Podmore, P.I. - Part 16
Chicago, 1926. A vicious August heatwave holds the city in its grip, but the denizens of the town are used to being oppressed from every direction. If it's not the crooked cops it's the Mob, and if it's not them it's City Hall. Good thing there's short skirts, bathtub gin, and jazz in joints like the Hogshead to make it all bearable. That is, until the police raid the joint again.
When we last left the detective, he'd just woken up in the last place he wanted to be (his ex-wife's new house), with the last person he wanted to see (his ex-wife and her teenage sidekick), in the last circumstances he wanted to be in (shot). As we rejoin him, he is finally moving on...
* * *
"Ready?
Podmore gave a stiff nod and started walking. Two days wasn't really enough recovery time for a gunshot wound that hadn't even gone to an actual doctor, but Sturgis Podmore was tough enough to bear up under the pain, and he had things to do. Besides, he couldn't take any more of his ex-wife and her damn new husband. The detective didn't hate his ex-wife, not by any means. He was really very fond of her, even loved her in his own way. It was just that they got along a lot better when they didn't spend more than twenty minutes at a time in each other's company.
"If you need another day's rest, we don't mind havin' you," his host continued blithely. To a casual passer-by, Colonel Angus MacDougal would have sounded perfectly polite. It took a few years' experience with the man to spot the implied "if you're some kind of weakling, because, ya know, I walked four miles with a bullet in my thigh at the Marne, and..." that came along with the comment. Bastard.
"Would've thought a horse and buggy'd suit your era better," Podmore coolly replied.
"I'm sure I could find a jackass to match your attitude, if you--"
"Angus..." The warning tone came from Lydia, who met the men at the bottom of the stairs looking at them like a pair of badly-behaved schoolboys. Indeed, her husband (who was a fifty-three year old soldier in the United States Army, dammit) narrowly restrained an urge to point out "But he started it!"
Instead, he smiled just a hair too sharply. "Yes, dear?"
She must have caught the smug smile her ex-husband was developing, because her next glare was shot straight at him. "Oh, don't look innocent," she told him. "One day, you two should learn to act like grown men instead of teenagers. And you!" Lydia stroke forward and gave him a sharp poke in the middle of his chest. "You get shot again, and I'll shoot your head off. Is that clear?"
Dames. Couldn't live with 'em, and if you shot 'em you did twenty to life in Joliet.
"Got it," he replied, on his way to the door. "See you in September." Because September was when Lacey would be home for a week from her summer program before going back to school for the regular year. They'd do a few dinners, he'd get to spend a couple days hanging out with his daughter (because God knew she couldn't stay at his rattrap of an apartment), and all grownups involved would put their differences aside for the little blond girl.
But in the meantime, it was business as usual - which meant sniping at each other and Podmore getting the hell out as fast as he could to get back to work. Gunshot wounds might hurt, but not near as bad as sitting around Angus MacDougal and knowing he was indebted to the man.
He had the MacDougals' driver put him out at his apartment. While his first instinct was to go straight to the office, Podmore knew he needed a shower and a change of clothes first - and to look in and make sure they hadn't trashed his place after they came after him. He knew better than to keep any sensitive information in there, but that didn't mean no one would go looking there.
Sure enough, it was clear enough from one look at the door that someone had been in since he was last there. It never closed right without lifting up on the knob, and without knowing the trick you had to jam it and leave it sitting a little crooked in the frame. Whoever'd done it wasn't too strong, or was trying to get out quick; it wasn't even very far in the frame.
In the heavy silence, the detective pulled his gun. No telling if someone might be waiting to finish the job they started at the Hogshead. With it ready to fire in a second's movement, he gave the door a sharp kick to fling it open.
A scream, shrill and terrified, rang out from inside. Standing in front of him with her hands up was a young woman he didn't recognize, dark-haired and wide-eyed, her expression terrified as she backed toward the wall.
"Please don't shoot!" she pleaded, speaking as quickly as she could. "I'm sorry I broke in. I just didn't know where else to go."
"Who the hell are you?" Podmore snapped, still keeping her in his sights. It didn't take long in his line of work to learn that dames could be just as good at playing poisonous snakes in the grass as men could - sometimes better.
The girl bit her lip, and he started to finally notice that she was very young. No older than Black and Company, he'd say, and maybe younger. She didn't look like she meant harm, either; she looked frightened half to death. If she'd meant to start anything, she probably would've started shooting as soon as the door was open, and she would've taken it from some kind of cover.
Her hands shook, and so did her voice as she finally spoke. "Chloe Wilkes," she said softly. "And Celeste told me to get out of town, but I can't leave Regulus. I just can't."
Dammit.
Podmore sighed heavily, lowering his gun. "Have you got any idea how much trouble you're askin' for, lady?" he asked, annoyed. "You shoulda been on the first train to New York days ago, or better yet California."
The girl's back straightened, and her chin lifted. Her fear wasn't gone, but the detective could see her push it back as if it were a physical thing, like a blanket that had been pulled over her head to guard against the things that went bump in the night. Celeste Lestrange, he began to think, might have underestimated her friend. There was a thread of steel running up that girl's spine, and no mistake.
"I said I'm not leaving him, and I meant it," she said. "He's in there because of me, and one way or another I will get him out."
"Oh, Christ," Podmore muttered. Just what he needed: an eighteen year old china doll for a sidekick. "No," he said flatly. "If there's any gettin' him out, me and the FBI're gonna get him out. And you...you are gonna go far, far away where you're safe, and I'll ring ya up when your boyfriend's leavin' lockup."
Chloe Wilkes didn't even flinch, standing there in her proper little girl dress and her sensible black heels. She didn't move, didn't take so much as a single step or even wiggle a finger. She stood stone-still, a marble statue carved into pure determination. She reminded him of Addie MacFusty staring him down with her Winchester.
"I'm not leaving Chicago," she said softly, but there was just as much iron under the velvet of her voice as there was in her stick-straight posture. "Not until Regulus is either free or in Joliet - and I'm not letting him go to Joliet."
Dammit again.
The detective grimaced and his jaw tightened, and he was pretty sure he felt a headache coming on. He very quietly cursed again as he slowly became resigned to his fate. "'dya bring any stuff here?" he muttered.
"Just one bag," the girl quietly replied.
"Well pick it up," Podmore ordered. "Ya sure as hell can't stay here."
For a moment, Chloe looked stunned, and he realized she thought he was just going to boot her out on the street. "Oh, ferchrissakes," he complained loudly. "I'm not gonna leave you on the corner or somethin'. We're goin' down to Burrow Street - I got a friend there you can stay with while we work this mess out."