Moonshine

  By G.D. Penman

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2018 G.D. Penman

  ISBN 9781634866361

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  Moonshine

  By G.D. Penman

  Vergil’s shift was almost over when he caught a case. The sun was poking one lazy eye over the horizon by the time he got down to the riverside to look at whichever Prom-trotter from the university had decided to try and catch a bullet in his teeth. The bull on guard was some poor patrolman who looked like his balls hadn’t even dropped and Vergil had to flash his badge before the kid took his hand off the butt of his gun. It was probably easy to get spooked by one corpse if you hadn’t been in the war.

  Every time he left the station, Vergil made a bet with himself that the case was going to come back to the Miskatonic University. If it wasn’t a student pulling the Dutch act over nothing, then it was some scrap between boozehounds that had gotten out of hand. The townies in Arkham didn’t get murdered, except by students, and if they committed any murders themselves then they were tidy enough about it so it didn’t become Vergil’s job to track them down. He was pretty sure he had lost his bet when he spotted the body. None of the rich kids at the university would have been seen dead wearing anything as nondescript as a flatcap and an olive slicker.

  The dead mook was lying face-down on the grass, pointed towards the row houses of the town proper, and the only bullet hole Vergil could see was in his back. Blood would have looked almost black on the grass in the dull red of the early morning light, but a spray of it would have sparkled in the beam of his flashlight, which meant all the blood was under the body. Which in turn meant the victim had been on foot, in a pair of rubber-soled sailor’s boots, heading from the Miskatonic River up towards town when somebody shot him in the back.

  Vergil strolled over to the river, looking for boot-prints to confirm his theory and he found them in the riverbank mud. First a deep sunk pair—side by side—then a row of them—heavy on the toe and light on the heel. The victim had jumped off a boat and run for it. Commercial traffic didn’t run up the Miskatonic River at night, the depth was too unpredictable, and the turns got tight after town. Which meant smugglers. Bootleggers. Gangsters. Vergil sighed and went back to roll the dead man. He had a drop of tan in his complexion, still showing despite him catching the big one. Thick eyebrows, thin lips, heavy jowls. The clothes under the jacket didn’t shake Vergil’s assumption that he was a sailor. He had no wallet, no papers, nothing to identify him. A smuggler wouldn’t want to carry any of that, would they? The front of his shirt was a bloody mess, the ground underneath him stained dark where his life had gone trickling out. Nothing useful.

  He was just about to call it a night when he caught a glimpse of something on the dead man’s hand, a little bird worked into the skin with faded blue ink. Sailors had tattoos. He could work with that. With a quick glance to make sure that the bull on guard was facing the other way, Vergil pushed up the dead man’s sodden shirt. The bullet hole certainly drew the eye, but there were patterns on the skin under the blood. A shape like some sort of fish was splayed over his stomach, under the curly hair. A heart, a flapper girl, and a dog were dotted around his chest. They’d certainly help identify the body, but they didn’t give much else away. Vergil was just about to cover him over when he saw the tattoo hidden in the thick thatch of hair down below the fish.

  It was a scratchy jagged symbol that hurt his eyes, barely big enough to be legible but familiar enough that it made Vergil’s stomach heave. He fell backwards onto the dew wet grass and had to scramble to his feet before the uniform turned around. The shirt was still bunched up, but his stomach was churning at the thought of touching the tainted cadaver again, so Vergil used his foot to drag it back down. His heart was hammering in his chest, so hard, he was surprised it couldn’t be heard. A steadying breath completely failed to do its job, so he embraced the panic and started to move. With completely false camaraderie, he slung an arm around the shoulders of the nervous bull and asked, “Where could a man go to get a quiet drink in this town?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “You’re a young man, you’ve got to take your moll somewhere.”

  “I don’t have a…That is to say…”

  Vergil resisted the urge to shake him. “Listen, I’m not looking to put anyone in a jam.”

  There was a long moment where the uniform was conflicted then he finally said, “I’ve heard about a place on Haverhill Street, around the back of the old piano store. But I’ve never—”

  “Thanks kid. The coroner will be along soon. Keep your nose clean.”

  It was either too late or too early to visit a speakeasy, depending on your point of view, but there was no chance Vergil was going to sleep with his heart still hammering away, so he went back to the station to cause some trouble.

  “Who runs the panther-piss racket in Arkham?”

  Lieutenant Williams looked up sharply from his newspaper. “You leave mob work to the mob squad. Or the FBI. Preferably the FBI so they catch all the flack instead of us.”

  “I’m not looking to pinch anyone for it. I just need to speak to somebody up the ladder to get some dope on anybody that might be passing through in their line of business.”

  Williams gritted his teeth but jerked his head in what might have been an invitation to come inside his office. “You go out there causing trouble and I’ll have your buzzer, you hear me? Last thing Arkham needs is war on the streets. Particularly since I’m pretty sure we’d lose.”

  When Vergil didn’t say anything, he grumbled on. “There are two outfits in Arkham, but they dance around each other so they don’t step on nobody’s toes. One of them sells local shine and a bit of corn from the fine farms of New England. The other one brings in brown plaid from abroad. Higher class joints.”

  “Like the one on Haverhill?”

  The lieutenant turned red. “You been poking around there already?”

  “No sir.”

  “Why is it you always look like you know something everybody else don’t?”

  “Asking questions, sir. Isn’t that what you pay me for?”

  “Get out of my office.”

  “Who runs Haverhill, sir?”

  “Did you hear me?”

  Vergil smiled placidly. “No sir, could you repeat the name again for me?”

  “A skinny mick called Jimmy Hogan. Now get out of my office before I call some uniforms in here to give you the bum’s rush.”

  He smirked all the way out of the room. “Thank you, sir.”

  * * * *

  Sleep proved as elusive as expected, so the two hours in his rooming house mainly involved staring at the crack in the ceiling and wondering how long it was going to take before the bed in the more or less identical room above him fell through and crushed him. He hoped to have moved by then, but he had been hoping to move since before the crack first appeared. At a minute past midday Vergil arrived on Haverhill Street and made a beeline for the piano store. He pretended to look inside the dusty old place, but he was really letting his other senses do their job. He could hear jazz. The speakeasy was open for business. There was a slotted door down a side alley and it only took one rap with his knuckles before the cover was pulled aside and he had to suffer the scrutiny of the lowlife on guard. Vergil knew he wasn’t much to look at, that was the point of cultivating the same slicked hair as everyone else, dressing in the same hat, the same camel coat, and the same wingtips, to blend in, to be forgettable.

  The doorman grunted, “What’s the password?”

  “I need to see Mr. Hogan.”

  “Don’t know nobody with that name.”

  “One of his people is dead down by the river, I thought he would like to know.”

  The tiny window slot grated shut again. Vergil stood and waited. Spring wasn’t warming up as quick as he would have liked, and his gloves were still sitting in his locker at work. He had just stamped his feet to keep the blood moving when the door swung open. He had expected the bimbo doorman, not a flapper who barely came up to his shoulder. “This way if you please.”

  They went down a flight of stairs and stepped out into a completely different building than the one upstairs. The jazz was being played by a band at the far end of a hall that must have stretched the length of the street. There was an ho nest to God chandelier dangling above them and a fully stocked bar Vergil conscientiously didn’t notice running along one side of the room. This early in the day there weren’t many folks in and the dancefloor was bare, but there was still a hubbub from the students and wealthier townies mingling and sipping bootleg moonshine from fancy cocktail glasses. It looked like a high society party getting into full swing and Vergil wanted to slink right back out the way he had come in. He clenched his jaw and tried to keep up with the redhead in the indecently short dress as she wove in and out of the crowd seamlessly. He was expecting an office secreted somewhere around the edges of the room, but instead the girl stopped at a booth in the back. Once Vergil had caught up she gave him a nod and faded into the crowd.

  Sitting in the booth with nobody but a bottle of scotch for company was the most Joe Brooks-looking gangster Vergil had ever seen. There was a hint of red and a wave in his hair. His suit was black and tailored like it had been poured out of one of those foreign bottles on the shelves behind the bar, but it was the little details that really jumped out. The peacock waistcoat. The matching bowtie. The emerald cufflinks peeking out of his sleeves. When he met Vergil’s eyes and gave him a terse smile the hammering of his heart stopped for a moment.

  “Please join me. Have a drink, on the house.”

  Vergil slipped into the booth, sitting as far from the other man as possible, taking care not to stare. “I don’t drink.”

  Hogan let out a huff of laughter. “I’ve got the only dry detective in Massachusetts. Are you a bluenose?”

  Vergil shrugged. “I don’t like feeling out of control.”

  For a moment the smirk on Hogan’s face faded. “Neither do I, but this is the world we’ve got to live in.”

  “A man was found dead this morning. A smuggler running his ship up the Miskatonic in the night. He had been shot in the back. The boat was gone. Do you know anything about it?”

  “If I did, you wouldn’t be sitting there right now wagging your chin.”

  “You are trying to tell me you don’t know anything about a bootlegger ship running up the river?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because you’re a bootlegger.”

  Hogan had the gall to look offended. “A bootlegger? Me? I don’t know what you mean. I happen to own the buildings in this street, I’m just a landlord. What people do with the spaces they rent is none of my business.”

  Vergil stared at him. “To be clear; on a normal day I would wipe the smirk right off your face and hand you off to the FBI, but today I am willing to go a little bit blind to all the things going on around here because I’ve got a murder to solve and I think you can help me. So today, I don’t see this swanky juice joint. Get it?”

  Hogan’s smile made a comeback. “So you don’t agree with the Volstead act?”

  “I don’t get to pick and choose between the laws. Good or bad laws, they are better than no laws.”

  “Me? I love Prohibition. It has done wonders for me.”

  Vergil growled. “The ship running up the Miskatonic last night. It was one of yours?”

  “It was mine when it left port, but it doesn’t sound like it was mine by the time it got here and didn’t stop to make its delivery.”

  “The dead man was a mook, sparrow tattoo on his hand, more tattoos on his chest and stomach, a fish, a heart, a—”

  With a ragged sigh, Hogan worked it out. “Aquino. His name was Louis Aquino. I’ll send his family some money.”

  “Where was Louis from?”

  “What does it matter. We know where he ended up.”

  “It matters.”

  Hogan scowled. “One of the little fishing villages up the coast towards Hampton. On Essex Bay. Innsmouth or something. What’s it to you?”

  “Maybe nothing. That where your ships come in from Europe?”

  Hogan opened and shut his mouth rapidly, then he grinned. “Got some smarts, eh buttons?”

  Vergil found himself smiling back. “Like I said, I don’t see nothing, I don’t hear nothing. That is my side of the deal. Your side of the deal is when one of your birds comes cheeping to you with news about this, you bring it to me. You don’t go chasing his killer. You don’t put another body on my docket. Copacetic?”

  Hogan’s smile slipped again. “You’re asking me to roll over and take it? How is that going to look?”

  “Better than an FBI raid on Innsmouth or the mob squad kicking in your door, I’d bet.”

  “You threatening me, buttons?”

  “Why would I need to? We both want the same thing, right? Justice for your bell-bottom Louis.”

  There was a lull in the music, and a smattering of applause around the ballroom as the band took a bow. Hogan was staring at Vergil with an intensity that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Vergil stared right back and realised his heart had been ticking away slow and steady through the whole conversation.

  “I don’t get you, buttons. You look like the most milquetoast bunny to ever hop through my door, but here you are in the lion’s den, not even blinking when I could have you snubbed out with a nod.”

  “Where did you serve?”

  Hogan scowled. “I was a navy man. Enlisted myself.”

  “I was in the trenches, the Hundred Day Offensive. If men with guns could put me off doing my job, I’d still be there in the mud and you’d still be bobbing around in a boat.”

  “Bloodied the Kaiser’s nose yourself, did you?”

  “Do we have a deal or not?”

  Hogan went quiet again, doing the mental arithmetic. He obviously wanted to handle this himself, but it would cost him his smuggling outfit in Innsmouth or a lot of local heat if he bumped off a bull in front of all his egg clientele.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Detective Levard, Arkham Police Department.”

  “Not what it says on your buzzer, your name.”

  “Vergil.”

  “I don’t have no interest in making deals with the coppers. But this Vergil fella seem to be a stand-up guy, so I’ll shake his hand and send him a wire when I hear something.”

  “That’s all I’m asking.”

  Hogan stood up and held out a hand, and despite every bone in his body telling him not to do it, Vergil rose and shook it. He had expected the grip to be soft and limp from the opulent surroundings, but there were hard worn calluses brushing against his palm and Hogan shook hands like he was trying to choke a chicken. It would have been easy to think a cake eater like Hogan was soft, but the creaking of bones in Vergil’s hand was a reminder that the man was a hardened criminal. He gave as good as he got.

  By the time they were done, Hogan was grinning again. “Now get out and don’t come around no more unless you’re drinking. The public library, this ain’t.”

  Back out on the street Vergil considered his options. The two obvious suspects in any mob murder were the victim’s employer, or his organisation’s competitors. If Hogan had the man killed, it would come out in the next few days as he gave Vergil the run around. So that was handled. There was another bootlegging operation running in Arkham, local boys who didn’t need to import a thing. Could be they were trying to bump off the competition or take over Hogan’s outfit themselves. Of course, if Vergil was being honest, he didn’t give a half a damn about bootleggers or mob wars or anything else except the maddening glimpse of that tattoo.

  He left a note on his desk at the station that he was chasing leads out of town and would be back in a day. He swung past the mob squad, such as it was, and got the name of the lady-legger they thought was running the other outfit in town. His last stop was the rooming house; where he packed all his worldly possessions in a suitcase, leaving it half empty, and tucked the miniscule amount of dough he had managed to save into his pocket. He left the case under the bed with little hope of it still being there when he got back and jogged down to York Road where a jitney ran out to Innsmouth. He flicked the frog-faced driver a nickel for the ride and the slumped into the back seat. It was only once the old junker was rolling along the road, rattling his teeth together that Vergil finally pulled his hat down over his face and drifted off to sleep.

  * * * *

  Vergil’s dreams were as deep and dark as the bottom of the ocean. The only shimmer of light filtering down from the distant stars above was tainted by the waters before it reached him. That faint emerald green glow was his only defence against the crushing cold. He woke with a start, sweating despite the chill on the bus. There was a tremor in his hands he hadn’t seen in years and he was silently furious with himself for showing so much weakness. A quick glance around showed no indication that any of the other three passengers had noticed, two were snoring and the other peering intently into his paper, so he took that as a small comfort. Before he had to work out what to do with himself for the rest of the trip, Innsmouth came into view around the bend. It was a wretched, windswept little town, on the verge of collapsing into the sea from the look of it. The wooden shingles coating every roof were salt bleached and enough had fallen or rotten out to make the whole town look gap-toothed. Of course this town was a smuggling front, why else would anybody willingly come here? They disembarked at an overgrown public square in the middle of town, some of them more willingly than others, then the jitney pulled off with a much fuller load of people making their escape from the dreary place.

 

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