Song in the Dark

Chapter 14

Insistent, annoying things plucked at me, at my clothes. I waved them off, but they made a solid grab, pulled strong, and dragged me over a rough, hard surface. A man yelled in my ear, but it was muffled, as though I'd vanished. He might have been cursing.
Fire rained down. It was almost leisurely. Fat drops floated confetti-like or struck the cement, bouncing to scatter yellow-and-blue flames. A second look, and they proved to be attached to dark bits of burning things. It seemed a good idea to get out of their way, so I got my feet under me and working together. Hours later we reached the cover of a building and ducked in. Someone had broken the front window, and the lights were out. When I chanced to breathe, the air reeked of gasoline, burned rubber, and hot metal.
Doubled over, coughed it clear. Two other men were with me, Coldfield and Isham, also coughing.
Eyes stinging, I looked through the window-the shattered glass had blown inside-and saw the big Cadillac's shell engulfed in a fast and furious inferno. Smoke roiled from its stricken, blackened carcass in a wide, twisting cloud that was fortunately blowing away from us. Even at this distance the heat warmed my face, but I couldn't hear anything from what should have been a blast-furnace bellow. Touched one ear. Came away blood. A lot of it. My face, too. Damn. Without thinking, I vanished and returned. My hearing popped back to normal and other hurts that were starting to make themselves felt ceased altogether.
"Jack?"
Turned. Coldfield stared at me, concerned. So did Isham, but with a different expression. He rubbed his watering eyes, shook his head, looking puzzled.
"Jack? You hear me?" Coldfield again.
"Yeah." What the hell had happened?
"You okay?"
"Think so."
"That makes one of you. Your friend out there's gone."
I didn't get him. "What? Something happen to Gordy?"
"The guy you came with. Kroun."
"What? No..." Looked again at the wreck. Too much smoke to see inside the car, but that was just as well. For some things you don't want details.
"There was no way to help him."
"Oh, goddamn."
"Yeah. This puts everybody up shit creek. Gonna be hell to pay." He wiped his streaming eyes with a handkerchief.
Someone touched my shoulder. The woman who always stood behind the counter offered me a damp towel.
"You're hurt, Mister. Your face."
I accepted the gift and used it. My ears no longer streamed blood, but the leftover gore must have been an alarming sight. "Thank you."
"Come in back, we'll get you cleaned up."
Back, meaning a bathroom or kitchen, meaning mirrors at some point. I pulled enough of my scrambled thoughts together to thank her again. "This is more than enough."
"We gotta get him out of here," Coldfield told her. "We gotta all get moving."
"The hotel," said Isham.
"Farther than that."
"The club." He'd mean Coldfield's place, the Shoebox. But we had to check another place first.
"Call Lady Crymsyn," I said. "Charles is there by now. If there's other bombs..." It finally got through that I'd seen one going off.
"Jeez." Coldfield, moving with astonishing speed for his size, threaded past dark aisle displays toward a door, where presumably he would find a phone. I hoped Escott would answer.
"The lobby number," I called after. "Try that one. Let it ring."
The fire rain of blown-up car pieces had stopped, but not the smoke. The wreckage lay all over the street, shattered windows gaped, their stares blank and cold. Most were ground floor, though a few second-story ones were gone. I hoped to God no one had been in front of any of them.
Isham left the grocers for a look-see, keeping a healthy distance from the car and moving fast. I went as well, standing just clear of the door. No other casualties were in view, but people were cautiously emerging, Coldfield's soldiers. Isham talked to some of them, and they began to melt away from the attraction. By the time I heard the first fire-engine siren, the street was empty except for civilian types. Other cars rolled up, full of vultures who'd come to view the burning body. The smoke forced most of them upwind. A white man came over and asked if I was all right.
I swabbed the towel around, hoping to get the telltale blood off my face and neck. "Yeah, I'm fine, got cut by flying glass. Did you see what happened?"
"Was gonna ask you. Looks like the gas tank blew. Must have been a humdinger. Anyone in it?"
"I donno. Hope not."
"Anyone else see?" He pulled out a notebook and a chewed pencil, and I recognized yet another of my own kind.
What used to be, anyway.
"I don't think so."
"Hey, I know you, don't I?" He gave me a squint. "You got that fancy nightclub. The one what had the body in the basement-"
"I gotta go." I retreated into the grocery. People on the sidewalk parted for me, but closed up for him. He shrugged and looked for other witnesses.
It hadn't really sunk in yet about Kroun. Hard to think beyond the burning car. The flames were less now, running out of fuel.
Coldfield returned. "Charles is fine. He'll keep his eyes open and not be driving. You and me, this way." He headed to the back.
He was in a hurry, but I paused long enough to leave the stained towel on the counter and fish out my wallet. I pressed five twenties into the woman's hand.
She backed a step. "No, we couldn't..."
"For the window."
"It's too much!"
"I'm apologizing, as well, ma'am."
I rushed after Coldfield, who had cut left down the alley and was waiting impatiently by a row of trash cans. As he turned I only then noticed his coat was smeared with street dirt. Apparently the blast had knocked him down, too. I'd been much closer. There was a singed patch on my jacket and holes torn in my shirt. It was black so no staining showed, but I could smell my own blood on the fabric, along with the smoke.
With me half a step behind him, he led us down a much more narrow alley that opened to the next street. Just as we emerged Isham pulled up in Coldfield's Nash, barely braking, and we dove into the back.
This car was also armored, for all the good it would do.
I looked when we had enough distance and saw the smoke rising over the buildings, thundering fast and black against what for me was pale gray sky.
"No one's gonna follow," said Coldfield, misinterpreting.
"Where we going?"
"My club."
"Drop me at the Nightcrawler."
"You joking?"
"I got things to do or there really will be hell to pay. Kroun comes to Chicago, gets killed, and, if I don't get the blame, it will drop like a ton of bricks on Gordy. I gotta steer that away."
"Seems to me you should be keeping your head a lot lower. I give you a talking-to, then bang-boom, there you are on the damn sidewalk being another damn mess."
"Thanks for pulling me clear."
"Thought you were a goner when that hit. Isham, who the hell got close enough to the car to rig that thing?"
"No one, Shoe. We watched it good."
"It didn't happen here," I said. "Someone had to have done it earlier. The guys know Gordy's car and that Kroun and I have been using it. Anyone could have wired it up at any time."
"Why didn't it go off sooner, then?"
"The trigger might have been on the passenger door. Kroun didn't get in on that side when we left. It was pure chance. It was supposed to take me and Kroun out together." I'd survived a hell of a lot, but being blown to pieces might have done the trick for real.
"So who did it?"
"Mitchell. Kroun's lieutenant."
"You sure?"
I spread my hands. "If that was meant just for me, then I'd have other names to give you. But if Kroun was supposed to go, too... the passenger door trigger changes things. A lot of people might know I'd be driving him and that he'd probably sit in the front. Mitchell's the only one I can think of who'd stand to gain by Kroun's death. He might be set to take over Kroun's job if anything happens to his boss. With Kroun getting killed here, the Chicago outfit gets the blame, and Mitchell is clear to walk in. He wouldn't be the first mug in the world trying to improve himself by knocking off his boss."
"It worked great for Cassius. Didn't last. He bought it later."
"Hah?"
"In Julius Caesar? Cassius got a bunch of other guys to go in with him for the hit on Caesar. Dropping you at the Nightcrawler strikes me as being a really stupid thing to do. You don't know who could be on Mitchell's side."
"I got an edge."
"Yeah. Sure was helpful against that bomb."
Actually it had kept me alive and had certainly cured a couple of busted eardrums if not more, but Coldfield needed to grouse and grumble and get it out of his system. He was shaken by the business, and this was his way of handling it.
When he ran down, I said, "I still have to go there and deal with him. I can't let Gordy catch hell for something I didn't do."
Coldfield managed not to heave a huge sigh, just most of one. "All right. Isham, drive this guy to the lion's den."
"Thanks," I said.
"Uh-uh, I'm not taking the responsibility."
"No problem."
"You're certain Mitchell's the guy?"
"At this point he's the likeliest, but there might be stuff going on I've missed or never knew about. I wasn't exactly tailor-made for these kinds of fun and games."
"The hell you're not." He gave me a look that was meant to include my supernatural condition.
"Maybe now, yeah, but I never wanted this job. That's why I don't get all the stuff happening. Too damned trusting. Soon as Gordy's better I step clear."
"Amen, brother. This shit's bad for business."
"The cops are going to be all over that wreck once it's cooled down. They'll eventually trace it to Gordy and want to question him. You got the name of his lawyer so he can run interference?"
"Yeah, Adelle's had to deal with him. That's covered."
"You sure about this trip to the den?"
"I'll go very carefully." I checked my watch, but the crystal was cracked right across, the time stopped at the moment I'd been flung backward. It could probably be fixed, even the damaged innards, but I would replace it, buy something with a different face to it so it wouldn't be constantly reminding me. "You wanna do me a real favor, you and Isham run over to Crymsyn and help Charles stay out of trouble. They might target there next."
"I told him to get out, go to my club, and I'd put him up, but he said he was staying put."
"Playing lieutenant," I said, saying it with an "f."
Isham dropped me a block from the Nightcrawler and drove off. I ghosted the rest of the way in, brushing quick between pedestrians on the walks, giving them a brief, intense chill that had nothing to do with the weather. When I encountered the uncompromising solidity of a building, I rose high, found a window shape, and sieved in. Men were in the room and a radio was on, tuned to some fights, but they didn't pay much attention, talking over the commentator.
I identified a couple of the voices as being regulars who worked the gaming tables below. They were expecting some local politicos tonight, and the pickings would be good except for one guy who was to "win" his weekly payoff. There was a discussion going on over the best way to make it seem like a genuine game.
Shifted from that room to the hall and floated along, counting doors until reaching Gordy's office. I eased through to the other side and listened, handicapped by this form's cottonlike muffling. No one seemed to be in. That wasn't too likely. I pushed on, finally going solid in the bathroom. I kept quiet and waited. Derner was on the phone, and he was pissed.
"Oh, yeah? Well, you get your ass moving and find him! The boss is raising hell over this. If we don't find Hoyle tonight, tomorrow there's gonna be fresh food in the lake for the damn fish."
Since the phone was probably tapped I hoped he meant that threat for effect and wasn't planning to carry it through. On the other hand, the FBI would like nothing better than for the wiseguys to knock each other off. Less work for them.
Derner hung up. I peered around the door. He was consulting a book for the next number. He dialed, let it ring a long time, then hung up in disgust. Before he could find another to try the phone rang.
"Yeah?" He sounded impatient. There was a glass of water on the desk and a toppled-over bottle of aspirin. He'd been busy. And frustrated.
Silence as he listened. So did I. I could almost make out the speaker's words on the other end of the line.
"What? What'd you say?" His voice lost its decisive force, like the air had been sucked right from his lungs.
The caller repeated, his tones emphatic.
"Th-that's impossible. I was just on the phone with him tonight. You sure?" Now he sounded uneasy. I could guess what the bad news must be. "Both of 'em? Where? You sure? Are you? Okay. Stick around, keep an eye on what the cops do. Call me again. I know it's been busy, you just keep calling!" He slammed the receiver down, staring at the opposite wall with its pastoral painting and probably not seeing it.
After a moment, with elbows on the desk, he slumped until his head was between the heels of his hands. He let out a long low groan, gently rubbing his temples.
"Ahh, jeez. This is too much," he whispered, eyes shut.
I went semitransparent, floating noiselessly over the floor. Stood right in front of him, going solid. Waited.
He must have had a really bad headache; he didn't look up. He gave a sluggish jump when the phone rang and muttered a curse.
Then he straightened to answer, saw me, and froze.
After the first yelp, no cursing, no nothing, just pure shock on his face. Couldn't tell if it was from dismay or guilt, then it slipped suddenly into genuine relief.
"You-you're okay!"
I nodded, keeping a sober and somber mask on. "What did you hear?"
"One of the boys... said a bomb, the car blew up. Took you and Kroun..." He looked around. "Where is... ?"
The phone continued ringing. "Get that," I said. "I'm still dead. Understand?"
He answered. It was someone else relaying the same bad news. He said he'd heard already and told them to leave the area, then hung up. "Was that what you want?"
"That's fine. Take the phone off the hook."
He did so.
"Kroun's dead. I was there."
"How'd you get away?"
"I wasn't in the car when it happened."
"But you-" He just now noticed my appearance.
"Stuff hit me. I'm not hurt much. Listen, I think Mitchell might have arranged it."
Derner seemed to hold his breath. He let it out, picked up his water glass, and finished what was left, not looking well.
"Who in this town knows how to rig a bomb?"
The man visibly winced.
"Well?"
"You ain't gonna like it."
"Aw, don't you be telling me-"
" 'Fraid so, Boss. Hoyle."
I didn't quite hit the ceiling. "Oh, that's great! That's just peachy! I thought that son of a bitch was a boxer!"
"He was. But before that he did mining. Out West. He learned how to set charges as a kid. He learned boxing in the mining camp, and that was his ticket out."
"And in the good old days did he used to run around with Mitchell?"
He shrugged. "I donno. Could have."
"So how is it Mitchell's able to find Hoyle when no one else can?"
"Maybe Hoyle found him. It's no secret him and Kroun came to town. Coulda looked him up, they got to talkin'..."
"Yeah, then decide to kill two birds with one boom." Which didn't explain Alan Caine's death. Maybe he'd overheard something he shouldn't.
"He ain't getting out of Chicago alive." said Derner. "None of them."
"Make sure New York knows what really happened. I want them to hear it from you first, not Mitchell."
"Right." He reached for an index book with phone numbers, then slapped his hand on it. "Damn! I got some good news for you! Ruzzo-they been found. That two-grand reward tipped things. One of the guys phoned in with the name of a hotel and a room number. Not five minutes back. They probably been there under some other name this whole time. I can send some guys to get them now."
"No, I'll do it."
He looked me up and down. "But you need a doctor."
"The address."
He gave me what he'd scribbled on notepaper,
"I'm going now. You go on and do what you've been doing and play the angle that me and Kroun are both dead.
You don't tell anyone different. Make sure New York understands they have to play along with the act, too, in case Mitchell calls them. If he comes in, pretend go along with whatever he says, find out all you can of what he's up to.
Don't let him kill you, though."
"No, Boss."
"Protect yourself, but we need Mitchell alive to tell us what he's been doing." The last thing I wanted was Mitchell catching lead before I had the chance to take him apart myself.
"Right, Boss."
I hurried to a smaller room off that one. It had once been Bobbi's bedroom when she'd been with Slick. Completely redone, the stark white walls were partially hidden by gray metal file cabinets, a five-foot-tall map of Chicago, a large neon beer sign meant for outside display, and a desk too ugly for any place public. As depressing as an army barracks, no fond memory of our first encounter stirred in these surroundings.
It did have a fire escape, though. I opened the window and climbed out, thereby giving Derner a plausible explanation for how I'd gotten in in the first place.
Outside, I shut the window, vanished, and, holding close to the side of the building, slipped down to terra firma, then glided over the sidewalk until reasonably sure I was out of sight of the club.
The street where I materialized was busy with early-evening traffic. I walked quickly toward an intersection and waited, palming some dollar bills. I used those to hail a cab, figuring my now-scruffy clothes were not something to inspire trust in any driver. On the third try I got one to pull over and gave him the street for Ruzzo's hotel.
It was west of the Loop. A good place twenty years ago, less so now. They couldn't charge the pre-Crash fancy prices to travelers anymore, so they switched to bringing in long-term tenants who didn't mind that service wasn't what it used to be. I paid off the driver and sauntered in the opposite direction, circling the block to see what the back alley looked like.
Pretty much what I expected, but the loading-dock area was taking a laundry delivery and full of busy men in work clothes. I blended with them, waving a familiar and confident hello to complete strangers who nodded in return. You can get away with nearly everything doing that. Obligingly I shouldered two paper-wrapped bundles and took them in. I dropped them onto a flat trolley cart with other bundles and, without looking back, kept going down a short hall until I found the service elevator. There was no operator at the moment; he might have been on a coffee break or helping with the delivery. I stepped in and took myself up to the sixth floor.
The inside layout was in a squared off U-shape with the elevators in the middle. I went down the wrong branch, retraced, and found the right door. Ruzzo's room was at the very end, next to the window that opened to the metal framework of a fire escape. I wondered if they'd chosen it on purpose to have an extra exit or just naturally got lucky.
As I bent down for a look and listen at the keyhole the air in my dormant lungs shifted from the motion, and I got the first whiff of bloodsmell.
Quickly I backed from the door, hands out defensively.
As though the damn thing would break off from its hinges and jump me.
It didn't.
After a moment, I pulled together enough to think twice about entering. Both times the decision was to go; I just couldn't bring myself to move.
Never mind peering through the keyhole, just get it over with. Before I could think a third time, I vanished, streamed through the crack above the doorsill, and reformed just inside, but taking it easy.
No lights on, but the blinds were up on the window across the room; plenty of glow came in for me to use.
Nothing fancy about this place. A bathroom opened on my immediate left, an alcove served for a closet on the right, then the entry widened to a larger area with a sofa along the right-hand wall. Two beds were at the far end on either side of the window, and a couple chairs and a table, as normal as could be except for the bodies.
The Ruzzo brothers were collapsed, loose-boned in the chairs, having fallen forward across the table. Their heads were wrong, strangely misshapen. One had his face toward me, and his eyeballs were half out of their sockets, his tongue protruding, like a cartoon mocking surprise. The realization finally came that their heads had been bashed to pulp, and exactly in the middle of the table between them was a bloodied baseball bat.
The light changed, went suddenly gray, and I thought Myrna must have been acting up, only she wouldn't be here, she was at Lady Crymsyn.
I blinked, looking around. I was in the hall again, my back to the Ruzzo door, with my guts about to turn inside out.
Oh, hell, not now...
Drew a steadying breath. Wrong thing to do with blood-smell filling every crevice of this place, and the scent of it and death hovering so close was too much, and it dropped fast and hard, and I doubled over, hitting the floor like I'd been shot.
My own blood seemed to hammer the top of my skull, and for a second it felt like I was once more swinging upside down in that meat locker, then I was creeping purposefully over the red-washed cement floor seeking life from another's death, and after all that I still thirsted for more human-red fire to pour down my throat...
The memory of pain and the nightmare of failure left me curled, stifling the urge to vomit, and clutching my sides where the cold, taut lines of the scars prickled along new-healed flesh. My eyes rolled up, and I shivered and held back the rising wail and hung on, hating, hating, hating this weakness and not wanting to give in to it. If I vanished, it would mean surrender. This stuff had power over me, and it had to stop. I had to stop it, I just didn't know how.
But gradually... gradually, the seizure passed.
Exhausted, I couldn't move for a while. No one came down the hall, and, even if someone had, I'd have not been able to do anything for myself. This was soul-weariness, and I couldn't control it.
When I thought I could start to trust my coordination, I pushed up, one stage at a time, eventually gaining my feet.
The tension left over in my muscles was bad, but beginning to ease. I stretched cautiously, and you could have heard the pops and cracks at fifty feet.
I regarded the Ruzzo's door with bleak and chill thoughts. They were long dead, I was sure. Going in for a second look wouldn't change that or help me. I couldn't go in there. They were dead, and that's all there was to it, leave them and get out.
I was five steps toward the elevator, then turned around and went back and went in, because that was what bosses had to do.
The second visit was less bad because I was careful to not breathe and not look at them, letting my gaze skip over the bits that threatened to add to my internal library of evil memories. With enough practice anyone can learn to create temporary blind spots in their sight.
The baseball bat placed so neatly in the center of the butcher's chaos could have been one from the party in the cornfield. I checked the alcove closet and found a cache of other bats standing in a corner, a bonanza for sandlot kids.
Someone had reached in and lifted one away, then turned to where Ruzzo sat having a drink at the table-there were two unbroken glasses on it. He'd perhaps playfully hefted it, making a couple practice swings, having a laugh. Then the next two swings were utterly serious, and he'd kept on swinging, just to be sure.
No one would have heard any of it even through these walls. What were a couple of dull cracks, followed by meaty thumps to this place? Just another sound effect on a radio show and who wants to bother Ruzzo, anyway? Surly pair, just stay outta their way and hope they shut up. This wasn't the kind of place where people wanted to notice things, so I'd leave questioning the tenants and staff to others. As easily as I got in, the killer could have gotten out. Hell, he might have taken the fire escape stairs easy as pie or hijacked the freight elevator as I'd done.
Blood splatters generously freckled the walls and ceiling, long dried out. Several hours at least had passed since their creation. Ruzzo had been killed long before Kroun and I had driven away from the Nightcrawler.
Why, though?
If they were helping Mitchell, wouldn't he want to have them around? They might have been dumb, but extra muscle could be useful. Unless he couldn't trust them to keep their mouths shut. If they knew Hoyle had readied a bomb for Kroun, it wouldn't do having them running loose.
I went through the rest of the room, not touching anything, fists stuffed in my jacket pockets. Just looking was enough. They didn't have much: some clothes, a radio, old racing forms, a scatter of magazines you had to ask for special so the druggist would pull them from under the counter.
The two beds were unmade, and there was a tangle of blankets and a pillow discarded on the long sofa. I suspected that I'd at last found where Hoyle had been staying. Was he the killer here? With all three sharing a common hatred of me, they might have stuck together until Ruzzo became a liability.
If not himself the killer, Hoyle could well be a target, too. Only it didn't fit what I knew of the man.
A very quick sideways glance toward the table. It would take a hell of a lot of strength to do that kind of damage, and to be able to do it cold, without working yourself up into a muscle-charged rage. Hoyle was big enough for the work. The punches he'd landed on me in that snowy field were meant to disable and might have succeeded on anyone else. I'd felt killing force behind them, seen it in his face.
Last on my way out was the bathroom. Someone had rinsed off using the tub tap and slopped around, leaving diluted red stains all over. Those were also long dried. In the sink were two wallets, empty of cash. Well, the killer had been practical. When you're on the run you need money, and whatever had been there would serve to give the cops a motive, however flimsy, for the crime.
Nothing left to discover here, but I had more questions. I'd have to return to the Nightcrawler and wait for the answers to straggle in. Unless he was already on his way back to New York where I couldn't get to him right away, Mitchell would have to show himself sometime to put in his claim for the boss's chair. It would give him a chance to bitch at the locals for not having enough protection for Kroun. Of course, Mitchell could be blameless and been off having a fine time at another club while Kroun was blown to bits. The whole business with the passenger-door trigger could easily be a misinterpretation. Not my first one.
But first a stop at Lady Crymsyn. Escott should know this latest.
I ghosted through the door, materialized, and found myself staring Strome square in the face.