The Four-Night Run

by William Lashner

  “Now what have we caught ourselves here? Our own Tom Jefferson. Lift him, Luther.”

  The largest of the men sucked noisily on his toothpick before stepping behind Scrbacek, grabbing his torso, and effortlessly lifting him to his feet. He slipped his hands beneath Scrbacek’s arms and up behind Scrbacek’s neck and kept lifting until Scrbacek’s feet dangled above the asphalt.

  Scrbacek’s shoulder screamed in pain, or was that his mouth? He struggled to escape, and failed, miserably. The breathing of the giant was loud in his ear.

  Another red-suit strode up to Scrbacek, swayed for a moment, and then flicked out his wrist. A blade appeared like magic in his hand, the metal glistening dully in the moonlight. Scrbacek stared in horror as the knife drew closer, when suddenly he heard, “Let me at the Frog bastard.”

  The two red-suits standing in front of Scrbacek split apart, and between them, bent at the waist, left arm tight to his side, bareheaded but still grinning, came the Worm. The small man laughed wildly before burying his right hand in Scrbacek’s stomach.

  Scrbacek’s legs pulled up as he let out an “Oof,” but Luther held him firmly in place.

  “Mark him, Felix,” said a red-suit with a beard.

  The man with the switchblade stepped forward and placed the edge of the blade on the bridge of Scrbacek’s nose. Scrbacek pulled his head away from the blade until he was stopped by a great amount of pressure from Luther’s hands.

  “Why?” gasped Scrbacek.

  “Because we can,” said the man with the beard.

  “How’s your breathing, Tom?” said Felix, putting pressure on the blade, letting it slide through the flesh of Scrbacek’s nose. “Maybe I’ll help things along.”

  “Not so much he can’t be recognized,” said the man with the beard. “Mickey already worked out a deal for the head.”

  “I’ll be gentle-like,” said Felix as he pressed the blade further into Scrbacek’s flesh. The pressure was growing unbearable, the sharp edge of pain slipping deeper, when suddenly Felix flung himself back and raised his arms like a dancer.

  It was a lovely bit of ballet, that move, graceful and slow and inexplicable to Scrbacek, even as the knife flew in an arc through the air, even as a darkness bled across Felix’s narrow yellow tie.

  Luther released his grip on Scrbacek and spun around. Scrbacek dropped to the ground and rolled away just as the huge man’s knee collapsed in a mist of red and he tumbled to the ground, letting out a loud, inhuman howl.

  The two red-suits still standing looked around, puzzled, amidst the huge man’s cries. One of the men reached into his jacket, but before he could pull a weapon, something came out of the sky and slammed into his jaw, dropping him cold to the ground.

  And now, crouched beside Scrbacek’s heaped body, was the Nightingale, her gun aimed at the Worm’s head.

  The Worm backed away, still showing his teeth but no longer grinning.

  “Say you’re sorry,” said the Nightingale over the huge man’s shouting.

  The Worm backed away farther. Scrbacek, understanding suddenly what had just happened, staggered to his feet.

  “Who’s looking for me?” said Scrbacek to the retreating man.

  “Fuck you, Tom.”

  “That’s no apology,” said the Nightingale as she reached to her boot, pulling out her huge, jagged blade. “And his name isn’t Tom.”

  “Whoever the hell is after me,” said Scrbacek, “you tell him I’m coming.”

  The small man backed away even farther.

  “And you tell him I’m not coming alone.”

  The Worm took one more step back and then turned to run. The Nightingale smoothly took hold of the blade of her knife and cocked it behind her ear like a baseball catcher about to nail a runner stealing third. Before she could spin it forward, Scrbacek placed a hand on her elbow.

  “Let him go,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s running.”

  “Just makes him a smaller target is all.”

  “Let him go,” said Scrbacek. “Let him tell the bastards who are after me that I’m not defenseless.”

  “You looked pretty damn defenseless to me,” she said.

  He turned his head to look at her. She was smiling, and her smile was positively incandescent. “Who are you?” he said.

  “Just a girl with a gun.”

  “Aren’t you a little young?”

  “Not too young to save your ass.”

  “Yeah, well, I would have muddled through on my own,” said Scrbacek. He could still feel the pressure of the blade on the bridge of his nose, and his utter helplessness at that moment. But he could also feel the strange calm he had mustered just moments before at Ed’s counter. He wiped at the bridge of his nose, and his hand came away slick with blood. “I was just getting ready to make my move.”

  “Your move?”

  “My move. You know.” He did a little shuffle. “My move.”

  “Oh, that move.”

  “But I guess I ought to thank you anyway. Thanks for . . .”

  “For saving your ass?”

  “Yeah, for that.”

  “Blixen asked me to look after you.”

  “You did the old woman proud.”

  “For some reason she trusts you.”

  “Maybe she should trust a razor.”

  “Wait a second,” said the Nightingale, and then she went over to the huge man on the ground, still rolling, still shouting in pain. She leaned over him, put her hand gently on his forehead, and spoke to him softly. His howls quieted, and she spoke to him some more, and he listened without saying a word, and then she leaned her ear close to his mouth.

  “You wanted to know who’s looking for you?” she said when she returned. “Everyone. And not just because you’re on the front page of the paper. The order’s been passed that anyone with any word of where you are should go to Dirty Dirk’s.”

  “Whose order?”

  “He didn’t know.”

  “Did Caleb Breest give it?”

  “He didn’t know. But there’s money behind it. Big money.”

  “We have to get out of here before the reinforcements come,” said Scrbacek. “Or worse, before Ed steps out the back of his diner.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  He thought for a moment, wiping more blood from the bridge of his nose. “Remember what the Contessa said, about finding the answers in my past, my present, my future?”

  “I remember.”

  “Maybe I’ll start at the beginning.”

  “So, which way’s that?” she said, looking around.

  The night sky was changing, a grayness reaching its fingers menacingly across the black. He faced the coming dawn and pointed to his left.

  “That way.”

  He walked along one street and then over to another and kept walking, always keeping the dawn to his right, ignoring the sirens that rose behind him. The Nightingale was walking with him, he was sure, but a hundred yards on, when he asked where she had learned to fight like that and turned around for an answer, she was gone, vanished into the thinning night. He looked along the street, swept his gaze over the rooftops, saw nothing. He rubbed more blood from the bridge of his nose and continued on his way, still hunted, still without refuge, still with less than a clue.

  But no longer without hope.

  THIRD NIGHT

  20

  TRENT FALLOW, PI

  See him there, Trent Fallow, PI, dark stringy hair, five-day growth of beard, Buddy Holly glasses, mouth an open O through which he breathes, constantly, gulping in the liters of oxygen needed to keep his great bulk fervidly metabolizing. He is obese, Trent Fallow, PI, morbidly so, he hasn’t been able to appreciate the woof of his dick for decades, but don’t blame him—he’s just big-boned.

  Trent Fallow, PI, wears tentlike jeans, cinched at his equatorial waist, and a scabrous checked sport coat over T-shirts bearing cheap advertising slogans from down-and-out Crapstown join
ts, picked up on clearance for a buck and a half. And he packs licensed heat, a Colt Detective Special with six .38 cartridges and no safety device, which he harnesses in the gap between the folds of his chest and the loose fat hanging from his arm. One would never consider him quick on the draw—he’s not actually quick at anything—and, in a fair fight, by the time he could lumber into position, excavate the revolver from his slabs of fat, and wrap his pudgy finger around the trigger, a quicker shot with an automatic could have riddled Fallow’s stomach with lead, reloaded, and riddled it some more. In a fair fight, he wouldn’t stand a chance, Trent Fallow, PI, which is why he avoids fair fights.

  See him there, Trent Fallow, PI, stepping out of his office to make his way through the streets of Crapstown. His T-shirt today heralds Honest Dan’s Expired Condoms at 69 West Buchanan Street, with a slogan on the back: More Bang for the Buck. It’s noon, but for a guy like Fallow, who prowls for scraps in the night like a hyena, it seems ungodly early, and sleep lays crusty in his blackened eyes. He’d still be in bed nursing his wounds, but he has a job to do, a desperate job on which his very life hinges. He grabs a tabloid from the vendor on the corner.

  “How you doing, Frankie?” says Trent Fallow, PI.

  “Good, Mr. Fallow. Real good.”

  “How’s the wife?”

  “Still dead, Mr. Fallow.”

  “Attaboy, Frankie. You doing something right.”

  He tips Frankie the usual dime and glances at the front of the paper. His bruised and bloody face spasms with nervousness. From the wince at the newspaper and the damaged face, the inevitable assumption rises that the newspaper headlines and the brutal beating he recently suffered are somehow related. He folds the paper quickly, twists his head, flashing worried looks fore and aft, and then steps back to Frankie’s shed.

  “Hey, Frankie,” he says, dropping a fiver and a Trent Fallow, PI, business card on a pile of papers, just atop the face of J.D. Scrbacek smiling above the fold on the front page. “Do me a favor.”

  “Anything, Mr. Fallow.”

  “You see this guy plastered on the front page, you give me a call, all right?”

  “Will do, Mr. Fallow.”

  “You call me before you call anyone else, you got it? Even before the police. You let me take care of it, and there will be a bonus in it for you.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. Fallow.”

  Trent Fallow, PI, pulls out more cards from his pocket and places them in a pile beside the scratched change tray. “Pass the word. Anyone finds him and calls me first gets himself a nice bonus. A nice bonus. Okay, Frankie?”

  He winks, and Frankie winks back.

  “Will do, Mr. Fallow.”

  “Good boy, Frankie,” says Trent Fallow, PI, before heading off, not noticing the way Frankie, the fifty-three-year-old newsboy, still mourning the death of his life’s love after a brutal six-month battle with ovarian cancer, stares after him with dark cheeks and narrowed eyes before taking the neat pile of cards and dumping them in the trash can.

  Trent Fallow, PI, has himself a killer of a problem, and it isn’t his fault. Ask him, he’ll tell you—it isn’t his fault. It all started at Dirty Dirk’s one night when he was simply minding his own damn business. Dirk’s, where he can’t anymore show his face until the problem is solved. He was at Dirk’s when Joey Torresdale called him over. What was he going to do, say no to Caleb Breest’s right-hand man? Hell, the Lady Baltimore was on the stage, and what he wanted to be doing was to edge his way between the tables and flash his fivers and wait for sweet Baltimore to sashay that firm white ass of hers over to him and squat down in those strappy heels and pucker those sexy lips like she’s got his schlong right there between her teeth while he snaps her thong just enough to stick the bills inside and maybe catch a whiff of her sweet sweaty scent. That’s what he wanted to be doing. But when Joey Torresdale called him over, Trent Fallow, PI, came running as usual.

  “Hey, Trent,” said Torresdale, his big putty nose red from too much booze. “I want you to meet my dear friend J.D. Scrbacek. He’s representing Caleb.”

  “Hey, good luck on that,” said Trent Fallow. “We need the big guy out and about.”

  “J.D. is looking for a PI to work with him on the case. I told him you’re the man.”

  “You got that right,” said Fallow. “Anything you want, J.D., you got.” Fallow pulled a card out of his jeans. “Whenever you’re ready to sit down and lay out what you need, give me a call.”

  “I will,” said J.D. Scrbacek. “Yes, I will.”

  And so he did, that son of a bitch, and now Trent Fallow, PI, is in the big dark deep.

  21

  THE MARINA DISTRICT

  J.D. Scrbacek, the object of Trent Fallow’s ire, had slipped unnoticed through the streets of the city while the PI was still snoring in his fetid bed like a fat boar. As the dangerous dawn reached across the whole of the night sky, and a gray light rose as if from the streets themselves, Scrbacek had hunched himself deeper within the turned-up collar of his raincoat and scurried forward as if in a race with the sun.

  The landscape was different here than in the heart of Crapstown, the streets better paved, the cars better maintained, the tenements rehabbed into garden apartments and the occasional town house. The windows of the lower levels still were barred, true, but the cast iron was of a higher degree of craftsmanship. And there were no slashes of graffiti here, just flyers tacked onto posts hyping a community rally to protest Diamond’s casino development plan. The trees growing from square plots in the sidewalk were alive, the flowers in the flower boxes had blooms. Coming out of Crapstown to the Marina District on the northern fringe of the city was like emerging into a fresh and fragrant dawn.

  To Scrbacek the landscape here was as familiar as an old friend. He had spent his first few years after law school right here, eating in the Portuguese diner patronized by the commercial fishermen who docked their boats in the harbor, shopping in the mom-and-pop grocery, sipping cappuccino in the coffee bar that opened beside the dry cleaner, walking the dog along the still undeveloped coastline, crabbing in the bay.

  It was an impossible conglomeration of ruins when they had moved there, buying and rehabbing the house because it was the only way they could afford a place of their own. But they were not alone in their industry. A whole community of pioneers worked to turn the Marina District into something other than a swath of urban blight. And, against all odds, they had succeeded. Scrbacek had always been proud of his part in the rebirth of the Marina District. He looked upon its resurgence as a personal triumph, though he had also been quick enough to leave as soon as he had freed Amber Grace from a death sentence and became a legal eagle earning enough to afford his own building in Casinoland.

  But now here he was again. And this was the street on which he had lived. And this was the house.

  Scrbacek stood in the shadows and searched the landscape. He had checked out the parked cars one by one, walking carefully past, peering inside to see if there was anyone sitting with a cup of coffee and the remnants of a half dozen donuts waiting for him to pop up at his old haunt. The cars had all been empty. The street was deserted. He stood a moment more and examined the town house across the way. No lights, no movement. In a lower-level window, a poster for an antidevelopment rally had been slipped behind the glass. Still the rabble-rouser. He took a step toward the house when suddenly a door opened beside him. He jumped back into the shadows.

  A runner in her long-sleeved T-shirt and gloves, turning away from his position and heading off down the street, ponytail bobbing like a pony’s tail.

  The day was blossoming, and so was the danger. When the runner was far enough away, he left the landing, scooted across the street, and stepped up to the front door of his old house. He pressed the button of the bell that had never worked while he had lived there. It still didn’t. He lifted up the knocker, with an exotic face on its handle that looked vaguely like that of the Contessa Romany, and let it drop.

&nbs
p; A dog barked, and a long moment later a light appeared through the door’s peephole, died for a few seconds, and appeared again. Then the door opened just enough for the dog to stick his black shiny muzzle through, gulping at Scrbacek’s scent. Through the crack, Scrbacek saw a woman clutching at her robe.

  She was beautiful still, with long black hair, high cheekbones, lovely eyes. Older now, tired, but still oh so beautiful. Behind her was a man in jeans and no shirt, with bare feet and dirty blond hair. The woman looked at Scrbacek’s face for a long time without saying a word, then opened the door a bit wider to search the street behind him. Satisfied, apparently, that there was no immediate mortal threat, she opened the door wide enough for the dog, a great black monster, to leap through the opening and jump up to his chest. The dog showed his teeth and then licked Scrbacek’s chin.

  “You’re a mess,” said Jenny Ling after she had let him in, closed the door firmly behind him, and slid shut both of the locks.

  “I’ve had a rough couple of nights,” said Scrbacek, kneeling down to scratch the dog’s neck as the dog flipped his hind legs back and forth like a hyperactive wind-up doll and breathed in Scrbacek’s foul gaminess. “Hey, Palsgraf, how’s my buddy? How you doing? You still a good dog? Yes, you are, yes. Yes, you are.”

  The dog thrashed his tail and washed Scrbacek’s face with his great pink tongue.

  “He remembers you,” she said.

  “It’s nice to be remembered.”

  “What happened to your nose?”

  Scrbacek stood and wiped at the wound. Still oozing. “I cut myself shaving.”

  “What were you using, a Bowie knife? I’m making coffee. You want coffee?”

  “Not if you still make it thick as sludge and tasting of acid.”

  “None for you, then,” she said, turning and heading for the kitchen. As she did, she passed the man with the blond hair. “This is Dan,” she said without stopping. “He was just leaving. Dan, meet America’s most wanted, J.D. Scrbacek.”