The Neon Boneyard

by Craig Schaefer

  “Or he doesn’t know who he works for. She can be anyone she wants to be, after all.”

  “What I do know is I’m only standing here because Harry’s got one weakness: he’s addicted to the kill. Likes to draw it out.” I leaned against the drywall while my neck and my feet competed to see which could ache harder. “He’s got a résumé, sure, but he’s still an amateur. He could have taken me out with that car bomb if he didn’t love the sound of his own voice so much. Could have killed me tonight, too, but he wanted to play with his food.”

  Caitlin folded her arms and cradled her glass. “A weakness like that can be exploited. Let’s find a way.”

  “I was thinking, before you came in…I think I mentioned once or twice, I had an apprentice, before we met.”

  “Right,” she said. “Desi, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded, smiling, distant as the memories flowed back to me. The good ones I could smile at.

  “Desi Srivastava. Everybody called her Dizzy. Anyway, one night I was telling her how to handle it if she ever had to fight another magician. Forget duels. Duels are for suckers. The best way to take out a magician, I said, was to come up behind him, jam an ice pick between his ribs, and keep walking. If you’ve got anything to say, say it to his tombstone. You never give your enemy a fair warning or a fair fight.”

  “You’ve been thinking about her a lot lately,” Caitlin said.

  I guess I had. Not that I ever forgot about her. Normally, though, I only saw her face when the whiskey flowed and my walls cracked around the edges.

  “It’s the Melanie thing,” I said. “I’m thinking Bentley might be right. She’s going to find a teacher, one way or another. And there are a lot of shitty teachers out there. At least I’d know, with me, she wouldn’t get pushed in the deep end too fast, or taken advantage of.”

  “But,” Caitlin said.

  “But…it’s a lot of responsibility. I gave Bentley and Corman a lot of sleepless nights.” I shrugged. “I think I still do. Probably more now than I used to, really.”

  “Is that all that’s staying your hand? Just the responsibility?”

  I stared at the floor. The work light’s beam cast a line down the dance floor, drawing a fuzzy border between a soft white glow and darkness.

  “Desi died on my watch,” I said. “I’ve replayed that moment in my head a thousand times, seeing a thousand ways it could have gone different. One decision here, one second of hesitation there, and she’d still be alive today.”

  “Might still be alive,” she said. “You can’t know that.”

  “No. All I know is I’m going to carry her with me until the end of time. And I’m not sure I can go through that again.”

  Caitlin stepped closer. Our shadows brushed, then our bodies, as she curled her hand around my waist and pulled me in.

  “You never told me what happened that night,” she said. “Not the details.”

  “I…thought she was ready. This was back when I was working for Nicky. He’d gotten a line on an easy score. A stack of bearer bonds—untraceable, good as cash—sitting in an investment manager’s office safe. So I put a crew together, and we hit the place. When we broke in, the safe was already open and empty. Then somebody—not us—tripped the alarm.”

  Caitlin’s eyes narrowed. Glints of copper swirled in their depths.

  “You were set up,” she said.

  “And ambushed, on our way out. It was this…construct, a crocodile made of sand. Desi, she…”

  The words didn’t come. My throat wouldn’t let them through. Caitlin held me until the blockade opened.

  “She was trying to impress me,” I said. “But she didn’t know what she was up against. She thought it was a demon, tried using a banishing spell, and it just…cut her down. Her and everybody else on my crew. I was the only one who made it out alive. If I’d been a better teacher, if I’d trained her better—”

  She pulled me closer. Tighter.

  “Did you avenge her?” she asked.

  Echoes of grief faded, swallowed by colder, harder memories of vengeance. I felt my heartbeat slow, along with my breath.

  “Yeah. I did. Nicky’s tipster was in on it, as it turned out. He’d arranged to empty out the safe and frame us for it. His magician was supposed to kill us all, then make the bodies disappear off the face of the earth. When I survived, it wrecked the plan.”

  Caitlin tilted her head. Her fingertips played at the nape of my neck.

  “They wanted you to disappear, so Nicky would assume you’d betrayed him and absconded with the bearer bonds,” she said.

  “Exactly. He’d be hunting ghosts, never realizing his own informant was laughing behind his back. The guy even laid a paper trail to make it look like we’d fled the country with the score. He bought airline tickets in our names, for the day after—”

  I froze. My body went rigid, cold stone, as my mind raced.

  “Pet?” Caitlin asked.

  I pulled away from her, just to arm’s length, and gazed into her eyes.

  “The truth has been right in front of us this whole time. Right in my damn face, and I didn’t see it. Elmer Donaghy didn’t expect me to chase him to Paris and fall into another trap. The trap was right here in Vegas all along. He. Never. Left.”

  * * *

  We were chasing dawn. Good thing I had a bunch of night owls on my crew. Jennifer was first to arrive at the American, stifling a yawn behind her hand, followed by Bentley and Corman. Pixie didn’t even look tired, though the can of Red Bull she plowed through on her way in—and the second one she plucked from her laptop bag half a minute later—might have accounted for that.

  “When Elmer ran from the fight at his waste management plant,” I said, “he left the receipt for his flight to Paris behind. Making it look like an accident, an oversight.”

  Jennifer nodded and rubbed at one bleary eye. “Right. And then you’d fly to Paris to chase him down, he’d lure you to the company HQ, and kill you on his home turf.”

  “The creepy little fucker is still playing chess with us. He wanted us to think we saw through his plan. He also wanted us to think we had some time to kill before he came back to Vegas.”

  Bentley shook his head. The wrinkles on his brow got deeper.

  “To what end?” he asked. “To arrange another trap?”

  “His so-called ‘phase two,’” Caitlin replied. “The project he’s been undertaking for his masters in the Network. He needed time to bring it to fruition.”

  “And he got it, courtesy of Harry Grimes,” I said.

  Pixie opened up her laptop and cracked a third can of Red Bull. She was starting a row of empties along the sawhorse.

  “The guy who’s trying to kill you,” she said. “Wait, so he’s been working for Elmer all along? I thought Elmer had to kill you, to get what he wanted from the King of Worms.”

  I pointed her way. “Exactly. And that’s why it didn’t even occur to me that they might be on the same team. The king said that Elmer has to kill me with his own hands. If Harry gets the job done, Elmer’s shit out of luck. Natural enemies, right?”

  “Maybe I’m just overthinking it,” Jennifer said, “but lemme take a stab. They’re the same person, wearing a magical disguise. Or they got a surgeon and did a hand transplant.”

  “You are…definitely overthinking it,” I said.

  “It’s after three in the morning, sugar. You’re lucky I’m even coherent.”

  “It’s okay, I was overthinking it too, which is how I missed the obvious. Bottom line? Harry isn’t trying to kill me.”

  “He put a bomb under your car,” Corman said.

  “Sure. And he gave me plenty of time to pull over, get out, and run out of the blast range before he set it off. He has a gun—I saw the empty case where he’d been holing up—but he’s never even pulled it on me. He beat the hell out of me tonight, but he could have ended me if he had really been trying.”

  “So Elmer hired an assassin,” Jennifer said, “and told
him not to kill you?”

  “Right, because killing me—eventually, on his own terms—is Elmer’s job. Harry’s job was to do exactly what he did: to keep me chasing him all over town, and give his boss some breathing room. Every step of the way, we’ve known we need to go after the Network, but with Elmer supposedly in Paris and Harry Grimes out for blood, I made Harry my top priority. It was a distraction. A big, elaborate distraction, making me spend all my time and energy hunting a phony threat.”

  Bentley steepled his fingers, deep in thought. “And in the meantime, Elmer Donaghy has been free to finish his project in peace. For all we know, ‘phase two’ is already underway. So what do we do about it?”

  “We set a trap of our own,” I said. “And I’m the bait.”

  37.

  It was a little after four in the morning, inside that momentary pause of breath where the city almost slept. I walked alone down a desolate street, one block from Fremont and a stone’s throw from Container Park, where my long-distance death match with Elmer Donaghy had begun.

  A short hiss of static burst from the walkie-talkie in my hand, followed by Caitlin’s voice. “I still think this plan is too dangerous.”

  I squeezed the call button. “It’s the best way to find Grimes. We know he’s going to be looking for me, and we know he’s got a means of tracking me across the city. Best thing I can do is give him a nice, juicy target away from any collateral damage.”

  “And thank you for that,” he said, rounding the corner in front of me.

  I came to a dead stop. We squared off, ten feet apart.

  “I’ll call you back,” I said to Caitlin and hooked the walkie-talkie onto my belt.

  Harry didn’t look any worse for wear after our fight in the apartment. He spread his legs in a gunslinger’s stance.

  “Nice shooting back there,” he said. “You almost parted my hair.”

  “In my defense, I couldn’t see what I was shooting at. I’ll do better this time.”

  “Let’s make a bet.”

  “That I’m faster on the draw than you are?” I asked.

  “Too easy. How about I close the distance between us and take that little gun away from you before you even get a shot off?”

  I had to steel myself for what was coming next. We had a plan. It was a good plan.

  It was an okay plan.

  Most of all, it was a plan that required me to be exactly one-hundred-percent right. If I’d misjudged Harry’s motives, or my hunch about his secret employer turned out to be wrong, well…my backup wouldn’t get here before I was reduced to red paste on the sidewalk.

  “Let’s do this,” I told him.

  I threw back my jacket. He charged, coming at me head-on, a high-speed juggernaut of muscle and bone. I had just cleared my holster when he plowed into me, tackling me to the sidewalk. We rolled end over end in a clinch and his fist cracked across my chin hard enough to leave me seeing double. Then he ripped the pistol from my grip, raised it high, and smashed the butt across my forehead. Blood spattered his face and ran down my scalp, a hot, salty river on my cheeks.

  He tossed my gun aside, grabbed my shoulders, and wrestled me onto my hands and knees. I had crimson in my eyes and a branding-iron burn across my hairline, drowning out anything but animal panic. I think I flailed at him. He caught my wrist and wrenched it behind my back. My cheek smacked the concrete.

  “C’mon, pretty boy,” he snarled. “Bite the curb. Let’s give you a brand-new face.”

  If I was right, Harry wouldn’t kill me. That left everything else, up to and including disfigurement, on the table. It was now or never.

  My walkie-talkie squawked. “Dan, it’s Jen. You there?”

  Harry grabbed it off my belt, leering at the plastic shell as he raised it to his mouth. Probably thinking of something badass and witty to say to her before he pulverized me.

  “Did you lead him away?” Jen’s voice crackled. Harry blinked at it, slow realization dawning.

  “Jen,” I croaked, straining one hand up like I was reaching for heaven. “Help.”

  “Just stay ahead of Grimes, keep him distracted and chasing you so he can’t get in our way,” Jen said. “We’ve got Elmer Donaghy and the second Network safe house surrounded. The strike team is in place and we’re rolling in five minutes. Soon as we snatch Elmer and we’ve got the place on lock, we’ll come and pick you up.”

  Harry’s beefy hand curled around the walkie-talkie as his face went red. “The fuck? You…you tricked me!”

  I managed to flop onto my back. Somehow, I even managed to smile.

  The walkie-talkie shattered on the pavement and spilled its electronic guts. He turned and ran, bolting up the alley, heading back the way he came. I tugged my phone from my hip pocket.

  “He bought it,” I breathed.

  “We got eyes on him, kiddo,” Corman said. “He’s running eastbound, hell-bent for leather. Looks like he’s headed for his van. You in one piece over there?”

  I sat up, groaning, and stripped off my jacket. I pressed the rumpled fabric to the split in my forehead. One hell of an expensive bandage.

  “Just don’t lose him. Stay tight, swap pursuit cars every few blocks, and I’ll be right behind you.”

  I hung up. Then I reached over and scooped my pistol off the sidewalk. The safety was still on. It didn’t even have a magazine loaded, not that he noticed.

  “Putz,” I muttered.

  Harry Grimes thought you had to be a tough guy to win a fight. He wasn’t wrong, but you had to be even tougher to get in a fight and lose on purpose.

  * * *

  Convinced he was racing to Elmer’s rescue, Harry led us on a chase across town. Well, not far across. His final destination was a foreclosed storefront in East Vegas, a hop, skip, and a punch away from where he’d jumped me. My crew kept on him, running an alternating pursuit and putting plenty of slack in his leash.

  “Left side of the street,” Corman said over the conference line. “He’s pulling up…looks like a deli. Shut down, though, old newspaper taped over all the windows. Two floors of apartments above it. I’m driving past so he doesn’t make us.”

  “I’m on it,” Jennifer shot back. “Coming up the alley opposite. Yep, he’s unlocking the front door.”

  We couldn’t track down Elmer Donaghy on our own, but Harry knew exactly where to find him. And he’d just led us straight to his hiding place.

  “He left the front door wide open,” Jen said. “Man’s definitely in a panic. Can’t see too much unless I get closer, but it looks stripped to the bone inside.”

  I wiped some crusted blood from my left eyelid. It clung to my hand like flakes of rust. The place was just up ahead; a long, low storefront with paper-shrouded windows, Marino’s in faded gold leaf over the open front door. Hard light spilled from the open doorway and etched a razor-sharp angle on the sidewalk.

  “He’s coming out alone,” Jennifer said. “Looks like he’s leaving, and he is pissed.”

  Elmer wasn’t here. And now Harry knew he’d been tricked, twice. His stolen van was curbside, up ahead near the deli’s doorway. I stood in an alcove to the left of the door and pressed my back to the wall. The cut on my forehead still hadn’t clotted over all the way. It oozed down in a slow, warm trickle, tickling the side of my nose and pooling on my upper lip. I tasted copper on my tongue and waited.

  Harry boiled out of the deli, slammed the door shut behind him, and headed for the van. I pushed away from the wall and prowled in his wake. My footsteps matched his beat for beat, my stride longer, closing the gap between us.

  Then I lunged in, clamped one hand over his mouth, and punched him with the ice pick in my other fist. Five quick jabs, tearing into his kidneys, his lungs, turning his back into a mangled slab of raw meat.

  Harry Grimes collapsed to the sidewalk, glassy-eyed, dead. He never knew what hit him. Just like I promised. He’d figure it out when he woke up in hell.

  My crew swarmed in, guardian angels with lockpick
s and guns. Bentley went to work on the deli’s front door and Jennifer popped the side of the panel van. We grabbed Harry’s corpse under each arm and hauled him along the sidewalk, leaving a slug smear of scarlet behind.

  “How much of that blood is yours?” she asked, nodding at my face.

  “All of it. Why? Bad?”

  We heaved, once, and tossed the body into the van. The door rattled shut. He’d keep for a couple of days, until somebody noticed the smell and called it in.

  “Nothing’s that bad if you’re still breathin’. All the same, oughta get some stitches on that cut.”

  “If we have time,” I said. “If Elmer’s not here, there’s a good chance Harry got a warning out to him. I want this whole operation mopped up tonight.”

  Tonight was turning into today, with the glow of dawn on the horizon. Bentley got the door open—faster than my best time, the man still had a magic touch—and we got off the street. The deli was stripped bare, just a long counter, a dusty glass case, and stark light from a couple of humming fluorescent tubes over our heads.

  On the far side of the abandoned shop, a backroom door hung open with a keypad lock set into the wall beside it. Harry was in too much of a hurry to close up properly. Either that, or Elmer was just beyond the doorway, waiting for us.

  “Jen, Cait, you’re with me. Bentley, Corman, and Pix, hold until we give the all-clear.”

  I slid a fresh magazine into my gun. No more play-acting tonight.

  We crossed the threshold in single file, Jennifer and Caitlin splitting left and right, all eyes hunting for danger. What we found was half private apartment, half mini laboratory, where a wall-mounted cot and a chemical toilet shared space with computer tables and racks of analytic equipment. My gaze drifted to a rounded platform of metal with a drain in the floor, ringed in Plexiglas. I thought it was Elmer’s shower, until I saw the dangling, open manacles.

  “The hell were you doing in here?” I muttered to the empty room. Hand-written notes lay scattered across a folding table, with incomprehensible graphs etched onto green-lined graph paper. A camcorder stood on a tripod, pointed toward the empty plastic-walled cell, and a scattering of cassettes joined the clutter beside it. Each tape was marked with symbols, not words or numbers, spiky, boxy glyphs that spoke to some kind of common hierarchy.