Dead Mann Walking

16

If I hadn’t ever been a decent detective I wouldn’t mind being such a shitty one now. Don’t know what made me think I could handle this one. Instead of getting involved, I should’ve just wandered into a cemetery and asked someone to bury me.

If it wasn’t Booth, it’d be a pretty big coincidence he’d hire the D-cappers. That didn’t quite fit either. The older one, Grandpa, didn’t seem to have anything against chakz. He asked if the cuffs were too tight, and even lowered Ashby’s head as he pushed him into the backseat of their sedan. He came across like a good limo driver, doing a lousy job he’d done a dozen times, intent on doing it well.

Mastermind or hired hand, if we were going to get away, Gramps was the one I’d have to take out. Knock him down and Forty-watt would wander around like a windup toy not knowing what to hit. I was surprised the old man let him drive. Despite the GPS, Grandpa had to keep giving Watt directions. They were kind of like Lennie and George from Of Mice and Men. Couldn’t imagine why they were working together, but the third time Grandpa reminded him to turn right, I ventured a guess.

“He your son?”

I don’t think he liked the question very much, because in response, he pulled out a piece and aimed it at me with one hand. He fished something out of his pocket with the other and held it up in front of me. It was a bullet.

“Know what this is?” he asked. “Know what it does?”

Recognizing the aluminum tip, I nodded. “It’s a devastator. Like Hinckley used on President Reagan and Brady, back in ’eighty-one.”

Random memory, quick lesson on bullets. Dumdum and hollow points are what they call expanding bullets. They shatter on impact so the pieces can do more internal damage. For a liveblood, that’s life and death. For a chak, it may just be an inconvenience. The devastator is an honest-to-gosh exploding bullet. Behind that aluminum tip it had a lead azide center that blew up on impact. It could cost you bones, a limb. They say President Reagan only survived because the bullet that hit his rib and entered his lung failed to explode.

“Those’re illegal, you know.”

“So’s my cleaning lady. I don’t want you to get any ideas about being able to take a few slugs before rushing me.”

“Well, not now.”

“Good. Tell your friend the same thing.”

Ashby was looking out the window, watching the streetlights. “Don’t sweat it, Gramps. He doesn’t have any ideas of his own. A little like our handsome chauffeur.”

The old man winced. “Tell him anyway.”

I nudged his shoulder. “Ashby, don’t get any ideas, okay?”

“Ideas. Heh-heh.”

“See?”

Grandpa’s move with the devastator made me realize something that made me think D-capping Boyle was not their idea. “You don’t have a lot of experience with chakz, do you?”

He got a little defensive. “You’ve got bodies, don’t you? Made of the same stuff as everyone else. It’s all meat, dried or not.”

“Sort of. Blow an arm off somebody else, it’s not going to come crawling after you, is it?”

Forty-watt opened his mouth for the first time. “Can they do that?”

“No,” Grandpa said. “He’s shitting you.”

Of course I was, but Watt didn’t know that. Grandpa shook the gun in my face. “Tell him you’re shitting him.”

“I am shitting you,” I said. I gave Forty-watt an exaggerated shrug, so he’d still wonder if it was true.

Had to make sure, so I figured I’d ask. “Either of you have anything against someone exonerated for the killing of their spouse?”

“What? No.”

So Booth and the chak chopper somehow hired the same team. Maybe Grandpa and Forty-watt had flyers up in the grocery stores, little chits at the end with the number to call. Somehow I didn’t think so. Was it someone Booth knew? Another cop? Hazen? No, he’d open the car window to let a fly out rather than kill it.

It worked once, so I figured I’d just ask again. “Booth know who else you work for?”

“We get lots of work. Who do you mean?”

I made a scissor motion with my fingers.

“Oh, him. You figure it out.”

“Do I get a hint?”

“No.”

“Given his reaction to my questions, I’d say no.”

“Well, you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of being right, then, don’t you?”

Grandpa didn’t even blink. At least I knew it was a he.

“Did the chak chopper hire you because he knew you

worked for Booth? Asked you to keep tabs on him in case I showed up?”

The old man snickered. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“It’s not like I’ve got a magazine back here to read.”

“Want to play twenty questions?” He put the barrel to my neck. “Okay. Guess what I’m going to do if you open your mouth again?”

Hell, I’d probably have my answer at the end of the ride, which, as it turned out, was in the warehouse district. Cue gloomy jazz riff.

Every town has one, but not every town built them as huge, thin, and rickety as Fort Hammer. One good hurricane should’ve wiped them all out, but even physics doesn’t work much in this town. Fifty years they’d been standing, and of course now, times being what they are, they mostly stood empty.

Watt maneuvered the sedan down narrow spaces tight as a behemoth’s butt crack. He kept getting lost, but I couldn’t blame him. One mass of tin wall and steel support is a lot like any other. It was like looking for a particular piece of hay in a haystack. After a lot of eye rolling from Grandpa, we made it. Hip-hip-hooray.

Watt got out, opened the door, and yanked at Ashby. The kid struggled, if you can call it that. His thin bony hands swatted Watt’s arms like wet noodles slapping brick. Just the same, Watt didn’t like it. It looked like he might get rough with the kid.

“Hey! Easy!” I barked.

Grandpa tensed, but agreed. “Don’t damage him yet.”

“Listen to your father,” I said as I climbed out of the car.

Watt looked at me like I was a wizard. “How’d you know?”

“I didn’t. I guessed, but I wasn’t sure until you told me just now.”

“When did I tell . . . ?”

“Shut up.” Grandpa grunted. “You want to give him our address, too?”

I grinned. “Does he take after Mom?”

He shoved me real hard for that. Made me wonder how far I could push him. A little chaos might break our way.

I laid into the mom. “She still on crack? Their kids usually have brain damage. Not that I have anything against crack addicts or brain damage. You’ve met Ashby, and my secretary used to be—”

Grandpa clocked me on the chin. I’d expected it, seen it coming, and moved back fast enough to avoid a broken jaw, but it still sent me to the ground.

“Anything else?” he said.

Watt was holding Ashby tight, and even if I wanted to abandon him, it wasn’t like I could get up quick and run with my hands cuffed. I shook my head. Grandpa pulled me to standing.

Ashby was horrified. Or maybe he was crying.

“I’m okay, kid; I’m fine. We’re just playing a little rough,” I said.

“These are the men who took Frank. Is Frank . . . inside? Heh-heh.”

Grandpa and I looked at each other. Neither of us answered. The old man may not have liked me very much, but I think Ashby reminded him of Watt. Maybe that’s why Ashby got away from them the first time. Gramps may have “accidentally” let him go.

“I wish you hadn’t brought him,” he said.

“Me, too. You could let him go.”

“These are the men who took Frank,” the kid said again.

Grandpa shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Watt slid the door open on a brand-new darkness. Inside, it was more like a cave than a building, the ceiling too far up to see. High up, the shadows of thick, dangling chains loomed, hooks at the end big enough to snare Moby Dick. Down below, with us, there was plenty of empty shelving, an oil-stained floor, and tracks where forklifts used to roll cargo. All mixed with dead leaves and dirt, it smelled like an oily cemetery.

Watt and Grandpa shoved; we stumbled along, tripping on whatever we couldn’t see. Takes longer for a chak to adjust to the dark. As we went farther in, my eyes could barely sort one shadow from another.

Suddenly, though, my nose grabbed all the attention. A sharp chemical odor was piggybacking on the breeze. I thought it was cleaning fluid, but that’d be pointless in this place. It was too strong, anyway, and lacked the perfumes Mr. Clean likes to wear.

Then I saw the source—a circular tub, four feet tall and just as wide. In its youth, it may have been a Jacuzzi or a hot tub. Now it was more a cauldron, the kind cannibals used in those old cartoons for the missionaries they were having for dinner. It was filled nearly to the brim with a gross, slick liquid that gave the color green a bad name.

The man I’d been looking for stood to the side, head covered in a hood, the rest decked out in overalls, a gas mask, and protective gloves. Whoever he was, he hummed and swayed, looking like a toddler dressed in a costume. Mom! Look at me! I’m a hazmat worker! For lack of a better word, he played with the silvery tools laid out on a narrow table in front of him. He’d turn one sharp instrument over, pick up another, then put it back down someplace else. One, a leather strap at the end of a long pole, looked like a bondage sex toy. Another looked like a garden tool, something you’d use to snap off thick branches—say, an arm or a leg. Yeah, the head clippers were there, center place, sharper and shinier than all the others put together.

I could see where this was going.

Getting a head start on that electric-syrup feeling I knew was coming, I looked down and tried not to think. My bad. A duffel bag sat below the table. I thought it was for the tools, but it was still full, the string at the top tied. It was stuffed with roundish things, basketballs, bowling balls, or . . .

No. Couldn’t be. Not just lying there like that.

I shuddered as the syrup roiled inside me.

As if he’d heard what I was thinking, the killer looked up and found my eyes.

“Where do you want them?” Grandpa asked.

The masked man looked as if he hadn’t even thought about that part. He’d been too busy pouring all those cool-colored chemicals into the tub, making sure his nifty tools were nice and clean.

“How’d you work it with Booth?” I said. “I’ve got my guesses, but it’d be nice to know for sure. You plant them there ahead of me or did they work with him before? Odd jobs on the far side of the law? He still thinks they’re going to beat me up, break an arm at most, right?”

He gave a little shrug that ruined the neat line of his hazmat suit.

I was actually doing okay until the moment he hefted the head clippers. Then it was like he’d stuck a chubby finger down my throat and touched the bottom of my stomach. A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man but one. Call me a coward, then. I could already feel the silver blades against my neck. I was ready to go to my knees and beg, offer to let him take the kid instead of me. But I knew it wouldn’t have worked, and I already had crap enough to live with.

Instead I straightened and tried to pretend I was somebody else, role-playing my pathetic excuse for an existence. “Let the kid go. He’s a babbler. Doesn’t know what’s going on from one minute to the next.”

He shook his head no.

“Why? This how you get your jollies?”

He stiffened and shook his head no again.

“What, then? It’s going to hurt you more than it will me? Little hard to believe, don’t you think?”

Grandpa pointed at the vat. “That’s what the acid’s for, to make it easier.”

“What do you mean, easier?”

“You’ll see,” the old man said. He and Watt put some thick gloves on; then, with a nod from the high priest, Grandpa put his hands on Ashby’s shoulders.

“No!” I shouted.

I tried to move. Watt grabbed me from behind, but I managed a quick kick to his groin. I prayed it’d put him down, but he mumbled something about chemical sterilization and got me in a bear hug. My arms were pinned, and seconds later my feet were dangling off the ground. I grunted and kicked, but any strength I had was useless.

Ashby looked very worried. “Heh-heh.”

Mr. Mask put a yellow-gloved finger to his lips and said, “Shhh! Shh!”

Ashby stared at him like he was watching a cartoon. I could see how he’d make the mistake. Watt tightened his bear hug until my ribs felt ready to crack.

Grandpa turned and whispered to me, “Don’t tell him. It won’t change anything. You’ll only scare him.”

“Sweet of you to be so concerned,” I said, croaking more than talking. “What’s he going to do with the kid’s head? Keep it as another souvenir?”

His eyes flitted to the duffel bag, then back to me.

Grandpa gritted his teeth. “He doesn’t want his head. He’s an experiment. The acid should destroy him faster than fire. Completely. You tell him what’s going to happen, he’ll spend his last moments thinking about it. What do you think would be best for him?”

“Killing all three of you and getting out of here. But I guess I shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Ashby’s head twitched from me to Grandpa to Watt to the mystery man.

“Are we going to find Frank? Heh-heh.”

It may have been my imagination, but when the kid said Frank, it looked like one of the bowling balls in the duffel bag twitched.

Christ, I didn’t want to think about it.

Gramps gave Ashby a paternal smile. “You’ll see Frank in a second. First you gotta take a little bath.”

“I don’t like baths. Heh-heh.”

“Even for Frank?”

“Frank didn’t say take a bath. Frank said to run.”

“That was a game,” Grandpa said. “Game time’s over. Now it’s bath time.”

He hooked him by the arm and walked him toward the vat. Ashby looked back at me with a grin that deserved to be a picture in the dictionary, next to the word insipid.

“A bath. A bath for Frank, heh-heh.”

Death, real death. I knew there was worse than that, and hell, maybe it would be better if he didn’t know it was coming. What did he have to look forward to, anyway? Fuck. Moral questions are easy when the situation’s black and white. The tough shit is figuring out the lesser of two evils. You can’t win, but you have to choose anyway. I decided that the bigger evil would be satisfying the son of a bitch with the headgear. If he was for it, I was against it.

“Ashby, for fuck’s sake, fight!” I screamed. “Poke his fucking eyes out! Kick! Scratch! They killed Frank and they’re going to kill you!”

“Killed Frank? Killed Frank? Heh-heh?”

Moving fast for his age, Grandpa snapped off a glove, yanked my head back by the hair, and stuffed it down my throat. But I’d made my point.

Ashby screamed, writhed, whirled, twisted, and kicked. Good for you, Ashby.

I tried to help, if only by fighting Watt. I pulled and kicked, but my best didn’t impress him at all. As for Ashby, well, for a second it looked like he was actually getting away from the old geezer. Instead he flew sideways into the concrete. Grandpa had thrown him to the ground to avoid the kicks. Then the old man plopped himself down on Ashby like a cowboy roping a calf, slapped another set of cuffs around his ankles, and tied his knees together.

As Ashby writhed, the masked man shook his head at me like it was my fault. I would have said if he didn’t like it he should take his vat and go home, but there was this rubber glove in my throat. It filled my mouth and throat with an acrid taste that I was sure wasn’t healthy even for dead things. I only hoped it wasn’t burning anything important.

I wanted to scream. I tried. I tried to scream as Watt chained me to a support beam, tried again when the two of them hefted Ashby into the air. I kept trying as I pulled against the chains so hard it felt like I was breaking my own bones. When I heard Grandpa caution Watt to be gentle in order to avoid spills, yeah, I tried screaming then, too.

As they hoisted him up and over, the kid’s eyes looked like they were trying to pop out of his skull and run away without him. I froze. Watt and Grandpa, as if they were dumping fresh-cut potatoes into a deep-fryer, let go and hopped back.

With a final, “Heh-heh,” Ashby disappeared. The viscous green crap didn’t even splash as it swallowed him. It was so thick, it just made a sickening plop, like radioactive pea soup.

The liquid churned like water not quite willing to boil. Maybe Ashby was struggling as the acid ate him. I thought I saw a bone-white elbow rise above the surface, but it was gone before I could be sure. After a minute or so, the churning slowed. Swampy vapors, a lighter green, hovered on the surface. The chemical odor was joined with a smell like burning meat.

“Most of it’s gone now,” Grandpa said. “I think the bones take a little longer.”

Even he looked a little grossed out, but our host was absolutely fascinated, intent as Ashby had been on Misty. To him, this was the equivalent of something shiny.

After another minute, the liquid, slightly darker, stopped moving altogether. For the first time, I believed something other than fire, or being ground by a millstone, could kill a chak.

The killer gave off a victory laugh, as if to say, Wow!

Grandpa wiped some sweat from his brow. “It’s sure as hell better than chasing someone all over the desert. That Boyle fellow took hours.”

Something in the bag twitched again.

Before I could think about what that meant, Watt undid the chain connecting me to the column. My turn.

The masked man stepped over to the table and regarded his pretty tools. He lifted the metal pole with the leather harness and stepped toward me. I think I made out a wide smile beneath the mask.

Then he said three words, drew each one out in a ridiculously singsong way. The voice was boyish, hauntingly familiar, but that could have been a put-on.

“We’ll talk later.”