Fade To Midnight (45 page)

T
he Squeaker led them to Tony's Diner, off Sandy Boulevard.

Davy parked across the street. Through the windows, they saw Bruno Ranieri perched on a stool at the counter, talking to an old guy with a jarhead haircut. An older lady with big hair was participating in the conversation, waving a spoon as she did so. The people eating watched as if it were some sort of dinner theater in the round. It looked like the conversation was degenerating into a shouting match.

“Shall we?” Miles asked.

Davy looked dubious. “We'll be taking our lives in our hands.”

“That's where they usually are,” was Con's wry observation.

They waited to enter while a file of nervous, whispering customers pushed their way out, throwing nervous glances behind themselves. Plates with half-eaten burgers and fries lay on the table. The decibel level swelled when the door swung open. Most of the screaming was impossible to decipher, since the two older people were screaming in a foreign language that sounded vaguely like Italian, but not quite.

Miles, Con, and Davy walked in. Bruno Ranieri looked dumbfounded. “What the fuck are you assholes doing here?”

“We told you already,” Davy said. “Looking for information.” He directed his words at the older man. “Are you Tony?”

The old jarhead reached under the counter. “You want some information?” He whipped up a sawed-off pump action Remington 870 shotgun and aimed it at Davy's chest. “I'll give you some fuckin' information.”

The customers started collectively freaking out, and the old man waved the gun around. “Everybody out of here!” he bawled. “We're closed! Come back another day and I'll give you lunch for free. Clear outta here! Move it!”

The old man's tone reminded Miles of the way the McCloud guys talked when they were under stress. When the last customer scurried out, Davy and Con and Miles stood there, staring at the shotgun.

“These those bozos you told us about?” the old man asked Bruno.

“Yeah,” Bruno said. “The very ones.”

Con made a strangled sound. Miles turned. He was gazing at the wall. “The drawings,” he whispered.

They looked. The framed drawings on the walls were not the usual horrific restaurant art. Miles recognized the style instantly. It was like the stuff displayed in Davy's and Con's houses. Kev stuff.

“I think you guys oughtta forget the fuckin' artwork, and look at the gun,” the old guy growled. “You think I wouldn't shoot you with it, you're dead wrong.”

He looked sincere. Miles took a deep breath, and hung on hard to his guts. A skill he'd learned from hanging out with McClouds.

“Now you pussies got a couple of choices,” the old man rasped. “You can turn your asses around, fuck off and disappear, permanently. Or else, I can shoot you dead. Your choice. You got five seconds to make up your mind. Five. Four. Three. Two—”

“I propose a third option,” Con said. “Put down the gun, and tell us where you've been hiding our brother Kev for the last eighteen years.”

The old man squinted at them, studying Con's face, then Davy's. Then Miles's. A look that seemed almost like fear came over his bulldog face. “What the fuck…?” he whispered. “Who?”

“Don't fall for it, Tony,” Bruno Ranieri hissed. “These guys are the assholes who attacked him and Edie. There were three of them, remember? And he said they had training.”

“Someone attacked Kev?” Con's voice sharpened. “When? Why?”

“Shut your fucking mouth, and mind your fucking business.” Tony swung the shotgun up and aimed at Connor. “I know who you are. I been waitin' for you for years. Eamon McCloud sent you, right?”

Davy and Con were too surprised to speak. Tony shook the gun to break their spell. “Am I right?” he yelled. “Answer me, goddamnit!”

Bruno looked baffled. “Eamon who? Who the fuck's Eamon?”

Davy cleared his throat with a harsh cough. “Eamon McCloud was our father,” he said. “Kev's father.”

Tony's face turned a strange shade of eggplant. “But that's…that's bullshit,” he sputtered. “I know about that guy. I know what he was, what he did. I heard the stories!”

“Then you knew more than us,” Con said. “What stories?”

“About McCloud! That he was a killer for hire!” the old man bellowed. “About his trophy collection. Ears, tongues, balls! That he'd slit your throat as soon as look at you! That he could snipe somebody at twenty-five hundred meters, right through the eye! The kills weren't certified, because it happened deep in-country, but everybody knew!”

Davy and Con looked at each other. “We don't know about that,” Davy said. “Could be true. Except for the trophies. That wasn't his style. He didn't talk about Nam. But it haunted him until he died.”

“Died?” Tony sounded personally insulted. “Whaddaya mean, died? He ain't dead! I looked around, I informed myself, and I didn't hear nothing about him being dead! Or about him having kids, neither! Nobody said anything about that!”

“Nobody knew,” Davy said. “We weren't entered on any public registries when we were born. He wasn't entered on any when he died. We buried him ourselves. Kev was twelve.”

Tony gave Miles a long, slit-eyed look. “Who's this kid? He ain't your brother, or Kev's, neither. Not with that long honkin' schnoz.”

Miles forced himself to take that with his habitual saintly patience. He'd learned to live with his nose, and everything that came with it. “I'm just a friend,” he said.

The gun did not waver. “Give me one good reason why I should believe you guys.”

“I'll give you more than one.” Con pulled an envelope from his pocket, and shook the photographs into his hands, gleaned from his walls before they'd left his house that afternoon.

Tony held out his hand. “Lemme see those.”

The old lady crowded close. Bruno leaned over their shoulders. The family resemblance came into focus. They all had the same furiously suspicious frown on their faces.

“This one is right before my mother died, in '75,” Con said, pointing. “The two little ones are Kev and Sean, his twin. They were four. I don't know which one is which in that picture.”

The old lady clapped a beringed hand over her mouth. “He was a
gemellino
? So blond. So cute,” she crooned. “
Che piccino carino
.”

“Twin,” Tony said, his voice heavy. “He had a twin?”

“Identical,” Con said. “This one is where they were both eight. I was twelve here, and Davy was fourteen. And this is Kev, doing one of his drawings. I think Davy snapped that when Kev was about sixteen. And this is when Sean graduated from high school. All of us together.”

“Oh,
madonna santissima
.” Tears welled up in the old lady's eyes. “Just look at him. Without the scars.
Mio povero bambino
.”

“What scars?” Davy demanded. “Who scarred him? And what the hell has he been doing for the last eighteen years?”

Tony lay the gun slowly back under the counter. Bruno kept shuffling through the pictures, his face screwed up in fierce concentration. As if he were convinced that they were somehow fake.

Tony moved slowly, turning to pull down a ceramic keep-sake in the shape of the Roman Colosseum. He pulled a rubber plug from the bottom, and shook something small into his hand. He paced around the counter. It dangled from his hand. Dog tags, darkened with age.

“This was in his jeans pocket, the night I found him,” Tony said.

Davy snatched the thing. Con leaned over his shoulder. “Oh, Jesus,” Con said softly. “I didn't even know Kev had those.”

“Found him where?” Davy asked, his voice hard.

“In Renton. Behind the warehouse where I was working. August twenty-four. Ninety-two. This big sonofabitch was beating him to death. I was a working a night shift as a security guard. Watched it on the camera for a while, but it bugged me that the other guy was too messed up to fight back.” Tony shrugged. “Went out with my Beretta, took a few shots at the dirty motherfucker. And there Kev was. Almost dead.”

“But he lived,” Miles prompted.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “He lived. I didn't know what the fuck to do with him. Couldn't take him to a hospital. I figured they'd be waiting for someone to do that. So I took him with me. He was wrong, up here, for the longest time.” Tony tapped his temple. “Couldn't talk, or write. Like a retard. Whoever cut him up and burned his face did something to his brain, maybe. Who the fuck knows.”

Davy and Con both flinched at that. “Burned?” Davy asked.

“Tortured.” Tony said bluntly. “It was real bad. He didn't remember anything. Couldn't talk. I kept him here, with us. He worked here, ate here, slept here. He was safe. We took care of him.”

“But you had this.” Davy shook the dog tags. His voice rocked with tightly controlled anger. “You could have found us with this. You could have brought him home. We could have taken care of him. He was our brother, goddamnit. Ours to keep safe. Ours to take care of. Why the fuck didn't you find us?”

“I made a bad call,” Tony said stiffly. “I thought McCloud was a killer. When I saw how Kev could fight, I figured the kid had been on Eamon McCloud's team, and he'd gotten on the guy's bad side. I figured looking for McCloud would get him killed. So I sat on it.”

Connor blew out a harsh breath. “Oh, God,” he muttered.

“Your daddy taught you boys to fight, right?” Tony asked.

Davy nodded. Tony grunted. “That would explain the way he fought, the stuff he knew. I figured him for SF, or ex-SF. How else would he know all that knifework, all that survival shit?”

“Being Eamon McCloud's son,” Con said. “Part of the curriculum.”

Miles tried to get the conversation back on track. “He lost his memory? Did he ever get it back?”

“Not really,” Bruno said, reluctantly. “A few months ago he went over a huge waterfall, bonked his head. He knocked some of that stuff loose, but just a little bit. Just enough to drive him totally bugfuck with frustration. That was what started all this crazy shit.”

“A waterfall?” Connor's voice cracked. “What in the fuck?”

“Don't ask us to explain the stunts that guy pulls,” Bruno growled. “He has no fear of death. Drives me bonkers. So anyway, he remembered Osterman, and the torture. And he's been trying to get more of it back ever since. He was obsessed.” He threw up his hands. “And see? He starts making progress, and all hell breaks loose. People start attacking him, people get shot to death—”

“What?” Connor and Davy yelled in unison. “Who got shot?”

“Charles Parrish,” Bruno explained glumly. “A sniper blew his head off this morning. And now Kev's missing.”

“What do you mean, missing?” Miles demanded. “Now he's found, right? How the hell can he still be missing?”

“Missing is missing,” Bruno said. “He left this morning to meet some Helix fat cat who promised to show him the Osterman archives. He had this thing about recovering his past. To find his lost memories at all costs.” He looked them over and grunted, clearly unimpressed with the representatives of Kev's past that stood before him. “He was supposed to check in hours ago. He never did. And he won't answer his phone. Not even for Edie. That's not like him.”

“What was the name of the fat cat?” Connor demanded.

Bruno looked irritated. “Who the fuck knows. He's Kevlar, the mystery man. He doesn't talk unless you put a gun to his head, and sometimes not even then. Edie'd know, but she has no phone.”

“Edie the graphic artist?” Davy asked.

“Yeah, Kev's new true love,” Bruno said. “She lost her dad today, to that sniper. Everything's all fucked up. I just knew that if he started poking around in his past, it would blow up right in his face. And sure enough. Ka-boom. What a fucking mess.”

Miles rubbed his hands together. “So? We came here to find him, so let's go find him.”

Bruno pulled out a phone, punched buttons. “I've got Edie's little sister's number.” He waited, and shook his head. “Nobody's answering.”

“How about Kev's house?” Miles suggested. “We might find, I don't know. Clues. Right?”

Davy and Connor's faces lit up. They looked at Bruno. “You got keys to his place?” Con asked.

Bruno gave them a devilish grin. “Who the fuck needs keys?”

 

The blast knocked every cell of Kev's body loose. He lay there, stunned. Struggled to his feet.

Someone hurtled through the door. Kev delivered a bruising kick to the bastard's face, knocking him back into the drifting billows of dust. The guy fetched up hard against the wrought iron railing.

Kev followed up, landing a jab to the kidney. Someone was screaming. Female, far away, words impossible to hear. The guy blocked the chop he aimed to the bridge of the nose and snagged the fleshy part of Kev's thumb, twisting it over in a manner calculated to induce agony up the twisted tendons. But not to him. He held himself apart, detached from screaming agony. He had lots of practice.

His twisted hand was useless, trembling, but he jabbed up with the other, trying for a stab to the pancreas. The bastard twisted like an eel, took it on the ribs, but Kev managed to snag his hand. He grabbed the back of the guy's jacket, and heaved him over the railing—

The man's face came into focus, in an endless, eternally dilated instant, turning, somersaulting, staring straight into Kev's eyes.

Sean.

His brother. His twin. Their fingers tightened around each others' hands, an iron death grip. He broke Sean's fall. The weight of his brother's dangling body almost wrenched Kev's arm out of its socket.

Kev hung over the railing, coughing and choking on the smoke. Sean dangled from his hand, like fruit from a branch.