by H T G Hedges
He found himself wondering who the second man they hunted might be, the unknown stranger who had helped the driver back to his apartment. Whoever he was, Quinn thought, in doing so he had signed his own death warrant. If we ever find them that is, he mentally added ruefully.
The thoughts troubled him, but he did his best to push them to the back of his mind, something he found himself doing more and more frequently of late with troubling questions. Best not to think about it, he warned himself, orders are orders and there for obeying. Better to let others worry about the morality of them.
Water trickled from a broken gutter, tracing an icy trail down his back. If he could just find them, he told himself, then it wouldn’t matter what was true and what wasn’t, at least for another day. Taking a deep breath of the alley’s cold, damp air, Quinn looked once more at the ticking digits of his wrist watch. He could put it off no longer.
"Hendriks," he said into his close range radio, "Patch me into Control."
He sighed. Thoughts of failure and what it might mean on his return had robbed him of any sense of freedom the night might have offered. The reality of the situation came back to him. This was still his first command and he had still lost his quarry. And it was time to make his report.
"Here," Corg whispered, coming to a stop in front of a set of large burnt orange monochrome doors indistinguishable, to my eyes at least, from any of the others in the row. He fumbled for another key then spent a few moments battling with the lock as the rain beat down, plastering my hair across my skull. My scrubs hung wetly against me, saturated and clinging as water like ice slid under my collar.
Then, with a click, the lock gave and we bundled in out of the night.
Quinn stood with a thumb pressed to his ear-piece, making report over the fizz and crackle of the line. Something was interfering with the signal, he thought, as he made his despondent update back to Control.
"Two men down," he said again. "Request immediate cleanup. Targets temporarily lost." He listened to a voice through the static for a moment, the suppressed blue light of his ear-piece lending his skin an unearthly, ghoulish tint.
"Affirmative," he said stiffly, at length. "We’ll find them."
The burbling static cut off abruptly as the line went dead.
It was dark in the storage shed, the air heavy with a musky damp perfume.
Gradually, as my eyes acclimatized to the gloom, grey silhouettes began to flow into abstract focus. Vague box-like shapes were stacked against the walls, their contents a mystery although I’d guess they housed, at times at least, the evidence of Corg’s bootlegging.
Under the overriding airless odor I gradually came to detect another more camphoraceous element; a machine smell, like oil or grease perhaps, and something else as well. Wax?
It was coming from the main resident of the room, hidden beneath a large irregular shaped tarpaulin that dominated the centre of the garage.
"I think I know what’s under there," I whispered flatly.
In the half darkness I couldn’t really see him, but I’m pretty sure Corg was grinning as, with a magician like flourish, he swept back the oilcloth to reveal the old hearse concealed beneath.
Tah-dah, I thought.
"Get the door," Corg muttered.
"Time to go?"
"Hell yeah," Corg replied, popping open the driver’s door, face illuminated like a pointed devil’s in the sudden amber glow.
"We’re bustin’ outta here!"
Quinn was back on the radio.
"Positive ID on the second target," the voice reported through a growing sea of electronic crackle. Quinn listened intently to the report, unease growing in tune with the hiss and pop.
"Hesker?" he repeated at last.
"Affirmative," came the disembodied metallic reply.
"Jon Hesker is dead," Quinn said. "It was a part of the briefing, shot and killed on Central Station yesterday morning. That’s why we’re here, now. Cleaning up. Confirm?"
This whole business, he thought, was starting to turn sour. The mission was heading south and he didn’t want to be the one left holding the compass trying to turn it back around. He waited, listening to the white noise on the line for a long time. Long enough, in fact that he started to wonder if the connection had flat lined.
When at last the voice came back on in his ear, there was a note of confusion to it. "That has been confirmed. But, well, we also have evidence that Jon Hesker walked out of Lucia General Hospital earlier today. We’re looking into it."
"Evidence?"
"Look," the voice said candidly, "This comes direct from downstairs. Direct from Control, so no questions. Just get it finished."
Quinn considered this for a moment, watching his team move from door to door in a vain attempt to trace their missing targets, shining torch beams down the entrances to alleys and checking locked doors with mounting frustration.
"What do we do about him?"
There was a pause and some muffled words spoken on the other end of the line between his contact and another unknown factor. Quinn wondered who it could be, someone who knew more about what was going on than he did for certain. Rift's scarred face floated unnervingly before his mind's eye as the voice came back clearly.
"Find him. Find both of them. Bring them in. Get it done." Once again the line clicked into jarring, empty silence.
And, at the same moment, Quinn’s close range radio squawked into life.
"Sir!" came the distorted voice of one of his squad – even his close range equipment was losing clarity – the message sounding horse in his ear. "We’ve found an open depot."
"Where?" Quinn started to run.
The engine purred into life. All around the oddly familiar - the smell of the interior, the soft glow of a dashboard I’d seen thousands of times, the small sounds you take for granted on a daily basis – warred with the outlandish nature of unfurling events. It was an unsettling, detached moment that pinpricked down my spine.
Then Corg fired down the pedal and, roaring like a banshee, the hearse leaped from cover. For a second dark silhouetted figures were picked out, blinded in the twin beam of the headlights, and then we were powering past them, tires spinning on the drowned road.
Quinn was almost at the open depot when the hulking mass of the hearse screamed to life from the gaping black pit of the garage and into the grey night. In one fluid movement, he dropped into a shooter’s stance on the wet road, ripping his pistol from its holster, and managed to squeeze off a handful of rounds.
But the action was hurried, the rain thick, the mist rising from the road a cloying, shape bending menace and his shots all went wide of their mark.
For a moment the street was filled with the receding roar of the engine and the burning coals of its lights and then these things faded to nothing and it stood empty once more.
***
To begin with we drove with an urgency and speed that was almost the same as purpose, choosing our route at random, twisting and turning through a maze of side streets and alleys until we were truly lost and hoped that any pursuit must surely be likewise entangled in our spider web of indecision.
Warehouses had quickly given way to dilapidated brown bricks, tenement housing rich with graffiti and broken down, discarded hopes as we tried to lose ourselves in the shapeless domestic warren of forlorn city streets.
The sky was lightening with a rosy tint when at last Corg killed the engine and we steamed, cooling and ticking, unwanted in the lee of a battered and boarded over school-house. A big, sprayed on Q stood out resplendent in neon green and white paint over its sealed and boarded over front doors.
It was still raining.
I’d caught Corg glancing at me as he drove, concern or apprehension or something like it reflected in his eyes.
"You know," I said at last, breaking a heavy silence that had grown up between us as the circuitous miles wound past, "I’ve never seen inside your warehouse before." Corg raised an acid eyebrow.
&nbs
p; "Really?" he said, "That’s funny, I’ve never seen you put three bullets through someone’s face before."
The engine pinged as it cooled.
"A day of firsts then I guess," I said glibly.
He gave me a sharp look. "Where did you learn to shoot like that?"
I understood his concern. At first a mixture of the alien nature of events and pure adrenaline had kept us running as normal. That and a copious amount of vodka in Corg’s case, but I supposed it was unavoidable that uncertainties would arise, floating out of a sea of confusion and fear like the crashing waves after a narcotic high. Immediate danger passed, reality was seeping assiduously back in with blanket inevitability.
"I don’t know," I confessed. "At the time, it didn’t even occur to me I might miss." It was the truth and yet saying it aloud cast a shadow of worry against the back of my mind. There was no way I would have been able to do the things I had done tonight two days ago. I had come in from the dark apparently emancipated from doubt, from hesitation, but at what cost?
That was what was bothering Corg, I think. Doubt was normal, fear was human and at present I felt neither. I was aware that my emotional responses were in no way in line with what they ought to be. In truth I felt detached from events, an island of stillness as chaos seas churned about me.
But then I thought of the patch of clean, fresh skin on my chest where a bullet should have blown apart my heart and rattled across ribs and the dark, hungry well that had grown from it. If the world had stopped making sense, why shouldn’t my responses follow suit? It was a train of thought I wasn’t going to pursue much further.
To change the subject, as much for my own benefit as Corg’s, I brought up another that had been nagging away at me as I’d watched the rain slough down the window and the buildings loom up large and barren before fading away once more.
"This is our old hearse right? The one we used before Danvers auctioned it off?"
"Yeah, that’s right," he said frostily.
"And Danvers sold it to you?"
I could see Corg relax slightly, despite himself, as he thought about his prized and familiar chariot. He’d always treated it like he owned it anyway and created merry hell at the prospect of its sale, something I now realised, with a certain respect, was probably an act of commendable play acting from Corg.
"No," he said, the ghost of a smile hovering at the corner’s of his mouth, "He sold it to Harry Katch."
"Who’s Harry Katch?" I asked, before catching the smug look on his face. "You’re Harry Katch?"
He nodded. "Harry Katch owns this car and the apartment behind mine and the garage."
"Harry Katch," I said slowly, "Must be the single worst fake name I ever heard."
Unimpressed at this, Corg pointed out the obvious, "He’s a fake guy."
"Yeah," I agreed, "But I don’t think you’re supposed to advertise the fact."
Corg harrumphed but I could tell he felt mollified by this exchange. Running a meaty paw over the bald plate of his head he gunned the engine once more and eased us back into motion. Outside the window, the clouds continued to swirl.
Eventually, we had to stop. Driving without end and purpose was wearing away at our collective nerves, but Corg’s especially.
I’d taken the opportunity to change into my spare suit – an awkward proposition as we had continued to drive - and was revelling in the feeling of wearing shoes once again. However, despite my newfound comfort, I could feel Corg getting more and more tightly wound as the minutes ticked by. I tried to engage him in conversation a couple of times, but each time was stone-walled with sullen silence as he grew increasingly closed off and taciturn.
We left the car in a deserted street and headed into an unloved all-night diner, the kind of place that catered mostly to long haul drivers and dedicated night-owls, to drink coffee and collect our thoughts.
The glass front was decorated with frayed pictures of playing cards stuck onto the dirty window and the name above the door said Trixies in a faded, looping script. A lonely bell tinkled despondently as we pushed open the once bubblegum coloured door, revealing a sad collection of faded red booths over a chess-board floor and black and white pictures on the walls of rock’n’roll starts from decades passed. The shell of a juke-box huddled in one lonely corner.
I approached a disinterested waitress leaning on a spotted plastic counter whilst Corg slunk into a booth with his back to the wall and sat glowering.
"How’s the coffee?" I asked her with all the pleasantness and feigned nonchalance I could bring to bear.
She fixed me with a singularly uninterested, jaundiced look. "Best coffee in the building," she said, one eye on a small TV locked in a Perspex cage showing rolling news with the sound turned way down low. I tried to place her accent but came up blank.
"That so?" I asked.
"Yep." She sighed and gave me all of her washed out attention for a few brief seconds.
"Two coffees," I said. It wasn’t the kind of place to sell more than one type or give them fancy names. She reached behind her to where a dirty glass jug was percolating and, if I was any judge, burning into soup, and poured two thick cupfuls.
"Cream?"
I looked at the state of the jug. "I don’t think so." With a shrug she turned her full attention back to the television and I carried the drinks over to Corg in his chosen booth. I watched with distaste as he poured five or six shots of sugar from the dispenser then sipped his coffee and grimaced.
"How’s your syrup?" I asked him.
"Barely tolerable," he growled back as I took a sip from my own cup and was forced to agree: the gritty, greasy liquid tasted like charcoal that had been roasting for hours then mixed with potter’s clay. I set it down and, in the face of Corg’s continued silence, looked around the diner.
It had a lost, almost forgotten feel. The booths and plastic benches, once red, had faded to a uniform pinky grey, pitted with cigarette burns and scars. The floor too was rough and neglected, the Formica tiles, black and white and probably deco once upon a time, now shabby and peeling. Much like the coffee, everything seemed to have a layer of grease spread thinly over its surface.
Depressed by my surroundings, I turned my back on the interior of the diner and directed my attention out of the streaked window instead.
An almost equally dismal view met my eyes; a cold, grey street, touched with chill early morning sunlight, robbed of any warmth or colour. The road was empty, an unwelcoming line of desolate shop fronts and tired, shabby buildings.
An auto-repair shop across the way seemed to be the only other sign of life on the whole street, its barred window lit by a lone dirty yellow bulb that was mirrored in the deep puddles forming on the sidewalk.
For a while I watched this marooned reflection as the raindrops rippled and disturbed the surface of the water, spreading strange, dull neon patterns in their wake, an ever shifting, circling inkblot of dirty blues and oranges.
A sharp intake of breath from Corg brought me back to the real word. I looked over at him but found him staring fixedly past me.
"Damn."
I turned and followed his eye-line and found the TV screen - and my own face - staring back at me, Corg’s big bald head lined up next to it. The set was behind a cage of thin wire mesh and smeared with grime but I could still make out enough to put together a pretty good guess as to what was being said by the newscaster. Quite clearly, the word "murder" stood out bold and loud through the grease.
As the picture cut to a shot of the burned out husk of "Last Rights" - the place I’d worked for over half a decade - still smoking damply in clouds of thick grey fog, I remembered the waitress.
"Wait," I said imploringly, half stood up, trying to disentangle myself from the booth. I don’t know what the end of that sentence was going to be but it turned out not to matter as she bolted away, spiderlike, through the door into the back with a surprising burst of speed. We both clearly heard the unmistakable sound of a bolt being shot.
<
br /> "What the hell is this?" Corg hissed.
"Never mind that, how much do you want to bet she’s got a phone in there with her?" I said. He rolled his eyes.
"We need to go. Again," was all he said in reply, wrenching open the door with such force that it bounced off the opposite wall, gouging a big chunk of plaster from the already crumbling facade in a cloud of dust. He glanced at the damage, almost guiltily, then shook his great head and stepped out into the rain. With one final glance at the television, which had resumed coverage of our twin photographs, I followed him out.
Back in the car and moving again. Whereas before it had felt like a prison, it now seemed more like a welcome sanctuary, warm and shut-off from the hostile world outside, the soft glow of the dash fading in the grey morning light.
I thought back to our faces on the TV screen, my own dark eyes and unruly hair, Corg grinning massively, the edges of a Hawaiian shirt just visible in the corners of the frame, the ridiculous, colourful cocktail that I knew him to be holding cropped out of the image.
"I know that picture," I said aloud, making Corg jump, "The one of you on the news. I recognise it - Heechey’s birthday last year. That god-awful theme bar we ended up in."
"So?" Corg said, nonplussed. He was squinting through the front window as we coasted along identical narrow streets. The rain had really picked up again, its continuous flow obscuring his view, drumming an insistent, repetitive beat against the glass. Oddly, our new danger seemed to have revitalized him somewhat, reducing his sullenness back to normal atmopsheric levels.
"So I took it, it’s on my laptop. They’ve been in my flat." It was obvious really. After all, they’d been waiting, watching Corg’s place, it made sense that they would have set up on mine too. Still, it was an upsetting feeling to imagine faceless shadows creeping through a space I considered my own, a private space, gloved hands rifling through my papers, my cupboards, my life.