Randy White - Dead of Night

A block away, a car turned the corner, lights panning. I knelt to tie my shoes, hiding my face until it’d passed.

A white sedan with black antenna, dorsal-like, on the trunk.

An unmarked squad car? It had that look.

I waited, feeling the quarter moon brighten, then sail behind clouds. Waited until the car turned in the distance, and I began to jog again.

I made one more lap around the block. Stopped briefly near the hospital’s front entrance and watched two security guards escort my son to a black Lincoln Town Car. I felt an uncharacteristic surge of emotion as one of the guards held the rear door open for Lake. The other chatted with the driver while also inspecting what I assumed to be his chauffeur’s license.

Good men. It explained the absence of security in the rear parking lot.

My son was getting his ride in a limo. A small surprise from his father. A parting gift.

At a faster pace, I jogged past the strip mall a final time, cut through the parking lot, and approached the Magic Bus from behind. Curtains covered the side windows of the VW, so I peeked in the rear. It was impossible to be certain, but it looked empty.

I touched fingertips to metal, sensitive to any slight movement, a shifting of weight.

Nothing.

Nearby cars also looked empty. I decided that if this was a setup, the X spot-where they’d hit me-would be somewhere on the dirt road that led to the canal.

More likely, though, I’d overanalyzed Reynolds’s phone message. I’d probably find the cops still searching for the cell phone, suspicious of my motives, just like he’d said.

I unlocked the driver’s-side door, then started to slide in behind the wheel when I realized the dome light had not come on.

Uh-oh.

In the same instant, I heard a car start a few spaces to my left, and was simultaneously aware of someone running-light-footed, on asphalt-before the car’s engine grew louder, audibly thumping into gear.

Trouble.

I turned to see the silhouette of a woman closing on me, as a pale-colored car appeared, lights off. It was timed to let the woman pass before the car pulled in tight behind the Volkswagen, shielding my view of the EMTs at the ER entrance, and also any chance of anyone seeing what was happening to me.

Professionals…

It was the Russian woman charging me. The one who’d taken such pleasure in torturing Jobe Applebee. I got a flickering look at the short blond hair, the feral eyes, her skin glazed orange with industrial light. She had something in her hand. An aluminum flashlight?

It made no sense. Even if it were a gun, she couldn’t be planning to take me down all by herself.

Where’s her partner?

The driver’s-side window of the blocker car was tinted; I could see a vague male shape at the wheel as the woman stopped abruptly a couple of yards away. As she lifted her hand toward me-maybe it’s a weapon-I reached for my cell phone, feeling for the keypad, hoping to hit the redial button, any number would do. I wanted there to be some record of what was happening here.

I tensed, expecting to hear a gunshot. Instead, a laser-bright light blinded me momentarily. From behind, two huge, hairy hands grabbed me from inside the van, one of them locked around my windpipe. I didn’t have a chance to bury my chin against my chest but managed to wedge a couple of fingers between my Adam’s apple and the man’s hand, hearing the woman whisper something harsh in Russian.

An instant later, my back muscles spasmed as if voltage charged when I felt a sickening, hypodermic pain-a needle had been driven deep into the side of my throat. I felt the gagging pain for several long seconds before the needle was removed.

More whispered Russian as I coughed and heaved reflexively, feeling woozy-headed, eyes blurring… I was aware of a flooding weariness as my brain struggled to translate the grotesque images that gradually appeared before me.

The Russian woman, with her feral eyes, now had the skeletal face of a screaming death’s-head. Her partner appeared briefly, walking upright, then was liquefied and reassembled as an animal from a cartoon vision. He dropped to all fours, his body as thick and hairy as a lion, but with the leering, hairy head of a jackal.

“Walk, you clumsy idiot. If you make us carry you, we’ll let you die here.”

The screaming death’s-head spoke a whispered English, heavily accented.

I then stood for a moment, teetering on the edge of an expanding abyss-the trunk of a car was opening next to me, I realized. A third figure was now involved. A man with a plaid jacket, a Bronx accent, eyes smoldering with the stink of cigars.

I tried to say his name-Jimmy Heller-but the words exited my numb face as the blubbering sound of an invalid weeping.

“Tough guy,” I heard the squatty little detective say. “The way he handles himself-like his shit doesn’t stink. Listen to ’im now, crying like a baby.”

I watched, beginning to tilt earthward, as the checkered jacket became an animal’s spotted pelt, and smoldering eyes centered themselves on Heller’s pointed, yellow face-the face of a hyena. Then I was falling… falling toward a dark concavity that had been the trunk of a car but was now a spinning coffin.

Felt the air go out of me. Felt an acidic welling that signals the need to vomit as the coffin lid slammed shut…

Serpiente

Marion D. Ford-if the man really is an operator, what’s the best way to take him down…?

Dasha had been thinking about it Friday morning when she’d found the address of Sanibel Biological Supply on the Internet, and used MapQuest to print directions. She was still excited; couldn’t wait to meet the man face-to-face.

She’d also printed Ford’s photograph. Those eyes… thinking of the way he’d used a boat as a weapon added to the anticipation.

She had Broz drop them at Orlando International, where she used a counterfeit credit card to get another rental, a green Pontiac midsize, nondescript.

Aleski was with her, of course. Aleski, whose right eye was now swollen closed, ear blood-clotted beneath antibiotic salve.

Irritating. She’d have much preferred to make the trip alone, she and Ford, two operators meeting-that’s the way she pictured it-but there was no escaping Aleski. Like a dog, the way he followed her around. Lately, though, it was more like a guard dog.

Four hours later, they were driving over a causeway bridge onto Sanibel Island, mica-bright water beneath, the molten fire of a western sky familiar in a misplaced way.

An image formed in Dasha’s mind: the Foundry furnaces of Volstak blazing, doors wide, ghost men swinging shovels…

One of them probably my idiot father.

Her mother had worked the factories at lunchtime. To Dasha, the heat from the furnaces felt like heaven. Her mother said they were doors that opened to hell.

“This is a pretty island. I like the way coconut trees look at sunset.”

Aleski’s first combination of sentences since they’d left Orlando. He sat there, his face looking as if he’d been beaten with a hammer, now suddenly the insightful romantic.

The images of furnaces and ghost men lingered. “Shut your stupid mouth. Concentrate on the job. I told you-this man, Ford, isn’t some typical American amateur. You can’t even defend yourself from a woman. And you’re wasting your time thinking about fruit trees?”

“Sorry, Dasha.” Aleski sniffed, obviously irritated, but still not done with it. Finally, he asked, “Coconuts are fruit?”

“Oh God…”

“I didn’t know that. But, if they are a fruit, why are they called ‘nuts’?”

“Enough!”

“I’m tired of you speaking to me as if I’m stupid! Fruit is soft on the outside. Nuts are hard.”