The Four-Night Run

by William Lashner

  “The Hanged Man,” she said.

  “What does it mean?” said Scrbacek.

  “It means you should pay me other hundred now before we leave.”

  “Tell me,” said Scrbacek.

  “This is card of self-sacrifice. To solve your problem, you must give of everything. The result must be either death or transformation. One or other, nothing in between. At the end of this struggle against magician, life for you will never be same.”

  “That’s not what I want to hear.”

  “That is always problem with tarot,” said the woman.

  Suddenly there was a crash from the hallway and a shout, the sound of some sort of blow thudding into the soft part of a body. The next instant, the music stopped and the lights were flicked on, and in the light now appeared the man who had before been standing behind the Contessa. He was in the doorway, holding a cell phone, his head bent weirdly to the side. He took a step forward, and then Scrbacek could see that the Nightingale was behind him, one hand gripping his black hair and pulling down his head, the other holding a huge jagged knife with its point sticking into his thick neck.

  The man tried to say, “I was just—”

  “Shut up,” said the Nightingale. “I caught him trying to make a call.”

  “Who to?” said Reggie.

  “Don’t know, but from the way he jumped when I caught him, it was about our guest.”

  “No, no,” said the man, “I was just—”

  The Nightingale twisted the knife into the neck. Blood spurted, and the man stopped talking.

  “Leave him be,” said the Contessa, rising from the table and grabbing the man’s arm. “He is my nephew, Carlo. He did nothing wrong.”

  Reggie swaggered over and grabbed the phone out of the man’s hand. “Who were you calling, Mustard Mouth?”

  “No one. Just a woman. No one.”

  “Get your story straight. Was it no one, or was it a woman? My guess is you were telling someone about seeing Stifferdeck over there. How much you get for selling him out? Who’d you call?”

  The man shook his head, his lips shut closed, and the Nightingale twisted the knife deeper.

  “Nothing,” cried the man. “No one. I called a woman only.”

  “Check the last number dialed,” said Squirrel.

  “Shut up, Squirrel,” said Reggie. “I need your advice, I’ll shake your tree.” Then she handed the phone to Elisha. “Check the last number dialed.”

  “Nice phone,” said Elisha, looking down at the handset. “There’s just a number.”

  “Call it,” said Reggie.

  As Elisha thumbed the screen and put the phone to her ear, she said, “Too bad about the Freak. He would have paid top dollar for this baby.”

  “Fat chance of that now,” said Reggie.

  “Poor Freddie,” Elisha sighed, then turned away with one hand to her free ear as someone answered the redial.

  “Wait.” Scrbacek stood up. “Freaky Freddie bought phones?”

  Reggie gave him a look. “He was a fence, so yeah, Freddie bought everything. But especially phones. Nobody moved phones like Freaky Freddie.”

  “Hang up,” Scrbacek barked at Elisha. “Turn the phone off.”

  “Since when are you giving orders, Stifferdeck?” said Reggie, but Elisha had already done what he’d said, and now both women were staring at him.

  “We have to get out of here,” said Scrbacek. “All of us. Right away.”

  And as if to prove the point, from outside the house came the sound of tires squealing madly, as first one vehicle, then many, sped around the corner and onto Ansonia Road.

  16

  RATS

  Someone turned off the overhead light.

  Someone snuffed out the two dim candles on the table.

  Someone yelled, “Jesus,” and started running.

  “What is happening?” called out the Contessa. “What?”

  Someone killed the lights in the hall as the conversation from the television continued unabated in the darkness.

  Someone called out, “In here. In here,” and then screamed until his voice turned into a wet gurgle.

  “Carlo. Tell me what is happening. What? Carlo. Carlo?”

  Outside, vehicles slammed to a stop on Ansonia Road, car doors swung open, orders were shouted.

  Someone grabbed Scrbacek’s arm, mercifully, his right, and dragged him across the floor.

  “This way.” The voice was Donnie’s.

  Scrbacek stumbled as he followed the pull, but he didn’t fight it, wanting now to be somewhere, anywhere other than where he was. There were footsteps accompanying them, more than two sets, more than three.

  “Down here.”

  A door opened, and the footsteps began to tumble down a set of wooden stairs, and Scrbacek tumbled with them. He lost his balance and reached out with his free arm and grabbed hold of something, and a dagger of pain almost drove him to his knees, but he kept descending. The door behind him closed. A bolt locked. Footsteps pounded overhead. A burst of gunfire, and the television shut its fucking mouth. Scrbacek continued down until he tried to take another step and his leg locked painfully on the floor. He was in the cool of a cellar, could feel the unevenness of cracked cement beneath his boots. The hand around his arm let go, and he was adrift in the darkness, totally lost beneath the hammering of feet charging across the floor above.

  A scrape and then the beam of a flashlight alighting on the red of a rat’s eyes before the rodent scurried into a pile of old paint cans. Scrbacek took the moment to regain his bearings.

  They were in a dank basement, overrun with rotting pieces of wood, disintegrating boxes, a bent and rusted bike, scattered acetylene tanks. There were five of them down there: Donnie, holding the flashlight; Scrbacek; Elisha; the old woman, Blixen, grasping tight to a large plastic bag full of stuff; and the Nightingale with her gun. Donnie put a finger on his lips and pointed the light to the water heater, a rusted old thing listing in the corner. The beam moved behind the water heater, alighting on a brown metal plate embedded in the rough plaster, with a small gap of blackness between its bottom rim and the wall.

  Someone upstairs tried the door, found it locked, started banging on it, shouting. In the twitch of a rat’s tail, the Nightingale whirled, fell to one knee, raised the gun, and braced it on her shoulder as she aimed at the door. There was more banging, the door shuddered at a heavy blow, shuddered again, and quieted.

  Donnie, with the flashlight, scooted around the water heater to the rusted metal plate behind. He grabbed the edge and swung it open, revealing a great black hole in the wall. With the beam he waved the others toward it. First, Elisha stooped to enter the hole, then Blixen, groaning softly as she hobbled forward, then Donnie with the flashlight, then Scrbacek.

  It was narrow and wet, this place they ducked into. It smelled of raw sewage, of foul living things huddled together. The ceiling of damp wooden planks was higher than Scrbacek expected, the ground firmer. The walls were lined with seeping cinder block.

  From behind came a banging again upon the door to the basement they’d left behind and then a blast from a machine gun and then something smashing into the wood, shoulders or an ax, followed by the wood shattering. Scrbacek looked behind him and saw, in the dim light, the Nightingale climb into the hole and pull the metal plate closed behind her. Carefully she turned a latch that clicked shut. A moment later her hand was on Scrbacek’s back, urging him forward.

  He followed the wavering line of Donnie’s flashlight through the tunnel, raising his feet high as he moved, brushing his right arm gently against the ceiling and wall to keep from banging into them, keeping his left hand close to his mouth and nose to silence his coughs and ward off the thick smell of sewage. Beyond the sound of their own progress, he could hear footsteps charging down the steps in the basement behind them, boxes being tossed and cans kicked, calls back up the stairs. There came a quick burst of gunfire and then laughter, and immediately some desperately fleein
g thing scurried between Scrbacek’s legs. He stood up suddenly and banged his head on the ceiling planks and barely kept from calling out.

  The Nightingale’s hand on his back pushed harder.

  Through the tunnel, quietly following the thin beam of light, hand brushing the ceiling, Scrbacek moved ever onward. Behind him he heard the muffled voices of men in the cellar and then, suddenly, the sharp banging of metal. The men must have seen the rat dive into the gap at the bottom of the plate in the wall. They began pounding on the flat metal, pounding with the stocks of their guns, hearing the obvious reverberations of hollowness.

  Scrbacek moved faster now, spurred by raw fear. He heard scraping, prying, an attempt to open the plate, more pounding.

  And then it stopped, and the muffled voices faded away.

  Up ahead, Elisha, illuminated by Donnie’s flashlight, climbed a metal ladder. First, Elisha went, then Blixen, struggling to rise. Donnie tried to take the bag from her to make the climb easier, but Blixen clutched it to her chest. Donnie then gestured for Scrbacek to follow behind Blixen and help the old woman up.

  Scrbacek grabbed hold of the damp, rusty rungs and began to hoist himself with his right hand. When he rose close to Blixen, he put his injured left arm through a rung, braced with his feet, and pushed the old woman’s rear with his right hand. He climbed upward and did it again. And then one more time until the old woman and her bag disappeared through the hole above the ladder’s top rung, where Elisha helped her to her feet. Scrbacek climbed after her, through the hole, onto a flat cement floor.

  They were in someplace large, huge, a great cavernous space within which the slightest sounds echoed. The place smelled fresh compared to the tunnel, but after a moment he could detect the scent of dampness and sulfur. He stepped back from the hole as Donnie, with his flashlight, climbed out, and then the Nightingale.

  Donnie dragged a large box over the opening in the floor and then aimed the light across the space to a set of metal stairs bolted to a wall. He started for the stairs, and the others followed. From the wavering beam of light, Scrbacek could just make out the far edges of the expanse. The walls wide and straight, boxes and debris were all pushed to the perimeter, leaving a huge emptiness, big as a basketball court, bigger.

  They stepped as quietly as possible up the steel stairs, but still their footsteps reverberated. At the top was a doorway, which Donnie pushed open, and they were suddenly outside. There was more than a hint of smoke in the night air, but still Scrbacek was never so glad to see the sky over Crapstown. The moon was full and bright, casting its silver over a wide flat roof. It had to be, figured Scrbacek, the roof of the abandoned warehouse behind Donnie’s house. Donnie motioned them all to be quiet and get low, and then he led them to the edge of the roof, where they scooted down and raised their heads just enough above the three-foot lip to see what lay beyond.

  It was 714 Ansonia Road, and it was on fire.

  They stared at the now strangely lit ramshackle building in silence. It was just starting, the fire, its flickering light barely visible through the few windows not boarded up in the rear, its smoke just leaking out through broken panes. But it would not be long before dancing shoots of flame devoured the roof and lit bright the night sky. Around the house a small army of men with guns searched the lot, waving their flashlights along the road and into the black waters of the bay, huddling in conversation as they watched the house burn. They were not in any uniform Scrbacek recognized, some in cable-knit sweaters, others wearing dark trench coats and sporting automatic weapons. A few talked on phones, apparently coordinating their murderous movements.

  “I told you something was happening,” said Blixen. “It’s in the moon. I told you.”

  “I’m so sorry, Donnie,” said Scrbacek, quietly. “I didn’t mean to bring this down on you.”

  Donnie looked at him with hard eyes, and then they softened and he shrugged. “The rats were making themselves too much at home, anyways.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “We’ve got places.”

  “But your art.”

  “I’ll make more.”

  “Any idea what happened to Reggie or Squirrel?” said Elisha.

  “Regina can take care of herself,” said Blixen. “She’s too much a hammerhead to get herself killed.”

  “She keeps her bike away from the house as a precaution,” said Elisha.

  “And that damn Squirrel,” said the old woman, “is like a puff of smoke.”

  “There’s another way out through the roof,” said Donnie, “and onto the roof of that house over there and then down that tree.”

  Just then, the clatter of an unmuffled engine tore through the night, roaring loud in defiance before fading in the distance. The men surrounding the house turned their attention to the sound.

  “Go with the wind, Regina,” said Blixen.

  “Who are the assholes with the guns down there?” said Elisha.

  “Someone the Contessa’s nephew called in,” said Donnie. “What is his name? Carlo?”

  “Was,” said the Nightingale, looking down at the scene through a small set of binoculars.

  “What do they want?” said Elisha.

  “They want the beagle,” said Blixen. “He’s dangerous to them. Blixen told you so.”

  “How’d you know they were coming, Mr. Scrbacek?” said Donnie.

  “My phone,” said Scrbacek. “Before I got to the house, three jokers stole it. They said they were taking it to someone they called ‘the Freak.’ I didn’t put it together with what happened to Freddie Margolis until Reggie said that Freaky Freddie specialized in phones. By the time the Freak got hold of my phone, they were out looking for me. He must have turned my phone on and brought that pack of jackals down on his skull.”

  “Poor bastard,” said Donnie. “But that still leaves the question of who’s behind them.”

  “You saw the cards,” said the old woman. “It’s the magician.”

  “Yeah, but who’s that?” said Donnie.

  “The beagle will find out.”

  “Let’s just go down and ask the guy in charge,” said the Nightingale. Slowly she put down the binoculars, raised her gun over the edge of the roof, and pointed it down at the men in the lot. “I got a bead on him.” The silver moonlight glowed dully off the thick tube appended to the end of the barrel.

  “Don’t,” said Donnie. “They get an inkling we’re here, we’ll be surrounded in seconds.”

  She looked at Donnie and then pulled the gun back.

  Scrbacek stared at the thick end of the Nightingale’s gun and thought of the black metal tube he had seen on the workbench inside the house. “Tell me something, Donnie,” he said. “What good is a brake line with holes drilled through it?”

  Donnie looked at him for a moment. “It has its uses.”

  “And the piles of steel wool I saw on one of your benches?”

  “Cleans the pots and pans.”

  “Are you making silencers?”

  “You asking as my lawyer?”

  “I’m asking as a guy with a price on his head.”

  “It’s a living.”

  “Not for the person at the other end of the muzzle. One of the things that puzzled me about getting shot was that I never heard the gun go off, just felt something slam into my arm.”

  “Maybe the shooter was faraway.”

  “Or maybe he had one of your tubes stuffed with steel wool on his gun. Who do you sell these things to, anyway?”

  “People hear about it.”

  “You sell to anyone recently?”

  “I can’t talk about that, man.”

  “It’s privileged, is that it? Lawyer-client. Priest-penitent. Munitions maker-hired assassin.”

  “If I want to stay alive, yeah.”

  “Someone is trying to kill me, Donnie. Someone tried to kill me with a silencer, and I’m guessing, since they’re seriously illegal, it’s safer to travel without and buy on-site. Who did you sell to?�
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  “Tell him,” said Blixen. “He’s our knight.”

  Donnie leaned over the wall to get a better view of his burning house. The fire had now engulfed the second floor, smoke was pouring out the windows where the plywood had burned away, and the first licks of flame were rising through the roof. The smoke brought a deep cough from Scrbacek’s throat. The Nightingale slapped him hard on the back to quiet him.

  “They’re not just after the beagle,” said Blixen. “They’re gonna burn us all. Tell him.”

  Donnie waited a moment, watching the fire devour his house. “A guy from out of town,” he said finally. “Just a few days ago. Tall, red hair.”

  “You get a name?”

  “I don’t ask names.”

  “Give me the glasses,” he said to the Nightingale. “Where’s the guy you said was leading?”

  She handed over her binoculars and pointed. Scrbacek focused in. The man was standing with his back to them, wearing a long black leather coat, dancing from foot to foot with a phone to his ear, his mass of unruly red hair lit bright by the growing flames. The sight of him chilled Scrbacek’s blood, as if his body could make the identification on its own.

  “Turn around,” Scrbacek said softly. “Turn around and let me see your face, you bastard.” But the man didn’t have to turn around for Scrbacek to know. Remi Bozant, not fat and happy in Las Vegas, but instead out for blood in Crapstown. “He say anything to you about me?”

  Donnie shook his head. “He just said he was getting good money for the job.”

  “So someone else hired him, someone with resources to burn.”

  “He made a few lame jokes as he gave me the money.”

  “Well, you know what they say—comedy is hard. Did he buy anything else beside the silencers?”

  “Just some guns.”

  “Any explosives like the stuff that blew up my car?”

  “I don’t mess with plastics, but they’re easy enough to get hold of.”

  “Down,” whispered the Nightingale, and everyone bent beneath the raised edge of the roof. “Someone was pointing up here.”

  “We have to get off the roof before this building catches too,” said Donnie. “There’s a fire escape on the far side.”