Gods of Chicago: Omnibus Edition (19 page)

Chapter 31

Brand held onto the airbike. Chief gripped the handlebar and rode them both through the city’s memories. Flashes of light pockmarked the surfaces of buildings that rose and fell around them. Indistinct glimmers made the gossamer cityscape into a projected image rather than a reality. Brand knew what he was seeing couldn’t be real, but the feeling in his chest told him it was. Passing through the street he grew up on, Brand confronted his own memories. His family home stood down the block, flickering against a backdrop of blackness shot through with star points of light. Brand couldn’t take it and shut his eyes against the scene, against the memories of his childhood and everything he’d thought forgotten and buried.

“Hang on, Mitch. We’re almost there.”

Chief veered their course around the stockyards, over the rail lines, and finally into the Ukrainian Village. They pulled up beside the looming mass of an enormous home, larger than any other on the street. All around it hovering like supplicants were a collection of newer homes and a few apartment blocks.

“Even back here this place looks like a palace,” Brand said.

“We both know that’s not true though, don’t we?”

“And how, brother,” Brand agreed. “Let’s get me out of here and into there,” he said, jutting his chin at the building. Chief breathed out and gave Brand a look. Brand gave him a look back.

“You can’t hang around here all day, Chief. Any minute your boss’ll be sending you on a delivery, hey? So just let go and I’ll get out of your hair.”

Brand couldn’t explain the change in his mood. Maybe it was where he was headed. He’d grown resentful during the ride. Something loomed over Chicago City’s future, and it wouldn’t do for Brand to just sit around waiting for it to happen. But that didn’t mean it should fall to him to make things right. Chief lifted his hand off the airbike and Brand couldn’t hold back the shiver that rippled up his spine when the city fell back around him like a drape.

He straddled the airbike and hovered behind an evergreen tree by the front steps, his head just level with the porch. Chief’s head appeared in the air beside Brand, only long enough for the man to sigh at him and shake his head.

“Good luck, Mitch,” Chief said before he vanished behind the curtain.

Shouting and the sounds of vehicles came from down the street. Brand almost edged the airbike forward, but thought better about it. If the Governor’s boys had followed him somehow, he’d be a sitting target out here. Nobody in the Village had as much as a bicycle. They all used wagons, horses, or their own blistered feet to get around Chicago City.

“I’ll take any kind of luck right now,” Brand muttered to himself. He slipped off the airbike and stepped out from behind the tree to examine the street. The Village was in full uproar a few blocks away and the commotion was heading in Brand’s direction. Not wanting to get caught on foot either, he slipped back into hiding and searched for the escape route he hoped was still there.

The house next to him stood as it had the last time he’d seen it this close. Heavy and dark with peeling paint and cracked basement windows. But it was still the biggest, sturdiest building on the block.

Brand felt around the clapboard siding of the porch until he found the catch, his fingers lifting it slow and careful just as they had a year ago when he’d come here chasing a story about bootleggers. Chief had word from the Mayor’s office about Capone’s crew using old cellars and a tunnel network to run their hooch around the city. The cellars and tunnels were supposed to be closed off to prevent that very thing from happening. But somebody had gotten in, and now Brand was here again, following in their footsteps.

The side of the porch swung in on well-oiled hinges, not making a sound, and the tunnel entrance showed signs of use. Footprints and freshly tracked snowmelt marked the earthen floor of the passage. Brand went really slow, letting the door stand open behind him to give him light as he stepped deeper into the space. Three steps in and he lifted the crank torch from his pocket and spun the handle a few times to get a weak glow going in front of him. The stairs were still there, concrete steps, six of them, leading down to the basement below the manor house.

Brand waited and listened for movement or voices from below, in case anyone was there and had seen his torchlight. After a few quiet, deep breaths he moved to the steps, turning the torch handle and following the watery glow it let out. Without its focusing lens, the filament’s glimmer was barely enough to light up a pile of dry straw in the heat of summer. It helped Brand make out shapes in the darkness, but only just.

He slipped at the top of the steps, nearly missing the handrail in the dark. Brand’s feet hunted for purchase on each step and finally he felt the soft earthen floor of the cellar. Remembering the space from when he’d been here before, Brand felt to his right and found the light switch. Should he hit it?

He heard noises from outside, shouting and the tooting of horns. Someone out there had a megaphone. Brand was probably safe down here. Anyone in the house would be watching the street. He slapped his right hand against the button, letting his body sag against the wall in relief at finally getting a moment of quiet safety.

Light flickered on overhead and a single bulb glowed bright and clear in the cellar space. A set of steps descended into the space from across the room. All around the room shelves stood against the walls, packed full of items. Brand stood away from the wall and took it all in. Old picture frames, tools, lamps, cups and saucers, a doctor’s bag and even a few pistols. On one shelf near Brand’s head a small box held a collection of eyeglasses like a tangle of golden spiders with eyes the size of silver dollars.

Brand shook his head, recalling the story that had brought him down here before and the sense of failure he’d taken back to Chief’s office along with the truth about the tunnel network. It was supposed to be Capone’s liquor operation, his smugglers’ corridor. All it turned out to be was a neighborhood full of immigrant gypsies who knew better than to let anything go to waste.

The tunnels went down into the ruins of Old Chicago itself, the city that had burned to the ground in 1871. For a few years during the rebuilding, tunneling was encouraged. People went back down to the old city to collect mementos and lost possessions. After a time, the tunnels were forgotten, and the old city along with them. When they first discovered the tunnels under the manor house, the people living in the Village thought the Mayor had built them, so he could sneak his spies and police into their homes. Then the first kid had come back from the tunnels carrying a golden necklace, and it was worse than the rush out to California.

Every gypsy in the neighborhood had gone down into those tunnels, and the things they’d brought back were put up for sale in the manor house above. There wasn’t much to find, but they found enough. The manor house became Chicago City’s most infamous curio shop, with belongings of the deceased up for sale alongside fakes the gypsies had made. Brand had to hand it to them, because nobody had ever made the rich folks in Chicago City look so damn foolish before. They’d pile in from the Gold Coast neighborhoods, driving up in their cars and carriages, stepping lightly through the mud and beating a path to the shelves, fighting with each other for a chance to get the only remaining porcelain dish from this or that potter’s shed, or to maybe find great old Aunt Doreen’s cherished silver hairbrush.

Brand had been sent to get a story on Al Capone’s hidden stash of booze and all he’d come back with was a dirt-encrusted beer bottle that some kid had dug up. It was that kid whose ghost haunted the space around him now. When the Mayor found out Capone wasn’t using the tunnels, he quickly made sure the mobster wouldn’t get any funny ideas. Teams of coppers went around the Village neighborhoods dynamiting any tunnel entrances they found. They hadn’t bothered to check if anyone was in the tunnels before setting off the charges though, assuming the people knew well enough not to interfere with police business. It wasn’t until the boy’s mother came calling at the Mayor’s office with her son’s body wrapped in a sheet that anyone knew different.

The gypsies kept the manor house from harm because nobody ever found a tunnel connection in the building’s cellar. Not even Brand, and he’d had a full day and night to search the cellar. The gypsies offered him the chance to find
the secret tunnel
, and laughed long and hard when he came up the stairs with nothing but his hat in his hand. The kid gave him the bottle and headed back downstairs to disappear in the cellar.

Standing in that space now, Brand still couldn’t see anything that looked like a doorway. If there was a secret door, it was hidden but good. A shuffling in the room overhead put Brand on alert. If the gypsies’ reputation was to be trusted, they wouldn’t take kindly to a nosy newshawk poking around in their cellar without permission. Before he had a chance to move into hiding, the shelf with the box of eyeglasses swung out into the room, knocking him across the brow.

A section of the wall followed the shelf. As Brand collected himself, a short man with a round face and weasel’s eyes stepped out from behind the wall holding a pistol. Brand reacted fast, putting his hands up and giving a look of surrender as best he could. They might gun him down right here, but if they had arms out and at the ready, they were probably on the run from something. Brand’s mind flicked to the sounds from outside, the horns and the megaphone. He figured he knew what it was the gypsies had behind them.

“I’m not a copper,” he said, hoping that was enough to stop the little round-faced man from shooting him.

“Aw, sure enough you ain’t,” the man said, grinning like a fool and laughing out loud. “Hey, get this,” he said over his shoulder. “Guess who’s in our basement again. Mitchell Brand!”

Chapter 32

Emma shuffled along with the others, keeping her face half-turned away from the street. She couldn’t let Wynes see her, but she had to keep an eye on him. He walked ahead of her, beside Eszti. Biros turned to regard Wynes from time to time as they moved, and each time the detective snarled for the gypsy to keep his eyes on the road.

“Can’t have you tripping, can we, Rigo?”

Eszti caught her breath and drew up short at the last word. Biros halted, too, and Emma heard Nagy grumble from behind her.

“Don’t like it?” Wynes said, staring Biros down. “Rigo?”

Emma eyed both men, worried that the standoff would end in tragedy for them all. She wanted to stop it, tell Biros to let it be. She understood
Rigo
had to be an insult. Her ears had caught plenty of insults in the past, and even though this was the first she’d heard that wasn’t aimed at a dark-skinned man or woman, she knew well enough how much weight the insult could carry. Biros’ face shook with anger and his mouth worked around words Emma hoped he knew better than to let out.

A soldier approached from across the street, asking Wynes if he needed help with the line.

“No, I’ve got them,” Wynes said. “Rigo and I were just having a chat here. Isn’t that so, Rigo?” The soldier turned away and went to join his two comrades by a jeep. Emma hardly saw Biros’ hand move, but she heard the slap of his palm across Wynes’ cheek and saw the detective spin aside only to right himself and whip a gun out of his coat. The soldier came back with the others in tow. The held their rifles on Biros and yelled for him to stay still. Wynes came close to the man and gave him a smack across the face and then another. Emma barely kept her tongue, wanting to scream murder at Wynes, holler at him to lay off and pick on someone who wasn’t chained up and held at gun point.

A soldier slapped a pair of bracelets onto Biros’ wrists and looped a length of rope around them and the chain between his feet. If he wanted to raise his hands now, he’d have to upend himself to do it.

“Go on,” Wynes said, poking Biros in the shoulder. “Lead the way. Rigo.”

Eszti shouted a curse then, drawing Wynes’ attention. He stepped closer and lifted his hand like he’d slap her. Emma stepped forward as far as the chain would allow. She put a hand up to cover Eszti’s face and stared daggers at Wynes. For a moment, she forgot about being anything but a young man from the neighborhood. She bent her face into an angry glare and held her lips tight together. Wynes stared back and turned as if he’d let her have the smack instead.

“Is her brother,” Nagy said from the back. “Hit me if you want to, but leave boy alone. Please.”

Wynes looked to the old man and sniffed. He dropped his hand and then brought a finger back up to aim at Emma’s nose.

“Keep a cool head and I might leave her be. Give me any trouble and a smack’ll be the last thing your sister here has to worry about.” With that, Wynes spun on his heel and addressed the soldiers. All but one went back to the jeep. The soldier went to the back of the line with Nagy and Wynes stayed up front by Biros. They moved again, shuffling along with chains dragging on the pavement, a steady cadence of rasping and grating.

After several blocks, too many for Emma to count, they reached the edge of the neighborhood, apparently the last of the prisoners to arrive. The street behind them was empty now. A roadblock had been set up at the last intersection before they left the Village and stepped into Chicago City proper. Two jeeps crossed the roadway, preventing anything bigger than a bicycle from getting through. Soldiers stood in the jeeps holding their ominous rifles. One soldier held a megaphone and shouted commands.

Wynes went up to this man and they exchanged a few words. The copper left then, stepping away from the jeeps and getting into the cab of a nearby police van. Lines of gypsies stood to either side of the roadblock waiting for trucks and police vans to drive them away. Line by line the neighborhood’s residents were carted off, taken to the facility, a word that still burned like an electric shock in Emma’s mind.

Their line was next up for transportation when Emma saw the air around the jeeps shimmer and flutter. The soldiers seemed to notice it, too. The one with the megaphone paused mid-sentence. Before the soldiers could react, the air whirled and whipped aside, revealing a man straddling an old metal bicycle on the street between the jeeps.

The man, a filthy tramp if ever Emma had seen one, laughed and bellowed at the sky. In one hand he held an empty wine bottle, which he threw at the nearest soldier, hitting the man in the face. The soldier’s visor cracked and he went down in his seat, holding his hands to his eyes and howling. The other soldiers reacted then, drawing aim on the tramp, but holding their fire. The tramp took advantage of this and flung his arms out to either side, pushing at the soldiers nearest him.

Where the tramp found his strength, Emma had no idea, but the man knocked one soldier right out of his jeep. The other kept his balance and seemed to get his wits about him, setting his rifle aside and moving to grapple the tramp. Another soldier from the other jeep did the same. When they both had their hands on the man, the air shuddered again, like a fierce and purposeful wind had chosen just that spot to exercise its power. In an instant, tramp, bicycle, and soldiers vanished.

In the chaos of the tramp’s appearance and vanishing act, a few lines of gypsies turned on their captors. They surrounded the soldiers tasked with keeping them in line and held them fast. Some soldiers were beaten to the ground. Emma looked to Nagy and then Biros, but neither showed any sign of wanting to fight. Biros couldn’t anyway. The soldiers in the jeeps abandoned their posts and went to help their comrades, firing warning shots from their rifles into the ground. Emma’s ears rang with the blasts as electric bolts seared the air and scorched the ground. Men and women who had overpowered the soldiers beside them quickly relented and went calm.

Emma waited for the worst. The soldiers couldn’t let the revolt go unpunished. They were no different than the coppers who broke up speaks in Eddie’s neighborhood. Somebody had to be an example. Emma shouted with Eszti and the others in her line when she saw the soldiers select a youth for their display of dominance. The young man couldn’t have been any older than Eszti, maybe not even of age. As the rifle was raised, the youth quivered. He dropped the rage and fury from his face as tears fell down his cheeks.

Before the soldier could fire, the air shook around him, and again the tramp and bicycle appeared out of thin air.

“Boo!” the tramp shouted, grabbing the would-be executioner by the collar and vanishing from sight once more. The tramp flew in and out of view again, performing his trick twice more before the remaining few soldiers backed away from the roadblock and took up positions beside a waiting police van. The tramp whipped into view again, this time beside Emma. He stood with his back to her and yelled at the soldiers.

“Go on you damn worms. You damn rodents. Crawl back home where you belong.”

The tramp’s stink nearly made Emma retch into the street. He turned to face her and lifted a ring of keys from his pocket, stuffing them into her pocket.

“Go on, girl. Go on and get yourself out of here.”

“Dad?” Emma’s eyes swam and she felt the ground coming up to meet her. She fell into the tramp’s embrace, felt his greasy hair and threadbare clothes smearing and scratching against her face.

“Go on, I said. Get yourself free and save what people you can.”

The tramp whipped away from her and hollered at the soldiers again before vanishing one more time. He reappeared behind the police van and knocked two soldiers’ heads together before flickering out of sight. Emma felt her knees buckle and her hands hit the dirt, catching her weight. She slumped forward onto her arms until Eszti reached to help her up.

“He gives you keys,” Eszti said. Emma patted her coat and felt the key ring.

All around the roadblock was pandemonium. Lines of prisoners shuffled together, looking for hiding places and piling into nearby houses. Some headed back down the street, ignoring shouts from the soldiers. Only four remained, and of these only one had his rifle trained in the direction of the prisoners. The others darted their aim around them, looking for all the world like frightened mice watching for the cat to return. The one eyeing the prisoners jerked backwards and Emma saw the tramp holding him by the throat. Seconds later both men vanished and the final three soldiers rushed away from the neighborhood.

Emma didn’t waste any more time. With Eszti’s help, she got their line out of sight behind a wagon. Eszti undid the shackles on Emma’s feet first, then handed over the keys. Emma released Eszti and went to Biros. The man regarded her with suspicion.

“You know a messenger and do not tell us.”

“A what?”

“Messenger. The Bicycle Man.”

Emma shook her head and went to work unlocking the man’s bonds. “I don’t know what I know anymore. That tramp? Whatever he was, I don’t know him. He couldn’t have been my father. But that’s who he sounded like and that’s who he looked like.” She stopped when the last chain fell from Biros’ wrists. “Only my father never dressed like that and sure enough he never knew any magic tricks either.”

Emma felt her stomach rising into her throat and fought it back. Whatever she’d just witnessed it had ended with her being free. At least as free as possible in this new version of Chicago City where soldiers marched entire neighborhoods off to jail. She handed Biros the keys. “Get somewhere safe, okay? I’ve got to get back to Eddie.”

Shouting from the direction of the police van got her attention, and Emma stepped from behind the wagon to see what was going on. The tramp was back, and so were the soldiers. One of them had the man in a choke hold and two others had their rifles trained on him.

Emma didn’t wait to see what happened. She got away quickly, moving off the main stem on a neighborhood street and stepping fast. Two blocks along and houses stood open and empty all around her. She thought about entering the nearest one when a soldier appeared in the doorway. He faced into the house and called for his comrade to join him. Emma kept out of sight until the two men had moved down the street to the next house.

She remembered what Wynes had said. They were searching the entire neighborhood. House by house, making sure nobody was left behind.

How many teams were there?

She’d have to risk finding out. The evening sky darkened above her and she slinked around the neighborhood, ducking into hiding every chance she got and watching for soldiers before moving again. Eddie may have been found already, or maybe he hadn’t. But Emma wasn’t leaving the Village until she knew for sure either way.