Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3)

by Ben Bequer

  Folks had lived in this area for thousands of years, weathering the Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Barbarians, Tartars, Huns, Ottomans and Germans like waves crashing on the shore. Even the heaviest surf would rush deep into the shore, only to wash away, leaving the land changed, but the people much the same.

  I knew Bubu was still awake by the stink of his cigarettes filtering up the stairs into the second floor and a tune he whistled softly from time to time. I was tempted to go down and share a beer with the guy, but I barely knew him, and I was afraid that he might get caught up in the crossfire. The best conclusion to our little relationship was for him to get me the items I needed, make a bundle of money, and be on his way. Maybe he would make enough to restart his accounting career, or start a business. It didn’t matter in the end as long as he didn’t get hurt.

  My company that night would be a shitty 13-inch television playing an old episode of Baywatch. The reception was terrible, and the actor’s voices all dubbed in Romanian, but I recognized the Pacific Ocean and it felt like being home. I smelled the salt air as the tide licked the beach, felt the cold water between my fingers as I paddled my board out to sea, looking for a wave. Never had life been better than those days spent on the water, my ambition nothing simpler than seeing how long I could keep my balance before the ocean tossed me askew.

  The show went to a news break and the image shifted to a squat, one story office building. I froze. Smoke poured from a dozen holes and despite the bad reception, I could see fires still burned within the husk. The image cut again, this time focusing on street level images of police and emergency workers, but my eyes were drawn to a gutted sports car, turned on its side. One of the wheels had been torn off the axle, and the hood had been thrust into the passenger compartment diagonally. The next image was that of men from the coroner’s office wheeling away a body from the scene.

  The footage disappeared and there he was, Sandy, my lawyer. He was pictured in a suit that cost more than the GDP of the entire town of Liteni, his hair thinner than I remember, his paunch a little more pronounced. Then my picture appeared in a small rectangle in the bottom left corner of the screen. It was the same picture from my Wikipedia page, more text filling in under it.

  I watched the whole report, which lasted only a few minutes, the bleak images filling whatever gaps the language barrier would have omitted. I reached over and turned the television off. I brought my hand back and it was shaking. I clenched it, the small flex a salve for the nuclear anger simmering just beneath my skin.

  Sandy was dead.

  Part of me wanted to think it was random. Sandy dealt with all types of bad people, all of them super powered. One of them might have been unsatisfied with their service. I wanted to believe it, but I knew that was bullshit. He was dead because of our association.

  Godammit, Haha.

  The storm howled outside, and the room temperature had plummeted in the last hour, but I didn’t feel it. The four walls were a cage keeping the world safe from me, a tenuous protection, at best, because at that moment, I felt like running to the top of the nearest mountain and screaming until Haha found me. Let him come, I would tear it all down. Nothing would keep me from him. I didn’t need an intricate plan, just my fingers threaded through his mechanical guts.

  Blood thundered in my ears, and a low growl burbled up from my chest, the sound an octave lower than the piercing howl that buffeted the walls. I felt my body clenched into a ball, ready to spring, and forced myself to calm. The long sleeves were sweltering, so I took off the heavy sweater, the white T-shirt beneath damp with sweat. I knew there would be no solace in loneliness tonight. The room was cloying and musty, I needed to get out.

  Stepping into the hallway, I saw a light on down the hall. Bubu’s whistling was a warbling counterpoint to the storm outside, and as I reached his door, I found it ajar. He was sitting at the table, dabbing out a cigarette, the laptop open in front of him, but his attention was on his phone, which he propped up with a small box. He stopped whistling and whispered a few words of Romanian. I held at the door, waiting to hear the answer, but I couldn’t hear anything.

  Peering through the small crease, I heard him say something else, his demeanor suddenly dark. I still wasn’t close enough to hear a response and realized I wouldn’t, because he was wearing a single earbud, the other dangling over his shoulder. He threw his hands up in the air, pointing up at where he thought I slept, his speech animated. I scowled deep, and felt my insides churn. I knew he was playing me, marking up prices, skimming money. I knew, he knew, it was the nature of our relationship. Maybe he recognized me. He was no idiot. Beside’s Haha’s bounty on me was two billion dollars, more than a nest egg. Going on reputation alone, it was safer to turn on me than breaking the law to acquire the things on my list. If I had half of his brains, maybe I would have turned on Retcon, saved myself and a lot of other people a lot of pain.

  The same guy who blindly fetched for Retcon would have killed Bubu. Not because he wanted to, but because he would have had to. That guy was a criminal and in that world, there was only one way to repay betrayal. I had since learned that there was more than one way to sell someone out and the reason always mattered. The world was made of terrible choices, and most people had to sift through and find the one that made the most sense to them.

  Pushing the door open, I stepped into the room. Bubu turned to look at me, shock on his face, the words stilled in his mouth. He flipped the phone face down and plucked the earbud from his ear. “Bro, you don’t knock?”

  “Who is it,” I said, pointing at the phone.

  Bubu stood, bringing his hands up defensively. “This is not what you think.”

  “This is not the time to be fucking with me,” I said, taking a step deeper into the room. I didn’t want to kill him, but his weak, cliché bluff pissed me off. “Who are you talking to?”

  His expression turned indignant. “You think I flip on you like that,” he said snapping his fingers for effect. “Like some little bitch who runs to the police?

  “I’m not going to ask again,” I said, my anger simmering to match his.

  Shaking his head, he flipped the phone back over, popping an earbud in and walking up to me. Were I a normal man, I still would have towered over the skinny Romanian, but he entered arm’s reach without fear. He turned the phone towards me and I saw a very angry young woman staring back at me with a toddler sitting in her lap. He held the earbud near my ear so I could hear the child babbling away.

  He said a few words in Romanian, but the woman’s mien did not improve. Turning to look at me, his eyes cold and a little afraid now, he said, “My wife, Anica, and my son Emil.”

  The little boy smiled at hearing his name and laughed loudly as Bubu gestured that I pop the earbud into my ear. I did and when the woman spoke, there was steel in her voice. “You took my husband to Liteni?”

  “We here for business,” Bubu said. “Tell her.”

  The woman’s expression shifted so quickly from angry to sardonic that I knew not only Bubu’s relationship dynamic, but that nothing I said in the next minute would be taken for truth. I almost told her the truth, but in the end I settled for, “Its legitimate business. I promise.”

  “You better pay,” she said, before launching into a Romanian tirade I was perfectly happy to be excluded from. I handed Bubu the earbud and he ended the call.

  The room was still for a minute, the wind outside dying down to an interminable screech. We looked at each other, and I started laughing. It was a hard guffaw that almost doubled me and I gave in to it, feeling the itch in my guts and the warmth behind my eyes that foreshadowed more. It was Bubu’s turn to scowl, as I sat down hard, the wood floor shaking under my weight.

  I sat cross-legged, still laughing, tears burning down my cheeks, and thought of Sandy. He had been loud, brash, and in the eyes of the law probably guilty of many crimes. He had flipped on me after Hashima, another lesson in terrible choices. It was always my intention to reconnect
with him after Utopia, if for nothing else than to let him know there were no hard feelings. Another regret added to an ever-growing list.

  My head still hung low, my laughter dead, but the tears still tracing down my cheeks, when I felt a cold poke in the shoulder. I looked up to find Bubu with a couple of beers in hand. I took one, using the bottle opener he offered to uncap both. We toasted; the glass clinking in the quiet room and drank.

  “So, wife and a kid, huh,” I said.

  “Yeah, she got pregnant when we were in college. I was supposed to be the big time accountant and she was studying nursing. She dropped out to have the baby. I got my degree, and found out nobody wants accountants unless their brother, cousin, nephew is someone important.”

  “Amazing how some shit is universal,” I said, thinking of my own mishaps in the private sector. “So what happened?”

  “My uncle needed another person driving cabs. I thought it would be just that, but of course he want me to take illegal shit with passengers. He paid me three hundred to do it, cash. Driving cabs is shit money otherwise.”

  “And Anica doesn’t like it?”

  Flinging a warding hand at the inert phone, Bubu said, “What do you think? She a good girl. Smart. She didn’t want to marry low life, but that’s all I can give her now.”

  I took a swing, “She’s gorgeous, Bubu. You’re a lucky man.”

  “Gorgeous?” he said and a smile played on his face. “Maybe when she’s not mad at me.”

  “Why not watch the kid and let her go back to school?”

  His glare told me what he thought of that notion, but he said, “What about you, wife, kids?”

  “Nah, not good in my line of work.”

  “You sure? When I look at you, you look like a guy who has people.” He took a drink of beer, “I was honest, bro,” he said. “Be honest.”

  “There’s a woman,” I said, numbly. “But I don’t know what’s going on with it. She’s a hard one to read.”

  “Mine too. When she’s yelling at me, it’s always about how she loves me and worries, but to stop being such an asshole.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Only thing to do is love her, bro.”

  “I don’t have any other choice,” I said, that warmth back behind my eyes. “A friend of mine died today.” It felt weird to say, but despite what had happened, Sandy’s loss struck something I hadn’t known was there.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I don’t have many.”

  Bubu extended his beer once again and said, “A toast. To lost friends.”

  We toasted again, and I finished my beer in one long pull. Setting the bottle down, I got up and headed for the door. “I can’t explain it, but time is running out on me, Bubu. I need that stuff.”

  “You got it, bro. Tomorrow is a big day for us.”

  * * * *

  My room was littered with drawings for the first printer. It would be like the Original Seven, generating other, smaller printers in its wake. In my head, I dubbed the printer Seven, a dream sketched out on dozens of schematics strewn about the room or stacked lazily according to part or mechanism. Most of those drawings were obsolete as alterations and improvements sprung to mind. If I took the time to jot them all down, the machine would never be built, but I kept the old drawings around as a reminder of the work to be done.

  Seven was a traditional bed printer, only much larger, with a maximum build volume of 36 inches cubed but a layer resolution of 15 microns. With such a large volume and ten times the detail of any 3D-printer currently available, Seven would make ten smaller 3D printers, responsible for making the actual builder drones, and one specialized printer to make the fifty or so mothership drones – designed like rolling tanks. These motherships would serve as repository of raw materials for the smaller builder drones, with each returning when their onboard reservoir was depleted.

  The builder drones would turn the concept of 3D-printing on its head, making the printer something mobile and independent, rather than a bed-based system, located atop a computer desk. These little works of wonder would have GPS control, guiding them within 0.001 inches of the design, each with a tiny fused deposition modeling head and a layer resolution as small as 50 microns. The plan was to design them as four-armed rovers with rotors to keep them aloft. As I made them smaller and smaller, I reduced the rotors to two, then finally to one, allowing the tiny drones to hover over the job. I had a vision of them dropping out of the sky en-masse to put down layer upon layer of material. These would work as a swarm to finish the design, creating detailed paintings, exquisite tapestries and carpeting, and manufacturing the elaborate moldings and woodcarvings of a castle worthy of Blackjack.

  My mind was burning, ready for the challenge. I had all the schematics memorized, even the rejected ones. Haha was targeting people close to me. How long before he went after Madelyne or worse, my brother? I grabbed my coat and went back down to Bubu’s room, expecting him to be asleep. I pushed through his door and found him hunched over his laptop, scrolling down the list.

  “Bro, we’ve got to talk about you knocking,” he said.

  “I can’t sleep either,” I said. “Let’s get moving. If we leave for Bucharest now, we can get a jump on the work.”

  Bubu shrugged and said, “I want to get started too, but it’s bad out there, and my car is crap.”

  “So call a taxi,” I said.

  “You’re kidding me,” he said. “Bro, calling a taxi this time of night is asking to wake up naked in the gutter. We should wait until morning.”

  That would be one surprised taxi driving thief, but I still needed my cover. “And waste the morning driving? No. Get what you need, and I’ll find us a way to Bucharest.”

  He turned to face me, still seated and lit a cigarette, taking a deep drag before saying, “Listen bro, we go out in that, maybe we get to Bucharest. Or maybe the car breaks down. Then you know what happens? We freeze to death. It’s not smart.”

  “It’s not smart to forget who’s paying,” I said, my voice a growl. “I can’t use you if you won’t listen to me, Bogdan.”

  “Bro, why did you hire me? Because I can get you stuff? My uncle could get you stuff. No, you hired me because I’m smart. What use is that if you won’t listen to me?”

  “There’s more to it than that. Things you don’t understand.”

  “You’re in a hurry – I understand. You think you know Romania better than me? You think I made a bad call since you hired me? Then fire me, but you know its bullshit.”

  I looked out the room’s lone window and saw frost riming the edges of the glass, the swirling blizzard obscuring everything else, the lone streetlight’s illumination dimmed in the chaff. The townhouse was freezing, even with my coat and pants. I might survive the exposure, though I had never tested myself in extreme cold before, but Bubu wouldn’t. He was too useful to lose.

  “You win,” I said, quelling the urge to pick him up and leave. “We wait for morning, but first thing, we get better transportation.”

  “You got it,” Bubu said, acting as if he were not just fired and rehired within the space of a minute. “I get you a good deal on a car.”

  I held up two fingers, “Get a pair, one for each of us. And no more bullshit. I say something needs to get done, it needs to get done.”

  “As long as you’re not trying to get us killed,” he said, a small smile touching his lips.

  I left his room without a word, thinking about the castle, beyond the thrill of creating something the world had never seen before, to the reason I was building it, and promised myself that Bubu would be home with his wife and kid long before Haha sniffed anywhere near Romania.

  Chapter Eight

  Morning came and the last vestiges of the snow flurries were still blowing past, but Bubu and I decided it was safe enough to drive the highway back to Bucharest. We had a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, bread and goat’s milk, and then went to dig out his taxi.

  Bubu’s car was un
der a heavy pile of snow, but the worrying part was the sharp angle he had parked it, facing down towards a crevasse. When we arrived the spot seemed fine, as the decline toward the edge of the cliff was over fifty feet. With the snow covering the mountainside, moving the car would be tricky. The only thing keeping it from sliding down and over the edge was the mound of snow covering it.

  “Take the snow off the front and top,” Bubu said, after thinking about it for a while. “Leave the snow on back to stop it as brake.”

  I was afraid when he turned the car on, the packed snow and ice would simply shift and spill, Bubu’s brake sloughing away into uselessness. Instead, I went around the back of the car, once we had cleared it of the snow and offered to push it out.

  “Bro, the car will come back and run you over,” he said as I dug a pit between the rear lights.

  “I’ll be good,” I said, tossing him the satchel with all the money we needed for today’s purchases. “Go on, get in.”

  He shook his head and sat behind the wheel, turning the engine and dropping it in gear. I meant to let him pull out on his own, then throw myself face forward in to the snow like a goof. The fewer clues he had about me the better.

  But the taxi didn’t budge when he began to slip the clutch, and the right tire spun as its grip on the ice slipped.

  So I gave the car a little shove.

  The taxi tore out of the rear enclosure of snow and raced up the hill like a rock hurled out of a slingshot. Bubu slammed the breaks, the early morning quiet broken by the squealing tires as he side-slipped the car to a jerky stop. He stared at me with shocked eyes through the rear view mirror as I hopped out of the snow and strolled over to the passenger door. I could feel him staring at me as I opened the door and took a seat, tossing on the seat belt.

  “What was that,” he asked, both his feet still stomping the brake pedal.