Spiked (16 page)

At the next intersection, the man with the gun again chose the correct path.

“I gotta warn you, Carl. Once I get pissed, it's no longer business for me. I don't think I'll be in the mood to hear your story. It ain't a threat—not really—it's just how it is. So why don't you save us both a lot of trouble and come out?”

Eddie trembled as the voice got louder. He battled the urge to run. One more turn and the man would be on him. Eddie peeked around a crate in the man's direction. The footsteps stopped in the middle of an intersection and the man bent over. In the yellow light of his cigarette lighter, Eddie's tracks through the dust were plain to see. The man turned right.

Eddie shoved over a crate and bolted.

There were two shots, the second so soon after the first it seemed like an echo. The bullets rang against a steel barrel twelve inches to Eddie's left. A white-hot spark seared his wrist and he gasped. The barrel hummed.

Eddie dashed recklessly through the darkened paths.

The man with the gun waded through the debris Eddie had dumped and charged after him. He was quick and just as reckless over the short haul, but Eddie, running for his life, out-raced him deep into the junk. The man gave up in a coughing fit.

“Carl,” he howled, “you're beginning to piss me off!”

Eddie ran to the windows before he stopped. There was freedom, just fifty feet away. But it was fifty feet straight down. He had little time to rest. The man would be tracking him again, and Eddie was an easy mark in the light of the windows. He looked for a weapon, something to cover his tracks—anything. He tore through nearby crates. He found garden hose nozzles in one, ceramic lawn elves in another. The labels on the boxes were from a defunct hardware chain. Yes, tools! Eddie rifled through more boxes of the same label. He took a curved claw hammer and a screwdriver, a long brown smock and a roll of electrician's tape. He found three dozen cans of silver spray paint in a cardboard box.

Eddie thought for a moment, and then scooped up the box and slipped into the darkness.

His pursuer was quiet now. Eddie didn't like that. At least when he was talking Eddie knew where he was. Eddie wound through the passageways at a quick clip. He made no effort to conceal his footprints, but he needed to build up time, lots of it, if he was going to stop the hitman from tracking him.

When the case of paint became too heavy to lug any longer, Eddie set it down in a narrow four-way intersection, between high stacks of wooden pallets. Working mostly by feel in the shadows, Eddie used the screwdriver to pry the caps from the spray cans. He gathered the cans into a bunch and wrapped them together with five winds of tape. Then he flipped the cluster over and carefully set it down so the cans stood on their nozzles in the center of the intersection.

He pulled apart the top of a nearby wooden crate and crisscrossed the slats over the cans. Then he muscled pallets onto the floor as quietly as he could. Sweat beaded again on his face. He layered the pallets two deep—approximately the height of the cans.

To pass through Eddie's redesigned intersection, one had to walk over his handiwork. He snuck down a corridor to watch and to wait.

He wondered how Chanthay was faring. Better than he, he hoped. He had heard no gunshots from the basement, but would he in this place?

What if she had escaped? What if she was outside right now, getting away and leaving him, as she did in the old triple-decker? No, he had to have faith. He had risked his own life to go back for her at the window. She would come back for him.
Just stay alive until she gets here.

Eddie smelled tobacco again. He rose onto his toes and readied to run.

Footsteps approached the intersection from the direction Eddie had come. The red end of a cigarette floated in space. It stopped at the edge of the pallets Eddie had placed on the floor. It waited there.
Come find me, you stupid bastard
. Finally, the pallets creaked under the weight of the man with the gun.

Flick, flick, flick went the lighter. The flame illuminated the man's face. He had a thick brow, lumpy features. And yup—he looked
pissed
.

The man stepped into the intersection and bent over with the flame. The spray cans hissed beneath his foot, and the propellant gases ignited in a whoosh.

A fireball roared to the ceiling. The man cried out, flung the lighter, and dove aside. Spiraling orange flames devoured the gasses and quickly burned out, leaving a ghostly green spot before Eddie's eyes.

A puddle of plastic that was the man's lighter burned on the floor a few seconds more, and then went out for good.

Eddie slipped deeper into the shadows.

The man screamed himself hoarse. “You think you're cute Carl? I'll beat you dead with my bare fucking hands. That's a promise! You hear me? My bare fucking hands!”

Eddie took the man at his word and hustled away. He would not be tracked anymore, but his enemy still had his gun, and he would never give up. With no lighter, the hitman wouldn't be smoking anymore, either.
I can forget about hiding until he dies of lung cancer.

Eddie trotted on his toes toward the middle of the sprawling junkyard. The man stomped blindly after him, heading a quarter-turn in the wrong direction and crashing crates to the floor.

How long could Eddie survive? The man would need an hour to search the whole floor in semi-darkness. If Eddie kept on the move and stayed lucky, he might survive until nightfall. At night the place would be black and neither of them would be able to move. Dawn would break the stalemate in favor of the man with the gun. And if bitchy old Mick ever came up from the basement, Eddie's life expectancy would be halved. A torch or a flashlight in the wrong hands would halve it again. Eddie decided to get out of there before dark.

The man with the gun was stalking him quietly again. Twisting passageways led Eddie to the main corridor, down the center of the warehouse. He trotted along the aisle, measuring the weight of the hammer in his right hand. Surely one blow to the skull would knock a man unconscious—or worse. Eddie didn't want to kill him. Just hurt him bad enough to get away. Knock him down, take his gun. Then inform the man that Ford lost because Carter out-debated him, and run away. Real fast.

Eddie stopped to wrap the hammer's slick hickory handle in tape. It improved his grip, but not his chances against the man with the gun. How the hell would Eddie ever get close enough to use it?

He took a practice swing, and jostled the roll of tape from his jacket. He reached down for the roll, saw it bounce once on the floor and then disappear without a sound. Eddie froze. He withstood the prickly heat wave of another close call. He had stopped two feet in front of another dark square on the floor, twelve feet across—the elevator shaft.

Eddie looked up. There was a similar hole in the ceiling. He looked from one to the other, and then had an idea, a terrible thought he could not believe was his own. His chest tightened.

There's got to be another way.

But was there?

Eddie reluctantly put the hammer down, crawled around the hole and felt for its edge. Standing with his heels inches from the shaft, he filled his chest with a deep breath of dusty air and let it out slowly. He inhaled again, even more deeply, and held the breath for a second before he eased it out. He did this until he could no longer hear his heart thumping inside his ear.

Then Eddie exploded into a sprint down the aisle.

He pumped his arms and concentrated on a hard, even pace, pounding down the pathway like a sprinter in a dash.

He counted each time his right foot struck the floor.
One
—
two
—
three
….

When he reached eight, a crate crashed to the floor over his left shoulder. At twelve, the man cried out, “You're dead Carl! Dead!”

Footsteps came after him.

At twenty-one, his right foot struck upon the sill between the mill floor and the stairwell.

Twenty-one.

Eddie scrambled up the stairs to the fifth floor, and stopped. The boxes were piled higher on this level; the corridor was black.

His body wanted to run—run away from the man plodding up the stairs.
Not yet.
Eddie faced down the long, dark center corridor and placed his feet on the sill between the mill floor and the stairwell. He bent over, grabbed his pants at the knees and fought for his breath. The footsteps were almost on him. The man with the gun was growling.

Eddie's last thought before he ran was of Congressman Hippo Vaughn, in his silly white suit, gazing up at the last out of the World Series. It was a lazy fly ball that hung in the air so long, the fans had already started to celebrate the Red Sox championship. Vaughn was cheering in slow motion. There was no audio in this daydream. Next to Vaughn was an empty seat.

Uhhh!
Eddie grunted and tore down the center of the aisle. Knees high, arms driving, his toes barely tapping the floor. The high walls of stacked junk on either side formed a canyon of pure shadow, through which Eddie hurled himself blind.

The man roared, “You're mine!” He stormed after Eddie.

A gunshot rang out.

Eddie counted his steps.
Six—seven—eight
. Even pace, even pace. Together, they raced, stride for stride, down the darkened warehouse floor.
Fourteen—fifteen—sixteen
.

Another shot echoed.

The bottom of Eddie's right ear sizzled and then went numb. Hot blood drizzled down his neck.

In Eddie's mind, Hippo's beaming smile twisted to slow-motion horror. The ball was coming down and there was nobody underneath to catch it. But it was too late now.

Twenty-one
. Eddie slammed down his right foot, threw up his hands and leaped. Twelve feet was not a far jump—not if his stride was perfect and his takeoff accurate. But what if he had left too early? His feet churned. At his apex, he stretched his legs forward and reached, reached for every inch of distance. Time seemed to stop as he moved through the air, as if he wasn't moving at all but was suspended, weightless, in dark space.

Where the hell is the floor?

Bang! Eddie hit it and rolled.

From deep below, the man with the gun screamed once.

Eddie lay panting for a minute. His fingers felt where the bullet had taken a chunk, half-moon shaped, from his earlobe. The tip of his thumb fit in the hole. Blood streamed from the wound. Eddie gathered himself at the edge of the shaft. There was nothing visible in it. His mind's eye saw the man splayed face down across a mound of strange machinery that was sharp and irregular like a coral reef.

He felt a mix of joy and detached terror.

Eddie was safe.

And Eddie was a killer. Self-defense or not, he was a killer, now and for the rest of his life.

He spat down the hole and then spoke into it, “Carl Lewis was a long-jumper, too, you son-of-a-bitch.”

Chapter 21

Eddie flexed his right hand around the hammer, which he had retrieved from beside the hole on the fourth floor. The tan smock he had found among the tools was tied around his waist. He had crudely patched his ear with some of the tape he had wound around the hammer.

He had decoded the weird logic of the passageways. It was something of a honeycomb pattern. Eddie silently negotiated back to the first floor and returned to the stairs that Chanthay had run down.

He listened from the top of the stairwell. Nothing.

Eddie stepped down to the first stair. His foot skidded on something slick, and he lunged at the railing to keep his balance. He reached a hand down. The stair was spattered with blood.

Chanthay and the gunman had come back up.

He couldn't know whose blood it was, but Eddie could not shake the sick feeling he was too late.

Suddenly, from deep across the mill came a tremendous crash, like an avalanche of debris falling and bouncing and tumbling on the floor. Eddie whirled, stepped in the direction of the crash and heard a muffled gunshot. Two sets of footsteps carried across the junk.

She was alive.

He trotted toward the sound.

Eddie needed several minutes to reach the scene of the crash. A stack of crates had been purposely toppled into a pyramid of metal drums, judging by the vast debris field and the crude lever and fulcrum left where the crates had stood. A few of the barrels leaked fluid that burned Eddie's sinuses with a stench similar to model airplane glue. The mess seemed like Chanthay's doing. Eddie couldn't imagine a New York City hitman going through all the trouble. They didn't get paid by the hour.

Eddie needed to find Chanthay before he ran into the gunman. This part of his evolving plan relied on chance. Fifty-fifty. Better odds than blackjack, and Eddie liked blackjack. He proceeded quietly through the aisles, stopping every few steps to listen for clues.

His mind wandered. He pictured Chanthay with Danny Nowlin.

She was an urban warrior bent on homicidal revenge; he was an anal-retentive political reporter still learning to write. The irony police would have collared that odd couple. What had brought them together? Danny couldn't tell him, and Chanthay probably wouldn't, so the best Eddie could do was wonder. Did they have plans together? Hard to imagine Danny would move out on Jesse for a fling, unless it wasn't by his choice. Had Jesse found out about Chanthay? Or had she just heard Danny's cheating heart beat when the lights went out?

Eddie stopped beside a wall built from bags of cement mix. Each was the size of a thin pillow from a cheap hotel. They were piled eight feet high, like sandbags around a bomb shelter. He listened. Nothing. Or was that something? The scuff of a shoe in the distance?

He was about to move on when something tickled his ear. Fine particles of cement dust leaked from a bag on the pile. Eddie stood back and looked up.

Chanthay squatted on top of the stack, wrapped in a dark oily cloth.

She had fared worse than he, by the look of her. Her ski vest was missing and her turtleneck was ripped from her right armpit to her navel. Her sleeve was blood-soaked; she had tried to bandage her upper arm with a rag. Her face was bruised. She pushed dark drool over her swollen bottom lip, and then wiped her chin on her sleeve.

They stared at each other for a minute, neither moving.

Chanthay clutched a knife in her right hand. It was a little thing, just a pocketknife, but it was proof that the fight carried on. Beaten up but not beaten, too noble for her own good. Eddie's instinct to maintain journalistic distance buckled under her allure. He realized that his competition to wring information from Chanthay was over; he couldn't compete against her again.
I would trade my life to save this person
. He would kill to protect her, too. That fact awed him.

Eddie untied the smock from his waist. He cleared his throat and rolled the goo to the back of his tongue. He put a rasp in his voice, and mustered a New York accent. “Hey Mick,” he called out. “She's over here.”

There was a pause, and then a voice came across the field of flotsam.

“Is that you, er—Chester?”

Would a chain-smoking New York City hitman go by
Chester
? Probably not. This was an old reporter's trick. Eddie yelled, “No, dickhead, it's Gerry freakin' Ford.”

There was a laugh. The man yelled back, “Right—your hero. Sorry, Ray, you don't sound so good.”

“I been running all over this pisshole chasing that skinny fucker.”

The voice sounded closer. “You get him?”

“What do you think?”

Another laugh. “You get anything out of him?”

“Naw, he pissed me off.”

There was a loud sigh. “You're a goddam animal with that temper and it's going to get you into trouble.” The voice was closer still. “Where's the girl?”

“Here. She's dead. Looks like she bled out.”

“Yeah, I cut her good. Where are you?”

“Over
here
.”

The gunman suggested, businesslike, “Give her two slugs in the hat to be sure. And let's get the hell outta here.”

“You do it. I'm taking a piss.”

Eddie lowered himself to the floor and slipped beneath the smock.

The gunman shouted in a festive tone, “Lemme tell ya, that was one tough bitch. It's no wonder they're paying what they're paying, making us rich—not that those guys don't have the money.”

He yawned loudly, getting closer. “Chick wore me out. I thought the hot little whore would want one last ride before reincarnation. Didn't want her dead right away, just to hold still for half-a-fuckin' minute, you know? Where the hell are you, Ray? Anywhere near the stack of cement bags? Ray? Oh, never mind, I see her.”

His footsteps drew near. “She could have had ecstasy, but she had a beating instead,” he said. “Some women got too much pride, no matter how bad they want it.” He laughed a silly laugh, more suited to a little girl.

The gunman had arrived. “Hey baby,” he said in a low silky voice. “Are you still warm?”

He pulled the smock away.

Eddie winked at him.

The gunman gasped. His face twisted into a horror mask. “Over here, Ray!” he screamed. He grabbed furiously for the gun in his waistband, but the bag of cement was already in the air. It thumped off his shoulder and the side of his head. He grunted and stumbled to one knee. Eddie swung the hammer. The man was unconscious before his jaw hit the floor.

Chanthay dropped from her perch and took the man's pistol.

“Where's your gun?” Eddie asked, but she wasn't listening.

“Mick?” she said in disbelief. “You knew his name?”

Eddie shrugged. “That's what the other guy said.”

“Did you two sit around upstairs talking sports?”

“Politics, actually—he's Republican.”

“Yeah? Where is he?”

Eddie stared at her. He said flatly, “That guy dropped out of the race.” Chanthay looked him up and down, at his ear and the blood down his neck, and nodded.

“You're hurt,” Eddie said. He raised a hand toward her face.

She stepped backwards out of his reach and shook her head.

Eddie lightly bit his bottom lip. He should have known better. He gestured to the man on the floor. “What about this asshole? Can we get him to the hospital?”

Chanthay straddled the man and shot him through the back of his head.

When the bang had died away, she said, “It's too late for him.”