Every Day Above Ground

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Cyndra wasn’t alone there.

  “What?” said Addy, catching my tension.

  “Call the cops,” I said. “I’ll meet them there.”

  Thirty-Eight

  I left Addy’s car on the far side of the elevated light rail tracks and ran at a low crouch along the support columns toward Pacific Pearl. Already I could see my Dodge truck, parked sideways a few dozen yards from the freight company’s lot. The lot’s exterior lights were switched off, leaving the squat cinderblock building completely dark.

  Cyndra wasn’t in the Dodge. But through the window I could see her laptop computer lying on the passenger-side floor. The driver’s door was unlocked. I searched the cab. The Smith & Wesson was gone. Did Cyndra have it? Was she skulking somewhere around the building right now, looking for her dad?

  There was no sign of the cops. Perhaps they’d done a drive-by already and left. I couldn’t wait.

  The razor-wired gate was wide open. I ran across the street and the lot, straight into the deepest shadows by the loading docks. With its brown solidity and barred windows, the freight building might have been a prison from two centuries ago. Bleak and unforgiving.

  I circled the building, looking for Cyndra, watching for signs of anyone within. A single car passed by the lot at high speed, hurrying on its way to less desolate parts of the city. That was the only sound.

  No kid. No nothing. If it weren’t for my Dodge abandoned outside, I’d have been convinced everything was squared away and looked for Cyndra elsewhere.

  Instead, I picked the Medeco lock on the rear door. I had to make sure.

  I knew the layout now, and moved quickly through the rooms without needing my penlight. The office space with its roller chairs, and the file cabinets just beyond. Moonbeams through the window grilles divided the interior into smears of bile yellow and black.

  When I reached the loading bays, I paused. The broad cool room was as quiet as the rest. But there was a smell here, fresher than the undertones of diesel and coolant. An organic stink. Blood, or shit, or both.

  I followed the smell into the ratty communal room off the loading bays, with its big wooden cable-drum table and spindly chairs. One chair had been knocked over. At the far end of the long space, past the table and the emergency exit, a shabby black curtain stretched across a doorway. The animal smell must be coming from behind it.

  Crossing the room, I saw blood splashes and spatters on the cement floor, outside the black curtain. Smears on the walls as well. I touched one. Still sticky. I stood to one side and peered through the inch between the curtain and wall.

  Beyond the tattered velveteen cloth was a space about the size of the main room in my studio apartment. It was a slaughterhouse. Fekkete was lying on his back, still wearing his orange tracksuit, in the middle of the bare floor. Another man’s body lay beside him, facedown. The body wore a navy suit, and a crushed pair of horn-rimmed glasses lay near his foot.

  Boule was a fraction more upright, his shoulders awkwardly propped against built-in shelves along the wall. His head lolled, joining the collection of dirty junk on the shelves. His wrists were bound behind his back.

  More blood here, much more. On Fekkete’s face and chest, and on the floor, in thick drops and tiny pools. The confines reeked of recent death.

  Boule exhaled, and coughed wetly. I checked for signs of life on the other hunter and found none. There was no point in my checking Fekkete. The front half of his head had been beaten almost concave.

  I knelt by Boule and grabbed his hand. “Can you hear me? Squeeze.”

  His fingers gripped mine. His face wasn’t the unrecognizable paste that Fekkete’s was, but it wasn’t good. One eye was puffed shut, and if he lived he would need a set of new teeth. Under his tan skin he had the undead sallowness of internal bleeding.

  “Seh me ub,” he rasped, surprising me. The B sound made flecks of pink mist.

  “Where’s Cyndra?” I said. “The girl. Was she here?”

  Boule nodded. “Girl. ’ngri.”

  “She and Ingrid. Where are they?”

  “Zho. Helb me.” Blood dribbled from his jaw.

  “Joe,” I said, “and Gar. The Slatterys have them. Do you know where?”

  He nodded a clear affirmative, and twisted, trying to show me his bound wrists. “Clinig,” he said through the pain.

  “I’ll get you to a doctor. After you tell me. Where are they?”

  His head tilted. Trying to shake no. “Clin—”

  Then he was out. I felt for his pulse. The tap against my fingertips was strong enough, but very fast.

  As I stood, I saw a familiar piece of white strap. A handle, on the plain canvas bag that Fekkete had carried away from Ingrid Ekby’s hotel room. It was buried in the junk on the shelves above the unresponsive Boule’s head. I opened it. The two gold bars she had given Fekkete were still inside. His down payment on betraying Joe Slattery. He must have concealed the bag here on the shelves, before the violence started.

  I could guess how it had gone down. Fekkete had tried luring Gar or Joe or both to Pacific Pearl, a place they would deem safe ground. Ingrid and her men had been waiting. But the Slatterys had been too shrewd, or maybe Fekkete had tried to play both sides against the middle.

  It didn’t matter now. The Sledge City crew had come out on top. Fekkete had been judged a traitor and beaten to death. It wasn’t hard to imagine Dickson Hinch and the others having their fun. They had left Boule alive. He would know where Ingrid had the red suitcase with their two million in gold.

  Ingrid and Cyndra had been taken elsewhere. For other purposes. Where could they have gone? And why?

  Ingrid had told me she had made preparations for Joe’s death. A place, presumably. Not the farmhouse; Marshall had been moving out. Somewhere else where she could take her time torturing and killing Joe. Then the Slatterys had turned the tables. Had they forced Ingrid to take them to her intended murder room? My gut turned over at the thought.

  Hydraulic brakes squeaked on the other side of the loading bay doors, over the weighty rumble of a diesel engine. One of the refrigerated trucks.

  Hinch and the others, returning to move the bodies. Time to leave.

  The emergency exit in the communal room was our way out. I could carry Boule to the Dodge, get him conscious and talking. Once I had Cyndra I’d dump him outside the nearest ER. I went to disconnect the fire alarm.

  The door had been nailed into the frame. Dead solid. It would take a crowbar and half an hour to open.

  I could run for it. Dash through the far side of the building, and count on foot speed to give me enough distance before anyone started shooting. If I were willing to abandon Boule to his fate.

  Boule knew where Cyndra was. It wasn’t a choice.

  A loud steely clatter from the bays, the sound of someone unlocking one of the rolling doors. Another minute and they would be inside.

  The lights were still off. I needed them to stay that way. Dirt and paint chips scattered as I wrenched open the fuse box, flipping the master breaker down and snapping off the plastic switch for good measure.

  Back into the curtained room, stepping over Fekkete’s body. I needed a weapon, too. The beam of the penlight confirmed that the contents of the shelves were useless. Crumbling magazines and twisted nails and rolls of old strapping tape. The only objects with any weight at all were the two gold bars in their plastic wrap, dense but small.

  They were coming. And I had nothing but my two hands.

  An idea struck. I tore at the dusty tape with my teeth and nails, peeling long strips away from the roll.

  From the loading bay, the door rattled as Hinch or one of the others wrestled it up the first foot. I clicked off the penlight and worked by feel alone. Peeling more tape, winding it around the first gold kilobar. Then around my knuckles.

  The rolling door made a sustained thunder and final boom as it opened to its full height. At the edges of the curtain, the yellowish moonlight grew brighter. Boule’s la
bored breathing made a liquid rhythm.

  Someone swore as they tried the light switch. Then footsteps. One step at a time, feeling their way in the dark.

  “Get a flashlight.” Hinch, his usual lazy drawl trimmed by anger.

  “Where? The truck?” That was Wex, the kid with the topknot.

  “Look the fuck around, dickhead.”

  I finished with the last strip of tape, pressing it hard into my palm as I counted the sets of footsteps. Hinch plus two men. At least two. I moved to one side of the curtain that separated us. My eyes had adjusted and the fabric showed as a black maw in the gray wall.

  One man coming toward me now, edging through the dark along the wall with the useless exit door. Another crossed the center of the room by the round table. Slow steps, and heavy.

  “Bomba,” said Hinch. From closer than I’d thought, somewhere near the fuse box. “Drag those pussies out here,” he said.

  I pressed my back against the sheet metal wall next to the black curtain, the steel cold through my shirt. I was already sweating.

  Hinch by the fuses, five yards away. Wex somewhere off in the loading bays. Bomba coming right toward me.

  Cyndra, God knew where. I curled my hands into fists, slowly, feeling the weight.

  One more deep inhale. Knees bent, coiling.

  All right, you sons of bitches.

  Bomba’s steps reached the curtain, and moonlight flooded in.

  Let’s get mean.

  A kilo of gold, with as much of my two hundred pounds behind it as I could throw, smashed Bomba full in the face. His nose and cheekbone collapsed in the split second before his head snapped back. He toppled, and I came right behind his falling body. Rushing through the half-open curtain toward Hinch.

  Hinch was fast. Hinch was expert. He could barely see me in the half-light from the loading bay, but he knew an attack was coming, and he dipped and sidestepped and slapped a palm out like a striking adder in one fluid motion, measuring, ready to throw the big counterpunch. I wasn’t obliging. In the last rushing instant I fell to one knee, swinging my fist in a vicious haymaker. Hinch belted me on the meat of my shoulder, just as the world’s most expensive brass knuckles fractured his shinbone. He screamed. I swung again and missed as he fell with another cry of agony.

  A shadow blocked the moonlight. Wex. I rolled on the cement, not caring about direction, as the muscular kid almost fell over me in his haste. My roll brought me up against Bomba’s writhing form. He grabbed me reflexively with his big hands, trapping me on the ground. I heard him gag through his ruined face. Wex found my leg, held it. I kicked at him in the dark, thrashed against Bomba. The huge man’s grip tightened.

  “Kill him,” Hinch yelled from somewhere in the black. I couldn’t get a clean kick at Wex. He grabbed my other ankle, pinned it. They had me. Bomba rolled onto his side, blindly straining to crush me from behind in a bearhug.

  His face was near mine. I headbutted him in the spot where I’d crushed his nose. Twice, three times. Blood sprayed the side of my neck, and Bomba’s hands fell away. Wex sacrificed his grip on my leg to punch me in the gut. I slammed both fists, both gold bars, down onto his skull. He went instantly limp.

  The gunshot from the dark was like a bomb going off, dazzling and deafening. Hinch. Unable to stand but not done fighting. I shoved Wex off of me and rolled as Hinch fired again and again, the muzzle flaring like a strobe. He may have hit Wex, or Bomba, or both. I went for the cover of the table. A bullet shredded a plank of the wood, so close to my face I saw it in the split second of illumination.

  “Fuck you,” Hinch said, and fired again. When that flash faded there was neither darkness nor light, only the phantom spots left behind in my vision.

  Was he out of rounds? I had no idea what he was holding. A heavy enough caliber to make any wound a permanent problem. I wedged my bound fingertips under the big round table’s base and lifted, straining with everything I had.

  “You motherfu—” The cable drum crashing onto its round edges cut off his words. A shot sliced the air above my head with a sharp whap. I bent low and shoved, rolling the man-sized drum in front of me, toward where the muzzle flare was still glowing. It bowled over Hinch just as a final shot went into the ceiling. He screamed, and flailed at the crushing weight, for the spare second before my armored fist connected with his head.

  I left him alive. Half by choice, and half by chance.

  Thirty-Nine

  Boule had regained consciousness during the chaos. Once I got him outside the loading bay, he pushed away from me and shambled to lean against the Pacific Pearl truck. Its idling engine radiated heat I could feel, even though I felt powered by a blast furnace myself.

  I yanked open the passenger door and dragged Boule toward it, sweeping an orange tackle box off the seat to make room.

  “Zhow you,” Boule mumbled. The blood on his face had dried and it cracked and flaked with every move of his torn lips. I watched to make sure he didn’t collapse during his tortoise climb into the passenger seat. He used his right arm exclusively, his left cradled protectively to his body.

  He pointed south. And I realized what he had been trying to say earlier. He had been trying to tell me where Cyndra was. Where Ingrid had prepared a place for Joe.

  We made it there in fifteen minutes, staying off the freeway. I stopped the refrigerated truck one block away and one over, where there would be little chance of it being spotted. Boule had zoned out again during the drive, his head lolling against the doorframe and broken arm in his lap. I left him there.

  An alley cutting through the middle of the block was the quickest path. I tucked Hinch’s Luger pistol, wrapped in a rag, into the back pocket of my pants and vaulted the chain-link gate. The Luger had two rounds left in it, after all of Hinch’s wild shots at me.

  I emerged from the alley. There it was. Right where all the terror had started.

  The steel frame of the six-story building had survived O’Hasson’s blaze, but most of the windows were missing or charred completely black. On the ground floor, a new fence made from sap-wet sheets of plywood looked incongruously clean.

  Above the fence, its plastic splintered by heat and high-pressure water, was the empty socket where the sign for the urgent care clinic had once been, on the ground floor of the now-destroyed building.

  Clinic, Boule had said through his mouthful of splintered teeth. He hadn’t been asking for a doctor. He had meant here.

  I was an idiot for not realizing it before. Boule and his hunters had set the trap at the safe. They would have had to lay in wait close by, in shifts. And they would need somewhere to take Joe Slattery after capturing him. What better place than in the same building? Ingrid owned the whole fucking thing. The old clinic was ready and waiting.

  O’Hasson had told me his vague recollection of a frightening place with tile and steel tables. A nightmare, he had believed. The hunters had hit O’Hasson with the tranquilizer that night, at least partially. Mick hadn’t taken enough dope to put him all the way out, and he’d managed to fight back with his firesticks before they finally grabbed him. He’d still had a fingernail grip on consciousness when they brought him inside the clinic. Maybe Boule and his men had been rushing to grab their gear before the whole building went up. They had been lucky to make it out alive, just as I was fleeing the building on the opposite side.

  O’Hasson had thought the scary place had been his drug-induced hallucination. But it was very real, I knew now.

  Ingrid’s murder room. And Cyndra was somewhere in there.

  I slipped across the street and behind a Chevy Malibu with deflated tires. A sliver of darkness showed in the plywood fence, where one sheet tilted outward on hinges.

  No sound from within. I put a finger against the plywood and pushed. It swung wide, silently, and I glided inside.

  As if in answer to my movement, I heard a cry from deep within. A woman’s cry.

  The glass of the lower panes on the wall had been shattered by fire or by f
irefighters, making a path for the torrents of spent water. I knelt and crawled under the knee-high window frame.

  Beyond it was a hallway, half-filled with burnt debris and covered in sludgy muck that had never completely dried after the fire. Most of the ceiling was intact. The cry of pain had come from the other side of the hallway wall. If there was a door leading in that direction, it must be around the far corner.

  I didn’t like the hall. It was too confined, too obstructed. With some of the walls half-collapsed, any escape route was uncertain.

  Another sound. A man’s laughter, high and hearty. It echoed off the blackened metal air vents and bubbled glass.

  I inched my way through the wreckage. If a board or a piece of charred drywall blocked my way, I moved it aside, as slowly as if I were doing a curious form of tai chi. Making a path I could follow in the dark at a dead run, carrying the kid.

  At the corner, I stopped. A low murmur of talking from the second door down on the right. A light behind that door switched on, and the hallway was suddenly cast into green-tinted funhouse shapes. Warped walls and twisted angles.

  I heard a heavy door close, and a shadow blocked the mossy light. I drew back, around the corner. A flashlight shone past me and footsteps—casual, relaxed—came toward me.

  The moment he stepped into view, I stuck the muzzle of the Luger behind his cauliflower ear. He froze.

  “Hello, Joe,” I said.

  The man I’d known as Orville turned his head. His scarred eyelids widened at the sight of me.

  “Drop the flashlight,” I said.

  “Zack,” he said in his high hoarse voice. “Or whatever your name is.”

  “Down.”

  He let go of the flash. I moved behind him.

  “Nobody’s called me Joe in fuckin’ years and years,” he said, as I began to pat him down. “I wouldn’t even let my sister say it. She might make a mistake where somebody could hear. Then suddenly today, I’m Joe to everybody.”