Burned Bridges

by A. J. Stewart

  “Get something to eat.”

  The men nodded silently and pocketed the money. Maybe they would buy more alcohol. Maybe they would visit the buffet at the Four Seasons. He couldn’t say and he couldn’t decide for them. He pulled out his Glauca knife and flicked it open, the blade as dark as the shadows. The little guy saw it and he squirmed and gave a whine like gas releasing from a bicycle tire. Flynn dropped to a knee and cut the second plastic tie from the fence. He left the first one as a cuff around the guy’s wrists.

  Flynn pulled the guy to his feet and pushed him forward to set him marching. The guy stumbled along the track as if having his hands behind him disrupted his equilibrium. They reached the fire where the four men sat. One was the bearded man who had directed the little guy to the back of the lot. Flynn kicked the little guy in the back of the knee and he dropped to the ground. Then Flynn removed four more hundreds and moved around the outside of the group and gave each of the men around the fire a single bill. Flynn felt the warmth of the fire. It should have felt comforting on a cold evening, but it didn’t. It made him sweat and he felt his pulse beat harder in his neck.

  “Thanks,” he said to the bearded man as he handed him the money.

  The man looked at him. Or maybe through him. His face was grimy, and sleeping rough had aged him, but it was his eyes that Flynn saw. They were ancient eyes. As if they had seen the Lenape people roam the fields of this nameless island, and then watched as the Dutch had arrived and the place became New Amsterdam and then the English had arrived and changed the name to New York, and then Washington had lost and then won, and the people had come and the buildings had grown and the greatest metropolis on the planet had flourished around him.

  The man just nodded. “Be good.”

  Flynn pulled the little guy up again and marched him out and under the fence and onto the street. His pulse should have been rising now, dragging a man onto a Manhattan street. The opposite was true. The further from the flames he moved, the calmer he got. It wasn’t logical, Flynn knew that. There were a few people on the street but Flynn paid them no mind. He opened the tailgate of the Yukon and motioned for the little guy to get in. The guy hesitated, but Flynn’s face hardened and the little guy got the message. Getting in with his hands tied was difficult, so he sat on the edge and leaned back and Flynn spun his legs in and slammed the tailgate closed before the legs could spring back out again.

  Flynn looked around and saw no one calling for the cops or taking cell phone video. No one was paying any attention at all. He got in the passenger seat and Hutton pulled away.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “We need somewhere quiet.”

  “I’m not sure I want these guys in my office.”

  “No. Somewhere different. I need to talk to Hedstrom.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Flynn used Hutton’s phone to explain what he needed to Hedstrom. Hedstrom spoke in staccato, and Flynn could picture his eyes moving over the environment wherever he was protecting the Russian oil guys.

  “I know a place,” said Hedstrom.

  “No eyes.”

  “You’ll have to use some of your cash.”

  “You know about that?”

  “I know everything that comes into my office.”

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  “What are you prepared to do?”

  “Everything.”

  “To protect Laura?”

  Flynn glanced at Hutton. She was focused on the road, but she was listening.

  “Everything.”

  “Listen up, then.”

  Flynn sat half-rotated in his seat. He kept his eye on the two guys in the back as they drove north up FDR, along the west side of the East River, and then followed the curve of the island up the Harlem River. As they passed by, he glanced across at Yankee Stadium, the giant ballpark dark and dormant. He had grown up listening to stories of the house that Babe built, and had watched the World Series on Armed Forces Television. The Yankees had moved one block north to their new stadium before Flynn ever got to see a game live. He still hadn’t.

  “Your friends are quiet,” said Hutton.

  “One’s out of it. The other wishes he was.”

  “They don’t seem top drawer.”

  “No.”

  “Like Iraq.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t think?”

  “No,” said Flynn. “Dennison wasn’t top drawer, for sure. But someone in Iraq was.”

  “So this is one but not the other.”

  Flynn said nothing. He watched the lights across in the Bronx.

  Hutton glanced at him as she drove. “You have to consider it.”

  Nothing.

  “Can we be sure Dennison is dead?”

  “I shot him.”

  “Not the same thing.”

  “Usually is. When I do it.”

  “Did you see the body?”

  “The building exploded. Our driver, Yusuf, pulled me out. I was near the door. He didn’t go in looking for Dennison.”

  “Everyone thought you were dead. They were wrong. Maybe we’re wrong about Dennison.”

  Flynn looked at her and then focused on the backseat.

  “They’re inked,” he said.

  “These two?” she replied, nodding toward the rear.

  “The driver has military ink.”

  “How does military ink differ from any other kind? Like a unit designation?”

  “Military tattoos are badges of honor. Like permanent medals. They get them all over the world from all kinds of places. But the common link is the precision. They tell of a certain time in a certain place, but they get them done well.”

  “Like drunk sailors?”

  “I’m not talking about the back room of a bar in Saigon. I’m talking about Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

  Hutton nodded. “So at least one of these guys was there?”

  “They were both there. But the little guy has a second set of ink.”

  “Where?”

  “Prison.”

  “He’s not a gangbanger.”

  “No, he’s not. Prison tattoos are a different kind of badge, and it’s not about honor. It’s about picking a side in order to stay alive. And prison ink isn’t high art. It’s amateur. Done in less than optimal conditions with less than optimal tools. It’s more like branding a bull.”

  “Where did he do time?”

  “His markings don’t tell me that. But he will.”

  The warehouse looked abandoned. There were no vehicles in the lot, no lights around the building. A ten-foot chain-link gate lay partly open like a lazy sentry. Hutton cut the headlights, edged the gate fully open with the Yukon’s grille and drove in. The George Washington Bridge shaded any moonlight, and Hutton seemed to drive by sonar. The building wasn’t large by warehouse standards. Not designed for masses of freight or large semitrailers. There were no loading bays. There was a large roller door that looked as if it hadn’t been opened since the Reagan era. Hutton pulled the Yukon to the rear, between the warehouse and the river. There were cars here. A dozen of them. All new models, mostly European.

  “Interesting,” said Flynn.

  “They call it a boudoir. I saw some with the Bureau. It might not be a high-end area, but it’s a white-collar place. Designed for people with other lives that they really want to keep separate from their secret life.” She put her hand on the door to open it.

  “Let me do the talking,” she said. “At first anyway.”

  “You got it.”

  Flynn opened the tailgate and found the little guy curled up in the fetal position. But he was awake.

  “Open your mouth and I’ll make you swallow every tooth you own,” Flynn said.

  The little guy shook but said nothing. Flynn took his agreement as implied.

  Hutton led them back to the end of the warehouse that was closest to the street. Not the front of the place. Logically the longest side was the front, with the roller doors, even t
hough it was perpendicular to the road. But Hutton found a door on the street side. It was unmarked. No company name or street number. There was a rusted rectangle where a post box might have once been attached to the steel cladding.

  Hutton stopped short of the door. “If you don’t want to make a lot of noise, we’ll need some cash.”

  Flynn reached into his pack and pulled out a brick of bills. He handed it to Hutton.

  “What is it you do for a living?” she asked.

  “Tell you later.”

  Hutton tapped on the door. It was metal and solid. The door opened and a big black guy who was wider than he was tall blocked the space. He didn’t speak.

  “Party of four,” she said.

  The big guy looked at her. Didn’t look her over. His eyes never moved off hers. Then he jinked his head toward the interior. The three of them stepped inside and they felt the pressure change as the door closed behind them. They were in a dark room. The walls were painted black. Strips of red fabric cascaded from the ceiling, giving the space a sense of movement. Like being underwater. Hutton spoke to a thin woman sitting on a stool behind a small black table.

  “Four,” she said.

  The woman gave her a look of distaste like the finest French maître d’, and then ran a long finger down a register book.

  “Private?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She tapped her finger on the book as if she were deciding something. She glanced at the little guy. He was twitching, genetically incapable of standing still. The woman turned her eyes to Hutton.

  “Two thousand.”

  Hutton peeled the cash off Flynn’s brick and handed it over. The woman opened a drawer, put the cash inside, and stood. She was built like a reed and moved with a similar rhythm. Hutton dropped in behind the woman, and Flynn kept the twitchy little guy between them. They walked through a large room. Soft lighting made it possible to discern shapes but nothing more. The space was filled with giant beanbags. Some had people in them. The room smelled of sweat and Chanel No. 5. More fabric dropped from the ceiling, making it difficult to discern the true dimensions of the room. There was a bar at the end of the space. The bottles gave the occasional glint in the muted light, but there was no bright display of color one might expect in a nightclub. A man in black stood behind the bar, his silhouette like a hole in the glint of the bottles behind him. Flynn noted the music. The stuff that had been new age in Europe when he was a boy. Flutes and harps and organs mixed with ocean waves and rain splatter. Soft and formless. Like the room.

  They reached a hallway, and the woman led them past a series of doors. The walls were still black, but the light was red. She stopped at a door and opened it and then stood aside for them to enter. The space was about the size of a hotel room. There were a couple of the beanbags designed for one and another designed for a party. It was the size of a small bed. There was a table with a landline phone and a bar fridge stocked with Fiji water.

  “Do you require anything?” the woman asked.

  Hutton looked at Flynn. Flynn looked at the woman.

  “Privacy.”

  The woman waited a moment, as if there was more to come, and then nodded.

  “If you require anything, you can reach the concierge with the phone.”

  She closed the door and left them alone. Flynn dropped the little guy in one of the smaller beanbags. They were useful. There were no surprises, no sudden moves getting out of a beanbag.

  “You watch him, I’ll get his pal.”

  Hutton slipped her Glock out of its holster and held it casually. No need to point it at the guy. Flynn opened the door and walked back down the corridor. His eyes were adjusting and his view was better. He made his way through the large room slowly. He didn’t want to step on anything, or anyone. And it gave him time to get a fix on the space. It could have been a dance club. He had seen those in Europe, back when his job had necessitated tracking guys down to places like that. Deserters from the Legion often found their way to nightclubs, bars, brothels. Dance clubs were like mainlining humanity. After being locked away from society on Legion barracks, doing nothing but marching and make-work for what seemed like a lifetime, some guys broke. Some broke and were discharged. Some broke and ran. And more often than not, they ran to get a fix of humanity, such as it was. He had found a lot of deserters in places like this one. Just not exactly like this one.

  No one was dancing. The music was more white noise than rhythm, and it was better suited to an elevator than a club. It was suited to lying back in a beanbag. He hadn’t picked up on it the first time through, but now he heard the subtle moans coming from the floor. Sounds of release. He stepped to the right to avoid a pair of legs stretched out in his way. He followed them up and saw they were joined to a man sprawled in a beanbag. He was in a business shirt. His tie was loosened like a noose and his collar splayed open. His suit jacket lay discarded beside him. He was white, maybe forty. His left sleeve was rolled up, a rubber tourniquet around his arm. His hand lay open, having dropped a syringe onto the floor. His eyes were closed and he wore a smile.

  Flynn kept walking. Out to the entrance lobby, where the thin woman gave him a silent glare, as if she disapproved of the whole thing. The big guy was still at the door. He opened it and Flynn stepped back out into the night air. It was cold and he realized that the inside of the warehouse had been warm. He marched around to the Yukon. It was the oldest vehicle in the lot by a decade. He opened the rear door and slid the driver half out. Flynn dropped to a squat and slid the driver the rest of the way out, over his shoulder and into a fireman’s carry. Then he pushed up, closed the door, and walked back to the front of the warehouse. He tapped on the metal, and the door opened. The big doorman stood there silently.

  “May I?” asked Flynn.

  “No readmission.”

  “My friend hasn’t come in yet.”

  The big guy looked at the body hanging over Flynn’s shoulder. “He can come in. You need to pay again.”

  “My cash is in the room.”

  “That’s a problem.”

  “For you.”

  The doorman puffed out his chest like a rooster. Flynn considered his moves. There were plenty of ways to take him down. Most involved dropping the driver from his shoulder, which he didn’t want to do. Picking him up again would be hard. Humans didn’t lift like barbells. They weren’t so compliant.

  “I’ll put it on his account,” said the woman from her perch behind the table.

  The doorman took a good few seconds to move, as if he had a point to prove. Flynn just waited. He’d gotten what he wanted. The doorman would keep. He turned sideways to get around the big guy and marched past the woman without a glance, as if carrying a man like a side of beef was a nightly occurrence. He made his way through the large space with the beanbags and back to the private room. Hutton leaned against the table, sipping on a bottle of water. The little guy lay in his beanbag.

  Flynn dropped the driver into the large party-sized beanbag. It boomed like a timpani. Then he took a water from the fridge and gulped some down.

  “How does a place like this not get shut down?” he asked.

  “Money. You see the parking lot? This is where Wall Street comes to hide its dirty secrets.”

  Flynn shook his head and sipped his water. He opened his pack and took out a roll of duct tape and placed it on the table. Then he stepped over to the little guy and dropped to a crouch.

  “Your buddy’s taken the easy way out. Looks like he’s out for the duration. So it’s just you and me.”

  The little guy’s eyes shot from side to side.

  “Who is in charge?” Flynn asked.

  The little guy said nothing.

  “This could get hard real fast. Who’s in charge? Ox Dennison?”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Do better. Who and where?”

  “I don’t know who. I don’t know where. Cust got the job. I don’t know nothin’.”

&nbs
p; Flynn glanced at the driver. He was breathing, but he could have been closer to a coma than awake. Impossible to tell. Flynn cursed his luck to knock out the brains of the operation, such as they were. He turned back to the little guy.

  “Where’s the woman?”

  “Gone.”

  Flynn swallowed the impulse to hit the guy into tomorrow.

  “How did you know the woman? How did you know she was the one?”

  The little guy said nothing. More than nothing. He pursed his lips as if physically clamming up would prevent the words from leaving him.

  “This doesn’t end well for you if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”

  The little guy set his jaw firm. Ready for another punch to the face. Not happy about it but prepared to wear it. Which made Flynn think about the reason why. People clammed up for three reasons: ideology, money and fear. Which really amounted to one reason.

  Belief.

  Flynn pushed off his thighs and stood. He stepped to the table and grabbed the roll of duct tape. His experience was that belief in future events was often overtaken by current events and the human instinct for survival. However bad the future might be, one needed to survive the present. He picked at the tape and then pulled a length of it out. The sound of the tape ripping away from the roll was loud against the white noise of the waves and the harps. He tore the tape with his teeth and let the roll drop to the floor.

  “How did you know the woman?”

  The little guy’s eyes were wide, but not wide enough to talk.

  “How did you know the woman was the right one?”

  The little guy said nothing.

  Flynn leaned over him and plastered the length of tape across the top of the little guy’s head from ear to ear.

  “How?”

  Nothing.

  Flynn stood. As he stood he ripped the tape away. Like a giant Band-Aid. Or a wax job. One vicious yank. The tape came away covered in hair. Some of the hair was still attached to skin. A flat patch ran across the guy’s head, like a freeway blasted through a hill. Hair at the back and hair at the front. But in the middle, from ear to ear, most of the hair was gone. Blood oozed from the guy’s scalp, black in the dark room.