The Never War (7 page)

The show was definitely on.

 

I'm going to end this journal here, Mark and Courtney. I wish I had my ring so I could send these pages to you. Hopefully, it'll turn up soon. But until it does, I'll keep these pages safe and keep writing. I'm beginning to get the hang of this typewriter.

I hope this journal finds you well, and that your lives are much simpler than mine.

It's March 11. It's my birthday. Do I still turn fifteen, even though it's 1937?

 

END OF JOURNAL #9

I
'm getting ready to launch to another territory.

It's been nearly two months since I finished my last journal, and I can't tell you how worried I am. I don't want to leave here. At least not now.

But I think we found the turning point.

Gunny was right. I think that if we can change the outcome of this one event, there's a really good chance we can stop World War II. Is that incredible or what? The idea of saving the lives of millions of people is almost too good to be true. Gunny was right. The turning point isn't as big as a war between tribes like on Denduron, or the poisoning of an entire territory, like on Cloral. It's actually one single event. One big, stupid, spectacular event.

But it's going to be hard to stop it from happening. Dangerous, too. Big surprise, right?

Since I wrote you guys last, we have crossed paths with some truly foul characters. It's getting hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. If we have any hope of stopping this event, we've got to go up against these guys again, and I can't guarantee we'll win.

That's why I'm fluming to another territory. We need some information and there's no way we can get it here. But I'm nervous about leaving because I don't want to miss anything. I'm typing this to you guys on the night of May 5. Tomorrow is the day everything is going to hit the fan. That much we know for sure. We absolutely, positively have to be back in time and leaving now means we'll be cutting it really close. I'm counting on the fact that the flumes always send us Travelers where we need to be,
when
we need to be there. It wouldn't be cool to get back late.

But I think it's a risk worth taking because, like I said before, we need all the help we can get.

The last time I wrote to you it was my birthday, March 11. Spader and I have been here for almost two months. So much has happened since I last wrote that I hope I can remember it all.

When Mr. Nasty Gangster took that header off the Manhattan Tower Hotel, it was truly disturbing. Seeing a man fall to his death is about as horrible and gruesome as it gets. But as bad as that was, it also left us with a mystery. How did he fall?
Why
did he fall? He had been chasing us around on the sixth floor. I couldn't imagine he took a wrong turn and suddenly said, “Oops, this door leads to…air! Let's go!” No way.

I also couldn't imagine that he jumped deliberately. Not that I know anything about suicide, but this guy was busy doing other things, like trying to murder Spader and me. Why would he suddenly stop in the middle of the chase and say, “I can't believe I lost those guys. I'm such a lousy gangster, I think I'll just end it all.” That didn't make sense either.

The only possible explanation was that he was murdered.

That leads to the bigger question. Who did it? It wasn't his
partner, Mr. Nervous Gangster. Spader and I saw him leaving the hotel only a few seconds after Mr. Nasty took the dive. That meant somebody else was guilty. There was somebody else in the hotel who was part of all this, and I could make a pretty good guess as to who it might be.

Yeah, you guessed it too. Saint Dane.

He had to be here somewhere, looking like somebody else. Still, why would Saint Dane murder a guy who was trying to murder us? I guess the bottom line was, we had a ton of questions and not a whole lot of answers. There was only one person who could shed any light on this, and that was Gunny. It was time for him to tell us what he knew about these gangsters.

After Mr. Nasty took the fall, Gunny told Spader and me to go back up to our room. He had to talk to the police and let them know what he saw. Of course he didn't want Spader or me talking to them. They might ask tough questions like: “And where do you live, sonny boy?” or “Give us the name of your parents so we can call them.” That would have been tricky. So Spader and I went quietly back up to our room and waited for Gunny.

Once we hit the room though, we weren't quiet anymore. Spader was all worked up.

“He's here. I can smell him,” he said while pacing.

“Who?”

“Saint Dane. He's in this building.”

“We don't know that.”

“C'mon, mate!” Spader exclaimed. “You know he's got to have his slimy hands in this. He sent those gunmen to the flume to kill Press, then he sent 'em after us. How else would those wogglies know we were here?”

“Then how come one of 'em is dead?”

“I'm still working on that; give me some time.”

Spader's hatred for Saint Dane was starting to bubble up again. That was bad. We had to keep our eyes on the ball, and that meant not letting our emotions take over.

“Spader,” I said cautiously. “You know you've gotta be cool about this, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he assured me. “Cool as a cooger fish, that's me. Don't worry, Pendragon. I made you a promise. I won't go back on you.”

“I believe you,” I said. I really,
really
hoped I was right.

That's when the door opened and Gunny walked in. I thought he looked a little older than he had earlier. He was the kind of guy who wanted everything to be just so. Having gangsters plunge to a gruesome death from his hotel wasn't part of his perfect picture.

“I've seen a lot of things happen at this hotel,” he said with a shaky voice. “But this beats 'em all.”

“Be patient,” I cautioned him. “We're just getting started.”

Spader said, “What's all this talk about a natty-do around here?”

“A what?” asked Gunny, once again confused by an expression of Spader's.

“You said there was going to be a war here at the hotel,” I jumped in. “What's up with that?”

Gunny sat down in one of the easy chairs and let out a tired breath. Spader and I sat across from him on the same couch Spader had toppled over on the gangsters.

“You ever hear of a thing called Prohibition?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Isn't that when the government outlawed booze?”

“Exactly,” said Gunny. “No wine, no beer, no whiskey, no
nothin'. From 1920 until they gave up on it in 1933. It was all against the law, unless you knew where to go. Most people knew where to go.”

“Speakeasies, right?” I asked.

“Speak easy?” asked Spader. “I'm losing you two.”

“A lot of people got rich during Prohibition,” Gunny continued. “Some did it making booze—they called it bootlegging. Others sold it in secret clubs called speakeasies; still others shipped it here, there, and everywhere right under the noses of the police. It was all very illegal. It made a lot of gangsters rich and put a lot of others behind bars. Put a lot of them six feet under dirt, too.”

“What's that got to do with us?” I asked.

“There was a gang,” Gunny continued. “Operated on the Upper East Side here. They had it all covered—bootlegging, shipping, even ran a couple of speakeasies. Made a lot of money for the two bosses. One of 'em was a gentleman named Maximilian Rose.”

“The big guy with the fancy suit we met outside?” I asked.

“One and the same,” answered Gunny.

“Who was the other boss?” asked Spader.

“Fellow named Winn Farrow.”

Spader and I shot each other a look. “That's who those gangsters were working for!” I shouted. “Farrow and Rose are partners?”

“They
were
partners,” Gunny answered. “Long time ago. As I heard it, Rose was the smart one. He knew Prohibition wouldn't last forever, so he started investing his money into other businesses. Some legal, some not. He got his fingers into all kinds of criminal activities like gambling and smuggling and even art theft. When Prohibition ended, he didn't
miss a beat. Just kept going on making money.”

“What about Farrow?” asked Spader.

“He was just as crooked, but not as smart. He didn't have the same style as Rose. Let's say he was rough around the edges.”

“So he was a dumb thug,” I said.

“Pretty much,” agreed Gunny. “He spent his money fast as he made it. When Prohibition went away, he had nothing to show for it. Rose didn't have any use for him, so they split up. Way I heard it, Farrow didn't like that much. Now the two are what you might call enemies.”

“What's Farrow doing now?” I asked.

“He's got his own gang that operates out of an old meat-packing plant downtown. They're a bad bunch. They'll slit your throat just to get your wallet. It's pretty much all they're good at.”

“So while Max Rose is hanging out in a fancy penthouse uptown,” I said, “his old partner, Winn Farrow, is struggling to get by downtown.”

“That about sums it up,” Gunny said. “And that's why I'm getting nervous. If Winn Farrow is sending his goons up here to make trouble, and they start falling out of windows, we might find ourselves in the middle of a gang war. People die in gang wars. We may have just seen the first.”

“It's worse than that,” I added. “Saint Dane has gotta be in this equation somewhere.”

“Take it another step, mates,” Spader jumped in. “What do these two gangs have to do with setting off this tum-tigger you call World War Two?”

“There's one thing we can say for certain,” I added. “Whatever Saint Dane's got in mind for First Earth, I think we're sitting right in the middle of it.”

“So what do we do?” asked Spader. “Just sit around waiting for more wogglies to show up with guns, looking for us?”

“I have an idea,” said Gunny. “You two have jobs now. Once people get to know you, you can come and go as you please. You might even get closer to Max Rose and his boys. He's got a whole penthouse up there, with people coming and going all the time. There's a lot you can learn just by doing your job in a place like this.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Tomorrow we go to work.”

And that's how we began our careers as bellhops at the Manhattan Tower Hotel. Our goal was to learn as much about Max Rose and his gangster buddies as we could. We were going undercover. No problem, right?

Yeah, right.

Early the next morning Spader and I put on our spiffy uniforms and reported to Gunny in the lobby of the hotel. Our first duty was to get haircuts. Gunny brought us to the hotel barbershop where Spader and I sat side by side in big, padded leather chairs that spun around. I knew we were in trouble when the barbers didn't start with scissors. They went right for the electric sheers. Gulp. With Gunny behind us smiling, Spader and I got buzzed. We didn't end up with Marine cuts or anything drastic like that, but our hair ended up so short, it wasn't even worth brushing.

The barbers put some kind of goop in our hair that smelled like lemons. It gave us both a slicked-back kind of look that may have been perfect for 1937, but felt greasy and awful. Mental note to self: Wash hair often.

Now that we were all cleaned up and presentable, we went to work. Gunny was right. The job wasn't all that hard. We had to meet guests when they arrived at the hotel and bring their luggage up to their rooms. When they checked out, we'd
pick up their luggage and bring it down to the lobby. It was pretty much a no-brainer. The main thing was to be polite and not break anything.

We ate our meals in the big, noisy kitchen with the other bellhops and soon became accepted as regular staff people. That was key because it meant we could pretty much go wherever we wanted in the hotel. Nobody questioned us. The only tricky thing was going back to our room. We didn't want Dewey to start wondering why we always got off on the sixth floor. So at the end of our shift we always climbed the stairs instead of taking the elevator. What a pain.

I could tell you guys more about what it was like to be a bellhop, but that's not the important part of the story. What mattered was figuring out the connection between the gangsters and Saint Dane. That meant we had to watch Maximilian Rose. Easier said than done. He always had these gorilla-look-alike bodyguards surrounding him and we couldn't let them catch us spying on their boss. They might take us out into the alley and rub us out, or whatever it was the old-time gangsters did to people they didn't like. So we had to be careful. Luckily there were three of us, so we could take turns and hopefully not be too obvious.

Rose lived in the penthouse on the thirtieth floor of the hotel. He didn't leave very often. That's because he had a lot of enemies and liked to stay where it was safe. He had tons of visitors though. I guess that's how he did his business. People would come to him. Dewey told me stories about the odd assortment of goons he brought up to the thirtieth floor. What a strange and scary way to live.

Since Rose didn't go out much, we didn't see him much. Mostly all we could do was check out his visitors to try and figure out what he might be up to. But I'm no detective, and
it's not like these guys were walking around with big signs saying “Friend of Saint Dane” or anything. They all looked like average guys. Okay, they looked like average
gangster
guys, but you get the idea.

That is, except for one man. His name was Mr. Zell. I knew this because whenever he showed up, he had to pick up the lobby phone and call the penthouse to announce that he was there. Mr. Zell had a style that stood out from Rose's other visitors. His hair was blond and shiny and greased straight back. He always wore these perfect, gray suits that looked real expensive, like they were made for him. His eyes were sharp and always darting around, checking out the room. But he wasn't nervous. Just the opposite. He was real confident. I think he looked around because he always wanted to know exactly what was going on and who was watching him. The word would be “observant.” I had to be extra careful not to be observed by Mr. Zell.

But there was one other big thing that made Mr. Zell stand out.

He had an accent. A German accent.