The Calorium Wars Read online

  “Wait a minute,” Liam exclaimed. Chen was bowing to the grocer and backing towards the door, and a moment later he was outside on the sidewalk looking around. Liam and Crazy Horse waved to him, since catching anybody’s attention was no joke in the midst of the rushing, jostling Bedlam.

  “Hey, Ambrose!” bellowed Liam.

  “Siuda, durak!” yelled Crazy Horse.

  Chen stopped abruptly, looked towards his companions’ voices, and then pushed his way towards them through the crowd wearing a look so grim that Liam immediately feared for the worst.

  “Are they OK?” he asked Chen.

  Chen shook his head. “They’re prisoners,” he said in a voice cracking with anxiety. “Evidently that blackguard Stanton circularized every port on the continent, warning them to look out for members of a family trying to secure passage back to China and to arrest them immediately and hold them. They were to notify Stanton at once, and upon physical receipt of the Chen family Stanton’s representatives would pay a reward of $50,000 in gold.” He cursed bitterly in Chinese, then went back to Russian: “Naturally every criminal gang from the California Guberniia to northern Maine joined the search as well, with the result that my family are presently in the custody of a local gangster named McCluskey!”

  Liam frowned and shook his head. “I knew Fergus McCluskey back in New York after the War,” he said, “and he was as poisonous a snake as Stanton. He killed one of the baby Whyos for picking his pocket—beat him to death with a blackjack—and he had to light out for California when the two Dannys put a price on his head. Did the guy in the grocery tell you how to find him?”

  Chen nodded heavily, unable to speak.

  “Relax,” Crazy Horse said to Chen in a kindly tone, “we’ll have them back for you by dinnertime. Right, Lev Frentsisovich?”

  Liam grinned wryly. “In time for a midnight snack, anyway. Come on, let’s go!”

  He gestured to Chen to lead the way, and a moment later Liam and Crazy Horse were struggling to keep up as Chen shoved his way through the crowds like a battering ram, heading back the way they had come.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Following Chen at a semi-trot, they had rapidly moved out of the stinking rookeries of the Calle de los Negros into a series of increasingly pleasant middle-class streets and finally into a classy district that reminded Liam of Shore Road in Brooklyn: big houses set well back from the road amid enough greenery for an arboretum or two. Liam hoped they would be reaching their destination soon, since the only thing that was keeping him from getting tetchy about the pace Chen was setting was the thought that Chen had, after all, been tortured a lot worse than he had and it had barely been two days since they had escaped from Stanton’s clutches.

  The trouble was, Chen was so obsessed with freeing his family that he hadn’t uttered a word throughout their crazy half-sprint, so Liam had no idea when they were supposed to be reaching their goal. If it wasn’t going to be a whole lot longer, he could stay mum. But if this was going to be some kind of cross-country race, like maybe to those mountains over there in the background, he was going to have to put his foot down. And not pick it up again until they hired a carriage! For the luvva Mike! He wasn’t an athlete, he lived a nice quiet life cracking cribs, and what’s more he’d just finished three months in solitary, it’s not like you could get a lot of exercise organizing cockroach races!

  And he was starting to pant, which was embarrassing. If only he could think of something that would catch Chen’s attention, something that long-legged madman might think was really gripping, maybe he’d have to slow down a little while he thought it over. Something about Oxford? Something about alchemy? Something … after a moment or two of deep thought, inspiration struck:

  “Oh, right, Ambrose!” Liam called out. “I forgot, Tom Edison told me something really big that he wanted me to pass on to you!”

  Chen threw him an irritable look, like: “Don’t bother me with petty stuff,” but Liam ploughed on doggedly:

  “Yeah, it was about that guy Lee that you told us about, you know, the alchemist?”

  Without missing a beat, Chen turned and snapped at him crossly: “The man is not an alchemist, he is the paltriest sort of dabbler, and furthermore he has betrayed my trust over and over again! What on earth would Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, know or care about a self-promoting scoundrel like Lee?”

  Liam smiled to himself: the hook was setting, he just had to play it right and maybe they’d get to draw a breath or two:

  “I don’t know about the alchemist part, but Edison said he was just talking to a colleague from back East who arrived in Los Angeles yesterday by fast airship. It seems Lee is billing himself as a metallurgist now, and …”

  “A WHAT??” roared Chen, coming to a halt so abrupt that the three of them almost ran into each other. “That insufferable simpleton doesn’t know any more about metallurgy than I do about the fine points of Azerbaijani cuisine!”

  Liam shrugged. “It’s just a word, Ambrose. Lee probably figured out that calling himself an alchemist would make an old mossback like Stanton nervous, so he picked himself a nice, modern, businesslike title like metallurgist …”

  Chen interrupted him with an impatient wave of the hand: “The difference between the world of magic and the world of business is too fundamental to be tut-tutted away by talk of ‘mere semantics.’ You can’t standardize magic or package it or market it in carefully measured units. Above all, magic stands in a totally different relationship to the natural world. Magic depends on a deep empathy with the natural world, on acceptance of the basic identity of the magician and the world around him.

  “Business, on the other hand, strives to manipulate the world, to chop it up into easily handled pieces whose characteristics can be reproduced over and over again. The anti-magical science and technology that have developed out of the business world’s need for dependable processes of manipulation have led to a basically bullying relationship towards the natural world—that’s why people of that sort are always speaking of ‘conquering’ nature. That’s how a metallurgist relates to metals—they must be made to bow to his purposes so that the results can be measured and marketed.”

  Chen ground his teeth frustratedly and glared at Liam as if he might bite him just to relieve his feelings. Liam held up his hands in a placating gesture:

  “Hey, do I look like a businessman? I rob businessmen, OK? I’m just passing along what Edison told me. He said he’s extremely worried about the dangers of calorium in general, and he was even more worried now that he’d heard that Stanton had Lee working on making calorium out of molten lead.”

  Chen swayed as if he’d been struck, his face turning that horrible parchment color that Liam had seen on him only once before, back on the Straight Up. “Oh, dear God in Heaven!” Chen said in a strangled voice. “If we can’t get back to Washington in time to stop him …”

  His voice trailed away and he stood there lost in thought for a moment before he visibly forced himself to push his thoughts aside. “We have no time to waste,” he said to Liam and Crazy Horse, “literally no time to waste. There are a few things I can do at long distance, but they will only be palliative. We must get to Washington as rapidly as possible and make sure that Lee is stopped or there will be a terrible accident!”

  With that he took off down the street at a flat run, leaving his companions to stay with him as best they could and Liam to give himself a talking-to about keeping his brilliant ideas to himself. And also to wonder about McCluskey, who seemed to have come up in the world amazingly since Liam had known him back in Five Points.

  Liam looked around curiously as they jogged along, automatically casing the big houses as possible jobs and wondering: how had a two-bit house sneak and swindler like Fergus McCluskey managed to buy a home in a swell neighborhood like this—a wide, tree-lined street of walled estates any one of which Liam would have loved to visit in the middle of the night with his little black bag. And which Che
n sailed by one after another like they were only mirages until he came to a second abrupt halt outside an eight-foot wrought-iron gate with a giant, gilded “McC” worked into a shield in its middle.

  “This is it,” Chen said in a grim voice. “McCluskey’s lair.”

  The others caught up, panting, and moved in to look over his shoulder at a long, curving gravel driveway lined by gnarled old live oaks and—a hundred yards or so from the gate—a sprawling three-story red-brick house in the ugliest and most forbidding Victorian Gothic style surrounded by smaller red-brick outbuildings like military barracks.

  “Well, look at this!” Liam said with a big grin. “They must have known I was coming.” Underneath the gilded “McC” was a steel plate a foot square with a dial lock in its center, strongly reminiscent of the lock on a bank safe.

  “Stand back, boys!” he said, and rubbing his fingertips briskly on the brick wall he took hold of the lock’s knob and with his ear against the metal plate spun the dial slowly to the left until he’d turned it a couple of times, then repeated the operation in the other direction.

  “Pooh!” Liam muttered, making a face. “Too easy, that’s no fun!”

  And quickly turning the dial again, this time right, left and then right, he opened the lock and gave the gate a push so that it swung back towards the house with a protesting squeak.

  “After you, gentlemen,” he said, bowing low and gesturing them in.

  As they walked up the drive towards the house even Chen slowed down, feeling a kind of oppressive heaviness in the twilight shade of the massive live oaks and the eerie silence of the grounds. Squatting down next to the lawn, he picked up a clump of sod and knocked the earth out into his hand; then he inspected it, nodding as if some guess had been confirmed, and transferred the dirt to his coat pocket.

  “There’s something wrong with this place,” Chen said, “and I don’t just mean McCluskey. Do you feel it?”

  Crazy Horse and Liam nodded wordlessly, Crazy Horse wearing a queasy look as if he were on the verge of throwing up.

  “Many deaths,” he said in Lakota Sioux; then, as the others looked at him curiously he held up his hand and shook his head, unable to say more.

  As they reached the front door it swung open even before Chen reached for the knocker, revealing a huge, ape-like bruiser with a jaw like a gorilla and a sneering smile of purely human meanness:

  “Well, well,” he said in a heavy brogue, “if it isn’t Liam McCool and a couple of his pansy pals. Give us a kiss, then, will you Liam me darlin’?”

  Liam made a disgusted face. “Mikey Finnerty,” he said, “still beating the odds after all these years. I was sure somebody would have rid the world of you long ago, but maybe Fergus taking you under his wing has changed your luck.”

  Finnerty’s face set hard as he felt the sting of Liam’s contempt. “I reckon me luck’s just lovely,” he said in a flat tone. “How’s yours?”

  Without any further warning he threw a looping punch at Liam, who moved under it so fast that his companions could barely follow it, pushing his shoulder hard into Finnerty’s gut and grabbing his legs behind the knees at the same time that he went into a squat, pivoting under the big man and standing up again abruptly as he let go of his burden so that Finnerty was launched through the air like a boulder from a ballista. Screaming with terror as he flew across a spacious vestibule tiled in alternating squares of black and white, Finnerty careened into a huge stuffed horse clad in battle armor, bearing an equally huge armored knight holding a battle axe in one hand and a broadsword in the other. The impact was spectacular: Finnerty, pieces of armor, knight and horse flying in every direction and crashing to the tiled floor with a din that resounded through the building like a train wreck.

  The three companions surveyed the wreckage with the judicious half-smiles of connoisseurs contemplating a great painting:

  “Well done.” Chen said.

  “Molodets, ty!” Crazy Horse said.

  Liam smiled appreciatively as he picked up his stick and his hat. “Jiu jitsu,” he said modestly, “sometimes you just don’t have time to fool around with all that magic stuff.”

  At that, a door across the hall was flung open with a resounding bang and a fat, red-faced man with a fringe of grizzled red hair burst into the vestibule yelling …

  “What in the bloody hell … ?”

  … and came to a sharp stop as he took in his trio of visitors.

  “Well, well, well!” he said with oily mock pleasure. “What a treat! Liam McCool, as I live and breathe. And I expect you must be Mr. Chen,” he said to Ambrose, “come to ask after your nearest and dearest. And you’ve brought along a redskin to round out the menagerie!”

  A groan issued from the wreckage where the display of armor had stood and a series of clanks and clatters arose as Finnerty struggled to regain consciousness. In spite of himself, McCluskey darted a look at the pile of junk and frowned. Liam grinned:

  “It’s a cryin’ shame you can’t find better help, Fergie,” he said. “I’m thinking Finnerty must have tripped over his own shoelaces.”

  McCluskey returned the grin with clenched teeth: “Is that so? Well normally Mikey would be my butler but under the circumstances maybe you won’t mind if I show you into the study meself.” He gestured towards the open door: “After you, boys.”

  “Maybe not,” Liam said. “Backshooters make me nervous.”

  “Suit yourself,” said McCluskey with an edge, heading into the study without looking back.

  “I’ll go first,” Liam murmured to the others, reaching around under his jacket and pulling his Colt Peacemaker out of the back of his pants. Clicking back the hammer he entered the study and found McCluskey seated at an elaborately carved mahogany desk. Radiating hostility and a kind of sneering self-confidence, he waved dismissively at Liam’s pistol:

  “You can put away the blunderbuss, McCool, if I decide you need shooting, I’ll have one of my boys do it.”

  “Maybe I’ll just keep it handy,” Liam said, dropping it into his jacket pocket. “Anyway, we’re not planning to stay long, so just have one of your boys bring us Mr. Chen’s family and we’ll be on our way.”

  “Did you know my place is built on an old Indian burial ground?” McCluskey asked with a grin. Crazy Horse cursed in Lakota Sioux and McCluskey’s grin turned into an unpleasant laugh. “That’s right, redskin, it’s packed to the rafters with Gabrielino Indian stiffs, and in fact all of Los Angeles used to be a Gabrielino village called Yang-Na until the good padres from the San Gabriel Mission started civilizing them. So I don’t see myself being too put out by digging three new holes out there for the three of you.”

  “How about that?” Liam said. “You’ve moved up in the world, Fergie. From being a cheap punk you’ve turned into a real honest-to-goodness murderer.”

  “Hey,” McCluskey said, “why do you think they call it the Land of Opportunity?”

  “Well here’s another opportunity for you,” Liam said. “Have Chen’s people brought here right now and we’ll be on our way without doing you any harm. OK?”

  McCluskey laughed uproariously. “Say, McCool, you’ve got some brassbound gall. Why not? I’ll kill the three of you right in front of them. That should be good for some fun!” He picked up a voicewire apparatus and spoke into it: “Frankie? Round up those Chinks we got working in the kitchen and bring them to my office. Yeah, right now, whaddyou think, tomorrow?”

  “So,” Chen said quietly. “You have my family working in your kitchens, do you?”

  “That’s right,” McCluskey said, “what did you expect, I’ll feed them for free? Tell you the truth, I don’t even like having Chinks around, you people give me the willies. I’d kill your family right along with you if I weren’t expecting to get good money for them from Stanton’s boys. As for ‘murder,’ McCool, obviously you don’t get how politics work way out here in the Bear Flag Republic. Sure, Holy Joe Barnum wants law and order, and Mayor Tommy backs him, but the re
al law around here is the police, and I own them. Get it?”

  Before Liam could answer, there was a knock at the study door and a moment later it swung open as a half-dozen terrified-looking Chinese were herded into the room by a man dressed in a cook’s uniform.

  “Here they are, Boss,” the man said.

  “OK, Frankie,” McCluskey said, “now get out of here.”

  Frankie gave him an uneasy little half bow and left in a hurry. McCluskey turned and watched Chen, grinning as the tall Chinese exchanged eye language with his family.

  “Some reunion, huh?” McCluskey sneered. “Any last words before I have you scragged?”

  “Yes, actually,” Chen said in an even tone. “I hope you are aware that this whole enterprise of yours is founded on quicksand.”

  “Ooooh!” McCluskey laughed, pretending to be impressed. “You’re going to be poetical, huh?”

  “No,” Chen said, “it’s simply a fact.” He reached into his pocket, took out a handful of the dirt he’d put there earlier and then rubbed it between his fingers, letting it dribble to the floor as he murmured something in Chinese. Then he smiled politely at McCluskey and continued: “Step to the window, you’ll see what I mean.”

  McCluskey sat and glared at Chen for a moment, but when he heard panicky shouting outside followed by the sound of falling masonry, he jumped to his feet and crossed to the window. As he looked out, his jaw dropped, and his jovial facade fell away. Liam moved to get a better look and what he saw made him grin. One of the barracks-like buildings was located nearly opposite the window, and as Liam watched, the building tipped precariously at one corner and part of its front wall collapsed as it started to slide into what looked like a lake of quicksand, its panicky occupants yelling with terror as they poured out the windows only to end up floundering wildly in the gooey soil.

  “You see?” Chen asked McCluskey in a tone of mild reproof. “I would never joke about a thing like that.”