by Penny McCall
“It’s the crack of dawn. I got, like, four hours of sleep. I’m tired.”
“Then keep your yap shut and let me handle this,” Harry whispered. “I’m trying to scare the crap out of him here, and it won’t work so good if you make me admit I don’t want to hit him.”
“Well, I ain’t hitting him. Blood makes me barf.”
“You hit Larkin.”
“That was mostly an accident. I tripped him so you and Kemp could get him on the ground and tie him up, remember? He hit his head when he fell. There was a lot of blood.”
“Oh. Right. There doesn’t have to be any blood. You could kick him.”
“Sure, just let me change into my steel-toed boots.”
“Really?”
“No. I’m not kicking him, either.”
“Maybe you ought to pull some Three Stooges stunts,” Hans Lockner said. “Try to poke my eyes out, hit me in the stomach, then conk me on the head when I double over.”
“I’m getting tired of the Stooges crap,” Joe said. “Maybe I will hit him.”
“Oh, puh-leeze. I heard you talking over there. You don’t like blood, and I’m a bleeder.”
Hans owned and ran a shop called Paper Moon, which specialized in prints of damsels in distress. He made the prints right there in the back of the small wooden building where he sold them, and when he wasn’t printing copies of dragons assailing Druid priestesses in the forest, he was making money. Except when he was tied to a chair in the basement of Joe’s house in Redford.
Despite their close call, kidnapping Hans had been a raging success, especially as compared to their last attempt. As things stood, however, they were on track to get just as much information from him as they’d gotten from Connor Larkin.
Harry might have worried that he was barking up the wrong tree, but Hans was the guy who printed the money, which meant Hans had been in possession of the plates last.
“It’s your ass or mine,” Harry said, the memory of past failure as much an incentive as the consequences of missing the boat again. “Cough up the plates, and don’t tell us they’re in your trailer. We already looked there. We want the truth, or the next thing coming out of your mouth will be your teeth.”
“Go ahead, hit me.”
Harry looked at Joe. Joe looked back. Neither of them moved.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” Joe said.
“Yes you did, and we got no choice if you want to eat tomorrow. You got laid off, same as me.” It hadn’t seemed so bleak at first. With unemployment and subpay they’d pulled down ninety percent of their pay sitting on their butts. But the layoff had become permanent when the union bartered their jobs away during the subsequent contract talks, and then the economy went to shit. There were no other jobs, unless you went into another profession. Hell, Harry thought, he hadn’t wanted to go to college when he was eighteen. No way was he going back at fifty-three.
When the simple delivery job had turned into something more . . . troubling, he’d said to himself, How hard could it be to threaten some ding-dongs who liked to play dress-up? Even when Larkin had come on the scene, he’d only been one guy—built like a bulldozer, sure, but there were three of them and only one of him.
The whole thing had turned to crap, though, and the Mackinac Island jail was just a taste of the humiliation they were in for, the difference between Marshmallow Fluff and a crust of maggot-ridden bread. First they found out Larkin was some kind of secret agent, and they’d blown their one chance to find out how deep the shit really was. Then the big boss refused to shut down the operation. No, he wanted to make one last big score. With Larkin’s posse ready to ride in like John Wayne and the cavalry trouncing the fucking Indians. And to top it all off, they were expected to kill the participants and the witnesses. Actually put people in their graves. And they couldn’t even smack around one obnoxious jackass to save their own necks.
Then again, there was more than one way to defrock a re-enactor.
“You got any liquor in the house?” he said to Joe.
“Got some Jack left over from last New Year’s.”
“Well?”
Joe shoved his hands into his pockets and ambled up the stairs.
“Liquor ain’t gonna help,” Hans said.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Okay, but I thought the point here was to get me to talk.”
“Everybody’s a comedian.”
“Not everybody. Some of us are Stooges. And that’s not Jack Daniel’s,” he added when Joe returned with a dusty bottle that held a few inches of murky brown liquid. “You don’t expect me to drink that.”
“Nope.” But it gave Harry great pleasure to plug Hans’s nose and pour the contents of the bottle down his throat.
Harry had a feeling Hans’s blood was already about twenty proof since it didn’t take him all that long to get good and sloshed. Unfortunately he also got belligerent. Turned out Hans was a mean drunk.
“Go fruk y’sel,” he slurred when Harry asked him where the plates were.
“We know you had them last.”
“So wha’? Been print’n money onna side, too. Din’t even notice.”
“Jesus,” Joe said, “why didn’t we think of that?”
“Shtup’d pricksh.”
“I wanna hit him now.”
“He wouldn’t feel it, Joe.”
“I would.”
“Focus,” Harry said. “We need to get the plates or we’re toast.”
Joe gave Hans an open-handed shot to the chest. No blood drawn, but Hans’s chair went flying over backward.
“Fruck,” he shouted, sounding like the booze was wearing off. Or maybe the pain was cutting through. He rolled around without managing to improve his situation at all. “Feels like you broke my wrists. Fucking asshole.”
Joe leaned over, got right in Hans’s face. “I want. The fucking. Plates. Now.”
Hans tried to spit at him. It splatted back on his own face.
“Not a good idea when you’re on your back and there’s, you know, gravity,” Joe said, booting Hans in the side, but without much intent since Hans barely grunted.
“You done?” Harry asked him.
Joe fisted his hands and glared at Hans. “Not until we get the plates.”
“Cut it out, you’re scaring me,” Harry deadpanned.
“Any ideas? Other than beating the crap out of him, which ain’t gonna do any good now that he’s feeling no pain.”
“The booze was your idea.”
“You think you can do better, go right ahead.”
Joe mulled it over for a minute, eyes rolling back in his head like he was trying to read the thoughts as they scrolled across his brain. It must have worked because his eyes rotated forward again, and he looked like there ought to be a lightbulb popping on over his head. “Be right back,” he said, taking the basement stairs two at a time and disappearing before Harry could ask him what the bright idea was.
When he came back, a couple of little white pills stamped with cloverleaf lay in the palm of his hand.
“It looks like aspirin. What good’s that gonna do?”
“It’s not aspirin, it’s E, you know, Ecstasy. Kid next door is into all this garbage, says it will make anybody do anything you want.”
“Isn’t that the sex drug?”
“I think it works for that, too. Mostly, he said it’s a mood elevator.”
“That couldn’t hurt. Give him some.”
Joe didn’t follow instructions. He just looked at the pills in his hand.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure how much to give him.”
Harry just shook his head and pinched one of the pills off Joe’s palm. Hans clenched his teeth shut. Hans definitely did not want his mood elevated.
“Hold his nose shut,” Joe suggested.
“You do it, and when he opens his mouth to breathe I’ll toss the pill down his throat.”
They grabbed Hans by the arms and hoisted him a
nd his chair back to an upright position. Joe got behind him and clamped his thumb and forefinger around Hans’s nose. Hans opened his lips and sucked in a breath, letting it whistle back out again through teeth he’d clamped shut. “Dumb asses,” he said. He was grinning from ear to ear.
Harry lost it. He gave Joe a shot to the shoulder that broke his hold on Hans’s nose, knocked Hans and his chair over again, and kneeled on his neck until he gasped for air. In went the pill, and Hans swallowed it before he knew what was happening. The fact that he almost choked on it was just gravy.
“How long do you think it will take?” Joe asked a couple hours later.
“Seems like there should’ve been some change by now.” Harry walked over to Hans. “How you doing?”
“I’m lying on a cold cement floor with my hands and feet tied to a chair. How about we switch places and you can see firsthand how I’m doing, you fucking moron.”
“I think he needs more time,” Joe said.
“I think he needs more E.” And since Harry was in charge, they repeated the process, minus the part where he had to kneel on Hans’s neck. Hans might be fully sauced and partially cooked, but he wasn’t forgetful or stupid.
Joe consulted his watch. It was after nine A.M., with no end in sight. “Let’s go have breakfast,” he said. “I got some nice, fresh sausage. He should be ready to talk by the time we’re done.”
“I want some sausage,” Hans said as they started up the stairs.
“We want the plates,” Harry said.
“Shove the fucking plates up your fucking ass,” Hans shouted.
Harry chose not to respond.
“Give me some fucking sausage. I’m starving here.”
“Yeah, you look it,” Joe yelled down to Hans before he shut the basement door and left Hans alone, still cursing and screaming.
They’d barely worked their way through scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast before the silence from the basement became deafening.
“You think the second pill was overkill?” Joe asked.
“I hope it wasn’t any kind of kill.” Harry made a beeline for the door to the basement, taking the stairs two at a time and breathing a sigh of relief when Hans turned his head and smiled at him.
Smiled at him. That was a good sign. He thought. “Hey, how you doin’?” Hans said in a nighttime deejay kind of voice.
Harry stopped so fast Joe ran into him.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think his mood’s the only thing that’s been elevated,” Harry said.
“I’ll tell you where the plates are if you get me a broad.”
“A broad?” Joe repeated. Joe was a little slow on the uptake.
Hans thrust his hips a couple of times. “A broad, dumb-ass.”
Joe stared at Hans’s bulging crotch. “Jeez, he’s all sexed up.”
“That’s right, baby face. Put on a dress or untie my hands—at least one of them.”
Joe made a sound in the back of his throat that pretty much summed up their mutual disgust, but didn’t begin to address Harry’s frustration.
“Christ,” he said, “all I want is the freaking plates.”
“Tree,” Hans shouted like he had Tourette’s. “They’re in the tree.” Then he passed out.
Harry and Joe traded a look, then Joe walked over and nudged Hans with the toe of his beat-up Nike. Hans snorted out a breath and settled into a nice steady snoring pattern.
“Should we pick him up?” Joe said.
Harry shrugged. “He seems to be pretty comfortable.” “What tree do you think he was talking about?”
“Has to be at the nutfest,” Harry said. He pulled out his cell phone and called Kemp to come and watch Hans. “Soon as he gets here,” Harry said to Joe, “we head back to the festival. Should get there just before lunchtime.”
Joe, master of the obvious, said, “There’s a lotta trees there,” and when Harry scowled at him, he added hastily, “but I bet we can figure out where Hans stashed the plates in no time. We just have to think like him.”
“Great,” Harry said, “all I have to do is stick my finger in a light socket and kill off a bunch of brain cells, and I’ll be all set.”
chapter 26
SUNDAY MORNING ARRIVED ON A STIFF NORTH-EASTERLY wind, bringing a sharp drop in temperature, clouds that seemed to be all talk and no action, and a mean case of second-guessing on Conn’s part.
“We already checked out all the booths on the map,” Rae reminded him.
“Except these two.”
“I was in Paper Moon, and I thought you ruled out Madame Zaretsky based on my parents’ opinion that it wasn’t her.”
“I have a gut feeling.”
Rae rolled her eyes, since one of those booths was Hans Lockner’s, and the other was probably just a smoke screen. Conn seemed hell-bent on making Hans’s acquaintance, so there was no point in arguing about it.
Madame Zaretsky read palms and tarot out of a tent pitched not far from the tilting grounds where the “jousts” were held, but away from the permanent booths ringing the Grove. She looked like the typical palm reader: gypsy dress, scarf wrapped around her graying hair, gold coin earrings brushing her shoulders. In real life she was a grandmother of twelve, named Edith Whipple, from New Jersey. With really bad eyesight, and an equally bad accent. Her predictions, however, tended to be spot-on. She’d been traveling with the group on and off for as long as Rae could remember. The tourists didn’t really buy her shtick. The circuit gypsies claimed she had a cosmic gift. But then, they tended to be a superstitious lot.
A girl in her early teens sat on the threadbare velvet ottoman across the table from Madame, a fog-filled crystal ball between them. The girl got up and joined a group of friends standing nearby, all of them blushing and giggling as they wandered off. Judging by the sidelong glances going Conn’s way, Rae figured it wasn’t all about the reading.
Conn nudged Rae toward the ottoman. Rae had no intention of putting her butt on that stool. She already knew how her future was going to play out—at least in the short term, short being however long it took her to get over Connor Larkin.
“Sit, sit,” Madame Zaretsky said, peering up in the general direction of Conn’s face.
Conn crossed his arms and glared at Rae.
“He’s shy,” Rae said to Madame.
“He ees afrrrraid?”
Conn blew out a breath, folded his long body onto the stool, and laid his hand, palm up, on the table. But he was looking at Rae.
She popped up an eyebrow and stared back until he turned his attention to the task at hand—which was keeping Madame Zaretsky busy while Rae searched the premises for a printing press. Not that Madame was much of a challenge since she had to practically put her face in Conn’s hand just to see it.
“Verrrry interrrrresting,” Madame said, tracing the lines on Conn’s palm with her finger. “The road you walk is not easy, or straight.”
Or truthful, Rae thought as she slipped behind Madame and pretended to browse the stacks of tarot cards and aromatherapy candles, the bins of stones possessing various useful properties, and the racks of preprinted zodiacs and personality charts. Madame Zaretsky also printed horoscopes to order, one hour or less.
Rae took a quick glance around, and when it was clear she slipped into the tent. There was no printing press, just a computer with a screen saver running. When Rae put her hand on the mouse, a menu popped up for state-of-the-art publishing software, and there was a printer that looked pretty sophisticated and expensive to her untrained eye. But when she brought up the list of files there were only three, and none of them contained artwork for counterfeit money.
Besides the computer, there wasn’t much else inside the tent except a bigger table where Madame worked up the special-order horoscopes and apparently ate her lunch, since the remains of something unidentifiable but definitely food-based was spread out on one end.
She eased out of the tent, just in time to hear the end of Conn’s
palm reading.
“You arrre not long for this life,” Madame was saying. She traced the lifeline on Conn’s palm, which curled from his wrist, around the pad of his thumb to the index finger side of his hand. “See here where the line breaks? You are in a time of great upheaval. You will not overcome.”
Rae’s heart skipped. She drew in her breath and held it against the sudden pain. Even if Madame Zaretsky’s accuracy hadn’t been well proven, Rae had never considered Conn’s danger, not really anyway. He seemed so . . . impervious, so rock solid. She’d seen him fight off men with swords, for Pete’s sake. But he was as mortal as the next man. He could be hurt. He could be killed.
The thought of it devastated her. She knew he would leave; she’d come to terms with it. But in her mind’s eye she’d always seen him going on with his life. She’d resented him for it, but maybe it was for the best after all. She wasn’t the kind of woman who could live day-to-day, never knowing if the man she loved would come home to her at the end of his next assignment. This way she could always think of him as he was now—alive, vital. And more than a little snarky.
“I’m not going to kick it today, am I?”
“You mock me now,” Madame said in her faux-Russian accent. “But you will remember Madame Zarrretsky long after you leave.”
“If I believe you, long isn’t a concept that applies to me.” Conn tucked a five-dollar bill into Madame’s hand as he got to his feet. “Next time,” he said when he joined Rae, “it’s your turn to be the distraction.”
“But you do it so well,” Rae said, not entirely sarcastic since he’d done a pretty damn good job of distracting her.
“It’s not Madame Zaretsky. She has a pretty sophisticated computer set up in the tent, and the latest in print shop software, but I don’t think she has the knowledge to use it for forgeries. She didn’t even password protect the system, and I couldn’t find anything suspicious.”