Metro (8 page)

Mudd has been doing that for such a long time too.

In the corridor of love and freedom.

“You're so
beautiful
, Jake,” Darian says, when he comes up for air.

The heat of it, like something from hell.

Darian whispers now, low and lost, like a child in awe: “I'm not sorry I have to do this. This is the way to
true enlightenment
. But I know how it is for you now. I know how much it hurts someone else when you love them with such purity. So we'll keep it short. For old time's sake.”

Mudd hears the words come from Darian's heart and breath, passionate in those last moments before the kill. He's heard it a million times, but he never thought it would happen to him, this close—that awful scent of a child's gum and the salty slather of his own blood, still trickling down his chin. The cold heat of true love. Because true love is nothing but blood to a man like Darian Stanwell.

Fuck you, Darian. Fuck you and fuck Eddie and fuck the whole goddamn perverted Monster Squad. Just fuck you fuck you
FUCK YOU
.

But Mudd doesn't say any of that out loud.

“Do your worst, you filthy faggot,” he says instead, hoping Darian will keep his promise and kill him quickly.

• • •

I
t doesn't work.

• • •

T
wenty minutes later, he finally drops the F-bomb on Darian Stanwell out loud. The sound chokes through like something half-alive, struggling through gurgling deep red and folds of torn flesh.

Jackie wakes up just in time to see it.

Sees the bad lieutenant who protected him since he was born tell the monster he's feared all his life to go fuck himself through a river of blood.

Jackie thinks it's still part of the nightmare.

Darian Stanwell turns and smiles at the kid in his bed.

The smile is gory and awful.

“Hello, child. I'll be with you in just a minute.”

• • •

T
he house is on the east side, of course.

That's where METRO has most of their safe houses.

A bit of a joke, really.

It's a neighborhood that looks bad on the surface but is really full of cops and lawyers and upscale web-development executives who got good deals on real estate and turned the world around. The catch is that it all still has to look shitty on the
outside
—keeps the IRS away and fools the local riffraff into thinking you don't have a TV worth stealing.

It's a typical one-story affair, bad shingles, one big living room window sealed off with a plaid curtain. No porch, just a tiny concrete landing, and the lawn is scorched from the Texas summer, scabbed over and half-dead like a dog with mange. Every lawn in Austin looks like that after a bad August. There was record heat this year.

Mark hauls the Black Box to the cement landing, checks the front door. Unlocked, just like the text message he got ten minutes ago said it would be. Inside, the living room is big. He needs to check the fridge. Jollie will need fruit juice. She always needs a lot of liquid sugar to come down from ecstasy.

There's juice in the fridge, it turns out.

Lots of juice, lots of food, lots of everything.

They are good here.

• • •

A
n hour later, Jollie sits on the couch, sipping a glass of Ocean Spray 100% No Sugar Added—
Sweetened with Real Fruit Juice
—Cranberry Cocktail.

Fruit juice sweetened with fruit juice?

She thinks that might be an ironic statement about her current situation, but can't for the life of her figure out what the hell it is. Sees herself reflected in the shimmering crimson cranberry pool, wondering if she's still dreaming.

Andy sits on the shag-carpeted floor, smoking a joint.

He's looking at the new plaster cast on his hand, custom-molded, secured there with ACE bandages, which covers the fresh needle-and-thread work. The wound seemed awful at first, almost separating his thumb from his hand, but now it doesn't even hurt. The field pack from the Black Box was filled with goodies. Everything from needles preloaded with morphine to surgical thread and plaster gauze.

Almost like Mark knew this was gonna happen.

Even had bags of weed and blow in there.

It only took Mark seven minutes by the clock on the wall
to sew the wound closed, wrap it up tight, and set the plaster cast. Mark never said a word the whole time. Stitches and needles. Just add water. His eyes and his breathing regulated carefully, hands unshaking. Like a professional. Then he rolled Andy a fatty and lit the good end for them, explaining that they needed it to calm down. And all at once, the room was filled with the familiar, comforting smell of high-grade weed. Just like home.

It's all so incredibly surreal.

Andy passes the joint to Jollie and shifts his gaze to the open Black Box, seeing what else is in there, as Mark paces the room, waiting on a phone call.

• • •

A
fter a very long time, Jollie finally says something.

She hasn't spoken in almost an hour.

She says this: “Those people back there, they were dead, right? Those people in our house.”

“Yes, they were dead,” Mark says.

“Who killed them?”

“They were going to torture and murder us.”

“Who
killed them
, Mark?”

“It's better if you don't know what's going on.”

“I think I have a right to know. I think Andy and I both do. Haven't you been telling us enough lies?”

“It's not about that, Jollie. It's about what'll make you safe. I didn't think we'd be in this situation. I didn't even think I would ever have to use the Black Box. It's an escape kit you're not allowed to break into unless the shit's really hitting the fan.”

“What kind of shit—and what kind of fan, Mark? I just want the
truth
.”

That's always what she's wanted
, Mark thinks.
Always the truth with this one, no matter what the cost.

He thinks about her radical pals in Philly. Senator Bob. He thinks about their petty filibuster scheme. He wants to let Jollie know how close she's been all these years—and how far away too. He wants to tell her she's been asking the wrong questions.

But he can't do that.

Not yet.

“You don't know what you're talking about,” he says to her. “You're still stoned.”

She almost laughs. “This whole damn night has been one hell of a buzzkill.”

Mark smirks and starts rolling himself another joint.

“They blew her head off,” Andy suddenly mutters, running his finger along the slightly-rusted .357 handgun in the Black Box. “That girl I was making out with. They came in my room and grabbed her and asked me what my name was . . . and then . . .”

Mark closes his eyes, picturing it. The moment when those goons shattered the peace of the Kingdom.

Marnie Stanwell, brother of Darian—the Son of Satan.

This is so goddamn bad.

“It was the Monster Squad,” Mark says out loud, before he can think better of it. “They're the only guys Razzle could have brought in so fast. I don't even know how the hell they knew—”

He stops himself, hard.

Looks at Jollie just as she looks at him.

“Knew
what
, Mark? What did you do? And what Monster Squad?”

They're a bunch of really perverted fucks. They kidnap children. Sell them. They also deal drugs and kill people.

That's what he wants to tell her, but he doesn't.

So Jollie starts screaming: “Jesus fucking
Christ
, Mark! You have to
talk to us
! You said something really heavy happened and you were leaving us and you wanted me to come with you—”

“Just calm down.”

“
Mark
—!”

“I said
calm the fuck down
.”

She stops.

“I was leaving because I had to,” Mark says. “Because of what I had to
do
. But I don't know how those guys zeroed me so fast. It's just impossible. Unless—”

“Unless what? Tell me, Mark.”

Unless those guys he hit during the sale weren't all dead when he left them. Unless someone ratted out Mark Jones and the House of JAM. The sick slime doing all the talking back there knew that he and Jollie and Andy were the
one percent ruling class
of the Kingdom—Marnie Stanwell used those exact words. He knew that the three of them were
royalty
. It's why they didn't just kill the Boy Prince like all the others back there—when he said his name was Andy and not Mark.

Whoever survived told them everything.

And that could only be . . .

Jackie.

How? He was shot six times.

But everything was a blur in that backroom.

And now Mark remembers that he never checked any of those men for pulses, never gave Jackie the head shot for insurance. Two bullets is usually enough. It didn't even take one bullet to kill Brandon Lee—just a plug of smoldering paper wadding, jammed in the barrel of a prop gun.

Jackie survived.

And Jollie can never know about that.

Already, she's looking at him like he's a monster.

And guess what?

“Was it some deal that went bad? Jackie always wanted you to go bigger—was that it? Did somebody hurt him, Mark?
Jesus Christ
—”

“I never wanted any of you to get hurt.”

“So that makes it okay to mess with our lives like this? I don't even know who you
are
, Mark!”

“That makes two of us,” Andy says, still seemingly mesmerized by the contents of the Black Box. “This is all professional gear, dude. We're sitting in a safe house right now. And he wasted five guys back there in, like, three seconds.”

Jollie's face drains white. “He did
what?”

“He's some sort of trained assassin. He did it all while you were sleeping. Those guys had me on the floor and they were about to take my fingers off, and he turned into the Tasmanian Devil.”

Andy heaves a half-smile, aims a thumb-and-forefinger pistol at Jollie.

With his good hand, of course.

Booyah.

• • •

J
ollie can't even find the words now.

That's a genuine first for her.

Mark just looks at his feet. “Eleven,” he says.

“What?” Andy says, looking up from the Black Box.

“I killed
eleven guys
back there. Four in the room, one in the hall, one in the bathroom. And five cops.”

Jollie shakes her head, her mouth gaping wipe, almost laughing. She can hardly remember the bodies in the house, and none of it even seemed real then. It still doesn't seem real now. She looks at Andy desperately, her whole body trembling: “Is he serious? Are you two guys fucking
serious
?”

Andy scratches his head with his bandaged hand, the fresh cast scraping against his sweaty hair. “Just look at his toy box, Jollie. It's all pretty obvious. He's a spook or something.”

Mark sighs.
The truth hurts when you tell it
, he thinks.
Because people are liars.
They live in lies. They live in denial. Live in it forever.

Jackie.

She can never know or she'll hate me forever.

“The Kingdom's been my cover for years,” Mark says. “But you two were never supposed to get hurt. It was never about either of you. It was about Razzle Schaeffer.”

“Then why are we here?” Jollie says. “Why did those people want to kill us?”

“They knew you were important to me. I had something they wanted. They were going to do whatever it took to get it back. I was supposed to do the job. Get on a plane and disappear. Nobody was ever supposed to see me again.”

“And what about Jackie?”

“He was never supposed to see me again either.”

“What
happened
to him?”

Mark lowers his eyes. He was hoping she wouldn't ask again.

She starts shaking her head again, wide-eyed now. Incredulous. “Why, Mark? Why would you let them hurt Jackie? That kid never did anything to anybody.”

“His father . . . would have hurt him eventually.”

It's almost like a lie. He tells himself it isn't.

Damn me straight to hell.

“Mark, if you let something happen to that poor kid—”

“I didn't. I mean . . . I think he's okay.”

Now that's definitely a lie. But it's also the truth.

From a certain point of view.

Jollie sags her shoulders. “Why did you come back? You must've known it would be scorched earth with us.”

“I didn't care.”

“Because you
love us
? Because you couldn't bear leaving without saying good-bye? How do I know that's not just more bullshit, Mark? How do either of us trust
anything
you say now?”

“I guess you can't. But I do love you. I love you both. That love was never supposed to happen. They . . .
teach you
not to . . .”

“Who's
they
?” she says, looking unimpressed. “We talking FBI, CIA? Some other deep-paranoia agency I've never heard of?”

Mark takes another deep breath. “It's never about whether you're paranoid, Jollie.”

She almost laughs again, because this is an old bad joke between them. “Are you fucking
kidding me
, Mark? Our lives have boiled down to some tired mid-eighties pun about the Cold War and my best friend is a black-ops super assassin by way of the Austin drug/kiddie-porn mafia? For fuck's sake, it just isn't happening. It just can't be real.”