Brian Freeman - The Crooked Street

Somehow, when they did, Frost knew he would recognize the face emerging from the other side. His enemy was no stranger.

He was right.

The elevator doors slid open, and Fox strolled onto the platform.

“Hello, Frost,” the boy said.

Except he wasn’t a boy at all. Frost realized that now. Fox was dressed the way he always was, all in black. His tank top was soaking wet from the rain. A cigarette dripped from his mouth. He had no gun, but he had two heavy leather balls that he juggled gracefully in one hand without even looking at what he was doing. He looked the same with his oddly plastic skin and tousled dark hair, but he looked different, too. He’d traded his innocence for the sharp eyes of a hawk. His smile was smarter, nastier, and more arrogant. He knew he’d played Frost for a fool.

“So how old are you really?” Frost asked him. “I would have guessed fourteen.”

“I’m twenty-six,” Fox replied. Then his voice rose an octave. “But don’t feel bad, it’s easy to make people believe what they want to believe.”

“Obviously, you’re not Mr. Jin’s son.”

“Obviously.”

“Where’s the real boy?” Frost asked. “The real Fox.”

“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking. No, Fox is safe and sound. I grabbed him as soon as Mr. Jin disappeared. I kept him around in case we needed him to lure out his father. As things turned out, that wasn’t a problem.”

The strange leather juggling balls went up and down, slapping into Fox’s palm.

“So it was you,” Frost said. He wanted to make sure that Fawn, standing next to him, understood the truth. “Not Cyril. Trent broke down the door and saw you killing Mr. Jin. That’s why he was chasing you.”

“Yeah, he would have shot me, too,” Fox replied. “He had me cornered. Good thing the other cop got him first.”

Frost glanced at Fawn. Her dark eyes were two little dots of hatred.

“And who exactly are you?” Frost asked, eyeing the screen that counted down the minutes until the train arrived. “You may not be a kid, but I can’t believe you’re Lombard.”

“You’re right about that. I’m Geary, actually. He uses me for the dirty work. Lombard only comes out for the occasional job. When we have to take out one of our own, he likes to do that himself. It sends a message.”

Fox turned his attention to the woman beside Frost.

“So you’re Fawn,” he went on. “You’re looking good for a dead woman. That was quite the stunt you and Gorham pulled. Very impressive. None of us suspected a thing.”

Fawn said nothing, but her breathing was loud, and her nostrils flared with anger.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Fox told her, “Martin Filko really is a pig. I don’t blame you for wanting to get rid of him. Unfortunately, you played the game, and you lost.”

Frost stepped in front of Fawn. He lifted his gun and pointed it at Fox’s chest. It was cocked, and his index finger was on the trigger. They were no more than twenty feet apart, close enough that he couldn’t miss. Fox stood in front of the elevator doors, and Frost and Fawn were on the very edge of the platform, with their backs to the train tracks.

“Put the gun away and stop being silly, Frost,” Fox said.

He grinned as he juggled the two leather balls in his hand. They were hypnotic and oddly threatening, and Frost tried to follow them with his eyes, but the constant motion was dizzying.

“I don’t think so,” Frost said.

“Look, I have no beef with you,” Fox added. “I actually like you.”

“Really? You tried to kill me when I was with Coyle. That was you, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Fox acknowledged. “But things change. All I want now is the girl, so if you walk away, we’ll call it no harm, no foul. You’ll be perfectly safe. My boys upstairs won’t touch you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Frost said.

Fox nodded without surprise. “No, of course not. Well, I gave you a chance. Everyone says you’re a Boy Scout, so I didn’t expect you to leave a damsel in distress. Too bad, though. I’ve never understood the mathematics of hero types. Only one of you has to die, but instead, you both do. It seems like a waste.”

“Or maybe you die, and Fawn and I take the train that’s coming in a couple minutes and get the hell out of here.”

“That’s brave talk, Frost, but this isn’t our first rodeo, remember? Didn’t you learn anything on the boat? Or in Mr. Jin’s apartment? You can’t beat me. I always win, you always lose.”

“Your Cirque du Soleil tricks aren’t as effective when I have a gun,” Frost replied.

“Except you don’t have a gun,” Fox told him.

Frost was ready, and still he never saw it coming. As one leather juggling ball flew up in the air, Fox’s wrist flashed. The ball in his hand shot across the space like a missile, striking the barrel of Frost’s gun and kicking it away. The pistol spun through the air and hit the wall on the far side of the train tracks. Frost felt an intense shock of pain and realized that his index finger had been snapped backward and broken. It stuck upward from his hand as if it were pointing at heaven.

This all happened in the time it took for the second ball to rise up and drop casually back into Fox’s hand.

“Lead pellets,” Fox told him with a smile. “They give these things the kick of a mule.”

Frost charged across the space between them. He was far bigger than Fox, but size didn’t matter. As Frost leaped, Fox’s foot jabbed like a piston underneath Frost’s rib cage, and the air burst from his lungs. Fox’s arm spun into a roundhouse and hammered the back of Frost’s head, driving him face-first to the ground. The impact shuddered through his skull and bloodied his forehead. Frost rolled away just as Fox’s next kick flew by his head. He staggered to his feet and backed up, gasping for breath and trying to shake off a wave of nausea.

Fox hadn’t even broken a sweat. He tossed the second leather ball up and down in his hand.

“Had enough? I mean, after a while, I’m going to get bored with kicking your ass, Frost. Eventually, the cat always kills the mouse. You know that, right? You’ve got a cat.”

Frost charged again.

Fox’s left leg flew upward, and his whole body followed it around. This time, the kick landed against Frost’s shoulder and threw him sideways against the elevator doors. He slammed hard and had to brace himself not to slip down to the floor of the platform. Blood dripped down his face, mixed with sweat. His broken finger throbbed like the searing burn of a cattle brand. His head spun. He could barely move his arm.

Fox still casually juggled the leather ball in his hand.

“How do you want this, Inspector? Fast or slow?”

Frost smiled and spat out the words. “You just made a mistake.”

Fox cocked his head warily. “A mistake?”

“You missed something.”

“Yeah? What’d I miss?”

The voice came from behind Fox. It came from Fawn.

“I have a gun, too, you son of a bitch,” she told him.

And she began to fire.

Her first two bullets went wide. She wasn’t a good shot. But the next blast from her revolver slammed the meat of Fox’s shoulder, and the bullet exited his body with a spray of blood and ricocheted off the steel of the elevator bank near Frost’s head. Fawn fired one more time, searing Fox’s thigh, before he spun around and whipped the second leather ball squarely into her forehead. It landed like a hammer, and she fell straight back and hit the floor of the platform, unconscious.

Ignoring the screams of pain in his body, Frost launched himself off the elevator bank and crashed into Fox’s back and took him down. He shot an elbow into Fox’s face, buried a thumb in his wounded shoulder, then turned him over and rained down blow after blow with his uninjured fist. Fox took the assault without flinching, but Frost’s strength quickly waned, and the killer wriggled out of his grip and clapped both sides of Frost’s head sharply with his feet. It felt like a tornado in Frost’s brain. He threw his head back in agony, and instantly, Fox squirmed free and was on his feet.