Brothers

Two homeless brothers disappeared one night months ago. One returned with no memory of where he’d been. The only clue is a dirty, battered spoon. Tom Jurgen and Rachel search for the missing brother, a trail that uncovers the secret of jindalore—and something far more deadly.  

Brothers, Part One

“This is my brother Abel,” Gwen Martin said. “Abel, this is Tom Jurgen, the man I was telling you about? The detective. And his friend Rachel.”

Abel, a lanky, thin Black man with patchy hair, looked left to right. He looked at Rachel longer than me, but I couldn’t blame him for that. “H-hi. I’m, uh, Abel.”

            We sat at a table outside a bar on Wells Street on a warm summer afternoon. Gwen was nervous about COVID inside the bar—Abel’s health was shit, she told us. 

            She was in her forties, with short curly hair, in a high-necked white blouse and jeans. She had a clear big-sisterly protective attitude toward Abel. “Can you tell them what happened?”

            Abel closed his eyes. “I don’t—we were walking, me and, uh, Charlie. It was night. Outside that drugstore on north Clark, looking for—whatever. We got kicked out . . .” He shook his head and slammed a fist on the table, shaking our drinks. “I don’t remember! I just don’t remember!”

            “Shh, it’s okay.” Gwen stroked his arm. “It’s okay.”

            I nudged Rachel’s foot under the table. She has short red hair, hazelnut eyes, and mild psychic powers. She glared at me, sipped her gin and tonic, then reached out a hand. “May I?”

            Gwen squeezed Abel’s shoulder. He looked at Rachel and nodded. “I’m, uh, Abel.”

            She smiled and placed a hand on his wrist. Abel stared at her, then closed his eyes again. Gwen watched them. I’d told her about Rachel, and unlike a lot of clients, she didn’t ask any skeptical questions about her. 

            We waited. I sipped my beer. After 10 seconds Rachel let go of Abel and leaned back, blinking her eyes. “Okay.”

            “Anything?” I asked.

            She lifted her glass for another swallow. “Tell me about your dreams,” she asked Abel.

            He shuddered and looked away. “It’s dark, and there’s this pit. It’s dark. I’m down on the ground, digging in the dirt. There’s dogs around me, barking. Bells ringing. It’s cold. There’s someone—it’s Charlie. Next to me. Digging. I drop something, and the dogs bark at me. All they do is bark, and the bells keep ringing. Loud. Berking.” He dropped his head. 

            “It’s okay, Abel.” Gwen stroked his arm again. “I’m here. You’re here. We’re going to find Charlie.”

            Two months ago, Abel and Charlie Martin had disappeared. Brothers, they were frequently homeless. Sometimes they slept at Gwen’s house, sometimes in shelters, and the rest of the time.in places Gwen didn’t want to know about. They’d had problems with drugs, and run-ins with the cops. Abel had done rehab twice. Gwen was sure they were both straight and sober now. But when a week went by without any word from them, she got scared.

            “The police didn’t care,” she told me on the phone. “Two Black drug addicts? They took a report, but didn’t do anything about it. I called them every other day for a while, and at least no one hung up on me, but—nothing. I went to church, talked to my friends—our mom’s gone 10 years now—but there wasn’t anything to do. I found some of their friends, the ones I knew about, but . . . nothing.”

            Then, last Thursday, Abel was found wandering around on the Point—Promontory Point, jutting out into Lake Michigan to the east of the University of Chicago campus. He was dazed, talking in rambling sentences that didn’t connect, but he managed to give someone his name. The cops came, and his sister picked him up. 

            But he had no idea where he’d been for two months. Or where his brother Charlie was.

            Abel smiled nervously at his sister and then reached for his glass of lemonade. 

            “This what he was wearing when they found him.” Gwen dropped a plastic shopping bag on the table. “It’s just jeans and a T-shirt, dirty. And this.” She dug inside and dropped a sealed plastic bag in the middle.

            Inside was a stainless steel spoon. I turned it over. Some lettering and a small symbol were printed on the back of the handle. 

            “I don’t know if you can find out anything.” Gwen shrugged. “They said you’re good at stuff like this. If you can find Charlie, or at least what happened to him, you’ll help the family. It’s been tough.” She squeezed Abel’s hand.

            “What was the drugstore?” I asked.

            Abel rubbed his eyes, thinking. “We always—sometimes they have—Golden. Golden Drugs. Sometimes they let us in, sometimes they kick us out, you know?”

            The skinny blond waitress came out to our table with a big smile. “Another round?”

            “I think we’re done.” I handed her my credit card, then looked at Abel. “Let me see what we can do.”

 

Back at our apartment I made fresh coffee. “What do you think?” I asked Rachel.

            She sat down at the kitchen table. “You know I don’t read minds, I just get feelings, vibes? It’s like there’s a gap—something that blew out part of his mind. Trauma? I don’t know.” She blew on her coffee. “I caught some images that I couldn’t see clearly, so I asked him about his dreams. That was sort of a guess.”

            “It worked.” I picked up the bagged spoon. The printing was too small to make out with my bare eyes, so I used my phone to magnify it. Unfortunately, all I saw were the words “Stainless Steel” and an emblem—a stylized seven-pointed star inside a many-sided box. I strained my eyes to make out the shape. An octagon, like a stop sign. “Huh.”

            “Well, I have work to do.” Rachel’s a graphic designer when she’s not helping me. “Leftovers tonight.” It was her turn to make dinner.

            “Fine.” I refilled my coffee and followed her to the office. 

            First I checked the internet for anything about Abel Martin and his brother. I only found a short news story about Abel being found at Promontory Point. He was wandering around, then fell down on his knees and started clawing at the dirt with his fingers, mumbling incoherently, according to a nameless bystander quoted in the article. The piece ended by reporting that the man had been reunited with his family.

            So then I started trying to figure out the emblem on the spoon. “Star” and “octagon” got me a lot of results, but most of them had the wrong kind of star. This one had seven points, so it wasn’t a pentagram, which was good as far as I was concerned. The less weird magic I ran into the better. “Octagon” led me to a lot of images of stop signs and posters for martial-arts movies from the 1980s with Chuck Norris. 

            Then I found something. “Aha!”

            Rachel swung around in her chair. “What is it? Really good porn?”

            The emblem was a logo for a chain of upscale hotels. “Baryar Elite—ever heard of them?”

            She sauntered over to peer at my screen while I pulled up the website. “Looks snazzy. Out of my league. Unless you’re on an expense account.”

            My excitement took a dive as I searched the website. No locations in Chicago. New York, San Francisco, Moscow, Dubai, check—no windy city. Huh. I doublechecked my photo of the emblem. It was definitely the same. 

            So I called my client. “Abel’s sleeping,” Gwen told me. “He liked you. It’s a good sign he remembers you. Short-term isn’t so good since—since he came back.”

            I asked her about the Baryar Elite hotel. “I think I’ve seen commercials for it,” she said. “I don’t know. I travel some for work—” She was in insurance. “No place like that.”

            “Could you ask him when he wakes up? It may not mean anything, but it’s the only lead we’ve got so far.”

            “Sure let me—oh, wait. Hang on a minute. Abel?”

            A moment later she was back. “He just woke up. Abel, this is Tom and his friend Rachel. You remember them?”

            “R-Rachel? Yeah. Hi, Rachel.”

            Of course he’d remember her. Rachel grinned. “Hi, Abel. You okay?”

            “Abel?” I said. “I just want to ask you if you remember anything about a hotel. It’s called Baryar Elite. Does that ring any bells?”

            “Bells.” He was silent for a moment. Then—“Bells! No bells! No bells! Drakon! No bells!” 

            Oops. He’d mentioned bells in his dream. “Sorry, I, uh—”    

“It’s all right, Abel.” Gwen tried to soothe him. “It’s all right. No bells. No bells here. Just breathe. No bells. “I’m sorry, Tom—”

            “Sorry, T-Tom. Rachel.” His voice was suddenly quiet again. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” He started crying.

            “It’s okay, Abel,” Rachel said. O had the phone on speaker. “We’re sorry.”

            “Is that all?” Gwen sounded annoyed. 

            “Yes,” I said. “No, wait. What did Abel say? Drakon?”

            “I don’t—wait a minute. Abel? Abel?”

            After a moment she said, “He’s just sitting there not talking. Rocking back and forth. I don’t want to bother him anymore.” 

            Rachel and I looked at each other and nodded. “Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry. We’ll call again when we know anything.”

            Gwen hung up.

            “Drakon?” I turned to my computer. “That mean anything to you?”

            “Elon Musk’s latest prototype? The latest strain of hydroponic weed? The new guy in the latest Suicide Squad movie?” Rachel rolled her eyes. “I can come up with these all day. Or I can go heat up dinner. Last night’s curry.” She punched my arm. “You choose.”

            “Curry. Mmm.” I rubbed my arm and turned to my keyboard. “How do you think it’s spelled?”

            “J-E-R-K.” She kissed the top of my head. “Fifteen minutes. Salad?”

            “Yes, please.” I started experimenting with spellings. 

 

The next morning I got a call from my favorite cop, Detective Anita Sharpe of the Chicago PD. “Jurgen, what the hell?” Her traditional greeting.

            “Good morning, detective! And thanks for calling me back.”

            “Jurgen, this is not TV and I am not your cop friend who can pull strings for you. We are not friends. I only put up with you for Rachel’s sake. What she sees in you, I don’t know. Anyway, I am busy with actual crime. Why are you bothering me?”

            Sharpe and I worked together on vampire cases, although they haven’t flared up in a long time. I guess even vamps were being careful during the pandemic. “My client spoke to Detective Alvie Harrison about her missing brothers, Abel and Charlie Martin. Abel’s back, but Charlie is still missing. I spoke to Detective Harrison, and his responses were, let’s say less than informative, although very colorful.”

            “Yeah, Alvie’s a real hoot.” Sharpe sighed. “I remember the guy showing up at the Point. Look, all I know—and you didn’t get it from me—is there’s more missing persons in the last couple of months than usual. More runaway kids, more homeless, but they’re hard to track anyway. Sex workers, male and female and whatever. People walking home from work late at night. Mostly west and south side. No ransom notes or witnesses, so there’s not much we can do. What do you think you’ve got?”

            “Nothing,” I admitted. “Just a spoon and some nightmares from the victim. And something called Drakon.”

            “Isn’t that a perfume?”

            “That’s Drakkar.” I’d found it while searching the internet. “Should I get some? Rachel’s not much for cologne, but—”

            “Yeah, you stink no matter what you wear. Tell her hi for me.” Sharpe hung up.

            Rachel came into the office a few minutes later carrying her Wonder Woman coffee mug. “What’s up, Sherlock?”

            “Sharpe says hi. Should I start wearing cologne?”

            “Let’s see.” She leaned down and kissed me. “Nah. Maybe a different mouthwash.” Then she punched my arm and headed over to her desk. 

            I went back to calling people. Aside from Sharpe, I’d been working on a list of Abel and Charlie’s friends from Gwen—those that she knew about, and those who had phones. Most didn’t answer, so I left messages where I could. Those who did answer couldn’t talk, or didn’t want to talk, or couldn’t talk coherently. But I kept at it until I reached the end of the list. Asking questions is what I do.

            I worked on other cases for a few hours. I planned on eating lunch and then driving to the drugstore Abel remembered walking past with his brother. Before heading to the kitchen to make a sandwich, I spent a few minutes in variant spellings of the word “drakon.” Two k’s, three k’s, “draken,” “Dr. Akon,” and anything else I could think of, forward or backward, until words had no meaning no matter what order the letters were in. I was considering getting out Scrabble square, or maybe I Ching sticks, until I gave up, too hungry to think.

            After lunch I drove up to Golden Drugs on north Clark. It had a small parking lot, a bank on one side, a grocery store across the street, and a small office building next door. I checked out the alley, staying cautious—alleys in Chicago creep me out even in full daylight. You never know when a rat’s going to dart out from under a dumpster, or you’re going to step in something disgusting.

            The staff inside the drugstore was polite when I asked questions, although most of them were too busy stocking shelves or ringing up customers to really pay attention to me. They knew Abel and Charlie—or at least some of them recognized their pictures because they didn’t know their names—but nobody specifically remembered the night they’d disappeared.

The manager actually took me in back to check the records, but she didn’t find any mention of an incident. “It happens. We don’t write it all down. I didn’t know anything about them disappearing.” She shook her head. “I noticed I didn’t see them for a while. They were generally pretty nice, except when they were too high to walk straight.”

            I nodded. “Well, thank you for your time. And your staff, too.” I hadn’t really expected to find anything, but clients like it when you’re thorough. So I took a random stab. “By the way, does the word ‘drakon’ mean anything to you? It’s something Abel said.”

            The manager blinked. “Sounds kind of familiar. I don’t know. How do you spell it?”

            “That’s the thing.” I tried a few variations. 

            “Wait!” She hit a key on my computer, then hesitated. “I don’t know—I don’t know you. You can’t tell anyone about this. But I guess it doesn’t mean anything. Not a secret. I guess. Here.”

            She was pointing to the homepage of the Golden Drug Corporation. Then she clicked a link and went to a corporate page, with information on the company—where its HQ was, how to contact, etc. Toward the bottom was a list of officers and owners.

            The CEO was Ronald Drachon.

            Huh. “Ever talk to him?”

            The manager snorted. “It’s not that kind of company.”

            I nodded and gave her a card. “Thanks. I’ll keep your store out of it. If this even means anything.”

            She sighed. “I need this job.” Then she ripped the card up and handed it back to me. “Sorry.”

            “No problem.” I stuffed the remains in my pocket. “Thanks again.”

            

 

Back home I grabbed a Coke and looked up Golden Drug Corporation and Ronald Drachon. It was a privately held company, so there wasn’t much information on its inner workings. It had about 20 stores in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. 

            I tracked down his home address, in a northern suburb. Real estate records showed he’d paid close to $900,000 for his house, so business was obviously good. He was married, two children. No outstanding tax liens. Nothing that suggested he had anything to do with Abel and Charlie’s disappearance. Still . . .

            I took a long, deep, calming breath and called Sharpe again. 

            “Jurgen.” Her voice was low and menacing. “I am in the middle of my final report for the day, and you’re keeping me from getting hammered at the bar. Why do you do this to me?”

            “I just love to hear your voice when you berate me.” At least she’d answered. “Look, you remember that bump in missing persons you mentioned?”

            Sharpe groaned. “I knew that was going to come back to haunt me. What?”

            “Is there any way you can get a list of where the people were last reported seen?”

            A long silence. “I thought I made myself clear this morning about calling me for favors.”

            “And I assumed you were joking.”

            “I should delete you. And not just from my phone.” She sighed. “In fact we do track that kind of information. I can send it to you. Don’t call me again today unless someone is dead or dying. Especially you.” She hung up.

            I got the document a few minutes later. Out of 42 missing persons reports in the last three months, about 22 had a “last seen at/near” notation. I pulled up a map of Golden locations in Chicago to compare. 

            Seventeen missing persons had disappeared within a block of a Golden Drugstore. “Yahtzee!”

            Rachel turned. “You found the golden snitch?”

            “A clue. Maybe.” Now what? Why would Drachon—or somebody else—be kidnapping people off the streets? 

            If the missing people had vanished close to a Walgreens or CVS, it wouldn’t mean much—there were hundreds of them around the city. Golden had less than a dozen. It had to mean something. But what?

            It looked like I was going to have to talk to Ronald Drachon.

Brothers, Part Two

 I spent the rest of the day and part of the next morning looking up everything I could find on Drachon and Golden Drug Corp. That was in between making dinner—my turn—watching TV with Rachel, and sleeping with Rachel. By 10:30 the next morning I’d dug up everything the internet had to offer, not all of through strictly legal means.

            Nothing in it helped. Drachon seemed to be a mostly honest businessman—he’d had a few legal battles over taxes, like most of them—with a relatively unscandalous personal life. His first divorce had been messy, but that was 20 years ago. He apparently had a brother, but I couldn’t turn anything up on him.

            So I had nothing left. Calling strangers and asking them impertinent questions is my job, after all. It’s what I did as a reporter, and even with the internet, nothing replaces an actual live conversation. 

That doesn’t make it easy.

            I fortified myself with more coffee, checked my email, flirted with Rachel, then picked up my phone with a grimace and punched the digits for Golden’s corporate HQ. The menu up front didn’t offer a direct link to the CEO’s office, so I hit 0 and got connected with an actual human being. She didn’t hesitate to send me to Drachon, no doubt happy to hand me off to someone else to deal with.

            To my surprise he picked up on the second buzz. “Ronald Drachon, Golden Drug Corp., may I help you?”

            “Uh, Mr. Drachon? My name is Tom Jurgen, I’m a private detective here in Chicago . . .” I told him the story of Abel and Charlie, and his stores’ connection with other disappearances. He listened politely.

            Instead of hanging up on me, or yelling, Drachon said calmly, “I understand you’re concerned, but I really don’t see what I can do for you. I mean, you’re not seriously suggesting that we’re kidnapping people off the street, are you?”

            That was one possibility. Farfetched, but I’ve run into vampires and demons and magic rings that can force people to kill themselves. It didn’t seem like the best argument at the moment, though. “I’m trying to cover all the bases here. Abel was found with a spoon from the Baryar Elite Hotel. He has dreams about digging, and dogs, and bells. And he mentioned the word ‘drakon,’ which is at least a little similar to your name, and the connection with the stores—”

            “Drakon.” His voice was low. “Oh my god.”

            “What is it?”

            I heard him swallow, as if catching his breath. “I can’t—I can’t talk about it here. Could you come out to my house? Tonight?”

            “I suppose so.” He lived in Deerfield, a northern suburb. “Six thirty?”

            “That’s fine.” He gave me the address, even though I already had it, but I decided not to scare him off by telling him how thoroughly I’d researched him. “Don’t—please don’t talk to anyone until we’ve talked. All right?”

            I promised, and then I broke my promise after we hung up and told Rachel. 

            “Am I going out there with you?” She folded her arms. “It’s my turn for dinner. Is he going to feed us?”

            “We’ll find someplace to eat.”

            “Then I’m in.” She turned back to her computer again. “No Olive Garden this time.”

            I nodded. “You pick.”

 

Ronald Drachon lived in a three-story house surrounded by tall trees and leafy bushes. His wife answered the door—short, pretty, in sweats and barefoot—then ran downstairs to the basement as if she didn’t want to hear anything we said. Drachon—50s, husky, with gray hair and a blunt nose, still in a suit and necktie—led us upstairs to an office. He offered us drinks, then poured himself a scotch.

            “My brother David is—well, he’s brilliant.” He took a sip. “He’s always, well, troubled. He’s 12 years younger than me. Ph.D. in chemistry, from the U of C. Except he never finished the degree, he dropped out. David’s always been—different. Smart, not very social. Keeping to himself. Not exactly a nerd, but . . .” He shrugged.

            “He started calling himself Drakon years ago.” Drachon shrugged. “I guess he thought our name was boring. Around when he dropped out. We didn’t see him for a long time. Our dad died. He came to the funeral, and then when mom died. Then—until he called me, about four months ago. I had to go down to see him. He’s still living in Hyde Park.” The University of Chicago neighborhood. Near Promontory Point.

            Drachon paused to wipe his glasses. “He wanted me to get him something. Some kind of—he called it an herb, like an herbal supplement, but I never heard of it. Jinda—jindalore.”

            I scribbled a note. Yeah, I still carry a notebook. Old reporter’s habits die hard. “Did you get it?”

            “It’s from India. It’s in a pill we carry in our stores.” He opened a drawer. “Here’s some. One of our VPs, Dean Schindless, handles supplements. We support different kinds of alternative options.”

            I picked up the bottle. A purple label had the words “Dragon’s Breath” in fancy lettering. It promised “increased vigor and endurance, more relaxed sleeping, efficacious digestion, and calming influence.” The ingredients included “jindalore root” some other stuff I’d never heard of. The label had the standard note that nothing had actually been confirmed by the FDA.

            “You can keep it.” Drachon waved a hand. “I gave some to David. He wanted the actual stuff, whatever it is, but I asked Dean and he couldn’t find any to order. Well, I sent David a box, and that was it. I haven’t heard from him since. I’m a little worried.”

            “Why did he want it?” Rachel looked over the bottle, then stuffed it into his bag. 

            Drachon shook his head. “He didn’t say. I’m—well, I’m afraid he’s into something illegal. Trying to get some foreign organic into the country—I mean, I don’t think you can make meth from it or anything, but David gets into some pretty weird stuff. He was doing chemistry, but he was talking about alchemy at the same time.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

            He gave me his brother’s number and address. I thanked him, and Rachel and I went back out to the car. “So what do you think?” Rachel asked as I started up.

            I shook my head. “Not sure how it figures in. At least there’s something to look into.”

            “After dinner.” 

            I nodded. “Yeah. After dinner.”

 

Once we got back Rachel settled down in front of the TV for whatever Real Housewives or Below Decks was up next. I took a beer into the office for some quick research.

            Jindalore was indeed some kind of plant found mostly in India. I looked at images and read the Wikipedia article. Then I took a lot of some other pages. 

            Some were from companies touting its supposedly medicinal and curative properties. Like Dragon’s Breath, they claimed jindalore cured erectile dysfunction, and offered startling NSFW photos of its effects. Other supposed properties included sexual stamina—“go all night!—” and athletic endurance. 

Other pages referenced its cultural connections. JIndalore was associated with tigers, who were said to consume it to make them stronger and faster. Monkeys also dug it up and ate its roots, especially males, and legends said it aided their sexual relations. No graphic pictures, fortunately. 

            The plant was also said to be sought and eaten by various mythological creatures—manticores, nagini, dragons, rakshas, even yetis. That made me wonder.

            I took a photo of the Dragon’s Breath jar and sent it to Gwen Martin, asking if it rang any—oops. I deleted that and asked if Abel remembered it. Probably not, but it was something to check.

            Then I went out to watch TV with Rachel. “Should we see if those pills have the, uh, desired effect?” I put my arm around her.

            She laughed and elbowed my ribs. “Like I’d let you take anything like that. Wait, you didn’t, did you?” She swung around to glare at me.

            I kissed her. “Of course not. Do you think I’m—wait, don’t answer that.”

            She kissed me, then pushed me away. “Later, loverboy. Let me finish this episode.”

            I sat back to watch. And wait.

Brothers, Part Three

 Gwen Martin called me the next morning. “He didn’t freak out or anything. He just looked at the picture and then he asked me to buy some for him. I asked him why, and he didn’t know.”

            That was interesting. I just didn’t know what to do with it.

            Rachel came in a few minutes later and kissed me. “Told you that you didn’t need any of those pills last night.”

            “Just some sexy lingerie.” I kissed her back.

            She snorted. “Now I know what to buy for your birthday. Anything up?”

            I told her about Gwen Martin’s call. “I don’t know how it ties in. I’m thinking of going down to Hyde Park to check out David’s apartment. Maybe some of his neighbors will talk to me.”

            “Sounds like a plan. Not a good plan, but something.” She sank into her office chair. “Don’t bother me today, okay? I’ve got deadlines.”

            I worked on other cases until lunchtime. After my sandwich, I got into the car and headed down to Hyde Park. 

            David Drachon’s apartment building was east of the campus, close to the Museum of Science & Industry with its doll house and German submarine. Not that far from the Point, too. I parked, walked up to the building, and scanned a list of names. No doorman. I’d have to bluff my way inside, or sneak in when someone came out. I found “D. Drachon” on the list, though, so I thought I’d give it a try first. Since his brother hadn’t heard from him in month, I didn’t expect—

            “Hello? Who’s this?”

            Oops. Bad assumption. “Uh, I’m Tom Jurgen. I’m a private detective. Your, uh, brother Ronald is concerned about you, and I just came down to check that you’re all right.” Which was true. Sort of. 

            “I’m calling him. Hang on.”

            I waited, expecting him to tell me to go to hell. It wouldn’t be the first time. But after five minutes the door buzzed, and David said, “Come on up. Apartment 3C.”

            On the third floor I knocked on a door.

            David Drachon wore a dirty gray T-shirt and jeans, no shoes. His head was shaved close to the scalp. His arms were thin and sinewy. He crossed them. “Yeah? You can see I’m fine. What do you want?”

            “Can I come in?” Again, I expected him to say no. Again, he surprised me by stepping aside.

            The apartment was small, but clean. An oriental rug lay over a parquet floor. Posters of birds and seascape hung in frames. Books crammed two bookcases—textbooks, mostly, but a few hardcover novels, and on the bottom shelf, some leatherbound volumes that looked straight out of Hogwarts. A window looked across the street, over the tops of the trees outside. A computer sat on a desk in the corner.

            Hundreds of purple bottles of Dragon’s Breath were buried in plastic bins stacked along one wall.

            “Okay?” David spread his arms. “I’m not being held prisoner or anything. There’s nobody here. I’m doing research. That’s why I haven’t called Ron.”

            “What kind of research?”

            “Physics. You wouldn’t understand.” He smirked.

            “Probably not.” I looked at the bins. “What’s all that? Vitamins?”

            “It’s a project.” He glanced at the door. “Is that all?”

            I’d outlasted my unwelcome. “Sorry to bother you.”

            My phone buzzed on the way back to the car. Ronald Drachon. “Are you still there? What’s going on?”

            “David is fine.” I dodged a woman walking a dog on the sidewalk. “I apologize. I’m trying to figure out if there’s any connection between your brother and the disappearances. From what you said, I didn’t expect David to be home, so I thought I’d just be talking to some neighbors—”

            “Well, I’m glad it made him call me, but after that, I really don’t think you have any right to bother him anymore. You didn’t find anything, you said? So I want you to just leave him alone.”

            I reached my car. “He did have several hundred bottles of Dragon’s Breath. That’s all I saw. He said it was for a physics project.”

            Drachon hesitated. “Well, I guess that’s his business. Not mine. Not yours. If you bother him again I’ll call my attorney.”

            “I’ll stay away.” I wasn’t sure that was true, but it felt like the right thing to say.

 

“How’d it go?” Rachel asked when I got back home.

            “He had enough of that stuff to give erections to a herd of elephants.” I picked up my coffee mug. “I wish I’d taken you for a psychic overview.”

            “Elephants? Thanks for that mental image.” She turned back to her computer. “Sorry. Work, work, work.”

            My phone buzzed a few minutes later. My client. “Abel just had a nap, and he remembered something. Just a minute. Abel?”

            A moment later: “Tom? I remember those pills. This guy was asking us to get them. Or steal them. Wherever we could get them.”

            I sat up. “What guy?”

            “I don’t . . . damn it! I don’t know. He—there was a car, a big blue car. And he was inside it. We’d give him the pills. He gave us—stuff. I don’t remember his name. Wait . . .”  I heard him breathing. “Drakon. He was Drakon.”

            Drakon—David Drachon? I didn’t have a picture of him, and I doubted his brother would send me one. Maybe he had a Facebook profile. “Do you remember where you saw him? What kind of a car he had?”

            “Just a big blue car. I don’t know.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll try and remember more. I’m sorry.”

            “You’re doing great, Abel. This is a big help.”

            “Tom?” Gwen Martin. “He’s doing a lot better today. Right, baby?”

            “Y-yeah.” His voice was firmer than yesterday. “Slept good. Doctor says my stuff is getting better.”

            “That’s good.”

            “You sound like you’ve got some idea about what happened,” Gwen said. 

            “It’s got something to do with those pills. There’s someone who was trying to get a lot of them, or what’s in them, for—some reason. I don’t want to give you his name right now, until I’ve got more to go on. I’ll be in touch.”

            She obviously wanted more, but she let me go. 

            I told Rachel as her eyes flicked back and forth from her computer screen. “Now what?” she asked.

            “I need to find out more about David Drachon. Or Drakon. And . . .” I hesitated. I knew Ronald Drachon wouldn’t want to talk to me, but there was a question I had to ask. I swigged some coffee. “Give me a minute.”

            This time the operator at Golden Drug Corp. put me on hold. I waited for her to come back and tell me he was in a meeting, but he came on after 30 seconds. “Jurgen. What is it that you want? I thought I made things clear.”

            “I just have one question. Not about your brother.”

            A moment. “Ask it.”

            “Have you been selling a lot of Dragon’s Breath in the last few months?”

            Again he paused to think about it. “Why?”

            “The man who disappeared, Abel Martin? He remembers someone asking him to buy Dragon’s Breath shortly before—whatever it was happened to him. And like I told you, there were hundreds of bottles of it in your brother’s apartment.”

            “I don’t . . .” He sighed. “Let me call you back.”

            I alternated between playing a game on my computer and gazing surreptitiously at Rachel’s legs while waiting. Until she caught me and threw a pen at me. Ten minutes later my phone buzzed.

            “Jurgen? There’s apparently been a run on sales of the stuff in the last three months. Also shoplifting. And my marketing VP tells me he placed a large order for the pills last month, for—well, for my brother. He just assumed it was okay.” His tone suggested that the VP was in trouble now. “What does this mean?”

            “I’m not sure. If my client agrees, I’ll let you know what I find out.”

            “Fine. Just—this doesn’t make sense. What does this have to do with a couple of drug addicts disappearing?”

            “Like I said, I’m not sure. I’ll be in touch if I have any more questions.” I hung up.

            David Drachon kept a low internet profile. I couldn’t find any photos, and only a few mentions of him related to whatever research he’d been doing at the U of C, which might as well have been in ancient Etruscan. Or even modern Etruscan, if there is such a thing. So I finished my coffee and stood up. “I’m going down to Hyde Park to try getting a picture of David for Abel to look at.” 

            “Happy stakeout. Don’t forget a big bottle with a wide opening.”

            “Always got them.” I headed for the door.

            “Remember to throw it away this time!”

            “That was just that one time—” But I fled before she could throw another pen at me.

Brothers, Part Four

 So I drove down to Hyde Park for the second time that day, parked down the street from David’s building, and settled in to wait.

            Two hours went by before he came out. Fortunately I didn’t need to use the bottle because I’d gone to the bathroom before I left. I managed to snap a few quick images on my Minolta—smartphone cameras aren’t really that good for long-distance surveillance—and dropped down before he saw me. 

            Then, because I didn’t have anything urgent to work on back home, I decided to tail David. Because that’s what detectives do when they can’t think of what to do next, or so I’ve heard.

            He took off north on the sidewalk, passing my car, and I grabbed a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses before jumping out. He walked fast, crossing at the first corner without the WALK light, and I had to trot to catch up to him on the next block.

            Whatever his hurry was, it kept him from spotting me behind him. He bumped into pedestrians without apologizing, dashed across streets between crosswalks, and almost got slammed by a bus once. I lost sight of him twice, then caught him again, but I was breathing hard after two miles when he slipped out of sight again. 

            I leaned against the side a bus stop shelter, catching my breath. Behind me people hustled in and out of a small convenience store, but David hadn’t gone in to shop there. I’d seen him last across the street, where the entire block was boarded off and the steel girders of a half-constructed high rise cast shadows down across the pavement. 

            A car drove past. I peered at the empty construction site. No signage announced the birth of a mighty new condo tower or office building that would transform how everyone would work and live. The plywood walls, with chain link fencing behind them 10 feet high, were stained from rain, spills, and other stuff I didn’t want to think about. A padlock hung on a door near the corner, under a big KEEP OUT sign. 

            I made a note of the address, just in case, and peered up and down the street, almost hoping I’d lost David for good so I could go home. Maybe I’d duck inside the store for a bottle of Coke and some Doritos before heading back to my car—

            Then David emerged, pushing and squeezing through a gap in the plywood. He brushed off his hands, looked left and right, then turned and strolled back down the sidewalk in the direction he’d come from.

            Now he was taking his time, so I had to hang back further to avoid being caught. By the time we reached his apartment I was more than half a block behind, and I stopped at my car to watch him climb the steps and go inside. 

Tired, I slid into the driver’s seat and grabbed a bottle of water from the holder. David disappeared, and I started the car, eager for the bathroom. But I could wait.

 

Back home again I got myself a beer and headed into the office. “Any luck?” Rachel was playing Minecraft.

            “Not sure yet.” I sent the photo of David to my client, and then I did a search for the building site address. Someone had started a condo there, but the financing vanished with the coronavirus and right now the work was paused. So I dug a little deeper, and then—“Yahtzee!”
            “What?” Rachel paused her game. “You cracked the case? You won the lottery? C’mon, tell me you won the lottery.”

            “I tailed David to a construction site. They were building a condo. Before the condo there was a hotel there. It was . . .” I paused. “A Baryar Elite.”

            She blinked. “Where the spoon came from.”

            “Right. That’s got to be—” Then my phone buzzed. Gwen Martin.

            Except it was Abel, sounding excited but in control. “That’s Drakon. It’s him!”

            Double Yahtzee. I was on a roll. 

“So now what?” Gwen asked me when Abel handed her the phone. Rachel’s hazelnut eyes asked the same question—through her usual suspicious glare.

“I have something to check out.” I avoided Rachel’s gaze. “Later tonight. I’ll be in touch.”

She punched my shoulder when I hung up. “What’s going on?”

I explained about the construction site. “It’s got to be where Abel was. And where Charlie is now.”

            Rachel crossed her arms. “And where you’re going tonight? I mean—where you and me are going?”

            I sighed. “There’s no way I can talk you out of this, is there?”

            “Not if you ever want sex with me again. Or sex in general.”

            I rolled my eyes. “I expect a little something extra next time.”

            “You’ll take what you get and love it.” But she kissed me. “What time do we leave?”

Brothers, Part Five

 I still didn’t know how David Drachon was kidnapping people—or what they were doing inside the abandoned construction site. But if Charlie was there, maybe I could get him out. I’m not especially brave or tough, but I’d have Rachel with me. And she fights like a girl—dirty.

            So at 9:30 that night we were sitting in my car across the street from the construction site.

            The street was quiet and pretty much empty. We waited until a bus came by to pick up passengers from the stop.

            “Are we going to do anything soon? I could be home watching Real Housewives,” Rachel said. 

            “You wanted to come.” I opened my door.

            “Only to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid. Or at least laugh when you do.” She opened her door.

            We were wearing dark jackets and jeans. I had a small flashlight. Rachel had pepper spray and a stun gun. On the other side of the street I ran my hands across the wall, looking for the gap David had squeezed through. I got two splinters in my fingers—ouch—before I found it.

            I pulled enough to peer inside the site, but I couldn’t really see anything. No lights, no movement. Someone—David?—had cut a hole in the chain link fence behind the wall. I pulled on the plywood harder, and Rachel helped, until I managed to shove my shoulders through and then work my legs forward and finally stand unsteadily inside. 

            I pushed on the plank and Rachel used her shoulder, and she got through, cursing in a whisper. “If these jeans are ripped, you’re in big trouble.” 

            Our eyes adjusted to the darkness slowly. We stood on a narrow walkway around the inside the fence, looking across an area the size of a football field. I flicked on my flashlight, keeping the beam on the ground. 

            Twenty feet away I spotted steps leading down. We were on the edge of a pit that had probably been dug for the foundation or something—I’m no construction engineer. The ground below was maybe 20 feet down, but beyond that I could make out another hole, smaller. Mounds of dirt were piled randomly around it, and I saw flames flickering, and movement in the darkness.

            Rachel followed me as I took careful, silent steps down the stairs. They were aluminum, lightweight, and felt like they might tumble over in a harsh wind. I bit my lip, my heart pounding loud enough that I thought Rachel would punch me, and when we reached ground at the bottom she clutched my arm tight enough to leave a bruise under my jacket. 

            “Something’s here,” she whispered. “It’s—not good.”

            Great. Why was I here again? For a moment I wanted to be back home, even if it meant watching Real Housewives of Whatever. I looked at Rachel. Then I remembered Abel. And Charlie. And that it’s always cool to look brave in front of your girlfriend. Especially when you’re actually terrified.

            So I swallowed and held her hand. “We’ll be careful.”

            I heard her snort. “Riiight.”    

We moved closer to the hole, my hand over the mouth of the flashlight. The flickering flames came from fires in three trash cans, spitting sparks and scraps of burning paper that flickered out as they fell to the dirt. Shadows crept in the, and my eyes fought to focus in the darkness until I finally realized they were people—men and women hunched over, on their hands and knees, up to their waists or necks in the hole, working in the dirt.

Some had children’s shovels or small garden spades; others dug with their hands, carrying the dirt with their shirts bunched up to toss onto the mounds surrounding the hole. I couldn’t tell how deep the hole went. In some spots I saw only the top of people’s heads. 

Darting shapes circled them in the flickering darkness. Dogs, two or three—they moved too fast to be sure—nudging their legs or nipping at their skin. 

Their clothes were ragged and torn, and lots of them were barefoot when I could see them as they clambered from the pit to deposit their load. They worked sluggishly, as if exhausted. I tried to find Charlie, but there wasn’t enough light.

“What are they looking for?” Rachel whispered.

Before I could think of an answer, a bell rang. Loud, over and over again, from the far side of the hole. A shadowy figured drifted forward, wearing a long coat and swinging the bell—big and brass—back and forth over a woman who’d fallen down and lay motionless on the ground. 

The dogs surrounded her, barking and snarling. The bell blared, but the other workers just kept digging, harder and faster, until the woman finally lifted her head and then pushed herself back up onto her knees. Her shoulders shaking, she started digging again, gripping big spoons in her hands, shoveling dirt away as she fought to stay upright.

The ringing stopped and the dogs trotted away. The shadowy figure stepped back. He looked around for other tiring diggers but apparently didn’t see any. 

Then reached into a pocket. He pulled out something. I couldn’t see it at first, but then one of the trashcan fires flared, and I spotted a small bottle in his hand. A purple bottle. 

He unscrewed the cap and hurled it, sending a hail of Dragon’s Breath pills through the air over the digging workers. He turned as they fell into the hole. The flickering firelight gave us a look at his face.

David Drachon. 

I grabbed Rachel’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.” We had enough to go to the police—slaves digging in a pit inside an abandoned construction site would definitely get their attention. I turned—

Then David’s bell rang again.

He was looking at us, swinging the bell, and when I turned to run the dogs were in my face, barking and slobbering. Rachel tried to reach for her pepper spray, but one dog lunged at her and she dropped it. I grabbed for my phone, but another dog clamped its jaws around my jacket at the wrist. I pushed it away, but it stayed close, its eyes glowing in the firelight.

“You.” David let the bell stop. “Who’s that?”

“Get these dogs away from me.” Rachel waved an arm, swatting at their snouts. “What the hell are you doing with these guys?”

I raised my hands. “David—what are you doing here?”

He rolled his eyes. “None of your business. I should—” He reached into a pocket. More pills? But when his hand came out it had some kind of powder. He leaned down to blow it in my face.

Rachel kicked him in the shin. The powder blew away, dissolving in the air. I smelled flowers and copper, and felt woozy for a moment, but Rachel clamped a hand around my arm and pulled me back. The dogs barked and pushed at my legs, but I stayed on my feet and staggered back with Rachel helping me.

David fumbled in his pocket again. The dogs jumped at us.

Then the ground started rumbling. 

My feet slipped in the dirt. Rachel lost her balance and fell to her knees, and I stood over her, a hand on her shoulder, watching the dogs.

But the dogs weren’t barking at us now. They were running back and forth, toward the pit and then away, as if afraid to get too close. David lifted his arm rang his bell loud, as if trying to signal something. A wide smile curled his lips. “Yes. Yes!”

Dirt flew up from the hole, like the start of an eruption. The workers reared up and staggered back, their legs weak. Some of them fell. David ignored them, still ringing his bell, but I tried to check their faces. Men, women, Black, Hispanic, white—there he was. “Charlie! Charlie Martin!”

Charlie paused, confused. He wore a ripped T-shirt and sweatpants, no shoes, and his face was scarred with cuts and bruises. He gazed at me.

I waved a hand. “I’m a friend of Abe! Your brother! Come here!”

He blinked, glanced at David—who wasn’t paying any attention—then stumbled toward us. “I’m—I’m Charlie.”

“Yeah.” I reached for his hand, my eyes looking over his shoulder. “Let’s get out of—”

Then something burst up from the hole. A long scaly arm with claws, four feet high and rising higher. It dropped to the ground and dug its claws into the earth. Then another one shot upward.

David laughed and ran toward the hole. He tripped, then jumped up, spreading his arms wide, styill swinging his bell. “Come on, come on!” He looked down at the nearest clawed arm and stomped a foot next to it. “Come on!”

Maybe the thing heard him, or the bell. Probably it didn’t care. When it came up—two glowing eyes on top of a sloped head, a face covered with scales, a quivering jaw with saliva dripping from its lower lip—it turned its head almost all the way around on its thick neck, paused, then opened its mouth and screamed.

The shriek shook my bones. I held onto Charlie and tried to drag Rachel to her feet. She leaned against me, grunting. “Is that—really?”

“Uh-huh.” A dragon.

Its tongue flicked left and right. Muscles in its two arms tightened and it hauled its body up slowly, slumping forward on the ground and pulling itself forward. 

Huge round black scales covered its torso, and its body heaved as it breathed. It crawled forward until its tail cleared the edge of the hole, then lay there, as if catching its breath. Or waking from a long nap.

Folds of skin on its back moved. Lifted. Wings. They fluttered, flinging dirt through the air. The dragon pushed on its front legs and started to rise up, breathing harder and stretching its wings. 

David dropped his bell and  ran forward. At the edge of the hole, behind one of the dragon’s rear legs, he stopped and looked down, hands on his knees as he leaned forward. “Yes!” he shouted. “Yes—”

Maybe the dragon was irritated at his shouting and bell-ringing. Maybe it just needed to flex its muscles. Whatever. The leg next to David kicked, and he tumbled through the air, 30 feet or more, landing on the dirt, shrieking in pain.

The dragon reared up. It kicked again, pushing dirt down into the hole like a dog burying a bone. David’s screams faded, and then stopped. I looked, but I could barely see him in the firelight.

The dragon rose on four massive legs and roared again. It beat its wings, once, twice, more, pushing dirt in every direction around us. Its body seemed too huge for its wings to lift, but then it leaped forward and flew up in the air, fapping furiously. The wind knocked over a burning trashcan. 

It climbed in the darkness until all we could see was a black dot over our heads, circling overhead. It dropped once, and I worried about fire breath—would it incinerate us to hide its lair?—but then it soared upward, turning east toward the lake, and zoomed off into the night sky.

The workers were wandering in circles, dazed and puzzled, like sleepwalkers slowly waking up. Charlie pulled on my arm. “Abel—is, is he all right?”

“He’s fine.” I nodded. “My name’s Tom. This is Rachel.”

“H-hi.” He rubbed his face. “W-what happened?”

“That guy—” I looked toward David’s body. “Let me go check on him.”

David Drachon lay on his back, gasping. One leg was twisted next to his body at a nasty angle, and blood seeped from his scalp. But he was grinning as if he’d just won the lottery. “Did you see it? Did you see it?”

“The dragon’s gone.” I pulled a handkerchief from my back pocket to wipe away the blood from his face.

“The—the gold.” He grunted, gasping for air. “Down there. I found it!”

Rachel knelt next to him and put a hand on his chest. She looked at me and shook her head. “Not good. Let me call an ambulance.” She’s not a doctor, but being psychic helps with other things.

“What gold?” I asked.

David shook his head as if talking to a child. “Dragons have gold. They guard it. Once I found out where the dragon was—it was in a book, a book I found downstairs at the library, the Regenstein? At the U of C—” He coughed. “All I had to do was bring him up. I needed—that stuff. Jindalore. To wake up. I needed lots of it. I made that powder—from books. I needed people to dig him up . . .”

Like Abel. And Charlie. I stood up. Rachel put her phone away. “They’re coming.”

“Good.” Now I had to see. “Wait here.”

She grimaced, but she couldn’t leave David. Charlie stayed with her while I walked up to the edge of the hole and peered down. 

The dragon had tried to cover it up before flying off, but I could see some gleaming in the firelight—small nuggets and larger blocks, like a pirate’s treasure waiting to be dug up and carried off. Yeah, there was gold down there. Lots of it. 

Yeah, I was tempted for a moment to reach down and grab some for myself. For Rachel and me, I mean. For our retirement fund, or at least a weekend in Cabo.

But in the end I stepped back and kicked some dirt back down into the hole. Let someone else deal with the taxes on the stuff.

 

The paramedics carried David away, and more showed up to treat the diggers, who were starting to come out of the haze that David’s powder had forced on them, the stuff he’d tried to use on me and Rachel. Charlie refused to go to the hospital, so we drove him to Gwen Martin’s house. 

            The reunion was predictably joyous. Hugs were exchanged, with Rachel and me included. Still, we left as fast as we decently could to give them some privacy.

            Back home we opened beers and watched late night talk shows to decompress. Rachel fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, and we stayed there half the night.

Many calls came the next morning as I sat at my desk with coffee. Gwen Martin was first. “Just wanted to thank you again.” She sounded happy. “Charlie’s still asleep. We’re going to take him to the doctor once he wakes up. I don’t know how you did it, but thanks.”

            “I’ll send you a full report,” I promised. Along with my invoice.

            Sharpe called next. “I’m not sure I want to know,” she said with a sigh. “But you want to tell me what the hell happened last night?”

            I rubbed my eyes. “From what I can figure out—and I didn’t get a chance to talk to Drachon very much—he found a book with  legend about a dragon hibernating in Chicago, and figured out where it was. But he couldn’t dig it up all by himself.” I sipped some coffee. “So he recruited homeless people to buy something called Dragon’s Breath—as far as I know the name is just a coincidence, except—well, it has something called jindalore, from India, and supposedly it can attract dragons.” Saying it out loud made it all sound even crazier.

            I drank more coffee. “Anyway, he managed to come up with something that would mess up people’s minds so they’d do whatever he told them. He’s a chemist, but maybe there was magic too. I saw some books in his apartment. He used it to kidnap people after they got him the Dragon’s Breath, and he had them digging in that lot where the hotel used to be. He figured with the jindalore, he could wake the dragon up and steal whatever gold it was guarding.”

            “And you just happened to be there when the dragon finally woke up?”

            I shrugged. “You know me—always in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

She grunted. “This is the biggest mess I’ve heard lately. I’m just glad it’s not my mess. I mean, they told me to call you because no one wants to talk to you, as usual, but I’m not supposed to tell you anything.” She paused. “I mean, we did clear a bunch of missing persons cases with those folks, but you never heard that from me.”

            “What about the gold? Do I at least get a finder’s fee?”

            “I’m not authorized to even admit anything about any gold. There’s no gold. You never saw it.”

            I sighed. I was regretting not shoving some into my pockets now. “Maybe it can fill up the city’s budget hole. I hope at least somebody’s looking out for that dragon.”

            “Not my department, thank god.”

            Rachel came in with coffee a few minutes later. “Did you carry me to the bed after I fell asleep?”

            “You stumbled your way into the bedroom. I did help you with your clothes, so that was fun.”

            “Pervert.” But she didn’t hit me, at least. “Any news about anything?”

            “The client’s happy. Sharpe is about as happy as she gets with me. Nothing—” My phone buzzed. Ronald Drachon. “Hang on—Tom Jurgen speaking.”

            “Jurgen.” His voice was a low growl. “My brother’s in the hospital.”

            I figured. “Is David all right?”

            “Well, he’s got a cracked rib, punctured lung, broken leg. And he’s delirious or something. Something about a dragon, and some gold? I don’t know.”

            “The jindalore was to wake the dragon. The people he kidnapped to dig it up were also sprinkling it into the ground.” That’s what Charlie had managed to remember. “You’ll have to ask him about the rest. Have the police talked to him?”

            “They tried. I’ve got a lawyer. What did you do to him?”

            I sighed. “Nothing. I won’t bother him or you anymore. Hope he feels better.” And I hung up.

            Rachel came in. “So what’s on the docket for today?”

            “Write the report, send the invoice, research, and I have to tail a cheating husband this afternoon.” I’d put that off because of Drachon, and the client wasn’t happy. “Do we have leftovers from the other night?” It was my turn for dinner again.

            “No.” She smiled. “But I’ll trade you. I’ve got a new recipe for seaweed salad.”

            “Yum.” I made a note to have a big lunch.

            “Do we get to keep any of the gold?” She sat down at her desk.

            “No. I knew I should have grabbed some when I had the chance.”

            “Jerk. Good thing you’re cute.” She blew me a kiss.

            I grinned and went back to my computer, trying not to think about the gold. Or the wonder where the dragon was right now. 

 

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