The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust Book 5)

by Craig Schaefer

  “There a lot of guys in Hive B?”

  He stared at me like I’d found his last nerve and planted my heel on it. Behind me, the line kept getting longer. I moved on.

  The prisoners in Hive B were still eating, which meant they weren’t dead. One possible explanation down, countless more to go.

  The back of my neck prickled as I walked the aisle, looking for a place to sit. I caught glances out of the corner of my eye, mostly from the Latino wedge of the cafeteria. Hard, narrowed eyes and soft murmurs. I slipped into an open spot not far from Brisco.

  “Might have a problem,” he said, shooting a quick look over his shoulder.

  Ray-Ray, sitting next to him, snorted over his eggs. “Yeah, and his fuckin’ name is Jablonski.”

  “You may have felt,” Brisco told me, “a little shade from our brown brothers over there being thrown your way.”

  “I noticed,” I said.

  “That’s not by accident. Someone slipped a copy of your jacket to the browns’ shot-caller, and he passed it on to the Cinco Calles. They know who you are.”

  “Not seeing a problem,” I said. “They’re tight with a friend of mine on the outside. She can smooth it.”

  Ray-Ray shook his head. “You’re in here for icing one of their dealers, bro. They gotta do something about that. Mexican honor, you know?”

  “I was framed. And I’m pretty sure they’re Puerto Rican.”

  He furrowed his brow at me. “What’s the difference?”

  “Seems pretty clear Jablonski and his boys want to turn this black-brown feud into a three-way,” Brisco said. “Get us all fighting so they can justify a hive-wide lockdown, sit on their asses, and collect overtime pay ’til Christmas. And you’re the wedge.”

  “I can smooth it,” I said again. “Point out a Calles big shot for me. I’ll have a chat.”

  “Never point your finger at anybody in here,” Brisco said. “That’s a good way to die. But if you’ll look a little more to your left—see the guy at the end of that table? Skinhead with a hooknose and the double-teardrop tat at the corner of his eye? That’s Raymundo. Thinks he’s Don Corleone, which he ain’t, but he’s hooked up with the Calles from end to end.”

  “End to end?”

  “Yeah,” Brisco said, “cradle to grave. Old-school gangster. Listen, Faust, you gotta understand something. I’m not letting my people get sucked into this fight. We’re outnumbered, big time, and any kind of race-war-type-situation is going to end with a lot of my guys in the infirmary or the morgue. That’s just how it is. We’ll watch your back if we can…”

  “But if it gets hot, I’m on my own.” I stirred my plastic fork in the eggs, leaving a slug trail of yellow water on my plate. “Message received.”

  “Well we’re not giving you to ’em.” Brisco nodded at Ray-Ray. “Stay close. And Ray-Ray and Slanger’ll watch your curtain while you shower. Just make sure to return the favor. Safety in numbers.”

  Safety in numbers was the first thing I had to shed out in the prison yard. I spotted Raymundo quick. He was over by the weight benches, shouting encouragement as one of his buddies lifted the equivalent of a small car on his barbell. Five guys in all, mostly shirtless and flashing calligraphic CC tattoos on their pecs or shoulder blades, one keeping a hard-eyed watch while the others pumped iron and joked around.

  The joking stopped, dead cold, when I walked up alone.

  The barbell rattled onto its rack and the weightlifter sat up, shooting a lethal glare. Everybody froze except for Raymundo. He went on the offensive, strutting up with his hands spread wide.

  “Look at this,” he said in a sibilant rasp. “You believe the balls on this pendejo? What’s up, you in a hurry to die?”

  I took a deep breath, locking eyes with him. Showing my open hands, keeping my tone light and my moves easy.

  “I come in respect. I hear you’ve been told some falsehoods about me. I want to set the record straight, before the situation gets out of control.”

  “No, no.” He wagged his finger. “There’s no falsehoods. Jacket’s a jacket, and we’ve seen yours.”

  “Sure. And who gave you that jacket? A guard who wants to set off a race war.”

  He shrugged. “So what if he does? Doesn’t mean you didn’t shoot Little Konnie.”

  Konstantin Floros, I thought. My alleged “victim,” a low-level pot dealer on Jennifer’s payroll.

  “Floros wasn’t even part of your set,” I told him. “He didn’t fly your flag. You don’t have to go to war for him.”

  “He worked for our partnership. He was an earner. If we let you skate, that makes us look weak.”

  “Good news, then. I didn’t kill him. You can get in touch with the outside, reach out to Jennifer. She’s family. She’ll tell you there’s no way in hell I pulled the trigger on one of her guys.”

  Raymundo’s bushy eyebrows fell into a straight line, sharp as the path of a bullet. He got inside my personal space.

  “Jennifer?” he said. “What do you know about JJ?”

  “Enough to know she’ll vouch for me. I’ve known her longer than you have. We’ve been places together. We’ve seen things.”

  He thought that over. The scowl didn’t leave his face, though.

  “Can’t call her,” he said. “She ain’t around right now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what I mean. She ain’t around.”

  She’s just hiding, I told myself, forcing my gut to unclench. She heard about the cops going after Nicky, and she went underground to wait out the heat. She’s smart. She’s fine. She’s safe.

  But with a turf war brewing, I couldn’t know that. I couldn’t know anything for certain—not until I got the hell out of here and fought my way back home.

  “You should wait to talk to her before you do anything she might not like,” I told Raymundo.

  “Maybe,” he replied.

  That was all he had to say. I took one step backward, then another. He mirrored me. I didn’t turn my back and walk away until I was well out of arm’s reach, and even then I held my breath until I’d taken a good twenty steps. Nobody ran up on me from behind. I was safe.

  This time.

  I found Paul walking the oval track, sucking on a cigarette. He glanced my way.

  “So how’d that go?”

  “I’m still breathing.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “I’ve got to get word to the outside,” I told him. “And without being listened in on. Anybody ever smuggle a cell phone in here?”

  Paul flicked his cigarette to the track and snuffed it under the heel of his canvas shoe.

  “Sure,” he said, “pricey, though. Burner with an hour or two of call time on it can run you four, five hundred bucks in commissary credit. Oh, there’s one other problem. In Hive C, there’s really only one reliable supplier.”

  “Yeah? Who’s that?”

  Paul nodded back toward the weight benches.

  “Raymundo. Wanna go back over there, ask if he’ll talk business?”

  “Shit.”

  Paul lit another cigarette. Offered it to me. I passed. He took a deep drag and looked up to the cloudless sky.

  “You are so right, my friend,” he said. “And we are all neck-deep in it.”

  As we walked, I could feel the alien maggot crawling across my brain. Writhing over gray meat, leaving a burning slug trail in its wake. How long, I wondered, before it would stop wriggling and start chewing? Swallowing down my revulsion, I took a walk, alone, along the fence line. I knew that wasn’t safe, but I hoped I’d bought myself a little time with Raymundo and his boys. I needed a few quiet minutes to think.

  Instead, I saw an unexpected arrival hobbling my way. The Prof. He goggled at me, eyes wide and bulging, coming closer in a limping shuffle-step like one of his legs was an inch longer than the other.

  I stopped cold by the fence and waited for him.

  “You,” he said, sounding as perplexed as he looked, “ar
e not the Thief.”

  “To the contrary. I’m a pretty damn good thief.” I shrugged. “Current situation notwithstanding.”

  “You’re not the Thief. You—you shouldn’t be here.”

  “That’s what I keep telling people.”

  He grabbed a handful of his wild snow-white mane, yanking it in frustration and squeezing his eyes shut.

  “No,” he snapped. “This is all wrong. He’s telling the story wrong. You aren’t supposed to be here. You…you need to talk to my sister. She can explain. Better than I can. I get…confused. My head is foggy.”

  “Hey, if they ever have an open visiting day, feel free to introduce me. I just don’t think—”

  “No. She can’t come here. But you can talk to her from my cell.”

  I grabbed his shoulder.

  “Are you telling me,” I said, “that you’ve got a cell phone? Let me borrow it for five minutes, and I’ll talk to anybody you want. Just one phone call, that’s all I need.”

  His lips curled, and he gave me a slow, mad-eyed smile.

  “Come with me.”

  12.

  Back in Hive C, up on the fourth tier, I knew the Prof’s cell before he led me inside. It was the one that glowed in my second sight.

  The tiny chalk mark on the threshold was aflame with power. I didn’t recognize the symbol, but I could taste its intent, like the memory of ginger on my tongue and the scent of sandalwood incense. A warding sigil. Three more dotted his cell, one for each wall, the white glyphs tucked into hard-to-spot places. While I counted sigils, he reached under his bunk and dragged out a plastic storage tub.

  “You’re a magician,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  He paused, turning his head to grin my way.

  “No, magic is tricks and lies. I peddle the truth. Only truth, but nobody ever believes me.”

  The stench that roiled out when he popped the plastic lid, something like three-day-old roadkill on a hot Nevada highway, nearly knocked me flat. Prison wine. I recognized the makings of a crude still for fermentation, cobbled together with cast-off containers and plastic tubing.

  “Problem is,” he muttered, shuffling to his desk and picking up a dusty plastic cup, “nobody wants truth. It’s a hard sell. I was a traveling salesman once, before I found my true vocation. Did you know that?”

  “Buddy,” I told him, “I don’t even know your name.”

  He barked a delighted laugh.

  “Buddy. My name is Buddy. My parents were avid fans of the blues, quite avid. Here, hold this cup.”

  I obliged him, but I wasn’t sure why.

  I thought the stench from the makeshift still couldn’t get any worse. He took a Ziploc bag from the container, fat with viscous, strawberry-colored goop, and proved me wrong the second he opened it. I raised an eyebrow as he poured out three fingers of the nasty stuff, splattering into the cup.

  “So, uh, what’s in this, exactly?”

  “This and that.” He winked and sealed the bag back up. “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. No, not blue. Pink.”

  “Thanks, but I’m really not thirsty. So about that phone—”

  “I know, I know, you want to talk to your—” He paused, furrowing his brow and tilting his head. “Cait…Caitlin. And you’re afraid for Jennifer, so very afraid, though you’re trying to tell yourself everything’s fine.”

  “I get it,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I did. “You’re a psychic. A mind reader.”

  Buddy slapped the plastic cover over his improvised still, frowning as he waved a fluttery hand.

  “I hear the machinery of the universe,” he said. “So many thoughts, so many voices, crowding everything out of my head. They tried to put me on pills once. Just made it worse. Nothing stops the transmission. I’m Radio Free Buddy.”

  Poor guy. I’d seen the unlucky ones like him before. Natural talents who never got the training they needed. It was easy to dig too deep, push the senses too hard, and end up a burnout or a head case. There but for the grace of Bentley and Corman go I, I thought, thinking back to my own misspent youth.

  Still, he could come in handy. It’d be easier to clear up the mystery of Hive B and get back in good graces with Winslow and his gang if Buddy had any talent for remote viewing.

  “I don’t have a phone,” Buddy said, “but I have a connection. My sister, she’s singing out across the lines. You need to hear her. Drink.”

  I eyed the pink glop. I’d swallowed some pretty dubious concoctions in my day, either for occult purposes or just in the pursuit of a good time, but this was a little extreme even for me.

  “Hey,” I said, reaching to hand the cup back to him, “look, not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but I’m going to take a pass—”

  “Lauren Carmichael,” he said.

  That froze me.

  “My sister,” he said, squinting as if listening to a voice I couldn’t hear, “says you think it’s over. But you don’t understand. Everything Lauren Carmichael did and all that she became, everything you think you stopped…it was nothing but a side effect.”

  I should have been able to put it all behind me. Lauren Carmichael was dead. I should know—I’d helped kill her. I’d put her, her followers, and her whole rotten legacy to the torch. I should have been able to sleep easy after that.

  Sometimes, though.

  Sometimes, if I heard her name, or if I was lying awake in the still hours of the night, I was suddenly right back there again—back in that place I never wanted to go.

  Flat on my back on a blood-soaked carpet, paralyzed, my aura shredded, her hands on my body. Forcing her toxic energy inside me, one quivering inch at a time. Hearing her gasp of pleasure as she finished her work and let go.

  I should have been strong enough to fight her off. I should have been strong enough, after it was all over, to shrug off the memory and let it go. And I hated that I couldn’t. I hated that it was so easy to slip back to that place in my mind, feeling filthy and worthless all over again like it just happened yesterday.

  I’d killed Lauren Carmichael, but I couldn’t kill her ghost.

  Maybe this would bring me one step closer.

  “Buddy,” I said, lifting the cup to my lips and trying to ignore the stench.

  He looked at me, a question in his eyes.

  “If this is a trick,” I told him, “I will kill you. Understand that.”

  “No tricks.” He nodded, his shock of hair bobbing. “No treats either, sorry. Only truth.”

  I held my nose and drank it down.

  The slime tasted like a rotten animal carcass smells. It coated my tongue and got stuck in the back of my mouth, my gag reflex fighting me as I forced myself to swallow. Blood roared in my ears as the drink hit my stomach, the cell beginning to spin, the ground falling away from my feet and chunks of concrete raining down as the ceiling wrenched itself open to let in a stream of molten light.

  Then I was gone.

  * * *

  Home again.

  I stood in the middle of South Las Vegas Boulevard under a burning midday sun. Raw desert heat washed over me, stealing my breath, turning distant parked cars into mirages.

  Not parked. Abandoned. Crashed. One of the busiest streets in the world was a graveyard of broken-down, rusted, and burned-out shells. Dead taxis and capsized rental cars. I stood alone in the wreckage.

  The last living man in Las Vegas.

  The Karnak, once a pyramid of glass thirty stories tall, was nothing but a shattered, twisted skeleton of steel girders burned black. Its closest neighbor, a resort built to look like a fantasy castle, had been through a siege: what walls remained were charred and half-battered to rubble. In the other direction, the Taipei Tower—Caitlin’s home—stood skewed on blasted foundations and poised to fall.

  A page from the Las Vegas Sun blew past my feet, carried on a stray gust of hot wind. I snatched at it, too slow, and only saw the single-word headline before the breeze carried it under
the smoldering husk of a taxicab.

  GOODBYE.

  Rattling, squeaking wheels turned my head. A stoop-shouldered woman puttered up the sidewalk, her tangled hair poking out from under a dirty lace shawl, pushing a shopping cart piled high with empty cans and clutter. She stopped. As she raised her head, I realized she could pass for Buddy’s twin.

  “You aren’t the Thief,” she croaked.

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Then who are you?”

  I took a step closer, showing her my open hands, trying to be reassuring. She didn’t seem to be afraid of me, though.

  “I’m Daniel Faust.”

  “I didn’t ask your name,” she said. “I asked who are you? Not the same question at all. A reasonably bright dog can learn his own name. Do you even know who you are?”

  I gestured at the wreckage. “Is this the future?”

  She snorted, waving a wrinkled hand at me.

  “How could it be the future if it already happened? Don’t think about past or present. Forget about time, boy, it won’t help you. Think sideways. Look closer.”

  She pointed to my left, at the broken Ionic columns and flame-scorched steps. I looked up at the marquee and frowned.

  “This is the Monaco,” I told her. “I’ve been here a hundred times. So why does the sign say—”

  “This isn’t your home,” she said. “It’s mine. Call me Cassandra, if you’re needing a name. Not the one I was born with, but it suits me these days.”

  Graffiti caught my eye, spattered across a leaning wall. A crescent curve like a sideways moon spray-painted in neon purple, lined with uneven squares. Chaos inside symmetry. It took me a minute to realize I was looking at a picture of smiling teeth.

  “He’s the man with the Cheshire smile,” Cassandra said, following my gaze, “and rest assured, he is the reason you’re here.”

  “Did he do all this?” I turned toward her.

  “This?” She looked into the distance. Faint plumes of black smoke licked the cloudless sky. “This was only the beginning. Some people had a very good idea, though, my brother tells me. They couldn’t kill him, you see. He just keeps coming back. He’ll always come back. So they trapped him. Snared him in a land of smoke, under a black sun. Sealed away and left to rot in the darkness.”