Deadlock

by Robert Liparulo

  Cruisers flew by, heading toward the Denver Post building. Hutch’s brain seemed to throb in time with their sirens. Their strobing lights jabbed at his eyes. But it was all right. He had Logan. If he were walking the Via Dolorosa, carrying a cross and ducking from a thousand thrown stones, he would take it all with a grin because he had his son.

  He spotted a cab and nearly leaped in front of it. The driver took one look at him standing at the front of the hood and shook his head. Hutch pulled out the wad of money Larry had gotten for him and fanned the bills for the driver to see. The driver jerked his head, gesturing for them to get in.

  “Go ahead,” Hutch told Logan. Only after the boy opened the rear door and started inside did Hutch move from the front of the car. With the cops on full alert, another Outis soldier somewhere on the loose, and Macie, Laura, and Dillon not yet within his reach, he didn’t want to be stranded in the street.

  He pushed in beside Logan, set the bow bag beside him, and handed the driver two twenties. “Casa Bonita,” he said.

  Logan laughed, what little he could, and said, “I guess you were serious about taking me there.”

  The driver eyed them suspiciously. He said, “What happened to you two?”

  “Rough day,” Hutch said. He couldn’t help himself from looking through the rear window to the convergence of Denver’s finest several blocks away. The Post building was just out of sight where the road curved around Civic Center Park. The lights, however, flickered and flashed on the surrounding buildings as though a bonfire had erupted.

  “What’s going on back there?” the driver said. “You part of that?”

  “Just curious,” Hutch said. “What do you say we get going, huh? Casa Bonita.” He considered peeling off another twenty and pushing it in the guy’s hand, but he figured that would be about the same as telling him to drive them back to the cops.

  The cab pulled away from the curb, and Hutch felt the tension in Logan’s muscles relax a little. His son was leaning into him, one hand draped over his shoulder, the other crossing Hutch’s stomach to grip his side. Hutch pulled him closer. He brushed Logan’s bangs off his forehead, let them fall back, and did it again, over and over.

  When he thought the boy had fallen asleep, Logan whispered, “We had an adventure, didn’t we?”

  “Did we ever.”

  “Like you and Dillon?”

  Hutch caught the faintest scent of Logan’s meaning, like knowing a fire was nearby, but not yet comprehending its implications. “Something like that, I guess.”

  “So . . .” Logan shifted against Hutch. “So, will you talk about me, now? Will you tell everybody how we got through this together?”

  Hutch felt that his heart and not his leg had taken Page’s bullet. Had he been that callous, that superficial, that Logan felt unloved because he had not experienced all that had happened in Canada? Did Logan really believe that it took being kidnapped and almost killed to stake a claim in his father’s life?

  Hutch closed his eyes tight, knowing he had asked the wrong question. It was not whether Logan believed that, but whether it was actually true.

  “Oh, Logan.” He pressed his cheek to Logan’s head, turned and kissed his hair. “You have always had my love. We’ve always shared the greatest adventure there can ever be. We share each other’s lives. I’m sorry I haven’t made you feel that way.”

  As his mind searched for the words that would express how he felt, but did not always behave, Logan relieved him of that duty. His son hugged him tightly, as though he wanted to pull himself right into Hutch’s chest.

  “Thank you for saving me, Dad. I love you.”

  Hutch’s inclination was to recite the words back to Logan, but he stopped himself. He knew that on Logan’s tongue those three words were precious and as weighted in meaning as they were intended to be. But Hutch had tossed them around like treats to a dog without supporting them with his time and attention. Over the past year they had become cheap, costing him nothing.

  He worked with words every day. He knew they had power, but by using them without tethering them to the objects they described—in this case to his heart—they just floated away, so much air. Even now he wanted to caress his son with words, to wrap a blanket of I love yous and Here are all the things we’re going to do together around him. But he had no right to expect those words to mean anything to Logan. All he could do was do. One hug at a time, one day at a time—one day of giving his children everything he had.

  He squeezed Logan now and kissed him again. It wasn’t enough, but he hoped his son understood.

  The driver hitched his elbow over the seat back and looked at his watch. “Casa Bonita at twelve thirty in the morning? It’s closed, dude.”

  “That’s all right,” Hutch said, peering through the windshield as the cab pulled into the near-empty lot. In truth, he hadn’t thought about the restaurant being closed. Traveling all night and sleeping all day had knocked his biorhythms out of sync. It had felt twelve hours earlier when he’d told Laura to take off and meet him here. Somewhere in his head he had pictured Laura, Macie, and Dillon munching on sopai­pillas until he and Logan arrived.

  He tapped the driver’s elbow and pointed. “See that SUV? Drop us there.”

  The XTerra was parked at the far end of the lot behind a large Dumpster-like box designed to receive donations of clothes and other items that could be sold. Leave it to Laura to park out of sight from the street. A pursuer would have to pull into the lot to spot the vehicle. When he had last talked to her, Larry had just been shot and hell was breaking loose. She had left in a panic and would have had no way of knowing who had won: Hutch or hell.

  Hutch watched the taxicab pull away. He said, “We better hurry. They must be worried out of their minds.”

  “What happened?” Logan said, putting his finger in one of the bul-letholes. He poked at a shattered window. Safety glass cascaded over the sheet metal, tinkling musically. Hutch had taped cardboard behind the broken glass, but had not bothered to clear the rest away.

  “The guys who took you had friends,” Hutch said.

  He and Logan simultaneously pressed their faces to the rear-door window, the only one not broken on the driver’s side. They cupped their hands around their eyes to block the reflection of a nearby sodium vapor lamp.

  “They’re not in here,” Logan said.

  Hutch turned to stare at the restaurant’s big pink facade. He said, “She probably figured it was safer inside.”

  “But it’s closed.”

  Hutch shook his head. “That wouldn’t stop Laura.” He gently slapped Logan on the shoulder. “Let’s go see what’s what.”

  The fountain out front had been turned off, but lights in the portico’s ceiling cast a dim, yellow glow over the entrance area. Hutch pulled on one of the doors, then another. “Locked,” he said. He walked out from under the portico to survey the building. “If I know Laura, she would keep looking until she found a way in.”

  “Do they have guards?” Logan said.

  “I don’t know. It’s big enough, draws enough attention . . . you’d think they’d have an after-hours guy.”

  “Can’t we knock?” Logan said.

  “Let’s make that the last resort. Laura could have talked her way in, convinced the guy to let her and the kids stay.” He scratched the stubble on his cheek and squinted at a window twenty feet up. Wrought-iron bars covered it, but in the dark they looked rusty and unstable. “Or she could have found another way in. If they’re hiding in there, I don’t want to blow their cover.”

  “Does it matter?” Logan said. “Now?”

  That struck Hutch as a profound comment, not only true, but one that marked a critical change in their circumstances. They no longer had to worry about being chased or caught or killed. It didn’t matter if the police came, threw them all in the pokey for a day or two. They were finished with all of that.

  “I guess you’re right,” Hutch said. He noticed a van in the parking lot, hidd
en by shadows. He could barely make out the logo on the side: CRAZY CARPET CLEANERS. If not a security guard, then perhaps a janitorial crew was in there. “I was just thinking—”

  “Dad?” Logan was holding a front door open.

  Hutch said, “It was unlocked?”

  Logan nodded.

  Hutch hurried toward it. He whispered, “Wouldn’t you know it’d be the one I didn’t try. Laura must have got in somehow and left it open for us.”

  “It’s dark in there,” Logan said.

  “They’re closed,” Hutch said, keeping his voice low.

  They stepped in, and the door closed behind them. A hallway broke left. If they were there to eat, they’d head that way, pay at a bank of cash registers, and pick up their meals from a cafeteria-style food bar. Straight ahead, a chain blocked an arched passage to the seating areas. Hutch unhooked the chain and reattached it to the other side.

  “If you see anyone, just—” He stopped. He sniffed the air. The subtle, lingering odors of flour, cheese, grease, and . . . the grassy-tea aroma of an expensive cigar. He stumbled back into Logan and turned. He lifted his son in his arms and crashed back through the door, spilling outside onto the tiled patio beyond.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  “What is it?” Logan said.

  Sprawled on the tiles outside the restaurant doors, Hutch scanned all directions. He expected to hear the crack of a rifle at any moment and feel a brief, hot pain in his head, before . . . nothing. Unless the bullet reached him before the sound. Unless Logan was hit first!

  Rolling onto all fours, he pulled Logan into a corner near the front door and a perpendicular wall. He pressed his chest into Logan’s head, trying to cover as much of him as he could. He spun around and leaned his back into the boy’s upraised knees.

  “Dad,” Logan said. “What is it? I’m—” Then he gasped, started to whine, then sob.

  “What, Logan?” Hutch said. He pushed up into a crouch so that his torso completely protected Logan’s head. “What do you see?”

  This is it, he thought. This is how it ends. Please, Lord, not Logan.

  He remembered news footage of a Jewish father and son in Jerusalem. They were heading to the boy’s school when a firefight broke out between Israeli guardsmen and Palestinian militants. The father had pushed the boy into a corner and covered him with his body. Bullets kicked up dust and dirt all around them. As it cleared, the father fell away dead. The son fell on top of him, dead. The video had been the talk of the newsroom. It had been painful to watch, and a lot of lunches had gone uneaten that day.

  What Hutch remembered now was how fast it had happened—mere seconds—and that the father, regardless of his resolve, regardless of his love, had been unable to protect his child.

  He wasn’t going to let that happen. If Page wanted him, he could have him, but not his boy. “What is it, Logan?” he said. “What?”

  Logan’s arm came out from behind him, pointing into the parking lot. “That van.”

  The carpet-cleaning van Hutch had noticed on the way in. But he saw no one in the windows, no one standing around it.

  Logan said, “That’s the van Emile put me in, the one he used to pick up that other man and bring me downtown. They . . . there’s . . .”

  Hutch saw Logan’s eyes grow moist. “What is it, son?”

  “There are bodies in the back. He tied me to them. My face . . .” He wiped a hand over his cheek, back and forth, taking off something that wasn’t there anymore. “The smell.”

  Hutch hated Page for many things, but at that moment, he hated him for exposing Logan to human death and decay. Hutch felt his fury rising. Page—or someone working for him—had tied his son to corpses.

  “It’s okay now,” Hutch said. “Shhh. It’ll be all right.” He gripped Logan’s shoulders and held them until the boy’s breathing slowed and their eyes met. He said, “Listen, I want you to run. Just start running that way. Run far. Then find a place to hide. Watch for me.”

  “No! I’m not leaving, you can’t make me!” Logan grabbed two handfuls of Hutch’s jacket. “No!” His head drooped, and he started sobbing.

  Maybe it would be best to keep Logan with him, Hutch thought. What if Page’s men were outside somewhere, watching? He was sure nothing would please Page more than snatching back what Hutch had taken from him—what had been Hutch’s in the first place, but he didn’t think Page would care about that. He hoped he was not simply justifying a stupid decision because he could not stand to see Logan cry—and because he himself did not want to be separated from him.

  He said, “Okay. You stay with me, but do exactly as I say right when I say it, got it? No trying to be a hero or anything. Deal?”

  Logan repeated the instructions, fast, as though they were the magic words that would keep him with his dad.

  Hutch pulled the bag around to his front, unzipped it, and withdrew the bow. He set it on the tiles beside him. He tugged out the ballistic vest. “Put this on.”

  “No,” Logan said, pushing it away. “You’ll need it.”

  “Logan! What did we just talk about?”

  Logan nodded. He let Hutch slip the vest onto him.

  Hutch pulled the Velcro belts as tight as they’d go, but the vest still fit Logan as poorly as his pants did. “That’ll have to do,” he said.

  He picked up the bow. The attached quiver held the two arrows he had retrieved from the roof. He grabbed one of them and nocked it onto his string. He held the arrow in place with the index finger of his bow hand. That kept one hand free, while positioning the bow and arrow for quick use.

  He gestured toward the van. He said, “I should go check it out, see if anyone’s hiding there, waiting to sneak up behind us when we go in.”

  “Don’t,” Logan said. “What if it’s a trap, an ambush?”

  “More likely there’d be one inside the restaurant,” Hutch said. But Logan was right. To reach the van he’d have to walk forty feet in the open. And for what? Weapons, maybe, but he wasn’t much good with firearms. Besides, he had to reach Macie, Laura, and Dillon before Page did. He prayed it was not already too late.

  “Okay,” Hutch said. “You saw only two men?”

  Logan nodded.

  “I got one of them, so it must be only Page inside.”

  Page, he thought. How can it be Page?

  Hutch had seen him on the terrace. He’d signaled his displeasure at the arrival of the police, and he’d taken off for Logan. But had it been Page who came through the roof’s door, guns blazing? Hutch had seen a helmeted soldier and had assumed it was Page.

  He remembered Page’s words: What’s real? Everything is an illusion.

  That’s the way Page saw the world, the way he lived his life. Michael had been fooled into believing he had been playing combat games. In his mind, he had shot only at actors and computerized renderings of enemy targets, avatars. But Page had sent him to kill real people. He had shown Michael a bad guy, so Michael had shot him—and had killed a child. Illusions.

  Page had not been merely making a case for relativism, for the subjectivity of his actions. When he’d said Everything is an illusion, he’d really meant everything. The success of Outis depended on illusion.

  His ability to control his soldiers, not only to wage war on his client’s enemies, but also to eliminate his own perceived foes—it all depended on illusion.

  Page had made Hutch believe they had fought each other, and that Hutch had won. Now it appeared that Hutch had arrowed someone else, had pushed someone else off the roof. Still, Hutch could not shake the sense that Page had come back from the dead. He thought he had seen Page die, and even now it was hard to grasp that the man was alive.

  For how many centuries had people clung to the idea that seeing is believing? How long would it take to realize the eyes could no longer be trusted? Pictures were Photoshopped. Characters in video games and even some movies looked real, but never were. Page had recognized the potential of technology to manipulate perception and
had built an industry around it.

  Whatever had happened back on the roof, however the man had found his way here, Hutch was sure it was Page who waited inside. Who else was cocky enough to smoke cigars while trying to assassinate people?

  Hutch looked at the door to the restaurant. Above it should have been mounted the inscription Dante attributed to hell’s entrance: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

  No, no, he thought. I won’t do that. I can’t.

  “Logan,” he whispered. “Grab hold of my belt. Squeeze it tight. Don’t let go.”

  He closed his eyes. He imagined that he was about to enter the woods on a hunting excursion: stealth mode, high sensitivity to sounds, every move intentional, no wasted energy. He called to mind his objectives: Macie, Laura, Dillon, alive and away from Page; Logan and himself too.

  He pictured the hurdle to reaching those objectives: Page. He’d be armed, wearing the black SWAT-type clothes he’d worn on the terrace, and he’d have that helmet. Hutch would have to find a way to combat the advantages the helmet gave Page. He thought of a few things that might work. He felt the bow in his left hand, the arrow under his index finger. He took a deep breath, rose, and opened the door.

  Crouching low, feeling the tug of Logan’s hand on his belt, he stepped inside.

  SIXTY-NINE

  Hutch eased the door closed, and darkness engulfed them like a fist. He felt a curving wall on his right. He knew it circled around to the exit doors and a small room. He followed it, Logan clinging to him, until the lighted green letters of an exit sign showed him the doorway he wanted: a small security office. Here, a guard could monitor the closed-circuit cameras positioned around the restaurant and control the lighting and other features.

  Hutch felt a desk, a Styrofoam coffee cup—still warm, and the glass screens of the monitors. He pushed a button and a screen came on, displaying static. He pushed another button, lighting up another screen. He found a panel of switches next to the monitors and began flipping them. The static on the screens changed to black. A distant exit light in the corner of one told Hutch they were working, staring into the darkened building. He found another bank of switches and toggled one up.