Hook and Shoot (27 page)

Robbie waited outside the door to our room, stared at the dead leg and the bandages crusting on my head. “Congrats, man.”

“Thanks.”

Gil walked over with a stack of towels and a first-aid kit, started pulling the tape off my wrists to get the gloves off.

Robbie poked a thumb at the door. “Sorry. I told 'em not to go in.”

“Who?”

“Some assholes.”

It was alarming how many people fit the criteria. I opened the door.

Brandenberg sat on the couch with his legs crossed, bobbing a loafer and showing eight inches of silk sock. He was clipping his fingernails and didn't look up. “Come on in.”

I told Gil, “Leave 'em on.”

He let go of my wrist. “You need a doctor.”

“Right now I just don't need any witnesses.”

He knew not to argue. “Don't break your hands.”

“Five minutes.” I stepped in and shut the door.

Brandenberg said, “You can't be serious about assaulting me. I'd own your great-grandchildren.”

“My word against yours.”

“A whimper against thunder.”

The bathroom door was closed. Somebody coughed inside and spat. Brandenberg's pet cops?

“How'd you get back here?”

“Never ask a person like me a question like that. Shows you're stupid.
Why
am I back here—now that's a decent question.”

I locked the door. “You're not getting Vanessa back.”

“She's my property. And what I do with her is none of your fucking business. But that's not why I'm here. Our friend Shuko is handling that.” Brandenberg checked a thin platinum watch. “They ought to be having a nice conversation by now.”

“Bullshit.”

He shrugged. “You want to debate facts, go to church. I'd be goddamn delighted to take you to Shuko, let you watch him play with your friends before he starts in on you. But I'm here because my business partner thinks you're worth keeping alive.”

The bathroom door opened and Lou Gerrone walked out.

The room whirled. I pried my left eye open to make sure this was happening.

“Should see your face,” Lou said. He looked decent for a dead guy, maybe even less pasty but still drooping a hound dog mug under that receding hairline. Tight slacks and a wrinkled suit coat over an open-collared shirt. “Almost as good as when you stuck your head in the RV and saw me sitting there with my guts hanging out. Took everything for me to keep still, not lose my shit.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Look, this is what you need to know. Eddie's dead or good as. Shareholders are gonna want somebody with experience to step in, and that's me. The contract we drew up names me president of the co-promotion, not hard to stretch that into full control.”

“Eddie never signed that.”

“He will when Shuko asks him nice.”

“You don't have to kill him.”

“Hey, I don't wanna kill anybody. I just want Warrior.” Lou presented Brandenberg. “All the killing, blood feud shit comes from here. Guy hears I want Eddie's company. Next thing I know I'm retiring and sitting in a pool of corn syrup with a busted sword
sticking out of me.”

I said to Brandenberg, “Those were your guys at the RV lot.”

“Shuko was there with his little blowpipe. My boys didn't like taking orders from a Jap, let me tell you.”

“Burch put a few out of their misery.”

“Ah, Mr. Burch. Shuko said he'd work on Eddie first, make Burch watch. Failure's the worst pain a soldier can feel.”

“Where are they?”

“Slow down,” Lou said. “Bottom line, I'm your new boss. I got big ideas and you're part of them. Gonna work with the Yakuza, not be stupid and fight it like Eddie, get Warrior into Japan. The Russians are interested too.”

“Tell me where.”

“I'll tell you,” Brandenberg said.

Lou stepped between us. “Hold on.”

“Shuko wants him to know.” Brandenberg studied his nails, folded his hands. “You know he'll get to this idiot anyway. Why waste any time or money on him?”

“I'll handle Shuko,” Lou said. “Woody, come on. I'll have the heavyweight belt around your waist in two fights. I'll pull Gil's other fighters in, give 'em a few cans to kick around. If they can't handle that, we'll work it.”

It was tempting. No more dangling and twitching
from Eddie's puppet strings. Roth and Terence would have their shots and the other guys would at least get a taste. The carrot Lou waved was fat and juicy.

Then Brandenberg brought out the whip. “I can see you're vacillating and I have things to do. So know this. You say no, I'll tell you where Shuko is. When he's done with you I'll hand him a ticket to Brazil so he can visit Marcela, be the last face she sees. Then I'll rezone Gil's property and yank that staph factory of a gym out from under him. So say yes. If your ignorant pride won't let you, just fucking nod.”

I stared at him, everything slow enough I could feel the expansion of my chest with each heartbeat. “I'm the ignorant one?”

Brandenberg realized what was about to happen. Too late.

“You're the two who thought it was a good idea to get locked in a room with me.”

“You won't lay a finger on me,” Brandenberg said.

“That's true.” I grabbed Lou by his belt and collar, picked him up, and smashed him into Brandenberg's wide-open mouth.

Their blood looked the same, but you could tell who the scattered teeth had come from. In the first ten
seconds Brandenberg told me a couple dozen times where Shuko had taken Eddie and Burch. Even gave me directions.

It made sense and his story didn't change—even when his pitch did—and after that we didn't have much to talk about. I left them tangled and dripping off the couch, still breathing and probably dreaming about head-on collisions with freight trains.

I grabbed fresh clothes and shoes, checked the hallway. Gil was there with a bucket of coffee. I shut the door before he caught a glimpse. “Those guys really went at it.”

“Just give me your goddamn hands.” He ignored the fresh blood while he cut the gloves off, squeezed my fingers and hands to make sure nothing was broken.

I started walking away from the arena entrance, pulling Gil down the concrete hallway. There were a few people rushing past; everybody else was prepping in the rooms or in the arena for whichever fight had the crowd jumping above us.

I dropped the shirt over my head and hopped into the jeans, stomped into the shoes while I searched the inner wall. There were stacks of chairs, tables, black plywood partitions, rolling carts crammed with painting supplies.

“What are we looking for?” Gil said.

“Shuko has Eddie and Burch.”

“You're sure? I saw them run out.”

“Straight to him.” I stopped.

The door was solid gray metal, all sorts of warning stickers about maintenance personnel only, high voltage, moving machinery.

Nothing about Yakuza assassins.

The door was unlocked. The room inside was small and lined with electrical panels that gave off a deep hum I felt more than heard. It had a concrete floor and an opening in the left wall leading to a steel grate staircase that dropped into darkness.

“You're not going down there,” Gil said.

I stepped inside. “Sorry.”

“All right, then you're not going down there alone.”

He was in deep enough already, and I didn't need to worry about him getting a dart or a sword in his neck.

“Sorry again.” I shoved him back and slammed the door, threw a massive dead bolt that Shuko hadn't used.

He wanted me to follow him.

Gil thumped the door and yelled something, sounded like, “Eddie's not worth it.”

That was possible. But the ripple effect of doing nothing—Shuko tortures Eddie and Burch, finds Vanessa, finishes the tattoo so he can rip it apart.

Maybe what's left of Lou ends up running Warrior; I'm out and Gil's blackballed.

And Shuko comes for me anyway, just for blood feud grins.

I sank into the dark stairway.

“He's not worth it.”

The echoes followed me down.

Shuko probably thought he was giving me a tough choice—die now or die later. Drawing me into whatever deviant squatter's lair he'd set up so we could fight in the dark, tooth and claw, blood and spit.

What he didn't understand: he wasn't pulling me into a trap.

He was inviting me home.

The stairs were steep and narrow. They made a ninety-degree turn to the right and dropped into a space lit by a bank of buzzing fluorescents. I looked at the mess on the floor.

Burch's gun. Stripped, mangled, springs and rods bent and twisted. If I had a gunsmith and two weeks, maybe it would be useful.

The walls were covered in more panels that sprouted thick bands of conduit, all of it stretching toward a black gap in the wall where it rolled around the corners and kept going. I stepped into the passageway, walls close enough to touch with my elbows at my sides.

Something crunched against the floor. Glass. I looked up, could barely see the ghost of another light bank floating near the ceiling. Between me groping through high voltage and the glass eggshells he'd scattered, Shuko had himself a nice early-warning system.

Or he could be two feet in front of me.

I threw a left kick just in case, hit nothing, and felt my right knee buckle. Felt a little stupid too, but me and the pipes made a pact not to tell anybody about it.

I stopped and held my breath, listened for anyone else's. No good. My ears were still ringing from the strikes and chokes Zombi had dished out.

With one eye swollen shut my depth perception was way off—not sure it made a difference in the blackness, but I didn't like having a built-in blind spot. Shapes skimmed through the darkness, darts and faces and swinging pipes.

I moved forward, felt the floor pull me. Had to lean back on my heels to stay balanced. The concrete was sloped, angling down into the bowels of the arena. Good news was I didn't have to worry about the subfloors under the casino. No way those were connected to an area with lock-and-key access only. So I got to search one huge dark nest of tunnels instead of two.

Neat.

I inched ahead, one hand on the wall and one
stretched out, waving and waiting to brush against flesh.

Touched fabric instead.

I grabbed, pulled, and lifted my left knee into his face. He was light. My right knee buckled again, and I toppled forward into him, realized no one was there. Just a jacket hanging from the ceiling.

It was wet. Sticky.

I felt the silk lining, found sewn-in pouches and straps: Dorian's custom work that let Burch carry an arsenal without advertising.

I dropped the jacket and moved on, crunching more glass. Somewhere along the way I braced my arms against the conduit on both sides to make sure I couldn't get turned around. I checked over my shoulder and saw more blackness. The light and stairs were swallowed up.

I kept going.

Twenty minutes later, maybe an hour, a week, I could see the outlines of pipes and panels. There was light somewhere ahead. I fought the urge to run—Shuko would plan for that, wait for me to drop my guard and sprint, and that's when the dart would come.

I crept on, didn't see the hallway that angled off ninety degrees to the right until I was in the intersection. Some sections of the conduit stayed straight and ran along the ceiling and wall into more darkness. Others bent the corner and took the new passageway
fifty feet toward a room that flashed and died in flickering light.

Something hung in the entrance.

Putting my back as close to the wall as I could, I edged toward the room. A single fluorescent tube burbled and pinged in the middle of the square ceiling. The rest were shards on the floor. Racks of blinking LEDs and dials and switches lined the walls behind steel mesh doors with padlocks. I'd need three years of school just to know what the hell this room was for.

I leaned through the opening and checked the corners.

Empty.

There was another hallway across the space, a black maw the flickering light couldn't pierce.

I turned, finally got a good look at what was hanging in the doorway but didn't touch it. Light flashed on a tuft of blue hair wrapped in wire, a shiny red coin of scalp still attached.

I moved faster.

Eddie and Burch were bleeding, giving up Vanessa, and Shuko was leaving things to make me slow down and stop. Trying to hold me up or make me a stationary target. Either way it was working.

I thumped on my dead leg through the room into
the black space on the far wall and braced for the impact with Shuko or whatever he carried.

I wanted this over with. Fuck the chase. Get me into the fight.

Nobody there.

Glass crunched under my feet. The walls were smooth concrete, no pipes or conduit. The floor was angled up toward the surface. I leaned into it and climbed. Three steps later the flickering light was lost behind me, dumping me into a pitch-black chute.

I sped up. Pulled air in through my ragged throat and opened wide to roar Shuko's name, tell him I didn't care if he knew I was coming. I started to exhale when I heard a scream.

I froze, felt my hair arch away from my body.

The scream was guttural, shameless. No gender, just something that knew it was about to die. It came from somewhere ahead, above.

My feet didn't want to go toward it. No part of me did. Every cell in my body tried to turn and run. I fought the current and pressed forward. The scream faded but I could still hear it, knew I would forever.

However long that would be.

A white horizontal line sliced across at eye level. I ducked, noticed it was ahead of me, not moving. I climbed. It dropped until the floor leveled out and the line became a crack at the bottom of a closed door.

The scream had come from the other side.