Wildcase - [Rail Black 02]

by Neil Russell

  While her chest heaved, and the pulse in her neck throbbed, I got up and opened cabinets until I found a set of sambuca glasses and a half-empty bottle of B&B. Not exactly a breakfast drink, but I poured three fingers and handed it to her. Suzanne took a slug, snorted and took another. When she calmed sufficiently, Meong gave her a lace handkerchief and went back to her sofa but not before mentally shoving a dagger through my Adam’s apple. I noticed that when she sat down, she began texting on a cell phone.

  “I’m so sorry. I knew that name was coming, but I hadn’t heard it for so long ...”

  “You’re not doing yourself any good holding on to that kind of anger.”

  She took another sip of B&B, and I noticed a tremor in her hand. “I know,” she said. “What’s the saying? ‘Hate is like taking a little poison every day and hoping the other person dies.’”

  “It’s true.”

  “Then why are you here? I felt your hand when we shook. That kind of hardness doesn’t come with a man who turns the other cheek.”

  I didn’t have an answer for that, so I plowed ahead. “How did you know Rackmann?”

  “My father was one of his students. Before the war.”

  I did a quick calculation. “Then he was relatively young when he became ill.”

  “Sixty-two. Early-onset Alzheimer’s. The body’s not broken, so it’s death by millimeters. Seven years of hell. My mother had so many strokes, she became less coherent than he was. Never happen to me. I keep a loaded gun next to the bed and a backup in the basement.”

  “The wife of a good friend says the day her guy stumbles over something that’s not there, she’s buying him the big Harley.”

  That seemed to lighten her a little, but I also thought she was looking for an excuse to come back. “I haven’t asked your father’s name.”

  “Ellery. I don’t know what it was originally. I don’t even know if he was born with the name Chang. Until the missionaries found him, he lived in the streets. The kids called him Rat because he was good at finding food. Rackmann didn’t like that, so started calling him Ellery.”

  “After the detective.”

  She nodded. “My father would have done anything for that motherfucker, and look what it got us.”

  I hated what I had to do, but it was time to puncture the balloon. “The jade tiger was Ellery’s, wasn’t it?”

  She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it and nodded. “He was using the tour company to get babies out. He said he owed Rackmann his life, and if he could save even one child from what he’d gone through, he was damn well going to do it. Whatever the consequences. Well, he sure as fuck got plenty of those.”

  While she dabbed at her eyes, I helped her along. “So when Ellery became ill, Randy stepped in. To honor him but also to have his own sense of purpose. Something separate from his brother. Maybe to see that look in your father’s eyes that was reserved only for Philip.”

  The wind seemed to go out of her, and I went on. “So all this fury really isn’t about Rackmann. Philip was the chosen one, then Randy got his moment. But you were still the shy little girl with the limp whose father never saw that you were smarter and more capable than both of them.”

  “Goddamn you,” she said, but there wasn’t much conviction behind it.

  I was going to hate myself in the morning, but as long as I was breaking eggs, I needed to go all the way. If she knew something that could help me, she had to focus on what was real not some personal myth.

  “But no hate comes close to yours for Philip. A guy, who for all his brilliance, was so arrogant that he ignored all the warnings and brought the twins here anyway. And who never grasped that the people who made him rich cared less about balance sheets than raw power. What makes it even more difficult is that for all its brutality, you completely understand what happened and why.”

  I watched her fight it through and her eyes turn to stone. “Philip signed his own death warrant, and his selfish, controlling bitch of a wife deserved it right along with him. I felt sorry for the kids, but I barely knew them.”

  I prodded. “Ellery got a pass because he was sick and harmless, but when you’re dealing with families, you can’t take a chance that the quiet brother won’t suddenly find his stones.”

  She dropped her glass, and what was left of the B&B, spilled onto the Chinese rug. She buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders heaved with sobs. “Oh, my dear sweet Randy. What did they do to you, my little baby?”

  I heard Meong get up behind me. I stood and glared at her. She faltered and returned to the sofa. I went over to Suzanne and put my hand on her shoulder. “If there’s something you haven’t told me, I need to know it.”

  She looked up. “Everything you said is true. Everything. After Randy died, some people came here. They said they were from a church. I remember looking it up. It was out in the desert.”

  “Victorville.”

  “Yes. They wanted me to continue, but I was confused ... angry.” She hesitated. “I hate myself for saying it, but I was afraid too. How could anybody think I would help them after what happened?”

  “Because they knew how much it had meant to your father,” I said. “And you were in a position to save lives. The most innocent ones.”

  “That’s almost word for word. I called them terrible names and threw them out.”

  So the Chang appendage had been severed. Sleeping Tiger was dead. Or was it? “They didn’t let it drop that easily, did they?”

  She shook her head. “No, somebody came every year. Like clockwork. Always a different person, always very polite. I offered them money, but they wouldn’t take it.”

  “That would have let your conscience off the hook. They needed your ships.”

  “Well, apparently, they got tired of hearing no, because last year, they tried something different. They sent one of us.”

  “One of us?”

  “A man on the lists. Closer to your spot than mine.”

  “Who?”

  He voice turned into a snarl. “The man you asked about. Markus Kingdom. His pitch was that we had obligations we couldn’t walk away from because they were inconvenient. That it was our duty to hold civilization to a higher standard. I told him he could go fuck himself and every obligation he could find. As for civilization, it was pretty busy fucking itself.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing at first. He just hit me.”

  Her answer caught me off guard. “Hit you, how?”

  “With his fucking fist, that’s how. Right here in this office. He had a goon with him he called Duke, but Markus did the hitting himself. Knocked me clear over the desk. He would have kept at it if one of my girls hadn’t heard the commotion and come in. I’ve never seen a man so angry.

  “Then he started yelling that he wasn’t even Chinese, and he was tired of carrying the whole load himself. That he had important business with powerful people, and the kids were in the way.”

  “So why not just quit?”

  “That’s what I asked. And he got even angrier. Started yelling it wasn’t that simple. That two trains can’t run on the same track at the same time—especially if there’s only one locomotive.”

  I didn’t say it to Suzanne, but a man in Markus Kingdom’s position doesn’t lose his temper. At least not where outsiders can see it. At his level, everything is a chess move, and anger gives the edge to your opponent. The only time it happens is for effect or if the man is backed into a corner. The punch settled which this was.

  Before I could ask another question, I heard running footsteps on the roof. Not heavy, but fast. I turned and saw two young Asian men barely out of their teens. Each had a MAC-11 or the latest knockoff in one hand and an amber-colored Snapple bottle with sparks shooting out of its top in the other. Probably firecracker fuses inserted into det cord. When it ignited, it would amplify the Molotov cocktail tenfold.

  A volley of gunshots slammed into the panes, sending glass shards in all directions. I j
erked Suzanne to the floor, so the desk was between us and the windows. Meong didn’t drop. She ran to the open one and began shouting angrily in Chinese and pointing in our direction. The first Snapple bottle came through where the glass had originally been.

  Pros like to score bottles with a glass cutter so they’ll break if they contact anything stiffer than cotton candy. Fortunately, these two hadn’t read the manual, and the heavy carpet absorbed its fall. I rolled, swept it up with my right hand and threw it back. I heard it break and the familiar whoosh of unleashed flame, but it wasn’t going to do much damage to an asphalt roof.

  The second cocktail hit the window frame, shattered, and splashed its contents onto Meong. A split second later, she burst into flame. She got off only a partial scream before another flurry of bullets cut her dead. The pungent odor of gasoline and burning flesh reached me at the same time as the heat.

  As the men fled, I bolted up, tore off one of the drapes and smothered the flames on Meong. It saved the office, but it didn’t matter to her. There were shouts in the hallway, and I knew Suzanne would be looked after. Getting her head around Meong’s betrayal would take longer. I climbed through the open window and onto the roof.

  * * * *

  28

  A Flag and a Fish

  The shooters had split up. The decision of which to go after was made for me. Only one was visible. He had leaped onto an adjoining rooftop and fallen. As he struggled to his feet, his clothes were torn, and his hands and face were sliced open from belly flopping on the rough gravel surface. Unfortunately, he still had his gun.

  I hit the edge of the Happy Asia roof at full speed and tried not to look down. As I clawed for altitude, I half expected to feel a shower of lead plow into me, but my quarry had disappeared into a service stairwell. Being as tall as I am, I leap pretty well, and I needed every inch. Normally, I would have hit and rolled to lessen the chance of breaking an ankle, but having seen what happened to the kid, I bent my knees and took the shock on the soles of my feet. I felt it all the way up my spine.

  At the stairwell door, I stopped and waved my arm past the opening. Immediately, several shots rang out, kicking loose pieces of the steel frame. When I heard footsteps descending, I went down too.

  When I reached the sidewalk, I saw the shooter turning the corner a block away. He was heading back the way we’d come. The kid was fast, and by the time I reached Grant Avenue again, he was gone. People avoiding pursuit tend not to cross streets unless they have to, so I turned right and walked briskly along the storefronts looking in. I had gone about twenty feet when I heard chickens squawking and a man yelling. I ducked into a Chinese grocery.

  The place was so jammed with merchandise, I couldn’t see much of anything. Then suddenly, a flock of chickens came cackling past me and ran out the front door. I heard tires screech as they made it to the street, then shouts and people running after a free chicken dinner.

  I threaded my way past barrels, boxes and several older women talking excitedly and pointing toward the rear. I pushed through a beaded curtain into a narrow hallway.

  The back door was twenty feet ahead, and it had a burglar bar across it. Another doorway opened to my left, and I took a breath and ran past it. MAC-11 bullets tore plaster off the opposite wall. As soon as the firing stopped, I dove through the doorway and rolled behind the cash register counter.

  I was in a small restaurant not accessible from the street. It was decorated with mismatched Salvation Army furniture and old martial arts posters, and whatever was cooking was mouthwatering. About half the tables were occupied, their occupants shifting their gaze from me to the back, where I presumed the kitchen was. In a corner to my right, six older men wearing black suits sat playing cards at a large, round table. One looked up long enough to nod, then went back to his cards. I guessed I was in a tong restaurant and had just been given an okay to handle the problem. Unfortunately, nobody slid me a Magnum.

  I worked my way to the other end of the counter and used a mirror on the wall to look in the kitchen. The shooter was slamming another clip into his weapon, while the cookstaff stood next to the stove watching him. One of them caught my eye in the mirror and pantomimed opening a drawer.

  I reached up, pulled on the knob under the register and felt inside the drawer. The gun was a Raven .25, not much bigger than a pack of Camels. The cops call it a Saturday night special. I call it an amputation-in-waiting. Maybe I could ram it down his throat.

  The shooter saw me watching him and blew the mirror to pieces. That sent a few, but not all, of the patrons running into the grocery. The old men dealt another hand. While I was considering my next move, the shooter stuck his gun around the corner and fired wildly. He didn’t hit anything significant except a long fish tank filled with black water. It exploded, setting free a swarm of four-foot eels. They slithered past me faster than most people can run, and what the bullets had failed to do, the eels accomplished. Women screamed, and men knocked their wives out of the way running for the door.

  I used the distraction to grab a straggler by the tail, and before it could turn on me, I flung it in the general direction of the kitchen. Blind luck wrapped it over the shooter’s wrist, and it sank its teeth—serious teeth—into his wrist. He did the eel dance for a second, then regained his composure, changed hands with the gun and shot it. He kept firing as he ran past me and out the door. I heard the burglar bar clank, and by the time I got to the alley, he was gone.

  I caught up with him on the next block. City workers were rebuilding a stretch of sidewalk, and four cement trucks were lined up, waiting to disgorge their loads. The shooter had climbed into the lead mixer, which was painted bumper to bumper like a giant grinning shark. He was frantically trying to start it while the driver pulled at the door and yelled obscenities. When the kid pointed the MAC in the driver’s face, he opted for discretion and backed off.

  Seconds later, the mixer roared to life, and the shooter ground it into gear. I was already running toward the second truck. The guy in the cab didn’t look like he was going to surrender his rig easily, but I got lucky. The driver behind him got out to confront me, probably assuming I was some kind of jacker. Unfortunately, he was right, and I brushed him out of the way and got behind the wheel. My ride was painted like an American flag, and as I wound through first and second gears and headed downhill, I liked my look if not my chances.

  From the way the shark was swaying, I thought the kid was having a little trouble getting the feel of seventy thousand pounds of steel, chrome and shifting viscosity. But he wasn’t tentative. His brake lights came on only intermittently, and while he banged into parked cars, he continued accelerating.

  San Francisco’s one-way streets seem to have been determined by drawing names out of a hat. If there is a discernible pattern, it’s one I don’t recognize. At the next block, the kid went left, which put us on a two-way level surface and closing on a traffic jam ahead. In any other city, the next street would have headed uphill, so he would have had to turn against cars coming at him. But it headed down again, and the kid took it.

  There was some kind of street festival taking place, and as I swerved to avoid taking out a popcorn wagon, an Asian woman with an infant strapped to her stomach stepped in front of me and froze. I looked at her, and she looked at me, and in that split second, I imagined her disappearing under my bumper. I wrenched the wheel right, but there was no hope. Then, at the last possible instant, a hand came out of nowhere, grabbed her by the back of neck and jerked her out of my path.

  I glanced in my mirror and saw the red-and-white-striped coat of the popcorn man clutching her. I hit the horn in appreciation, but I doubt anyone guessed what it was for. Certainly not the motorcycle cop who flew out of an alley and had no choice but to lay down his bike and let it slide under my wheels. He was able to grab on to a tire of a parked car and miss being mashed into his Harley.

  The kid in the shark was doing better on the downgrade, missing most of the vehicles. But when I saw
that my speedometer was approaching seventy, I knew it was only a matter of time before we both hit something that would kill us and a lot of innocents. Then his cement feeder trough broke loose, swung out and began disgorging wet sludge onto parked cars. The fail-safe chip in the truck’s computer immediately jammed the transmission into a lower gear and began grinding the shark to an involuntary stop.

  I got the American flag down three gears in less than half a block, hearing steel tear with a shriek like a hundred cats in heat. When the brakes caught, the truck jolted to a stop, slamming my chest into the steering wheel.

  The kid was already out and firing his MAC. I dove down in the seat and pushed open the passenger door, preparing for another foot chase. Any other criminal would have taken off, but this was a teenager who’d probably been driving cement mixers on his Xbox since he was in diapers. While he kept me pinned down, he refolded and rehooked the trough and ran back to the cab. If I had moved right away, I might have gotten to him while he was fighting the truck into gear, but I might have also gotten a hollow point between the eyes. I was back on my own accelerator while the blue smoke from the stop was still in the air. My passenger door closed itself against a FedEx van.