The Austin Job

by David Mark Brown

  “You don’t know anything!” she barked, spittle exploding from her lips.

  “Well darling, I’ll tell you what I know. As an interrogator, I know I might as well kill you and save us both a lot of grief.” She froze. He smiled. “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna kill you.” He looked at the wall and shrugged before looking back at the girl. “Not directly, anyway. No. I’m gonna let you go.” He started to release the restraint on her left hand, but then stopped. “Granted you answer me one question with a straight answer. I think you’re shooting shit, I’ll dump you down the elevator shaft just to be done with ya. You tell me the truth, I promise I’ll let you go unharmed.”

  He glanced at the wound on her thigh. “Well, any more harmed. Sorry about the gunshot wound.” She glared. “Right then. The question.” He stood, looked her in the eyes like he’d done before and nodded. “What does he call you? You know, the name he’s given you, like the name he gave Brutus.” He shook his head and frowned. “Poor schmuck.” Confusion bubbled beneath her surface again, welling behind her eyes visibly. “Sorry. Anyway, you were saying?” She hesitated. “Your choice.” He tapped the holster at his side.

  “Oleander.”

  Lickter nodded, then loosened the restraint on her left wrist. Shifting between her and the door, he loosened the final restraint and stood back. “One of the most poisonous domestic shrubs. I seen one in a garden near abouts. Pretty though. Anyway, say hi to Oleg for me.” She lowered her feet to the floor, slid gingerly from the table.

  “Tell him I’ll see him soon, and I’m grateful for the map.” He reached slowly into his pants pocket. Pulling out a blood stained parchment—tattered, yellowed with age—he gently unfolded it enough for her to recognize it. Her eyes panicked, a deer in headlights, confirming his suspicion.

  He continued, “I didn’t see it at first, only being an indentation and all.” He folded the paper back and flipped it over. “But you rub your finger over it right here and you can make it out. Well then it struck me that it’s about the right size to be tucked into an envelope—an envelope with your name on it. Well his name for you, anyway.” He scratched his head under the brim of his hat. “Anyway, I got some gear to pack.” He stepped to the door and held it open for her.

  She rushed past him, darting into the plush lobby but not finding any convenient exits. “I didn’t give you that!”

  “Calm down, I know you didn’t. Here, I’ll escort you out of the building. Get your blood up and you’ll soak through that bandage before you get back to him. Then you’ll be a poor sight.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Speaking of, where are my manners. The doc done tore the leg off your pants all the way up the thigh. That ain’t no way for a lady to be seen in public.” He tutted. “Maybe you should take the tunnels.” He held up the map.

  She snarled, her hackles rising. “You’d like that wouldn’t you? But I didn’t give you that map, and I’m not letting you follow me either.” She began to shake with desperation. “Just open this damn lift! If you try to follow me out of the building, I’ll scream.”

  Lickter scowled, tapping his holster. “Don’t forget your manners, young lady.” He unlocked the elevator, drew his weapon and waved her in. After an awkward ride to the second floor he stood by the elevator doors and watched her scamper down the stairs, through the main lobby and out into the street.

  As he stepped back into the elevator he felt anything but pleasure over the outcome. On the surface it disturbed him to think of the girl’s wasted affections, and what Oleg might do to her if he didn’t believe her story. More importantly he’d confirmed that the map detailed a system of tunnels running beneath the city—tunnels that Oleg probably knew by heart. Worse yet, it seemed they connected to the Grandview building at least once. And Lickter found it impossible to believe anything like a secret tunnel could exist under her building without Gwendolyn Winifryd Lloyd’s knowledge of it.

  Underneath it all, he couldn’t fight the nagging feeling that he and Miss Oleander had too much in common.

  TEN

  An Older Austin

  A chilly breeze from the surface of Waller Creek drifted across Twelfth Street. Its water trickled south beneath the ethereal blue light of the Trinity Tower and eventually into the Colorado River.

  “Do you see them?” Starr pressed his back into the rough surface of a stone wall while Daisy peeked around the corner.

  “Nothing. Weren’t there three of them right at the end?”

  “That’s what I saw. Come on.” He led the way across the empty street, stretching his eyes across every surface as he went. Despite the area being residential, not a single light or lamp burned in a window. The town had been snuffed out with anxiety, or chosen to pass away rather than go mad. On the northeast corner they found a tiny park, an empty lot where the creek emerged from backyards before diving beneath Twelfth Street.

  “They were standing right here.” Daisy crossed an ornate, stone footbridge preserved from a much older Austin, or a time before Austin. No path lead up to it, and it led nowhere.

  Starr slid down the bank, peering under the foot bridge and then the culvert beneath the street. “Could they have gone into a house?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “There’s barely room for a full-grown man to fit through here, and he’d get pretty wet in the process.” Starr shifted, trying to get a view all the way out the other side of the culvert.

  Daisy leaned over the side of the bridge for a better angle. “Hey, look at this.” She ran her hands over a carving on the outside edge of the footbridge. “This relief feels loose.” As Starr scrambled back up the bank and onto the bridge, Daisy crossed to the opposite side. “There’s one over here too, same thing.” Starr kneeled down and ran his fingers over the carving. He pressed down on it with his palm, causing the bridge to shake.

  “What the—”

  “I just—”

  “Me too.” Starr stood up, the sound of grinding gears vibrating from beneath him. “Look.” A section of the bridge’s surface slowly sank, the pungent odor of stagnant water and decomposition wafting up to greet them. For a few seconds they watched, slack-jawed, as it crept lower. He knew they were both contemplating turning back, waiting till morning. Finally Starr tested its surface with a foot before getting on. “Here.” Daisy accepted his hands around her waist.

  “We’ve gone this far.” She hugged him tight.

  Starr breathed deep. “We’ll just see where it goes. It might be nothing, an old storm cellar.” But they both knew better. The stone walls of the narrow shaft gave way to open air—dark and clammy. Suddenly he felt exposed. What if Oleg waited for them below? He crouched in the confined quarters, begging the lift to drop faster. Disobedient, it continued a steady pace until finally Starr could see beneath the ceiling of the underground space. But in the absence of light, there was nothing to see.

  With a thud the stone slab struck bottom. Tentatively he stepped off, his eyes adjusting to the marginal glow of the moonlight tower casting a blue square on the floor. When Daisy followed, a click reverberated from the far wall as the gears commenced again, but in reverse. “Oh biscuits.” She grabbed his arm, the slab inching back toward the surface. “What do we do?” Her voice echoed in the dark expanse.

  “This is how Oleg’s been moving about town. There has to be controls down here too.” He desperately wanted to find out more. He wanted to stop Oleg on his own, without being manipulated by G.W.

  “It’s about to get pretty dark. How do we find them?” Daisy sounded concerned, but not panicked.

  He followed the sound of the clicking chains and gears. “It should be obvious from this side.” He ran his fingers over the surface of the stone. The joints had been mitered to perfection.

  “What’s this? Is that a light?” Daisy’s voice came from his right.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the platform, two feet off the ground and rising, before peering in her direction. He narrowed his eyes t
o slits. “Carbon arc.”

  “It’s awful small.”

  “Or far off.” He kept his hands roving over the moss-covered stones.

  “James.” Daisy had returned to the platform, almost chest high on her. The blue light from above emphasized the fear on her face.

  “Here. A carving just like the others.” He pressed it an inch into the wall. The lift stopped. Silence.

  “Thank God. I was getting a little—”

  “Shhh.” Starr held his breath. “Did you hear that?” A faint scuttling echoed, bouncing off the tunnel walls. He turned his head in both directions—north towards campus, then south toward the river. He couldn’t tell where it came from, or how far. The disorientation maddened him. The sound could have been ten feet away or ten thousand. “North, I think.” He started walking in that direction.

  “Rats?” Daisy asked.

  He froze. “I hate rats.”

  “You big baby.”

  The scuttling sound returned, a little louder. It felt like a faint sound, closer than it was far. He studied the ground at his feet. “Do you suppose that sonic gun would work on critters?”

  “I don’t see why not. But come on. Let’s find the source of the light first. I have an idea.”

  He stood his ground for a moment longer, trying to feel the darkness with his mind, trying to use sound and imagination to create a picture. He waved his hands about in the space around him. The gesture added a clicking sound to the scuttling. It reminded him of something, chilling him despite the muggy, underground air. But he couldn’t place it. With a final huff, he turned to join her.

  In the confines of the tunnel her presence intoxicated him more quickly than above ground. His heightened senses combined with his imagination to sketch her in even lustier proportions. Plus the darkness created an insatiable need for physical touch.

  She allowed him to lead, her fingers laced in his. He felt a partnership with her unlike any other, as if his thoughts were a film projected on a screen. Communicating with her both frightened and titillated him. The possibilities included a level of trust he’d never known—an unknown potential for intimacy, joy, and grief. While terrifying, he felt an insatiable need to know and be known at such depths, consequences be damned. Creeping southward for a city block, they discovered the source of light.

  “I thought so.” Daisy stepped in front of him.

  “It’s right under the moonlight tower.”

  “It’s the base of it. Look.” She placed his hand on a rust-encrusted pipe, a foot in diameter. “Shield your eyes.”

  “What—” a bright, blue light flooded into the space around them before Starr could react. As he belatedly blocked the light with his hand he heard a hissing from the way they’d come.

  Giddy with discovery, Daisy continued, “There’s an extra light in the base. It hasn’t been maintained as well, but someone’s caring for it.” Starr stepped into the middle of the tunnel, peering northward where the light pushed the darkness nearly back to the entrance. But his eyes were still awash with the initial burst. “Hello. Look at this. The carvings. They’ve all been of bulls’ heads. And there’s a date here.”

  “1895, right?” Starr kept his eyes focused northward up the tunnel, the scuttling sound growing louder, angrier.

  “How did you know?”

  “The year the towers were finished.” He crept a step closer to the noise.

  “You know what this means.” She paused. “James? You’re not still worried about the rats?”

  He waved a hand in her direction without looking back. “Daisy, I think I recognize that sound, and I don’t think it’s rats.”

  ~~~

  She would be twenty-two tomorrow, but Oleg wouldn’t be there to celebrate the anniversary of his daughter’s birth. Oleander had her same hair. Perhaps it explained why he’d been soft on her. He stopped before the entrance into his lair, listening to her breathing directly behind him. He clutched the left horn and pulled it down, then the right. Next he pushed the right back in place, followed by the left. The dead end wall split in the middle and slid open. Any other sequence filled the tunnel with burning oil from two tiny spouts in the ceiling.

  It had been one of his early inventions for Russia, only revolutionary in its scope and treachery. But it had become his legacy when deployed sloppily by the British against the Germans at Somme only two years earlier. Here it served as his signature addition to the system of tunnels that existed long before his arrival. He’d leave them behind for the enjoyment of future generations of saboteurs and secret societies—one more gift of chaos to help David slay Goliath.

  It was the least he could do, a feeble attempt to compensate for betraying his ideals. But his self-righteous ideals had lost him his family to begin with. He would be a new Oleg Rodchenko from now on.

  The gas lights hissed to life, a chain reaction making its way around the room. “Thank you, Barabbas, for your help. Go. Is time to sleep.” He clapped the young man on the shoulder. “Tomorrow is big day.”

  “I’m ready, Professor.”

  Despite the young man’s blue eyes and Saxon heritage, he reminded Oleg of his younger self—same build, same fire. He nodded. “Good, good. Now go.” Barabbas headed up the stairs toward Oleg’s academic office. The professor pulled the right horn of a second bronze bull to let the young man pass. As he pushed it back into the wall he turned toward the girl. “Oleander. Help me with this. I am old man.” He placed the nozzle of the flame thrower on the work bench. “Ah, Rasputin. We will not require services just yet.”

  Oleander came up slowly behind him, timid. She slid the tanks up, removing the harness from his shoulders. The movement required her to lean close to Oleg. Lifting her arms over his bent neck and head, she finally placed the tanks beside the nozzle.

  He shook his head. She is good girl, but naive. Too malleable. It was a shame. His directions to her having been completed, she stood motionless, her back toward him. “Good to have you back.” He put his hand on her shoulder and felt her quivering. “We all worry for you.” He turned her around, tears streaming down her face.

  “Stop crying.” He brushed back a tear as she closed her eyes to his touch. “Is leg? Did they harm you?” She shook her head. “I know. I give too much responsibility, but all will soon be over.” She shook her head again, more vehemently.

  Through sobs she burst out, “I didn’t give it to them. I don’t know how he got it, but it wasn’t from me.”

  “Peace child. What is this you speak of?” He cupped her chin with his hands, lifting her eyes to meet his.

  “The map.” She cringed as she spoke. “The sheriff has the map.” She crumbled, forcing him to catch her under the arms. His mustache twitched. “He said something about Brutus. I think he killed him.” She blubbered into his chest.

  “Unfortunate.” His eyes flashed with venom, disgusted with himself for not checking the boy’s pockets first. He tried to relax. Without help the map would be next to impossible to interpret. But what had the girl given them in exchange for her release? As if reading his thoughts she flinched, jerking her head from his chest.

  “I didn’t tell them anything, I swear. Not a thing.” She pleaded with him through swimming eyes.

  “Of course you didn’t. Peace child.” He backed her toward his chair until she sat. “They cannot read map. Is too late. Tomorrow we end what we begin.” She rested her head on the table. He backed away from her, collecting a box and a jar before returning. “You must be strong.”

  He slammed both containers upside down on the surface, inches from her head. She jolted, rearing back as he lifted both the box and the jar to reveal an angry scorpion and tarantula. Instantly the animals locked in mortal combat. “Scorpion is out-matched by both size and weight.” The battling arachnids shifted about the table, grappling for the upper hand. “She must lure larger enemy into striking range.”

  Oleander attempted to rise from the chair, but Oleg pressed her back down gently. The scorp
ion clamped the tarantula’s forward most legs in its pincers, pulling the spider into itself. “Only when spider attacks is top of head within reach of scorpion sting.” Oleg put his hand on Oleander’s back, keeping her from retreating in horror. “Watch.”

  Lightning quick the spider took its shot, the fang protruding from its jaw scratching the armored back of its foe. But in the same instant the scorpion landed its sting on the soft, bulbous head of the spider. Twice more it forced its tail up over its head while pulling the spider down by the legs. Finally it let go. The spider spun, leapt lamely, and then crumpled. Reacting to the toxin, its legs curled inward.

  Oleg scooped both the spider and scorpion into the jar before dumping them into the box and closing it tight. “Scorpion is sick, but she will eat foe and live.” He picked Oleander up by the shoulders. Shaking her lightly, he forced her to look him in the eyes. “Tonight you are sick. Tomorrow we eat foe.” He raised his brows. “да?” She nodded, uncertain at first. Then her eyes filled with poison as she borrowed from his own. He kissed her forehead. “Good.” He had plenty to share.

  ~~~

  The scuttle-click hissing bore down on them until the popping burns on Starr’s retinas finally cleared.

  Daisy took his hand, crouching behind him. “Then what—”

  “Scorpions!” He stumbled backwards into her. “Duck!” He forced her down as a pincer the size of a dinner plate slashed across the back of his head, knocking him to the ground on top of her. He rolled and came up firing. The .38 popped loudly in the tunnel. Gunpowder flared from the barrel, creating a spasmodic light show and illuminating the chaos around them one still image at a time. “The sonic gun!”

  A stinger lashed from the roof of the tunnel within inches of his face, the pungent venom choking the air. He continued firing as the monster fled over the top of them and smashed into the base of the moonlight tower. Furious, it jabbed at the light, pounding its armor-encrusted pincers and head into the pipe.