Burned Bridges

by A. J. Stewart

  The guy howled like he’d been shot. Flynn dropped and punched him in the guts to knock the sound out of him. His scream turned to a sucking sound. Then wheezing as he tried to breathe. Wheezing and whimpering. Sudden and extreme pain and then no oxygen. Flynn hadn’t invented it. He’d seen it in Africa, from a guy who swore waterboarding was superior but problematic when stuck in a parched desert. It had worked then, and he had every reason to believe it would work now.

  Flynn searched the floor and found the roll of tape. Turned and picked it up. Stood and found himself face-to-face with Hutton. She was frowning. He didn’t expect her to approve of his methods. She was one of the righteous ones. And he was thankful for that. He knew that without the righteous ones like her, the world would belong to the ones who tended to the barbaric. Like him. But the two were like scales, keeping the world in balance. Those like Hutton fought hard to protect the laws by following the laws. And Flynn accepted that bad people never just spilled the beans voluntarily.

  He turned back to the little guy. Picked at the tape and pulled it out a couple of inches. The little guy shifted in his beanbag at the sound. Flynn crouched beside him.

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

  The little guy shivered. He was crying. Not audible sobs, but there were tears on his cheeks.

  “There was a code word. Like a phrase,” he wept.

  “What phrase?”

  “Something she said. I don’t know.”

  Flynn pulled the tape out another inch.

  “No, please no. I don’t know. It was a kid’s thing.”

  “A kid’s thing?”

  “Like a saying. Something about the bogeyman.”

  “The bogeyman?”

  “Yes. I’m not making it up, I swear. The bogeyman.” Now the guy began sobbing. Flynn sat back on his haunches and stared into the darkness in the corner of the room. He thought of a phrase, a remnant of a past life that had stuck with him. Then he turned back to the little guy.

  “Even the bogeyman can’t hide forever.”

  The little guy stopped sobbing and looked at Flynn. “That’s it. That’s it. The bogeyman.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I don’t know. I swear. She said it. She knew it. Said it was Spanish or something. Where she got it, I don’t know. I swear.”

  “Tell me again, who gave you this job?”

  “Cust, Cust. He knows them. All I know is, he’s scared of them. That’s all I know. Cust don’t scare easy, but he’s scared of them.”

  “Why is he scared?”

  “Because of the last guy. The last guy was burned to death. That’s what Cust said. Burned alive.”

  Flynn looked at Hutton. He could see she was thinking what he was thinking. Burned. Like Iraq. Like Ox Dennison. Burned alive.

  Or not.

  “Where are they?” Flynn asked.

  “I don’t know.” He started sobbing again. “This really hurts, man.”

  “Tell me where and I’ll take the pain away.”

  “We meet in White Plains. A parking lot in White Plains. We don’t get out of the car.”

  “How do you set up the meets?”

  “I don’t. Cust does it. Cust makes the calls. I don’t know nothing. Jesus, man. This really hurts.” The last line was a swallowed scream. The guy was in serious pain.

  Flynn nodded and stood. Opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. Walked back out into the large room. His eyesight had gotten better. The guy was still behind the bar. He was chopping something delicate with a blade. Flynn guessed cocaine. He paid the guy no mind. Just marched back to the smiling guy with the suit. He hadn’t moved. The smirk was still plastered to his face. Flynn looked at him for a second. Wondered what a guy like that was trying to escape. He obviously had a good job, a nice car, an expensive suit. The ring on his finger suggested a wife, maybe a family. Not the worst situation in the world. Not poverty or disease or war. Flynn shook his head. Pulled the tourniquet from the guy’s arm and picked up his syringe. It was empty. A second syringe lay on the floor, still wearing a plastic cap over the needle. Safety first. Flynn picked it up. The syringe was full. No burning flames under spoons here. Everything was catered for. One for now, one for later. Flynn stood and turned and headed back toward the room. The barman had stopped chopping. He was watching. Watching Flynn walk across the space, around the beanbags and the prone bodies and down the corridor.

  Flynn stepped back in and closed the door. He stood before the little guy and then dropped down on him. The beanbag exhaled more air, and Flynn’s knees pressed the guy’s arms into his ribs. He pulled the guy’s right arm out from under his left knee and ripped the guy’s shirtsleeve. Then he wrapped the tourniquet around the guy’s arm.

  “What are you doing, man?”

  Flynn held the syringe up and tapped it. A dribble of liquid squeezed from the tip of the needle.

  “What are you doing?” the guy repeated.

  “Making the pain go away.”

  Flynn stabbed the needle into a vein and pressed the plunger. Pushed it in about halfway. It wasn’t that he didn’t want the guy to overdose. He didn’t care about the guy. Not anymore. He had chosen his side and he had chosen poorly. But Flynn only had the one dose. He pulled the needle from the guy’s arm and stayed on top of him. The drug coursed through his body quickly, and his head lolled back as the analgesic properties of the heroin took hold and the pain drifted away. The little guy smiled.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Flynn got up and stepped to the driver. Repeated the dose. The driver didn’t offer thanks. Flynn wiped the syringe with his shirt and dropped it on the table. Hutton was still watching him.

  “Was that necessary?”

  “You want them to leave and warn Ox that we’re coming?”

  “So you think it’s him?”

  “That phrase. We used to use it in the unit. And I used it just before I killed Ox Dennison.”

  “So how does it relate to Beth?”

  “I used it the night I met Beth. It became a thing. Something we’d say to each other. She traced money and convertibles for a living, so it appealed to her.”

  “We need to leave,” said Hutton.

  “Got that right.”

  They took their water and their bags. Strode down the corridor. Out into the main room, past the beanbags. The barman was gone from his station. Flynn swept a ribbon of fabric away and stepped into the hall that led to the exit.

  The woman was standing behind her table. The barman was talking to the big doorman. The doorman caught Flynn’s eye and the barman spun around.

  “That’s him. He took the other guy’s stuff.”

  The doorman pushed past the bar guy and headed for Flynn. Like they were teenagers in cars, playing chicken. Flynn heard the woman behind the table call him a thief, which he thought was rich, given the environment. But he kept his eye on the big guy. He was the right size for the job of a doorman. His girth alone intimidated the white-collar clientele. Kept them in line. Stopped the odd disagreement with intimidation more than force. But the job had just changed. Flynn wasn’t intimidated. So now the guy was all wrong for the job. Because he was too big and too wide and too slow.

  “We owe you some money,” Flynn said. The doorman didn’t stop coming. It was past time for cash payment alone. Bruises needed to be left, lessons learned. But the big guy watched Flynn’s right hand reach back toward Hutton behind him. Handing her his water bottle, maybe reaching for some cash. It was natural that the big guy’s eye would follow the movement. Instinct.

  But the doorman’s instincts were off. His size gave him a false sense of strength. Flynn recalled something by Mark Twain. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Size was never a guarantee of victory. Not by a long shot. The doorman’s eyes moved to his left, watching the motion of Flynn’s right hand, but they failed the see the motion of his left hand. It moved in a straight line, h
arder to judge than side-to-side movement. Close to impossible to see in the dark room.

  Flynn used the rocking back right to propel himself forward on the left. It was a jab, not the most powerful punch. But the follow-through was tremendous. He put his whole body into it, pivoting at the waist, his core wrenching and creating torque that propelled his fist into the big guy’s throat just above the manubrium. There was plenty of flab there, but it all moved en masse, collapsing his trachea, cutting off his air and sending his entire body into emergency life support mode. The doorman grabbed at his numerous chins and gurgled as he dropped to his knees. Flynn’s left punch had positioned his right foot in the perfect position for a kick, which he delivered like a penalty goal attempt. Full and straight, plastering the doorman’s nose across his face.

  The woman had ducked under her table, and as Flynn landed from his kick she came up holding a gun. It looked like a pistol on steroids, but the way she swung it in a two-handed arc told Flynn it was a Heckler and Koch MP5K. It was a snub-nosed version of the MP5 submachine gun. Flynn knew the K stood for kurz, German for “short”. The fore-end was little more than a stubby handguard at the front, so it could be hidden and handled like a pistol. But the woman had taken it up two-handed. That would give her greater control, but slowed her movement to target.

  It slowed her too long. The short gun swung toward Flynn, but before the muzzle reached him he wrapped his hand around the women’s front hand grip and drove it back. Her arms folded from the violent action, and Flynn forced the gun back into her chest. She fell down and let go of the gun. Flynn didn’t. He kept hold of it by the front handguard and flipped it around and aimed it at the woman. She cowered back against the wall, her hands in the air.

  Flynn didn’t break stride. He kept moving straight toward the barman, who saw the gun and threw himself at the wall to get out of the way. That was okay with Flynn. It saved any further exertion, and his heart rate had already burst past two hundred. He hit the door at pace, pushed it open and held it for Hutton. The night was bracing. Hutton led him back around to the Yukon. Once more she started it before Flynn had closed his door, and she peeled out of the lot.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Flynn wanted to stop and bunker down and reassess. Hutton knew just where. She pulled onto Route 9A and took the Henry Hudson Bridge off the island, and then followed the road north until it became Saw Mill River Parkway. East of Yonkers she pulled into a motel that made low rent look polished and new. The place looked closed. There was a lit sign on the corner, a utilitarian announcement of the establishment’s name. No more, no less. No mention of amenities, no claims of spa tubs or HBO. The place was surrounded by leafless trees. The rooms were in one long strip, three stories. Twelve rooms on each of two levels, twenty-four total, with parking underneath on the ground level a thoughtful concession to rough winter conditions. Attached to the end of the row was a solid block that housed the office and some kind of breakfast room and probably the manager’s billet above.

  The only light in the place came from the office. It wasn’t lit like Times Square. A soft, dull glow more than the proverbial well-lighted place. There were six vehicles parked under the rooms, all large sedans. Businessmen. The kind of road warriors for whom even the cheap chain business hotels were out of the budget. No light came from any of the rooms. Heavy drapes had been pulled, warding off the cold.

  Hutton stopped short of the office, and Flynn wandered inside. The office was as plain as the exterior. Linoleum floors, worn thin and colorless. A wooden rack of dusty tourist brochures. The counter was peeling gray laminate. Behind it stood a young guy in a hoodie. Maybe a college student working the graveyard shift. Plenty of time to study or sleep.

  “How much for a room?”

  “Fifty,” said the kid.

  “Okay.”

  “Credit card and ID.”

  Flynn pulled a hundred from his roll.

  “Fifty for the room, and the rest is my ID.”

  “We need a credit card for incidentals.”

  “You offer a minibar?”

  The kid shook his head. “The rooms don’t have fridges.”

  “So no incidentals.”

  He shrugged and pocketed the money and handed Flynn an old-fashioned key on a ring attached to a large wooden tag with the number 24 burned into it like a brand. Flynn offered the kid a nod and walked out to the end of the block. Hutton parked the Yukon under cover and gathered their bags. They used the fire stairs at the end of the building. The stairs were rusted and small flakes of concrete fell from where they were fixed to the wall as Flynn and Hutton took each step.

  Room 24 was last in the block on the top level. The original owner was clearly a no-nonsense guy. He had eschewed the convention of including the floor level in the room number. So 212 was plain old 24. The door was a solid item, some kind of old-growth hardwood that would outlast the stairs. The room was as expected. Everything they needed and absolutely nothing they didn’t. A queen-sized bed with a bedspread in a pattern designed to mask stains and wear. The carpet was a gold-brown, with a trail worn thin between the door, the bed and the bathroom. There was a wall unit opposite the bed that featured a desk, a TV cabinet and a wardrobe. All one unit, all impossible to steal without a trip to a hardware store. The bathroom had a stall shower in the corner, surrounded by a flower motif plastic curtain, and a small sink. A little soap in paper and a small bottle of shampoo. There was a paper sash draped across the toilet seat, signifying that the bowl had been cleaned.

  “One room?” asked Hutton.

  “I wasn’t planning on staying.”

  Flynn shrugged out of his jacket and hung it in the wardrobe, and then splashed some water across his face and wiped down with a thin towel. He could hear the main road outside, but only because the bathroom window was fused open an inch. He came out and sat on the bed, and Hutton sat on the old chair under the desk. Seeing Flynn’s face, she decided as an afterthought to splash some water herself. She spoke to him from the bathroom.

  “Those guys aren’t all there is.”

  “No.”

  “They’re reporting to someone.”

  “Yes.”

  “So is it Ox Dennison?” Hutton came out wiping her face.

  “Maybe.”

  “Army grunts, deployed in the same place as Dennison. After the same shipment, and they knew about the phrase. Your bogeyman phrase is not exactly the most common phrase in the world. It’s hardly veni, vidi, vici.”

  “No, it’s not. But they didn’t know the phrase. Whoever was operating them knew the phrase.”

  “Dennison.”

  “Maybe. But the thing that doesn’t fit is why. Why would he be after a container of arms, biological or otherwise, after all this time?”

  “Maybe the shipment isn’t what we thought.”

  “And how does Dennison link to Beth?” asked Flynn. “She was a lawyer. Big corporate stuff. Not Dennison’s circle at all.”

  Hutton opened her laptop and turned on her phone and connected to the internet.

  “Did you get their phones?” she asked.

  “I dropped one in the alley. I was more focused on landing a good punch.”

  “You did that. What about the other?”

  Flynn stood and went to the wardrobe and felt the pockets and pulled out a plain black phone. He threw it to Hutton and she caught it in one hand. Turned it on and scrolled through previous calls. Flynn took his spot back on the edge of the bed.

  “All the recent calls are to two stored numbers. Both 917 numbers. New York area cell phones. All three were probably bought at the same time.”

  “Do they have to provide ID to get them?”

  Hutton shook her head. “Technically, yes. But did you give ID when you registered for this room?”

  “In the form of a dead president. I see your point.”

  “But—” said Hutton. She turned the phone over and used her nail to flick the cover off the back of the unit. Underneath was a
thin battery. She used her nail again to remove the battery. In the cavity of the phone was a small SIM card in a metal brace. She pulled the brace back and it opened on a tiny hinge and she removed the small SIM card. She held it up to Flynn.

  “Now we know the cell phone carrier.”

  “Okay.”

  “These burner phones can be registered online. To facilitate topping up with credit, that sort of thing.” She tapped a few keys on her laptop. “But lots of people don’t bother. They just add credit via the phone itself, or in a store. Which means it might not be registered.”

  “How does that help?”

  Hutton wrote down a couple of numbers. One from the SIM, the other from inside the phone. Then she put the device back together and powered it up.

  “With the phone, the SIM number and the phone IMEI, we might be able to register the account.”

  “How does that help us? They aren’t going to make any more calls. They don’t have the phones.”

  Hutton didn’t answer. Her focus was on the screen. She tapped away, and then the phone beeped. She looked at the phone’s screen and tapped some more.

  “Voilà.”

  Flynn stood and looked over Hutton’s shoulder. Despite spending the evening on the streets of downtown Manhattan and in a drug den on the north end of the island, she smelled fresh like lavender.

  “I just registered the phone to a dummy email account.”

  “So we can add credit to the phone for them?”

  “Yes, smart guy, we could. But we can also see this.”

  She tapped a key on her laptop, and the screen rolled out a register of the calls made to and from the phone they had. It showed that all the calls were to the same two numbers that were in the phone. But the register showed more. It showed the location where the phone was when it received incoming calls. And it showed where the other phones were when it made outgoing calls. Manhattan was repeated over and over. Outgoing and incoming calls made and received in Manhattan. That was not news to them. But in between all the calls to and from Manhattan there was one other location. Outgoing calls made. To Katonah, New York.