Follow Me Down

by Gordon MacKinney

  My God. I felt as if some organism had wound my intestines into a ball. Panic crept into Reuben’s expression.

  Valentine leapt to his assignment. “Stand up, legs spread, hands behind your head,” he commanded Reuben. My friend obeyed, looking ready to vomit. Valentine dropped to one knee and began at the left ankle, progressively clapping with cupped hands up to the crotch. Reuben winced.

  Catastrophe loomed. The same maneuver on Tricia would reveal the film.

  After finishing the right leg, Valentine stood and worked Reuben’s arms, shoulders, chest, belly, and back. Mid-grope, he ripped away the lamp-chain lanyard with penny and whistle.

  I was next. As Valentine patted and squeezed with leathery hands, I wracked my brain for some intervention, some distraction. A diverting question? A threat? A suicidal attack? But nothing came. Valentine finished with me.

  Tricia was already standing. But her face didn’t show the panic I expected to see. Valentine loomed before her, momentarily eye to eye, as he adapted to an unexpected battlefield reality: a female combatant.

  “Did you light the match that burned down my grandfather’s business?” she said coolly, the curves beneath her black, skin-tight top too revealing. Valentine held his gaze on her face for a second before clapping her arms and shoulders. His compressed lips hinted at a smile.

  Rudolph stepped behind Tricia, supervising the proceedings. “Miss Blumenfeld, our loyal employees do many important jobs because they believe in Drax Enterprises.”

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the next, utterly powerless.

  Valentine took his time, circling like a predator. Shoulder blades. Middle back. Lower back. Rump.

  Tricia stiffened. “It’s easy to give the order, Mr. Drax, from your nice air-conditioned office at the top of the world.”

  Valentine circled again. Sides. Stomach. The curved edges of her bra, testing boundaries, invading with eyes as well as fingers, taking too long.

  “Don’t do that,” I said.

  “Now, why would you make such a comment, Mr. Tremaine?” Rudolph remarked with a teasing smile. “Feeling a little protective?”

  Valentine’s face was now inches in front of Tricia’s as he kneaded his fingers in her dark hair—an absurd motion, as if she’d stashed a hand grenade in her ponytail.

  But her mind was elsewhere, her eyes aglow with a primitive fire. “It takes a special kind of sick to light the match.”

  Valentine dropped to one knee and wrapped his hands around her left ankle.

  Her upper lip quivered. “The kind of sick that steals and rapes and kills, and then goes on with life as if nothing happened. Is that you, Mr. Valentine?”

  Valentine halted mid-calf and peered up into her eyes. “Call me whatever you want, young lady. But I lit the match.” He flashed a contemptuous grin. “And that night I went out and had a steak to celebrate, charred on the outside and red on the inside, because that’s how I like my meat.” He held his gaze unblinking. “Now close your mouth and show me a pout.” He waited another second before returning to his task.

  Upper calf. Lower thigh. Mid-thigh.

  The force of Tricia’s knee struck dead center in Valentine’s face with a crunch of cartilage. His head jerked up, neck bowed, Adam’s apple bulging. He whipped his hand to the floor behind to keep from collapsing to his back.

  “You don’t get to touch me there, you sonofabitch,” she hissed, her hands now balled up, legs rooted, one foot ahead of the other like a Greco-Roman wrestler.

  Seething, Valentine settled to his knees and clutched his face, shoulders taut with rage. Blood oozed between his fingers, rapid breaths behind his hands.

  Rudolph stepped between them and dangled a handkerchief before the man’s face. “That’ll be enough, you two,” he said, as if scolding bickering children. Then with a chuckle, “One more agenda item and we can wrap this up before our director of security regains his manhood. A word in private please, Mr. Valentine?”

  CHAPTER 30

  Mopping his busted nose, Valentine trailed Rudolph into a corner for a whispered conference. I thought of the way a baseball coach walks out to a struggling pitcher mid-inning to offer encouragement, maybe point out the batter’s weak spot. The player returns to the mound with fresh determination, which is what I saw in Valentine’s smirk as he marched over to Hard Ass and the Gorillas to share the latest game-winning strategy.

  I had allowed myself to imagine our exodus to a dark but benevolent city street, morning birds announcing the dawn, promise of a fresh start in Tricia’s eyes. But no longer.

  As if the boardroom table was a giant clock, the security men seated Tricia and Reuben at three and nine o’clock, and me straight ahead at the bottom of the hour. Their motions seemed so prescribed and inevitable, even Tricia complied without protest.

  Once again, Rudolph materialized from shadow to stand alongside Tony at high noon, but now he cradled a bright red fire extinguisher, one of those bulky two-foot models mandated for commercial buildings. He lifted it over his head with both arms and paused to make sure we watched. He glanced down at our gear and adjusted his angle a few degrees.

  “Don’t do it,” I said.

  Rudolph’s swing and the resulting impact caused Tony to lurch in his wheelchair. Shattered glass from the lens skated across the tabletop in a twinkling cone. The Hasselblad’s aluminum housing spasmed and rocked to a stop, now caved and peeled like a trailer after a tornado.

  I should’ve predicted Rudolph’s Jekyll-to-Hyde transformation. He’d done the same at Alfred’s shop, one minute civil, and the next minute raging on the fringe of control.

  “You’ve had your fun,” he said, breathing hard as he dropped the fire extinguisher to the floor.

  Valentine and Hard Ass took up posts a few feet behind Tricia, the Gorillas likewise behind Reuben. I sat unsupervised, the threat to my friends enough to bolt me to my seat.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked wearily, belying the frigid sweat I felt under my shirt. “We answered every question—”

  “With lies,” he snapped. Then he smiled tightly, eyes devoid of mirth. “I must admit, I almost believed Miss Blumenfeld wanted to scratch your eyes out. But then Mr. Valentine’s fingers got a little too close for comfort, didn’t they?”

  “She deserves the same respect as anyone else,” I said.

  Tricia shot me a disapproving glance. “I can take care of myself.”

  Rudolph laughed. “Oh, you’ve established that, as I’m sure Mr. Valentine would attest.”

  The ex-soldier neither spoke nor relaxed his spring-loaded stance.

  I leaned forward. The leather groaned. “I told you, she’s not part of this.”

  “Another lie,” Rudolph said. “She’s her grandfather’s representative, the same as you.”

  I shook my head. “Why go over this again? Alfred Blumenfeld has no interest in my art, or in saving the subway.”

  Rudolph sized me up for a moment and then lowered his gaze as if preparing for some monumental declaration. “I don’t need to convince you of anything, Mr. Tremaine,” he said, his tone ominous, his rhythm metered. “But I will try, strictly as a courtesy, because you three must fully understand how deep a hole you’ve dug for yourselves.”

  I swallowed a lump and stared back.

  “No one steals a rare laser, illegally enters a heavily guarded building, engages in hand-to-hand combat with armed security men, and then knowingly walks into a toxic cloud,” he paused, his eyes blazing, “to take goddamn pretty pictures.”

  I had no response, and even if I did, there was no point. Rudolph had seen through my story with x-ray vision, exposing a c
ardboard foundation.

  Reuben shot me a desperate glance.

  Reflexively, I sought out the teachings of my savior from every tight pinch. But this was life or death. Whatever N. Jefferson Chapel had to offer, it would have to be brazen. Audacity itself persuades, he wrote, for whom but the true would be so audacious? Yet I doubted the advice. So far, I’d been bolder than ever. My painting-by-light story had accounted for every detail, including the test photos Drax stole, but Rudolph dismantled it.

  He eased into a clockwise stroll around the oval table, tenting his fingers before his chest as if bestowing timeless wisdom. “We know your style, how you zigzag all over town before your little adventures so no one can follow you. Very clever.” A pause. “But there’s a downside. No witnesses. No one knows you’re here.”

  “People know,” Tricia blurted, but her tentative eyes betrayed the truth.

  Rudolph brought his feet together behind her chair and spoke to the back of her head. “People like your grandfather? That doped-up wheezer in the hospital bed? He’ll convince the police?” He continued his circular meander like ticks of a clock’s second hand. In less than a minute, he’d demand an explanation. No, he’d demand a confession, and only the damning truth remained unsaid.

  He halted behind my chair and placed his hands on my shoulders as a father might condescend to a child. I cringed. “Of course, Mr. Tremaine, your mother might save you.”

  “My mother has nothing to do with this.”

  “She’s unable to have anything to do with it. She can barely look up a phone number.”

  He was inches away. How much damage could I do with my bare hands before the guards shut me down? Not enough. I gritted my teeth. “She’s like that because of what you did to my father—to my family.”

  “Finally!” Rudolph said. “Now we’re getting someplace. You don’t need Alfred Blumenfeld’s crusade to want me dead, do you?”

  He released his hands and ambled further until he appeared in my peripheral vision, his wrinkled dress shirt puffed behind his back. “Who am I missing? Oh yes, your coworker, the hippie. What’s his name?”

  Valentine piped up. “Charles Dahlgren.”

  “That’s right.” Rudolph pulled in behind Reuben’s chair and massaged the shiny cushion with manicured fingers. “The one who consumes more drugs than your mother and Blumenfeld combined. He’ll call the cops?” He snorted, and then lowered his voice to a cold hush. “He could watch us bury you alive and still forget by the next morning.”

  Hard Ass snickered but then checked himself. Sweat trickled from my hairline to my cheek. Think.

  Chapel wrote of a last resort, the urban explorer’s Hail Mary pass. When pretext comes to naught, and even lesser truth fails to soften the skeptic, beseech mercy through confession, for only the coldest soul refuses the penitent. But that’s the problem, Mr. Chapel. The soul of Drax is liquid nitrogen. The truth would bring no mercy. The truth would bury us.

  The ticks of Rudolph’s rotation continued. “My point, Mr. Tremaine, is that you’ve never been more alone.” He arrived at high noon and signaled Valentine with a backhand, as if shooing a fly. Reuben cried out with pain as the two Gorillas pinned his arms behind the chair. I glanced right. Tricia’s eyes stretched wide with fear. Kneeling behind her chair, Valentine had reached around to press his forearm to her chest, the blade to her throat.

  “You’re right, Miss Blumenfeld,” Rudolph sneered, standing ramrod straight at the head of the table. “Mr. Valentine is that special kind of sick. He’s killed more people with that knife than you’ve dated, and I don’t mean to disparage your appeal. You’re not unattractive for a Jewess.” He shifted his attention to me. “Don’t blow your last chance, Mr. Tremaine, because after he slices her throat, she’ll stay conscious long enough to damn you to hell. Now…”

  Tick.

  My throat constricted.

  Tick.

  Rudolph brought his hands together in front of his body. My heart pounded in my ears.

  “Why were you in the subway?”

  Time’s up.

  “Forgive me, Tricia,” I said to her, her face taut with panic and pain, her eyes wet. “Alfred would want me to protect you even if we had to sacrifice everything else.” I turned to Rudolph. “Alfred Blumenfeld sent us to collect evidence to destroy you.”

  Rudolph smiled. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Another tick, unexpected, a moment to think, to dissect a single line from Chapel. Two words jumped out.

  “Keep going, Mr. Tremaine.”

  I cleared my throat. “Alfred believes your father funneled money to support Hitler’s rise to power and eventually the Holocaust.”

  Rudolph’s smile vaporized. “That accusation is nothing new.”

  “Is it true?” Tricia challenged in spite of Valentine’s blade, which bought me another tick of the clock. I thought of one more roll of the dice, but I’d be betting everything.

  Rudolph huffed with impatience. “Mr. Valentine, on my signal.” Tricia gasped. Reuben struggled against his captors but in vain. “Mr. Tremaine, you’ve got five seconds. Collecting what evidence?”

  I gulped, rolled the dice, and leapt to standing. “You held the answer in your hand—the photograph—Alfred and a journalist investigating Drax twenty years ago.” Five seconds done. Rudolph waited. I desperately splashed words. “But they weren’t just colleagues, they were lovers.” Rudolph’s eyebrows shot up. “His name was Richard Baumgartner and, according to Alfred, he got too close to the truth and was murdered. Alfred believes his body is in the subway. After all, your company built it. And sure enough, just like Alfred predicted, you kept your own secret portal. So he came to us. We knew how to break in and we knew photography. Our job was to find Baumgartner’s body and photograph it, clothes and all. Even dental work, if possible. Alfred planned to take the evidence to a cop he knows from the old days. He figured a murder verdict would bring down the company.” I took a breath.

  “He’s right, it would.”

  Thirty seconds past deadline. Rudolph’s stare demanded more. I obliged. “Alfred sent us to a hidden chamber filled with hundreds of corpses from the Depression—homeless people—stored in crates.” Rudolph nodded to himself; he knew about the unmapped chamber. He glanced at Hard Ass and Valentine, but I couldn’t catch their reaction. Had one of them nodded a validation? After all, we locked Hard Ass and Gorilla One in the spur. No time to speculate. “Alfred instructed us to find a peripheral crate with signs of tampering, but we never did.”

  I had placed our bets and rolled the dice. No turning back. But the upturned numbers remained hidden from view. Time to reveal. I threw back my shoulders. “Is the journalist in one of those boxes?” I stopped breathing.

  If Alfred was right about Richard’s resting place, then our knowledge would be too dangerous to release to the world. But if Alfred was wrong…

  Rudolph studied me for a heart-stopping eternity, the ticks of the invisible second hand like spikes through my brain. Then he shook his head. “Jesus Christ.”

  No one spoke. No one moved.

  Rudolph pinched the bridge of his nose and looked down. “You’re wasting your time. That journalist isn’t down there.”

  I released my breath and glanced right. Valentine retracted the blade a half-inch from Tricia’s skin. A bloodless indentation lingered.

  “Then where is he?” she demanded.

  Rudolph returned her challenge with a smirk. “Probably where he’ll never be found—but I wouldn’t know.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Tricia said.

  I wedged my voice between them. “We failed. Alfred failed, which means he can’t hu
rt you—we can’t hurt you.” I sat down. The seat cushion exhaled. “You should let us go.”

  Rudolph lifted his eyebrows as if the notion of our release was somehow novel. “You’re right. I should.” He leaned into the table, retrieved the photograph once again, and scrutinized the decades-old gala in fading sepia. “How about that. Blumenfeld’s boyfriend. I never pegged him for a poof.” He spoke to the air. “No wonder he’s pissed off,” he concluded, as if genocide wasn’t bad enough. He tossed the photo with a flip of his hand. The image spun as it floated and settled among our gear. “Crazy old faggot.”

  Tony caught his father’s attention and beckoned him close. They exchanged a few whispered words, during which Rudolph glowered at Valentine for a second or two. Then Rudolph straightened and said to Tony, “Fine.” He shuffled toward the exit but turned midway to address the room. “Mr. Valentine, help Tony with whatever he needs. Mr. Daley, get these idiots the hell out of my building. They leave their crap behind. I’m going to bed. Jesus Christ.” He shook his head as he disappeared into the hall. “Crazy Jew.”

  . . . . .

  Hard Ass escorted us to the front entrance of Drax Enterprises and watched as we pushed out under a gray, pre-dawn sky—all without saying a word. Then he turned and vanished into the shadows of the lobby.

  Too shaken or petrified or paranoid of the jinx to speak out loud, we walked single file to the first bus stop with nighttime service, between Adolphus Avenue and Ptarmigan. Instead of freshness to start a new day, humid air trapped the diesel fumes of delivery trucks. Somewhere below our feet lay hundreds of forgotten corpses, none of them Richard Baumgartner.

  We climbed aboard the first bus to pull up. We didn’t care where it was going. We needed departure. We’d worry about arrival later.

  I couldn’t help but judge every face for threat potential. Besides the driver, we shared the coach with a boozy-eyed teen in a Bengals cap, and a fresh-faced nurse with Cincinnati General Hospital embroidered above the breast pocket of her uniform.