Eye of the Burning Man: A Mick Callahan Novel (The Mick Callahan Series)

by Harry Shannon

  ". . . so I thought I would come down here for a while and check it out," she said. "This is my first night."

  "What is your name?"

  "Rose," Darlene said. She blew another bubble.

  The charade had gone on long enough. I nodded. "Well, Rose, good luck to you."

  "Thanks sweetie," she said. She walked away. The men in the alley continued to watch. It was impossible to act as if they weren't there. Jerry raised his eyebrows, asking if we were done with the game. I wasn't sure. I watched Darlene walk back up the block. She neared a smaller alley on the other side of the avenue. I glanced back at the three men who were following her with their eyes. They were still there.

  I looked back up the street. Darlene was gone.

  I took off running, tracing her steps, arms pumping. When I got to the smaller alley I turned, cautiously. The alley was well lit; a porch lamp from a nearby bar spread a wide, yellowing pool of light and shadow. Darlene was on her knees in a pile of flattened garbage. A tall, skinny Caucasian male with carrot red hair held a long straight razor to her throat. He was whispering in her ear. I edged closer, mouth dry, pulse racing. Well, he's Fancy's boy and he's definitely white, so that's one, anyway.

  "Come on somebody else's turf with a big mouth, bitch, and you don't live very long."

  "Easy," Darlene said, breathing rapidly. "Let's talk about this for a minute."

  The man looked up. His face was pitted with acne scars and he had the yellowing teeth of a heroin addict. He spotted me and growled low, like a junkyard dog. "Back off."

  Darlene moved the second his attention wavered. She slipped her open palms between his forearm and her chest, gripped and pulled. As the man fell forward slightly, off balance, she simultaneously rose slightly and squatted, lifting him with her strong legs. She turned her shoulder and rolled him over her and down onto the pavement with an audible thump. Somehow she ended up with the razor, too. Darlene eyed it with distaste and threw it in the garbage.

  The man was up in a flash. He tried to get by me to escape. I tripped him, grabbed his shirt and slammed him into the brick wall. Then I did it a second time, just for scaring the crap out of me.

  "What's his name?"

  "Huh?"

  I slammed him again and this time I thought I heard a rib pop. The thin man cried out. "Who sent you?"

  "Let go, dude."

  I grabbed one of the man's hands and bent the little finger back. He squealed like a pig, bared those bad teeth.

  "Okay, you're gonna know soon enough anyway. The top dude around here is a black guy, name of Fancy."

  "Fancy sent you?"

  "No. His people, though."

  "What did his people tell you to do?"

  "They said nobody wasn't in his stable should be working these streets. I was supposed to scare her off, man. Okay, maybe cut her a little, but not kill her or anything."

  "That's it?"

  "That's it."

  I let go. His legs gave out and he fell forward, striking his chin on the pavement. He whimpered, checked his mouth for blood and then sat up on his knees.

  "You tell Fancy something for me, okay?"

  "Yeah, yeah."

  I grabbed his hair and pulled. The man looked up. His lip was bleeding and his rheumy eyes went wide. "You tell him what used to be his isn't his anymore," I whispered.

  "Shit, man. Are you fucking crazy?"

  "You tell him we don't answer to him, or to anybody else. There's a new game in town. Any part of that you don't understand?"

  "No."

  I let him go. The man ran to the end of the alley. He turned back, shook his head in amazement and then disappeared into the night.

  "Well," I said happily, "that ought to stir things up."

  Jerry had taped the whole exchange. He looked at me as he lowered the camera, then let out a long rush of frightened air. He moved his baseball cap around again, pointing backwards, and stroked his scar. "Oh, man. I hate it when you say that."

  SIXTEEN

  The Carlton Arms Hotel was a funky, claptrap building with the nondescript, bland rooms that reeked of alcohol, marijuana, and sex. It had ancient iron fire escapes gone orange with rust and brick-rimmed windows with splintered frames and broken panes of glass. In any other neighborhood it would have been condemned, but here it served a purpose.

  The bored clerk at the counter was studying the racing form. He didn't look up when we walked in. He held a room key in one hand and an open palm in the other. I gave him cash. Our trio stood frozen for a few moments, repeatedly pushing the elevator button. Jerry was sweating and his eyes were bugged with anxiety.

  "Elevator ain't working," the clerk said, still looking down. He turned a page and wrote down some ideas. "Your room is on the second floor."

  The stairs creaked like coffin lids. The burgundy carpet in the hallway stank of urine. I memorized the layout and noted the bulbs above all the doors were behind wire mesh to keep someone from breaking or unscrewing them. This hotel had seen its share of violence.

  I glanced both ways. I opened the room, went in first, checked the closet and the bath then motioned to the others. Darlene immediately tore off the wig she had been wearing. She shifted her clothing around, pulled padding out of her bra, and took out a .38 special and two speed loaders. She checked the gun and tucked it into the waistband of her jeans.

  "Man, I don't get it," Jerry said. "I hope you know what you're doing, Mick. A guy could get killed this way. Incidentally, what are you doing?"

  "I'm making him mad."

  "Oh, no shit? Well, we'll be lucky if he doesn't firebomb the whole fucking hotel after what you just said."

  "Relax, Jerry," Darlene said.

  "Oh, sure. Just relax." Jerry looked around the room. Gang graffiti festooned the peeling wallpaper and the lampshade and curtains were yellowed from smoke. The aging pieces of furniture—a well-worn double bed, end table, and one armchair—were pocked with cigarette burns.

  "Another high class establishment," Jerry said. "I lived better than this in Dry Wells." He sat down on the edge of the bed and bounced. The springs squeaked. "What do we do now?"

  I moved the chair over by the window and the fire escape; sat in the chair, leaned back and closed my eyes. The gallows humor had worn off and now I just felt sad, bitter, and overtired. "We wait."

  "For what?"

  "For Fancy to process what he hears and come to a decision. Then he'll make his move."

  "And?"

  "And then we'll make ours."

  "Let me guess," Jerry said. "He kills us, and then we die?"

  I shrugged. "Given time, I think he'll be more puzzled than angry."

  "You think? Oh, great."

  "I don't know if he will remember my face from the night I took Mary," I said. "But if he does, that will make him even more curious."

  "So he'll want to talk to us instead of just take us out?"

  "Exactly."

  "Why?" Jerry asked.

  "First I took one of his girls for what I told him were personal reasons, and now I show up again a few weeks later as if I am doing a documentary on hookers."

  "Yeah, so?"

  "So then I finally act like the truth is that I actually have a stable of my own girls. One of those three things has to be a lie, right?"

  "So my life is riding on his curiosity."

  "In a way."

  "You're giving him an awful lot of credit, Mick," Darlene said. "Jerry has a valid point. Some of these pimps wouldn't be interested. They would just blow us the fuck away without missing dinner."

  "He won't."

  Jerry flopped back on the bed and put his hands behind his head. "What makes you so sure?"

  I had closed his eyes. "Darlene, you take first watch, okay?"

  She glanced at the time. "Four hours?"

  "Good enough. Wake me at two and I'll take the second."

  "Wake me when it's over," Jerry said. He covered his face with a pillow then threw it across the room. "This
thing stinks," he complained. "It smells like blowjobs and cheap perfume."

  "So enjoy."

  "Up yours."

  Time crawled. I tried to meditate; breathed slowly and evenly, but did not sleep. I heard Darlene check the locks on the windows and the door. She went into the bathroom and washed her face.

  "Mick?"

  "What, Jerry?"

  "I have to ask you something."

  "Shoot."

  "Did anything . . . happen between you and Mary when she stayed at your place?"

  "No."

  "That's not why she didn't want to see me?"

  "I told you the truth, Jerry," I said. The lie burned, but came easier the second time. Don't they always? "Nothing happened. I think you're letting your imagination get to you."

  "I'm acting bonkers, man. I'm sorry."

  "That's okay."

  "I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm drinking too much. I don't usually get high all the time. I'm not a . . . you know."

  "I know. Forget it."

  "Yeah. Okay."

  "Get some sleep, Jerry."

  A lie of omission or misdirection is a lie just the same, I thought. Was that love? A few moments passed. Darlene flushed the toilet. She turned out the lights before leaving the bathroom, returned to sit quietly on the floor with the gun in her lap. I could see her face in the gloom. After a while she closed her eyes, but my instincts told me she was awake.

  Eventually, Jerry started snoring. Voices passed in the hallway, two men arguing. I opened one eye. Darlene was already at the door with the gun pointed down at the floor. The men passed by and she returned to her sitting position. I couldn't rest.

  "You okay?"

  Darlene nodded. "Fine, go back to sleep."

  "Can I ask you a question?"

  "What?"

  "It's the shrink in me," I said softly. "I just can't help but wonder why you're so down on men."

  Darlene leaned closer and patted my hand. "Not very tactfully done, Mr. Therapist. I'm sure you already figured it out."

  "I have my suspicions. Your sexuality is intense, but it blows hot and cold. You seem to have what we call an approach-avoidance conflict going on. From the vibe I get, I'd say someone was inappropriate with you when you were little."

  She chuckled, bitterly. "If you call molesting a girl who is only eight acting inappropriately, I guess that's true."

  "Okay, thanks for telling me."

  "What do you care?"

  "I just wanted to understand you better."

  "Go back to sleep."

  Time crawled. Some people entered the room directly above, took a noisy shower together and had aggressive, loud sex. The springs creaked, the headboard pounded the wall, and a man grunted repeatedly. Finally he groaned and the couple fell silent. Against all odds, I tried to empty my mind.

  At two o'clock, Darlene started across the room to wake me. I waved her back and nodded. She made a pillow out of a bath towel and stretched out flat on the floor, the gun at her side.

  She closed her eyes. I yawned and closed mine, too.

  Scratching sounds startled me. Something like a rat, moving somewhere in the wall? I opened my eyes again. The room was velvet black and the cheap alarm clock was not showing the time, so the power had been cut. I eased forward out of the chair and down onto my knees. The scratching came again.

  The window slid open, almost silently.

  A figure rolled over the sill and down onto the carpet, slick as a long cobra. I kept my eyes fixed on the window, looking for more shapes, but nothing else moved.

  The man began to crawl across the carpet, moving towards Darlene and her weapon. I saw the tip of the long blade of a hunting knife, glinting in the moonlight; probably held between clenched jaws. I gauged the distance, jumped out of the darkness and onto his back, rammed a knee down into his spine.

  The man arched in pain and tried to roll away. I grabbed for the handle of the knife. I guessed wrong and cut my fingers, grabbed hair and twisted, then tried again. My fist closed over a forearm. I realized I'd surrendered too much leverage and started to change positions.

  A flashlight blinded us. "Freeze, motherfucker," Darlene said. "Let go of the knife and put your hands flat on the floor, or I'll blow your brains all over this carpet."

  "Don't shoot."

  Jerry turned on the lights. "The fuck?"

  Another white guy working for Fancy. He was in his early twenties and had long, greasy blond hair. He had dropped the knife. Darlene held the 9mm pressed against his forehead. She reached out and took the hunting knife and slid it away, under the bed. The mattress squeaked as Jerry moved again.

  "The fuck is going on?"

  The phone rang, then rang again. I released the man and went back to the chair, closed and locked the window as the phone rang a third time. I used my shirt to stop my two fingers from bleeding, reached over and picked up the telephone. I didn't say anything.

  "You're awake, I see. Is my man still alive?"

  I cleared my throat. "We haven't killed him yet."

  "How courteous of you." A rich voice with a clear English accent. It was Fancy. "I would prefer that you didn't, even though he has proven to be something of a disappointment to me."

  "Okay. We won't, then."

  "I assume you wish to meet?"

  "Yes. Do you know why?"

  Fancy laughed. "My dear Mr. Callahan, you must think me an uncultured fool."

  "You know me?"

  "But of course. Incidentally, I quite enjoyed that special you did on the crystal methamphetamine laboratories in northern Nevada. It was quite informative without being unduly sensational. Top notch work."

  "Thank you," I said, a bit dazed. "Perhaps you'd like me to autograph an eight by ten photo?"

  "We shall see. Now, do not panic, Mr. Callahan. And please tell your lady friend not to shoot."

  Darlene was still pressing the 9mm down into quivering flesh. She raised an eyebrow.

  I shrugged. "He said don't panic and don't shoot."

  The door burst open. Darlene tried to bring the gun up. Two large kids, clearly gang-bangers, entered the room. Each had an AK47. One covered me and one aimed his directly at Darlene's face. Darlene considered and rejected several options, all in a heartbeat. She sighed, lowered the pistol, and sat back against the ripped wallpaper.

  "Well," she said to me, sarcastically, "looks like your idea is working out just great so far."

  The gang members stepped further into the room. One moved past the bed, his gun trained on a trembling Jerry, and backed away into a far corner.

  Fancy entered the room. His chiseled features seemed darkly amused. He wore a mink coat despite the sweltering heat. Even though I towered over him, he was more impressive in the small, crowded room than he had seemed weeks before. His jewelry glinted. He clicked off his cell phone with his good hand. Feeling foolish, I put the hotel phone back in the cradle.

  "You recognized me the first time?" I asked, with a dopey smile on my face. "Man, do I feel dumb."

  Fancy smiled and I noticed that one front tooth was made of solid gold. "Of course I did, Mr. Callahan. And it was simply fascinating to watch you in action, I might add. One hears the stories, but . . ."

  "Do you know why I came back here tonight?"

  Fancy shrugged. "I suspect you'll tell me soon enough." He gestured to his followers. They cocked their weapons and aimed. "Now, at the risk of stating the obvious, please do what I tell you to do or these men will kill you. Is there any part of that instruction you need me to repeat?"

  "We got it."

  Fancy faced Darlene, then Jerry. "Miss Hernandez? Mr. Jover?"

  I blinked. "All our names, too? I'm impressed."

  "I get information because I pay well. This way, please." He turned his back, strode out the door and down the hallway.

  I got to my feet. The white kid with the greasy hair gave me a dirty look and stepped back. I helped Darlene stand. Jerry was pale as he rolled over on the bed
and swung his feet down to the floor. I went to the doorway and motioned for him to follow.

  When I stepped out into the hall, Fancy was standing several yards away, near what appeared to be a utility door. It had DANGER ELECTRICITY, writ large in block letters. I turned around. Jerry came out first, followed by Darlene and then the two gunmen. When I looked back, Fancy had unlocked and opened the door. It led out into a bricked-up fire escape. We followed the small man down the metal frame, our footsteps ringing like wind chimes.

  The secret passageway led down into the alley, but Fancy kept walking. The rest of the steps led into an expanded sewer area below the street. Someone had cleaned and painted the walkway. I noticed that drainpipes had been placed below the grates so that the area would be undetectable from above. In fact, the workmanship was impressive. Electric lights made the passageway feel less claustrophobic.

  Several yards later, I gauged we had crossed beneath the busy street packed with hookers and johns and gone under what had appeared to be a deserted warehouse. Fancy went up some cement steps. He was whistling to himself. I looked back. The armed guards were trailing us, weapons still at the ready. I followed Fancy up concrete steps.

  We entered an immense workspace. Extraordinarily bright lights were flaring in one far corner and professional grade video equipment was running. Four naked people were having loud and noisy sex before cameras, while a man circled around them with a hand-held unit for close ups. Jerry stopped in his tracks. He watched until the guard poked him from behind with the barrel of an AK47.

  Fancy was already opening another door. He walked into a plushy furnished business office. Security cameras banked one wall, a huge entertainment system another. The longer walls were covered, from floor to ceiling, with books. I recognized what appeared to be first edition copies of American classics such as Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

  "Would you care for a drink, Mr. Callahan? Oh, excuse me. Of course it is well known that you no longer imbibe. What about your friends?"