by Thomas Locke
“Your vision clarifies with practice. We need to leave that for later. Do you remember the final point we discussed last night?”
“Yes.” When they left the chamber, Charlie had crossed the foyer under his own steam, but Gabriella had kept a hand on his arm just the same.
The handsome guy’s name was Brett. Charlie remembered that now, how Brett had come forward and ordered Charlie to tell them what the number was. Pushing at him with his voice. Gabriella had called Brett by his name and told him to back off. He had simply demanded again, “Did you read the number?”
Charlie’s tongue had felt too thick for his mouth as he replied, “Nine-one-eight-eight.”
The others had smiled, and the geek had traded a high five with the Brazilian. Only Brett and Byron had not looked pleased.
“Charlie?”
He remembered how Gabriella had then pulled him away from the group. She had asked one of the Tibetan women to follow them in a second vehicle. When they were alone in the elevator Gabriella had spoken to him. She had used a tone he had not heard before, soft and urgent and perhaps a little frightened.
Charlie recalled, “You said the protocols demanded that I proceed through the process knowing nothing at all.”
“Very good, Charlie. Do you understand the term protocol?”
“Probably not the way you mean it.” Charlie’s boss used the term a lot. Before meeting with new clients, Major General Curtis Strang ordered his team to hold to proper protocol. What he meant was, his staff needed to be careful not to offend the power players.
Gabriella said, “In order to have a successful experiment, you must first define the boundaries. A scientist begins her research by establishing a controlled environment. Strict limitations are set on the stimuli you introduce. You develop a method for measuring both the stimuli and the subject’s response. All of these taken together are the experiment’s protocol.”
“Last night you said I wasn’t in an experiment.”
“No, Charlie, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. What I said was, your experience in the lab was not part of our trials. You were not participating as a test subject. But what brought you to us was indeed a part of our experiment. And for that I had to establish protocols. Otherwise the others would not allow me to introduce an outsider. Especially one with, well . . .”
“My dark side.”
“Are you so very dark, Charlie?”
“My wife thought so.”
“You are married, then.”
“I was. She died. Three years ago.”
“I’m so sorry, Charlie. Very, very sorry.” She hesitated, then said, “Every answer you give me only brings up more questions.”
That was exactly what Charlie was thinking. But all he said was, “So the protocol requires me to be completely out of the loop.”
“For now, yes. It is only temporary.”
“Until when?”
“You have a juncture arriving.”
“Excuse me?”
“Did I use the wrong word? A big choice. We all do. Different choices that may or may not bring us together again. But I hope you decide to join us, Charlie. I think we may need you very soon.”
“Are you in trouble, Gabriella?”
“Your turning comes very soon. Right or left. You must choose between the safety of your current life and the adventure of the complete unknown.”
Charlie almost told her that his life contained more than enough dangers already, then let it drop. “Are you a fortune-teller too?”
“I told you, Charlie. I am an experimental psychologist. How I know is only important if you decide to help us.”
“So what do I do, come back to the hospital?”
“We have left the lab and will never return. That was the objective behind the protocols, Charlie. That was why I had to be so careful about what I said. The others accepted our need to depart, despite all the wonderful elements that surrounded us. But only if last night you came with me and refused payment and then took part in the process and succeeded in reading the number.” She paused, then added, “So far, only about ten percent of all subjects are successful at what you have accomplished, no matter how we prepare them. And none on their first trial run.”
“Why so few?”
“It is a good question, Charlie. You may ask me that if we ever meet again. Right now, what you must understand is that my team faces our own juncture. In order for them to accept the danger I have seen, it was vital that you accomplished the impossible. Everything had to happen precisely as I had laid out to my team, before I drove down and met you and brought you back to our lab. Because you were successful, the others have agreed that the rest of what I said was also true.”
“That you’re in danger.”
“That we had to leave the lab.”
“My doing the impossible was a sign.”
“A vital indicator of direction, yes.” She hesitated a moment, and Charlie had the impression there was much more she wanted to say. Instead, she told him, “If you choose not to join us, that is all you will ever know. One of my team will contact you in thirty-six hours. Do not try to contact me in the meantime. If you decide not to assist us, throw away the phone. It is safer for both of us if you do not use it again.”
“What about the car?”
“You will need it very soon.”
“Say again?”
“Take this as your final bit of evidence that what I say is very real. We are in danger. Soon we will need your protection. Good-bye, Charlie Hazard. I am so very glad we met. And so sorry if this is indeed our farewell.” She was silent a long moment, then whispered, “Unless you choose to become my dark knight.”
5
This is it.” Julio pointed through the front windshield. “Third house on the left.”
Irma leaned forward and inserted herself between the two of them. “Drive on past the house.”
Charlie continued on to the end of the street, turned around, and parked so that the Range Rover was partially blocked by a towering oleander but granted them a clear view of the front door. “Does your aunt work?”
“Not in years. Easier to live off her men.”
“What about this latest boyfriend? He work somewhere?”
“Sure. Off the back of his bike.”
Charlie nodded to show the kid he understood. The state’s crack and crystal meth trades were both controlled by biker gangs. “Does he cook in the house?”
“Not anymore.”
Irma glared at the silent house. “I asked friends on the local force to stop by, they did it again yesterday. Which I’m guessing is why the new boyfriend gave Julio the black eye.”
Charlie went back to examining the house, a run-down single-story ranch. Local developers had thrown up thousands of them during the sixties, when Kennedy’s rush to the moon had fueled the region’s growth. Charlie pointed at the three Harley choppers parked in the drive, glinting like metal soldiers. “Who owns the other bikes?”
“His buddies come and go all the time. I mighta seen them before.” Julio’s standard tough-guy pose was gone. In its place was just a frightened kid. “Maybe we should come back later.”
“No. Now is fine.” But Charlie remained exactly where he was. The central bike’s right side was deeply scarred, like it had been slammed at high speed into the asphalt. The front wheel guard and saddle were pitted with tiny holes. Just as Charlie would have expected after being hit by a shotgun blast. He thought it over and decided it changed nothing.
He turned to Julio and asked, “You remember what I told you?”
“Sure, sure.”
“Look at me, Julio.”
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”
“Julio.”
The kid tore his gaze away from the silent house. “What?”
“This is my job. It’s the only thing I’m good at. I guard people for a living. It’s why Irma asked me to come with you, because she knows that no one will hurt you. Do you believe me?”<
br />
Julio blinked rapidly and did not speak.
“Focus on what I said. You don’t introduce me. You don’t look my way. As far as you’re concerned, I’m invisible. Irma, give us three minutes to clear the front room.”
“Roger that.”
Charlie reached for his door. “Okay, Julio. Let’s roll.”
He walked around to Julio’s side of the car and linked in as tight as sweat to the kid’s right side. Julio was so frightened he probably didn’t even realize he was talking. “My aunt, she’s made me her ward on account of how the state pays her a stipend. The social workers used to come around and check things out, but that stopped last fall when I turned seventeen.”
Charlie was dressed in castoffs from the community center’s goodwill hamper. He needed the people inside to assume he was just another of Julio’s crowd. He wore ripped sneakers and stained surfer shorts and an aloha shirt with the pocket ripped out. He covered his face with wrap-around shades and a frayed cap advertising a bar that had died years ago. “Does your aunt try to take care of you?”
“Sure thing, man. When she’s awake and straight.” The closer they got to the house, the harder Julio had to fight against the tremors. “Which is, like, never these days.”
“Okay. Up the stairs and across the porch and through the door and straight to your room. You don’t look at them, no matter what they say. You don’t speak. In and out.” Charlie mounted the stairs and opened the door.
The smell hit him before he was across the entrance, a sweetish funk from old sweat and garbage and dope. The guys were Hispanic and tattooed and big. They all wore jeans and biker vests and boots. The man sprawled on the sofa’s far end wore a walking cast on his left leg, and his face and shoulder were patched with bandages that looked overly white against the room’s dull interior. The three men sat in front of a chattering television. The largest guy snarled something at Julio. Charlie was a half step behind the kid, his hand on the small of Julio’s back, and felt him stiffen at the guy’s angry words. Charlie pressed him forward.
From the living room came a roar of anger, Charlie assumed from being dissed in front of his buddies. Fear pinched Julio’s face even tighter.
Charlie kept his voice level. “This your room?”
Julio nodded.
“Okay. Pack everything you need because you are not coming back.”
The voice from the front room shouted once more. There came the sound of boots thumping down the hall. Julio jammed books and a laptop and clothes into his backpack, his hands turning clumsy with terror. “Oh man.”
“Stay cool.” Charlie tossed the sunglasses into the garbage can. He moved to the bedroom doorway and crouched slightly, shoulders hunched, cap down low. Just a frightened oversized kid wishing he was somewhere else. Hands hidden down by his sides, like they were in his pockets.
The guy stepped into the doorway and snarled words Charlie didn’t need to understand. Up close he was hair and muscle and stink. A hand the size of a bear’s paw swiped at where Charlie’s face had just been. Only Charlie was moving now.
He gripped the guy’s wrist at the pressure point and swept his hand in the direction it had been going. Charlie accelerated the swing until the man’s forearm collided with the doorjamb. He trapped the arm there by applying his thumb to the nerve center inside the elbow. A simple jab. He had practiced the motion a hundred thousand times.
The guy’s eyes widened to where Charlie could see his pinpoint pupils. He was in low-altitude orbit, no question. Charlie hammered his rib cage just above the heart. Three quick one-hand punches, his fist only traveling back and forth about ten inches. Boom boom boom.
The guy started falling while still coming to terms with the fact that the kid in Julio’s doorway was neither a kid nor prey. Charlie clipped him once behind the ear and saw the light of battle vanish from his eyes.
From the living room came Irma’s shrill, “Freeze! Stay right—”
There was a grinding crash as the man in the cast picked Irma up and tossed her through the screen door. Charlie was moving fast now. The injured biker took one moment longer than necessary to admire his handiwork, granting Charlie time to accelerate like a rocket. Straight toward where he stood.
The biker reached behind him. Charlie knew the motion. He was going for the gun at the small of his back.
Only Charlie was faster.
The biker had survived more than his share of bar fights. The gun was firing long before he brought it fully around. He was clearly used to people flinching away from the sound of cordite flaming and bullets flying. The pistol punched three holes in the wall to Charlie’s left, and then Charlie was inside the guy’s arm.
Charlie gripped the wrist and not the weapon. He dug his thumb into the point where the sinews met the muscles, and twisted. Hard.
The guy howled as his wrist was dislocated. Even then, he did not go down. He reached for Charlie’s eyes with his free hand, but that was only a feint, because what he really intended was to hammer Charlie’s nose with his forehead. Standard prison ops. But Charlie had shifted to his right, pulling on the damaged wrist. With the attacker off balance, he chopped his windpipe.
Then Charlie felt the earth tremble. Or saw the shadows change. He kept pulling his attacker by the hand, around to where his tattooed body became Charlie’s shield. The television that had been aimed at Charlie now landed on the biker’s head.
The third man froze with the shock of accidentally nailing his own buddy. That one second was enough for Charlie to sweep his legs out from under him. His skull thunked hard on the table where the trio’s boots had just been resting.
Irma rammed back through the shattered door, a Walther held down low by her thigh. She surveyed the pair and said, “Cops are inbound.”
“You okay?” Charlie asked.
“Everything except my pride. Sorry I wasn’t there for you, sport.”
“You slowed him down. Without that . . .” Charlie shrugged away the what-ifs. “You have cuffs?”
She dug in her pocket and came up with plastic ties. “Everything for the happy home.”
Charlie helped her secure the two men in the living room. Both were still down for the count.
The man lying prone in the hallway was gradually coming around. Charlie secured his wrists, then called to Julio, “Hurry up in there.”
“Two minutes, bro.”
Charlie grabbed the boyfriend’s hair and thunked him softly against the hall floor. Again. When the guy drew him into focus, Charlie said, “I was in the Range Rover last night.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the guy said.
“Tell me who was behind the attack and I’ll tell you where to find the bike.”
The gaze hardened. “We’ll find the bike. And then we’ll find you.”
Charlie rose to his feet. “Deliver a message to the people pulling your strings. Tell them I’m coming. And when I find them, I’m going to take them out.”
6
Charlie left while Irma was still dealing with the cops, and drove Julio back to the community center. Julio stared silently out the window, too spooked by all that had just gone down to play the sullen teen. Charlie’s entire perspective regarding Julio had undergone a dramatic change. He now saw a kid doing his dead-level best to stay straight. No home life to speak of, the whole world against him, and surfing was the only thing he could claim as his own.
Charlie asked, “Where are you bunking?”
“Irma said the community center’s caretaker cottage is empty. I can use that for a while.”
Charlie knew the place, a fifties-era cottage on the parking lot’s far end. As far as he was concerned, the place held all the charm of a juvie center. He turned down a side street and replied, “Let’s see if we can’t find you a better place to chill.”
He drove the Land Rover down streets he had known since childhood. He was repeatedly struck by lightning images—Gabriella driving them south, the attack, meeting
her team, the procedure, waking up that morning, his final conversation with her. He tasted the salt-laced breeze through his open window and heard Gabriella utter the words again. My dark knight. There was no reason why he would shiver from the memory of her soft voice. He was a professional guardian. He had protected people in some of the world’s most dangerous conflicts. He was certain he could handle whatever Gabriella’s situation would toss his way. But no matter how often he repeated the words, he could not bring himself to accept that this was just another job.
Charlie pulled into his drive and said, “I want to show you something.”
Julio followed him around the garage and up the side stairs, looking confused, uncertain. Charlie unlocked the door and said, “My old man and I never got along. So when I came back from the Army, I tore out what probably had once been a maid’s apartment and turned this into a place I could call home. Then I ended up getting married, and I moved with my wife back to her home in LA. I don’t think I’ve spent more than a couple of weeks total up here.”
The single room was sixty-five feet long and forty wide. The cathedral ceiling was laced with heavy beams that were pegged into the walnut side-panels. The floor was heart of pine, the furniture sparse, the rear wall a tall glass triangle. A kitchenette fitted the corner where the stairs opened. A trio of sliding doors hid a pantry, closet, and bath.
Charlie saw how Julio stared at the room, his shoulders hunched slightly, and asked, “How’d you like to move in?”
The kid blinked hard. “You mean it?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”
“I won’t be any trouble. I swear.”
Charlie wanted to say something about how impressed he was, how he didn’t know if he would have had the strength to emerge intact from the kid’s hellish home life. But Julio was already struggling to hold on to control. So he just cuffed the kid’s shoulder and said, “I’m sure of that.”
Then the telephone rang, startling them both.
Charlie walked over to where the old-fashioned apparatus was screwed into the wall beside the pantry door. “This is Hazard.”