by P. N. Elrod
Ziemer and his cronies were gone from their table. The last of them was just walking into some kind of cave passage off the main room. Maybe it was the call of nature. One way to find out.
The hall was wide and low, the ceiling and walls rounded. A wire with bare bulbs every ten feet hung from hooks in the ceiling. Their glow, all fifteen watts of it, wasn’t much help against the darkness, not that Gabe was worried. It was plenty bright to his eyes.
Maybe this was where they raised the mushrooms once upon a time. The size of the place surprised him. Wasn’t it easier to build walls than carve out a hole? Had to be. People were nuts.
I should know.
He sniffed the air, for the first time picking up the kind of dank scent associated with caves. . .and tombs.
Now why the hell did I think that?
If only that smirking idiot had called him “Mr. Kroun” and not overstepped with the too-familiar “Whitey.”
I should be out in the main room charming the socks off Inga, not doing this.
The racket from the inept band faded with distance and a turn.
A few yards along, he came to a branching. One way was absolutely black, even to him, and the source of the dank air. It must have led to the outside; he picked up the scent of snow, dead leaves, and moldy earth. Something dead and rotting was down there as well, but the stink of decay was so faint that a human would not have noticed.
The other branch had light, a weak glow far down where the hall turned again. Gabe could see it, but only because of his supernatural edge. The bare bulbs on their wire had been shattered in this whole section, making a powerful discouragement to anyone without a flashlight.
He went that way, drawn by voices echoing off the stone. Glass was underfoot. He kept to the one side, wincing when he couldn’t avoid stepping on the shards. The crunching sounded very loud to him.
No one can hear me, they’re too busy talking.
The hall had shrunk in width and was more like a tunnel. His shoulders hunched up again. He forced them down.
He reached the turn, took it, and came even with what seemed to be the boss’s lair. It wasn’t a room in the sense of having a door and a chamber beyond, but an especially deep alcove cut into the side of the tunnel. It had a big desk, chairs, file cabinets, and plenty of light, which was cheering.
On the floor almost at his feet was a wide scatter of desk clutter, pencils and other junk, including a stone paperweight the same pale color as the walls. The name Lars Pargreave had been carved into one side. It was too small to be a cemetery marker, but the image crossed Gabe’s mind regardless. He could picture Ziemer swaggering in and knocking things from the desk as a way of getting the owner’s attention.
A blond man—most likely Pargreave—sat behind the desk that faced toward the tunnel. His doughy face was sheeted with flop sweat. Even at ten feet Gabe picked up on air made thick and sour by the man’s fear.
He had a right to it. Harry Ziemer, smiling, leaned over him with a gun muzzle pressed hard against his head. The smile had reached Ziemer’s dead eyes, animating them. He clearly liked his work.
The other three were ranged loosely around the desk with their backs to Gabe. Like Ziemer, they were too focused on their prey, hyenas who’d not yet noticed the lion walking up.
There was a long piece of paper on the desk that had the look of a legal document. The blond man was trying to hold a fountain pen in his shaking hand. It had to be hard to concentrate while four guys with their guns hanging out stared at you like that.
Gabe came fully around the corner. “Harry!” he cheerfully called. “How you doing?”
All five men jumped. Gratifying.
Ziemer snapped around. He lost his smile. “We had a deal.”
“Of course we did. I came to watch.” Gabe bent and picked up the paperweight, hefting it idly.
“Watch?”
“Yeah, it was this or bowling.” He swung the stone experimentally like a bowling ball to demonstrate, then put it on the desk. The men were looking at it and not noticing his other hand, which was in his coat pocket holding the revolver. “Doing a little taking-over?”
“Whitey. . .” but Ziemer didn’t seem to know how to finish. Must have been a new kind of situation for him.
Gabe drummed his fingers on the stone, gauging distances. He could bean the guy at the end, grab Ziemer and toss him over the desk at the other two, but one of them could still get a shot off. “The band out there stinks. I hope you’ll be hiring better talent.”
“I’ll make money, don’t worry,” Ziemer said. “Whitey. . .”
“Hm? Oh, don’t let me stop you. Go on with what you were doing. Act like I’m not here.”
That had to be impossible, but Ziemer finally gathered himself and turned his attention back to the sweating man. “Sign it, Pargreave. Now.”
The hapless Pargreave somehow managed to hold the pen long enough to scratch his signature on the paper. He shrank, visibly shrank, inside his ample skin. He was nothing to Gabe. For all he knew the man might be worse than Ziemer, but Gabe wasn’t here to defend any side but his own.
I should just leave. These guys aren’t worth the trouble.
Ziemer had the smile back. His eyes were bright and alive as he put a couple steps between himself and the moaning Pargreave, sighting down one extended arm.
Gabe recognized that look, and thought he knew what it felt like. Some black ghost of a memory scuttled out from a corner of his mind, grinned, then darted from sight again.
Whitey Kroun used to look like Ziemer—or so Gabe imagined. Whitey put himself forward to do jobs like this so he could feel the kind of thing Ziemer was now feeling.
That’s wrong.
Gabe had a conscience, just not much of one yet. It still managed to give him a twinge. It wanted him to do. . .something.
“Harry?” Gabe spoke loud enough to disrupt the headlong rush to bring death in.
Ziemer flinched, irritated. “What?”
“There’s witnesses out front.”
“They won’t know. This far in you can fire a cannon and they’d never hear it.”
“Really?” That was interesting. “What about the cops? Won’t they wonder about this guy turning up dead?”
“Cops here won’t do squat. We keep our business under the table, don’t bother them, and they leave us alone.”
Gabe had heard about St. Paul’s infamous deal with the gangsters. The pact between law and disorder was an uneasy one, but mostly worked so long as the town got its share of the take. “Glad that’s covered, but come on, Harry—think about the mess. You’ll get blood and brains all over your nice bill of sale or whatever that is.”
Ziemer was sufficiently distracted now. He looked fully at Gabe, not Pargreave. “What?”
“Scrag him if you have to, but not here. Take it from one who knows. Blood soaks right into stone like this, you’ll never get it out.”
“What do you want?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying you can do this better someplace else. You’ll have this guy’s leavings all over what’s going to be your desk. Instead, you ought to be sitting behind it from the first minute, laying down the rules like a big shot should.”
One of the mugs who had the wit to move clear of Ziemer’s line of fire nodded. “He’s got a point, boss.”
“You don’t want to get that stuff on your suit,” Gabe added. “Any of you guys in a mood for carrying a body around and cleaning up afterwards?”
A silent exchange of looks between the three of them resulted in a unanimous shaking of heads and murmurs against such lowly labor.
“I’m getting rid of him,” stated Ziemer, teeth on edge.
“Well, of course you have to, just not here is all I’m saying.” Gabe stared indifferently down at the terrified Pargreave and thought of that branching into blackness and its stink of decay. “I bet you’ve got a place where you do that kind of business. Somewhere here in these caves? Yeah, I thought so.”
<
br /> Pargreave, shivering now, hadn’t given an answer. Ziemer and his pals saw what they wanted to see in the man’s gray face.
“What do you think, Harry? Let’s make him take us to where he buries his bodies.”
“Why do you wanna know? What do you care?”
Gabe gave a shrug. “I help you out and maybe down the road you do me a small favor. It’s how the business runs, you know that. Think about it: what’ll it do for your reputation when it gets out that you got backing from Whitey Kroun himself?”
“How small a favor?”
“I was thinking free drinks from your new bar.”
They gave a short laugh. Pargreave didn’t, but they talked over him.
“You don’t want a cut of the take?” Ziemer was reasonably suspicious.
“The take from a joint like this is peanuts to me. I’m just here ’cause I’m bored. Like I said: it was this or bowling.”
They laughed again, and he could see his death in their eyes.
I could be wrong. But killing an interloper is what I’d have done a few months back.
He wasn’t that man anymore, but some piece of him lurked within. Gabe couldn’t recall Whitey, not exactly, but could judge him by the company he’d kept. Much of it had been scum like these.
That’s why I understand them so well.
Ziemer got an idea. “You’ve heard of me. That’s why you came to St. Paul. You heard what I’m doing.”
Gabe sobered and slowly nodded, approving. “Good. . .you figured it out. Word gets around.”
“So what’s your real angle?”
“Harry, I’m here to size you up for the big boys, see if you’re someone we can work with. How you handle this—” he indicated Pargreave, “—with kid gloves or a wrecking ball, tells us what we need to know. I’ll give you a hint: use the kid gloves, and we’ll cut you in on bigger and better things.”
Ziemer looked as though he had the number on what they were talking about. Hell if Gabe knew. He was making it up as he went.
Ziemer’s smirk was back, and he relaxed by a whole inch. “You’re all right, Whitey. I heard stories about you, but they—”
With unnatural speed Gabe pulled his revolver free and shot four times. The noise was deafening in the confining space.
He braced for return fire, but none came.
He blinked against the smoke and ascertained there were four bodies on the floor, none of them getting up again. They had that look.
Under the tang of gunpowder, the heavy perfume of their blood suddenly bloomed in the alcove. It seemed to fill his head. He made his normally dormant lungs take in a full measure of the scent, but not for a moment did he consider feeding. Those mugs were garbage, and you got rid of garbage.
Gabe glanced at Pargreave, who looked like he’d swallowed his own tongue.
“You gonna be a problem and remember any of this?” Gabe asked.
Pargreave struggled past his shock, shaking his head. “No, sir,” he finally whispered.
“Can you make them disappear?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
Gabe didn’t trust him, though, and put him under anyway to make him forget. He washed himself from Pargreave’s memory, put the revolver in his hand, and told him it was self-defense, then walked quickly back down the tunnel before the man woke up.
Gabriel returned to his table in the club’s main room, noticing that nothing had changed. The music from the amateurish band continued uninterrupted. His nerves settled, and the tightness inside his skull abruptly eased and vanished.
Inga came over, face solemn. “You okay? Something wrong?”
He found himself smiling warmly at her. “Nah. It’s copasetic.”
“What’s going on with Ziemer?”
“Just wanted a card game is all. I’d have joined in, but you and I have a date.”
“I should get them drinks.”
“Leave ’em. They’ll come out when they’re thirsty.”
Inga was doubtful, looking at the hallway opening.
“Hey.” He reached out, gently taking one of her hands. “Lemme ask you something.”
Her attention shifted to him.
“Do you think if I slipped the bartender a couple of bucks that he’d let you off early tonight?”
She brightened again. “I’m pretty sure he would.”
“Go find out for me, would you?”
Inga bounced away, and Gabriel’s gaze swept the room again. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not one hint of what had happened and just as well.
But four men dead. Just like that.
For the two seconds it took for him to draw and fire and put them down Gabe had been a machine. He’d had no thoughts, no feelings; he’d functioned well with cold efficiency.
Gabe didn’t like being a machine. He suspected that if he allowed it run one time too many it might open a door in his mind that would allow Whitey to return. That would be bad.
Gabe was aware he possessed faults and flaws like other men, and on the really tough nights only a tenuous hold on sanity. He thought insanity had to do with loss of control. But back there he’d been in complete control, of himself, of the situation. He’d gone in, eyes open, knowing—
Four men dead.
He couldn’t feel sorry for them, though.
But shouldn’t I feel something?
He looked for, but didn’t find anything more than a sense of letdown.
Then it occurred to him that he’d not felt the unholy joy he’d seen in Ziemer. Whitey had been like him once upon a time, but not the reborn Gabriel.
That had to make a difference. Maybe that’s what it was about.
Or not.
Or. . .
Inga returned, pulling a coat on, her face bright with a big smile.
Nuts. He’d think about that crap later.
She was much better company.
* * * * * * *
__________
DEATH IN DOVER
Author’s Note: Imagine being asked twice to do a story for an Anne Perry collection! This one sold to DEATH BY DICKENS. It had a short deadline, so there was no time for me to actually read a whole Dickens novel for research, but I did get in enough chapters from A Tale of Two Cities to write this story. Young Jonathan Barrett—not yet a vampire—returns with Cousin Oliver to share an adventure with a future celebrity.
The further adventures of Jonathan Barrett: Gentleman Vampire, are available for download from Darkstar Books, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and other online retail outlets. Hard copies are also available from Benbella Books, B&N and Amazon.
Dover, England, November 1775
I ventured to pull back the flap of the coach window for a glimpse of what lay ahead and was disappointed by the near-unrelieved darkness. The only glimmer of light emanated from the distant gray sea, which stirred restlessly under a wind out of the bitter north. Some of that cruel zephyr cut its sharp way round the stuffy interior of our swaying conveyance, causing a large, red-haired, red-faced woman to make a most indignant remonstrance against my curiosity.
“Faith, Mr. Barrett, if you’ve pity in your heart, spare us from your gawping lest we all perish of cold. You’ll be seeing the town soon enough. It’s been there for hundreds of years an’ not like to run off now, is it?”
As a gentleman it was my lot to meet harsh speech—at least when it flowed from female lips—with humble apology. I tied the flap back into place. “I do beg your pardon, Miss Pross, and yours as well, Miss Manette.”
By this I acknowledged the smaller, younger lady who seemed to be her mistress. Miss Manette had caught the attention of all the gentlemen since she first came aboard with her forceful companion. The coach’s confines were such as to kindle interest in any member of the fair sex who happened to be there, but her delicate blond beauty would command attention even in a great throng. In Miss Pross, though, she had so fierce and wild a protector that none had been able to draw her into polite conversation.
The passing of pl
easantries was difficult anyway. The most innocuous of exchanges had to be conducted at the top of one’s lungs because of the rumbling of our wheels. The violent rocking as we tumbled over broken and muddy roads kept most of us occupied hanging on to leather straps to avoid a degree of intimacy not generally shared by the average English subject with his fellow countrymen.
There were seven of us crammed in rather tight: the two ladies, my good cousin Oliver, myself, and three other gentlemen. The fellow next to Oliver was Sir Algernon. . . something. I’d missed his whole name. He was a tall, handsome specimen, but dolorous of aspect and dressed in the deepest mourning. Traveling with him was his child—a boy of no more than eleven years—also impeccably dressed for sorrow. Because of this outward declaration of a private tragedy we left them to themselves. The man was disinclined to speak, and the boy miraculously slept, leaning against the third gentleman. This was M. Deveau, a Frenchman who was the boy’s dancing and sword master, the male equivalent of a governess.
He and the boy, Master Percy, had the misfortune to share the opposite bench with the females. I say misfortune, for the lady next to Percy was the redoubtable Miss Pross, who acted as a bastion of protection for her delicate charge, who was on her other side. Though it was clear by manner and dress that none of us—for we were one and all clearly gentlemen—would presume to make unwelcome overtures to the young lady, Miss Pross seemed to have decided we were rascally adventurers of the worst sort. I was certain she had a pistol, or at least a leaded cudgel, concealed in the large traveling bag she clutched to her person, and was equally certain she would find a use for it if she determined any of us to be the least importune in our behavior.
“Are there no lights in the town at all?” I asked. Even the most squalid parts of London had lamps here and there.
Oliver barked a short laugh, which roused Master Percy from his slumber. “Oh, lots, but they don’t get much use. It’s a rare lamplighter who makes aught but a poor living in our coastal hamlets on certain evenings. Haven’t you something like it on your Long Island?”
