Black Rust (23 page)

Lutz looked at Keith Workman in his starched shirt and primped hair sitting across the desk with a wall of windows at his back, rubbing his wealth in Lutz’s face without stooping to the vulgarity of saying it out loud.  Workman had shoulders that had maybe worked for a hard living many years ago, but now they were sagging.  The callouses on his hands had gone soft, and he wore a gut bigger than Lutz’s. 

Bumpkin-done-good country boy masking a slimy business behind a megawatt smile. 

Lutz hated him. 

He hated the type. 

In truth, Lutz hated most types of most people. 

Who was he kidding?  He hated them all.

Lutz glanced over his left shoulder.  The Goose dipshit was lingering there.  At the moment, Lutz hated him most of all. 

It made Lutz nervous to have that lifer back there.  And he had to be a lifer.  Lutz knew how the corporate farms integrated with the work camps: d-gens did the grunt work, prisoners supervised them, trustees policed the prisoners—not a one getting paid—and some smiling palm-greaser like Workman sitting astride the golden goose and thinking himself a business genius.

“You’re Lutz, right?” Workman asked.  “Franco Lutz.”

Lutz nodded at the plastic bag containing his things sitting on Workman’s desk.  “It’s not a secret.” 

Workman smiled and leaned back in his chair, as if he and Lutz were sitting on the back porch sharing a beer and talking about a favorite hunting dog.  “No, it’s not a secret.  I didn’t have to look at your billfold to know who you are.  I’ve got people.” 

Lutz’s lip twitched.  It was a nervous response that fired whenever his background was mentioned unexpectedly.  “You smile like you want to pretend we’re friends,” said Lutz.  “I’ll play.”  He looked over his shoulder again at Goose.  “No friend of mine would leave that guy standing there.”

Workman waved a hand and Goose walked over to the window behind Workman’s desk. 

“Here, Boss Man?” Goose asked.

Workman looked at Lutz and asked, “Good?”

Lutz nodded. 

Goose turned his back to the conversation.  He leaned on a wall and looked out the window.

“What do you want with me?” Lutz asked.

“The question is,” responded Workman, “what do you want with
me
?”

“Nothing,” Lutz told him automatically.  He deliberately reached out for the plastic bag containing his things and took it off Workman’s desk.  He opened it up and fished around for his phone.  “I need to make a call.”

Workman sat forward in his chair, reached out, and scooted a desk phone across to Lutz.  “Your cell phone won’t be able to access our network.  Use mine if you want.”

Lutz eyed the desk phone warily. 

“Call whoever you like.”

Lutz stopped rummaging in his bag, trying to guess what game Workman was playing.      

“I know what you and your partner, Christian Black, did last night,” said Workman.  “You boys are guilty as hell.  I suspect you and I might be seeing a lot of one another pretty soon.”

Goose giggled behind Lutz.

Lutz shook his head. 

“Disagree if you want.”  Workman shrugged.  “Makes no difference to me.  What I don’t understand is why you and your partner came here instead of running off to Mexico.  Hell, it ain’t that far.  You could have been across the border in time for breakfast tacos.”

“Got other plans,” said Lutz.

“And that’s what I need to know,” said Workman, leaning on his desk and turning serious.  “What plans brought you back here, because it concerns me.  It concerns Blue Bean Farms.  It concerns our work camp.  So why don’t you tell me, Mr. Lutz, what are these other plans?”

Lutz kept his mouth shut as he stared at Workman, still trying to figure what was up.  He was in a conversation he shouldn’t have been having.  There was no reason for it, at least not regarding what Lutz understood about the situation.  And that made Lutz curious.  “Why do
you
think I’m here?”

“Oh?” Workman rubbed his chin.  “It’s a game you want to play.”

Lutz shook his head.  “I’m a business man.  I’m looking for an opportunity.”

“By trespassing?”

“No,” said Lutz.  “By talking to you.”

“Okay,” said Workman.  “Let me tell you what I think.  My people tell me you’re a ne’er-do-well Regulator with a spotty past—so spotty, in fact, I’m surprised you haven’t been a guest at the work camp here before.  Questions abound about the deaths of your former partners.  And now you’re hooked up with this Christian Black, some kind of hitman out of Mexico.”

Goose giggled again.  “He’s drowned now.”

Drowned? 

It wasn’t possible, not with Christian Black. 

Lutz didn’t want his disappointment to show, so he masked it with a question.  “What about my car?”

Goose pointed toward a line of trees in the south.  “He drove it into the forest a mile or two down the road, a little piece from the river.  We looked for him a good while.  One of the boys heard him go into the water.  Damn stupid if you ask me with that current right now.  He drowned tryin’ to cross.  Maybe a gator got ‘em.  Don’t know.”

“My Mercedes?” Lutz persisted.

“Damn thing’s fine,” said Goose.  “Still sittin’ over there in them trees, though.”

“Forget about the car,” Workman told Lutz.  “What I want to know is why you brought a hitman here from Mexico?”

Lutz saw Workman’s mask of confidence turn transparent for a second and Lutz understood—Workman was afraid of Christian.  Lutz couldn’t help but laugh.  “You think I brought him here to kill you.”

She explained her list of clues to me:  the brush with death down the sight of my rifle, the deteriorating relationship with Workman and his staff, culminating in the revelation in the meeting with Doggett that he was stuck with her, couldn’t fire her without getting buried in fines from the state, the threats from Goose that morning, and now the dead Bully Boy. 

To her, it all added up to concrete proof. 

Through the string of stories she grew calm.  She had an analytical mind and as it engaged she’d disconnected her emotions from what had just happened.  That said something about her.  She was strong. 

Or she was on the sociopathic side of normalcy. 

Sometimes it’s hard to guess which.

“Why’d you come here?” she finally asked, turning her attention to the wad of damp cash I’d tossed on Caleb’s desk.  “Why that?”

“A bribe,” I answered simply.

“For what?”

“For you.”

“Why?”

“There’s a warrant out for me.  For last night.”

“Because you murdered those degenerates?” She said it with no emotion at all.  That seemed odd to me.  She was disconnecting. 

I shrugged.  With no valid sanction to cover my ass, technically, she was right.

“That was quick.”

I nodded.

“Why?”

“Don’t know,” I answered.  “Sometimes things don’t go your way.”  I pointed at the money.  “I need you to lie for me.”

“Lie for you?  I don’t even know you.”

I cast a deliberate look down at the Bully Boy.  “We’re not friends, but I think I did you a favor with that one.”

Sienna looked at her feet.  “What do you want me to say?”

“Say there was a toddler on that fire before we arrived last night.”

Shaking her head, Sienna said, “That won’t do any good.  I’ll just go to jail for perjury or something.  You guys have videos from spotter drones, right?” She was analyzing my problem now.  “I don’t watch TV much, but I’ve seen the kill videos.  It’s hard to miss them.  Weren’t there any drones up there last night?”

“There were,” I told her, keeping my voice steady.  “That part’s being taken care of.  Mostly.  I need an eyewitness to seal the deal.  I need you.”  I pointed at the money.  “Ten thousand.  I’ll get you another ten if that’ll make this go any smoother.”

“Twenty thousand to lie.”

I nodded.

“Or twenty thousand plus the obligation you want me to feel for saving me from him.”  She pointed at the body.

The obligation should have been enough by itself, but I didn’t say that.  “Whatever works.”

Muttering, she said, “Everybody wants me to turn a blind eye so they can kill degenerates with the rubber stamp of the state.  Everybody wants my integrity.”

“It’s not that.”  I told her the story of how the sanction appeared to me and Lutz, how Lutz thought he saw dead children and more to be slaughtered, how he’d started shooting and I had to shoot to keep him from getting killed.  It was just an unfortunate incident made worse by the fog.  It was a mistake, not a crime.  I finally said, “It’s just one lie.”

“And it’s
never
just one lie,” she shot back.

That ended the conversation.  She pulled her buttonless shirt together, and her eyes fell to the body on the floor as she retreated into herself, maybe thinking about my offer, maybe settling in with the emotions that were just now catching up. 

That’s how it was with most people.  In-person violence is frightening in a sticky way that doesn’t flit away with the next scene like scares in the movies. 

To most, death is a sanitized, repackaged, repurposed product wrapped in Hollywood-generated emotions.  Fictional movie heroes slaughtering d-gens to save virgins from monsters’ lecherous grasps doesn’t bother anybody.  That’s entertainment.  Reality shows turning the killing into a joke, that’s just a laugh. 

TV turned death into something it wasn’t.  It peeled away the suffering.  Flat-screen entertainment might show a pair of pleading eyes, but it can never convey the fright a thing feels when it knows death has come.  The smell of the panic-piss never leaches through.  Nobody every shits their pants before they die on TV.  Nobody’s skull explodes warm blood on your face.  You never taste what gets in your mouth.  You never have to spit out niblets of brain and gritty bone.

So when real death drops at someone’s feet, with its overwhelming sensations, they’re seldom prepared.  They scream.  They cry.  They run.  And sometimes, like Sienna, they withdraw.

I don’t do any of those things.  I feel no empathy, no remorse. 

That’s not to say I don’t understand the pain of others, especially the dying, but I understand it in a clinical way.  None of it ever touches my emotions.

And it had always been that way.  The state psychologist said I’d disconnected emotionally after shooting both my parents—back in those days it wasn’t illegal to kill those whose brains were being rotted by the prions.  I let the psychologist think what she wanted.  I knew I’d always been the way I was.

I’m not claiming to be a monster.  I don’t get off on watching things die.  In fact, seeing the dying brings me no pleasure at all.  For me, it’s business.  I kill for money.  Looking down at the dead Bully Boy, I supposed I killed for a few other reasons, too. 

Some fuckers just deserve an untimely death.

Lutz watched Workman’s face flush as he sat back in his chair, harrumphed, and adjusted himself behind the desk. 

“That’s why you have those men outside with rifles?” Lutz asked.

Workman glanced toward the window.

Goose turned away from the glass and silently nodded at Lutz.

Still laughing, Lutz said, “If you did your research, then you should know if Christian
were
here to kill you, those men wouldn’t do you any good.” 

“Why not?” Workman asked.  “Is he that sneaky?”

“I don’t know how much of what I read was true,” answered Lutz.  “But if it’s half-true, then he’d just kill ‘em.”

“Kill them?” Workman asked, trying to force a smile onto his face.  “You hear that Goose, the guy who drowned in the river was going to kill all those men downstairs just to get to me.”

Seeing Workman’s vulnerability, Lutz said, “You don’t have anything to worry about.  Christian isn’t here to kill
you
.”

“Wait.”  Workman froze.  “Are you saying he
is
here to kill someone?”

Lutz realized he’d said too much.  “No.  I didn’t say that.”

“You did,” Workman told him.  He was back to being a superior prick again.

“Don’t matter anyway,” Goose said without turning away from whatever had his attention out the window.  “He’s drowned.”

“I’m not going to threaten you, Mr. Lutz.”  Workman let that obvious lie sink in before he proceeded.  “But if a man thinks he might be in danger, if his beloved employees might be threatened, well, there ain’t no law all the way out here to protect him.”  Workman sat back in his chair again.  He slowly opened a desk drawer, reached in, and took out a knife with an antler handle and a long, wide silver blade.  Workman set to awkwardly scraping the tip of the blade under his fingernails.  “A man’s got to take matters into his own hands.  You understand me, Mr. Lutz?”

Lutz looked at the blade.  He understood the threat.

Goose took a glance at Workman and emphasized for Lutz’s benefit, “That’s a big knife.”

Lutz rubbed his face as he thought about the best tack for fishing information out of Workman.  Something about the guy wasn’t right.  And if Lutz’s instincts were correct—and they usually were in these matters—then Workman was up to no good.  He decided to put a few of his cards on the table.  “If you did any research at all, you’d know Christian and me got into a little mishap last night just off your property.”

“We know,” said Workman.  “Half the damn country’s seen that video by now.”

“That video might not be exactly accurate,” said Lutz.

“How’s that?” asked Workman.

“A clearer version might show up later that shows there were dead children there, so Christian and I were justified in the kill.”

“The version I saw was pretty clear,” said Workman.  “Bits and pieces, but it was just as clear as can be.”

“That was altered,” said Lutz.  “We have the original video, but we came here to convince one of your employees to back our version of the video when the police come to ask which version is fake.”

“Convince?” Workman asked.

Lutz looked at his hands in his lap.  “Bribe, maybe.”

“With a hit man from Mexico?” Workman made his disbelief clear with his tone.

“I think maybe you’re reading too much into this situation,” Lutz told him.  “Our business here has nothing to do with you personally.”

Workman put his elbows on the table.  He interlocked his fingers as he stared at Lutz with eyes that seemed to be trying to read his thoughts.

Lutz held Workman’s eyes for a moment before he looked away, letting Workman think he was the biggest monkey in the tree.

“You know what I think?” Workman asked.

Lutz shook his head.

“I think you figured you’d kill her instead of bribing her.  That way the only witnesses to tell the police which version of this video is real are you and your partner.”

Lutz said nothing.  He didn’t move.  He didn’t blink.

Workman smiled.  He got out of his seat, walked around the desk, and parked himself in the chair beside Lutz.  “I think Ms. Galloway, the woman you’re here to convince, isn’t going to be with Blue Bean much longer.”

Lutz kept his silence but showed a question clearly on his face.

“She’s been unhappy here,” said Workman.  “I doubt she’ll be around to be any kind of witness to anything so I don’t think that will be a problem for you.  You should just go on back where you came from.” 

Goose stiffened and slapped a palm against the glass.  “Oh shit.”

Workman jumped to his feet.

“Over there.”  Goose pointed out the window.  “Way over there by the trainin’ compound.  Is that Galloway with that d-gen?”

Workman ran around the desk and looked out through the glass.

Lutz got to his feet and hurried over to the window as well.

“Goddammit!” Workman shouted, letting his anger slip out.  “That
is
Galloway.”

“And that’s no d-gen,” Lutz told them.  “That’s Christian Black.”

Workman spun on Lutz and stepped close, jabbing his finger into Lutz’s chest.  “I don’t know what your game is but I know you’re a liar.”

“I’m not.”  Of course, he was.  Lutz backpedaled to get out of finger-stabbing range.

Workman stayed after him until Lutz made it around the desk and half-ran to the center of the office.  Lutz stopped, turned, and raised his hands. 

Workman was glowering. 

Goose had a hand on the butt of his pistol. 

Lutz saw the situation racing to a bad end with men who were motivated to get it there.  He blurted, “You want her dead, don’t you?”

Workman stopped.  Goose glanced at Workman.

Workman cautiously said, “I want her gone.”

Lutz knew then that his view into the hearts of black-hearted men was as sharp as ever.  “Maybe we have some common ground here.”

“If that’s so,” Workman shot back, “then why is your assassin running into the woods with her?”

“Christian is a clever bastard,” said Lutz.  “He doesn’t always share his plans with me, but you can bet he’s working an angle.  There’s an advantage in it for him and me.”

“Like blackmailin’ Mr. Workman,” Goose snarled.

“Blackmail is for bitches,” spat Lutz, “like you.”

Goose pulled his gun.  Workman cowed Goose with a sharp look, and Goose holstered the weapon.

Lutz, watching Workman’s eyes, said, “I think we do want the same thing—me, Christian, and you.  You know why we want it.  I don’t care why you do.  Doesn’t matter to me.  I guarantee it doesn’t matter to Christian.  He doesn’t have a conscience when it comes to this kind of stuff.”

“What are you getting at?” Workman asked.

“Maybe we work together on this,” answered Lutz.