All the Way Down

by Eric Beetner

  Dale hoped the next stop came with friendlier natives.

  CHAPTER 27

  O’Brien rarely came to the staffers’ floor, by design. Make them come to you. Slumming it in their cramped offices was a sign of weakness. They weren’t that important for him to come down two flights of stairs. All eyes were on him as people watched him march with laser focus to Lewis’ office.

  Lewis’ secretary, a bright-eyed girl named Dianne, started to say something but noticed quickly that Mayor O’Brien wasn’t going to stop and ask permission to enter Lewis’ office.

  She called to his back. “Go right in, sir.”

  O’Brien entered his chief of staff’s office for the first time in over a year. It looked like his own office in three-quarters scale. Lewis had plans to move up a few floors, it was easy to see.

  “Call it off.”

  Lewis rushed off the phone without a goodbye, slamming the receiver down like a husband caught talking to a girlfriend. “Sir? What brings you down here?”

  “Call it off, I said.” O’Brien reached the edge of Lewis’ desk and loomed over.

  “That’s…” Lewis checked the door. Still open from O’Brien’s flamboyant entrance. Lewis stood and walked to close it. “I can’t do that.”

  “You did it, you can undo it.”

  Lewis shut the door. “No, sir. You did it.”

  O’Brien puffed up his chest, not wanting any of Lewis’ tricks. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do, Mr. Mayor. And I know Roy won’t change any plans on my phone call. It has to be you.”

  “So give me his number.”

  Lewis stood in the center of the room, two men as equals. The mayor was in his space now and he owned it the way a spider hangs proudly in the center of a newly spun web. Lewis didn’t answer.

  O’Brien took a step forward. “Give me his number so I can call it off.”

  “Changed your mind, did you?”

  O’Brien swallowed. He didn’t seem to like the tone in Lewis’ voice. “Yes, I did.”

  “Guilty conscience?”

  A stiff finger came out from O’Brien’s clenched fist, waved in emphasis at his subordinate. “Just give me the goddamn num—”

  “No.”

  The finger hung between them, impotent in Lewis’ face. O’Brien lifted his chest as he breathed heavy. Lewis stood perfectly still. O’Brien dropped his hand, lifted it again, then let it fall to his side.

  Lewis became calmer the more frantic the mayor became. “It was the right call, sir.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “Apparently you don’t understand, Mister Mayor.” Lewis raised his tone in volume and in hardness. His feet stayed set in place and he wished for another few inches so he could stand taller than the mayor, a space he always felt he should occupy. “She’ll ruin us.”

  There it was, thought O’Brien. Us, not me. This wasn’t about preserving the current office, it was about protecting his chance to sit behind the desk upstairs. A derailment of this administration meant Lewis would never work in politics again, not after the revelations came out. Lewis’ own kickbacks, while only a fraction of the mayor’s, would come to light and not only would those relationships be ruined, meaning losing out on millions of revenue from his future term in office, but he would be drummed out of town by an angry constituency and most likely spend some token time in prison while O’Brien lived out his exile under house arrest in his four-thousand-square-foot lake home.

  O’Brien dropped his voice low. “It’s my daughter.”

  “She’s a liability.”

  “She’s a person, goddamn you.”

  Lewis took a step forward. “She’s a threat.”

  O’Brien could feel his cheeks flushing and his ears grow hot with blood pumping through from the angry beats of his heart. If this young bastard in front of him didn’t make this stop, he might as well be pulling the trigger.

  He saw the punch land on Lewis’ chin before he even knew he’d thrown it. Lewis staggered back, caught completely unaware by the mayor’s fist. Once he’d started, O’Brien felt like he was back in the Navy, taking swings on the deck of the USS Stennis.

  He chased Lewis as he fell away and swung hard with a left, catching only Lewis’ shoulder. It had been years since he’d thrown a punch and already his knuckles ached. O’Brien wasn’t sure he’d ever hit anyone bare knuckled.

  Lewis jerked up and raised his hands in defense. He ended up looking like a boxer from the twenties ready to engage in fisticuffs over the virtue of a lady. He rolled his fists around like he was kneading salt water taffy. O’Brien launched a jab in between the youngster’s hands and hit him in the sternum.

  A pained wheeze escaped Lewis’ lungs. O’Brien knew the feeling and knew it hurt. He moved in and shoved Lewis to the floor, trying to spare his knuckles any more abuse.

  “Give me Roy’s number, you son of a bitch.”

  Lewis gained half a lungful of breath. “I guess I’m fired, huh?”

  “You’re damn right.”

  “Well, then…” Lewis scissored his legs while doing a spin on his back. O’Brien’s legs went out from under him and he crashed to the floor. Lewis pounced on his boss’ back. Right away O’Brien could tell Lewis had done some high school wrestling. That Greco-Roman grappling crap always rubbed O’Brien the wrong way. If you’re going to fight someone, stand up and fight them. Don’t give them a hug and wait for someone to count to three.

  O’Brien rolled and slid out from Lewis’ grasp. The sleeve of his jacket tore as he went. He shifted his wingtips under him and got into a crouch. O’Brien waited for Lewis to do the same. When Lewis had his feet set, O’Brien lunged forward and tackled him. They banged into a leather chair and it rocketed into a set of bookshelves lining the wall. A cascade of leather-bound editions fell to the floor.

  O’Brien stood quickly and landed another punch to Lewis’ jaw before the kid had time to stand up.

  Behind them, Dianne opened the door. “Is everything all right in here?”

  She blanched and put a hand over her mouth. She stood, one hand on the doorknob, and watched as Mayor O’Brien punched Lewis in the stomach.

  “Oh my God.” Dianne looked back to her desk as if she might break for the phone, but she stayed in the doorway.

  O’Brien leaned in to Lewis, who slumped against the bookcase, both men out of breath. “Are you going to help me call this off?”

  Lewis ran a tongue across cracked and bloody lips. “Fuck you.”

  The mayor turned to Dianne. “He’s fired. Get security up here to take him out. And call my car for me, tell them to meet me downstairs in three minutes.” He picked up a book that had fallen off the shelf, a volume of city ordinances that looked as if it had never been opened. “Got that?”

  Dianne nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  O’Brien cracked Lewis across the cheek with the hard spine of the book.

  CHAPTER 28

  The bodies hadn’t been moved.

  “No need for you to see this, Momma.” Tat turned his mother away from the sight of the men sprawled on the floor of their dorms, dead only an hour now and already stiff as the wood floors they lay on. “Take her back to her room.”

  One of Tat’s six men stepped out of the small crowd to escort Esmerelda downstairs.

  “What are you gonna do about it?” Tat’s mother stood firm, jerking her arm away from the man trying to help her out.

  “I’ll take care of it, Momma.”

  “How?”

  Tat was annoyed, but never rose to the level of anger with his mother. “So that it never happens again.”

  “That’s right.” Esmerelda crossed her arms and nodded once for emphasis.

  “Now will you trust me to take care of this and go back to your apartment?”

  “I suppose so.” She uncrossed her arms and set a hand on her son’s shoulder. “You take care of yourself now.”

&nbs
p; “I will, Momma.” Some leaders would never let their militia men see a tender side like Tat held for his mother, but he wasn’t shy about it. He kissed her forehead and she walked out on the arm of a six-foot Samoan boy.

  When she had gone, Tat looked back down at the wreckage in front of him. Bodies on both sides of the hallway. Loyal men.

  The men had come once Esmerelda went upstairs to get them. As Tat suspected, they were huddled and waiting for orders, but terrified to breech the sanctity of Tat’s residential floor. With Esmerelda’s blessing, the men came to the rescue.

  First order of business was to reset Tat’s arms. One man split off and untied Tat’s girlfriend from her shirtless binding in the living room. Tat ordered her taken away as he lay on the floor waiting for one of the heftier men to stand over him, lift his arm, twist it slightly, then pull up sharply until it slid back into joint with a pop.

  The heavy blocks of ink on Tat’s arms twisted under the big man’s grip as the second arm was reset. Tat grunted like an animal but stood right away and got down to business despite the ache in his shoulders. His mom nodded slowly, approving her son’s tolerance to pain. They both knew if he’d started crying she would have been quick to tell him to be quiet or else go put on a dress.

  Now, patched up to tolerable and staring at a floor full of bodies, Tat was eager to get down to the business of vengeance.

  “The mayor wants a war, we’ll give him a war.” He clenched his unwounded hand into a fist. “The police want a war, we’ll give them a war.” Tat turned to his small assemblage of men, his last troops. He held his fist out in front of him, then lifted his injured hand, curled his fingers down into a fist over the crude wrapping of the hole in his hand. The pain twisted his features and a fresh flow of blood oozed out from his clenched fist. The other men fed off flowing endorphins watching their leader endure such pain in the name of vengeance.

  “Anyone who wants a war, we’ll give it to them.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The empty warehouse threw a shadow onto the car. Somewhere in an alley beyond, a bottle broke. Dahlia stood looking at the state of her abandonment and was no closer to coming up with a solution. With T dead she had no way of getting to wherever he was taking her—presumably where Dale would be and she could get both answers and protection.

  Alone and with the clock running, Dahlia again thought of her appointment. No way to make it now. Not with so much else to do. That was on the off chance the baby was still alive inside her after the crazy day she’d been having.

  The resolve—or was it resignation?—she possessed that morning had vanished. In the face of all evidence telling her she shouldn’t bring a child into the world because of more factors than she could count, she reached for the notion that maybe this was a sign.

  Dahlia wasn’t usually one of those everything-happens-for-a-reason type people, but her day was enough to convert anyone. When she saw the car pulling slowly to a stop behind her, the initial thought was that a kind Samaritan had stopped to help a woman in need. Now how the hell was she going to explain the dead body?

  A man got out from the driver’s side with a phone pressed to his ear. Olive skinned and muscled, he wore a tight black T-shirt and buzz cut hair. He moved slowly and eyed her skeptically, she thought. Then Dahlia remembered the gun in her hand. She tucked it behind her, but before she could call out to her rescuer to explain, a chirping sounded from inside the car and at first, she thought maybe a bird had been trapped.

  She looked inside and a cell phone vibrated its way out of T’s pocket, the chirp gaining volume when it cleared the cloth dampers on the sound. She looked from the phone to the man in the new car, then to the two other men getting out of the passenger side. Both clones of the first and, now that she looked at them, all three were subtle versions of T.

  Everything clicked into place. These weren’t saviors—they were more kidnappers. T must have been on the phone with backup when he rolled up on her with the crashed car and Pooch dead in the front seat. Then what? They must have tracked him with his cell phone signal. They can do that, right? Leave it to Dahlia to get mixed up with high-tech gangsters. Most likely it was something any kid with an iPad could do in ten seconds, but to Dahlia, checking her email sometimes made her feel as satisfied as a Russian hacker who brings down the U.S. military mainframe.

  The calm pause she’d been experiencing by the side of the road shattered into panic and frantic, empty-fisted hunts for a plan. The man hung up the phone and put it in his pocket. He reached behind him and Dahlia knew he was going for a gun.

  “Stop right there.” To her shock, he did. The other two men stood on guard. All three seemed to respect the gun in her hand, even though she still had it pointed at the ground. Synapses fired in her brain and somehow made the connection that they were going to take her hostage, and to counteract that, she needed a hostage. In the absence of any other plan, she aimed the gun into the car.

  “I’ll shoot him.”

  She watched as the three men strained to get a good look inside the car where T slumped dead in the passenger seat.

  “Yo, T, you all right, man?”

  Dahlia cut off any potential answer. “He won’t be if you don’t back off.” Now she was committed. She had to up the ante.

  Dahlia had read about those women who lift a burning car off their child with some untapped reserve of strength only the threat of death gives you, but she never knew what it felt like until right then. Surging with a cocktail of adrenalin and fear blasting through her bloodstream, a mixture that would render heroin and cocaine obsolete if you could crystalize it and sell it on the streets, she reached in and put and arm under T and hauled him up next to her. She did her best to make him look as alive as possible, but she knew it was a losing battle.

  “I already knocked the shit out of him. Don’t make me finish the job. Guns on the ground.”

  The three men looked skeptically at her puppet show. Dahlia knew she was losing the crowd.

  “Fine. I warned you.”

  She did it before she could think too hard about it. She did it with the same mindset her grandmother had talked about having when she walked her through the steps of beheading a chicken for dinner. She did it to save her own life.

  Dahlia put the gun to T’s temple and fired. She let go as she shot and he fell like the dead weight he was. A spray of blood and bone coated the car, but Dahlia was too busy clutching at her ear from the incredibly loud noise of the blast.

  The three men all jumped at the shot and stared in wonder as their comrade fell to the street with half a head. Who was this crazy bitch?

  Dahlia shook off the ringing in her ears and tried to ignore that warm sticky stuff on her cheek. She raised the gun to them. “Drop them.”

  One of the passengers was first to comply. He set his gun down and kept his hands up and gave her what Dahlia could only describe as a don’t-shoot-my-head-off look. She took two steps forward and the other two men set down their guns.

  A looping refrain of this is working, this is working, this is working played in her head as she walked over to the car. She went to the driver, stopped five feet away from him to protect against any anxious grabs for her gun, and gave the orders.

  “Take me to your boss. That’s where he was supposed to take me. The man wants to see me? So let’s see him.”

  She tried not to get too frustrated that all this effort had been spent trying to avoid going to see this mystery man and now she was hijacking a car to get there, but the hope that Dale would be there made it a risk worth taking. She couldn’t trust anyone else, and the thought surprised her as much as anything all day long.

  The driver got back behind the wheel. She aimed the gun at the other two men still standing in the street and she got in the back behind the driver like she was taking a casual cab to the airport.

  Once in, she made sure he knew the gun was pointed at the base of his skull. Good God, she thought, What the f
ear of dying will make you do.

  “Get going.”

  “Lady—”

  “I said, get going.”

  “I’m just telling you for your own good, you can’t roll up to Tat’s place with a gun waving around. We won’t get a hundred feet from there.”

  “Then we’ll get two hundred feet and you’ll call him. You like making phone calls, right?”

  He sighed. “It’s your funeral.”

  “Y’know, this morning I’d have thought so too. But I’m starting to think I’ve got nine lives. I may have used up five or six of them, but as long as I have more to go, I’m going to find out what the hell this is all about and what it has to do with my husband.”

  He dropped the car in gear and they drove off, leaving two stranded thugs with T’s corpse. When they were beyond the sight of the two men left behind, and with the driver’s back to her, Dahlia frantically wiped at her face to remove the wet, slightly viscous mess on her cheek. She pawed with her sleeve pulled down over her palm to clear away blood that was not hers. Her breath came out in huffed panting and somehow, she held back tears.

  3RD FLOOR

  The ride down was short. One floor. The elevator bumped to a stop and Dale pushed himself against the back wall, giving enough space to raise the machine gun in front of him. Lauren clung to the side wall, using the eighteen inches of protection the sides of the elevator offered.

  On the ride down she had time to explain the floor they were entering was the kitchen. A central hub for the entire complex catering three meals a day to the entire staff. Since they were so far out of town, and since coming and going from the secure location was a chore and a potential breech of security, Tat provided all meals complimentary. He even imported a chef from Guam to cook special dishes for his mother to make her feel at home.

  But after the gunfight upstairs, Dale didn’t even trust a room full of cooks and dishwashers.

  No bell dinged as the doors opened. Dale was ready for a fight. What he got was a nose full of garlic and the humid air of a long galley kitchen filled with bubbling pots and sizzling pans.