Hook and Shoot (23 page)

Something clicked behind me, the sound of a folding knife locking in the open position. Fingers tugged my collar away from my spine.

“Can't call yourself a tough guy, you never been shot. We don't find any, I'll give you one for free. You can even pick the spot.”

The blade poked through the fabric, purred down an inch, and stopped.

“Where's Mr. Brandenberg's daughter?” Eugene said.

Two choices: play dumb, which I was, or let them think I knew something. If they believed I didn't know, there was a good chance I'd go from this room to the bottom of a construction site, cozy under a few feet of concrete. If they thought I had something to give up, they were ready to rip it out of me. “I want a lawyer.”

It wasn't any easier than the last time I'd said it. I don't like lawyers and hate asking anyone to fight for me. But it would stall these two mutts. They were
legally bound to stop questioning me until a lawyer was present.

Eugene said, “I want steak and eggs for breakfast. Guess which one's coming true?”

Karp spit on the back of my head. “There's your lawyer.”

I was almost sure they weren't going to give me a lawyer.

Eugene said, “If you don't want to tell us about Mr. Brandenberg's daughter, we can talk about how you murdered Lou Gerrone.”

It hadn't been on the news. “He's dead?”

“Don't even. Anytime we want, his body shows up. Where you want it? Your truck? No, the gym. Hang him from the ceiling like a punching bag. Take you and all your hump buddies down.”

Karp leaned into my ear. “You tell us where the daughter is, maybe Lou's body goes away.”

“Maybe,” Eugene said. “But hey, maybe you'll like it in prison. They love to fight in there. With less clothes on so there you go.”

They were sealing me in. I needed time to think. Space to breathe. Most of all, I needed to get out of this tomb. “Put me back in the car. I'll take you to her.”

“Well, that was easy. Karpy, how are we on gas?”

“Plenty.”

“This is just super. I thought we'd be here all
night, have to keep you through the fight tomorrow. But here's the thing: we know this guy Shuko. You heard of him?”

I kept my teeth together.

“You don't have to answer. Your face tells me yes. Shuko wants you dead, and he sees you riding around with us he'll get your blood all over our car. The paperwork on that shit is ridiculous. So we'll put you in the trunk.”

The trunk.

“About the size of a freezer,” Karp said. Sweat fell into my eyes. I don't remember getting hot.

Eugene said, “You change your mind? Sounded pretty good to me. Drive here and there, let you out to look around. Plenty of opportunities for you to jump us and scurry away. Right, Karpy?”

“He woulda taken me completely unawares.”

Eugene pulled his key ring out again, jangled it. “Wanna go for a ride? Huh? Do ya?” He wrapped the keys in his fist, looked between it and my face a few times, shook his head. “How about this—we stay here, and if the next words out of your mouth don't tell me where Vanessa is, Karpy gives you another mouth on the back of your head? We'll see if that one has anything good to say.”

The blade pressed against the back of my skull. I waited for the heat of the slice, the tug of skin parting
before the sting, then the pain. As soon as it happened they'd both pause to get my reaction.

In that pause I would go to work. Stand up, shove the table into Eugene, and get space between me and the blade. Crush his nose with my forehead.

Turn and kick Karp in the balls hard enough to catch a glimpse of them in his open mouth. Let him slash my leg if he has to, long as it isn't near the femoral.

Lead with a roundhouse kick back to Eugene. Chop it into his face if it's exposed, break his arm if he tries to block. If he's reaching for his gun, drive the kick into his humerus, kill that arm, pull back, and stomp him in the face.

I stared at Eugene and waited for the blade to move.

Karp pushed hot breath onto the back of my head.

Eugene blinked. Something happened to his face—I wouldn't call it fear, not entirely—there was wisdom mixed in. Instinct. He shifted sideways and eased his gun over the table to point it at my chest.

I heard Karp shuffle to the side, out of the line of fire, but the knife stayed against my skin.

“Keep going, Karpy.”

The blade slid off and left an itch behind. Karp moved to my left away from the door. Eugene had a double-action revolver. The hammer was down—it would take a good pull on the trigger to raise and drop it. Maybe I could do something in that time.

Like get shot.

“Stand up,” Eugene said.

“What for?”

“Stand the fuck up.”

I did, wanted to curl around my stomach and chest to hide them from that black tunnel of a barrel.

“Back against the wall.”

I moved until my hands touched cinder block.

Eugene opened the door and stepped into the hallway. “Come on.”

I looked at Karp, who changed his confused frown into a stern frown and kicked me toward the door. “Go on.”

Eugene walked backward and kept the gun on me to the hallway intersection. He flicked the gun to my right, down the hall toward Holding. I turned that way and stopped at a locked steel door with a mesh window.

Eugene stuck a key into a box on the wall and twisted. The door buzzed and I pushed through. It was bright on the other side, all the fluorescent tubes humming.

The left wall was holding cells, ten-by-ten yellow cinder block with the front wall and a sliding door made of dull gray bars. Metal bench along the back wall, cut short for the stainless steel toilet in one corner.

The right wall was solid cinder block so you could
sit on the bench and stare out at nothing. The first holding cell was open.

“Shoes off,” Eugene said.

I checked my options, ran out after one. Kicked my shoes off and left them near the wall.

Karp reached to pull my belt off, didn't find one. “Huh. Thought you were some kinda black belt. Inside.”

I entered the cell and heard it close behind me. When I turned Eugene's gun was holstered.

“Know what I'm thinking, Karpy?”

“Not really.”

“If Shuko wants this guy so bad, what's he gonna do if he finds out we had him and didn't say anything?”

“Brandenberg—”

“I know but he ain't here with this beast. We are. And Shuko's gonna get Vanessa anyway. Why not let him do all the work finding out where she is?”

“What about the other thing?”

“I got it covered. Let's go call Shuko. I wanna see what happens when you get these two animals in the same cage.”

There was a round patch of lighter paint at the top of the wall across from the cell next to an exposed piece of conduit dropping out of the ceiling, a few capped wires forking out of the end.

I thanked whoever had come through and taken the video camera down. I didn't want Karp and Eugene watching me the whole time, and I didn't want anybody watching while I flopped around on the floor and got one leg through the handcuffs, then the other. I gripped one of the bars above my head and stretched my shoulders, heard the pops, and let some of the blood flow out of my hands.

Gil was probably calling every cop he knew, maybe stalking around the Metro Police station looking for me. He'd find a lot of blank faces. I didn't even know if Karp and Eugene were on duty. I hadn't heard or seen a radio since they picked me up.

One thing I did know: Brandenberg and his dirty cops were working with the Dojin-gumi. Possibly just long enough to give Vanessa back to Shuko, make things right so he wouldn't drag them up to his private floor for tattoos and torture.

Or maybe Eugene and Karp were bluffing. Getting me to sweat and stew, tenderize myself thinking about Shuko and his freezer.

It was working.

I sat down on the bench and tried to keep still. Knees kept bouncing, hands opening, closing.

Eddie and Burch knew these guys. Maybe they'd know where to find me. Then they could stand outside the abandoned station and pound on the front
door and be ignored.

Until Shuko rolled in.

Shit. If Eddie and Burch showed up, Shuko would have all three of us sealed inside an empty building. Not the public executions he wanted, but no way he'd turn down a gift-wrapped body count.

I tried to pull the handcuffs off.

Not a chance.

Peeked into the toilet. Maybe the blue water would make things slippery enough.

It was dry, shut off, dust in the bowl.

I paced the cell and thought about freezers and bathtubs and the woman Burch had mercy killed. Tried to think about anything else. The walls moved when I wasn't looking, went from ten-by-ten to a phone booth. I stopped, took a deep breath, pictured Marcela, and felt dirty for even bringing her image into this.

Back to pacing, hearing the tattoo needle bounce off bone, and waiting.

Two hours later the waiting was over.

The door clicked like a gun switching off safe.

Karp pushed through and held it open for Eugene, twirling his keys around a finger. He glanced at his watch. “It is now officially Saturday. You want to
fight tonight? Hell, see the sun again? Tell me where Mr. Brandenberg's daughter is. When we find her I'll come back here and cut you loose.”

“Then what?”

“Life goes on. For most of us.”

Karp still had the door open, peering down the hall where I couldn't see. He was sweating. “My advice, pack your shit, get out of town, and don't look back. Eddie's a walking corpse. So's Burch. Don't factor them into your decision.”

They waited.

Eugene shrugged. “Okay.” He pinched a key and let the rest fall away, stuck it in the cell lock, froze there, and pointed at me. “Don't you move.”

The cell door slid open. Shuko walked out of the hallway and into the cell and sat next to me.

Eugene locked us in. “You boys play nice now.”

They walked out, Karp smiling as the hallway door eased shut.

I stared straight ahead and listened to Shuko breathing next to me. He was much larger than I remembered from the parking lot. Six two and thick, probably two fifty. Colorful neck tattoos sprouting above his black T-shirt. Smelled like stale smoke and greasy food.

I turned to him. “Remember me?”

He tried to show me how dead his eyes could
look. Pretty dead, not bad.

“You don't because I've never seen you before. Who are you?”

“Shuko, motherfucker.”

“Bullshit. I met Shuko. Those clowns just don't know it. At least you're Japanese so they got that right. They paying you for this?”

He smiled. He was on something.

“They letting you walk on a bust for coming in here, throwing me around?”

He stood up, rolled his neck and fists. Scars laced over his knuckles and forearms, trails left behind by knives, glass, teeth. “Where's the girl?”

“What girl? You don't even know.”

“Vanna.”

“Jesus. This is offensive.”

He stepped back, gave me a good look at his black steel-toed boots. “Tell me where the bitch is, bitch.”

“Take it easy. What are you getting out of this?”

“I get to fuck you up.”

“You should renegotiate. Hey, you know any catch wrestling?”

He smiled. “I get to fuck you up, then I get to fuck her. Karpy said so. Shh, don't tell her daddy.”

I sat still. “What do you do?”

“Huh?”

“Your job.”

“Man, stand up.”

“Because this is what I do. Get locked in cages and fight my way out.”

He frowned, some alarm going off in the fog of drugs and dementia. He shook it off and took a step toward me.

“Don't do it.”

He reached out and everything slowed down. Among the scars I could see calluses on his palms and fingers, recognized them as barbell-made. A weight-lifter in addition to the brawling.

So what.

I shot my hands out and got the handcuff chain between his right thumb and forefinger, pushed off the bench, and drove into him. His thumb bent back and he went with it, hissing and trying to belt me with a left hook. I took it on the shoulder and kicked him in the balls.

He dropped to a knee and shoved me away with his right arm, then locked the elbow. I still had the chain against his thumb, plowed my hands forward. His thumb snapped at the joint and flopped back against his forearm. I kept the chain going and slammed it into his upper lip, got it under his nose, and kept pushing until his skull thumped into the cell bars.

I wedged it in tight, got my fingertips around the
bars on either side of his head, and pinned it there while I drove knees into his diaphragm, worked my way up, and compressed his rib cage in a few places.

Blood sprayed out of his nose with each impact. I don't know what was crawling around in it, but I didn't want it on me. I stepped back and let his head slip out of the bars. He tipped forward, folding over his cracked ribs, and on the way down I stomped my left heel below his ear, sending him flopping across the floor against the wall where he didn't move.

I checked his pockets for a phone, no luck, then wiped any blood I could find on his jeans and sat on the bench to wait.

Twenty minutes later the door opened and Eugene walked in with his hands over his eyes. Karp followed with his ears covered, a grin splitting his face.

“I see no evil,” Eugene said.

Karp giggled. “I hear no evil.” He looked into the cell and stopped.

I said, “Both you idiots oughta cover your mouths too. I happen to have two fists, so whenever you're ready.”

Eugene dropped his hands and stared at the guy heaped against the wall. “Fuck.”

“You should get him to a hospital.”

“I should take him out back and shoot him.
Fucking worthless.”