Stefan Petrucha - Dead Mann Walking

It worked once, so I figured I’d just ask again. “Booth know who else you work for?”

“We get lots of work. Who do you mean?”

I made a scissor motion with my fingers.

“Oh, him. You figure it out.”

“Do I get a hint?”

“No.”

“Given his reaction to my questions, I’d say no.”

“Well, you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of being right, then, don’t you?”

Grandpa didn’t even blink. At least I knew it was a he .

“Did the chak chopper hire you because he knew you

worked for Booth? Asked you to keep tabs on him in case I showed up?”

The old man snickered. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“It’s not like I’ve got a magazine back here to read.”

“Want to play twenty questions?” He put the barrel to my neck. “Okay. Guess what I’m going to do if you open your mouth again?”

Hell, I’d probably have my answer at the end of the ride, which, as it turned out, was in the warehouse district. Cue gloomy jazz riff.

Every town has one, but not every town built them as huge, thin, and rickety as Fort Hammer. One good hurricane should’ve wiped them all out, but even physics doesn’t work much in this town. Fifty years they’d been standing, and of course now, times being what they are, they mostly stood empty.

Watt maneuvered the sedan down narrow spaces tight as a behemoth’s butt crack. He kept getting lost, but I couldn’t blame him. One mass of tin wall and steel support is a lot like any other. It was like looking for a particular piece of hay in a haystack. After a lot of eye rolling from Grandpa, we made it. Hip-hip-hooray.

Watt got out, opened the door, and yanked at Ashby. The kid struggled, if you can call it that. His thin bony hands swatted Watt’s arms like wet noodles slapping brick. Just the same, Watt didn’t like it. It looked like he might get rough with the kid.

“Hey! Easy!” I barked.

Grandpa tensed, but agreed. “Don’t damage him yet.”

“Listen to your father,” I said as I climbed out of the car.

Watt looked at me like I was a wizard. “How’d you know?”

“I didn’t. I guessed, but I wasn’t sure until you told me just now.”

“When did I tell . . . ?”

“Shut up.” Grandpa grunted. “You want to give him our address, too?”

I grinned. “Does he take after Mom?”

He shoved me real hard for that. Made me wonder how far I could push him. A little chaos might break our way.

I laid into the mom. “She still on crack? Their kids usually have brain damage. Not that I have anything against crack addicts or brain damage. You’ve met Ashby, and my secretary used to be—”

Grandpa clocked me on the chin. I’d expected it, seen it coming, and moved back fast enough to avoid a broken jaw, but it still sent me to the ground.

“Anything else?” he said.

Watt was holding Ashby tight, and even if I wanted to abandon him, it wasn’t like I could get up quick and run with my hands cuffed. I shook my head. Grandpa pulled me to standing.

Ashby was horrified. Or maybe he was crying.

“I’m okay, kid; I’m fine. We’re just playing a little rough,” I said.

“These are the men who took Frank. Is Frank . . . inside? Heh-heh.”

Grandpa and I looked at each other. Neither of us answered. The old man may not have liked me very much, but I think Ashby reminded him of Watt. Maybe that’s why Ashby got away from them the first time. Gramps may have “accidentally” let him go.

“I wish you hadn’t brought him,” he said.

“Me, too. You could let him go.”

“These are the men who took Frank,” the kid said again.

Grandpa shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Watt slid the door open on a brand-new darkness. Inside, it was more like a cave than a building, the ceiling too far up to see. High up, the shadows of thick, dangling chains loomed, hooks at the end big enough to snare Moby Dick. Down below, with us, there was plenty of empty shelving, an oil-stained floor, and tracks where forklifts used to roll cargo. All mixed with dead leaves and dirt, it smelled like an oily cemetery.

Watt and Grandpa shoved; we stumbled along, tripping on whatever we couldn’t see. Takes longer for a chak to adjust to the dark. As we went farther in, my eyes could barely sort one shadow from another.

Suddenly, though, my nose grabbed all the attention. A sharp chemical odor was piggybacking on the breeze. I thought it was cleaning fluid, but that’d be pointless in this place. It was too strong, anyway, and lacked the perfumes Mr. Clean likes to wear.

Then I saw the source—a circular tub, four feet tall and just as wide. In its youth, it may have been a Jacuzzi or a hot tub. Now it was more a cauldron, the kind cannibals used in those old cartoons for the missionaries they were having for dinner. It was filled nearly to the brim with a gross, slick liquid that gave the color green a bad name.

The man I’d been looking for stood to the side, head covered in a hood, the rest decked out in overalls, a gas mask, and protective gloves. Whoever he was, he hummed and swayed, looking like a toddler dressed in a costume. Mom! Look at me! I’m a hazmat worker! For lack of a better word, he played with the silvery tools laid out on a narrow table in front of him. He’d turn one sharp instrument over, pick up another, then put it back down someplace else. One, a leather strap at the end of a long pole, looked like a bondage sex toy. Another looked like a garden tool, something you’d use to snap off thick branches—say, an arm or a leg. Yeah, the head clippers were there, center place, sharper and shinier than all the others put together.

I could see where this was going.

Getting a head start on that electric-syrup feeling I knew was coming, I looked down and tried not to think. My bad. A duffel bag sat below the table. I thought it was for the tools, but it was still full, the string at the top tied. It was stuffed with roundish things, basketballs, bowling balls, or . . .

No. Couldn’t be. Not just lying there like that.

I shuddered as the syrup roiled inside me.

As if he’d heard what I was thinking, the killer looked up and found my eyes.

“Where do you want them?” Grandpa asked.

The masked man looked as if he hadn’t even thought about that part. He’d been too busy pouring all those cool-colored chemicals into the tub, making sure his nifty tools were nice and clean.

“How’d you work it with Booth?” I said. “I’ve got my guesses, but it’d be nice to know for sure. You plant them there ahead of me or did they work with him before? Odd jobs on the far side of the law? He still thinks they’re going to beat me up, break an arm at most, right?”

He gave a little shrug that ruined the neat line of his hazmat suit.

I was actually doing okay until the moment he hefted the head clippers. Then it was like he’d stuck a chubby finger down my throat and touched the bottom of my stomach. A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man but one. Call me a coward, then. I could already feel the silver blades against my neck. I was ready to go to my knees and beg, offer to let him take the kid instead of me. But I knew it wouldn’t have worked, and I already had crap enough to live with.

Instead I straightened and tried to pretend I was somebody else, role-playing my pathetic excuse for an existence. “Let the kid go. He’s a babbler. Doesn’t know what’s going on from one minute to the next.”

He shook his head no.

“Why? This how you get your jollies?”

He stiffened and shook his head no again.

“What, then? It’s going to hurt you more than it will me? Little hard to believe, don’t you think?”