Midnight Taxi Tango (14 page)

The Ferns' basement is pristine. What kind of maniac has a pristine basement? Empty boxes are stacked neatly against one wall. A washer and dryer, immaculate, glisten in the far corner. There's a pool table in the center and a few lawn chairs set up under the one small window. At the other end, they've put up a little office area: a desk with some paperwork and a desktop computer on it. We lay Evelyn's carpet-wrapped body beside her husband's and then lean against the pool table to catch our breath.

“I understand,” I say. “But you came outta nowhere with it. I had no idea 'bout all that.”

“I know. I haven't worked with you before and I couldn't be sure you'd play along right.” She pauses, shuffles her feet. “Sorry 'bout that.”

I dig out a Malagueña, put it in my mouth but don't light it. “I just . . . The last time I took a life, a living one, I mean . . . I mean, mostly living—it never left me, is all. I'm still living the fallout of that kill, Reza.”

“I understand,” she says, her eyes looking suddenly weary. “Believe me. And believe me when I tell you this
had to happen.” Reza goes into a black duffel bag beside the bodies—she must've run out to the car for it when she was snooping around. She takes a Glock from the bag and holds it out to me, handle first.

“I don't really . . .” I say.

“What?”

“Not my style.”

“Take it anyway. Try for headshots; seems to drop them quicker.”

I nod, take the gun. It's too heavy and awkward in my hands. I tuck it into my pants and already feel it jacking up my rhythm.

“And I'm sorry I used your blade. If we'da done it down here, I would've used my guns. This place is soundproofed.”

“How can you—”

“Extra-thick glass on the windows, that slanted angle they at, the sealing around 'em. The door is big enough to shut in a meat locker. They designed this room for
activities
.”

“So now we . . . ?

Reza's already halfway up the stairs. “Now,” she says, slamming the giant door at the top. “We wait.” She clicks off the light. “And then young Jeremy will show up and work his way through the house, come down here, and we handle him.”

It's darker than I'm comfortable with, but those windows near the ceiling would announce a lit-up basement in a dark house and ruin the whole thing. In my mind, the bodies at my feet loom large, take over the whole floor, stand up and walk around. Reza's beside me, rustling through her bag again.

“Rule number two is always be prepared. Now, take this.” She hands me a little flashlight attached to a headband. “And this.” A ski mask and some goggles. I put them on. “Now, hold still.” She shakes a can of something and then sprays it directly into my face and all over my head and body. “It's extra-strength. DDT-out this bitch.”

“Yay cancer.”

She sprays herself down.

“And there's a corollary to that one.” She stands, and now that my eyes have adjusted to the half-light, I can see she has a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun in her hands. “Never be outgunned. Anyway,” Reza says, her own flashlight lighting up narrow pockets of the floor as she crosses toward the office end of the basement, “this gives me time to look over whatever they've been working on down here.”

I light the Malagueña and lean against the pool table, trying to ignore the creeping, endless darkness around me.

I can't decide whether something is actually crawling around on the ceiling or if my troubled mind is just making shit up. Then a pale quarter-sized shape skitters across the patch of light thrown by the computer screen and disappears into the shadows. “Fuck,” I mutter. “Reza.”

There goes another. And another. I turn on the flashlight strapped to my head, and five of them scatter from the sudden glow on the ceiling.

I draw my blade. “Reza!”

“Hang on, Carlos. I'm onto something over here. They got more photos on this computer. I think it's Caitlin's and—”

“We got roaches, Rez. Lotta them.”

“Well, kill them. I'll be right there.”

I follow the line of skittering monsters back to the stack of boxes.

“Looks like they plotting on some of your people, Carlos.”

“What?”

“This dude looks half dead like you.”

I'm across the room in seconds, and there on the screen in front of Reza is Gregorio Franco, the gray-skinned man with the beard and fedora I'd seen Sasha meet with when I was trailing her. “Shit.”

Reza moves out the way. “Let me go see 'bout this roach situation.”

There's a few more shots of Gregorio, crossing a street, talking on a pay phone. And then I click on the next one and my breath catches.

Sasha.

She's carrying a baby in one arm,
our
baby. And she's pushing a stroller. There's a baby in the stroller.
Our
baby.

“Carlos,” Reza says. “We have a problem.”

There are two babies. We have two babies. Twins. They are tiny and round and brown and perfect. And they're ours. I . . . We have twins. Baby twins. Twin babies. Sasha's hair is pulled back into a bun. She's glancing sideways, looking fierce and beautiful as always. She wears a long jacket and a red blouse, jeans, and boots. Looks like she's in Brooklyn, but I can't place where.

“Carlos,” Reza says again. “There's . . . Fuck. There's a door back here.”

I have babies. Two of them. And they're being watched.

Fuck.

Behind me, Reza yells, “Fuck!” and I swing around to see boxes fly away from the wall as she raises her shotgun. A wooden door swings open, and a man steps forward from the shadows. The blast rips out and devours this tiny dark world: everything echoes with it. The man flies backward and a thousand small shapes flutter out of the doorway. Another figure appears, and I hear the
chuk-chuk
ing reload of Reza's weapon.

These monsters want to destroy my family, my friends. My babies. Reza blasts again as I'm crossing the room. Two more of the roach men already clamber forward over the shattered remnants of their brethren, but they don't get far. My upswing catches the first one, cleaving a dark red gash across his midsection. He drops as my blade comes down on the second; it opens up his shoulder, and my next cut leaves his head dangling from a torn thread of cartilage.

The air fills with pale flying monstrosities. I swat through
them as a fifth and sixth roach man appear. One vanishes into the shadows at the far end of the room before either of us can get at him. Reza slow-steps into the darkness after him, shotgun poised. I close on the doorway, where the other stands watching.

He hurls toward me, arms swinging, and I catch him midstride with a cross-body slice. The man spins and collapses, roaches exploding to either side, and I throw myself out of the way.

“Reza?” I yell. They've moved into the far end of the basement, and I can't make out shit for all these flying fuckers and the encroaching shadows.

“Hang on.” She grunts, and I hear a dull crunch and then the sound of a body dropping.

“Reza!”

“I'm alright. Just too close to blast him without getting got too.” I hear another thwack and then another and the air gets even thicker with roaches. A few land on me and I brush them off and then spin a wild circle, patting at my clothes, and whirl directly into another tall pale man as he emerges from the tunnel.

“Fuck!” is the only word that I get out before he smacks my blade to the ground, and then his cool hands find my throat and roaches surge along my neck and up my face, under the mask. If I open my mouth to scream, I'll be inundated. The world quickly becomes gray and cloudy.

Another figure steps out behind the one choking me, and I hear Reza yell. The face staring into mine is emotionless, pale, dead. I try to smash it, miss. A diamond-shaped chunk of flesh detaches and adjusts its evil little body before settling back in.

Darkness begins to close in.

And then I remember Reza's gun, which I'd tucked into my waistband. My hands scramble around it, retrieve it, and put it under the man's chin. I don't close my eyes when I pull
the trigger; I want to see it. The blast throws his head back, shattering bits of flesh and skull as roaches burst outward. I drop to the ground, shaking. Brace myself against the pool table and stumble to my feet. Swat roaches or my own frantic imagination. Everything is alive and crawling.

Reza.

I look up just in time to see her bring the butt of her sawed-off across another roach man's face, spin the gun around, and then blast his head off. The image of Sasha and our babies flashes through my mind. The whole world goes dark red, and it's their blood that I won't stop spilling now that I've started; it's a red that's the promise I'll destroy every single one of these living parasites until there's none left to hurt the people I love.

I'm on my feet; my blade crashes down on another one as he launches out the door toward me. I free it from his flesh and stab directly into his chest, then kick him back into the tunnel. There's another waiting in the shadows and another behind that one. I flush forward, slicing, catching bits of flesh as roaches flutter and dance in the darkness around me.

“Carlos!” Reza's yelling, her voice hoarse. “We gotta . . . We gotta get the fuck outta here.”

I don't want to leave.

I want to kill.

I slash again, take off an arm. A gathering crowd of roach men whistle and chirp as they rush forward, then stumble back from my blade. Reza's arm wraps around my shoulder from behind. “We can't, Carlos. We can't do this alone. You can't do this alone. We gotta get out of here, man.”

She reaches past me, Glock in hand, and fires four times, crumbling a roach man with each shot. In the shadows beyond them, more skitter toward us.

She's right.

“Carlos, come on. I got something for 'em anyway.”

I pull back, step over the fallen roach men and the rug-rolled
Ferns. “Get ready to run,” Reza says. Halfway up the stairs she tosses something into the basement below. Three, now four of the roach men burst out of the tunnel and lurch toward us. The object Reza threw lands with a clink and then explodes with a sharp bang. Thick gray smoke fills the basement as the roach men scatter to either direction.

“Tear gas?” I ask, covering my nose.

Reza shakes her head. “Insecticide. Made 'em myself.” She pulls out a silver lighter when we reach the ground floor. “Also, highly flammable.” She lights it and tosses it down the stairs, slamming the door after it.

“Rule number three,” Reza says as we run the fuck outta there. “Burn the whole shit down.”

• • •

We don't walk away slowly while the Ferns' house bursts into flames behind us. We fucking beeline the fuck outta there and then fly forward when the blast sends burning chunks of wood and metal out over our heads.

I'm standing, the blast still ringing in my ears, as a figure emerges from the smoldering ruins and runs toward us.

Reza hasn't moved. I draw my blade. Flames dance off the man's charred skin. I sidestep as he closes, send a long, deep cut bristling across his gut and then another down his chest. He crumples.

Reza's up. Behind us, the fire rages. We run up the tree-covered hill behind the Ferns' house, crash through a neighbor's yard, and don't stop till we reach Reza's Crown Vic and, breathless, speed off into the night.

Kia

R
igo seem like the kinda dude wanna whisper sweet nothings to ya pussy before he dive on into it.”

“Karina.”

“
Bonjour
, beautiful kitten of the night;
mon Dieu,
what lovely leeps you have,
mon pussevou
.”

“Why he got a French accent all the sudden though?”

“Dudes automatically become French before they eat the box. That's the rule.”

“I'm hanging up the phone.”

“Kia!”

“What?”

“Be careful, okay?”

I'm standing outside the address Rigo gave me, a quiet block on Underhill Avenue in gentrified-ass Prospect Heights. At the end of the street, the Brooklyn Public Library emits a gentle glow like some magical palace. The second-floor apartment has its lights on and plants in the windows. How could I possibly be in danger if the man puts plants in his windows?

I know if I overthink this shit, I'll walk away. And look, I'm not stupid—I know Rigo ain't no love-of-my-life-type dude, but this, even if it's ridiculous and impossible and probably stupid too, this isn't some shit you just walk away from.

So instead of plotting out all the maybes and maybe nots, I just press the buzzer.

“Yes?”

“It's Kia.”

“Ah, good!”

The door lets out a mechanical burp and then clicks, and I pull it open, take a deep breath, and walk in.

There's this boy Tall Adam that I let come over last summer and eat me out. I mean, he was my friend since we were little and whenever I was near him I thought about what it would be like. Could see from the way he looked at me he was hungry for it, but he was too shy to ever say anything. It was an energy thing—his eyes'd dance over my body real quick whenever they got the chance and a tiny earthquake'd erupt inside me and rumble straight up from my pussy into my brain and I wouldn't be able to concentrate on shit for like five minutes.

It was weird to have that power over someone—like, I knew I could have him, take him home, do what I pleased with him—I knew it without either of us saying a single word, so when I called him one hot-ass Thursday afternoon and said, “Come over,” he knew better than to ask any questions. I don't think he was that bright, so it's better that we didn't talk much first. As Karina says, one dumbass comment turn that pussy from the Niagara Falls to the Kalahari. When it was over I think he thought I was gonna reciprocate, so I just rolled over and pretended I was asleep until I really did pass out, and when I woke up he was gone and we never talked about it and barely stayed friends after that, just a “hey, you” in the hallways every now and then.

And I mean—it was something else. That orgasm ripped through me like nothing I'd ever felt when it was just me and my hand. I think I went blind for a few seconds and I didn't even care, and I wanted all of him inside me so badly at that moment it scared me. He was ready too. His eyes flashed with it; his whole body tensed to pounce and devour me whole again
and again. But I closed up shop. I didn't wanna lose my mind, and I was already spinning dangerously close to the edge.

Now I stand before Rigo's door and I know this is another thing entirely. And I wonder if I'm ready. If he'll answer the door in just a towel and then sweep me off my feet. If that bulge will tear me in half and if I'll die smiling. I wonder all these things, and then the door opens before I can knock and it's not Rigo standing there at all. It's someone else.

And then all my breath leaves my body and I fall forward. Arms wrap around me, real flesh arms, not translucent ones, and he still smells like he used to somehow, but that old scent is mixed in with some cologne and, beneath that, something tangy and citrusy. And I can't speak 'cause I'm crying so hard. His arms squeeze me closer, and the only word I can get out comes from somewhere deep, deep in the pit of my gut.

“Gio.”