Daylight Runner (9 page)

“What are you talking about?” Ana frowned suspiciously.

“Before Gregor Wheat disappeared, he made some kind of bizarre wager with a man by the name of Cortez, a man who has some very violent people working for him. One of his enforcers was seen at the Earth Center today. His name is Enrique Romanos.”

The police officer took a palmtop from his pocket and pulled up a display. He showed the picture to Ana. It was a head-and-shoulders shot of a man with a neck that was thicker than his head.

“He is known as ‘Necktie' Romanos, because of his favorite method of killing.”

“A necktie?”

“A garrotte, Ms. Kiroa. Now, could we please see Sol's things?”

 

Back at Ana's apartment, Sol stared at his face in the bathroom mirror. His nose was still a bit swollen, but the faint bruising around his eyes was going down, turning a sickly yellow. His dark hair was getting quite long, coming down
over his ears, and he had the beginnings of a downy mustache that he had never got around to shaving. He looked pathetic. The teenage punk staring back at him had the face of a victim—the kind of kid who always got pummeled in the boxing ring.

On an impulse, he reached for his wash bag. He had brought his father's straight razor with him. Taking it out, he unfolded it and scraped the edge down over part of the hair on his upper lip. The blade was well honed, and the hair came away clean. He shaved away the rest of his adolescent mustache. The skin felt bare and tender underneath, but it made his face look better, cleaner. More intense too. This was what he needed—to alter his appearance to match the changes he felt happening within him.

Continuing to stare at his reflection, his gaze wandered to the tousled black hair on his head. There was a pair of scissors in the cupboard behind the mirror, and he took them down. Holding tufts of hair out between two fingers, he started snipping. When he had cut it all close to the scalp, he covered the top of his head with soap lather. Pulling the razor over his scalp in slow, awkward strokes, he scraped one swath of hair after another from his head. The blade cut his skin several times, and he winced as blood mixed with the soap and water, but he kept shaving. Slowly, he took all the hair off his head. He rinsed it clean until the water came away without blood in it, and then dried his bare scalp. After cleaning
up the hair clippings, he wiped down the sink before studying himself in the mirror once more; he nodded with satisfaction. He was no longer just a schoolkid. He definitely looked older now—harder too. Like somebody you didn't want to mess with.

Out in the living room, he opened the bag that held all the stuff he had brought from his apartment. The webscreen in the corner of the room was asleep, just showing the time: 4:28
P.M
. He had missed his meeting with the ISS. Too bad, he decided. He pulled out a heavy jacket, the kind rarely worn in the upper levels of the city, and put it on. He needed big, baggy pockets. Taking the gun from his school bag, he slipped it into the jacket and tried drawing it quickly from the pocket several times. Good enough. He checked to see that he could take the safety catch off with his thumb without looking at it, and then put it away.

Sol could feel the change in himself: a new sense of determination. He knew the names of three different gambling dens that his father frequented. Two of them were in the Filipino District. He was going down there to find out what he could, and if anybody tried to get rough with him, he was going to shoot them.

 

When Ana got to her apartment with the two police officers, there was a man walking away down the corridor toward the exit on the other side of the building. His head looked as if it had been shaved with a power
sander. She glanced at him again for a moment, then went to unlock her door. Mercier and Baiev seemed to pay him no attention.

Inside the apartment, the two men walked through to the living room. Ana showed them Sol's bag, and Baiev started going through it.

“I'll just use your toilet, if I may,” Mercier said to her, and she pointed him toward the bathroom.

The inspector seemed less interested in using the facilities than in perusing the finer points of the décor. He had left the door open, and Ana peered in to see what he was doing. She could feel moisture in the air, and there was condensation on the mirror. Mercier ran his finger around the rim of the drain and looked at it.

“Baiev!” he shouted, pushing past Ana. “That was him outside! He's shaved his head. He's definitely on the run—call for back-up!”

They charged out into the corridor with Ana chasing after them. A sense of outrage kept her on their heels; they were chasing Sol as if
he
were the criminal. Hissing through her teeth, she ran with the police as they crashed through the fire doors and into the side street. They split up, each taking a different direction, but there was no sign of Sol. Standing where she had come out, Ana took panting breaths.

The fact that Sol had escaped brought her a little gleam of satisfaction. The younger, rebellious side of her
enjoyed seeing the police evaded. Even if it was for the wrong reasons.

“Unfortunate.” Inspector Mercier sighed, walking back to her. “If he's still in the vicinity, we'll catch him. Otherwise, our young Mr. Wheat is on his own.”

A
FTER LEAVING THE
building, Sol descended some steps to a lower street level, intent on catching a tram toward the city center. He wasn't very familiar with the Filipino District, and he wanted to take the main route in. It was after five
P.M
., and the streets on this level were clouded in shadow. Water was draining from a leaking pipe somewhere, the sound loud in these narrow, echoing spaces. Bats' droppings coated the ground beneath a low bridge. A homeless drunk was lying wrapped in a foil blanket, propped up in the doorway of a closed-down nightclub. There was graffiti on the walls: the usual complaints about life, as well as tags from the young hoods competing for territory.

A tram passed overhead, and somewhere nearby, a
mechanical press was thumping in time with the shudder of a conveyor belt. Sol passed an open window and saw a factory floor where overalled workers were standing at benches operating hand-cranked machines that broke down and recycled the soles of shoes. The men and women chatted as they worked; dirty jokes and petty small talk passed across the worktops over the whirring clank of the machines. People content to be busy.

Seeing the people at work, he was reminded of how many jobs had been taken over by machines in the past. Now muscle and bone were becoming valuable again, since so much of what was made had to be salvaged from something else. He started to run at an easy pace, enjoying his strength, light on his feet. Jabbing the air with quick, loose fists, he mixed combinations, working on his breathing and his timing.

His mind was in the ring, sizing up his opponent, circling, doing the little dance like Muhammad Ali used to. He wished Ana would come to one of his fights; then she might see him as something more than a student. His imagination filled the hall, lit the floodlights, called his name from the speaker, and sat Ana in the front row.

That was why he didn't notice the car pulling up behind him or see the two figures waiting under the shadow of a walkway arching over the street. The car swept past him and he looked up, surprised. He was walking past the two men at that moment, and one of them
stepped out in front of him, swinging a punch at his face. Already psyched up, Sol blocked it and was about to counter when the other man slammed something hard and heavy against the back of his head. Lights exploded in his vision, and the world spun over on its side. His left arm went up to guard reflexively much too late. But he wasn't out of it yet. His right hand went into his pocket even as he fell. One of the men bent to hit him again, and he untangled the gun from his jacket and fired without aiming. His head was filled with dark confusion, his vision gone crazy. The gunshot was deafening, and the recoil kicked the weapon right out of his limp fingers. He heard a cry of pain, which he had time to register with satisfaction before something hit his head again and—

 

The first thing to register was the pain in his wrists. Then the pain in his head introduced itself as an old acquaintance who had returned to visit. His head was hanging forward on his chest, and when he lifted it, the pain raised its voice. As soon as he realized his position, he tried to support himself on his feet. He was hanging from his wrists, bound in what must be handcuffs. The metal bit into the flesh and bone, and he gripped the cuffs to try to ease the pressure. His toes pressed against the ground, taking some of the strain off his arms, but he was hanging too high to get his feet all the way down. He tried raising one foot to feel around, and discovered his ankles were
chained to the floor. Sol opened heavy eyes but saw nothing. There was some kind of material over his face; he could feel it tied around his neck.

“Our little pugilist is awake,” a voice said.

Somebody untied the material around his throat and pulled it up above his mouth, leaving his eyes covered.

“Can you hear me all right, Mr. Wheat?”

Sol struggled to regain his senses. He couldn't remember what had happened. He could vaguely remember being attacked…again. Nothing more. He didn't know where he was. He didn't recognize the voice. This wasn't the police station; he was quite sure of that. Somebody else had him. A hand smacked him across the head, arousing his headache's temper. He groaned.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” he mumbled. “What's going on?”

“You've been kidnapped. We have taken you somewhere you won't be found, and you won't be getting out of here unless you give us the answers we're looking for.”

Sol felt breath on the skin of his face and smelled cheap aftershave. “You were one of the guys who jumped me in the apartment.”

“Hear that?” the man said to someone else. “The kid's sharp! How's that nose by the way? Did I break it that time? Here, let me top that up for you.”

A fist struck him right on the bridge of the nose, and Sol cried out in pain. His eyes filled with tears as he
struggled vainly against the handcuffs, but any movement caused him to lose purchase with his toes, increasing the strain on his wrists. It forced him to keep as still as possible.

“That only hurt you a little,” the man whispered menacingly. “We're going to be doing much more than that. By the way,” he continued in a brighter voice, “what's with the haircut? You look like you scalped yourself. You trying to start without us or what?”

Another voice somewhere behind him gave a sardonic laugh. The sound told Sol something about the size of the room. It was small with a low ceiling. It probably had very solid walls.

“What do you want?” he said, gasping.

“We want to know who your father talked to last Wednesday.”

“I don't know,” Sol said, his voice trembling. “I don't know where he is or anything.”

The hand pulled the material farther up his face so that he could see toward his feet. His gun was brought into view.

“Then where did you get this?” the man asked. “This kind of hardware's not easy to get hold of. It wasn't in your apartment when we searched it, and you weren't carrying it. So you've picked it up since then. Where'd you get it? You shot my pal here in the ear, shot his earlobe right off. Whole body to aim at and you shoot a man's earlobe—what are you, some kind of idiot?”

Sol was shivering, his throat tight, constricting his breathing. He didn't want to tell them about the note from his father. They wanted Gregor and he couldn't betray him, even if the little he knew wouldn't tell them anything.

“Who gave you the gun? You're not going to tell me you got it yourself? Not likely, kid. Who was your father in contact with? He has passed on information and you are going to tell us who to, or we're going to put you through a lot of pain. Do you understand me?”

Sol started shaking. He couldn't stop. The tension from trying to stay up on his toes was racking his body, and his calves were cramping up. Any time he let his legs relax, the cuffs bit into his wrists, and his shoulders began to ache. But now he was terrified too. He knew if he spoke, he would start crying.

“I want to show you something,” the man said to him.

“I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do to you. I just want you to look at this and use your imagination.”

Through the tears in his eyes, Sol saw a pair of pliers being held up in front of him. He stifled a sob.

“That's not going to help you, so stop the blubbering right now. Just tell us what we want to know, and we'll make everything all right.”

“I don't know what you're talking about!” Sol screamed. “I haven't seen my father since he disappeared! He left the gun with a note in the apartment while I was
asleep! I don't know where he is or who he's been talking to—I don't know
anything
!”

“That's a start,” said the man. “In a few minutes, you'll be telling us everything you know. It's a good thing that you're loyal to your father. I'd expect the same from my own son if he were in your position. But you'll break as soon as the pain starts, so why not just tell us now and save yourself the hassle, eh?”

Sol gaped in disbelief. “That
is
all I know,” he protested. “I swear to God! What else can I tell you? I don't know anything more!”

“There's always more, Mr. Wheat.”

“This is stupid! I can't tell you anything more. I'd have to make it up, and then you'd hurt me for talking crap.” He arched his neck, attempting to get a look at his tormentor, to try to make eye contact. “What the hell can I do? I don't know! I swear to God I don't know! What good is it if I lie to you? If you…if you hurt me, I'll end up telling you whatever you want to hear. But it won't be the truth, it'll just be anything I think will make you stop hurting me. What good…what good is that?”

His voice was frantic, high-pitched with terror. “What's the point in that?” He whimpered. “It's just stupid.”

“I think it's time to get started,” the man said.

Sol's face contorted in a sob, and he drew in a long breath.

Then came the sudden crash of the door being kicked
in, followed by three silenced gunshots. Sol heard a body drop to the floor. There was a fourth muffled shot, and another. A second body fell. Sol arched his head back, trying to see what was going on under the edge of the bag covering his head. He saw a man lying on the floor with somebody standing over him. The man had two bullet holes in his chest. The barrel of a pistol was aimed down at him, and a shot was fired into the center of his forehead, spilling a bloody mess across the floor.

Sol's toes slipped from under him and he hung from his wrists, turning away from the scene as he tried to get his feet under him again. A strong arm wrapped under his armpit and around his chest, supporting his weight. There was a clicking sound, and one of the cuffs came loose. A chain slipped, and he was lowered to the floor.

“Sol? You're all right now. You're safe. Your mother's favorite song was ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me' by the Mamas and the Papas. My name is Maslow—I'm sorry I was late.”

 

The man named Maslow was a little taller than Sol, with wide, flat shoulders, and the burly build of a heavyweight. His dark skin had the gray pall of someone who spent his life away from the sunlight of the dome. Deep lines in his face described a hard life. His close-cut hair and the tightly trimmed mustache that bracketed the corners of his mouth were salt and pepper in color and gave him an even
more grizzled appearance. Sol sat shaking on a chair, his feet up on the seat, his arms wrapped around his knees. Maslow had pulled both of the dead men's bodies into the center of the room and was searching through the metal cupboards that lined one wall.

“Who are you?” Sol asked him.

“I'm a friend of your old man's—I mean, sort of. I owe him a debt.”

“I didn't know he knew anybody…like you.”

“You're lucky he did.” Maslow pulled a waterproof bag from one of the cupboards, one with an airtight zipper.

“Body bags. They were geared up for this. Looks like they get rid of bodies all the time.”

Sol stared hard at the bag. He could have ended up in one of those. “How did you find me?” he asked. “And how did you kill them, just like that? They seemed like real pros. I didn't stand a chance.”

Maslow glanced down at the bodies. “I've had dealings with their type before. I've been following you since last week, and found out they were tailing you too. So I tailed
them
. They led me back here yesterday. When you were nabbed this afternoon, I was following on foot—I wasn't expecting the car. But I guessed where they'd take you.”

He laid out the body bags, one alongside each corpse, and unzipped them.

“Who were they?” Sol felt a chill run through him as he gazed down at the bodies.

“Professional killers and kidnappers: strong-arm men,” Maslow told him. “But what you should be asking is who they were working for. I can't tell you that. Help me pack them up.”

Slipping from his chair, Sol grabbed the feet of the nearest man and helped lift him onto the open bag. He pulled the bottom of the bag up around the feet and dragged the zipper toward the waist. Maslow took it and finished closing it up. Sol had one last look at his torturer's face: a round, jovial-looking potato with light blue eyes, blond hair, and gray skin. And a bullet hole through the forehead. They got the other man wrapped up—a bulkier, sharp-faced guy with wizened skin—and then Maslow went over to the aluminum sink in the corner of the room. Sol sat back down at the stainless-steel table and watched Maslow take cleaners and detergents from the cupboard under the sink.

“We can't hide everything,” the man told him. “A good forensic crew will find some trace of us if they check this place out. So we have to get the bodies out of here and make it look like they just disappeared. The police have to have no reason to look here. We are going to scrub every centimeter of this floor and wipe down every other surface. We can't leave a drop of blood anywhere. Got it?”

Sol nodded. Maslow cleaned the spattered blood off the top of the table, and then he and Sol lifted the two bodies onto it, along with the four chairs. There was a
mop in a utility room out in the corridor, and they carefully cleared all the blood from the floor, washing the red-stained water down the sink. For nearly half an hour, they cleaned the entire room. Maslow took down the meat-hook from a steel loop in the ceiling—the hook from which Sol had been hanging—and threw the cuffs and ankle-chains into a cupboard. When they were finished, there were only the two body bags left to suggest that there had been any violence.

Sol's gun was lying on the table beside them, and he put on his jacket and pocketed the weapon.

“Next time, try to hit something more important,” Maslow said without humor. “Can you carry the smaller guy? There's a chute down to a fertilizer grinder back along the corridor. We can dump them down there.”