It was stupid when I gave it a little thought. Who cleans fish in a basement? What do you do with the guts?
What did they do with the guts?
I grabbed Looie and pulled him to his feet, dragged him to the bottom of the stairs, and sat him next to Irma. “Watch her!” I commanded.
I took two steps back into the main room and immediately discovered there was almost no breathable air left. The smoke had gotten thicker and the ceiling was nearly engulfed, and the heat from the flames was palpable. At the front of the room, the wooden staircase had collapsed, and I could see several bodies already piled up near the door, either victims of the fire or victims of the sons of bitches on the other side of the doorway. Those that were still alive were in pretty much the same state of paralysis as Irma and Looie.
Me? I had an idea.
Back when I first saw the old fish market, my first thought had been that the building was surely about to tumble into the lake. It jutted out over the water a good five feet. My new thought was, you don’t build a building hanging over the side of a lake unless you’ve got a good reason for it.
There was one part of the floor that wasn’t just cement plus sawdust, and that was where the band played. An area rug defined the space. Coughing madly, I managed to push the equipment out of the way—thoroughly destroying a snare drum in the process—and pulled up the rug.
At the edge of the wall was a trap door.
It was where they threw the bones after cleaning the fish, and where the runoff from the melted ice traveled. And since it had been years since anyone had used it—based on the rust buildup—there was a good chance the guys outside didn’t know it was there. Looie didn’t even know it was there.
I grabbed the metal ring and yanked. It opened with an unpleasant creak and there was the lake, and best of all, nobody was standing there with a tommy gun.
Stifling the impulse to just jump down and get away, I instead ran back to Irma and Looie, grabbed them both, and pulled them over to the trap door. Irma—by then resigned to the idea that her life was over—refused to recognize the significance of the trap door, so rather than wait for her to get herself together, I just pushed her out. Hopefully the cold water of Lake Michigan would snap her out of it in time to understand she was supposed to swim.
“Looie,” I said. “I need you to look out for her. I’ll be right out.”
He nodded and patted my hand, then dropped out of sight, hopefully not on top of Irma.
I crawled and crouched my way to the front of the room, looking for anyone who wasn’t dead yet so I could show them the way out. This was no easy task, as the smoke was getting heavier and there was a good chance the ceiling would be collapsing at any moment.
I managed to find about twenty people and point the way—including Looie’s nephew, who was miraculously still breathing when I unburied him—before things got dicey. I was dragging a somewhat portly and thoroughly inconsolable woman across the floor when a fire-engulfed support beam landed between me and the trap door. I had no doubt that in another second the rest of the ceiling was going to join it, but the woman wouldn’t budge. I tried to scream at her to get her fat ass up and start moving them legs, but I’d been breathing smoke for about five minutes. My lungs felt like they were on fire and there was a good possibility I’d permanently damaged my vocal cords. (My future existence as an immortal mime flashed before my eyes. I didn’t like the idea at all.)
Not knowing any other way to get the fat lady to pick herself up—and not entirely willing to leave her behind (although she was sure pushing her luck)—I leaned over and pulled her skirt up past her hips.
If you ever need to get someone’s undivided attention, the very best way to do it is to expose their undergarments. People are weird.
“Hey!” she screamed. It worked. She rolled to her feet. Still unable to speak, I grabbed her by the back of the neck and pushed her around the fiery beam and to the trap door. She barely fit through, but she did fit, thank goodness.
I took one last look back, but there was no way I’d make it for another trip, not without a good long dose of fresh air first. I dropped through the trap. Seconds later, the ceiling gave with a tremendous crash, and the building started to come down.
The water was wonderfully cool and only about four feet deep, so I didn’t even have to concern myself with drowning. Even more pleasant was the air. I promised myself not to ever take air for granted again.
“Rocky,” someone called out to my right. I followed the voice, emerging from underneath the lip of the old fish market to find myself eye level with a short dock.
“Over here, my friend,” Looie said in Italian from atop the dock. He offered me a hand. Beside him, two of the men I’d just helped save were pulling the fat woman out of the water.
I accepted Looie’s hand gratefully and mutely, as I still could not speak. It would be days before I could utter anything. I never got a chance to ask Looie if he’d seen a woman with bright red hair emerge from the club. Because I sure never did.
Chapter 4
At least I’m eating well. There is a well-stocked kitchen on the base somewhere and possibly a gourmet chef, because today’s dinner was the finest example of beef bourguignon I’ve had since before the French Revolution. Granted the plastic fork and the egregious lack of wine to accompany the meal ruined the effect, but I’m still impressed.
I would kill for a glass of wine, or a beer, or a shot of anything up to and including rubbing alcohol. I’d been dry for over five days before getting here and haven’t had a drink since, meaning I’m in the middle of possibly the longest stretch of sobriety I’ve lived through for a century. This just makes me grouchier, if that’s possible.
* * *
Shortly after the fire at Looie’s, Irma found God, pretty much signaling the end of our relationship. Especially when she insisted God had saved her from the fire, which I took a bit personally, as I was there saving her and a bunch of other people at the time, and I never once saw God. Too bad. I could have used the help.
It turned out Looie’s mistake was in selling out to the wrong mafia family—although the question of whether there is such a thing as a “right” mafia family is debatable—and ending up an important piece in a turf war he knew nothing about. Not willing to risk making the same mistake again, he got out of the speakeasy business altogether. He ended up using his savings to open a small shoe store.
I decided to leave Chicago not long after that, fairly well convinced my red-haired foil was dead. It just didn’t seem possible for her to have gotten out of that fire intact, not if she was anything like me—although maybe she wasn’t.
I ran through the possibilities again. Vampire was one that was most likely, as they are hypothetically just as immortal as me. Except I’d seen her in the daytime on more than one occasion. And, every vampire I ever met had black eyes. Possibly she was a vampire that didn’t need to hide from sunlight and had blue eyes, but that’s a bit like saying something is a cat except it walks on hind legs and has no fur or whiskers.
I don’t know any other sentient humanoids that have a get-out-of-death clause. Well, other than me. And I don’t have porcelain skin and haunting eyes. So, she might be like me, but was she the same thing as me?
What was she?
Mind you, I’d run through all this before, thousands of times. I’ve taken suggestions, too. A succubus I used to hang out with insisted my red-haired mystery girl was death incarnate, meaning my endless search for her was actually a complex working-out of my immortality issues. (A note: succubi are notorious amateur psychologists and have been since well before Freud. In fact I have it on good authority that Freud stole his whole gig from a particularly talkative succubus he used to know. And if you don’t believe Freud knew a succubus, you haven’t read Freud.) I didn’t find the argument convincing. If I am to believe in some sort of anthropomorphic representation of mortality, I should first develop a belief in some higher power, or at least in life-after-death.