The Never War (12 page)

“Y
ou're going to what?” shouted Gunny with horror.

“We're going to deliver a message from Max Rose to Winn Farrow,” I said.

Spader added, “And that's going to get us in good with Rose so we can find out about the natty-do he's cooking up with the Nazi wogglies. It's perfect.”

“It's
not
perfect,” Gunny said nervously as he paced the floor of our hotel room. “First off, you're not delivering a message, you're delivering a warning. Winn Farrow doesn't take kindly to warnings.”

“But we're just the messengers,” I said.

“That's even worse, shorty,” Gunny shot back. “He tried to kill Max Rose. Do you think he'd bat an eye over bumping off two messenger kids? No, sir. You boys can't do this.”

“I hear what you're saying, Gunny,” I said. “But May sixth is tomorrow! We're running out of time.”

“This is what we do,” Spader added. “It's what being a Traveler is all about.”

Gunny stopped pacing and looked at the two of us. Like it or not, what Spader said was true. This was what we were
there for. To chicken out and hide wasn't an option. I wished it
were
an option, but it wasn't.

“Then I'm going with you,” Gunny announced.

“You can't,” I said. “If something happens to us, you're the only one who knows what's going on.”

“He's right, mate,” Spader said. “You'd have to push on without us.”

This was the last thing Gunny wanted to hear.

“That doesn't make me feel any better,” Gunny said softly.

It didn't do much for me, either, but it was the truth. “It's not going to come to that,” I said with more confidence than I actually felt. “We're going to go down there, give him the message, and get out.”

“And what happens if you run into Saint Dane?” Gunny asked.

“I'm counting on it,” said Spader with conviction.

I didn't like the way Spader said that. The simple mention of Saint Dane's name always cast a dark shadow over his normally bright personality. Our best hope of pulling this off was to keep our heads on straight and be smart. If Spader lost it and went after Saint Dane, well, then Gunny would probably end up being on his own after all. I couldn't let that happen, mostly because I didn't want to end up on the front page of the newspaper under the headline
TWO BELLBOYS RUBBED OUT IN GRISLY MOB SLAYING.

“I'm not going to argue with you anymore,” Gunny finally said, sounding tired. “You boys have had more experience with this Traveler business than I have. But I know about Winn Farrow and how he operates. I promise you, the man isn't right.”

“We know,” I said. “We'll be careful.”

I really, really hoped that “careful” was going to cut it.

 

Twenty minutes later we were in a taxicab, headed downtown to meet the infamous Winn Farrow.

I have to admit, I was having second thoughts. What if Winn Farrow was as nutzoid-vicious as everybody said? He might start shooting before we even got in the door. The more I thought about it, the more I worried that we had gotten a little bit too cocky.

Spader must have sensed my tension because he gave me a friendly shove.

“It's gonna be fine, mate,” he said, actually sounding oddly cheery. “We're the good guys. We can't lose.”

I wished that were true.

“Besides,” he added, “nothing's gonna happen to you so long as I'm around.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked.

Spader didn't answer right away. I think he was trying to find the right words. When he next spoke, it was with a serious tone I hadn't often heard from him. I'd seen him blind with rage at Saint Dane. I'd also seen him devastated by the death of his father and the disappearance of his mother. But this was different. This was a thoughtful, sincere side of Spader that I hadn't known existed.

“I may not know much about being a Traveler,” he said. “But from what I've seen, the key to this whole thing is you, Pendragon.”

That took me by surprise. “We're all in this together,” I said quickly.

“True, but you're the one keeping us together. I think we're all playing our parts, but I've got no doubt, the most important piece to this natty puzzle is you, mate. If anything happens to you, I'm afraid the show would be over. I won't let that happen.”

I didn't know how to react. Though I was slowly starting to accept the fact that I was a Traveler, I wasn't ready to take on the responsibility of being some kind of ringleader. It was tough enough just trying to figure out why I was chosen to be a Traveler in the first place. I didn't want to be in charge, no way. The thought of it actually made me a little nauseous.

“I appreciate it, Spader,” I said to him. “And I'll be watching your back too.”

“I know that, mate,” he said.

I wanted this conversation to end. It was freaking me out more than I was freaked out already. Anyhow, the time for talk was over because the cab had screeched to a stop. I looked out the window and saw we were two blocks away from where we told the cab driver to take us.

“We're not there yet,” I said to him. “We need to go another two blocks west.”

The cabbie turned around and said, “Maybe
you
gotta go two more blocks, but I sure don't. Ain't safe for cabs to go over there. They see us comin', they think it's Christmas. I been robbed too many times to go in there again. So whether you like it or not, this is as far as I go.”

He meant it too. I didn't bother trying to talk him out of it. We got out of the car and paid him. The cabbie then hit the gas and did a quick U-turn with his wheels squealing. He gunned it out of there like he didn't even like being
close
to Winn Farrow territory. We watched him for a second as he made his escape, driving right through a red light.

It didn't help our confidence any.

“Maybe we should rethink this,” Spader said.

“I'm tired of thinking,” I said. “C'mon.”

We started walking west. As I'm sure you've figured out by now, this was a bad section of town. Gunny told us it was
the meat-packing district. Historically this was an area of Manhattan where all the slaughterhouses were. It was made up of big, rambling brick buildings where livestock were killed, cleaned, packed, and shipped. A grisly business by anybody's standards. Luckily for us, they didn't do the slaughtering here anymore. The main business was processing and shipping meat. It was a place most people avoided. Can you blame them? It wasn't exactly a fun spot for a Sunday picnic. I guess that's why so many criminals made their homes down here. It was the kind of place that even the cops avoided.

Yet here we were, Spader and I, walking right down the street like we belonged there. Believe me, we didn't. The further west we walked, the more I felt the hot stares of people's eyes on us. This was the kind of neighborhood where everybody knew everybody else. A stranger stood out like a brilliant light bulb in a dark cave. People watched us from doorways and windows and from passing cars. A few people even whistled. It was their way of taunting us, knowing that we were headed for deep trouble.

“I feel like we just arrived at a party we weren't invited to,” Spader said nervously.

“Or like it's feeding time at the zoo…and we're a couple of pork chops.”

Our destination was an old packing plant that was built onto a pier over the Hudson River. Max Rose told us exactly where it was. It was the place where Winn Farrow and his gang spent most of their time, when they weren't out slitting people's throats, that is.

After walking for a very tense five minutes, we found ourselves in front of a big brick building with the words
WILD BOAR MEATS
painted in two-foot-high faded white letters over the green, garage-style door.

“This is it,” said Spader. “What do we do, knock?”

The answer came quickly. Somebody had walked up behind us. I turned to see that it was more than one somebody. There were five guys, all wearing greasy clothes and worn caps. Their sleeves were rolled up to reveal huge, Johnny Bravo–style arms. I also saw that their hands and arms were stained with dark-brown blotches. I'm guessing these guys worked in the meat-packing plant, which meant those brown stains were actually, gross me out, dried blood.

None of them looked happy to see us. They all had scowls that told me they didn't like strangers and would probably make us pay for invading their turf. Looking at their hands again, I really hoped that those blood stains came from working in the packing plant and not from pummeling bozos like us who wandered into their neighborhood.

“Do you guys work here?” I asked, trying to sound like I wasn't about to pee in my pants.

They didn't answer. Their expressions got darker.

“We're looking for Winn Farrow,” Spader said.

Those were the magic words. But it was bad magic, because as soon as they heard the name “Winn Farrow,” they circled us, cutting off any hope we had of escape.

“We've got to see Farrow,” I said. “We got a message for him.”

The thugs started to tighten the circle. Spader and I went back to back. We didn't stand a chance in a fight against these brutes. I could see them clenching their fists, which made the knotty muscles in their forearms flex. Now that they were in close, I could smell them too. Didn't these guys know about deodorant? It was getting real ugly, real fast.

“It's a message from Max Rose,” I said in desperation.

The thugs stopped. I actually saw hesitation in their
focused, killers' eyes. We were seconds away from adding to the stains on their hands, but hearing Max Rose's name made them freeze. Better, they looked scared. Up until that moment we had only heard about what a tough guy Max Rose was. Seeing these thugs turn all Jell-O at the sound of his name confirmed it. Max Rose wasn't somebody you messed with.

Suddenly the garage door of the building flew up and four more guys stepped out. These guys were just as vicious looking as the smelly guys surrounding us, except they wore gangster-looking suits. They also had shotguns. I suddenly felt safer with the guys who only worked with their fists. One of the new thugs—I'll call him Shotgun—motioned toward us. Instantly the smelly thugs frisked us up and down, looking for guns. Of course they came up empty.

“We have a message from Max Rose to Winn Farrow,” I said. “We don't want any trouble.”

Shotgun looked back at the other thugs and laughed. The smelly thugs laughed with him. “You don't want any trouble?” Shotgun laughed. “Well, golly gee-whiz, we wouldn't want you to get into any trouble!”

The thugs laughed even harder. Great. Not only were our lives in danger, we had to be insulted, too.

Shotgun then barked, “Inside!” He motioned toward the garage door with his gun. Spader and I walked inside. The shotgun boys followed close behind us, but the smelly thugs stayed outside. I wasn't going to miss them.

Inside we saw what was once a busy slaughterhouse. Luckily for us, it wasn't in operation anymore. It was a big, open warehouse room that stretched up for three or four stories. There was a track running on either side of the ceiling with ugly metal hooks hanging down. My guess was this was where they strung up the cattle when they did the
yucky stuff. There were cement troughs in the floor that I'm sure caught most of the yuk. At the end of the track were long rows of wooden tables where all the slicing and dicing happened. Yuk. It's impossible to overuse the word “yuk” when it comes to this place. I like hamburgers as much as the next guy, but I never wanted to see where they came from.

“What is this place?” asked Spader.

“You don't want to know,” I answered.

“Pipe down!” shouted Shotgun. They marched us through this big room to the back of the building, where there was a large, open metal door on the back wall. “In there,” ordered Shotgun.

I was starting to get nervous. Okay, I was already plenty nervous, but now I was getting close to that hairy edge of panic. I had a fleeting thought that we were being marched to a quiet back room where these guys would start blasting away.

“Max Rose sent us,” I said again. “We want to see Winn Farrow.”

I was cut off when Shotgun poked me in the gut with his gun, pushing me into the next room. Spader shot forward and grabbed the gun, but the other thugs jumped him and threw him in the room after me.

The next room was almost as big as the first. There was a big stack of wooden crates full of I don't know what. There were also hundreds of metal hooks that were evenly spaced along the walls and ceiling. A flight of metal stairs led up to a catwalk that ringed the walls over our heads. I'm guessing they stored the sides of beef high and low in here. There were only two doors—the one we came through and another off the catwalk above us. There were no windows.

“Tie their hands,” ordered Shotgun. One of the other
thugs pulled out a length of rope and immediately started tying our hands together.

“If Max Rose finds out you wouldn't let us talk to Winn Farrow, there's going to be trouble,” I said, trying not to sound too pathetic and desperate.

“Really?” said Shotgun without a trace of concern. “And how's he gonna find out?”

“Oh, he'll find out,” was all I could think of saying. Great comeback. I'm not a good bluffer. The thug finished tying our hands so Spader and I were now roped together at the wrists.

“I'm saying this for the last time—” I said.

“You got that right,” came a voice from the door we had just come through. “You're doing a lot of things for the last time.”

Spader and I shot a look at the door to see a man standing there. I knew instantly that this had to be the one and only Winn Farrow.