Charlotte Sing said something to Chang, who led the way along the ends of the stacks. Coming to the last one he stopped and stepped aside, still holding the lantern low so that only a circle of floor was visible in its light. A puddle of seepage lay there, incubating mosquito larvae. At the opposite end of the stack, shadows formed a heap in the alcove formed by the wall and the steel structure. It might have been a pile of equipment that had been left behind.
“I’m understaffed,” Charlotte Sing said. “Security at the borders has limited me to Chang and a few dozen day laborers recruited locally, with as little explanation as possible about the reason for their employment. In the absence of physical force I considered it necessary to take other steps to secure your cooperation.”
She spoke again in Chinese. Chang raised the lantern to shoulder height. The light penetrated the blackness.
A folding cot had been erected in the narrow space at the end. I left Ouida to support herself against the wall while I went in to identify the small figure stretched out on the cot.
It was Luis Quincy Adams, Johnny Toledo’s errand boy, eyes closed, face sheathed in cold sweat. Something crunched underfoot when I moved in to see if he was breathing. I withdrew my foot and looked down at the broken pieces of a disposable syringe.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. When I placed the back of my hand near his lips, nothing stirred the hairs. I lifted his bare arm from atop the thin wool blanket that covered him and pressed my thumb to the artery on the underside of his wrist. I felt nothing at first, then a shallow throb. I lowered the arm.
“The mildest of injections,” Charlotte Sing said. “Just enough to keep him unconscious. I shouldn’t need to add that the solution will be increased substantially if despite Chang’s supervision you fail to return with the converter boxes, but certain things are safer not left unsaid.”
I asked how long he’d been there.
“Chang found him at the bus station yesterday, on his own initiative. He couldn’t fly without photo ID, and you can no longer board a train without passing through security. It was possible the authorities had been notified, with his description. He had a ticket to El Paso.”
“He was on his way to Mexico.”
“Your advice. No, we didn’t torture him. He told us about you and the camera phone he gave you, but that was under the influence of the drug. I assume by now you’ve turned the phone over to the police.”
“He’s just a kid.”
“At his age I’d been a slave for two years. Children sometimes endure under circumstances that would destroy their elders.”
Ouida made a noise. I’d almost forgotten about her. “You don’t need the boy,” I said. “He doesn’t know anything the cops don’t.”
“He can give evidence in support of it; but I’m not interested in holding him. When I have those boxes, Chang and I will leave. By the time you bring back help, we’ll be out of U.S. jurisdiction.”
That meant Canada; and I knew then Detroit had been no accident. It was only three minutes across the border by bridge and tunnel, only they wouldn’t be using either. The guards on either side couldn’t be expected to catch every small watercraft, every private plane or helicopter. She could slip out as easily as she’d slipped in.
I stood facing her in the crawling light. “Neat but sloppy. Those temps you hired spilled a lot of powder on the street.”
“Oh, we always meant to measure the impact in a real-world situation. The boxes containing the heroin were intended to stray into the hands of local dealers. I overestimated their ability to recognize its purity and adulterate it properly; I’ve been away, and I’m still a novice in this area of commerce. Product development claimed most of my attention. The inferior quality of the Mexican import came as a shock.
“When the deaths began to attract the attention of the media, I issued instructions to reclaim as much of the shipment as possible. Your Mr. Crossgrain was a clerical mistake, made by an employee in a computer boiler room. He provided a tax identification number with his order that was similar to one on our list of customers in the related field of smuggled electronics. I came here to correct that error and make sure that no others took place.”
“With Chang.”
“We traveled separately; but yes. The local pool of qualified professionals is polluted with undercover officers.”
“Was Johnny Toledo on your customer list?”
“He was a parasite. I’m sure it wasn’t your intention, when you made contact with him, to set him off after those boxes, but that was the result. By the time my people learned they’d been recalled, they were already on the street.”
I’d guessed part of that. The rest was news. “So it wasn’t your people who burgled Crossgrain’s place the first time?”
She laughed unexpectedly, a tinkle of bells that walked up my spine like a centipede. “I’m not the only criminal in town. The fools who stole that shipment never looked inside. They marketed them at the going rate for hot merchandise.” Her face smoothed. “We’ve managed to recover only fourteen boxes. The ten we tracked to Eugenia Pappas’ warehouse leave one unaccounted for. I assume that found its way into official hands or you wouldn’t have known heroin was involved.”
I didn’t see any reason to tell her how Rudy the street person had swiped one from Johnny. “I’m back to what’s in it for you, if not the cash.”
“That isn’t part of our transaction. The boxes, please.” When I glanced at Luis she said, “He’ll be here when you return.”
I looked at Chang waiting, standing as motionless as the fixtures with the lantern raised, the light reflecting off the skin grafts on his face and the dark glossy marbles of his eyes.
Just then the boy on the cot made a low whimpering noise and stirred. Charlotte Sing came forward, drawing a slim leather case from the pocket opposite the one where she kept the knife.
“Don’t be alarmed,” she said, spreading it open on the boy’s chest. “This is methadone. Too sudden an awakening from the other can trigger cardiac arrest.” She filled one of a row of disposable syringes from one of a pair of small prescription bottles with different colored labels and squirted a short arc of liquid to clear the barrel of air. “The second bottle contains morphine, distilled from the opium from my gardens. You know the sound quality in this building. Any disturbance you’ve planned will lead to tragedy.”
She lifted his arm from the blanket. Ouida turned her face to the wall.
*
Chang accepted a loose key from his mistress and directed me with grunts and gestures to a different gate from the one I’d climbed before. I stood supporting Ouida while he bent over the padlock and undid the chain. We preceded him through the opening.
It was a hike from there to the Cutlass, supporting most of the young woman’s weight on my shoulders, but as we came under the street lamp nearest the car I managed to turn her between us and made a cutting gesture on the offside with my hand at waist level. Gale Kreski’s panel truck was dark, parked in the gloom between lamps; I hoped he was paying attention. If he called Alderdyce and Thaler as we’d discussed, the Chinese would react at the first sound of a rapidly approaching vehicle. I’d experienced him in action, and there had been Madam Sing’s warning about what would happen to Luis.
I fumbled open the door on the passenger’s side of the Cutlass and lowered Ouida onto the seat. I had to pry my arm free of her fingers. She was shaking violently with post-trauma, her teeth rattling. I guided her legs in their ruined stockings into the car, patted her thigh, and closed the door on her.
Chang stood within lunging room as I unlocked and swung open the trunk. When I bent to lift a stack of boxes, he grunted and waved toward the street. He must have had instructions. I backed into the traffic lane, arms spread, while he scooped up a box in both hands.
I had an instant before he realized it was too light to contain a kilo of heroin. He was making a noise of surprise when I slammed the trunk d
own on his head.
That was the plan; but he had the reflexes of a scalded cat. He blocked the lid with his arm and it bounced back up off his biceps. At the same time he braced himself on the bumper with his other hand and his leg swung around on ball bearings, catching me on the bone at the side of my knee with the edge of his foot. Shards of blue-white pain shot out in all directions. The street slammed into me before I knew I was folding.
All this happened fast. What happened next was faster.
I’d landed hard on my shoulder. I rolled over onto my back to defend myself from the next attack. The empty revolver dug into my tailbone. I needed cartridges. I needed thunderbolts from heaven. Chang bent his knees to leap.
An engine roared. Rubber shrieked. Something as big as a building hurtled along the curb. I rolled again to clear myself from its path. I came to rest on my face just as something struck something else with the thud of a baseball bat colliding with a side of beef. A high thin scream pierced the echo of torn tires.
I got a palm on the pavement and pushed myself up onto my good leg. Everything is relative; it had been my bad leg until a moment ago. Chang’s face was a mask of agony, and then it was gone. He slumped forward over the boxes in the trunk. He could fall no farther. His legs were pinned between the Cutlass’ rear bumper and the front bumper of Kreski’s truck.
“Ogodogodogodogodogodogodogodogodogod.”
This went on as I hobbled around to curbside and snatched open the passenger’s door. It cut off on the instant. I took Ouida’s chin and turned her face toward me. Her eyes were white around the irises and a shadow was spreading under the skin of her forehead where it had struck the padded dash, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage.
Well, I’d have cried too. I smiled at her, watching the hysteria fade. She rested her cheek on the back of my hand. After a moment she nodded and I shut her back in.
Kreski was standing outside his cab. His cell phone screen glowed in one hand. His thumb twitched toward a button.
“Hang on,” I said.
He lifted the thumb. “New plan?”
“I never really cared for the first one.” I frowned. “I brought you in for hand-to-hand combat. I didn’t say anything about a lead foot.”
He grinned, an event as rare as solar eclipse. “Yeah, well, what’re you gonna do? It’s Detroit.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
When Kreski backed up his truck, Chang slid into a pile on the street. I approached him carefully, but his whirling-dervish days were over; he’d need braces in the exercise yard. The bump had shattered both legs as thoroughly as he had any of his victims’. He was breathing shallowly, whistling in his throat when he exhaled. Barely conscious.
Kreski stood over us. “We can’t leave him like this.”
“You’re right. Get something to tie him up.”
“I meant a hospital.”
“A boy inside needs it more. This one can still crawl. You want to wonder where he is a year from now when the bones knit?”
He trotted over to his truck and cane back with a coil of piano wire. Disregarding Chang’s gasps I dragged him over to the street lamp, heaved him into a sitting position with his back against the base—he screamed—and wired his wrists together on the other side.
Kreski watched me tie off the wire. I made it bite. “He’ll slash himself to the bone if he tries to get loose.”
“That’s the idea.” I snatched the cutters from Kreski’s hand and snipped the coil free. My hands shook. I was going through some post-trauma of my own.
“You okay?”
“I’m a little worked up.” I staggered to my feet and gave him back the wires and cutters. “I need you to take Ouida home.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got to get the boy.”
“Who’s in there with him?”
“Just one person. A woman.”
“A woman’s behind all this?”
“If you knew this woman you wouldn’t be surprised.”
He helped me take Ouida from the car and went ahead to wait by the truck. She seemed steadier now, taking some weight off me. “I—I have the impression I was unkind to you.” I had to strain to hear her.
“I bring that out in people.”
“That horrible woman. Is she—?”
“The Queen of Cuckoo? She belongs in a Saturday morning cartoon. That’s where we keep the really dangerous ones.”
“Do you think she knows something went wrong?”
“I don’t know. If sound travels through the walls the way it does inside, yeah.”
“What will you do?”
“Wait for the cops,” Kreski said. He took Ouida’s arm gently. The other slid through my hand, paused when our palms touched. I squeezed hers quickly and let go. He helped her up onto the seat beside the driver’s.
“Can’t,” I said. “Give it fifteen minutes, then call both numbers I gave you. Tell them to come to the equipment room. Someone must have a plan of the building. Fifteen,” I repeated. “I want her in reach before she hears so much as a hinge squeak.” I showed him the revolver.
“Shouldn’t you reload?”
“I didn’t bring extra shells.”
“What are you going to do, throw it at her?”
“That’s what they do in movies.”
“You just make this up as you go along?”
“It makes itself up. I just follow.”
I watched the panel truck pull out, then fished out the last of the pills Barry had given me and crunched them thoughtfully. Chang breathed in broken moans, the back of his head resting against the lamppost. His ruined legs were spread out in front of him like a doll’s. He didn’t exist for me.
I swallowed, tasting the bitter medicine in the roots of my tongue. The Cutlass’ trunk stood open. I holstered the .38 and lifted out a box containing an empty TV converter.
The gate I’d come through with Chang was still unlocked. Out in the moonlight he’d abandoned the lantern, the kerosene burning low now on the ground. I shifted the box under my arm, lifted the lamp by the bail. It lit my way only a yard at a time, but the weight of it quieted the tremors in my hand. Navigating by memory and the odd familiar feature I found my way through the building’s entrails. The route back inside seemed three times as long as the way out. Twice I stopped, second-guessing myself; had I taken a wrong turn? But even a place built in so lopsided a circle led eventually to the right spot.
The opening to the equipment room made a black rectangle in the pale wall. Was she waiting there in darkness? It was inconceivable that Charlotte Sing, who’d seen the way to freedom and power from the bottom of the human compost, hadn’t made provisions for so small a comfort as a source of light. Or could she see in the dark? Maybe her eyes were all pupil after all.
I stepped inside and stopped, holding the lantern high. In that primitive cave in the center of a city of just under a million people I made a swell target for something ancient and evil.
I stepped forward. Anything was better than standing still and inviting paralysis.
Luis lay as I’d left him, rolling his head now from side to side in some restless dream. I propped the lantern on an empty utility shelf high enough to shed light down on the cot and felt again for his pulse. It seemed stronger than before; then it didn’t. His young system seemed to be tiring of the struggle to survive.
“Hang on, muchacho. Those bulls in Mexico don’t stand a chance.” I was talking in a singsong rhythm, like someone saying grace.
He whimpered, shifted a leg under the blanket. The long muscle stood out in his thigh. He was running down some adobe-lined street.
“You’re short nine boxes and one man.”
The low contralto, too scrupulously separated from any hint of regionality, made me shudder. It was like coming upon a snake when you were expecting something else. I willed the tension out of my shoulders and turned around, sliding the revolver out of its holster in the same movement. Charlotte Sing stood at the ot
her end of the narrow aisle between the wall and the rack of shelves, hands folded at her waist. Her gaze slid from the .38 to my face.
“You should consider carrying a semiautomatic pistol,” she said. “The light shows through the empty chambers in a revolver.”
I hung on to it anyway. From my angle I couldn’t tell if that was true. “You’ve got about five minutes before the cops come. Plenty of time to run—if you’re right about the gun.”
She didn’t move. “This is the second time Chang has disappointed me. It was clumsy of him to allow himself to be photographed. Did you overcome him alone?”
“I had a couple of tons of help. They can pin him back together or deport him as is. What’s the appeals process for Paper Dog killers in China?”
“If you came back for the boy, why did you bring any boxes at all?”
“I thought you might like to take a look inside.” I let the shipping carton fall to the floor and kicked it her way. It slid to a stop at her feet.
She remained unmoving for a moment, then bent a knee to lift it. She let it drop and rose. “Did you remove the contents?”
“I’m not sure it ever had any. How much do you trust your people?”
“They know the penalty for theft and betrayal. This is the work of the Pappas woman.”
“It’s possible. Her caretaker never even knew the boxes were in the warehouse. Her people could have gutted them any time and resealed the cartons while he was busy messing with his plastic models, or they might have arrived empty, having been harvested somewhere along the way. You can fund a lot of charities with twenty kilos of souped-up heroin. After that, Ouida was intended to track down the boxes in the system and report them. Maybe she was supposed to take the fall for what was missing.”
Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels Page 18