Every Day Above Ground

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  The yell didn’t repeat, but as I rounded the third landing a door slammed on the floor above me. I stopped. Listened. When no further noises came, I moved silently up the stairs.

  The fourth floor hadn’t been fully gutted like the fifth, where we’d opened the safe. I was looking at a hallway, or at least the portion of it I could make out in the dark. No telling which of the doors down its length had slammed.

  Not O’Hasson. Instinct told me, before my senses had solid evidence. We weren’t alone here.

  A heavy thump, from the top floor. I dashed up the last flight, safe in the enveloping blackness.

  My boot sole skidded on something. I peered down at it in the gloom. A small tube on the tiled floor of the landing.

  No, a dart. Two inches of hollow white syringe with a billow of red strands at one end and a needle on the other. I picked it up. The steel needle glinted wickedly where it was still clean. Its tip was dark, and wet.

  What the hell was happening?

  Without the help of a flashlight, the empty fifth floor was a cave, with only the narrow ghostly glow of the city light coming from outside to interrupt the black. I felt exposed, and automatically dipped low to where I wouldn’t be silhouetted against the windows. I moved around the edge of the room, listening. Someone was here. I could almost hear them breathe.

  As if in answer, the tiny figure of O’Hasson abruptly appeared in the middle of the vastness, still carrying his duffel bag. He must have stood up from the safe. Maybe what I’d heard had been the weakened man falling down. I started to call to him, when more silhouetted figures emerged from the shadows, far off at the end of the building.

  O’Hasson saw them, too. He yelled again, a guttural, desperate sound of fear, and broke something in his hands with a loud snap. One of his glow sticks, I realized.

  He hurled the sticks to the floor. Fire burst into life, globs of some burning gelatinous substance splashing up like a tiny volcano from the carpet.

  I hit the deck, catching a glimpse of white men’s faces on the dark figures as I dropped. O’Hasson broke a full handful of the sticks. The men shouted. He hurled the firesticks into the mound of carpet remnants between him and the men. The flames surged to life in a flash that blinded me. An instant bonfire lapped at the ceiling and engulfed the heap of desiccated fabric and the floor beyond. The figures retreated, as a sudden wave of heat made me shield my eyes.

  The fire was already rolling in a wave across the carpet toward me. Whatever the accelerant in O’Hasson’s homemade Molotovs was, it was volatile as hell itself.

  Through watering eyes I saw O’Hasson on the other side of the fire, staggering toward the main staircase. He wasn’t going to make it. The men were right on his tail.

  I jumped up and raced in the opposite direction. There would be another set of stairs at the far end of the building. There had to be. Behind me, the crackling roar pursued.

  At the south wall I slammed against a door, making its push bar bang like a pistol shot, and emerged into an unlit stairwell. I ran down the stairs as fast as the dark allowed. My hands swept every speck of dirt off the stairway railing. The hungry growl of the fire grew louder, even as I descended.

  The stairs ended at the lobby. I couldn’t see enough of the street to know if it was clear. I’d have to chance it. A heavy padlock and chain sealed the rear doors. I thrust the pry bar into the lock shackle. It was a clumsy fit. I couldn’t get leverage, and the lock resisted every attempt to snap it. Acrid fumes began to fill the room. I jammed the tip of the pry bar into the handle of the door instead, and threw my back into it. The screws gave with a screech. My eyes were blinded. I pushed harder. The handle burst from the door, the chain falling away. Choking, I felt for the top and bottom bolts, yanked them open, and lunged out onto the sidewalk.

  I’d lost direction. Which way had we come in? Had O’Hasson made it out?

  No time to dwell on his fate. A sharp crack and a flash of yellow light high above the street made me flinch, as a swift rain of glass jingled down onto the asphalt. The car battery had blown, adding to the inferno. I could see the windows on the middle floors warping with heat. It wouldn’t be long before the entire structure was ablaze.

  One distant moan of a fire engine was soon joined by a second. Cops would be close behind. I needed a car. Or I’d have to hide in one of the boarded-up shops. Walking out in the open in this neighborhood would be as good as signing a confession.

  The dented blue Honda was right where we’d left it, the street quiet. Without the approaching sirens, I could have believed myself the only person in a square mile.

  No time to question my good luck now. I dashed for the Honda and yanked the door open, ducking as the first hook-and-ladder howled past, headed toward the front of the building.

  I kept my head down to strip the ignition wires and tap them together. The second the fire truck rounded the corner, I hit the gas and got the hell out of there.

  Run as far as you like. Dono’s voice in my head, both mocking and disappointed. It won’t matter, will it now?

  It wouldn’t. O’Hasson and I had stumbled into a snare. As elaborate as anything laid by hunters for a jungle cat. I looked at the tranquilizer dart. It bounced minutely on the passenger seat as I made the aged Honda’s pistons whine.

  We’d screwed with somebody’s carefully laid plans. Mick O’Hasson might already be bagged and tagged. Or worse.

  And now the hunters would be on my trail.

  Six

  At the first touch of morning, the huge marina at Shilshole looked diminished. Elongated shadows shrunk the luxury cruisers and tall masts into so many toys set in orderly rows, waiting to be tossed into a child’s bathtub. I parked my truck where I could see the road that ran alongside the vast and mostly vacant marina lot, and watched to see if anyone turned in after me, or slowed on their way past.

  I had been a short hop away from full paranoia since fleeing the scene of the fire in O’Hasson’s stolen Honda. Even after I’d ditched the car and caught a train at the next light rail station to retrieve my truck, I kept doubling back, looking for signs of pursuit. No one was chasing me. Not yet.

  My speedboat was moored two docks over from Hollis’s Francesca. The Stingray had been my grandfather’s, registered under one of his many assumed names. It was a deliberately dull vessel. Gray hull, gray trim, with no name painted on the transom. But it had a spearhead shape and a 300-horse engine that could make it lunge like a hungry shark.

  I reeked of dried sweat and chemical smoke. Like Dono had before me, I kept a change of clothes and a few emergency provisions in the boat’s tiny cabin. A rag and the dock’s water hose would serve to wash the worst of the grime off of me. I stripped to my boxers. The icy spray crushed the air from my lungs on the first blast. Also the second.

  As I was dunking my head under the freezing stream for a final time, the gate at the end of the dock banged shut. Hollis, dressed in madras shorts and a red-and-white-striped Derry City FC shirt, trundled noisily down the ramp.

  “I was gonna knock on your door,” I said through slightly chattering teeth as he drew closer, “once the sun was higher.”

  “And once you had some pants on, I hope. What the hell happened with you?”

  I twisted the faucet closed and dropped the hose over the dock edge to drain. “Bad night.”

  I filled him in on the past few hours. By the time I got to the part about not finding O’Hasson or the shadowy men on the street before the fire trucks showed, I had dressed in a t-shirt and frayed jeans and we were sitting together in the cockpit of the speedboat.

  “No chance he got away?” Hollis asked, his voice uncharacteristically somber.

  I thought of my last sight of O’Hasson, barely on his feet as his pursuers closed in. “No. He couldn’t have made it out on his own. Either he collapsed and died in the fire, or they have him now.”

  “Like an arrest,” Hollis said.

  “Like big game.” I handed Hollis the dart I had
picked up off the stairway landing. “Don’t touch the tip.”

  “No chance there. Evil-looking thing.”

  It was. But it gave me some small hope that O’Hasson was still alive. If the hunters—I kept thinking of the men at the building as that, with their trap and their trank gun—wanted to kill outright, they could have gunned O’Hasson down the moment they saw him.

  There was a flip side to that hope. O’Hasson might have given up the name of his partner in the fiasco at any moment. The next dart could be coming for me.

  Hollis brushed his broad thumb over the red plastic hairs on the tail of the dart. “Who would care enough about that little man to shoot him with this?”

  “They came ready to take down whoever opened the safe. A dying ex-con wasn’t exactly who they were expecting, I think.”

  “And he brought you.”

  I leaned back against the cowling. The sun was already hot and promising to get nasty before the day hit noon.

  “I should be more pissed off at the son of a bitch. He burned down the whole building, and could have cooked me right along with it. I thought he was just carrying glow sticks. Break the damn things and they become instant Molotovs.” I whistled at the memory of the roaring heat. “But if O’Hasson hadn’t torched the place, maybe I’d have wound up wherever he is now.”

  “And the gold?” Hollis said. “You said you left it all in the backpack, by the exit?” His antennae were out, feeling the air for the scent of possible profit.

  “The fire wouldn’t have hurt it. Either it’s still there, waiting for the arson investigators to come across it, or”—I shrugged—“the hunters found it and took it while I was busy saving my own ass.”

  “You don’t suppose we could, well, have a quick look? Just to see?”

  “I’m not getting near the place. It’ll be swarming with law. And maybe the hunters have the same idea. If they were after the real owner of the gold, they might be hoping he shows up to see if the safe is still there.”

  Since the train ride from South Seattle, I had been wondering about Office 501, and who had been leasing it before the building was sold. And thinking about that gave me another notion that made me sit bolt upright.

  “What’s the matter? You look knocked for six,” Hollis said.

  “The building. It was scheduled to be torn down.”

  “Sure. You said that was why O’Hasson couldn’t wait for his partner to be released from Lancaster.”

  “Right. O’Hasson had to crack the safe now. And the hunters knew somebody would be coming soon, for the same reason. It can’t be just random chance that the building was sold and empty when they needed to set their trap.” I shook my head. “Too big a coincidence. The building being demolished had to be part of the lure.”

  Hollis stared. “What are you saying? That the bastards actually own the building?”

  “Or they bought it, just to gut the place and wait. Think about it. If you want to catch a tiger, you set fire to the tall grass and flush him out. If you want to make someone hurry to open a secret safe—”

  “Then you make it look like the safe is about to be discovered. Christ Almighty.”

  Hollis stood and stepped out onto the dock. Fifteen minutes sitting in one place might have been a new record for him. His sandals slapped against the planks as he paced.

  “How much money would that take?” he said. “Hundreds of thousands, surely.”

  “Or more. Enough that I wonder if the gold—wherever it came from—wasn’t what the hunters were after. Not entirely. Maybe they set the alarm themselves, or maybe they just took advantage of an alarm that was already installed. Waiting to see who showed up.”

  “And as you said, that wasn’t supposed to be O’Hasson.”

  “No.”

  “So they don’t have much use for him.”

  I didn’t have to say anything for Hollis to know that I agreed. O’Hasson’s attendant in the prison infirmary had sold him on the idea of the safe, and the gold. Once the hunters wrung a little information out of him, O’Hasson would be expendable.

  “Bad way for a man to check out,” said Hollis. “Even if the poor bugger didn’t have much time left to him.”

  Maybe especially if that. Days had more value when there were fewer left. I wondered about O’Hasson’s kid, Cyndra. Where would she be when she learned about his death? If he simply fell off the end of the earth, his body never found, would she think he’d left her?

  That idea disturbed me. Almost as much as thinking that people with enough resources and determination to buy a whole building might come looking for me, now that O’Hasson was gone.

  I took a long breath and stretched. My muscles creaked, my body finally daring to relax after hours of tension. I knew the feeling. Aches and twinges sprang up after every mission with the Rangers, no matter how short. It was more than simple physical exhaustion. It was the hangover from the rush.

  Hollis must have read my fatigue. “You’ll want food in your belly. Come along to the boat with me, I’ll show you something.”

  I locked up the speedboat’s cabin and joined him. The seawater smell coming off the dock pilings was strong, with salt and bits of kelp left by the retreating tide baking slowly in the heat. We walked without haste toward the gate. It gave me time to think about my next move.

  I wouldn’t sit and wait. If the hunters really had bought the building, maybe I could follow the money. It would be much better if I knew who might be coming after me.

  Hollis led me down his dock and its array of large luxury powerboats, and on board the Francesca. Surprise made me stop short at the door.

  The main cabin was partly dismantled. Hollis had removed the built-in settee and the lockers underneath, and some of the wall behind on the starboard side, exposing the curve of the inner hull. Large pieces of teakwood and molded fiberglass lay scattered around the room. A pile of nuts and bolts and brackets and screws took up half of the chart table.

  “You’ve been busy,” I said.

  “A little project. I want to be able to take out the whole side here and put it back at short notice, whenever I require.”

  I took a closer look. Despite the clutter of tools and bits of furniture, the removal work had been very carefully done. The seam where the settee had met the floor was cut as straight as a guitar string. “Just because.”

  “Well, there’s a particular need I have in mind.”

  “No kidding. You wanted me to see this why?”

  He sighed. Hollis did not play cards, should never play cards. He could look a cop in the eye and swear that the stars were made of popcorn without blinking, but dissembling with friends was something he’d never mastered. For a crook, he was shockingly honest.

  “Call it advance planning,” he said. “So you can do me a favor, if there’s reason.”

  I looked at him. “In case you’re not around?”

  “Not that way. I’m not expecting any trouble on this little venture. You know I like to keep my life less exciting. Unlike some young fools.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “It’s a timing thing. I might not be able to retrieve whatever items I’ve placed inside this handy little compartment promptly. If I’m delayed, I thought perhaps I could get word to you, and you’d know how to open it up and take what’s inside elsewhere.”

  “Before what happens? Cops coming with a warrant? Or worse?”

  “Let’s say police.”

  “And the reason you’re talking in circles around whatever you’re hauling is because you think I’ll faint dead away.”

  “Some art pieces. They’re from Japan.” When I didn’t respond Hollis filled the awkward silence. “Carved posts, each about eight feet long. Which is why I need such a long space to hold them. See, they’ll run along the hull, behind these panels here.”

  “Posts.”

  “Bedposts, really.”

  Bedposts. “Carved with what?”

  Hollis actually blushed.
And I started laughing.

  “It’s just business,” he said.

  “I’m glad it’s not pleasure.”

  “The damn things are worth as much as a house. Japanese take their smut seriously. The posts have pearls and jade laid in them.”

  The word laid made me laugh even harder. After the long night of fear and felonies, I welcomed it. “Great, Hollis. A niche market.”

  “To hell with you, then.” But he was starting to break up, too.

  When we’d finally stopped snickering like a couple of eighth-grade boys, Hollis showed me how he was going to reconstruct the pieces of the cabin, and where he was going to install bolts and thumbscrews to allow someone to access the space beneath. You could take the whole section apart and reassemble it again within twenty minutes. It was ingenious.

  My cell phone buzzed as Hollis was describing how to reattach the final pieces. A voicemail. I must have missed the call while I was giving myself an ice bath.

  Van, I’m sorry to call so early. Addy Proctor, my elderly neighbor. She didn’t sleep much, and I received calls at strange times. I have to move the washing machine today to get the window replaced.

  Shit, I had told Addy I’d come by yesterday. I’d gotten distracted with preparations for the safe job. The man will be here around ten, I think. They are maddeningly unspecific about times. Could you—I ended the voicemail.

  “A rain check on the meal,” I said to Hollis. We’d set one of the larger teakwood panels against the cabin door during Hollis’s little master class in smuggling, and I handed it back to him. “Hell of a job. Dono would have been impressed.”

  “You think? Your man was a hand at the tricky carpentry himself.” Hollis flushed again, this time with pride. “Was that the one from down your street?”

  “Addy. Yeah.”

  “Give the old bat my love.”

  On the way back to the truck, my eyes making a careful survey of the road and the parking lot, I hit Contact to call Addy back.

  “I’m on my way,” I said on the tail of her hello. Her dog, Stanley, woofed in the background.