Podmore, P.I. - Part 20
Chicago, 1926. The twentieth century struck this city with a vengeance, bringing the whirl of the cars and factories, the mob and the hookers, the cops and the lawyers, the smoke and the speed. Prohibition didn't slow it down - if anything, telling Chicago "no" just made it shout "Yes, yes, yes!" even louder. It rolled over and showed its underbelly, and it thrived.
There's one man who's determined to get some of the fleas out, though, and it's Sturgis Podmore, Private Investigator. An honest man in a town full of crooks, a good cop who thinks he's a bad cop, he took Celeste Lestrange's money with every expectation that he wouldn't find a damn thing. Now the more he finds, the less he likes...but justice hasn't got much of anyone else on her side these days.
When we last left our detective he'd finally managed to shake some answers from Detective Pete Pettigrew (with a little help from department secretary Alex Savage) and ran into ace reporter Betty Braithwaite on her way out of a little conversation with banker Patrice Nott. Now, time to have a look in on Bones and Moody's investigation, and pay a visit back to 738 Burrow Street.
* * *
Paranoia has a way of settling on a man. It starts from someplace legitimate, usually. He has a close call, or maybe a lot of close calls, and he starts to watch his back a little more than most. That only has to save him once before it becomes ingrained as a habit. You saw it on cops a lot, and you saw it even more on cops that didn't have the protection of the department anymore.
Podmore was well aware that he was paranoid. He was fine with being paranoid. Being paranoid kept people on their feet and off the coroner's slab. He knew that Bones and Moody were perfectly capable of handling a case - hell, they were the best in town - but he just couldn't help going to the bank to find out how things were going. He didn't have much new to give them - just that when it came time to make a case, they'd need to go find Pettigrew in Kansas, really. Mostly he just wanted a little look at things.
And from the looks of things, they were doing just fine. They had asked their questions, hadn't answered any of Betty Braithwaite's, and they'd collected more boxes of files for review than even Alastor Gumboil had ever seen. It was going to be slow going now, though, which was always Podmore's least favorite part of police work. The drudgery of picking through paper evidence and looking for "irregularities" was dull, hard, thankless work, and he was glad he had Sully to take some of it off his hands these days. Just thinking of all the paper his buddies at the FBI would be sifting through made him think he should probably pay his secretary more, or at least get her some flowers.
But that was the stuff of tomorrow. He called in the office to fill Sully in, then went to check in at Burrow Street before heading home himself.
Despite her high-society upbringing, Chloe seemed to be getting on just fine on the south side. When Podmore hit Burrow Street, she was sitting on the floor with baby Ron in her lap and Percy (who seemed to have adopted her) sitting beside her. They were drawing pictures with crayons. Percy was drawing what was either a dog, a rabbit, a cat, or maybe a rat. Chloe had a page covered in different colored daisies.
"You know, in my day we had to get by with charcoal and pencils," Podmore said, because that was his idea of announcing himself. It worked, anyway. Got their attention - a snaggle-toothed grin from Percy, a wide-eyed stare from the baby, and Chloe looked up from her flowers and pressed her lips together.
She needed to talk to him, but none of it was anything children needed to hear. There were enough innocent people caught up in her problems already, these little boys included. They were in danger just by her being here, and if she didn't need so badly to get Regulus out of the mess he was in, she would already have been gone. This was one thing she had to see through, though, and she couldn't end it unless she had all the information.
"Bill?" she called out. The twelve year old heard and came trotting down the stairs almost instantaneously.
"Need help, Miss Chloe?" he asked, apparently not too bothered to be disturbed from his homework.
"Thank you, Bill," she said. "Can you just stay with Ron and Percy for a few minutes while I talk to Mr. Podmore?"
"Sure!"
The change of the guard was quickly effected, and Chloe stepped out onto the back steps. Podmore followed, and found that as soon as he shut the door Miss Wilkes was already giving him an expectant look.
"We're makin' progress," he told her. She was still giving him the same look. "Look, I've got my guys with the feds on it. They're takin' apart the business at the bank, and--"
"What business at the bank?" Chloe crossed her arms. "And Molly said something about the police department. I heard her talking to Arthur, and I know someone there has to be in on it for Regulus to get arrested for something he didn't do."
The girl was sharp as a tack, and no mistake. Lying to her wasn't going to cut it, and really there wasn't any need to. If she knew what was going on, maybe that would impress upon her the need to be careful. Better to just lay it all out there for her.
"It's trouble from the top down," he said. "Riddle's running a game through the bank, moving money around to both the big mob families. Fenwick found out about it, and Barty Crouch Junior's the one who iced him for it. Dorcas Meadowes found out about that, and now she's dead too. You seein' a pattern here?"
Later, he would wish that he had known about Riddle's hand in the death of the Wilkes parents. If he had, he might have recognized the steel in her eyes, the determination. He might have seen then what it was she was beginning to plan. But then again...maybe there was never another way it could have gone.
"Has anyone warned Meredith?" she asked, quiet.
"It's taken care of." From what Emmeline had said, Podmore could at least assure her of that. It would be good to be able to tell her at least one thing good.
The girl nodded, her eyes fixing on her shoes for a moment, and then she looked up to stare him right in the face. "I need to see Regulus."
"See him?" Podmore looked at her like she was crazy. "You can't see him. He's in the fu--he's in the jailhouse. I only managed to get in to see him last time 'cause there weren't any eyes on me. Now there for sure are, and if those eyes get on you, you're dead."
"What if we go at night?" she asked, desperate for a way. Her voice was breaking, coming down to nothing but a whisper. "Please, Mr. Podmore. I need to see him."
One last time, she had to see him. Just in case...in case there was never another chance. Knowing what she now knew, Chloe wasn't sure of a way out anymore - only an ending.
Podmore didn't like it, not a bit, but he could see how much she needed this. If she needed it...there might be a way. He grimaced, but he stood. "C'mon."
Chloe looked up, amazed. Obviously she hadn't expected that to work. "You can get me in there?"
"No," the detective evenly replied. "But I might know a guy who can. We're goin' to the Hogshead."
"Sirius?" The girl's expression darkened, making her feelings on the clarinetist good and clear.
Podmore wasn't real interested in her personal feelings on the matter, and gave her a pointed look. "You wanna see your boyfriend or not?"
A fair point. For this, she would do what she had to do - even if it meant being civil to Sirius Black. Podmore began walking toward the Hogshead, and she followed.
She had never been in such a place, and wasn't anywhere near prepared for the smoke, the dark, the jazz, or the heavily bearded old man behind the bar. He was jovial in spite of looking like a mountain goat, and gave her a plain soda water along with whiskey for the detective.
"Thanks, Abe," Podmore said with a nod. "When's your band get here?"
"Seven," Aberforth replied. "Which, since they're musicians, means eight."
The detective snorted. "Musicians after my own heart. So any minute now, huh?"
"Right you are! Time for at least three cigarettes and two whiskeys."
Podmore laughed and lit up while Chloe fidgeted uncomfortably. She busied herself with her drink, looking as if she'd like to sink into the floor and disappear. Then the band walked in, and she just plain bristled like a ticked off cat - Podmore half expected her to start hissing as he waved the clarinet player over. She stayed silent, though, content to stare like she was trying to bore holes through Black's forehead.
"Chloe needs to see your brother, but I can't have her name on the sign-in," Podmore said, because he didn't have time for teenage staring games. "You're family. Can you get Chloe in with you?"
Sirius shook his head. "He sees my name on the roster, he'll never even agree to look at it. But Lily can do it."
It was rare that Podmore was surprised, but Black managed it with that comment. "Your piano player can get Chloe in for a visit at the Cook County Jail?"
"And anybody else, too." Black shrugged. "She knows a guy. Long as you don't mention my name or James's, he'll do it for Lil."
Sure enough, Black was dead right about that. They couldn't manage it until the next evening, but the guard on front desk duty for the night shift was an old buddy of Lily's from when they were kids: Officer Snape. Clearly he was about as junior as officers got, and he was real nervous about cutting them a break, but he had some kind of motivation to help them out. "You've only got a couple minutes," he said, resisting the urge to ask why Lily hadn't come herself. This was something he would have done just for Regulus, though - the younger Black brother joined Lily Potter in the small group of people Severus Snape called friends, and he knew what Chloe meant to him. "Go quick, say what you need to say, and get out - otherwise I lose my job and you're probably dead."
Obedient, they booked it down the hall fast. Podmore didn't think he'd ever made the visitors' room so quickly. Time still seemed to be flying by when they came in, just by how quickly Regulus got to his feet when he laid eyes on Chloe. Podmore couldn't tell if the kid was more shocked, happy, or horrified to see her; he wasn't sure Regulus knew, himself. It had clearly been a long time, though, judging by the way they were rushing to each other.
"What are you doing here?!" Regulus demanded. "You're supposed to be out of town! Way out of town!"
"I told you I wouldn't leave you!" Chloe whispered fiercely, taking his hands in hers. "And I won't."
"You're going to get yourself killed like this." His voice was just as low as hers, and for the first time his cool countenance broke. Light as a feather, his hand brushed over her cheek. She threw her arms around him, holding him tightly as just a few tiny tears began to dot his shirt. It was clear neither of them necessarily expected to see the other again. They might well be right.
"A'right, nobody's gettin' killed," the detective flatly replied. Podmore felt like a peeping tom, observing this soft and intimate moment. It made him uncomfortable, witnessing this overflow of emotion - which meant that it needed to be over now. "We're making progress, and if you'd both just do like I tell ya, we'll get you both outta here without a scratch."
Regulus kept his arms around Chloe, but he nodded. "What do we need to do?"
"Lay low," the detective said in a tone that wasn't made to be argued with. "You've seen each other, you know everybody's alive and well, and now I need you to play it cool and act like you got some damn sense in here, and I need her to stay with Molly and keep outta the way so I can work us through this thing."
"We will," Regulus promised, because he still had hope that Celeste's machinations with this detective were going to get him out of here. The first thing he'd do when he was would be to grab Chloe and make a run for anywhere but here. He'd always wanted to travel, and running would be an excellent start to it.
He gave Chloe one last tight hug, and then a kiss that Sturgis obligingly turned his back for. Then it was time to get the hell out before they were spotted and the Snape kid lost his job. Chloe needed to get back to Burrow Street before Molly had a stroke about her being out late two nights in a row and started giving a lecture about how he was a bad influence, and Podmore still needed to find out just what the hell Betty Braithwaite knew. There was no chance of catching her at home in daylight hours, but he was pretty sure she'd be in by the time he got Chloe dropped off and tucked in and let Molly finish chewing him out.
When he knocked on her apartment door, though, it wasn't Betty who answered: it was Gawain Robards.