Chapter 7

At the apartment, Jill whipped up a big dinner for both of us, as it had been a very long and active day, plus it wasn’t over yet. After eating, we relaxed together for a time before preparing to leave to find Frank ‘the Fish’ and check him into our new hotel facility with nothing but cold bricks for a companion.

As it approached 2200 that evening, I donned my warmest clothing as I prepared to leave for the North End, as the nights here were quite cold. I would need to locate my target and see what he was doing before I could remove him from circulation.

“I may be late returning,” I told Jill when I was ready to depart.

“Will he be that hard to find?”

“No, but I need him alone when I abduct him, so no one knows or suspects where he is, or what happened to him,” I told her.

“You don’t want me to go with you, do you?” she asked, seeing that I was already dressed.

“It may be a long, cold, boring night. I don’t believe you would enjoy it,” I told her before kissing her and then casting the transfer spell.

Appearing in the same alley that I had used previously, I checked the area for passersby before transferring to the second floor of the New Acorn Club. After casting the invisibility spell, I moved up to the third floor to see who was there, and what they were doing. Staying in the shadows near the front wall, I could see that the same people were here tonight who had been here last night. What I didn’t see was any sign of ‘the Fish’, so I listened carefully to what was being said.

“That god dammed ‘Fish’ got more of my money last night. How am I ever going to get even with him?” I heard the same guy grouse.

“It’s because you’re a lousy poker player, Whistler. Every time you get a good hand, you start whistling under your breath. All of us can hear it,” the guy across the table from him told him to his face. “You should be glad that ‘the Fish’ isn’t here yet. It will save you some money,” the guy finished.

So, Frank wasn’t here and apparently hadn’t been here yet tonight. Returning to the second floor on learning this, I canceled the invisibility spell, as it requires a lot of energy to maintain it, before transferring back to the alley where I had appeared to see if ‘the Fish’ would show up.

An hour and a-half later, I was cold, tired, and bored when I saw him approaching, looking like the cat that had swallowed the canary. As he drew closer, I stepped out of the alley.

“Hello Frank,” I said in greeting.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, as his hand went into the pocket of his overcoat.

“Why, I’m your biggest fan, Frank. I’ve been waiting for a long time to meet you, and now here you are,” I told him with a big smile.

“I asked who the hell you are?” he grumbled in return.

“I’m Max,” I told him, still with a big smile.

“I never heard of you,” he said, trying to push past me.

“But I’ve heard of you,” I told him, just before I threw the freeze spell that I had cast at him, freezing him in place. I quickly checked the street then to see if anyone had seen us, but in the cold this late at night, no one was outside.

After getting a good grip on him, I cast the transfer spell while drawing its glyph on his coat. We disappeared from Endicott Street to reappear in the foyer of the subbasement at the bottom of the stairs of the Second Otis house. Releasing Frank, I turned on Jill’s flashlight, opened the door on the right hand wall of the foyer, and pushed him inside the empty room to leave him standing there frozen in the middle of the floor. On exiting the room, I closed and locked the stout oak door before casting the transfer spell again to reappear in our apartment in Southie. Jill was still up, waiting for me to return.

“Did you find him?” she asked first thing, as she moved over to me. She quickly backed way when she felt how cold I was.

“Good grief, Max, get that coat off and move over here by the radiator while I make some hot soup to warm you up,” she insisted. Removing the coat, I tossed it on the sofa before sitting in the chair near the radiator. A short time later, Jill brought me a bowl of hot soup on a serving tray along with several hot biscuits.

“Eat all of that and then tell me what happened,” she demanded.

The soup was the canned type but very good, and it helped warm me up. The biscuits also went well with the soup. On finishing it, I explained what had occurred while I was out.

“It’s way too late to work on him tonight. I’ll start in the morning when I’m rested,” I finished.

“We’ll work on him in the morning,” she assured me.

I took a good hot shower before going to bed. Jill had already showered while I was out, and we were both asleep for the night shortly after I got in bed.

We awoke late on Thursday and had a good breakfast before setting out on our work for the day.

“I need to make time for Maureen’s lessons in Magic today,” Jill told me as we ate. “I wasn’t able to make time for her yesterday, and I’m sure she was disappointed,” she finished.

“Hopefully, we won’t be as busy today,” I told her.

We stopped by Paddy’s shop to check with him before we went to interrogate ‘the Fish’. We found him moving supplies to his van when we arrived.

“I have a rush job today,” he told us, as I helped him move some of the supplies. “Won’t have any time to take you anywhere today,” he finished.

“That’s okay, we will be interrogating Frank ‘the Fish’ in a bit, and that should keep us busy for a while plus we’ll need to evaluate what we learned from him, so we should be busy all day,” I assured him.

“We’ll look after Maureen when she gets out of school,” Jill assured him before he left for the rush job.

“I’ll cast a ward around the shop while we’re gone. We should be back well before Maureen gets out of school,” I told Jill before casting the ward. Following that, I transferred us to the sub-basement of the Second Otis House. Jill had already turned on her light before we left.

“It’s actually warmer down here than it is outside,” she commented, after we appeared in the foyer there.

“I’m sure that Frank didn’t notice it,” I told her, as she opened the lock on the door to the storage room. As I opened the door, the light shown on Frank in the middle of the room, still under the freeze spell.

“You’re going to need to cancel the freeze spell before we can learn anything from him,” she pointed out.

“After I search him,” I told her, moving over to ‘the Fish’ and checking the pockets of his overcoat, where I found a revolver. I also checked the rest of his clothes and his body, and found an automatic in a shoulder holster under his left arm with the extra magazines for it under his right arm, and a large folding knife on his belt. Additionally, he had a money clip with a thousand dollars in his pants pocket and a second wallet with over two thousand dollars in it in his left inside suit coat pocket.

“I don’t think Frank will be needing these,” I said, as I handed them to Jill. The weapons, I transferred to the fancy room across the foyer for now.

Following that, I moved him further back into the room before changing the freeze spell to only a partial one from his knees down, effectively holding him in place. Frank snapped back to consciousness as the spell changed. Jill had the light trained on him, and he brought his left hand up in front of his eyes to block the light while feeling for the pistol in his overcoat pocket. Shock showed on his face on realizing that it was missing.

“What the fuck is this? What the hell are you up to?” he demanded in an upset voice.

“That’s easy, you are my prisoner, Frank, and we are in the subbasement of a house on Beacon Hill. You can scream as loud as you want. There is no one to hear you, as we are deep underground and there is no one in the house above us,” I told him with a smile.

“What the hell do you want?” he demanded, as he tried to move but was unsuccessful.

“We want information about the people in Salem who you introduced to Don Palladino, and who he sent to Atlanta to see his nephew Rickey Pontoliano,” I told him.

“How the hell do you know about that?” he demanded belligerently.

“We’ve followed the trail in reverse starting with Rickey and then his Uncle. That’s how we learned your name, and then the ‘Big Cheese’ and the ‘Little Cheese’ revealed what had occurred during an argument that I overheard a couple of nights ago. Now you are here, and we intend to learn everything that you know about those in Salem before we go there to deal with them,” I told him.

“How the hell do you know all of that?” he demanded in an upset voice.

“People are always ready to tell us everything they know after a little persuasion,” I assured him.

“Why should I tell you anything? What’s in it for me?” he demanded.

“It could be worth your life,” I told him with a grin.

“Fuck you, I don’t know nothing,” he sneered.

“Very well, Frank, don’t say that we didn’t warn you,” I told him before casting the pain spell on him, but not changing the freeze spell, as I didn’t care if he screamed.

“Let’s look at the other rooms while Frank considers his options,” I told Jill who hadn’t said anything. We left the room, and I locked the door this time and cast a ward in the wall and the door. No one was going in or out until I canceled it.

“Will he tell us what we want to know?” Jill asked.

“Oh yes, I’ll use the truth spell, after he suffers for a while, and he will tell us what we want to know, if he knows the answer,” I assured her.

We returned to the fancy room behind the left door on the foyer wall to spend more time examining it. We checked it very thoroughly, but after more than an hour, we knew very little more about who had stayed here or why. We had heard Frank screaming many times while in there, as we had left the door to the room open.

Returning from our fruitless search, I canceled the ward in the right hand wall and the spell on the lock to the door. On opening it, we were treated to the full blast of Frank’s screams, but after an hour or more, his screams had been reduced to not much more than a loud whisper, but they still conveyed the agony that he was in.

As we approached him, I canceled the pain spell whereupon he commenced to puke, urinate, and defecate all over himself. We were prepared for this with strong cleaning spells to remove the mess, and Jill even used a cleaning spell to tidy up his clothing. Frank just stared at us with bleary eyes once the reaction had subsided. I also used a spell to freshen the air in the room.

“How can you do that?” he finally wheezed in a whisper.

“We are Wizards and use Magic to accomplish many things,” I told him, to a shocked look from him.

“So the fanatics were right after all, even though the government has denied for years that there is anything like Magic,” he whispered in a voice that grew weaker and less audible with each word.

“The government has lied about many things it doesn’t want people to know,” I told him.

“He needs some water for his throat,” Jill reminded me, and I called a bottle of water to me from where I had been shopping yesterday. Frank drank it in small gulps after the first few sips.

“Are you ready to talk now, or do you need more persuasion?” I demanded.

“I’m not going through that again for those assholes,” he answered in a better voice having finished the bottle of water. I cast the truth spell to be sure that what he told us was the truth.

“Who were the people you took to meet Don Palladino?” I asked.

“They were a bunch of over educated Salem ne’er-do-wells. Their ancestors had been wealthy and powerful men. Now their families live on past glory and small trust funds, and they need to work at what they considered menial jobs that are beneath them to support themselves.

“They are all also the younger members of the Salem East India Marine Society. The old coots of the Society meet up in the Society’s club house on the roof of the Hawthorne Hotel, but the younger members meet in a suite on the sixth floor of the hotel that no one but them knows about. I know about it because they took me up there for one of their meetings. They are all a bunch of religious fanatics who believe the devil is still behind all of their problems, and that those who can do Magic are his followers here on earth,” he told us.

“When do they meet?” I asked.

“They meet on Tuesday night at eight. Wednesday night, they go to church to hear this fanatical preacher. Thursday night, the old coots meet up in the clubhouse,” he told us.

“They use the tunnels under Salem to reach the hotel unseen. Despite what you read in that book on the tunnels, there are still usable tunnels that connect to the Hawthorne Hotel from several of the old houses as well as the Peabody Essex Museum complex plus other places I’m sure. The Mayor and the cops all know about them and keep people away from the tunnels. All of those punks are really pissed that they don’t have the power and influence that their ancestors did. They also blame their congressman and senators for not pushing harder to eliminate the use of all Magic and Magic users even though the government has denied the existence of Magic for many years. Now, you tell me that you are Wizards and use Magic. Who do I believe?” he finished.