The Killing Floor Blues (8 page)

I dreamed of Caitlin.

It wasn’t a message, no mystic vision. Just a snatch of memory on repeat. Sitting at a plastic two-seater in the secret little pizza parlor at the Metropolitan, side by side, sharing Cokes and fat, greasy slices of pepperoni pizza. She flashed her smile my way and I felt…whole. Human. Warm inside.

Then I woke up to the clattering and shouts and stench of the cellblock. My new home. My new home for the rest of my life if I didn’t start making moves.

I joined the line for the showers, letting myself be herded like a cow, hating how fast it became routine. Brisco’s boys, Ray-Ray and Slanger, fell in on my left and right. I gave Ray-Ray a nod.

“Brisco wants us to cover you while you shower,” he told me. “In case the Calles get stupid. Just do the same for us, okay?”

“Good deal,” I said.

I stripped down, setting my folded clothes on a long wooden bench, and stepped into the narrow shower stall. The curtain hung short, and even with it pulled closed I could see my new bodyguards’ feet outside, standing watch for me. For five minutes, at least, I could exhale and let my guard down.

I didn’t, though.

Something was off. As the lukewarm water splashed across the stubble on my scalp and rolled down my naked back, I stretched out my psychic tendrils. A mind here, a mind there. Snatches of confusion, of sudden anxiety, adrenaline spiking.

Fewer minds than there should have been. And the ones I could touch were
leaving
.

I turned around in the stall and looked down to the curtain gap. Ray-Ray and Slanger were gone.

Here it comes, then
, I thought.

In the moments before a confrontation—when you know it’s going to be genuine kill-or-be-killed violence, no discussion, no debate—the world slows to a crawl. Time turns into an hourglass filled with molasses, the seconds dripping down one leaden echoing heartbeat at a time. Your vision narrows, the walls closing in around you.

I took a deep breath, living in that silent, eternal moment.

Then the curtain ripped open, and everything happened very, very fast.

He was shorter than me, Asian, cropped black hair, but my eyes were on his knife. Not prison junk. Carbon black steel, spec-ops style, and forged to carve skin like butter.

Pro
, said the back of my brain while the rest of me went into overdrive, dodging to one side as he lunged at me. The blade stabbed empty air, one inch from my left shoulder. I grabbed his wrist, twisted, shoved him a step backward, and slammed his arm against the shower stall opening as hard as I could. His forearm met the white tile with a shotgun
crack
as a bone fractured. He grunted through gritted teeth, but he clung to the knife with a death grip.

He had a buddy with a blade of his own, dancing around outside the stall like a prizefighter waiting for his title shot. The stall was too small, and they could only come at me one at a time. My only edge. That, and the weapon they didn’t know I had.

The first hitter grabbed his knife with both hands, using his good arm to push as he forced me back a step, my shoulder blades pressed to the cold tile. The tip of the knife inched toward my belly as the shower rained down, drenching us both and turning the world into a wet blur as the downpour washed over my eyes.

As I pushed his hands back, straining against him, the alien maggot in my skull writhed with excitement. I felt it crawling across the back of my eyeball. Then it squirmed its way through the gelatinous tissue and nestled inside.

The hitter got a bright idea. Suddenly he wasn’t pushing, he was
pulling
, hauling me off-balance and sending me stumbling out of the shower stall. Out into the empty room, where they could both have a go at me. The second killer was eager, too eager. He took a wild swing, his knife slicing the air as I ducked, and he didn’t have time to recover before I threw myself on top of him. We landed on the wooden bench, rolled, landed hard on the floor, almost nose to nose.

I saw a heartbeat of terror register on his face. Then it was too late.

The black maggot spat from my iris like a bullet. It left no wound in its wake, and it didn’t leave a visible wound on him either. Not when it chewed its way into his eyeball, and not when it dug into his brain like a diamond-tipped drill.

He dropped his knife and clutched his face, shrieking, feet pounding the floor. The confusion bought me a precious second, just enough time to snatch up his fallen blade and jump back. I came up in a crouch as the first hitter, the one with the fractured arm, lunged at me. I grabbed my shirt from the bench and swung it like a whip, snapping it at his face. Then I darted in and slashed, shredding his shirt and drawing a thin red line from his nipple to his gut with the tip of the blade.

He broke and ran, cradling his arm. There were no alarms, no pounding of guards’ booted feet, and the security camera in the corner hung as a mute and witness. Nobody was coming. The guards had been bought off or warned off. It was just me and the second hitter, pressing his palms to his eyes and screeching like a newborn baby as he thrashed on the floor.

A kinder man would have put him out of his misery. I wasn’t that man. Besides, I needed to make a statement to the entire prison. He’d do. I toweled off, pocketed his knife, got dressed, and walked out of the shower room, letting the door shut on his terrorized wails.

*     *     *

Out in the yard, they were playing cards at Brisco’s picnic table. Sounded like a raucous good time, at least until they saw me coming.

A metal detector checkpoint stood between the hive and the yard, so I’d stashed the knife in my cell before I came out to play. That was all right. By now, they’d have found the second hitter, and word spread fast on the prison grapevine. I waited just long enough in my cell, before heading outside, to make sure the story got around.

Fear was my best weapon.

Ray-Ray and Slanger found someplace else to be, fast. The others could tell something was up but looked more confused than anxious; they must not have been in on the hit. Brisco, he just turned into a statue, his eyes going marble-hard.

“Hey, Brisco,” I said, “what’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He leaned back a little, shoulders tensing.

“Guys,” he said, “need a minute here.”

His buddies cleared off, orbiting the table at a respectful distance. I sat down across from Brisco. And stared, without saying another word.

He tugged at his collar like a suspect sweating it out under an interrogation-room lamp and looked everywhere but straight ahead.

“It wasn’t…it wasn’t anything personal,” he finally said.

“Funny,” I told him. “When somebody tries to screw somebody else over and fails hard? That’s always the first thing out of their mouth. ‘It was only business.’ ‘It wasn’t personal.’ Thing is, to the guy
getting
screwed? It’s
always
personal.”

“You—you don’t understand.” He wrung his hands on the table. “I’m trying to save
lives
here, man. The browns are itching to go to war, and it’s all because of you and those fucking Calles. No you, no more problem.”

“Except those hitters weren’t CCs. For one thing, they were Asian. Korean, maybe. Second, they were genuine operators. Where’d they come from, Brisco?”

He looked up at me and shook his head. “Outside. Don’t know. Didn’t ask. They said they’d been hired to take you out, and they came in with fake jackets. I know they had some bent guards covering for ’em. They said…they said if I set the scene and pulled my protection away, they’d move in and seal the deal. They get what they want, my problem goes away, everybody’s happy.”

“Yeah. Everybody’s happy, except for me.” I rested my palms on the picnic table and locked eyes with him. “You can imagine I might have a slight problem with that.”

He froze, a deer in headlights. When he opened his mouth again, his voice came out in a near whisper.

“That guy…that guy they pulled out of the showers. They’re saying he doesn’t have a scratch on him. But he was screaming like he was burning alive. Said it took horse tranquilizers to knock him out. The second he woke up…he just started screaming again.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I heard, too.”

“What did—” Now he did drop to a whisper, eyes flicking left and right before he finished the question. “What did you
do
to him, Faust?”

I leaned in and gave him the sweetest smile I could muster.

“I did what I do.”

He swallowed hard.

“Seems to me,” I said, “the other day, at this very table, you were explaining the danger of holding grudges in here. So tell me, Brisco…are you going to settle things up with me? Make it right? Or are we going to have a problem?”

“No, no problem.” He shook his head, eyes going wide. “What…what would square us, do you think?”

“That’s simple. Right now, unless a friendly guard already smuggled him out, there’s a hit man with a broken arm hiding somewhere in this prison. I want you, and all your boys, to go on a scavenger hunt. Find him, and bring him to me,
alive
. He needs to answer some questions. You do that, and as far as I’m concerned, I can let bygones be bygones. Fair enough?”

“Yeah.” He pushed himself up on shaky legs, waving a hand to call his entourage back. “And I mean it, it was nothing personal—”

I held up one hand. He stopped talking.

“Also,” I said, “I want a cell phone.”

After I gave my new best friend his marching orders, I went looking for Jake and Westie. I found them over by the fence, sharing hits off a half-burnt cigarette.

“Hey,” Jake said, “don’t suppose you’ve got any smokes on you? We’re down to the bottom of the pack.”

“Sorry. Never picked up the habit. I figure it’s best if there’s at least
one
vice I don’t indulge in.”

Westie took a drag, passed the cigarette to Jake, and looked me up and down.

“You in one piece, friend? Heard some funny stories about the showers this morning. Stories where your name popped up.”

“What can I say?” I shrugged. “I’m a popular guy. Been thinking about our problem, the Hive B thing.”

Jake glanced at the cigarette stub between his fingers. Fingers that trembled just a bit.

“Yeah? All that thinking taking you anywhere in particular?”

“Yep.” I nodded toward the fence and the endless plain of scrub and sand on the other side. “Out. Seems to me, if people are being snatched and taken away for possibly nefarious purposes, the best solution is to be far, far away from the guards doing the snatching. Wanna come with?”

Westie arched one bushy eyebrow. “A prison break? You takin’ the piss?”

“I’ve got a bit of a contrarian nature,” I said. “Tell me something’s never been done before, or
can’t
be done, and it just encourages me. Besides, I can’t get used to this lifestyle. Don’t like the accommodations, don’t like the fashion, and I sure as hell don’t care for the cuisine. So what do you say? If I can spring us, you in?”

They shared a quiet glance. A whole conversation passed between them without a word being said.

“Who else knows?” Jake asked. Cautious, but nibbling at the hook.

“Paul’s on board. And, ah, we have to take Buddy.”

“Buddy?”

“The Prof.”

Jake tilted his head at me. Then he looked off to the left. I followed his gaze. Buddy sat at one of the chess tables, alone, having what looked like an animated conversation.

“He’s talking to his chess pieces,” Jake said.

“Yep. That he is.”

“And…he’s pausing, like he’s hearing them talk back.”

I shrugged. “Admittedly, he’s more of a liability than an asset, but I gotta get him out of here. Favor for a friend.”

Westie rubbed his chin. “Man’s brain is fried. Paul’s solid, though. Bit of an egghead, but we could use that. So a four-man crew. Plus the Prof. You got a plan up your sleeve?”

“I’m working on that.”

Jake and Westie shared another silent conversation.

“Let us know when you’ve got something solid,” Jake said. “And
if
the plan feels right…hell, man, I’m in. I hear Mexico’s nice this time of year.”

“Yeah, all right,” Westie said. “I’m up for some beachside piña coladas. You let us know, Dan. We’ll be waiting.”

Back in the hive, out on the gallery floor, I caught movement in my peripheral vision. Another man cutting through the crowd, headed toward me on a collision course. I tensed up. Something must have shown in my eyes as I turned, because he froze in his tracks. It was Zap, Brisco’s pet trustee.

“Hey, man, it’s cool. I’m just playing delivery boy.”

I showed him my open hands, and we both relaxed.

“Walk with me,” he said.

He matched my stride, moving to stand on my left side, opposite the gun tower at the heart of the hive.

“Gonna put something in your left hand,” he said in a low voice. “Keep it out of sight.”

I felt the sleek plastic shell of a flip phone slide against my palm.

“This is major-league contraband,” he warned me. “You’re looking at a month in Ad Seg if you get caught with it. So don’t get caught with it. And if you do get caught, I don’t know you.”

“You’re a good man, Zap.”

“Brisco’s a good man. So, uh, are you gonna kill him?”

“Probably not,” I told him, “but we’ll see how things go. The day is still young.”

My pulse raced as I climbed the metal stairs, rounded the tier catwalk, and headed straight for my cell. I had to force myself to slow my stride no matter how badly I wanted to run. One-way mirrors plastered the central tower like posters on a subway wall; it was impossible to tell if a guard was watching. Thinking fast, I opened the little storage cabinet, stood up the phone—a cheap prepaid burner with a scratched-up purple plastic shell—on a shelf, and leaned in close.

Perfect. At that angle, even if a guard spotted me, it’d look like I was just rummaging through my stuff. If I kept my head turned, they wouldn’t even see my lips moving. I dialed a number I knew by heart, fingers trembling so bad I messed up and had to redial.

The phone purred once. Twice. Then a click.

“Thank you for calling the Scrivener’s Nook,” Bentley’s reedy voice intoned. “How may I help you?”

I almost couldn’t answer, the words catching in my strangled throat. So many things I’d taken for granted: freedom, money, the high life, and the Vegas lights. So many things I didn’t appreciate until they were suddenly gone.

Family, most of all.

“Bentley, it’s…it’s me.”

“Daniel! Where
are
you? We’ve been trying to visit you ever since the trial ended, but nobody seems to know anything. It’s as if you vanished from the system.”

“Because I was never
in
the system. It’s a con, Bentley. The whole damn thing. I’m at Eisenberg Correctional. I—damn it, I’ve got so much to say, and I don’t even know how much time I’ve got on this phone.”

“Then say it in person. We’re coming to see you, right now.”

“I need you to get in touch with Jennifer,” I said, the words flowing fast now like water from a spigot. “There’s some trouble with her business partners. And also get word to—”

“In person,” Bentley repeated. I heard a gruff voice in the background. “Yes, Cormie, it’s Daniel. Daniel, we’ll be there in a few hours. Stay strong, son.”

The line went dead.

The minutes left weren’t the problem, I realized. The phone’s battery was down to half strength, and I doubted I’d get my hands on a charger in here. Once it died, there went my lifeline to the outside world. Still, my next call was just as urgent as the first.

“Southern Tropics Import-Export,” said a nasal operator. “How may I direct your call?”

“Emma Loomis, please.”

“I’m
so
sorry,” she droned, though she didn’t sound sorry at all. “Ms. Loomis is in meetings all day and can’t be disturbed. If I could take your number—”

“Tell her it’s Daniel Faust. I’m in a situation here, and I need her help.”

“Certainly, sir. I’ll give her that message as soon as she’s done with her meetings for the day.”

“No.” I took a long, deep breath. It didn’t help. “I mean, I need you to do it
now
.”

“Oh, but that’s quite impossible. She’s in a meeting.”

Southern Tropics was a front company, established to finance Prince Sitri’s operations on Earth and provide cover for his agents. I should have expected the head office of Hell Incorporated would have an unhelpful receptionist.
How does Caitlin deal with these people?
I thought. Then the answer came to me.

“I’m calling on hound business,” I said. “And if you don’t have Emma Loomis on this phone in the next sixty seconds, I will personally have you rolled in batter, boiled alive in cooking oil, and served in the company cafeteria as a tempura dish.”

Dead silence.

Then the operator let out an exasperated
tsk
. “Well, that’s
all
you had to say in the
first place
, sir. Please hold.”

The hold music came on. Kenny G, playing saxophone.

“Daniel?” Emma said. “Where are you?”

“Hey, Emma. I’m in prison. Don’t suppose you know when Caitlin’s coming home?”

“You’re in—wait, did you say
prison?
”

“Yeah, I imagine it’s like hell, but the food’s probably worse.”

“Don’t count on that,” she said. “And speaking of, our prince’s gala is…ongoing. These affairs tend to run long. There’s allegedly quite the orgy going on. Which I am
missing
, having been left behind to tend the shop in everyone’s absence.”

“I’m sure your dedication is appreciated.”

“Don’t count on that either. As for Caitlin, I’m expecting she’ll be back by tomorrow evening. Now,
why
are you in prison?”

The power bar on the phone drooped, shifting color from pale green to warning yellow.

“I don’t know how long I’ll have this phone,” I told her, “but call Corman and Bentley tomorrow morning and they’ll fill you in on everything. Can you get word to Caitlin?”

“I can try using the conduit. Even if I do, though, she won’t be able to come home early, not without Prince Sitri’s leave. Can you wait until tomorrow night?”

Good question. I’d used my one holdout weapon, the “gift” from the King of Worms, and I didn’t dare ask for another. Not with my head still throbbing and one eye feeling raw every time I blinked. Not when I’d come that close to being its meal. I had the knife, but the metal detectors meant I couldn’t get it out onto the yard, where I was most likely to get jumped. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s gang buddies wanted me dead, Fleiss might send more assassins—at least one of whom, even with a broken wing, was still lurking around the prison—and I had little doubt Brisco would steer me into another ambush if he thought the second time would be the charm.

“Sure,” I said. “No problem. Everything’s just peachy.”