His two homies sag next to him in windbreakers, checking us out as we come over to the table. He opens his mouth and those rusty razor blades spill out:
“You the man?”
“I guess that depends,” I tell him. “Are you Death Ray?”
“Only to motherfuckers who ain’t got no respect.”
I let the pounding backwoods techno-screech of the music take up the slack as I stare him down. I learned this in prison. With danger men, you don’t back down. They get the message loud and clear.
Sure enough, he nods.
“Okay, boy. You got my attention. We’re in a nice public place. Nobody’s gonna fuck with nobody.”
“You sure about that?”
“Who’s the Mount Everest motherfucker standin’ next to you?”
“He’s my doctor. Says I’ve got three weeks to live.”
“Nice hair, doc.” He does an evil thing with his face, and the scar almost winks at Franklin across his chin. Then he looks at the girl. “And what about this fine bitch here? You bring me a present or what?”
Ray’s scar winks at me again as he smiles.
Franklin nods to me.
Stands, with his hand under his jacket, inches from the gun in his waistband.
I sit across from the homies, and I notice one of them has silver-capped teeth—real silver, not a mouthpiece, like the rappers. That’s the flunky to Ray’s left. The one on the right is wearing sunglasses framed in Day-Glo yellow, like a reject from I Love the ’80s. They both look ridiculous sitting next to a danger man like Death Ray. Then again, maybe I’m just easily impressed by a voice on the phone.
“I’m nobody’s present,” the girl says, standing next to me.
Her voice comes during a lull in the music. The song has downshifted to something slow and dirty and R&B, the announcer crowing from his nest that someone named Lady Death is hitting the center stage.
“You my present if I fuckin’ say you is, bitch!”
Ray stands up like a shot and pushes the table back when he says that. The two homies look like they’re going for pistols under their windbreakers.
“Be cool,” he tells them. Then he looks right at me. “Where my fine-ass Ellie, motherfucker? Where she at?”
“She won’t be coming around anymore,” I say. “Told me to tell you so.”
Ray walks right over to the girl, until just inches separate them. Smiles like a demon. “Then I guess this here bitch really is mine, huh?”
The girl looks at me, then gets right in Ray’s face:
“You’re a disgusting pig.”
Franklin moves his hand deeper under his jacket. I shake my head at him but he doesn’t back off. I stand up and get right between Ray and the girl.
He looks right at me, and:
“You and Mount Everest get the fuck out. I’ll take it from here.”
“I don’t think so,” says Franklin. “Not until my boss says our business is done.”
“That’s real courageous,” Ray says. “But that don’t mean nothin’ to me, man.”
He locks his arms across his chest. Stands there like a stone bastard. His voice, crackling now with rage hardly contained:
“Now I gonna tell you motherfuckers the news, and that news be this: any deal you thought we was gonna be doin’—that’s all off now. This bitch is mine. It be last call for dumb white boys. You get to turn your asses around and walk outta here with your heads still on your shoulders. I be a nice guy and let that happen. I be real fuckin’ polite about it.”
He shifts his weight, passing a serious sideways glance to his crew. Then aims the last bit at me. One crushing syllable at a time:
“But if you ain’t happy white boys, that ain’t no problem. If you wanna go and look a gift horse up its motherfucking ass, that’s no problem either. Because I ain’t got no problem with makin’ your motherfucking asses bleed. Now you can nod once for yes and twice for no . . .”
Spit falls from his mouth. He’s snarling.
“. . . or you can sit right there and watch yourself die.”
• • •
Well.
I guess that’s that.
Time to do my Colombo.
Turn toward him on one heel, scratching my head.
Looking real innocent.
“Oh . . . just one more thing, Ray.”
“Yeah?”
“Kim Hammer.”
His eyes get big when the name floats over to him, like he just saw a ghost.
Maybe he did.
“I’d like to know why you killed her,” I say. “Was it personal . . . or were you doing a favor for a friend?”
“What the fuck is it to you, white boy?”
“It’s simple. I think we know the same people.”
He forgets about the girl.
He forgets about Ellie Mayhem or the room full of people.
Forgets about everything but the gun under his leather vest.
• • •
Franklin draws down on him fast with his Glock 30. The bullet does a merciless midair burn just inches past the girl’s face, blowing a huge hole in Ray’s chest before he gets the pistol halfway out of the shoulder holster. Everything shatters in a series of shrill thundercracks. The girl lunges forward and lands on Ray, the two homies pulling their iron. Cheap shots go long across the table from pissant little popgun pistols, like annoying insects buzzing around Franklin’s head, missing him by miles. The 9-mil discharges hardly make a sound, but the load rips apart one of the nearby beer signs. The big double-bang from Franklin’s Glock is still the loudest thing in the room, even over the syrupy R&B music, and lots of people start screaming. Death Ray goes down, bleeding, twitching, and the girl is on top of him. His buddies don’t get a second chance at killing Franklin. The big guy pivots like a robot and kills them both instantly—two in each head. Bang bang and bang bang. He’s got one bullet left when the homies twitch hard and decide they’re dead. It goes down in less than three seconds. And the whole room is nuts now. People running for the exits. Girls leaping from the stage, half naked and hysterical. Death Ray on the floor and the girl with her hands around his throat, spitting in his face. He hocks back blood and doesn’t die. His thugs, sprawled like broken stick figures, oozing brains across the table. How did this happen? It all happened so fast. And it keeps on happening in a series of flash frames, like disco-kinetic thunder-splooshes lit up in the spaces between eye-blinks. I jump through the strobe light like a man stumbling in stop-motion, and I crash to my knees and try to force the girl away from Death Ray, but her grip is like steel and she won’t let him go, and she’s screaming like everyone else in the room—screaming that Ray is a bastard and a son of a bitch and she hates him—and it damn near breaks my heart because it’s not really Toni, it was never really Toni, but I don’t let it break my heart, because I know, somewhere in my mind, that it’s just not this simple, none of this is simple, and she smothers him with her hatred, smashing his head into the floor, forcing his last breath to come to the surface, and she brings him close to her and asks him how it feels—how does it feel, you son of a bitch BASTARD—and something cracks inside him and he almost screams, he almost chokes, and he manages the word motherfucker right as I finally get her to let go of him, and he hits the floor again, making wet, strangled sounds, and my own voice is hardly audible over the storm of chaos blasting through the room as I spit at him to tell me who wanted Kim Hammer dead, and I expect him to yell Jenison’s name . . . I expect him to choke on Jenison’s name . . .
But he tells me to go fuck myself and dies.
And that’s when a roomful of assholes open fire on us.
• • •
The chaos speeds through me in a series of rhythmic staccato color bursts, people winding and screaming and scrambling ahead of us and in our wake, as the wrecking crew pours into the room, guns first. About four of them, Ray’s backup, coming in fast behind a series of jagged lightning bolts—muzzleflashes burning gunpowder, setting th
e sleazy air on fire. I dive for the floor as patrons scatter. Franklin dives after me, his Glock still in one fist. He doesn’t fire at anyone with his last bullet—what’s the point? Too many targets. Too much insanity. We retreat through the storm, crawling low. The whole joint sparks in a million points of white-hot ignition, hellfire and the screaming of innocents. I see the vaguest shattershard of the lady who said she was my wife, somewhere behind us, falling on the dance floor, blood splattering in the confused spaces between us. Bodies falling on all sides, like living dead corpses piling up in a horror movie. It all comes in faster than thought—I’m trying to slow it down, but my heart accelerates to attack speed. The lights blind me. More shots. More blood. Complete insanity. I move almost on autopilot as Franklin pulls at me . . . and we’re crawling along the floor through the screaming crowd . . . and we get to the back exit fast, as the shots die off . . .
• • •
Standing up and coming through the door is like surfacing from a punishing ocean of light and noise.
Everything slows down.
Our car waits in the alley.
The air outside the club is colder than it was before—it hits me like an electric shock, shaking me loose from the mayhem.
It’s almost 9 P.M. We just walked out of a war zone again.
We’re damn lucky to be alive.
I can still hear shots in there.
And the girl . . .
“We have to go back for her,” I find myself muttering, taking a step toward the door. But a hand slaps down on my shoulder, pulling at me.
“She’s gone, kid.”
That seems like Franklin’s voice . . . but it’s so far away now . . . behind a wall of city noise, and sirens closing on the block . . . as everything slows again . . .
“Get the fuck in the car!”
That’s definitely Franklin’s voice.
He’s yanking me back now, and I’m going along with it.
I hardly hear the doors slam or the engine gun.
A bunch of really scared people watch us peel out of there.
Franklin doesn’t say a word as he drives.
His hateful breath comes short and labored, and I know just how he feels.
• • •
Cop cars scream by us in the opposite direction as Franklin punches it like a pro, getting us into a side street. No one sees us. We are damn near invisible. As we race between pools of shadow, everything comes in fast and forces itself through a long black tunnel without detail. My voice, Franklin’s voice, the world speeding in crazed midtown blurs and streetlamp supernovae.
“We have to go for the money and the discs,” I tell him. “All bets are off. There’s too much damage on the street now.”
“You got that right. There’s gonna be roadblocks. They’ll be watching the bus terminals and the train stations.”
“We have to get to the money and get hidden again. You and me will finally be square, at least.”
“That’s damn fine by me. I never wanna see you again.”
“Yeah, it’s been a real pleasure, huh?”
“Fuck you.”
I’ll use the rest of my cash to buy some time. I’ll dig deeper, using what I brought out of the vault. It’s the only thing that will shield me, the only way I can figure this thing out. I’ll find Jenison somehow, off the radar . . . somehow . . .
Goddammit, why did Franklin have to shoot the guy? Death Ray was my one real link back to Jenison. Back to Resurrection Express.
And Toni.
I go a little crazy from split second to split second, thinking about it—and about the moment when the girl fell in the strobe lights. Blasts of crimson detonating in the air between us. Civilian casualties on all sides. I don’t get a clear picture of any of it. It replays like bad video, shot through with static. The smell of roses and ammonia should be hammering me now, but it’s not. The familiar shriek of the rage should be rezzing like hell in my throat and my heart, but all of my armor is compromised, all of my thoughts suspect. Everything I believed was true five minutes ago, blown away and replaced by the absolutely goddamn inevitable. I’ve become a hapless bystander in a world made of evil bullshit.
Jimmy Stewart, lost in a maze of blood.
“You shouldn’t have left the girl,” I say. “She didn’t deserve that.”
“She was dead, asshole. You wanna go back there and bury her properly, that’s fine by me. But you do it later—when we’re square, understand?”
“You’re a real hero, aren’t you?”
“I’m the hero who just shot our way out of that mess—so fuck you again. If those cowboys back there were scared enough by your Colombo routine to try and cap us in a public brothel full of eyewitnesses, that should at least tell you something.”
“Like what?”
“Like we were damn lucky to be alive a long time ago, and right now, we’re playing with fire and I want off this crazy train. Do you understand me, Elroy Coffin?”
I almost find myself laughing. “You knew I was playing Colombo, huh? Pretty slick, Slick.”
“Fuck you.”
“But you say ‘fuck’ too much. That’s not so slick.”
“Fuck you.”
He’s not laughing at all.
Because he’s right. Colombo only got shot at when the bad guys he busted were crazy and desperate. He always played it laid-back and humble, until the very last minute. I always wanted to be just like that guy, but nobody’s ever that cool under fire. Especially at the last minute. Especially now. The world spinning in space and traced in neon, screaming at me that I never should have looked for the answers.
Death Ray knew that I knew about Jenison. He figured Ellie Mayhem set him up for the kill. Maybe I was a cop. Maybe . . . shit, I just don’t know.
I grit my teeth and live with it. I tell the girl I’m sorry. I say it out loud.
“I’m sorry.”
Franklin makes a stoic face, stares straight at the oncoming road.
We should have at least pulled your body out of there. Should have let you take your last breath in the street, where the air was clean.
She doesn’t say a word back to me. She can’t say a word to anyone.
She’s dead.
And I never even knew her name.
“I have to crack those discs. There’s no other choice now.”
Franklin nods, driving hard.
• • •
We ditch the car downtown and walk ten blocks, to the long-term garage.
The car is right where I left it, on the fifth floor.
Right next to the green Honda with the expired inspection sticker.
The place smells like secrets encased in concrete.
I find the keys in the magnet box under the chassis. I pop the trunk and unscrew the spare tire. The Gold’s Gym bag is still there. I unzip it and Franklin gives a solemn sort of grunt when he sees the green. Sitting on top of the money is one black plastic square that contains a terabyte of very important information. Right where I left it. It might be the key to the end of everything. I hand the Gold’s Gym bag to Franklin and slam the trunk closed.
When I’m not looking at him, the son of a bitch shoots me in the back.
17
00000-17
UNBREAKABLE
The discharge is so loud and it spreads out so long across the entire floor of the garage that I don’t hear it at all. I almost saw this coming. Rule number one in the field is that you never turn your back on anyone when your cards are on the table. I gave him the bag so he would show his hand and he played into it, but I didn’t see the revolver—that sneaky little Bulldog with three rounds left in the chamber. Must have had it up his sleeve. So I almost don’t turn the right way when the bullet hits me—the way they taught us about rolling with point-blank concussion—and I feel the scraping white-hot sear of the hard lead against my rib cage. It scrapes me just under my skin, blowing out a foot below my armpit as I spin, and the bullet keeps on going, shattering a car
window three rows down. I don’t have time to concentrate on the pain, or the blood loss. I’m using my momentum as I spin in the next microsecond, whipping my arm around to catch his wrist and shove the gun three feet to the right so that his next shot blasts off past my shoulder and punches a hole in a Corvette right behind me. I manage to twist his arm, but he’s not soft or afraid like Hartman—his muscles are honed and programmed, and he’s a cold machine. The tendons gnash under my grip like iron coils. I get to an important nerve and he drops the gun, but he comes back at me with a really fast left hook and I have to let go of him to duck it. His arms are big and he’s got his whole weight behind the blow. If one of those touches me, I go down fast. You know those movies where guys beat up on each other for twenty minutes while the music blares nice and heroic and you hear all those meaty slapping noises? Those are sound effects. It’s all bullshit. Your average fistfight is over in less than sixty seconds.
Then again, me and Franklin aren’t average guys. He’s trained, like I am. But he’s big, and big guys tend to overachieve.
His first move is proof of that.
He comes in with a big dumb lunge, which allows me to sidestep him and kick the revolver away. He gets to the other gun in his waistband when I do that but I bend fast in a spinning kick that chops it from his hand before he can fire that last nasty bullet. The metal clanks on the cement. He spits the word “fuck”—it’s been his favorite thing to say lately—and falls back into an attack crouch. I circle the gun and kick it under a nearby car. A stinging, unforgiving pain jabs me in my side, and I realize with some faint left-over amazement that he actually shot me, that I didn’t duck the first bullet all the way. I feel warmth running down my leg in a slow rolling cascade, like heat waves leaving my body. He sets the Gold’s Gym bag on the hood of the car and doesn’t smile at me.
“You’re hurt bad. You should just give up. It’ll be less painful that way.”
Resurrection Express Page 28