Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel (12 page)

To my dismay, I experienced that sensation less and less each day.

Horror, and its attendant emotions, shock and revulsion, were like the classic boxing combination of two left jabs followed by a right—the more I got hit with it, the less it hurt. That didn’t mean it reduced the damage; on the contrary, one of the worst things that can happen to a fighter is the development of scar tissue, which deadens pain but also numbs comprehension of how severely she’s injured. What my grandpa did to those poor people at the Catacomb Club was burrowing into my subconscious like an infection; I just couldn’t feel it. That didn’t mean I welcomed it or, in the long run, would allow it to exist.

Being a natural-born killer,
I thought, bristling with electricity,
is no way to live.

THERE ARE FEW THINGS AS SUSPICIOUS IN THE
Outfit as superlative statements.

When a gangster refers to anything—a restaurant, limo company, another hoodlum—in terms of perfection, it means something bad is brewing. In the Outfit, where yes is no and up is down, where the most mundane action such as buying a cup of coffee or reading a book causes others to doubt your motives and smell treachery, listening to unqualified praise puts everyone on alert. It signifies that the restaurant is about to be firebombed, the limo company has been infiltrated by the FBI, the praiser in question is a rat informant, and that other hoodlum, the one who is just so damn wonderful? He’s a dead man. That’s why, when Doug burst into the Bird Cage Club Saturday night bellowing, “I just had the greatest night of my
life,
” his superlative jubilance bouncing off the walls before the elevator arrived, my antennae went up. Harry leaped from the mattress where I’d been reading the secret pages and sprinted for the main room. I followed, feeling like a huffy parent. The only contact we’d had since Friday night were his annoyingly cheery replies to my texts (Awesome-sauce! This party rocks! Woo-hoo!). Now I watched as he stepped from the elevator—to use an old movie term, he
swept off
—saying, “Well hello-o-o, gorgeous! And I’m talking to
me
!”

I stared at Doug’s face, which was—there’s no other word for it—radiant. Only his eyes, pink at the edges, showed evidence of having been awake for a long time, and I said, “Are you . . . okay?”

He actually did a jig, a joyfully awkward shuffling thing, and lifted Harry to his face, rubbing noses. “Better than okay! I ate and talked and danced . . . Can you believe it? Me, dancing! . . . And talked and ate and talked, but most of all I made
friends,
Sara Jane! All kinds of friends! And everyone was just like me!”

“You mean . . . ?” I said, trying to communicate with my hands instead of saying it.

“No, no.” He grinned with rubbery cheeks. “I don’t mean overweight! Some were, but no, I mean they were on the fringe, so to speak. Loners, geeks, outliers, whatever . . . we had such similar stories! It was weird and amazing at the same time, and definitely a bonding thing! And the one trait we all
completely
shared? Addiction!”

“You mean drugs?”

“Drugs, alcohol, food, sex, whatever! There were even some homeless people there, like, the type that get blitzed on super-cheap wine! They were
awesome
!” He swooned. “Seriously, it’s almost unbelievable, isn’t it? Me, making friends, and you know what?” He held up Harry like a trophy. “They
like
me! They really, really like me! Remember? Sally Field, when she won an Oscar for
Places in the Heart.
”

“Uh . . . who?”

“Guess what else? They invited me to a big get-together at a Cubs game next weekend! Mister Kreamy Kone has a party suite at Wrigley Field where they entertain VIPs!” he said, dancing with Harry and singing, “Take me out to the ball game . . .”

I stood back, inspecting him. “Doug . . . are you high?”

“You mean stoned? Wasted? Zonked? No, but I’ll tell you how I feel,” he said, smiling like an electric clown-plug was attached to his butt. Slowly, articulating for effect, he opened his mouth and the word came out.

I paused, making sure I’d heard correctly, and then said, “Don’t be offended, but . . . it sounded like you said sexy?”

“I know, right? Well, yeah, it makes me
feel
that way, but it’s s-e-c-c . . . Sec-C. That’s what Mister Kreamy Kone fans meant about an S-C party.”

“What the hell is it?”

“Oh so delicious and like it says online . . .
miraculous! Life-changing!
” he cooed, licking his lips and hugging himself. “It’s a completely organic, all-natural, appetite-suppressant ice cream that Mister Kreamy Kone is test marketing!”

“They’re going to sell an appetite suppressant out of trucks?”

“No, no . . . the trucks sell regular ice cream. Sec-C will be sold in, like, gourmet grocery stores or somewhere . . . I’m not really sure. All I know is that right now, it’s available only to a select few, like yours truly! The incredible thing is that Sec-C isn’t
just
for food appetites. According to a Konnoisseur . . .”

“Wait,” I said, thinking and then sounding it out. “You mean like ‘connoisseur’? Like some kind of expert, except with a ‘Kone’? That’s really nerdy.”

“Trust me, everyone there was a total nerd and outcast, in the very best way. Anyway, the Konnoisseurs host the parties, and according to them, Sec-C also suppresses overactive appetites for drugs and alcohol and obsessive habits, with
tah-dah
 . . . no harmful side effects! So it was all of these dependent people licking and talking, and I swear I could feel it working in my brain. The more I ate, the less I thought about Munchitos, and the better I felt about
me.
It must be real, because the Konnoisseurs are all ex-addicts and healthy and
hot.
”

“Okay, great . . . but what did you learn about Mister Kreamy Kone headquarters?” I said, unable to hide my irritation. I was choking on Uncle-Jack-and-secret-pages information, not to mention the fact that I’d been whistled in by Lucky, while Doug babbled on about miracle ice cream and seductive junkies. “The trucks hunting me down, remember? The creatures attempting to steal my brain? You begged me to let you go that party . . . did you learn
anything
?”

“Oh, well, not this time, but . . .” And he paused, wincing at my gaze, really
seeing
me for the first time through his happiness cloud. His smile faded and he swallowed thickly, sweat flecking his brow. “Did . . . something happen?”

Trying for restraint and failing, I blurted out how I’d been whistled in by Lucky, the boss of bosses, and what it could possibly mean. Was he aware that my family had disappeared? Did he think my dad was a rat? Did he think
I
was a rat? I shuddered just thinking of it, especially Knuckles’s warning not to use cold fury on Lucky, which meant I would be going in there unarmed.

Doug sat slowly. “Wow. You just made my night seem really . . . frivolous.”

“Oh wait, there’s more,” I said. “Two more, in fact—Jack Richards and Weston Skarlov.” I recounted the appearance of Uncle Jack, Heather, and Annabelle, and how a slim chance existed that the old man could translate
“Volta.”
Doug had questions, all of which I shelved, watching his eyes widen as I explained about Ice Cream Cohen and his jaw drop at the revelation of my grandpa’s bloody crime.

“It’s connected somehow. From 1956 to the night my family disappeared until today, right up to Sec-C. I have to recopy
‘Volta,’
make some pages that Uncle Jack can actually read, and we have to track down that factory immediately. I
know
my family is there. So first . . .”

“Um . . . are
you
okay? I mean, what your grandpa did was brutal. Really . . . terrible,” he said cautiously. “I’m surprised you’re not more affected by it after, you know, what you’ve been struggling with.”

“You mean never finding the people I love? Becoming something that I hate?” I asked matter-of-factly. “How it makes me consider killing myself before I kill someone else? Is that what you’re referring to, Doug?”

“Sara Jane . . .”

“One of the first things I told you about the notebook was that it was my guide to the past. That I couldn’t address the present until I understood the history of the Outfit and my family’s place in it,” I said. “Well, the past has collided with the present. For the moment, everything else—old history, what my grandpa did—is meaningless.”

“The death of those people at the Catacomb Club wasn’t meaningless,” he said.

“I don’t mean it that way.” I sighed. “Listen, one of your favorite movies,
The Big Sleep . . .
”

“Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, 1946, directed by Howard Hawks. So?”

“So, Owen Taylor, the chauffeur, dies when his car goes off a pier into the ocean, but it’s never revealed whether he was murdered or committed suicide. Why?”

“Because,” he said slowly, seeing it, “the only significance of his death is that it propels Bogart’s detective character, Philip Marlowe, forward. Why or how it occurred isn’t important.”

“All that matters for now,” I answered, “is whether Uncle Jack can translate that chapter, and how fast we can locate that factory.”

Doug nodded thoughtfully. “How do you know that your family is there, besides your gut? I’m sure it knows what it’s talking about, but still . . .”

“Teardrop showed me my mom’s finger. Why do that if she was really dead? Just show me her corpse and threaten to kill Lou next, or my dad. I believe they’re alive more than I don’t, and that they’re somewhere that’s nowhere,” I said. “It makes perfect sense it would be Outfit connected, but not
part
of the Outfit.”

“It sounds like you’re talking about Elzy,” Doug said, and thought for a moment, lips pursed. “Could it be her, Sara Jane? She knew a lot about the Outfit and your family. She could’ve known about Ice Cream Cohen, right?”

“Right,” I said, “or wrong. At this point, guessing if it’s Elzy is as much of a waste of time as wondering if . . .”

“If Owen Taylor was killed or he killed himself,” Doug said.

“Two someones,” I repeated. “Jack Richards and Weston Skarlov. They’re who we care about now.”

We were silent then, with Harry whining contentedly as Doug scratched between his ears. From then on, we reminded each other to stay focused by invoking a mantra—“Remember the chauffeur”—allowing the words to drive us forward.

ON FRIDAY EVENING, I MADE THE STARTLING
discovery of an unknown great-uncle who was forgetting the past but might remember Buondiavolese; that he had a mute, pastry-chef daughter with an unmistakable (somewhat disturbing) resemblance to Uncle Buddy; and that she had a daughter who made Miss July look misshapen.

Afterward, I used them as an excuse to blow off introducing Max to my family.

I called him Sunday morning, thankfully got his voice mail, and broke the (bad for him, great for me) news. As I left the message, explaining the surprise drop-in by relatives and how their presence would dominate our household for the unforeseeable future, a warning went off in my gut—as considerate as he was, everyone, even a sweet specimen like Max, has limits. It was only natural that he’d be hurt and suspicious, but it couldn’t be helped—I was racing that deadly cosmic hourglass. Doug and I decided on a divide-and-conquer strategy to locate the factory; I’d covertly tap my sources for information while he continued on with the Sec-C weirdos. There were eat-and-greets during the week, and the Cubs party the following weekend. He was excited about—as he said—“Going undercover . . . with
friends.
” I made another copy of
“Volta,”
this one without the hidden sheets, and arranged to meet Uncle Jack and his family on Sunday morning, where I’d give him the pages and—I swallowed hard thinking about it—the keys to the bakery.

First, though, I had to puke my guts out.

Afterward, I hid the bloody pinholes on my forehead.

All of it was my own fault for not being observant.

I should’ve peered over the edge of the balcony twenty-seven floors to the ground before leaving for the bakery on Sunday morning. If so, I would’ve spotted two ice cream trucks crisscrossing the surrounding streets like a pair of determined black ants. Doug didn’t see any creatures at the party, but they must’ve followed him to the Currency Exchange Building. Other than the underground parking garage (the entrance is so well concealed that sometimes even I miss it), the only way in and out of the Bird Cage Club is a Capone Door hidden in the ground-floor carryout joint, Phun Ho—To Go! They’d probably watched Doug enter and never come out, realizing we were inside the building or nearby. They hadn’t followed him into the restaurant, but how could they? Throughout the past several months, the guy in a greasy apron never moved from his place behind the counter where he leaned, staring at a fuzzy TV. The appearance of skinny ghouls in black would’ve at least caused him to lift an eyebrow.

Instead, they patrolled the blocks, waiting for me to appear.

Normally I would’ve used high-powered binoculars to scan the blocks below before leaving the Bird Cage Club, but I was preoccupied with secret pages and bakery keys. Now I tugged my hair into a ponytail, pulled on a pair of Fep Prep sweatpants and one of Max’s Triumph Motorcycle T-shirts I’d stolen, and hurried for the elevator with the copied pages of
“Volta.”
My finger was extended, about to press the button, when I froze. But it wasn’t paranoia or even simple caution that stopped me.

It was Heather.

I was sure she’d appear as shiny and fresh as if she’d spent hours prepping for a Cover Girl photo shoot, and even more distressing, she’d have done nothing more than yawned once and rolled out of bed. She was that kind of a chick—deep green eyes, shimmering blond hair, bee-stung lips—so naturally gorgeous that the whole package seemed phony. But it wasn’t, and I was suddenly acutely aware of my hair, clothes, and (lack of) makeup. It’s that dynamic shared by girls when it comes to judging one another’s appearance—a wicked combination of being inspected and categorized based on, say, a pair of shoes, shade of hair color, or a purse, combined with a sort of sisterhood-charitableness that sought out the other person’s “positive feature,” like slim ankles, or good workout clothes, or the right application of lipstick. This emotional sweet-and-sour can be off-putting for someone like me, who puts almost zero effort into how I look.

Around Heather, however, my self-consciousness flared like a wildfire.

The truth was that I wanted her to like me as much as I liked her.

I walked into the bathroom, stared into the mirror, and didn’t even bother sighing. At certain angles, my nose looks like an oversized Mr. Potato Head accessory. The light behind my eyes was dull and my hair was a nest of tangles that even the laziest rat would avoid. I tried doing something to it with a brush, but it fought me, like trying to comb a Venus flytrap, and I gave up and dug out makeup that had sat unused since the spring dance. I had no good idea what I was doing, with the result somewhere between demented raccoon and Cirque du Soleil reject. I looked at the clown-vampire staring back, wiped my face clean, and thought,
Screw it, glamour’s not my thing . . . why fool myself? I was built for action. To chase, and to escape.

Apparently, I was fooling myself about that too.

Only minutes later I was trapped on Lower Wacker Drive.

I’d pulled from the parking garage beneath the Currency Exchange Building onto Wells Street, empty on a weekend morning, with my mind tipping from Uncle Jack to the impending sit-down with Lucky—only four short days away, Thursday at noon! A tremor of unease went through me just thinking about it. It wasn’t the fear of the unknown; on the contrary, it was the fear of the known, since, as counselor-at-large, I was acutely aware of what could happen if Lucky believed that my family had fled to the Feds. I drove slowly, considering the death-by-tire-iron-or-blowtorch possibilities as Frank Sinatra came whistling in my ear.

An ice cream truck blasted into me like a heat-seeking missile an instant later.

The Lincoln spun in a smoking circle while I grasped for consciousness, knowing I was done for if I passed out. With all of my strength I yanked the steering wheel and jammed the gas pedal, hopped the sidewalk, blasted a mailbox to kingdom come, and bumped back onto Wells Street. An El train rumbling on tracks overhead interrupted dazzling sunshine as the Lincoln shrieked metallically and I raced away, leaving the ice cream truck in the dust. I was hyperalert for another truck, which, if I hadn’t cranked the wheel, would’ve hit me head-on. It was obvious the creatures had returned to the crush-or-kill strategy of capture. They were behind me now, the one that had attacked, the other I’d avoided, as we hurtled into the concrete guts of Chicago. Lower Wacker Drive descends so deep belowground that city lights dim and noise fades away. Even at noon, when the sun is high, headlights pop on as loading docks and forgotten alleyways fly by.

I was driving fast while the hood spit orange smoke. The rusty stink of burning oil filled the car. I watched the speedometer needle quiver upward, eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five.

The ice cream trucks ignored oncoming traffic, swerving around startled drivers, coming up on both sides like homicidal bookends, and smashing me in the middle. The Lincoln bucked and rocked, metal-on-metal echoing monstrously through the subterranean tunnel as I stomped on the brakes, ripped the car into reverse, and blew backward, away from the tinkling killers. One hand on the wheel, the other arm spread across the seat as I gaped through the back window, I wove wildly away from the cars that came up behind me, horns braying, until the mouth of an alley presented itself. I hit the brakes again, narrowly avoiding a moving van that rocketed past by inches, and flew into a murky dead end. In front of me was a short barrier, not much higher than a speed bump, where the street ended, literally—the other side was a suicidal drop of thirty feet to the next, deeper level of Lower Wacker, or “Lowest Wacker,” as the natives called it. But then it didn’t matter since the driver’s-side window exploded around me. Steely hands clamped around my neck and dragged me from the Lincoln in a jumble of punches to my head; me kicking and connecting, hearing the breath leaving something’s body. I dropped to my knees and scrabbled for the Lincoln but was dragged back by an ankle, shoved into the back of one of the trucks and thrown to the floor. It was a pair of them, their hands in constant motion—batting at me, pinning me down—and in the feeble glow of a dome light I saw two things clearly—Teardrop’s red eyes brimming with hatred, and the steely point of a hypodermic needle before it bit my arm.

The world grew feathery soft as hot pinpricks peppered my neck and face.

My arms were dense and useless as wet sandbags, and I blinked heavily at four crimson eyes watching and waiting.
“Mi Belleza”
was whispered in my ear, the rotten scent of a decaying tongue finding my nose, drawing me back, and then,
“Te llevaste mi Belleza, y ahora voy a tomar tu cerebro.”
My brain, trying to shake itself awake, filtered the words through Fep Prep Spanish—“You took my Beauty, and now I will take your brain”—as my eyes fluttered and my temples grew feverish. I lifted a sluggish hand, brushing at what felt like a wire, and heard Teardrop warn the other creature, “She’s moving.”

“She’ll be comatose soon,” it replied. “Juan said it would take two minutes.”

“Just be careful. Juan’s not always right.
Él no es Dios,
” Teardrop said coldly.

He’s not God,
I translated silently.
Juan . . . is not God. Juan is a Spanish name.

“She’s trying to talk,” Teardrop said.

“Hallucinating,” the creature said, and I heard fingers on a keyboard. “I’ll check the electrodes. Blood should be flowing through them by now.”

Spanish is the language spoken . . . in Argentina,
I thought. The skin at my temples twisted beneath sharp metal pins, warmth oozed across my forehead, and my eyes popped open.

“She’s awake!” Teardrop said.

“It’s not poss—” the other creature said as I blinked once. The flame in my gut roared into a cold blue conflagration, and with every living ounce of my being, I willed the electricity to find the gold flecks in my eyes. It was instantaneous, the lightning bolt snaking through my body, racing for my brain, and I grabbed and yanked what was nearest to me, the silver ice cream cone dangling from the creature’s neck. Its red eyes bulged with shock, my blue eyes radiated a furious calm, and I saw red wires attached to my forehead trailing to a laptop where lines of letters and numerals like hieroglyphics flitted across a screen. In the next second it went blank, my hand began to sizzle, and I turned to see the creature’s eyes rolled back in its head, its black tongue flopping like a catfish out of water. Voltage crackled through my body, into my hand, and through the conductive silver cone and chain that hung from the creature’s neck, electrocuting it. All I had to do was let go and it might live. But it had tried to infiltrate my brain, and now I wanted to kill it. I’d fooled the other creature on the bridge into drowning itself, but it was different now—I needed to murder this one with my own hands. The muscles in the creature’s lean white face rippled, the skin at its neck popped with translucent bubbles, and its body began to vibrate. Gripping the silver cone with all of my strength, I turned my gaze on Teardrop and smiled, just a little, the look on its face not one of horror but surprise. It was obviously aware of ghiaccio furioso and had experienced the electricity firsthand when I nearly crushed its cheekbone, but it must’ve thought I’d be unconscious before the voltage occurred.

Teardrop pointed its gloved hand at me like a gun and leaped from the truck.

With a shudder, the other creature stopped moving.

A final sour gust of air leaked from between its lips, it wilted and fell forward, and I shoved the thing away from me.

The electricity dissipated, and I hadn’t even felt it go. The electrodes were still stuck in my head. I pulled them out, gasping in pain, my fingers warm and sticky. I looked at my hands and realized it wasn’t the wires that were red; it was me. They’d been siphoning blood from my head directly into the computer like electronic mosquitos. And then I glanced down at the creature, seeing it for what it was—a dead human being. Its face was similar to Teardrop’s and the others, bleached and angular, absolutely free of extraneous flesh, and young. It was barely twenty, if that, and I was suddenly nauseated. I knew it was from the injection, but it was also because I’d stepped to the other side of a chasm from which I could never return. I’d saved my life but lost something as valuable in the process, and a warning issued by my old boxing trainer, Willy Williams, came to mind. It was when I’d come close to shooting Poor Kevin. Willy cautioned me that murder put a cancer on one’s existence. It was precisely how I felt—alive, but as if a deeper part of me had contracted a fatal disease.

A wave of sickly heat washed up my neck and clogged my throat. I barely made it out of the truck before I threw up, gasped, and did it again. Glancing back to where the creature lay motionless, I saw the laptop.

In a queasy blur, I grabbed the computer and jumped into the Lincoln. Quickly, I dropped it into reverse, jammed down the gas, and bumper-shoved the ice cream truck out of the way. Lower Wacker was momentarily empty, and I squealed out backward, stuntman style, just as the side mirror blew to bits. Teardrop was behind me in another ice cream truck, having gone old school with a handgun large enough to shoot a helicopter out of the sky; if it couldn’t use electrodes to access my skull, bullets would do. And then the back window shattered, and I sped away, the Lincoln shaking and smoking but still able to fly. Teardrop rammed into my trunk as we wove down a stretch of the drive nicknamed “the Emerald City” for its glowing green warning signals. But the old car was too heavy and the truck too light, and Teardrop actually pushed me forward while bumping itself back dozens of feet. And that’s when I saw it—a quivering gray mass pouring out of the drainpipes and up through the sewer grates. Hundreds of beady eyes reflected green light, hundreds of worm tails curled in the air. After I sped past, a wide flowing river of Nunzio’s rats rippled across Lower Wacker Drive.

Teardrop never had a chance to brake.

The truck plowed through the undulating rodents, which detonated beneath its wheels like little grenade sacks packed with oily guts and greasy fat. Slip-sliding in the bloody stain, unable to regain control, Teardrop smashed into a concrete pillar and was showered in flickering bits of jade glass. I sat in the middle of the lane as the Lincoln rattled beneath me and offered a silent thank you to the rodent martyrs who had given their lives for a Rispoli, while the remaining survivors scuttled away.