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Now I know you’ve heard the stories about Mr. Houdini, but at least one isn’t true: he’d performed the Chinese Water Torture Act dozens of times. It wasn’t the torture cell that killed him- it was a burst appendix. When he first introduced the cell, which he called the Up Side Down, it was a part of a one man play- a trick to copyright the effect and prevent imitation. That was because his previous bread and butter, the milk can escape, had been stolen a hundred times over.

But something you may not know is Mr. Houdini was friends with none other than the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. They met in the 20s, while Mr. Houdini was touring England. Doyle was a member of a group of spiritualists that went by the name of the Ghost Club. Ostensibly, their work focused on rooting out frauds in the spirit world, but Doyle became convinced that Mr. Houdini was a great medium- which teed Mr. Houdini off.

They were quite a pair. Conan Doyle was a full head taller- and nearly two of Mr. Houdinis thick. Mr. Houdini didn’t cotton to spiritualists and grifters trying to take advantage of him and his family after his mother Cecelia’s passing. Conversely, Doyle, following the death of his wife Louisa and his son Kingsley, found solace in the idea that those he lost weren’t really and truly gone. 

I think that’s why they became friends: they both wanted to believe, and the difference came down to whichever side of skepticism they landed. Their friendship ended abruptly- that many people know- but there’s one incident that neither man, despite their books on the subject and their general outspokenness, ever told.

It was the year before Mr. Houdini’s death, and they hadn’t spoken since before he published A Magician Among the Spirits. Doyle sent a letter over the ocean: “I’ve spoken with Louisa. You must come. A. Conan Doyle” (signed).

When Mr. Houdini arrived at Doyle’s door two weeks later, he asked, “Whatever was so urgent?”

Doyle smiled. “I’d hoped you would arrive today. It’s the anniversary, you might not recall, of the séance with Lady Jean. I won’t abuse the proverbial beast of burden, but it was the last time I believe we attempted one to another to see the other’s eyes. In the past you’ve accused me of incaution- even zeal- and perhaps I’m culpable on both counts. But I’ve found someone- a mystic beyond anything I’ve seen, and I’d wager beyond even the cleverest artifices of your luminous mind.”

Mr. Houdini was immediately taken aback. Doyle had sworn for quite some time that his feats were to a one supernatural, owing to powers perhaps he was unaware of, but of a metaphysical nature he was certain. “You believe you’ve found a genuine spiritualist?”

“I have,” he paused. “It’s strange, but without knowing firsthand the actual article, how simple it was to... confuse the merely mysterious with the magical. But I have seen-” Doyle stopped himself, “I can’t expect, after all these years, you to take anecdote for evidence of the thing. You shall see, with your own eyes, the very thing tonight.”

“Will Lady Doyle be joining us?” Mr. Houdini asked after a moment’s pause.

“No. They’ll be plenty time enough for pleasantries. And perhaps Bess will join us before you take your leave. But come. I’ve an audience scheduled on the hour, and we should have just enough time for it.”

They walked perhaps two-thirds of the way to the Queen’s Head pub before Doyle said something to the effect of, “It’s a good feeling, walking with you again. It has been a great sacrifice.”

Houdini snapped back at him. “It is no ‘sacrifice’ to convince people who have recently suffered a bereavement of the possibility and reality of communicating with their dear ones.”

Doyle smiled pleasantly. “Our friendship has suffered. I am mocked openly in the presses. If not sacrifice, what word would suffice?”

“To me the poor suffering followers eagerly searching for relief from the heart-pain that follows the passing on of a dear one are the ‘sacrifice.’”

“I’ve missed your passion, Houdini; I pray it survives its trial.”

“I would like nothing more than to believe, but unlike you Conan, I must be convinced. Validation mustn’t be sought after; it must be manifest.”

“You should have your proof,” Doyle said, holding the door into the Queen’s Head open. There was a small room near the rear of the pub, and Doyle led the way through a gentle mob of patrons. Inside the room, Doyle spoke. “This is the medium I’ve spoken of, Albert Roberts. And Mr. Roberts, this is the great Harry Houdini. Not sell Mr. Roberts short, but he’s not the showman you are.”

“Who could be?” Mr. Houdini asked, with a twinkle in his eye.

Roberts was not at a moment an impressive man. Bespectacled, balding, and with a thin beard and a thinner frame, he looked beside Mr. Houdini’s rather rugged and muscular build as an aging spinster- an old maid, to you youngins. But he had enough pride to him that he rose up from his seat and put out his hand to be shaken. “I understand your hostility to spiritualists; and I admire your skepticism. Those who would abuse innocent pain deserve the damnation of more than a fiery tongue. While enough of them are likely themselves innocent and convinced, I’d prefer to know myself if I am genuine or merely insane.”

Mr. Houdini sat on Roberts’ right, his dominant side, holding onto his hand and wrist, while Doyle did the same on his left. At Houdini’s insistence, both he and Doyle placed a foot over each of the mystic’s feet.

The lights were low, lit only by a single candle in the center of the table, already burnt through most of the wax. As the candlelight waned, the room became chilled, and all men felt a breeze.

And suddenly there was light, not so much that you could see clearly, but enough so you could see what was making the light: a face, the face of a woman, a woman Mr. Houdini hadn’t seen in a very long time, and his mouth opened and couldn’t be shut.

She spoke to him. My Yiddish is, well, I’ve been warned off the language, as I have a tendency to mistakenly mutter curses rather than proper phrasing, but she said in his mother’s tongue, “My little boy.”

“Momma,” he said, and a tear went down his face.

“It’s my birthday. Did you remember?” She asked, her voice wavering upon the final word.

He turned out his collar and produced a flower he’d tacked to the inside of his lapel- a black Hungarian flower specifically. He released it from the pin, set it down on the table and pushed it forward, in the direction of the face. She breathed it in, and when she exhaled the smell of it filled the room. Then her expression changed. And she shimmered, and when she spoke her voice was stern. “You must stop this, Eric. Your crusade… the powers you’ve angered are a gathering shadow over you. You will lose your life, and death will be most unkind to you.”

“Enough.” Mr. Houdini said, and every muscle in his body tensed at once; his hand squeezed down so tightly that Roberts’ hand emitted a series of painful pops, and the mystic’s face contorted.

Mr. Houdini released his hand and rose, his entire body balled as if in a fist. “Stop this.” Small though he might have been, nobody in a right mind would have denied his request. But at a minimum, the medium was not in a right mind, and despite some lingering pain he appeared distant. Mr. Houdini was about to belt Roberts in the mouth, when the medium started to vomit.

And he vomited enough that there shouldn’t have been anything left of the man but a husk, yet he kept at it, a frothy slime that covered the floor by an inch.  

Mr. Houdini walked hurriedly from the room, and Doyle followed. He’d badly misread Mr. Houdini, and believed the man’s distress came from disappointment at being wrong. Doyle couldn’t help himself, and there was a pinch of triumph in his rounded boy’s cheeks. “Well?”

“Yet another medium requesting I cease my investigations to his own benefit. My only surprise is how long it’s taken one to find a photograph of my mother and to learn Yiddish.”

“I assure you the man speaks not a word.”

“And you know this how? By his admission? I’m sorry. No amount of ectoplasm, or of visual or auditory trickery, is enough.”

Wounded, and perhaps sensing that he may not have another opportunity, Doyle hurriedly blurted, “You must by now know how many spiritualists have predicted your death. I worry over those dangerous stunts of yours.”

“I defy Death daily- and predict my demise every morning. Sir Arthur,” he said with a light smile and a shallow bow, and took his leave. They were the last words spoken between them; and no extant letters seem to have passed, either, as both men seemed wary of misuse of their words.

“And maybe it’s just a ghost story. After all, Mr. Houdini never spoke on it, and Doyle prolific as he was never wrote it down. But there are times, especially at night walking these halls in the dark, surrounded by so many of the things that tried so desperately to take away Mr. Houdini’s life- only to see his body do the work itself- that I feel his breath on the nape of my neck, or see a shadow that shouldn’t be on the floor, or what I think’s a reflection for a moment, that when stared at disappears.”

“But Mr. Houdini left instructions with Bess. If ever he got a message across, if ever he spoke to her from beyond the grave, there was a phrase he was to speak to her. She gave an annual séance for him for ten long years and not a peep- and declared ten years was too long to wait for any man- even Mr. Houdini.”

“Now, unfortunately, the gift shop’s closed now; we usually end the tour there, but they cash out before dark, safety concerns. If any of the children saw something they simply must have, perhaps we could do something for it, but- no? All right. I have to ask, because I hate the thought of sending away some imp with a twinkle in his eye. You folks have an excellent night, and drive carefully home. I can’t guarantee what manner of afterlife you might experience, or if there is one.”

The old door latched with a familiarity that felt like a hand on shoulder, and I realized I felt warmth, too; I couldn’t be certain if I heard the words, or felt them ask, “Rosabelle believes?”

“I believe she does, Mr. Houdini. The good Lord knows I do.”

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I’d known beforehand that Robert Anderson, head of the Criminal Investigation Department, would be on holiday in Switzerland. At this later writing, I suspect I would not have curtailed my activities otherwise, but it seemed a beneficial coincidence. The initial Metropolitan Police response was pitiful, as I’d hoped. Detectives linked the death of Mary Nichols to murders by a gang of hooligans.

The papers whipped up a frenzy by suggesting a single murderer for the crimes, ironic in that Nichols was only my first; the previous victims had been unrelated, by accounts even to each other. The agitation was enough that several Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard were assigned to the case, and at first I feared my fun had ended prematurely.  

But I’d had run-ins with coppers before, and I had a powerful urge to get closer and squeeze- to know who and what it was I was up against. So I tracked the man who whispers said was wiliest of the three to a pub. I sat down beside him and ordered a pint, and just as it arrived I turned to him as if I hadn’t seen him before and said, “Inspector Abberline?”

“Yes?” Abberline looks and sounds like a bank manager, but that is a factor of birth and of temperament. There’s something watchful behind his eyes, and he immediately distrusts me- immediately distrusts everyone. It’s an admirable trait in a Chief Inspector.

“I don’t mean to bother you, but as you’ve no doubt deduced from my speech, I’m not local. And the White Chapel murders fascinate me.”

“Murder,” he muttered under his bristly moustache.

“Murder?” I asked.

“First two, they were different. There’s only one White Chapel murder.”

“You don’t think there will be more?” I asked.

“Oh, there will be. Women, I expect. He despises women. He must. Why else prey on them otherwise?” I felt pity for him. Why women? I will not make an argument of their being the weaker sex, because that is a secondary calculation. They were foremost whores. And as whores, they were women open to going places a woman shouldn’t with a man she does not know; in a word: vulnerable.

“Why indeed? It must be difficult, to try and think like that kind of, of m-“

“Monster. It is. Drinking and brooding helps. Hating helps. If I weren’t a married man, maybe I’d hate women better, catch him faster.” Something in his eyes flashed, something dangerous and intelligent, and I realized it wasn’t a sparkle from liquor. “What’d you say your name was?”

“I hadn’t, yet; Mudgett is my name, Herman Mudgett.”

“And you’re American. Trade?”

“Proprietor of a hotel in Chicago, or at least I will be once it’s completed. If you’ve a mind to see the white city,” I stopped short of inviting him.

He licked his teeth, snorted out of his nose indifferently, like a bulldog whose lost interest in a kitten. “Single?”

“Married, much to my wife’s chagrin.” He doesn’t smile, but he hasn’t smiled yet over the course of our conversation.

“My first wife died of tuberculosis.”

“The first? Then there’s a second,” I said.

“Indeed,” he replied, and betrayed the tiniest bit of emotion, not a smile so much as a twitch in his lips.

“I shouldn’t take up more of your time.” I said, and took up my beer in one hand; he gave a gruff sigh. I didn’t have to look behind me to know that a moment later he would turn to watch- all he would find was my empty glass on a table beside the door.

After only a few days I found myself wanting for pocket money. The majority of my funds and credit are tied down in construction of my hotel in Chicago. My encounter with Abberline had left me suspicious, but it was far too early to retreat back across the sea, so I devised another option.

I found another woman, and I carved out pieces of her for sale to medical students- a practice that had paid my way through medical school. Specifically, a young man was looking for a uterus, which I cut out of Annie Chapman that very night.

It was the day after, and I had delivered the organ already, and I was walking in Flower and Dean street, when I saw a ghost. To my surprise, she spoke to me, and told me her name was Miss Lyons, and agreed to meet me at Queen’s Head that evening.

Possessed nearly, I could not stop myself from stating, "You are about the same style of woman as the one that's murdered."

She nearly dropped her pint. "What do you know about her?" she asked.

I’d spoken too candidly. "You are beginning to smell a rat. Foxes hunt geese, but they don't always find them." I excused myself politely and left. She followed me all the way to Spitalfield Church, though the wisdom of such vigilance I’d question, when she lost me in a crowd.  

A second brush with apprehension chastened me, and I spent the next several weeks indulging in sight-seeing and whore-mongering. I believe it was out of boredom , or at least because it had been so long since I’d scratched the itch, but I murdered two women in one evening.

But even that could not salvage things. My vacation in London was proving less agreeable than I’d hoped. The city was cold and damp. Even dispatching Mrs. Stride and Eddowes had left me despondent. Several letters, to the police and the papers, had claimed responsibility for my actions, discussing them in lurid and often silly and demeaning detail.

I was depressive and trying to calm my own spirits when I penned my address as “From Hell” in a letter to George Lusk. I’d considered a conversation with the man, but after my meeting Abberline thought it best to keep Lusk at a distance. I included with the letter half a kidney, preserved in wine, from Eddowes. I’d intended to take both kidneys, but hadn’t the time, so I cut the kidney in half; the med student not being very bright, I doubted he’d miss a half a kidney. I know now I should not have drunk half the bottle of wine before composing the letter; the results were atrocious, spelling, handwriting and grammar all appalling.

Embarrassed, and perhaps worried I had included some traceable detail in my ill-advised note, I left the city for a time. The English countryside was filled with wonders, and I visited several manors with an eye to adapting architectural features for my hotel.

I had not intended to travel to South Sea on my vacation, but events had so disgusted me that I became careless in my wandering. I found myself on the porch of the one man in all of England, more so even than Abberline or Lusk, who could have found me out.

Readers of the penny dreadfuls will likely know the man only as the author of A Study in Scarlet, but Conan Doyle is also an informed criminologist of some repute; he may appear at first blush to be the model of Dr. John Watson, but his is also the mind behind Sherlock Holmes. I knocked lightly, half wanting not to be heard; he arrived at the door shortly, and from his dress, had not yet retired for the evening.

“I know it’s late, and the appropriateness of my visit is questionable at best. But I couldn’t spend time here all the way from America without at a minimum telling you how impressed I am by your writings.”

He eyed me for a moment before he asked, “Would you care to join me for tea?” He left the door open and I followed him inside. “We’ll have to be quiet, you understand. My wife Jean is sleeping. I take it from your late night visit you’re not a married man.” He motioned for me to take a chair across from a high wingback he dropped into.

“I am, in fact, though my wife is back in America. She was scheduled to travel with me, but came down with a chest cold she swears against the doctors’ diagnosis is tuberculosis. It isn’t, but she couldn’t be motivated from her fainting couch.”

“My first wife died of tuberculosis.”

“Fascinating,” I said, “the same occurred to Inspector Abberline’s first wife.”

“Abberline?” he asked. “Of White Chapel?”

“Happened upon him in a pub when I’d first arrived on holiday. Very quiet, thoughtful man.”

“What does he think of the murders?” Doyle asked, a hint of an amused child dancing in the candlelight reflected in his eyes.

“We didn’t speak of it. In fact, we only spoke for a moment.”

“Yet discussion of his deceased wife became pertinent?” I chuckled nervously. It was like being batted about by a tiger; the bottle of chloroform in my jacket pocket comforted me.

“He relayed it as you just did; the logical counter to news of my own nuptials. If I had to fathom a supposition, I would say it the guilt of one who survivors what others did not- typical of a soldier’s reaction after a war.”

“Are you a veteran?” he asked.

“Regrettably, and just as fortunately, no.” 

“Hmm. I’ve mulled a story involving the Indian Rebellion, but no matter; I’ve also contemplated murdering Holmes,” he said plainly.

“Why on Earth would you do that?”

“He interferes. The public demands that he dominate my pen, but I have more important uses for it.”

“An absolutely lunatic idea, but I won’t presume to lecture you on it; in good time, you’ll see the error of shuffling him off his mortal spine. But what do you think would Holmes, or you for the matter, make of this White Chapel mess?”

He eyed me, then shrugged. “I’ve pondered on the subject, but who hasn’t? The declaration of Jack as left-handed is unfounded; if the murders were committed while the victims lay strangled, then a left to right direction of the cut is decipherable only if one knows the orientation of the killer. If he stands above her head, then left to right is naturally right-handed, and only if the killer kneels below the neck that the throat-slitting should be seen as left-handed.”

“And nothing I’ve known implies a career with a knife. Butchers, surgeons, professional soldiers and common enough criminals have enough familiarity with a blade to do the dirty deed.”

“Further, our backward age is biased, looking for anyone to blame who isn’t us. That’s why most allegations are made against Jews, and foreigners; even the ‘sinister’ hand is accused. No, I’m afraid at my distance I’m more useful to express who is not the killer than who is.”

 “Ah, but I promised you tea,” he said, and scrambled out of his chair. I smiled, nodded, and took my leave. I believe he’d do something to my tea, or would have. I did not stay til he emerged from his kitchen to test my theory for fact.

I was still tense after meeting Doyle, and had begun to believe I would leave the country worse than I’d found it, when I happened upon Mary Kelly. Through irreconcilable kindness she had chased off Joseph Barnett- having been a prostitute she could not refuse shelter to other prostitutes, and he could not stand to house them.

She had a weakness for drink, worse even than most of her countrymen, and without Barnett she fell back to her old profession. It was a simple enough thing to hire her services, but Kelly still maintained the room she’d had with Barnett. I’m afraid I took advantage of her hospitality, and the solace and solitude.

I removed her heart; my unscrupulous medical student customer saw to it my trip was, on balance, profitable, if modestly so, and I spent the better part of a morning, well, playing, we’ll say. I’ll admit, I took a portion of my frustrations and curiosities out on the poor girl’s corpse, but she was dead long before the mutilation. After all, I’m not a monster.

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I’m writing a book because I’m tired of being misquoted and mischaracterized by liberal media elites. Maybe that’s unfair; I’m a lawyer with high-level ties to government, and your house would probably fit in my garage- it doesn’t get much more elite than that. But at least I’m not a liberal.

I’m going to skip over my boring childhood, the awkward coming of age masturbation stories, even my probably better left to Penthouse Letters college and law school years. I was born Warren Arthur Reid. I drive a big red hummer with a personalized plate with my initials on it.

We’ll start with a story in the Alaskan wilderness. I’m there with a couple of Russians, city boys, by how poorly they keep up. I usually carry a .454 Casull Ruger Super Redhawk- the snub nosed Alaskan for concealed carry, the 7.5” barrel for hunting- but this was a business trip. I had to convince these Russians that this particular rifle was worth their time.

One of them gets caught in a tree branch, Yuri, I think was his name, and starts swearing up a storm in Russian. I shush him, and point to the bull moose just on the other side of some brush. He gets pissy, and shoots me a glare that reminds me that the difference between the Russian mafia and their intelligence services is only in who cuts the checks. “Fall is hunting season, but it’s also mating season,” I explain.

“No moose is making me his bitch,” he says, and adjusts his coat.

“During mating season, bull moose are very aggressive. They’re responsible for more attacks than bears and wolves combined.” That shuts him up; it’s technically true, too, but moose attacks tend to be milder- unless you’re unlucky. I hold up the rifle to let them get a look of it. “This is similar to one of Barrett’s 25 mm rifles, only it’s newer and therefore less tightly regulated, and shit, you’re here because you know the Dragunov’s a pussy’s weapon.”

Yuri’s friend, whose name I couldn’t remember but I called Boris in my head says in a loud whisper, “We’re here looking for Anatoli.”

“Right, well, Alaskan Arms are a very loyal client of mine, who happen to have pretty well-placed people who think they might have found your man. But in exchange, they want to see orders for the BMK.” I sight the bull moose in.

“I’m sorry, perhaps my English is not so good, but BMK?”

“Bull moose killer. I came up with that- now if you’ll excuse me.” I do like my daddy taught me, and squeeze the trigger while I exhale, slow and even. The moose shudders, and drops.  “See, the thing is, Alaskan Arms is a newer company, trying to build up a reputation. Colt and Barrett have the US by the prostate, which is fine, because even SFOD-Delta are a little too cuddly these days. But word gets out that the Spetsnaz and KGB have put in an order for AA rifles, and suddenly everyone who needs to kill something a mile away takes notice.”

Boris spoke, low and fast, in Russian. “Stupid pig-fuck American thinks Spetsnaz is name of special forces.” Both men chortled.

I responded in their native tongue: “If you’d taken your mind off lovingly suckling your friend’s scrotum, you’d have understood that selling guns to ‘elite’ soldiers is the point- not specifically name-checking elite groups from the FSB or the GRU- and that I speak Russian.”

He tried to stare bullet holes in me, and when that didn’t work he said, “There is no longer KGB.” 

“And I don’t know the taste of a 16 year old Prom Queen’s asshole.”

He stared. They were fresh off a plane, so they probably weren’t armed, but the way he glared I thought he might rush me for the rifle. Then he laughed. “You are okay,” he said in shattered English.

I didn’t let my relief show, just went back to the sale. “We’re not here to talk about the past. You’re allies.” I turned, pointed the rifle at the both of them (actually, at the ground in front of them- safety first). “Fuck, I thought you Russian bastards would use these on Americans or Alaskans I’d put a bullet in each of you sure as look at you.” I lowered the gun, handed it to Yuri. “But it’s a new world, and you have bigger fish to fry. I know you’ll use these like a responsible, capitalist country, on folks who deserve it. Like if Georgia’s britches get too big again, or Muslim Chechens, the Chinese, if they turn their wandering eyes to your eastern flank, or Iran, they step a toe too far out of line.” 

“And for this, you give us Anatoli?”

“No. For this I give you a contact at Alaskan Arms’ security department.” I handed Boris a business card. “Now either of you know how to field dress a moose?”

To Yuri’s credit, he only puked once; Boris is a pseudonym anyway, so no point in pretending he didn’t vomit half a dozen times. He even made a half-hearted attempt to wander off and find his own way back to civilization, only to return, sheepish, fifteen minutes later, and by the smell off him he’d fallen into some bear shit.

Anatoli, in case you’re worried, was wayward FSB. Alaskan Arms had flagged him a while back for trying to get in good with local government, especially anybody with a window into the pipeline. He claimed to be working for a Russian weapons company that was an FSB front- but they said they’d never heard of him. Nobody quite knew what he was up to or who he was working with, but if his old bosses sent Yuri and Boris for him it was probably no good.

Now don’t put yourself to too much effort analyzing this; I don’t include the anecdote as a metaphor or as anything more than a day in my normal life, twelve billable hours of it, anyway. It’s a snapshot of me, perfectly excerptable for those of you who were on the fence about getting my book.

But I’ve worked with enough juries to know that no story gets told episodically; eventually an audience’s attention just wanders away if the story isn’t making enough progress. So here’s the central conflict: I want to be President. Not of the USA- I’m a man of too much integrity for that level of politicking. No, I’m talking about something I love far more than America herself: the NRBAS.

For those poor bastards among you stuck in a city, that’s the National Right to Bear Arms Society. The NRA? Bunch of centrist hacks. In rural America, the NRBAS’re the ones who actually hunt and fish and take their second amendment rights seriously.

I’ve been on their board for ten years, been a Vice President of the organization for three. The current President is an old man, and we tend to think he’ll die in his chair- but also that it’ll be sooner rather than later. I’m antsy, too, because a new player named Auric is trying to push a few of us out for being too moderate.

Just last year I got into a screaming match with Chuck Heston, and would have punched him in the face if Tom Selleck hadn’t gotten between us- and even then I called Magnum a Goddamned pussy for refusing to slug it out- I told him he could have Heston if he liked the odds better. There’s a tiny bit of me wishes we could settle the business with Auric with a duel, but mostly cause I think he’s a believer, not a bearer- and I don’t think he’d hit the broad side of a mountain. Or maybe I hate Auric because he’s a slimy bastard, and I prefer to think of myself in the mold of Roosevelt, who responded to a challenge for a duel politely requesting diplomacy, but ended with, “I too, as you know, am always on hand, and ever ready to hold myself accountable in any way for anything I have said or done.”

My phone makes a noise. I’ve gotten a twit from Tweeter, telling me to check Facebook. I’ve got a case in the morning- a buddy of mine in the Air Force, Ollie Nier, got told he can’t put personalized plates on his truck, but I’m supposed to have dinner with Sarah- and you don’t cancel dinner with the governor.

I navigate to Facebook, which is at least more discreet than sending a text like used to be her habit, canceling our dinner reservation. So I meet her in the usual place. She’s a creature of habit, meets me in the lobby and tells a variation on her usual joke about the room service steaks being better here anyway. I like meat, sue me (though I do intuit impending legislation from my cardiovascular system over the matter).

I should feel worse than I do. She’s a wife, and a mother several times over, but I can’t. I’ve tried to feel more Catholically guilty over it, but ours is a far more adult relationship than theirs is. Terry married his high school sweet heart, and is pretty much the exact same man today. Sarah is… different. Evolving and intense.

It isn’t about the sex. She’s an attractive enough woman, but if that were all it was, there are plenty of single women in this state. But there’s only one Sarah. I think a part of my fascination is with the changes in her. When I met her she wasn’t Misses anything, yet, though she’s always loved Terry. But she’s always been smarter than him, more ambitious. She spent a lot of time settling, but she isn’t willing to anymore. I think Governor is just a pit stop to whoever she’s becoming.

But right now she’s warm, and soft, deceptively strong, sweaty and smiling at me. I think she’s about to ask me to get a bottle of champagne, or see about taking a shower. “I… want to nominate you for the state Attorney General.”  

“Was the sex really that bad? And if you’re determined to punish me, a riding crop certainly sounds more fun.”

“We need you.”

“You want me. And you want a plausible excuse for late night meetings with me.”

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My daddy was an astronaut and a teetotaler; I suspect, though I’ve never had any proof, that one night he hit my mother and it took his CO to convince her not to leave him or file charges, and because of that he swore off the sauce. Either way, the old man was insufferable.
 
He never really liked me as a kid- though in fairness, he never seemed to much like anybody- but when I got charged for minor in possession at 17, that’s when he stopped having a son.
 
He was one of the astronauts they sent on the second trip to Mars- the one where they seeded the planet with colony-building robots. At the time everybody thought it was a massive boondoggle- up until the 2070s when the colonies provided space for the always multiplying population. But that pretty much ended his career. The astronauts on that mission never flew again, and his commission in the Air Force ended shortly after that.

I tried not to care. It would have been fair, or ironic, or whatever, if I’d have been able to ignore my father and his achievements, since he did his damnedest to ignore me, but he was a hero, back when astronauts were treated like astronauts, anyway, before every Tom, Dick and moron with a vacation check had been to the moon and bought themselves officially licensed astronaut t-shirts and foam hats.
 
He was genuinely shocked when I got a decent score on the ASVAB and signed up for the Air Force. I don’t think he’d talked to me that whole year, but when I told him I’d passed my physical and been accepted as an aviator he said, “Huh. Never occurred to me you might be worth a shit.” Prick, I know.
 
I flew a handful of combat missions against the Chinese when the trade war flashed hot, but it didn’t last. I hear it’s because somebody in Beijing tracked down the numbers and realized that accounting for parts and labor- especially higher end parts that were manufactured outside the country- the Chinese economy was losing $1.05 for every plane they built. Commie bastards were willing to feed their people into a meat grinder, but the moment it impacted their cheeseburger-buying abilities, suddenly they wanted to go back to the negotiating tables.

But, before that happened, I managed to get called in off my shift to move my plane; they thought the Chinese were going to bomb the planes on the runway like the Japanese did in WWII. The information was legit, and I got into the air, but before I got altitude or speed one of the Chinese shredded my tail and the plane went down. Brass decided to investigate my crash, since it would pad their numbers and make it look less like they got caught with their pants down if there was one fewer downed plane in their stats. They found trace amounts of liquor in me (like I said, I wasn’t on duty when they called me to fly). They did me for a dishonorable- and I always wondered if my dad had something to do with it (by then the Mars colonies were in the black, and even before then, the old man knew how to work a handshake).
 
Anyway, I spent a bit of time flying for fun and profit. I was young, and reckless, and I flew for whoever asked. I think some of my father’s shit got stuck in my brain, and I wanted to be the delinquent he’d figured me for. I almost got killed when I realized some smugglers weren’t just flying drugs- they had a hostage, and they made the mistake of shooting (but not killing) their pilot. Me and the hostage walked away with several kilos- which was just enough to buy me another plane, since the damned insurance wouldn’t cover one downed by smugglers.
 
I decided I wanted to live a while longer, so I had to go legit- though not necessarily too legit. I got involved with flying pirate servers. Basically, they had a server farm on an old hollowed out E-3 Sentry AWAC. They jury-rigged the radome on top of the plane to connect to a satellite that connected to customers. The plane was constantly moving, in the air 23 hours a day, flying in international skies whenever possible. Me and the other pilot took twelve hours behind the controls for 3 month stints. It was grueling, and exciting and mostly insane- I can’t tell you how many different languages pilots swore at me that they were going to shoot me down, international law be fucked.
 
But eventually I stopped being a young man. I was still young enough to be crazy, I think, but not young enough to work that many hours for a season at a time. So I retired, with enough of a wad that I could have sat out my golden years on a beach someplace drinking mai tais. But that wasn’t really me, either.
 
A buddy of mine was a microbrewer. His old partner had run his previous distillery into the ground, but he knew the scene and thought the two of us could at least break even. We did a little better than that- at least, better enough that somebody bought us- on the condition that we came with the company and its recipes.
 
They’d decided an untapped market, given the burgeoning space tourism industry, was beer designed for space. I guess there are problems, since without buoyancy force there’s no carbonation (and who wants a flat beer on vacation?), and something to do with lower gravity affecting the taste buds, but they’d mostly overcome those things by the time we came on board. Then somebody Googled me and found out I was an astronaut’s kid and suddenly my face was on the label.
 
By this point my dad wasn’t even speaking with me. I bought up advertising space on the side of a building near my parents home and plastered my mug on the wall proudly holding up a stein and smiling from underneath a beer-froth moustache, with the words, “Astronaut Beer: Tastes like Freedom” across the bottom. I got a text message a few days later from my mother that apparently he decided to have all the windows on that side of the house papered over; she seemed in pretty good spirits about it, actually, since I think she’d figured out a while ago that he was more than a little crazy.
 
I thought it was going to be a niche product, like astronaut ice cream, but it became a luxury item of a sort, since it was a little more expensive- but not such a luxury that normal folks couldn’t splurge on it- champagne for rednecks, I guess.
 
A couple of the bigger beer companies reverse-engineered our beer enough that the market was starting to crowd us out. It was my old microbrew partner, Steve, that came up with the idea for the gimmick, that it not just be beer made for space travel, but be beer brewed specifically in space. We all thought he was nuts at the time, laughed him practically out of the room- except when any normal person would have hung his head and walked out he gave me the devil’s grin and said. “Sleep on it. I thought it was crazy at first, too.”
 
And the idea grew on me, must have grown on all of us. Our CEO, an old industry hand named Bert, took the management folks, all of us who’d been in on the meeting the day before, out to a Mongolian grill. He stood up, with his drink in his hand, like he was going to toast something, and slowly this big, wide grin grew across his face, until he finally said, “We’re going to make some fucking beer in space.”
 
He told us all how he’d been up most of the night emailing; something about the idea had caught his attention. And he’d talked to some contacts he had in China, and thought he had the perfect satellite for us to buy.
 
It was the PanAsian Space Station. It had been the whacky idea of the Chinese, working with of all countries the Japanese, with limited participation from other nations on or floating near the continent. Basically, they wanted to make sure the western world didn’t screw them out of their slice of the space pie. When we didn’t, and cooperation on the ISS continued unabated, the project was all but mothballed, and the Chinese were planning on letting it drop into the sea, like the Ruskies had done to MIR.
 
So the plan, admittedly sort of poorly thought-out, was to manufacture and bottle bear inside the satellite. The thinking was that people would be willing to pay the premium just to drink space liquors that were actually brewed in space. I thought it was insane at the time, but in a roundabout fashion I got to train, both for practical and promotional purposes, to fly into space.
 
My first jaunt was exciting- I’d been having fever dreams of the Challenger explosion for weeks and had completely prepared myself to die in fire, and kept waiting for a shoe to drop. I was actually just staring out at space, imagining my fiery demise when the last Chinese astronaut on the station opened up the hatch and said, “Good seal.”
 
Mostly because it was his crazy ass idea (but also because we couldn’t think of a nicer guy to put on the go in circles until you throw up machine) Steve was with me. He was going to set up the barley and hop crops. For our first trip, we’d also brought enough raw materials to start brewing immediately- with the hopes that we’d be able to start subsidizing the immense costs of starting up the venture.
 
We used old discarded inflatable hotels to expand the acreage of the station- it didn’t take too much to retrofit them as hydroponic green houses, and by the end of our fourth year we were growing enough wheat and barley to feed a medium-sized African country (or to keep Connecticut wasted 24/7).
 
We were in the space station business six years. Margin on space beer was usually pretty thin, and we were always looking for ways to cut down on expenses, but we were profitable. Hell, we reconquered the space beer market by introducing partially space-brewed blends.
 
And I never would have seen it coming. There was a backlash, and I think it had more to do with the political parties strawmanning drug liberalization for political gain (though not being a political sort, I don’t know who was trying to protect our fragile persons from ourselves). Rather than just repeal the laws legalizing pot and some of the milder opiates, they went after everything- even caffeine and liquor. Intense lobbying by Coke, Pepsi and a bunch of coffee companies protected caffeine, but MADD was rabid, and booze became an endangered species.
 
This time the Coast Guard wasn’t fucking around, either, and they started sinking ships, even a couple of cruise liners, stupid enough to bring liquor into their territorial waters. A group of us got while the getting was good, and took one last ride up in our space taxi and stayed in the station. A few of the staff decided to quit, and road a survival pod down to the surface- but room wasn’t much of an issue. In a telescope it looks like one of those hamster cities with colored tubes connecting tubes, but in raw acres it was the third largest barley farm in the world, and that’s not counting all the various storage and
 
One of the first things we’d done once the station turned a profit was purchase the mineral rights to a slice of the moon; the fewer things you have to bring up out of Earth’s atmosphere the fewer multimillion dollar launches you have to budget for.
 
After the mine we bought various production facilities, just enough that we could build further additions to the station in orbit. But now that we were the only potential supplier of liquor to the country, we came up with another idea: booze drops.
 
The design is based on Multiple Reentry Vehicles used for modern nuclear weapons. It’s essentially a robotic glider that floats slowly into the atmosphere, and at specific times drops down individual shipments of booze to land within a quarter kilometer of the drop zone. For the drop the liquor has to be frozen- otherwise the changes in pressure would burst it like a puppy in the Marianas Trench. 
 
The MRVs are expensive, but our asking price is higher these days, so we can afford them. We’ve also near-perfected a just-add-water dehydrated liquor block, and the margin on those is even better.
 
I got an email from my mother this morning; I guess she’d tracked me down from a Yahoo news story about bootleggers. She said my father doesn’t know yet; he’d hate me even more if he knew I was a space pirate, enabling other people to keep on drinking.
 
I try not to consciously wish for him to die, but barring a half-dozen robotic organs he would have been dead thirty years ago. Something about the thought of further disappointing that ornery old bastard turns my knees to jam.
 
But I think it’s high past time I popped open a cold one, turned on whatever late night show might be on and enjoy a beer in space. 
 
 
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Being kind, the woman serving drinks in the train car might have mistook the pair of men as father and son; being unkind, she would have guessed grandfather and grandson. The younger man, who she’d heard called “Pete” flicked his cigarette out the open window. “Take a care, son. Matt Horner was an ornery son of a cuss. Shot a lot of men dead; cold blood dripped off his hands in the day.”

“Allegedly,” the younger man said, settling into his seat. “Horner’s only been linked to a handful of actual deaths, you know, ones with bodies or kin we can find, ones that aren’t just a part of his legend. And of those, there’s only one we can prove he shot, and that was in an honest duel.”

“Parts of legends disappear, son, don’t mean they’re any less true.”

“Whiskey?” the woman asked, holding out a bottle and a pair of glasses.

“I’m working,” said Pete, with irritation she didn’t deserve.

“Figure he’s working hard enough for the both of us,” the older man said with a wink in his eye as he dropped a few coins in her palm; she wasn’t sure if he was being an old flirt or kind, as she’d found in old men the two are almost indistinguishable, at first. She poured his drink then walked away. “You should relax. You’re making me nervous. And Horner’s already a nervous sort; you make him anxious and he’s like to shoot us afore we get a word out.”

At the station they were met by a man with two beat up old horses, and a hand-drawn map. They followed it out of the skeleton of a town into the grassy hills. “Used to be Indian territory,” the older man, who went by Gene, said.

“Whole country used to be Indian territory,” said Pete, though the way he said it you wouldn’t know how exactly he felt about it.

They didn’t say anything else until they arrived at a beat to hell little shack built out of scavenged boards against the side of a squat plateau of red rock. Gene knocked. “Keep your mouth shut and your hand off your goddamned gun,” he said quickly.

The door opened, not fast, not slow, just regular, like nothing special was happening. But rather than a man, all that was there was the sawed-down nose of a double-barrel shotgun, and past that darkness. Smoke from the wick of a kerosene lamp wafted out of the black beyond what little light broke through the door. “How can I help you?” asked a voice from behind the gun.

Gene glanced nervously to his younger partner, but knew both men they were on a hair trigger. “We work for the government, but we ain’t here in any official capacity, you understand. The Bureau might take an extra interest if we turned up missing, but they like as not wouldn’t. The boy here is young, and stupid; I’d appreciate if you could lower that shooter before he’s moved to get me killed.”

Twin hammers on the double-barrel came down, slow and quiet, then the shotgun pointed away as the man carrying it walked back over towards the lamp, and lit it with a match. Gene didn’t wait for an invitation, but he also didn’t move too close, or too fast, just walked into the house, keeping a clear distance. Pete’s instincts wouldn’t let him, move, not at first, but then he caught the other man’s eyes, and he knew that standing outside the front door weren’t an option, either.

“Matthew Horner, I feel safe to presume,” Gene said. “I’d put out my hand for you to shake, but I doubt you’re inclined.” The point of a handshake was showing somebody you didn’t have any aggression- or a weapon- and at the moment he had both. “I’m going to advise you to think on this as a business proposition. Now before you object, this ain’t about your skills, which I’m informed you retired from using. Problem is, you’re a wanted man, and the authorities are now aware of your whereabouts. They’re duty bound to take you in.”

“But, and this is where that proposition comes in, there’s an Indian fellow up in the hills. His entire tribe sold off their land, collectively, but he won’t budge. The authorities can’t seem to get to him; he’s killed a posse or three in more or less cold blood.”

Horner cocked back the hammers on his double-barrel. “What are you asking of me?”

“Honestly, Matt, we’re giving you the choice Jesse James never got. You do this for us and me, or the boy here, or whoever comes next after us, doesn’t put a bullet in the back of you. Now, I know that look. You’re a man of his own honor; it don’t sit right to even entertain us in your home, leave be any offer we bring with us. But the boy and I, we’re the pony express, after a fashion. We’re the carrot, or as close as is like to be used. What might follow us is a mighty big stick, indeed.”

“My boss don’t want to admit to Indian Affairs that he can’t handle one old redskinned coot, nor does he want to deal with the Marshals Office on account of you. He counts two birds, but he thinks he’s got an idea better than any stone. But I’ve a feeling the first stone he’d throw’d be Pinkerton detectives.”

Horner thought a moment, and it last a long time before he spoke. “You’ll answer a question,” and it was plain by the way he said it that he hadn’t asked it yet. “Why?”

“We ain’t got to tell you shit,” Pete said with a snarl, his hand trembling over his gun.

“Now calm down, son; he’s had you dead to rights since we first came through his door. He’ll shoot you first, I guarantee it, and hope he’s still enough years on me or I’ve gone soft enough- ain’t a dance I’d step to lightly. But you, son, you die, so take your stupid thumb off your hammer or we’ll both turn and shoot you- I swear to your God I will.” The younger man eyed the oldest and realized he wasn’t blowing smoke, then threw his hands up in the air.

“I ain’t supposed to say shit, boy’s correct in that, but you want to know because you think a man’s got a right to know the reason for the evil he does. I can respect that. There’s gold in them thar hills- black gold. He bought his Dawes Act allotment, good, legal, and proper, back before anyone thought there might be oil there. But the rest of the tribe upped stakes and sold, and a court of the law says his deed went with theirs.”

“Now I could give a shit, you want to reason with him, or shoot his legs out from under him while he’s taking a shit. Your means are your own; ends are all I’m concerned with. And if you don’t mind, I’ll take my leave. I hope, sincerely, this is the last time I see you.” Gene tipped his hat; Pete eyed the other man, not wanting to turn his back on a man with a gun. “He ain’t going to shoot you in the back, son, but if you linger too long he might feel inclined to shoot you in the front.” A grim smile poked out through Horner’s dark whiskers. Pete walked away.  

The next morning Horner kissed his wife and got on his horse. It’d been years since he’d rode with such grim purpose. He’d seen Indian Joe several times at the general store, maybe even spoke a word to him, once. It felt like he was standing over some poor man’s grave, walking up to the front door. There was blood in the dirt, dried.

Horner didn’t knock; policemen knocked, soldiers sometimes, too, if there was anyone higher than a lieutenant in sight. “Joe?” he said, and there was a tremble in his voice he hated to betray. There was a long pause, but before he gave a thought to calling out again, he heard another door, slamming as it caught the wind. He didn’t bother trying to turn fast or draw- by that point Joe had him dead if he wanted him.

“You here to steal my land?” Joe asked. The question, the possibility Matt might be some lost fool, was the only thing keeping him alive.

“No. But I would like to have a jaw at you.” Joe lowered his rifle.

The old Indian nodded at the door. “It’s open.” Horner led the way inside, and once there Joe fixed him with a stare, then flicked his eyes towards a round table with a chair. “Sit.” Horner did; the old Indian was wilier than he looked, because drawing from a chair would slow him down. “You with them oil men?”  

Horner’s eyes told most of the story. “They-”

Joe held up his hand to cut Horner off. “What are they holding over you?”

Horner lowered his eyes, not proud of his reply. “Got a past.”

“Don’t we all?” asked Joe, and for the first time Horner looked into his eyes and saw another man, there, and the same kind of pride and shame hiding behind an old man’s smile. Then he looked back to the table, steeling himself.

“Ain’t looking for sympathy, but before I kill a man, or before I even try, I owe him to look in his eyes and tell him why. In my young, wild days, or maybe if I didn’t have a missus and young one at home, I’d barricade here with you and help you defend your homestead. But this ain’t a fight you can win; ain’t a fight I could, either.”

Joe walks over to a cabinet; Horner doesn’t look up, half expecting the old Indian to produce a pistol. “Rum?” he asks, and instead he pulls out a bottle and a pair of dirty glasses, and Horner nods.

Joe poured two big shots before Horner could protest, then tossed his back with abandon. Horner’s pupils narrow to slits, dancing from the rifle propped against the table, to Joe, his head still back as he swallows; he could shoot the other man down without a care. He doesn’t.

Horner takes up his glass and swallows it, and the burning liquid sears pictures of his family alone, and that hard, bitter life, if he dies, into his mind. Joe sighs, and Horner tries not to let it be seen that he’s reaching for his gun, thinking the Indian’s sighing over their gunfight until the old man says, “I’ll go.”

Horner’s surprised enough his hand drifts away from his pistol, and he asks, “Did I hear you correctly.”

“I don’t even want the land- I’ve just been stubborn. I hate it here. Land’s terrible. Nothing grows. Cattle won’t graze. You passed my herd on the way in, probably mistook them for deer. And everyone I knew left a long time ago.” He’s sad, but he’s tranquil in his sadness.

“It ain’t right,” Horner says.

“When was it?” asks Joe.

Joe asked for one thing, that Horner stall the oil men a few days, long enough to remove his personal belongings, and to drive as much of his herd would go, and he obliged him gladly.

Six days after he sent a telegram east, Horner received a return visit. He recognized the knock at the door, and like last time shooed his family into the back room; he wondered if they were reneging on the deal. Horner saw Gene, the older man, first. “We come in?” He stepped out of the way to let them through.

A long, tense moment passed; Horner couldn’t get a read on Pete, and the older man was stifling something. “Seems they didn’t trust Joe, so even with your assurances, they brought some hired guns to his place.” Then Gene almost smiled. “Apparently, the old Indian dynamited his place before he left, so that when they arrived to force him away, the whole place went kablooie. It was big enough the oil well caught fire, and the oil company’s still trying to get it put out.”

“Best of all possible outcomes- not for my employer, mind you- but for the general state of justice in the world. Now, for your troubles, I wish I could give you a pardon, but the governor’s a hard man to bribe, besides which it’s not clear that crimes committed in the territory would have been covered, anyway. But we got you the next best thing.” The older agent handed Horner a newspaper from the day before, and at the bottom of the front page was a story titled, “Notorious Outlaw Matt Horner Dead.”

Horner’s eyes flicked to the kid, assuming that was the moment he’d feel a bullet in his chest, but Pete was standing with his shoulders low, shaking his head. “You’re dead,” Gene beamed. “Me and the boy claimed the bounty off some drifter couldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer, roughly fitting the description. And Marshals don’t hunt dead men.” Gene turned on his heel, and tipped his hat. “Do enjoy your little slice of heaven, son, I do believe you earned it.” Pete slunk out behind him.

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