by Brett Savory
“I’m just saying, maybe our meeting wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe we were supposed to meet like this. Maybe there’s a reason for it.”
“Yeah, the reason was for me to kill you.” But now… Krebosche thought. He closed his eyes, inhaled and exhaled slowly, rubbed his head with the heel of the hand holding the gun. “But now I don’t know. It’s fucked. I had everything all planned out, but…” He shook his head as if trying to put his thoughts back in their proper order.
“But you’re not a killer.”
Krebosche looked up. “Really. Now, how do you know that?”
“You’d have done it by now. You’d have done it the moment we were safely away from the warehouse. You’d have had me park somewhere, told me who you were, cut my head off or shot me to death, left my body in the jeep to rot. But you didn’t. And I don’t think you will now. You don’t have it in you. As much as you wish you did. It’s just not there. I know what a killer looks like, and you’re simply not it.”
In truth, Palermo knew no such thing. But he felt there was enough truth in what he said that he had a shot at this panning out in his favor.
“I mean, you gave me a tourniquet for the leg you stabbed. Twice.” Palermo allowed himself a smile, hoped his instincts were serving him well, and that his attempt at humor wouldn’t backfire.
Krebosche seemed to have softened at Palermo’s words. His scowl less severe, shoulders less tense. The gun, however, continued to be held tight in Krebosche’s hand, so any sudden movements could still end very poorly for Palermo.
Krebosche thought things through, analyzing them from every angle. Was he a killer? Had all this preparation been for nothing? Could he let it all go so easily, just let Palermo get out of the car, walk away?
Palermo watched his face intently. He was sure he’d convinced him. Perhaps tricked Krebosche out of killing him. He wondered how far he could push it. When – or even if – he should ask to be released.
But then something snapped into Krebosche’s features – a hardness that was not there before. As suddenly as a light being switched on. And Palermo had seen this look before. Was reasonably sure he’d had the very same look when he’d hammered Carl Duncan to death in the warehouse.
“No,” Krebosche said, raising the gun to Palermo’s head, pressing it hard against his skull. “I’m going to do this. Because you deserve it. Whether your stories are true or not. Adelina is fucking gone. Along with my sister. And now so are you. I doubt even you can survive a bullet at this range.”
“Please, wait!” Palermo said in a rush, ashamed of his fear, but unable to control it. His mind scrambled for anything at all he could say to save his life. He realized he had only one card left to play. “I lied, OK, I lied! Two of our number have ascended. Henry Kyllo is the second person. He knows where Adelina is, and I swear I can take you right to him. I don’t know why, but he didn’t disappear like she did. And he knows. He knows where she is.”
“More bullshit just to save your life. Forget it. You’re done.”
But again, nagging doubts in Krebosche’s mind… Five seconds went by – the longest in Palermo’s life. His eyes were closed tight, waiting for the gun to erupt.
Then the gun was removed from his head, but still hovered close. He opened his eyes, looked at Krebosche, sweat beads forming and rolling down his forehead.
His voice low and dangerous, Krebosche said slowly, “Why didn’t you mention this Kyllo guy before?”
“I was trying to keep as much from you as possible. You’d’ve done the same in my position.”
Krebosche thought about it. His head spun. He didn’t know what to think anymore. But the thought that wouldn’t leave his head was: What if she isn’t dead? What if I really can see her again?
Palermo saw the wheels turning in Krebosche’s head, thought maybe this final card was worth playing after all. Not quite my final card, actually, he thought. Krebosche has no idea what Kyllo is, what he’s become. Neither do I, for that matter. Not really. But whatever it is, it’ll buy me time. And I’ll be among friends.
“Alright,” Krebosche said. “We’ll go see this Kyllo guy. But on the way, you’re going to explain what exactly you mean by ‘ascension.’ And if this is part of that trap I was gonna be walking into – the one where you were gonna take me to Adelina’s ‘real’ killer – you’d better rethink that. I see more than one person when we arrive–”
“I get it. I’m dead.”
“Yeah, you’re fucking dead.”
“I’ll have to get a message to my guys, tell them to go back to the warehouse. I’ll say the place they’re sitting on doesn’t need watching anymore.”
“Do it.”
“I’ll need my cellphone to send the text.” Palermo held his hands away from his body. “Right side pocket in my coat.”
Krebosche fished inside the pocket, drew out the phone. “I’ll do it. Tell me who to–”
That’s when Palermo went for the gun.
But, as Palermo had thought earlier, Krebosche was stronger than he looked, and even the element of surprise wasn’t enough for the older man to overpower him. Krebosche’s right hand chopped hard at Palermo’s left arm. The momentary grip he’d had on Krebosche fell away, and the gun was immediately back against his head.
“Do not try that again.” Krebosche fixed Palermo with a look so hard, he thought he was just going to blow his head off, anyway, warning be damned.
“Marcton,” Palermo finally said once his breathing had calmed.
“What?”
“That’s who you call. Marcton.”
Krebosche took a moment, straightened the sleeves on his coat, then tapped at the phone’s screen. “Found him. What do I say? And don’t think I’m stupid. I’ll know a code word if I hear it.”
“Just say, ‘Get off apartment. Go back to warehouse.’ That ought to do it.”
Krebosche scrolled through some of Palermo’s previous texts to Marcton, checking to see if the voice matched. If he wasn’t normally so brief, that in itself might be a code, a previously agreed-upon sign of trouble. But brevity seemed to be Palermo’s texting style. Krebosche was satisfied that it checked out. He typed the message with one hand, keeping an eye on Palermo the whole time. Clicked Send.
“I’ll just hang on to this, shall I?” Krebosche said. “One less thing for you to think about. Now, start the car. Let’s go.”
Palermo turned the key, pulled out once again into the storm.
* * *
In the Hummer, Marcton’s cell phone pinged.
“Check that for me, would ya, Cleve? Probably important.”
Cleve reached for Marcton’s phone where it sat on the dash. “Holy good fuck,” he said.
“What? Who’s it from?”
“Palermo.”
“Christ. Read it.”
“It says, ‘Get off apartment. Go back to warehouse.’” Cleve looked up from the screen. “Why would he think we’re at the apartment? He assigned two other Runners to that.”
“Yeah, he did,” Marcton said, slowing the Hummer down, pulling it over to the side of the road, popping it into Park. “It doesn’t add up. Palermo obviously knows who he assigned to the apartment, but he still sent that text.”
Cleve handed the phone to Marcton, who read the message himself. He texted back: Got it. “We gotta get those Runners off the apartment. Then we have to get there ourselves, but quietly, unseen.”
“Quietly. Unseen. In a Hummer,” said Cleve.
“Yeah,” said Marcton, smirking. “In a Hummer.”
“You got those guys’ number to call ’em off?”
“Call the warehouse, they’ll have it.”
“Why don’t you have it?”
“I don’t know, ’cause I fucking don’t, Cleve! Now call the warehouse!”
“Alright, Jesus,” Cleve said, dialing. “Just thought you were Palermo’s right-hand man and all that.” He held the phone to his ear.
“I am, Cleve, but he doesn’t
always–”
Cleve held up a finger in a shushing motion, “It’s ringing,” he whispered, knowing he was bugging the shit out of Marcton.
But Marcton was in no mood for playing games. Cleve was obviously too stupid to realize how serious the situation was, but Marcton had been a high-ranking member for years longer than Cleve. Cleve was really only in the inner circle because of a good word Marcton had put in for him. Times like this, he regretted doing Cleve the favor.
He reached over, yanking the phone out of Cleve’s hand – which Cleve had fully expected. He laughed, and Marcton saw red – visions of smashing his fist into Cleve’s big dumb face over and again raced through his mind.
He asked for the apartment’s address, then told warehouse dispatch to call off the two guys Palermo’d put there. “On Palermo’s direct goddamn say-so,” Marcton said, when the dispatcher gave him grief. “Just fucking do it, or it’s your head when Palermo gets back.” He pressed the End Call button on the phone, handed it back to Cleve, said, “Put the warehouse on my Blocked Call list for now. I don’t want them able to call back and argue with me. With no other input – and no other recourse for input – they’ll do what I asked.”
Marcton put the Hummer back into gear, pulled out onto the road, headed again for the nurse’s apartment. He glanced in the rearview mirror. “You two redshirts ready for action back there?”
The Runners in the backseat – Bill Tremblay and Melvin Rowe – exchanged confused looks.
“Not big Star Trek fans? Well, hopefully it doesn’t come to that.”
F I F T E E N
One of the Runners assigned to watching Faye’s building sat in a beat-up old Omni, binoculars pressed to his face. He was going back and forth between the apartment he was supposed to be watching – second from the top – and a woman undressing on the floor directly above.
“This shit is fucking up our Run, ladygirl. We could be out there tonight with everyone else instead of sitting here with our dicks in our hands. Figuratively speaking.”
The other Runner pressed her walkie’s talk button from her position around back of the building, where she sat in a similarly beat-up Corolla. “You think there’s a Run tonight with all the shit that’s been going down? Ridiculous. We’re on lockdown, remember? Would be nice if there was, though, so that no one would fucking disappear, but I just can’t see this shit being resolved tonight. Also, what part of ‘radio silence’ don’t you get, fuckweed? Stop talking.”
The radio went dead for a moment, then crackled back to life.
“And quit calling me ‘ladygirl.’ Last time I tell you.”
Fuckweed and ladygirl – old friends who’d grown up together, real names Jim Lamb and Lindsay Kinzett, respectively – had gladly taken the fairly shitty assignment, trying to get into Palermo’s good books again after a monumental cockup a few weeks ago. They’d been sent in to clean up after a Run in the southern section of the city, and had left a ton of shell casings – and one severely injured Runner – on the street for any random passerby to find the next morning. It was one thing to rightfully expect that whoever found the guy would just call 911, then immediately begin to forget the experience; it was another entirely to be careless and start taking the effect for granted, essentially inviting enquiry where none was welcome.
They’d both been reamed out, and this was their penance. What neither of them knew was that after this assignment Palermo planned to kill them anyway, so they were the perfect pair to use, since it didn’t matter if they saw Kyllo or not. Palermo figured he might as well get one more use out of them.
The most recent fuckup wasn’t nearly their first – this had been a long time coming. They’d endangered the Inferne Cutis through their combined idiocy (they were trustworthy enough alone, but reverted to teenage behavior when in each other’s company) more times than Palermo cared to mention.
The last movement Lamb had seen inside the apartment was a few hours ago when someone appeared to be throwing all kinds of things in all kinds of directions. Plates, cups, and china dolls smashing everywhere. Neither Lamb nor Kinzett knew what to make of it, so they just radioed in the occurrence and waited for instructions. No one at the warehouse knew what to make of it either, so no instructions came – and in the intervening time, Palermo had been kidnapped and taken “fuck knows where,” as the Runner in charge at the warehouse had said, so they had a whole new set of problems to contend with on their end, effectively relegating Kinzett and Lamb’s babysitting assignment to the bottom of the priority list.
What was on both of their minds, though, was what had happened to the ambulance driver Kinzett had seen enter Faye’s apartment. Lamb’s sightline into the apartment was decent enough to see what was taking place in a certain section of the living room, where the drapes had been partially opened, but the apartment’s front door – and the surrounding area – was completely obscured. So Kinzett had seen him for only a moment as he came into view, but then lost sight of him, and never saw him again.
“Can an ambulance driver just fuck off with an ambulance all day, ladygirl?” Lamb had asked Kinzett.
“No, they’ll come looking for him eventually,” Kinzett had answered. “Might have to wait till the cops are alerted before we know what’s going on in there. For now, we just sit and wait, as ordered. Don’t go getting any bright ideas.”
“Oh, right, I forgot: you’re the smart one; I’m the idiot.”
“Nah, we’re both idiots, but you have that ridiculous penis, which clouds your judgement, so I get to be the leader.”
“Yeah, I’m definitely the dickhead. No argument there.”
They’d both laughed, then fallen into a comfortable silence – the kind of silence only old friends drew actual comfort from.
Now, the radio crackled again.
“How long we gotta do radio silence?”
Kinzett sighed. “Radio silence isn’t something we ‘do,’ Lamb; it’s something that just is, so long as you keep your mouth shut.”
They were quiet for another five minutes or so, then Kinzett’s cell phone buzzed on the passenger seat, scaring the shit out of her. “This better not be you, Lamb,” she mumbled. “Again.”
She swiped the green symbol across the screen, held the phone up to her ear. “Kinzett.”
“Kinzett, you and Lamb have been called back. Get off the apartment. We need everyone back at the warehouse, anyway. Figure this Palermo thing out.”
“Roger that, headed back now.”
Kinzett hung up the phone, pressed the button on the walkie. “Let’s go back. We’ve been called off,” she said, and started her car’s engine.
“What? Why?”
“Dunno, but we’re done here. Let’s go. You should be happy. You just got through bitching about the assignment, and now you’re questioning the reason we don’t have to do it anymore? Pick a side, sasquatch.”
“Sasquatch? Why you gotta call me that?”
“’Cause you’re hairy as hell, that’s why. When you sit in the bathtub, I bet it feels like you’re sittin’ on grass.”
They traded a few more insults, then drove away, their headlights slicing through the last bit of snow that would fall that night. The rest of the evening would be clear.
The next morning, though, it would start to snow again.
And dead bodies in and around Faye’s building – spines crushed and skulls splintered – would be the first to be touched by the snowflakes.
S I X T E E N
While Henry and Faye slept, Milo hovered around the living room, thinking, wondering where Henry was going to go, where all this was leading, and how it had all become so fucked up in the first place.
Was a simple, clean death really so much to ask for? Just lop my head off, and let me welcome the black.
Two hours into their three-hour nap, Milo was roused from his musings by headlights below. It was nearly 2 a.m., and nothing outside had moved for about an hour. The snow had finally stopped, and now lay in a
thick blanket over everything.
He drifted over to the window, saw that a car had pulled into the parking lot. Two men got out. One he didn’t recognize, but the other was Edward Palermo. At street level, it would be difficult to see, but looking directly down as Milo was, it was unmistakable: the man he didn’t recognize had a gun in Palermo’s back and was marching him toward the back entrance of Faye’s building.
Milo’s eyes widened, and he immediately went for Henry. Drifted through the door, concentrated on engaging with the physical world, putting his hands on Henry’s broad shoulders, shaking, shaking. “Henry! Wake up! Palermo’s here. Fucking Palermo. We gotta bail, man. Wake up!”
He shook and shook, but Henry wouldn’t rouse. Milo concentrated harder, looked around for something to smash. Maybe that would wake him up.
“Fucking Palermo’s here, Henry, get UP!” Shaking harder still… until finally, Henry cracked his thick metal eyelids. Subconsciously, Milo registered that Henry’d gotten even bigger in the past ninety minutes. When’s he gonna stop fucking growing? Christ.
“Who’s here? Whuh?” Henry mumbled.
“What part of ‘fucking Palermo’ don’t you get, Henry? He’s on his way up here right now, and some douchebag has a gun in his back.”
Henry shook his head from side to side to clear the cobwebs. He reached an arm out. “Help me up,” he said groggily.
Milo gave him a look. “Right ’cause I’m suddenly Superman and can lift small cars on my own.”
Henry grunted something under his breath, used the closest wall to gain his feet instead.
“Henry? What’s… what’s happening?” Faye said blearily from the bed.
“We have to go,” Henry said, moving beside her. “Now. Get up.” Henry was awake now, the word “Palermo” cutting through the fog in his brain like a knife and kicking his ass into operating with pure efficiency.
“Why? Tell me what’s –”
“No time, just get up, let’s go.” He put one of his hands as delicately as he could around her left arm, pulled gently.