The Infiltrators (24 page)

He walked along quickly, almost
trotting, and as soon as he saw a carriage that looked available
for hire, he hopped in, handed two solid gold coins to the driver,
and said, “To jail.”

He hoped Billy had seen him get inside
the carriage and simultaneously felt foolish for thinking it would
be such a Herculean task to find the jail. Perhaps his excessive
use of aerial transportation had made him a bit forgetful of some
of the niceties of land-based travel.

His worries about Billy getting lost
evaporated when he suddenly saw him perched on his knee grinning.
He then flew out of window but not before whispering into Righty’s
ear, “Don’t worry; I’ll be nearby.”

Righty’s heart was pounding heavier
than ever. Pitkins wasn’t even in this filthy business, and yet
both he and his wife had fallen victim to it. It brought back to
Righty’s mind unspeakable fears that he had quelled recently with
the purchase of his remote ranch for his wife but that now came
back to his mind with full force.

If it can happen to someone
not even involved in the business, it’s only a matter of time until
your turn comes.

His heart began to race even faster at
this ominous thought. He felt partly responsible, even though he
clearly had no collaboration in, or foreknowledge of, Rucifus’s
actions, but what he did know was he was going to rectify it or die
trying.

“Here she is,” a kindly voice said from
ahead.

Righty snapped out of a daydream full
of broken images he fought to repress—all belonging to Pitkins’
grieving face or the corpse of his wife.

He looked at his watch. An hour had
passed. He tossed another solid gold coin to the man and started to
get out of the carriage but then stopped himself.

“How many more of these will assure I
can find you here reserved for me throughout the next
hour?”

“Oh, I think two would be
sufficient.”

“Great—here’re three, and you’ll have
another three to take me back.”

“Thank
you sir!” the erstwhile reserved man said with
enthusiasm.

Righty stepped out of the carriage a
bit uneasily and headed towards the jail.

Two heavyset deputies looked at him
suspiciously as he approached the main doors.

As he walked in, he was greeted by the
soles of two boots pointed directly at him and the backside of a
paper. A tuft of unkempt hair poking above the paper was the only
other clue that there was a sentient being in the room.

The crumpled paper obscured most of the
contents, but Righty saw the words “massacre,” “Pitkins,” and
“bloodbath” more than once.

“Hehmmm,” Righty said, clearing his
throat lightly.

The paper lowered, and he saw a pair of
cruel eyes glaring at him from behind a large pair of
glasses.

“Yes?” was the flat reply.

“I’m here to visit a
friend.”

“You keep company with
criminals?”

“No, sir.”

“Then what’s your friend doin’ in a
place like this?”

“That’s what I aim to find
out.”

A deputy sauntered in with a hot mug of
coffee, looked at his colleague and then the guest, and then
proceeded over to a desk, but not without shooting a few sideways
glances over at Righty.

“Who you here to see?”

“Pitkins.”

If there had been tension in the room
before, it now seemed like a relaxing foot massage compared to what
followed once that seemingly harmless name issued from Righty’s
mouth.

The other deputy now stared directly at
Righty with undisguised hostility beaming from his eyes. The eyes
behind the deputy’s glasses grew even crueler—a feat Righty
wouldn’t have believed possible seconds earlier.

“Friend of yours?” he asked, a threat
ostentatiously in his voice.

“Of sorts. I’ve got business to discuss
with him.”

“He won’t be conductin’ any business
ever again. The hangin’s scheduled for next week.”

“The hanging?”

“Did you just drop down from a cloud,
boy? This man killed almost a dozen deputies and about twenty
civilians beyond that. That means he swings, you see.”

Righty felt panic wash over him, as he
realized he had no plan of action, but a gut feeling told him not
to do anything brash before he had found Pitkins’ wife. Rucifus
could probably pull some strings and get Pitkins off if he decided
to play ball, but once he was dead—or if he escaped—his wife was as
good as dead.

“Well, DAMN IT, he owes me money,
GALLOWS OR NO GALLOWS!!” Righty thundered in a voice so loud he
practically knocked the glasses off his inquisitor.

A long silence ensued, broken first by
the footsteps of a deputy who poked his head in to see what the
commotion was all about. He quickly figured one of the deputies had
done the shouting and turned and left.

“Now you just cool your heels, son,”
the deputy said, moving his boots to the ground, setting the paper
aside, and giving Righty his full attention.

He turned to the other deputy—“Chris,
take him back there. He’s got five minutes. If he tries any funny
business, you know what to do.”

“Yes, sir,” the deputy said, standing,
and he beckoned Righty to follow him with a scowl on his
face.

Righty felt a sense of doom and gloom
as he strode down the dank hallway, the hacking coughs of nearby
inmates doing little to add a sense of cheer to the miserable
ambience.

Just when a feeling of intense
claustrophobia was about to set in, the deputy inserted a long key
into a door, turned it with some struggle, and then opened up a
creaking steel door.

“Five,” the deputy said, looking at him
with a juvenile sense of self-satisfaction.

When he saw the deputy show no sign of
moving from the side of the door, Righty put a couple gold coins in
his pocket.

“For a little privacy.”

“You got it,” he said with undisguised
glee before quickly putting a frown back on his face.

Righty heard the deputy’s footsteps
growing more distant down the hallway as he walked inside and saw a
lifeless body stretched out on a bed.

Righty, if anybody, had seen his share
of aftermaths of whippings. After one fight in particular, a boxer
at his school was visited by everyone from the gym for about a
month while he recovered from a match that nearly cost him his
life.

That, and perhaps that beating alone,
prepared Righty for the pulverized sight before him.

Pitkins’ usually trim, business-like
face with a razor-sharp jawline was swollen into something
resembling a giant piece of fruit. Both eyes were sealed shut with
large, rat-sized lumps protruding around them.

The rest of his body was concealed
beneath a blanket, but Righty figured the rest couldn’t be much
better.

He pulled a small stool over to the
bed.

“Hey there, pal,” he said, using a
degree of familiarity that somehow felt fitting to the
circumstances but that would have been unthinkable days
ago.

A quick rasp from Pitkins’ mouth
suggested he had been startled, but with his injuries the best he
could do was move his head slightly towards Righty at a speed that
would have made falling molasses look like greased
lightning.

“Simmers?” he rasped.

“Tried to duck on me, didn’t you? You
know we had a lesson planned today.”

A slight rasp and a barely perceptible
movement at the corners of Pitkins’ mouth suggested some
appreciation for the attempt at levity.

Righty cast a stealthy eye over his
shoulder, got off the stool, and then leaned forward just a few
inches from Pitkins’ ear.

“Look, friend. I’d like to stay and
talk longer, but the guards won’t let me, and I don’t think you’re
in any shape for it either. But I want you to know this. I’m gonna
get you out of here, and I’m gonna find your wife.”

Pitkins groaned in pain as he moved his
head more in Righty’s direction, where it appeared he just might be
able to see him through a pair of razor-thin gaps in the
bruising.

“Please,” was all he could
muster.

Righty felt a lump the size of an apple
in his throat when he saw a clear substance trickling down the
puffy mounds around Pitkins’ eyes.

“What’s her name, friend?”

“Donive,” he rasped.

“Donive,” Righty said back in
confirmation.

“Can you stand a little good
news?”

“Huh?” Pitkins rasped.

“Your dog’s alive. I gave him some meat
and some water. He’ll make it.”

Pitkins’ grotesque face seemed to
smile, and Righty felt the lump in his throat grow to the size of a
watermelon. He coughed a couple times to regain his
composure.

“Simmers?”

“Yes.”

“Guh . . . green.”

“Green?” Righty asked in
bewilderment.

Rasp. “Healed dog. Spicy Green healed
dog,” he said amidst incredible rasping, leading to severe
coughs.

“Spicy Green’s illegal,” Righty said
cautiously, aware it had once been lawfully sold as a culinary
spice in Sodorf City.

“Heals,” Pitkins responded
simply.

“Okay,” Righty said
confused.

“Bring,” Pitkins rasped. “Bring
Green.”

“You want me to bring you Spicy Green?”
he asked, fully understanding the question but thinking Pitkins had
perhaps lost his mind.

Pitkins moved his head up and down
slightly and then appeared to doze off.

Righty stood up, walked out, and began
making his way down the hallway.

“I’ll walk you out,” the deputy said
cheerily.

Chapter 34

As Righty walked out of the jail, his
head was spinning, though he didn’t know which was the greater
cause—the images of the bludgeoned pulp that was left of his sword
instructor or the fact that at this moment the biggest drug kingpin
in all mankind was racking his brains trying to think of how he was
going to quickly score some Smokeless Green for the last man on
earth from whom he would have expected such a request.

He realized he had no better place to
look than Pitkins’ house, since he said it had healed his dog. As
far as he knew, Spicy Green was nothing but Smokeless Green with a
bit of pepper added to it, and he did not know of pepper to have
any healing properties.

Would regular Smokeless
Green work just as well?

As he got into the carriage, the irony
dawned on him that it would practically be a tie between taking the
carriage to the edge of town, walking to Pitkins’ house, and
finding Spicy Green (even if he found it there right away) and then
walking back until he found a carriage and returning to the jail
that way versus hopping on Harold’s back right now, flying to his
ranch and picking Smokeless Green right off the plant, and then
flying back.

But he had no idea where Harold was at
right now, and even if he did, hopping on a bird’s back in the
middle of town and taking off would draw a little more attention to
himself than he cared for at the moment.

His anxiety lay not with Pitkins,
however, but with his wife’s situation. Every minute that passed
without him finding her was an increase in the probability she
would be killed, violated every way imaginable, or both.

Were the situation reversed, he would
sure hope that as he lay there pulverized in a jail cell that his
friend would move a hell of a lot more quickly to find Janie than
he was doing to find Donive. Heck, her name was all he had to show
for his efforts so far.

Just as he began to think this was a
trifling detail, little Billy flew into the carriage and onto his
lap. As Billy’s face looked intently at Righty’s, the theory
occurred to him that while the little fellow’s brain was sure
small, it quite efficiently read faces because he could practically
feel the little devil reading his mind.