by Jason Winn
Chapter 69
High beams blinded Madison. A big engine roared. The sound was punctuated by the screech of brakes. And was that Huey Lewis and the News blaring?
The two cops stopped, looking toward the car.
“You want me to?” It was a hurried half sentence from Dudley.
“I got this one,” said the mustached cop.
Madison felt the steel bracelets fall away from her wrists. She looked over at Wrench. He was being helped to his feet by the other officer, who just a minute ago was talking about killing them in something called “the warehouse.” The cops’ faces had turned polite, almost apologetic.
A car door opened. Madison could see it was a Porsche, very similar to the one that tried to race her earlier.
“Ma’am,” said Dudley, “all your paperwork is in order. Can we be of any further assistance?”
The same goofy-looking man who tried to race Madison earlier, stepped out of the Porsche. His clothes were high class, but wrinkled to shit. And he smelled like a running back after the game. He still wore his sunglasses. “Wow,” he chuckled, “these guys really hate you. What did you do to them? Shoot their partner?” He was panting as if he’d just darted up ten flights of stairs.
He went quiet for a moment. Madison was utterly stunned. Who was this man?
“Ohhhh,” he went on, wagging a finger at Madison, “you got their buddy in blue fired. Oh, they don’t like that.” He paused for a moment and looked away. “Oh boy, somebody thinks you were involved in, wow, attacking a police station in Annandale? Holy cow, you got guts I didn’t think you had, Madison.” He swung his head around to look at her. “What are you, Rambo? I guess it would be Ramba, maybe? Feminine gender of the name. That just doesn’t sound right though.”
“Who the hell are you?” Madison asked the stranger.
Madison stole a glance at Wrench, shocked that he was still standing there, cuffs off, just staring off into space.
“All that in good time. Do me a favor and lie down on the sidewalk. Look dead.”
“What? Hell no. I was just down there.”
“Madison, these two were sent here to kill you. We provide them a little proof to their employer. It buys you some time. Work with me, all right? Unless, you want me to just tell them to shoot you.”
“All right, fine.”
Madison did as she was told, feeling she had no choice in the matter.
“Wait,” said the stranger. He bolted back into his car and rummaged around in the passenger seat. A second later he came back, digging in a fast food bag. He pulled out two catsup packets, ripped them open with his teeth and aimed them at Madison’s chest.
“What? No,” she said.
“It will come out in the wash,” said the stranger. He shot the catsup all over her shirt and smeared it across her stomach. “Jeeze, do you argue with everyone who saves your life? Now shut-up and look dead.”
Madison did as she was told, seething at the stain on her new shirt. The stranger nodded to Dudley, who promptly pulled out his cell phone and snapped a few pictures.
“Good. You two be on your way, now,” the stranger said to the cops.
They both tipped their hat brims to Madison and Wrench, as politely as English gentlemen, got in their car and left.
Huey Lewis had given way to the Bangles, “Walk Like an Egyptian.”
The stranger staggered up to Madison and pulled down his sunglasses to reveal eyes so cloudy white they might as well have been mothballs. “Alec Graves, your new best friend, if the price is right. And, I’ll take half of what’s in the trunk right now, or else I ask your new friends to come back here and finish their job for real.”
A thunderbolt hit Madison. He was a sorcerer, one she’d never met. A swirl of possibilities raged through her mind. Who did he know? Who was he working with? Maybe nobody, since he said something about becoming her new best friend. There was no time to argue or haggle. She and Wrench needed to get off the street and find out if the Outfit was actually dead.
“Done.” Madison pulled two and a half stacks out of the envelope in the trunk and handed it to Graves.
“Mind if you drive?” asked Graves. “I’m just beat. That’s a pretty bracelet you’re wearing. Can I see it?”
He pointed to the tennis bracelet on her arm, the embedded crystals might be the only thing keeping Alec out of her head at the moment.
“No,” she snapped. “Get in the car and keep your fucking hands where I can see them.”
“You packing?” He squinted his eyes. “Can’t tell.”
“I’m pretty sure you know.”
He stared longingly at the million-dollar houses. “Hmm. I always wanted to get a place over here. But the wife wouldn’t have it.” He turned to Wrench and whistled. “Hey, lover boy.”
Wrench turned to look at the both of them.
“Can you drive a Porsche?”
Wrench nodded. Madison was suddenly very concerned for him. “Let him go,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” he gasped. “I don’t have the strength to hurt him, just tell him to follow us. Be careful, that isn’t my car.” He lowered his voice and smiled wide. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Where are we going?” asked Madison.
“Just take me back to my hotel. We can talk on the way.”
Chapter 70
Madison made for Route 1 and following Graves’ directions, they would be at the motels that advertised hourly rates in thirty minutes.
“Give me ten million dollars and I’m yours,” said Graves. He looked like he was about to pass out. He clearly needed a few hits of Moonmilk, but Madison didn’t have any on her. She figured she could call Sarah later and see if she could bring some over to the motel, after she was done with dinner with her dad.
“That’s a little steep.”
Graves grunted. “You’d be in jail right now, if it weren’t for me.”
“Don’t you mean the morgue?”
“No. I’m the one that blew the minds of the state troopers and detectives and firemen crawling all over Camp Peterson six months ago. They would have tracked you down eventually. And then…” He snapped his fingers. “It would be all over. That almost killed me by the way. And, yes, you would be in the morgue right now, if I hadn’t saved your butt, again.”
He rested his head with a thud against the window. The same window Madison wished she could roll down. Hers was down and that was putting a dent in his stench, but her eyes still felt like they were going to gush tears any minute.
He continued. “And then I went to all the people in between. It was beautiful. By the time I was done, none of them could remember a thing.”
“Thanks. I guess. How did you know about Camp Peterson?”
Graves turned to look at her. “Trask was a really bad guy.”
“You were with him?” Madison wanted to slam on the brakes and kick him out of her car. He might have been part of Reese’s murder.
“You could say that. But, I’m a hired gun. I didn’t believe in his paranoia. I can’t ever remember talking directly to the man.”
Madison decided to take a chance. “Did you know the Rose Widow?”
“Your grandmother, Nancy? Can’t say I did.” Graves turned to Madison, his head moving like a man about to pass out from too much cheap beer. “She was a legend though. Everything was simpler when she was running the show out here.”
“What do you mean, out here?”
“East Coast. It was all hers, Miami to Maine, all the way out to Chicago.”
“Who runs Chicago?”
“Who the hell knows anymore? Everyone is dead or hiding. Guys like me only ever bought Moonmilk from one person. You can’t exactly buy from anyone off the street. You know? She kept things running smooth. Nobody fucked with her. She had a good organization.” He paused. “Lot better than yours.”
“She didn’t exactly leave a manual behind.” Madison checked the rearview mirror to make sure Wrench was still following her.
He was.
“Yeah, well. Everything’s fucked now. When she left, all hell broke loose. Former underlings started to take a cut of the pie for themselves.”
“Do you know why she left?”
“Probably sick of dealing with all the psychos. Like Miss Molly. Watched her almost kill you in the liquor store. And by the way, I would have jumped in there, but she scares the hell out of me.” He sighed heavily. “Everyone’s crazy now.”
“Thanks so much for stepping in,” Madison said sarcastically.
“She wears crystals around her waist. Never takes them off. She’s a smart girl, that one.”
“So, getting back to your proposal.”
“Ten million. I’m yours for a year. I could make the president invade Canada. You ever been up there? Man, I need some Moonmilk. You’ve got some, right?”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you expect me to pay you that much money?”
“Sweetie, you’ve been making hand-over-fist money. I know. A few of your clients are careless, don’t have the right armor, if you take what I mean.” He raised his index finger to his cheek and pointed to Madison’s wrist. “Their minds are an open book.”
“And your last employer paid you that much?”
“Not even close. But you’re in a lot of trouble. And soon somebody else is going to sell you out. Soon Contessa or Molden is going to take you out. It’s just the way the business works. You want to stay alive, you hire me.”
“I already have protection.”
“Huh? Those bikers. Honey, the first time your Bulldog friends figure out they’re running product for you, they’re going to take them to that warehouse they talked about and start waterboarding the shit out of them. Your bikers are enchanted by your money, and frightened of your little lightening crows. But they’re just men. They can’t cast spells. You got any sorcerers working for you, now?”
“No.”
“You remember a man named Caymen Darrow?”
Madison’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel, hearing that name. “Yes.”
“Yeah, he’s still out there. He’s probably with the Baltimore crew, or Contessa—couldn’t say for sure. He’s bad news. You remember a woman name Patricia Churchill, blonde, cold as a snowflake?
“Yes,” Madison growled.
“She’s still alive. She’s in a coma. You’d better pray that she never wakes up. Because she’s like the Terminator. She doesn’t quit.”
“Why don’t you take care of these people?”
“Madison, baby, look at me. It took everything I had to save your dumb ass this evening. You think I can just go around and hit everyone that ever wronged you? Patricia paid me a fortune. When you blew her up, you cut off my livelihood. My wife left me and took the kids.”
“Hold on—you can make people just give you money. Give you anything you want. You could probably tell the US government to give you Hawaii and a bunch of nukes to defend it. I’m calling bullshit.”
“Okay, those are good points. Let me address them. Jesus, my head hurts. Number one, I can’t just walk up to the president and make him give me what I want. He’s got security around him at all times. I’d have to turn them, then there’s the cameras that are always on him. I can’t do anything about those. Two, I think the media would have something to say about me being the lord commander of the fiftieth state. And three, nukes don’t run themselves. You need trained people for that. And last but not least, Moonmilk makes the spells go round. Oh, that reminds me. I’m going to need a steady supply of the juice. We got a deal?”
Madison pulled into the parking lot of Graves’ motel. It was a dump and that was putting it mildly.
“I’ll think about it.”
“I don’t want to go up to New York. Molden will pay me, but his Moonmilk is shit, quite honestly. You’ve got the good stuff, baby.”
“I said, I’ll think about it. Give me your number.”
“Just come find me here. I’m not going anywhere. You’ve got twenty-four hours, or I catch a train to the Big Apple.”
“Fuck. Fine.”
Graves sighed and smiled. “Good. You have a week to get it to me. I’ll consider the twenty-five K a down payment.”
With that, Graves got out of the car and staggered towards his room. Wrench got out of the Porsche and threw Graves his keys before getting into the car.
“He seemed nice,” said Wrench.
“Yeah,” she said, looking him up and down. His face was placid. But other than that, he seemed perfectly fine. “You all right?” She didn’t know what to expect.
“I’m good.”
It was as if the cop bullshit had never happened. Graves, the soul diver. Langston had talked about those guys a million years ago, back in Madison’s apartment. What was that old man doing right now, she wondered. Did he get his army?
“Did we miss last call?” Wrench asked.
“Not if we drive real fast.”
Now all she had to do was figure out how to get about ten million dollars in the next week. The current orders wouldn’t bridge the money gap, and she had to take Graves at his word that he’d be gone if she didn’t come up with his cash. The skies were getting cloudy and there was bound to be more fighting. She needed someone like him on her side. There was only one place where she could score that kind of cash. She’d start in on that mess tomorrow. Right now, she needed a drink to get her head clear.
Chapter 71
Jane stood with her arms crossed, staring across the warehouse at Madison. “All this needs to go.”
“What?” asked Madison.
“All of this, and fast.” Jane spread her arms out, pointing to the Pelican crates full of Moonmilk. There were at least fifty hard plastic boxes stacked neatly in rows in the center of the room. The cache represented weeks of eighteen-hour days, shuttling base compound from the new kitchen to the mansion and then over to here.
“Where are we going to put it all?”
“I don’t know right now, but the security system,” she pointed to the new cameras Sean had installed, “isn’t going to do much to stop someone from strong-arming their way in and making off with it. Plus, if Contessa can get to you on the street, she can find this place. The Bulldogs will just bum rush the place.”
It was a good point. Madison hadn’t considered that her stash house was vulnerable. “Fuck, I can’t even sell this stuff.”
Millions of dollars of product and no way to offload it. All the couriers were dead or scattered to the wind. Langston’s courier, Kenneth, wasn’t due back at the mansion for a couple of weeks. Madison slumped down onto one of the crates and put her head in her hands. Her hair smelled like sweat and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d thought to take a proper shower.
Jane broke the silence. “I mean flushing it all down the toilet would almost be better than leaving it here. At least then, you don’t run the risk of Contessa getting it and endearing herself to your customers.”
Madison sat up. “Fuck that. I got an idea.” She dug in her pocket and pulled out a toy cricket. It was metal with a dull black finish. “I think we can sell all of it tonight.”
For the first time in their relationship, Jane actually looked surprised. Her narrow eyes went wide and a thin smile creased her lips. Madison couldn’t remember the last she’d smiled either.
Madison put the cricket on the floor and stood back. “Shogun.”
Smoke billowed from the metal bug to reveal an outline of Carl, sitting over a bowl with chopsticks in his hands. Noodles dangled from his mouth. He sighed, slurped up the noodle and threw his chopsticks down.
“What now?” he asked. “Another kitchen burn down? No wait, you lost the secret recipe. Or, did your storm brewer get a flat tire?” He crossed his arms and slouched in his chair.
“No, smart-ass,” replied Madison. She put her face inches away from Carl’s smoky outline. “I want to know if you want a wholesale deal.”
Carl raised an eyebrow. “What ki
nd of deal?”
“I’ve got three hundred gallons of Moonmilk, give or take, I need to get rid of tonight.”
Carl let out a cough. “Excuse me? What’s wrong with it?”
Madison was incensed that he would suggest she would try to pawn off subpar product. “Nothing.” She took a deep breath.
Honesty time, she thought.
“My warehouse is possibly under surveillance by another brewer.”
“Who?”
“Contessa Morano.”
Carl’s eyes went wide for a split second. “I see.”
“What? What was that?”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing her out of the way. That’s all. She’s a competitor of sorts. At least she was. She got some of my people killed a few years back when a deal she set up went bad.”
“I’m going to take care of her.”
“I hope you’ve got plenty of tricks, if you know what I mean. What’s your plan?”
Madison hadn’t had time to think about that. The rage of Contessa’s betrayal had only just subsided. The Shiloh Library would have everything she could want, but without a guidebook or inventory there wasn’t enough time to search through everything and find the right tool.
“I’m still working on that.”
Carl thought for a moment, but Madison needed to get the hell out of the warehouse, now, before Contessa’s goons showed up and killed her and Jane.
“Look, I don’t have a place right now where I can stash my Moonmilk, and my entire organization is either dead or in hiding...again. I need to get rid of as much as I can, tonight.” She paused, waiting for Carl to say something. She could see he was considering. “Five million, one time offer, and it’s yours.”
Five million dollars eased the Graves salary situation a bit. It would be easier to conjure five million, instead of ten. Carl might agree to more, but there was no time to haggle. Plus, the deal would leave her with two cases, which she and Jane could hustle out in their cars. Plus, it would leave her with some spare Moonmilk for Graves and enough to fill Langston’s order in a few weeks.