I went right, passed some open doors leading to empty rooms. There were puddles of stagnant water on the stone floor, and everything smelled like mildew. The hall ended in a T, I took another right, running now, calling Pasha’s name, coming up to the door at the end, steel with a heavy deadbolt.
I threw the bolt, tugged open the door—
—and saw an empty room.
HUGO
TWENTY MINUTES EARLIER
“Phin!” the woman screamed.
“Guess again,” Hugo said, grinning.
She fought, scratching, kicking, but once he got a hold of her broken finger she dropped to her knees and began to beg.
“If you don’t cut it out, I’m going to break your other nine fingers. Got it?”
Pasha nodded, tears streaking down her dirty cheeks. After choking back several sobs, she said, “Where’s Phin?”
“Your boyfriend is still alive. But you’ll see him, soon enough. Do you know anything about nerve gas?”
Pasha nodded.
“Good,” said Hugo, smiling his pumpkin smile. “We’ll have something to talk about on the way to the theater.”
PHIN
I stared at an air mattress, and a plastic bucket that reeked of urine.
Rage filled me. My hands began to shake. Jack and Pecker came up behind me, and I turned and hit the Nazi in the chest so hard we could all hear his ribs crack.
He fell to his knees, and I pulled out Jack’s .38.
“Where is she?” My ears burned, my vision going red, my teeth clenched so hard they threatened to shatter.
“Phin.” Jack warned.
“Back off, Jack.” I thumbed back the hammer on the revolver. “I’m counting to three. One…”
“I don’t know where she is. I thought she was here.”
“Two…”
Jack came closer. “Phin, I can’t let you do this.”
Pecker seemed truly afraid. “I swear I don’t know. She was supposed to be here.”
It was playing out just like it had in Hugo’s hospital room. Except this time, the hammer wouldn’t drop on an empty chamber. If Pecker didn’t talk within the next two seconds, I was going to kill the son of a bitch.
“Three,” I said.
The blow came fast and hard, connecting with the side of my neck, dropping me onto my ass. I blinked, trying to focus, and then my wrist was grabbed, my gun hand pinned under a knee. I gripped it tight, firing into the dirt floor, not knowing who hit me but refusing to give the gun up.
And then, above the sting of the punch and the ear-jangling roar of the gunshot slamming my eardrums in the enclosed room, I heard someone yelling at me.
Jack.
She’d punched me. Punched me as hard as I’d ever been hit by anyone. I let her take the .38 and looked around for Pecker, but the bastard had scurried off.
The rage flared again, but squinting up at Jack, the utter disappointment on her face, made all the fight go out of me.
She stared hard at me, eyebrows furrowed, mouth downturned, the weight of her disapproval burrowing into my soul, and then took off after Pecker. I shook away some disorientation and got up, four steps behind her.
We flew down the hall, she went left, I went right, my hearing still muted, my flashlight lost after Jack had hit me, sprinting until I reached a door at the very end, flinging it open.
A storeroom full of chairs, packed so full there was no place to hide.
I backtracked, my breathing catching up with my rapid heart rate, turned a corner, and ran into Jack.
We headed for the stairs, storming up them, and then we were in the locker room and Pecker was nowhere to be found.
“You let him get away,” I said, my words sounding hollow.
She shot me a look, and I thought she was going to hit me again. “I trusted you,” she snarled.
“He knows where she is.”
“And he wouldn’t be able to tell us if you blew his head off. And you wouldn’t be able to look for her if you were in jail for murder one.”
My hands became fists. “That’s what matters to you? You care about the law? What about Pasha, goddammit!”
We had a staring contest which I should have lost, but I was too everything. Too angry, too rattled, too hurt, too tired, too stubborn, too devastated.
“If you don’t have rules,” she said, her voice steady, “there’s no point to anything.”
“You want to follow rules.” I jabbed a finger into the air, pointing at the playing field. “Tell them. They don’t have any rules.”
“And that’s why we’ll win.”
Part of me wanted to punch a wall, part of me wanted to cry. Instead of doing either, I turned away, wondering what I was supposed to do next.
“Phin…” she put her hand on my shoulder. I didn’t turn around. “We have to go. If Packer is telling the men, there will be trouble. And I don’t have any jurisdiction here.”
“I know. All of your jurisdiction is in Chicago. Maybe you should have stayed there, Lieutenant. You’re a much better cop than you are a friend.”
Jack let her hand fall away. It took a moment before she answered, and when she did, she spoke softly. “You’re right. But as a cop, and as a friend, I wasn’t going to let you kill a man in cold blood.”
I walked away from her, through the dugout, onto the field, to the Bronco. She got in next to me, and neither of us spoke on the ride back to Parviz’s van. Harry was waiting outside for us when we pulled up.
“That was brutal,” he said.
“What’s our next step?” Jack asked.
“We already know your next step,” I told her. “Run home, go punch your clock.”
My words wounded her, I could tell, and she told McGlade, “I’ll ride back with you,” and got into the van.
“She hit me,” I said.
“I know. I heard everything.” He held his hand out for his walkie-talkie, and I handed it back.
“I’m going to stay. See what I can turn up.”
“That will put you in the hospital, or the morgue. The rally is tomorrow. Hundreds of Nazis, goose-stepping everywhere. And you know they’ll be looking for you.”
“I can blend in.”
“I’ve got Pecker’s cell phone. I can trace some calls, get some leads. And my Photoshop blackmail might still work, if I can get in touch with him. And I know you’re pissed at Jack, but she’s a good cop. She’ll have a better chance of finding Hugo than you will.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Get some rest. I’ll call you tomorrow. I got a plan.”
“What kind of plan?”
“When you want to kill a weed, you can’t cut it down. It will come back. The only way to get rid of it for good is to pull the root.”
“We had Pecker. We screwed it up.”
“Not Pecker,” Harry said. “The real root. I think we need to have a little talk with the Supreme Caucasian himself.”
I recalled what Jack had told me. “Bradford Milton?”
“The electronics mogul himself.”
“He’s rich,” I said.
“So? I’m rich.”
“He’s super-rich, Harry. Wherever he lives, you know it’ll be secure. Alarms, guards, dogs, the works.”
“Dogs love me. And I’m a private eye, remember? If I can’t bypass a few burglar alarms, what the hell good am I?”
I chose not to answer him. Instead I offered a weak nod, then headed back to my truck.
“We’ll find her, Phin,” he called after me. “Go home. Get some rest. We’ll get on this tomorrow.”
He might have been right. I couldn’t remember when I’d been this tired.
But as much as I needed rest, I no longer had a home.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever had a home.
I grew up unwanted, unloved. On good days, I was neglected. On bad days, abused. On really bad days…
It’s actually some sort of miracle I didn’t wind up like Hugo, a psychopathic Nazi
who killed for kicks, or dead from an overdose or a bullet in the brain. The closest things I had to friends were driving away from me, into the night. And as much as I loved Pasha, and hoped she loved me, I was the reason she’d been taken. Exposing her to my life was like giving her a terrible disease that at best would scar her forever, at worst kill her.
Pity party much? Earl asked.
I considered the scalpel, still in my boot.
Ha! Do you think you can cut me out of your body?
“I could try,” I said to the darkness.
Don’t be a fool, Phin. You can’t ever be free of me.
You deserve me.
You and I are one.
We’ve always been one. One and the same.
Don’t you remember my voice in your head? When you were a kid, and Hugo came to your bedroom at night?
Oh, god. I did remember.
You are your fears.
You’ve been trying to deal with them since you were five years old.
You thought I was the boogeyman, talking to you.
And when you got older, you thought I was God. Remember that, praying to the voice in your head to make all the bad things stop?
And then I was your conscience.
And then I was madness.
And then you got cancer, and in some drugged-out, drunken bender you began to call me Earl.
But I’m not cancer. And I’m not god. I’m not your conscience, and I’m not madness, and I’m not even the boogeyman.
I’m just a scared little boy, trying to make sense of a world that does nothing but hurt me.
I’m you, Phin.
And if you want to get rid of me, you know there’s only one way.
Go on. Put the scalpel up to your throat.
Something warm stung my neck, and I was surprised to see that I already had the blade in my hand.
I immediately dropped it.
I wasn’t afraid of dying. I saw the appeal.
But if I was going to shed this mortal coil, it wouldn’t be at my own hand.
It would be while saving Pasha.
I fired up the Bronco and headed to Chicago.
MILTON
Bradford Milton, millionaire a hundred times over, prime shareholder in of one of the top ten electronic companies in the world, Supreme Caucasian of the Caucasian Nation, entered his favorite room in a mansion boasting twenty-eight. It was his secret room. His trophy room. Where he nurtured his private obsessions, and where he spent a good deal of his fortune. Had he decided to go public, he would have been recognized as the owner of the world’s largest collection of Nazi memorabilia.
But going public wasn’t in his plans.
Milton wasn’t feeling his sixty-odd years today. The arthritis in his knees, normally unbearable in the spring, was but a mere annoyance. His heart, given to arrhythmia, beat true and strong, like a proper race warrior’s. His old, shriveled body felt invigorated, even sexual. Surrounded by his artifacts, Milton transformed from an ailing business tycoon into a leader of nations; a ruler of men.
He walked past his glass display cases, which held items ranging from a pair of Heinrich Himmler’s eyeglasses, to a brown party jacket—no insignias of course—owned by Josef Goebbels. Signed letters and documents from practically everyone in the Nazi hierarchy, a who’s who of Übermensch, including several original manuscript pages of Mein Kampf handwritten by Hitler while imprisoned in Landsberg, kept in a locked, air-sealed vault next to the cases. Battle plans by none other than Rommel graced the walls. German medals and insignias from the First World War up until the unification were grouped and categorized displayed and mounted on crushed velvet under glass. All told, more than twenty-eight million dollars’ worth of Nazi treasures, gold, art, and artifacts, collected for his sole viewing pleasure.
Milton dialed the combination on his wall safe. He hummed to himself, a bit of Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner, and absently scratched his bald head. Tiny flecks of dead scalp skin speckled his purple ascot, but Milton no more noticed that than he noticed that no one wore ascots anymore.
Opening the safe, Milton paused a moment to inspect its contents. A lock of hair, presumably Hitler’s, saved by the Führer’s barber and passed down through the family until purchased on the black market. A silver dagger, also Hitler’s, with an eagle perched on a swastika engraved in the handle. Supposedly the Führer had carried it on him at all times, up until the final moments of the War. And the crowning jewel of the collection: a pair of Hitler’s underwear, monogrammed AH.
Milton took an obscene pleasure in the fact that the underwear wasn’t clean. At least once a week he would hold the garment to his face and revel in the funky odor. Worth every penny of the half a million dollars he paid for them.
He indulged himself with one quick sniff, carefully opening the sealed conservatory bag and inhaling deeply the scent of the greatest warrior who ever walked the earth.
It smelled a lot like funky cheese.
Carefully placing his treasure back in the safe, Milton spun to view his shrine. He’d only allowed the highest members of his Order into his private enclave. Hector Packer had broken down and cried at the beauty of it. Others had been struck speechless, or inflamed with excitement. After the start of the Great Race War at the Roscoe, Milton would let yet another into his upper echelon. As a reward for the completed task, Hugo Troutt would be allowed to visit this sanctuary.
Troutt was an interesting experiment to Milton. As with most fringe groups, Nazism consistently failed to attract the best and the brightest. With its recruiting centers located in prisons, how could Milton hope for a pure specimen of Caucasoid, Europid genetics? He’d garnered his share of dedicated, beautifully proportioned young men, but dedication didn’t carry much weight when one had the IQ of an eggplant and the social skills of a bilge rat. Roguishly attractive as they might be, they weren’t Aryan ideals.
Hugo didn’t have the brain power of Eichmann, or even Eichmann’s dog. But he’d been carving out quite a personal legacy. He’d killed more than a few people over the years, and had gotten away with those murders, even though he had been caught and convicted of lesser crimes. While Milton wouldn’t hire Hugo to do his taxes, he’d proven a more than adequate killer.
Especially delicious was Hugo’s complete lack of moral conscience. That was an aspect of the man almost as appealing as his obscenely gorgeous body; a body Milton often watched on the many hidden cameras installed in Hugo’s trailer.
His bathroom cam was his favorite. In contrast to his outrageous size, Hugo had delicate, childlike genitals. Milton had made many recordings, and they reminded Milton of those delightful fountain statues of cherubs, urinating, of which he had several dozen on his front lawn. Milton hoped, one day, to see Hugo, fully naked, in person.
But first things first. Duty before pleasure. History before hedonism.
One day, some millionaire idealist would have Milton’s underwear in a wall safe, waiting to be sniffed. But that would only happen if the plans became reality.
Allowing Hugo to be the on-the-scene orchestrator at the Roscoe was a leap of faith by Milton, though Packer was overseeing every aspect of the operation. If it were traced back to the CN, it would mean the end. Milton had some protection from incarceration in the form of anonymity, but his precious organization would be chewed up and spat out by an angry public screaming for blood.
The trick was to do the deed but come out of it above suspicion. He’d chosen his targets carefully, had all the mechanics worked out, an alibi ready, and a patsy lined up.
The waiting was maddening and exciting at the same time, like waiting for the spanking from Father for being a Bad Boy.
But the waiting was almost over, and the dawn of a glorious new beginning, for America, the white race, and the world, was only two days away.
The Great Race War was finally about to begin. And Bradford Milton was giddy.
So giddy that he went back to his wall safe, to reward himself with one more dele
ctable sniff of der Führer’s underpants.
PASHA
Pasha slowed her breathing, tried to get the pain under control. Hugo seemed to really like it when she screamed, and she didn’t want to do anything to please him.
She wasn’t sure where she was. Hugo had put her in the trunk of a taxi and drove for a long time. Seemed like hours. Again, he’d put duct tape over her mouth and eyes, and when he finally hauled her out of the truck, she was carried into a building, down a flight of stairs, and through a very long hallway that echoed like the corridors at that football stadium. Eventually, she was taken into a room and set down onto a wooden floor.
“Göth is going to cut off the tape,” he’d said. “Hold very still.”
Pasha held very still, and he handled the razor with a surgeon’s touch, not nicking her once. Then he put a handcuff on her leg, attached to a meter-long chain, and locked the other end to an enormous iron pipe.
“No sounds. Not a peep. Or I’ll do terrible things to you.”
Then he’d turned off the overhead light and left.
After Pasha was sure he was gone, she began to tug on the chain. It was solid. So was the pipe it was hooked to. She crawled around, trying to explore her area, having seen some sort of shelving unit to her right before the lights went out. As she moved, she kicked up some dust on the floor, and it got in her nose and throat, making her cough.
She coughed as quietly as she could.
Pasha wasn’t sure how long it took, but she was eventually able to stretch out in a complete half circle, using the pipe as a radius.
She couldn’t reach the shelf, or anything else.
Fighting the urge to cry, she waited in the dark.
Thirst came first.
Then cold.
Then an uncomfortable urge to pee.
Pasha considered pissing her own pants. Maybe that would revolt Hugo so much he wouldn’t come near her.
Or maybe it would make him angry.
Phineas Troutt Series - Three Thriller Novels (Dead On My Feet #1, Dying Breath #2, Everybody Dies #3) Page 75