The Little Death (9 page)

Clearly he was on the phone. His steps seemed to echo as he walked across the lobby, and I was able to hear him coming toward me before pausing to snap, “Stop with the fucking excuses, Carl. I’m not your fucking wife. Get it done and stop bullshitting me.” I heard the click of his phone as he shut it with force, and he kept walking, while I wondered if a sweaty palm would affect the Taser’s performance.

He walked on by, and I heard him hit the dining room door hard with his palm, swinging it wide and disappearing inside it as it slapped shut in his wake, communicating his anger. I wondered idly if he had been talking about Sloane.

I waited a moment; then I was out from behind the desk. Now that I knew where the elevator was, I searched the gloom and finally found the door to the emergency stairs, which I opened and ducked inside. I was just assuming there’d be no one camped out in the stairwell.

And there wasn’t, but the tiniest noises seemed to echo, so I knew I’d have to be as quiet as possible. There were miniscule emergency strip lights embedded in every fifth step, so if the hotel was smoke clogged, you still had some ability to find the way out. It was probably a good thing it never occurred to anyone that if there was that much smoke in the stairwell, you’d probably die of smoke inhalation long before you reached the bottom.

I was at the third level, going up the fourth, when I heard voices.

They had that faint, faraway sound, like people above me, so I froze and listened. After a minute, it became obvious they weren’t getting any closer, and you’d think their footsteps would make some noise. I finally figured out they were near one of the fire exits in an upstairs hall. I couldn’t tell what they were talking about, as they were too far removed from me. But it sounded like things weren’t happy at the Roosevelt.

It felt like an Escher stairwell, like I was going up a strangely endless set of stairs, and the dim light added to the disorientation. I could have been a ghost, damned to haunt this overpriced hotel forever, until I could finally get a hold of room service.

I took to pressing my ear to the exit door, listening for voices, and what I figured out was there was security personnel on hand, or whatever their low-budget equivalent was. I had probably been lucky to duck ’em on my way in. I couldn’t count on my luck, such as it was, to continue.

Somewhere around the seventh floor—or could have been the hundredth; I felt like I’d been climbing these stairs forever—the music began to become clearer, and I felt the distant tremors of a heavy bass kicking in. The music was high upstairs. Top floor? I sort of hoped not, because I wasn’t in as good a shape as I thought. I was huffing to get up the stairs now, sweating like a fat guy under heat lamps, and I really wanted to blame it on having been beaten up not too long ago, but since my sweat smelled a little of rotgut, I figured that was a partial excuse at best.

By the time I hauled my ass up to the tenth floor, I could feel the bass in the safety railings, and listening at the exit door gave me nothing but music and an occasional voice, but it seemed to be my best bet for sneaking into the party. Assuming it was a party. Was I dressed for one?

No, of course not. I had never dressed for any, because the only ones I had ever attended had no dress codes and grotesque quantities of booze. Who wants to go to a party where you have to make an effort?

I pushed open the door carefully, taking a peek before easing into the hallway. It was lit by faint yellow bulbs, sort of like bug lights, and the music was indeed that monotonous kind of dance music that could be made by a computer. It was so rote and repetitive it was possible it was the same song playing over and over again on a loop.

I followed the noise—not just music, but voices—and I began to smell things. The expected cigarette smoke and booze, but also pot, sex, and the acrid scent of poppers. Had I just walked into an orgy?

The hall ended in what seemed to be suites, huge hotel rooms that were bigger than most people’s apartments and just as expensive, and while one of the doors was ajar, I couldn’t see in it from here. I could tell it was lit from within by strange blue lighting, like maybe there was something even weirder going on.

I was within a hundred feet of the door when a huge man emerged, something like a cross between a stalactite and a yeti, and as he folded his humongous arms across his beefy chest, he asked, “What’s the password?”

Oh shit. Somehow I bet it wasn’t
Please don’t kill me
, but it would have been nice.

I had no choice but to bluff. “The agency sent me.” Even I had to suppress a scoff at that. Yeah, I could see me posing for beefcake shots beside Tyler and Sander, sure.

The behemoth looked down at me skeptically, and it was a frightening sight. His eyes were small and dark and had all the native intelligence of a doorknob. “The agency sent you? Ain’t you a little… old?”

“Some guys like a more mature fellow.” He wasn’t buying this, so I was wondering if I could tase him as he moved in to grab me when I heard a noise behind me.

With this music it was hard to hear anything, but sometimes you get the sense someone is sneaking up on you. I turned, just in time to meet a fist face-first.

Well, that could’ve gone better.

11

I
WOKE
up tied to a chair, my arms bound to my sides by something constricting, my wrists held together by plastic ties. My head pounded like a snare drum being beaten by a psychotic three-year-old, and I tasted blood in my mouth. I used my tongue and carefully searched my gums, trying to feel if I was missing a tooth. Goddamn it, dentists were expensive as well as annoying. Still, maybe I could get some decent painkillers out of the deal. My bottom lip felt like it was swollen to the size of the average bratwurst.

I kept playing dead, chin on my chest, trying hard to listen and judge my surroundings that way. Wasn’t working too well. I knew I was still in the hotel from the repetitive thud of music, but it was far above me. I was back on the lower floors, a long way from people, which didn’t seem good. When they put you in a room where people can’t be disturbed by your screams, you’re looking at a rough night.

“You know, I saw your jaw move,” a man’s voice said. “I know you’re awake, Jake.” Didn’t he sound familiar?

As soon as I placed the voice, shock made me raise my head and open my eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

I saw for myself I was dealing with Cutter Malloy, the right-hand thug of Echo City’s resident crime boss, Richard “Tricky Dick” Blunt. Malloy was roughly the size and shape of a file cabinet and just about as smart, with square everything: square shoulders, square jaw, square head, square-cut hair…. Hell, he probably had a square dick. He was like the love child of Frankenstein and a trash compactor.

The problem was, he hit like that too. His body seemed to be sinew to the bone, and he could take twice as much punishment as he could give out, and that was pretty substantial. Never mind that he seemed to have too much forehead, a nose permanently out of joint from having been broken so many times, or piggy little eyes the exact color of slate—he was a nasty piece of business, which was  why Blunt kept him around in spite of his obvious instability. Sure, he’d kill Blunt as soon as the next guy, except Blunt gave him big fat checks and seemed to have enough pull to keep him from going back to the slammer.

Malloy sneered, although it could have been an attempt at a smile. With a face as ugly as his, it was hard to tell. “Shouldn’t I ask you the same thing, fag-o-tron?” He was wearing awful brown pants with a matching brown jacket, over a black turtleneck. He had a thing for turtlenecks, which I figured meant he was actually hiding neck bolts.

“Was that some attempt at humor, or are you mispronouncing something? You should really try one of those English as a first language night classes.”

“English is my first language, you dumb shit,” he replied with no irony at all. You just can’t teach sarcasm to some people, can you? Cutter was pacing almost nervously, taking short, violent drags off his stub of a cigarette. I had upset something, or my presence here was unwelcome for more than the obvious reasons.

I was bound to a wooden chair in the middle of a hotel room that looked familiar, mainly because I recognized it from Sander’s tape. Only the nightstand’s lamp was on, but it was enough to tell this place had a strange gold wallpaper that I had only seen before in the sex films. Well, at least the latest ones. This one hadn’t been used in a while, though, as not only was the room’s single bed made to hotel crispness, but under the heavy cigarette scent was a whiff of dust.

“So what does Dick have to do with this?” I asked, deciding fishing might be my best tactic right now. I didn’t have many options.

His eyes narrowed to evil little slits as smoke curled from his lips. “You don’t call Mr. Blunt that, faggot.”

Among Cutter’s many winning charms was rampant homophobia. I had it on good authority he was racist too, and sexist went without saying. His mother must have been so proud. “C’mon, since when have sex parties been his thing? I thought he preferred more personal entertainment.” Complicating matters for my muddled head was the fact that Tricky Dick was known to be straight. He had an official wife, an unofficial wife across town, and a mistress du jour, who generally changed every three months, although they were usually young bottle blondes who could have passed for clones. If he was going to swap them out for newer models, why not ones with different looks as well? Straight men—sometimes there was no understanding them.

Cutter glared at me before flicking his cigarette butt. It bounced off my forehead and landed on the sandy beige carpet. “Where’s the files, butt monkey?”

“What files?” Were they hunting Sloane for the sex films? That didn’t make a whole lot of sense, simply because I didn’t see Tricky Dick or any of his people that I knew with Sander.

“Don’t play dumb with me,” he said, slipping on his rings.

Cutter’s actual name was Bennett Malloy, which was about as threatening a name as Sir Patsy Winterbottom the Fourth. But he got his name Cutter from his choice of accessory, which was a set of silver metal rings with small protrusions welded to the center of each band. Those protrusions were scalpel blades that had been cut and welded to each ring, so he cut people to ribbons while punching them, crushing bones and ripping skin often at the very same time. He was a sadist with a clever streak, the very worst kind of thug, which was why Tricky Dick leaned on him so heavily. He had eight rings, one set of four for each hand, so you had time to contemplate how much damage he was about to do to you before he did it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What files? I haven’t seen any files.” Playing dumb was my only choice. While my arms were held to my side with what seemed to be bungee cord, they hadn’t tied or secured my legs in any way. That wasn’t smart. Of course, I didn’t see how I could get out of straps with my legs, or kill someone with my feet, so maybe they were smarter than they seemed.

His slate eyes were cold and suspicious. “The files on the computer at the Granger place. Or were you just there to fuck the pretty boy?”

“On the computer? Oh, you mean the thing your brilliant gunmen turned into slag? I can’t read rubble, so try again.”

He had on all his rings and took a step toward me but stopped. Doubt made him look suddenly constipated. “You didn’t see the files?”

I sighed, and feigning annoyance wasn’t hard. Pretending I wasn’t scared was the hard part. “What have I been telling you? What files? What I wanna know is, what the fuck does Tricky Dick hafta do with all of this?”

“You don’t ask questions.” Cutter continued to look confused, like a dog who didn’t know where the thrown ball had gone, but he walked toward me anyway. “Where is the other one?”

“What other one?”

“The twin. Sloane. Where’ve you stashed him?”

“The cops took him into custody.”

Cutter smirked at me, now within punching distance. I had a sinking feeling I was in big trouble. “No, they didn’t. So where is he?”

I shrugged a single shoulder, wondering what I could do. I could kick him away, but he’d just return even madder than before. “Probably a motel.”

I knew it was coming and braced for it, but it didn’t help. He punched me almost casually, without much force, but I felt the skin tear, and I tasted blood and felt air suddenly coming in through my torn cheek. He’d sliced all the way through my cheek to my mouth. That was impossibly deep, so I guess I wasn’t surprised by the blood now pouring down my face, sluicing over my chin and trailing down my neck, while the rest of it pattered on my pants like warm rain. At least the scalpel blades were relatively sharp; they didn’t hurt so much cutting in. It was the afterward that hurt. “Try again, faggot.”

It was disconcerting to have blood filling my mouth while at the same time it was running down my face. I knew from experience that the human body had more blood in it than you’d ever expect, but still it was unnerving when it was happening to me.

I was wondering if lying had any chance of working. I was willing to lie; I had a motel all picked out—the Alley Cat, a no-tell motel where all of the cheap and sleazy ended up sooner or later. They’d be forced to check it out before discovering Sloane wasn’t there. But Cutter wasn’t that stupid; he’d expect me to lie if I gave it up so easily. But the Alley Cat was about the only place in town that wasn’t in Tricky Dick’s pocket; the other places, one phone call would be enough to confirm whether Sloane was there or not. So, in summary, I was fucked, and not in a good way. Not that that was new.

I spit blood on the carpet, aiming for his shoes but mostly missing, and said, “Go fuck yourself and die, dickbag.” If I was going to get beaten to a bloody pulp, I was going to earn it.

He had just pulled back his fist to punch me again when the door opened, and one of his lieutenants, a stocky fireplug of a guy, came in, announcing, “We got trouble.”

Cutter threw him an annoyed glance. “What?”