The Unlucky Man (14 page)

"There’s someone in the mist," Quinn hissed urgently, still sighting on Wychelo. He was losing it fast from the look in his wide eyes. "Someone who makes my skin crawl same as you do. How do you explain that you creepy motherfucker?" he growled, voicing the strange creeping parity between the cold eyed assassin and the encroaching white wall.

Quin was unravelling quickly now, every breath of misted air leaving him more strung out than before, spooling his poise out like so much unwound cotton. The whispering was increasing too, a steady creeping susurration that seemed to come from all sides.

Around us, the mist was moving as if alive, coalescing and resolving itself into half-seen shapes, darker patches that flittered and moved in the corner of the eye and disappeared when you tried to look for them. Dark patches that looked almost like the shapes of people. My mouth felt full of electric and there was so much tension buzzing off Quinn and his men I expected them to sizzle and crack with each jerking movement. Quinn was breathing in heavy gulps, taking in great lungfulls of the coiling air.

I caught Corg’s eye and tried my best to convey "When this goes off, get ready to run," without moving my face in any way. I think he got it.

Wychelo’s lips slid back revealing even, white teeth. "Put it down," he said with deadly finality. I looked from his cold, impassive face, still with poise, to Quinn’s bunched up features, a vein pumping madly at his temple, teeth bared. There’s only one way this ends, I thought.

"What’s happening?" Quinn whispered again, desperation edging into his voice, his final plea. What followed was a complete cessation of all movement, the whispering stopped: whatever - if anything - was waiting in the mist held its breath.

"Fuck it," Quinn breathed and I could read his intent. His fist tightened on the grip of his rifle, knuckles white and bloodless on the trigger. With a speed that seemed impossible, inhuman, Wychelo whipped up his hand and we all heard the zip as he fired, once, at close range.

There was blood in the air. Something howled.

I grabbed Corg and pulled him into the wall of mist before Quinn even started falling. It closed around us immediately, muffling all noise so the boom of automatic weapons fire came to us as a muted staccato, the answering zips as chilling as the hiss of a knife through velvet.

Whether they were firing at each other or us or something else entirely I didn’t know or care, we just ran, not stopping until our legs were pained and stiff with lactic acid and our lungs burned with each laboured mouthful of chilling fog that felt like fingers stroking at our faces.

We ran and ran and didn’t stop until, at last, we were free of the mist that grabbed at us like dead men’s hands.

"What the fuck was that?" Corg breathed but I could only shake my head. I could tell him what I’d felt: that the world was stretching and melting to join with another that lay just behind it, but how could I put that into words that didn’t sound crazy? There was no way. He pulled out his phone and dialled, putting it to his ear and stumbling off a few steps in something of a daze.

Small snakelike knots of mist still hung limply in stray bundles close to the ground, moving with a repulsive undulation, whispering apart with oily reluctance as I kicked out at them. Corg was on the phone, speaking animatedly, but I couldn’t hear the words. My mind was still full of the sounds of another place, of the strange sibilant voices I’d heard as we tumbled madly through the fog, of unknown animal calls and howls from a place that wasn’t there and yet, I felt sure, was real or as close to it as made no odds. I shuddered at the thought as Corg limped back over to me.

"She’s on her way," he said, waving the phone, then added regretfully, "Poor Genie."

It took me a moment to catch up. Oh god, I thought, he named the hearse. Of course he did. Despite the events of the day a smile was trying very hard to spread itself across my features.

"Genie?" I said tightly.

"Fuck off." It was good to see him getting back to normal and we lapsed back into tense silence, waiting, trying not to listen and watch for sounds and shapes that weren’t there on the far side of the lingering curtain.

When at last the familiar beat-up shape of Loess’ ride came into view it was a blessed relief. We piled in, shivering and desperate.

"Shit," she said, taking in our further ravaged appearances. "What happened?"

"You think we look bad you should see Genie," I said, though it came out as little more than a croak. "Listen, let’s get the hell out of here." Obligingly she put the pedal to the floor. It was only some time later that my brain caught up enough to wonder where we were going.

"We’re heading out of town," Loess said, throwing a wink. "You’ve got an appointment to keep."

***

As she drove, Loess gave us a brief history lesson. The Old Town Motel, she told us, had first come to fame, or should that be infamy, some thirty years ago at a time when pretty much all organised crime in the city was orchestrated by three rival families. Three families at war, but a war that was costing each of them dear and holding them back in their main preoccupation: making money. Or at least, making even more money.

"So," she said, as the grey city whipped by though the windows, "One of the families reached out to the other two and proposed they hold a council of war. But the big question was where could they meet to discuss their business? They couldn’t agree to anywhere in the city else two of them would be in the third’s territory and none of them trusted the others as far as they could spit. No one would agree to be held at a disadvantage.

"The solution? The heads of all three headed out of town, to the nearest motel outside of the city limits – neutral territory – and they sat down, with the cops of course, and carved the city into big pieces of pie and, for a while I guess, peace reigned."

"Until?" I asked. There’s always an until, after all.

"Well," she said, flipping on the wipers as the first inevitable fat drops of rain spattered the windshield once more, heralding the beginning of yet another deluge. Despite knowing better, I had sort of hoped we were done with the rain for a while.

"For a time everything ran smoothly and more meetings were held at the Old Town, and there grew out of them a sort of code. All three families had to be represented at every meeting and all baggage was left at the door. It was like a church or something, holy ground. There was an understanding that this was equal territory and they all accepted that its value as such couldn’t be overestimated."

Our headlights cut a swath through the deepening afternoon, lighting the road markings like neon veins.

"But then, naturally, someone got greedy," she continued. "Someone started to wonder why they were only taking one third of the pie when there was so much more tasty tasty pie for the taking."

"I’ve just realised how hungry I am," Corg chimed in. Loess pointedly ignored him.

"So this one family, they thought about it and they planned and wondered how to hit their enemies – who were, after all, paranoid and never easy targets. I heard that none of the heads ever went anywhere without their own private retinue of tough guys, drove bullet proof cars, the lot. It was only at this one place you saw them relax a little, and so they realized that they had the perfect opportunity for an ambush just waiting for them outside the city."

"At the motel?"

"Surely. So they paid off the cops and they came armed to the next sit down. And it was a bloodbath." We drove for a while in silence, listening to the steady swipe of the wipers. "Of course," she said at length, "It’s never that neat is it? Decapitate the head of the snake and two new heads grow back. In the end it spelled death for all three families and their turf war shifted, their influence diminished and they were gradually banished to my side of the Links and, I guess, everything that’s going on there grew out of it."

"But the Motel’s still there?" Corg asked.

"I guess it must be, though I imagine it must have seen better days. Here endeth the lesson," she added with a smile.

We rolled on still further, the city shrinking behind, the buildings becoming fewer until we were passing the kind of grubby industrial size shopping complexes and manufacturing zones that seem the make up the fringes of all major cities, lit by the kind of bright white lights that made your eyes ache.

"That was a fun story," Corg said at last, as I watched the city fade in the rearview. "I do kind of hope that it wasn’t portentous to our own situation, however."

Loess arched an eyebrow at him in the mirror.

"I mean," he said slowly, "I hope that we, too, aren’t happily rolling into a trap."

"Whimsy?" she asked, uncertainly. "Do you trust him?"

"We’ve never even met him," Corg replied.

"I trust him," I said simply. In truth I hadn’t even considered it until that moment but I knew the words to be true as I spoke them. "I saw his face when he saw me bleeding on the ground, it’s enough for me."

"Ah well," Loess said with a bright shrug. "Too late now anyway, I guess."

We had just passed the city limits.

It turned out that the Old Town Motel
had
seen better days. It was raining harder than ever by the time we reached the fabled establishment but what we could see through the cascading downpour looked far from inviting: paint peeled and bubbled, brickwork crumbled and gutters wept. A handful of once white free standing lodge cabins rose out of a muddy courtyard that was fast becoming a swamp of mulch, like bleached bones.

"Nice taste our man has," Corg observed drily.

Loess tsk’d and pulled us up outside of the manager’s office that was little more than a shack, a flat, wooden building painted in flecked, faded pink and illuminated by a single grey bulb, ensconced behind a mesh cage, that crackled and hissed in the falling rain.

"As you boys are wanted felons I guess I’d better brave the weather and get us a room," Loess said.

"Don’t know what we’d do without you," I said in reply, and meant it.

She threw me a wink before bolting off into the rain, reappearing a few minutes later with a set of keys.

"Surprisingly enough," she said, putting the car in gear and pressing forward onto a lot that was a seething sludge of churning mud with some nominal gravel scattered on top like marshmallows in cereal, "We would seem to be the only guests." She held up a warped, chewed, key fob shaped incongruously like a Christmas tree.

"Cabin one."

We pulled up outside the tattered, wood framed shed and raced through the driving rain into the cabin. Inside, aside from the cold and musty smell, our new home turned out to be surprisingly comfortable. Two small beds took up the back of the main room, their linen old but clean enough. To the left of them was a small bathroom complete with tiny shower and hand basin, at their foot a small kitchenette and seating area with a black vinyl table for eating. The whole thing didn’t seem to have been redecorated since the time when the motel was used as a conference centre for crime-lords but at least it was dry and quiet. A small electric heater was even pumping out enough heat to make the atmosphere somewhere just shy of cosy.

"The manager told me there was a bagel place in the next town, a couple of minutes down the road," Loess said, shaking droplets from her hair. "Fancy anything?" The looks on our faces must have said it all as she gave a small laugh and nodded. "Okay," she said, "I’ll be back soon."

I watched her run back through the lot to the car, the headlights lighting up the swamp and sweeping away, before turning to find Corg exploring the contents of every drawer and cupboard in the room.

"Never know," he said, catching my eye. No, I thought, I guess you don’t.

Loess returned a little while later bearing a brown paper bag, much droplet speckled, packed full of styrophome containers that she passed into our eager hands. The enticing smell of rich cheese and grease went straight to my growling gut and I felt myself start to salivate in anticipation.

I don’t know if it was just the fact that I hadn’t eaten since I didn’t know when, but that bagel was a slice of heaven. Grilled pastrami, two types of cheese, mayo, dill pickle all came together to make a sublime, toasted, greasy delicacy that filled my mouth with flavor and my belly with satisfaction. I wolfed down two in quick succession with definite gusto.

"Good?" Loess asked, nibbling delicately at her own.

" ’Mazing," I managed thickly through a mouthful of half chewed greasy bread before licking the last sweat sour tang of pickle from my remaining digits.

She looked pleased, then produced something else from the bag: a bottle of single malt. Corg let out an involuntary whoop as she tossed him the bottle.

"You are an angel fallen from heaven," he said seriously, snatching the whiskey out of the air.

"Thank you, I try," she said.

"I wasn’t talking to you," he responded, cradling the bottle like his newborn child.

"Though I am grateful," he added after a beat.

And so we waited, each lost in our own thoughts.

Now and again the world of our cabin was lit by a flash of lightening followed by the ominous peel of thunder rolling across the sky.