Alien Blues (28 page)

“Go on,” David said.

“They've got my box.”

She stood so close he could hear the quick intake of her breath, the loud gulps when she swallowed. David didn't like the way the men looked at her. He wished she had a shirt on, under the vest.

“Naomi.” David clenched his teeth. “Go.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks.

“That
one
,” she said. “He … she. It's got my box.
You know what's in there, Silver
.”

“Naomi,
go. Now. Move
.”

He heard something behind him.

“Go, go, go!”

A shot flicked sparks along the wall beside him, and echoed through the tunnel.

“Throw it behind you, cop.”

David dropped the gun.

“Up against the wall.”

David backed into the cold stone wall. A man in a red sweatshirt waved the barrel of a gun. The lookout. David's knees felt weak.

Naomi was trembling. She had a cigarette between her fingers, but her hand shook so badly she dropped it.

One of the men against the wall, one with a heavy handlebar mustache and a trim narrow waist, lit a cigarette. He licked the end of it and offered it to Naomi. Her mouth popped open, making David think of a hungry baby bird.

She took a small puff of the cigarette.

“Move away, Quintero,” the lookout man said.

Quintero stepped back, but kept his eyes on Naomi.

David didn't hear anything, but saw Naomi shift her attention to the well of darkness on his right. Both Quintero and the fat-necked man beside him turned to look.

David checked the lookout man. The man's gaze was cool, and still focused on him. David squinted into the darkness.

The figure moved closer and David caught his breath. Santana was tall and impossibly thin, soft brown skin covering a build that was lean to excess, thin wires of muscle strung over bone. Two women moved stealthily behind him—a matched pair of cats with a dangerous aura of confidence.

“I see you, all my babies.” The melodious voice was marred by a slight childish lisp. Santana paused under the light, and David studied him, as he was meant to.

Santana's eyes were deep brown, the whites so clear they were almost blue. The lashes were black and long, girlish. He wore black boots that had silver over the toe, black jeans, and a white silk shirt. A silver buckle glinted on a leather belt that encircled a slender waist.

His fingers were long and supple. The cheekbones on the face were high and pronounced, the skin smooth and luminous. A beautiful man/woman—mesmerizing as a snake. Small rosebud breasts swelled under the white shirt, nipples erect, prominent.

“Give it to me,” Naomi said. “
You've
got it!”

Quintero turned to Santana. “That box she was carrying. That's what she means.”

Santana smiled. From nowhere, it seemed, the box appeared in the long brown fingers.

Naomi bared her teeth. David felt her move just as she screamed. She hurled toward Santana with the lit cigarette.

The women behind Santana strained forward, then settled back at a small movement of Santana's hand. The box smashed on the stone floor.

Santana held his arms wide, welcoming Naomi like a lover. He swept her off her feet, and pulled her arms behind her back. David heard the pop when both shoulders dislocated. Santana put his mouth on Naomi's, stifling her cry of pain. He bent her to him, pressing until her neck snapped. David flinched.

Santana rounded his lips over Naomi's mouth, like a dog sucking marrow from a bone.

The tunnel was silent. Quintero took a deep breath.

Santana's mouth slipped wetly off Naomi's lips. He let her go and she slid down his chest, her chin catching his belt buckle before her weight pulled her to the floor. David stared at the crumpled body, the glassy eyes, the magic box that lay an inch from the lifeless hand.

“David Silver,” Santana said softly, and the warm promising voice sent ice up David's spine. “I been wanting to know you for some time now.” Santana held out a hand. David felt the flesh on his cheek tighten and twitch, though Santana was not close enough to touch.

“I know Rose.” The voice implied a peculiar intimacy. “She and I go way back. So I been curious about you. Her husband. A cop.” The voice was lilting, sweet and slightly southern. “And the weather, you know, is in our favor. We have time to kill.” Santana motioned to Quintero. “Hold him.”

Quintero grabbed David's arms, and the coat bunched and strained, pulling across David's back, clumping over his shoulders. He was hot, suddenly, cramped, the coat holding him like a straitjacket.

Santana was smiling, face luminous and soft.

“I will love you.” The rich timbre of the voice promised him pleasure. “I will hurt you.” The voice throbbed, promising pain.

Santana moved toward him in the dark passageway, body flowing, sinuous, rippling ever close. David feared the proximity, yet felt a fascination that was almost desire. Get it over, he thought. Get it done.

The seductive slowness became a blur of motion, and a well-calculated blow caught David on the left side, breaking two ribs and bruising a third. He heard the chuff of his breath as it escaped his throat, felt Quintero's grip tighten on his arms and take his weight as his legs jelled and collapsed beneath him. And he knew, in a small working part of his mind, that Santana had pulled a punch that could have gone right through him.

Santana touched David's cheek with fingers that smelled faintly of lilac. He cupped David's chin in the sweet-smelling hands and bent close, licking David's lower lip with a fleshy wet red tongue.

David closed his eyes and groaned, clenching his teeth against the tongue that strained between his lips.

Santana pulled away, sighing softly. “Sweet. So sweet.”

David lifted his head, his voice a guttural hiss. “Stick to the pain, Santana.”

FORTY-FOUR

David's mouth was pulpy and wet, and blood trickled down the back of his throat. He coughed, thinking he should roll over on his stomach.

“He's still moving.”

David coughed again, and strained sideways.

“More like
trying
to move.”

“We been here too long.” Santana's voice. “Beller, check for weather. See if it's safe to go out.”

“What about her?”

“Leave it.”

“We taking the cop?”

“I have something in mind.”

Someone was lifting him—firm hands under his armpits, propping him against the wall. He slid sideways. Santana straightened him up again.

David couldn't remember being hurt this bad before, couldn't remember feeling such hot brokenness inside.

“
Silver
.” Santana patted his cheeks affectionately. “Look at me, Silver. Focus. Still there? I have something for you.”

Why did he keep on? David wondered.

“I wish I had time to take you with me,” Santana said, voice soft, regretful.

David wanted to lay down, but there was a reason—wasn't there?—that he needed to sit up.

“Pay attention.” Santana opened his fist. “See this?”

David squinted. Fine black dust laced the cracks and crevices of Santana's moist palm.

“This is it, my friend. My
cop
. Black Diamond. It will make you feel better, so much better. And it's the new and improved version. Programmable, Silver, do you know what that means?”

David wanted to say something, but the words wouldn't come.

“Easy, Silver, take it slow. This is just a taste. Five minutes. Five intense beautiful minutes. But if you like it, Silver—and you will—and if you ask me nice, I'll give you something that will keep you up for seven hours. That's
hours
—seven. And just the beginning of what we can do, Silver, think of that. Programmable highs. The drug has no limits, only people do.”

Santana stroked David's shoulder and David flinched backward, the pain hot and electric. Broken collarbone, David decided. Christ.

Santana smiled. “I'm afraid, the shape you're in, you may not survive. And then, maybe you will. Either way, the word will get out. From the coroner's office, or the hospital grapevine. And the cops will shiver, and gear up their guys—ready to battle my Diamond. But the customers, Silver,
my
customers, will line up for miles.

“So this is for you, my cop.” Santana blew Black Diamond from the palm of his hand. The black dust settled with soft finality over David's face.

FORTY-FIVE

It was over too soon—a memory while he was still trying to hold it. The pain seeped back, waves and waves, intense, grinding, taking his breath away.

Tears trickled from the corners of his eyes.

Clothing rustled—there was someone in the passageway. Someone had watched. Boot heels clicked on the stone floor, getting closer and closer.

“Come on, Quintero, we need you right now. The van's on its side and we need everybody to get it up.”

“On its side!”

“Man, you should see it. We had a blow like you wouldn't believe. Whole side of the street's wiped out.”

“What about him?”

“He ain't going nowhere. Santana said come.”

Their footsteps were loud, then soft. They would be back, David knew.

He rolled sideways and tried to get up on his knees. He couldn't raise his left arm, so he pushed with his right, rocking back and forth, trying to keep his balance. He remembered when his daughters were babies, how they had swayed back and forth on their knees, trying to crawl. Had they been this frustrated?

His legs went, pitching him facedown on the floor. His fingers brushed something soft and feathery. Naomi's hair. David stared into her sad, wary face.

He pushed with his toes, pulled with his right elbow, and inched across the floor. Sweat ran down his temples and seeped across his back, drenching his shirt and raincoat.

He stopped at the edge of the wormhole. He wanted the raincoat off. He wiggled out of it, keeping the left arm straight, setting up hot runnels of pain. The broken ribs kept his breathing shallow, but he was able, finally, to crawl away from the bloody, sweat-stained coat, into the cold dusty blackness of the wormhole.

He kept moving, going slowly, treasuring every inch of progress that took him farther away from Santana. He understood Rose's nightmares, her fears, her memories. He didn't know where he was heading. He could die in the black twists and turns, like a mouse behind kitchen walls.

There were worse things than solitude and darkness.

The temptation to press close to the wall and rest was getting stronger. He was cold, and shivers ran through him in bursts of agony. He stopped moving, resting his cheek on the gritty rock floor.

He wished he had kissed the girls good-bye. Which one of them had been crying?

So few of his friends had made it out of Little Saigo. Why him and not them? He thought of the woman he'd heard singing when he and Bertie had made their way behind the walls. Had Ruth sung to him when he was a baby? Had his mother?

How wasteful it was, to throw away Ruth's affection for his children.

He heard singing again—a man's voice, baritone and pure. “Hatikvah.” Jews in the tunnel. The voice washed over him with the comfort of his father's affection.

His father had taught him so many things—his prayers, his duties, how to tie knots, how to hammer a nail. But he had not taught him how to keep Lavinia happy.

He wondered if his father was really dead.

David crawled. He would keep moving until he found a way out of the wormhole. He would kiss his daughters.

A large cockroach wandered past his cheek.

His breath came quickly, and the broken ribs circled his chest with a deep hot ache. Best not to think, he decided. Bertie would stay put, as ordered. Mel would never find him behind the dark stone walls. Santana might.

Definitely better not to think.

The top of his head bumped solid rock. David stretched his hand forward and sideways. The wormhole had ended. No twists, no turns, definitely the end. He reached upward, felt rock, and realized the ceiling pressed two inches over his head.

The sump pump throbbed beneath the rock.

David squirmed sideways, but there was no room to turn. His elbow wedged him in tight. He could not breathe, or go forward. He yanked his elbow loose and squeezed his eyes shut. Slow, easy breaths, Silver. Slow, easy breaths.

He inched backward, his left toe hitting rock. Fear made him cold, and he sobbed. There could not be rock behind him.
Think
. He'd crawled in, he could crawl back out.

He prodded backward with his foot. He'd turned a corner without being aware of it. He moved backward slowly, keeping his mind strictly on the task at hand.

The jog in the tunnel was a short one. David squirmed back into the open wormhole.

His shoulder was swelling and aching with mounting intensity. He thrashed from side to side, trying to get away from the pain. Moving hurt more, and he forced himself to lay still. If he kept going, he chanced working himself into unknown depths of rock that did not open into any tunnels, but instead drove him deeper into the earth.

Behind was Santana.

David laid his head down on the cold rock floor.

Somewhere a dog was barking. David opened his eyes. He heard the scrape and scuffle of dirt underfoot. A rock hit the wall, setting up reverberations in the wormhole behind him.

“What the
fuck
is going on here?” The voice came through the ventilation shaft, echoing oddly.

David closed his eyes and smiled. Mel's voice. A dog barked, then whined, scrabbling at the rock on the other side of the wall. Dead Meat? Leave it to Mel.

David frowned. The scuffling noises had come from behind. If Mel and the dog were on the other side of the wall, what was in the passage behind him?

Something—someone?—was in the tunnel, heading his way. David held his breath and listened. Whoever it was moved steadily and swiftly. His best bet was to stay quiet.