The man lit the cigarette with a match. “I’ll send somebody around to claim the body.” He turned and headed out of the room.
Epilogue
My eyes felt like they were held shut with lead weights. I shifted slightly, my body stiff but without pain. My mind reeled with dark shapes that were filled with bright flashes and explosions of noise. Fleeting images started to come into focus, like short cuts from several different movies all jumbled together in the darkness. I saw my parents and sister arguing over dinner…Moira lifting her head back to laugh at a joke at the Green Mill…Mrs. Rabinowitz chiding me to get a second lock for my door…Bugs Moran grinning as he puffed on a cigar…Moira making love to me… and then trying to kill me…and Al Capone winking at me over the barrel of a gun as he pulled the trigger…
I awoke with a jerk. My mouth felt like it was filled with an entire bale of cotton. I blinked my eyes several times; it was like I had never opened them before. When they finally came into focus, I saw a white, corniced ceiling that was tinged yellow with cigarette smoke.
I turned my head to take in my surroundings. I was in a dimly lit room that was sparsely decorated. I lay on a couch and could make out a table sitting against the far wall. I managed to sit up, a ravaging hunger filling me. I was starving, almost as if I had never eaten in my entire life.
“Ah, I see you’re awake.” The voice came from my left. I turned toward the sound and blinked as a lamp clicked on, revealing a man sitting in a dingy armchair. He was dressed in a rumpled grey suit with a white shirt and a dark blue tie, loose around his neck. He had a soft, narrow face, now covered in short stubble. His hair was black and was parted down the middle. “How are you feeling, Saul?” I recognized his voice as belonging to the man who’d interviewed me at the hospital.
I looked around and didn’t recognize my surroundings. I was in an apartment, but I didn’t know who lived there. “I feel fine, though I’m starving.” I rubbed my head, a slight headache pounding behind my temples. My thoughts started to become clear. “Wait a minute. Didn’t I die?”
“Here,” the man stood up and handed me a glass filled with tomato juice and a newspaper. “These might help.”
I took the glass and paper. The paper was open to page eight and I had to scan down to a small piece at the bottom of the page. “Postal employee dead in gang shoot out,” read the headline. “Great,” I said. “So everybody thinks I’m dead.” Then a new thought struck me. “Gevalt! What are mom and dad going to think? And Sarah? Shit! Are they okay?”
“Your parents and sister are fine,” said the man. “I have a man watching their place but, with you being dead, I don’t think that Capone will make good on his threats. He’s turned up back in Florida and there’s no leverage for him with your family now that you are dead. Despite his many faults, Capone is not a monster.”
I gave the man a look, raising one eyebrow. “Well, not a monster in the sense that he’d attack an innocent family,” he said. “People would know it was him, and that would hurt his image.”
I nodded and finally took a drink of the tomato juice. The sharp, coppery taste of blood filled my mouth. I spewed the drink in a violent explosion, drops raining down on the newspaper and across the room. “What the hell is this?”
“Blood.”
I stared at him like he was crazy, but something inside me clicked into place. The taste had taken the edge off of my hunger. I stared at the glass and grimaced. Damn. Or damned? I lifted the glass again and, after a slight hesitation, took another drink, the blood flowing down my throat. I could feel my hunger becoming sated, my headache fading away. I finished the glass in three long gulps. “Do I want to know whose blood?” I asked.
“It’s cows blood, actually.” The man gave a sheepish smile. “I figured you wouldn’t like pigs blood, being Jewish and all.”
“I appreciate that. And who are you?”
“My name is Eliot Ness,” he held out his hand.
I shook it and gave him a look. “So, my parents and friends think I’m dead and I’ve become a vampire?”
“Yep,” Ness said. “That sums it up pretty well. You will be given a new name in a couple of days; you can’t go around with a dead man’s name. And I’m afraid you will not be able to see your family ever again.” He gave me a piercing gaze. “Ever.”
“But, certainly just once couldn’t…”
“No.” Ness shook his head. “Don’t even think about it. If you showed up, it might give your poor mom a heart attack. And do you think they’d be able to keep quiet about it? You’d just be putting them right back into danger again.”
I nodded slowly, realizing that he was right. I didn’t like it, but I knew in my gut it was not possible. Dad might understand, and he might even be able to keep it under his hat, but if I showed up in front of mom she would have a heart attack. And even if she didn’t, and even if she swore on my grandfather’s grave, she’d never be able to keep the fact that I was still alive a secret.
I glanced around the apartment again. “Where am I? Whose place is this?”
“Yours,” Ness replied. He pulled out a set of house keys and handed them to me. “This apartment happened to come into our possession a few weeks ago, so I thought it would work for you.”
“What about my old place?” I asked out of curiosity. This place was clearly better than my old apartment so I really had no desire to go back.
“Well, in addition to the fact that it was your old apartment and you are now dead,” Ness made it sound like it was an accusation. “We also think your old apartment is a risk. Your neighbor, Mrs. Rabinowitz, was found dead in her apartment last night.”
“What?” I was shocked.
“The report that I saw said that a wild dog had broken into her apartment and attacked her. Her throat was torn out and she bled to death.”
I stared at Ness, my mouth agape. She’s been an old busy-body, but she hadn’t deserved to be brutally killed. “But you said Capone was back in Florida. And why would he care about Mrs. R? I don’t think he’d ever met her.”
Ness just shrugged. He apparently didn’t have any more information. I hung my head in silence for a moment, actually saying a small prayer for Mrs. R.
I looked up and walked over to the window, pulling open the heavy curtain. The bright sunlight hurt my eyes, but I think that was from not having seen it for such a long time. I looked out onto the Loop district, looking down on the sign for the Chicago Theatre. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Saul,” Ness said, a slight smile playing across his face. “How would you like to come work for the Treasury Department?”
About the Authors
Geoff Habiger and Coy Kissee have been life-long friends since high school in Manhattan, Kansas. (The Little Apple, which was a much better place to grow up than the Big Apple, in our humble opinion.) We love reading, baseball, cats, role-playing games, comics, and board games (not necessarily in that order and sometimes the cats can be very trying). The idea for Unremarkable was sparked on a trip to Chicago and the basic idea was fleshed out on the return drive back to Kansas City. The main story, along with the characters, were fleshed out on a trip to GenCon later that year. That was over 7 years ago! But through Geoff’s steadfast dedication, and Coy’s staunch diligence, we managed to get Saul’s story finished. Not an easy feat sometimes when we often worked long distance over Facetime.
Coy lives with his wife in Lenexa, Kansas. Geoff lives with his wife and son in Tijeras, New Mexico.
Saul’s story will continue in Untouchable. You can also check out Geoff and Coy’s fantasy crime novel, Wrath of the Fury Blade.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
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br /> Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
About the Authors
Unremarkable Page 17
