by D L Young
Blayze kicked the partition in anger, then spun to the door and began yanking on the handle. It didn’t move.
“It’s locked from up here,” Z Dog called back. “Safety first, baby. Just sit back and relax.”
“Christ,” Dezmund said, shaking his head in disbelief. With his back against the wall, he stomped his foot against the floor. “I knew it. I fucking knew it. I told you he was smart, didn’t I? Now look at us.”
“Shut up!” she shouted, furious. Then she whirled away from the partition to face Tommy. The kid stood next to Maddox, his hand also pressed against the roof.
Tommy grinned at Blayze. “Sorry to disappoint, mama,” he said, “but I ain’t no sellout.”
“You filthy groundfloor piece of shit,” she spat. “I should have cut off your prick when I had the chance.”
Maddox turned to the kid. “The mouth on this one.”
“I know, right?” Tommy said. “She’s got anger issues too.”
“You really hit that?” Maddox asked.
“Seemed like a good idea at the time, bruh.”
Blayze’s face contorted with fury, her teeth bared like some rabid dog. Enraged beyond speech, she looked as if the top of her head might blow off.
From the driver’s compartment, Z Dog shouted, “Ah, shit!”
“What?” Maddox called.
“We’ve got company,” Z said. “Coming up on our ass.”
Maddox grabbed a wall handhold as the van leaned into a corner, tires screeching. He turned and peered out the small rear window. The vehicle rocked back and forth violently as the kid weaved through traffic. Through the glass Maddox saw them, the two uninjured thugs in a black Lexus, pursuing them. He cursed inwardly. Car chases in the City’s sluggish traffic always favored the hunter, never the hunted.
Later, Maddox would regret turning his back on Dezmund for that small moment. The punch came from Maddox’s blind side, striking him flush on the temple. Outside the van’s window the City lurched sideways. Maddox reeled, falling against the wall of the van. Before he could regain his balance, a follow-up kick to his gut knocked the wind from his lungs. He dropped to his knees, gasping for air. Dezmund loomed over him, fists clenched.
Then a gun fired. Inside the small enclosure of the van’s cargo space, the shot’s deafening report struck Maddox violently, as if someone had jabbed a needle into his eardrums. The ringing in his ears instantly drowned out all other sounds. With an effort, he sucked in a breath and saw Tommy standing near the cab, holding up a small homefabbed pistol Z Dog had passed back to him. Smoke drifted up from the weapon’s thin barrel, and a ray of daylight shone down through a thumbnail-sized hole in the van’s roof.
“Over in the corner,” Tommy barked at Dezmund and Blayze, waving the gun.
Gasping and still woozy, Maddox got to his feet and moved over to Tommy as Dez and Blayze did as they were told. Z Dog passed back two pairs of plastic cuffs, and Maddox bound the datajackers’ hands behind their backs. No easy task when you’re dizzy with the floor rocking under your feet. He’d just finished binding their wrists when the van stopped abruptly, sending its passengers in the cargo space lurching forward.
“What’s going on?” Maddox asked, bracing himself against the partition.
Z Dog twisted around to face Maddox. “I kind of turned into a dead-end alley, bruh. Sorry, yeah?”
“So back it up,” Maddox said.
“Not sure I can do that right now,” the kid said, lifting his hands slowly off the steering wheel and raising them over his head.
The two thugs stood near the front of the van with their pistols drawn.
“Get out,” one of them barked, throwing open the driver’s door.
Maddox locked eyes with Tommy. “Give it to me,” he said quietly, holding out his hand.
Tommy hesitated. “I can take care of—”
“Tommy, give me the gun.”
The kid blew out a breath, then nodded and passed Maddox the weapon.
“They’re armed!” Blayze shouted, popping up to her feet. “They’ve got a fabbed pist—”
Her words were cut short by Tommy’s fist striking her mouth. She fell backwards onto the floor. “You cheap little hood,” she hissed, spitting blood. “I’m going to have your fucking head on a stick.”
“Out, now!” the thug repeated, louder. “And hands where I can see them!”
Maddox took a breath. “Go ahead and get out,” he advised Z Dog. “Don’t give them a reason.”
Out of the back window he saw the parked Lexus, blocking their way out of the alley. He looked down at the toylike cherry red weapon in his hand. A three-shotter, of course. And Tommy had already used one. He couldn’t waste either of the remaining bullets with a missed shot.
He’d take out the nearest one first, the one on the driver’s side. Maddox steeled himself, crouching low and creeping forward. Raising up slightly to peer through the cab window, Maddox saw Z Dog standing outside the van near the front bumper, his hands clasped behind his neck. The thugs were no longer in view. They must have backed away when they heard Blayze’s warning.
Z Dog’s eyes suddenly went wide, and his hands unclasped and dropped to his sides. Maddox thought for an instant the kid was about to be shot, then he heard a grunt and something slammed hard against the outside of the van.
“Nice moves!” Z Dog shouted. It was a joyful cry, Maddox realized, not a terrified one. What was happening out there?
In the next moment, on the opposite side of the impact, the second thug staggered into view. Hunched forward, his eyes squeezed shut in agony, his forgotten pistol lay on the ground behind him. Riding on his back was Beatrice, her arms locked around his neck in a choke hold, her legs wrapped around his belly. The man lunged backward onto the ground, twisting and kicking and clawing at his neck. Useless efforts, as Beatrice had him locked in tight. Seconds later, the thug’s body went limp. He was out cold.
Releasing him, Beatrice rose to her feet, brushed herself off, and reached inside the driver’s area to unlock the cargo door. A moment later she slid the door open, and behind her the other thug lay sprawled out. Dead or unconscious, Maddox wasn’t sure.
Beatrice held out her hand. “Give me that thing,” she said to Maddox, “before you hurt somebody.”
Maddox passed her the pistol, relieved to surrender the weapon. He wasn’t good with guns.
Beatrice glanced between Maddox, Tommy, and their two cuffed prisoners. She tucked the fabbed pistol into her jacket pocket, then put her hands on her hips.
“You’ve got some explaining to do, salaryman.”
20 - Nice Try, Salaryman
Since the thugs no longer needed it, Maddox and company piled into the Lexus, the cuffed datajackers wedged into the back between Tommy and Z Dog. Maddox sat next to Beatrice, who drove until she found a deserted parking garage a few blocks away. Thankfully, Maddox reflected, there were no police on their tail. The alley where she’d taken the thugs by surprise hadn’t had any working street cams, and whatever portions of the chase—and calling the minute-long sprint before they turned into a dead end a chase was a stretch—had been detected apparently hadn’t kicked off any automated alarms. Traffic-monitoring algorithms generally ignored speedy, even foolhardy drivers if their recklessness didn’t cause an accident or last more than a few moments. Wrecks, hit-and-runs, and other major crimes invariably got flagged to the nearest patrol cop. Shitty drivers, not so much.
Beatrice and Maddox got out and moved a discreet distance away from the Lexus while the two kids kept an eye on the sullen captives. She’d lent Tommy her Ruger to make sure their guests stayed put.
“All right,” she said, crossing her arms and scowling. “Spill it. And this time no bullshit.” They stood in a darkened corner of the dilapidated concrete structure. From the construction site on the adjacent lot, the grinding motor of an excavator machine drowned out the City’s normal symphony of ground car klaxons, advertisement jingles, and the crowd churn of count
less pedestrians.
Might as well, Maddox decided, his temple still throbbing from Dezmund’s sucker punch. There didn’t seem to be much point in keeping anything from her at this point.
“The kid thought they might hide out in New Fulton,” Maddox said, “and I figured it was worth checking out.” While Beatrice had been out on her shopping run, he explained, he and Tommy had talked it over.
As she listened, her scowl deepened. “Christ, you used the kid as bait…again?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“Listen,” he said, yearning for a smoke in the worst way, “he was only supposed to check things out. That’s what we’d agreed to. See if they were there and then get back to me. But what can I say, the kid improvised. And not too badly, if you ask me.”
Tommy had called Maddox, he explained, apparently as Blayze and Dezmund had requested. The pair had no doubt listened in on the call, connecting via their own specs and muting their mics. They weren’t going to take any chances. They wouldn’t let Maddox pull a fast one on them.
What they didn’t know was that Tommy had already pulled a fast one of his own.
By the time he’d arrived at Blayze and Dezmund’s tower hideout, Tommy’s turf sister Girlie had completed the favor Z Dog had asked for on Tommy’s behalf. The skilled climber had scaled the outside of the new tower and stealthily implanted listening devices called “little ears” into the walls. After testing the link and making sure the little ears were picking up every word from inside the tower suite, she’d then set the autosend to the number Tommy had passed along: Maddox’s private line. The recording had loaded onto Maddox’s specs a few minutes prior to Tommy’s call. And by the time the call had come in, Maddox had heard just enough to gather what the kid had done, and so he’d played along during their chat, agreeing to the meetup.
“After the call,” he explained, “I went through the recording until I found what they were up to.”
Everything was there. How they planned to kidnap him. Where they’d park the van. Which direction they’d converge on him in Washington Square Park. And once they had him in the van, it would be two shots to the head, then dump him in the Hudson. He’d learned every detail of their planned ambush and execution, thanks to Tommy’s quick thinking.
The only portion of the recording he hadn’t been able to decipher was a brief call Blayze had made. Or what he believed was a call. Either that or she’d been muttering to herself. Whatever the short conversation had entailed, he couldn’t decipher any of it, even after running it through filters. The little ears had picked up nothing but an unintelligible murmur. So either Blayze had some kind of chatter bubble-type tech in her lenses that distorted her speech or she’d been standing in an acoustically dead zone where the hidden mics couldn’t pick her up. Either way, the entire conversation had been lost on him.
Still, he’d gleaned everything he really needed from the recording. And once he’d learned the specifics of their plan to get rid of him, it didn’t take long for Maddox to work out how to undermine things. He called up the Anarchy Boyz, and as it turned out they were more than happy to help. Fortunately for Maddox, the biker gang apparently despised Blayze as much as he did, though he hadn’t had time to delve into the reasons behind it.
“So those kids saved your ass again,” Beatrice said. “How many favors do you owe them now?”
“I did get them out of jail, if you recall,” Maddox countered.
She gave him a sour look. “They were there because of you in the first place, salaryman.”
“Details,” he said, shrugging. “Okay,” he confessed, “maybe I owe them one.”
So now she knew the whole story. Not that it appeared to make any difference. She still glared at him, her eyes burning with a heat he could feel.
“It wasn’t exactly the most elegant piece of work, was it?” she asked.
“I didn’t have much time to plan.”
“I could have done this a lot better, you know,” she said.
“Probably.”
“So why didn’t you ask me, then? Why’d you lie to me about knowing where the kid was and what you two were up to?”
There were answers to those questions. He knew there had to be. But searching his mind, he found no explanations, no sensible way to explain what he’d done.
“If the kid went with you, they would have found him,” he finally said. “Sooner or later, they would have tracked him down. I figured if I kept him close, I could keep him out of trouble.”
She gave him a mirthless smile. “Nice try, salaryman. But that’s not it. That’s not it at all.”
“It’s not?”
“I thought you trusted me,” she said.
“I do trust you.”
“Just not enough, I guess,” she said. The anger faded from her voice and features, replaced with a wistful, disappointed expression. The man standing in front of her wasn’t who she thought he was. Maddox wanted to say something, but again no words came.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he didn’t trust her, even though she’d given him every reason to. Her disappointment struck him powerfully, the way the truth sometimes does when you don’t expect to hear it.
But it wasn’t just about trust, he insisted inwardly. Yes, he’d lied to her. But he’d done it for reasons not just rooted in his own flaws and inadequacies. He’d lied to her because he wanted her out of it. He and Tommy had targets painted on their backs already, but she hadn’t been implicated. And he wanted to keep it that way.
The world was an awful place, filled with awful people. He could count on one hand the number of people who’d ever given a damn about him, and he’d still have a couple fingers left over. Rooney, Tommy, and the disappointed mercenary woman standing in front of him now. That was it. Roon was gone, and Tommy had been thrown to the wolves with him. So if he had to lie to Beatrice to keep her out of this dirty little war, then fine. He’d rather have her pissed off at him than dead.
She removed the fabbed pistol from her jacket and handed it to him. Then she tilted her head toward the Lexus. “Go and end your war, salaryman,” she said. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”
21 - Confession
Maddox watched as Beatrice walked away and reclaimed her Ruger from Tommy. She said something to the kid that Maddox couldn’t make out, then touched him on the cheek and turned away, leaving the parking garage out a side door. A part of him wanted to follow after her and try to explain himself. But the larger part of him resisted, knowing whatever he might say wouldn’t erase what he’d done and how she felt about it. He wished things could have been different, but there you were. Pissed off at him was better than dead, he reminded himself.
Blowing out a long breath, he steeled himself for the grim task at hand. He approached the Lexus, the pistol heavy in his hand.
“Get out,” he said to Dezmund and Blayze. Their hands still bound behind them, the two datajackers scooted awkwardly across the back seat and exited the sedan.
Maddox waved the pistol. “Turn around and face the wall.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Dezmund said, his voice quaking. Even in the dim ambient light, Maddox could see the death panic on the man’s face. He averted his eyes to Dezmund’s midsection.
“I didn’t start all this,” Maddox said. “But I’m finishing it.”
Anger welled up inside him. It never should have come to this. Why the hell hadn’t Dezmund tried to work it out with him, before things had gone too far?
“I didn’t start this either,” Dezmund said.
Maddox glanced at Blayze. There was no fear on her face, only a cold, hateful stare. Defiant to the end.
“Yeah,” Maddox said. “I figured you weren’t calling the shots anymore. But you might have talked her out of it.” From the next lot over, the construction crane’s engine rumbled and its hydraulics hissed.
“That’s not what I mean,” Dezmund said.
“Shut up,”
Blayze blurted out.
Dezmund ignored her. “Listen to me, Blackburn,” he implored. “There’s something you have to know. None of this was my idea.”
“Shut your fucking mouth!” the girl cried.
“And it wasn’t hers either,” Dezmund said, raising his voice over the girl’s. “He made us do it. He forced us to take you out.”
Maddox had never shot anyone in cold blood, but he’d seen a few executions in his time. When people knew their deaths were moments away, they said things, often strange things. They begged and cried and even pissed themselves. They made up stories, desperate to talk their way out of taking a bullet. It wasn’t their fault. They’d been duped. Somebody else was responsible. Whatever frantic craziness Dezmund was spouting now was just that: craziness.
“Turn around,” Maddox ordered. “Now.”
The pair slowly rotated and faced the wall. “Blackburn, don’t do it,” Dezmund begged.
Maddox raised the pistol, leveling it to the back of Dezmund’s head. “Tommy,” Maddox said, “you and Z turn away.”
“Blackburn,” Dezmund blubbered, “you have to believe me.”
“He’s not going to believe you,” the girl snapped. Then to Maddox: “Come on, jacker, fucking get it over with.”
Maddox stared at the back of the girl’s head, her words giving him pause. Why did she care? With her own end looming, why did she give a damn what death-plea nonsense Dezmund was blurting out?
“Who, then?” Maddox asked, morbidly curious. “Tell me, Dez.”
“Don’t,” Blayze barked.
“Fuck you,” Dezmund said.
“Fuck me?” she cried. “Fuck you, you goddamn coward!” She kicked out at him, furious. With her hands still bound behind her, the leg strike threw her off-balance. Missing her target completely, she fell hard to the floor. She shrieked obscenities at Dezmund as she flailed about madly on her back, trying to get up.