by P. N. Elrod
“Why the hell should I? I didn’t know you. You run with an outfit like Gordy’s and think that’s a good character reference?”
“But I hypnotized you.”
“You thought you did. I was wondering, ‘What the hell?’ and then played along to see what you’d do. Ahh! Damn!”
He pulled himself toward Bobbi’s couch and eased down with his back against it, long legs sprawled on the floor, arms tight around his chest, pressing hard, visibly hurting. Why was he putting himself through that? Why not vanish?
Bobbi broke away from me and into the kitchen, ran water, and returned with wet dish towels. She knelt and Kroun let her try to clean him up. He gave her a bemused look as she swabbed blood from his face.
“You’re all right, kid,” he concluded.
“Are you?” She made him move his arms and opened his shirt. “The hole’s gone, but…”
“Just on the outside, cutie. Inside stuff…it takes longer. I need to rest a little. I’ll get better.” He winked the way you do to reassure someone, then made null of it when he began to cough. He grabbed one of the towels, hacking blood into it. The bullet must have gone through a lung.
She glanced at me, clearly thinking the same question. Why wasn’t he vanishing?
When the fit eased, Kroun said, “You surprised me, Fleming. During the hypnosis when you were trying to get me to change things…I expected a left, and you went right.”
“What did you do?” Bobbi asked. “Jack?”
I shook my head. “I just wanted him to keep Gordy in charge. That’s all.”
“It was enough,” he said. “What you wanted told me a lot about you. You didn’t order me around, you didn’t do a lot of stuff that others might. Didn’t ask for anything for yourself. All you did was look out for a friend.”
“But you weren’t under.”
“I played along. You get that, yet? I faked being under to learn more. Then you went funny, had—whatever that was—some kind of fit, I don’t know, you were bad off, then you just weren’t there. And that clinched it for me on what you are, what I was dealing with. But just try to pretend to still be out of things when someone pulls that on you. I damn near lost it there.”
“Well, you fooled me.”
“You had other problems than just worrying about my taking you on a ride to the boneyard. I wanted to know about ’em. I figured it was to do with Bristow’s work. What he did messed you up. With hypnotizing. That right?”
“I think so.” I flinched inside. “Yes.”
Bobbi looked at me. “What’s he mean?”
She had to find out sometime. “I…I can’t do that anymore. Whammying people. It’s…like my head’s exploding. I don’t dare try it again. Maybe not ever. Bristow messed me up, all right.”
Kroun snorted. “Face it, kid, what Bristow did left you crippled, the same as if he chopped off one of your legs. You’ll just have to live without. The way you looked, it could kill you if nothing else can.” He winced again, coughing more blood into the towel. “Damn, this hurts.”
“Vanish, then. Heal up.”
He gave a short laugh. Coughing. “Believe me, I’d like to.”
“Why don’t you?”
“You know why I was talking with Gordy so much? To hear about you. He’s always a gold mine of news about all kinds of stuff, but this was the mother lode. He knew everything, including why you were hanging in the meat locker instead of kicking Bristow’s ass. You had a piece of ice pick stuck in your back. The metal kept you solid.”
“What? So you’ve got the same thing? Shrapnel or something?”
“Or something. Remember I told Adelle Taylor about a guy getting cute and grazing my skull?” Kroun brushed at the white streak on the side of his head. “It wasn’t a graze. That was how I died.”
“Oh, God,” Bobbi’s jaw dropped. She started to sway. Kroun shot a hand out and steadied her a moment.
“Sorry, cutie. You okay? Good girl. The bullet that killed me is still inside. I’m as crippled as you are, Fleming. Between us we make a whole vampire—ya think?”
“But your looks,” said Bobbi. “When the change happens…you—you get younger. Don’t you?”
He shrugged. “Far as I know I look the same as the day it happened. Maybe the bullet screws that up, too. I can’t exactly go to a doctor and find out, can I?”
It made for a hell of a good cover. Now and then I’d look twice at some young mug in his twenties, thinking he might be a vampire. I hadn’t once considered Kroun to be a member of the club. “Guess not,” I said. “But what now?”
He waved a bloody hand. “Damned if I know. I can’t kill you—not the state I’m in, anyway—and I can’t make you forget, but I don’t want anyone else knowing about me.”
“We can keep shut. You got my word. Both of us.”
Bobbi nodded.
Kroun gave us each a long look with those dark, remarkable eyes. I wondered if mine had that kind of power behind them. “I think I can believe you. There’s just one thing…I really don’t want to go back.”
“Back to…?”
“Back to the business. It stinks. You know how it stinks. I’m tired of it. Mitch trying to blow me up…that could be my ticket out. A blessing in disguise. A real, real good disguise.”
“But there’s no body in the car. The cops’ll know that by now. That’ll get public.”
He pointed a finger toward his eyes. “There are ways around cop records. Maybe you can show me where to find them, then I do a little talking to the people who matter. Whitey Kroun can die in Chicago and stay here. Fake burial, the works. Shouldn’t be too hard to fix.” He cocked his head. “Do me a favor?”
“No problem. And then what?”
“And then…maybe…maybe I go fishing.”
I called Derner, told him how things had fallen out with Mitchell and what had to be done. I said I’d get Bobbi someplace else, and he was to send a cleaning crew over, not just to disappear the body but to scrub the place better than any hospital.
That took a while to arrange. He wasn’t a happy man.
I had spare clothes in her closet and put on fresh ones. Blood was on my overcoat, but the coat was dark, so nothing incriminating was visible. Bobbi also changed and packed some things together. There wasn’t much we could do to clean up Kroun. When he was able to stand, he washed in the kitchen, coughing over the sink to get his lungs cleared of blood. That done, he went down to wait in the Nash, out of sight.
When Derner’s crew arrived, Bobbi left with one of them, bound for Shoe Coldfield’s special hotel in the Bronze Belt. The way things were going, Escott could wind up recuperating there as well.
If he was going to be all right. He’d been sitting up and talking, but I knew how that could turn around in an instant. Before the night was gone, I’d have to see him, make sure he was all right, try again to apologize for what I’d put him through.
I’d tell Bobbi later why he was in the hospital; I hadn’t quite figured out just how much to say about what prompted two grown men to beat the hell out of each other. She really didn’t need to know about me trying to kill myself.
As for Kroun…I got the impression that he’d been alone and on his own with this for a long time. It must have been a hell of a novelty to meet people who could deal with his big secret, though I was still digesting what to think about him.
We’re a rare breed. Hard to make. He’d not said anything about his initiation and who was responsible, what had led up to his death, how he’d dealt with his first waking. We would have to talk. Hell, maybe I could go fishing with him.
Derner’s people came, and I handed over the key to Bobbi’s place and left.
Kroun was in the backseat of the Nash, still hurting from the gunshot.
“Is that bullet still in you?” I asked, getting behind the wheel.
“Nah. They tend to go right through.”
“You’ve been shot other times?”
“Let’s talk about somet
hing else, okay?”
“Like why you didn’t just continue playing possum on the rug?”
“I couldn’t help the coughing. Even without it you’d have tumbled soon enough. Besides, you told me what I needed to know. You made a promise about burying me and were going to keep it.”
“That’s it?”
“Hey, come on. It’s easy to make a promise to a dying man. Just as easy to break. You’re crazy, but you’re a stand-up guy.”
I grunted. “Not an easy job.”
“Yeah. But you do okay.”
“And that’s it?” I repeated.
“There’s one other thing…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, any guy who’s that good of friends with Adelle Taylor can’t be all bad.”
DARK ROAD RISING
With thanks to Rox, Jackie,
and Lucienne
1
Chicago, February 1938
WHEN I set the brake and cut the motor, the dead man in the backseat of my Nash shifted, groaned, and straightened up to look around. He suppressed a cough, arms locked against his bloodstained chest as though to keep it from coming apart.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Peachy.” His voice rasped hollow and hoarse. He was lying, but that’s what you do when you feel like hell and don’t want to give in to it.
His name was Whitey Kroun. He was a big bad gang boss out of New York who had come to town to oversee my execution.
That hadn’t worked out very well.
He’d taken a bullet through the chest only a couple hours earlier and should be healing faster. He needed blood and a day’s rest on his home earth, but that would have to wait; I had one more thing to do before either of us could have a break.
“What’s this?” His dark eyes were bleary with fatigue and pain.
We were in a parking lot close to the hospital. “I gotta see a man about a dog.”
He grunted and pushed up his coat sleeve to squint at his watch. The crystal was gone, and the exposed hands swung loose over the numbers. “Well, it’s half past, better get a move on.”
I slammed out of the car and hurried toward the hospital entrance.
The streets weren’t awake yet. At this bleak hour they seemed too tired, unable to recover from the pains of an overlong night. The smack of predawn air felt good, though, and I consciously tried a lungful. Clinging to my overcoat was the smell of Kroun’s blood. The scent had filled the car, but with no need to breathe I’d been remarkably successful at pushing away the distraction.
Dried stains smeared the front of the coat, but the material was dark, no one would notice. Even if someone did, I had more serious concerns. I needed to check on my partner. The phone calls made hours ago to the emergency room and later to the doctor in charge weren’t enough, I had to see for myself.
After convincing a lone reception nurse that I was the patient’s cousin she got my name and other necessary information before giving away Charles Escott’s location. He was in the men’s ward.
I made sure that would change. “He gets a private room,” I said, pulling money from my wallet. From her shocked look the stack was more than she’d make in the next two months. “He gets whatever he needs before he needs it.” I folded the cash into her hand.
She stared at the money, uncertain. “Mr. Fleming, I—”
“Consider it a personal thank-you. Do whatever you want with it so long as my friend gets first-class treatment. I have to see him now.”
“He shouldn’t have visitors.”
“We’re not gonna play cards. I just need to check on him. Please.”
She read my mood right: determinedly polite but not leaving until I got what I wanted. She slipped the money into her clipboard, hugged it to her front, and led the way down the empty corridors herself. Maybe I couldn’t hypnotize people anymore, but a goodwill gift in the right place can take you far in the world. It had worked well enough for Capone, up to a point.
The ward was clean, but still a ward: a high, dim room full of restive misery. Some of the bodies shrouded under their blankets were frozen in place by injury, others twitched, sleepless from pain or illness.
I had a brief flash of memory of a similar place in France back when I was a red-faced kid still awkward in my doughboy uniform. There, the ward had been full of nuns gliding back and forth between the wounded. Some of the guys played cards one-handed, getting used to the new amputations, some groaned despite their doses of morphine, some slept, some wept, and one poor bastard at the end was screaming too much and had to be taken to a different part of the building. After twenty years, the picture was still sharp, but I couldn’t recall why I’d been there. Probably visiting someone, same as now.
Escott was second in from the door, lying slightly propped up on the narrow metal bed. His face was puffy and turning black from bruising, his ribs were taped, his hands bandaged like an outclassed boxer who’d unwisely stayed for the full twelve rounds. He seemed to be breathing okay, and when I listened, his heart thumped along steady and slow as he slept. But he looked so damned frail and crushed.
That was my doing. My fault.
He shouldn’t be here. I’d been an incredible, unconscionable fool, and he was paying for my lapse with cracked, maybe broken bones, pulped flesh, and slow weeks of recovery. God help us both, I’d come within a thin hair of killing him. He still wasn’t out of the woods. If I’d broken him up inside, he could bleed to death internally.
Not recognizing my own voice, I asked the nurse about that.
She consulted the chart at the foot of the bed. X-rays had been taken, though how anyone could make sense of a mass of indefinite shadows was beyond me. She told me what was wrong and, more importantly, what wasn’t wrong. It was cold comfort. I’d only half killed my best friend.
I wanted to help him, to do more than what had already been done, but no action on my part could possibly make up for such stupidity. This was true helplessness, and I hated it. My hand went toward him on its own, but I made a sudden fist, shoving it into a pocket. The nurse read this mood as well.
“He’ll be all right,” she said. “It’ll just take some time.”
It could take years, and still wouldn’t be all right.
One of his eyelids flickered. The other was fused fast shut from swelling.
Guilty at disturbing him, I started to back out of view, but it was too late. He was awake, if groggy, and fixed me in place with his cloudy gaze, not speaking.
When I couldn’t take the silence anymore, I said, “Charles…y-you don’t worry. They’ll get you whatever you want. It’s taken care of. You just say.”
His eyelid slowly shut and opened again, and there was an audible thickening of the breath passing through his throat. I took that to mean he understood.
“I’m…I’m sorry as hell. I’m so sorry.”
He continued to look at me.
“I’m sorry as hell, I—I—” I would not ask for forgiveness. I didn’t deserve it and never would.
He shook his head and made a small sound of frustration.
I understood. He was afraid for me…afraid I’d try to hurt myself. That had been the cause of the fight. My face heated up from shame. “I’m sorry for that, too. It won’t happen again. I swear. On Bobbi’s life, I promise you. Never again.”
The corner of his mouth curled in a ghost’s smile. His lips moved in the softest of whispers. “Jack.”
I leaned in. “Yeah?”
“About damn time, you bloody fool.”
He lifted a bandaged hand toward my near arm, gave my shoulder a clumsy pat.
Sleep took him away.
Men aren’t supposed to cry, but I came damn close just then.
WHITEY Kroun, the corpse I’d left waiting in the backseat of the Nash, now slumped on the front passenger side with the door open, feet on the running board. His left trouser leg was rusty with dried blood, and he cautiously unwound a similarly stained handkerchief from his left hand. He
flexed his fingers, checking them. Whatever damage he’d gotten seemed to be gone. He threw the grubby cloth away, hauled his long legs in, and yanked the door shut. The effort made him grunt, and he went back to favoring his chest.
He didn’t say if he wanted to be dropped anywhere, and I didn’t inquire, just started the motor and pulled away, mindful of the shortening time until dawn. We’d have to go to ground soon.
Shadows caught, lingered, and slithered quick over his craggy features as we sped under streetlamps, his eyelids at half-mast from pain. In good light Kroun’s eyes were dark brown with strangely dilated pupils; now all that showed were skull-deep voids, unreadable.
Life had gotten damned complicated lately. It happens sometimes; for me it started when I tried to be a nice guy and do a favor for a friend in need.
That favor, along with circumstances beyond my control, had put me in the short line for the gang version of the hot seat. Kroun’s arrival in Chicago was to sort things out and put me to bed with a shovel. Or an anchor. Lake Michigan makes for a very big graveyard when you know the wrong people.
But after looking me over, Kroun decided against carrying out the death sentence.
Mighty generous of him, except at the time I didn’t know the real reason behind his choice. Outwardly, I’m not special; I own a nightclub that does pretty well, have a wonderful girl, a few good friends—I’m worse than some, better than most. Average. Most of the time.
Not ten minutes after we met, Kroun figured out about my being a vampire—you heard it right—and in the nights to follow never once let slip that he was also a card-carrying member of the union. I’d been tied up too tight in my own problems to notice anything odd about him or even remotely suspect. It had been one pip of a surprise when the boom came.
I was still getting used to it, the topper of a very busy evening.
It began with one hell of a fistfight between me and Escott, which was what had landed him in the casualty ward. I’d done something really stupid and his attempt to knock some sense into me set me off. I hadn’t meant to hurt him, but I woke out of my rage a little too late. Before I could follow his ambulance to the hospital, I’d been sidetracked by a phone call from my girlfriend, Bobbi. In so many words she let me know there was a man in her flat holding a gun to her head.
