Deadline Man

by Jon Talton

  I have made my choice. Going back the other way means another dangerous walk through a mile of darkness and then, perhaps, questions from cops at the station. Going forward might be worse. Stu and Laura will be there. They might have backup, with all the weaponry that would make Fitz envious, and all I have is the small revolver, five rounds in the chamber, and another five reloads—if I get that far. But there’s an advantage in being underestimated. Bill made that mistake and gave me the edge I needed. Now I count on it again. I walk to a quarter mile of the end of the tunnel and lay an ambush.

  ***

  The sound of shoes crunching on gravel reaches me even before I see them. Stu and Laura enter the tunnel’s portal walking down the middle of the tracks. Laura’s blond halo disappears as they leave the outside light. Stu has a flashlight, but he’s aiming it at the ground. Their hands are otherwise empty. It’s amazing: I have given them every reason to believe I am slow and witless. That I am weak. Now they walk down the middle of the railroad tracks expecting to meet up with Bill, who will tell them, mission accomplished. The last thing they expect is for me not only to be alive, but in a comfortable shooting position, concealed in the darkness.

  The .357 is out of my pocket now, slipping silently and easily from its holster. It is the lightest gun I have ever held and I have never fired it. I wish I had taken time to go to a range in Phoenix, even squeeze off a few with Fitz when we were in the desert. But I was always afraid of using ammunition I might need later. And, as always, there was no time. But Fitz, who loved the pistol, gave me some advice about how to fire it. I make use of that now, as I hold it two-handed and spread my elbows wider than if I were shooting the heavy Combat Magnum. Both of their silhouettes are clear and black against the city light emitted by portal. The trigger gets as warm as my finger. I let them walk closer.

  Years ago, in that other life, I was taught that most firefights take place within fifty feet. I wait until they are half that distance before I make the final alignment of my sights, aiming for the torso. I exhale and smoothly pull the trigger.

  The revolver explodes twice in quick succession, echoing eerily through the tunnel. The gun kicks very hard but my wide-armed stance controls it. Instantly, Stu goes off his feet, a dark, viscous shadow flying out from behind his body, then he falls straight back and down as if a wall had become animate and run into him at fifty miles an hour.

  “Bill! No!”

  Laura screams this and I have already traversed to her silhouette. She thinks her colleague following me through the tunnel has accidentally fired on them. It’s a fatal mistake. The first round spins her like a rag doll. The second puts her on the hard rail roadbed.

  Ten seconds have passed.

  I rise and walk quickly to Stu. He’s on his back with a pair of holes in his white shirt and no pulse. I go through his pockets and retrieve what I hope are the keys to the black SUV. His flashlight lies with its head atop one of the rails, spotlighting the face of an attractive woman with short blond hair.

  Three feet away, Laura is on her side, her arms splayed out. Blood is coming out of the side of her mouth and her eyes follow me dully. I keep the revolver trained on her. One round is left in its five-shot cylinder. I pat her down and find the mass of a semi-auto in a holster on her back, still in place. Her pulse is weak and thready.

  “You can’t stop it.”

  She says this as clearly as if she were still talking to me the day I was chained to the waterboard chair. I kneel down on my haunches, brushing her hair out of her face with involuntary tenderness.

  “Stop what?” I nearly shout it. My ears are still ringing from the gunfire.

  But she’s gone now, her eyes milky marbles in the glare of the flashlight.

  ***

  The black SUV is parked on Alaskan Way, fifty feet from the tunnel portal near the Port of Seattle office. Traffic is light and the bay beyond is blue-black, nearly invisible. I walk quickly from the tracks, across a low railing, and to the sidewalk. I cross the four lanes of the street and approach the SUV from behind. Someone is sitting in the back seat.

  Tamping down the rage that has followed me from the tunnel, I walk calmly along the sidewalk, wishing I had reloaded. One live round is left in the .357. It’s back in the holster in my right pocket. As I stride along, just a normal gait, just like anybody going down the sidewalk, my hand rests on the gun. Through the tinted windows, I can only see a shadow, sitting on the driver’s side rear seat. He seems to be looking forward.

  Backup.

  This is where a sane man would walk the other way, catch the 99 bus that would take me to Pioneer Square and home. Yet I walk toward the vehicle. “You can’t stop it,” Laura had said. They know what “it” is. The man sitting in the SUV will know.

  Now I move quickly, quicker than he can check the side mirrors and react. In an instant, my hand is on the cold doorknob. I rip the door open and lean in, putting the gun barrel an inch from his nose.

  “No!” It is Rachel who screams. She draws back against the opposite door in a fetal position.

  “What’s going on? Where are the FBI agents?” she demands.

  “In the tunnel. And they’re not FBI agents.”

  I put her in the front seat, put Stu’s key in the ignition, and drive.

  She must see a wild look in my eyes. She keeps quiet, glances at me in brief bursts, seeking recognition. I watch her out of the corner of my eye, something in me not trusting her, even though she was the one who alerted me to the danger at the station, even though her body language was stiff with fear. Still, she was sitting unrestrained in the SUV—nothing keeping her from summoning help when Stu and Laura went to get me. She obviously had suspicions about them—why else would she have mouthed the word “run”? My bloodstream, bones, muscles are all animated by mistrust now.

  After we have gone several blocks, she starts to talk quickly. The three caught her in the parking lot, showed their identification, demanded to know what she was doing at the station. She told them—it was just instinct. Deference to authority. Stupid, sure. But they said they were federal agents. Maybe they were there to protect me. She blurted it out: I was arriving tonight. They walked her in to the station to meet the Portland train, Stu keeping a tight grip on her upper arm. She points to it, rubs it.

  “Something about the way he was holding me made me realize they were there to hurt you…”

  We drive past the businesses on First Avenue. I don’t notice the clever marquee of the week at the Lusty Lady. Rachel talks in a quiet voice. She had been careful driving to meet me, taken all the precautions I had given her.

  “But you stayed in this SUV. Nobody kept you here. Why?”

  Her voice grows steely. “I can’t tell you anything that you’ll believe. You’ve decided now you don’t trust me.”

  I want to hope she’s telling the truth. A hundred things could have gone wrong, setting them back on my track, including my own carelessness. She’s either a part of this—call it what it is: plot—or she’s in danger. She sent me a note warning me off eleven/eleven. She claims she doesn’t know what it means. Her father does. But maybe he thought he was doing the right thing by keeping me from Praetorian. Maybe he thought eleven/eleven was another drill, and my digging into it would just bring lethal trouble my way. But he’s the one who ran the original Praetorian. A man trained to conceal and deceive. I don’t have time to sort it all out.

  I let her lean across and caress my face. Later I might wish I had been less out of my mind, wish I had debriefed her more. But that would be later.

  “You’re hurt.”

  For the first time I notice the throbbing in my left cheek. Where I was knocked to the hard ground by Bill.

  “I like your beard,” she says.

  “Do you trust your father?”

  “How can you ask such a thing.” Her voice turns hot. “Of course, I do.”

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “I�
��m starting to wonder if I should trust you.”

  I let that hang in the stuffy air of the cab as we glide down the street into the train station parking lot. No police cars, no conspicuously unmarked vehicles, no officers with shotguns and dogs looking for the man who ran down the railroad tunnel. The lot is half-full and I slide into the empty spot next to Rachel’s Honda.

  “You need to leave,” I say. “Where can you go?”

  “What are you talking about? What have you gotten into?”

  “They’ll kill you.” I say it simply and she shudders. “Where can you go?”

  She purses her lips and stares at me. “We have a condo in Vancouver. Is that good enough?”

  “That’s a start. Go tonight.”

  “But…”

  “Rachel, you’ve got to go.”

  “Then come with me.”

  “I can’t. I have to get the story.”

  “The story!” She pounds her fists on the dashboard. “Are you insane? If they’ll try to kill me, they will kill you! You’re not even employed anymore—you told me yourself. I asked you if you’d be willing to just have a happy life, and you told me yes…” She starts to cry, but the anger retakes her. “This is just another way for you to keep me at a distance.”

  “This is not about you and me.”

  She shakes her head slowly. “Damn you to hell.”

  “Go! Tonight!” I shout it and she screams a worse obscenity back at me, storms from the SUV, unlocks her car, and gets inside. In seconds, the tail lights glow red and she burns out of the parking lot.

  I drive the SUV up Madison, past First Hill into the Central District. All of Seattle’s glamour falls away in the Seedy. I park it on a desolate side street, use my tie to wipe down the places I touched, and leave it with the keys in the driver’s door. With any luck, it will be stolen by the morning. Four blocks take me to a bus stop and the chill sea air slowly chips away the calm, edgeless rage that overtook me in the tunnel. In ten minutes, I catch the nearly empty bus back to Pioneer Square. Pam is dead, and now the people who killed her, and probably Troy Hardesty and Ryan Meyers, are dead. I acted with murderous clarity. If vengeance is sweet, why do I taste only bile in my mouth?

  Chapter Forty-three

  I get off the bus at Pioneer Square. A girl is standing at the curb and reluctantly lets me get past her. Otherwise, the park, so leafy just two months ago, is bare and nearly deserted. The spire of the Smith Tower stands out stark white with its blue light at the top. Across the street, the bare bulbs of the Merchants Café sign beams out as if it’s 1910. A small group of autumn tourists passes speaking Russian.

  Closer to me, a homeless man hunches on one wooden bench, his net worth in several large garbage bags. I buy a Free Press from the news rack, go to an empty bench, and let myself down slowly. My knee hurts from where Bill drop-kicked me. Someday maybe I’ll have time to wonder why he had such a personal, visceral hatred of me, while his colleagues were just professional killers. Maybe a newspaper misspelled his name when he was in high-school band. My face throbs. Mostly I feel this huge emptiness in my middle and pressure against my eyes. Like I need a good cry but the tears won’t come. The newspaper feels strange to the touch. Someday historians might look back and say it was a perfect “delivery device” for information. Now it’s just headed to the dustbin of history. They’re starting to run historic photos—not a good sign for the paper’s future. I guess that a buyer hasn’t been found.

  “You looking for a date, mister?”

  It’s the girl from the bus stop. She’s medium-sized, with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing only a bright blue blouse and jeans against the cold. Her eyes are shiny and wide—she’s doped out of her mind. I tell her I don’t need a date.

  All the time I was so alone in my twenties—when I went literally years at a time without a date, just a date, just taking a woman for a drink or dinner and talking—all that time, I never went to a prostitute. Maybe it’s a generational thing. I know my father went to them. Maybe it’s a class thing. In the Army, the enlisted guys spent plenty of money at the massage parlors off base. Maybe it’s a kink thing. Whatever, I never did. I figured if I had to pay for it, I might as well be dead. When I was on the I-Team in Texas, we used prostitutes as sources for the stories about unsolved murders and drug cartels. Sometimes they were reliable, often not. They were usually women supporting a drug habit. Often they were also supporting one or more children.

  “I fuck for money,” she says. “I’ll suck your cock for ten dollars.”

  Deflation hits the hookers—that would be a column, if I still had a column. She stands in front of me, swaying from side to side. I set the newspaper down.

  “No, thanks. You’re too pretty anyway,” I say gallantly. “You’re probably a cop.”

  “I’m no cop.” She smiles and lifts the flimsy shirt. She’s not wearing a wire or a bra. I look at her face. She’s definitely underage. But there’s something else. Something about the smile. And something about the voice. She has a small, pale mole on the left edge of her chin. I feel the sudden rush of revelation.

  I say, “Heather.”

  She tries to back away but I grip her firmly by the wrist. I pull her down to the bench. Her skin is icebox cold.

  “How the hell do you know my name? Nobody knows my name. I say my name is Samantha.”

  “Like the character in Sex in the City. You and Megan loved the show.” I’ve never even seen one episode, but my guess is on target. Now she stares at me. I let go of her wrist.

  “You know Megan…?”

  I take off my suit coat and drape it over her shoulders. It will at least take away the chill. More will be required to get the skating-rink glare out of her eyes.

  “I know about Megan. I need to find her, to keep her safe.”

  “I don’t know. They were after her. Both of us. I got away. Lived on the streets. Maybe you’re one of them.”

  “I’m a friend. You’re safe now.”

  She’s too high to run. She adds, “Please let me suck your cock. God, I need money.”

  “We’ve got to find Megan. She’s in trouble.”

  “We’re both in fucking trouble!” At least momentarily, she snaps out of the high. She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “They were going to kill us. That’s why we went to Ryan. He wanted to call the cops.”

  “Did Ryan call the cops?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Megan thought the cops, um, would be in on it. So we stayed with Ryan awhile…”

  I ask her when and she laughs hysterically.

  “Ryan loved Megan. He was devoted to her, would have done anything for her. Very old-fashioned, kinda. Megan wanted to play.”

  “With older men?”

  “I wasn’t always a crack ho, you know…”

  “I didn’t say you were. You’re very attractive…”

  “I partied with the big guys. Movers…shakers…” She does wavy movements with her arms, first to the right, then, to the left. “Um, Megan got me in. We were tight. Shit, we had fun. Got me on cocaine. I mean really good stuff. All these big shots, so proper and moral back home, but when we were there…”

  “Where?”

  She shrugs. “Jack and the beanstalk. Little red riding hood.” She laughs again. “We flew…” She makes wings with her arms and whoops loudly. I drape my suit coat around her small shoulders again. She stares at the flashing lights the toy store across the street.

  “Do you know where Megan is?”

  “Look dawg, we had to get out, understand?”

  “Why?”

  She stares ahead, then buries her face in her hands. “I don’t remember things. Shit. They were going to kill us. God, I miss those parties.”

  She sees a man walking north on First Avenue, a potential john.

  “Heather.”

  She turns back to me. “Do you know me from Texas?”

  “Remember, you w
ere going to tell me about what happened to Megan?”

  “She went with him. She thought she’d be safe.” Her face screws up in a knowing little-girl mask. “But I didn’t trust him.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I never knew. He looked kinda like you.” She giggles and shakes. “They never told us their names. That was a rule. But they sure liked that young virgin pussy…” She shakes her head sadly. “They wouldn’t like me now.”

  “He gave her the pendant.”

  “Yeah,” she says wistfully. “Wasn’t it beautiful? They always hooked up. It was like she belonged specially to him. He didn’t like me as much. He liked blondes. Are you going to let me suck your cock now?”

  “Did he mention eleven/eleven?”

  Her eyes turn clear and wary.

  “How do you know about that?”

  I watch her closely, ready to tackle her if she tries to run. This is the same woman who had screamed “eleven/eleven” at me that night in the rain, and then had disappeared. Until now. She had said, “You’ll get yours.” I tell her this slowly, holding her hands. They are dry from the cold. Somehow this takes away the sense of threat. “You scared me,” I say.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “Sometimes I’m mean now.”

  I ask her what she meant: eleven/eleven. I describe the tattoo on Ryan’s leg. What’s eleven/eleven?

  “I don’t remember…” Her brow is knotted beyond her years. “But it’s bad.” More gears try to catch inside her head. “See, we heard it. Eleven/eleven. We weren’t supposed to. Somehow…shit, dawg…gotta remember. They brought us back same as always. But something was different. The way they were looking at us. We knew it was because we overheard something we weren’t supposed to. Megan heard more than I did.”