Johnny went to the kitchen and looked over what Pedro and Marjory were cooking. Then, in halting speech, he told the younger cook that Anna wasn't feeling well and wanted chicken soup.
Just as Maybelle had, Marjory stared at Jonny before exclaiming, “My God, you can talk! That’s wonderful!” He thought she might hug him, but she grasped his shoulders instead. “Soup. Right.” She ladled a wooden bowl full of the requested food, including several thick chunks of meat, and handed it to Jonny with a spoon. Pepper and savory, melted fat floated atop the broth. Johnny filled a mug at the tap, and brought Anna the hot soup and beer. He set them on her night stand and with a smile, she began to eat.
Twenty minutes later, Johnny stood against a wall in the third-floor parlor. With the various fragrances the ladies wore, it smelled like a flower garden. Sunlight streamed through the open window to the west, but that was down a short hallway, so bulbs above provided hard light. Eight doors led out of the meeting room into the prostitutes’ individual bedrooms. Behind one, Lorraine and her current john alternately laughed and moaned.
Only she, Karla, Susanna, and Winnifred were not in attendance. Karla had remained at the bar; though the saloon was not yet busy, someone had to mind it besides the steelies.
Growing up had not been easy for Jonny. He liked to read any books he could get a hold of, from Charles Dickens to Victor Hugo. He had devoured Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age sixteen and figured he understood most of it. Other kids didn’t understand why he avoided playing with them. In truth, the occasional bullying had discouraged him and driven him to books. Until about age fifteen, he often shook in large groups.
Traveling across the country from Indiana to California from age seventeen to eighteen had taught him that he could make a living off his smarts. In that time, he had learned a blend of Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan from a middle-aged Chinese man, Xiong Liko, a railroad worker he’d befriended in Colorado. All this combined had given him the confidence to work with others and to be comfortable in crowds.
With his new, limited ability to speak, he found himself shaking as though he were a child again in front of class. He imagined the fifteen doves there, seated on the two long couches and chairs they had brought from their rooms, bursting into laughter.
Maybelle stood beside him. When he looked at her, she patted him on the back as if to say, “You can do this.”
“A—” Jonny stopped himself, closed his eyes, and continued, “Anna. Feeling sick.” He patted his belly and touched his nose. At least the gesture was a half-truth. Her illness had everything to do with her gut. “Flu.”
“He’s talking!” one of the girls exclaimed. He didn’t know who, but when he opened his eyes, they all began to clap, a few to whistle. Charlotte, face mostly healed, her smile broad, popped up off the couch to give him a moist kiss on the cheek. His chest tingled and he felt a bit aroused as she skipped back to her seat. A moment later he wiped away tears. Though he hadn’t cried in years before the previous night, they seemed to come whether he wanted them or not now.
Maybelle clapped along, and as the cheering died down, Lorraine peeked out her door, one of her breasts popping into view. “What am I missing?”
Lonzo Rivera came up behind her, held her from behind, and with a giggle, she slammed the door shut.
Jonny and the girls laughed, and as he caught his breath, he realized he wasn’t shaking so much. Anna had been right. He could get the meaning to them.
“Maybelle is, ah… madam. For now.”
“We expect Anna to be better within the week. You can come to Jonny or me for anything.”
Rowena, a young dove with softly angled cheeks, straight auburn hair, and captivating eyes, tipped her head. “Is that all?”
Jonny began to nod, then forced himself to speak. “That’s all.”
As the doves shuffled out, in turn, a few kissed Jonny on the check, the rest, on the lips. Jonny felt the blush in his cheeks as the ladies sashayed away. Their footfalls pattered along the hallway then down the stairs. Maybelle and Jonny still stood in the parlor for a minute. A few cheers came from downstairs as the doves returned to the saloon.
“Give Anna time. We speak.” Jonny gestured between himself and Maybelle.
“Very well.”
“Last night… A-Anna. Ah, shot.”
“Oh God,” said Maybelle. “The blood on your clothes—”
He nodded. “Outlaws.”
“I would think so,” she answered.
“Fullerton. Killed p-people.”
“You mean the murders at Plowshares? That was Margarita Fullerton?”
Their conversation, conducted mostly in whispers, went on for another fifteen minutes or so until Jonny figured she understood everything he did. She could tell the doves what they needed to know while helping Anna, and keeping her secrets.
Back in his and Anna’s room, Jonny peeked in on Creed. The gunfighter slept on his back, blanket up to his armpits, bare arms over his chest. Creed had become mostly nocturnal since rebirth, and it was no wonder he still dozed.
Jonny took a bath and even washed his hair before dressing again. Anna, done with her food, asked him to retrieve Dr. Raleigh Gilmore’s notes from the lab. She began reading the moment he placed the ledger on her lap, and he took her dishes to the kitchen.
That evening, he realized he had become the main topic of conversation throughout the saloon. Nate Lieby, the lanky singer from Whiskey Zombie Collective, shook the tinker’s hand. “You’ll be singing with us in no time.”
When the band began to play, Jonny’s shoulders relaxed. As diners clapped their hands to the music, he no longer felt like the center of attention.
Behind the bar, he told Karla, “I’ll help.”
No sooner had he spoken than an older gentleman, one of the many railroad conductors, approached her with a handful of brothel tokens. She glanced at Jonny. He didn’t feel ready to take on the bar alone, but why not? He could listen to orders. He waved her away.
Karla ruffled the patron’s silver hair and took him upstairs.
As Whiskey Zombie Collective played, the talking grew louder, though some stopped to enjoy the music. Jonny shut his eyes for a few seconds and tapped his fingers on the bar, in time to the tune. When he opened them, he started in surprise. Gaining back his composure, he glared across the bar at the newcomer.
“Drink? B-bastard.”
Rob Cantrell leaned forward slightly in his seat, frowning, then sat back. “I deserve that.”
Jonny kept his face stoic. “You do.”
“I shouldn’t have taken that job. So, I’m sorry.”
He watched the tinker, but if he expected Jonny to budge, to offer forgiveness, he would have to wait a while longer.
Cantrell placed his hands on the bar’s polished edge. “I’m just here to help.”
Creed intended to work with the bounty hunter, and Jonny decided to defer to Creed’s wisdom. It seemed to him that El Tiburón had entered their inner circle through subterfuge.
“You have pork, right?” Cantrell scratched his beard.
“Sometimes…” Jonny concentrated on getting out the next word. “Shark.”
“Yes, I have some experience with that.” Cantrell rubbed his face and Jonny realized the man had bruises under his beard. “Just a couple pork chops, some greens, and a mug of beer.” Cantrell pulled a dollar coin from his coat and passed across the bar. Jonny took it and noted that underneath, the bounty hunter had concealed a folded piece of paper.
Jonny put the dollar in the till, gave Cantrell his seventy-five cents in change, went to the kitchen, and slowly gave Marjory the order. He stepped into the hallway and unfolded the note.
“Marshal Creed,” it read in a simple but neat script, “I have a lead. Let me know where to meet.”
Johnny would give Creed the note soon. Meanwhile, a few more men approached the bar, and he had a business to run.
CHAPTER FORTY
Melba Gregg sat at the end of the hallway, the light of a Tesla bulb casting her sharp shadow against the wall. Maxwell couldn’t understand how his younger sister, in her early thirties, looked closer to fifty, with gutters of crow’s feet around her lips and small eyes. She never showed more than a half smile, as though half of her mouth refused to give up an ounce of cynicism.
She smoked a home rolled cigarillo, stinking up the hallway with a musky tobacco haze. Maxwell waved her over to him as he didn’t want Gilmore, whom he had stationed in the room beyond the door, listening in. Melba stood without having to push off the floor. Though she may look prematurely old, she had strapping muscles.
Maxwell met her in the middle of the hallway. “What's the news?”
Melba scratched her cheek and took a drag on the cigarillo, which remained hanging from her lip as she blew out the smoke. “I reckon he's doing what he’s supposed to. I don’t think he expected us to ever bring him here.”
“Well, he let Fullerton get away. He should have known.”
She laughed as Maxwell clasped his hands in satisfaction. “Too bad you missed his surprise when we removed the blindfold. I mean, the whole time, he was shaking like a newborn kitten. He wanted to go into business for himself?”
“I hope you explained why bringing him in this way was necessary.”
“Sure. Might help if you did, too.”
“Thank you, sis.” Gregg passed her and opened the door at the end of the hall.
Gilmore stood at one of two working tables in the organization’s morgue. On it lay Fullerton’s naked body. In the past, Gregg reminisced this room and these tables had been used to dismember bodies to more easily dispose of them. Like in Crowder’s morgue, along the back wall were rows of newly installed body cabinets. The room smelled of nervous sweat, alcohol, and formaldehyde.
The doctor looked up and his breathing stopped, as though he too were one of those corpses tucked away behind him. In addition to the harsh lights shining above, he had a lamp beside him giving further white illumination to the former madam’s face. On a rolling cart beside her head sat a stack of papers, which Gregg presumed were the doctor’s final notes retrieved from the mansion.
“No need to feel tense, Raleigh. We’re on the same side. You could even think of me as your benefactor.”
“The kidnapping gave me a different impression.” Gilmore turned his gaze back to Fullerton’s body.
“We need to keep secrets until we know we can trust you.”
“Trust me?” Gilmore huffed.
“You want to make a business of helping the rich skirt death. I helped you by letting you use one of my steelies, and then the brain circuitry went missing.”
“That couldn’t be helped,” said Gilmore.
“That’s behind us. We want to help paying clients to live longer as well. You have the knowledge. Nearly. We have the resources. Let’s explore this relationship further.”
“What if I decide I don’t want to work with you?”
Gregg bit his lower lip. “That’s why we don’t want you to know too much. I’d like the option of leaving you alive. Still, I think you’ll see this is all to our mutual advantage.”
“Where are the animals?” Gilmore asked abruptly.
Gregg felt a grin flicker on his lips. “We moved your kennel into a safe area of our operation. How often do they need to eat?”
“As much as any dog, but they’re ravenous. All of them will eat only meat. Including the mice.” Gilmore clasped his hands, which had begun to tremble.
“Huh.” Gregg tapped his finger on his chin. He had heard a few refer to Creed as a zombie, though he thought of the man more as a benevolent, though dangerous, Frankenstein’s monster. Boyd’s, in this case. These reanimated animals, and Fullerton, reminded him of stories he’d heard out of New Orleans about people raising the dead as flesh-eating servants.
Gregg watched Gilmore’s hands and jaw trembling. “Please don’t let nervousness take you over. We’re working together. I apologize if Melba came off as especially intimidating. I don’t think she meant to be, not with you. You get your science worked out, and together we’ll sell immortality.”
“It’s probably not immortality.”
Gregg nodded at the physician. “Well, resurrection, in any case. Jesus sure hasn't come down from on high to provide it, so why not us?”
“That’s essentially what I've been thinking.” Gilmore’s voice had less of a quiver. “I had other notes in a ledger. Where is it?”
“We didn’t find a ledger.” Gregg knew, however, that Cantrell had killed one of his men at Fullerton’s mansion with a bullet to the brain. Around the same time that he, Bill Roseberry, and Jed Brubaker were taking the bodies from Crowder’s Mortuary, the federal marshals had found the dead man at the madam’s estate. Might someone else have been out there, before his men had gone there to clean up? Maybe Cantrell had been there the entire time.
“What's this on her arm?” Greg traced the skin around the circular device and found it soft.
Gilmore rested his hand on it then went back to looking at the head unit. “It keeps her from decaying while I figure out what went wrong. You can use that on any fresh corpse to keep it from rotting, even if you haven't brought that body back to life.”
“Stupendous.” An excited shiver went down Gregg’s spine. Even this bit of the technology could help them turn a huge profit. Medical schools could keep corpses life like indefinitely. It might even allow doctors to transplant hearts, kidneys, and livers from one body to another. The only problem was the California Technological Rights Act, the law Miles Morgan had pushed through to break competition to his monopoly. However, Gregg had to admit that he owed the inspiration for his organization to that law.
“Bodacious Creed.” Gilmore looked Gregg in the eyes for a moment, before looking back at Fullerton. “He talks like a living man. He seems to think like one, but he’s quick, tough, rarely misses a shot and, they say, can aim in two directions at once. Margarita, though, she was like...” He furrowed his brows as though searching for the word.
“A zombie,” Gregg finished for him. “Just what I’ve been thinking.”
“Like the name of that group that plays at Amber Doves.” Gilmore pointed toward the steel attachment on her arm. “I also strapped those to the other corpses. No need to repeat mistakes.”
“Do your best, make progress, and you’ll always have a place with us.” Gregg stepped back from the corpse and watched until Gilmore gazed at him. “We're in no hurry. Research takes time, as I’m aware. Tesla didn't invent the light bulb on his first go, even with Miles Morgan's funds and encouragement.” He pointed toward one of the many bulbs brightening the room from the ceiling. “You have the support of this organization. If you need them, we can get you more bodies.”
“What do you call your business?” asked Gilmore. “I doubt you use the term ‘criminal underground.’”
“You know the monkeys?” Gregg covered first his eyes, then ears, then mouth.
Gilmore said, “Those ostensibly ignoring sin.”
“We don’t ignore it. We’re 'The Evil Eye Syndicate.’”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
That night, the tenth of August, less than a quarter-mile from the Fullerton mansion, Bodacious Creed waited among tall redwoods. All day long, Jonny had paid attention to the chit chat from deputies who stopped in at The House of Amber Doves. In his new, halting way, he had given Creed helpful information. It seemed the marshals had changed their focus from searching for Creed to pursuing Corwin Blake and Margarita Fullerton. As they had talked, Jonny added tiny switches into the head unit and inserted new lenses into Creed’s eyes.
Rising steadily above the call of crickets and the rustling of squirrels in the branches came a man’s approaching footsteps. Rob Cantrell emerged from behind the trees, goggles firmly over his eyes. Though the bounty hunter moved quietly enough that most wouldn’t have heard him, Creed had caught the sound of his feet cracking twi
gs from about a tenth of a mile away. Due to Jonny’s improvements to his machinery, Creed’s keener hearing let in distractions: a distant shout here, a cough there. He hoped to get used to it in short order. As for his vision, with concentration, he could zero in his sight, as with a pair of binoculars, then snap it back.
“Over here,” he called to the bounty hunter.
“The marshals are still reeling from your escape, and Boris Orange’s murder,” Cantrell said as he approached. “You know what they discovered yesterday? Three bodies, stolen from the mortuary. All except Orange. The Plowshares victims. The mortician didn’t see the body thieves, and no other witnesses have come forward. It’s Maxwell Gregg and his people, though. We both know it. I bet he brought Blake along with him.”
Creed raised an eyebrow. “Blake? I don't think so.”
“Why not?”
“Pat Crowder is alive. He’s who they’d bring in when they think killing necessary. They don’t mean to cause more death. They want to bring the dead back to life.”
“Fullerton. More corpses.” Cantrell crossed his arms. “I reckon you’re right.”
“When Ben Nelsen and I chased him in the Flats, Blake disappeared by slipping into a hidey-hole in a roof. We found others roof spaces when we searched, doors with coffin-sized compartments, hidden under shingles.
“I think the entire Santa Cruz underground is in the Flats, using spare rooms to make illegal gadgets. Once again, Morgan’s technological rights.” Creed shook his head. “An unjust law. I’d be tempted to leave this group alone if that was all they did.” Creed had seen signs of their machinery over the last few years, mostly in San Francisco, much of it dangerous.
“The marshals are ignoring the Flats.” Cantrell wore a sour grin. “You’ve put so much fear in the burglars and killers that the marshals just aren’t seeing any clues there. No one believes there’s an organized crime syndicate in Santa Cruz. Willful ignorance, I say. I haven't been able to find any leads. I think maybe you could.”
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