Colin Harrison - Afterburn

"I get it, smoke them fuckers."

"Listen, guys," said Christina, "I want you to stand here for five minutes and look like big bad black guys, okay? Because, if you do, then you're going to see something very funny."

"What?"

"You're going to see some guys scream up in some kind of car and be looking for-"

"You."

"Right."

He nodded solemnly. "It's cool."

Now she dialed her cell phone using pay phone B. The low-battery light blinked steadily. The phone rang, and she punched the talk button. She could hear her own voice coming out of the earpiece of the other phone. "Okay, this connection is made. Now I dial the other one." Which she did. "You guys stand here." She positioned them in front of the phone booths. As long as they stood there, no one would mess with the phones taped together.

"Yeah?" came a voice in her ear.

"Okay, I'm calling in," she said. The connection worked, but there was a lot of garbage in the sound. She patted one guy on the cheek, winked at the other. "I'm calling, like I said."

"Where are you?"

"I'm in midtown, Forty-second and Broadway."

"Okay."

She started walking.

"You said Forty-second and Broadway?"

"Yeah, what do you want me to do?"

"I got to check, hang on."

Stalling. They already knew she was lying, of course. She turned the corner onto Bowery, wondering how long the cell-phone battery would last.

"Yeah, okay. What we'd like you to do," came the voice, "is set up a way so that we can get this piece of paper."

"All right," she said.

"What?"

"I said all right."

"Connection's terrible."

"I'm at a pay phone." They probably had a car on the way. She had to stay on the phone long enough so that they thought she was there.

"We want you to suggest a way of meeting, a place," came the voice.

"How about at the top of the Empire State Building?" she said.

"Well, no… maybe. I got to check. What about somewhere near where you are?"

"That's a good idea," she said.

Suddenly the phone filled with ripping static.

"Hey!" a voice called.

"Hello? Hello?" came another.

"She fucked us!"

Christina turned off her phone and kept walking, the bill of lading securely in her bag. I'm free, she told herself. I'm just going to go back to the Pioneer Hotel and think of a way to survive a few more days. But then there was the question of her mother. If her mother answered the phone and was fine, then she wouldn't have to worry. She could figure out what to do next. I'll try one more time, Christina decided. She turned on the phone. The battery light blinked constantly. She punched in the number.

"Hello?" came her mother's voice, full of fear.

"Mom?"

"Please do whatever they say, Tina," her mother cried. "There are three of them here in the living room. They turned this place upside down."

Christina sagged in dismay. A man came on the phone. "Tony says he's starting to chop up your boyfriend. Go to the corner of Tenth Avenue and Thirteenth Street. Bring the piece of paper." He hung up.

She collapsed against the wall. I'm so bad, she thought, so bad.

A few minutes later she stood at the corner of Tenth and Thirteenth. The meatpacking district, the buildings boarded up, gutters filled with glass and garbage. A cab sat at the corner with a flat tire, the driver staring at it in disgust. A door opened on the other side of the street. She walked across.

"All right, I'm here," she said hatefully. "You have to let my mother go."

She recognized Peck. He pulled her inside and marched her up the steps into a huge room. The floor was rough, the high windows broken and streaked. She could see Tony in a chair, speaking into a phone, food cartons around his feet. He hung up. "Paul's coming," he announced, looking up. He saw Christina. "You got it?"

"Yes."

A man in a green baseball jacket stood next to Tony. Something was laid out on a table in front of them. "We have your rich boyfriend here," the man called.

She stopped. "Where?"

Peck pushed her forward across the wooden floor.

"Right here. Tough old guy, too." He switched on a bright work light. "Want to see?"

They parked Paul's car a few blocks away, broken windows and all, and went up to the door, past a cabdriver who had his taxi jacked up and the wheel off. "It's me," Paul said into his phone. "I'll wait for you to open it." Rick stood on the hinged side of the door. They could hear someone coming down the steps inside.

"Just let me talk the situation through," Paul warned.

"Fine." He'd let Paul believe whatever he wanted. His shotgun was reloaded now, the Ruger pistol in his right hand.

"You alone?" came a voice behind the door.

Rick touched Paul's back with the gun. "Yeah," Paul answered, looking at his good shoes on the pavement.

The door opened.

Paul stepped inside. "Hey."

"We've got her upstairs-" a voice began.

Rick yanked the door open, then set his finger against the pistol's trigger. The detective, Peck, frowned at him in surprise. Rick fired. The noise was enormous in the dark stairwell. Peck fell backward, his stomach bursting blood. He rolled onto his front and kicked his feet at the stairs, trying to stand. Rick fired into Peck's back. The blood soaked through his clothes, wetting the steps.

"Oh shit," Paul said.

Rick glanced out the door. The cabbie was wheeling his spare from the trunk. Otherwise the street was empty. No one had noticed the gunshots. He pulled the door shut. Peck moaned and tried to get up.

"Let's go," said Rick. He dropped the pistol into his coat pocket.

Peck lurched onto his side, looking up the stairs.

"We can't just leave him," Paul protested.

"Why not?" He pushed Paul up the stairs toward the floor of the large, gloomy factory room. "This is where they cut off my fucking arm, Paul."

Across the darkness he could see Morris, Tony, and somebody on the same table he'd been on-an older man, shirt off, face down, arm cuffed. He had a couple of hemostats pinching the bloody mess of his lower back. Bloody gauze packs littered the floor. One foot was clearly cut off, the wound clamped with a hemostat. Tony sat in a chair examining a piece of paper with reading glasses on, as if perusing the day's mail. Rick swung the shotgun at the room, keeping a step behind Paul's shoulder. Morris stood with a pistol extended at Rick.

"Peck!" called Tony. "Peck?"

"Where is she?" Rick shouted feverishly.

"Hey, hey, Rick!" said Tony. "She's here. With her boyfriend."

Morris followed Rick with his gun. "Just tell me and that will be it," he said to Tony.

Rick saw Christina bound in tape and hunched on the floor, not moving. "Is she alive?" he yelled in terror. The room seemed to tilt.

"We didn't touch her." Morris switched off the work light, then switched it on again.

"Christina?" he called, bothered by the changing light.

She didn't move or respond.

"Stop fucking with the light!" cried Rick. "What did you do?"

"We didn't do anything," said Morris. "We taped her up."

Rick pushed Paul forward and glanced at the man on the table. One hand was twitching, and a long incision ran up the base of his spine. "Who's he?"

"That's her boyfriend." Tony, fat inside a loose shirt, worked the overbite of his lower jaw. His smile appeared to measure the sum of the world's illusions. "Rick, you can't just walk in and walk out of this."

"Let her go," Rick ordered Tony.

"Let her go yourself." Morris flicked the light on, off.

I want to kill him, thought Rick, I want to do that more than anything ever.

"Tony," Paul began, trying to mediate between madmen. "Let her go. You have the money, the piece of paper, right? Let them all go. Come on. I've got guys who can clean this up. We can have the problem gone in three hours. Couple of suitcases, whatever." He paused. "You and me go way back, Tony. And we still got a lot of money to make."