Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel (7 page)

And then I was running for the second secret.

It was around the corner from the Diversey El stop, on Wolfram Street.

It was a place for dead people, and I couldn’t get there fast enough.

Chapter five of the notebook is
“Sfuggire”
(“Escape”), which contains a list of all known Capone Doors in Chicago; I’d taken the precaution of memorizing locations close to Fep Prep. Strozcak’s Bohemian Funeral Parlor on Wolfram Street, housed in a castlelike brownstone, had been an Outfit front business for decades. I sprinted through the station, out the back door, and jumped a fence as Teardrop galloped after me. I had a head start but knew it wouldn’t last. The creature was determined to mete out punishment for drowning its friend before delivering me up to have my skull unscrewed. The funeral parlor was only a block from the El, with its peaked slate roof usually visible from the street—except today I saw no slate and no roof. Instead, a sign stood in front of the rubble of a building in the process of being torn down. It read
COMING SOON, WOLFRAM MANOR LUXURY CONDOS!
I knew that the Capone Door had been located in the basement, and I turned to see Teardrop flying up the sidewalk. Without hesitation I scrambled over the construction fence. The old brownstone looked like it had been hit by a tornado—the facade stood, and parts of the walls, but the roof was gone and mounds of bricks had been clawed free. I ripped away yellow warning tape, kicked open the front door, and ran into the shell of a building as warped wooden slats groaned ominously beneath me.

“Stop!” Teardrop shouted, and I turned to see it pointing the gun at me.

It took a step, the old floor creaked painfully, and the creature screeched as it disappeared before my eyes.

I turned for the door but the world splintered, and all that was beneath me was air as I fell into the basement.

When I blinked my eyes, everything was quiet and dark. I was bleeding on my back where shards of wood and rusty nails had torn at my flesh as I fell through the floor. In blazing pain, feeling like I’d been hit by a tractor, I pulled myself to one knee, squinting into the gloom, overcome by an alcoholic odor that felt gluey on the inside of my nose. I tried to stand but my ankle gave way, and I grabbed the edge of something cold and metallic to stop from falling. And then my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw that I was leaning on a steel table. There were drains at both ends from which yellowed hoses hung, stained by brown gunk. I’d kicked over a large jar of something milky that was pooling beneath my feet. I looked down at the label.

Formaldehyde.

It was the stuff used to embalm dead people.

I lifted my hand from the table, realizing it was where corpses were drained of bodily fluids and refilled with the preservative ooze.

I shuddered because it was so gross, and because it made perfect sense according to Outfit logic. An embalming room is the creepiest place in a funeral home (perhaps in the world) and the last place anyone chooses to go (except an embalmer), which made it the ideal place to hide a Capone Door. Disgusting junk is always left behind in old, abandoned buildings—worn-out couches, stained mattresses—but this was unusual, and unusually nauseating, and it was when I bent to puke that I saw the zephyr. It appeared in a tiny, swirling tornado made of dust from a hairline crack in the wall that was leaking air. I knew Teardrop was down here somewhere, and on cue, it groaned and thrashed violently, kicking over something heavy trying to get to its feet. I hobbled to the wall and scanned it desperately, seeing empty shelves, a corroded sink, and a crusty, peeling anatomical wall chart. Looking closer, I saw the outline of a human body crisscrossed by bloody red lines, showing how formaldehyde flowed through the circulatory system.

Each part was titled—heart, aorta, superior vena cava—and it was when I saw the raised, metallic
C
in
cava
that my own heart leapt.

My finger was moving for it when a glass jar exploded above my head. I was covered in slime, and another just missed me when I ducked out of the way of Teardrop’s missile. It was on the move, trying to brain me. The only thing slowing it were overturned tables and boxes of who knows what, and I jammed my finger against the
C.
The wall coughed and lifted, and I leaped into darkness, expecting to touch a platform or the top step of a staircase, but there was nothing. My fall through the floor had been painful but short, while this was a genuine plummet, a head-over-heels free fall, and I screamed, smelling the sewage below. I managed to shut my mouth and land on my back, hearing the sticky
splock!
as warm sludge washed over me. I got to my feet, hacking and spitting, and spotted the bones of an old, collapsed stairway. It had once connected to a walkway along the edge of the sewer, safely above the crud.

I looked up, seeing Teardrop looking down, trying to decide what to do.

I had no trouble deciding and clambered up to the walkway.

When I heard the
splock!
behind me, I knew the creature had made up its mind.

The walkway twisted, I felt my way around a corner, and a narrow, shadowy doorway appeared out of nowhere. It was just an indentation in the wall, easy to miss, and I stepped into it, hugging the wall. It was then that I noticed faded red letters stenciled in curlicues higher up on the brick:

The Catacomb Club
Buzz twice
Gents, kindly check your gats

There was no door below it, or at least I thought there wasn’t until I touched the wall and felt a wooden frame painted over to blend in with the brick. Seconds later, Teardrop charged past without seeing me. I glanced around the corner, scanning the smooth, wet walls, seeing narrow catwalks leading to large, screened air vents but no other way out. The disguised door was my only chance. Carefully, trying to mute any noise, I pushed a shoulder against it. There was a complaint of warped wood, so I did it again and something splintered. I leaned with all of my strength, sure it wouldn’t open, but then by stubborn, scraping inches it did. A sour exhalation blew over me as I slipped inside. I remembered Tyler hinting at a story about the Catacomb Club and Grandpa Enzo, which I’d pretended to be aware of. At the moment, though, all I cared about was that a speakeasy
always
had a secret exit, and I was determined to find it. Squinting into grayness, I saw a bar on one side of the vast room and moved toward it, groping air. My fingers grazed a table and when I leaned on it for guidance, it rotated beneath my touch.

Tic-tic-tic . . .

The noise was calibrated and cold, like the spinning chamber of a loaded pistol.

. . . tic-tic-tic-ic-ic-ic.

Until it stopped slowly, and the room was silent again. I bent toward the table, seeing a roulette wheel, the small white ball taking its final leap from black to red.

And then I saw a hand pushing money toward it.

I gasped and drew back, because its flesh was leather.

When I moved, my heels caught at a pile of something on the floor behind me, and I fell onto half of a human torso.

I babbled with terror, a whispered stream of “Oh God! Oh no! Oh please!” as I scuttled away like a crab, crushing something as brittle as kindling, seeing a desiccated leg beneath a sequined skirt. I was on my feet in a flash, stumbling past gambling tables and slot machines, and pressed against a wall, my heart tripping like a jackhammer. I moved my hand across cold plaster until I located a light switch, and with trembling fingers, I flipped it. First one, then another and another light fixture blew its old bulb to bits. Shielding my face with a forearm, I lowered it to see a lone fixture oozing light, turning the room a ghastly yellow, changing the mass of slumped shadows into corpses. I sucked back a scream, covering my mouth with the back of a hand at the sight of the brutal carnage. There were bodies everywhere, shot down where they’d stood or sat. Some, like the one I’d fallen on, had been ripped in two by bullets. Dried black blood pooled on green felt tables and tiled floors, spattering the walls like abstract art. I had no idea how long they’d been here, but with revulsion and sick curiosity, I noted that decomposition was at a point between mummy and skeleton. Generations of spiders had infested the scene, draping it in a stringy cloak of webbing. It was a mix of men and women dressed in the style of the fifties or sixties, and then I noticed something else.

Besides blood, cash was everywhere, in thick piles or scattered like blown leaves.

This was not a robbery gone wrong.

I was looking at the remains of a massacre.

My mind choked on so much murder, with one thought shouldering aside the rest:
Whoever did it left these people down here to rot.
It was a notion I’d pull apart later, but now my ear twitched at the scratch of footsteps. I ducked behind the bar, stifling a scream at coming nose-to-nose with a bartender missing half his skull, and carefully peeked over the top. At the front of the expansive room, near the main entrance, Teardrop’s face glowed in murkiness like a beacon of death. He moved warily, looking for me but obviously taken aback by the butchery. From this viewpoint, I discerned the layout of the place—main entrance leading to gaming tables, which led to the bar (where I cowered) and a small stage at the rear of the room. Half the bodies were clustered at the front, but the rest had been cut down toward the back. Some had been trying so desperately to reach the rear of the room that they’d run right out of their shoes.

They were attempting, unsuccessfully, to escape.

There had to be an exit back there.

Nearly hugging the floor so Teardrop couldn’t see me, I went down on all fours and crawled madly and silently toward the small stage. I passed by a hallway with no doors or windows, only an ancient cigarette machine; long ago, coins were fed into it and levers yanked as packs of smokes tumbled out. I rose, crouching in shadows, peering at one brand in particular, Carlyle Red, with a tiny raised
C.
I pulled the lever, cringing at the echoing
thunk!
as the machine swung aside, revealing a flight of stairs. Clawing cobwebs from my face, I ran up the steps, hearing Teardrop kicking over chairs and cadavers as he came after me. A door popped open at the top and I found myself on a narrow catwalk leading to a large, whooshing air vent. I lunged for the screen and grunted, ripping it free and lifting myself inside, when a steely hand closed around my ankle.

Teardrop hissed, “Got you, you smug little bi—” but didn’t finish since I hammered its festering mouth with my other foot until it gurgled and let go. And then I was crawling rapidly through inches of smelly water. When I reached another round screen, I realized I wasn’t inside an air vent but a drainpipe.

Those weren’t screens—they were, like, poo filters.

I squinted through the filter in front of me and saw that the pipe on the other side flowed directly toward me, dribbling water. Behind me, I heard a slap and a splash, and I knew Teardrop was on the move. I yanked at the filter but it held tight, and that’s when I saw two buttons on the other side of the screen—a red one marked “lock” and a green one marked “unlock.” Of course they were on that side, since that’s where the utility guys came from, and of course the filters were locked, to keep trespassers out and rats in. I tried to push the unlock button, but it was just out of reach, my fingers straining through the filter as Teardrop called out, “
Es el estremo de la linea, puta
 . . . it’s the end of the line. Time to meet Mister Kreamy Kone in person.”

I thought,
Of course! Mister Kreamy Kone!

I patted my pockets desperately and fished out the ice cream stick.

Squeezing it between my fingertips, I slid it through the filter and pushed the button. There was a
click
and a
pop,
and Teardrop crawled faster, panting with rage. I slammed my shoulder against the filter, dove through, and kicked it shut just as the red-eyed demon lunged. A quick punch to the lock button and it latched into place.

“No . . . no!” Teardrop howled, grappling at the filter, scraping it with sharp knuckles. It swallowed its rage, hissing, “Just wait. You’re mine.”

“I’m no one’s,” I said quietly, backing away.

The wall behind me was fit with metal rungs to climb in and out of the sewer. I went for the rungs as a rumble sounded from the pipe. It was followed by a noxious odor that made my stomach heave, and raw sewage rushed toward us. Teardrop heard it too, face pressed against the filter, gaping. “I’d close that ugly mouth if I were you,” I said, climbing quickly away. A stream of stinking goop rolled beneath my feet and I paused to watch it bubble up as high as Teardrop’s shoulders before subsiding. Trapped in muck, its eyes blazed up at me, but I was gone, rising toward a manhole cover. I pushed it aside and pulled myself into an alley, seeing the Biograph Theater across the street, which meant I was on Lincoln Avenue. It was showing a vintage Humphrey Bogart film, its marquee glowing with the title
The Stick-Up.
It reminded me of my savior, the ice cream stick. I looked at it now, seeing words stamped on it that had once been covered by a frozen treat.

It read,
Find Mister Kreamy Kone on Friendbook!

UNTIL YESTERDAY, I COULD ADJUST THE
intensity of ghiaccio furioso but was unable to summon it. There had to be a perfect storm of emotion—intense hatred, love, or fear—in order for cold fury to kindle and flicker.

Not anymore.

Now I am its master.

Now I think of what was done to my mom’s hand, the horrific pain and shock she must have suffered, and blink my eyes just once. The blue flame leaps at my command as I burn with fury, all the while remaining as cool and calm as a blackjack dealer. I’m possessed by a sense of power that I haven’t known before, since cold fury was transitory, rolling in unbidden and blowing away like a hurricane. I lay in bed tingling with the new knowledge, then got up and looked at myself in the mirror. Slowly closing and opening my eyes, there was an internal, audible hum as my pupils went to pinpoints and the blueness deepened to cobalt. I’d never seen what they looked like while deploying cold fury since it normally ended almost as soon as it began, but now I saw what other people saw.

It was all of the loneliness that had ever existed since time began staring back at me.

It was abandonment and torture, humiliation and disease, rejection and death searching for a warm, pulsating place to infiltrate and infect.

My eyes were the nightmare mirrors of other men’s souls.

I blinked and was myself again, except that the other Sara Jane—the one who disappeared before my eyes—was also me. Being able to control cold fury added a new dimension to my double life, and I wondered if I’d be able to control the electricity as well. All I knew for sure was that my current evolution had been induced by a trauma so disturbing that it had broken down whatever mental or emotional boundaries had existed and drawn cold fury to my fingertips—and there I was again, thinking about my poor mother’s fingers.

And then my phone rang.

The clock on the table next to me glowed 5:03 a.m. I lifted the phone and Max whispered, “Hey, it’s me . . .”

“Is everything okay? It’s so early.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’ve been thinking about us. And I need to show you something important.”

“You mean now?”

“Yeah. If you’re not too tired, I mean.”

“No!” I said enthusiastically, a little too happy that he’d called me. I really wasn’t tired since I’d gone to bed five hours earlier than usual. I’d returned to the Bird Cage Club the day before, stinking like the underbelly of Chicago after my sewer hide-and-seek, and left the Mister Kreamy Kone stick on Doug’s laptop where he’d find it. I showered, still stunk, showered again, crawled into bed, and slid into a deep sleep before seven p.m. I was awake and alert as Max told me to meet him at the corner of Hermitage and Cortland in Bucktown. When I asked why, he said he’d answer my questions later and that time was of the essence. It’s one of those terms—“time is of the essence”—that spurs people to action. I dressed quickly and tiptoed past Doug and Harry sleeping on the couch. Passing the control center, I saw a note Doug had left for me, scrawled in red pen on the back of a fast-food bag, with an arrow pointing at the ice cream stick:

Wait until you see what I found online!
Mister Kreamy Kone fans are freaks!

A hug from—
Doug

I bristled with curiosity and was tempted to wake him, but Max’s admonition to hurry kept me moving; butterflies did backflips in my stomach as I rode down the elevator. Twenty minutes later, I pulled the Lincoln to a curb in Bucktown. Max was on the corner leaning on his motorcycle, his brown hair early-morning messy in a good way. He wore classic biker gear—jeans, boots, and a snug leather jacket; it would be warm by noon, but was chilly in the predawn darkness. I approached cautiously, wondering if he was going to break up with me here, on a deserted street. Instead, his frozen breath preceded his lips when he kissed me lightly.

“How do you feel about going to Italy this morning?” he asked.

“Uh, well . . . we have to be in school, remember?”

“It’ll be a quick trip. Short but sweet. As long as you’re not scared of angels.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Great, that makes it even better.” He grinned. His eyebrows rose in happy anticipation, and he nodded his head across the street, saying, “Follow me.” We crossed over to an enormous old redbrick church so huge and imposing that it consumed an entire city block. A tower of scaffolding clung to the wall and rose into the sky. Max looked around and then gave the scaffold a hard shake, making sure it was secure. He grinned again and said, “They’re repairing the brick. All the way to the roof.”

“How high is the roof?”

Max shrugged. “Fifteen, sixteen stories, maybe. Are you okay with heights?”

I looked up, considering my safe haven on the twenty-seventh floor of the Currency Exchange Building on the one hand, and dangling from a hundred-and-fifty-foot-high Ferris wheel on the other. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”

“It’s completely safe,” he said, drawing my gaze back to him. “Trust me.”

I looked into his warm, open face, thinking not for the first time that he sometimes seemed too good to be true, but then I shook it off; it was my paranoid gut, trying to jinx me. I smiled back and said, “I do. Always.”

And then we were climbing silently from pole to platform until Max said, “Be careful of his feet . . . her feet. Whatever, there’s a pair up here.” I looked past as he pulled himself onto the roof, and he was right—two large, snow-white feet were at the base of a tall body clad in drapes of alabaster robe, and behind them were a huge pair of folded wings. Max helped me onto the roof and I saw that the angel’s arm extended toward me, offering another hand up. “There are twenty-six of them along the wall of the roof.”

“Parapet,” I mumbled, staring into the face of the giant winged creature.

“Each statue is nine feet tall, made of solid marble,” Max said, “and they’re all committed to protecting beautiful, dirty old Chicago.”

The angel’s delicate features transfixed me. It was definitely feminine, with the set of her jaw reflecting a fierce determination. Although my family had been casual when it came to attending mass, I knew the role of certain angels was that of guardian, existing solely to save humans from dangerous situations. Another concept I’d picked up during my (rare) trips to Sunday school was that the sins of a father were sometimes passed on to his children. It was impossible to deny that Great-Grandpa Nunzio’s role as counselor-at-large for the bloody Chicago Outfit, passed on to Grandpa Enzo, my dad, and now me, was ultimately why my family was missing. I noticed then how familiar the look carved into the angel’s eyes was, seeing it as a beatific reflection of my own in the mirror while deploying cold fury—part serenity, part end-of-days wrath. It seemed appropriate, considering that the angel was specifically created to protect and rescue all those fathers from their sins, and I thought,
Lady, I know how you feel.

“Sara Jane,” Max said, taking my hand, “follow me. It’s almost time.”

“For what?”

He smiled and took my hand. “Rome,” he said, and led me around the massive tile and terra-cotta dome where two lawn chairs sat side by side.

I looked at them, at the thermos and cups between them, and a jelly jar holding a rose. “Max . . . for me?”

“We don’t want to miss it,” he said. “Sit.” We eased into chairs and he poured two espressos. I sipped, watching him blow steam from a cup. He stared straight ahead and said, “Now . . . we wait.” It seems like waiting is an element woven into our relationship—waiting to get together because of a divorce and a secret Chloe, because of a missing family and Outfit secrets. We’re young and haven’t been together long enough, and we both feel (thankfully) that the time isn’t yet right to take the next big, scary romantic step, which means more waiting. And here we sat, side by side on a roof in the chilled semi-darkness, and I realized that there was no one in the world I’d rather wait with.

He pointed east. “Ready? Watch.”

Far out over the snaking lanes of the Kennedy Expressway, traffic was just beginning to move like distant, tiny beetles, while farther beyond, an orange-pink aura glowed over Lake Michigan. The sun rose by the second, throwing back the blanket of darkness from the suddenly shimmering city and sending a wave of light rolling toward us. When it finally kissed the dew-covered dome, a veil of gold covered Max and me—we looked at each other incandescently—and he said, “It’s just like Saint Peter’s in Rome. This is the light of Italy, Sara Jane.” It was the most beautiful moment of my life—literally a moment, since its luminescence faded almost as soon as it had begun. I closed my eyes, trying to absorb it before it faded—the peacefulness of the early morning roof, the guardian angels, the dome of gold with Max next to me—and I felt his hand pressing mine. This time there was no voltage, only warmth. I looked down at a medallion he’d placed in my palm. It was round steel with a raised blue
T
on one side and
Triumph
on the other, also in blue, the tail of the
R
underlining the word. Max said, “It’s the logo from my motorcycle. You know, a Triumph. It’s a vintage zipper pull from a biker jacket, like, from the 1950s. People wore them to look cool.”

“It is . . . so cool,” I said, turning the thick, quarter-sized metal in my hand.

He cleared his throat and moved a lock of hair from his face. “So it’s my way of saying that I don’t ever want to not . . . be with you.” His cheeks colored at the tangle of words. “I mean, us being together is good . . . better than us not being together.”

“Max, I totally agree.”

He looked into my eyes, smiled a little, and his nerves evaporated. “Things have been so weird between us. And when you told me about the guy, Tyler . . .”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It was nothing,” I said, regretting the heartache I’d caused. “Less than nothing.”

“Really?” he said. “Because with you, Sara Jane, only you . . . the best way to say it is that you make me feel more like myself and less alone. You know what I mean?”

I understood then that he needed me as much as I needed him. Maybe it had to do with both of us feeling the void of our families—his dad in California, his mom dating “Gary the dentist,” and Max somewhere in between. For me, it was the fact that since forever, my parents made Lou and me understand that they loved nothing in the world more than us simply because we existed. That love freed me to be who I am; without it, I felt the opposite of free, trapped in aloneness except when I’m with Max.

“I thought you could wear it next to your mom’s ring,” he said.

I touched at my neck and removed the chain holding the gold signet ring. I’d worn it there since Lou gave it to me on the Ferris wheel before he slipped away, back into the void of Chicago. The medallion felt cold and real in my hand; the
T
on one side and that word on the other,
Triumph,
seemed like a good omen. It was a symbol of feelings that were exclusively between us, just Max and me, and it suddenly seemed important that it stand alone. I removed the ring from the chain, put the medallion in its place, and slipped the ring on my index finger. It was then, hugging Max as hard as I could with my eyes squeezed shut, that I decided to trust him and tell him everything.

When I opened them, we were being watched.

I would have missed it if I’d blinked.

He was on the parapet, standing behind one of the angels, imitating its stance to remain unseen, until he moved an inch to get a better look.

I continued holding Max tight in order to watch who was watching us. It was a guy in filthy jeans, shredded hoodie, and beater boots, and when he moved again, I saw his face and stifled a gasp; it was nearly the same bleached tone as Teardrop’s. His head had been violently shaved in a manner similar to Lou’s when I’d seen him at the Ferris wheel, and he was thicker than the creatures—not quite as model-thin, but close. And then he shifted, revealing more of his face.

Even from that distance I could see the shocking contrast of one blue eye and the other glowing ice-cream-creature red.

I turned then, and he saw me move and leaped like a rabbit. Pushing away from Max, I sprinted across the roof, gawking over the edge. The street and sidewalks were empty. Then something moved on the apartment house across the street, where he scrabbled up the drainpipe. Max came up alongside me, saying, “What’s wrong?” I kept my eyes on the opposite roof, seeing the guy hop away across building tops, and by the time Max looked in the same direction, he was gone. “Did you see something?”

I had, I just wasn’t sure what until my paranoia answered—if the guy had something to do with the ice cream trucks, it was a blip of danger that just barely veered past Max. I swallowed hard, touched the medallion, and forced a smile. “It’s just . . . this means so much to me. I was overwhelmed for a second because I feel the same way you do.” He took me into his arms, and I looked over his shoulder at empty rooftops, my gut whispering how the guy had been a forewarning of something bad about to happen.

And then it did.

“So,” Max said, “does this mean I can finally meet your parents and brother?”

I’d feared it was coming at some point. I may not have dated much before Max (understatement alert) but at least realized that not introducing him to my family meant that I was embarrassed to be with him. The statute of limitations had run out on my original excuse—they would’ve had to be on the longest cruise in history. For someone who tries to be prepared for every eventuality, I was caught flat-footed, and when I opened my mouth to lie, nothing came out. “I’ll stop by your house any night this week that you choose,” he said. “I’m inviting myself, and I won’t take no for an answer. It’s my fault I wasn’t around all summer to meet them. It’s way overdue.”

Nodding dumbly, I realized that there was no realistic way to explain my vacant, locked-up house.

I was as cornered as I had been on the Wilson Avenue Bridge, except this time there was no escape.