Free Unholy Fire by Robert J. Mrazek

that I regularly replenished and kept hidden in a crevice behind the corner sink, fill one of the paper cups next to the water crock, and then go to one of the thunderboxes to consume the laudanum in relative safety. At around three every afternoon, I would go back to the washroom for another cup.
    Upon returning to Mrs. Warden’s in the military van, I would avail myself of another mug in my room before going down to supper. Back upstairs, I would have a final measure at around eight o’clock. On those long, sweltering summer evenings, the sun would still be streaming in the windows when I stripped off my uniform, closed the curtains, and fell naked across the bed. On rare occasions, if the black hole of opium-induced oblivion proved elusive, I would supplement the usual ration until I finally passed out.
    During that time I never went to a play or concert, never read a book or newspaper, never attended church, and never took part in exercise or joined friends for a meal at a restaurant. I had no friends. I saw no one outside my office or the rooming house. My only knowledge of what was happening in the world came from conversations I overheard at work or around the dining room table at Mrs. Warden’s.
    I knew that General McClellan had failed in his attempt to lay siege to Richmond in June and had been replaced by Pope, who suffered another great defeat near Manassas in August. A few days later, the flood of wounded came streaming back into the hospitals around Washington like a bloody tide. The slaughter was so great that the Sanitary Commission ended up pitching a hospital tent on the grounds of the asylum. The familiar stench of physical corruption assaulted my nostrils every time I left the building for the next two weeks.
    My life was one of complete subterfuge and concealment. Every Saturday night I would leave the house by the backstairs dressed in an old slouch hat, a patched workman’s coat, and denim overalls. By then, I had made contact with an army quartermaster named Spangler, who operated his private affairs out of a row house in the notorious area known as Swampoodle. Among the range of army goods he peddled, Spangler had crate upon crate of laudanum for sale.
    I paid him four dollars a bottle, which was a small fraction of the money I had saved during all the months I had spent in the hospital. My monthly pay as a lieutenant, including the bonus I received for my wound, was just over a hundred dollars. Laudanum was my only personal indulgence.
    Spangler had no idea that I was an army officer. If I had truly cared about my responsibilities as an investigator for the provost marshal general, I could have had him put in prison for twenty years. He was a far bigger thief than anyone I had investigated up to that time. Consumed with self-loathing every time I transacted business with him, I would ride back to Mrs. Warden’s in a hansom, and carefully conceal the bottles behind the hay bales in the small livery stable that faced onto the alley behind her house.
    Of course, I wondered whether Val Burdette knew of my condition. I also wondered why he had salvaged me from all the human detritus at the field hospital. Did some fellow officer of mine bring me to his attention? Did a surgeon of his acquaintance hear of my case and mention it to him?
    He seemed to have the prescient ability to divine almost everything; but after getting me started in my job, I rarely saw him. He was in charge of prosecuting major fraud cases involving military procurement contracts, and the work often kept him traveling for days and even weeks at a time.
    Being emotionally cauterized, it never occurred to me that he might also be concealing mysteries of his own until I overheard Tubshawe talking with one of the lawyers in the next office about him one day. I knew it was Val they were talking about since Harold had come to refer to him as Colonel Vagrant, due to the perpetually sad state of his uniform.
    â€œI tell