Gods of Chicago: Omnibus Edition (24 page)

Chapter 40

Brand skidded to a stop beside the curio shop’s back stoop. He put his back to the wall of the house. Its bulk loomed over him in the night. Firelight flickered beyond his position and horrific shadows danced on the wall of the next house. A gunshot sounded and a man howled in pain. Brand darted out when he heard laughter. What he saw made him nearly bellow with rage.

Behind the curio shop, in the glow of a burning woodshed, Stevie Five Sticks and two other village types had a soldier pinned to the ground. Five Sticks held a pistol aimed at the soldier’s leg. Brand saw an angry wound there in the fire’s crackling glare. Before he could shout to stop the execution, Five Sticks lifted the gun and shot the soldier in the chest. The man heaved once and went still.

Brand quietly moved back into hiding before hailing the gypsy.

“Hey, Five Sticks. It’s Brand. I’ll come out if you promise to keep that pistol pointed at the ground.”

“Sure thing, Brand. Hey fellas,” came the reply. Brand didn’t bother listening to the rest. He stepped out and moved fast to close on the trio of men standing around the dead soldier. Five Sticks had his pistol aimed at the ground all right, and Brand didn’t miss a beat before bringing his fist up and into the gypsy’s cheek. Five Sticks saw it coming just the same and rolled with the punch. He jumped back a step and held his free hand to his face. The pistol hadn’t moved, but Brand noticed the gypsy’s grip tighten around it.

“What gives, Brand? Don’t tell me you’re working both sides here.”

“I’m only working one side, and that’s the side that knows when a prisoner of war has earned an execution and when he hasn’t. But it doesn’t matter what side a man’s on when he’s been shot in the leg and is lying there unarmed. Who the hell gave you the right to kill a man like that?”

Five Sticks stepped slow and easy, wiggling the pistol in his hand now but still keeping it pointed down. His voice rose as he spoke.

“We’re not like the gray hairs in the neighborhood, Brand. We’re from here. This is our home. You hear that? Our home!”

“And so you’ll do what you like, when you like, and how you like. Is that it? Well—”

A gunshot from inside the curio shop broke in on their argument. Brand whirled to see the door to the back stoop bang open and a kid come rushing out holding a pistol. A soldier appeared in the doorway behind the kid. Brand winced as a shot cracked the air by his head and the soldier fell backwards into the house. The kid fell down the steps, landing in a heap in the mud.

Brand rushed forward to the kid, hearing Stevie Five Sticks and his pals laughing behind him.

“See the way that fella toppled back, Brand? Wish they didn’t have them masks on. Would’ve loved to see his eyes just then.”

Spinning on his heel, Brand hollered blue murder at the gypsy. “How about the kid here? Want to see his eyes, too? Go on and look!”

Brand reached down and lifted the kid by his arm. The pistol he’d been holding tumbled to the ground. A whimpering plea came to Brand’s ears and he paused. He knew the voice.

“Conroy?” he said, lifting the kid by both arms now and looking him in the face. It was Aiden Conroy, all right. He wore a great coat that was two sizes too big and ten kinds of fancy too much for his family’s wardrobe. Brand knew the kid lived in Old Town. He’d dressed the part everyday since getting hired at the Daily Record.

“What gives, Conroy? Where’d you get the duds here, and what’s with the gunslinger routine? Didn’t your folks tell you right about guns?”

From across the frozen ground, Stevie Five Sticks wished Brand a farewell and waved goodbye.

“Be seeing you, Brand. If you and your little brother here aren’t too scared, the show’s over by Humboldt Park.”

“What show?”

“The big one. That’s where it all ends tonight for the Governor. C’mon fellas,” the gypsy said to his pals. They sauntered off between the nearby houses and disappeared in the darkness.

“Nuts,” Brand said, turning back to Conroy. The kid had his legs under him again. He opened his coat and brought out Brand’s photo viewer.

#

Aiden held the camera box out, but his boss told him to keep it tucked into his coat.

“We might need it, or we might not. I don’t know. We’ll see when we get to the park.”

“The park? But I thought you weren’t in with those guys. You gave ‘em hell after they—” Aiden felt his voice cut out, so he pointed to the dead soldier on the ground. He’d heard the whole exchange after the gunshot that killed the man. Even though the gypsy had saved him by killing the soldier coming out of the house, Aiden felt worse about it than if he’d shot the man himself. He kicked at the gun on the ground by his feet, sending it sliding into a pile of muddy snow.

“I did,” Mr. Brand said, breaking in on Aiden’s thoughts. “I’d give ‘em hell again if I had the chance. But Stevie Five Sticks is right. This is going to end for the Governor over at that park, only it won’t be that gypsy and his gun that ends it.”

Mr. Brand reached into his coat and lifted a square microphone that was hooked to his belt.

“We’re going after the story, Conroy. You ready to do the news?”

Aiden flinched as gunfire crackled across the night. He felt his stomach roll over on itself, but he still couldn’t help the grin that stretched over his face.

#

Aiden followed his boss through the neighborhood, in and out of hiding around the broken up buildings. Small explosions kept sounding in the deadly night, threatening to end their journey at any moment. Each blast made Aiden’s stomach quiver. He thought about going back for the pistol he’d dropped, but Aiden hadn’t liked the way it felt in his hands. The heaviness frightened him, like he might drop it on his foot and shoot off a toe.

“When’s it gonna stop, Mr. Brand? Been going on all night, since. . .”

His boss pulled up by a bombed out house and turned to look at him. Mr. Brand’s questioning eyes roamed over Aiden’s face, and he felt the memories welling up in his throat.

“You all right, Conroy?”

“My folks, Mr. Brand. Some G-men took ‘em away.” Aiden blubbered while he told his boss about seeing his folks pushed into the sedan and the soldier staying behind to wait for him. Mr. Brand moved them deeper into hiding within the ruined home.

“What else happened? How’d you get out here anyway?”

Aiden explained about finding the tunnel Digs showed him, and getting caught by a couple gypsies. He told about the professor and his radio, too, and about how the guy led him back through the tunnels after the shooting started.

“Then the guy just up and vanished. Like the tunnel swallowed him. He was there and then he wasn’t.”

“Well that settles one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Eh?” his boss said, shaking his head like he was waking up from a dream. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that bird. He’s with the good guys. At least I think he is. C’mon.”

They kept moving through the neighborhood, aiming their path toward the sounds of fighting. They crossed a wide street with shattered homes and shops facing onto it. Firelight glowed from the next block.

“That’s the park up ahead, Conroy. Let’s get—”

An explosion shook the neighborhood and then another. Aiden held his hands to his ears when a whistling pierced the night and before he knew it Mr. Brand had him pressed against the ground in front of a still burning storefront. The flames waved in the nighttime breeze and cast shadows over them as earth and wood and stone rained down. When the clumps of mud stopped falling, Aiden shook his head free from his boss’s hands and rolled into a ball.

Mr. Brand slid forward on his belly and put a hand on Aiden’s shoulder.

“I know what you’re thinking right now, Conroy. I thought it myself when I was over there and the Kaiser’s boys kept up the mortar fire day and night.”

“Ain’t going to see my folks again, am I?”

“Eh? Oh, sure you are. I mean, I hope like hell you will. It won’t be on account of me letting you buy it at any rate. But I need you on your feet, Conroy. Your folks want to see you just the same as you do them. It won’t do them any good you lying on the ground like that.”

Aiden struggled into a sitting position. He dusted his palms on the heavy coat the professor gave him. The bullets rattled in his pockets and he fished them out, both hands heavy with little pills of lead and brass. Aiden let them fall into the snowmelt and ash.

“I’m ready, Mr. Brand. Just needed a good cry is all.”

“Attaboy, Conroy. We need to get the story out about this. That’s our job. Like before, only now we’re on the ground and in the soup. Look, I’d better show you how to work this,” Mr. Brand said, lifting the microphone off his hip.

He held the device out and pressed a switch on the side then released it.

“That’s to transmit. You have to hold it down if you want to be heard. And don’t pull this cable out of the bottom. That’ll cut your power and then you’re just talking to yourself.”

Aiden was still in a daze, but he tried to focus on what his boss was telling him.

Mr. Brand seemed to notice and gave Aiden’s shoulder a shake.

“You have to know how to use this, Conroy.”

“Why?”

“Because if I get mine while we’re out here, it’s up to you to get on the mic and tell the people what’s happening.”

The weight of it settled into Aiden’s stomach like a ball of lead. He couldn’t move to join Mr. Brand when he stood and looked around the corner.

“The park is down the street. That’s where we have to be.” Mr. Brand looked down on him and seemed ready to shake his head. “C’mon, Conroy. Get up. I’ll pour you a slug when it’s all over. Right now, we’re on duty.”

Aiden took his boss’s hand and stood. Then they moved out.

Chapter 41

Emma stayed close to Eddie as they followed the old man and his daughter down the tracks. The rails stretched forever into the darkness, pushing the edge of Emma’s vision deeper and deeper into the black but never changing, never showing her a destination other than the pitch ahead of them. To the side, she would see bits of old sidewalks, the planks and trestles rotten or showing burn marks from the fire that swallowed Old Chicago and spat it out a charred and blackened husk. Like the neighborhood she and Eddie and their two guides had just fled from.

Their path reached an incline and Emma’s legs felt like stone. Her steps faltered as the long day’s fatigue settled in. She fell against Eddie and he caught her.

“Keep on, Lovebird. We’re almost there. See?” He pointed up ahead and Emma could just make out a circle of paler darkness, a slight shade of gray brighter than the surrounding tunnel. Through the opening, she saw the promise of freedom leading away and into the night, but it was a promise soon broken. They emerged under the canopy of a deserted train shed. The tracks were empty but for two old handcars off to the right.

“Trains have gone,” Peter said, dropping the crank torch into the gravel at his feet. His daughter turned on him and spoke fast and sharp in their tongue. The squat little man recoiled from the abuse and held up his hands, defending himself with cries of shame and regret. The girl gave up and went to Emma with great streams of tears pouring down her cheeks.

“The soldiers, they take my mother. Take her with the others. He says no, that she came with others, that she will be here waiting for us. But I know better. They are at the camp. She will be made to work until she is dead.” The girl collapsed against Emma and clung to her shoulders for support. Emma found her legs, but was thankful for Eddie’s hands on her waist.

“What camp? What’s she mean about a camp?” Emma demanded of the father.

“Is by lakeshore. For the fair they build. All the Rigos are taken there to work. To make fair happen. My daughter fears her mother will die there. Will not be first time our people are made to work like slaves. Will not be last.”

“And that’s all you can say about it? Your wife is there with the others, all those people from your neighborhood, and you’re just going to stand here?”

“What should Peter do? Eh? Peter should fight soldiers? Should take his gun and shoot at men with rifles and bombs and airships? Peter should die like other Rigos who fight for neighborhood that is already lost? Ah,” the old man’s voice cracked. He shook his head and turned away.

“What does that mean?” Emma asked. “That word. I know it ain’t nice, so why do you keep saying it?”

The daughter piped up. “It means gypsy. Person with no home. Person who doesn’t belong anywhere. But we are not Rigos!” she shouted, whirling to face her father. His grief had passed and he stood with his hands by his sides, defeated but not dead.

“No, my girl,” he said, coming close and putting his hands on hers. “No, we are not Rigos. We are Kertész, and I would see your mother, my Katarina, again before I die.”

Emma stepped forward, leaving the support of Eddie’s hands. She went to the handcars. Both had been loaded with cargo recently. Fresh scrapes in the deck showed where heavy objects had been dragged and shifted. One of the cars had a broken handle, making it next to useless unless they wanted to pump and lift from one side only. The other car’s handle was fine though.

“How far do these tracks go?” Emma asked, turning back to Peter and his daughter.

“To river, but—”

“So we’ll need to find a way across the river and out to the lakeshore. Let’s go.”

Peter and his daughter hesitated until Eddie came up and put his hands on their shoulders. “She’s right. We can’t hang around here, and Misses Kertész ain’t going to like it if we’re late picking her up, is she?” He looked into Emma’s eyes as he spoke and she saw that old fire again, the embers that glowed in the heart of the man she loved. She smiled at him and moved to help Peter and his daughter over to the handcar.

#

They took turns pumping the handcar down the tracks. Peter’s daughter lit the way with the crank torch. Emma and Eddie worked the lever arm for the first leg of their journey. Peter spelled Emma a bit and then she gave Eddie a break. The car squeaked and squealed along the tracks as they made the quickest pace they could manage. They kept on this way, rotating shifts on the lever arm, until they reached the ruins of a depot house from the old city. The musty smell of sodden wood mixed with charcoal filled the tunnel around them. Emma climbed off the handcar and helped the girl down behind her.

They stepped aside to make room for her father and Eddie to dismount the car. “What’s your name anyway?” Emma asked.

“Marta. Your name really is Lovebird?”

Emma laughed. “No, that’s what Eddie calls me. My name’s Emma.”

The girl’s eyes rounded and Emma felt a tension forming in the air behind her. Peter spoke up then and confirmed her fears.

“Emma Farnsworth,” he said. “Rich woman who murders man in airship and runs away with dark man.” The tension between them grew so great Emma feared she would have to draw her father’s gun. An instant later, Emma felt the thickness in the air dissolve amidst the old man’s chuckles. “Peter chooses good company tonight.”

Emma looked into Marta’s eyes and saw friendship there still, but her sadness remained and a ring of worry creased the skin around her eyes now. Not knowing what to say, Emma simply nodded, admitting her identity, and waited for the girl or her father to respond.

“Is okay,” Peter said. “My daughter and I do not believe everything on radio. Come.”

He ushered them up a set of crumbled stone steps and to a door that was set into the tunnel wall. Working a catch on one side, he pushed the door open slowly and Emma felt the chill of a Chicago City night rush into the tunnel. They stepped out at the back of an open shed that sat at the mouth of a wharf. Stacks of lumber and rope filled the shed, and they moved through them carefully. Emma kept her eyes darting around the wharf area. Across the pier was another set of sheds, their far sides open to the river.

Silos and half-filled lumber yards waited across the river, expectant and hopeful for the next day’s shipments from the Eastern Seaboard. Emma spied the narrow bridge she and Eddie had driven across the previous day. It was two piers farther along the wharf on this side. Across the bridge, the silos and shack stood ominous in the dark night, and she couldn’t shake the fear that coppers or soldiers would come rushing out of the shadows at any second.

“Let’s get moving. That bridge isn’t guarded.”

They moved as fast as they could, staying low and shuffling between piles of cargo, coils of rope and netting, and stacks of lumber. Within minutes, they’d reached the near end of the bridge.

“We’re almost there. Just a—”

Emma swallowed her words and pulled up short when a jeep engine sounded from farther down the wharf road. A set of headlights flashed across the wall of the silos across the bridge. The vehicle came slowly along the road and for a moment, Emma hoped it would pass by. But a searchlight stabbed out into the darkness and swept the area. Emma and her companions dropped to a crouch behind a stack of railroad ties.

The jeep pulled to a halt at the opposite end of the bridge and the engine cut. The headlights dimmed but the searchlight stayed lit and continued to sweep like a blade against the curtain of darkness.

“What is Emma Farnsworth’s plan?” Peter asked, making no effort to hide his disappointment.

“Father!” Marta hissed.

Emma put a hand up to silence them when the searchlight sliced in their direction and hovered off to the side of their hiding place. A bullhorn crackled to life and they all pressed their backs tight against the railroad ties.

“
Citizens, curfew is in effect until oh-five-thirty hours tomorrow morning. Anyone on the streets is subject to internment.
”

The four of them stayed put. Emma drew her dad’s revolver and saw Eddie palm the pistol they got from Wynes. Only Peter kept his gun tucked away. He shook his head at Emma and Eddie, muttering something under his breath. Emma ignored the old man. If the soldiers were coming for them, they’d have to take them with a fight. She hadn’t gotten this far just to throw her hands up in the air and waltz off to a cold cell and a jailer’s leers.

Shouting from across the river came to her ears. At first she feared it was the soldiers yelling for them to come out, that they’d been spotted somehow. But shouts of fright and anger cut the night air. When a sharp, final silence fell again, Emma risked a look. She couldn’t see any soldiers, and the searchlight wasn’t moving anymore either. It was still lit, but had been aimed farther away from the bridge, leaving the passage across shrouded in shadow.

“Let’s go,” she said, stepping fast to the next pile of lumber along their route. She turned to see Eddie following her. Peter and Marta came next, the old man shaking his head and showing more distress than before.

“Is no good. No good,” he kept muttering, twitching and whipping his head side to side, and peering into the night as if he expected a threat to emerge from every corner. Emma wanted to calm him down, quiet him for fear he’d give them away, but the air around them fluttered and shook, reminding Emma of her escape from the prison chain earlier. An instant later, her fears were made real as the ghost of her father stepped out of the night beside her astride a rusted old Boneshaker bicycle.

His face was stained with filth and his wispy white hair stuck out in all directions from his scalp like whorls of spider silk.

“Emma. My girl, I’m so sorry.”

“Dad?”

Tears fell in rivers that froze on her father’s hobo face. He wiped at them and dirt smudged across his cheeks, showing a patch of clean skin. In a flash, the edges of the clean area grew inward like a fungus until a layer of grime had coated Josiah Farnsworth’s face again.

“Can’t tell you how sorry I am, my Emma. My only. . .” he trailed off, and his eyes blinked fast, like he’d heard or seen something in the distance that scared him. “We gotta move on now, my girl. Time to go,” he said, taking her free hand and leading her out from behind the lumber pile. She went with him, unable to deny the pull to follow, just as she was unable to deny the feeling of horror that rose in her chest and throat.

“Time to go now. Just like when you was a little tot and your Momma and me used to put you on the trains to New York to visit your Grandmother. Time to go, Little Emma.”

Her father had been walking backwards, pushing the bicycle along with his feet. He paused and glanced over Emma’s shoulder. “They with you, Emma? That nigger boy there and them two—what are they now, some of them gypsies? They your friends now?”

Hearing the vulgar names escape her father’s lips, Emma broke from the spell and ripped her hand from his. “Yes, they’re my friends. His name is Eddie, and he’s not just a friend. He’s the man I love. And they’re not gypsies. They have names. Peter and Marta. She’s his daughter, and at least he has enough sense to stay by her side and see her through the worst of times instead of taking the easy way out like you did.”

“Emma, I—”

“Shut up! Just shut up,” Emma hollered at him, her anger and fury unstoppable now, even though the threat of discovery still hung heavy in her mind. Whatever this tramp was supposed to be, wherever he’d come from, he’d earned an earful, and she was going to give it to him.

“What the hell are you? I saw you in your office. I saw what you did. With this,” she said, lifting the gun between them. The tramp recoiled in fright, putting his hands up and begging her to remove the weapon from his sight. She pressed forward, holding the gun on him now, and backed him into a corner between two stacks of lumber.

“I’m your daddy, Emma,” he said, broken and defeated. “I’m the same as ever I was back then. A drunk. A good for nothing drunk. I helped you as best I could back on the street this morning, and I did the same just now. But it’s going to cost me, my girl. It’s going to cost me more than you can know.”

“What do you mean? What’s left to pay? There’s nothing left of the Farnsworth name in Chicago City, nothing but a—”

A rabid hiss split the night around them and Emma spun to put her back up against the lumber pile beside the tramp who looked and talked and acted just like her father.

“Go on, my girl. Go on and run now.”

“What?”

“Run, I said. Dammit! Run!”

Emma backed away from him, his acrid breath and vehemence shoving against her chest. Behind her she heard a girl’s voice cry out and then a scream. Eddie hollered and then Emma heard gunshots from two pistols. She moved to help, but felt her father’s hand on her arm. She knew then that the tramp was her father. His touch, his grip was too familiar, too much like she remembered. As she stood there, frozen in memory, Eddie and Marta raced around the end of the lumber pile and came to stand with her, facing back the way they’d come.

Sounds of grisly violence came to them from their former hiding place and Marta sobbed in pitiable, wracking grief. Eddie put his arm around her and pulled her farther away, backing them into the corner beside Emma and her father. Emma watched all this happen and knew she should be doing something, but her father’s hand on her arm kept her fixed where she stood. When finally he released her she almost toppled forward.

“Told you to run, Emma. You listen this time. You run, my girl. Run and don’t stop.”

Emma turned to regard her father, the tramp. Behind her the sounds of gore had gone silent and a steady, rasping breathing grew to take their place.

“You,” her father said, looking at Eddie. “You take good care of her, boy. You do that, you hear?”

Eddie nodded and gritted his teeth. Emma’s father trembled and muttered a feeble apology in Eddie’s direction as he pushed past them all on his bicycle, moving straight for the growling and hissing sounds coming from around the lumber pile.

“Let’s go, Lovebird.”

Emma took Marta’s hand and together they followed Eddie out of the lumber stacks and onto the bridge. Their gait was slow but quickened as they reached the middle of the crossing. A cry of terror pierced the night from within the stacked lumber and Eddie began to run. Emma tugged Marta along and pumped her legs with every ounce of strength she had.