They walked me downstairs and outside. The short man who had torn apart my office got behind the wheel. The lights from the dash glowed. The big guy sat behind me and the pale-eyed man next to me. The van eased into traffic and glided into the night.
* * *
We drove south on Telegraph in the direction of Oakland. The driver was cautious. He drove several miles under the speed limit, stopped at yellow lights, braked if a pedestrian was anywhere near a crosswalk. We weren’t going to get pulled over. I figured they had Brandon in a warehouse or empty building. Probably one they had rented days or weeks before, to have ready for this kind of thing. I didn’t bother to talk. There was no point. The glitter of downtown Oakland drew closer. People out on a Thursday night, happy hours and dinners and concerts. Then downtown faded behind us, the streets grittier, fewer cars. We passed rows of one-story houses, beat-up apartment buildings, and weeded vacant lots. The part of Oakland where tech employees didn’t move and tech money didn’t flow. The streets were familiar.
I realized where we were going. Not to some warehouse.
They had my brother at the most obvious place of all: his own apartment.
The van pulled up to the curb. The driver left the engine running and stayed where he was. The pale-eyed man opened the door and the big guy shifted behind me. They stayed close, watching me carefully. We walked inside as the van pulled away. In the lobby, there was a broken pipe or leak. Slow metronome water drops ticked against the floor. A fluorescent light flickered. A rat bolted across the lobby, long bald tail whipping from side to side.
We walked up the stairs. The big guy in front of me, the pale-eyed man behind.
No choices.
For a moment, it all looked the same. The mess, the smell of stale smoke, Brandon sitting on the couch as usual. Except now his hands and feet were duct-taped together. A man with dishwater-blond hair in a charcoal suit sat next to him, playing a game on his cell phone. He looked up at us and put the phone down, showing a salon-tan face and too-white teeth that looked like he gargled with bleach every morning. Everything else the same squalor—overflowing ashtrays and empty pizza boxes.
“Nik?”
“Brandon.” I tried to run over to him and the big guy grabbed me by the shoulders. He was abnormally strong. He held me back easily, laughing. I forced myself to relax. I didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of feeling me struggle. His fingers pressed painfully into my arms long after I’d stopped moving. The man with the pale eyes had brought my purse from the bookstore. He dumped it out on the coffee table and looked at the Beretta with mild interest.
“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
Brandon smiled and I saw the old, gentle humor in his eyes. “Hurt? Naw, Nik. I was bored. Sitting here all alone without anyone to talk to.”
I turned to the man with the pale eyes. “What do I call you?”
His eyes slid off me. He shrugged. “Call me Joseph if you like.”
“Let him go, Joseph. Then you can do whatever you want to me. He’s not part of this.”
“We do whatever we want to you now. No bargains. And he’s your flesh and blood, which makes him part of this.”
“What do you want?”
He gave me a long basilisk look. “Who have you talked to, Nikki?”
“What do you mean, talked to? About what?”
Joseph walked over to the coffee table. I noticed a large briefcase that had been placed on the floor. He set the briefcase on the table and opened it carefully. Wires. Red and black alligator clamps. And some kind of large metal cube the size of a shoebox.
A battery.
“I haven’t talked to anyone,” I said again. “Not about any of this.”
He shook his head. “Forget it. Save your breath. We are going to use this on you regardless. And we will keep using it all night, back and forth between you and your brother. Until we are sure you are not withholding anything we want to know.”
The big guy grinned. “We never really pay attention to anything the first hour. That’s just getting-to-know-you chitchat.”
I met his gaze. “I bet you enjoy that part.”
His grin grew. Not denying it.
They sat me down in one of the armchairs. It took them about two minutes to tape my hands in front of me, then my feet. They were thorough. I didn’t bother to struggle. Not even when Joseph placed alligator clamps onto each of my arms, just above the tape that bound my wrists. I watched as the stubby serrated jaws closed over my flesh.
He held something up. A rubber mouth guard.
I looked at it. “Why?”
“We need you to be able to talk. When it’s time.”
I shook my head. Trying to ignore the visible teeth marks embedded in the rubber. “No.”
Joseph stared at me. His eyes were an almost colorless shade of blue. “Have you ever seen someone bite off their own tongue?”
I thought this over, then opened my mouth dutifully. Tasted the sour rubber, wondering how many other people had sat with this mouth guard against their teeth, feeling the metal clamps pinching into their skin, knowing what was coming. Brandon spoke up, the nonchalance stripped from his voice. “Please, guys. Don’t hurt her. Do it to me, instead.”
I tried to tell him to shut up but my voice was muffled around the mouth guard and I could only mumble. The big guy laughed. “Don’t worry, junkie. Plenty for you, too. But first your arrogant bitch sister needs a drink of the juice.”
“Before we start,” Joseph was saying, “I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to tell you something important. Five seconds. Do you understand what I mean?”
I looked at the wall in front of me. Said nothing.
“That’s how long the first time will last. This is the only time I’ll tell you how long. And this will be the shortest of the night. Remember that, when you’re trying to count to five.”
“Please,” said Brandon again. Louder.
“Shut up.” The man in the charcoal suit gave him a hard, open-handed smack against the face. My brother’s head jerked back. I managed to get out of the chair but the big guy laughed again and pushed me down easily. I stopped struggling and focused on what was coming. Trying to put my thoughts far away. Away from this room and these men. Away from the rubber taste in my mouth and the cold clamps against my skin. The three of them were staring openly at me. Curious. Like I was a lab mouse. Wanting to see how I took it. The big guy watched me with special intensity. An almost sexual anticipation. Greedy, eager, like I was performing a striptease just for him.
“Ready?” Joseph asked. Wires ran to a control panel that he held in both hands, like he was operating a remote-control airplane.
I didn’t answer.
He adjusted a dial.
He fastened his eyes on me and hit a switch.
Liquid fire filled me from arms to legs to face. My body was on fire from the inside out. My face was on fire deep within the skin. My eyes felt like they’d pop out of their sockets and I felt a horrible grip over my very organs, as if they were being squeezed into pulp. I was vaguely conscious of my teeth burrowing into the hard rubber in my mouth. I didn’t know if one or one hundred seconds had gone by. Space and time had ceased to exist. Just pain. Nothing else.
The pain was gone as instantaneously as it had arrived.
I was conscious of the world again. I smelled burnt flesh and spat out the mouth guard. I became aware that I was screaming and managed to quiet. The screaming continued and I realized the sound was coming from my brother. The big guy was watching me with even more hunger. “Some people piss themselves, even the first time. Did you?”
Brandon was still screaming. The man in the charcoal suit slapped him twice more, hard. Brandon quieted, vivid marks on his thin cheeks. They were taking the clamps off of me, putting them on my brother’s wrists. “Don’t,” I said. “He’s got a weak heart. It will kill him.”
The big guy looked at me. “Your junkie brother should pray to God he has a heart att
ack bad enough to finish him off. It would be the luckiest day of his worthless life.”
I already knew I was going to try to stop them. They did, too. I could see it. I didn’t care. The Beretta lay on the coffee table. Maybe, somehow, I could reach it.
“Ready, junkie?” Joseph asked. “Five seconds. Same as she got.”
He fiddled with the dials again. His hand moved closer to the switch.
I took a breath. Blew it out. Tensing in the chair.
The front door opened.
All five of us turned our heads in surprise. It was Eric, with the green Mohawk. Standing in the doorway looking just as surprised as we were. The big guy moved quickly. Bounded over and pushed the door shut behind him. Joseph was on his feet. He glared at Eric. “How did you get in here?”
Eric swiveled his head toward Joseph and slowly lit a cigarette. He was high out of his mind. His pupils were shiny little points. He held an open Twix bar in one hand and a grease-stained McDonald’s bag in the other. He took two slow steps into the apartment. “I have a key,” he said. “That’s how.” He tucked his cigarette into the corner of his mouth and held up a brass key as if to offer proof.
“You gave him a key to your apartment?” I exclaimed. “Seriously?”
“He had nowhere to stay, Nik,” protested my brother.
“What’s going on?” Eric looked around suspiciously. He must have shot up very recently. An easy way to tell. Because he wasn’t flat-out terrified. Any normal, sober person would have been frantically out the door after one look. But stoned as he was, Eric wasn’t blind. A vague look of worry settled over his face as his eyes took in the three men. “Is this a bust?”
The big guy laughed. “He’s junkie number two, that’s all.”
“Hey, man!” said Eric. “Screw you! I’m no junkie.” He took a slow bite of his Twix. Chocolate crumbs flecked his shirt. “Who are these people, Brandon?” He took a closer look at my brother. Saw the duct tape and alligator clamps. He might have been high, but he wasn’t dumb. Every instinct of self-preservation seemed to fire up at once. His eyes darted around. “I’ll come back later,” he said, and started backing toward the door.
“Wait!” said Joseph. “Take this, to be quiet about what you saw.”
Eric looked over. Seeing the wad of hundred-dollar bills held in Joseph’s outstretched left hand. Almost at the door, he stopped. Looking at the outstretched cash.
Hundred-dollar bills.
Irresistible.
“You should probably run, Eric,” I advised. “Right now.”
Instead he walked toward Joseph, hypnotized by the cash. “That’s all for me?”
“All for you,” Joseph agreed.
He picked up my Beretta from the coffee table and shot Eric in the head.
The Beretta was loaded with .40 caliber hollow-points. A very destructive round. The bullet blew out the back of Eric’s head. He was dead instantly. Blood spattered the scuffed white paint behind him in a five-foot radius. The McDonald’s bag dropped to the floor. Fries spilled out of greasy paper as blood pooled around the food. My brother was screaming again. “You didn’t have to do that!”
I was trying to figure out how this changed things. The gunshot had been loud, but this neighborhood was no stranger to gunshots. Gang and drug shootings happened all the time, and many of the residents had a distinct aversion to police involvement no matter what the reason. There was always a chance that if someone had heard the noise they’d call it in, but I wasn’t counting on this. These three men, though, had flown in from somewhere else. Hired guns. They probably went all over the world doing this kind of work. They didn’t know the area. And they were in an apartment with a dead body and enough incriminating evidence to put them away for life on a dozen different charges. Joseph had to be in his midforties and looked like he’d already done plenty of terrible things in his career. Hitmen didn’t tend to make it to their forties unless they had at least a modicum of caution.
The three of them, whispering urgently, seemed to reach a decision. Joseph looked over at me. “You two are lucky. You just avoided a very long night.”
“You’re letting us go?” Brandon asked. His voice was charged with relief.
The big guy laughed. “You can think of it like that, if you want.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to do what we came here to do,” answered Joseph. “We’re going to use you to tell a story. The only difference is we’re just going to skip to the last chapter.”
The big guy removed two other objects out of the briefcase. A small leather case the size of a hardcover and a narrow, two-foot tube wrapped in cloth. Joseph unzipped the case. A row of syringes gleamed against the black interior. “What are those?” asked Brandon.
The big guy snickered. “Should look familiar, junkie.”
Joseph addressed my brother. “A synthetic opioid compound. Chemically almost indistinguishable from heroin. A toxicology report won’t even show a difference.”
“Why?” I asked, feeling sick.
Joseph looked to me. “You showed up tonight and found your little brother, overdosed.” He jerked his head over at Eric’s body. More blood pooled, the face an awful, unnatural shade of white. “You saw the scumbag who sold it to him and flew into a rage, pulled your gun, and shot him dead on the spot.”
“Very likely. And then what?” I challenged.
“You realize what you’ve done. And you realize you only have one option left.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“That should be obvious.” He smiled thinly. “Suicide.”
“Right. People will believe that.”
“Of course they will. After all, you showed up here already a murderess, already knowing they were closing in on you.” He gave Eric’s body another glance. “This one doesn’t really change anything. Your brother was always going to OD tonight and you were always going to find him. And you were always going to have Karen Li’s blood on your hands.”
Now I was confused. “What?”
Joseph was unwrapping the cloth.
We all watched as the object was revealed.
A crowbar.
One end stained with what looked like spilled paint. I understood. He could tell. “Now you see, right? You’d been stalking her, out of control.”
“That kind of cheap trick isn’t something you’ll get away with.”
The big guy grinned. “We get away with way, way worse. You wouldn’t believe what we get away with. This is nothing.”
“I talked to the FBI. They know all about you. They know who you are.”
Joseph shook his head. “No, they know who you are.”
“They’ll know it wasn’t me.”
“How hard will they bother to even look? Finding you in this slum, drugs everywhere, practically on top of a dead man who was killed with your gun. Finding the crowbar with the Li woman’s blood all over it. That’s what they call open and shut, I believe.”
He was more right than I cared to admit, but it didn’t matter. He thought he was, and was confident enough to move forward with the plan. If things didn’t work out for them down the road, that wouldn’t do Brandon or me much good.
“Which one of you actually killed her?” I wanted to know.
Joseph shrugged. “Questions like that—what’s the point?”
I looked at the big guy. Thinking of the bookstore, his kick to the office door. “You?”
He grinned at me. Not denying. “What makes you say that?”
“Because you like it. I can tell.”
His eyes flicked over me with that same hungry look. “You think I like it?”
“Yes.”
He took a step closer. “I wish we had more time. I could have so much fun with you.”
“Take it easy, Victor. We have work to do,” said Joseph. He took one of the syringes and sat next to Brandon, searching for a vein in my brother’s thin arm. I watched the needle probe fruitlessly.
> Brandon smiled cheerfully. “Sorry. I used those up about ten years ago.”
“Shut up.” Joseph checked the other arm, to no avail.
Brandon giggled, hysteria under the levity. “I’m trying to cooperate. I really am.”
“Goddamn junkie,” Joseph exclaimed. He kicked the coffee table in frustration, knocking ashtrays and detritus and the open leather case onto the floor. I watched one of the syringes roll. It came to rest near my feet. I looked at it. A thin, translucent cylinder, the metallic needle jutting out. Almost invisible against the floor.
I stretched a leg out, grazing the syringe with my foot.
“Try his leg,” suggested Victor. None of the three were looking my way as I inched the syringe closer. They were all staring down at Brandon like he was a puzzle of some kind. Joseph rolled up a pants leg and probed around the ankle, then slid the needle carefully into Brandon’s leg. Brandon’s eyes softened with involuntary pleasure. He sagged back on the couch as I used my outstretched foot to work the syringe closer. Everyone’s eyes still on my brother as he breathed heavily, deep down in the stupefying pleasure of the drug. I leaned down quickly as they moved away from my brother.
I sat up. “Victor,” I said. “That’s your name, right?”
The big guy looked over at me. “Why?”
“It was you, wasn’t it? You were the one who did that to Karen.”
“Why do you care so much?”
“What does it matter?”
He shrugged. “Okay, why not, then? Sure.”
“It was you?”
He nodded slowly. “She begged, you know. You should have heard her beg.”
“And you liked that.”
He wasn’t bothering to pretend. Gave me that same hungry look. “I loved it.”
Behind him, I saw Joseph retrieve the open case and remove another syringe. He didn’t seem to notice one was missing. For the first time in my life I was grateful for Brandon’s addiction. Addiction equaled tolerance. Right now, tolerance equaled life. The more he could take, the longer he could stay alive. The question was how much. He could handle a far greater dose than a normal person. Maybe a second syringe, or a third if he was very lucky. I doubted anyone could take more than that. And there had been six in the case. They’d keep shooting into his unconscious body until his breathing stopped.
Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel Page 21