Resurrection Express (23 page)

She looks right in my eyes.

“. . . tell me where the disc drives are located . . .”

Right into my eyes.

“. . . and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“You’re going to let me die anyway, why should I talk to you?”

“Because you want to, Mister Coffin. You
want
to.”

When she says the word
want
 . . . it seems right somehow.

I
want
to tell her what she
wants
.

I want that, don’t I?

No.

They’ve drugged me.

This woman intends to kill me.

“You
always
planned on killing me.”

“Not in the beginning, Mister Coffin. We had to re-evaluate things when you became difficult. You’ve been snooping around the edges just a little too much. You’re very smart. My organization has issues with very smart people.”

“You use them and then you kill them.”

“Only when they become difficult.”

“You’ve been working with Hartman all along. The whole damn thing at that toy store was a setup to scare me straight.”

“You’re half right. Hartman and I are
former
business associates. Unfortunately, we had a parting of ways not long ago and it became necessary to appropriate what he would not allow me to purchase from him.”

“You’re planning on stealing nukes. That’s why everyone’s running scared. That’s what this whole thing is about, right?”

“Nukes? You watch too many movies, Mister Coffin. Nuclear weapons are antiquated. They serve only as a deterrent and a smokescreen in this day and age. My organization requires far more . . . shall we say,
practical
means?”

“You’re full of shit. I saw what was on the discs.”

She makes a dim smile happen.

Shakes her head slightly.

As if to tell me I’m
almost
right.
Almost, but not quite.

“This whole thing is about
many things,
” she says. “You’re only one part of it, Mister Coffin. And I never had anything to do with what went on at the toy store. That was all Hartman.”

“You would have done it anyway. You killed Alex Bennett without thinking twice.”

“Oh, believe me, I
did
think twice about it. Just like I thought twice about cutting you loose from jail, even after reading your psych report. An obsessed man is a dangerous man—but we’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?”

My head swims now.

I fight the next wave of euphoria, focus on my hatred of this woman . . . but my rage slides away from me . . . like it’s oozing with a tide . . .

My rage.

All I have left to fight with.

Going away now.

The drug is taking it from me.

And words come out of my mouth that sound like this:

“You said you
understood
my obsession. I think you’re just a maniac. Like Hartman.”

“I’m nothing like Hartman. You know me only a little. I find that comparison insulting.”

“I don’t know you at all.”

“Fair enough. But David Hartman is a loose cannon and a rapist of women, with no vision beyond the here and now. A shallow, degenerate monster. If it hadn’t been for his disgusting theatrics, it never would have been necessary to force him out of our organization and pull you from prison in the first place.”

“So you cooked up a story about a human trafficking ring and dropped the seven of us in a meat grinder. There was never any chance of finding my wife at all, was there?”

“Oh, she’s
alive,
Mister Coffin. I can at least promise you that. But even if you were to walk out of here, you’d still never find her. She’s gone underground.
Very
much. And I wasn’t lying to you about Hartman’s operation. He’s quite obsessed with beautiful women. That was, ironically, one of the many reasons why we parted ways.”

Then who was that on the phone?

Baby, get the hell out of there. They’re going to kill you.

I hear the voice in my head, and it’s sweet, just like the word
want
.

Little fingers are tickling my belly, making me feel very good.

My rage, all replaced by hearts and flowers and . . .

Oh my God. I have to focus.

She just said something about my wife.

Said she was alive.

“Did Hartman tell you where she was?”

“Like I said, we were business associates until recently. But it’s a long story.”

“So David grabbed my father for some fun in the dark, and you went against him to bail us both out. Because you knew you needed us.”

“I needed
you,
not your father. But it’s all in the family, yes?”

“You’re full of shit.”

She uncrosses her legs, leans forward on her knees. “I have no reason to lie now, Mister Coffin. No reason to mislead you about anything. I used your talents and I ordered your execution, that’s all true. You and your father did your best to escape, and you did very well. You can go to your grave knowing that what you did for my people will be very, very important.”

Important
.

So very happy, that word.

Someone else said that to me. Was it a lifetime ago?

Focus, Goddammit!

I have to keep her talking, find out more.

I want to talk to this woman.

The word
talk
is so very,
very
 . . .

“So how did you find me here?”

“That’s a trade secret, Mister Coffin. Also, you should be more careful about who you sell an army surplus helicopter to on such short notice. Let’s just say a . . .
woman
like Kim Hammer doesn’t hold up well under questioning.”

Oh Christ. They killed her, too. They killed everyone.

Kill
is such a friendly word.

“You underestimated my reach, Mister Coffin. My organization is all over Houston. All over the world, really. You’ve been dead game ever since you flew off into the sunrise with my package. We’ve just been waiting to see what your next move would be. You’ve been somewhat predictable.”

My voice is slurring now: “Dead game? Sounds like . . . an action . . . movie.”

“I enjoy action movies. Which is your favorite, Mister Coffin?”

“This one.”

She doesn’t laugh. Still looks like nothing. Says everything monotone. But that’s really nice, isn’t it? We’re just sitting here. Having a nice talk.

Yes.

I’m in my own favorite action movie.

Action
and
movie
are such
important
words . . .

“I was always partial to Bruce Willis myself,” she says.

“Now who’s . . . kidding who?”

“I’m serious, Mister Coffin. I always enjoyed his style of machismo. It came with less branded stoicism than your standard Dirty Harry types. More of a regular guy. You bought into him a little more when he jumped off a burning building with a gun.”

This is a nice conversation.

This is getting me nowhere.

I like this conversation.

Snap the hell out of this.

DO IT NOW.

“So we both like action movies,” she says. “I think you like
many things,
Mister Coffin. I think you want to
tell me
about what you hid before you came to this place. You want to
tell me
whom you’ve spoken with. You want to
tell me
where the seventeen disc drives are.”

No.

If I tell her, it will be my most terrible mistake.

I’ve let so many people die, even my father.

If I give up what she wants, millions more could die.

But . . . millions dying wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

“Come on, Mister Coffin. Let’s not forget why we’re here.”

Even more of her goons in the lobby. Three flanks of men. Six guys with guns. More on the exits and the elevators.

I only have a choice of how I will go out.

Can’t fight them all. They will kill me, regardless.

The drug will kill me, regardless.

“One last question,” I say, slurred and beaten. I want to make my voice stronger, but I can’t. I can almost
visualize
the words . . .
I can hear them in my head . . .
but they struggle out garbled and awful . . .

“Make it quick,” she says. “We have serious drinking to do.”

Waves hitting me now.

I hardly find my voice at all now.

But I manage it.

“Did you . . . mean . . . what you said . . . when we first met . . . about family being important . . . do you . . . really . . . have . . . a . . . daughter?”

“That’s two last questions, Mister Coffin.”

She just sits there, not looking like anything. I stare her down. Keeping my focus on her. Losing it every third second. Keeping focus. Losing it. Keeping. Losing.

“Yes . . . I do have a daughter, Mister Coffin. And she was also taken by David Hartman. That was not a lie. I want you to know that.”

She wants me to think that I like that.

That I’m cool with that.

But I say this:

“Go to hell again.”

She leans back in her chair.

For a whole minute, she smiles.

“Very well, Mister Coffin. Let’s have that drink anyway.”

She nods to her goons at the bar. They start towards me. The men in the lobby cover the area. A small platoon, now. She keeps her eyes on me. Knows they’re there, doesn’t even have to look. All the time in the world to round me up. It all swims behind a wall of happiness, my vision filled with an image of endless evil. I fight it with everything I’ve got.

I reach into my jacket pocket.

“Tell your . . . gorillas . . . to back off . . .
I’ve got . . . a gun.
”

“They’re not coming to kill you, Mister Coffin. They’re coming to bring you a drink. I hope you don’t mind whiskey.”

“I’m
warning
you . . .”

“You have nothing to threaten me with. Certainly not with the gun in your pocket. Would you like to know how I
know
that, Mister Coffin? Beyond the fact that you hardly even have control of your mind at this moment?”

The men surround us now. Two on either side. Even at my best, I couldn’t take all four, not from a sitting position, not with that many guns.

But that’s okay, right?

Sure it is.

One of the men hands me a glass full of ice swimming in amber liquid.

“Bottoms up, Mister Coffin. There is nothing to fear anymore. Nothing at all.”

Nothing to fear.

Nothing.

Have to try something.

Anything.

I flex my shoulders and realize I don’t want to.

All the bases are covered.

I take the drink. I
want
to drink it.

I fight the word “want” so hard . . . like it’s steel and flesh pushing against my mind.

“You still haven’t answered my question, Mister Coffin.”

“Question? You . . . asked me . . . a question?”

“Would you like to know why you have nothing to threaten me with?”

Threat.

Yes.

My hand touches the handle of the gun in my pocket, fingers trembling.

My other hand holds a glass filled with ice.

Both things that I touch are deadly. Both are things I’m fighting with everything I’ve got.

She knows.

“If I say the words, these men on either side of us will kill you right here in this bar, and they’ll do it without even considering the consequences. That is something you will
not
do, Mister Coffin. I know that about you. I know that you’ve never killed anyone in your life. It reminds me of a story. Something I’d like to share with you. Would you like that?”

Like that.

Yes.

Story . . .

She sees me contort, sees my struggle.

She leans back, and her voice is like deadly silk:

“When I was five years old, my father took me to see a dogfight. He was a hustler, my father. Dirt poor. But he taught me about the way things really are. It prepared me a lot for the legitimate business world. For politics and lobbying. For the organization I’ve been a part of for decades. Does that surprise you?”

I don’t say anything.

The men surrounding us have blast-furnace breath.

I concentrate on that—on the bad.

“My father brought me along on a lot of his scams,” she says. “A little girl laughing in your lap always makes the other guy less suspicious. That
shouldn’t
surprise you.”

Fight them.

“Anyway . . . a small-time bootlegger who also bred fighting dogs had us meet him at a location in El Paso near the border of Mexico one afternoon. We were delivering a bag full of chopped aquarium rocks and baby laxative dressed up as cocaine. He was a
crazy man without any juice at all. A thousand dollars in cash was the score. That was a fortune back then. He put it in our hands without even thinking, then handed us tequila and said we had to see his boys fight.”

Fight it.

“We crossed the border, hiding in his truck, and walked into a room filled with sweaty, screaming men and the roar of simple creatures transformed into monsters—bottomless inhumanity disguised as grand sport. Like something in a nightmare. Two pit bulls in the center of the room, ripping each other apart until one of them couldn’t even crawl anymore. I wondered how they made those dogs hate each other so much. It left me with nightmares for years. Haunted me, really.”

She leans forward, with a victorious little grin right in my face.

“They called the loser
dead game,
Mister Coffin. The pit bull that has no idea when to quit, even after he’s crawling in his own blood, long after he’s lost the fight. That is what
we are
right now. Do you understand? We are, every one of us, fighting a losing battle against evil men who don’t care if we live or die. We are focused only on our own
dead game
.”