Hot Lead, Cold Iron

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Ari Marmell

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Brief Word on Language

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fae Pronunciation Guide

  Mobsters of Chicago

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Coming Soon from Titan Books

  COMING SOON FROM ARI MARMELL AND TITAN BOOKS

  Hallow Point: A Mick Oberon Job (May 2015)

  Hot Lead, Cold Iron

  Print edition ISBN: 9781781168226

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781781168233

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: May 2014

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Ari Marmell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Copyright © 2014 by Ari Marmell. All rights reserved.

  www.titanbooks.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  To Jaym, for giving Mick his first chance in Broken Time

  Blues—but more importantly, for helping me to make the

  most of my second. You’re amazing, Little Dragon.

  A BRIEF WORD ON LANGUAGE

  Throughout Hot Lead, Cold Iron, I’ve done my best to ensure that most, if not all, of the 30s-era slang can be picked up from context, rather than trying to include what would become a massive (and, no matter how careful I was, likely incomplete) dictionary. So over the course of reading, it shouldn’t be difficult to pick up on the fact that “lamps” and “peepers” are eyes, “choppers” and “Chicago typewriters” are Tommy guns, and so forth.

  But there are two terms that I do want to address, due primarily to how they appear to modern readers.

  “Bird,” when used as slang in some areas today, almost always refers to a woman. In the 1930s, however, it was just another word for “man” or guy.”

  “Gink” sounds like it should be a racial epithet to modern ears (and indeed, though rare, I’ve been told that it is used as such in a few regions). In the 30s, the term was, again, just a word for “man,” though it has a somewhat condescending connotation to it. (That is, you wouldn’t use it to refer to anyone you liked or respected.) It’s in this fashion that I’ve used it throughout the novel.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I really feel that fewer of modern society’s bits and pieces are sadder—more banal, I guess—than a big office. It’s kinda like, once mankind perfected the assembly line, there was nothing left to do but live on it. Desk after bulky desk, endless rows reaching into the distance like railroad tracks to nowhere; constant monotonous clacks and dings of typewriters and adding machines; tacky marble floors—and maybe columns, in the swankier joints—trying to echo the glories of ancient temples and libraries, and miserably failing at it. Honestly, I dunno if it’s more depressing or more boring.

  Unless someone’s trying to rub you out in one of ’em. Then I’m pretty damn confident in telling you it’s a lot more depressing than it is boring.

  Right that minute, I wasn’t looking at the desks, or the typewriters, or the pillars, because I was staring blearily at the growing puddle of red soaking into the piss-yellow carpet between my scuffed Oxfords. (Yeah, carpet. This was the second story, so no marble flooring here.) It wasn’t a whole lot of leakage, not yet, but the brick-fisted galoots flocking around me seemed right eager to help me add to it. We were having a friendly little get-together, me and the four of them, wherein I was helping them to relax by massaging their knuckles with my cheeks and my gut. Repeatedly; they musta been really tense. But hey, at least the coppery scent in my nose kept me from gagging on the mixed bouquet of old sweat, typewriter oil, and carpet shampoo.

  How the hell, I wondered, can people work in this kinda hole?

  And then a refrigerator all dolled up as a fist tried to offer me a backrub through my navel, and I remembered that I had more important things to worry about.

  They were pretty much all of a type: big fellas in cheap suits, breath reeking of bootleg eel juice and cheap cigarettes. It wasn’t too warm in there, but they were sweating from the exertion of working me over, so their jackets were draped over the backs of chairs or hanging limp over one shoulder. I think the fact that I wasn’t sweating was making them even more steamed.

  Wonder what they’d have thought if I told them straight up that I don’t do that? Ever?

  I hadn’t caught any of their names—if they’d been spoken at all, I’d had other things to worry about at the time—so as far as I was concerned, they were Mustache, Muscles, Edgy, and Egghead. Muscles was the guy who was doing most of the actual pounding on me (big surprise there, right?), with Mustache watching over his shoulder—maybe to see if Muscles was doing it wrong. Edgy kept a few steps away, fist wrapped around the only heater in sight—a Colt semi, if it matters—though I knew the others were packing in their coat pockets. Egghead had also moved back a little, wiping the perspiration off his head with one hand; in the other, he was holding a length of polished whitewood, just a little curved, not quite twice the size of a fountain pen. He was noodling over it like it was the most confounding thing he’d ever seen.

  Which maybe it was. He’d pulled it from the shoulder holster under my jacket, so I gotta imagine he was anticipating something else.

  But ultimately, none of these fellas was my main problem. No, he was sitting way over at the front of the office, his keister planted on the manager’s desk. Tan slacks, navy sportcoat, and a pressed shirt with a collar big enough to serve as a parachute—spitting image of a rich man’s idea of “casual.”

  His name I knew. He was part of the reason I was here. The other part was the big brown envelope currently in his hand, and that used to be in my coat pocket.

  Floyd Winger, committeeman of Chicago’s 34th Ward, went red as a honeymooning bride and started spitting words he’d never let his constituents hear as he tore open the flap and looked inside.

  Muscles—who, I guess, assumed that the parade of profanity was born of his boss’s frustration—knocked on my ribs again, maybe to see if anyone was home. I think I probably grunted, and struggled to keep my focus on Edgy and Egghead.

  Almost there…

  “Who sent ya?” Muscles demanded. “What’d ya break in for? I swear, bo, you don’t start talking, we’re gonna—”

  “It’s all right, Ronnie.” Committeeman Winger w
aved the envelope at me. “I know everything I need to know.”

  Yeah, you keep right on thinking that, you dumb bastard…

  Egghead, his curiosity piqued, turned to face his boss. Without even thinking about it, he slipped the length of wood into the pocket of his coat, which was hanging on the chair behind him.

  Well, finally! The strings and strands of his thoughts had felt so greasy, I thought for a while there I was never gonna make him do that. I was disgustingly out of practice; no way that shoulda taken me more than a couple of minutes.

  “So who is he, Mr. Winger?” Egghead asked, shoving a cigarette in his trap and digging in his pocket for matches. I struggled to pay attention to the conversation, all the while turning my focus back to Edgy’s Colt…

  “Oh, I don’t know his name, Benny.” Of course he didn’t; I’d left my wallet back in my office. Didn’t want my name on me during a B-and-E job, did I? “But I know why he’s here.”

  He aimed his narrow, lying peepers my way. “And we both know who sent you, don’t we?” Even here, with an audience of five—four on the payroll, and one that he was probably measuring for a pine overcoat—he couldn’t switch off the politician. His voice was sharp, clear, echoing in the massive room; he coulda been addressing a rally of hundreds.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him, grinning around a mouthful of blood. “I’m just a janitor. Had to break in, ’cause I forgot my key. And my uniform.” I shrugged, as much as the rope binding my hands behind the back of the chair would let me. “What can I say? I’m new at this.”

  Either I wasn’t nearly as funny as I thought I was, or Muscles laughs with his fists, not his mouth. I’ll let you decide which. Either way, I quit talking for a spell.

  “Now, Ronnie,” Winger said, “that shouldn’t be necessary any longer.” Something in the committeeman’s voice made me look his way, almost losing my concentration on Edgy in the process. His tone hadn’t changed much, but his words tasted wrong. Angry. The lines around his eyes and mouth were sharp enough to shave with.

  “So this is how Baskin wants to play it?” he asked me. “Send some sap to come and burgle my place? Fine. We’ll play. This is on his head, and yours.” Winger brushed a few strands of thin hair from his face with the back of his hand, shoved the envelope into the inside pocket of his jacket, and reached for the office phone. He actually turned back toward me, as he lifted the receiver to his ear, so I could watch.

  Louse. I hate politicians.

  “Operator?” His lips were practically on the candlestick’s mouthpiece, making love to the thing. “Glenview 0898, please.”

  I knew that exchange; he was calling Baskin at home. Nice guy.

  “You’ll want…”

  He and the gang of four barely glanced my way as I paused long enough to spit out the last of the blood. “What was that?” Winger asked. I could faintly hear the sound of ringing on the other end of the line.

  “You’ll wanna put down the blower,” I said. “Before you embarrass yourself.”

  Three chuckles and two pairs of rolled blinkers were all I got from that pronouncement. And why not? Even if I hadn’t been tightly roped to a heavy wooden chair, I’d already taken a beating that’d keep a strong man down for hours, and put a weak one in the hospital.

  Two things they mighta wanted to know right then. First, I heal fast. Damn fast; it takes a lot more than a beating to lay me up longer than a few minutes, no matter how bad. And second, I coulda been free of the ropes half a minute after they tied me up. Not only are my joints a lot more flexible than most, but Mustache left a lot of slack in the loops.

  Why? Because it’s an easy mistake to make if you don’t know your knots, and I’d been concentrating real hard on how much I wanted him to make it, that’s why. All I’d been waiting for was…

  (I felt the aura of luck around Edgy’s roscoe, the chains of cause and effect that had to go just right for the mechanism to function, finally deflate beneath the pressure I’d been willing into it on and off for the past ten minutes.)

  …That.

  I stood up—rope dangling loosely from around my left wrist—spun the chair around me like it was my partner on the dance floor at the Savoy, and used it to return some of the loving attention that Muscles had been giving me over the course of the evening. He doubled up around the wood and hit the carpet, puking up bloody chunks of what might once have been cheap sausage.

  It still didn’t smell as bad as the rest of the damn office.

  For a heartbeat or two, everyone just gaped at me as though I’d sprouted a zeppelin. The receiver fell from Winger’s fingers, a nervous, twitching tail dangling at his side. The cigarette tumbled from Egghead’s kisser and bounced across the carpet in a mini-Fourth of July; the room was so quiet, we could actually hear the embers sizzling as they scattered. It was just luck that they didn’t ignite anything.

  Or maybe it’s because I didn’t want them to. I’m not always entirely sure, when it comes to little quirks of fortune like that.

  Edgy was, well, on edge, and acted before any of the others. He raised the Colt in a trembling hand—but not trembling enough to throw off his aim at this range—and squeezed the trigger.

  Something inside—probably the firing pin, by the sound of it—snapped with a dull twang, and Edgy found his fist wrapped around a Browning Colt M1911 doorstop.

  I was off and running before any of ’em had quite doped out what was happening. I put a haymaker across Egghead’s chin hard enough that he wouldn’t have to shave for a week, and he collapsed in a heap that I mighta called boneless if my throbbing knuckles didn’t prove there was a pretty solid jawbone in there. I yanked his coat from the chair where he’d draped it and spun, beating feet toward my favorite public servant, Committeeman Winger.

  Who was, himself, making a pretty convincing sprint for the closest door.

  Mustache moved to intercept me, yanking a .38 special from his jacket. No way I could deal with that one the way I had Edgy’s; even if I’d had the time to focus on it, it’s a lot harder for me to disable a revolver than a semi. Simpler mechanism, older technology. Maybe if I’d pulled my own piece from Egghead’s jacket, but I hadn’t had even a second to dig for it yet…

  So I did what any normal Joe does when he’s got the pipe of a gun pointed his way: I ducked.

  More accurately, I hurled myself frantically to the side, plowing into one of the desks so we went tumbling in a splayed mess of limbs both flesh and wood. (Bad enough that the corners of the damn thing dug into my ribs something fierce, but they managed to catch three different spots that Muscles had already tenderized like a cheap steak. Of course.)

  It did the trick, though. I heard the boom of flying lead, and the softer crack as the slugs chewed through the far wall or into the wooden shield I was hunkering behind, but other than an ugly splinter across the back of my left hand, it didn’t cause me any pain.

  I may heal fast, and I may die a lot harder than you mugs, but that don’t make getting shot any fun.

  So, I couldn’t hide here forever. The desk was already about ready to disintegrate, I couldn’t be sure how long the other guys were out of the fight, and Winger was getting farther away with every breath. I stood up from behind the broken heap, shoved the luck I’d pulled from Edgy’s Colt into the short length of rope still coiled around my wrist, and threw it.

  Mustache tried to knock it aside so it didn’t hit him in the face, tried to shoot me at the same time—and the .38’s hammer came down and lodged in the hemp fibers.

  You can do a lot with a little extra luck, if you know how.

  But it was only a little. Mustache was frantically tugging at the loose strands, trying to clear the hammer, and it probably wouldn’t take him long to pull it off. Edgy was digging in Muscles’s coat over one of the other chairs, probably going for the larger man’s roscoe, and Muscles himself was groaning and starting to struggle upright.

  On the other hand, I was packing now
, too.

  From Egghead’s jacket pocket, I slid the wand he’d found so damn peculiar: a Luchtaine & Goodfellow Model 1592. It sat in my hand like it was a part of me. No surprise there; considering how long I’ve had it, I’ve actually worn down the wood to fit my fist. The dverga who sold it to me so long ago swore up and down that it actually contains a sliver of the raft that carried King Arthur to Avalon; I don’t know if I buy any of that, but on the square or not, the wand’s never let me down yet.

  I raked the L&G across Winger’s goons, reaching through the mystic conduit to fiddle with the images behind their eyes. I gathered strands of shadow from the blind spots at the corners of their vision, smeared it across the rest of their sight; not as elegant as just painting myself out of the room, or making them see me somewhere I wasn’t, but even with the wand, this was a lot faster. For just a few moments, their worlds went dark as the inside of a gas tank.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Hey, who killed the lights?”

  “Ronnie, that you? Where are you?”

  “I’m over here!”

  “Who’s that?!”

  At which point, genius that he was, Edgy started squirting metal at every sound he didn’t immediately recognize. Powdered plaster and chipped marble fell from the walls and the columns, steel crumpled and typewriter keys flew free, and Mustache and Muscles dove blindly for cover. I heard a loud thunk, a pained squawk, and another of the desks collapsed, putting Muscles completely out of action for the second time.

  Figuring that oughta keep them all busy for a few minutes, I snuffled once—the smell of burnt gunpowder always makes me wanna sneeze—and went hunting for Floyd Winger.

  * * *

  I practically skidded across the rough carpet, doors banging behind me, and slid into the brass railing on the balcony beyond. A quick peek down into the first-floor atrium didn’t show me much of anything useful: big honking secretary’s desk, bunch of potted ferns, marble flooring with swirls the color of watered-down Pepto-Bismol. Of course, I couldn’t see anything beneath the balcony, but at least the front door was firmly shut and there was no sight or sound of Winger anywhere near ’em.