A Dead-End Job

by Justin Alcala

  Luna seemed happy enough tagging along and I enjoyed her company, a lot. I didn’t know much about children, but her go-with-the-flow demeanor seemed pretty rare for a kid her age. It was nice. It had a way of keeping my blood a degree cooler through the recent excitement. Plus, for as much as she didn’t talk, there was an air of good nature about her. You just had to read between the lines. I wondered how I would sort everything out with Luna in the upcoming months should I untangle this mess. One step at a time, I guessed.

  I needed to give answers to Jumbo quickly but was hesitant about how I’d talk to Luna regarding my new plan of action. After she was good and sugared up, I put down my coffee while sitting directly in front of her atop a construction helmet that I had used as a disguise. Luna picked up on my awkwardness, grabbed her doll, and scooted away from me until her back was across the cab wall. She puffed up her frosting covered cheeks and squeezed Harry tight.

  “Yes,” I confessed. “I have bad news.” Luna furrowed her brow. “We need to go back to the place where I found you.” Luna shook her head violently. “Please, kid, I need you to roll with this because if you don’t, I won’t do it.” Luna held her breath and gave me a narrow-eyed death glare. “I need to find the bad man that bought you from the other bad man who delivered you in a crate. If I don’t, there is a very good chance that I won’t find him at all. And that would be bad.” I paused and thought about what would happen if I didn’t kill Dillinger. “I mean, really bad.” Luna gave me a once over but didn’t say anything. “Like, I’ll-be-dead bad.” There was a long moment of silence as Luna squeezed onto Harry while staring at her light-up gym shoes. I didn’t have any clue as to what I’d do if she refused, so it all came down to this. After an excruciating pause, Luna stared up at me and nodded.

  “Thank you,” I sighed in relief, duck-squatting through the back of the van to hug her. It was instinctual, but it felt good. It felt even better when she squeezed back. I pulled away and looked her in the eyes. “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, kid. Once this is over, we’ll talk about new books, school, and possibly a bedroom.”

  We cleaned up after our dextrose invasion and headed back to the westside toward the old, abandoned factory. I was on the verge of my second wind from the caffeine overhaul as we started crushing gravel along the path to the converted storage facility. I could see Dillinger’s building from a half mile away. It looked untouched. The delivery dock’s door was still gaping open from Adam’s quick semi-truck getaway, allowing sunlight to pour in. From above, the pair of gargoyles seemed to stare at the intact paved tire tracks from our last visit. Dusk was still hours away, so I had time to kill. Keeping that in mind, Dillinger wasn’t just some dumb apex predator, he was cunning. Just because he wasn’t here didn’t mean that I wasn’t in danger.

  I reversed the van, kicking up a cloud of gravel dust. If we needed to make a quick getaway, we’d be ready. The car sat fifty feet away from the door. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving Luna alone knowing that police, security, or Dillinger’s thugs would likely explore the mystery vehicle if they arrived. Luna was instructed to follow close behind me. I took Old Lilith as a precautionary measure, though I saw no reason to use the long-range weapon if close quarter combat ensued. I just didn’t want to explain to the Grim Reaper that I lost his instrument of total destruction because I didn’t have proper locks on my van.

  There was hesitation as I took that first step toward the warehouse. I gave myself the briefest second to examine why. I’d never been afraid on a job before. Hell, part of me thought that being gunned down a few days ago was overdue. Why am I so nervous this time? It had to be Luna. I couldn’t help but feel if in the event we were caught, she’d pay the price and that scared me. If I became bullet food that was fine. It would suck, but it was an acceptable professional hazard. Luna, on the other hand, might be tortured for answers, thrown back into service, or worse.

  The thought of that killed me.

  So, as we hurried our way into the broken dock doors, I knew that being careful was an understatement.

  We used the broken door to gain access. The first thing I noticed upon entering was the missing bodies of the two old were-women. There was still shattered crate wood and dried blood on the cement floor, but no corpses. Someone had cleaned up the crime scene.

  That isn’t good.

  I quietly scouted out the remainder of the lower floor, but everything had remained untouched. With the bottom floor cleared, it was time to go upstairs. Luna and I crawled up the industrial steel steps, trying to tread lightly on a staircase engineered to thunder with a cat’s gait. The second and third floor mezzanines hugged the four walls, supporting a handful of glass office doors. Luna and I stalked along the catwalks checking each abandoned office for clues.

  There were moldy shipping boxes, rusted desks, and rat droppings. After an hour of searching, we gave up on the middle levels. That left only a narrow stairwell to the fourth floor. The flight of steps led to a single worn oak door of a main boss-like office. My imagination went wild as we approached, traveling back in time to when this place had been an active worksite. I envisioned some cock-strong manager in a cheap suit sipping coffee while inspecting scurried employees below.

  The faded gold letters along the door read Ex-blurred-letters-ice, which I assumed spelled Executive Office. I tested the doorknob. Bizarrely, it was locked. My chagrin turned to optimism. I couldn’t see the point in locking a door to protect moldy paperwork. The lock was traditional. I removed the warder’s key in my pocket and inserted it into the keyhole. I applied slight torque to the wrench, scrubbing the key back and forth until I heard a distinct click. I pulled the knob and the door opened.

  Bingo.

  Luna threw me a suspicious look and I gave her a toothy grin in return. Luna shook her head. I pushed the door and was met with a reserve of heat from the sunbaked walls. The room had been well kept compared to all others. While the office’s wallpaper was tired and the ceiling tarnished, the furniture inside was organized. The desk was something fashioned out of the forties, but it was polished and free of clutter. There wasn’t any filth, and it was void of vermin. A cedar rolling chair with green crushed velvet cushions sat at the desk with twin gunmetal grey filing cabinets tucked under the workspace. I closed the office door behind us but motioned for Luna to stay near the exit momentarily. I didn’t put it past Dillinger to booby-trap anything. Sure enough, as I flicked on the amber light from an antique bronze library desk lamp, I spotted a thin red wire snaking from behind a pinup of a scantily clad bob-haired flapper along the wall. The cable coiled under the desk and into the back of the hutch drawer. Red wiring meant “live” universally, so I asked Luna to step back into the hall. Luna wrung her hands together and inched into the lonely stairwell.

  I removed the poster one tack at a time to find a hollow in the wall. The red wire’s top had been inserted into a car battery sitting in a drywall nest. I pinched the rubber insulated wire and tugged. A spark spat out. Like a matador, I sidestepped the waste drawer and prepared to open it.

  “Alright, funny man,” I said underneath my breath. “Let’s see what you’re hiding.”

  There was a snap and pop before several random items violently flung from the desk. The drawer had been rigged with a miniature catapult that triggered upon opening. I took a second to study the pile of scattered ammunition along the warped wood floor. Alongside a broken glass vial of clear liquid were silver pellets, rock salt, and an assortment of crystals. The red wire had been bound to the handle. Anyone who wasn’t aware of the booby-trap would likely be shocked still as they pulled the drawer, and then pelted by mystical ammunition. Dillinger was protecting the contents from supernatural forces.

  I rifled through the proverbial junk drawer of mystical items, from twined sage to dried chicken’s feet. The leftovers seemed harmless. I called Luna back in as I dug up a few file folders tucked under the treasure trove of leftover Happy Meal witch toys. Luna entered gingerly, taking
bite-sized steps before stopping to study the pile of broken catapult armaments on the ground. I dissected each file as she fixated on the junk. There was correspondence between Dillinger and a DuSable about organizing an Undead Union. On the top of the letterhead was a sigil that matched Dillinger’s signet ring.

  Details in the letter included proposed voting rights and requests for fair representation based on individual undead needs. I didn’t know the first thing about the modern vampires, ghosts, and revenants mentioned in the various transcripts, but the Undead Union’s ideology didn’t sound half as malicious as Ms. Boise made them out to be. In addition, there were several blueprints for the Field Museum’s Egyptian exhibit. There were specifics on transforming a long- established warlock’s nightclub into lodging for supernatural refugees. Most importantly, there were details about an Operation Shackled Moon, an initiative to free, drum roll, please, paranormal prisoners.

  I flipped through the pages. Each document gave specifics on rescuing ghoulish house servants from aristocratic fiends, dispelling voodoo zombies from priests, and liberating lycanthropes from werewolf fighting pits. Every objective had assigned names to them.

  Designated to werewolf recovery duty was none other than John Dillinger and Adam Frankenstein.

  Son of a bitch.

  I peered over my shoulder to Luna, who was arranging magical rocks into a mosaic masterpiece while kicking away silver pellets. Dillinger had tried to save her. Could a ruthless vampiric gangster also be a superhuman Hallmark sweetie who rescues enslaved kid-werewolves on the side? I imagined the shoebox card with one of those big-headed Precious Moments kids in the likeliness of Dillinger, his clawed fingers over the chest. The interior read, You turn my cold heart into a gold heart.

  The cocky smile he’d had when I was tied up slipped into my thoughts. Wait, what was I thinking? This was the same man that had gone on endless crime sprees in the early twentieth century. He’d murdered a cop in East Chicago. He ate people for food. Oh, and let’s not forget, Buck, this guy had shot me down in cold blood. No, there was only one place for this man, and it was on the business end of Old Lilith’s barrel. The job was still Dillinger.

  I collected the files and decided to slip out of Dillinger’s factory before it was too late. Luna and I didn’t waste time cleaning up our mess. I couldn’t give a damn if Dillinger knew we were here. The man was astute enough to know he was being hunted. Having a mess to clean up was the least of his worries. We hurried down to the bottom floor where we left from the broken dock door. The heat was getting unbearable and as we headed to the van, I struggled to air out my sweaty stomach by fanning my shirt. Luna tugged my pant leg. I gave her the quickest little glance and noticed that she was staring behind us. I spun around expecting Dillinger or his goons to be behind us, but there was no one there. Luna pointed up to the top of the factory and I noticed that the gargoyles were missing.

  I’m ready for some blessings that aren’t in disguise.

  Those pieces of granite sculpted shit had several windows of opportunity to do something, and it was only now that they decided to go fly off and tattletale on me? They were likely mid-flight to Dillinger of the Undead Union. However, unless they had the speed of a Grumman F-14 Tomcat, we had a little time. I wrote their disappearance off as a learning experience that came with amateur undead killing and made a mental note to shoot every damn gargoyle, fountain statue, or garden gnome I came across in the future. I took Luna by the hand and tugged.

  “Okay, kid,” I said as I picked up the pace. “Speed it up. Those oversized Halloween props might be rushing to get backup.”

  Luna followed my pace, hopping into the back of the van as I checked beneath for explosives. Once I saw the coast was clear, I jumped into the driver seat, shoved the key in the ignition and put the car into drive. We kicked rocks as we sped out of the factory district and onto real streets. Luna stared out of the window to the sky. It was midafternoon and, naturally, we hit Friday evacuation traffic. We were now on the Eisenhower, surrounded by Mercedes and BMWs. Every driver wore a business suit. They were presidents, vice-executives, and any other upper management title that had the luxury of dictating their own schedule. I half wanted to ram them off the road but told the Emperor Palpatine in my head to relax. Instead, I fiddled with my phone to get it to share music with my car radio. This would all be a lot easier with a little Tom Waits.

  I chose the Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards album and turned it up until the speaker static kicked in. Luna glowered at me as Tom’s shattered glass smothered in smoker’s cough voice cried throughout the van. She wiped the sweat from her creased forehead and drew her lips into a hard line. I flicked my eyes between Luna and the road, jaw drawn. As we drew to another sudden stop, I decided to make my stand.

  “Kid,” I spoke up. “Listen hard. We might die fighting vampires or babysitting demon toddlers, but it will be for naught unless you respect the Tom Waits. You get me?” Luna looked at the radio as if it were spewing earwigs, covering her ears with her hands. “I get it. He has a—” I hummed while searching for the right words. “—distinct style. It’s deliberate. Do me a favor though and listen to these dang lyrics.” Luna shook her head. “One song, come on. If you hate it, we can play whatever you want.” Luna sighed, crossed her arms, and leaned back in her seat. We listened to Tom. One song became two and then two became four. By the time we reached our exit, we’d listened to the entire album. I never looked at her. No, that would only thwart my intentions. I’ve learned that Luna wasn’t the kind to take crap if she wasn’t happy. Tom had jammed his broken fingers into her werewolf heart, singing razor lullabies that milked the darkest minds with ardor.

  We pulled up in front of Gamer’s Pair-of-Dice as the Earth bled the last hours of the sun’s fury for the day. I prayed that Darren wasn’t there, as I was so hot I could drink iced Windex and ask for seconds. Today’s visit could end with a Darren fatality. Luna and I trotted into the cooled air of the hobby store. The register was unmanned. We headed straight to the back looking for Freddy. I had vampire questions to ask and death threats to administer. No one gets to visit me at home. Well, except Bethany, but she had clothes for Luna. Then there’s Ms. Boise’s freak show, but I had no real options on that one. Anyhow, all others must die.

  I pushed to the back but was sad to find Freddy and his usual table of outcast gamers were missing. Wendell, a teenage Warhammer player who frequented the store, must have seen my boiling expression. He waved me down with his stick arms and pointed toward the closed off back hall. I knew what he was trying to say. Past the hall and to the left was an emergency exit where smokers like me went to feed their chemical enslavement. I nodded, waved Luna to follow, and stomped toward the door. I was mentally poking at my frustrated embers in hopes to provoke them into a frenzied fire as we entered the lonely white hall filled with storage. I needed to remind myself that someone, as harmless as they might be, looking for my home was bad in my line of work. I kicked the handlebars of the emergency door and stomped into the alley.

  A pack of Goth maniacs in pleather pants and trench coats were speaking in bad British accents along the tight lane that bridged the alley to the main road. Freddy, who was at the front, donned a pair of plastic quarter machine fangs in his mouth as a trio of dark dorks pointed finger guns at him. A pudgy woman with cropped hair and scratch marks painted on her cheek howled like a wolf, her chipped purple fingernails curled into imaginary claws. Darren hid in the back near the street outlet recording the action on his phone with a satisfied grin. Luna leaned on me as she pulled her brows together, blinking rapidly.

  “Don’t worry, kid.” I tucked her behind my leg. “These scary looking people are just LARPers. They only pretend to be dangerous.”

  “Dang it, Buck.” Darren dropped his camera angle. “You ruined the shot. We’re trying to record a promo video for the store here.” It was time to center my inner-asshole. Time to shine.

  “Listen up, children of Morpheus,” I shout
ed. “Your Monster Mash is over. Freddy and I need to have a chat about his attempt to visit me at my private residence.” The Buffy cast froze, their eyes darting between my glare and Freddy’s reaction. Freddy grimaced and swallowed hard.

  “Come on, Buck,” yelled Darren. “Can’t this wait?”

  “Oh,” I gasped with false bravado. “Would the representative of Confidential Information Sharing Brigade like to take the stage? I have a few choice words for you too, you fat piece of—”

  “Okay, okay.” Darren lowered his head like a scolded dog and scurried along with the other LARPers inside. Luna followed behind them, posting next to the entrance. Meanwhile, Freddy puffed out his man-boob chest, pushing the bridge of his moon shaped sunglasses farther onto his nose. It appeared someone had a backbone to break. I approached him with a John Wayne gait and waited for the nerds to completely disperse.

  “Hey, Freddy.” I crushed a discarded pop can that littered in the alley. “I heard you stopped at my house.” Freddy flipped a drape of long bangs over his glasses, combing his fingers through his mane. His trench coat lapel was covered in cheap Spencer’s iron on patches of Jack the Pumpkin King. It was the sort of tacky decor that screamed wanna-be-lost-soul.

  “I did,” he said with a straight face.

  “Freddy,” I sung while wagging my finger like a parent at their sock chewing puppy. “I want to warn you as a man that hasn’t taken his PTSD medication, your next answer needs to be spot on. Why did you think it’s a good idea to come to my home?”

  “You wanted to know about vampires, didn’t you?”

  “I can buy the Requiem book.”

  “No,” he snarled before taking a breath. “Real vampires.”

  “Freddy, from one crazy son of a bitch to another, there’s no such thing as vampires, man. Let it go.”

  “Oh no?” he snapped back, his nostrils dilated. “Then why have you been going to The Violet Hour?”