BioShock: Rapture

“Sounds fascinating,” Ryan said, frowning slightly. “Caligula. Well, well, well.”

“My proteges, such artistic courage—they stand there posed in a state of near undress in a cold room, minute after minute, as if frozen in place!” He tossed his head like a stallion and whispered, “They’re in fierce competition to please me! Oh how hard they work at it—but art calls for an agony of self-sacrifice, for submission, an inverted immolation upon its altar!”

“That’s what I admire about you, Sander,” Ryan said. “Your complete devotion to your art. No matter what anyone thinks! You are yourself completely. That’s essential to art, it seems to me. Expressing one’s true self…”

But it seemed to Bill that whatever Sander Cohen really was, it was all hidden away, even as he presented another side of himself to the world with great verve. It was like there was a scared little animal looking out of his sleepy eyes. And yet he spoke with flourishes, moved with striking dynamism. Queer sort of duck.

“I may be out of the country for your opening, I’m afraid,” Ryan was saying. “But I was just telling Jasmine—”

“Oh—Jasmine.” Cohen shrugged dismissively. “She does have her charms. Believe me, I understand. But Andrew—I’m told that this show may close rather sooner than we expected. Dandies was to be my re-emergence, my metamorphosis! And the cocoon, I find, is rather constricting and may squeeze me out too soon—” He hugged himself tight, seemed to writhe in his own hug as he said it. “I feel positively squeezed!”

“Artists chafe at constraint,” Ryan said, nodding sympathetically. “Don’t worry about the show—Broadway will soon be old hat. We’ll create our own venue for genius, Sander!”

“Really! And with what sort of… scope? A large audience?”

“You’ll see. As for scope—well, there will be plenty of people to appreciate you there. Almost a captive audience in a way.”

“Ooh, nothing I’d like better than a captive audience! But I must away! I see Jimmy signaling desperately to me from the dressing room. Do keep me informed as to this… this new project, Andrew!”

“You will be among the first to know when it’s ready, Sander. It will take some courage on your part”— Ryan smiled crookedly—“but if you take the leap, you’ll find yourself immersed in something beautiful.”

They watched Sander Cohen strutting off toward the dressing rooms. It seemed to Bill that Cohen was off his trolley, but Ryan was right—genius was eccentric. As if guessing his thoughts, Ryan said, “Yes, Bill, he can be… outrageous. Exasperating. But all the great ones hurt the eyes and burn the ears a bit. He calls himself the Napoleon of Mime sometimes—and so he is, when he’s miming. Come along, Bill. We’re off to the airport. If you’re quite ready to go. Or are you having second thoughts?”

Bill grinned. “Not me, sir. I’m in, A to Zed. I’m diving in at the deep end, Mr. Ryan…”

4

New York City 1946

“Look, Mr. Gorland—I don’t know that much about it.” Merton was sitting in the backroom of The Clanger, across from what used to be his own seat. Now Gorland was behind the desk, with Garcia standing to one side, eyeing Merton and tapping a blackjack in his palm, while on the other side was Reggie, a bruiser from the Bronx, wearing the doorman’s uniform that went with his day job.

Gorland knew Reggie from the old days—he was one of the only people alive who knew Frank’s real last name—and he sometimes hired him as extra muscle. Tonight, Gorland had to put the fear of God into Merton. Harv Merton needed to have more fear for Frank Gorland than for the powerful Andrew Ryan.

“I mean, if I knew anything else,” Merton went on, wringing his hands, “I’d tell ya.”

“Hey, you got any hot advice on the horses, Merton?” Garcia, asked, grinning.

Gorland signaled for Garcia to be quiet. The bookie shrugged, put away his sap, and took out a cigar instead. In the lull, the sound of the bar seeped through the closed door. A girl squealed with laughter; a man hooted, “Aw you don’t know nothin’ about Dempsey!”

“Let’s all just think this through, Merton,” Gorland said, pouring Merton a drink from the bourbon bottle. “You’re telling me you got a job with Seaworthy, on the North Atlantic project, from this guy Rizzo—you were working as a steward on one of their ships. Right? And they take your ass out to the North Atlantic and keep it there for a month and a half—and you didn’t see a thing out there?”

Gorland shoved the shot glass across the desk, and Merton snatched it up. “Thanks. Uh—that’s about the size of it. I mean… some stuff was taken down, you know, under the water. But…” He laughed nervously. “I didn’t go down with it! They were all hush-hush about what was going on down there. Much as your life was worth to talk about it, one fella said, after he come up. I don’t know what they’re up to.”

“You see, I know what they’re up to—in a general kind of way,” Gorland said, pouring himself a drink. “Building something big. But I don’t know what Ryan’s angle is. Where the money is. You seen ’em bring up any… ore? You know, mining goodies? Gold, silver, oil?”

“No, nothin’ like that. Just a lotta ships. Never saw Mr. Ryan. Heard his name sometimes, that’s all. I was busy the whole time. Seasick too. I was glad to get back here and look for another job…”

“Yeah, you’ll live to look for another job too,” Reggie said helpfully, his voice mild. “If you tell Mr. Gorland exactly what he needs to know.”

“I swear—I didn’t find out anything else! I hardly left the galley on that big ol’ ship! Now, Frank Fontaine— he might know something. He’s got boats going out there to supply ’em with fish! And they get to talk more. You know, to the guys in the construction…”

Gorland frowned thoughtfully. “Frank Fontaine. Fontaine’s Fisheries? He used to smuggle stuff from Cuba up here in those fishing boats of his. Now he’s delivering… fish? You kiddin’ me?”

“I saw him on the dock—that’s what he told me! I used to buy some of the rum he smuggled up here for my… for your place.” Merton swallowed. “Fontaine says there’s more money selling fish to Ryan for that crew out there than there is selling rum to New York! They got a cryin’ need for food out there—got an army of workers to feed…”

Gorland grunted thoughtfully to himself. That did dovetail with what he’d heard at the loading dock. The one sure way to get close to that operation… was to supply it.

A crazy thought came to him. Bringing with it some interesting possibilities…

But if he did go that far—and far was the word, all right—he’d be way out of his own stomping ground. He’d be splashing around in the North Atlantic.

There was something about this secret project of Ryan’s that fascinated him, that drew him the way rumors of buried pirate gold drew a treasure hunter. Millions of dollars were being sunk into the North Atlantic. He ought to be able to scoop some of it up.

Years ago, when “Frank Gorland” was dodging the law, he’d hopped a freight train. Riding the boxcar he’d read an old newspaper about the newly minted industrialist Andrew Ryan. There was a picture of him standing in front of a fancy building with his name on it. That picture had stirred something in him. The picture of Andrew Ryan standing there in front of the skyline of Manhattan, like he owned it, had made Frank think:

Whatever he’s got—I want it. I’m going to take it from him…

Could be now was his chance. But first he had to figure out what Ryan’s angle was. What he was up to—or down to—out there with a city down in the cold guts of that dark ocean…