I thought I had come here to bully Goodman. Instead I was the one with my back against the wall.
Goodman clasped my hand. “Mr. Big wants to talk. He’s got questions about you and your friend.”
“Who is this Mr. Big?”
“Does it matter? You don’t think you can handle him? I thought you wanted your friend back. No? Then stay out here and pick your nose.” He gestured toward the guards. “They need something to do.”
I had Goodman by the neck but he had me by the balls. I let go. “What kind of questions?”
“That’s between you and him.”
I looked back at Krandall and Peltier. She was touching her earpiece.
I warned them: “There isn’t a bullet fast enough to kill me before I can rip the heart out of your boss. Either one of you want to bet that I couldn’t kill you now?”
I expected Peltier to flinch in horror. Instead she put a hand on her submachine gun and flicked the safety to the fire position.
I pushed Goodman into his golf cart. “You drive. Don’t want to keep your Mr. Big waiting.”
He got behind the wheel and I sat next to him. I rested my hand on his shoulder. “Goodman, if I detect anything suspicious…”
Goodman massaged the red marks I’d left on his neck. “You mean more suspicious than being escorted by a platoon of armed guards through a golf course?”
Good point. “Despite what you think,” I replied, “the odds aren’t in your favor.”
“Don’t get too cocky, my weird friend.” Goodman’s demeanor frosted. “I’ve made a career of beating the odds.”
“So have I.”
Goodman pursed his lips in contempt before giving a rude smile. He pressed the accelerator pedal and the cart rolled forward. He drove on the asphalt cart path toward the hotel. I counted more than thirty guards along the way. Hotel guests gathered a safe distance from the display of firepower and gawked at the spectacle.
My sixth sense buzzed constantly, from what, specifically, I couldn’t tell. Despite the fact that he was but one short second from decapitation, Goodman seemed at ease; then again, he was a professional assassin. A squad of snipers could be aiming for my head, or the cushion under me could be hiding a Claymore mine.
I thought about what got me started on this case. “You murdered Odin, didn’t you?”
Goodman sneered. “You can only murder humans.”
“What about Marissa? She was human.”
“I had to.”
“Why?”
Goodman kept quiet.
I poked a talon against his ribs. “You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to live, either.”
Goodman said, “Sure you want to do that? It would make your job harder.”
“Why would you care? You’ll be dead.”
Goodman must have thought about that, because he offered, “The nosy bitch knew too much.”
“About whom?” I asked. “Naomi Peyton?”
The color receded from Goodman’s ruddy cheeks. “You know too much.”
“Not enough. What about Vanessa Tico and Janice Wyndersook? Where are they? Or did you kill them too?”
“They’re still alive.”
Where? Why? Are they with Carmen? “Why are you telling me this?”
“To make you aware of the stakes involved. You make a wrong move and it’ll be more than your friend Carmen who gets popped for good.”
I snatched Goodman by the throat. He grunted like he was passing a stone. “Don’t put their murders on my head.” Droplets of my spit sprayed into his face.
The cart shuffled to a halt. I wanted to squeeze his neck until his eyeballs popped out.
“You caused their commuter plane to crash, didn’t you? And murdered seventeen more innocent people.”
“It’s called collateral damage.”
Collateral damage? “What about Karen Beck? More collateral damage?”
Luminous red spots the size of peas floated on my arms. A couple of the dots hovered on my nose and dazzled my eyes. The guards were painting me with the laser pointers on their rifles.
Goodman’s eyes traced the laser dots dancing on my face. “Go ahead and play the angry macho man. See where that gets you.”
It would finish me off and Carmen would remain a prisoner. I let go. The laser dots disappeared.
Goodman took a deep breath. “I did what I had to do.”
“What you’ve done is mass murder,” I said. “And you’re admitting it?”
“What are you going to do about it? Tell the world? You’re a fucking alien.”
Alien? By using the word, Goodman admitted he knew about the extraterrestrials. I wanted to shout my questions at him, then pick him up by the ankles to shake the answers loose. But if I asked him, then I’d be giving away what I knew or didn’t know. Let him think I was an alien.
“What do you care?” he said.
I grabbed his collar. “I care about Carmen. Why did you do it? Why did you murder all those people? To cover up the kidnapping of Tico and Wyndersook? To kidnap Carmen?”
Goodman tensed his arms as he put a death grip on the steering wheel. His knuckles turned white. “Ever try making people disappear? Pretty soon the numbers add up and the goddamn noise about what happened to all these broads can get fucking deafening.”
“You like being a murderer on the government’s payroll?”
Goodman stared, and his expression grew ever more hateful. “Do me a goddamn favor, Felix. Don’t patronize me. I know I’m a henchman for this kleptocracy we call a democratic republic. I’ve always been a soldier. I still am. They give me my orders and I say, yes sir, three bags full.”
“Only following orders? You sound like a Nazi.”
Goodman stepped on the accelerator. The cart lurched forward. “Read your history books.” Goodman added a dismissive look. “We didn’t beat the Nazis by being pussies.”
“These are innocent women, not Nazis.”
“Orders are orders.”
“If you ever met Mother Teresa,” I said, “I’m sure she’d shoot you.”
“Not if I shot her first.”
“What happened to the blaster you used on Marissa and Odin?”
“I gave it back to Mr. Big.”
Was Mr. Big an alien? Why had he ordered the hit on Gilbert Odin? What did Mr. Big have to do with the disappearance of the women? Was this the threat the Araneum wanted me to investigate? Every question was like a box with another question inside.
We passed through a cordon of guards. Goodman nodded at them and they nodded back.
“Think you’ve seen everything?”
“Why do you ask?” I replied.
“Because if you think you’ve seen everything, guess again, wise guy.” Goodman smirked. “Compared to what’s coming up, you haven’t seen shit.”
Chapter
40
Goodman took a left and followed the fence around the service area. We rolled behind the maintenance shed and the Dumpsters and continued past the parking garage.
I’d come here to rescue Carmen and instead I was letting my enemies take me deeper into their lair. The guilt of failing to protect her weighed on me. My hidden ace was that Goodman assumed I was an alien and had no idea that I was a vampire. When the time came, I hoped my supernatural powers were enough to help me find and free Carmen and for both of us to escape.
Krandall and Peltier trailed behind us with three more carts and a Gator after them. Each of those carts carried three armed guards, the Gator four. To complete our little circus parade all we needed was a brass band and a bear riding a tricycle.
Our convoy went beyond the back of the hotel and halted at the gate in the chain-link fence around the enclosure of the annex building.
Two guards wearing sunglasses and cradling submachine guns waited for us. An electric motor retracted the gate.
Goodman drove the cart over the threshold and into the grassy enclosure the size of a baseball infield. A concrete pad with a ye
llow H occupied the middle of the enclosure. This was where I’d seen the military helicopter land before.
The annex, a featureless three-story box with the antenna farm on the roof, stood to our right.
The gate closed behind us. The guards and the other carts remained outside the enclosure. As far as I could tell, Goodman and I were alone, though I was sure we were being watched.
I didn’t notice an entrance into the annex until Goodman headed toward a concrete driveway that inclined into the ground under the wall. We proceeded down the incline. A metal door scrolled open and we entered an underground corridor.
My kundalini noir tightened with apprehension. I put my hand on Goodman’s leg above the knee and pressed my talons into his thigh. If this was an ambush, I’d pull him apart like a wishbone.
Goodman didn’t slow the golf cart as we drove onto the linoleum floor and under the fluorescent lights. The whine of the cart’s motor echoed in the hall. The corridor continued straight down a long tunnel that must connect the annex to the main hotel building. A second hallway opened to our right. Placards on the doors of wall compartments indicated access to power and water conduits. We made a right turn at this second hall and stopped at a set of elevator doors. They pinged open and waited for us. We were being watched, for sure.
Goodman halted in front of the doors. I locked my fingers around his arm. We got out of the cart and walked into the elevator. I turned Goodman toward the video camera in the upper left corner. I grasped his chin and lifted his face to the camera. I scratched his neck with a talon to make him wince. “There’s more of that, if your friends are not careful.”
The doors closed and the elevator rose. I got ready for anything and held Goodman by the back of his collar. If the floor dropped, I’d leap through the ceiling. If a flamethrower sprayed fire, I’d use Goodman for cover.
The elevator stopped on the second floor. In the moment before the door opened, I listened carefully. I detected no rustle of clothing, no muffled click of a weapon’s safety moved into the firing position, nothing that threatened me.
When the door opened, I pushed Goodman in front of me into a deserted foyer. A simple steel door stood across from us. A red light glowed above the access lever. The light went off and a green one lit up.
Goodman grasped the lever. He paused and glanced over his shoulder at me. Did his look telegraph a warning?
“Think twice before you try to surprise me, Goodman,” I warned.
“You’re going to be surprised all right, hero boy.”
The door swung open. We entered a large sitting room decorated with high-end wood furnishings. Pistachio-green floor mats, table linen, and tapestries accented the room. Fresh flowers-red alpinias and camellias, purple and white pansies, and yellow trumpet flowers-stood in crystal vases on a console table and a credenza. Despite the blossoms, the room smelled like a humidor.
A fabric screen of shiny green material partitioned the floor. Past the left side of the screen I could see the door of what looked like a freight elevator. What did that transport?
In front of the screen sat an emerald-green velvet love seat and a leather cigar chair. This place was right off the cover of Better Homes and Gardens.
Something stirred behind the partition. Mr. Big? My sixth sense tingled.
Chapter
41
“Colonel Goodman, you are dismissed.” The voice was high-pitched yet sounded male, like a teenage boy breathing helium.
Goodman tugged against my grip.
I held firm. “You and I are in this for the duration.”
“We have your friend,” the voice behind the screen reminded.
Goodman gave a dirty grin, like he’d wiped a booger on my sleeve and there was nothing I could do about it.
I let go. Goodman straightened his rumpled collar. He backed out the door and it snapped closed. A light beside the door lock went from green to red.
Who lurked behind the screen? I knew it wasn’t the Wizard of Oz. I was sure it was an alien and hoped it didn’t come out with Carmen’s head in one hand and a blaster in the other. My kundalini noir knotted into a tight ball, like a fist ready to strike.
I removed my sunglasses and surveyed the room again, looking for any obvious threat. I could trust nothing and expected the worst.
“Have a seat, please,” the voice said from behind the screen.
I walked to the love seat and cigar chair. Both pieces of furniture looked normal enough. A step of polished heavy wood had been pushed against the front of the chair. Why the step? Was Mr. Big a midget?
An end table, in a finish matching the step, separated the chair and love seat. On the table sat a heavy crystal ashtray and a shallow glass bowl with a red cactus blossom floating in water.
The step indicated that the chair was reserved, so I stood beside the love seat and waited. I remained very still, to let my sixth sense absorb every nuance. My muscles remained primed to react to anything.
Whatever was behind the screen moved into view: a short bipedal creature with skin the texture and color of tarnished green leather. A yellow aura surrounded him like he stood inside a burning torch.
Yellow aura. Extraterrestrial.
I stood in stunned disbelief. This little goblin was Mr. Big?
Beside being called “mister,” it was the smooth head and masculine form that made me assume this thing was male. His head had the shape of an egg-the narrow end formed his chin-and was the size of a basketball. His almond-shaped black eyes were as large and glossy as billiard balls. I couldn’t discern any features within the obsidian orbs, no separate pupil or iris.
Twin nostrils the shape and size of coin slots occupied the blank space between his eyes and lipless mouth. A pair of tiny, bud-like ears sprouted on opposite sides of the crown of his bald head.
His skinny ankles were attached to dumbbell-shaped feet that had wide circular pads for “toes” and “heels.”
As a vampire, I was used to the grotesque, but this repulsive dwarf belonged in a freak show from hell.
Is this what Odin looked like in his natural state? Or was this alien a different species altogether?
He appeared similar to another alien I’d seen, a corpse recovered from the wreckage of the Roswell UFO. I learned that during my investigation for Gilbert Odin, when he had used me for his own devious ends.
I gave the alien a vampire glare. He took no notice of my naked eyes. When first I tried to zap Gilbert Odin, nothing happened either.
I had also experienced this before with one human. She not only proved invulnerable to vampire hypnosis but used her knowledge of the supernatural to manipulate us-the undead. Didn’t do her much good, ultimately, because another human killed her.
Neither she nor Odin could see my aura and, hopefully, this alien couldn’t either. I still had that advantage.
Yet, when his gaze turned upon me, I sensed a confidence and a paternal charisma, like he was used to being in charge.
He wore a simple gray suit buttoned up the front to a high Mandarin collar. The material looked like satin. The alien carried an unlit cigar. As he walked closer, I was struck by how short he was, maybe four foot six.
He motioned to the love seat with his free hand. He had three digits: two fingers and a thumb. All were thin and sinuous, like tentacles, and ended in flat disks. His mouth curved into a pandering smile that meant “please.”
He climbed on the step and turned around. We sat simultaneously-I, slowly and cautiously.
He planted those weird feet of his on the step, the toe pads drooping over the front. He relaxed and crossed his legs.
I said nothing and waited for him. My sixth sense made the hairs on my arms bristle.
Unlike Odin, this freaky creation had no cabbage odor; in fact, I couldn’t smell anything except for the flowers and tobacco. But the stink of sleaze was as tangible to me as was his aura. I hadn’t come all this way only to stare at his ugly face. Time for Q and A about the only reason I was here.
“Where is Carmen?”
His lipless mouth moved again, but it took a second for the words to come out, as if he were being dubbed. “Safe.”
“Not as long as you have her.” I clenched my fist. Careful. At the moment, I couldn’t afford to antagonize this little green spaceman. Goodman and the security complex deferred to this Mr. Big, meaning he was numero uno. I relaxed my hand.
The alien noticed this and nodded once, pleased that I acknowledged the situation. He lifted the cigar and stared at it. “My name is Clayborn.” He repeated his name, as if amused by the sound. “Clayborn.”
I wasn’t surprised that he spoke English, but his squeaky voice threw me off. Was he the one who ordered Gilbert Odin’s assassination? Clayborn, or whatever the hell his moniker was, possessed a gangster’s arrogance, so I didn’t doubt it. I’d find out why he murdered Odin, and why Goodman and our government protected his ET ass. But first, I had to rescue Carmen.
Clayborn swung that black gaze to me. “Goodman told me that he’d found another one of us. But you’re not, are you?”
They knew I wasn’t human, and so assumed I was not of this earth. Good enough. It didn’t matter what they thought I was as long as they didn’t know I was a vampire. “You didn’t answer my question. Where is Carmen?”
“And you didn’t answer mine. I don’t recognize you as any of the species in the Galactic Union.” Clayborn pointed upward with the cigar.
“Okay, I’m not one of you. There’s your answer.”
“Where are you from?”
“Colorado.”
Clayborn nodded again, his manner less amused than irritated. “What’s your business here?”
“To get my friend Carmen. Let her go and then we’ll chat over tea and cookies. Where is she? Why did you take her?”
He rolled the cigar between his fingers. “That concerns my business.”
“Which is what?”
Clayborn blinked. When his eyes closed, both wrinkled eyelids looked like the butt ends of overripe avocados. That creepy smile deepened. He pressed the cigar against his nose slits and inhaled. “You smoke?”
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