Painkiller (19 page)

He walked through the cold night, hands deep in his pockets, the streetlights in the alley shining down on him. He would have figured more of them would have been broken out, given the status of the neighborhood, but only two out of twenty or so actually were. Those two places were covered in a dark pall, though, and he stepped to avoid them almost subconsciously.

No, Harry had never put much stock in the end of the world. Life would spin on, and so would the world; that was something he could just about hang his hat on, even though he didn’t wear a hat anymore.

Harry shuddered against the chill as he walked past a garage that had its door open, loud music blaring into the night. Some damned rock band or another. Harry was all about living in the moment, adapting to modern times—which was why he didn’t wear a hat anymore, thank you very much, John Fitzgerald Kennedy—but he’d never gotten into modern music. He could sit at a card table all night long, gambling, smoking, drinking, and be totally at home except for the music. Put some Sinatra on and he was in bliss. It was why he liked steakhouses so much. They were like a retreat into the halcyon days of class, back when Harry could still comfortably and carefully win money hand over fist in Vegas.

Fortunately, the places he tended to frequent didn’t put crappy modern music on for the sake of creating an atmosphere. That was the benefit of back alley poolrooms and gambling dens. They didn’t rely on loud noise and flashing lights, all sound and fury and crap, for ambience. Harry glanced into the open garage at his left out of instinct and habit more than anything.

There was a guy in there in a wife beater shirt, white but stained with black spots of grease. It didn’t take Harry much effort to see the guy was working on a motorcycle. Pieces of it lay on the floor of the garage, carefully placed on blankets spread over the concrete. Harry took the motorcycle in with a glance; it was an Indian, looked newer.

“Hey,” the guy in the greasy wife beater said, acknowledging him with a nod. “How you doing?” He said it in that inimitable Chicago fashion, just a hint of challenge under the facade of politeness.

“Good,” Harry said, slowing his stroll, keeping his hands tucked in his pockets. “How are you doing?” He had been raised to be polite, and conversation wasn’t exactly his bane, though he tried to keep it superficial.

“I’m all right, neighbor,” the guy said, giving him a nod. Harry didn’t know the guy, but the guy evidently knew Harry. That wasn’t a total surprise. By design, Harry didn’t pay attention to anything unless it directly crossed his path. It was simpler to remain blissfully unaware, for the same reason he didn’t have conversations that went beyond the surface level. Entanglements were messy. “What are you up to this fine, freezing-ass evening?” The guy took a long pull of a lite beer that was sitting on a workbench, and the cigarette in his mouth drifted smoke.

Harry caught a whiff of the smoke and a hint of the beer’s scent from outside the garage, and wished he was doing something other than getting in his car and beating a hasty retreat out of town. Sitting in a favorite parlor with cards, a beer and cigarettes in front of him, sounded preferable to skedaddling so Sienna Nealon wouldn’t catch up with him. “I was just about to make like a fetus and head out,” Harry said. “Looks like you got a long night’s project in front of you.”

The guy had been leaning casually on his workbench, but he came off it now, beer in one hand, taking a drag from his cig with the other. He left it dangling between his lips as he crossed the garage over to Harry. “You just got into town a few days ago. You’re not leaving already, are you?”

Harry kept from narrowing his eyes, but only just. This was the danger of having a fixed residence. He always knew people talked about him in the neighborhoods where he kept houses, always behind his back. He was the ghost of any street he lived on, that was just fact, as inescapable as gossip in a small town. “Yeah. Spring hasn’t sprung quite enough for me, yet. Maybe I’ll come back later this year.”

“I try to keep a watch on the neighborhood,” the guy said, still strolling up to him. “I’ll keep an eye on your house if you want, give you a call if I see any of the punks around here doing any damage to it.”

“I don’t … keep a phone,” Harry said lamely. It was true. “Just call the cops for me if you see someone vandalizing the place.”

The guy’s eyebrows spiked. “You got it,” he said. He seemed affable enough. He left his cigarette dangling between his lips and thrust out a hand toward Harry. “I’m Paul Beckman.”

“Harry Graves,” Harry said and offered his hand. Beckman was close enough that Harry was practically taking a drag off his cigarette just standing this close to him. He touched Beckman’s hand in the course of the shake, and sure enough, he got a flash in an instant. He knew exactly what kind of a guy Paul Beckman was.

“Whoa!” Beckman said in surprise. “You got a mean grip there.”

Harry’s mouth felt dry. He wanted a beer. He wanted a cigarette. He wanted to be gambling.

But he wasn’t.

He was standing in a back alley with a real sonofabitch, and all his attempts to keep his damned head down and get the hell out of town had just fallen by the wayside with a handshake.

Harry didn’t like to fight, and he damned sure didn’t like a fair fight. So instead of doing something like telegraphing his movement, he just punched Paul Beckman right in the face, hard enough to knock his ass back into his garage. The cigarette fell out from between Beckman’s lips as he flew, crashing into his workbench. The impact knocked all the air out of Beckman and Harry watched him fall with dull eyes, utterly devoid of compassion for the hell he was about to put Paul Beckman through.

Harry stooped and retrieved Beckman’s cigarette off the wet pavement and put it in his mouth, taking a deep drag. Well, he wasn’t gambling or drinking, but at least he had this, he reflected as he stepped into the garage and pulled the door down with a clatter.

“What the … hell you doin’?” Paul Beckman asked, trying to right himself. He was sitting down with his back against the workbench, trying to stand but failing to coordinate his movements properly.

Harry sidled up to him, cigarette in his own mouth now, dangling lazily from his lips. Harry pushed back the sleeve on his right arm and choreographed this punch so Beckman could see it coming. He didn’t put too much into it, just enough to split skin and give Beckman a hell of a shiner tomorrow. He did it again, then again, then once more, holding the man by the greasy shirt with his left hand and pounding him with his right.

“The … f …” Paul Beckman wheezed through a split lip, his right eye swollen shut. “Wh … y …?”

“Because like that shirt you’re wearing, you’re a wife beater, Paul,” Harry said, looking at him remorselessly. He paused for a moment to take a drag off the cigarette and then lift it into the air with his right hand while he continued to hold Paul Beckman’s t-shirt with his left. He exhaled smoked in a thick cloud right into Paul’s face, and the man blanched and coughed. Harry put the cigarette back in his mouth and smacked Beckman once, hard, across the lips with a backhand.

“D … did that … b … bitch … tell … you …?” Beckman looked at him with his open eye, blood dripping down his lips and his cheek, and Harry nailed him across the face with a straight punch again, probably only putting ten percent into it.

“She didn’t tell me anything, Paul,” Harry said, sighing, and punched him again. “You beat her loud enough the whole neighborhood can hear you.” He punched him twice more, this time to the body, breaking a few ribs, listening to them snap and pop as he worked the man over. Paul Beckman was more than wheezing now, he was crying faintly, which was why Harry had shut the garage door when he came in here. “Don’t you?” He smacked him hard in the newly broken ribs, eliciting a pig-like squeal. “Don’t you, Paul? You like hearing her cry. You like the way it makes you feel, you impotent little weasel?” He popped him again, and again, playing the busted ribs like a xylophone. It didn’t even take much strength at this point.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Beckman cried, and Harry sensed the man had hit his breaking point.

Harry slapped him once more to focus his attention, and Beckman looked right at Harry with pleading eyes. “You’re never going to hit your wife again, are you?” Harry asked him, not blinking, not flinching.

“N-no,” Beckman said, shaking his head urgently.

Harry dropped him, left him limp next to his workbench, and then grabbed his beer, knocking a wrench off the bench as he did so. It plopped down perfectly on the middle of Beckman’s forehead and knocked him clean out. He’d wake up in the morning with a hell of a headache and a hell of a lot of other aching things, and he’d never say a damned word about this to anyone. He’d slipped in the garage; that was the tale he’d tell the world.

And he’d never hit his wife again.

“I believe you,” Harry said to the unconscious Beckman after draining his beer. He tossed the can in the garbage on the way out and pulled up the rattling garage door to step out into the cold before shutting it behind him. There was no one in the alley, and the night was quiet all around.

Harry didn’t like fights. He didn’t believe in the end of the world, in spite of what every doomsayer in every generation had said. He liked living in the moment, he liked his beer, his cigarettes and his gambling.

But he’d be damned if he was going to just run out of town now. That went way beyond keeping his head down and crossed into the realm of pure chickenshittery.

And that wasn’t Harry Graves. Not at all.

With a quick breath that fogged in front of him like cigarette smoke from the butt he’d left burning on the garage floor, he started back the way he’d come. There was only way out of this conundrum, really, at least without running, and he was ready to face it.

He had to find Sienna Nealon.
She’s going to die
, he thought, his shoes slopping along the wet alley floor, his footsteps carrying him back toward the city of Chicago and the girl in question.

By the time Reed and I got our phone situation ironed out, the clerk was ready to go home. I sympathized, being quite ready to go home myself, but unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards for me right now.

I had about a million thoughts rattling through my mind, leads I wanted and needed to chase. Okay, I had three, actually, but I wanted to chase them all, right now. I had Detective Maclean and his possible treachery at the top of my list, along with his presumably now-compiled dossier on our second murder victim, the runner at Oak Park Beach. I was toying with ways I could expose Detective Maclean as the person who was siccing metahuman assassins on me, but the problem I was running up against was motive. He certainly had some opportunity, and probably the means, since detectives have access to all manner of unsavory sorts. Usually that’s because they’re busting them, but plenty of Confidential Informants—CIs—can also arrange for the door the swing the other way.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a plan just yet, other than to sally forth into the precinct house and yell, “
J’accuse!
” right in Maclean’s face. He was a hardened cop, had been on the street for a long time. Even having the most dangerous woman in the world yelling at him in French was unlikely to cause the man to break out in a sweat. And while I could have, I dunno, dangled him off a building, that would probably be frowned upon, and the government was unlikely to spare me from prosecution from something like that, given it was my last week. Thuggy they’d overlook. A Chicago cop? Not so much, I figured.

“I know that look,” Reed said as we cruised along in the back of his Uber, which turned out to be a Toyota Prius driven by a young lady named Melody who apparently clerked at a local mall and drove people around in her car in her spare time. “That look means trouble.”

“So are you two like, a couple?” Melody asked. She had her ears perked up and everything.

“He’s my brother,” I said, wondering why I was being driven around by a part-time taxi driver instead of just getting a full-time one, especially since the government was paying for these little trips anyway.

“Oh, sorry,” Melody said, apologizing. She let that rest for a beat before throwing out her next question. “So are you guys going downtown to party tonight?”

“We’re heading to a police precinct, remember?” I was looking at her cock-eyed; none of the taxi drivers had tried to engage me in conversation for more than a few seconds of our ride.

“Oh, right,” Melody said, nodding, glancing back at us in the rearview. “Probably not partying there.” She chortled, and it sounded a little like a duck quacking at low volume. “What are you going to the cop shop for?”

“We’re federal agents investigating local transport licenses,” I said, hoping to switch this Chatty Cathy off. “You know, the kind taxi drivers need.”

“Oh, cool,” she said, plainly not getting the hint. “I bet that’s fun.”

“Yes, looking into local bureaucracy is totes fun,” I deadpanned, then turned back to Reed and lowered my voice. “I was trying to figure out how to trap Maclean so we could prove he’s set these assassins on us.”

“I don’t like Maclean for this,” Reed said with a shake of his head. “I think Gustafson is more likely.”

“You think Dr. Gustafson has meta assassins in his Rolodex?” I asked, jaw down in disbelief. “I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t pass the sniff test.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Melody asked from the front seat, way too chipper for this time of night.

“Federal Statute N51047,” I replied, making shit up, “the use of personal vehicles for non-regulatory purposes.”

“That sounds serious,” Melody said. “Are people breaking that law around here?”

“People break every law, everywhere,” I said. “That’s why we have jails.”

“Oh, that sucks,” Melody said, like it was such a bummer, you guys. “So are you going to get to do any partying while you’re in town?”

I looked at Melody in the front seat and I finally realized something. “You’re going out partying tonight, aren’t you?”

“Totally,” she said, nodding, a big grin on her face, her eyes not so much on the road. “That’s what so great about this gig. I picked you guys up, and it’s paying for my gas money to get into the city. How cool is that?”