by Jack Getze
Rags once again slices the duct tape binding my ankles, makes a fist of my shirt. “You’re going to drag Arnold to the elevator for me,” Rags says. “Turn around, open your palms and squat.”
Rags should have carried a semiautomatic when he was sales manager. If not friends, at least we could have had a working relationship based on mutual respect.
My ex-sales manager puts Arnold’s jacket collar in my duct-taped hands. Arnold of course is still inside the jacket. The man is heavy, too. I’m forced to drag him toward the elevator, past the last vending machine. It’s tough going. I don’t have the best grip. Plus I can’t lean far enough to properly balance.
Wonder how much Beth and Ryan will miss me when I’m gone. I know Luis will be sorry he has no one to lecture about questionable morals. One good thing, Arnold isn’t dead. He groaned twice so far on the drag over here, probably from being towed across the floor like a sack of onions. The blood trail he deposits isn’t as thick as it was. He must be pressing on the wound. At the vending machines, my legs cramp. I stumble, sink to my knees and let loose of Arnold’s collar.
Rags aims the semiautomatic at my teeth. “Get up.”
Scary thing, that black hole. Makes you think about brain electronics, chemical connections and reflexes—like, will I hear or feel the shot? I force myself to carry Arnold the last five yards to the elevator. Rags hits the call button. We’re in a narrow corridor, the employee’s locker and break space one of many intersecting rooms along the hall’s length.
The elevator arrives. Double sliding doors open. Rags makes me reload Arnold in my behind-the-back grip, tug him inside until my forehead bumps the back of the elevator. Rags punches THIRD FLOOR, then CLOSE. Old elevator buttons can take a few seconds, but this one works instantly.
I might try something with that.
On the third floor, when Rags asks me to, I make a show of needing room to drag Arnold out of the elevator. I bump into Rags’ broken leg, stomp on his foot. He smacks me with the gun, but finally shifts outside the doorway to give me room. I drop Arnold in the nice blue suit, catch Rags by surprise with a hard kick into the hallway, then bump the FIRST FLOOR and CLOSE buttons with my forehead.
I spin sideways to make myself a smaller target as the doors shut.
Instead of lunging for the rubber-tipped bumpers to halt us, Rags fires his weapon at the closing steel curtain. The bullet slams the inside wall of the elevator, passing within six inches of my chest. Hot powder and residue brush my neck as the doors bang shut. Rags screams and kicks as we lurch downward.
“Nice move, pal,” Arnold says. He sits up and shows me his back. “The key to my handcuffs is in my left ass pocket.”
Arnold in the nice blue suit is not only talking, he no longer acts badly injured.
“Hey, Carr,” Arnold says. “Move it!”
His quick recovery and the loud voice startle me. Not to mention me kicking Rags and almost getting shot. I’m confused. I have to remember Arnold is a Federal officer, a trained warrior in the battle against—
“If you want to live,” Arnold says. “Get these cuffs off me.”
Okay, now I’m back.
Arnold winces when I roll him over, but I easily find the key in his pocket. It’s much more of a struggle to unlock his handcuffs with my hands still taped together. “I thought you were dying,” I say.
“Hit the emergency STOP button.”
Well okay, Dick Tracy. Again with my forehead, I punch a red, round button the size of a fifty-cent piece. Our elevator rattles to a halt. Blinking red lights indicate our troubled condition. We’re stuck above the first floor, well past the second. My forehead hurts.
When I finally get the cuffs off him, Arnold tries to stand up. He can’t, staggers instead, the knees not working. Too weak, he drops back to elevator floor. “Sit down with me and turn your back,” he says. “Let’s get that tape off you.”
His hands work quickly.
“How badly are you wounded?” I say.
“The bullet went through shoulder muscle,” he says. “It didn’t hit a bone which is good. A paper towel in the wound slowed the bleeding.” Arnold pulls the last of the tape from my wrists. “But I’ve lost some blood. I’m dizzy and weak.”
“What are we going to do?” I say.
“Tell me you have a cell phone,” Arnold says.
“Sorry. Rags took it.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“Aunt Lena’s Cookie factory,” I say.
“Where is that? What town?”
“Piscataway. It’s where Rags works. He’s the night janitor.”
“Then he’ll know how to shut the phones off, probably has a key to get this elevator moving again. We have to get ready.”
Arnold tears his shirt and I kneel to help. He shows me how to wrap his wound with material, fashioning a makeshift bandage to keep on the pressure. We use the tape off my wrists to secure the dressing.
“Anything we do is risky,” Arnold says, “but I think our best shot is to go back to the third floor, look for a phone or a place to hide. People will come looking for me in a few hours.”
“But the third floor is where Rags is,” I say.
“I’d expect him to run down the stairs to meet us,” Arnold says. “But you know him better than me—you think he’d stay up there, wait for us to double back?”
Interesting question. Reminds me of my high school pitching career, standing out on the mound, wondering if the batter was expecting a fastball or a curve. In this situation, I’d say—as usual—Rags is mostly likely searching for his ass, and therefore on the move. I release the STOP button and poke THIRD FLOOR.
It’s a hell ride. The elevator at Aunt Lena’s Piscataway cookie factory becomes my personal version of “The Lady or the Tiger.” Sure, there are three floors instead of two doors, so my odds are fifty-percent better than the guy in that famous short story. But I share the same heart-pounding dilemma: Which hides the tiger? Trickles of sweat slide down my ribcage.
“Stand me up,” Arnold says.
I bend to clasp Arnold’s outstretched hands. His palms are clammy. His cheeks and neck glow paper white. The bandage we put together already leaks blood. I pull him onto his feet, lean him against the back elevator wall as gently as I can. He totters, knees and legs not wanting to support him. I clasp his middle until he catches his balance.
“Ow,” Arnold says. “Gunshots hurt.”
“First time you’ve been shot?”
“First time for anybody in my particular D.A. unit,” he says. “We’re pencil pushers.”
“Insider trading cases?”
“How’d you guess?”
Our elevator approaches floor number three. Arnold has me help him into the opposite corner, points for me to stay at the controls. The elevator’s floor space is four feet wider than the doors. With Arnold and me spread on either of the doorways like goalposts, we’ll be out of the line of fire when the steel box opens.
“If you see Ragsdale, punch the CLOSE DOOR button,” Arnold says. “If I see him, I’ll say hit it.”
General Schwarzkopf he’s not, but I don’t have a better plan.
The elevator doors part on the third floor. I can’t see anything but stacks of cylindrical cardboard food containers and a red hand-truck big enough to deliver a small car. I glance at Arnold. He shakes his head, doesn’t see Rags either.
I grab the elevator door to prevent it from closing. Arnold bravely sticks his head out, peeks both directions. “It’s like we thought,” he says. “Ragsdale ran downstairs.” He pulls his face back inside. “Hit emergency STOP again.”
At my command, the elevator jiggles and halts. I stare at Arnold, awaiting further instructions. Instinctively I trust this guy, trust him like I do Luis. Well, almost. I wouldn’t tell Arnold how much and when I knew about that Fishman Corp. merger.
“You have to do it,” Arnold says. “I can’t.”
“Do what?”
“Get one of t
hose round food containers on that hand-truck, bring it back here to keep the elevator from moving.”
“I can do that,” I say, “but won’t Rags come up the stairs and shoot us?”
“Maybe,” Arnold says. “But we’ll know where he’s coming from. Besides, his plan was never to shoot you or he already would have done it.”
“He tried.”
“Yeah, but he really wants to torture you.”
THIRTY
If Rags wants to torture me, Arnold Casey of the New York District Attorney’s Office says, “That gives us something to work with. He needs to capture you alive. Now get a feel for that red hand-truck—it’s bigger than anything you’ve used—then if you can, bring one of those cylindrical containers over here to the elevator.”
On my mission, I notice the third floor isn’t really a floor—not a solid one anyway. I’m walking and driving the hand-truck on black steel mesh, a see-through grid that goes everywhere in and around a dozen stainless steel domes. Like half-protruding silver eggs, domes peek through round holes in the mesh across the whole floor. Since we’re visiting Aunt Lena’s Cookie factory this evening, I’m thinking these big shiny eggs could be mixing vats.
Another passenger jet out of Newark rattles the roof. The hanging mesh walkway—the floor—vibrates and sways. Nice. Supporting the black mesh I’m walking on are hundreds of twenty-foot-long steel rods attached to the ceiling with nuts and bolts. Not exactly the Rock of Gibraltar.
Arnold was right about the hand-truck. It has electronic controls and a place to stand. Strictly for factories. But mounted on four automobile wheels, the bulky cart scoots around easily. Only two control sticks—forward, reverse, and left, right. That’s my kind of cockpit. I load a pallet with a two-hundred-gallon container of corn syrup in two minutes.
“Right here,” Arnold says.
He helps me position my cargo half in the elevator, half on the mesh floor. When we’re finished, the elevator doors can’t close, even if Rags has a special key.
“Now what?” I say.
“Did you see the stairway?”
“Over there.”
“Only the one?”
“Think so. That’s all I saw.”
“Okay, then move a container or two to the stairs,” Arnold says. “If you can, lay the barrels on their side when you get there, roll them to the edge of the stairway.”
I’m getting the picture. “But not too close, right? We don’t want Rags to see it when he comes barging up.”
“You’d better hurry,” Arnold says.
I’m hiding behind two-hundred-gallon cardboard drums of African chocolate, shipped from the Ivory Coast to Guadalajara, Mexico, where according to the labels and shipping papers, the chocolate was battered and beaten into chips. I intend to hand deliver these mega-size packages momentarily.
I left Arnold inside the elevator, propped against the container we used to block the doors. Arnold’s taken a turn for the worse. If he doesn’t get medical help soon, I’m afraid he’ll fall unconscious, or worse. I covered his chest with a mover’s blanket I found beside the hand-truck. He could be slipping into shock.
The sound of limping footsteps on the stairway gooses my heart rate. Rags is coming, three-legging it onto the second-floor landing. I count to three, then lean my weight into the first of two giant cardboard cans. The African chocolate groans and begins to roll. Here, Rags. Catch this. My special delivery shakes the building and fills the stairwell with booming, crashing noise. Hope the warning comes too late for Rags.
I scamper to the edge, see Rags leap back to the second-floor landing and jump down an instant before my rolling can of whip-ass slams into the landing wall. Missed. The structure of the building shudders. The container breaks open, spilling chocolate chips all over the second floor landing and the tip of Rags’ crutch.
He sees me watching, aims his semiautomatic at me.
There’s yellow fire burning the muzzle of Rags’ weapon. Hornets buzz my head. Three explosions make me dive backward. My ribs skid on the steel mesh floor, but I pick myself up, haul ass back to Arnold. I need his expertise.
“Hey, Arnold,” I say. “I’ve been counting Rags’ shots. Four at Luis’ place, two downstairs, one in the elevator, three or four more on the stairs. That’s ten or eleven shots. Shouldn’t he be out of ammunition?”
The white collar crime expert flutters his eyelids. “You missed him with the chocolate?”
“Lucky bastard.”
“Can you move the container, get the elevator going?”
“No. I left the hand-truck by the stairs. Rags will be here in seconds.”
Arnold sighs. My hope that murderous Rags is out of bullets is all I have left. There’s no place to hide, and I wouldn’t leave Arnold. The man kept me alive.
“Ten shots is a lot, right?” I say.
“His gun is a Sig Sauer,” Arnold says. His voice is an out-of-breath whisper. “Many models offer ten or twelve shots. His could have as many as seventeen.”
“Seventeen?”
Rags’ feet bang on the mesh flooring not far away. He’s on our third level, running directly toward us. I tuck Arnold as far behind container of chocolate as possible. “Seventeen shots?” I say. “What is it, a machine gun?”
Rags’ pounding feet reach the elevator.
“A law enforcement model,” Arnold says.
The man knows his guns. I crouch against the container, hoping the first thing I see is Rags’ Sig Sauer. I’ll try to grab it.
Rags whacks me with his crutch and hurries past, drops his back against the elevator wall. His gun is aimed at my center. “It’s called a P229SCT,” Rags says. “Seventeen rounds per magazine for the nine-millimeter version.”
I lift my hands.
Rags leans closer. “Even comes with a night vision sight.”
I see the blow coming, but not in time. Rags’ fancy Sig Sauer busts the side of my head.
I wake up dizzy and cold inside a perfect blackness. My arms and shoulders are stretched painfully behind me, my spine flat pressed against a hard, knobby surface. My hands are bound tightly at the wrist. What the hell?
“Aus-tin.”
The high-pitched, squeaky voice sounds evil, but in a silly, over-done way, a disguise meant to scare me. It’s working, though. Being tied up in the dark is something less than reassuring. I imagine this screechy creature—has to be Rags—in a long white coat, with sharp knives. Preparing tools in a stainless steel operating room. My head throbs from the gun smack Rags gave me. Odd that he altered his voice.
Dr. Squeaky says, “I know you have a reputation for a fancy mouth.”
The voice’s contrived tones buzz around my head like angry wasps. Rags must have some kind of electronic vocal distorter. The way the sound resonates on my clothes and skin, it makes me imagine I’m confined inside a huge, polished container.
Dr. Squeaky says, “You’re not talking your way out of this one.”
Mama Bones stops laughing and clicks the switch. This megaphone Gianni found is more fun than a barrel of monkey wrenches. She figures she is scaring the pants off poor Austin. Why not? Tommy Ragsdale would already have made mincemeat of him if she and Gianni hadn’t appeared. She leans over the big silver egg, megaphone on. “How’s that full-boat grin now, huh?”
Gianni showed her how to set the controls on super high-frequency distortion mode. Mama Bones giggles every time she hears her voice come out. She sounds like a crazy cartoon mouse. Wonder why playing tricks on Austin is so much fun?
“Someone’s conked me on the head, tied me to a post,” Austin says. “Wasn’t you, was it?”
Mama Bones giggles through the megaphone. “For your information, that’s not a post you’re tied to. That’s a gigantic mixing blade, one of four inside that industrial dough-maker.”
“Dough-maker?” he says.
Mama Bones hears noises, like Gianni and the boys finally cornered that crazy Tommy Ragsdale. She hopes he still has the real ruby.
More funny noises from outside as she lifts the lid on the dough-mixer. Running feet, clinks and clacks, shouting. Maybe she’s going too far with her joke, scaring poor Austin. But she couldn’t resist, not when she figured out what Tommy Ragsdale planned to do to Austin at the bakery.
“You and I are going to make cookies,” she says. “Stockbroker chip.”
The huge lid on the dough-mixer lifts full open. Light washes away the dark as I hear two or three odd clinks. A face appears. Hell, no. It’s Mama Bones. Her hawkish features peer at me. How did she get here?
“Gianni’s gonna find that Big Mojo ruby any minute,” Mama Bones says. “Then I send him down there to untie you.”
“You mean this is a joke? You’re not really going to grind me up into cookie dough?”
“Of course not. You got a big mouth, but you’re not a bad guy. I’m not even going to kill Tommy Ragsdale, the jerk who used to beat up my granddaughter. Him, we’ll turn over to the police.”
Muscles relax all over my body. This steel tube doesn’t seem as cold.
“Tell me, smarty pants—while I’m waiting to hear from Gianni—are you still in love with that redhead, Patricia Willis?”
“Since the day after Luis’ wedding. We went for a walk on the beach.”
“Ha. It was my magic, that perfume you sniffed on my neck at the wedding. You were supposed to fall in love with Luis’ new bride, but the redhead jumped in, smooched you first.”
“Sorry, Mama Bones, but it was chemistry.”
“That’s right—cranberry pits and bat balls. And by the way, so you know, me and Gianni are going to keep the ruby when we find it.”
“It belongs to Vic, of course.”
“No, he gave it to that slut. She lost it. Me and Gianni gonna find it and keep it, and you’re not going to tell Vic or the redhead nothing, right?”
“No way.” I know Mama Bones said she was going to release me, but perhaps it would be a smart idea to further cultivate her friendship. As long as I’m still down here tied up inside a giant cookie dough mixer. “Tell me where Gianni caught Rags, maybe I can figure out where he stashed the ruby,” I say. “You know me, Mama Bones, I’m a pretty smart guy. And I know Rags.”