Resurrection Express (30 page)

I see months and months of torture.

Chains in a dark place, hard cocktails mixed in syringes.

Cruel steel and endless dark.

“She
glowed,
the old gal did. She made every man who could come up with spit drool all over themselves. And she could make a man
love her,
too. On the dime, just like that.”

I don’t want to see it, but I do. She was broken on the rack while I rotted in jail. Forced to stay with him at gunpoint, at knifepoint—at lifepoint. Drugs and madness and endless doubt. Just like the sickness that claimed me. The endless spiral.

The whole world, dropping out from under you.

“There ain’t a whole lot of beautiful ladies on this earth who
have
that power, kiddo. Most of them just rely on what they look like. This one was smart. She had the sass and she had the
glow
. You were right as hell to love her like you did. Right as hell to go crazy like you did. So damn crazy and screwed up and shot to hell that you couldn’t even remember her
face
. That was a new one on me. Damn strange.”

He sees my eyes fill with shock.

Laughs.

“Does it really surprise you that I know about that, buddy? It shouldn’t. I got a look at all your reports and medical records after you went in the joint. Had to protect my investment, after all.”

“What investment?”

“The
lady,
stupid! I made a promise to her that I wouldn’t kill you, so long as she stayed with me. Had to make sure you never croaked. Plus, you’re just so damn smart—I knew I might need you one day. Didn’t you ever wonder why I never let my boys kill you when you came in my house and raised all that hell?”

“Not really.”

“That’s why I spared no expense with all those doctors. That’s why we fixed it to keep you in that nice deep hole of yours for so long. I was watching you every day when you were in prison. I saw your shrink reports while you were in there, too. That shouldn’t surprise you, either.”

“It does and it doesn’t. Didn’t think you would care.”

“Now that just
hurts me
. You and I are pals, aren’t we? And pals look out for each other, don’t they?”

“Go to hell.”

He laughs. “I even knew the exact
day
Jayne Jenison bought you out of the joint. Tried to stop it, of course . . . but her people are pretty serious.”

“Something like that.”

“Didn’t matter, though—I always had my trump card handy. The lady. She’s such a sexy thing, ain’t she?”

Toni stares at me as he laughs again.

Goddamn.

He fixed us all real good.

Took everything from her, and from me, too.

And here we are.

“Jayne told you I was running some kinda white slavery racket, didn’t she? Well, I guess maybe that’s true . . . but it ain’t
exactly
true, either. You might say I’ve been saving up for a rainy day. You know all about the rainy day, too, don’t ya? Those . . . evil sons of bitches.
Jayne
 . . .”

Toni, I . . .

Wait
.

What did he just say?

Christ . . .

I am filled with pain and the smell of roses. The side of beef is almost dead now, hanging there in pieces. Still trying to tell the world to go fuck itself, still failing like an animal cut loose in the world of men. The smell of blood almost energizes me—cancels out the pain in my head.

I hate that so much.

Hartman nods to the goons holding me, and the knot uncoils, letting me go. One of them shoves me towards the boss like a real tough guy. I want to turn around and rearrange his mule face. I move towards Toni instead.

“Don’t touch her,” Hartman says sharply, growling a little. “If you touch her again, I’ll have these boys shoot you where it really hurts. And you won’t die, either. We’ll open up that steel can in your head and play some more games. You won’t even be able to
smell her
when we’re done with you, boy.”

I freeze in place.

He really has done his homework—all those reports from the hospital and the joint, all those doctors who could never explain why she was locked away behind a wall of shadows that smelled like roses.

He read all of that.

He knows everything.

Fuck.

Hartman licks his lips. “Remember the other day when you asked me what I wanted? Back when I took a shot at you in the street?”

“You said it was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

“You know what that number
means
? You’re too young to remember. I used to watch that old game show when I was kneehigh
to a grasshopper. Everybody back in the fifties watched those shows, like it was some kind of religion.”

“They cancelled it 1958.”

His eyes light up, his perfect white teeth gleaming just past fat, wet lips like a rich man’s beacon slobbering through slime. “Yeah, they did, didn’t they?”

“Changed it to the
128 Thousand Dollar Question
in the seventies.”

He still looks really impressed. “I always wondered about that. Why they didn’t round it off to a hundred and thirty, I mean. Always seemed like an odd number.”

“They doubled it, that’s all.”

“Yeah, but it’s still odd-sounding. I figure someone was doing some heavy negotiating somewhere. That’s how these thing tend to work most of the time. One guy comes up with an idea, another guy talks him out of it, and then the whole thing starts over. Until you’ve got a number that just don’t make any sense.”

Then he slams the cleaver into a side of beef.

Wham.

“You’re just so goddamn smart, boy.”

He tosses a piece of the Weasel on the carving block.

Sears me with his next look.

“Come over here, boy,” he says, tapping the block with the bloody cleaver. “Come over here and keep me company. I’ve got a great game we can play right now.”

“You haven’t changed at all, have you?”

“You
may
be right . . . but, see, there’s a big difference between me and Jayne Jenison. People like her aren’t maniacs like us. They want to do things that will put me and you outta business forever.”

“I’m not like you. I’m not
anything
like you.”

“And yet we do keep finding each other, don’t we?”

He slams the meat cleaver down, into almost-dead meat. No screams now. Just the terrible sound of destroyed flesh. The gurgle of an animal trying to be a man.

Keep the big guy talking.

Say anything.

“I have what you want, David. What I stole from the vault. I’ll give it to you right now, tell you where I hid it.”

“I know you will. But that’s for later. I need something else first. See, it all comes down to
negotiations
. That’s the way it was when I had your old daddy on my ranch. He wanted something and I wanted something. He named a price and I named a price.”

Yeah.

Down in a dark room, just like this one.

“I wanted his
hands
. He wanted your
life
. Startin’ to get the gist?”

Dad’s flesh and bones on the chopping block.

Madness and blood.

“We were just three fingers into the deal when Jayne’s people grabbed him. Your daddy welshed. Probably by default, but that can’t be helped. A deal’s a deal and he broke it. And now
someone’s
got to pay. So I’m negotiating with
you
.”

Dad’s body, hung from a hook and left to bleed, if Jenison hadn’t saved his life.

And for what?

“Did they tell you, David? Did she tell you what they were going to do?”

He smiles thinly. Then stops himself from laughing, keeping the gruff chuckle deep in his body. Shakes his head. Waves a finger in front of his smirk.

Wouldn’t you like to know?

“Dammit, David, you have to
tell me
. What the hell is Jenison going to
do
? What the hell is Resurrection Express?”

“Calm down, kiddo. We’ve got all night for that.”

“This isn’t a goddamn
game show
!”

“Says who?”

He looks at the ceiling again.

I throw a glance after him and I see the cameras, finally. Six of them, bolted to the steel supports and tangled up in a mess of wires and connections, glimmering with red lights, like embers from a dying fire.

He’s recording all of this.

Wants it for later.

I feel his breath roll across the room in a long, terrible sigh, and his next words come slow and dark, floating like phantom traces, as he stares away into some remote dark corner: “I know you think I’m pretty sick. I know that’s what you’ve always thought. And who can blame you . . .”

He looks right at me now.

His eyes, terrified.

I’ve never seen him like this, not ever.

“. . . but believe me when I tell you that I’m
nothing
like those assholes who let you out of jail, Elroy. They’ve been crawling all over the world forever, doing their dirt. Controlling things, while nobody is looking. You
don’t
negotiate with people like that. They have priorities that go straight into the Twilight Zone. And there’s more of them out there than you can imagine.”

He pulls the meat cleaver close to him.

Speaks to someone far away, reflected in the bloody metal.

“When you first came to me, Jayne, didn’t you say I was the only man who could help you? And weren’t you right on the money, you nasty bitch? Didn’t I make you millions? Wasn’t it Christmas every day of the week? You always said I was your best asset. You always called me a sick man. But I’m not evil like you, Jayne . . .”

He smiles at some faraway image of her, through blood on stainless steel.

Then winks at her.

“. . . and I know
right where you live,
don’t I?”

David.

You’ve gone completely insane.

He looks right at me again, and I see that insanity, more pure than it ever was before, right over the edge, deep into nowhere. Crystalline. Terrifying.

Final as all hell.

“You saw it, too,” he says to me, his voice a whisper now. “You saw where she lives. You were right there and you
saw it
. I gave it to you, just like I gave you a reason to exist while you were in jail.”

He’s not even making any sense.

Babbling.

Toni moves closer to me. She wants to touch my face. I feel so much terror in her now, as Hartman’s madness fills the room. He looks at me wetly. His smile shines, like nothing else shines in this room. Shines in deep red.

“Now
get your ass over here,
boy! Do it NOW!”

I don’t move.

“We’re gonna get there, one way or another. You hear me talking, smart guy?
I said, DO YOU HEAR ME TALKING
?”

“I hear you talking. And you heard
me
the first time . . .”

I look him right in his crazy eyes.

“. . . go to hell, David.”

He almost screams at me again, chokes it back. Like he’s about to cry . . . but instead he laughs. Shifts his gaze on Toni.

Smiles at her.

“I will go to hell, boy. We’ll both be there soon . . .”

He snaps his fingers, motions to the goons.

“. . . but the lady goes first.”

Two of them start dragging Toni toward the table.

•  •  •

I
’m only vaguely aware of the hands on all sides of me again, the floor almost vanishing under my feet as the stink team pulls and pushes and rips at my clothes without mercy. I fight them with everything I have left, but it’s a wall of steel, muscle on muscle on muscle. Like being at the bottom of a suicide tackle on the fifty-yard line, just shy of victory. Useless. Trapped.

Toni doesn’t scream, doesn’t struggle.

Her hand is on the chopping block now.

Held there by animals disguised as men.

Hartman, still smiling at me. “Last chance, kiddo. You can still save her. But only if you walk over here on your own two feet and give it up. Going
once
 . . .”

He raises the cleaver five feet over her hand. She looks right in his face and doesn’t beg. Doesn’t scream. Broken and waiting.

“Going
twice
 . . .”

Can’t fight them anymore. It’s useless. I go limp in the steel arms of stinking thugs . . . and I scream at him. Scream that I’ll give him what he wants. I can’t even hear the words, they’re so loud, and the pounding in my head is so hot and awful. I see myself yelling like I’m in a dream . . .

. . . and Hartman stops his downward stroke.

Stops with the cleaver and looks at me.

The wall of stinking thugs loosens around me one last time.

I stand on my feet, facing Hartman.

“Okay, David. You win.”

•  •  •

I
walk over to him. Slow steps. He savors them, cutting the air with the cleaver, back and forth.

“You know that I’m a man of my word, Elroy. You know that if you put your hand right here and let me have what I want, she’ll live. I’ll even turn her loose. Let you
both
go free. You’ll never work again, but you’ll be out of here. Or you can stick around and
be a part of the family again. I’ll even protect your ass from those motherfuckers who are hunting you. We’ll be
good friends
again, Elroy . . .”

He taps the chopping block with the cleaver.

“Just put it right here.”

I take two quick breaths.

I look at Toni.

She stares back at me, two men holding her. They look like dark ghouls, featureless and black. Nightmares made flesh. Two guns aimed at her head. Two red laser dots bouncing off each other on her forehead. Hartman turns one corner of his mouth up at them.

“A little insurance, kiddo. In case you decide to change your mind. Move your hand one inch and they take off the little lady’s head. Got that?”

And I realize I have no choice. None at all.

I put my right hand on the chopping block.

I spread my fingers apart.