All the Way Down

by Eric Beetner

  On cue, a high-heeled shoe blurred into Dale’s periphery. A high-pitched karate yell came close behind it and Dale felt the sharp spike of the stiletto heel dig into his temple.

  Dale let go of Tat as he tilted toward the floor, the impact of the kick ringing his ears. Another high yell sounded, but Dale was already on the ground. He rolled over to see a girl in her twenties he thought he had seen in the room when he first arrived. Her tight-fitting tube dress was hiked up her thighs exposing her red thong. When her foot came down from clipping Dale across the skull, the heel snapped off on the hard tile floor. She flailed for balance, her second attack thrown off by the sudden spin of the earth.

  Her war cry never stopped. As the girl regained her footing and shifted her weight to attack with her good heel, Dale pawed at his belt, hunting for the gun he knew he’d stashed there only moments ago.

  Above him, Tat spun in a confused circle trying to avoid the girl and maybe think about escape. His arms flung out from his sides like deadweight. Droplets of blood hit Dale in the cheek as Tat swung.

  Dale couldn’t find his gun, his brain temporarily fuzzed out from the kick to the head. As the girl reared back for another attack, he saw the quick flash of Lauren’s hand and the gun turned butt-end first in her fist. The gun clubbed the young girl across the back of her skull and stunned her. She didn’t go lights out, but she stopped yelling and it halted her attack.

  Lauren whacked her again. Dale saw Tat start to make a run for it and thrust out his own feet to tangle in Tat’s legs as he got moving. Tat fell, and with no arms to protect him, hit the floor hard on his chest and his face.

  The girl followed him to the floor soon after.

  Dale scrambled up. “Thanks.”

  Lauren spun the gun back around in her hand. “No problem.” She turned her attention to the bank of elevators and the numbers in red digital readout climbing from below. “We gotta go.”

  Dale looked at the numbers ticking off Tat’s backup team’s inevitable arrival. “Yeah, but where?”

  “Stairs. Here.”

  Lauren turned and ran. Dale had to scoop up Tat, his nose now dumping any blood not already lost to his hand. Dale felt his own streak of red sliding down the side of his face from the heel-shaped indent in his scalp.

  Lauren made it to the stairwell using the building schematics she’d studied for a week before her meeting there. She’d been fascinated by how Tat came to possess the abandoned structure and how nobody could touch his criminal utopia inside. The building plans were public record and unless he’d altered them since moving in, she knew the layout of the fifteen stories as well as the architect.

  Lauren pushed open the door and held it in place with her body while Dale muscled Tat down the short hallway. “Come on, they’re almost here.”

  “I need to get to a phone, have this asshole call his guys off.”

  “An elevator full of his guys are about to be here. We can find a phone one floor down. Now, go.”

  “Shit.”

  Dale pushed Tat through the door and into the concrete stairwell. A stenciled number fifteen was spray painted on the grey cement wall. Concrete dust from construction still gritted the floors and the scraping of their shoes echoed down the shaft.

  Lauren stepped in and let the door slam behind her.

  Tat blew out, spraying blood off his lips. “You’re dead. Both of you. Dead.” His voice came out stuffy and slightly muffled from the nose full of blood. Dale knew the feeling, the blood dripping down the back of your throat. He could almost taste the bitter blood in his mouth.

  Dale pushed Tat forward and down the first steps. “Tat, I hate to say, I told you so.” Dale had to grip his prisoner with both hands to keep him from falling face-first down the steps. “I tell you what though, we get to a phone and you’re gonna call off your guys or you’ll be the one who’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Dahlia looked at the clock, wondering how early was too early to get to the clinic. Sitting around the house made her fidgety, but the idea of arriving with too much time to spare and sitting in a waiting room for an hour or more with her eyes down, avoiding contact with the other women there made her queasy. She wondered if there would be music. Would she have to sit and read month-old People magazines about vapid starlets’ lives being so goddamn difficult while she and her fellow moms-for-now crushed back tears and composed silent, internal eulogies for babies they’d never met?

  Would she be trapped in a crowded room with a dozen other women all feeling the same gut-churning emotions inside, or worse, would there be one lonely teenage girl crying into an already wet tissue? She’d have to ignore her. Ignore anyone else in the place. Dahlia didn’t have it in her to give her strength to someone else. She needed all of it for herself.

  Times like these she needed a vice like smoking. Instead she checked over her directions again even though she had it memorized. The route was convenient. She could even stop for groceries on the way home.

  Dahlia went to the kitchen to check if she needed eggs. The doorbell rang.

  Grateful for the distraction, she went to the door ready to endure the practiced speech of a fringe political group or a crackpot religious sect. She found two tall men with dark, tanned skin and tight black T-shirts on her stoop. They both had tightly cropped hair and one wore a neatly trimmed goatee. He took the lead.

  “Mrs. Burnett, could you come with us, please?”

  Dahlia pushed the door closed by a few inches. “Who are you?”

  “We need you to come with us.”

  Being a cop’s wife, Dahlia had been drilled in this situation before. Most of those instructions were as out of reach as the gun in the nightstand upstairs, but she remembered Dale being adamant—don’t let them in the house. It’s called a home invasion for a reason. Don’t let them invade.

  “What is this regarding?” Stall tactics. She looked beyond the two figures and tried to find someone in the street—a neighbor, the mailman. Empty.

  “We really need you to come with us, ma’am.”

  They were polite, not getting all gangster thuggish with her. Still, they wouldn’t say who they were. She couldn’t see the bulges of guns, but they hadn’t turned around. She knew she was being optimistic. This was a crime in progress of some sort. She had to know that.

  “Do you have any ID or anything?”

  The two men shared a look. Dahlia didn’t like it. She slammed the door and spun the deadbolt, then ran into the house.

  Behind her she heard two kicks, then the splintering of wood. She ran a circle around the sofa in the living room, no idea where to go or what to do. She saw the phone on the kitchen counter and bolted.

  The two men moved fast. They split up, flanking Dahlia so she couldn’t alter her path at all. In the kitchen, she was cornered. She scooped up the phone in her right hand and the man with the goatee reached her and slapped it away. The cordless bounced off the granite countertop and landed in the sink. A small series of what she could almost call sobs escaped Dahlia’s throat. Panicked whimpers. Fear she knew no words for.

  The clean-shaven man took hold of her right arm. The other man put a finger to his lips and shushed her. “We’re just supposed to take you in. No one’s here to hurt you.”

  That’s what they say right before they hurt you, Dahlia thought. She swung her left hand in a wide arc. The goateed man ducked away like a boxer and she brought her hand around, curling her fingers into claws before her hand met the clean-shaven man’s face. She raked four red gashes across his cheek. He let go of her arm.

  “Fuck. She cut me, T.”

  Keeping his boxer’s form, T shuffled forward on fast moving feet and planted a right jab to Dahlia’s face. She took the punch in stunned silence. The force of the hit spun her around and she hit her hip bone against the counter. She looked down and saw blood from her mouth splash on the granite.

  “Lady, let’s not do it like this.”

&
nbsp; Dahlia pulled open the drawer in front of her. She stabbed a hand inside and she spun, coming out with the first thing her hand wrapped around. She swung the thin-bladed boning knife out in front of her. T ducked away again, retreating toward a neutral corner.

  His partner had been moving closer, looking to wrap her in a clinch from behind and subdue the wildcat. Seeing the knife arcing through the air, he lifted his hand as if he were blocking a punch. This punch had a six-inch steel blade on the end of it.

  The knife punctured his palm and wedged itself between the bones. Dahlia held on as he jerked his hand at the sudden shock of pain. Her fist gripped tight to the hilt as he waved his hand left, then right. He stared at the tip of the blade peeking out from the skin on the back of his hand, his own blood pooling out around it.

  “Fuck, dude.” He grunted a pained caveman noise as they continued to move together with the knife stuck in his palm and she unwilling to let it go.

  T waited for an opening. He made one quick move forward, but the tangled duo twisted and blocked him, putting his partner’s back to him. T retreated to wait for another opportunity, not eager to get a knife through his hand or any other part of him.

  The partner pulled again and Dahlia went with him this time, pushing forward with his momentum. His hand and the knife tip protruding from it went toward him. The blade dove into his neck. It caught his left side as he turned a second too late to avoid it. The blade bit skin but only for a moment. The puncture was only a half inch deep, but it severed something vital.

  His arm went slack when the new pain started and Dahlia pulled the knife free, his bones releasing their grip on the blade. The man turned to face T, confusion on his face. T took a small step backward, away from the gore. He seemed frozen by the turn of events.

  As he spun, the young man spewed blood. He covered the four bananas on the counter, the pile of unpaid bills, the empty mug and spent tea bag Dahlia hadn’t cleaned up yet.

  The dot of blood on her lip from the punch became insignificant. He turned again, trying to find T’s eyes. They stood, the three of them, and watched him bleed. Dahlia against the counter, panting frightened sobs, T by the fridge, and the bleeding man beside the breakfast bar, neck rotating and spraying blood like a lawn sprinkler.

  Dahlia tried to drop the knife, but her grip on it was subconscious now. Some deep part of her brain knew she might need it again. She looked at T and saw the horror on his face as his partner bled out while searching his eyes for help or answers.

  His black T-shirt became blacker as it soaked through. The pumps of blood slowed. The cut looked so small, then it would open with another gush in time to the man’s slowing heartbeat. She thought about her appointment again. Would there be blood?

  The man started to slump. Dahlia broke out of her trance first. She ran.

  The front door was imploded in on itself and hung open. She sprinted through the house holding the boning knife like a relay runner’s baton and made a mini hurdle jump over the threshold and out of the house.

  14TH FLOOR

  They reached the landing for fourteen and Dale saw an elaborate keypad on the door. No simple push bar and they were in. This floor had a security system.

  “The fuck is this?”

  Tat slumped heavy in his arms, dazed by pain and unwilling to help his captor.

  Lauren stepped around the prisoner. “It’s a fingerprint scanner. This is Tat’s personal residence. Only he can get in.”

  “If only he can get in, how do you know about it?”

  “I’ve been researching this building for weeks.”

  “So how do we get in?”

  Lauren gestured to the man in Dale’s grasp. “Duh. It’s his fingerprints.”

  Dale wasn’t thinking straight. This whole thing had gone so off the rails, he was bound to make some stupid mistakes, but he looked like a rookie to the girl. He needed to shake it off, assume some authority over the rescue mission. Act like a goddamn hero and maybe the mayor would hear about it and say something nice to get his prison sentence reduced from a hundred to only fifty years. He was proud of himself up in Tat’s office. He still had some moves. Tat was the worst part of his weakness, his time on the take. He was a damn good cop. He knew it. His record showed it. The top brass agreed. But it was what his record hadn’t shown—until this morning—that would define him as a police officer.

  “Which hand?”

  “Right.”

  Dale went to reach for Tat’s right hand and balked when he saw the bloody mess at the end of his arm. The ragged hole in his hand had gone a dark purple from the half-coagulated blood and the bruising. He had no choice. Dale lifted Tat’s hand by the wrist. Tat let out a sudden yell, the combination of the pain in his hand and his dislocated shoulder tag-teamed to bring a shooting pain through his body.

  Dale tried to be gentle as he wiped Tat’s right thumb on Tat’s own pants to clear away some of the blood and make a clean print. He set the thumb down on the tiny pad and gave it a gentle side to side rocking motion, perfect perp printing technique, just like they taught him at the academy all those years ago.

  A tiny light went from red to green and the door clicked open. Dale felt the sudden urge to draw his gun.

  The room inside was dark and quiet. Dale toed the door the rest of the way open and tried to look around the corners. Lauren waited outside, looking to Dale with a question mark, as if she wondered if she should be scared or not.

  “Is it okay?”

  Dale swept his eyes from left to right. “Looks like it.”

  He pushed Tat through the door and followed him inside.

  If Tat’s office was a gaudy attempt at impressing people with his wealth, his apartment was a tacky attempt at seducing the female of the species through sheer submission. The couch was a zebra print with a bear skin rug on the floor in front of it. Gold candlestick holders balanced on every surface next to pots of potpourri in strong floral scents. A heavy stone fireplace surround sat at one end of the living space and large canvasses of nude oil paintings hung under low-wattage gallery light as if they were actual art and not the horny fantasies of some middle-aged Picasso wannabe.

  Dale lingered on a painting of two women with long Gene Simmons tongues in a sixty-nine position. He pulled his eyes away. “Nice place. Now where’s a phone so you can call the guys who are after my wife?”

  “Fuck off.” Tat’s voice was weak and slurry. Dale couldn’t be sure how much blood they’d left behind in the stairwell, but he was glad it wasn’t his.

  “Lauren, you see a phone?”

  “Hard to see anything in here.” She ran a hand along the wall until she found a switch. She flicked it and a wide crystal chandelier lit up the room and threw diamond reflections off every surface like being inside Liberace’s jockstrap.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  The new voice made both Dale and Lauren jump. Dale turned to see a woman facing them, a .45 pistol heavy in her grip. She was pretty, Latina, busty, and slender enough to pose for the artwork on the walls.

  She noticed Tat. “Ai, papi.” The tip of her gun drooped as she studied the blood stains and saw the slumped, defeated way he walked under Dale’s guidance.

  Dale raised his gun at her while she was distracted. “Question is, who the fuck are you?”

  The woman snapped back to attention, brought her gun up to aim at Dale again. “What are you doing with him?”

  “Looking for a phone.”

  “Let him go.”

  Dale shook his head. “He had that chance. Now he’s got to do me a favor first.”

  Lauren saw some sort of opportunity and lifted her gun to the woman in a classic cop grip. “Put the weapon down.”

  The Latina kept her gun on Dale but turned her eyes to Lauren. “You’re the reporter. The mayor’s daughter.”

  “You must be Tat’s number one.” Lauren sidestepped to the right, away from Dale and Tat. “For this week, anywa
y.”

  “He said you had a smart mouth.”

  “What would you know about being smart?”

  Dale kept up his eyeball search for a phone. “Ladies, can we get back to the phone here. Tat needs to make a call.”

  Lauren continued her sidestepping, drawing the woman’s view farther away from Dale. “You know what being the mayor’s daughter meant for me? It meant self-defense classes. Years of them. We don’t get round-the-clock secret service like the president or anything. I was on my own, but my dad was paranoid. He wanted me to be ready for anything. So I took karate, taekwando, Krav Maga. You name it.”

  Dale was silently impressed.

  “So you drop that weapon, or I’ll take it from you.”

  Tat spat a gob of blood on the floor. “Carolina.” The woman looked him in the eye. “Kill this bitch.”

  Lauren didn’t wait for the girl to follow orders. She kicked out with a long right leg and connected with the wrist of Carolina’s gun hand. Her pistol flew. The fight was on.

  Dale pulled Tat back and pressed against the wall, his gun at the ready but afraid to take any shots while Lauren’s limbs flung at their shared target.

  Carolina had her own training, but it was school of the streets. Her fighting style was girl-fight vicious and punctuated by loud screams. She immediately went for a hair grab. She got a few strands between the loose fingers of her right hand, but Lauren spun away and mentally checked that box. Watch out for the hair.

  She shot out a flat palm and hit Carolina in the center of her ribs. Carolina fell back, a deep wheezing sound coming from her empty lungs.

  Lauren set her feet, her body turned sideways to make a smaller target and to get her feet in position for another kick. Carolina hit against a long credenza. She spun and picked up a clear bowl filled with blue pebbles of glass. A decoration that had no discernible use suddenly found one—as a weapon.

  Carolina flung the bowl, and its shrapnel of glass beads, at Lauren who blocked with both arms covering her face. The glass pellets clattered across the room pinging off every surface, the bowl shattered on the floor. Carolina lunged forward and tackled Lauren like they were in an alley fight.