Machine City: A Thriller (Detective Barnes Book 2)

by Scott J. Holliday

  “Please.”

  “Shhh.”

  He set down the comic book and picked up the Mancino’s menu. He flipped through the pages. Nothing caught his eye. He examined the front, taking in a photo of the restaurant owners standing in the dining room, waving. Joe and Martha Briggs. Dad said they’d bought the restaurant from the original owner before it went under and that they’d restored the place to its former glory. Dad had loved that diner. He’d dragged Johnny and Ricky there for breakfast every chance he got. “Belly up, boys,” he would say as they took their usual stools at the counter, Ricky on Dad’s left side, Johnny to his right. Dad always ordered a Beast omelet with extra-crispy hash browns. Ricky got french toast. The countertop was decorated with license plates from every state in the union, thermoformed under a layer of clear resin.

  So crazy that you brought that menu.

  Barnes picked up Ricky’s letter and read it again—the note, the riddle, his signature.

  Don’t double your trouble.

  It didn’t feel like something Ricky would say. Had to be a clue of some kind, but . . . Barnes felt exhausted. His brain, scrambled eggs. He lay back on the bed, forearm on his forehead, and cleared his mind of mystery, of the past. He thought of home, their little house in the suburbs, the bang and rattle of that cheap screen door, Richie scratching through homework at the kitchen table. And Jessica, so grim, so stoic these days. Something had changed in her. The girl he met was adventurous and full of light, full of laughter. Her smile used to exorcise his pain. How long had it been since he’d seen that smile? He couldn’t calculate it. He’d heard of postpartum depression, but how long could that last? Richie was five, for God’s sake. Not so long ago the house had been wide open, the windows and doors allowing sunlight in, allowing a breeze to move through air filled with classic rock—AC/DC and the Allman Brothers, Van Halen, Styx. “Renegade” would get Richie on his feet every time, bouncing around the living room with burgeoning dance moves, his parents clapping and laughing around him. Barnes found the tune in his mind, found the chorus, and hummed it to himself. He pictured Richie giggling and spinning, trailing that long hair his mother refused to cut . . .

  Barnes awoke to an argument outside his motel room window.

  “You’ll do exactly what I tell you, bitch.” A male voice.

  “Stop. You’re hurting me.” A female voice.

  Barnes stood. His head swam from the bourbon, his mouth felt coated with fiberglass. He checked his armpit for the .45, found it. The alarm clock read 4:13 a.m.

  “Bitch, you don’t even know pain,” the male voice said. “Now get the fuck back in there before I introduce you.”

  Barnes sensed action beyond the drapes, silhouetted movement revealed by the streetlights.

  “No! Fuck you, Daryl.”

  The sound of a slap moved Barnes to his feet. He went to the door and slowly turned the handle. The bolt released and he eased the door open a crack. There was a munky-hook prostitute facing away from him, leaning against a concrete-and-pebble stone planter-cum-ashtray, her right hand on her right cheek. Her back was heaving with sobs, and Barnes could see her ribs through her tight-fitting top. She wore steep heels and a miniskirt that failed to cover the bruises on her thighs. The sides of her head were shaven, her remaining hair styled over to one side like punk rock angst. Men and women like her riddled the postmachine landscape. People with experiences for sale. Undoubtedly she’d filled up a machine with live sexual encounters, and if she were able to net a john he’d ride the machine for his money while she watched TV and smoked a cigarette. The pitch was that your ride would be realer than real. Why have sex with her using your dumpy body, you oaf? Why nail her when she’s having an off night? Be handsome when you do her. Catch her on that one night she’s willing to go over the line. Make her cum harder than she ever will again.

  Realer than real.

  Yeah, and flash-frozen is fresher than fresh.

  Barnes turned his head to find the pimp that’d slapped the woman, but he seemed to have fled.

  “Now that you and pain have made acquaintances,” the pimp’s voice said, “you’ll get the fuck back in this room.”

  Barnes looked around, confused. The pimp seemed right on top of him, but the man was nowhere to be found. Barnes pulled his gun and opened the door a bit more, stuck his head out.

  “I’m not going back with you, Daryl,” the prostitute said.

  Barnes looked in the direction she was facing, but there was no one beyond her. She was talking to . . .

  . . . shit, she was talking to herself.

  The girl straightened up from the planter, still facing away from Barnes. She steeled up her spine and threw back her shoulders. “I’m never going back with you, bastard.”

  Barnes holstered his gun and waited, watched from behind as she transformed from the prostitute back into the pimp. Her stance became shifty, swaying, like a boxer beginning to warm up. She gestured with her hands when she spoke in a deep tone. “Watch your tongue, bitch. I’ll cut it out, make room for more money.”

  She transformed again, goose pimples in a wave over her skin as she became herself. Spine of steel, shoulders cocked. She reached into her little purse and pulled out a tiny nickel-plated pistol . . . but again she shifted, gun paused above the unzipped hole of her purse. “Bitch,” she said, “you must be trippin’, pulling that little thing on me.”

  “Enough,” Barnes said.

  The hooker released the gun. It fell back into her purse. She dropped her head into her hands, and her body began to tremble. Her bangles and necklaces rattled.

  Barnes waited.

  When the trembling was over, she turned to him and smiled, wiping tears off her cheeks. She had trace raccoon eyes from a recently broken nose, a week to ten days ago. “Hey, baby. Wanna party?”

  “Where is he?” Barnes said.

  “It’s just me and you here, sweetie,” she said, stepping toward him. She reached out a hand toward his chest, placed her palm flat against him. “Just me and you.”

  Barnes looked down at her hand. Her touch was delicate and warm. A primal sensation moved through him, caused him to close his eyes and breathe in. She smelled faintly of perfume, maybe hair spray, cigarette smoke. The hooker’s caress turned into a knot on his chest, a fist closing and twisting Barnes’s shirt. He opened his eyes to a white-knuckled grip.

  “You messing with my bottom bitch?” The pimp’s voice.

  Barnes wristlocked her—strong enough to immobilize, light enough so she wouldn’t scream—and removed her hand from his shirt.

  “You like it rough, huh?” she said, back to being the hooker, smiling through a mess of makeup and tear tracks.

  “Which room?” Barnes said.

  “114.”

  “What will I find in there?”

  She smirked and winked, dragged her available hand in a seductive pattern from her chest down her belly. “A little slice of heaven.”

  Barnes made the wristlock hurt.

  The girl yelped and cringed.

  Barnes walked her into his room, opened the nightstand drawer, and pulled out the Gideon Bible. With one hand he splayed it open. “The gun,” he said, gesturing with the Bible. “Slowly.”

  She produced the gun from her purse and dropped it between the pages.

  Barnes clamped the gun with the book, set it down on the nightstand. “What’s your name?”

  “Terri.”

  “All right, Terri. Let’s move.” He guided her by the wrist two doors down to Room 114. He released her. “Open it.”

  Terri fished in her purse and came out with the motel room key. Barnes stood behind her, his head swimming with alcohol, pain behind his eyes. There was a smell that’d gotten stronger as they neared the room. Something rotten and familiar.

  Death.

  Terri opened the door and the scent wafted out. Decaying blood and feces. She walked into the room, seemingly unaffected by the stench. She dropped her purse on the rickety table
near the door and clicked on a lamp to illuminate the scene. Something that probably resembled Daryl was laid out spread-eagle on the far bed, his body going green and gray, melting into the mattress. Must have been there for a week or so, now. Probably about as long as Terri’s black eye. Undoubtedly there’d be a bullet hole in his chest or head, but Barnes refrained from investigating. Just like Barnes’s room, there was a bathroom in the back, a metal rack for hanging towels and clothing, the closed-loop hangers permanently attached, and an old glass-tube television on a stand along the far wall and across from the beds.

  Terri sat down in a cheap chair next to the table. She slid a Virginia Slims from a hard pack and lit up with a disposable lighter. She blew out smoke and said, “You’re a cop, right?”

  Barnes shook his head. He searched the room with his eyes.

  “PI?”

  “No,” Barnes said. “Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  He looked at Terri. “The machine.”

  “No way, pal,” she said. She side-nodded to the dead body on the bed. “It’s mine now.”

  Barnes didn’t bother to pull the .45. He simply lifted his arm and pointed at it.

  Terri remained still, her cigarette trembling between two fingers on her left hand. “Please. I need it.”

  “I only want to borrow it.”

  She sighed out a breath of smoke. Her knees worked madly up and down like a seamstress. “It’s no use to you. It’s almost out.”

  “Serum?” Barnes said.

  She nodded.

  “Who’s your supplier?”

  She gestured toward dead Daryl. “Duh.”

  “You shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds,” Barnes said.

  “What about the hand that beats?” Terri replied.

  “So what, then?” Barnes said. “You kill him, and since then you’ve been sitting in here using the machine to be him?”

  She shivered for a moment and then looked at Barnes like he was from another planet. “I made her be me, asshole.” The pimp’s voice. “She needed me inside her at all times, dig?”

  Barnes nodded. “Okay, I’ll make you a deal. My room for whatever you’ve got left.”

  “Your room?” Back to Terri. “What’s that gonna do for me?”

  “You really want to be around when the cops finally get a whiff of Daryl here?”

  Terri puffed on her smoke and put on the act of someone thinking things over. “I guess not.”

  “Then where is it?”

  She sighed and pointed at the television.

  “That’s the TV,” Barnes said. “Try again.”

  “You’re so smart, eh, Mr. Clean?” Terri said. She lipped her cigarette and stood, walked over to the television and pulled the glass front off. Inside was a machine. She tossed the glass on the unoccupied bed and wheeled the TV stand away from the wall, unplugged the machine, and guided it toward Barnes.

  He stopped her at the doorway and peeked out to make sure no one was around. They wheeled the stand down the concrete sidewalk to his room. Once inside, they moved Barnes’s TV out of the way and plugged in the machine. As it warmed up and found the motel’s Wi-Fi signal, Barnes checked the serum bottle. “Looks like only enough for one go.”

  “Like I said.”

  Barnes checked the IV needle, crusty with old blood. The thought of sticking it into his vein churned his guts. “Got any fresh needles?”

  “Be right back.”

  Terri left Barnes’s room and headed back down to 114. He sat down on the bed, stared at the machine inside the gutted television. The red LED pulsed its slow beat. Barnes picked up his pint and finished it in one go.

  “She’s so much. Like Mom.” The breathless voice.

  “Who are you?” Barnes thought.

  “Shhh,” the voice replied.

  Barnes chuckled.

  New lights appeared in the room. Red and blue spraying across the ceiling from where the drapes failed to reach. Barnes went to the window and peeked out through the blinds. Two uniforms were hopping out of a cruiser and moving quickly toward 114 just as Terri was coming out.

  “Freeze!”

  “Hold it right there, honey. Hands up.”

  Terri put her hands over her head. Barnes could see she held a hermetically sealed, clean machine needle in her left hand.

  “Turn around,” a cop said. “Hands against the wall. Wait, what do you got there? Place it on the windowsill. Slowly.”

  Terri turned away from the uniforms. From directly behind they couldn’t see her eyes. She placed the needle on the sill and looked up to catch Barnes’s gaze.

  He shook his head.

  Daryl smirked.

  The cops cuffed her and pressed her against the bricks. One of them picked up the needle. “What’s this, huh?” he said. “Where’s the machine?”

  “Beats me,” Daryl said, eyes still locked on Barnes.

  The cop pointed into the motel room. “That Daryl in there?”

  She blinked and shivered again, turned back into Terri. “I never touched him,” she said. “I found him like that.”

  “Right,” the cop said. He set the needle back on the windowsill and grabbed her purse. “Hundred bucks says I find a peashooter.”

  While the cop searched her purse, Barnes showed Terri the Bible with the gun inside. Her eyes thinned down to slits. He set the Bible down and made a gesture like the squeeze of a hypodermic needle and then pointed to himself.

  Terri rolled her eyes.

  The purse search came up empty. “Don’t worry,” the cop said, dropping the bag on the concrete, “we’ll find it.”

  The second cop came out of the room, flashlight held up near his face, the black length of it extending back over his shoulder. “By the tattoos it’s definitely Daryl. No doubt they were running a machine op, but it’s gone.”

  “Where is it?” the first cop said to Terri. He put a hand on her shoulder, ready to spin her around. Terri took on Daryl’s boxer stance. She leaned in toward the bricks, resisting the cop’s pull just before he yanked her backward. She spun and shouldered him right in the chest. Well played, like he pulled her too hard and it wasn’t her fault. The cop staggered back to find his balance. Terri backed against the windowsill, wrists cuffed behind her back, and picked up the needle. “Please,” she said, backing down the sidewalk toward Barnes’s Room 112, “don’t hurt me.”

  Both cops drew down on her. “Not another step.”

  Terri was just this side of the door to Room 113. She released the needle behind her back. It bounced off her calf toward Barnes in 112, still ten feet from his door.

  “Come on back here, honey,” the first cop said.

  Terri walked back toward them. “You scared me.”

  “Sure I did,” the cop said. He started reciting her rights.

  Barnes took off the holstered .45 and came out of his room. “What’s the trouble out here?”

  The second cop put his flashlight beam on Barnes. “Go back to your room, sir.”

  Barnes continued forward, shielding his eyes. “What’s happening? I can’t see.”

  “Get back in your fucking room, citizen!”

  Barnes pulled a pratfall over a nearby parking block, landing on the concrete in front of Room 113. His hand deftly covering the needle as he went down.

  “Jesus Christ,” the second cop said. He lowered his flashlight beam.

  “Go help him up,” the first cop said.

  “I’m fine,” Barnes said. He stood and dusted himself off. “Sorry to bother you boys. Just a little confused is all. Maybe a little drunk.”

  “Go sleep it off,” the first cop said as he loaded Terri into the back of the squad car.

  11

  It took three tries, but Barnes finally found the right vein. His forearm drizzled blood from the near misses. He pressed the IV needle’s butterfly-shaped sticky pad down to his skin to hold it in place. He applied the suction cups to his temples and pulled out the machine’s keyboard
tray. Nothing about this homemade machine had ever been legal. There was no option for CogNet, no med card slide reader. You could ride illegally on the Echo Ring or nothing. He repeated the search Dawn had used at Ziti’s—Adrian Flaherty, and then Detroit for hook-in location and Detroit for memory—and found the same three files on the peer-to-peer network. Each record showed the same IP address Dawn had written down.

  He’d already ridden the Franklin file, leaving ColdCase and FiveLives. He checked the serum bottle. Enough for one ride.

  ColdCase.

  Barnes looked up to find his own image on the blank TV that’d been pushed across the room to make space for the machine. The man in the glass—bald, and with suction cups on his temples—looked like an experiment, a lab rat. Blood on his arm and his hands. His eyes, sunken and bleak. Not just an experiment but a prisoner, just like the many men he’d arrested and sent to the clink. They entered the place as ordinary as you please, some still sporting the tough guy act they carried through their trials and convictions, others scared out of their skulls, yet all still pretty much resembling their regular selves. Six months later they were clean-shaven and tattooed. Scarred, broken, and reborn. These were the obvious physical signs. The more astute eye saw that the prisoner had been forcibly divorced from his soul, that he was reduced to a being who thought of nothing more than survival. Food was merely fuel. Muscles were stringy, rangy, and powerful. Teeth were now weapons, as were hands and feet. Eyes were for predation.

  It was the same with munkies, who were prisoners in their own right. Just like meth-heads, crackheads, and all the junkies before them. A cell need not have walls, only the power to reduce its inmate to an animal.

  Barnes smiled at himself on the television. The rounded nature of the old model’s thick glass stretched his face ridiculously. He picked up the Gideon Bible, dumped Terri’s .22 out onto the nearby bed, and bit down on the Bible’s binding. He pressed “Enter” on the keyboard to load the file and twisted a knob from “Idle” to “Transmit.” The machine clicked and hissed. The cold serum flooded his veins. He closed his eyes and lay back on the bed.