Paint the Toon Red

by A. J. Mayall

  Okay, I know I said pacifist, but growing up how I did, sometimes you also gotta “pass a fist” into someone’s face, like those frat boys.

  I saw his computer setup and whistled. It was impressive and definitely better than the floor model I got from some computer liquidation sale.

  “We got a deal. Can you show me how to use these things?” I said, pointing to the pistols.

  Chance grinned. “I have a feeling we’re gonna get along just fine.”

  CHAPTER 12

  I convinced Snappy to let this new task be my primary action for him. He seemed almost giddy that I wanted to digitize the entire catalog of every toon he had helped process, going back almost a hundred years. Even with me and Chance both going over it without the extra research he was putting into things, it would easily take us a month or two. That time was well spent with him training me how to use almost every weapon he had in his warehouse.

  It had taken some time to get used to the guns’ kickback when you weighed practically nothing; it was a serious issue. Plus, my toony fingers were fat, so pulling the trigger sometimes posed a problem. The upside was that wearing gloves all the time meant no fingerprints, not that I had any, and, well, toons don’t shoot people.

  I was busy practicing at the range he had set up. Somehow, he found a set of noise-canceling earmuffs that fit my big ears. Not to toot my own horn, but my aim had gotten good, and the weeks had gone by a lot faster than I was expecting. Despite all the time learning and refining these skills took, Kyle and I talked on the phone almost every night.

  He didn’t like that I’d put off actually seeing him for so long, but he accepted that work took up most of my time, just like it took up most of his. Now, though, I was ready to show him who I was, but I needed to get this, my training, taken care of first. I spent a goodly number of nights back at the warehouse, and Chance and I became good friends.

  If you’d told me a month ago that I’d be hanging out with a mercenary and discovered that I was actually fairly competent with firearms, I’d’ve called you a goddamn liar. Frankly, if you’d told me anything about what had happened in the last month, I’d’ve called you a goddamn liar…well, except for the asshole frat boys; I probably would’ve believed you on that.

  I made a point of checking in with Barry every few days. He congratulated me on staying off the radar. I didn’t have the heart to tell him what I’d been doing; I don’t think that he’d have approved, but extreme situations call for extreme measures.

  Chance told me more about Vic Pascu. He was an innocent kid, probably no more than eighteen when he disappeared. His mother was a politician and was well known for breaking up crime families in Romania. His father was an established businessman who had reinvested in the local community. The protection racket run by the local crime lords was practically put out of business, as a result.

  All that mattered to me was putting a bullet between Pamela Blake’s eyes for what she had taken from me.

  While we outnumbered her, she had a lot of visitors, most of whom Chance knew as black marketeers. We planned to raid her place, but we would have to do it at night. At any other time, there would’ve been a greater risk that we would fight more people. Me, being a toon, meant acting as the meat shield would be the obvious thing to do. The thing is, I didn’t want to feel fifty bullets going into me, even if I knew I’d survive the encounter.

  With this in mind, Chance taught me how to shoot fast from around corners, evasive maneuvers, jujitsu, and Krav Maga. Chance had some serious training under his belt. He said he’d worked for years running black ops as a contractor for various military organizations, mostly in Europe, but beyond that, he didn’t like to talk about it.

  It was nice being taken under the wing and being treated like just one of the guys by someone. My guess is he understood what it was like to be a part of society but still be outside of it.

  He commented that my focus when put to a task nearly rivaled his own. I took that as a compliment. Impressed that I still kept connections outside of a job, mostly Kyle, my apartment, etc., he said that once this was over, I could run ops for him and that the pay was great.

  I didn’t know about that. I mean, yeah, tracking down a missing teenager who’d been gone for almost 10 years seemed like a nice thing to do, but what would the next job be? Going after Mexican cartel? Flying to Russia and taking out a diplomat? That’s the sort of blood I didn’t want to have on my hands. I didn’t want to have any blood on my hands.

  Chance was at his computer; he had a VPN on a laptop running an operating system I’d never seen before, doing all of his dealings on the dark web. He showed me how everything worked. I even got some logins and a crash course on how to handle more delicate transactions.

  For the most part, when I wasn’t training, I was doing my job for Snappy. I photocopied everything twice: one for City Hall, one for Snappy. After updating the database with the information, Chance got the original copyrights and an update to his copy of the database. There were hundreds, if not thousands of toons in there.

  “Ugh,” I said, setting another stack aside. “None of these give us anything to work with. We have no confirmation that they did anything other than meet. Even if she did, we have no proof she converted him into a toon. And if she did, you know, how would we know?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe she kept a record. Snappy wouldn’t necessarily know anything.”

  “Okay, fine, but then what? We find the toon and tell him that he actually was human at one point? He’s not gonna have any memory of that, so I’m hoping he wasn’t one of the converted.”

  “She does deal with humans as well, you know.”

  I nodded. “I know, but still, worst-case scenario, we take her out, we get all of her info, and we find some—I dunno—hedgehog or wolf or something who doesn’t want to talk to us, who won’t believe us, because he’ll have no memory of being Ludovic Pascu.”

  Chance grunted. “Yeah, don’t remind me, but we have to try.”

  I walked back to the firing range and set the guns back in their designated cases, closing and locking them.

  “Seriously, Fairfax, you really are good at this.”

  “I don’t know if I have the stomach to do what you do, man. It’s like…this, now? Yeah, I can handle it because it’s personal but, I mean, you answer to the highest bidder. Do you…”

  Chance looked at me. “I was wondering when you’d ask. You want to know if I go for the highest bidder or if I’m a little more selective in who I go for.”

  I nodded. “I’ve seen some of the contracts that are out there for people like you. Some of them are husbands and wives who want to get their spouses killed, people who want to have business rivals just taken out or to have information planted on them.”

  I pointed to one of the requests that had been on a screen. “That one right there wanted someone to take child pornography, hack into a senator’s computer, and plant it in there to discredit him! Why would you even—I want to go after the people making the child porn and make them pay!”

  Chance patted me on the shoulders. “Yeah, I generally don’t take jobs that involve kids unless it’s something like this.”

  “He’s got to be in his mid-20s by now, almost 30, yeah?”

  “And people are still looking for him. They want him found and I’ll find him. I made a promise that I would bring him back to Romania, come hell or high water, no matter what condition I found him in. If that means he comes back in a body bag, so be it.”

  “Let’s go over the equipment again. I can’t carry much, so you’ll have to tell me what you’re bringing.”

  He nodded and unpacked a few crates, put on a pair of goggles, and then a metal framework around his arms that locked at the wrist up to the shoulder. At the bottom, on the elbow, he plugged in several magazines for his Desert Eagles.

  “What does this do again?” I asked.

  “They wirelessly connect to the eyepiece,” he said, pointing at the goggles. “
I aim at someone, and I’m a pretty damn good shot, but this automatically pulls my arm into the optimal position, down to half a millimeter, for a lethal shot. I generally use this with more silent weapons, but I’m prepared for the worst, especially considering what could happen if I get knocked out.”

  I shuddered; I hadn’t thought about that. I thought I was putting a lot at risk, but Chance could get knocked out and wake up the next day like Brandon and not even have any recollection of who he was the day before. If I got caught, they could just torture me until my body finally gave in.

  “I can go in through the front gate, but—”

  Chance shook his head. “You’d have to put in your passcode, and that would get logged. I’m going to head over and carry you in my backpack…”

  I huffed.

  “Hey, you weigh like 40, 50 pounds, tops. It’s hard enough for you to fire big guns.”

  “Fine.”

  “Because of that, I’m not to be able to carry as much computer equipment as I normally would for an information extraction like this. I’ve been doing some surveillance on the place. It looks like she’s got more people coming by tonight. I think they’re prepping for another conversion, but it’s not going to happen tonight.”

  “Don’t you want to wait until she’s alone?”

  Chance shook his head. “I want to take her out of business, and I want there to be at least one person to run away, a living message to the next guy wanting to do whatever the fuck they think they were doing to never, ever even consider trying it again.”

  I whistled. “Well, damn, man! Let’s do this!”

  I stood at the ready and had the worst kink in my neck. The back of my bowtie was the only place I could secure both guns and I only had room for one magazine in each shoe. A second was stuffed behind the back of each hand in my gloves. My supply was limited. Had it been one on one, it would’ve been more than enough, but God knows what we’d walk into.

  We drove to Snappy’s neighborhood, but took a few different turns and found a wooded area that abutted to the back of Snappy’s property. I crawled into the backpack and tried to shimmy myself in a small as possible. With the laptop hugged to my chest, I leaned back on one of the spare hard drives.

  Chance secured the pack to his back and trudged through the dark woods. It had to have been close to midnight. I saw Chance looking around when we’d reached the wall around Snappy’s estate. Then he scaled a tree.

  “I’m going to toss you over into the yard.”

  “Wait, what are you—”

  “Hold onto the computer!”

  “Wait, no!”

  I was airborne and then fell about 9 feet onto my side. My shoulder screamed in pain, but I held onto that laptop and did my best to roll.

  “Fuuuuu…” I wheezed, the wind knocked out of me.

  Chance scaled the wall and dropped down beside me about 20 seconds later.

  “Come on, get up!”

  “Fuck, I think my shoulder’s dislocated!”

  “We don’t have time for this shit. Get up!”

  I shook my head and crawled out of the bag. My left arm was hanging a bit limp and I had to flick my left wrist with my right hand. Definitely dislocated, which is odd, considering I didn’t really have bones.

  “Son of a bitch, why didn’t you just carry me on your back?”

  “I couldn’t afford to carry that much weight and drop that far. Sorry man, I’m so used to toons shaking shit off and—”

  “We’ve been working together, practicing for the better part of a month, and it never occurred to you that a nine-foot fall would hurt me as much as if I were a human with no physical training in this shit?”

  “Let me see what I can do.” He looked at my limp rubber hose arm, grabbed my shoulder, and pulled. I yelped slightly, and I was worried that we would alert the guesthouse, but to my relief, nothing happened.

  There was a meaty pop. I was able to move it somewhat, but I would definitely need Barry’s help on this. It felt really weak.

  “Okay, I think it’s just sprained now or something. I’m gonna need a cast.”

  “You are such a baby. Come on, I’ve completed jobs after being shot.”

  “This is my first job, and I’ve never been shot, and I don’t want to be shot.”

  He grunted as I walked beside him, still rubbing my sore shoulder. “You go into shock pretty fast, actually. It feels like you’ve been punched really hard and the shock to the system prevents a majority of the pain from actually getting your senses. When it fades, it’s one of the worst things you can feel.”

  “It doesn’t make me feel any better about this whole thing.”

  He looked at me. “You’ll live through it. They shoot me, I could just be DOA.”

  I looked at him. “Yeah, and if I collapse because I’m in too much pain, all they have to do is unload every ammo clip we brought into me. Eventually, my body will just tornado and I’ll be whoever they wanted me to be in the first place.”

  There was a bright flash and Chance pointed off in the distance. We hid behind some foliage as five black sedans, led by Pamela’s car, entered the estate.

  “So that was why no one responded to my crying out,” I muttered under my breath. “We got here just in time.”

  I lost count of how many huge muscular men in tight but well-fitted suits emerged from the cars. There was also an older man with a few younger men who did not seem to have the same build.

  Chance grabbed a pair of pocket binoculars and peeked in. “I think…yeah, that’s the Dellamorte family. I was worried about this.”

  “Who?”

  “You don’t need to worry about them just now. They deal in human trafficking, primarily sex trafficking.”

  “So, what you’re saying is…”

  “I’m worried they’ll take some of their girls who been a little more uppity…”

  “Oh, God,” I muttered, realizing what he meant. “Turn them into toons, X-rated ones, and then they hold the copyright. The girls have to do whatever the hell they’re ordered to do.”

  He nodded.

  “And how do you know them?”

  “I did a job for them once,” he said. “Something I’m not terribly proud of.”

  He looked at me and saw the look of sheer shock and horror on my face.

  “I didn’t know what they were when I took the job! It was early days for me. It was good money, okay? Dirty money, blood money, but there was a lot of it. I’ve done some shit I’m not proud of; working with them is one of them.”

  I reached behind me and pulled out my pistols, checking to make sure that the safeties were on and that they were loaded. “Then let’s give you an opportunity to earn a bit of forgiveness for that sin, huh?”

  Chance gave me a side glance and nodded. “I suppose so.”

  “What did you—”

  Chance held up a hand. “I don’t wanna talk about it with you. Not yet. We know each other pretty well, but I don’t know you that well.”

  I nodded; I knew how it was.

  We waited for a few minutes, peeking from the outside. They had a man stationed on either side of the front and back doors. We circled the place a few times, keeping a good, long distance. The thugs or bodyguards or whatever they were weren’t expecting anyone to come around, so they were taking their jobs pretty lightly.

  “Okay, okay,” Chance said, looking through the binoculars. “I see one in the kitchen, one at the door to the basement, and my guess is there’s probably seven men downstairs, and that’s not counting the Dellamortes and Pamela. What’s your thinking?”

  “I’m still technically allowed to be on the grounds, and I’m a toon, so they’re not going to suspect me of doing anything violent.”

  Chance nodded.

  “I’ll just run around to the front. I’ll try to act a little bit more wacky than usual and ask to come in. If the guy turns me down or refuses to let me talk to Pamela, you take on the back door. You’ll cause enough of a ruck
us that the guy will turn around to see what’s going on but he won’t see me sneak in.”

  Chance grinned. “That is...,” he whistled, “an oddly effective technique. Damn, Fairfax! You have a knack for this.”

  I shrugged, “I mean, to me it’s just basic strategy, just running the numbers.”

  Chance paused and scruffled my hair, I pushed him off, “Quiddit.”

  “What’s the rest of your plan, fox?”

  It took me a moment, but I continued, “If you come in through the back door, you’ll take out the first guy easily enough. The second guy on the inside is gonna run out, see what’s going on. You take him out. The guy in the kitchen will run toward you. I take out the guy at the door. The other guy’s going to be halfway to the back door when he hears my shot. He’ll turn around. I’ll get him while he’s confused, and then we basically sandwich him in, go downstairs and raise some hell.”

  “I’m buying you a beer after this. Hell, I’ll buy you a fucking bar with what I’m getting paid for this.”

  “Not necessary, but thanks.”

  This was it; it was time for my great act of vengeance and I was about to become a killer. I paused. Could I really go through with this? I looked at the man at the door, trying to imagine putting a bullet in him, watching the light go from his eyes. Then I thought about Kyle, and being made human again, and what I would pay for just my identity back.

  With what Chance had told me about these men, what they had done, and what they were likely about to do, I couldn’t let that stand. One bad action doesn’t make you a bad person, no matter how bad that action is. At least, that’s what I was trying to tell myself. I’d probably be fine at the end of the day.

  After all, toons don’t kill people.

  I stepped forward out of the shadows. Once I’d cycled around Snappy’s place, I whistled a jaunty tune, making sure I had some extra bounce in my step. I kept my back straight to make sure the guns didn’t jostle or make too much noise. God, my neck hurt from this…shoulders, too.