Max Collins - Skin Game

A light rain peppered the ground and Otto pulled his black topcoat tighter around himself. The night air had a chill, and he had a childhood memory of Michigan, which was similarly cold. He could see his breath as he neared the small shack that served as the checkpoint’s guard post. Looking through the window of the shed-sized building, he couldn’t see anyone inside. The light was on, but no one seemed to be home.

Moving around to the door, Otto opened it, walked in, and knew immediately that something was wrong.

The desk against the left wall held a coffeepot that was still on, a cup filled with steaming joe, and an ashtray with a cigarette burning in it, a pack of Winstons nearby. Every-thing was right where it belonged...

... except for the sector cop.

A door in the back right corner led into the closet that served as a bathroom, but the door yawned wide open, the room empty.

Otto checked his watch — 3:02. Brian Dunphy should be here.

But he wasn’t. Where the hell is the bastard?

A five-thousand-dollar appointment wasn’t something an underpaid sector cop would normally be late for...

His own cop instincts twitching, Otto went back outside. The gate separating the two sectors was locked. He looked through the eight-foot chain-link fence, down the street into Sector Twelve, and still saw no sign of the officer. Then he looked back up the street in the direction he’d come and saw nothing there either.

The rain grew more intense, and for a long moment he considered calling White, then decided he better look around a little more. He considered leaving the briefcase in the guard shack to keep his hands free, and thought better of it.

An old factory neighborhood, Sector Eleven was mostly run-down vacant buildings for blocks in every direction. Some had been taken over by squatters, who seldom ventured far at night, especially not on a rainy night like this one. Otto gazed down the street into Sector Twelve again and still saw nothing, the rain blurring anything beyond a few hundred feet anyway.

His heart fluttered, his stomach was in knots, and he had a warm, loose feeling in his bowels. Otto hated being scared, but something was terribly wrong here and he had no idea what it was. He withdrew a small flashlight from his coat pocket, turned it on, then struggled to hold it in his left hand along with the briefcase as he drew his pistol with his right from under his topcoat and started back in the direction from whence he’d come. His rubber-soled shoes moved silently over the concrete, his flashlight jabbing holes in the night, seeking any sign of the missing sector cop.

Halfway back down the block, an alley bisected the street. Otto was worried that if Dunphy had gone off to check on a prowler or something, the sector cop might be coming back down the alley, see the light and the gun, and wind up drilling Otto.

Wouldn’t that be a son of a bitch.

Pushing himself flat against the brick building on the west side of the street, Otto moved back north. When he got to the alley, he first looked across the street to the east and could see nothing but rain in that direction. Feeling like a putz on the empty street, Otto peeked around the edge of the building, saw nothing, and risked shining the flashlight down that way.

Nothing.

He turned west in the alley, the flashlight and briefcase clumsily in front of him as he meandered ahead, careful to stay in the middle and aim the tiny pen flash at any shadows. Keeping his pistol ready, he moved forward slowly.

Five feet, ten feet, fifteen, twenty, nothing, the flashlight sweeping back and forth, the briefcase growing heavier by the second, his fingers aching, then stiffening, as the case wobbled back and forth.

Damnit , he thought. Where is this asshole?

Ahead, on his right, something tapped on metal in the shadows.

He swung the flashlight over and saw a dumpster. He couldn’t tell whether the tapping came from the inside or from the far end, where he couldn’t see. The tapping continued, slow, rhythmic — something man-made, for sure.

“Dunphy?” he asked quietly.

No answer — just the tapping.

Otto took a wider arc, so he could see around the far end of the dumpster.

Nothing.

The tapping stopped.

His gun coming up, Otto took a step forward, then another. Still no sound from the dumpster. He took a third step, and was now less than ten feet away. Taking a breath in through his nose, he blew it out through his mouth, just like he did when he was running.

The lid to the dumpster flew open, clanging off the wall, and a figure rose up from within the container.

Freaking at the noise, Otto dropped both the flashlight and the briefcase as he brought up the gun in a two-handed grip. The light stayed on, doing its job as best it could, shining crazily toward the foot of the dumpster.

The briefcase wasn’t so lucky.

Money spilled out into the puddles in the alley, and the remaining cash got splattered by the rain. The crash of the lid scared Otto so badly he almost shot whoever-the-hell-it-was without getting a clear look.

Fumbling to keep the gun on the dumpster and pick up the flash, Otto stumbled, went to a knee on the wet pavement, and finally had the light and gun pointed at the new arrival.

“Freeze!” Otto yelled.

The figure looked up, saw Otto, the flashlight, and the gun... and screamed.

Then the screamer ducked back down into the dumpster, out of sight, but not out of mind.

Otto had only a glimpse to go on: the body shape had seemed male, but the scream was as high-pitched as a little girl’s; and the person’s hair was long enough that Otto couldn’t tell whether he’d just cornered a man or a woman.

“Federal agent,” he said, perhaps too loudly. “Put up your hands, then slowly stand.”

No one stood, but Otto thought he could discern a soft whimpering from inside the dumpster.

“I’m not going to tell you again. Hands up and stand up slowly.”

First he saw the dumpster dweller’s hands, then the person slowly stood, the rain dripping off a disheveled mat of dark hair. “I didn’t do nothin’,” the man said.

Older man.

Otto shined the light on the guy’s face — late fifties, kind of frail, wearing a lightweight navy windbreaker. The dumpster dweller had a scruffy beard and bad teeth that he managed to smile with. His way of showing he was on the up and up.

“What’re you doing in there?”

“Gettin’ out of the rain.”

“You were making some kind of noise in there, a tapping — what was it?”

The old man’s face went blank, then he looked down inside the dumpster. “Oh, that?”

“Oh, what?” Otto asked.

“Scrounged me a flashlight. Tried to knock it against the side, to get it to work. But the batteries is bum.”

Otto came up to the edge of the dumpster, shooed the old man to the other end, then looked over the edge. He shone the flashlight in, and on the bottom caught a glimpse of metal. He homed in on it with the light, and when he finally figured out what he was looking at, his heart sank.

The thermal imager — beaten almost beyond recognition.

“Okay, old man — time to get out.”

The dumpster dweller did as he was told, but not without bitching about it: “What’d I do?”

“Did you put that, uh... flashlight in the dumpster yourself?”

“No! It was there already, when I went fishin’ inside. Honest. Swear to God.”

Otto believed the old guy. The man didn’t seem to be strong enough to have taken out a sector cop; and if he had, why was he down rooting in the dumpster?

“Go on, gramps. Take a hike.”

The old man frowned. “Can I take the flashlight?”

“No.”