by Johnny Shaw
“Was that a threat?” Andy asked. “What do you mean, ‘what happens next’?”
Kate Girard walked toward the big table to join the others. As she passed, she said a few words to the bouncer in the green suit. He got off his stool and lumbered over to Andy, one hand in his jacket.
“You must rise and make to exit,” the man said through a thick accent.
“I must?”
“Yes. Or I choose to assault and tote you. It is my mandate.” He opened his jacket to give Andy a glimpse of his shoulder holster.
“Well, if it’s your mandate.” Andy stood and backed toward the front door, his eyes locked on the bouncer, who kept pace with him. When Andy reached the hostess counter, the twins slipped his jacket onto his arms.
He turned to leave, almost running into Deputy Commissioner Gray, who was entering the restaurant at the same time.
“Destra?” Gray said, surprised. “You’re a persistent son of a bitch. I’ll give you that.”
“You can count on it,” Andy said.
“Should’ve had you brought in after that fracas in Muldoon’s. Thrown you a blanket party. To be honest, I had too much damn fun to bother. Nothing like a barroom rhubarb. Sad we were on the opposite ends of the place. I would’ve put on a boxing clinic.”
“Anytime you want to go, old man,” Andy said, squaring up. “I’ll knock you right into senility.”
“Speaking of which. How is Champ?” Gray smiled. “It’s going to be a terrible blow when you lose that old lush.”
“You don’t get to say her name.”
Gray let out a chuckle. “I could’ve used a tough guy like you. You got heart but unfortunately too much brains.”
“I’m going to take you down, Al,” Andy said, wishing he could have come up with something better. In the moment, you couldn’t second-guess your one-liners.
Gray gave Andy a hard shove. “I look forward to drawing the chalk line around your body, Destra.”
Andy took a step toward him, but the bouncer grabbed the back of his collar. As if to make clear his job title, he literally bounced Andy off the front door before he threw him outside. Andy heard Gray’s laughter as he flew into the cold night.
An hour later, Andy found himself standing in the cold watching the front door of the Japanese restaurant. There was nothing quite like anger to buoy one’s capacity for patience. Every minute felt a degree colder, clouds of mist with each exhale. Andy didn’t care. They could toss him out of a building, but they couldn’t make him give up.
They could try to kill him, though. They could definitely do that.
When the man in the black trench coat turned the corner, Andy knew immediately that the guy was wrong. Trudging toward him with purpose, the monobrow Italian would have raised anyone’s hackles. His stiff-legged walk told Andy that he was either happy to see him or the man carried a bat or rifle under his coat.
Andy casually reached a hand into his pocket. The man stutter-stepped. Andy charged him. The guy was definitely not happy to see him. It ended up being a shotgun he swung upward, not a rifle.
When you’re unarmed and exposed, everything needs to be a weapon. Andy threw a handful of change at the man’s face. Enough of a distraction to get the barrel of the shotgun under his arm. The gun fired. Andy felt the heat of the barrel, smelled the powder, and heard glass break.
With the shotgun pinned to his body, Andy threw right hooks into the gunman’s ribs. The man headbutted Andy, almost knocking him off his feet. He gained his balance and gave the man a knee to the groin.
The blow did the trick, allowing Andy to pull the shotgun away. Like swinging too hard at a curveball, the momentum sent the shotgun flying through the air in a spinning arc. It landed in the middle of the street.
The man took a knee, one hand on his jewels. Andy didn’t wait for an invitation. He kicked him in the head and took off down the street, turning the first corner. As he ran, he looked for Little Nagasaki landmarks, something he might remember from his cop days. No luck. Maybe if he lost himself in the maze, he could lose the shooter, too.
Every chance he got, Andy turned corners. He ran past curious pedestrians. He stuck to the alleys. He tried side doors, but they were locked. At one point, he dared to glance over his shoulder. The shooter was a block back. The gunman had retrieved the shotgun, brandishing it openly in one hand and a pistol in the other. Who was he trying to impress? He also appeared to be in better shape than Andy was, which was going to be a problem.
Andy turned into another alley and almost ran into a six-foot-tall bald black woman in a man’s suit. Her tan suit was so crisp that the lapels looked like knife blades. Her lean body and high cheekbones made her slightly androgynous. She held a brick in each hand.
“Aw, crap,” Andy said, wishing he had chosen better last words.
Then he saw the Japanese kid who had followed him standing behind her.
“What the hell?” Andy said.
“Get down,” the kid said, pulling a pistol but staying shielded behind the tall woman’s body.
The woman motioned for Andy to get down on the ground. Her ease convinced him. He dropped, lying as flat as he could on the wet and slimy alley floor. Some water got in his mouth. It tasted like month-old kitchen-drawer celery.
When the shooter turned the corner, the bald woman threw a brick. The sound it made when it hit the man’s chest made Andy flinch. Lots of crack and slosh. The man kept running, but he had dropped the pistol and lost his balance. As he stumbled forward, the woman threw the other brick. It broke in half on the man’s head. He crashed into the wall, bounced back, and fell on top of Andy.
Andy heaved the unconscious man off him. Blood oozed from the man’s ear. Andy scrambled upright and turned to the woman and kid, ready to fight.
“Holy Christ in hell. What is going on? Who are you? Who is this? What the what?” Andy said, rapid-fire.
“No thank-you for saving your ass?” the Japanese kid said.
Andy looked at the man on the ground. “That guy was going to kill me. Someone sent him to kill me.”
The bald woman walked to Andy. “What is the difference between a birthday cake and a punch in the face?” she asked, speaking with an accent that Andy guessed was West African.
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?” Andy said, frantic. “What does that mean? What could that possibly mean?”
“This is no birthday cake,” she said and hit him with a sharp right cross. The shock, more than the force, dropped him back to the ground. He just missed landing on his would-be assassin.
“Okay, that’s it,” Andy said. “You want a fight? You got it, lady.”
As he tried to get to his feet, he felt the hypodermic needle that the Japanese kid jabbed into his neck.
“I am so confused,” Andy said.
Something warm flowed into his veins. It made his skin tingle and his body warm. It made him see an extra color. The world got swirly. He felt really weird but good. And then he felt nothing.
CHAPTER 9
Bad luck. Just bad luck.
—Attributed to disgraced mortician Graham Berry after surviving a suicide leap from the King Olaf Bridge (1955)
It wasn’t the first time that Andy had woken up underneath a bridge. Regained consciousness was more accurate. Those other times, he had been on undercover assignments or stakeouts. Getting assaulted, drugged, and transported to the bridge was a new one, something to tell his grandkids. If he lived long enough to have grandkids. Or kids, which were a prerequisite.
Groggy and half-awake, Andy deduced it was night from the darkness that surrounded him. That’s the kind of astute observation that made Andy a crackerjack investigator. The painfulness of pain was another specialty of his. He was in some kind of tentlike structure, one that had seen better days. Through the gaping holes in the overhead tarp, he made out the bottom of the bridge above.
Andy’s right eye felt swollen and tender to the touch. Dried blood caked his nostrils
, but nothing felt broken and the bleeding had stopped. He rubbed his neck where the needle had gone in.
His pockets were empty. No wallet. No keys. No nothing. Even the scraps of paper with his random notes were gone. The most he could be happy for was that they hadn’t taken his clothes. Naked under a bridge was a different level of trouble.
Kate Girard had tried to warn him. Someone had tried to kill him. Things had gone from curious to serious, but he couldn’t stay in a stranger’s lean-to and wait for it all to go away.
Crawling out of the tent, he recognized his surroundings. The unmistakable urban patchwork known as the Castles, an enormous tent town on the other side of the river that housed the undermost strata of Auction City’s impoverished population. People who aspired to be lower class. On paper it was an illegal encampment, but it had existed as long as the city itself. If the system failed you, create your own system. Andy knew the Castles well. He had made enough arrests down there, carted off some bodies, and heard innumerable sad stories of what had led people to the outside.
While the residents changed, the community under the King Olaf Bridge dated back to the nineteenth century. The Castles had supported those affected by the Depression, the survivors of the Flood, war veterans forgotten by the people they defended, and those unfortunates for whom the American Dream had become a nightmare. Similar to the sovereignty of an Indian reservation, the Castles was autonomous. Forgotten and ignored long ago, it received little interference from the outside. With its own crude form of governance, the people of the Castles only reached out to the police when things got too big or weird for them to handle in-house. And if a politician required some extra votes, he would outright buy them rather than campaign down there. Cash trumped empty rhetoric every day.
A group of four women sat in front of the tent directly across from Andy. Each one of the women was Hispanic, in her midtwenties, and missing a limb. Andy gave them a weak smile. They stared back, indifferent.
Andy recognized them as members of the Broken. Victims from Auction City’s worst days. A sad time when the world was reminded that man’s capacity for cruelty had no limits. The pointless and cruel solution when the competition among the panhandlers had reached such a cutthroat peak that a few sadists borrowed a practice from India and started disfiguring young girls to up the sympathy factor. Hundreds of children had been maimed to make an extra nickel, their tiny limbs lost and buried in the city’s landfill.
The ring of men who ran that racket were long gone, brought to justice by unknown vigilantes. They had been found hung by their necks from the very bridge that Andy found himself below. The police let the eleven men hang for a full day before cutting them down. Not a single resident complained.
Andy checked the time, but his watch was gone again. Of course it was. Now they were just screwing with him.
“It’s around two,” one of the women said. Like the others, she wore a tank top and camo pants. Shoulder-length hair framed a round face with penciled-on chola eyebrows. Her right arm was missing just below the elbow, a scarred cross dimpled the stump.
“Thanks,” Andy said, trying not to stare. “Someone stole my watch. Twice.”
One of the other women laughed. “Least you had a watch to steal?”
“Have you seen anyone suspicious?” Andy asked.
“You’re in the Castles,” the first woman said.
“Did you see how I got here?”
“The same as the rest of us, güero. Born poor. Bad luck. Lost your job or started drinking. Bad choices. Look inside yourself—maybe you learn some things.”
“No, I mean literally. I got chased through Naga by a man with a shotgun. Then drugged by a Japanese kid and a bald African woman.”
“How high are you?” one of the others said and laughed.
“Ain’t going to get nowhere blaming other people, telling stories,” the first woman said, as if to a child. “The first step is admitting you have a problem.”
“Thanks. That helps,” Andy said. “Can you give me directions to get back on the bridge, cross back into downtown?”
“If there’s people out to get you, what’s your hurry?” the first woman asked. “You’re safe here.”
“If someone is after me, they could be after my people,” Andy said.
The woman nodded. “There are stairs at the bottom of the bridge, but you’re going to have to pay the troll if you want to go that way, though.”
Andy shook his head. “There had to be a damn troll.”
“In a day or year, it ain’t easy to get out of the Castles.”
“I don’t have money.”
“There are all sorts of ways to pay.”
Andy headed down the “street.” For a tent town, it was well organized, each of the paths and lanes between quick-and-dirty blocks named and labeled. How else could pizza, Chinese food, and mail get delivered? As Andy passed a couple of gang members, he recognized their colors. The Ghost Shadows patrolled the Castles, acting as security and ensuring that no deliverymen were accosted. People might live rough in the Castles, but commerce marched on.
“Troll” was the perfect one-word description for the behemoth at the bottom of the stairs. Wide enough to block the narrow pedestrian stairway, the brute stared indifferently as he tried to untie the knotted string of a yo-yo. The monster’s bald head was lopsided and cratered, a planet that had seen too many meteors. The Planet Troll lazily held up a catcher’s mitt of a hand.
“I’m going to make this easy. I ain’t got no money,” Andy said. “I got rolled. Left here.”
“If I let you pass pro bono,” the troll said, his voice as soft as a lullaby, “it sets a troublesome precedent for subsequent customers.”
Andy reeled a little. He had expected caveman and got adjunct faculty member. “That doesn’t change the fact that I have no money.”
“No, but it establishes your negotiation leverage. Which is minimal to nonexistent.”
“If you allow people to leave, you allow people in,” Andy said. “Did you see how I got here? Who brought me?”
“I don’t let people walk for free on a public staircase. How could you possibly infer that I would answer your inquiries?” The troll showed what was probably a smile but looked more like a crack in his face.
“Do you know anything about a bald black woman and a Japanese kid?”
“If you think this is a riddle-of-the-sphinx type of scenario, then I suggest you take a fresh perusal of your Greek mythology. The one blocking the path asks the questions,” the troll said. “And the one blocking the path gets paid.”
“I should have planned better before I got shot at, punched, and drugged. At least I’m wearing clean underwear,” Andy said. “Can we cut to the chase? What do you want?”
“Are those Florsheims?” the giant said, pointing at his shoes.
Every shadow held a new threat. Every change of light made Andy jump. That’s what happened when a strange man tried to kill you. Especially when you were already a little paranoid. Andy prepared to defend himself from every pedestrian he passed, fists clenched, ready to go. Zigzagging through the city, he avoided people. When he reached a street with nonworking streetlights, he walked six blocks out of his way to find a well-lit route.
Nobody tried to kill him. Hurrah. When that was the best thing that happened in a day, you knew the kind of day you’d had.
Crossing the bridge, walking the fifty-plus blocks, and getting to his apartment took a little more than an hour. Walking barefoot through the city reminded Andy of how disgusting people were. The array of nastiness that Andy stepped in ranged from the mundane (dogshit and gum) to the dangerous (broken glass and a hypodermic needle) to the gross (a used condom, spaghetti in marinara that was probably vomit, and a single rain-soaked bread slice that texturally had been the worst).
When he got to his building, he circled the block three times looking for anything suspicious. Nobody in the alley. Nobody sitting in their car or smoking on the street. I
f there was someone watching, he couldn’t find them.
It took fifteen minutes of pounding to get the super to answer his door. And another fifteen to convince the beboxered man to don some pants and let Andy into his apartment. He agreed to let him in, but he didn’t budge on the pants.
On the fourth-floor landing, the super looked one flight away from needing CPR. No wonder he never made any repairs. The man took his life in his hands every time he changed a bulb.
The two men stared at Andy’s apartment door, unlocked and ajar.
“I won’t forget this,” the super said through labored breathing. He headed back down the stairs, cursing at the enormous inconvenience he had suffered. For some people, doing their job was akin to torture.
Every instinct told Andy to run. To get out of town. To forget it all, find a cave, and become a guy who lived in a cave. Things had gotten too serious and weird.
He had his limits, though. He was tired, hungry, needed a shower, and if there was someone in his apartment waiting to kill him, so be it. It was time to bring the fight to them. He had prepared for this moment a long time ago.
Using his thumbnail as a screwdriver, Andy removed the grate from the vent in the hall. He found the string and pulled out the go-bag that he’d stowed there. Digging through the duffel, he wished he’d had the foresight to throw some tennis shoes in there. On the plus side, there was some beef jerky in the bag. He shoved some in his mouth and quickly chewed it down. It made his jaw hurt, didn’t take away his hunger, and made him thirsty.
He found his revolver, an unregistered throw-down piece he’d never had the need to use. The weight of it was comforting. He could see himself shooting someone that night. Pistol in one hand, bag in the other, Andy took the long, slow walk down the hall toward his apartment. And nearly jumped out of his skin when the door behind him opened.
CHAPTER 10
Here lies Anton Hansen Osborne. Born 1863. Died 1933. Owes his brother Erik $28 for this tombstone. Plus interest.
