"Well, you see, officer, I have a very specialized environment in this building. It is a habitat for endangered creatures, and I do not want to disturb them."
"What kind of creatures?" Frank said.
The woman let go of the front door, and it began to close slowly as she vanished behind it. Frank held out his hand to stop the door and said, "Ma'am?"
Jack leaned in, trying to get eyes on the suspect. The chances of a half-naked woman pulling a machine gun on them were slim. It was a more likely possibility that she'd run. Both Jack and Frank stepped into the doorway and stopped when they heard Li Xiao say, "Such as this."
The woman appeared in front of them holding a two foot long cobra wrapped around her right wrist. The snake's head was a burnt-sienna color and Li Xiao petted it along the spine, making the snake rise. "This is the Katien spitting cobra," she said, leaning down to blow softly along the creature's back. Its hooded neck flared in response, and the snake opened its mouth, showing Frank and Jack its fangs. Li Xiao cupped her hand under the snakes jaw and said, "The spitting cobras always aim for the eyes of their victims."
Jack was rooted in place at the sight of the snake, hands frozen at her sides. They weren't even two feet away. The snake wouldn't have to spit. It would probably be able to leap off the woman's wrist and bite her and Frank before either one of them could move.
"I'm not really fond of snakes," Frank said. "Can you please put that away?"
"This snake has more right to be here than you do," Li Xiao said. "It is his home you are asking to enter as well."
Jack snickered and said, "You mean we need its permission to come in?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes," replied Li Xiao.
Jack shifted slightly, moving the right side of her body past the doorframe and out of the woman's view, trying to get her gun out without drawing any attention. "Hey, I've got a question. You ever lose any?" she said.
"Lose any what?"
"Any snakes. When I was a kid in school our science teacher brought a snake in for class and it escaped from its cage overnight. We spent the rest of the year in terror it was hiding in the cubby holes or going to bite us in the ass when we sat on the toilet."
"Sometimes," Li Xiao said, her dark eyes glittering as she continued to stroke the snake. "But I have nothing to fear from them. The snakes protect me and know me as one of their own." Both the snake and woman turned to look at Frank, taking his measure. "The same cannot be said for everyone else."
Frank could see what Jack was doing and said, "We'll try to keep that in mind."
Phinneas Trout crept along the back fence, keeping low to the ground. He checked the warehouse and light posts for security cameras but didn't see any and kept moving. The fence was threaded tightly and straight. Most older properties had loose spots along the back you could lift up like a curtain and slip under. Not this one. Whoever owned the building cared more about the fence than anything like seeding the rear yard for grass or scraping the decades of rust off the siding. The top of the fence was not an option either. Spools of Constantine wire, armed with razor blades every two inches, covered every inch of the upper strut.
He was going to have to do it the hard way.
Phin looked over his shoulder to check the pier behind him. Frank's damn satellite photos hadn't shown how freaking close they were to the pier. How any asshole walking around on it could just turn and say, "Oh, look. There's a suspicious young man breaking into that warehouse. Maybe we should call the authorities."
Thanks, Frank, Phin thought. Just another reason you are a colossal dick.
Phin checked to see who was on the pier. Nothing but old fogies, and they were too busy talking and looking out into the water to pay him any mind, and even if they were, he decided they probably couldn't see him at that distance. Phin pulled a hand-sized multi-tool out of its nylon scabbard on his belt and folded it in half to expose the rugged wire cutters in the middle. They should put a set of lock picks on these things and market them to burglars, he thought. In fact, if I get out of this gig alive and without going to prison, I'm going to draw up a design and make the damn thing myself. Sell it on the internet or something.
Snip.
He cut through the first wire quickly and then moved on to the second and third. He didn't need a big hole. Just enough for him to squeeze through. It's not like Herb's coming out this way, he thought. If he's in trouble, we're going to tear the whole place down getting him out. If he's in there loving life, thinking everything's sweet with his new sexy Asian babe, he's going to have bigger problems on his hands in the form of Jack Daniels.
Snip.
"Come on, come on," he grunted, squeezing the wire cutters with both hands. It was getting harder to make a cut, but he wasn't sure if it was because the tool was getting dull or his hands were getting tired. It didn't matter. He only had another foot or two to go.
"Hey!" someone shouted from behind him.
Phin turned slowly, blinking in astonishment that someone was so bold as to call him out like that. It was an old man in high-waisted denim overalls, leaning on the pier's rail. Didn't this fool know Phin would bash his skull in and toss him into the harbor? "What?" Phin snarled.
"You do fence repair?"
Phin looked down at the hole in the fence and said, "Yeah. We're replacing this section."
"I need an estimate on my building."
"All right. Later."
"Sounds good."
Phin turned back to the fence and started cutting faster, trying to get the hell out of sight.
"Hey!" the old man shouted again.
Phin looked back.
"You got a card?"
Phin shook his head as he made the final cut.
"Word of mouth, eh?"
Phin peeled back a handful of fence and said, "That's the only way I know how to do things, pal. I'm all about the old school."
"Atta boy!" the old man called out, as Phin slid inside the hole and kept low, cutting right to head for the first crate near the fence large enough for him to drop down behind. The wood was rotten and filled with holes, and Phin rolled over to spy through one of them, searching to see if the old man was still watching. Luckily, he'd wandered off to the other end of the pier to bother some other person. If this goes wrong because of you, they'll be fishing your body out of the water next week, Phin thought. He moved to the next crate, staying down, and then another. He went from cover to cover, checking the warehouse windows for signs of movement. There was nothing but the sound of gulls screeching overhead and waves slapping the docks at the waterline.
Two steel doors were built into the back of the building, and neither one of them had handles. Just my luck, he thought. All of the crates were in bad shape, but he managed to find one that would support his weight, so he hustled it over to the back wall. He set it under the lowest row of windows, but they were still too high to reach. "Goddamn it!" Phin hissed. He climbed up onto the crate and reached as high as he could, standing on the tips of his toes to feel for any kind of ledge in the siding that he could grab, but there was nothing. None of the other crates would support his weight so stacking them was out of the question.
That left one option, and it sucked.
Phin closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The windows had a one inch ledge three feet above where he could reach. That meant they were almost fifteen feet off the ground. It wasn't even soft ground. It was dirt and stone. If I miss, coming down off that thing is going to hurt big time. That's a broken leg at least. Maybe even a back or a spine.
Listen, you're a sick man, something whispered in the back of his mind. You're a sick man and you're getting older, and this isn't the sort of shit you should be doing. You don't even know this guy Herb that well. Let's just extract from this little fool's errand, and go grab a bottle or a baggie, and forget all this nonsense.
He thought about Jack then, about her standing in the doorway trying to get in, expecting him to be there. He thought about how tired she lo
oked lately, and how maybe, just maybe if they found this fat bastard of a partner of hers, she just might get enough sleep to join him for another game of pool.
Anyway, what the hell, he thought. At least I'll have a hell of a story to tell the nurses in the paraplegic section of the hospital.
Phin bent down at the knees as far as he could and sprung up, throwing his arms into the air and stretching out with all his might to reach for the tiny, slippery ledge.
His fingers brushed above the ledge and he clenched onto it, slamming hard against the aluminum wall. He immediately stuck the soles of his sneakers onto the surface, trying to dig in with the rubber enough to support himself. It was like Spider-man, just a whole lot uglier and more dangerous, but as he clung there, much to his own disbelief, Phin looked down and saw that he'd made it.
He looked at the window and said, "I swear to God, if you're not open, I'm going to burn this building to the ground with everyone and everything still inside it. Be open, you son of a bitch. Be open. Be open." He reached up with one hand, grunting as all the weight of his upper body was hanging on the tips of his left hand's fingers, and pushed.
"Yes!" he whispered. The window pivoted inwards and he stuck his hand through, grabbing the inside ledge with his hand. Anchoring himself there for a moment, saving his strength, Phin slid up onto the windowsill and hung there, half his body inside the building and the other half sticking out through the window, feet kicking wildly in the air.
He looked down at a pile of long wooden planks several feet beneath him that formed some sort of catwalk. Phin folded his forearm over his face and dropped down through the window, crashing down onto the planks hard enough that the noise echoed throughout the large, open room below. He laid there for a second, trying to catch his breath. He was inside. He could hardly believe it. There was some sort of spot light directly over his head with a massive bulb aiming down. It looked like something stage crews used to light rock bands at a concert.
He laid there wondering what the light was for when something directly beneath him started to splash violently, like an alligator thrown into a bathtub. Phin scrambled to his feet, a distinct animal odor assailing his nostrils, making him think that in this place, an alligator was a definite possibility. He leaned slowly over the side of the catwalk and looked down at the swollen, colossal form of Herb Benedict swinging by his arms inside a tank filled with what could only be described as piss-colored water. Herb looked up at Phin and sputtered, "Help."
Li Xiao's wrapped her fingers around the snake's throat and squeezed firmly, making its mouth open wide and its fangs extend, showing them both the small holes at their tips where the venom would squirt out. "Its reflexes are instantaneous," she said. "Any sudden movement. The slightest threat, and it will release poison into your eyes to blind you and then strike for your throat."
"If we were a threat, you mean," Frank said, forcing himself to smile. They were still stuck in the doorway, the two of them trapped in the fatal funnel by a goddamn snake. He felt ridiculous. He didn't even have a gun. This is a hell of a way to go out, he thought.
"Of course," the woman said, laughing. Her eyes were dark and full of unspeakable cruelty, and there was little doubt she would love every second of watching him thrash around on the ground screaming while her little monster's venom ate away his eyes. Li Xiao's face darkened and she suddenly choked the snake harder, making venom drops spill out of the cobra's fangs. It hissed and squirmed as it glared at Frank, ready to strike. Li Xiao aimed the cobra's face at Frank's and said, "Now, why don't we stop this little charade, and you tell me what you really want?"
"One more question," Jack said, sliding herself back to Frank's side. Her right arm was in the doorway now too and her chrome pistol was tight to her side. "Are the snake's reflexes faster than this?"
The gun's hammer clapped the frame and bright flame spurted from the mouth of the barrel, lighting up the dark doorway for a brief instant that showed the cobra's open mouth preparing to unleash its venom and then Jack's bullet smashing the reptile into bloody black pieces. Li Xiao stood frozen. The snake's blood was spattered across her robe and the side of her face as she slowly turned to look at the clump of ruined, squirming snake flesh dangling from her hand. Its long tail twitched and coiled tightly, went limp, then coiled again.
"Monster," Li Xiao whispered. She looked down at the destroyed animal and started to shake, "You…monster!"
Jack lifted her pistol and cocked the hammer back, centering it on the woman's face and said, "I always heard you have to cut a snake's head off to kill it. Same goes for people. Now where the hell is my partner?"
Li Xiao hurled the clump of bloody snake at both of them with a scream and ran from the door. Frank caught a face full of pulped innards and swept them out of his eyes as he dove inside the door after her. Jack made out worse. She'd still been speaking when Li Xiao hurled the snake and some of it had flown into her mouth. "Get her..ack!" Jack spat as much as she could, feeling vomit come into her throat. She grabbed the door and bent forward, about to erupt. "Go get her!"
Frank ran blindly into the dark room and felt the wind of a heavy door slamming shut in his face, stopping him in his tracks. Li Xiao turned the first deadbolt and Frank reared back and slammed his shoulder into the center of the door so hard it bent the metal frame, but he could see cracks of light through the edge of the door. So he hit it again and again, trying to snap the lock off.
Li Xiao screamed and ran at the door, leaping high in the air to kick it from her side. The impact struck Frank in his bad knee and he collapsed instantly, crying out in pain. Li Xiao laughed and said, "My snake is going to feed on your friend first, and then I will feed both of you to him over the next six weeks! I will cut off pieces of you to give him every day! You will beg for death by the time I finish with you!"
Phin climbed down from the platform and grabbed onto the lid of the tank, lifting his head over it only to recoil and say, "What the Christ is that?"
"Wine. Piss. I dunno what else," Herb grunted. "I've been in here for days! Shut up and get me the hell out of here!"
"All right, give me a second. I have to figure out how to raise this damn hoist. Where are the controls?"
"I don't…I don't know," Herb said. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open. His heart was beating too rapidly to let him focus, flooding his body with just enough blood and oxygen to remind him how badly he was hurting. In the semi-comatose state where he was barely getting enough oxygen to breathe, he'd found a quiet place to exist. A place close to death that was detached and peaceful. Now, Phin had dragged him back into the moment, back into the tank where every inch of him wanted to scream. His shoulders were both separated and the muscles and tendons surrounding his arm sockets were torn. It felt like only loose skin was keeping his body intact, and he might tear away from it at any moment. He might have lost one or both of his hands, he couldn't tell. They both felt dead.
His lower body was limp and he could do little more than flail around by turning his hips either way. From what he could see, the pool of filth he'd been sitting in had leeched the color and moisture from the skin and tissue of everything below his thighs. "I never saw the controls," Herb said, grimacing.
Phin dropped down from the tank and spun in every direction, searching for a control panel or some kind of button to raise the hook that held Herb inside the tank. He inspected the hook itself, seeing it was attached to some sort of platform and anchored to the wall just beneath the catwalk. There were cables attached to it that had to be used to power the hoist and Phin jogged around the room, trying to see where each of them lead. He circled around the back of the tank and found a small metal box connected to one of the loose wires with a red button on it. "Here goes nothing," Phin said, picking up the box and jamming the button with the palm of his hand.
There was a loud grinding of steel cable dragging across a series of pulleys as the hoist activated, and the platform, hook, and Herb Benedict all began to rise.
"That's it!" Herb shouted. "You did it!"
"Hang on," Phin called out over the noise of the machine. "It looks like this thing has a swing arm. It should lift you out and drop you down automatically. I can't say how hard you're going to fall though."
"I don't care!" Herb cried out. "Just get me the hell out of this goddamn tank!"
Phin watched Herb ascend from the lid of the tank, yellow slime dripping off of his naked body like egg yolk. Herb's legs crashed into the top of the glass as the hoist swiveled, crashing Herb into the top of the glass. Herb groaned in pain as he tried to swing himself up high enough to get free. He finally rolled over the top of the threshold and wept with relief as the hoist began to lower him toward the floor.
"You're almost down," Phin said.
Herb Benedict could hardly contain his relief as the hydraulic arm descended, taking him down to the floor. He wasn't sure how he was going to land but he didn't care. Even if he broke both his legs, he didn't care. He was out of the tank and free of the…
Snake.
The massive cobra was coiled on the floor directly beneath him, its muscular head raised high in the air, waiting for him. The snake's hood was flared out wider than his forearm, staring at him menacingly with its hard, obsidian eyes. "No!" Herb shouted. "Stop!"
Phin looked up from behind the tank, barely able to see Herb through the blurry glass and said, "What?"
"Stop the winch!"
"What?" Phin shouted.
Herb kicked wildly at the snake, telling it to "Get back! Get the hell back in your cage!" but it did not move. He was about to be delivered directly into the thing's mouth. It was going to eat him while Phinneas Trout held the button down, and then when Phin came out to check on him, the snake was going to eat him too.
Jack Daniels and Associates: Snake Wine Page 15