Everything but the Squeal sg-2

by Timothy Hallinan

  Nonetheless, I worked on pumping my adrenaline. I'd just finished a deep-breathing exercise that Eleanor had taught me, the New Age equivalent of “Whistle a Happy Tune,” and was starting to stand up so I could go in and massacre everyone more than five feet tall, when the Mountain gave my arm a yank that almost dislocated it.

  “Squat,” he said. “Somebody coming.”

  Another car, the fourth that we'd seen, cruised through the gates and pulled up to the door of the warehouse.

  “One fatty or two?” the Mountain whispered. “Five dollars says one.” The car's horn honked.

  “Two,” I said. We shook. I lost. The coat hanger came out again, vitamin in hand, and escorted a single guy with the bulk of a mature elk, plus one child, into the warehouse. Same procedure: the fatty went first, the kid was in the middle, and the little guy brought up the rear, brandishing his vitamin.

  “They've got it down,” I said. “They've done this before.”

  “Give it three minutes,” the Mountain said, assuming command. Maybe he heard the uncertainty in my voice. “Then we move.”

  Four minutes later we were running down the block and through the gate, heading toward the left side of the warehouse. We'd decided not to go for the door on the first pass. I didn't know whether it was locked from inside, and I also wanted to see whether there were people in there who might have arrived before we did. The finish line for our run was the second transom window, which had been propped open.

  By the time we reached it, the Mountain was wheezing like a man in an iron lung. Nevertheless, he squatted down and held up his arms. I stepped onto his shoulders and he braced my legs with his hands, exhaled an imperial gallon of air, and stood up.

  He rose so fast that I scraped my forehead on the stucco and almost toppled us backward by pushing myself away from the wall. Nothing bleeds like a cut on the head. I could feel blood running down my face as the Mountain steadied himself and I peered in through the window.

  What I saw at first were trucks. There were three of them, big mothers, with the Cap'n Cluckbucket logo painted on their sides. They were standard refrigerated tractor-trailer semis, the same models that cart California lettuce to salad bars all over the continent. These trucks held kids: special orders being delivered in response to requests. The kids who traveled in the backs of the trucks were used to the cold. They'd been through obedience school.

  It was hard to get a grasp of the internal geography of the warehouse. Bare bulbs under iron cones hung at the ends of wires here and there, creating islands of bright light that gleamed off the tops of the trucks. In the spaces between the splashes of light, it was dark. I felt the Mountain tremble beneath my weight as I waited for my eyes to adjust.

  High up on the opposite wall was a large picture window. On the other side of the window was undoubtedly what had been the foreman's office when this had been a legitimate operation, a vantage point from which the highest-paid guy in the room had supervised the loading and unloading of the trucks. Lights were on behind the glass, but I couldn't see anyone. Then a child let out a shrill scream, and I followed the sound all the way to the right and found myself staring at a small circle of people gathered in a dark spot near the door.

  There was a sudden disturbance at the center of the circle as people took a step back, and the child screamed again, and my heartbeat began to pound in my ears. Somebody laughed. It took all my willpower to ignore the screams and the laugh, and count the people.

  Mrs. Brussels was the first one I spotted, still in her trendy wrinkled linen. She had her back to me. The children were probably in the middle of the circle, since I couldn't see them. I counted five grim giants on the circle's perimeter. That was one more than we had counted, so someone had arrived before we had. As far as I was concerned, that cinched it. We were outweighed, even with the Mountain in reserve.

  I grabbed the edge of the transom window with one hand and leaned down to tap the Mountain's wrist with the other. At the signal he crouched, and I stepped onto solid ground. ‘There's another one,” I whispered. “That makes five. I don't know how many kids. I didn't see the little one, but I think he's hurting a kid.” Another shrill cry shivered through the window, and the features on the Mountain's face squeezed together, tighter than the knot at the end of a sausage. He started to move toward the door, and I put a hand on his arm.

  “It's too many,” I said. “We've got to call the cops.”

  “Forget it, asshole,” Max Bruner said from behind me. “They're already here.”

  28

  The Boys in Blue

  T he Mountain heaved himself around with such force that he grunted. Then he froze.

  Framed in the pale pool of light falling from the transom window, Bruner's usual impeccable wardrobe looked damp. He made up for it, however, with the perfect accessory: a nickel-plated automatic aimed at the center of my stomach. Behind him, looking much wetter and more wrinkled, was a man who seemed only marginally smaller than Ship Rock, New Mexico. The man also held an automatic. His was pointed at the Mountain.

  “Hello, Fat Boy,” Bruner said to the Mountain. “You should've stuck with the burgers.” To me he said, “I really didn't think you'd get this far.”

  “Max,” I said, swallowing my heart to clear speaking room, “you shouldn't be out in this weather. You'll ruin your creases. Your dry cleaner is going to be furious.”

  He moved the barrel of the bright little gun in a tight circle. The top of the circle was my nipples and the bottom was my groin. Not much of a choice.

  “Pissant,” he said. He shook his head. “I tried to tell you. I tried to get you out of it.”

  “I've always had a hard time with advice,” I said.

  Bruner's mouth twitched into a straight line that made his upper lip disappear. “Fatal flaw,” he said. “And contagious, too. You're going to take Tubbo here with you.”

  “You snotrag,” the Mountain said between heavy breaths. “You're supposed to help them.”

  Ship Rock took a step forward and raised his gun so that it pointed at the Mountain's forehead.

  “Help them what?” Bruner said, putting a restraining hand on Ship Rock's forearm. Ship Rock stopped like he'd been freeze-framed. “Help them go home to the people who chased them away in the first place? Home to all those hugs and kisses and sweet words? This may be hard for you to believe, Tubbo, but the people who write Hallmark cards aren't in charge of the universe.”

  The child inside shrilled again. At the top of its arc the sound tore itself into confetti and mingled with the drizzle settling around us.

  “Neither are you, snotrag,” I said, borrowing the Mountain's phrase. It had seemed to nettle Bruner.

  “Over the long haul,” Bruner said, “over the millennia, probably not. But what you're looking at here,” he added, lifting his arm straight in front of him and training the silvery automatic directly into my left eye, “is the present.”

  The flow of time slowed to a trickle. I could feel a bead of cold moisture make its way down my cheek in agonizing slow motion. There was an itch in the center of my back. I knew that the moment I moved the smallest muscle I was dead. The hole in the end of the automatic looked wider than the Milky Way.

  “The question,” I said through rigid lips as the Mountain wheezed and snuffled beside me, “is what brought you out from under the plumbing?”

  Bruner lowered the gun with a nasty little grin that told me he knew he'd scared the shit out of me. He kept it aimed casually at my middle. “Good question,” he said. “You should have been a cop.”

  I wiped the moisture from my cheek and found that it was blood from the scratch on my forehead. “So should you,” I said.

  Ship Rock bared puffy gums and let out a truncated bark. It could have been a laugh or a particularly vehement scoff. His gun stayed trained on the Mountain.

  “This is Sergeant Belson,” Bruner said by way of introduction. “Sergeant Belson thinks you're funny.”

  “Yeah,” I
said, wiping the blood on my pants. My hand brushed over the hard barrel of the gun, and I immediately let my arms dangle at my sides. “Well, it's hard to get good help.”

  “Hey,” Belson said. It was probably the longest sentence he'd spoken in a week. He was looking at me instead of the Mountain. Belson could be distracted. That was something to remember. Not much, but something.

  Bruner shook his head again, pityingly this time. “You're not going to rattle me. You sure shook up Doris, though. It was a cute stunt, but any idiot would have known it was a setup.”

  “Doris?” I said. “You mean the Wicked Witch of the West has a first name? What'd you do, Max, slip into the Mister's used condoms? Were they still warm?”

  “Keep trying if it makes you happy,” Bruner said. “The Mister, as you call him, had to keep poking the merchandise. I handled the investigation on the Mister, which maybe you already know.” I certainly hadn't. “He had a very sweet thing going. If he hadn't had his heart attack when he did, I would’ve attacked his heart for him. Now, let's go inside.” He gave his gun a tiny jerk toward the door, and I turned obediently, hearing the Mountain snap into step behind me. To draw attention away from the gun jammed into the front of my pants, I laced my fingers together and put my hands on top of my head.

  “So that's why you're here, Max? You're the new Mister? You figured the pictures on the computer were a draw play?” I asked, keeping as close to the wall of the warehouse as possible. It was darker there. We were about a third of the way to the door.

  “Doris panicked,” he said, full of male superiority. “Keep walking. Your little parlor trick got her all superstitious. She barely had the brains to call me. It was an obvious spook trick, and I was working on my list of possible spooks. When she described you and your adorable little ward, the list shrank to one. I didn't know about Tubbo, here, but I'd already decided that she should get the meat together and Belson and I should hang around and watch you show up. Tubbo just makes it better.”

  We rounded the corner. The door was only paces away.

  “Why does he make it better?”

  “He'll cook slower,” Belson said in the resonant voice of someone who uses his skull mainly as an echo chamber. Then he barked again.

  “Shut up,” Bruner said.

  “The sergeant has something on his mind,” I said, “and it must be an exciting occasion for him. If you don't let him talk, he could have a stroke. There must be some blood pressure up there.” I had slowed considerably, and the Mountain bumped up against me. I could smell the sour sweat of fear coming from him.

  “Accelerate, please,” Bruner said. “If you keep walking, I'll explain. Otherwise, I shoot you here, and not to kill. A man who's been gut-shot can live long enough to burn to death.”

  I accelerated.

  “When they respond to the fire alarm,” Bruner said, giving me my reward, “they'll find a bunch of dead missing kids and two dead adults. One of them is a private dick who decided to go for big money instead of a fee you could count in pennies, and the other is a tub of lard who works at the place where the kids hang out. I mean, you couldn't ask for more perfect suspects. Case closed.”

  The child's wail split the night again. I drove my fingernails into the palms of my hands.

  “Don't slow down again,” Bruner said. “You want to measure your life in minutes, or in half an hour or so?”

  “Fire alarm,” I said. “The kids are going to be dead. Then why are they hurting her?”

  “Ahhh,” Bruner said, “some people know what's going on, and some people don't.”

  We'd reached the door. It was closed.

  “Hit the horn, Belson,” Bruner said. Belson ambled obediently toward the nearest car.

  “Why, Max?” I asked, trying to keep him talking instead of thinking about searching me. “What happened? Al always said you were a good cop.”

  “I am a good cop,” Bruner said. The Mountain made a small choking sound. “That's the problem. I'd bust the pimps and see them on the street the next night. I'd save the kids' lives and send them home and then watch them come back and turn into pimps.”

  “This is bullshit,” I said as Belson gave a beep on the horn of a car behind me. “It can't be the lady. I mean, she's okay for someone with a lot of wear on her, but nothing to abandon your life over. She's got a neck like a leg of poultry.”

  “Don't be silly,” Bruner said. “I've seen enough sex so that I don't ever want anything to do with it again. Anyway, I'm not the Mister that way. We stay away from each other. I'm what you might call the fixer.” There was a knock from inside the door.

  “Knock twice,” Bruner said.

  “It was the money,” I said, not knocking.

  “It was a lot of things,” Bruner said, “and none of them matter worth an ounce of spit. Knock on the door two times or I'll shoot you in the back.” I hesitated. “Even better,” Bruner said, “I'll shoot Tubbo, here.”

  The Mountain let out an involuntary moan. I knocked twice.

  The door opened as Belson shuffled up behind us. It was like a dam bursting: light flooded through it and into my eyes, and I was blind.

  “Well, Happy Easter,” said a familiar voice. “I must of been a good little boy. And, looky, the Mountain too.”

  “Marco, you little shit,” the Mountain said.

  “Congratulations, Marco,” I said, trying to focus. “Nice job on Junko.”

  “Nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you.” He bared his cocaine-rotted teeth and waved the switchblade, his vitamin, under my nose. His pupils were the size of punctuation marks but less expressive. Marco was flying.

  “Now that we've all said hello, Marco,” Bruner said in a voice that would have frozen vodka, “maybe you can get the fuck out of the way so we can get inside.”

  Marco jumped back as though he'd been jerked on a wire.

  “Max,” Belson said, “I think we-”

  “Belson thinks,” I said desperately. “What a headline for the Times. On a par with mayor abducted by UFO or Elvis appears at summit meeting. Do you pay Belson to think, Bruner?” What Belson was thinking, I was certain, was that he should search us. “When was the last time a crustacean had a good idea?”

  “God damn you,” Belson said. The Mountain hissed in warning, and a 747 flew into my right kidney. My head snapped back and I hurtled into Marco, knocking him flat on his back. I landed on my face next to him, feeling the concrete floor rip at the cut on my forehead. Something black and hot rose in the back of my throat and I turned my head and retched. In what seemed like the far distance I saw Belson blowing on his fist.

  Marco scrambled away from me, swearing in a thin, chemically high-pitched voice. The next thing I knew, he was standing over me, grinding his foot into the back of my head and rolling my face back and forth in whatever it was that I had spit up. “Your turn, asshole,” he said. Then he increased the pressure of his foot and said it again. The Mountain was making a blubbering sound.

  “You little jerk,” Bruner said viciously. “I'm telling you, get back inside and do what you're supposed to do. Or maybe you'd like to be on-line?”

  Marco lifted his foot.

  “I'm too old,” he said in a pleading voice.

  “Too old for what?” Bruner said. “Get Tubbo inside, Belson, and close the door. Too old for handcuffs and a plywood table? Too old for John Wayne Gacy?”

  “Jesus,” Marco said. The door slammed shut behind us. It sounded like a very heavy door. “You wouldn't do that.”

  “There's all kinds of customers,” Bruner said.

  “I'm going,” Marco said. “I'm going.” I heard his heels tap on the concrete, going away from me. Then I heard a door close.

  “And you, Belson,” Bruner said, “keep your fucking hands to yourself.”

  “But, Max-”

  “You want marks?” Bruner said. “You want internal injuries? You want something to wake up some smart coroner who wants to run for governor? Or you want to go to wor
k tomorrow and take early retirement in a couple of years and live to be a hundred?”

  “Okay, sorry,” Belson said, “sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “You bet your ass you're sorry,” Bruner said. I'd made it to my hands and knees. My forehead was bleeding freely and something vile dripped from my chin. “You're about the sorriest thing I've ever seen,” Bruner continued remorselessly. “Just keep your ideas to yourself and your eyes on Tubbo. And you,” he said to me, “get up. It wasn't all that bad.”

  I tried my legs. They worked, more or less. “It wasn't a weekend in Acapulco, either,” I said, wiping my face. More blood flowed immediately from my forehead. We were inside and we still hadn't been searched.

  “What’m I, your travel agent?” Bruner asked. “You're not going to have a weekend anywhere. Now, stop dicking around and walk.” He reached into his jacket and popped some Maalox. I hoped he was digesting his backbone.

  The Mountain was now weeping openly behind me. Great. All my life I'd fantasized having a sidekick, and the one I'd finally gotten had turned out to be the Cowardly Lion. I consigned him to the litter heap and walked.

  There was a door inside the door, an arrangement like a low-tech parody of the airlock in a movie spaceship. Marco had closed the inner door behind him, or maybe it had closed of its own accord. The four of us-Bruner, Belson, the Mountain, and I-were now alone inside a brilliantly lighted room about twelve feet square. Now, if ever, was the time to make a move. Now, before we were inside the warehouse with a bunch of guys who looked like the offensive line of the Green Bay Packers.

  My back was turned toward Belson, the Mountain, and Bruner. No one could see my hands. I forced a cough and then a chain of coughs, bent double, and put my right hand under my shirt. The grip of the gun felt cold and rough beneath my fingers. I was trying to tug it upward, free of my pants, when the coughs, to my surprise, became real and I bent forward against my will and retched again.