Chapter 15
15
T he prohee sat around and drank on their dime for a couple of hours after the conversation ended. Alistair probably should have removed himself to the backrooms for the sake of his blood pressure. But his skin crawled at the thought of the man in their establishment, doing whatever he pleased, unobserved.
Not that he would have been unobserved: Teresa, Philip, and Doris were all there, not to mention Zola. Unobserved by Alistair, then, as if he could do anything more than them.
Johnston had ended the conversation on a threat, because of course he had. Warned Sam to look harder, ordered Alistair to find proof of Sullivan’s involvement, dangling the threat of a raid the entire time. Alistair smoked cigarette after cigarette, glowering at the prohee’s back until he finally put down his glass and left.
Holly wandered over, having finished a set. A reefer trailed resinous smoke from between her fingertips; she offered it to Alistair. “You look like you could use a puff.”
“No thanks.”
“I forgot; you enjoy being angry.” She slid into the chair beside him. “Every time I glanced at the crowd, I had to look at your sorry face. It just about put me off singing altogether.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
She shrugged and changed the subject. “How are things going with Sam?”
He remembered the way Nagorski had looked at Sam earlier. But who cared? The sap could look all he wanted. No need to be jealous that he spent more time with Sam than Alistair did these days. “It’s none of your business, but we’re fine.”
“Just so long as you’re treating him well. Wanda told me you tried to ship him off to Milwaukee.”
Damn Wanda. “You were in hiding from Ursino; I just wanted the same for him as Wanda wanted for you.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “And that’s all I’m going to say. My love life isn’t for Wanda’s entertainment, or yours.”
“Have it your way.” She rose to her feet. “I’ll go bother Philip instead. I hear he’s been seeing a cigarette girl from the South Side.”
“He’s also seeing a young man down on the Stroll,” Alistair offered. “They don’t know about each other.”
“Ooh, scandalous!” She leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I knew I came to talk to you for a reason.”
Sam had gone home, and Alistair decided to join him. Work could wait until tomorrow. He stuck his head in and let Wanda know he was leaving, then set off on the short walk to their house.
Or Eldon’s house. Or someone’s house.
Sam wanted to buy it off his aunt and uncle. While sending the rest of his family the money they extorted from him out of guilt.
Maybe he was being uncharitable in his belief that things weren’t really as bad as they pretended. Maybe his mother had genuinely collapsed from the shock of believing Sam to be dead.
But in that case, wouldn’t she be glad to hear he was alive?
That was it, the thorn in his paw when it came to the whole thing. None of them seemed particularly happy to discover Sam was alive and well. In their position, he imagined he would have rushed to Chicago to tell him face-to-face how sad he’d been, but also how glad he was now. To work on healing the relationship going forward. And if that was impossible, he would have sent a long, heartfelt letter.
Instead, the Cunninghams used a third party to heap guilt on poor Sam’s head and demand money from him.
He found Sam in the living room, sitting at the desk where he did his hexwork, a piece of paper unfolded in front of him. “What’s that?”
Sam bit his lip, then sighed. “I lied to Agent Johnston.”
Alistair frowned as he hung up his hat. “What do you mean?”
“During the fight today, I looked around the lab. I found this hidden inside the athanor.”
“Which is?” Alistair asked, crossing the room to look over Sam’s shoulder.
“A sort of oven, used to create even, steady heat for distilling. Not to make liquor,” he added quickly. “It was owned by a hexmaker who lived in Paris centuries ago.”
Alistair arched his brow. “Does this have something to do with this secret project you’ve been working on with Nagorski?”
Sam’s shoulders hunched. “Yes. I thought, if anything was hidden, that would be a good place for it. I found this piece of paper.”
He passed it to Alistair. The paper was thicker and heavier than its modern equivalent; one edge was ragged, as if it had been ripped from a book. A wood-cut engraving depicted a man dressed like a medieval king, with something like a bottle superimposed over his stomach. Strange symbols were arrayed all around him. In the margin, someone had scribbled a note in what he guessed to be Latin, given what little he could recall of going to mass as a child.
And below, written in a modern pen: “True prima materia is human.”
“What does it mean?” Alistair asked.
Sam shook his head. “That’s Vic’s handwriting, so he either hid it there, or put it back if that’s where it was hidden to begin with. As for the Latin, I can’t read it.”
“I’m sure we could find a priest to translate it. If we need to.” He glanced at Sam. “Do we need to?”
“I don’t know.” Sam stared down at the desk, seeming to curl into himself. “I don’t know why Vic would hide this in the athanor; I don’t even know if it relates to the hexes we’re working on.”
“And you didn’t give this to Johnston because…?”
At this, Sam straightened. “Because I was attacked by that rattlesnake familiar thanks to him. Glenda, Luke—either of them might have been killed! Because they’re my friends, and Vic is my friend, and people got hurt today, and…”
He trailed off. “So fuck Johnston,” Alistair supplied. “I get it. The guy’s an asshole.”
Sam finally looked at him. “Did I do the right thing?”
Alistair went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a drink. On the one hand, Johnston would certainly shut down The Pride if he learned Sam had been holding out on him. On the other…
Sam might have died today, thanks to Johnston nudging Fabiano in the direction of the old brewery. Would have died, if not for Nagorski.
His mouth went dry every time the thought reoccurred, and he could feel all the blood draining from his limbs. All his worst fears had almost come true today.
At least he wouldn’t have had to feel a bond break this time, whispered a little voice in his head, and he instantly hated himself for even thinking it. As if that would have made anything better, anything easier.
“We’ve been running around, doing Johnston’s bidding like we’re his personal lackeys,” Alistair said, fingers tightening on his glass. “But that hasn’t been enough for him. So I say it’s time to fight back.”
“What do you mean?”
Alistair paced to the window and looked out at the streetlights. “Johnston thinks Bobby was killed because he double-crossed Sullivan. But we want Sullivan to stay in power, at least for now, because he’ll let us run The Pride as we see fit.” He turned back to Sam. “I say we remove Johnston from the equation.”
Sam’s brown eyes went wide behind the lenses of his cheaters. “You mean…?”
“Fur and feathers, Sam, I don’t mean kill him.”
“I didn’t think you did,” Sam said, rather unconvincingly.
Alistair snorted. “Right. No, the feds don’t like it when one of their agents, no matter how crooked, goes missing. I’m going to redirect my efforts and take a good, hard look at Johnston—who he is, what he does for fun, who he owes money to. There must be something we can use as leverage to get him off our backs.”
“And what about Bobby? We aren’t just going to forget about him, right?”
Alistair bit back a sigh. This was where they differed. Sam hadn’t seen men die by the dozen, gassed or shot or blown to bits, for no other reason than they happened to be standing in the place where the shell fell or the bullet flew. Death was random, chaotic, and the only thing to do was hope you and the ones you loved would be left standing.
“I’m sorry he died,” Alistair said, choosing his words carefully. “But he isn’t our responsibility.”
Sam’s lip set in a stubborn expression. “Then whose is it?”
“Sullivan’s. And if he’s the one who poisoned the kid, then…well, Bobby had to know it was dangerous, spying for Fabiano while working elbow-to-elbow with Mickey Sullivan.”
“So it was his own fault,” Sam said, eyes narrowing with anger.
Alistair tossed back his drink and put the glass down, hard. “No, I’m not saying that. Don’t you think I had buddies die right in front of me, over there in the war? Should I go over to Germany, try to track down the individual soldiers who fired the guns, loaded the shells?”
“That’s different—that was war.”
“So is this.” Alistair raked his hand through his hair. “Only with fewer civilian casualties.”
Sam wasn’t giving up so easily.
Alistair might be able to forget about Bobby, or at least to write off his death as an inevitable tragedy, but Sam couldn’t. Every time he closed his eyes to sleep, he felt the weight of the dying body in his arms, dragging him down, saw the pleading in Bobby’s eyes. Heard the terror in his voice as he gasped out, “You got to help me!”
Since he had the day off, he took the opportunity to sleep in with Alistair, then make them breakfast. Alistair offered to help, but since he couldn’t boil water without burning it, Sam distracted him with a request to bring in the paper.
“You made the news,” Alistair said, when Sam brought out their plates and sat down across from him at the table. He turned the paper around so Sam could read the front page headline: Three Killed in Beer War Shoot-Out.
His pulse sped up. “That’s not good, is it? Will the police shut down the brewery, or…I don’t know, start arresting us?”
“I doubt it.” Alistair went back to perusing the headlines. “Even if they weren’t paid off, it’s hard to make a case when no one will admit to seeing anything, or setting foot near the brewery, or ever laying eyes on a gun. The most they might do is drag in one of Sullivan’s tough guys and rough him up a bit until the lawyer gets there. But this was gangsters shooting other gangsters, out of sight of the public, so chances are nothing will happen at all.”
“I see.” Sam poked at his eggs, his appetite gone.
Alistair lowered the paper and looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
Sam wasn’t sure how to explain it. “I don’t know…I guess at one time I thought there was…I’m not sure. Justice? Or that the laws meant something, or…” He trailed off helplessly.
Alistair’s thin mouth softened. “I grew up reading stories about the Hexas Rangers, or the Witch Police, or brilliant private detectives who always got their man. Hell, I still like a good mystery—there’s this new writer, Agatha Christie, in particular. But the real world isn’t that simple, because it’s made up of real people. And real people are messy. No one’s all good or all bad.”
“I know. And it isn’t like I want the police to raid The Pride…” Sam shook his head ruefully. “Crime is paying my salary.”
“And a very nice salary it is.” Alistair reached across the table and took his hand, running one elegant thumb over his knuckles. “Most of us are just getting by the best we can—you, me, the coppers, the moonshiners, everyone. Look at it this way—those rich assholes in Congress, who knew they’d never have to worry about getting a drink whenever they wanted one, passed a stupid act that shut down legitimate businesses. But it opened up new, less legitimate opportunities. Of course people are going to take those opportunities, try to better their lives any way they can. You included.”
“I suppose.”
“Maybe the party at Sullivan’s will cheer you up.” Alistair gave him a hopeful smile. “It’s sure to be like nothing you or I have ever seen.”
Despite himself, Sam was intrigued. “How so?”
“It’s a rich people party. And rich people aren’t like us. We’ll go and eat his food, drink his booze—or I will—and rub elbows with the powerful and inebriated. Dance until dawn.”
Sam smiled. “That part sounds nice.”
“I thought so.” Alistair leaned over the table and kissed him, before dropping back into his seat. “But as for today, I’m going to start looking into our dear friend Agent Johnston.”