Dead Mann Walking (24 page)

He nodded. “It would, and I could. The commissioner is in one of the back rooms right now. Shall I tell you what he's doing with who? It'd give you quite a bit of leverage. Married, you know.”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I don't need anyone else after my head. Will you talk to him?”

He leaned in as if to pat me on the shoulder. Instead, his hand lingered and squeezed. “Could you write it all down for me, Detective? Everything? In your own words?”

The conversation had taken a weird turn, but I wasn't sure in which direction. Did he want the details for the commissioner, or was I being poked and prodded without benefit of dinner and a movie?

But what choice did have? I shrugged. “Yeah. I could do that.”

His eyes lit up, making him look a little too happy. “Excellent! Use my laptop.”

He rose, headed toward the door. The Reservoir Dogs fell in behind him. I didn't care for how quickly they were moving.

“Mr. Green,” I called. I pointed to my head. “Not sure how much detail I can give you.”

He gave me a smile, practiced, deliberate, the way a snake would smile if it could. “Hessius Mann, do what you can. I'll do as I like.”

Before I could so much as grunt, the door closed and the lock clicked.

What the fuck?

Maybe he just didn't want me wandering around. Or maybe the whole chat had been a new way for him to jerk off over his big life question, and he liked it so much he might want to try it again. Or maybe something worse was going on.

If I was imagining things and I did anything about it, I could piss away my big chance for some help. I sat at the desk. There was some kind of form on the screen. Half of it was already filled out, including my name, address, and photo. It looked like he was collecting info for some kind of database, not a good sign. But I played along, adding what I could, doing my best to describe Turgeon without using the words
baby
or
egg
. As I hunted and pecked at the keys, though, I kept thinking about the door, getting more and more antsy.

After about fifteen minutes, I remembered what the emcee said:

That did it. Crap. I'd just been a prisoner at the warehouse. Friend or foe, good, bad, or ugly, I wanted out, now, and I wasn't going to ask to be shown the way. I found the wire leading up to the surveillance camera and yanked it. Then I picked up one of the nice, comfy chairs and threw it through the nearest window. Shielding my face with my arms, I jumped through the shattered frame. Was it the wrong move? Wouldn't be the first time.

I landed on a slate floor. I was on some kind of porch ringed with bushes thick with red berries. Late afternoon having given way to evening, I stumbled into the wicker furniture, trying to get my bearings.

And then I heard a sound like chimes. Three rings, pause, three rings again. It took me a while to realize it was an alarm, set off, no doubt, when I smashed the window. Footsteps tromped nearby, getting louder. Yep, an alarm.

I jumped over the bushes and scurried like a rat along the edge of the house, doing the quiet-dead-man thing. It didn't mean I was safe, not by a long shot. You'd need an army to keep this place secure, and Green could afford one. Given his hobby, they were probably trained to spot chakz, too. I slipped by at least ten of his men before reaching the delivery entrance at the rear of the house. I guessed it'd be a quick run to the hemlocks and the way I came in. The gate would be locked, so I'd have to figure some other way over the wall.

Only, I didn't go. Something held me back.

It wasn't torpor, it wasn't the guards, wasn't a Nancy Drew hunch, or a weird schoolboy pang about Nell Parker. It was a sound. It came from behind me, from the other side of the thick glass of a low basement window—moaning. Not just one voice, five or six.

I knelt and rubbed the glass to get a decent view. Inside it was like the chak pens Jonesey had warned me about. He was half-right. They weren't exactly pens, more like jail cells, solid metal bars, floor to ceiling. Straw covered the ground—to catch any gleet ooze, I suppose.

There were only two cells, a seven-foot space between them, one along each side of a deep room. The chakz on the left, some still dressed in party costumes, looked sullen, but functional. There was a cowboy, the hole where an eye used to be visible through his mask, a noseless robot, and two mermen danglers. They were all pretty quiet.

The moaning was coming from the second pen. It was standing room only in there, so many chakz I could barely distinguish one set of limbs from another. A gleet whose skull was half exposed chewed at the rubber gills covering his chest as if they were macaroni. An eye dangler in a scuba outfit started wailing as I watched. Four others looked as if they'd been at it a while, and were ready to blow. Shoved into tight quarters like that, it was only a question of time before they all went. Charred bones and burn marks told me what happened to them when they did.

With most of the guards outside looking for me, only one was here, a goofy-looking guy with a huge Adam's apple and a tense face. He had a gun in his hand, a magnum, and a key ring clipped to his belt. He was nervous, eyeing the moaners, trying to keep his distance. That meant putting his back to the other cell, where the “safe” chakz were. You know, the ones who were still smart enough to grab you from behind and try to get those keys.

I felt bad for him, wondered which chak would figure it out first.

The cowboy won. While Goofy watched the moaners, he watched him. When Goofy took a step back from the moaners, the cowboy took a step forward.

Goofy was just about to bring himself within reach of the eager cowboy when his Adam's apple rose like a radar antenna. His expression changed. He was about to turn around, catch the cowboy, and ruin it all. So . . .

I rapped at the glass.

That's all it took. The second Goofy looked up at me, the one-eyed cowboy reached through the bars and wrapped his arm tight around the man's neck. The other chakz joined in. In seconds, six arms held him against the bars. Two hands were clamped over his mouth, a third over his nose, and they held on tight until he passed out. The cowboy was smart enough to snag the keys before the body fell out of reach.

Next thing I knew the cell door was unlocked and the cowboy was opening the window. It made me wonder if Green was wrong. Maybe the smart ones aren't so rare. Maybe some of us are just smart
enough
to act dumb.

When I didn't climb in right off, the cowboy looked annoyed. “Can you talk? In or out?”

With his fellow escapees stumbling out into the hallway, I was blocking his path to the window. In or out? I wasn't sure. If I had half a brain I'd use the distraction of the escaping chakz to make for the hemlocks and catch the next train home.

I knew Green wasn't being straight with me, but I had a feeling it wasn't only so he could experiment with me. There was too much talk about Turgeon. There had to be something else going on, something with Nell Parker. If I could find her, she might tell me. And at least I could warn her personally. I can't say I didn't like the idea.

A group of guards storming along near my hiding spot decided things. I leaped in.

Seeing the guards, the cowboy shut the window. As he watched them rush by, he looked even more annoyed. “Shit, if you'd been faster, I'd be at the wall by now.”

“Hey, if I hadn't set off the alarms and tapped that glass, you'd still be locked up. Besides, how could you even reach the wall? He's got at least twenty men on the grounds, and you've got no depth perception.”

“A smart one, eh? Here. Got something for you.” He reached his hand into his pocket and pulled it back out, giving me the finger. Not the actual finger, just the FU sign. “I've got the layout memorized. Forty-seven seconds to the wall, twenty to reach the woods.”

“Show-off. If you're so damn smart, why come here in the first place?”

He made a face. “Same as everyone. Money. They let me in for the party. I was planning to pick a few pockets and blow. Didn't know about the chak checks. Every fucking hour. You don't react fast enough, ask how high when they tell you to jump on something, they think you're about to go feral and throw you down here. And once you're here long enough . . .” He nodded toward the moaners. “Green leaves them in there until they tear each other to pieces. Then he burns whatever's left. Watching that shit, I don't know how I kept it together.”

Another lost soul, or whatever. I wanted to give him a few bucks for his troubles. Instead, I don't know why, I pulled out Jonesey's crumpled flyer and handed it over.

He glanced at it. “A rally? You kidding me?”

“It's stupid. It's dangerous. It's something to do.”

I headed for the hall.

“Wait a minute! What about
them
?” He pointed toward the moaners.

“Up to you, cowboy,” I said.

“Oh, thanks. Exit's to the right, by the way,” he said.

“Thanks,” I answered. Then I headed left.

T
he escapees pooled in the hall, blocking the way. I had to push through them. Once I made it out of the pile, like a bunch of zombies they followed me. I tried explaining that the exit was the other way, but they either didn't believe me or, in the case of one earless guy, didn't hear me at all. With a nod to Frank Boyle's efforts during the Bedland hakker attack, I tried turning them toward the exit, but some slipped by and toddled deeper into the basement.

My Boy Scout efforts ended when a howl and a thud snapped all our heads back toward the door to the jail cells. There, the one-eyed cowboy flew into the hall and headed for the exit faster than if he'd been riding a horse. The moaning inside had turned into growls.

Son of a bitch, he'd opened the cage.

Far down the hall, I could see a staircase, but there was a lot going on between me and it. The chakz that'd slipped by me were already meeting up with some seriously armed LBs on their way down. I started running the other way, thinking I'd follow the cowboy. But once I took some turns, raced up and down some carved stone hallways, I was totally lost. The place was a fucking labyrinth. If the ferals didn't get me, I was afraid I'd run into a Minotaur or a giant piece of cheese.

A fancy wooden-slat-and-banded-iron door took me into a huge room, a cross between a wine cellar and some kind of freaky herb garden. I was thinking it was a dead end until I saw a bit of luck. A fire ax and hose were mounted behind one of those glass doors marked IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. The ax was only half the fun. Sitting next to it was a great big, juicy series of circuit breakers. A little chaos could go a long way in helping the chakz escape, and me get around.

So, ax, meet circuit breakers. Circuit breakers, ax.

My first swing didn't do much. The second earned a major spark shower and plunged the place into darkness. The emergency lights kicked in, but they were few and far between, leaving the basement dim enough to make it hard to tell the living from the dead. Plus, I still had the ax.

Screams came from all directions, wet and dry. Guards barked to one another, trying to organize themselves enough to cut off the exits, keep us down here.

“Herd them south! Nets up!”

“Twenty-one, where are you?”

From what I overheard they'd already screwed up. A couple of ferals had reached the grounds, forcing the guards to split up. I crept along, trying to stay away from everything, until I kicked into something on the floor. It spun and sloshed. A water bottle, half-full. Nice that Green kept his employees hydrated. I scooped it up.

About a minute later, I found another staircase. Unfortunately, there was a guard in front of it, and, unlike the others, he was decked out in thick body armor, like he was training German shepherds to attack fat, ugly people. He also had a flamethrower.

I got as close as I dared, then made it to a small, windowless room off the hall without being spotted. It could've been knocking the lights out, or maybe it was Nell's hoochie-coo dance, but I was starting to think I might be able to pull some shit off.

Water bottle in hand, I got ready to try an old trick. It didn't always work, but with all the yelling going on it might. I took a mouthful, let it soak my leathery throat. Then I shouted, nice and LB-wet: “This is twenty-one! They got my radio. I think my leg's broke.”

I hoped the guard wouldn't hear the water spitting out as I spoke.

“Hang on, Mike!” the man at the stairs said. It worked.

Through a crack in the door, I saw him lumber toward the room, his outfit making him look like the Stay Puft marshmallow man. I pulled away, pushed my back to the wall, and waited. When he came in, I jumped out, then used the ax to wedge the door shut.

“Hey!” he said.

He slammed into the door, but his protective gear acted like padding, making it tough for him to really pound. I doubted he'd use the flamethrower. Even so, it wouldn't hold forever, but it didn't have to.

I scooted up the stairs, moving on all fours, keeping low and lower as I reached the top. I stuck my head out near the floor. The stairs opened on a white-tiled corridor, silver cabinets lining the wall. Best guess was that it was a storage space for the kitchen. With all the action downstairs and outside, it was empty.

There was a second staircase right across from me, heading farther up. Up was probably a good bet if I wanted to find Nell Parker. Green's “playground” had been at least two stories tall, and she'd slipped up some stairs after leaving the stage.

After listening carefully for any possible company, I went for it. At the top of the second staircase, I stopped short at the sound of running. Green's personal guard, the two dog-gunsels, were pounding down the hall. With the glasses and the hair, these guys really could be twins. One had a slightly fatter jowl, maybe.