Absynthe, page 6
Grace’s brow glistened from the evening mist. She looked as if she were about to speak when the purr of a Phaeton came loudly from the alley’s opposite end, fifty paces distant. Morgan’s car rolled to a halt, headlights off, and Alastair hopped out. After opening the passenger door, he clanked toward Liam’s position.
Grace was silent as Alastair arrived. Morgan, thank God, was conscious again, and moaning. Working together, Liam and Alastair carried him toward the sleek car.
“Liam, wait!” Grace called. “We have to talk.”
Liam stopped, nodded for Alastair to continue with Morgan. “I’m leaving in that car,” he said to Grace. “If you want to talk, you’ll have to come with us.”
“I can’t do that.” The rain was falling heavier. Grace stood, licking her lips nervously as streams of rain traced lines along her face. She looked so forlorn Liam nearly reached out to embrace her.
“Why can’t you?” he asked.
Her hands were bunched into fists. “Please come with me.”
There was something about her manner, her desperation, that made him want to trust her, but how could he? He’d be risking not only his own life, but Morgan’s as well. Without another word, he turned and headed for the Phaeton.
“Morgan will die without our help!” she called after him.
It was as if she’d read his thoughts, but he refused to give in to fear. Morgan needed a doctor. Grace said no more as Liam reached the car. When he climbed inside and closed the door, the Phaeton’s headlights blinked on and the engine hummed to life. As they pulled away, he looked down the alley one last time.
Grace was gone.
Seven
Dr. Ramachandra’s medical office was a set of three cozy rooms occupying the lowest floor of his posh brownstone. Although the hour was late, Dr. Ramachandra arrived quickly at the door when they knocked. Liam’s experience with the man was limited, but his unflappable manner and calm authority had already done much to build trust.
Dr. Ramachandra rushed Morgan into his examination room. As he listened to his breathing through a stethoscope, his bristly beard and the sapphire-blue dastar wrapped around his head bobbed—an affectation, it seemed, as if Morgan’s heart were set to a ragtime beat.
“Breathe deeply,” Dr. Ramachandra said. His Punjabi accent was barely noticeable.
With a grimace, Morgan drew in a deep breath. His shirt was off, exposing clammy skin much paler than normal and a physique that had become noticeably softer since his army days. Morgan was far from well. The shot of morphine Dr. Ramachandra administered took the edge off his pain, but he still looked miserable.
“Again,” the doctor said as he moved the chest piece lower.
This time Morgan’s breath was accompanied by a heavy rasp. Not since the war had Liam seen a man look so scared. When Morgan glanced over, Liam shared a confident nod with him. Morgan returned the gesture, though it was filled with more misery than hope.
After removing the stethoscope and wrapping it around his neck, Dr. Ramachandra spun his chair toward a desk and began writing.
“In the dream,” Morgan said, continuing the story he’d started when they arrived, “I saw a field of wheat.”
“So did I,” Liam said, more than a little surprised.
On the car ride over, Liam had been tempted to tell Morgan about his absynthe-fueled dream, but Morgan had been in so much pain he’d decided to remain silent. He quickly gave Morgan the broad brushstrokes: the field, Elle kissing him, Morgan lying between the rows.
Morgan huffed in disgust. “At least you got a kiss out of yours. All I got was a horror show. There was a naked man between the rows of my field. He was pitiful and chilling. Black pits for eyes. Pale skin with blue veins. Shivering with palsy and gaunt as a war prisoner.”
It was curious that their dreams were so similar, but the naked man was easily explained—it was surely Morgan’s own pain manifesting in his dream.
Morgan seemed eager to get the dream out, to have Dr. Ramachandra interpret it for him, but Dr. Ramachandra rejected the very notion. “Dreams echo our hopes and fears,” he declared flatly. “They have no bearing on your physical condition.”
Liam had been about to broach the subject of the strange, disembodied voice, the orders being passed, but given the way Dr. Ramachandra had just reacted to Morgan’s dream, he thought better of it. Dr. Ramachandra would probably just laugh at him.
Later, he promised himself, when Morgan and I are alone.
As Dr. Ramachandra went on to check Morgan’s blood pressure, Liam pulled back the heavy green curtains of the nearby window. Alastair had insisted on standing guard on the doctor’s front stoop, and Liam reluctantly agreed. His presence would likely draw curious eyes, but with sunrise still hours away, few enough would notice him. And whatever attention might come, a mechanika looming on the stoop like a mafia foot soldier was worth it. The men in gray uniforms. The attack. Liam’s hands were still shaking from it.
After drawing a sample of Morgan’s blood, Dr. Ramachandra wrote a series of instructions on a piece of paper, wrapped the instructions around the syringe, and placed both into a pneumatic canister. Then he popped the canister into a messenger pipe, clamped the pipe shut, and pressed one of several buttons on the wall, the one marked “Lab,” and the canister was whisked away with a thoomp.
“That’ll be a day or two coming back.” Dr. Ramachandra sat and took several more notes. “Tell me again what you drank.”
Morgan shrugged. “Whiskey, mostly. A few mixed drinks. Then absynthe.”
“Any of it moonshine?”
“I don’t know,” Morgan said, looking perfectly wretched, “but I doubt it. Club Artemis is clean as they come.”
“Plus,” Liam broke in, “Morgan was already experiencing symptoms. Ever since taking the government serum.”
“It’s doubtful the serum is to blame here.” Dr. Ramachandra looked back and forth from one of them to the other, clearly choosing his words with care. “I’m not going to berate you for imbibing alcohol. I leave that to your parents and God. But I will admit I’m concerned. Your symptoms are similar to several cases of poisoning I’ve heard about.”
Morgan blinked. “Poison?”
Dr. Ramachandra nodded. “The making and running of alcohol have become major sources of income for the Uprising. They’ve been waging a war against the traditional bootleggers, and it’s escalated in recent months. There are reports of people being poisoned, others being abducted or killed when they threaten to finger the ones who did it. These days, getting involved with alcohol in any way, shape, or form is dangerous.”
Morgan frowned. “But the Uprising were the ones who attacked us! Why attack a place where they’d already poisoned the booze?”
“To sow even more chaos. Or perhaps to make a statement to other bootleggers that Chicago is theirs. I don’t know the minds of criminals, Morgan. My concern is to see your health returned to you.” He went to a glass cabinet and retrieved two small brown bottles. “I’ll make inquiries. In the meantime, take these.” He shook one of the bottles. “This to help you sleep, two spoons, just before you lay down.” He shook the other. “This one twice daily, with food. It should help you fend off the worst of the symptoms until I can learn more. And Liam, you’ll let me know straight away if you have similar symptoms.”
Morgan accepted the bottles, but Liam was concerned. “And the government serum Morgan took?” he asked.
Dr. Ramachandra gave him a noncommittal nod. “I’ll contact the Bureau of Health and ask them about it. But the serum is hardly new. Whatever President De Pere might have said at the ceremony, it’s been distributed fairly widely along the East Coast. If there were major concerns over it, I would have heard about them by now.”
“All right,” Liam said. “Thank you for checking.”
Morgan, meanwhile, was staring at the bottles Dr. Ramachandra had given him as if one was poison, the other the elixir of life, and he didn’t know which was which.
Dr. Ramachandra put his hairy hand on Morgan’s shoulder. “You’ve a strong constitution, Morgan. You always have had. Take those, and we’ll soon learn more. I’ll send word the moment I know.” He squeezed Morgan’s shoulder, then patted it twice. “We’ll see you through.”
Morgan nodded tentatively, then pulled his shirt back on. In short order, he and Liam were in the Phaeton and Alastair was driving them north through the streets of Chicago’s posh Wicker Park, heading for the Aysana estate.
In the rear, Morgan and Liam were silent, both dumbstruck, worried, scared. Outside, the tall brownstones gave way to staid homes spaced farther apart. In the distance, through the light rain, Liam could just make out the flashtrain line, the very one he took to work every day. A train streaked toward the glowing Deco towers of downtown. The air in the car smelled musky, some new scent Morgan was giving off. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, but it was worrying just the same, yet another of the strange symptoms Morgan had been exhibiting since the firefight at the train station.
When the Phaeton began taking the easy curves of a road through a forest preserve, Morgan said, “I can’t believe Elle and Charlie are gone.”
Their final moments, so bloody and violent, flashed through Liam’s mind. “We should count ourselves lucky Geraldine couldn’t make it.”
“True”—Morgan made a miserable attempt at a smile—“but her absence wasn’t some random fluke.”
“What do you mean?”
“She had a better offer is all. Her message said she was detained because President De Pere himself was staying for dinner. Geraldine’s father, Walter, apparently had a meeting with him that went long. Her mother offered to host him for dinner, and he agreed.” Morgan paused, his gaze going distant. “It was a bit odd, though.”
“What was?”
“She said I should head home, that she’d call me tomorrow to explain.”
Liam was stunned. “Head home?”
Morgan nodded. “It was the bartender who passed me the message, so it might’ve gotten a bit mangled, but apparently she wanted me to head home straight away.”
The moments that followed were filled by the Phaeton’s purr, the hiss of the tires navigating the wet road. Liam was trying and failing to understand why she would have said it. “So she gives you a warning like that,” he finally said, “and then the attack happens?”
Morgan looked affronted. “Don’t be ridiculous. She couldn’t have known. It’s just a coincidence.”
“What did she mean by it, then?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Leland De Pere, our president, a famous teetotaler, was in her home. She was worried that my being associated with Club Artemis, or any speakeasy, for that matter, would implicate her. Her father only gained the mayor’s seat a few months ago. If De Pere finds out she’s been tipping back Gin Rickeys all over the city, Walter would instantly lose favor.”
Liam shrugged. “You’re probably right. It’s too bad it turned out like this.”
“It’s fine. She’s going shopping for flowers at the market on Wednesday. Decorations for the President’s final night in Chicago, apparently. I’ll see her then, assuming I’m well enough.” A hint of a smile broke across Morgan’s face. “Speaking of sweethearts, what’d you think of Grace?”
For a moment Liam felt like the same fool he’d been on seeing her enter Club Artemis, though the feeling was all but smothered by the memory of Grace summoning an image of herself to save him from the man with the shotgun.
Morgan, perhaps interpreting Liam’s silence as embarrassment over his attraction, said, “She asked about you, you know.”
Liam stared at him, confused. “When?”
“Three nights ago at Club Artemis. I was talking about the firefight at the flashtrain station. She said she’d heard someone say he’d witnessed the porter shooting Kohler point blank with the tommy gun. She seemed to know quite a bit about the incident already. And you. She described you and what you were wearing before I’d even said your name.”
Liam frowned. “How could she have known?”
Morgan shrugged while glancing out the back window. In the distance, a pair of yellow headlights trailed them. “Who knows? There were plenty of witnesses.”
“Do you know where she’s staying?”
“No”—Morgan’s smile broadened—“but there are only so many hotels a woman like Grace would stay in.” Though amused moments ago, Morgan’s smile collapsed the longer he stared at Liam. “What’s wrong?”
The very notion of hearing voices in his head still seemed mad—so mad Liam nearly told Morgan it was nothing—but he needed to talk about it, and if he couldn’t trust Morgan, he couldn’t trust anyone. “During the attack, I heard someone speaking to those men, someone issuing orders. It wasn’t from anyone in the bar, though. It felt like they were coming from far away. Did you hear it? A voice in your head?”
Morgan stared at him doubtfully, clearly thinking it was a poor sort of joke.
“I’m not kidding, Morgan. I heard a man’s voice telling them who they could kill and who they couldn’t. Elle’s death was authorized. As was Charlie’s. But not yours . . . They wanted you alive.”
“But you said it was a voice inside your head.”
“It was.”
“And that it was coming from far away.”
“Look, I know it sounds wild—”
Morgan released a pent-up burst of laughter. “God, you had me going there for a minute.” When Liam didn’t immediately back down, he went on. “Don’t you get it? It was the absynthe. None of us had come down from it yet.”
“I know, but it felt too real. Like you and I talking now. It was nothing like the dream in the wheat field.”
“You think the wheat field is the only sort of hallucination you can have with absynthe? I’ve felt myself falling apart and then being rebuilt by dwarves. Dwarves, Liam. Little ones with long beards and golden hammers. I’ve had extended conversations with alpacas, and they did most of the talking. I’ve felt myself inside a dozen people at once. Then none at all, which is a lot scarier than you think. Every flight with the green fairy is different. Depends on who’s there with you. Your mood. Their mood. The provenance of the liquor—an unknown quantity, as Dr. Ramachandra would say.”
“The voice said they wanted the scourge unharmed.”
Morgan’s next words died on his lips. “What did you say?”
“The voice I heard, it was talking to our assailants, directing them. It said, ‘We need the scourge unharmed.’ It was talking about you, Morgan.”
Morgan’s eyes spoke volumes.
“What is it?” Liam asked.
“The naked man I saw in the wheat field. He was whispering a lone word, over and over. Scourge.”
A chill ran down Liam’s spine. “What the hell’s a scourge?”
Before Morgan could reply, Alastair’s warbly voice reached them from the driver’s compartment. “Sirs, I don’t wish to alarm you, but there seems to be a squad car following us.”
Morgan and Liam turned to look through the back window. The yellow headlights he’d spotted earlier were close now. The car looked to be a long-nosed sedan of some sort. As it shouldered into the curve behind the Phaeton, a red light on its roof blinked on and off while a brass bell on the hood rang over and over, hammering a sequence as manic as a firehouse drill.
“Sir, we’re not far from the estate,” Alastair said into the rearview mirror.
“Let’s just see what he wants,” Morgan said. “Likely we’ll get home with little more than a tip of the hat.”
Morgan’s reasoning was that his father, one of the wealthiest businessmen in the Midwest, was granted certain protections, and that those protections extended to Morgan as well. He wasn’t wrong. Liam had seen it for himself over and over again, from being let go after being stopped for speeding to sobering him up at the police station and discharging him in the morning, scot-free. Still, Liam didn’t like it. His stomach twisted into knots at the mere thought of stopping the car in the middle of nowhere, and the more the Phaeton slowed, the worse it got.
As they pulled to a stop along the road’s gravel shoulder, the police car did as well. All seemed calm for a moment, the cop car sitting there, idling. Liam tried to peer through the windshield, but the lights were too blinding. Beyond the glare he saw only darkness and the red lamp as it flashed. For long moments, no one exited the vehicle.
“What’s going on?” Liam asked.
“He’s probably using the wireless to report to the station.”
“I don’t like it, Morgan.”
“Just stay calm. We’ll talk to him and we’ll be back home soon enough.”
On the driver’s side of the police car was an unlit spotlamp. Presently, it swiveled up and around, the lens rotating until it faced forward. A series of blue lights flashed from it, so bright Liam and Morgan both cringed. The faint popping sounds that accompanied each flash made Liam feel sick to his stomach.
Liam turned forward when he heard a thumping, rattling sound. In the driver’s seat, Alastair shook terribly as if he were having an epileptic seizure, then he simply slumped forward across the wheel, his weight engaging the horn. As the Phaeton blew one long, ceaseless note into the muggy night, the driver and passenger doors of the police vehicle opened.
Eight
Two uniformed men emerged from the squad car and closed the doors with an unhurried calm that sent Liam’s fears soaring. They were well aware of what they’d just done to Alastair—the strobing light had been turned on for a reason—and now they were walking with the confidence of men who were sure they had the situation under control.
One had his hand on his sidearm as he approached the Phaeton’s passenger side. The other, the driver, wore a sergeant’s uniform, including the high, rounded helmet with the station’s insignia, which, if Liam pegged it right, was from downtown, nowhere near the Aysana estate. The badge on his black wool coat gleamed red in the Phaeton’s taillights. He had a policeman’s baton in one hand, which he swung in circles, catching it with a snap as he sauntered forward.
