A Dangerous Breed

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “He’s not my concern. Leave.” Claybeck held herself stiff upright, as if guarding against the cold and the occasional gust that splashed water over her boots.

  “Why tell us now?” I said. “Hollis has been trying to call you for hours.”

  “I’ll let the dogs loose again.”

  “He could die before we reach the mainland. If we go back to the boat, it’ll be to call nine-one-one. You’re in this now. Help him.”

  Before she could answer, the door swung open behind her. A slim man with a thigh-length tan leather coat and a hard expression on his darker face appeared from one side of the doorway. He pointed the blunt barrel of a machine pistol at me. Hollis stepped back reflexively.

  For an instant, nobody moved. I watched the gun, anticipating the minute flex of the man’s trigger finger that would send half a dozen rounds tearing through my center mass.

  A young woman stepped past the gunman, blocking his field of fire. Her platinum hair had been highlighted with blue tips that brushed the shoulders of her trench coat. She took in the sodden sight of us for a moment before nodding assent to some private decision.

  “I have a better idea,” she said. “Come in out of the rain.”

  Six

  They made us leave Jaak on the wet lawn while the glowering man patted Hollis and me down. His leather coat had a band collar and only buttoned partway down his chest, as much poncho as jacket. I guessed him to be Indian or Pakistani, or some nation close to those borders. He removed my wallet and multitool and even the change from my pockets. Then he knelt to check Jaak himself.

  When they were satisfied, the white woman with the bicolor dye job ordered us to carry Jaak into the house. Dr. Claybeck remained at a distance, observing our progress without comment.

  We hefted Jaak’s limp form through a mudroom lined with cedar planks and into a finished basement, though unlike any basement I’d ever seen before.

  The square room had been outfitted like a very small but completely modern emergency care clinic. Two hospital beds and one steel-topped surface that might serve as an operating table took center stage. A rack on one wall held equipment like defibrillators and vital-signs monitors that I recognized, and a lot more that I didn’t. Cabinets and refrigerators completely covered the far side of the room. Each shelf was fully stocked with a pharmacy’s worth of pill bottles, surgical tools, and other supplies.

  One of the beds was occupied. A man, fully clothed in an expensive-looking metallic gray suit and fawn shirt, and a ventilator mask covering most of his face. Elastic bands around his forehead and neck held the clear plastic wedge in place. Tubes connecting the mask’s valve to the ventilator flexed and shuddered minutely with every breath. A sweep of brown hair started high on his scalp and reached down to his shoulders. His eyes were closed.

  “Set him on the table,” Dr. Claybeck said to us. It was her first utterance since the blonde and the gunman had appeared. Hollis and I made one last heave to set Jaak carefully on the steel surface.

  “Leave him.” The blonde strode across to grab Claybeck’s arm. “See to Bilal.”

  “Bilal is stable—” the doctor protested, as the blonde shoved her toward the man in the ventilator mask.

  “Then keep him that way.”

  Claybeck looked on the verge of spitting right back. She didn’t give the impression of a woman who would be pushed around, literally or otherwise. But she made work for herself by checking the ventilator machine.

  “What the hell’s going on, Paula?” Hollis said. “Setting your animals on us and now this?”

  “I’m sorry.” Claybeck spared a glance for him. “Saleem and Aura let my dogs loose to try and force you to leave.” She indicated the man with the machine gun and the blonde. “I convinced them that unless I turned you away directly, you’d keep trying. I underestimated your stubbornness.”

  “Sorry we didn’t take the hint,” Hollis growled at the blonde, Aura. “This is madness. Why not tend to both of them?”

  Because there was no point, I had realized. Whoever the man called Bilal was, his presence here was meant to be kept secret. Now that we had seen him, Saleem and Aura might have no intention of letting us leave.

  The man called Bilal opened his eyes. Wide eyes, very dark and completely alert. The mask and tubes gave the impression of a large translucent snake against his face. It was unclear who was eating whom.

  He motioned to the mask, and Aura began to remove it.

  “He needs that,” Claybeck said. They ignored her.

  Saleem motioned toward the opposite side of the room with his gun. “There. Sit down there,” he said in a heavy South Asian accent.

  Hollis and I sat on stools against the wall. The stools weren’t metal, like the table, but they were solid enough chunks of wood. Aura seemed distracted with Bilal. If Saleem came close, I would have a fair chance of putting his lights out with the stool and taking his gun before Aura could effectively retaliate.

  Except Saleem was a watchful fucker. He kept his distance from Hollis and me. His Steyr machine pistol was more than capable of cutting us both in two from across the room.

  Aura helped Bilal prop himself up on one elbow. His bronze face was long and square and creased with temporary furrows left by the mask and permanent ones that spoke of heavy concerns. He took a long breath, maybe testing his lungs. I guessed Bilal’s age at late forties. His brown mane showed no gray. Maybe he went to the same salon as his girlfriend, who must be twenty years younger.

  “Your names, please?” Bilal said to Hollis and me. His voice was deep and casual, with the same accent as Saleem’s, though not nearly as pronounced.

  Saleem answered for us. “The old man is Hollis Brant, who the doctor told us about. The big one with the marks is Donovan Shaw.” He stepped forward to offer Bilal my driver’s license. The picture on the license didn’t show my marks—the scars that divided my left cheek into three distinct sections, and the smaller ones that bisected my eyebrow and creased my jaw on that same side—as starkly as real life.

  Bilal tapped the license with a blunt finger.

  “Donovan Shaw,” he said. He met my gaze. “Perhaps you shorten that? To Van?”

  An answer wasn’t required. Bilal knew me, or at least recognized my name. Which was unsettling, since I’d never seen the man before.

  Bilal nodded to the unconscious Jaak. “Who is the man on the table?”

  “Only a merchant sailor,” Hollis said, doing enough nervous fidgeting for both of us.

  “And if he dies? What is that to you?” Bilal sat up, swinging his feet to touch each woven leather shoe gingerly to the tile floor. Aura stood prepared to catch him if he tottered.

  Hollis grunted. “He’s a friend.”

  Bilal stood up with almost exaggerated slowness and buttoned his suit jacket. “You go to considerable risk for your friend. Sailing through storms. Friendship is important to you. Correct?”

  “Yes,” said Hollis. He glanced at me, maybe feeling the same apprehension I had about the direction of Bilal’s questioning.

  “Good. Friends are very useful. I would like to be your friend. Yours and Mr. Shaw’s.”

  “Let the doctor look after our guy,” I said, “and I’ll buy the first fucking round.”

  Saleem spat a threat. No translation required.

  “Everyone may leave the doctor’s home healthy tonight,” said Bilal, as if neither of us had spoken.

  “In exchange for what?” I said.

  “Two necessities. One is that you will not mention our meeting here. To anyone, in any capacity. You have never heard of my name.”

  “I’d be happy to forget the whole damned night,” Hollis said, “you especially.”

  Bilal looked at me. I nodded agreement. He murmured something to Aura, who walked out of the room. Her steps retreated swiftly up a flight of stairs.

  “My second condition is a transaction,” Bilal continued. “The doctor is in my employ tonight. Exclusively. I’ve paid well f
or this. If she saves your sailor friend, then it stands to reason I should be recompensed for her time and effort.”

  “How much do you want?” Hollis said.

  “Not money,” I answered for Bilal, who was looking at me with the same focused expression as when he’d clicked on my name.

  “Not money,” he agreed. “I have a task for you, Mr. Van Shaw. For this service, all three of you will have your lives. A good exchange, I think. Until then—”

  Aura’s quick steps tapped back down the stairs and into the room. She carried a computer sleeve under one arm. Saleem crossed to hand her my cell phone. Aura removed a tablet from the sleeve and plugged my phone into it with connecting cables. Her face showed absolute concentration, as if we’d all gone for a walk in the storm and left her alone to work. It was a face I might have found cute in different circumstances, heart-shaped and with a snub of a nose between blue eyes that matched Bilal’s for size. But the circumstances did a lot to ugly her up.

  After a minute she handed the tablet to Bilal and pointed to the screen. “They’re the primaries.”

  Bilal nodded as he read. “Addy Proctor. Cyndra O’Hasson. And”—he looked up at Hollis—“Mr. Brant.”

  My scalp felt like worms were crawling over it. Saleem noticed and smirked.

  “These are the people with whom you are most in contact,” Bilal continued. “People you care about. I could list more.”

  “You’ve made your point. Here’s mine: If you touch them, you’re dead.” I glanced at Saleem. “I’ll go through this one and anyone else like fucking butter to get to you.”

  “You misunderstand. I do not need to touch them. This”—he tapped the tablet—“is a toy. Useful, but not the extent of my capabilities.”

  Aura had glowered slightly when Bilal dismissed the tablet. Had it been her work?

  He continued to scroll down the screen. “You have biometric sign-in for your bank account. Foolish. Though perhaps not so big a fool. You have a surprising amount of money for someone employed at a tavern, Mr. Shaw.”

  Bilal said it like a shared joke, like we both already knew the punchline. Damn.

  “I can harm your friends without resorting to violence,” Bilal continued. “Without even being in the country. Without even being alive, Mr. Shaw. My team could carry on ably, should anything happen to me. Debit accounts. Retirement savings. Legal status. Even medical records. Imagine Mrs. Proctor going to her doctor and being prescribed the wrong medicine. Or incriminating texts from Miss Cyndra appearing on the phone of someone arrested for selling drugs. These are simple things. It can get much worse.”

  I stayed silent. I didn’t trust myself not to snarl like one of Claybeck’s attack dogs.

  “Good,” said Bilal. “You understand.”

  He extended a hand and Saleem passed him a cell phone. Bilal held it out to me.

  “You will keep this close. It must be answered when I call.”

  “What’s the job?” I said.

  “I will tell you the particulars when time allows. Soon.”

  I still didn’t move to take the phone. To the left of us, Saleem stiffened. Aura shifted into view on Bilal’s other side, the pistol back in her hand.

  “Van,” Hollis urged.

  “If I don’t like the job, I won’t do it,” I said to Bilal.

  “Then we will renegotiate,” he said, as if he’d expected that very answer. He looked pointedly at Hollis. “I’m certain we can agree on terms.”

  “Mr. Nath,” Dr. Claybeck said, one hand on the wheeled cart of instruments. “The patient.”

  “Of course. See to him.”

  The doctor checked Jaak’s breathing and pulse, then took scissors from her cart to begin cutting his bandage away. Bilal and the others moved to the door. He motioned for Aura to go ahead of him and then paused in the doorway. Saleem tossed the items he’d taken from us on the spare patient bed.

  “You cannot clap with one hand. Do you know this expression?” Bilal said. “It means out of assistance comes great things. We are associates now. We cooperate.”

  Or else, I thought.

  The gunman, Saleem, took the rear, his eyes on us until his boss reached the top of the stairs. Then he, too, was gone.

  Seven

  Hollis and I gathered our possessions and joined Claybeck at the steel table.

  “Who the hell was that bastard?” Hollis said to her.

  “Priorities.” Claybeck had donned gloves and a surgical apron. She peeled away the tape and gauze that had held Jaak’s wound closed over the massed wad of sponge pieces. “What happened?”

  “His name’s Jaak,” said Hollis. “He passed out shortly after I found him, stabbed. Almost four hours now.”

  “My work,” I said, indicating the bandage. “I’d guess Jaak had lost at least a pint of blood by then. Maybe more inside him.”

  She frowned as she began to pick out the crimson-soaked bits of sponge with tweezers, dropping each one to the floor. “Military, I suppose.”

  “How’s his blood pressure?”

  “Still there. Now leave, please. Wait upstairs.” The doctor’s voice cracked slightly, but her hands moved without pause.

  We followed the same path that Bilal and his soldiers had taken. The stairs led to a living area so long it was practically a meeting hall. The picture windows we’d seen from the dock offered a view of the Sound and the distant lights of Dash Point on the mainland, all blurred by rain washing over the glass with every gust of wind. Crepe paper streamers adorned the room in preparation for what might be an early New Year’s party, if that year was 1963. Every low-slung chair and walnut credenza screamed Camelot. Only the computer monitor sitting on an elegantly curved desk in the corner fit this century.

  “A time capsule,” Hollis said, delighted by the display in spite of what we’d just been through.

  A whine and fervent scratching from the opposite side of a nearby door revealed where Claybeck’s dogs had gone. We beat a fast retreat to the farthest end of the living room. Hollis headed for the loaded bar cart and clanged through the bottles to see what was on hand. The cart was identical to the one downstairs with the surgical tools. I looked out the window at the evergreens. Their top reaches lashed to and fro like bullwhips. The cell phone Bilal had given me made a heavy lump in my pocket.

  “Your choice of health care sucks, Hollis,” I said.

  “Don’t you think if I’d known—” Hollis started. “Never mind. I’m sorry. Let’s have a drink and start the fucking healing process.”

  He poured two generous quantities of a brown liquor and brought them over to sit on the seafoam-blue couch. After a moment I took the matching chair and accepted the glass from him. We drank. Rye, smooth enough to soothe a consumptive’s cough.

  “This isn’t her fault,” Hollis said after a few moments. “Doc Claybeck. She’s trapped.”

  “Trapped by what?”

  “By who. The doctor had—still has, my mistake—a daughter. That poor girl was born with a devil’s truckload of what we used to call birth defects. I don’t know what the kinder term is now, but whatever you choose to say, the child is afflicted, even though she’s long since grown. Vision and hearing troubles, mental and sometimes emotional troubles, too, since her brain stopped developing after a point. She needed a lot of care. More than the doctor and her eventual ex-husband could pay for.”

  “So Claybeck borrowed.”

  “After a fashion. Paula Claybeck had an acquaintance from Seattle’s social elite. This person offered to hire the doctor at an exorbitant salary to be on call as a private physician. For whomever the acquaintance chose.”

  “For people like Bilal. Get there quicker, Hollis; I don’t need a damn yarn right now. What are you not telling me?”

  “Fine, fine. Doc Claybeck’s benefactor”—Hollis layered some uncharacteristic venom into the word—“is Ondine Long.”

  I stared at him.

  “Exactly.” Hollis nodded. “Once in, Paula was in all
the way.”

  Ondine Long was a broker. A facilitator. She might not deal directly in drugs or gambling or flesh or set up scores herself, but she knew who could and would make the introductions for a percentage. Her connections reached from corner boys to the legislature. She donated generously to symphonies and charities and the right politicians. A spider, if the spider never had to leave the center of her lavish web to feast on a morsel from every insect that happened along.

  Ondine and I had crossed paths before. After the dust had settled, we had both tacitly agreed to give one another a wide berth.

  “How are you in the know on Claybeck’s story?” I asked.

  “All that medical equipment you saw downstairs? I was the one Ondine tasked with obtaining it for Paula. Best if the AMA didn’t start asking why a surgeon would be outfitting her home like a trauma center.”

  I had to chuckle. “And you held on to Claybeck’s number.”

  “Who knows when a man might need a physician? Besides.” Hollis looked a little sheepish. “She’s a handsome woman. Though I never did call her, until tonight.”

  “Hell of a first date, Hollis.”

  He sighed. “At least Bilal is gone. Do you think he can do what he claims? Empty everyone’s bank account and all that cyber witchery?”

  I wasn’t certain. Bilal’s trick of phone hacking had been impressive. He might have made an educated guess at my net worth from text notifications of past deposits still in my history. The rest of his assertions sounded a few ticks above knocking down the privacy barriers on a cell phone. But his knowing everyone in my contact list was enough to me to take Bilal at face value.

  The doctor had spoken his last name: Nath. A place to start. I’d have to learn everything I could about the man and find something that would allow my own brand of renegotiation.

  We turned at the sound of Dr. Claybeck coming up the stairs. She had taken off the apron and was wiping her hands on a paper towel.

  “Jaak was very fortunate,” she said before she reached the top step. “No penetration of the organs that I can determine. But it’s a serious puncture. Something thicker than the average pocketknife. Do you know what it was?”