The Sixteen Burdens (17 page)

“We’ll figure something out, right?” Gray asked. “You’re a businessman. You work with contracts—you oughta know ways to work around the fine print so that doesn’t all come true.”

Hughes clicked the gun chamber into place.

“I do know how,” he said. “I have to kill you.”

Gray made to back up, but there was nowhere to go.

“That’s maybe a little more final than I was thinking,” he said, his voice shaking.

“It’s the only way,” Hughes said. “The Final Artifact has historically been viewed as an aberration, a creation so powerful that it destroys its creators. The only way to be absolutely sure you won’t do that is to make sure you can’t.”

Hughes pointed the gun at Gray, who instinctively put his hands up.

“You took me up here to dust me off and dump me in the ocean?” Gray said. “You’re lousy, mister. I ain’t done nothing to you. You’re prepared to smoke some kid because of a stupid poem?”

Hughes cocked the hammer on the pistol.

“We must be willing to change to survive,” Hughes said. “It’s one life that would spare sixteen. So in actuality I’d be saving lives. Chaplin’s life. Your mother’s. But even more important, it would preserve the future of our talents—talents that presumably you’ll destroy.”

Gray wasn’t worried about Pickford’s fate at some nebulous point in the future. He was more concerned with the present and the gun pointed at his face.

“What’s your intuition say about me?” Gray asked. “Not as an Artifact. As a person. Am I hell-bent on destroying you all?”

Gray held out his hand for Hughes to touch.

“Go on. Tell me what you see.”

Hughes watched his hand a moment, and then took it in his own. The silver in his eyes flashed momentarily.

“You hide yourself from me,” Hughes said. “I don’t know how you do that. But I’ll find you.”

His eyes narrowed into little silver slits.

“You’re afraid, you know that much. You don’t know how desperately lonely you are. You have no clue about the reservoir of power buried deep inside you. But I know. I can see it.”

Hughes stared at Gray a long while, so long Gray feared they’d reach Hawaii before Hughes stopped. With a sigh of defeat, Hughes tossed the pistol over the side of the plane.

“Some change is beyond our capacity,” Hughes said. “Even if it jeopardizes our survival. I am unprepared to kill you, which means I am complicit in my own demise, as well as that of our comrades.”

Hughes returned to the controls and made a sharp turn with the plane.

“That’s it?” Gray asked.

Hughes didn’t answer. They flew the rest of the way back in silence.

When they landed on the tarmac, Gray saw Chaplin waiting for them in the hangar.

Gray refused to believe he was capable of destroying the others. He liked Chaplin and Pickford. Elsie was a drag, but he didn’t hate her. And Panchito, however he felt about him, didn’t deserve to die.

“Can’t I do something?” Gray asked. “I ain’t gonna hurt nobody.”

Hughes taxied toward the hangar.

“Destiny has a way of barreling through place and time, whether or not you want it to,” Hughes said. “If you have a purpose, then fulfill it, and don’t spend your time grieving the consequences.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
OUR

E
LSIE
HID
AMONG
a cluster of taxi dancers, who were loitering under a pair of fake palm trees like grazing sheep.

Safety in numbers.

She hadn’t seen Jack Siegel since the night she failed to show up for work. Gina had covered for her, had told Mrs. McGiverney she was ill and had pretended to check on Elsie to keep the woman from getting too close. The old dormitory matron had the visual prowess of a turnip.

“So where did you go?” Gina asked.

She was donning a red dress that cinched tightly at the waist and ended little more than halfway down her thigh. Elsie blushed just thinking about wearing something like that. Her puffy powder blue dress look silly, she knew, but it was safe. It didn’t draw attention.

“I was meeting with a police officer,” Elsie said.

“Oooh—was he cute?”

“No, nothing like that. I was reporting a crime.”

Gina put her arm around Elsie in a protective manner. She was only a few years older, but with her hair and makeup all done up they could practically be mother and daughter.

“Did someone do something to you?”

“No, I was trying to—”

—Accuse the strongest man alive of kidnapping the prettiest woman on Earth.

“—Help a friend find something that was stolen.”

She focused her emotions as she had been practicing, and pulsed Gina with a peaceful kind of happiness in the hope that it would dull her concern. It seemed to work. No one would understand the strange world she had uncovered. The strange world of which she was now part.

The other girls were getting in one last smoke before the dance hall got busy. They were beautiful, all of them, and most of them passable dancers. Even so, Elsie could sense a hardness creeping in on them, like a cookie in the oven starting to burn around the edges. They smoked and drank too much, and they picked up curse words from the sailors on leave who danced there. But the biggest change Elsie saw was in their eyes, the way they assessed a man in a calculating way. They could tell the big tippers from the chintzy Joes, and the flirtatiously harmless to the lascivious predator.

The girls who were smoking abruptly doused their cigarettes in a nearby fountain. Elsie knew why without even seeing; she could feel the fear of the girls all around her.

Jack Siegel.

She could smell him before she saw him. He always wore expensive cologne—enough to make sure half of Los Angeles knew it.

Siegel caught Gina’s eye and gave her a wink.

“Hey, darling!” Gina called out with a girly wave. Siegel tipped his hat to her.

“God, how I hate that man,” she said through her smile. Gina always got special attention from Siegel because she was attractive and a real ducky-shincracker on the dance floor.

Elsie shrank behind Gina, hoping not to be noticed. But she felt a sudden flare of anger coming from Siegel’s direction, emanating like a furnace giving off heat.

Siegel walked up to Elsie and grabbed her arm.

“You don’t look sick.”

“I
was
sick!”

“Enzo said he saw you get out of a car. Said it was being driven by Charlie Chaplin’s assistant.”

Elsie’s heart dropped in her chest. She realized how bad it would look if Siegel connected her to Chaplin; he’d think the two were working together to scam money from the casino.

Gina stepped in-between them.

“Mr. Siegel, Enzo doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I saw Elsie in bed, sick as a dog. Besides, how would Enzo know what Charlie Chaplin’s assistant looks like?”

Siegel’s steely eyes flashed over to Gina, and softened slightly. Gina leaned in conspiratorially.

“I bet Enzo is just trying to deflect attention away from the fact that he takes bribes to let underage folks into the club,” Gina said.

Enzo would slug Gina if he found out she revealed that secret.

“If that’s true I’ll have words with him,” Siegel said. “As for you—”

He twisted Elsie’s arm.

“The losses from Chaplin’s winnings are being added to your debt.”

“That’s not fair! I didn’t do anything!”

“Get to work.”

He released her with a little push and stormed off toward the casino.

Another year added to the sentence.

Elsie owed Siegel a large sum of money or, rather, her father had. Peter Avery had been a good man but a compulsive gambler, and within six months of arriving in Los Angeles with his daughters, he had lost their savings. He spent the next six months going into debt with the casino, until he was mysteriously hit and killed by a trolley car on the outskirts of Angelino Heights late one night.

While they were still grieving their father, Siegel told Elsie she was responsible for his debt. Siegel planned to make Elsie a taxi dancer in his ballroom, but when he discovered her unique ability to read people’s emotions, he found a more useful position for her in the casino.

Elsie opened the door to the casino, the one disguised as a women’s dressing room, and poked her head inside. The tables were sparsely populated, but it was early yet. She recognized a few of the regulars, low-level gamblers who inevitably left with less money than they had come in with. The only big gambler was Mr. Crocker, the son of a railroad tycoon, who came in occasionally. He was probably less than 40, but he had sunken eyes and yellow teeth that made him look like one of the creatures in
White Zombie
. The man was a liberal drinker but a conservative gambler, so Elsie wasn’t too concerned about him making any bets that would require her input.

He’ll pass out before he cashes out.

For a while she watched the roulette table, the black and red numbers spinning around. Her mind wandered back to Gray and that black blood of his—the way it oozed out like crude oil but glinted gold in the light. That blood, more than anything, convinced her that all of this was real. She could probably have explained the rest of it away in one way or another, but his blood was undeniable proof.

What is Gray, anyway?

She had heard Chaplin call him a valuable tool. Panchito had said he was a damsel in distress who needed to be protected. To Elsie he just seemed like a street hustler—smart when he wanted something, frosty when he didn’t. She figured you had to act tough to survive on the streets; she was learning that from the dancers.

Elsie watched Siegel grab a bottle of Spey Royal from the bar and head into his back office with two of his men. With any luck they’d stay in there until the bottle was emptied.

She tugged on her light blue dress. It was the oldest of the three she owned, and in the past year it had become too snug for comfort.

Maybe Gray is right. Maybe I do look like a giant doll.

She walked out the casino door and into the dance hall of the Bali Ballroom. While Siegel was occupied, she wanted to check in on Lulu, who had been quieter than normal after the encounter with the panther. Lulu was ten, too young yet to work as a hired ballroom dancer, but she earned her keep as a courier, running odd jobs that Siegel’s men were too lazy to do themselves. Elsie was concerned that the longer Lulu hung out with Siegel’s goons, the more likely she’d become one of them.

The casino entrance was on the opposite side of the dance hall. Elsie walked along the wall where men loitered about, watching the dancers and trying to decide which ones to choose. Men could purchase tickets at the counter, then redeem it with the dancer of their choosing. One ticket was worth one song. Some men merely enjoyed dancing, some were trying to improve their moves for their girlfriends, and others were lonely and happy to have a little attention from a pretty girl.

“How about a dance, sweetheart?”

Elsie turned and found herself face-to-face with the bloodshot eyes of Mr. Crocker. He must have seen her leave the casino and followed her outside. A swollen pimple on the side of his nose made her want to gag.

“All you do is sit in the casino, watching,” he said. “I never see you use those pretty gams. So how about a trot across the floor?”

His breath was hot and rank, like a sweltering day along the L.A. River, when the water has evaporated and all the trash in it begins to rot.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I haven’t been trained to dance.”

“And I don’t have a ticket, so we’ll call it even.”

Elsie could feel an emotion radiating off him that repulsed her. It was desire, and yet complete disregard for her at the same time. It was unadulterated lust.

“Excuse me, I have an errand to run.” She turned away from him and took only one step when he grabbed her upper arm and spun her back around. With her free hand Elsie swung at him, but the man easily caught her by her wrist.

“You’re quite the bearcat,” he said, laughing. He swayed a little and his eyes struggled to focus. “But I’ll show you how a man leads.”

He dragged her onto the dance floor and people nearby began to stare. Gina was dancing with a gawky, young kid halfway across the dance floor. She caught Elsie’s eye and gave her a warning look.

Don’t fight; just do it.

Crocker stumbled around the floor with Elsie in tow, stepping on her shoes more than once with his huge feet. She refused to cry out. Crocker pulled her in so close she could hardly breathe. They were cheek-to-cheek, his sweat rubbing off on her face. His pimple touching her.

Elsie felt Crocker’s hand slide down her backside. He squeezed. His overpowering lust enveloped her; she couldn’t endure it a moment longer. She turned her head and bit as hard as she could into Crocker’s arm. He screamed and threw her down on the dance floor. A circle formed around them. The music faltered and then stopped.

“What’s wrong with you?” he shouted.

“You’re wrong with me, you dead hoofer.”

Crocker pulled his jacket off to inspect his arm. She had managed to tear his shirt and even draw a few specks of blood.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Siegel stormed into the circle and grabbed Elsie, not by the arm but by the hair, and pulled her to standing.

“You dare attack one of our guests?” he shouted. “One of our most esteemed customers?”

“This lounge lizard was forcing me to dance,” she said. “He acted like this was a petting party.”

“I don’t care if it’s a petting zoo and you’re the only animal in it,” Siegel said. “Mr. Crocker is one of our best customers. Now apologize to him.”

Elsie looked at Crocker, who was radiating with a kind of spiteful glee.

“I won’t,” Elsie said. “He should apologize to me.”

“I can make you apologize.”

Siegel cocked his hand, threatening to slap her.

Elsie felt anger welling up inside of her, and she remembered how the feeling had exploded into Chaplin, who was as much a pacifist as you could get. If she enraged Siegel with her own anger, the consequences could be deadly. She had to control her feelings.

Think of Mother.

She closed her eyes and pulled up the image of her mother in bed, struggling to breathe. The bloody handkerchief she coughed into. The maid who wouldn’t let Elsie get close enough to hug her mother goodbye before leaving England. Would she ever see her again?

After a moment Elsie realized the slap hadn’t come. When she opened her eyes she saw Siegel, his hand still raised but his eyes watery. He looked about to cry. Crocker and Enzo stared at him in confusion. Siegel abruptly came to, shaking his head and wiping his eyes.

“It won’t happen again,” he said to Crocker, bowing his head slightly.

“It better not,” Crocker said.

“And of course we’ll pay for your shirt.”

Siegel let go of Elsie as if she were a hot coal. He stole a glance at her, suspicious and curious.

“That’s being added to your debt,” he said.

Elsie felt raw and overwhelmed. All the people staring at her, all the emotions bearing down on her—she felt as if she might be crushed.

“And just how big is my debt?” Elsie shouted. “You never tell me anything!”

No one shouted at Jack Siegel, especially in front of his guests. Siegel grabbed her by the hair again and pulled her ear to his mouth.

“You’ll be paying off your debt until you’re nothing but a sagging bag of bones,” he said. “And when you’re too old to do anything else but beg, I’ll turn you out onto the street, where you’ll rot in the gutter like the trash you are.”

He pushed Elsie toward the casino.

“Now get back to work.”

She bowed subserviently to both men before turning to walk back to the casino. With every step she took, her mind pounded with just one thought.

I’ll kill Jack Siegel.