Metro (7 page)

Mark has gone and pissed off the wrong people and we're all doomed because of it, landed in some insane half-assed getaway from evil drug dealers, doomed to go down in history at the wrong end of a murder gig, because evil men with evil agendas
find you
, and then they separate you from your privates and throw what's left in the river.

No. Who wants to die like that?

Mark has finally lost his mind and gone postal in the worst possible way, and this is the result—the three of us sitting in a car with half the cops in this city scratching their heads about what happened to us,
and wondering what the hell happens next.

No. No. NO.

But she feels she may be onto something with all the above.

She runs down the list, keeps spinning through variations.

This all happens in the space of about fifteen seconds.

Jollie can type and text really fast too.

• • •

“Y
ou guys okay back there?”

Andy says something smart: “What's
okay
, Mark?”

“Are you injured? Are either of you shot?”

Andy has no idea what to say, other than
No, I'm not shot and thanks for asking, buddy
—but the sound wrecks in his throat when he tries to get the words out. And then he notices his bloody stump for the first time in a while—the knot of T-shirt that was once white, pulled hard around his throbbing fist and soaked through with slow ooze. Jollie seems like she's turned into a statue, not speaking a syllable, her eyes getting smaller, then bigger, than smaller again, her lips almost moving as her thoughts come quickly.

Andy thinks that's damn scary.

She looks insane.

He's never seen Jollie look that way.

“Come on, guys, don't make me play twenty questions,” Mark says.

“We're okay,” Jollie suddenly says out loud. “What the hell is happening?”

“We're about to take another ride. Sit tight.”

He gets out of the car and opens the back door on Jollie's side. Sees the Black Box on the floor. Sees the two of them sitting there, grimy and flushed with tears, sees Jollie staring straight into a black ocean of possible futures and scenarios, her mouth moving silently.

Mark
has
seen Jollie like that before.

He's watched her at her word machine, well into the wee hours of dawn, sensing the awesome shape of her mind as it made sense of the amazing, maddening, self-destructing earth under her feet. She even clutches the air with her hands now in a strange series of reflex actions, wanting a keyboard or a smartphone there, so she can write it all out—she is naked without her weapon of choice.

Mark loves her more than ever in this moment.

“Jollie . . . I can see your gears working. How about it?”

He leans into the compartment and brings his hand to her face, very gently. She recoils from him, almost shivering. “Don't touch me, Mark.”

“I know this is crazy. I know you—”

“Know me
what
? You don't know anything! This is
not okay
, Mark!”

“Calm down. We're in a quiet neighborhood. People are sleeping.”

“Maybe I should wake them up. Maybe you're a goddamn maniac and you're kidnapping your friends and I should just scream bloody fucking murder at the top of my lungs.”

“You think I'm
kidnapping
you?”

“I don't know what I think.”

He reaches for her again and she recoils again.

She looks right in his eyes, says nothing.

He sighs again. “Come on, Jollie, this is Mark. Whatever you think of what's happening now, this is
Mark
—the same man I was an hour ago.”

“I don't know who that man is.”

“I saved your life. I'm not gonna let anything bad happen to you. But you have to calm down. You can't get crazy on me. Please.”

“Where are you taking us?”

“Someplace safe.”

“How do I know that's true?”

“Because this is
Mark
, Jollie.”

He looks in her eyes, then sizes the Boy Prince up.

“Andy? Are you okay?”

“What's
okay
, man?”

“How's your hand?”

“I think it's stopped bleeding . . . but . . .”

“I'll stitch you up later. Hang in there. Just
hang in there
, both of you.”

Please.

He takes a look around before he makes his move, scans the area hard and quick. The street snakes through a series of nice houses that look like they belong mostly to renters—one-story flats, duplexes with two and three units. There's a dark-red Lexus Hybrid real close, and it looks brand new—maybe a graduation present from Daddy.

“Mark . . . please talk to me.”

That's Jollie, much calmer now, moving toward Mark, using her come-hither voice, the one she always defaults to when she needs something and knows just flatly asking for it won't work. Her breath freezes in the chill morning, and she looks like a concerned china doll, round and pondering, with desperate eyes that give her game away.

Mark loves her for that too.

He puts his hands on either side of her face again, looking right in her eyes. “It's going to be okay. We're gonna be fine. Wait here.”

“Mark . . .
this is just nuts
. . .”

“Yes, Jollie. Yes, it is. But I promise it'll be okay. Just trust me.”

• • •

H
e gets into the Black Box, opening it carefully on the sidewalk curb next to the car, finds the two Markos 6G smartphones, and activates one of them. Dedicated satellite uplink. A new one of these comes in the mail every three months, FedExed to a secure address—they have to keep him up on the latest technology—along with the updates on what to do with it. Those instructions come from secure Internet links. You memorize code numbers and operational directives and then you forget about them. You go back to being Joe Stoner with the ordinary slacker life. You adapt and survive. The first order in situations like this is to come straight in. And kill anything that gets in your way.

He sees Jackie's face when he thinks that.

He erases the image and it comes back again and he erases it again.

Damn it all.

He punches a series of numbers into the smartphone and talks to the satellite, and it tells him the shiny red Lexus is all his.

• • •

T
he drive that happens next is a lot calmer.

No blurs, no tracers, no sirens chasing after them.

They are three ghosts now, quiet and invisible.

Mark heads for the address that blips in over the Markos—a safe place to land, it says. He tells Jollie and Andy again that everything will be okay, and they say nothing back there, silent as the grave of Elvis.

Jollie is still making lists of possible scenarios.

She makes Mark into the boogeyman over and over, then makes excuses and dismisses the reasons why—because, at the end of it all, she just wants to survive this night.

And still she wonders:

Is this when it happens?

Is this how they finally break me?

II

THE MAN FROM METRO

T
he bad lieutenant walks back to Jackie-Boy's room and sits with him for a few minutes. The kid's still passed out and the nurse on duty still says it's touch-and-go. He's not in a coma or anything—just really messed up and drugged out. The bad lieutenant checks his watch again. 5:30, almost dawn. Just a few hours since he made the call, and he's still waiting. Damn, man.

He thinks about lighting a smoke—what are they gonna do, arrest him?—but he thinks better of it and sits down with a sigh.

He's thinking about his great-great-grandfather.

Sam Mudd, the conspirator, the asshole.

The reason for the expression
Your name is Mud
.

That always makes him smile, but it usually comes with a chill, because it's a grim marker of how screwed up things in the world really are—as if he needs another reminder. He thinks maybe he does. Maybe just needs to punish himself for being what he is. He thinks his death may be very near.

And he thinks that might be A-OK.

His father once explained to him that great-great-grandpappy Samuel Mudd was just an ordinary medical doctor who happened to draw the short straw the night John Wilkes Booth unloaded his derringer at the opera and made a sloppy getaway and ended up with a broken leg—and, well, son, you know how those family practitioners are with their Hippocratic oaths and all, particularly when a lone gunman bangs on their door in the dead of night.

The history books still disagree over whether old Doc Sam was actually a conspirator or just some random guy.

Jake Mudd knows the truth.

Knows that his great-great-grandpappy was the victim of something bigger than all of them—even the great and mighty Abraham Lincoln. (
Especially
bigger than that dumb old fuck, come to think of it.) Something like an all-crushing, all-enveloping black hand that scoops up everything in its path. The hand of fate, the hand of justice. For wise guys and nice guys. Something like a storm, set loose on the face of time to curse us all, down through history, until even the people who know the real names of those shadow murderers are snuffed. Because here's the thing: Nobody believes in any of it anyway. Nobody wants to know about conspiracies or corrupt systems or ghosts in the machine. And everybody is doomed to die in the storm eventually.

That's how they get us
.
That's how they rule us.

Nobody wants to know.

And I'm the rainmaker.

Mudd senses that terrible black hand reaching down for him now.

It's like the sick thrill of anticipation he got when he strapped on his gun for the first time. Or the awful, sinful, paralyzing rush of exhilaration that came with the first child he ever murdered.

• • •

S
ix men walk through the rear ER entrance of Saint Apollonia's Medical Center. Nobody tells them to turn around and walk the other way because nobody is guarding the door. That's the tragic thing about hospitals. You can walk right in, even just before dawn, so long as you look like you're a normal guy.

The six men all look like normal guys.

Except for the man in front.

That one has a big scar running down the middle of his face, just off-center. It angles weirdly and splits his eye socket at an awkward degree, zigzagging part of his lips into a mismatched jigsaw shape so it looks almost like someone cut him in half and glued him back together wrong. You'd notice it from a hundred feet away.

He's an apparition split in two—almost handsome, almost horrifying—wearing a very expensive black suit.

He stands there in the lobby of the ER for a moment.

Thinking.

Goes into his right inside coat pocket and pulls out a stick of strawberry chewing gum. The sugarless variety, with extra flavor crystals.

Pops it in his mouth.

Chews slowly.

Then he leads his boys straight for the elevator, which will take them to the trauma ward on the fifth floor. If there had been a security guard, it wouldn't have been a problem. There should have been one, but the guy is actually around the corner right now, spending his last five dollars in cash on a Coke and a bag of M&Ms. (Breakfast of champions, obviously.) He's an old man with arthritis in both hands. He's not even wearing a sidearm. His name is Karl Munt.

Mister Munt wouldn't believe you in a million years if you told him that the Coca-Cola Company just saved his life this morning.

• • •

J
ackie-Boy Schaeffer dreams of many things.

The bad lieutenant will never know what any of them are.

Tomorrow there will be another job.

Tomorrow there will be—

“A complete pesthole.”

• • •

T
he voice is low and strong, gentle and heavy all at once. Each syllable perfectly enunciated. Everything in its proper place.

The bad lieutenant turns and he sees the apparition and his heart drops.

There's three guys standing behind the apparition, and at least two more that Mudd can see in the hall just outside. They are anonymous and forgettable in plain dark slacks and black tees under long coats and down jackets. You'd never know they were murderers. You'd be minding your own business a thousand ways till Sunday, right up to the moment when one of them pulled a gun on you and asked politely for your money and your wife.

“It's not the Ritz,” Mudd says to the apparition. “But it could be worse.”

The gentle-strong voice again, sliding slowly across mismatched lips: “It's a pesthole. Did you see the mess in the hall out there? I wouldn't send my worst enemy to a place like this. It's just
unsanitary
.”

He takes almost four whole seconds to produce that last word.

Like it's a disgusting thing crawling out of his mouth.

His hand is holding something metal. “Then again, my worst enemies wouldn't know the difference, would they?”

It's a scalpel, covered in blood.

Mudd looks again and sees the hand of someone dead in the hall, just visible beyond the doorjamb.

• • •

“I
t was a massacre. They knew my brother was coming and they ambushed him. You're going to tell me who did it, Jake. You're going to tell me now.”

“I don't have any idea what you're talking about.”

“Oh, Jake. You disappoint me.”

“Goddammit, you guys—”

“There are two leading causes of death for people who happen to be standing where you are right now. The first are usually the words
You don't have the guts
. The second are the words
I don't have any idea what you're talking about
. Don't insult me, Jake. I'm not in the mood.”

“I'm not trying to insult anybody! I really
don't know
what's going on!”

“Okay. We'll explain it to you.”

The apparition nods to the two anonymous men behind him. One of them closes the door to the hallway. The other pulls a sleek Semmerling LM-4 pistol from under his down jacket. Starts screwing on a silencer.

Jake Mudd gets to his feet. Shaking.

The apparition raises his eyebrows, making his zigzagged lips into something really terrifying. “Give me your gun, Jake. Hand it over nice and easy.”

“What have you people done? What did Eddie tell you?”

“The
gun
, Jake. I won't ask you again.”

Mudd tries to jump-start himself one more time—but his brain misfires in weird panic-attack sputters. He's missed his medication this morning and his whole body shudders now. The voices, bouncing in his skull, hammering him hard.

Hand over that gun and you're dead. God only knows what they plan to do to you, how many they've already killed in this building. They've done the nurse for sure—that's her out in the hall.
Shit . . .

He reaches for his weapon, slowly.

It's heavy .38 iron, snapped tight into the shoulder holster.

He unsnaps it, pulls it out with two fingers.

The voice, even slower and more terrible now: “On the floor now, Jake. Kick it over to me, gently.”

They'll kill my ass anyway
.
It's only a question of how many I take along with me. I could maybe peg the one on the right before the one on the left got me in the leg. Or I could kill that ugly son of a bitch. And then he'd sprout fangs and come back from the dead and eat my whole goddamn soul in one big goddamn bite, man. Goddammit, this is so . . . so fucking . . .

Fuck.

He bends over and sets the gun on the floor.

Kicks it gently over to the apparition, who doesn't reach for it.

Instead, he says: “Six of our guys are dead. You should have seen it. I've got some video from the crime scene that would turn your stomach. Everybody is very upset about it.”

“This is the first I've heard. I've been here with Jackie-Boy all night.”

“You were the one who made the call, Jake. You told them where to go and who to look for. Eddie is thinking you set my brother up to be ambushed.”

“And what do you think?”

“I wasn't sure until now. But I think you're still smart. I think a guilty man would have tried to shoot us just now. I think you got as much information as you could out of the child and you're just as surprised as we are about what happened. So I guess I need to have a word with the child.”

“Then there's no reason to kill me.”

“Not necessarily.”

“God
dammit
. . .”

“Oh, and I didn't mention the dead police officers either. Five of them.
Your
men. And I don't mean ordinary dead. I mean
professionally
dead. All head shots. Not a single miss. These weren't amateurs. The slaughter pattern was government sponsored. They were using heavy ordnance and dropping the marks fast—turning them off like lights and leaving them steaming in their own guts. I'd know that pattern anywhere.”

He knows because he's the same breed of monster.

He knows because he's magic.

Mudd has never seen anything like him, not in ten years of seeing everything. The scary son of a bitch would have cased this whole hospital, dropped anyone who could have stopped them, made sure nobody would come running when the goo hit the fan. He would have carved his window of opportunity from steel and set the dominoes falling.

Mudd knows it all too goddamn well.

“Jackie told me a name and an address,” Mudd says. “Our guys were just following a lead. I don't even know who those people we hit were. They were Jackie's friends. Some asshole named Mark Jones. It's all I know—you've gotta believe me.”

The apparition smiles and lowers the scalpel.

“I believe you, Jake. I really do.”

Darian Stanwell then barely nods, and the silencer to his right hisses, filling the room with muted thunder.

• • •

J
ake Mudd feels his left kneecap blow out from under him, going to the floor. The hard surface smacks him in the face as he falls.

He grits his teeth and lives with it.

You fucks. You fucking goddamn fuckers . . .

Darian hovers over him with the scalpel.

“You're not traitor material, Jake. You were always a good soldier. Always a member in good standing. I'll never forget the wild times we had together in the Squad. Those are the things that define a man's soul—those things we did. And you always knew about loyalty to family. Always looked out for the little guy, and I admire that. Jackie thanks you. And I thank you.”

Darian gets much closer now.

Crouches low, his voice deep and sweet and excited.

“Can I tell you a little secret that might make you smile, Jake?”

Mudd doesn't say anything. He's busy choking back the pain, his brain still misfiring, trying to figure out how he ever ended up in this place.

He coughs and tastes blood.

“I'll take that as a
yes
, old friend,” Darian says, and looks Mudd right in the face, his breath filling the bad lieutenant's air, like it always did, back in the day.

Back in the corridor of love and freedom.

• • •

“T
he secret is . . . I
love you
, Jake. And when you love someone like that—when you truly
respect
what they are and live through the best times and the worst times—well, it just makes you feel all sunny inside. You know how that works. I've seen it on your face a lot. Do you know how rare
love
really is, Jake? We are the only animals on earth who know the privilege—and we take it for granted every single day of our lives. We don't
understand
how lucky we are. Jungle cats with elegance and beauty beyond human imagination don't know what we know. We name the animals, Jake. We are the rulers of all creation. You believe me when I tell you that, don't you? You know that I'm sincere?”

Mudd looks into Darian's eyes.

Go screw yourself, psycho. Get it over with.

“I'd like to kiss you good-bye,” Darian says. “Would you like that?”

Fuck you.

“I'd like that,” Darian says. “So here goes.”

Darian reaches over with the scalpel and runs it along Mudd's upper lip in a quick whispering sizzle, makes just a tiny cut, enough for the blood to come slowly. Mudd isn't shocked when Darian does it—he doesn't even feel the pain because the throbbing in his blown-to-shit kneecap trumps all of that. It doesn't even register much when Darian smears the blood on Mudd's flushed cheek and leans even closer, licking it off, licking it clean. It should feel like a diseased lizard bathed in strawberry slime tonguing him, but it doesn't feel like anything. He knows that Darian isn't really kissing him—he's kissing the past. Kissing the boys. Kissing them good-bye.