Page 1 (1/2)

Chicago, February 1937

Tired to the bone, I slued between hioing full blast, but I still shivered like a malaria victim I&039;d never been this cold before in my whole life, but that&039;s what happens when you take a dive off a boat into Lake Michigan in early February

Coldfield, a large, grilared down at me with a colare in Escort&039;s direction "Charles, he&039;s half-dead I&039; him to a hospital"

Escott bent forward so his pale, sharp-featured face was runt One of his eyes had a bad shiner, the other ollen shut, and he held his left arh the wars tonight hi Coldfield, not ood idea for any of us, and you&039;re well aware of it"

In response, Coldfield snarled a ripe curse as he hauled at the steering wheel He ot us pointed back toward Chicago

"Jack&039;s a little shell-shocked, but he only needs a war at lazed eyes

"No shit Then what? We wait for pneu over h chattering teeth Bad idea It htfully shoved a handkerchief in my face before I dribbled more lake water onto the overcoat he&039;d loaned lared briefly at ht-then focused on the road and the rearview h in the seat so he wouldn&039;t notice anything odd about the reflection

"Anyone following?" asked Escott

"Not yet"

"Let&039;s keep it that way No hospitals, Shoe, as a favor to all of us Weor Miss Paco could have informants anywhere in the city and-"

"Yeah, yeah, well, they won&039;t have any inin Doc Clarson to look at you both"

"I can e without"

"Oh sure, I&039;ve seen hoell you&039;ve ed with those busted ribs"

"They&039;re only just cracked a little"

"Charles" Rising impatience in Coldfield&039;s tone Couldn&039;t blame him

But Escott&039;s attention was centered onDr

Clarson?"

I shook my head A doctor meant an examination, which meant that the first time he tried to take my pulse he&039;d find out I was a bit more than just half-dead In fact, I&039;h tiht now I didn&039;t want to bother dealing with anything beyond getting out ofinto a nice hot oven for a few hours

"What are you asking hiive him a choice in the matter"

"Huh Shape he&039;s in he couldn&039;t think straight if you gave hi to keep the number of people involved in this mess to a minimum"

"Clarson&039;s family, he won&039;t talk"

"I know, but I&039;d rather not put him to any unnecessary risk"

"It&039;s in e of what&039;s a risk for my people"

"But-"

"Charles, just shut the hell up and let me drive"

Escott subsided As far as I could tell throughof nausea and disorientation, he seemed perfectly unoffended by Coldfield&039;s manner They were old friends from back in the twenties when they&039;d both been actors in sooes by and now Escott&039;s calling hiotone of the larger crio&039;s Bronze Belt How they ended up in two such opposite fields and reure out

Coldfield drove fast and the car got pretty war to feel a little less like an iceberg, but radually shortened, and the teeth-chattering business finally ceased I could still taste the sour metallic flavor of the lake in the back of o away if I could make a quick visit to the Stockyards to feed before dawn Not ; he didn&039;t know abouta vampire

I&039;osi movie There&039;re some similarities between me and old Count Dracula, but I don&039;t turn into animals or quake at crosses or silver bullets, flop in a coffin or stuff like that I do drink blood to keep body and soul together-still have one of those as far as I know-and it&039;s usually animal blood, but that little detail can still hit people the wrong way Because of it I hadn&039;t made up my mind whether to let Coldfield in on the news yet

Escott knew all about it, of course, and could more easily break it to his friend, but once told me it was really ht now, but daht You can&039;t just tell people that you&039;re a vampire and have theive out the whole history of how you got to be that way In my case, I fell in love with a beautiful, but unusual woed blood

Last summer I was killed by a mobster, but much to his surprise I didn&039;t stay dead

How I got back at him for my murder is another story

Half an hour orI liked their silent company It was nice, so very, very nice to be with people who didn&039;t want to kill me

That and the waret to dozing I don&039;t sleep, not like I used to when I still breathed regularly; at night I&039;m always solidly awake for the duration When dawn co dead it ain&039;t even remotely funny I&039;ve no control over it, and lately it&039;s been daerous I miss a lot

I opened my eyes when the car canal

Coldfield was in the thick of the city now and began driving sedately, easing into the start and stop of the wee hours&039; traffic, signals with care Maybe he didn&039;t want to jar us ure that he didn&039;t want to attract cops

Too many of thes up since the Feds whisked Capone away on that tax rap, and as Escott said, people like Miss Angela Paco could have eyes and ears anywhere in the town It was because of her I ended up in the lake tonight, another casualty in her gang war

"Where we going?" I asked, blinking against a barrage of neon fron

Coldfield seemed surprised I&039;d spoken "Someplace safe and warm"

" &039;M all for it Where&039;s Isham?" He was one of Coldfield&039;s men and had been with them earlier He&039;d tried his best to pull ela&039;s place earlier this evening

Escott-bad ribs, shiner, and all-had been her unwilling guest, and I&039;d snuck into her house to try getting hilar alar at us; Isha and noise as Coldfield tore across the grounds in his ared to reach the car, and I&039;d alrenades, which screwed everything up They&039;d quite sensibly hightailed it out of there with h, but not that tough

"I told hiet you back fro to do a double-cross Try to kill hiured that much by now You wanta tell us what happened?"

I shrugged, staring straight ahead at the dashboard "Tried to walk hoood"

"The hell you say"

"Would you care to expand a bit on the subject?" Escott asked "We rather lost track of you when Miss Paco lobbed that last grenade"

And what a sight she had been with her throwing the thing as far as her tiny for flat out in the other direction to hit the dirt a half second before the whole night went up She&039;d been laughing the whole ti," said Coldfield "We wanted to come back for you Sorry"

"I&039;ela&039;s her father&039;s daughter and then so crazy"

"So what happened? How&039;d you get away?"

It would be ive him the truth of it, of how I&039;d nearly checked out four tiuy named Chaven, which weakened me; I can survive bullets, but can&039;t tolerate blood loss too daela Paco, I caught a load of grenade shrapnel The stuff had gone right through me, of course, but it hurt like blazes and weakened me more The third tis ca to beat my brains out I was only just able to stop him, and in the aftermath, I&039;d fed from him to stay alive It saved me, until the morphine in his blood kicked in and laidan The only reason I was her than I used to be-though at the ile

A real hell night for yours truly, Jack Fle, and there was still more of it left

"Kyler had Frank Paco prisoner," I said, trying to sort what to say and what to leave out "Was going to use hiela When Kyler pegged out, that lieutenant of his, Chaven, cozied up with her to get her to trade&039;s books

"The hell you say Why did Chaven want you?"

"He needed a patsy to blame for Kyler&039;s death Probably pretty e his boss instead when I ducked too fast After he gave back Paco, he hauled uy called Vic as playing both sides, aboard the Elvira and was going to dump us all in the lake for fish food I waited until I had a chance, then jumped Chaven He&039;s dead now

Charles, it ith your gun"

Escott offered ht for a second "I&039;h there ht be trouble should the police trace it to un has been stolen"

"They won&039;t trace anything even if they do find the body The bullet went right through hiht not have thought so had he been the one pulling the trigger

"What&039;s become of it? My Webley?"

"Still aboard the yacht, I think"

He merely nodded "Who knows, perhaps I can recover it soot a dark streak in him and it&039;s icy like the lake Once in a while I run into it The encounters don&039;t always leave h already

"Are you really all right?" he asked, looking at ood eye allowed

What wasthe feel of Chaven&039;s death, not the sound, though that h when the Webley I&039;d turned on him went off and shot out the artery in his throat I reinstant as we both fell into the water and the sudden hellish silence that follohen freezing death closed over my head

"Jack?"

I huffed out souess so," I said, lying I looked down at my clothes, but the lake must have washed them clean

Too bad it couldn&039;t have done assomeone alive into someone dead, even scum like Chaven, made for a black ache inside that no doctor could ever fix This night with me for a while yet

"Then what?&039; asked Coldfield, wanting me back on the subject

"Then I jumped ship and swam for my life"

"You outta your mind, kid"

"I didn&039;t have a lot of choice There was another guy there, Deiter, he was all ready to ace ured I had a better chance in the water" That was total falsehood Deiter had been too shit scared to even think of shooting, andup in the drink had been a mix of accident and bad luck

Never mind the cold, that&039;s the least of it; because ofwater and I just don&039;t er If I&039;d not been able to vanish and float up over the surface soon after going under, it would have been fatal And that&039;s vanish, not turn into a

"Deiter, you said?"

"That&039;s what they called him One of Kyler&039;s boys His job was to bump off Gordy so Kyler could take over his part of the town, then cut a deal with the New York bosses With Gordy&039;s rackets in hand he could up their take by five percent and keep the rest Of course, that was before he got dead Chaven&039;s not here to pick up the reins, and now I don&039;t knohat they&039;re going to do"

"Holy shit" He glanced at Escott, as shaking his head "This town&039;s gonna bloide open once word gets out Without Kyler to take over Paco&039;s territory-"

"Hey, don&039;t forget Angela," I added

"What can she do? There ain&039;t a wiseguy in the toho&039;d let himself be bossed by a woirl, but don&039;t underesti her father as a front man, that&039;s why she wanted hiela, she wanted Frank Paco back because he was her father, period, but she still had more ambition than Napoleon and twice the nerve

"You think she&039;ll be able to take over?"

"I&039;d s work her way she&039;ll have the whole operation&039;s coded account books so for her"

"What?"

"She traded Opal back to Chaven to get Paco out, but Opal&039;s not staying long"

"My God," said Escott, his tone full of admiration rather than dismay "Between the two of them they could have the city in hand by the end of next week"

I was going to say he was probably overstating things on that point, but shut up

Opal, Kyler&039;s forela&039;s soons, brute force was nothing co all the profits, and Opal could do numbers the way the rest of the world breathes-without even thinking about it

"Let&039;s continue to assume that despite these distractions Miss Paco is still in a murderous frame of mind toward us," said Escott after a minute

"Toward you," I put in "She thinks I&039;m dead, courtesy of Chaven"

"Unless Deiter talks with her"

"He ht think I&039;m dead, too A swim at this time of year"

"Yes, yes And we know for certain that it was an obvious trap Shoe and I were driving into"

"Told you so," Coldfieldon the road like a New Year&039;s drunk we&039;d be in the lake by now, too"

"Angela will still have a hit out on you, Charles," I said "She thinks you&039;re a loose end"

"So I am"

"You&039;re pretty cool about it"

"Part of the job," he said with a shrug of his eyebrows "Right, I&039;ve not shown up for around or to the police, or both, which ht for a bit until things settle All we need to do is discover where she o"

"Good luck," said Coldfield with a snort "What do you do when you find her?"

Escott looked at hed "I&039;ll think of so"

Our drive finally ended soo&039;s Bronze Belt, and I ondering if this was such a good idea If Coldfield wanted to keep a low profile he was doing it with the wrong people ith our white skins- well, Escort&039;s was gone fairly gray by now I hoped he wasn&039;t buying trouble for hi us in

The entry to sanctuary was in a trash can-lined alley between soht after the O&039;Learys&039; cow changed all the real-estate values Coldfield stopped, cut the engine, and got out, telling us to wait

As he went up a couple steps to the rear of an old brick building I checked my watch, but the water had screwed the works Da until dawn

He caer side, and tried to help Escott out

"I&039;m fine," Escott insisted "Just let me take it slow" But the as cruel, and I still had his coat He hissed when the cold hit hiain as his ribs protested

"Slow is the only way you can take it, you fool"

"Hah," agreed Escott, and allowed himself to be steadied on the steps The screen door popped open to receive him By then I&039;d cli co tall in the winter air the tookunpleasant suddenly burbled deep inshort at a frozen puddle, and threw up

Nasty, but mercifully brief I&039;d sed so Pain lanced behind my eyes as I spat out the last of it and wondered how far ere froht kind of drink

"Fle at what to him would be thick shadows

I raised a feeble wave "Co"

"That bad stomach of yours?" he asked when I joined hiood a story as any to explain peculiarities in my behavior

"Ulcers?"

"Don&039;t know, don&039;t care"

We pressed ahead and the screen banged behind me I shut the inner door and was buffeted by a wall of rease

We were in a kitchen, a pretty big one: three stoves with oversized cooking pots on theain Some kind of eatery, then, that was either still open fro ready for breakfast, or maybe it just never closed at all Several black people wearing stained white aprons were gathered by one of the stoves, their watchful faces displaying a variety of expressions ranging from alar one of the men, "I need you to-"

"The hell you do!"

This came not from Sal, but from a slim black woman in her thirties who suddenly burst in on us like a cavalry charge She wore a sober, dark blue dress and a no-nonsense, God-help-you expression as she halted in the front of the group, hands on her hips and disgruntlement in every line of her well-shaped body She treated the whole roo once-over, then came forward to stand nose to nose with Coldfield She wasn&039;t nearly his ht, but made up for it with force of temper

"Clarence, just what the hell do you think you&039;re doing here?" she snapped

Clarence? I thought I caught Escott&039;s eye Hemotion with one hand

Coldfield offered her a winning s you a couple of strays It&039;s only for a day or so until we-"

"You know I don&039;t want anything to do with your crap- no offense," she said in an aside to Escott Brows high, he pursed his lips and gave a minute shake of his head "You damn well know I run a clean place here and I&039;m not about to-"

"Please, Tru, this is serious I wouldn&039;t have colared "Uh-huh I&039;ood sob story all ready for me"

"And you know you&039;ll do what I ask if I ask nice enough, so how &039;bout we pretend you&039;ve heard it all and I go straight to the please-pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top part?"

My eyes were ready to pop This was Shoe Coldfield?

Tru saw and slapped his ar yourself in front of the bu at me

"None taken," I whispered

"He&039;s no buht, and Charles, too You remember Charles Escott, don&039;t you?"

She rounded on hied Is that really you under those bruises?"

"Indeed it is, Miss Coldfield I do apologize for not being in a more presentable state, but as your brother was about to say, this is a rather serious occasion and-"

"It&039;s you all right Still using ten words when one will do, huh? Well, don&039;t stop, I like that English accent Coot any stew ready? Okay, then pour hi even Coldfield&039;s size by a few inches, instantly stepped forward to carry out this order

"Noho are you?" She looked at ain I&039;d heard a little about her from Escott, and by a roundabout way she&039;d once sent a case in our direction Don&039;t knohat I expected her to be like, but whatever it was fell short of the reality

"My na, I ith Charles-"

Coldfield interrupted "Tru, this can wait, the man took a dive in the lake and he&039;s half froze to death"

Her dark eyes flashed fire on him "You and your-your whatever the hell it is! I don&039;t want to know"

"But-"

"Oh, don&039;t worry, I&039;ll take care of the et Doc Clarson?"

Her brows ca us each a thorough looking over "Let the poor e these two They don&039;t seem ready to die just yet"

"But Charles has broken ribs-"

"Only cracked," put in Escott helpfully

"Shut up, Charles-and Fleot frostbite by now"

"No I don&039;t," I put in, also helpfully

"Shut up, Fle-"

"Clarence!" Her eyes narrowed and she jerked a thuo "Out of the way"

"But, Tru-"

"You run everything else, I run this place, I call the shots Those are the rules

Move"

Coldfield put a lid on it and, throwing a quick glare at each of us, found an unused corner and hunched there, shoving his hands in his coat pockets I had the strong feeling Escott and I would owe hi time for this favor

Escott, now seated on a stool by one of the stoves and hugging aof hot stew to his chest, apparently decided he was at the Vanderbilt mansion for a debutante ball He cleared his throat "Please allow me to make proper introductions: Miss Trudence Coldfield, this is Mr Jack Fle, my friend and business associate Jack, Miss Coldfield"

"Pleased to meet you, ain, along with another piercing look She wasn&039;t beautiful in the Hollyay, but her manner alone was the kind to stop traffic Maybe not Hollywood beauty, but they didn&039;t know everything Fine bones, fine ss froht equipment and then so sense of power and energy, but hers was more overt and in ht into you, and when they did you betterinside was up to snuff or she&039;d know the reason why That&039;s how she struck me, anyway, after only ten seconds of her hard scrutiny What she made of me I couldn&039;t tell

"Likewise," she said "Nohat happened to you?"

"Fell in the lake I only need to dry out and warm up But Charles is the one to-"

She raised one hand "I&039;ll deal with it, Mr Fle toward a door I followed her through a hall, up so wood floors creaked, but were polished and the paint on the walls was fresh

"What is this place?" I asked

She glanced back at h that was explanation enough

"What do you do here?"

"Help people who need it"