A Filthy Business [Kindle in Motion]

by William Lashner

  “Are you okay?” I said to Cindy as we raced on, a screeching following us as we powered away from the ruined Pontiac.

  “Bang gang, what the hell was that?”

  “They’re onto us. They sent a team out to kill us both. I had to do something.”

  “Are they dead?”

  “Hopefully. But the question, Cindy, is how are they onto us?”

  With my gaze more aimed at the rearview mirror than on the road, I kept waiting for the leap of fire. In every movie where a car spins and crashes like that, there’s always a leap of fire. But here, now there was nothing. I considered turning around, going back, and finishing the job, but what if there was a team behind them? Why wouldn’t there be a team behind them?

  “We have to get off this road.”

  The engine roared like an angry beast, still healthy in its rear compartment, but along with the roar was the screech of metal on metal, and a sour rubber smoke was leaking into the interior. We wouldn’t get very far before something snapped or a tire blew. That’s when I spotted in my high beams a rusted sign for a camp of tourist cabins.

  “Hold on,” I said.

  I took the turn at speed.

  The car limped onto the gravel drive of the old tourist camp. The beams of my headlights painted the lot haphazardly, like the gaze of two crossed eyes. I parked within the ambit of light in front of the far cabin, got out, and checked the car’s condition. Something viscous and dark was dripping from the rear-mounted engine as a result of the first slam, and the left side of the front was entirely crumpled, with a metal edge pressing into the top of the tire that was now blown. In the morning light I might be able to bend back the metal, change the tire, fix the oil leak. In the morning light we might be able to get somewhere other than here, but what did it matter? They were onto us, and here was as good a place as any.

  I pulled open Cindy’s door. Metal creaked and bent with the pulling. “Wait,” I said as I leaned in, opened the glove compartment, pulled out the gun. “I’ll check us in.”

  “We’re staying here?”

  “We’re not getting much farther with the car as it is.”

  “Who were they, the people in the car?”

  “Just some hoods. There will probably be more.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Get some sleep. Let me check us in.”

  “You’ll come back, won’t you, Dick?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

  Her eyes were still wide with fear and hope when I shut the door and headed across the curve of cabins to where a neon “Vacancy” sign was lit in front of the largest of the cabins. I turned back and saw Cindy staring at me as I stepped into the office.

  In the dimly lit log-cabin interior, alongside the counter, was a rack with pamphlets for all the local attractions: water slides, train rides, Fallingwater, Cooper’s Rock. And ooh, golf. There was a bell on the desk and a door behind the desk, where the innkeeper would be sleeping, and a door on the far side of the cabin, where I could sneak out without being seen by Cindy Lieu.

  They were onto us. They were tracking her, or me, or my car, but most likely her. There was something she brought, something in that bag, a phone she didn’t give me, the tablet she said she didn’t have, maybe a marker the good Dr. Heigenmeister stuck inside her when he took out the kidney. What it was didn’t much matter. Out of Virginia I had gotten off the interstate. We were driving west on a dark local road when that Pontiac came after us like a guided missile. They were onto us, which meant they still were coming. And right now we were no match for them.

  The smart thing was for me to get the hell away, alone, to take the gun and slip out the far door and head into the woods, alone, into the mountains, alone. I could roam the landscape, find a cabin here, some empty vacation home there, hide out in places where they would never find me, and regroup. Then, if there was going to be a fight, it would be on my terms, on my ground, where I had the advantage. There was nothing keeping me here that I cared about in the least, except maybe for the Porsche. I did like the Porsche. It would be a shame if something fatal happened to the Porsche. But something already near fatal had happened to the Porsche. And if Alberto came through, I could buy a fleet. Better yet, I’d still be alive to drive past the gaping suckers in their Hondas. The smart thing was to go.

  But for the second time in a span of only a few hours, I didn’t do the smart thing. (Did you catch the first time?) What I did instead was ring the bell and wake the kid sleeping in the room behind the desk. He was thin and tall, his dark hair mussed, his face a spilled glass of milk.

  “You guys busy?” I said.

  “It’s midweek.”

  “Is the cabin at the far end available?”

  “Pick whichever one you want,” he said without looking out the window. “It doesn’t matter. It’s midweek.”

  “Two nights. Cash okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. But I’ll still need to see a card.”

  “All I have is cash, but I can add a hundred to cover expenses. You get to keep what’s left.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  After Cindy and I were set in the cabin, along with our bags, the guns, and the ammunition, I moved the car to the cabin in the middle of the row. On the way back, I kicked gravel over the pool of oil that had leaked from the Porsche’s engine. I told Cindy to get some sleep, and then I pulled the easy chair around. I sat in the chair, looking out the opened window, with the Glock on the table and the AR-15 in my lap. They were onto us, which meant they were coming.

  Well, let the bastards come, I welcomed them. They weren’t just assassins to me anymore, they were opportunity.

  I sat in that chair and stared at the darkness surrounding the poorly lighted gravel clearing in front of the cabins. The sounds of nature floated in through the window as I waited for them to come: a breeze slipping through the trees, the chirrups and buzzes of insects, the distant song of an insomniac bird. It was soothing and innocent, lulling, all of it, until I jerked awake from the slam of a car door.

  A blue SUV had pulled behind the Porsche in the middle of the row of cabins. Behind the SUV, illuminated by the dim yellow light, looking around to get the lay of the land, stood Riley. She wore a leather jacket and she had a gun in her hand. Another car door slammed and there was Kief, slowly circling the Porsche, holding some device, shaking his head as he inspected the car’s wounds. He walked up to the cabin and tried to peer into the window.

  I could just barely make out his nasal voice floating above the insectile hum. “I don’t think he’s in there.”

  “Of course he’s not in there,” said Riley. “It would be suicide.”

  “And what he’s done isn’t?”

  “Maybe he hiked off into the mountains.”

  “Phil ever seem much of a hikey guy to you? He probably stole another car, stopped to get a manicure, and is now heading west, like he said. I’ll check in the office.”

  The shot kicked up gravel in front of the cabin. Kief dove to the side of the Porsche and lifted his head just above the crumpled hood. Riley turned toward me.

  “I hope you missed on purpose,” she said. “Because if you didn’t, then you’re a piss-poor shot, which doesn’t bode well for your survival.”

  “Drop the gun and raise your hands, both of you,” I said. The gun dropped, their hands rose. “Where are the rest of the Hyenas?”

  “They’re coming,” said Riley. “But we’re not with them. We both ran as soon as you told us to.”

  “Then why aren’t you on that beach halfway across the world with that girl you were with?”

  “It didn’t quite work out,” said Riley.

  “Like it didn’t work out last time?”

  “You got a point to make?”

  “I don’t think you’re ever getting to that beach.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Put the gun down, boss,” called out Kief, his hands raised while he
still was hiding behind the Porsche. “We’re here to help.”

  “They didn’t send us,” said Riley.

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “They’re tracking your ass,” said Kief.

  “I figured they were, but you’re the ones who showed up.”

  “Yeah, well, Riley broke into their server and found the signal specs they had sent off to their teams. At that point, all I had to do was reprogram the receiver that we used—”

  “Where’s the signaling device?”

  “From what I can tell it’s in your car. It seems to be coming from the glove compartment. Want me to get rid of it?”

  “Leave it,” I said. “I wouldn’t want your pals to get lost.”

  “Who was in your car who could have planted the device?” said Riley.

  “Just our kidney girl,” I said, “and Cassandra.”

  “Cassandra?” said Kief.

  “She saved my life in DC.”

  “So they could get to the girl.”

  “I suppose I know that now. And I guess our lawyer’s dead, too. That’s a shame. So why are you here again?”

  “To warn you. To help you. To stand with you.”

  “Why would you want to stand with me?”

  “You think they’re going to leave us be?” said Kief. “They already came after us once.”

  “If they come after us again,” said Riley, “we figured we’d rather be with you when they do.”

  “What about Gordon?” I said.

  “He’s with them. As soon as I warned him, like you said, the shit hit the fanny. Apparently he’d been keeping tabs on you for them from the start, playing a double game all along. He was the one who told Mr. Maambong about the lawyer in Washington.”

  “Gordon, huh. I knew someone was blabbing, but I thought the traitor was you, Kief.”

  “Me?”

  “Are you saying you wouldn’t have?”

  “I’m saying that Gordon beat me to it.”

  “So, how do you propose to help?”

  “First you put down the rifle,” said Riley.

  “Sure,” I said, keeping the barrel trained their way. “How’s that?”

  “We could run, man,” said Kief. “Your car’s not going anywhere the way it is now, but we could get away in the SUV.”

  “Until they find us again.”

  “Or, since we know they’re coming,” said Riley, “we could wait here and plead our case.”

  “Like they would listen.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about talking.”

  “How many guns you got?”

  “There’s the handgun you made me drop,” said Riley. “And a shotgun in the car.”

  “That’s not going to do much to stop Maambong’s army.”

  “The shotgun’s a twelve gauge,” said Riley. “Pump action with a magazine extender. It can do some damage, trust me. And Kief brought along some of his toys.”

  “Toys?”

  “Would it help,” said Kief, “if one of the toys was a flamethrower?”

  40. Waterloo

  The sun had not yet risen when they came. The treetops were barely visible in the lightening sky, and the drive into the tourist camp remained dark, impenetrable to my sight in a morning mist, but suddenly I knew they had come. The sounds of nature had gone abruptly quiet, as if a great speckled cat was moving swiftly through the woods, and I caught the scent of something rich with corruption and rot and inevitability. A moment later, through the hush, approaching footfalls tolled clearly on the gravel drive.

  They emerged out of the mist in two rows, like a murder of crows perched on twin electric wires. There were six henchmen up front, including Bobo, whom I had run off the road the night before—the bandages about his head and neck giving me more than a little satisfaction—and Bert, good old Bert, checking my veracity, building my drinks, coming now to put a bullet in my brain. The henchmen wore armored vests festooned with magazines and carried assault rifles as big as tree trunks. Behind them came four Hyenas: Gordon and Tom Preston and Mr. Maambong and sweet Cassandra, my Cassandra. All but Mr. Maambong bore weapons: Cassandra gripped the automatic she used in Washington; Gordon held an assault rifle with both hands; Tom Preston carried a huge gun with what looked like another gun fixed on top.

  Mr. Maambong in his white suit walked gingerly, leaning on his cane, his beetle-eyed glasses surveying the scene with that terrifying blankness. Sent here by the Principal, no doubt, to clean up his mess, which meant wiping me off the register of the organization as well as the face of the earth. I supposed that meant I wasn’t getting the partnership.

  When they were still a distance from the cabins, Tom Preston said something quietly and two of the henchmen broke off and headed to my right in order to flank the row of cabins. Another of the men headed to my left, entering the office. Then Bobo and a gunman from the front row walked right up to the Porsche parked before the middle cabin and raised their weapons. Only Bert now remained in front of the main hyenas. There was no attempt at negotiation, no call to wake me from my slumber and then entreat me to give up the girl without a fight. This wasn’t about giving up without a fight. Instead, the two gunmen stood in silence behind the Porsche, rifles aimed at the cabin, as if waiting for a signal.

  And then a shot rang out from inside the office.

  And suddenly the two men behind the Porsche started firing in bursts of four or five shots each. Burst after burst. And they kept at it, reloading when necessary with the magazines hanging off their vests. Burst after burst after burst, in a rhythm steady and strangely beautiful. The smoke rising, the dead magazines littering the gravel, the crisp scent of gunpowder, the very coldness of it. Blasting through the thin walls of the cabin, raising spinning splinters of wood and shards of glass, along with apocalyptic dust, loosing a relentless fusillade that brought the merest of smiles to Mr. Maambong’s face.

  Until the Porsche blew all to hell.

  The explosion bounced the car onto its side and unleashed an orange ball of flame and woe that flattened Bobo and the other gunman like a seven-eight spare.

  And at the same time, amidst a chorus of howls off to my right, fire poured through the woods like a tilted oil gusher gone mad. One of the henchmen ran out of the trees and onto the gravel, fire rising from every part of him, along with a thick, noisome smoke. He twirled and howled and fell. No one rushed over to pat out the flames, no one gave succor to the fallen man. Fire continued to drench the woods, even in the face of gunfire. Mr. Maambong’s glasses glinted blankly in the firelight.

  Things were going peachy. Before they arrived I had given Cindy the Glock and sent her into the woods behind the cabins to wait for us in safety. We had set our positions in anticipation. Already my assumption was that there were five down―the shot in the office was most likely from Riley, who had sent the young clerk off and was waiting behind the desk—five henchmen lost in the first wave of the battle. It would seem like a crushing blow, losing half your force in a snap of time, but what were five down to Mr. Maambong? They were henchmen, after all, and who in this world is more disposable than a henchman?

  As the Hyenas backed away, Bert firing haphazardly, I was confident enough to rise from behind the fortress of furniture and mattresses I had constructed to reinforce the wall of my cabin farthest from the office. I rested the barrel of the gun on the windowsill and was taking aim at Tom Preston himself, when I saw a puff of smoke rise from his position. Something like a small football spiraled through the air, coming right at me.

  And in the time span of its arcing flight, I began to reconsider this whole make-a-stand-at-the-tourist-camp thing.

  The explosion not only ripped a hole in the cabin and in my face, but in the very stream of time, creating a black hole that devoured memory. I have no recollection of the building disintegrating around me from the first grenade, or the incoming arc of the second grenade, or my dramatic bent-back flight through the air. All I know for sure is I landed faceup in
the middle of the gravel lot, not far from the ruined hulk of my Porsche, both of us streaming smoke into the morning air.

  When I came to, my pathetic little piece of resistance was over. I struggled to rise and finally did so, sitting up with my legs spread before me. I put a hand to my face and it came back bloody. My vision was spotty, unfocused, and one eye screamed with pain when I tried to wipe the blood away. Something was in it, something was sticking out of it. Kief was kneeling beside me, moaning. On the ground to his side was the whole flamethrower rig of tanks and nozzle torch he had whipped up from parts bought at a Home Depot, the nozzle gashed by a bullet and blackened. Kief’s pants were singed, his hands were burned hunks of flesh.

  Mr. Maambong stood before me, staring down with those blank beetle eyes. “You’re awake, Mr. Kubiak. Finally. Now answer us quickly. Where is she?”

  “Where is who?” I said, and it wasn’t an idle question. At that moment I was still fighting to clear the smog of unknowing in my brain. I wasn’t even sure who I was, where I was, whether or not this was reality or some brutal dream. Was I truly sitting on this gravel drive, or was I instead reclining on a chaise at the pool in Miami, the burns on my body from the sun, my brain fogged by a sweet stick of high-powered White Widow put into my lips by my lovely Cassandra? But as the fog lifted I realized that Cassandra wasn’t lying beside me but standing behind Kief with a gun at his head, and the sweet popcorn scent wasn’t reefer but the stink of Kief’s burned flesh.

  “The girl,” said Mr. Maambong. “The one you were assigned to eliminate and who you instead spirited away from Memphis and introduced to your former lawyer. Ms. Lieu. Where is she?”

  “I dropped her off on the road,” I said. “She’s on a bus somewhere.”