The Man Who Crossed Worlds (A Miles Franco Urban Fantasy)

by Chris Strange

  Staking out Andrews’ club probably wasn’t the best way to avoid getting shot, but it gave me a prime chance to get the ear of the gangster. And so far, it looked like it was paying off.

  Caterina Andrews stopped outside her car, fumbled with her keys, and climbed inside, closing her umbrella at the same time. The blue sedan rumbled to life and the headlights flicked on. I started Desmond’s car as well. Talking directly to John Andrews would get me nothing but a hole in the ground. But maybe I could convince his wife to talk some sense into him.

  Caterina’s sedan pulled out onto the road, and I followed. I stayed a little way back, doing my best not to attract her attention. I couldn’t afford for her to get spooked, especially if she’d seen my mug on the morning news. Tailing her would’ve been easier if the traffic was heavier and there were more cars to put between me and her, but I’d have to make do.

  She drove carefully through the rain, making her way east toward the suburbs. The streets got cleaner and safer-looking the further we drove, or maybe the seediness was just kept under wraps. I’d never lived out in the suburbs, but I’d dealt with plenty of people who had. I soon found out you don’t stay that clean without trampling on the people lying in the mud.

  I’d been half-expecting her to go all the way to Andrews’ mansion just south of here, but for some reason she didn’t. Not that I was complaining. If she disappeared behind those iron gates with Andrews’ private army guarding them, I’d never get her alone.

  So it was a relief when she pulled over at a quaint diner in the middle of a block of shops. I drove past and pulled around the corner before stopping. I walked back, my hands in my pockets and my collar up against the rain, and caught sight of her as she disappeared through the door of the diner.

  Doing what must’ve looked like a Pink Panther impression, I sneaked through the glass doors and took a seat at a booth near the main entrance. From there I could get a good view of the back of Caterina’s head where she sat in the corner, reading a newspaper. Her red hair was pulled up into a tight bun, and she was wearing a similar dress to the one I saw her in the other day. It struck me as odd that a gangster’s wife would dress so plainly and eat in a place like this. But then again, maybe she just liked pancakes.

  The diner was doing its best to convince its patrons they’d travelled back to the 1950s, but the 1950s as imagined by people who’d only experienced it through watching James Dean films. The illusion was spoiled somewhat by the Vei waitress that came over, complete with stuffed bra and white apron. “Coffee?” she asked.

  I nodded and she poured me a mug of something black and syrupy. She left me with a menu and tottered away on her high heels. I shook my head. Who were they kidding?

  Caterina must’ve been a regular, because the chef himself brought her a plate of French toast with banana and bacon within minutes of our arrival. She said something to him, and they exchanged a polite laugh, then the chef retreated. She didn’t immediately put her paper away. Half the page was covered with a splash picture of my most recent mug shot. Great.

  My paranoia kicked in again, startling the butterflies in my stomach into fluttering. I glanced around at the staff and patrons. No one was taking any notice of me. Most of them still looked half-asleep, which I suppose worked in my favor. At least until the coffee started kicking in.

  All right, no more screwing around. If I was going to do this, I’d better get on with it before someone recognized me and sent the police my way. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past some plucky, trigger-happy civilian to put a couple in me themselves, hoping to get a nice reward from the cops or the gangs or whoever decided to pay.

  I chugged down the lukewarm sludge they passed off as coffee, tossed my menu aside, and got up. Caterina didn’t look around as I strode across the room.

  “You shouldn’t read that stuff,” I said, sliding into the booth opposite her. “It’ll rot your brain.”

  Caterina started and blinked, staring at me. “Mr. Franco? What are you—”

  I raised a hand to cut her off. “First, it’s just Miles. Second, whatever they’re saying about me in the papers, it’s not true.”

  “I know.”

  I opened my mouth to defend myself, then paused. “What?”

  “I know it wasn’t you. I’ve spent enough time around John to spot a frame-up when I see one.”

  “Well…yes. Good.” It felt strange to have things go my way. It made me suspicious. “Well, in that case, we need to talk.”

  “I don’t know how much help I’ll be to you, Mr. Franco. My husband is the one with the police connections.”

  “It’s not that. I need your help on something else.”

  “What?”

  I glanced around the diner as another patron walked in. “Can we go somewhere a bit more private? All these people are making me antsy.”

  She looked the place over and nodded. “I know just the place.”

  Caterina took me to a motel a few blocks away. Yeah, yeah, I know, but it wasn’t like that. She decided it was for my own good to have somewhere to crash for a couple of days, somewhere that wouldn’t ask too many questions. She went in and paid in advance at the office while I parked Desmond’s car outside. I felt guilty for letting her pay, but my pocket was pretty light, and I wasn’t above taking charity. I wasn’t above much anymore.

  I huddled in the car to shelter from the rain until she emerged from the office, jingling the keys at me. I locked the car and followed her up the outside stairs to room 17.

  Inside, room 17 was your typical middle-of-the-range motel room, a double bed with a floral cover, a television bolted into place, a kitchenette with a small selection of cutlery and plates, and a bathroom so tiny you’d have to be a stick figure to get the door closed once you were inside.

  I collapsed onto the bed with all the grace of a junkie diving onto a new fix, then burrowed my head into the pillow. “You’re a king among men, Cat. I owe you one.”

  “You owe me two, now,” she said. “I can’t stay long. My husband…he’s been in a frenzy ever since he returned from Heaven.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” I regretfully pulled myself from the soft comfort of the pillow as she perched herself on the end of the bed. “I’ve got some information I want you to give him.”

  She glanced at me, then looked away. “I don’t know if I want to get in the middle of this, Mr. Franco.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t either. But this is important. I’m trying to stop him from doing something the whole city might regret.”

  “He won’t listen to me.” She screwed up her face. “He doesn’t like to discuss business with me. He’s fond of me, I think, but he keeps me around for political reasons more than anything.”

  “Yeah? How you figure that?”

  “My father is Kyle Greene.”

  The name struck a chord, but it took me a moment to place it. “The head of Bore Customs?”

  She bit her lip and nodded. Their odd relationship clicked into place for me. With Caterina as a wife—and a hostage—Andrews would have a link to Customs and the Bore he’d never get no matter how many Immigration officials he bribed. It also gave him leverage over the other gangs; he’d have some control over what was let in and out. I couldn’t work out how they’d manage to keep the relationship out of the media, though. The newspapers printed stories about Andrews like they were sordid pulp novels. His reputation for violence and drugs gave the public a thrill, at least it would until they found themselves in the middle of a gang war.

  I felt a sudden sympathy for her. We were both pawns in our own ways, but she must’ve lived like this for years. How did she survive it? How could she live with a man like that?

  She continued to chew on her lip, picking at nonexistent lint on the bedspread. “You want me to talk to him, don’t you?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “What do you want me to tell him?” she asked.

  I almost didn’t go through with it. Almost.
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  “Tell him he’s being manipulated,” I said, ignoring the sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach as I took my turn moving her around on the chessboard. “A shifty cop, Detective Todd, he’s trying to ignite a gang war, and he’s using the Chroma to kick-start it.” For the second time that morning I related the tale of what the Chroma had done to Tania, the madness and power it had sparked in her. Caterina nodded as I spoke, her lips pursed tight.

  “…I don’t have much love for your husband,” I said, “as I’m sure you figure. But if he rises to Todd’s bait, it’ll destroy him.”

  “Not if John gets enough Chroma. He has plenty of Tunnelers working for him. He could destroy Todd and the other gangs while he’s at it.”

  “Todd won’t let that happen. He must’ve got the recipe from Spencer and be crafting it somewhere in Heaven, but I haven’t got the foggiest where. He’s a crafty son of a bitch, and he’ll keep plenty of it for himself. He has contacts and access to police databases. He’ll find Tunnelers to join him, if he hasn’t already. He’ll dole out just enough Chroma to have the city fighting over it, and if they don’t destroy themselves, he’ll do it himself.”

  Caterina sighed, nodding slowly. “John is angry. So angry. I don’t know if I can make him see reason. But I’ll try.”

  “That’s all I’m asking.”

  She nodded again. An awkward silence passed between us, interrupted only by the steady sounds of morning traffic making its way past outside. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or maybe it was the prospect of spending a long time in the pen if the cops caught up with me, but Caterina’s perfume was having a strange effect on my head. It was a floral scent, not too strong, with a hint of something else beneath it.

  I watched her, and she watched her knees. We sat like that for a while, five minutes, maybe ten, maybe an hour. I couldn’t tell. Then a tear rolled slowly down her cheek.

  She didn’t sob, she didn’t wail, no part of her even moved except the bead of water trickling into the corner of her mouth.

  I shuffled over on the bed, and she didn’t move away. Neither did she move away when I slipped my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to me. Her breath came shallowly against the skin of my neck.

  I don’t know why I did it. It was stupid. She was John Andrews’ wife, for God’s sake, and my track record with women wasn’t going to win me any applause.

  But regardless of all that, I kissed her. She kissed back.

  I won’t pretend it was any kind of love that made me do it. And I don’t think it was love on her part that drove her to start pulling my shirt off. For me, it was nothing but lust and the desire for human comfort, the need for someone who wasn’t trying to manipulate me.

  She planted kisses on my neck and I pulled her hair loose of its bun. It flowed down to her shoulders in waves of bronze, and then I tangled my fingers in it and pulled her close.

  By the time I was tugging her dress off and she was fumbling with my belt, all logic had gone the way of my reservations, booted into a cage at the back of my mind where they could do nothing but holler against the bars. I didn’t plan on letting them out for a long time.

  Caterina collapsed onto the bed and dragged me on top of her, her hair falling about her face like something out of a magazine. She was wearing the sort of bra and panties women only wear on third dates and Valentine’s Day, a black lace deal ripped straight from the cover of Victoria’s Secret. I got a good eyeful before burying my face against her skin, kissing my way across her flat abdomen.

  I was so revved up it took me a few moments to realize she was gently pushing me away by the shoulders. “I can’t,” she whispered.

  My hormones were wishing I was deaf, but I wasn’t a complete asshole. The logic I’d locked up in the back of my head was attempting a prison break. Caterina kept pushing me away, and reluctantly I complied. “What’d I do?”

  She pulled her dress up to her chest and gave me a pained look. “You didn’t do anything.”

  “I can do more things. I had a whole bunch planned.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No big deal,” I said, though parts of my anatomy were betraying me.

  “Another time…”

  “Another life. Yeah, I gotcha.”

  She stood up and slipped her dress over her head. I got one last look at her ass in those lacy panties before they were lost to my sight forever. Hey, I think I deserved at least that much.

  I didn’t bother dressing. I was still reeling from the sudden changes in mood. Now all I wanted was a couple of fingers of whiskey, no matter that I hadn’t drunk the stuff for years. Something about it just seemed appropriate.

  “So you’re disappearing again?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell John what you told me. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  I snorted. “Lady Luck’s a bitch and I’m pretty sure she’s got a personal grudge against me. But thanks.”

  She tied her hair back into a bun. Somehow, she managed to make that sexy, even in her unassuming way. Maybe because of her unassuming way.

  “I guess this is the part where I ask if I’m going to see you again,” I said.

  She turned back to me with a smile. “Then this must be the part where I say, ‘Maybe, Mr. Franco. Maybe.’”

  “For the love of God, call me Miles.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Franco.”

  “Be seeing you, Cat.”

  She left. I got up, sat down again, then buried my head in the pillow.

  “Miles,” I asked myself, “how the hell did you manage to fuck that one up?”

  I slept.

  It was a sense of nervous urgency that awakened me. The rain had eased to a constant drizzle, and the red lights of the clock on the nightstand told me it was 4:17 p.m. Something in my head was nagging me to get up, to get moving, so I hauled myself out of bed. No one had arrested me during the day, apparently, for which I was grateful. I guessed prison cots would be a lot less comfortable than motel beds.

  I gulped down a glass of water while I considered my options. Rob had given me Vivian’s home phone number on the scrap of paper with her address. I could check in with her, see if she’d decided to believe me about Todd’s guilt. Hell, maybe the bastard had already been arrested. That would be a sweet kind of revenge, although I would have preferred to have a hand in taking him down myself.

  I picked up the motel phone, puzzled out how to dial an outside line, and punched in Vivian’s number. No response. Maybe she was out kicking Todd’s ass.

  All right, what now? I wanted to check in on Tania, make sure the hospital was treating her right, but I couldn’t just call up. If I called her mother, I’d either get the cops set on me, or I’d receive a new variation of the increasingly desperate demands for rent payment. And I didn’t like my chances of the hospital giving information to a wanted criminal. Especially when he wasn’t a family member.

  Another idea occurred to me. I was so far outside the law right now a charge for illegally accessing hospital records would be a fart in a hurricane, so I dialed Desmond’s number and prayed that Rob liked me enough to let me use his services again.

  Desmond picked up after four rings.

  “Des,” I said, “I got another favor to ask.”

  “Jeez, guy, where you been? I’ve been calling your cell all morning.”

  “Oh yeah. Damn thing got itself waterlogged. I wanted to know if Rob can get himself access to the patient records at Bluegate Hospital.”

  Desmond plowed right over me, ignoring my question. “Have you seen the news?”

  “What? No, why?”

  “You near a TV?”

  “Yeah, hold on.” I looked around and found the TV remote on the floor beside the bedside table. “What channel?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Desmond said in a tone that did strange things to the hairs on the back of my neck.

  I flicked the TV on, stared at it for three seconds. My jaw dropped. “Fuck.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and I
could tell he was nodding. “Fuck indeed.”

  The picture on the box looked like it was taken from a helicopter over Bluegate. By the position on the river, it looked to be an image on the northeast of the city, where Andrews’ territory butted against that of the 23rd Street Bikers. At least, that’s what it used to be.

  It looked like Godzilla had taken a stroll through the district. Several of the low-rises were completely demolished, a few of them crushed, a few of them simply burnt to the ground. The street was littered with the burnt husks of cars, and more than a couple of bodies. The word Live was printed in the top right of the screen, and a ticker-tape strip ran along the bottom. Gang Wars Throughout Bluegate, it said. Citizens Flee Violence.

  As I watched the live feed, a burst of gunfire rang out of one of the surviving low-rise buildings. A few seconds later, the building trembled and began to slip. The color of it changed instantly, becoming white, chalk-like. It crumbled in a way that buildings shouldn’t be able to crumble, and the gunfire cut off. In slow motion the building collapsed, spewing white dust up into the air.

  “It didn’t work,” I whispered, more to myself than to Desmond. “Chroma, it’s here, and they all fell for Todd’s trap.”

  “Reports are that Andrews’ gang is leading the violence,” Desmond said. “The media’s keeping tight-lipped about what’s causing it all, or maybe they don’t know themselves, but it’s my guess that Andrews got himself an advanced shipment of this drug of yours.”

  I slammed my fist down on the bedside table. Pain shot through my wrist, but that was drowned out by anger. I tried to warn him, goddamn it! That son of a bitch was going to destroy the city, and then find himself facing an even bigger threat from Todd. “Jesus. What the hell are we going to do?”

  “Look, guy, I got a tip. I asked Rob to run down some of the things in your story that didn’t ring true for me. You said Shirley O’Neil was involved in Andrews’ outfit. I know Shirley, or I used to. She was a hard bitch, but not the sort of woman to toss in with the likes of Andrews.”

  “Yeah? What’d you find?”