Beneath Ceaseless Skies #160 Read online

  Issue #160 • Nov. 13, 2014

  “A Guest of the Cockroach Club,” by M. Bennardo

  “The Streetking,” by Peter Hickman

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  A GUEST OF THE COCKROACH CLUB

  by M. Bennardo

  By the time Senator Warren reached the sloping mud road that dropped through Funkstown to the Potomac shoreline, a deep winter night had fallen. Not a star was visible from the foggy river bottom, and even the bland white-washed faces of the houses and shops of the German immigrants were lost in the chilly folds of the night air.

  Here and there, the freezing mist parted and a taper glowed dully in a window. At other times, the snuffling and fidgeting of cows drifted weirdly through the air—seeming first to come from one side of the road, and then from the other.

  Miserable Funkstown! The darkest inhabited corner of the District of Columbia, far from both the pettifogging of President Monroe’s White House and the honest bustle of Georgetown. And a fitting place, Warren thought grimly as he cinched his greatcoat tighter, for the home of the so-called Cockroach Club.

  Ugh, the Cockroach Club!

  They would pick a spot like this for their headquarters, as far as possible from Pennsylvania Avenue. They would like to make a United States senator walk for miles through muck and worse on a freezing February night. And they wouldn’t mind the foreign and sinister stink of the place—oh no! They would only make it worse.

  Warren sighed. He wouldn’t have come had he not been driven by necessity. A shiver went through him as he recalled Caxton’s exhibition of shooting on the Capitol lawn that very afternoon. How coolly the braggart had stood with a pistol in one hand, sights leveled with his hate-filled eyes, as he methodically shot the pips off a playing card tacked to a tree.

  Necessity? By God yes! Fatal necessity! Only a matter of life and death could have brought Warren this far again—to the black negative space that indicated the Funkstown Brewery, now looming amid the mist of the waterfront.

  “Thank God,” he muttered, feeling not very thankful at all. But why should he feel thankful? To be driven like a frightened lamb from the jaws of one lion into the den of another—

  The Potomac lapped audibly just under the steep riverbank as Warren hurried along the brewery wall. Dim lights peeked through the fog—barges bearing sandstone for the new Capitol rotunda. Warren suddenly wondered if he’d live to see it completed. Bah, better to ask if he’d live to see another night at all!

  But this was no time to lose his nerve. For two weeks now, he’d been scornful enough of young Caxton—and scornful enough of the whole institution of dueling! If he’d wanted to lose his nerve, he ought to have done it when the affair could have been ended with an apology before the Senate assembly. But he had learned too late that Caxton was a crack shot, and that the duel would be a deadly serious thing after all.

  Only one resource—only one man!—might save him now! And so Warren hastened toward the wan flame of the sole oil light that burned behind the brewery. It was fixed next to an unmarked door set in a blank brick wall. The Cockroach Club again, at last!

  And before he could change his mind, Warren grasped the great brass knocker in his hand and left it fall against the door.

  * * *

  The night porter who answered the knock was a great towering oval, his bulk barely contained by a uniform of club livery stretched nearly to the breaking point. He peered down through a broad white face with features that somehow seemed simultaneously both bright and dull, as though his eyes and mouth had been painted on eggshell.

  Warren glared at him critically, stamping his feet and chafing his arms beneath the porter’s shallow chin. Not a glint of intelligence or initiative was identifiable anywhere in the man as he slowly turned and shuffled to the appointment book that lay open on the hallway table.

  “I haven’t got an appointment,” said Warren, extracting a calling card from his pocket. Senator or not, the idiot servants never recognized him.

  But the porter was already turning the pages of the book. Only after he had satisfied himself that there was no appointment—an appointment, here, an hour before midnight!—did the porter turn back to Warren and accept his card. Then waving his arm stiffly, he motioned for Warren to follow him into the anteroom.

  Warren had never liked the house. The walls were uniformly dark, almost black. Walnut, perhaps, or something equally gloomy. The rugs and hangings were dark as well—blues and greys, with hardly a hint of gold or red. And God forbid a patch of white or untarnished silver should be seen anywhere.

  There were no windows and no paintings—not even the colored woodcuts of Washington, Jefferson, and Monroe that seemed to hang in every other house in the District. Instead there were maps and charts and rows upon rows of blue-leather books enclosed inside dark wicker cabinets. The place felt like a burrow to Warren—or a dark and secret passage, entombing ancient royalty.

  And dark and secret, at the least, it was. An open secret, perhaps, but thuggishly kept quiet enough that Warren had never heard a whisper of it back in Philadelphia. Since coming to Washington, he had learned that this was the heart of true power in the capital—this unassuming hovel stuck behind a riverside brewery, from which great waves of graft and patronage and threats of intimidation steadily pumped.

  Yes, everyone in this city knew the Cockroach Club had feelers that reached to every state and half the territories in the union, but no one there suspected a thing. And why should they? Who would give the game away? Either you jumped to orders and accepted the proffered bribes, or you found yourself off the next ballot quick enough!

  Warren clenched his fists as a blur of memories flooded his mind—former colleagues suddenly ousted from their seats. Or worse—suddenly gone spineless and simpering! At least when a monarch stretched the neck of an uncooperative vassal, the murdered man became conspicuous in his sudden disappearance. But when an elected man stood on principle and got himself turned out of his job, all evidence of corruption could be buried under the seal of a secret ballot.

  Yes, it was an insidious system, and Warren had always chafed against it!

  In private, though, he had to admit. Never had he railed too loudly, too openly... Years earlier, the damned Cockroach Club had permitted him and a few others to wriggle out from under the direct pressure of the corrupting thumb, with the tacit understanding that they wouldn’t upset the apple cart...

  Warren sighed. Yet here he was too at last, no better than all the others, come crawling back to beg a favor, and ready to do anything to get it.

  The porter waved Warren toward a black silk divan, his arm making a motion like the limb of a swimming water beetle as he disappeared into a doorway barely large enough to contain him. A moment later he emerged once more and, ignoring Warren entirely, shuffled back to his post in the hallway.

  “I suppose I’m to wait,” muttered Warren, suddenly wishing he hadn’t come at all. Just then, even the certain prospect of being shot through the breast seemed not much worse than spending another moment in a place that had always made his skin crawl. After all, his young secretary, Dardnell, who knew a thing or two about dueling, had assured him that the odds of escaping alive were good, so long as he wore a thick coat and made sure to present his right side forward instead of his left—

  A grandfather clock in a dark corner of the room suddenly intoned a single clear chime. Eleven-fifteen. Six hours or fewer remaining until dawn. And of all the places to spend them!

  Warren blew out his cheeks and eased back onto the divan in resignation as a black mood settled over him.


  * * *

  The next thing he knew, he was sputtering awake, suddenly gripped in a panic. His body crawled in shuddering revulsion as his eyes popped wide and he pawed at his arms and legs. Ugh, those great wormy snuffling monstrosities! Warren leapt up, stamping his feet and letting out a cry of disgust.

  He’d been dreaming the most awful dream—but dreaming with his eyes open, dreaming of the same dark room close around him and the same divan sagging under his weight. But then he’d watched in paralyzed horror as two grubby, waxen creatures had nosed around one of the open doorways—pushing, pulsing, creeping blindly forward into the room.

  Grubby? No, they were grubs—but enormous! White, round, pale-eyed beasts, each as long as one of his legs and twice as fat. With delicate white mouthparts, ever opening and shutting, and impossibly long and fine antennae switching through the air in every direction, slithering close, brushing his face with moist coldness.

  And legs—six of them each! But somehow half-formed and half-useless, dragged underneath their bloated carcasses. And their bodies—puffing and expanding, as if filling with air while they snuffled up close and laid their soft white heads against his knees—

  “Nonsense!” hissed Warren to himself, balling his hands into fists and suppressing the shiver that threatened to run down his spine.

  Some filthy insects, of course. No doubt he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open and had seen a couple of cockroach nymphs squirm up from the filthy floor, generated out of the muck and nastiness of the house. His dreaming and worried mind had supplied the monstrous size, of course, but the reality was disgusting enough.

  the clock chimed again, twelve peals tolling out in quick succession, each one rolling into the next before it had time to fully fade away.

  Midnight already! Warren had spent three-quarters of an hour dozing in the anteroom, and he suddenly felt he couldn’t stand to waste a minute more. The devil take Caxtons and Cockroaches alike! Clearly it had been stupid to imagine that anyone could intervene in the affair at this late hour, madness to come back here and expose himself to indifference and ridicule after all these years!

  No, there was nothing for it but to go face the duel with Caxton with as much manliness as he could, and to hope for some miraculous act of mercy. Warren looked in vain for a bell to ring, and was on the verge of showing himself out when suddenly a door on the other end of the anteroom clicked open.

  And there stood the very man that Warren had come to see.

  He was built on the same plan as the porter—round, bulky, high-shouldered to the point of looking almost hunch-backed but without any twist to his spine. Where the servant’s expression had been dull and lifeless, this man had a face alive with intelligence and cunning, a powdered wig laid perfectly over his scalp in impeccable imitation of the old style that the greybeards of Washington still clung to.

  And looking at him, Warren felt a second chill run up his spine. After having been away for so long, his old suspicions and revulsions all seemed to flock back again.

  “What?” demanded the man querulously, raising Warren’s calling card up to his eye. “Who is it? Warren, eh? A guest of the Cockroach Club again at last!”

  No one knew his real name—this puppetmaster who pulled the strings of power. Senators, Justices, even the President—they all simply called him Roach, and seeing him framed in the doorway Warren suddenly remembered why.

  The name, Warren knew, was partly a grim metaphor for Roach’s uncanny ability to survive and thrive in dark corners of the government. And survive he did!

  Indeed, those old-timers in their powdered wigs whispered that General Washington himself had waited on Roach in New York and Philadelphia a generation earlier. Still more fantastic rumors—fairy tales, really, not a shred of credibility about them!—held that Roach, or someone else with the same name, had bent the ears of Smith at Jamestown and Bradford at Plymouth Colony.

  But no, it was more than just that. There was a physical resemblance too. Warren was sure of it. The creepy feeling he had always had about Roach—long since written off as a youthful fancy, an over-active imagination... But he hadn’t imagined it! Something in Roach’s posture did suggest thorax and abdomen, something in his cheeks and chin the mandibles—

  But then Roach moved and the light changed, and the illusion was lost.

  Warren rubbed his eyes. Dammit, he was letting the hour and the stress get to him. As if there wasn’t enough to despise about the Cockroach Club without bringing back those old fancies!

  “Well, don’t waste time,” snapped Roach, a dull glint in his black eyes. “It’s past midnight, you know.”

  And with that, Roach disappeared again, leaving the door ajar and Warren steeling himself to follow.

  * * *

  If the hallway and anteroom comprised a burrow, then the office was a den. It had an earthy, acrid smell which Warren could never place. It wasn’t pipe smoke, nor book leather, nor the usual mustiness of dust and damp. It was a more like green wood and almonds, or the bitter tang of an apple seed.

  No sooner had Warren closed the door behind him then Roach peered at him through slit eyes, leveling a bony finger in his direction. “We haven’t seen you in ages, Senator Warren. I very much hope you haven’t come here to argue with us.”

  Warren sighed in annoyance. In his years in Congress, he’d seen countless of his bills and amendments quashed by Roach’s interests. How often had seemingly solid allies turned their backs on him, converted at the last moment by promises or threats? He would have had enough to complain about if he thought it would do any good.

  “All my arguments are in the Congressional Record, sir.”

  Roach threw up his hands in mock horror. “Preserve us! What we wouldn’t give if we could forgo reading that damnable Record week after week! You have no idea the tedium and strain we endure.” Here, Roach pressed his palm to his forehead pathetically, a red silk handkerchief running across his brow. “Why, look at the hour! And still you people parade through the door. But come, come, let’s be quick about it!”

  “If you really have been reading the Record,” said Warren testily, “then perhaps you read a speech of mine on the subject of Missouri statehood a fortnight ago.”

  Roach shrugged and looked bored, slumping into a chair. “You were most passionately against slavery in the new state, if I recall, and against even the ultimate compromise. Against our compromise.” Roach tapped a finger against his desktop a moment, the nail making a sharp ticking sound. Then his face broke into a wicked grin. “Though I recall the speech contained some amusing and ill-advised personal remarks about a former governor of the Missouri Territory... Quite an entertaining aside. One hears such talk constantly in all the most respectable parlors in Washington, of course. But to encounter it in the Congressional Record in bare black and white! Tut, tut, Senator Warren!”

  The blood rose to Warren’s cheeks. He hadn’t expected that Roach really would have noticed or remembered that speech, but of course the man had reasons to stay informed. “Yes,” he said stiffly.

  “Such immoderate behavior, in a man of your age! And a sitting senator!” Roach chortled, evidently relishing his mocking lecture. Then his grin turned cold and cruel. “Particularly immoderate considering that the territorial delegate here in Washington is young Caxton, the maligned man’s son....” Roach raised an eyebrow and leaned darkly over the desk. “Perhaps you didn’t know that? But I suppose you do now. And does the young gentleman from Missouri also read the Senate debates in the Congressional Record, I wonder?”

  “He, or someone he knows.” Warren reached under his coat, suddenly tired of talking, and flung a letter onto the desk. It was Caxton’s challenge to him, issued a week ago.

  Roach snatched it up greedily, unfolding it and scanning the contents with evident interest.

  “Yes...” he murmured. “Yes, indeed....”

  After a moment, Warren cleared his throat. “It’s all arranged already. The duel is at dawn.”


  Roach looked up in amazement. “What? At dawn, tomorrow? Today?”

  “I hadn’t thought it was anyone’s business....” Suddenly, Warren remembered the shot-up playing card that had made him change his mind. “Until this afternoon,” he finished lamely.

  “You fool!” hissed Roach, flinging the letter back. “You should have come here instantly! A chance such as this is no common thing! A chance—! A chance—!” A strangled sound came from Roach’s throat and Warren’s hairs suddenly rose at the gurgling half-words that followed, like some ancient brutal language.

  “Silence!” thundered Roach, pounding the desk. Warren hadn’t even realized he had made a sound, but he shut his mouth all the same. “Let us think, let us think....” For a moment, Roach rolled his head from side to side, with an expression of physical pain on his face. Then he stopped and slowly raised his eyes again. “You don’t want to be killed, do you?”

  Warren’s heart suddenly leapt. “No, by God. No, no, no.” He had begun to believe it was too late even for Roach to do anything, but perhaps there still was a chance—!

  “Where is the duel? Who are the seconds? Pistols, of course?” Roach leapt to his feet, thrusting parchment and quill at Warren. “Write it! Write it all down.”

  As Warren wrote, Roach paced on the other side of the desk, worrying the red handkerchief in his hands. No sooner had Warren finished writing than the sheet was ripped away and Roach held it up to the lamp with shaking hands.

  “Yes, yes,” murmured Roach. “Yes, for you, we shall fix it. This time, despite your naughtiness in not attending to us... But first you must tell us—” Roach paused, dropping his voice again as it gained a conspiratorial edge. “You must tell us, Senator, what you plan to do when it is your turn to shoot.”

  Warren trembled. He had not been physically this close to Roach in years, and the longer the audience went on, the more he felt some unnamable feeling of dread and terror building in his breast. Dread of—what? Terror of—what? Warren could no better explain it now than he ever could.