“Knock it off, Albert. I just need information,” I said. “Can you talk to me?”
He glowered.
“OK. I guess the mountain comes to Mohammed.” I reached out and riffled through the layers of time, feeling for one that would have Albert in it as strongly as possible. Wherever his presence was strongest, that was where I thought I’d be most likely to get him to talk. Though it was also where—or when—he’d have the most power and latitude to cause me trouble. I hoped the net was enough. I found a hard, cold plane of time and slipped into it… and fell back out.
“What—?”
Mara turned a curious frown on me. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t stay in the time plane Albert’s occupying.”
“But… you didn’t slip at all. You stayed right here.”
I puzzled on that a moment. “Then… this is the same place…?”
“It must be a loop or a bridge of some kind that connects him to both that plane where his energy was strongest and to this one. I don’t think I care for that…”
I turned my eyes to Mara. “Then why isn’t he talking?” Something cold brushed across my knee.
“Maybe he needs—”
“A voice.” It was a reedy tenor and it came from Albert. I looked toward him and saw a thin line of the net touching my knee, connecting me to Albert. “It comes from you,” he confirmed. “If you want me to talk, you have to lend me this.”
“I’d rather not, but I guess I don’t have much choice.”
Mara stared at me. “I can hear you both! But Albert’s so quiet…”
I peered into the darkness of the grid, seeing Albert as a haze of light floating above the blazing energy lines. I thought I might be able to push a thin strand of that energy to him and boost his voice…
“Yes!” Albert’s thin voice urged in my head.
I yanked back to a more normal level where the Grey was ever-present, the neon lines of power and force dim glimmers that clung to the shapes of the world.
“No. I don’t think that would be a good idea—giving you power.”
The light silvered his glasses and hid his eyes. He moved restlessly in his mesh of magic.
“Mara, can you tighten that net up a little?”
“I can, but why?”
“Albert is playing games.”
Mara gave a twitch of her hand and the reticulated spell cinched down, binding Albert into stillness. The illusion of light on his glasses faded.
“Better,” I said, moving my foot so it touched the edge of the net to maintain my connection to Albert. I felt it like a static charge passing over my skin.
“I won’t help you,” Albert warned.
“You will if you want to get out of that net. Let’s start with something easy. What’s your full name?”
He was stubbornly silent. I didn’t know if a geas—a magical compulsion—would work on a ghost, and I wasn’t thrilled about trying it, but Albert wasn’t cooperating. I plucked at a bit of the Grey and stared at Albert, catching his gaze as I pulled the buzzing, energetic material in front of me, forming the power connection that would allow me to make a binding demand on the ghost. Then I gave a mental push in Albert’s direction and said, “Talk freely and we’ll be done sooner. Then you can go.” I could see the fast-multiplying black lines of pressure build and press on the ghost, forcing my demand against him. He jerked his head back, then he shuddered. The tiny black lines clung to him and sank into his form like needles, knitting a compulsion between us. I felt instantly cold to the bone—the chill of lonely death. Compulsion runs two ways, and I’d have to take care to remove the connection completely when I was done with Albert. But I’d have to maintain the pressure as long as we were connected; I didn’t want him to push back and I didn’t want the feel of unquiet graves lingering in my mind.
“Very well!” he snapped.
“What is your full name?” I asked again. I wanted to see what he did when the answers were nonthreatening. It would make it easier to know when he was lying—which I was sure he’d try. Unlike most of the people I saw, Albert had no aura to act as a tell of his emotions.
“Albert Wallace Frye,” he answered, sighing a little with resignation.
“Any relation to Frye of the Frye Museum and Frye Meat Packing?”
“None. Had I call upon the fortunes of Charlie or Frank Frye, I’d hardly have been serving bootleg whiskey to whitter-brained flappers in a speak south of the skid.” His tone stung with resentment, and I found I didn’t need to push him to speak now that he was started. He wanted to spit out the lost story of his life.
I might have more trouble keeping him to the point.
“Is that how you made your living—bootlegging?” I asked. I’d let him run a while, get comfortable, before I asked about zombies and monsters.
“I made what you call a living in the pharmacy trade. I made money by distributing booze—which I’d started out making myself when the bluenosed fools of Washington state voted in their goddamned dry law. A better day for a dollar never was had until the Volstead Act made the booze business a crime.
Don’t believe them when people tell you crime does not pay—it paid better than propriety. I only kept to the druggists counter to give myself a front from which to dole out the bottles.”
Mara looked shocked at this venomous recitation. I guess even Irish witches have foolish romantic notions about American bootleggers as some kind of alcohol-running Robin Hood and his Merry Men. It was no revelation to me that they were in it for the money and not for the thrill of twitting a stupid law.
“So you couldn’t keep up with demand,” I prompted. “Then you went into distribution on your own?”
“Hell, no. I partnered up with Olmstead.”
“Roy Olmstead?”
“The same.”
“I see. You did the distribution for Roy’s boys. That explains why you walked me into a speakeasy on the bluff that time. Did you work that one, too?”
“No. I dropped goods. I only worked the One-oh-Seven.”
“That’s the place under Occidental, right?”
He peered at me. “Where?”
I racked my brain a moment. “Second Avenue.”
“Correct. I had to recoup my losses on the shop—I bought an interest in a drugstore upstairs, but it wasn’t going so well, what with Bartell and all, and my partner and I talked about opening a saloon instead.” I knew Bartell Drugs was a major chain, but I hadn’t realized it had started in Seattle.
Albert talked over my ruminations. “When the dry law came in, we busted. We tried a refreshment parlor, but everyone tried that—you can only sell so many phosphates and flips. I was stuck with half a bad bargain. So we brewed up some goods and sold them downstairs, where it was harder for the dry squad to raid us. That’s how I met Roy—he was in on a raid and he told me I was a chump for going it alone. He said the way to make money was to run the liquor like a business—which is what he did.”
“He also got caught.”
Albert shrugged. “Small beer. He was back right after. Business as usual.”
“I meant the Thanksgiving raid.”
“What Thanksgiving raid?”
An incredulous chuckle escaped me that he didn’t know and I did. “Roy Olmstead was arrested in 1924 and did four years at McNeil Island—it was the largest successful raid in the history of Prohibition. He appealed on a cause of unconstitutional process because the Federals tapped his phone. It’s a very famous case—Olmstead vs. United States. I’d think even a ghost would have heard of it.” With my interest in mystery and crime novels, I had gobbled up the details of the case in a college law course.
Albert stared at me. “They jugged Roy?”
I gave him a bemused look to cover a sudden wash of tiredness and an urge to shiver. This interrogation was more draining than I’d hoped.
“When did you die, Albert Wallace Frye? When did you die that you didn’t know the Feds nabbed Roy Olmstead?”
“I don’t know.”