The Road to Amber (41 page)

“Never touch the stuff,” said Croyd.

A half hour later Bug Pimp folded and made noises about checking on the line of joker femmes he hustled to straights wanting jittery jollies. By four o’clock the Runner was broke and had to walk. Croyd and Melt stared at each other.

“We’re both ahead,” said Melt.

“True.”

“Should we take the money and run?”

Croyd smiled.

“I feel the same way,” Melt said. “Deal.”

As sunrise tickled the stained glass window and the dusty mechanical bats followed the hologram ghosts to their rest, Melt massaged his temples, rubbed his eyes, and said, “Will you take my marker?”

“Nope,” Croyd replied.

“You shouldn’t have let me play that last hand then.”

“You didn’t tell me you were that broke. I thought you could write a check.”

“Well, shit. I ain’t got it. What do you want to do?”

“Take something else, I guess.”

“Like what?”

“A name.”

“Whose name?” Melt asked, reaching inside his jacket and scratching his chest.

“The person who gives you your orders.”

“What orders?”

“The ones you pass on to guys like Demise.”

“You’re kidding. It’d be my ass to name a name like that.”

“It’ll be your ass if you don’t,” Croyd said.

Melt’s hand came out from behind his coat holding a .32, automatic, which he leveled at Croyd’s chest. “I’m not scared of two-bit muscle. There’s dumdum slugs in here. Know what they do?”

Suddenly Melt’s hand was empty and blood began to ooze from around the nail of his trigger finger. Croyd slowly twisted the automatic out of shape before he tore out the clip and ejected a round.

“You’re right, they’re dumdums,” he acknowledged. “Look at the little flat-nosed buggers, will you? By the way, my name’s not Whiteout. I’m Croyd Crenson, the Sleeper, and nobody welshes on me. Maybe you’ve heard I’m a little bit nuts. You give me the name and you don’t find out how true that is.”

Melt licked his lips. The lumps beneath his glistening skin increased the tempo of their passage.

“I’m dead if they ever hear.”

Croyd shrugged. “I won’t tell them if you won’t.” He pushed a stack of bills toward Melt. “Here’s your cut for getting me into the game. Give me the name, take it and walk, or I’ll leave you in three of these boxes.” Croyd kicked the coffin.

“Danny Mao,” Melt whispered, “at the Twisted Dragon, over near Chinatown.”

“He gives you a hit list, pays you?”

“Right.”

“Who pulls his strings?”

“Beats the shit out of me. He’s all I know.”

“When’s he at the Twisted Dragon?”

“I think he hangs out there a lot, because other people in the place seem to know him. I’d get a call, I’d go over. I’d check my coat. We’d have dinner, or a few drinks. Business didn’t get mentioned. But when I’d leave, there’d be a piece of paper in my pocket with a name or two or three on it, and an envelope with money in it. Same as with Eye. That’s how he worked it.”

“The first time?”

“The first time we took a long walk and he explained the setup. After that, it was like I just said.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all.”

“Okay, you’re off the hook.”

Melt picked up his stack of bills and stuffed it into his pocket. He opened his distorted mouth as if to say something, thought better of it, thought again, said, “Let’s not leave together.”

“Fine with me. G’bye.”

Melt moved toward the side door, flanked by a pair of tombstones. Croyd picked up his winnings and began thinking about breakfast.

* * *

Croyd rode the elevator to Aces High, regretting the absence of a power of flight on such a perfect spring evening. Arriving, he stepped into the lounge, paused, and glanced about.

Six tables held twelve couples, and a dark-haired lady in a low-cut silver blouse sat alone at a two-person table near the bar, twirling a swizzle in some exotic drink. Three men and a woman were seated at the bar. Soft modern jazz sounds circulated through the cool air, accompaniment to blender and laughter, to the clicks and splashes of ice, liquid, and glass. Croyd moved forward.

“Is Hiram here?” he asked the bartender.

The man looked at him, then shook his head.

“Are you expecting him this evening?”

A shrug. “Hasn’t been around much lately.”

“What about Jane Dow?”

The man studied him. Then, “She’s taken off too,” he stated.

“So you really don’t know if either of them’ll be in?”

“Nope.”

Croyd nodded. “I’m Croyd Crenson and I plan to eat here tonight. If Jane comes in, I’d like to know.”

“Your best bet’s to leave a note at the reservation desk before you’re seated.”

“Got something I can write on?” Croyd asked.

The bartender reached beneath the bar, brought up a pad and a pencil and passed them to him. Croyd scribbled a message.

As he set the pad down, his hand was covered by a more delicate one, of darker complexion, with bright red nails. His gaze moved along it to the shoulder, skipped to the silver decolletage, paused a beat, rose. It was the solitary lady with the exotic drink. On closer inspection there was something familiar…

“Croyd?” she said softly. “You get stood up too?”

As he met her dark-eyed gaze a name drifted up from the past.

“Veronica,” he said.

“Right. You’ve a good memory for a psycho,” she observed, smiling.

“Tonight’s my night off. I’m real straight.”

“You look mature and distinguished with the white sideburns.”

“Damn, I missed some,” he said. “And you’re really missing a custom—Er, a date?”

“Uh-huh. Seems like we’ve both thought about getting together too.”

“True. You have dinner yet?”

She gave her hair a toss and smiled. “No, and I was looking forward to something special.”

He took her arm. “I’ll get us a table,” he said, “and I’ve already got a great special in mind.”

Croyd crumpled the note and left it in the ashtray.

* * *

The trouble with women, Croyd reflected, was that no matter how good they might be in bed, eventually they wanted to use that piece of furniture for sleeping—a condition he was generally unable and unwilling to share. Consequently, when Veronica had finally succumbed to the sleep of exhaustion, Croyd had risen and begun pacing his Morningside Heights apartment, to which they had finally repaired sometime after midnight.

He poured the contents of a can of beef and vegetable soup into a pan and set it on the stove. He prepared a pot of coffee. While he waited for them to simmer and percolate, he phoned those of his other apartments with telephone answering machines and used a remote activator to play back their message tapes. Nothing new.

Finishing his soup, he checked whether Veronica was still asleep, then removed the key from its hiding place and opened the reinforced door to the small room without windows. He turned on its single light, locked himself in, and went to sit beside the glass statue reclining upon the day bed. He held Melanie’s hand and began talking to her—slowly at first; but after a time the words came tumbling out. He told her of Dr. Finn and his sleep machine and talked about the Mafia and Demise and Eye and Danny Mao—whom he hadn’t been able to run down yet—and about how great things used to be. He talked until he grew hoarse, and then he went out and locked the door and hid the key again.

Later, a pallid dawn spreading like an infection in the east, he entered the bedroom on hearing sounds from within.

“Hey, lady, ready for a coffee fix?” he called. “And a little angular momentum? A steak—”

He paused on observing the drug paraphernalia Veronica had set out on the bedside table. She looked up, winked at him, and smiled.

“Coffee would be great, lover. I take it light. No sugar.”

“All right,” he replied. “I didn’t realize you were a user.”

She glanced down at her bare arms, nodded. “Doesn’t show. Can’t mainline or you spoil the merchandise.”

“Then what—”

She assembled a hype and filled it. Then she stuck out her tongue, took hold of its tip with the fingers of her left hand, raised it, and administered the injection in the underside.

“Ouch,” Croyd commented. “Where’d you learn that trick?”

“House of D. Can I fix you up here?”

Croyd shook his head. “Wrong time of month.”

“Makes you sound raggedy.”

“With me it’s a special need. When the time comes, I’ll drop some purple hearts or do some benz.”

“Oh,
bombitas. Si
,” she said, nodding. “Speedballs, STP, high-octane shit. Crazy man’s cooking. I’ve heard of your habits. Loco stuff.”

Croyd shrugged. “I’ve tried it all.”

“Not
yage?”

“Yeah. It ain’t that great.”

“Desoxyn? Desbutol?”

“Uh-huh. They’ll do.”

“Khat?”

“Hell, yes. I’ve even done
huilca
. You ever try
pituri?
Now that’s some good shit. Routine’s a little messy, though. Learned it from an abo. How’s about
kratom?
Comes out of Thailand—”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Jeez, we’ll never run out of conversation. Bet I can pick up a lot from you.”

“I’ll see that you do.”

“Sure I can’t set you up?”

“Right now coffee’ll do fine.”

The morning entered the room, spilling over their slow movements.

“Here’s one called the Purple Monkey Proffers the Peach and Takes It Away Again,” Croyd murmured. “Learned it—heard of it, that is—from the lady gave me the
kratom.
”

“Good shit,” Veronica whispered.

* * *

When Croyd entered the Twisted Dragon for the third time in as many days, he headed directly to the bar, seated himself beneath a red paper lantern, and ordered a Tsingtao.

A nasty-looking Caucasian with ornate scars all over his face occupied the stool two seats to his left, and Croyd glanced at him, looked away, and looked again. Light shone through the septum of the man’s nose. There was a good-size hole there, and a patch of scabbed pinkish flesh occurred on the nose’s tip. It was almost as if he had recently given up on wearing a nose ring under some duress.

Croyd smiled. “Stand too near a merry-go-round?”

“Huh?”

“Or is it just the
feng shui
in here?” Croyd continued.

“What the hell’s
feng shui?”
the man said.

“Ask any of these guys,” Croyd said, gesturing broadly. “Especially, though, ask Danny Mao. It’s the way energy circulates in the world, and sometimes it gets you in a tricky bind. Lady from Thailand told me about it once. Like, killer
chi
will come blasting in that door, bounce off the mirror here, get split by that
ba-gua
fixture there and”—he chugged his beer, stepped down from his stool and advanced—“hit you right in the nose.”

Croyd’s movement was too fast for the man’s eyes to follow, and he screamed when he felt that the finger had passed through his pe¬forated septum.

“Stop it! My God! Cut it out!” he cried.

Croyd led him off his stool.

“Twice I’ve gotten the runaround in this joint,” he said loudly. “I promised myself today that the first person I ran into here was going to talk to me.”

“I’ll talk to you! I’ll talk! What do you want to know?”

“Where’s Danny Mao?” Croyd asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know any—aah!”

Croyd had crooked his finger, moved it in a figure eight, straightened it

“Please,” the man whined. “Let go. He’s not here. He’s—”

“I’m Danny Mao,” came a well-modulated voice from a table partly masked by a dusty potted palm. Its owner rose and followed it around the tree, a middle-size Oriental man, expressionless save for a quirked eyebrow. “What’s your business here, paleface?”

“Private,” Croyd said, “unless you want to stand out on the street and shout.”

“I don’t give interviews to strangers,” Danny said, moving toward him.

The man whose nose Croyd wore on his finger whimpered as Croyd turned, dragging him with him.

“I’ll introduce myself in private,” Croyd said.

“Don’t bother.”

The man’s fist flashed forward. Croyd moved his free hand with equal rapidiry and the punch struck his palm. Three more punches followed, and Croyd stopped all of them in a similar fashion. The kick he caught behind the heel, raising the foot high and fast. Danny Mao executed a backward flip, landed on his feet, caught his balance.

“Shit!” Croyd observed, moving his other hand rapidly. The stranger howled as something in his nose snapped and he was hurled forward, crashing into Danny Mao. Both men went down, and the weeping man’s nose gushed red upon them. “Bad
feng shui
,” Croyd added. “You’ve got to watch out for that stuff. Gets you every time.”

“Danny,” came a voice from behind a carved wooden screen beyond the foot of the bar, “I gotta talk to you.”

Croyd thought he recognized the voice, and when the small, scaly joker with the fanged, orange face looked around the screen’s corner, he saw it to be Linetap, who had erratic telepathic abilities and often worked as a lookout.

“Might be a good idea,” Croyd told Danny Mao.

The man with the bleeding nose limped off to the rest room while Danny flowed gracefully to his feet, brushed off his trousers, and gave Croyd a quick burning glance before heading back toward Linetap.

After several minutes’ conversation Danny Mao returned from behind the screen and stood before him.

“So you’re the Sleeper,” Danny said.

“Yep.”

“St. John Latham, of the law firm Latham, Strauss.”

“What?”

“The name you’re after. I’m giving it to you: St. John Latham.”

“Without further struggle? Free, gratis and for nothing?”

“No. You will pay. For this information I believe that soon you will sleep forever. Good day, Mr. Crenson.”

Danny Mao turned and walked away. Croyd was about to do the same when the man with the nose job emerged from the rest room, holding a large wad of toilet tissue to his face.

“Hope you know you’ve made the Cannibal Headhunters’ shit list,” he snuffled.

Croyd nodded slowly. “Tell them to mind the killer
chi
,” he said, “and keep your nose clean.”