The Four-Night Run (7 page)

“Right now you’re safer here than anyplace else,” said Elisha. “So stop being a baby and let him look at your arm.”

Squirrel stepped hesitantly to the mattress as Scrbacek, buoyed by Elisha’s high-wattage smile, offered the little man his left arm. Squirrel unraveled the cloth around the wounds, took a magnifying glass out of his bag, and began his examination.

“Interesting,” said Squirrel as he studied the still-seeping holes in Scrbacek’s arm and the grotesquely swollen biceps, streaked yellow and purple from the blood that had drained through the muscle. Almost gleefully, he added, “The infection is spreading.”

“You’re not taking it off,” said Scrbacek.

“We shall see what we shall see,” said Squirrel as he leaned in to get a closer look at the wounds. “I only do what I must.”

“Don’t grow too attached to it, you little rodent,” came a raucous voice, crisply twanged.

Scrbacek turned to see, blocking the whole of the doorway, a concrete slab of a woman, with reddish dreads thick as snakes and large yellow teeth. She stood wide as a barn and haughty as a queen and brandished as her mace of state an automatic the size of a salami. Squirrel sucked in a wet breath when he saw her.

“I’m only looking, Reggie,” he said. “No harm is there in looking?”

“He’s not taking off my arm,” said Scrbacek.

“Don’t worry about your arm there, Stifferdeck,” said the woman, sliding back the barrel of the huge gun before pointing it at Scrbacek’s chest. “You got bigger things to be sweating over now.”

12

R
EGINA

The woman known as Reggie, with the dreads and the automatic, squinted at Scrbacek as she kept her gun pointed at his chest. She wore black buckled boots and faded jeans and a leather motorcycle vest over a stained T-shirt, and her arms were like tattooed girders of iron. Behind her an old woman wearing the ragged, layered clothing of the chronically homeless clutched a paper bag as she hobbled to Reggie’s side. The old woman, stooped and aged, barely came up to Reggie’s hip.

“Is Donnie back?” said the woman with the gun.

“I thought he was with you,” said Elisha.

“He skipped off before we could fill the scrip, said he had an important errand. Has Stifferdeck explained what he’s doing here?”

“We haven’t gotten there yet.”

“He ask you any suspicious questions?”

“Not even my sign. He’s mostly been sleeping.”

“Then it’s about time he woke up.” Reggie swaggered toward Scrbacek and pressed the gun into his cheek. It was cold and hard and had the slick dark scent of oil. “We got some questions that need answering, Stifferdeck. Like, what the hell you doing in this part of town?”

“Hiding,” said Scrbacek, keeping his head as still as possible.

“But why here?”

“Where else?” said Scrbacek. “Someone tried to kill me. I ran into Crapstown and remembered Donnie’s address.”

“How damn convenient for you,” said Reggie, raising the gun into the air and turning around as if giving a speech to the multitudes. “Just happened to remember Donnie’s address. Just happened. No one just stumbles into Crapstown. No one just happens to show up on Ansonia Road. Especially not no high-flying briefcase who defended the monster that killed Malloy and who’s now supposedly on the run.”

“Supposedly?”

She slapped the gun into his jaw; it cracked painfully against the bone. “Oh, they looking for you all right, Stifferdeck, but I still got questions. What’s your game?”

“Staying alive.”

“When Malloy appointed me Sentinel, he said a fool would come dancing our way, and that this fool would wreak havoc and change everything. And then, lo and behold, here you come, prancing on in. Something’s going on, and I’m going to smoke it out, all right.” She leaned forward, pressed the gun into Scrbacek’s neck, opened her eyes wide.

The old woman in rags took a step forward as Reggie backed off to lean against the wall. “You’re the beagle,” the old woman said in a rapid, cragged voice. Gray tufts of hair curled out of her chin. Her breath smelled of rotgut whiskey and rot. “The one that was mouthing for Caleb Breest. The one that’s gone missing. The one they think is dead.”

“I suppose that’s me,” said Scrbacek.

“Blixen has one question for you, beagle. Do you play chess? Do you?”

“I used to,” said Scrbacek.

“Then I’ll get the board.”

“Not until I take care of his arm,” said Squirrel.

Scrbacek quickly said to him, “Forget it.”

“Don’t worry,” said the old woman. “Squirrel’s not taking it off. Blixen won’t let him. He’d probably kill you doing it, and then we’d never have our game. But Squirrel’s about the best healer you can find in this part of the city. He was top of his class at medical school until—”

“Quiet, you old fool,” squealed Squirrel.

“Until he was expelled—”

“Must we go into this every time?”

“For collecting.”

Scrbacek looked at Squirrel for a moment and then yanked his arm away from the little man.

“It’s just a hobby,” said Squirrel. “A man needs a hobby.”

“I told you to take up golf,” said Elisha.

“You listen to Baltimore,” said the old woman, “before someone starts collecting parts off of you. Those ears of yours must be worth something.”

“Elisha Baltimore?” said Scrbacek, taking in anew the woman’s all-American face and well-filled T-shirt. “The Lady Baltimore?” Of course he knew her. He simply hadn’t recognized her with her clothes on. The Lady Baltimore was one of the headlining strippers at Dirty Dirk’s. He had seen her during his strategy meetings with Joey Torresdale, had seen her strut to the stage in a short mink jacket and wrap her long legs around the pole as the satin-lined fur slid languorously down her pale, firm skin. He remembered the way she faced away from the crowd and bent at the waist to reach through her legs for the ten-dollar bills thrust at her by trembling, eager hands. He remembered the way her breasts had kept their remarkable shape even as she hiked herself upside down on the pole.

“You are unforgettable,” said Scrbacek.

“So they say,” she said, standing. “You thirsty?”

“Yes, actually, I am.”

“You know, Stifferdeck,” said Reggie, still leaning against the wall, “even if we don’t ax you, you’re not going to last long anyhow, the way things are. Everyone and his whore is out looking for you. We just don’t want to end up laid out on the street alongside your worthless body. Like the Freak. I don’t think it’s no coincidence that a day after they burn down your building, they burn down the Freak’s place with him still inside. And word has been passed that the scavenger who finds you is in line to collect for himself a fat fee.”

Squirrel turned his head and his eyes opened with curiosity. “How fat?”

“You remember my Sheila?” said Reggie.

“That’s fat,” said Squirrel, toothy smile growing. “That’s positively obese.”

“Don’t even think it, you perverse piece of gristle,” said the old woman. “Not a word to anyone, or Blixen will twist your head off like a chicken and toss it into the bay for crab bait. Blixen and the beagle, we’re going to play. He promised. As soon as he is able. And we won’t let the likes of you spoil it.” She hobbled over to the bed and tossed the paper bag to Squirrel. “Now heal.”

As Squirrel rummaged through the bag, Reggie turned and spoke to the girl sitting on the bureau with the gun. “You keep your eye on him. One false move, and ffft.” She pushed herself off the wall and slid a finger across her own throat. “What the hell kind of name is Stifferdeck, anyway?”

“My father’s from Scandinavia,” said Scrbacek.

“Figures. Damn Scandinoovians . . .-navinians . . . Just don’t be getting too comfortable. I want you gone. One way or the other.” And then she swaggered out of the room.

“I don’t think she likes me,” said Scrbacek.

“Don’t mind Regina,” said the old woman, pulling out a flask from the rags wrapped around her body. “Underneath she’s just a lonely country girl.”

“And underneath that,” said Elisha, coming back in the room with a glass of murky water, “she’s a murderous bitch.”

“Just what the doctor ordered,” said Squirrel as he searched through the contents out of the bag. “Keflex, Tylenol No. 3, saline, gauze, peroxide.” He took an empty coffee can and mixed the peroxide with the saline. “We’ll see now if the limb can be saved, though I have my doubts. Take this.”

Squirrel took two of the spiked Tylenols out of the bottle, and Scrbacek chased the pills with the foul glass of water.

“Better give him two more,” said Elisha. “He doesn’t take well to
pain
.
” Squirrel did as she said, and Scrbacek gratefully downed those also.

“Now if one of you will gently restrain my patient’s arm, I can begin.”

“Just a cleaning, right?” said Scrbacek.

“Don’t you worry, beagle,” said the old woman before taking a snatch from her flask and then hobbling over to the bed. She took hold of Scrbacek’s left wrist and clamped her filthy, gnarled hands around it with shocking strength. “I’ll be here the whole time, keeping my eyes on the little thief. And right after he’s through, we’ll play our little game. That’s the deal. Our little game. Now hold on to your socks.”

“I’m not wearing any socks.”

“That’s a shame,” she said.

Squirrel dabbed a piece of gauze in the peroxide solution. It boiled and sizzled as Squirrel slowly brought it to the wounds in Scrbacek’s biceps.

The scream fell upon Ansonia Road like the mating call of a mammal long extinct.

13

B
LIXEN

After the ordeal of the treatment, Scrbacek lay back, closed his eyes, listened to the drone of the immortal television, and waited for the codeine in the Tylenol to ease both his pain and his urge to cough. Squirrel had flushed Scrbacek’s wounds with the peroxide and saline solution, applied a pressure dressing, and given him strict orders to take the Tylenol as needed and the Keflex four times daily for ten full days. Before the ersatz doctor left, he took one more look at Scrbacek’s arm and shook his head sadly. Scrbacek couldn’t tell if the sadness came because Squirrel thought the wounds wouldn’t heal or because he thought they would.

Now, his eyes still closed and the drugs just starting to take effect, Scrbacek plotted out his next move. He needed to find out who was trying to kill him, that much was certain. And he needed to find someplace safer to hide than this ruined house with its deranged ex-medical student, its peroxided stripper, its homeless old woman, its gargoyle with a gun, and its dreadlocked sentinel who wanted him gone, one way or the other. But most of all he needed help, was desperate for help, for it was not within the realm of his imaginings that he, J.D. Scrbacek, on his own, might save himself.

As far as he could determine, there were only two people to whom he might turn. Special Agent Dyer could put Scrbacek in a safe house, send her fellow agents out to discover who was after him, solve the whole problem through the finely tuned mechanisms of the law. But who knew better than Scrbacek the flaws in that machinery? And the state bureaucracy was incapable of keeping a secret; as soon as Dyer knew where he was hiding, everyone would know where he was hiding, including his would-be killer. Caleb Breest had the strength to protect Scrbacek, the sources to discover who was behind the attempts on his life, the brute power to annihilate the assassin and those behind him. But Breest could just as easily turn that brutality against Scrbacek if it served his purposes. There had been something in the way Breest had stared at him during their meeting in the courthouse lockup that had left him deeply unsettled.

So that was it: turn to the law, whose enforcers he had opposed for the entirety of his career; or turn to the lawless, whom he had defended but whom now he feared. How in the world, Scrbacek wondered, had his life come to hinge on such an unpalatable choice?

He smelled something unpleasant, acrid, like a mélange of freshly piled garbage, lightly scented with warm piss. He opened one eye. Staring at him from a chair beside his bed, a chessboard with the pieces arrayed in her shaking hands, was the old woman with the wisp of beard, the one called Blixen.

“Our game,” she croaked.

“I’m not sure I feel quite up to it,” said Scrbacek, groggy with codeine.

The old woman put the board on the side of his bed, white pieces facing him. It was a small leather-tooled chess set with pewter pieces. Two of the black pawns had been replaced by pennies; the role of a white bishop was being played by a pebble.

“Oh, you’re up for it, all right,” said the old woman. “Make your move. Pawn to king four is the old standby. Pawn to king four. Or to queen four, if you’re the adventurous sort.”

“I really don’t—”

“Make your move,” said the old woman. “Make it. Hurry.” And then her eyes locked into Scrbacek’s, and her voice softened so he could barely hear it above the television. “It could be worth your life. Make your move.”

Scrbacek sat up in the bed, the blanket falling from his bare chest, and stared at the woman for a moment before looking around. There was no one else in the room except the girl with the gun atop the bureau. Her face was in shadow, and she sat with a stillness that gave not the slightest indication she was alive.

“The Nightingale can be trusted,” said the old woman. “Make your move.”

“All right,” said Scrbacek, and he pushed his pawn to queen four.

“Excellent,” cackled the old woman. “We’re off on the hunt now. Hear the hounds? And already you’re in more danger than you know.”

“I made one move,” complained Scrbacek.

“One’s enough,” said the old woman before pushing her queen’s pawn to meet Scrbacek’s. “Too much.” And then, in a lower voice, she said, “Who sent you?”

“No one sent me,” said Scrbacek. “I’m just trying to stay alive.”

“Thar she blows,” said the old woman, pointing at Scrbacek’s naked chest. “Squirrel said that you had it. It’s a sign, a message from the moon.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s an extra nipple,” barked the old woman. “A third tit.”

“I’ve had it all my life.” Scrbacek covered his chest with the blanket as he pushed his king’s pawn up two spaces.

“Oh, the King’s Gambit,” howled Blixen. “Should Blixen wipe the pawn off the face of the board or let it be? What says the moon? Can the pawn be trusted? You tell me.”

“Let it be,” said Scrbacek.

The old woman stared at him as her hand hovered above the pawn, whose only move was to capture his pawn, and then her hand shifted her king’s knight, moving it to threaten the pawn, but keeping it alive for the moment.

“Regina is afraid of you,” said the old woman softly. “She thinks you’ve come to destroy us all. Is it true?”

“Of course not.”

“You’d be dead already if it wasn’t for Donatino’s say-so. Regina listens to Donatino. But not to Blixen. To Regina, Blixen’s a cantankerous loon. She thinks insanity runs in the family.” She extracted her flask, flicked it open, poured a slug down her throat, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “And she may be right. Still, Blixen knows things. The beagle can help, Blixen tells her. He can be our knight, jumping from place to place, but Regina won’t listen. She sees a threat and wants to eliminate it.”

“Why? I don’t understand.”

“You’re Caleb Breest’s lawyer. You come into Crapstown looking for our Donatino. Our Ares. You’re here just one day, and already the place is on fire. A friend was killed this morning, as honest a criminal as you could ever hope to find. Killed, and his entire storehouse of filched merchandise destroyed. Your name was shouted by the attackers.” The old woman raised her voice and said, “Make your move.”

Scrbacek moved the pebble, his king’s bishop, to protect his pawn. “How could I be connected to a fence? Was he a client?”

“Freddie Margolis.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Freddie ‘the Freak’ Margolis, friend of the forgotten. Give us your hubcaps, your car batteries, give us your stolen stereo speakers yearning to be free. He was one of the first of the circle. Now he’s dead. And the beagle’s in the middle of everything.” Pawn took pawn.

“I don’t understand.”

“Blixen took your gambit,” the old woman cackled. “What’s to understand? The moon is blue tonight, did you know that? Attack with your bishop—I dare you. Attack with your bishop and you are as good as dead.”

Scrbacek moved his bishop to relative safety beside his pawn. “You said I’m in the middle of everything. What is everything?”

“Keep your eye on the game,” said the old woman loudly. She waved her hand over the board and continued in a soft voice. “There is a battle for control of the center. Black sees the center as a source of power, something to be controlled, bled, sucked dry like a marrowbone. White sees the center as a drag on its power, something to be obliterated as it moves to take other positions of strength.”

The old woman developed her queenside knight to threaten Scrbacek’s remaining center pawn. Scrbacek stared at the board and then moved his king’s bishop pawn up one space. The old woman took the pawn, and Scrbacek took Blixen’s pawn in turn with his queen.

“I still don’t understand,” said Scrbacek, softly.

Blixen shook her head sadly, moved her knight forward to attack Scrbacek’s kingside position. “Blixen was born here. It was a place then. Blixen had a daughter here. ‘Where are you from?’ they would ask, and when Blixen told them, they’d ooh and aah. Now it is nothing except our home. And still, somehow, we’re caught in the middle of their game. That is why we listened when Malloy came to us.”

“Peter Malloy, the labor leader who was killed? Regina mentioned a Malloy, too. Is that the one?”

“He came. Organizing. Organizing Crapstown. What a thing to imagine. He called all the groups together, to the underworld, across the River Styx, the river of hate. The moon is blue. Make your move.”

Scrbacek stared at the woman, at her wet eyes, at her wisp of beard, tried to make sense of what she was saying, and failed. He turned back to the board and moved his bishop forward one space, threatening the old woman’s knight.

“In the underworld they formed the Inner Circle. A circle of hope and vengeance. Regina is our Sentinel, Donatino our Ares. And now into their house comes Caleb Breest’s lawyer. With destruction behind him. You cannot stay here, not a minute more than you must. They will kill you if you don’t leave before the moon has passed.”

The old woman moved her queen’s bishop to further protect the knight.

“Why are you telling me this?” said Scrbacek.

“Because nothing is more dangerous than a beagle with his back to the wall. Are you dangerous, beagle?”

“No,” said Scrbacek. “I’m not.”

“Make your move.”

“I’m not dangerous. I just want to stay alive.”

“Make your move.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Make your move.”

Scrbacek looked at the board. He thought to develop his knight to protect his bishop, but as he reached for the piece, the old woman let out a groan.

He took his hand away and studied the board anew, trying to see why the move was a mistake. He kept looking, examined his queen’s position on the right side, and suddenly he saw it, clear and sweet as a knife in the heart. He wasn’t much of a chess player, and he hadn’t maneuvered his pieces into such a position, but still there it was. He looked into the old woman’s eyes.

“Are you a dangerous man, J.D. Scrbacek, beagle-at-law with his back to the wall?”

Scrbacek moved his queen up the board, took the king’s bishop’s pawn, and said, “Checkmate.”

“Oh my Lord,” shouted out the old woman. “You beat Blixen. On a trick, a dirty trick.” She laughed loudly, laughed like a maniac. “You are dangerous after all.”

“It was there. I didn’t know—”

The old woman suddenly grabbed at Scrbacek’s extra nipple, her filthy, ragged fingernails digging sharply into his flesh. In a low voice she said, “Leave tonight. Save Blixen’s home. Save Crapstown.”

The old woman let go of his chest, took the top off her chessboard, dumped the pieces inside, and covered it again before hobbling out of the room, muttering to herself. Blixen was crocked, that was clear enough to Scrbacek, but her warning rang too true to ignore. How could he ever again doubt that there was someone who wanted him dead? He didn’t yet have a place to run to, but he knew for sure he had to run. He swung his legs off the bed, wrapped his body as best he could in the sheet that had been covering him, and took a step forward to find a way out, before swooning backward onto the bed.

He sat for a moment, trying to shake the dizzy fatigue out of his head, when he saw a thin, handsome man in jeans come into the room, carrying a pile of folded clothes with Scrbacek’s two boots on top. Scrbacek felt a wave of inexplicable relief fall upon him. Maybe it was something in the man’s smile.

“Hello, Donnie,” said Scrbacek.

“How you feeling there, Mr. Scrbacek?” said Donnie Guillen.

“Better, actually. That little man, what was his name? Squirrel?”

“Yeah, Squirrel knows his stuff.” Donnie placed the pile of clothes on the bed and patted it. “Time to get dressed. You need any help?”

“I don’t think so. The Tylenol has already kicked in.”

“Good. But you have to hurry. I brought a visitor.”

“Who?”

Just then, Scrbacek was hit with an overpowering scent of jasmine, followed by the vision of a woman sweeping magisterially into the room. Tall and dark, big-boned and graceful, she was dressed in a flowing purple gown, with a bright purple scarf covering her hair and jangling dollops of hammered silver hanging from her ears.

She stopped and looked around at the peeling wallpaper, the holes in the wall, the boarded-up window, the girl on the bureau with a gun. “This is dreadful,” she said, her accent as thick as her perfume. “How you expect me to work in such place? It is not fit for juk. No, Donnie darling, I won’t stay here one minute more. I go home.”

“Please,” said Donnie. “We need you desperately.”

“It is impossible. I must go. You come my shop and I do what I can, but here, no.”

“He’ll pay you another hundred,” said Donnie.

“What care I about such details?” She blew dismissively out her mouth and then turned to stare at the man covered by a sheet on the bed. “Cash?”

“Of course,” said Donnie.

“This moosh, he has the money?”

“I’ve seen it.”

“You know,” she said, “for no one else would I do such a thing, but you, Donnie, are such a kushti darling. So okay. I do it. Just for you.”

“Thank you,” said Donnie.

She turned to Scrbacek. “I hope you are grateful of your friend. He came all the way my shop to bring me here because your trouble. If the cards they tell me you are not a grateful moosh, I will be very disappointed.”

“Who are you?” said Scrbacek, still clutching the sheet to his body.

“Mr. Scrbacek,” said Donnie, “I’d like you to meet the Contessa Romany.”

“Charmed,” said the lady.

“The Contessa Romany,” said Donnie, “is going to tell you how to save your life.”