Beer Money (A Burr Ashland Mystery) (13 page)

The chair was kicked off the platform and I landed on my back, the back of my head pounded into the cement floor. Once again I was dragged by my hair back to the room.

I was propped up again, and faced the wall. Several minutes later, I heard the door open.

My chair was turned to face the door.

The man came back around and stood before me.

He was older, maybe near sixty. Tall, solidly built, with pale blue eyes and leathery skin. His hair was gray and he had a buzzcut. He looked like an overdressed drill sergeant.

"As you may be able to tell, Mr. Ashland, we don't like you. But in the grand scheme of things, that should be none of your concern."

"You're not giving me a chance. I've got a great personality."

"What should be your concern," here he breathed deeply from his cigarette, "is not that we don't like you, but that we don't
believe
you." He paced. "Unless you can change this mindset, I'm afraid you will die. Here. Tonight." The fact that he spoke the words so casually made it seem all the more emphatic. And the fact that he didn't seem to mind me seeing his face told me that I was probably going to die here tonight, no matter what I told them.

He waited for me and while he did, I decided to take the initiative.

"Look," I said. "My friend, Tim Bantien, whom I'm sure you murdered, is the only person who knows what you want. And he’s dead. Now do you understand?”

Another silence, except for the sound of him puffing on his cigarette.

"You were given nothing..." He gestured vaguely with the hand holding the cigarette. Smoke swirled.

"Nothing."

He peered at me through the cigarette smoke. "Are you sure? Are you sure a third and final dive into the vat wouldn't dislodge some closely held memory?" His eyes looked lifeless and even bored. Another day at the office.

"I'm telling you the truth. I swear to God. I don't have whatever it is you're looking for."

He stood there a long time and then went to the door and rapped twice again. It opened and he stepped out. The door closed again.

I was alone, while they no doubt were deciding what to do with me.

I twisted in my chair. It had taken nearly as much abuse as I had when they'd dragged me to the wort vat for the second time. I wrapped my feet around the bottom of the legs, and twisted my body with everything I had. I heard wood crack and splinter. I twisted the other way and I heard more cracking.

I thrust upward and lifted the chair several inches off the ground and then thrust back down. It crumpled beneath me.

I ripped my hands from the broken framework of the chair, and kicked until my legs were free.

There was movement outside the door and I froze. After several moments, I got my hands and feet free from the rope.

I picked up a heavy piece of wood from the chair and hefted it.

I pressed my ear to the door. Voices. Somewhere down the hall.

A small square of glass was positioned three-quarters of the way up the door. I peered through it but could see no one. I looked around the room. There was no other way out. If I waited for them to come and get me, I wouldn't stand a chance.

I thrust the butt end of my piece of wood through the glass, followed by my arm. Shards of glass sliced through the skin of my arm as I fumbled for the lock on the other side. My fingertips brushed it. I threw my shoulder into the square, glass cutting into my shoulder. My fingers found the lock and I threw it, then turned the knob with my left hand and pushed out into the hallway.

Shots rang out and I saw small holes pucker the inside of the door. I snaked my arm back through the door and ducked down. Footsteps raced toward me.

To my left, I saw a wide door with thick strips of plastic fluttering in a breeze. I dove through it. More shots rang out. The door slammed shut behind me.

I faced a stairway, took the steps three at a time. Another large door, the kind found on loading docks, faced me. I looked for a switch but couldn't find any. I grabbed at the door itself but it wouldn't budge. Footsteps raced behind me.

I saw another stairwell to my right. A figure burst through the plastic strips behind me and I swung the plank of wood and caught the man flush in the face. His nose crunched and he sank to his knees. I hit him over the head. I didn't see a gun.

I ran to the stairs and raced up them. My breathing was shallow and ragged.

I went up two flights and faced another door. I tried it. It opened. I stepped out onto the roof. The bitter wind ripped through my wet clothes. The air in my lungs caught and I gasped. I shut the door behind me and pushed a barrel half full of old roofing shingles in front of it. It wouldn't stop anyone, but it might slow them down.

I ran to the edge of the roof and looked down. No good. I was at least four stories up. Too high to jump. I scanned the corners of the roof, looking for a ladder. I ran to the other side of the roof and looked down.

The Milwaukee River roared beneath me, its waters thick and foamy. Although the current rocketed down this stretch of the river, there were still places where it probably wasn’t very deep.

I started for the other wall when the roof door slammed into the barrel. There was a pause. And then the door was slammed open, the barrel toppled over and rolled the other way.

A large man with an equally large gun leapt out. His eyes locked onto mine and he raised his pistol. A fancy sight mounted on the gun shot an infrared ray along the roof toward me.

Without hesitating, I turned and leaped.

Shots rang out.

I felt a tugging on my sleeve and then a powerful blow twisted me around and I was falling.

The warm water hit me with a thunderclap and I felt the current push me downstream. I slipped under the water, something sharp struck me in the side. I rolled over, my face broke the surface and then I went back under.

Thirty

The face before me reminded me of an old girlfriend whose face had been as weasely as her personality. The beady eyes, the twitch, the little nose and mouth. The small, sharp teeth.

What had I ever seen in her?
Then I remembered.

The only difference was that the face before me now was definitely less than human. It was vermin. It was a river rat and it was looking right at me. I moved and the rat sat back on its haunches. He started to hiss at me and I tried to sit up, but my body didn't respond; shooting pains scorched my spine, neck and right arm. My face felt thick and lumpy. I tried to move my lips but they were swollen together. I tentatively ran my tongue along them but what I felt couldn't have been my lips. It felt more like 60-grit sandpaper.

I sort of slumped some more and the rat bared his teeth. A surge of the last few drops of adrenaline went through my body and I rose to my knees. There was a thick branch of bleached driftwood beneath me. I must have clung to it before I passed out. It probably saved me from drowning and now in my hands, its heft felt good to me. I stood and the rat backed away. I took a half-swing that even the worst hitter in Pony League would probably have snickered at. But it was enough. The rodent ducked back into the water and swam away, disappearing beneath the lip of ice that separated the warm, factory run-off water from the main body of the river.

I could hear the faint sound of traffic up ahead. Using the branch as a walking staff, I plowed ahead through the grime-covered snow up over a bluff where I saw a freeway overpass. In the distance, I saw the familiar outline of the Zoo exchange, an overlapping group of freeways a few miles from the Milwaukee County Zoo.

The area was industrial. Several square miles of nameless, faceless warehouses known only to the people who own them or who are so unfortunate as to work there.

I doubted whether or not I would find my way back to the place I was tortured. There were probably more than a half-dozen factories supplying the brewing industry. I could poke around, but I knew that no one would know anything. I was dealing with people far too professional to leave a trail back to them.

On the bright side, the motherfuckers had chosen a place relatively convenient for me; I had about a forty minute walk home.

I climbed the embankment, a slope of gravel mixed with weeds, empty potato chip bags and broken bottles. After I got my bearings, I headed for what I knew to be north, for Wisconsin Avenue. I cut through an empty storage lot replete with graffiti and more smashed bottles. Empty tractor trailers sat on their steel arms, a driveway opened onto a dirt-and-gravel service drive which in turn led to a residential neighborhood. Two cross streets down, I came to Wisconsin Avenue.

I walked one block past Wisconsin, figuring that my interrogators just might take it upon themselves to cruise around looking for a bedraggled white guy who looked like he’d had the shit kicked out of him.

If there was fear in me as I walked along a darkened street past ramshackle duplexes and condemned row houses, I was too wiped out to notice. The internal alarm bells had all been beaten into silence.

The houses started to get a little bigger, the lots had a little more breathing room, and I saw that I was somewhere around 40th St., slightly south of Milwaukee's core ghetto, but close enough to be in risk of collateral damage.

I smelled like old beer and river sewage. Pity the poor bastard who chose to make me their next mugging victim.

My legs ached, each step jarred me to the bone, and my teeth vibrated like tuning forks. With a stubborn precision brought on by shock, I walked toward my home in the Highlands. Traffic was light and by the time I got to 50th St., the area around me had begun to improve, enough so that I no longer had any nagging worries about being mugged.

Pneumonia, now that was a different matter. I had a big fear of pneumonia. At night, in the low thirties and drenched to the bone, I figured I was a good candidate. A belly full of highly polluted Milwaukee River water didn't help matters.

I thought of my fireplace at home. Of a hot shower, a huge fire, and a gun of some sort. Anything to be warm and dry again. A thick terrycloth robe, warm slippers, some hot rum.

A deep cough rumbled through me, and some slop found itself on my tongue. I spit it out and watched it hit the sidewalk. At least I didn’t see any blood.

My feet carried me forward, past Hawley Road, then up past 60th St., into my more immediate neighborhood. My breath became shallow and I felt the first inkling of fear over whether or not I would actually make it home. The sidewalk seemed to rise at angles suddenly, like a Tilt-A-Whirl at the carnival. I was obsessed with getting to my house, with opening the door and looking in the mirror. I had a First Aid kit in the bottom drawer of the upstairs cabinets, I knew there was a ton of shit in there, Band-Aids, bandages, tape, gauze, some kind of anti-infection stuff I would smear over most of my body. I'd had the damn kit for years and never used it for anything more than a paper cut or a picked over mosquito bite scab. I desperately wanted to ransack the medicine chest for antibiotics, too.

I turned on 68th St. and headed north up a winding hill just past State Street. At the top of the hill would be the Highlands, and two blocks over would be my house.

The hill took a lot out of me. I stopped several times. I had to stop because I had fallen. I hoped none of my neighbors would call the cops about the man who was obviously drunk, passing out on the sidewalk.

It wouldn’t be the first time
. I laughed at the thought. It hurt to laugh.

One car slowed as it went by, but I was too weak to ask for a ride, besides, I knew that if I got within five feet of the driver, the smell would scare off even the most curious soul.

It was perhaps the longest walk of my life going up that hill. My legs burned, I vomited two or three more times although nothing really came up but brackish water. I half-expected to see a small carp flop out. Maybe even a catfish. I hadn't had the dry heaves since college. I felt warm but couldn't sweat. I could see the newspaper headline: man falls in river, dies of dehydration.

Finally, the sturdy wooden sign proclaiming the Washington Highlands greeted my hazy vision.

Home Sweet Home.

The rest was all downhill now.

But then I stopped. Through the shock and fatigue, a cold fear had crept up my spine. I'd walked, but the people who had tortured me could have easily hopped in their cars and beaten me home. Too much had happened for me to dismiss it as paranoia. I hesitated only briefly, longing for the warmth of my home, before I ducked back along a row of hedges. I was in no shape to do much of anything, but I could crawl. So that's what I did.

Keeping down, I crawled along my neighbor's line of evergreen shrubs, their thickness allowing me to remain hidden. My hands and knees became numb with cold.

My house was dark. The Roman shades were drawn.

I looked around the block but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

I crept back along the hedge until I came out the opposite end of the street. I cut through another yard and approached my house from the back.

Though the kitchen window I saw nothing but darkness. I hesitated, the physical need to get inside overpowering me. But I had no weapon. No way to fight. Even though they'd probably come and gone. Or assumed I'd drowned in the river. Or assumed that they'd shot me.