Chemical Burn (8 page)
Authors: Quincy J. Allen
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary Fiction, #Dystopian
I smiled with a bit of pride. I had been training with Xen for almost two years, and apparently it had paid off. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I bet you are,” Bennie sneered. “Eh …” he continued, shrugging it off, “Contract killers like that guy are dime a dozen. You wanna hear the best part, though?”
“I do, Bennie.”
“Whoever threw him in that vat of acid still hasn’t come to collect. It’s like … like Christmas for us.”
“Why’d you want Xen dead?”
“He was a threat to our business,” Bennie said suddenly very serious.
“So, what’s your business these days?”
Bennie laughed sarcastically, “What, you think I’m an idiot?”
“Well, now that you mention it,” I said under my breath.
“You think I’m just gonna tell you how we ship product?” Bennie continued.
BINGO!
I thought.
“Bennie …” Antonio said, clearly trying to keep his boss from revealing anything else.
“Ehhh … fuck it. He’s going out the door in a minute. Make of that what you will, Mister
Detective
.… while you still got time.” He pulled out his .45, and Tommy slid open the door.
“You got a parachute in that fuckin’ coat of yours, Case?” Bennie yelled over the engines and wind blasting through the doorway. The son-of-a-bitch casually pointed his .45 in my direction from across the aisle, smiling with that pudgy, piggy little face of his.
I did
not
have a parachute inside my coat. Even if I did, with my hands cuffed behind me, there wasn’t much I could do with a parachute besides use it as a pillow.
Antonio and Tommy stepped up on either side of me, just out of reach. The wind blowing through the door made my trench coat flutter wildly. I looked at the .45 and then at Bennie.
I gave them a tired smile, sore jaw and all. I couldn’t stand the sight of Bennie, which made staring down the barrel of that ridiculous, gold-plated Colt that much more intolerable. I decided right then and there that I’d have to kill him the next time I saw him. With the wind blasting, his jowls fluttered almost as much as my coat.
“Stand up.” Bennie pulled the hammer back on the pistol. Malice oozed from his fluttering smile. I did as instructed, easily managing to keep my feet beneath me as the plane lurched slightly with turbulence. My balance—like my mohawk—was impeccable. I stared down on them … well, except Tommy, who had me by a few inches.
As the plane lurched, Bennie and the goombahs—
what a great name for a band
, I thought—all raised a hand up to steady themselves, grabbing one of two railings that ran the length of the ceiling. Bennie’s gun, however, never wavered. Bennie was stupid, but he wasn’t totally brainless. He knew what sort of damage I could inflict with my feet when the mood suited me, cuffs or not.
“Help him out boys,” Bennie ordered.
Antonio and Tommy stepped in quickly, grabbed my arms and moved me roughly up to the open door. I didn’t resist, I just stared at the .45. The wind howled by my face as they moved me into the doorway. I looked down at Hollywood, the hills spreading out beneath me covered with posh, mostly nouveau-riche neighborhoods aglow in late afternoon sunshine. Hollywood Reservoir lay a short distance ahead, and Universal Studios spread out beyond that.
“You know, Bennie,” I said tiredly, “the only reason we’re here at all is that I hate getting shot.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I almost forgot.” Bennie said, grinning. He clapped me on the shoulder like we were old friends. “Thanks for reminding me, Case!” His face turned vicious as he shot me in the thigh. I winced at the hot pain lancing through my leg, but I refused to cry out. I’d be damned if I’d give the pudgy fucker the satisfaction.
“Damn it.” I said under my breath. “I
hate
getting shot.”
“What was that, Case? I couldn’t hear you over the gunshot,” Bennie yelled, laughing. “Well, that and the engines!” All three Italians were laughing again.
Before they could do anything, I leaned out the doorway and let gravity work its voodoo. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of pushing me out. After all, I did have my pride … and an image to maintain. With my leg throbbing and the wind screaming past my ears, I plummeted towards the rapidly approaching Hollywood Hills.
Now, if I was from Earth, I’d actually be worried. This was still going to hurt like a mother-fucker, but the Hollywood Hills are a target rich environment. All I had to do was find the right spot …
there
.
I angled my descent and hoped for the best.
Unbelievable
, I thought an instant before the impact. Another two-hundred yards north and I would have hit the reservoir.
Damn that Bennie.
***
A Friendly Face
I hit the pool at terminal velocity, just over a hundred-and-twenty-five miles an hour. Water erupted like a bomb had gone off, and a deafening
CRACK!
of splitting concrete filled my ears when I hit bottom. A flash of gut-wrenching pain coursed through me before I blacked out.
When I came to, I was lying in a puddle with my face mashed against the concrete. The water had drained out through an impact-crater in the bottom of the pool as well as a three-inch crack that led from the crater up the side of the pool. The water had eroded the soil as it drained, pouring through the thin hillside dropping away towards the reservoir.
Having managed to pull my legs through my arms during the fall, I reached up with cuffed hands and pulled myself out. My whole body hurt, especially my face, which was a shade flatter than when I’d stepped out of the plane. My nose was a mess. I stood there dripping, looking around at the destruction Bennie had caused. Blood ran from my crushed nose as well as from my leg, although the bullet hole in my leg had mostly stopped bleeding on the way down. I was one big ache, pissed off from head to toe, with the puddle around my feet turning a cloudy pink. I reached up and pressed my fingers firmly together against the bridge of my nose to set it straight. My nose crunched slightly as I pushed what I use for bone back into place, and my eyes filled with tears.
I bent over, wincing at sore ribs, and pulled a large paperclip from out of my shoe. I straightened one section, put a kink in the end with my teeth and inserted the bent end into the keyhole of the cuffs. A single twist opened the left cuff. Another twist sent the cuffs clattering to the bottom of the pool, sliding and disappearing into the crack.
Like I said, if I were from Earth I’d have been worried on the way down. It’s not like I’m invincible, although I am one tough son of a bitch. There are a number of ways to bring about my demise. It’s all about the how. And how to kill me … well, that’s my most closely guarded secret.
I let out a long, tired sigh as I rubbed sore wrists and reflexively reached into my jacket pocket. I pulled out a pack of Winston’s, flipped it open, and tried to slide out a cigarette. The filter broke loose from the soaked paper.
“Idiot,” I sighed. I wanted to kill someone. I calmly put the butt back in the package and placed the package back in my pocket. “Time to go,” I said to myself. I reached into a front pocket, my fingers dipping into an inch of water, and pulled out my cell phone. A trickle drained out of it as I flipped it open, and I shook my head. God dammit. I reached into an inner pocket and pulled out my other cell phone, the one I kept in a Ziploc baggie just in case. I opened the bag, pulled out the phone and dialed Rachel. Limping up to the shallow end of the empty pool, I heard Rachel pick up on the second ring.
“Justin! Where the hell are you?” She sounded worried but not panicked. In my line of work I frequently disappeared for days at a time, but I always called in safe, or at least mostly safe.
“Hollywood,” I said blandly. I walked up the concrete pool steps, limping slightly, and headed for the back fence. “Rachel, can you pick me up after dark on the east side of the Hollywood reservoir?”
“Of course. How will I find you?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll find you.” I hung up, put it back in the bag and sealed it tightly. Slipping the bag back into my coat, I looked behind me one last time to see the flash of a woman’s face in an upper window of the house beyond the pool. The curtain closed abruptly, and she was gone. I had to smile. She took that rather well. The cops couldn’t be that far away, though. I hopped the fence, walked down the hill—now soaked with pool water—crossed Montlake Drive, and headed into the bushes to lie low until the cops were finished doing their cop stuff.
***
A Good Banana
I crouched beneath some thick scrub oak near the dam that formed the Hollywood reservoir. The evening was comfortably hot but not humid, and rain wasn’t forecast till the following day. I saw the flickering, red-blue-white reflections of the last police car’s light bar bouncing across the black-glass surface of the reservoir.
There had been police cruisers, fire engines, two police helicopters and four news helicopters around the house for hours. They probably didn’t believe the woman’s story, but the impact crater and empty pool would be impossible to deny. I could only hope they wrote it off as a meteor strike or something combined with too much wine.
I pulled a banana from my coat, peeled it and took a few thoughtful bites, and scratched the bump on my leg where DiMarco’s bullet had gone in. I could feel the slug under the skin, wedged up against the bone, but it wouldn’t work its way out for several days. The damn things always itched like crazy until they popped out.
Police cruisers had driven by the dam a few times, using their searchlights to see if there was anything or anyone unusual, but I was certain they wouldn’t see me. When I didn’t want to be seen, I simply wasn’t.
A single, weak streetlight illuminated the small, dirt parking lot on the east side of the dam. Along its eastern edge ran a narrow, rough, dirt road, barely more than a trail, which led back to Montlake Drive and the house where I’d landed. The road continued on into the darkness, presumably into the Universal Studios property.
The sun had gone down only a few minutes before, so I scanned the area one last time to make sure the coast was clear. Then I stood up to stretch my tired legs and relieve my sore butt. My keen ears picked up the sound of something coming down the road, but it definitely wasn’t Rachel’s Porsche. In fact, it sounded a lot like bicycle tires crunching through dirt. I saw a small spotlight bouncing down the road towards the dam. The way it moved, I figured it was a helmet-mounted headlamp. Folding the banana peel over itself, I placed the banana back into my pocket, crouched beneath the bushes, and pulled out the Ziploc with the dry cell phone in it.
Opening both, I typed in “cops. Meet west side not east” then sent it to Rachel’s phone. I would have to cross the top of the dam to get to her when she arrived. As long as I wasn’t seen, though, I’d be fine.
A bicycle cop coasted into view, rolled through the parking lot and stopped at the base of the short flight of concrete stairs that led up to the walkway across the dam. He looked around for a minute or so, his headlamp flashing right over the bushes concealing me, and then mounted his bicycle and continued down the dirt road out of sight. I watched the headlamp bounce and jiggle through the darkness until it disappeared around a bend.
Minutes later, I heard the faint but distinct, six-cylinder purr of perfectly tuned German engineering. Across the hundred yards of dam, I saw a black Porsche Cayman S pull into the paved lot on the far side. The streetlight shone brighter on that side, and the car’s sleek silhouette glinted in the light. My cell phone vibrated, so I opened it up.
“West side—NOW.”
“I love ya, baby,” I said quietly and grinned. I slipped the phone back into the bag, placed the bag in my coat and pulled out the banana. I scanned the darkness for another few seconds to be sure no one was coming, and then I stood up and walked casually down the short hill towards the weak light of the east parking lot. Unfolding the banana again, I took another thoughtful bite and walked up the stairs.
There’s nothing quite like a good banana, I thought. As I reached the top, I heard the bicycle coming back up the road at high-speed … high for a bicycle anyway. It sounded like the cop was really humping it. After walking about ten yards across the top of the dam, I took one last big bite of the banana and dropped the empty peel at my feet. As I reached again into my pocket, I extended my stride a little in order to gain some distance on the cop without having to run. I pulled a transparent sphere about the size of a golf ball out of my pocket and dropped it on the walkway. When it hit the concrete it spread out into a thin, invisible film that coated the surface. The stuff would evaporate without a trace in about ten minutes. I was halfway across the bridge when I heard the cop’s voice behind me.
“Hey! Hold it!” the cop yelled from across the parking lot.
I didn’t turn around. Instead, I increased my pace a bit more but still refused to run. Running only excites the hounds, I thought. I was more than halfway across the dam when I heard the bike come to a skidding halt at the base of the stairs. The bike clattered against the concrete, and boot-clad feet stomped up the steps. I didn’t look back. I kept walking towards the Porsche.
I heard him running as he yelled, “I said FREEZE!” Then he un-holstered his pistol. That’s when I turned … not because the cop said so, but because I wanted to see what happened next.
Just as he raised his pistol, he spotted the banana peel and stepped over the ridiculously vaudevillian trip-hazard. He planted his front foot squarely on the invisible coating I’d dropped and stepped forward at full speed. I grinned as his front foot scooted out from underneath him. He yelped in surprise, shot straight up into the air, and came down hard on the railing. He gave a second, pained yelp and rolled unceremoniously over the edge into the water ten feet below. I couldn’t keep from chuckling when I heard the splash, but I turned and started walking again.
Splashes and yells rolled across the water behind me as I strolled down the steps, opened the door of the Porsche, and got in. Uncomfortably cool air from the AC hit me, forcing me to close up my coat. I’m not a big fan of cold.
“You may want to hurry,” I told Rachel as I looked over my shoulder at the dam. “His radio might be waterproof.” I couldn’t keep from chuckling a little as I said it.
“What? Whose radio?” Rachel put it in first gear and hammered the gas.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, still laughing a bit. “Let’s just get back to my place. I’ve got some thinking to do.” I finally looked at her, and a warmth spread through me.
“Is this all about that waiter?” she asked.
I nodded. “The waiter. Yeah, but he was just the tip of the iceberg. DiMarco’s working on something big.”
“Bennie?” Rachel was clearly perplexed by the notion of the dumb, fat mobster doing anything big. He was all clown-shoes and three stooges … like someone slipping on a banana peel.
“No. The smart one. The dangerous one,” I corrected.
“Gino hasn’t done anything for nearly three years. I thought he was retired.”
“I thought he was, too. We all did. But something’s got him pushing buttons again,” I said, “… or still,” I added thoughtfully.
Rachel’s Porsche hurtled through the night. I said nothing so she could concentrate. The radar detector on the dashboard stayed dark and silent as she cornered hard, traversing Lake Hollywood Drive doing one-ten in the straights and seventy in the corners. We reached a T-intersection, and Rachel slid left around the corner like a professional stunt driver, which, of course, she was. I paid for the classes myself. She took the immediate left turn only twenty yards down the pavement and continued to chew through a dozen more corners, gravel spitting up behind us and tires squealing as she raced on down Wonderview Drive. The Hollywood freeway came into view, and she pulled onto the northbound ramp. She dropped down a gear and stood on the gas. I watched her savor the howl of the motor as we exploded onto the freeway.
“Okay, we should be clear now,” I said. “There’s no way he could have seen your car from the water.”
“Awwww …” I knew she was disappointed that she didn’t get to keep speeding. That was one of her favorite parts of the job. She eased back on the gas, and we dropped down from one-thirty to a sane seventy-five. “So, were you the meteor?” she asked, sounding like a lawyer who knows the witness is guilty.
I smiled innocently. “What do you mean?”
“A swimming pool? A crater? Some poor maid from Tijuana terrified out of her skull and yammering in broken English on the news about the end of the world?” She paused to take a breath after the tirade, hoping I would fill the void with something more than a smile. When the void and the smile remained, she filled it herself. “Any of that sound familiar?”
“Perhaps.” I chuckled again.
“Are you going to tell me what happened, for Christ’s sake? It’s been twenty-four hours!”
“Just take me to the warehouse. And yes, I’ll tell you at least as much as I can before we get there.” I rubbed my still tender leg. “I have a lot of thinking to do tonight before O’Neil shows up in the morning.”
“How do you know O’Neil is coming?”
“He watches the news just like you do, and there is the small matter of a meteor strike. And one of his bicycle cops does have to explain both a complete set of soaked gear and how the guy in a trench coat they were looking for got away.” I rubbed the healed but still tender bridge of my nose. “O’Neil can add two plus two … even more when you press him,” I added.
“Well … out with it!” she demanded. “Tell me what happened! Your place is only a few miles away, so we don’t have much time.”
“There’s too much.” I glanced over at the speedometer. “At ninety-five I’d barely get the first bit out.” I patted her knee. “I’ll give you the whole story tomorrow. I promise. For now I have to sort some things out, okay?”
Rachel spent the rest of the ride grumbling, but I was calculating possibilities and not paying attention. She pulled up to the loft—actually a warehouse—which was my primary place of residence. There were no cars along the empty, industrial street that stretched off in both directions. Distant street lights spilled pale orange islands of brightness on every other street corner. She pulled up to the curb quickly and hit the brakes hard like she was coming in for a pit stop at Le Mans.
“Thanks, Rachel.” I opened the door and stepped out. “Like I said, I’ve got to get a few things straightened out in my head tonight and deal with O’Neil in the morning. I’ll meet you for lunch around noon and give you the whole story.”
“You’re killing me, Case,” she griped. “I hate waiting.”
“I know, but you wouldn’t have me any other way.”
“Tease!” she accused.
“Oh … one other thing …” I leaned back into the car.
“What?” She glared at me, sounding more perturbed than I knew she actually was.
“Remind me to put a door out by the reservoir, will you?”
Not really knowing what I was talking about but accustomed to that feeling, she smiled and said, “I’ll send you a memo.”
I closed the door, walked around the corner of the building, and made my way down the alley. The engine roared and tires screamed as she peeled away from the curb, disappearing quickly into the night.
***