Moonshine: A Novel (32 page)

I took that in the spirit in which it was offered, as an apology and a parting gift, and held it to my chest when I left him behind.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Kardal took me and Mama back to the city, near the Whitehall Street station. I gathered that he wasn't terribly familiar with New York, and so had a limited repertoire of places to which he could teleport. The streets were dark, but the pedestrians didn't seem quite as wary as they had for the last few nights. Faust hadn't made a significant reappearance, then.

"I think he'd like to see you," Kardal said, "when--"

"No," I said, shaking my head firmly. "I'll find Rinaldo." It was getting easier for me to read his amorphous expressions. The clues weren't so much in his face as the general quality of his smoke. Now, he settled into something like a human shrouded in fog--a literal depression. "And if you don't?" he asked.

My ears began to hurt; I relaxed my jaw.
You've only known him for two weeks
. Why did that seem entirely beside the point? "Kardal . . . would you let me . . . be your vessel? If I had your powers, we could find Rinaldo. We could save--"

But he was already shaking his head. "The vessel of a djinn can only be someone capable of overpowering us."

Not me, then. "But couldn't we find someone . . ."

"You do not want anyone capable of subduing me in control of my powers. No one becomes that powerful by being kind."

"I'm sorry."

He put his hand on my shoulder. It was heavier than I expected, and very stiff, as though he had only read about comforting human contact without ever actually practicing it. "You are a remarkable human," he said. "It is not your fault you couldn't save him."

I wasn't crying when he faded, but Mama hugged me anyway, pulling my head onto her shoulder and whispering the sort of platitudes you expect mothers to say.

"I have to go to class," I said, when I finally pulled away. It felt strange to even say it. After all that had happened, I had to go back to Chrystie Elementary for something as routine and mundane as night school? But it was too late to cancel, and the sad truth was that, as bad as things got, I still had to eat. Amir could last a few more days, Kardal had said. I'd start canvassing the entire damn city later to night.

Mama nodded. "Call us if you need anything, dear. I'll do what I can to get your father and Troy to hold off, but . . . I heard the client plans to pay Troy the last of the money tomorrow morning. They'll probably strike tomorrow night."

It was too soon. I felt like begging my mother to make them wait, but she knew the stakes as well as I, and she knew the futility of stopping Daddy or Troy when they set their minds on something. Especially something involving significant monetary remuneration. So I just clenched my fists a little tighter and told her that I'd call. She hailed a taxi, but I waited for the train, since my bicycle was still locked up near Amir's. Old Rick hadn't yet returned to his corner. Someone would have to actually touch his belongings if the police didn't return soon.

As I waited, I wondered what business transaction Amir could have arranged with Rinaldo. Knowing Amir, he probably wanted to rob someone else of a priceless antique. He really did treat our world like a sandbox. Beside me, a vampire staggered against a pillar, so inebriated he seemed in danger of plunging onto the tracks. I had started to move discreetly away when a bottle fell from his hands and shattered on the concrete of the platform. He cursed, but the rest of the humans in the station covered their noses. The stench from even a small bottle of Faust was overpowering this close. I realized that I'd smelled it before--faintly, on Giuseppe's breath, and earlier, in Amir's apartment when we'd encountered the revenant tomcat.

I huddled in the corner of the train once it arrived, wishing that the pieces didn't fit together quite neatly. Why would Rinaldo have wasted Faust to threaten Amir? I very much doubted he'd meant the stench to strike a special terror. Amir and Faust . . . no. There had to be a better explanation.

I had to stop by the boarding house to pick up some materials before class, but I didn't even make it up the stairs. Lily, of all people, was lounging in one of the worn chintz armchairs and watching with apparent delight an argument unfolding between Aileen and Mrs. Brodsky. All three looked up when I walked in.

"Zephyr!" said Mrs. Brodsky, her voice rising above the rest like a great ship buoyed on waves. "You will tell your wayward roommate to drink. She is sick. She is not herself."

Mrs. Brodsky held a tall glass of a strange amber liquid, thick enough to cling to the sides. I swallowed, hard, and gave Aileen a sympathetic look. She was seated on the couch, draped in what looked like four different knitted comforters of violently clashing hues. Hot water bladders covered her feet. And from beneath all this, she gazed at me with forlorn hope.

"I had no idea you lived with such fascinating people, Zephyr," quipped Lily. "Though I'm not entirely sure this is safe for us. I think your friend must be dying of consumption."

Aileen's skin
had
taken on an unhealthy pallor. "What is that sludge?" I asked Mrs. Brodsky.

"Traditional Moscow cure for storms of the mind," she said.

A morbid curiosity made me take a sniff. I gagged. It looked, if anything, better than it smelled. "Resist the Bolshevik tyranny," I said, which provoked Aileen and Lily to fits of laughter and Mrs. Brodsky to a voluble stream of Russian.

"What happened?" I said, sitting on the couch beside Aileen.

She sighed. "I was reading on the street and one of the visions just knocked me out cold. I don't even remember it now."

I put my arm around her. "Mrs. Brodsky," I said, as firmly as I could. "Aileen will be fine, I promise. But a hangover cure isn't going to help her."

Mrs. Brodsky glared at the two of us and then finally shrugged in the manner of an infinitely-put-upon mother. "Fine. See if I try to help you ungrateful girls again." She cupped her hand over her face. "Katya! The kitchen will need cleaning!"

Lily cautiously approached us once Mrs. Brodsky was safely out of the parlor. "What are you doing here, anyway?" I asked.

She put a manila envelope down on the floor beside two large Macy's boxes and gave me a curiously tentative glance. "Yes, well . . . well, I was invited to some election fund-raiser of Beau Jimmy's at the Waldorf and I thought, why not invite Zephyr!"

"You did?"

"Well, I'd been out all day . . . reporting things, you know, and anyway had no time at all to go back to my place so I had to dash into Macy's, though you know I just abhor department stores, and found the only two decent things on the rack and brought them here. You can have the one I don't like as much."

Aileen and I glanced at each other. "That's . . . nice," I said, unsure what to make of this side of Lily.

"You look like you want something," said Aileen, politic as always.

Lily raised her eyebrows and gave a speaking look at the tatty knitted shawls draped over her shoulders. "I don't believe we've met," she said.

I sighed. "Lily, Aileen. Fortune-telling roommate, meet deb journalist."

"I thought you must be that one. So, what's in the envelope, Lily?" Aileen said.

Lily smiled thinly. "What do you care? Do you
sense
something?"

Aileen blushed, but her glare could have staked a vampire. "Mock me all you like, but I doubt you'd have the balls for a real fortune-telling."

"I don't have the
balls
for anything." Lily did her best to look down her regal nose at Aileen, though it didn't seem to be working. She seemed a little too curious for it, in fact. "You mean to tell me you actually have some power? I have to tell you, I'm not gullible enough to think it comes with the accent."

"See for yourself, if you can stomach it."

"Oh, go ahead, please. I'm dreadfully curious."

I didn't like the sound of this at all, but both Aileen and Lily looked identically mule-headed. Nothing I could do would make either one back down. But I worried about Aileen--Lily didn't know any better, but I saw how much these visions cost her, and how they could overwhelm her if they came on too strongly. At least on the street she didn't invoke them deliberately, but with Lily she'd be sure to use as much of her fledgling seer power as she could command. I moved over so Lily could sit beside Aileen, who took Lily's hands, palms up. She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. After a moment, Lily laughed nervously.

"Well? Should I clear my mind? Envision a field of daisies?"

"Try closing your mouth."

I turned my giggle into a cough.
Oh, Aileen, I love you
. After a minute of strained silence, Lily shifted, but Aileen's grip on her hands was stronger than it looked. Lily gave me a panicked glance, but I just shrugged my shoulders and leaned back. She'd asked for this, after all. Only thing we could do was watch the show.

"You don't like it, but you learn to get used to it," Aileen said, her voice breathy and deep. Lily looked positively nonplussed. "Your kind are more forgiving than you believe. Less forgiving than mine. You crave success, but you won't achieve it unless you stop caring so much what they think." And then, in sudden panic, "Zephyr! You have to let him!"

Aileen slumped, tumbling onto Lily's chest and shivering like she'd just come in from the cold.

"Are you serious?" Lily said. "What kind of a fortune was that? It didn't mean anything!" I could tell that she was struggling to affect her nonchalance, and mostly failing. Even I felt a bit disconcerted. She looked down at Aileen, still shivering, and tentatively put an arm around her back.

"Well, there there. It's over now. What ever that was."

The parlor grandfather clock started to chime unsteadily, startling the three of us. I stood up and cursed. "Sorry, Lily, can't go to the party, I'm already late for Locution and Personal Finance." Her face actually fell, which would have made me as suspicious as Aileen if I'd had any time for it. I dashed upstairs to get the course materials, but when I came back down, Lily was still there. She was holding the manila envelope.

"You should see these, Zephyr."

Her voice was so uncharacteristically solemn that despite everything I paused and took it from her. I was going to be late, anyway. And I didn't at all like her anxious, worried expression. There were photographs in the envelope. Recently developed, I could tell from the chemical smell. They were of some dimly lit room in a ware house.

"Crates of boxes, crates of boxes, crates of . . . Harold Weisskopf and Sons Frankfurters?" I looked up. "You want me to see photos of a hot dog ware house?"

She shook her head. "Just keep going."

So I did. There were the hot dog crates. The next one, someone had cracked it open. And then inside. Those tall bottles definitely weren't frankfurters. Illegal hooch? Likely. Next photo, the bottle was broken open. The liquid was dark and thick . . .
almost
indistinguishable from red wine in the photograph, but not quite. I looked up at her. "Faust?" I said, my voice shaking for no reason I could name.

She nodded. I didn't need her encouragement to keep looking. The photographer had broken open a few more crates of the frankfurters. All of them held bottles of Faust. I looked back at the initial photo of the room: this ware house must hold hundreds of thousands of bottles.

"The Negro supplier," I whispered.

Now Lily actually looked away, and I found myself drawn to the last remaining photographs. There were two. The elevator shot looked familiar, but then, Otis service elevators ought to be remarkably similar. The final shot rendered the series unmistakable. The front of a ware house on East Twenty-sixth Street. A broken padlock on the door. Perhaps even my footprints in the snow?

I sat down abruptly at the foot of the steps and forced myself to breathe. A business transaction, indeed. He'd found Faust and arranged for it to be purchased by one of the most vicious crime lords in the city and now he was culpable for the deaths and destruction it had caused.

"How could he?" I said, realizing I was close to tears. "How could he do this and ask for my help and just pretend that he had nothing--" I choked to cut myself off.

Aileen had stood and was looking through the photographs I'd dropped. Lily seemed torn between trying to comfort me and running away.

"I'm sorry, Zephyr. I'd started to suspect, but I didn't want to tell you until I knew for sure. I snuck into the ware house today on a hunch and took those pictures. They were on the fifth floor, plain sight."

I had to laugh. "Well, no one's going to question why some frankfurter boxes smell a little funny. He loves hot dogs. What kind of a person loves hot dogs and Ming vases and just decides to supply a whole city with a dangerous drug . . . like it's some sort of joke?"

Lily bit her lip and put a hand on my shoulder. "But he's not a person, Zephyr. He's an Other."

And for the first time in my life, I didn't argue.

I arrived fifteen minutes late to class, and staggered through my lessons with the verve of a dying tortoise. Aileen had decided to wear the extra dress and go to the Jimmy Walker fund-raiser with Lily. I didn't begrudge them the night out. I could hardly think. Or, rather, I could think all too well. At least class distracted me. Giuseppe, to my surprise, played truant, though he usually attended Locution. And apparently, I wasn't the only one hoping to catch him. Several of the other students came up to me after class and requested that I tell Giuseppe to contact them if I saw him. And why? Because it seemed that he owed them all money.