Dig Ten Graves (12 page)

     He felt the needle, hot like a thin sliver of fire, slide into his neck. 

     His thoughts turned, very briefly, to Mom and Dad. To Jenna and Mr. Evans, brother Jeff, even Chuck and Rich, and he felt only a vague connection to them now. No, the only one who mattered was The Shape and he was sorry to leave but it was okay. He was a good boy.

    Petey closed his eyes, smiling, and drifted off to that place where, in the end, all good pets go.

Bonus time.

My very first professional sale (and by professional, I mean I got a few bucks for it) was Battle of the Carson Hotel, about four years ago or so. It was turned into a podcast, read by a brilliant voice actor named Andy Hoff, at a site called Well-Told Tales.

It’s nothing like the other stories in this book. But as my very first sale, it holds a special place for me.

And I still think it’s a pretty fun story. Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading.

H.L.

Battle of the Carson Hotel

     My younger brother Earle joined up to fight when the States got involved in the war, back in ’41, but I couldn’t go.  Too old, and I have a sort of gimpy leg.  But I keep up with what’s going on over there.  I try to “do my part on the home front”, just like all the social club ladies hawking War Bonds and little kids collecting cans.  I read the papers every day and hope my brother Earle and all the other boys come home safe and sound.

     But what I do, mostly, is keep the Carson Hotel respectable and free of riff-raff.   

     That night I was at work at the hotel, and Graham and me were perusing the local paper and reading about the First Infantry moving in on some German town called Aachen.  This was the fall of ‘44, and the headline read
Huns On The Run Before American Troops!

     Graham leaned across the reception desk and said, “First Infantry… that’s your little brother’s outfit, yeah?”

     I nodded, knowing I should be proud but only feeling anxious and nervous.

     “You hear from him at all?” Graham said.

     “Nope.  Censors won’t let them send mail right now.”

     “That’s too bad.  I’m sure little Earle is doing great, though, Len.” 

     It sort of bugged me, Graham’s tone, as if I was a punk kid like him who couldn’t stand the truth and needed to be coddled.  There was a good chance Earle was among the many dead over there.  Germany wasn’t going down without a fight, as last-ditch and desperate as it was.

     So I said, “Shut up, Graham, and gimme that bottle.”

     Graham looked wide-eyed.  “Bottle?  What bottle?”

     “The bottle I know you brought with you tonight and which is now directly under the counter.”

     He laughed good-naturedly and produced the bottle of whiskey.  He’d already taken a few nips but handed it across the desk like it was a Christmas gift.  “I didn’t think it would do any harm to have a little taste, Len.  It’s been a quiet night.”

     I took a healthy slug and slid the bottle back to him.  We played this same scene out a couple times a week, sometimes him bringing the bottle and sometimes me.  Not much else we could do.  The Carson Hotel was always dead this time of year and this time of night, but Graham couldn’t leave the reception desk.  As for me, I’d already done two rounds that night and wasn’t due for another until four, about two hours from then.

     Both of us were pretty surprised when, just as he was tilting the bottle back, the lobby doors flew open and a woman came in on a current of ice-cold Detroit air.

     Graham nearly choked on the whiskey, hurried to stash it away under the desk and managed to spill half the damn bottle on his uniform tunic.  The woman didn’t seem to notice, or if she did she said nothing.  She came right up to the desk, the way you’d come up to someone you were about to slug, and even though Graham was standing right there she rang the bell on the desk impatiently—
ping ping ping ping ping
—and said, “I’m here to visit Mr. Allen Vox, please.”

     Her tone made the ‘please’ part sound inconsequential.  She had hair as black as a nightmare, cascading around a pale face so delicate it was almost doll-like.  She wore an expensive fur and carried a black purse that matched her black shoes.  I won’t lie to you, she was an eyeful.

     Graham was in the midst of a coughing fit, the whiskey having gone down wrong.  He hacked and wheezed, turning away politely and holding up one hand in a ‘gimme a second’ gesture.  The second was more like a minute.

     The woman folded her arms, scowling. I leaned against the counter and tried to not look obvious, which is difficult for a guy my size.  She glanced over at me and I put on my best friendly-but-serious, and she turned away, clearly unimpressed.

     When Graham had sufficiently recovered, he said, “So sorry, ma’am, how can I help you?”

     “One of your guests.  Mr. Allen Vox.  I’m here to see him.”

     “Right.  Is Mr. Vox expecting you, ma’am?”

     “Of course he’s expecting me,” she said, very haughtily.  “I’ll have you know I’m not given to dropping in on men unannounced.”

     Graham reddened, fumbled for the registration book.  “Of course not, ma’am, I didn’t mean… I mean to say… I’ll just find his room number and ring him up.”

     The woman gave him a cold stare and I found that I was growing annoyed with her, and with Graham for being so intimidated.  Graham found what he was looking for, exclaimed, “Here we go!  I’ll just let him know he has a visitor.”

     He picked up the desk phone and dialed 405.  The woman watched his fingers, noting the number.  And I noted that she noted the number.

     While the line rang, Graham cleared his throat, drummed his fingers on the desk and smiled polite patience at the woman.  After a moment, he said, “Sorry, ma’am, Mr. Vox appears to be out.”  He cradled the phone.  “If you’d like, I can deliver a message when he comes back?”

     The woman bit her lip angrily and said, “I’ll wait in his room,” and started for the elevator.

     “Uh, ma’am, I’m afraid that’s, uh, excuse me…”

     She completely ignored him, blew him off like dust on her shoulder.  That tore it.  I stepped in front of her and said, “Sorry, lady.  I can’t allow you to do that.”

     She said, “It’s vitally important that I see him right away.  I must go to his room.”

     “Not gonna happen, lady.  Besides, you don’t have the key.  Did you plan on busting the door down?”

     She sized me up, probably wondering if I was fast enough to stop her if she made a break for the elevator or the stairs.  She wound up making the right decision.  Trying a different tact, she said, “Please.  If you only understood how important it is.  I’m terribly concerned about Allen… Mr. Vox.  I haven’t heard from him in days and I fear the worst.  He could be hurt.  Or… or he could even be dead!”

     She added a dramatic sob to the last word. 

     I said, “The maid cleans the rooms every day, ma’am.  She’d notice a dead body.  She’s very thorough that way.”

     “I beg you,” she said, moving in closer to me than was necessary.  “Can’t we at least check his room?  I’m so worried about him.”

     I looked down at her and knew then, without a doubt, that this was all wrong. 
She
was all wrong.

     And suddenly I was interested in what her story was.  I said, “Okay.  You win.  We’ll go up and check Mr. Vox’s room.”

     In the elevator she composed herself a bit and made a show of dabbing at nonexistent tears.  I didn’t ask her any questions about her relationship to the guest in 405; why would I?  I knew anything she told me would be a lie.

     The elevator at the Carson is notoriously goddamn slow, and the silence got to her before it got to me.  Seeing that I wasn’t going to respond to the sniffling, she sighed, put away her handkerchief and eyed me.  “You’re a big one, aren’t you?”

     I looked at her sideways and didn’t say anything, waiting to see where this one was going.

     “What are you?” she said.  “Six-four, six-five?”

     “I’m six-four.”

     She nodded, looking at me like you’d look at a show horse.  “Right.  And about 270 pounds, I’d say.  Mostly muscle.”

     “You seem unduly concerned with my personal proportions.”

     “Don’t get excited, Frankenstein.  I said you were big, not good-looking.”

     “Look, lady, I didn’t ask your opinion.  Why don’t you—“

     “Allen’s not big, but he’s smart.  Very, very smart.”

     “Good for you and Allen.  Honestly, lady, I’m not interested.”

     “Yes,” she said, completely ignoring me.  “He’s very smart.  He’s a scientist, as a matter of fact.” 

     The words were an awful lot like those of bored society women talking about how important their husbands were, but something dark in her tone of voice made me look at her.  She was scowling, probably unconsciously, her green eyes fixed on the elevator door. 

     Some trouble between her and her Mr. Allen Vox? 

     She looked at me and smiled in a way that made me uneasy.  “They’ve made a point of calling him ‘mister’ instead of ‘doctor’, but he’s a doctor just the same.  Yes, he’s quite brilliant.  Everybody seems to want a piece of my Allen Vox.”

     Against my better judgment, I said, “Who’s ‘they’?”

     She didn’t answer, only looked away from me, still smiling that strange little smile, and I faced front again and wished to hell we’d arrive on the fourth floor and the elevator door would open.

     The irony of that wasn’t lost on me three seconds later, when the door slid open and five men greeted us with guns in their hands.

     “Hands up,” one of them said.  “And out of the elevator, both of you.  Slowly.”

     Two things kept me from complying right away.  Five armed men was the last thing I expected to see standing there in front of the elevator, so that took about a second and a half to process.  The other thing, the thing that took up more like two seconds, was the quick assessment of what sort of chance I had of taking them down. 

     The answer: no chance at all.  Five guys with guns?  I’m pretty tough and I’m pretty quick, but I’m not Superman.  By the time the guy hissed his order a second time I was raising my hands and stepping out of the elevator.

     The black-haired woman did the same.  I noticed she seemed remarkably calm, and her face gave away nothing.

     All five men wore dark suits and needed shaves.  Their eyes were uniformly red and sleepless and the pallor of their faces said they hadn’t seen the sun in awhile.  The one who did the talking had a salt and pepper mustache slapped on a long thin face.  He said, “Okay.  Now both of you, move down the hall here.  Do exactly as I say and you won’t be hurt.”

     I said, “Are you gentlemen registered guests?  Because we don’t allow firearms in the Carson Hotel.”

     Mustache said, very calmly, “Do yourself a favor, big fella, and keep the trap closed.  Just move.”

     We moved.  One of the gunmen stayed in front of us, walking backwards very slowly and setting the pace.  Two others flanked us, and Mustache and the fifth walked behind.  All of them kept their guns pointed at us.

     “This is fine,” I said.  “I meant to do my rounds anyway.  Thanks for the company, boys.”

     No one answered, but the woman looked at me curiously.  I couldn’t tell if it was admiration or pity.  Maybe both.  I said to her, “Would these guys be the ‘they’ you were talking about?”  She didn’t answer.

     We passed room 405, reached the other end of the hall and stood in front of the emergency stairway.  In his calm, sleepy voice, Mustache said, “Okay.  Mrs. Galtry, you’ll be coming with us.  As for you, Mr. Hotel Detective, would you kindly step into the landing?”

     The gunman in front held the door open and Mustache pressed his gun barrel into my spine.  I didn’t like where this was going, but I went through the door.  All the possible scenarios played through my head, all the possible means of taking control of this situation and knocking the teeth out of these guys. 

     But every scenario ended with me catching a bullet in the gut.

     Three of them joined me on the landing, and behind me Mustache said, “Take care of him.  Now.”

     And so what if I took a bullet in the gut?  Better to go down fighting, right? 

     But as the old men say, some days you get the bear and other days the bear gets you.  I crouched low, ready to pop up with a haymaker on the jaw of the gunman nearest me, when something thumped hard at the base of my neck and pain jolted through me and everything went black.

     In case you didn’t know, I’ll tell you: being knocked unconscious doesn’t hurt particularly, but waking up from being knocked unconscious… that’s a different matter entirely.  First, there’s the headache, so bad it makes the worst hangover you’ve ever had seem like a day at the beach.  You can hardly move without little sledgehammers pounding at your temples from the inside.  Then there’s the nausea.  The first thing you want to do is vomit up everything you’ve eaten for the last three years. 

     And if you’re really lucky, you don’t have brain damage and after a few minutes you’re able to stand up without falling down and go after the sons of bitches that did it to you.

     Which, wobbling on my feet and gripping the stair rail, I made up my mind to do at the earliest possible convenience.

     There was no sign of the gunmen, or the woman.  What had Mustache called her?  Mrs. Galtry, that was it.  With the black spots slowly beginning to fade, I opened the door from the stairwell and onto the fourth floor. 

     No idea how long I was out, but it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes or so.  A lot can happen in ten minutes, though; like the complete disappearance of everyone involved in this little drama, except me.

     My head still throbbing, I made it to the door of room 405 and tried the knob.  Locked.  I didn’t bother to knock, just pulled out my key ring, found the master key for the fourth floor, and went in.

     The room was empty, just as I knew it would be. 

     Some signs of recent habitation, however.  The bed was unmade.  Three chairs were pulled around in a circle near it.  In the bathroom, a shaving razor lay open on the sink and some recently shaved chin whiskers hadn’t been washed down the drain.  There were ashtrays everywhere, packed with, from what I could tell, three different brands of smokes.

     Mister—or Doctor—Allen Vox had some company.  The gunmen?