All the Way Down

by Eric Beetner

  Three distant voices called back to Tat. “Here.” “Over here.” “I’m okay.”

  Dale turned to Lauren and checked on her. “You okay?”

  Her eyes were wide. “We’re not going to make it.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t even know how we made it this far. But if the world wanted us dead, it sure as shit had enough opportunities. We may be cats on our ninth life, but as long as we’re still moving, we have a chance.”

  She gave a slight smile. A what-the-hell, it-can’t-get-any-worse smile.

  Dale turned the corner around the stack of boxes and found the scene of the explosion. A charred black hole was hollowed out in the concrete floor. There was no evidence at all that two bodies were in the wreckage. A wood slat on one crate burned a tiny matchstick-sized flame.

  The wall beside Dale seemed different. It took Dale a moment to realize what he was seeing. At first it looked like a black scar on the cinder blocks, but as he looked closer, he saw it was a hole. And beyond the hole, not just earth.

  Dale stepped closer. The blast had opened up the side of the basement wall and exposed an open space big enough to stand up in. Dale craned his neck into the gap. It was some sort of sewer line. A wide pipe put down there years ago to feed the needs of the vast industrial park to come. A pipe that never got used.

  He turned to Lauren, a smile on his face. He didn’t know where it would lead, but they no longer needed the stairs to get out.

  CHAPTER 36

  “What the hell was that?” Schuster stopped walking when he heard the explosions in the distance.

  “Unclear, sir.”

  “Sounded like a goddamn bomb.”

  The officer at his side peeled away and got on his walkie to try to figure out what had happened. Schuster stepped over to where Dahlia lay on the ground. He leaned over her, checking her pale face.

  “Dahlia?”

  Her eyes fluttered. The pain had sent her under the cover of a welcome blackness for a little while, but now she was back. Both her legs burned from the bullets in each thigh. The SWAT team responded to her shots with defensive fire of their own. Her aim was lousy, theirs was dead on. A bullet to each leg put her down and the team quickly disarmed her and radioed in to the tactical van. That’s when Schuster came running.

  “Christ, you had me scared.”

  Dahlia didn’t answer, only grimaced in pain.

  “Dale had me checking up on you. How in the hell did you make it out here?” Schuster waved the question away. “Forget it, there’s time for that. Let’s get you fixed up. Dale’s almost out.”

  He hoped, anyway. And what the hell was that explosion?

  CHAPTER 37

  Two years in the ROTC hadn’t made O’Brien a master of stealth. He spotted the dark outline of Ray in the trees right where Lewis said he would be but getting to him was difficult. Pine needles crackled underfoot and in the quiet of the woods, O’Brien’s Armani suit made all kinds of noises heard never heard from it before.

  With thirty paces still to go, Roy turned and aimed the rifle barrel at him. When Roy saw who it was, he relaxed. It was the first time O’Brien had seen an ounce of stress on the man.

  O’Brien was allowed to approach.

  “The hell you doing here?” Roy turned his attention back to the building down at the bottom of the ridge at least five hundred yards away. The scope on Roy’s rifle reminded O’Brien of a pirate’s spyglass.

  “I’m calling it off. It’s over.”

  O’Brien nearly broke down in tears. If Roy was here that meant Lauren hadn’t come out yet. The job wasn’t done. He’d made it in time.

  “It’s not over. The job ain’t done.”

  “There is no more job. I’m calling it off.”

  “All due respect, Mayor. I don’t take my orders from you.”

  O’Brien couldn’t believe it. Why wasn’t this man listening? “Well, who then? Lewis?”

  Roy sighted down the scope. O’Brien’s voice pitched higher, in a frenzy. “I spoke to him. We called it off. Call him. Talk to him.” O’Brien fished in his pocket for his cell phone.

  “He would have called me.”

  “There isn’t time for this. It’s my contract, my job. I’m calling it off.”

  “No can do.”

  O’Brien moved next to him. “It’s my daughter.”

  Roy kept his eye to the scope. “To me, she’s just another target.”

  O’Brien dove. He landed on Roy’s back and put a bare hand around the barrel of the rifle. Roy rolled, fast, and flung the mayor off him, but that hand stayed attached. The gun jerked in Roy’s hand and his finger slid over the trigger. A shot blasted nearly straight up. The barrel burned with the sudden heat of the shot and O’Brien’s hand sizzled against the metal. He opened his fingers and let the gun go.

  Roy gripped the rifle and whipped the stock around to catch O’Brien in the jaw with a crack. The mayor fell back against the thick carpet of pine needles and inhaled the smell, one of his favorites until today.

  Standing, Roy put the scope to his eye again. This time he saw a door open.

  CHAPTER 38

  “We got movement.”

  Schuster pushed his way past a SWAT member to get a look at the video monitors. “Is it them?”

  Tiny shapes emerged from the glass doors of the building. One, then a second, then a third. Large men. Tattoos ran down the arms of the man in front. He held a stiff arm and a wounded hand out in front of him.

  “It’s Tat, sir. Looks like two of his own with him.”

  Schuster pounded the console desk in front of him. Despite himself, he’d been rooting for Dale to make it, and not only because he didn’t want to deal with the phone call from the mayor if this plan failed.

  “Is she there? Do they have the girl?”

  Two technicians scanned four different angles on the monitors. “Negative, sir.”

  “Fuck.” He turned to the open back door of the tactical van. The pine trees blocked his view of the compound like they’d done all day. With his back to the monitors he balled a fist and steeled himself to give the command.

  “Take them out.”

  In the distance, firecracker pops sounded. On the monitors the three figures shook and flailed their arms in a dance to the beat of the SWAT team’s guns.

  Roy turned at the sound of gunshots. O’Brien cried out an anguished scream and tore the rifle from Roy’s grip. Each blast from the SWAT automatics, an angry beehive buzz of shooting, could be his daughter dying.

  O’Brien turned the gun and hit Roy across the temple with a swing he’d perfected by countless hours on the golf course. With Roy out, O’Brien put the scope up to his eye. It took him some time to find what he was looking for through the powerful magnifying glass. When he steadied his view, he saw three men face down on the sidewalk in front of the building. He recognized Tat from his tattoos. The others could be any of the generic henchmen always surrounding Tat. No Lauren.

  He lowered the rifle, certain that she was inside—dead already.

  The polished black boots of the SWAT team came out of hiding and hustled to where the three bodies lay. Barking out commands and heads sweeping the area for other potential targets, the overdue adrenaline rush of the troops spurred them on to a near sprint.

  Behind their attention, what would be a block away down a driveway leading to a building that was never completed beyond a rectangular concrete pad, a manhole cover lifted from underneath.

  Wary of the gunfire he’d heard moments ago, Dale peeked out through a one-inch gap. Seeing no danger he pushed the rest of the way up and let the manhole cover clank to the road beside the hole. He climbed out, then reached back for Lauren.

  Dale smiled. “Told you I’d get you out.”

  Lauren smiled back at him, then wrapped him in a hug. Dale hopped on one leg, his injured foot awash in a new pain now that his b
ody began to relax. The agony his brain had been staving off for survival’s sake broke loose from the dam and flooded his pain receptors.

  Dale crumbled to his knees, laughing the whole way down.

  CHAPTER 39

  Dale waited outside Chief Schuster’s office, the same empty coffee table in front of him. His week in the hospital had barely been enough time for the story to unfold in the press, with Lauren’s reports leading the way.

  He’d made it this far along as an “unnamed inside confidant” within the department. Lauren was protecting her exclusive source, and protecting Dale from the certain attacks of the press once his hero story was revealed to be the work of a dirty cop. Nothing the press likes more than to tear down a hero of their own making.

  Out there, at the compound, Lauren had called out to the SWAT team to come help her with Dale. The team advanced on them with guns out until Schuster could be heard over their earpieces screaming at them not to shoot and to bring them in.

  Dale was laid out on a stretcher next to his wife. They cried and held hands, each with an IV in a vein of their wrist.

  Dale tried to explain. “Dahlia, I’m going to get in trouble when this is over. I’ve done some bad things.”

  “Me too.”

  “No. Some real bad things. You’re going to hear a lot of things about me you won’t want to. I won’t deny anything. I won’t lie to you anymore. I want you to know, though, that’s not me anymore.”

  Dahlia told him that she understood. If he’d confessed to her eight hours earlier, she wouldn’t have. But now, all she wanted was a new start.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  He squeezed her hand tighter and they cried together.

  Mayor O’Brien had almost been shot when he came out of the woods dragging a man’s body behind him. It took the officers onsite a long time to recognize who stood in front of them. O’Brien had dropped Roy’s body on the ground, the man rolled and groaned, blood soaking the side of his head and his shirt. O’Brien threw the gun down on top of him. “Arrest this man.” He held out his hands, ready for handcuffs. “And then arrest me.”

  Before the cuffs went on, Lauren broke free from the man applying alcohol swabs to her cuts. She ran to her father and hugged him.

  He spoke quietly into her ear. “I know what you need to do. I won’t stop you. Everything you think of me, all the reasons you hate me. They must all be true.”

  Lauren hugged him tighter.

  “Chief Schuster will see you now.” The girl behind the desk knew who Dale was. She knew her version of the story about what happened out there that day. Her version was lacking eighty percent of the facts, but even that much was enough to make her watch him go by like a combination serial killer and rock star.

  Dale propped himself on his crutches and opened the door, then put his crutch back under his armpit and entered the office. “Sir?”

  “Ah, Dale. Come in.”

  Schuster was flanked by Bardsley, the grey-haired man from Dale’s first meeting. The man from the mayor’s office—Lewis, Dale recalled—was missing.

  “Have a seat.” Schuster waved Dale onto the couch. Dale hobbled over, still getting used to the new way of walking, and sat down inelegantly. Schuster got up and sat on the edge of his desk, like a concerned college professor.

  “We were just going over the inventory.” He gestured to a pile of papers on his desk. He rambled off facts, ticking them off on his fingers. “Forty-one men and women in office suits with guns, a kitchen staff with their share of scrapes and other wounds, almost three dozen girls who looked like refugees.”

  Dale nodded, remembering. While he was on the stretcher, he saw the SWAT team leading clusters of Tat’s employees out the front entrance. Floor by floor they came out, hands raised in surrender or cuffed behind their backs. The girls all clumped together and chattered like hens. Last out the door was Tat’s girlfriend and Esmerelda, his mom. She fought against the two beefy SWAT members who each had a hold of an arm. She swore like a sailor at them, detailing all the ways her son would rain down revenge upon them—until she saw the white sheet draped over the body, a heavily tattooed arm peeking out the side. She began to wail to the heavens and beg Jesus for an explanation.

  She was hustled into a waiting squad car while larger transport vehicles drove away the others to their own fates. Dale watched as the tower became vacant once again.

  “So.” Schuster folded his hands together. “How you feeling?”

  “Getting by.”

  “How’s Dahlia?”

  “Fine. Another week of bed rest to be safe.”

  “Good. That’s good.” He gave a look over his shoulder to the grey-haired man. “Dale, I’m sure you’ve noticed your name has been kept out of the papers.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is by design.”

  Dale sank back a little deeper into the couch. “I understand, sir. While you build your case. I’m healthy enough for interviews with I.A.—”

  “It’s not that.”

  Dale cocked his head at an angle. Schuster and the grey-haired man shared another look. Last time they called him in here with an agenda, things didn’t work out so well. Or maybe they worked out better than he expected.

  “Dale, that rescue of yours was mighty impressive.”

  Impressive? thought Dale. It was pathetic.

  “Being able to send in a single man, a man like you, proved to be quite an asset. It saved that girl’s life for sure.”

  Dale wasn’t so sure at all, but he let Schuster talk.

  “I’m thinking.” He waved a hand between him and his second in command. “We’ve been thinking…a man with your skills could come in handy.”

  The grey-haired man finally spoke. “A man with your connections.”

  “Could be very valuable when the need arises.”

  Dale sat up straighter. “What are you saying, sir?”

  Schuster exhaled sharply, as if he didn’t like what he was about to say, but it needed saying. “You’re not going to prison, Detective. You’re going to work off your debt to the department by being more useful to us out on the streets than you would behind bars.”

  “More rescue missions?”

  Schuster leaned forward, emphasizing his seriousness. “Whatever we want you to do, Detective. Understand?”

  Barely wasn’t a good answer, Dale knew. He lied a little. “Yes.”

  “Good. Then we have a deal.”

  Schuster extended his hand. Dale didn’t know exactly what he was signing on for. If it meant more days like the one at Tat’s compound, he might rather take his chances in prison. But with Dahlia at home carrying their child and a chance, a real chance, at a new start—he couldn’t say no.

  Dale leaned forward on the couch and shook Chief Schuster’s hand. “Deal.” He couldn’t help thinking the chief was squeezing extra hard.

  Out in the hallway, Dale tried to process what had just happened. He wasn’t going away, but his job just got a hell of a lot harder. He stood and stared, leaning heavily on his crutches, a phantom pain where his toe used to be.

  Dale shook his head, breaking out of his stupor. He reached for the elevator button and stopped. He turned his head to the stairwell, then back to the elevator, his finger an inch away from the button.

  Dale smiled.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank Bobby McCue for that day in The Mystery Bookstore when he first put a copy of Duane Swierczynski, Victor Gischler, Steve Brewer and Allan Guthrie in my hands. And to John Rector for reading this early and giving some great thoughts. The first and only time anyone has ever read anything of mine early. That’s how much I trust him.

  Thanks to everyone who had something nice to say about the book and who let me exploit their good name for my own use. Thanks to Lauren O’Brien for allowing me to use her good name in an entirely different but equally exploitative way.


  Thanks to the Down & Out team for the unwavering support. Always and forever thanks to my family who puts up with my writing addiction.

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  ERIC BEETNER has been described as “the James Brown of crime fiction—the hardest working man in noir.” (Crime Fiction Lover) and “The 21st Century’s answer to Jim Thompson” (LitReactor). He has written more than 20 novels including Rumrunners, Leadfoot, The Devil Doesn’t Want Me, The Year I Died 7 Times and Criminal Economics. His award-winning short stories have appeared in over three dozen anthologies. He co-hosts the podcast Writer Types and the Noir at the Bar reading series in Los Angeles where he lives and works as a television editor.

  EricBeetner.com

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  BOOKS BY ERIC BEETNER

  The McGraw Crime Series

  Rumrunners

  Leadfoot

  The Lars and Shane Series

  The Devil Doesn’t Want Me

  When the Devil Comes to Call

  The Devil at Your Door

  The Fightcard Series

  Fightcard: Split Decision

  Fightcard: A Mouth Full of Blood

  The Lawyer Western Series

  Six Guns at Sundown

  Blood Moon

  The Last Trail

  Stand Alones

  The Year I Died Seven Times

  Criminal Economics

  Nine Toes in the Grave

  Dig Two Graves

  White Hot Pistol

  Stripper Pole at the End of the World

  A Bouquet of Bullets (stories)