City of the Lost (19 page)
Authors: Stephen Blackmoore
Jughead is getting increasingly agitated as Archie gets calmer. It’s weird how much the midget looks like a twisted version of Archie.
“Is it? If you’d been doing your job a little better in the first place,” I say, looking Archie squarely in the eye, “Neumann wouldn’t be replacing your sorry ass with me, now would he?”
Archie gazes impassively at me. Jughead, though, that little fucker’s snarling like a trapped wolverine. He moves on me, but Archie gives the leash a quick jerk, snapping the midget back.
“Wouldn’t want to let that leash slip, now would you?” I say. “Can’t have all those chained-up urges getting loose.”
“You don’t understand a thing,” Archie says. “You’re a hammer, nothing more. A badly made, poorly used tool. Doctor Neumann is using you, and you’re too stupid to get it. At the end of the day, you don’t matter. When he’s done with you, he’s just going to leave you to rust in the rain.”
“Wow. That was almost poetic. I’m hurt. Really.”
“Just go away,” he says. “Slip quietly into some hole, why don’t you? It’ll be easier.”
I take an inhumanly long draw on my cigarette, put it out on my hand. The skin crackles back, the edges glowing, then fades away as if nothing has happened.
“Easier than what, Arch? The fuck you think you can do to me?”
He leans in toward me. “I’ll cut off your head and burn the rest. I’ll stick it in a box with enough maggots to chew your eyeballs out and keep you in pieces. And when I want a laugh, I’ll open the box and piss in your eyeholes.”
“Good. But it still doesn’t rhyme. I got a better idea.”
I give a swift kick to Jughead’s skull, punting him across the floor. With a loud squawk, he spins under a Hummer.
Archie throws a haymaker. I duck under it easily, give a quick punch to the kidneys. Bring my knee up into his stomach, shove him down. Air blows out of him with a loud gasp, his eyes bug out like a fish’s.
Before he can get his wind back, I bring both hands down like a hammer onto the back of his neck, bounce his head off the concrete floor. I hear his nose crunch, and I know it’s over.
Jughead comes toward me. I have my Glock casually pointed at the back of Archie’s head.
“Don’t,” I say. “I’m not sure you’ll survive if I kill him. You want to find out?”
Jughead snarls but keeps his distance. I back into my car seat, gun leveled at Archie as he stands up. His eyes are swelling black, dark blood drips from his busted nose.
“Go home Arch. Get some ice on your face. Leave me the fuck alone.”
Chapter 19It’s funny how some things
can crystallize your thoughts.
can crystallize your thoughts.
With Carl out of commission I’ve got no one I can trust. Just as well. It’s my mess. I’m the only who can get me out.
The first thing I need to deal with is Giavetti.
No. It’s not.
I already know what he’s doing. He’s trying to tell me that he can get to me at any time. That much is obvious. Trying to freak me out. Go after friends, family. If I had a cat I probably would have found it nailed to my front door. It’s an old strategy. I’ve done it myself.
This kind of thing comes from a position of weakness, trying to make it look like strength. Give me this thing or I’ll do this to you. Yeah, and if you could do it to me, you would have already.
So, why doesn’t he?
For starters, it’s not like he can hurt me. Torture’s pointless. Shooting me, more so. If he sticks me in a block of cement, I can’t do much talking under eight feet of concrete.
So he goes after my friends. Only I don’t have any left. He doesn’t have the stone and doesn’t know where it is. So, no, he’s not the number one priority. I’ll kill him later. Once I figure out how.
What about Neumann? Some old fart who can put eyeballs on people. He’s not a problem. But Archie is. If he didn’t hate me before, he sure as hell does now. I probably should have killed him in the garage.
I’m still on the fence with Gabriela. She’s giving me a hand, helping Carl, but she still wants the stone, and she tried to screw me over for it with Darius.
And then there’s Samantha.
She’s just as much an enigma as when I met her at the club. She knows Giavetti. Had a falling out with him. But she hasn’t mentioned the stone. Hasn’t tried to convince me to give it to her or to keep it from someone else. Not once.
What the fuck is that all about?
I had meant to track her down after I was done in Bel Air, but then Carl and Gabriela and whatever the fuck Giavetti did in that hotel room happened.
My gut tells me she’s not going anywhere. Not until she’s seen me. She’s got some stake in this and something she wants from me, or she wouldn’t have tracked me down at the club, wouldn’t have talked to me about Giavetti. So she can wait.
Which leaves me the address I got from Carl.
I don’t know if Neumann could only see through the eye or if he could hear through Carl, too. If he can that could be a problem. He could be there now, and god knows what he’s finding.
I check the address online. It’s east of downtown, next to that cement ditch we call a river. A little more digging, and I realize that it’s a junkyard.
I look at the clock. They won’t be open. That’s fine. Every self-respecting thug has bolt cutters.
Most of the time the L.A. River is empty, a long slab of concrete where bums try to sleep while kids with too much drug money race their pimped-out Hondas. Occasionally, when we have rain that’s more than a drizzle, we get a lesson in the fact that all that cement’s there for a reason.
Our river doesn’t flow, it just floods. Every year, some moron gets swept away while helicopters try to pull him out, and the news guys stand by and film it all for our amusement.
I pull up about a block from the yard. The nearby train tracks are quiet. A couple of railcars on side tracks, some semis parked nearby. Anything natural was paved over a long time ago.
Mackay’s Salvage. High chain link and razor wire. Cars piled high like Hot Wheels in a windstorm, tumbled together in a maze of scrap metal hallways. A compactor and crane. A trailer for offices in the back.
I don’t see much in the way of security, but there’s got to be something.
I take a good whiff. Car exhaust, motor oil, and gasoline. Seat leather, vinyl too long in the sun. Something else. There’s at least one—no, two people here. One of them really likes garlic, the other’s an Old Spice kind of guy.
I wonder what that tastes like.
And a dog. One dog? More? I can’t tell.
It takes me almost two minutes to cut through the padlock. These bolt cutters are great on fingers, not so much on industrial steel. I have to stop twice and duck behind an oil drum when the security guards and their lone Doberman pass by. The dog offers me a casual sniff, but beyond that, they don’t seem to know I’m here.
I slide the gate open enough to let me through and close it behind me. The place is a fucking maze. Dead end at a mountain of Buicks, just as the guards make another sweep. This time the dog’s less forgiving.
Had a dog growing up. I’d hate to have to shoot this one. I check to make sure I’ve got a round in the chamber, just in case.
I push my way farther in the shadows and wait for the guards to let the dog loose, but they just tell it to shut up. They pass out of earshot, the barking and yelling fading in the distance.
Head to the back, get lost a few times, double back, finally find the offices to one side of the crane. The space they’re in is a staging area for feeding cars into the compactor. A rusted-out Cadillac hangs over it from the crane like a dead man on the gallows.
Lock’s an expensive Schlage embedded in a cheap wood-paneled door. I could pick it, but why bother? The door pops open under my shoulder.
Pretty boring layout inside. Filing cabinets, couple desks, chairs. A wall calendar showing Miss Tech-Tool September, silicone tits and all.
I riffle through the filing cabinets looking for what, I don’t know. They’re full of invoices and time sheets.
Then I see it. Sitting at the top of a license to operate, right under “Mackay’s Salvage.” The parent company: “Imperial Enterprises.” And under the words “Sole Proprietor,” S. Giavetti.
I stare at it, trying to make sense of it.
I’d almost forgotten about Imperial, the company that owned the house that the stone was stolen from. And Giavetti owned it?
I’m having trouble making sense of it. If he owned the house, if he got the guy in there with the stone, why did he need to hire guys from Simon to steal it? And something else. Other questions, but catching them is like trying to grab at moths. I can’t seem to think straight.
Why can’t I think? “Fuck me,” I say.
“Yeah, gonna do more than that.”
I turn to see the guards and their dog right outside the door. Thought I’d closed it better than that. Got so wound up I stopped paying attention to my nose. Still not used to it.
But now that I am, they remind me of beef stew and pumpkin pie. That can’t be good.
“You need to walk away now,” I say. My voice is thick in my ears. Something’s wrong. I realize what as I catch a glimpse of my hands in the guard’s flashlight. They’ve started to sink in on themselves, and splotches of rot are starting to bloom along my knuckles.
“Tough talk,” one of the guards says. Older guy. Overweight. Too many donuts and not enough exercise. His partner’s just a scrawny kid with acne scars. Doubt he could bench press a third his own weight with those arms.
The dog, though, all lean muscle and hungry teeth. And disciplined. Staring at me, not growling, not barking. Waiting for the command to go get himself an early breakfast.
“Really,” I say. “You want to run.” I lurch at them, try to barrel my way past. I don’t want to kill them. They haven’t done anything.
But then the fat guard lets the leash slip, launching the Doberman at me like a shot out of a gun, and I lose control.
The dog takes my arm. Teeth sink into my sleeve. My leather jacket keeps it from breaking skin, but the bone underneath crunches.
They’re expecting me to drop, scream, do something that will let them come in and beat on me with batons. They don’t expect me to bum rush them. The Doberman scrabbles for better purchase on my arm. Jaws lock down tighter.
I push my way out the door. Swing the dog at their surprised faces. Patches of hair are falling out of my head, skin still attached.
The kid gets the dog’s ass upside his skull, knocking him to the ground. I pick him up with my other hand, launch him toward a pile of rusted-out junk. Twisted metal rains down onto him, pinning his legs. I dislodge the Doberman, throw it after him.
The fat guard draws his gun and gets a shot off that punches through my chest, out my back. Quick step in, jab in his kidneys, sweep the gun out of his hand.
I give him one last chance. One chance to run, get out of here and save himself. I lean down at him to tell him that he can go, but he has to go now.
All that comes out is a groan.
He swings his flashlight up, freezes when he sees how far gone I am. A chunk of flesh falls from my jaw and plops onto his face. That’s the last straw. He starts to scream.
I grab the light, beat him until he shuts up. Beat him until his face is nothing but bloody pulp, busted teeth.
Then I start in on his sternum, the Maglite cracking through bone.
There’s a whimper nearby. I look up to see the kid staring at me and shitting himself.
“Don’t worry, buddy,” I try to say, “you’re next.”
But all that comes out of my mouth is a torrent of thick, black blood.
When I come to my senses, most of the Doberman’s back end has gone down the fat guard’s gullet. Loops of canine intestines hang between his teeth. Chest is a ragged hole. Most of his lower jaw is missing.
Doesn’t look like it stopped him from making short work of his buddy. Pinned under a half-dismantled Studebaker, the kid didn’t stand a chance. His neck is chewed through and most of his chest is gone.
He’s still pinned, but he’s already moving. Sweeps his arms back and forth, like he’s playing a game of blind man’s bluff.
I wipe thick blood off my watch. Damn. All this carnage in half an hour.
Just like last time I’m back to normal, covered in gore and chunks of rotting skin. I pull myself up from the ground. The fat guard casts a quick glance over his shoulder at me and goes back to work on the dog’s corpse.
I come up behind him, grab his head, snap his neck. He drops like a sack of bones. I take his partner out too, separate the dog’s head from its neck for good measure. Last thing this city needs are zombie dogs.
Getting rid of the bodies takes a little while, mostly to lever the kid out from under the Studebaker.
I toss them into the top loader of one of the junkyard’s car compactors. Turn them into paste with the push of a button.
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