The Blue Blazes (4 page)

“Your who?”

“My Pop-Pop. The Boss.”

“Cure. Like, the cancer.”

“That’s right. I need you to cure his cancer.”

Mookie almost laughs. This kid isn’t too bright. “I know I don’t look like a doctor.”

“But you know things. You’ve been…” The kid points toward the floor. “Downstairs.” He means the Great Below. The Underworld.
Hell itself
. Mookie’s surprised the kid knows about that, but if they’ve been giving him a real crash course and he’s going to take the wheel…

“Hell’s not a hospital. It’s the… opposite of one. No help there for your grandfather.”

“I’ve been reading.”

“Good for you. I hear it’s fundamental.”

“No, I mean– I have these pages. From this journal? This guy named Oakes…”

Shit.
This
. “John Atticus, yeah. He went down fifteen, twenty years ago. Went nuts. Never came back. End of story.”

“He says that the…” And here Casimir lowers his voice even further as if he’s summoning the Devil. “Blue stuff isn’t the only pigment. That there are
five
in addition to the Blue and that one of them can cure anything, can end death itself–”

All anybody has of Oakes’ journal are a dozen or so pages that have been found scattered around the Underworld over the years. Mookie knew him. Well, met him, anyway. Was a reformed thief-turned-explorer. A self-proclaimed “cartographer”. Like the dead of Daisypusher, he wanted to chart the whole Underworld. Thousands of miles of subterranean labyrinth. He got a lot of things right but some stuff…

“You’re talking about Death’s Head.
Caput Mortuum
. It’s not real. Nobody’s ever seen the stuff. Nobody’s seen anything but the Blue.”

“They say that they found the Red–”

“Fuck the Red.” The kid flinches. It’s only then Mookie hears the anger in his own voice. He’s tired. Hungry. Seeing Nora didn’t do him any favors. “I just mean, until I see it, I don’t buy it.”

“But if Death’s Head were real, it could cure him.”

Mookie shrugs. “If it does what Oakes said it could do, yeah.”

“So you’ll find it.”

“Kid–”

“You’d be helping me. And him. And the whole Organization. Can you imagine it? Curing his cancer?” Casimir runs his hands through his copper hair. “I’m not ready. I need more time.”

“Why me? Why not go to Werth?”

“James Werth is a half-and-half. A hybrid.”

So, he knows what that is
. Mookie wonders if the kid’s ever Blazed, torn the scales off of his eyes to see what’s really out there. “So? You some kind of racist?”

“No. I mean – I don’t know. You’re human. And you come highly recommended.”

“From who?”

The kid blanches. “From, I dunno. People.”

“Jesus. Fine. I’ll look.”

Casimir offers a hand to shake. “Thank you, Mookie.”

Mookie takes the hand. Shakes it. Tries not to roll the kid’s knuckles. If the measure of a handshake really matters, then Mookie wonders what it means that it feels like he’s shaking a dead carp instead of the kid’s hand. Maybe the kid really isn’t ready.

Which is bad news for everybody.

 

Mookie heads for the door. He ate. His stomach feels fit to burst. In a good way. He likes that feeling beyond satiety – the fullness of the flesh, the sense of being somehow completed by a good meal.

Werth hobbles over to him. “You leaving?”

“I figure.” He doesn’t say anything about what Casimir wanted. Werth would call it crazy. It
is
crazy. “I got things to check on while I’m in the city.”

“You should move back. Get an apartment in the village. Or Brooklyn at least.”

“I got my bar.”

“It’s not a bar. It’s a house with a bar in it.”

He shrugs. “Got a freezer for meat. Got shelves for liquor.” But he notices that Werth has mentally checked out. His tongue is fidgeting with his loose gray tooth and he’s staring off toward the door.

“Who’s that?” Werth asks, lifting his whiskery chin.

The man that enters the small banquet room isn’t one Mookie recognizes. Definitely not a thug. Nobody from a gang. He’s too well-dressed. Like he’s in a Cuban café – tan fedora, red embroidered guayabera shirt, a gold watch, and shoes so shiny other shoes might use them as mirrors.

Mookie doesn’t know what makes one guy good looking and another guy ugly, but he knows that if he’s at the ass-end of the spectrum, this guy’s at the other. He looks like someone out of a movie. Dark-drawn lines around the eyes, a glimmer in his gaze.

Following behind is a thin slip of a man, skin so pale it might as well be gray, sliding along with all the posture of a broken coat-rack. A black V-neck T-shirt hangs loose over his sickly frame – his match-stick arms are inked with symbols and sigils, ones Mookie’s seen but can’t place, ones that tell him right away what he’s looking at even without blazing.

“Ten to one that guy in the black shirt is a Snakeface,” Mookie says.

“Shit, yeah. Look at the arms.”

The man in the suit and his wormy attaché head toward the Boss’s table in the back of the room, the pair gliding through the crowd, earning stares. They don’t belong.

Mookie feels himself tense up. This could be it. This could be a hit. Maybe one of the gangs is sending someone. Or maybe this is from another city: the Sicilians, the Irish, or any number of Mexican, Aryan, or Dominican gangs. Or maybe it’s someone from the Deep Downstairs – some pissed off half-and-half wants to take over.

Mookie reaches into his pocket and starts to move toward the new guests. His big hand fumbles for his little tin of Cerulean – he’s ready to powder up, rip open his third eye and become
aware
. But then he sees Haversham stand and cross the room. Haversham and the man in the suit shake hands.

“Mr Candlefly?” Haversham says.

Mookie lets the tin drop back into his pocket.

Haversham greets the man in the suit. This man, Candlefly, speaks with a European accent. A Spanish roll to it. The voice warm, dark, like a fresh cup of black coffee. “Good day, Mr Haversham. Nice to finally meet in person.” Candlefly gestures toward the Snakeface: “This is my associate, Mr Sorago.”

The Snakeface – Sorago – bows his already bent head.

And with that, Haversham ushers them toward the Boss.

Werth pops up again by Mookie’s side. He’s eating a roll. “Why would a Snakeface be hanging out with the Boss?”

Mookie grunts: a wordless answer of,
not sure
.

Around a mouthful of bread, Werth says, “Strange. The Boss doesn’t usually deal with… that type.”

“Times are changing.”

“Hope they don’t change out from under us.”

Mookie shrugs. “I gotta go.”

 

4

 

Cerulean. The bright blue mineral vein shot through the prehistoric schist of the Great Below. Equal parts pigment and drug. It goes by many names: Peacock Powder, Truth Talc, the Straight Dope, Blue Jay (or just, “Jay”), Bluebird or Blue Butterfly (or simply “BB”), Blue Mascara, Cobalt, Azure. But many just call it – and the effects it engenders – the Blue Blazes. Users smudge some of the blue powder on the temples to bring on effects that include: preternatural strength, preternatural toughness, as well as a wiping away of the illusions that keep mortal men from seeing the truth of the denizens of the Underworld. In first-time users the Blue Blazes create an adrenalin rush and an eerie, powerful focus – a high that peaks with the initial use and is never again matched. Blazeheads are said in this way to “chase the blue” or “hunt the peacock”. Many never know that the visions they sometimes see are true – they believe them to be by-products of the drug, hallucinations that accompany the feelings of invulnerability and clarity. As a drug it’s quite rare and fetches a high price among those who know of its existence. The Organization controls Cerulean. Or, at least, they think they do.

– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below

 

A passing subway train shakes the walls. Fluorescent lights swing.

As they do, the shadows of the room move – shadows of crooked card tables, of antique scales, of the little towers of tins that tilt and teeter as the train passes.

Once the noise has calmed down, the half-man, Octavio, says, “C’mon, man. Death’s Head isn’t real, Mookie. You know that.”

Mookie’s not Blazing right now: if he were, he’d see a man with hair like braided vines, with skin like tree bark and fingernails like rose-thorns. Octavio’s a half-and-half, like Werth: but, while Blind, all Mookie sees is a broad-shouldered black man with long, puffy dreads going halfway down his back. Behind him, a couple other workers – ex-Mole People – pull out a few softball-sized hunks of Cerulean, the blue of the pigment an unearthly hue, here in the bright lights of the secret room not far from the Brooklyn Bridge Station.

Mookie shrugs. “I know. But I was told to ask.”

The ex-Moles use the bottom of plastic buckets to crush the Cerulean. They pulverize it to a powder. They measure it out into neat little piles. The piles go onto scales and then into little unmatched tins. Each equaling one ounce of Blue. Rumor has it it’s starting to catch on with rich kids and celebrities: folks who’ve finally caught wind that there’s some secret hush-hush drug out there, some trip-balls hallucinogen that makes you “see things” and “feel like you could take over the world.”

If Blue really catches on after all these years, it may be time to upgrade from little operations like this one. Mookie has a hard time envisioning rows and rows of trailers in some abandoned Jersey lot like they’re cooking meth or unbundling bales of weed. Besides, it’s not like Blue is in endless supply down here: you can always grow more marijuana or make more meth. Cerulean is like gold: you find the vein, you tap it, then it’s gone. It doesn’t come back. And one day they’re gonna get tapped out.

Speaking of that, Octavio says:

“Heard you found a new vein, bruh.”

Mookie nods. Reflexively he reaches for the leather satchel he carries over his shoulder and pulls it tight. He trusts Octavio, but the other Moles – they pulverize the Blue just hoping to get a taste. Addicts, all of them. “Under the Garment District, yeah. The Hell’s Kitchen crew knows their shit pretty well. They’re the ones that found it.”

You use Blue to find Blue – when you Blaze, you can sense more Blue through the walls. Like a heartbeat dully thudding behind the rock. A vein in every sense.

“No more problems with the gobs?” Mookie asks.

Octavio shakes his head; his dreads stay still as his head moves. “Nah, bruh. Thanks for saving our bacon.”

Mookie looks down at his scabbed over knuckles. “It’s fine.”

“They’re gettin’ worse, though. The gobbos. All riled up and shit.”

“I know.” Before Octavio can continue down this topic, Mookie asks again: “You sure you haven’t heard nothing about the Purple? No Death’s Head anywhere?”

“Nah. But I know I guy who knows a guy who got a hold of some of the Red.”

“Bullshit.” Always a
friend of a friend
story.

“For real! Said that shit’s like bath salts had a baby with steroids or something, man. Makes you go crazy. He went nuts. Tore up his mother’s house. Ate her dog.”

“Ate her dog.”

“Scout’s fuckin’ honor, yo.”

“You were a Scout?”

“Do I look like a damn Boy Scout to you?”

“I dunno, Octavio. Go back to work. You hear anything about Death’s Head–”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll call you.”

 

It’s all a myth. The Five Occulted Pigments. Sacred blah blah blah. Way Mookie sees it isn’t much different than talking about Jesus or Buddha or any of that other stuff: yeah, maybe there’s a grain of truth in that bag of rice, but for the most part, it’s all stuff people make up to feel better about all the other stuff they don’t understand. The stories folks tell about the Great Below – ancient gods in at the heart of the Labyrinth, mystical mineral pigments nobody’s ever seen but everybody’s got a story about, monsters that folks have only ever seen once – they’re all just that. Stories.

And Mookie doesn’t have time for stories. But Casimir Zoladski, he’s got his brain wrapped around one such story the way a car wraps around a telephone pole – it’s
inextricable
. He’s gonna be the Boss one day. So Mookie’s doing the deed. He won’t find anything, but hopefully Casimir will one day say, “Good job”, and maybe give him another couple crews, or maybe make him a proper lieutenant instead of a soldier, or best of all, just let him retire with one last suitcase full of money.

Mookie asks everybody he can ask. He knows a couple rock-flesh Trogbodies that hang out at a boxing gym in Brooklyn: Morg has a clumpy basalt body and he’s strong, but slow. His mate, Gannog, is taller, a little leaner, a body of all iron-blue limestone. Gannog’s quick on his feet, Morg is slow. Better at wrestling than boxing. Mookie shows up and the two of them are training – all the humans of the gym know them as Morgan and Gary, don’t know that they’re monsters, don’t know that they go down into the dark when night falls and sleep together by merging with the rock.

When he asks about Death’s Head, Morg says it’s all a lie. Gannog’s on the other end of the spectrum: he’s a believer. He says he sometimes hears the whispers of the Hungry Ones echoing up through the tunnels of the Tangle like someone talking through a cardboard paper towel tube. Says that the old gods make
Caput Mortuum
– sometimes they call it the Violet Void. Says that some folks claim it’s not even a proper Pigment in the rock. Then the two of them go on to talk about the other colors, too: Red’s real bad news, they heard tell of a quartzite Trogbody who got hold of some Golden Gate, but it didn’t do anything when he ate it, whatever, all crap, none of it useful.

After that, as afternoon settles in, Mookie grabs a couple tacos from a taco truck and heads to see a couple kooks from the Skein, one of the lesser and more harmless cults of zealots who venerate the Great Below. The Skein contains a bunch of rich-folk academic-types who think that the power of the Underworld is to show humans the way to enlightenment – something about men and women “walking the Labyrinth in their own hearts” and “confronting Satan in his own house”, which is all well and good except Mookie’s never met Satan or Lucifer or anybody in the Deep Downstairs who would claim the title.

They invite him into their loft space in Chelsea and he asks them about Death’s Head and of course they sit him down and give him some tea that tastes like they filtered water from a potted plant through a jockstrap stuffed with old gym-socks, a tea that has “live and active cultures… oh, and
love
.” Then they want to give him all the academic foo-faw, all the
wisdom
of the ages that
Caput Mortuum
is Latin for “worthless remains” and that in the world of painting and also in alchemy the pigment is iron oxide on hematite, though did Mookie
also
know that
Caput Mortuum
sometimes refers to a
brown
pigment which was made from ground-up mummies and–

None of this matters, so Mookie gives them their gym-sock tea back and moves on.

By the time night falls, he’s talked to a couple amateur spelunkers, a few Blue addicts, a Snakeface named Sirko (they always have
S-
names, those slithery sneaky pricks), and a homeless squid-faced half-and-half who calls himself “The Bishop of New York City.” He hits the few mystical bazaars and visits a few bars. Asks a lot of questions.

Everybody says the same thing. Death’s Head is a myth.

Eventually, evening settles on the city. Night closes like an iron door.

Mookie has a few more options. None of them he much likes.

He could go see Smiley. Chinatown Snakeface, sells information. Under Organization protection because, well, he pays for it. And he’s good to have around. But that doesn’t mean he’s trustworthy. No Naga is. Some Snakefaces are assassins in that they’ll kill your body, but Smiley, he’s a
character assassin
– he’d sell your social security number and your mother’s anal virginity for a half-a-secret.

So, for now: no Smiley.

Which means it’s time to go under. Into the Great Below. The Deep Downstairs.

It’s time to descend.

 

Mookie runs crews of Mole Men. Or, to be politically correct, Mole
People
, since a good half of them are women.

Now, in the city of New York, you have Mole People, and then you have
Mookie’s
Mole People. The city has a whole contingent of homeless lunatics who live under the city – a lot of them live in a ramshackle shantytown under the Freedom Tunnel. They put up little plywood houses and burn barrels and live with the rats and the dogs. Some of them know about the Underworld – what goes on deeper beneath their rag-swaddled feet – but a lot of them don’t. Mookie’s Mole People know. It’s their
job
to know.

The work of the Mole Men is straightforward: they live down in the dark, away from the light. They track gobbo movements. They keep their ears to the walls. And most importantly, they find and dig veins of Blue. In payment: they get a little money and a free supply of the Peacock Powder. (Which in turn helps them find more Blue.)

They’re all addicts.

Some are insane.

Mookie doesn’t like dealing with them, but it’s his job. A soldier doesn’t usually run a crew, but Werth sure as hell doesn’t want this part of the life. He doesn’t come down here. And it’s not like he and Werth are a part of the usual hierarchy, anyway.

So, Werth delegates. To Mookie.

Once Below, Mookie canvasses the Moles. Many as he can find. He finds the Hell’s Kitchen crew first: they’re a good bunch. Solid. Stable. Dependable. Four-Top leads that crew: big black shambling dude, was once one a waiter at several of the hottest, trendiest restaurants in the city. Then he got hit by a cab. Knocked his brain funny. Funny enough where he can’t wait tables but not so funny he can’t run a gang of Moles.

Sometimes, Mookie brings him charcuterie – a little salami, a little lardo.

He finds Four-Top and his crew working on the Hell’s Kitchen vein, chipping hunks of Cerulean out of black stone under the swimmy light of a couple camping lanterns. He sees Mookie, he comes up, gives a fist-bump–

“Hey, hey, whatchoo got, Mookie the Meat Man?”

Mookie knows what he wants. Mookie shrugs, shakes his head. “I don’t got any meat for you, Four-Top. Next time. I promise.”

Four-Top makes a pained face, holds his fists to his rag-swaddled chest and drops to his knees. “You’re killing me, Mook! You’re
killing
me.”

Mookie tells him that he knows. Then tells him what he’s looking for.

“Death’s Head’s just a dream,” Four-Top says. “People get lost down here lookin’ for that shit. It don’t exist.”

Behind him, the Moles continue working at the vein, pulling chunks out of the wall and dropping it into a rusty Red Ryder wagon,
ka-gung
. A couple of them stare at Mookie from under ratty bangs or dark scarves. He knows two of them: Benny Scafidi’s got a winky eye and a poochy belly like he’s eight months pregnant. Next to him is the Mole who calls herself “Jenny Greenteeth”. Curiously, her teeth aren’t green but rather, the color and consistency of melted nubs of black licorice. They want to see if he’s going to treat them with a little taste of the Blazes. Mookie just gives them a
get back to work
look and they quick pretend like they never saw him in the first place.

“Tell you what I did see,” Four-Top says, eye twitching. He leans in, so the others don’t hear: “I saw this thing, yo. It came with a pack of goblins, right? Looked like the cloak off the Grim Reaper, just a black blank space, like a… I dunno what. Shiny eyes and long fingers. Floated there. I hid and then, boom, they was gone.”

“Hrm,” Mookie says. Normally he wouldn’t trust a story like that. But while Four-Top might be twitchy, he’s trustworthy. And, surprisingly, not hooked on the Blue. Some guys control it. Some don’t, or can’t. Four-Top handles it. Mookie does, too – though even now he feels the need for Blue crawling through him like ants through a tunnel. He’s just lucky enough he doesn’t have to give into it. Some folks, they get a taste for it and need more and more and more. Some’ll even kill for a tin.

Which is why it’s important to have loyal crews like this one. Once in a while, the Moles try to steal what’s in the walls. That’s where guys like Four-Top come in. They tell Mookie and Mookie steps in. Might break some fingers. Pop off some kneecaps, use them as candy dishes. They get paid in Blue if they play nice. They get paid in pain if they take more than they’re owed.