Kaleidoscope Read Free

Some pretty fantastic digs, those guys put up. Two, three storey palaces on manicured grounds, fenced in and shaded with maples and elms. Long, gated drives. Pretty safe bet that behind one of those gates, in one of those palatial homes, was Fist Carlton’s boss.
    Word was that Oliver Bladehorn had run booze and broads in Chicago before relocating to Cincinnati. Jack had spent some time in Chicago. He had not profited from his sojourn in that city, but he had gained some wisdom. He learned, certainly, that it was much easier to deal off the bottom to any number of micks, wops, krauts, or niggers than it was to a single gangster. Jack had not turned a card with anybody moving whiskey since fleeing the windy city. And he was damn near certain that even in his blindest, drunkest excursions he had never gambled with Oliver Bladehorn.
    Jack gathered enough confidence to run his ungloved hand over the smooth finish of the Duesenberg’s mahogany dashboard.
    “Is that a radio ? In the dash ?”
    “Fuckin’ hick,” Fist growled.
    “We could hear the game? We could listen right here in the car?”
    “Not likely”
    “Gimme a break, Fist!”
    “Piss off Bladehorn, I’ll be breaking your fucking legs.”
    Jack felt the knot that had partially relaxed retie in the pit of his stomach.
     
     
    Oliver Bladehorn’s mansion rose smooth and modern on the cusp of older properties and architecture. A wrought-iron gate fashioned in the shape of an eagles wing, or maybe a vulture’s, was guarded. The Duesenberg passed through with barely a nod from a uniformed sentry to reach a private drive which glided toward a three-storey structure constructed in the art deco style that had become chic.
    The place looked like it had been poured from a mold. A bright white exterior. Couldn’t tell if it was made of cement, or just whitewashed. Lots of glass. No hard angles, at least not on the outside. It seemed of a much lighter construction than older, crenelated homes that Jack had seen, but that may have been a deceit wrought by design.
    They rumbled past a gaggle of women, forty or more, sipping tea on the broad lawn in their straight dresses and Mary Janes. Buttons’n bows. Resting from croquet, apparently. Mallets abandoned beside brightly striped balls.
    “What’s this? Your boss some kinda Free Thinker? Or does he just like petticoats?”
    “You’ll see what he likes,” Fist said, and actually smiled.
    They didn’t stop out front. Fist wheeled the Doosey around to the backside of Bladehorn’s modern residence and parked at the entrance to an enormous greenhouse.
    “Go ahead.”
    Fist dipped the lid of his hat toward a well-screened door.
    “He’s waitin’.”
     
     
    Jack entered the hothouse just ahead of Fist Carlton. The morning’s humidity was arid compared to the greenhouse’s interior. A startling variety of completely unfamiliar plant life bloomed and tangled and spored from potting tables and peat. And hanging on every vine, limb, and blossom were veritable curtains of bright-colored wings. There were thousands, maybe tens of thousands of creatures pulsing gently on exotic orchids or thrashing on currents of saturated air, their hues electric against the greenhouse’s transparent lens.
    “Butterflies, Mr. Romaine.”
    Oliver Bladehorn sported a monocle and an apron over his pinstriped trousers.
    “Surely even you can recognize a simple insect.”
    Jack resisted a reply. Butterflies were not, at that moment, the insect with which he was concerned.
    Oliver Bladehorn was an odd combination of parts. A tonsure of hair was perfectly trimmed to laurel a well-waxed skull. He wore a suit and vest beneath his apron, even in this wet sauna, and yet Jack, who was already wet in his pits, could not detect a hint of perspiration on Mr. Bladehorn.
    The gangster’s face bulged from its bone-work like a rotting gourd. A drool of spittle seeped uncontrolled from a smile slit as though with a knife into that dying and desiccated