Mikhail made a clicking sound with his tongue. “You are in bad shape.” He picked up his queen and moved it to check the king. “I believe that is the game.”
Conrad glanced at the board and let out a deep exhale. “I believe you are right.”
“What is wrong, my friend? Tell me.” Mikhail removed a stein from beneath the bar and pulled a draught from the keg that rested on the bar. He slid it across to Conrad who caught it and took a drink in one movement.
“Do you ever feel,” Conrad said, staring down into the frothing liquid, “that everything you know is falling apart? That things will never be the same?”
Mikhail laughed deep and heartily. “Yes, my friend. During that period of my life when I decided to make a change of profession.”
Conrad nodded knowingly, feeling somewhat embarrassed. Of course he had. They had grown close over the past few weeks, and Mikhail had told him much of his past. Including his time in Moscow, a member of the komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti—the KGB. He had spent years at the Lubyanka, and had even been close to a certain future Russian president.
“But I suppose I understand why you feel like you are in a particularly difficult transition.”
Conrad saw the almost playful glimmer in his eyes.
“Oh, come now,” Mikhail said, “did you really think a man of my particular talents could be kept in the dark about something as simple as who you are?”
Conrad started to object but Mikhail waved him off. “Please, my friend, your secret is safe with me. Besides, I am beginning to think that I am not the one you have to fear.”
Conrad suddenly felt cold, and it wasn’t from the draft whipping around the pub. “What do you mean?”
Time seemed to slow down. Mikhail stared him cold and hard in the eyes. Then he reached down behind the bar. When his hand came up, he was holding a business card.
“A man came into my bar today. He asked me if I had seen anyone fitting your description. I told him I had not, and that I had never heard of you. He told me I was lying, but that he understood, that I was only being a good friend. He told me that he wasn’t looking for you. He said you were looking for him. He said that when you were ready, he would be waiting.”
“Did he leave a name?”
“No,” said Mikhail. “He left only this.”
Mikhail dropped the card on the table and Conrad thought it landed with the sound of thunder.
“I know this group,” Mikhail said, as Conrad’s trembling fingers touched the corners of the thin piece of cardboard. The image of the globe seemed to glimmer in the candlelight.
“What do you mean you know them? They aren’t real.”
Mikhail’s laughter rebounded off the walls and ceiling of the darkened pub. “Oh they are real, my friend. Very real—and very dangerous.”
Conrad downed his drink and slid the tankard over to Mikhail, who filled it and slid it back without a word of question or answer.
“During my time at the kontora, I had a run-in with one of their, how do you say, representatives. A man came to see me. He said he had a business proposal. It was very unusual, of course. Such things did not happen in the old Soviet. He knew what I did for a living, knew my title and position. I threatened to have him arrested, but he just smiled. ‘You must choose,’ he told me. ‘Only you can do this job, and this job is only for you.’”
“Did you take it?”
Mikhail nodded.
“And what happened?”
Mikhail gazed down at the bar top, wiping it with an old, dirty towel, seemingly lost in the swirl of stale beer and spilled whiskey.
“The job is your own, my friend. And as much as I like you and trust you, it is not something I can share with you. Maybe one day, but not tonight. I suppose that this is all to say—the world is a stage, life is a play, and we are the puppets. It’s better not to ask who pulls the strings. Now you are on the line. You have been chosen for something, and it will no doubt change your life. Forever.”
Conrad glanced down at the card in his hand. He slipped it into his pocket and drank down his beer. For a single moment, he considered that he’d drunk enough during this night to slay a small horse, and yet he felt fine.
“How much do I owe you?”
Mikhail shook his head. “Tonight, it’s on the house. I have a feeling you are going to need all the good will you can get.”
Conrad nodded. “Thanks for the beer and the game. I’ll get you next time.”
“Sure you will.” Mikhail smiled and held up his massive hand in a gesture of farewell. Conrad wondered if it might be farewell forever.
“Until then,” Conrad said, trying to fight off that feeling of finality, the feeling that he was walking into something so massive and so potentially dark that he might never escape its gravity. He left the bar behind and stepped into the cold night.
The walk back to the inn was uneventful, as he knew it would be. The city had gone to sleep, and he was perhaps the only person still awake now that Mikhail had closed up shop. Yet he knew that was likely not to be true. There were others as well. Watching.
The fire was burning low when he closed the door of the ancient building behind him. He sat down at his computer and was not surprised to see another riddle meet his eyes. But this one was different. There was no question, just a blinking cursor and a request for an answer. He might have been lost. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t at all.
He pulled out the card and flipped it over to its back. Written in black pen and looping script were the words,
“When life asks a question, three is always the perfect answer.”
Conrad laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. But he couldn’t help himself. Instead he spread his fingers across his keyboard and pressed the number. The block of text swirled and spiraled, forming the image of what looked to be a full moon, partially obscured by a cloud. Then the words formed, and Conrad began to read again.
Three Guys Walk into a Bar
By
Jonathan Maberry
Chap. 1
The card was tucked into the cleft of a crack in the vinyl of my old Ford Escape’s dashboard. The car was locked, the alarm functional but silent.
Card was still there.
I hovered there in the open doorway of the car and looked at it. Whoever had placed it there crinkled the end so the card folded back to make it easy for me to see what was printed on it.
LIMBUS, Inc.
Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?
Call us. We employ. 1-800-555-0606
How lucky do you feel?
“Balls,” I said.
Chap. 2
I plucked the card out and threw it on the shotgun seat, got in, fired up the old beast, and headed out of the parking lot of the medical offices of Dr. Frieda Lipschitz.
She’s a great doctor, but, seriously, no one should ever have a name like Lipschitz. I know it doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means. Dr. Frieda—and I have to call her that or I can’t keep a straight face—makes a point of telling everyone that it’s a bastardization of Leobschütz, the German name for the Polish town of Głubczyce. Okay, sure, fine, nice history lesson. Change your name. Go with Lefkowitz or Lipstick or anything.
I mean, if you’re a proctologist, you have a certain responsibility to your clients. It’s a thing. Go with it.
So, there’s me, driving away from Dr. Frieda’s office after her telling me that I need a colonoscopy because I’m looking at fifty close enough to read the fine print and guys my age who eat like I do and drink like I do and generally act like overgrown frat boys like I do need to have someone stick a hose and a flashlight up their ass. Not how she put it, but words to that effect.
I told her I’d think about it.
She then browbeat me for twenty minutes and somehow I wound up agreeing. But…I really don’t know if I could or should do it. There are complications with guys like me going under general anesthesia. Those complications could be life-changing for anyo
ne in the E.R. if I have a bad dream.
Funny thing is, the thing she harped on the most was my cholesterol.
“You eat too much red meat,” she said.
I tried to make a joke and tell her that it wasn’t by choice. She didn’t get it and, let’s face it, it’s not like I could explain.
So, she stuck her fingers in my butt, told me my prostate was okay, and cut me loose with a date for the procedure and a prescription for stuff that would “cleanse my bowels” the night before.
Given a choice between marathon pre-procedure bowel evacuation and, say, getting mugged by an entire hockey team, I’ll take my chances with the hockey team. Sticks and all.
That was what I was thinking about as I drove.
The card was still on the seat next to me.
Still saying “Limbus” on it. Still reminding me of the last card with that name on it I’d had.
What was it now? Three years ago and change.
One of the nastiest cases I ever worked. Some psychopaths skinning young girls.
Yeah. Skinning.
Turns out, when I finally ran it down, the skinning wasn’t actually the worst thing happening to those girls. I know, you’re thinking how could it get worse than that?
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.
Some of those things come into my life dragging a lot of very ugly baggage.
That case haunts me.
Absolutely fucking haunts me.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wake up and see those dead girls standing around my bed. Naked of flesh, stripped of humanity, bloodless and lost.
I know I’m dreaming, but I think I’m awake. The things those girls say…
When I really wake up, I try to remember their words, but I can’t. Not really. It’s like the dead speak in a language that the living can’t really understand. Can’t, and shouldn’t try.
What scares me the most is that the older I get, the more I think I’m starting to understand a few words of that language. It’s becoming more familiar.
I leave night-lights on now.
Me. Sam Hunter. Ex-cop, occasional bodyguard, working private investigator. Whatever else I am. Tough and scary.
A night-light.
Shit.
The card refused to evaporate or fly out the window even though there was a breeze whipping through the car. As if it was anchored there. As if it didn’t want to leave.
Limbus, Inc.
How lucky do you feel?
I stopped at a red light and watched a father cross the street while holding the hands of two little girls. Twins. Maybe four years old. Curly blond hair on one, curly red hair on the other. Otherwise identical.
The little girls looked at me. Both of them.
They smiled at me.
I smiled back.
Innocent little kids. Pretty, happy. Their whole lives ahead of them.
The group of assholes I hunted for Limbus flayed the skin from girls only a dozen years older than these two. Girls who also expected to have lives, a future. Happiness.
Dead. Destroyed.
Consumed.
The father shepherded his daughters to the other side. The little redhead kept looking back at me.
And, as the light turned green, she gave me a single, silent nod.
It was such a weird thing. Not a kid thing. It was an adult gesture, and for a flickering moment her blue eyes were filled with a much older light.
Then she turned away and the guy behind me beeped his horn.
I hit the gas too hard and jerked the Escape forward, cursed, adjusted the pressure on the pedal, and drove away from the moment.
The card was still right there.
When I pulled into the slot outside of the creaky old building where I have my office, I left the card where it was. I didn’t want to bring it inside. It would mean that I was at least considering giving them a call. No way that was going to happen.
I locked my car, went up into my office.
Read the mail.
Most of it was bills. Some of it was junk.
Some of it was threatening letters.
Usual stuff.
I made some calls. Did some Net stuff for clients.
Didn’t think much at all about the card.
Except that’s a lie.
I couldn’t help but think about the fucking card.
I was thinking about the card when Stevie Turks walked in with two of his goons. Card went right out of my head at that point.
Here’s the thing about Stevie. His real last name is Turkleton, and he’s a six-and-a-half-foot-tall lump of ugly white boy with more biceps than brains. I was warned about him when I took a missing persons case last year. Stevie likes young chicks. Ideally fifteen or so. He gets them high, gets them naked, and videotapes them having sex with Stevie and some of his crew. The video files are uploaded to a server in the Netherlands and sold to foreign buyers. I found this out while looking for a ninth-grade girl who was last seen in Stevie’s storefront business—a video gamer shop on Broad Street near Girard. The girl’s mother let me look around the kid’s room, and that allowed me to pick up her scent. Everyone has a distinctive smell. Even kids with good hygiene. Most people can’t tell.
I’m not most people.
It took me a week to find the kid. Unfortunately by then Stevie had spent way too much time with her. The kid was so far out on the edge of a heroin high that she didn’t know what day it was. Barely knew her own name.
They’d been busy with her. Three video sessions a day. Different outfits. Schoolgirl clothes, cheerleader uniforms. Shit like that.
I’m no prude. But I have a very clear set of rules. Rape is, to me, no different than murder. It kills a part of the victim’s soul. I’ve seen it way too many times. As a cop in the Cities and as a P.I. in Philly.
And when it comes to the rape of a child? When it comes to white slavery? Sex trafficking? Forced addiction?
Well…
Stevie was in the hospital for three months. Did that without changing, either. Just me, a blackjack, and a lot of moral indignation.
Would have been worse if I’d let him see the real me, but I actually wanted him to stand trial.
He lawyered up, of course, and they’re taking their sweet time getting the trial started. Jury selection is next month.
Honestly, though, I didn’t expect him to be stupid enough to come here, to my office. He thought he was being smart by bringing two guys who were as big as he was. The three of them looked like bridge supports. Muscles on top of muscles.
Stevie opened his jacket to show the gun tucked into his belt. One of the goons closed the door. It was after-hours; there was nobody else in the building. Again, they thought they were stacking things in their favor.
I stood up from behind my desk.
Stevie pulled his gun and pointed it at me. “You don’t want to fucking move, dickbag.”
Chap. 3
The killer moved through the shadows. Running low, running fast. The winding ribbon of the game trail twisted and turned, whipsawed and plunged down the backs of the hills. Night birds screamed and fled the trees, flinging their ragged bodies into the cold sky. The last of the season’s crickets held their noise, their insect minds unable to process anything other than the concept of danger.
Of death.
A brown bear raised her head and sniffed the air. Then it pulled her cubs close and sheltered them with her bulk. The bear closed her eyes, not wanting to see what it was that passed so fast and so close.
The killer was aware of these things.
It drank in the intoxicating richness of sight and sound, of smell and taste. There was no drug that could match this rush. Not even the most powerful psychotropic pill or magic mushroom. Nothing came close.
It reveled in the thousand things that flooded in through its senses. The enormity of the information had been staggering at first.
At first.
Now…
&n
bsp; Now it was greater than a sexual thrill. Greater than anything.
Almost anything.
There was one thing that sent an even more potent thrill through the killer’s dark mind.
It raced toward that experience now.
With claws that tore the soft ground.
With teeth that gleamed as the killer smiled and smiled and smiled.
Chap. 4
I stayed where I was. “You really want to do this, Stevie?”
“No, I’m still fretting over whether it’s a good idea.”
We both grinned at that. It was a good comeback.
“They already have my deposition. On video. I signed the transcript in front of witnesses.”
He shook his head. “Don’t mean shit. It’s your word against mine. And that little slut isn’t going to be worth shit on the witness stand. My lawyers will rip her a new asshole. Not that her last asshole wasn’t good. I tapped that shit. Damn if I didn’t. Tight? Holy shit was she tight.”
“Stevie,” I said quietly, “you’d do yourself a big favor to shut the fuck up right about now.”
He chuckled. “Why? Thinking about that tight little brown-eye giving you wood?”
“Stevie…,” I said.
“Fuck this guy, Stevie,” said one of the two goons. He had a big nose that looked like it wanted to be punched.
“Yeah, fuck him,” agreed his colleague, who had no noticeable chin. “Let’s do him and get the fuck out of here.”
Stevie shook his head. “I’m not in a hurry. I spent three months thinking about this. This asshole suckered me and stomped me when I was down, and I need him to appreciate the consequences of his actions.”
“Who writes your dialogue?” I asked. “I’m serious. Joe Pesci couldn’t sell lines like that. You sound stupid, Stevie. No, let me correct that, you sound cheap. You’re a third-string kiddie porn asshole and your father would have done the whole world a favor by jerking off instead of banging your mother. Now you come here and try to lay some tough guy Goodfellas rap on me like I’m supposed to go all knock-kneed. Are you kidding me?”
He brightened. “Wait, you think I’m putting this on? Really? ’Cause I think that you’re going to realize just how wrong you are when I cut your dick off and stuff it in your—”
Limbus, Inc. Book II Page 24