Darkman (9 page)

“If your houseboy appears to be in agony,” Durant said sweetly, “it is because he is. Where is the document?”

“I don’t have any goddamn documents,” Peyton shouted as Pauly jerked him to his feet. “Yak’s only a lab assistant. For God’s sake, let him breathe!”

Durant smiled. “Rick, old boy, be so kind as to ventilate the young slant-eyes. The good doctor ordered it.”

Rick jerked, looking positively green, but his hand went inside his belt and he pulled out a small nickel-plated pistol. Peyton tried to surge forward, but Pauly gave him a vicious backhand that sent him reeling. Rick shot Yakky in the mouth. He died instantly. Martinez dropped him to the floor. Peyton seemed to be on the verge of fainting. Durant laughed.

“Better than John Wayne,” he said, giving Rick a wink. “You’re coming along nicely.”

Rick turned his head and threw up on the floor. When he was done, he fumbled with his prescription bottle, managing to drop it. It rolled to Durant, Rick staggering after it. Durant crushed it with one patent-leather shoe. Amber plastic crunched. “Nice touch,” he snarled at Rick, making him back away. He turned his face to Peyton. “We’re out of time, Doc. Give me the fucking paper I came here for!”

“I do not know what in hell you are talking about,” Peyton said evenly while blood drooled down his chin and spattered on the floor.

Durant sighed. “I have an appointment in less than fifteen minutes, and I do not expect to have to drag you along. Perhaps if we asked your lady friend? Julie?

Peyton jerked. He shook his head. “If you touch her, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Durant shouted. “Look around yourself, Doc. We don’t horse around. If we don’t find the memo here, we’ll find it at her place. Maybe even your place. I don’t have much time, and I’m not famous for being patient with raw assholes like you.”

Peyton frowned, his eyes shifting back and forth. He nodded to himself. “Wait,” he said. “I have a piece of paper in my breast pocket. That’s as close as I can come to a document.”

Durant stepped forward and ripped open Peyton’s lab coat. He slipped his fingers into the pocket of his shirt. The hand came out holding the trophy he had been seeking. He spread it open and grinned.

“I like you a lot better now, Doc. I really enjoy mutual cooperation. Guys?”

Smiley handed his leg gun to Rick. “My turn, boss.”

“Bullshit,” Pauly snapped. “He’s mine.”

Durant waved his hands. “We’re a team, men. You can both have him.”

They lunged at Peyton. He looked quite surprised to be so popular. They jerked him backward, away from Yakky’s bleeding body, toward the ThinkTank-PinkTank, where electricity hummed and porcelain insulators stood naked and obvious. Smiley smiled, seeing them. He would have smiled at an enemy battle tank just as much. He and Pauly spun Westlake around and pulled his hands toward the insulators, where naked wire was coiled and exposed. Peyton struggled uselessly.

“Ain’t this dangerous?” Pauly asked Smiley.

“Only if you touch both sides at once.”

“What are you, an electrician?”

“Idiots!” Durant shrieked. “Shut up and torch him!”

Smiley wrapped Peyton’s left hand over the exposed copper wires, then nodded to Pauly. Pauly held on to Peyton’s forearm and forced his hand around the insulator. A brief shower of yellow sparks shot across the room. Peyton, electrified and unable to let go, performed a fantastic shake, rattle, and roll, shrieking with pain. Smoke boiled off his captive hands. The skin popped and split, exposing white twigs of bone where the muscle was cooking and bending. He screamed and screamed and screamed.

“God,” Durant muttered, plugging his ears. “I’ll bet that
hurts!”

Smiley tried to pull Peyton away. He was as good as welded there. Pauly punched him hard in the face, knocking him backward. His hands jerked free from the insulators and burst into flame, sending the stench of burned hair and cooked meat into the air. Rick gagged, standing at the doorway with an empty bottle in one hand and nothing at all in the other, where a prescription bottle usually resided. He looked horrified because he was.

Peyton fell on his face with his hands tucked underneath him, extinguishing the flames. Rick was oh so glad. The stink was enough to kill a buzzard, to his way of thinking. He turned to go, but . . .

. . . but Durant wasn’t finished yet. He nodded once more to Smiley and Pauly, and they understood well enough what he meant. They lifted Peyton by the clothes and charged at the ThinkTank-PinkTank. At the last moment they applied the brakes and let Peyton dump headfirst into the fluid. Electricity flashed and popped, hurling sparks in random patterns.

Smiley went into a squat to watch him. Inside the pink stuff, his head was turning back and forth while scream bubbles boiled out of his mouth. Smiley was aware that something was humming that hadn’t been humming before. It sounded like a jarful of wasps. He stood up and went to Durant.

“Hear that?”

“Sure. So what?”

“What kind of mad scientist is this guy?”

“Who cares? He played with me, so I’m playing with him. Gentleman’s rules. He knows what the scoop is.”

Smiley went back to watching Peyton being drowned and fried at the same time. There was a huge blue flash, a bullet charge, and suddenly the pink stuff was boiling, boiling. A chunk of blackened skin floated to the top, and then another. Hair surfaced in a single dark blot, then was dissolved by the heat. Smiley decided that enough was enough. Rick was dry-heaving over in the corner. Smiley jerked Peyton out and let him crumple to the floor.

“Chicken?” Durant asked casually.

“Enough’s enough. He’s dead. Let’s go.”

Durant shook his head. “Evidence, Smiley. When are you going to learn?” He went to the tank marked
ACETYLENE
and turned the knob. It began to hiss. He opened the other one, the one marked
OXYGEN
. Another hiss.

Rick, done with his stomach, watched all this with growing alarm. “Boss,” he squeaked after a minute, “won’t those things blow us sky-high along with the doc? Won’t they?”

Durant smiled, shaking his head. “Not to worry at all. We will be long gone before any explosion occurs.” He pulled his fancy electronic lighter out of a pocket, and moved the water dish from the toy bird, and put his lighter there instead. He positioned it, frowning with concentration. When his interior voice signaled bingo, he gave the bird a tiny flick with one finger. The bird began to bob in tiny little jerks. The acidic smell of the acetylene was getting thick. Durant got his cigar trimmer out and handed it to Martinez. “Get me one of the Jap’s fingers,” he said, and Martinez did. By the time he handed the trimmer back, everybody was coughing.

“Exit stage left,” Durant said, and they went out.

The bird bobbed, its plastic beak dropping lower each time, aimed perfectly at the ignition button, thanks to Durant’s diligence. Peyton was on the floor, stunned by so much pain so fast. He tried to stagger to his feet, but the world tilted out of control and he landed hard on the floor. He began to crawl, gagging on fumes, dimly knowing what was about to happen. In the corner of his vision he could see the bird, pretty little bird, a gift from Julie many years ago, about to touch off a spark and ruin everything for which he had worked for so long.

He made it to the table. He tried to grapple his way up, but his mangled fingers only slid across the polished steel. The bird bobbed. Peyton gave in to a sudden urge, and passed out.

After that there was only noise and fire.

8

Peyton

T
HE FORCE OF
the explosion shot Peyton and most of his equipment skyward. The equipment, test tubes, glass beakers, petri dishes, a discarded pizza box, as well as the dead Yakky, were hurled nearly forty yards. The equipment chattered down on the foul-smelling river, sinking instantly. The pizza box became a distant kite, blowing in the breeze. Fire belched out of the laboratory, a giant mushroom made of orange and red.

Peyton landed in the river, just beyond the pier. So did Yakky, and a remarkable amount of glass and metal.

Yakky sank immediately. Peyton performed one of the world’s biggest belly flops, smashing hard onto the brown surface of the river, tearing his clothes to shreds. He floated facedown, nearly dead, riding with the current. He came awake long enough to raise his head. There was not much to see: a burning building with no roof, a decaying pier, a tremendous fireball.

He groaned, then sank deep into the water.

9

Julie

P
EYTON WAS OFFICIALY
buried three days later, on an autumn afternoon. Multicolored leaves swirled down and a brisk breeze hinted at the winter to come. He was nestled inside the world’s smallest coffin; all they could find was an ear. It was a bit ragged around the edges, but the coroner’s report confirmed that yes, it had indeed belonged to Peyton Westlake. Of Yakitito Yanagita they could find nothing. The police decided that the explosion was a freak laboratory accident, and shut down their investigation. The laboratory was cordoned off, awaiting city demolition crews. The ear was given to Julie. She had it buried with full honors.

Pappas and Swain gave her two weeks off to do her grieving. It was not a good idea; too much painful time to endure. She phoned Peyton’s mother in Indiana with the terrible news. Peyton’s father had died some six years ago, and Mrs. Westlake was not well enough to fly out and participate in the funeral. She had cried on the phone, which sent Julie into an emotional tailspin. At the funeral it was Julie alone. The temporary marker at the head of the grave read simply,
PEYTON WESTLAKE
. The monument sculptor said it would take three weeks to get the real one done. He charged six hundred dollars.

While she waited, she cleaned out the catastrophe that was Peyton’s apartment, and it went up for rent again. She cried as she lugged the boxes that were the remains of Peyton’s earthly possessions to her own apartment; she cried as she sifted through the soggy black junk that had been his research equipment. Most of it was salvageable, but not many people were interested in buying unrecognizable burned machines that looked as if they had been to the moon and back.

Before she left the lab for the last time, she took the strip of carnival photos out of her purse, the ones they had paid a dollar for so long ago when the future was bright and there was still laughter in the world. She stared at them for a long time while hot tears coursed down her cheeks, the pictures of her and Peyton kissing and clowning around, the pictures of them in love. She shoved them into the crude slot Peyton had cut into the side of the computer.

She did not know why. It seemed fitting somehow. In a world full of senseless death and hideous surprises, it seemed somehow all right, the final act of a romance that had come close to being a marriage.

Yet perhaps, or perhaps not, for the simple reason that if there were computers in heaven, then Peyton would surely get the message.

10

Robinson

D
R
. P
HILLIP
R
OBINSON
was a very happy man on this Monday. The clouds in the sky were coalescing into black anvil shapes, promising rain. As chief resident of Whicock County Hospital, it was his pleasure to guide the four young interns new to the hospital as they began their careers. It did not bother Robinson that he had graduated from med school twenty years ago, or that medicine had made so many advances that his schooling had become archaic. He read the medical journals on a regular basis and considered himself up-to-date. He had even published an article or two in the
Journal of American Medicine,
articles that dealt with the treatment of radically burned patients. It was his specialty, his obsession. If two or three weeks passed without a single new patient in the burn ward, he became morose and irritable.