by Johnny Shaw
Kate and Pilar looked at each other and said, “The Chief.”
CHAPTER 24
The army psychiatrists wouldn’t take me. Said I was too ready to kill. I suppose those head doctors know their business, but you’d’ve thought sending me to Germany would have been better. Can’t see why they wanted me to kill Americans instead.
—From an interview with Macon Crouch, two days before his execution for killing ten people in the course of a three-day murder spree throughout Auction City and its suburbs (1945)
The industrial neighborhood had no foot traffic. Scattered vehicles lined the streets, trucks and panel vans. An anonymous area where work got done. Machinists, tap and die, and fabricators. A Greek diner offered blue plates on the corners, a raw egg in every beer.
The military surplus store and firing range fit the location, a concrete brick bunker with three layers of barbed wire circling the flat roof. A hand-painted sign read CAMO & AMMO: FOR YOUR RECREATIONAL AND SURVIVAL NEEDS. Steel trash cans and bags of garbage sat on the sidewalk in front of the store. Auction City garbage collectors weren’t known for their regularity. Or their hygiene.
Kate got out of the car. Andy grabbed the door handle.
“You wait in the car,” she said.
“I’m not a German shepherd. I thought I was on the team now.” Andy caught the whine in his voice and adjusted. “I’m part of this, aren’t I?”
“The Chief is—” Kate searched for the right word. “Let’s say cautious. He’s a gun trafficker that believes in the imminent collapse of the Zionist government. Meetings with the Chief are—for lack of a better word—delicate. They require a deft hand. Usually there’s a month-long negotiation just to determine a meeting place and time. Walking straight in, asking questions, he’s going to be vexed. And he’s not going to forget last time.”
“What happened last time?” Andy asked.
“Nothing much,” Kate said. “I’m sure he’s healed by now.”
She removed all the weapons on her person, handing Andy two pistols, a throwing knife, a fighting knife, another knife, a small can of Mace, and a beavertail sap.
“You sure this is everything?” Andy asked. “No surface-to-air missile in your garter?”
Waiting again. Andy hated waiting.
There was nothing visual to distract him. He tried to daydream, but it only brought him back to where he was. He considered leaving. Keys sat in the ignition. He could drive away, head in any direction. Out of the city, out of the state, away from everything. He could start over, leave Auction City behind him.
He still had Champ and wanted to spend as much time with her as he could before she no longer knew who he was. Then there was Rocco. What did he even do with that? What did you do when you’d been searching for something most of your life, and when you got it, it just was. He wished he was more angry or more happy to see the man. Instead it felt as if he’d met some old guy. A new person in his life with the strange title of Dad.
Andy owed Auction City nothing. Based on his scorecard, it hadn’t treated him all too well. Yet despite its awfulness and darkness and slime, it was the place he knew. It was his home. No other place would sit quite right. He knew what he hated about Auction. He’d have to learn all new things to complain about in a new city.
He didn’t drive away because he was where he was meant to be. When you were a little bit crazy, a little bit crazy is the kind of life you were meant to lead.
Staying didn’t mean that sitting in a car for twenty minutes worked for him. He needed to know what was going on. Curiosity was definitely going to be his undoing. They couldn’t reveal part of a mystery, give him a peek into a strange new world, and then relegate him to the sidelines. Alice was going to catch that damn rabbit.
Entering the alley next to Camo & Ammo, Andy kept to the shadows. The barred windows were blackened out from the inside and covered in razor wire. The back of the store abutted another building. No back door. He bet on a series of secret tunnels winding underneath the city like an ant farm.
Lines of barbed wire ran the perimeter of the roof. Andy put his shoulder to a dumpster, rolling it flush against the building. No stealth to the maneuver, louder than a dancing hunchback.
He attempted to climb on top of the lid, slipping and hitting his chin. He missed biting off the tip of his tongue but managed to chomp a little cheek. The taste of blood had become so familiar the last couple of days, he barely noticed.
On the next try, he clumsily scrambled onto the dumpster, dragging his gut over the edge. He stood on top of it and grabbed the eave of the building’s roof and proceeded to not do a chin-up. Almost half of one, for anyone keeping score. He dropped back down, gave himself a pep talk, and tried again, arms shaking in spasms of failure. Unfortunately, pep talks didn’t magically give one upper body strength. A good plan thwarted by a bad diet, no exercise, and moronic optimism.
Andy awkwardly hopped off the dumpster, skidding on the ground and landing on his back. He sat up, now convinced that the roof was a waste of time. Why try to get inside? He would disrupt the meeting, which was probably going well. Somewhere, the skeleton of Aesop laughed.
He walked back through the dark alley to the car, feeling like an idiot. Leave the cloak-and-dagger stuff to the professionals. He was a desk jockey, pure and simple.
But even an idiot can feel dumber.
He saw the man’s gun before he saw the man. It took a few seconds to figure out what he was looking at, as the man wore a camouflage bodysuit and face paint. In a marvel of intricate detail, his body was painted exactly like the brick wall. To Andy it appeared as though the man had stepped out of the wall itself.
“You been there the whole time?” Andy asked.
The man said nothing, waving him toward the mouth of the alley.
“Did you watch me try to get on the roof?”
The man nodded.
“Don’t tell anyone about that, okay? Kind of embarrassing.”
Andy walked toward the man, the gun at his midsection.
“I’m here to talk to the Chief. I’m not a threat.”
Brick Camo waved him toward the front entrance of the store.
Andy nodded. He looked up and down the street, hoping for a witness. No one. Nothing. He would have settled for a tumbleweed, just for the company.
He spotted movement from the corner of his eye. Agnes on the roof of the store. A blink of an eye, but he was sure it was her.
Things were about to get weird. Well, weirder.
Andy stopped when he reached the sidewalk. Brick Camo motioned him toward the door more aggressively.
“Sorry, man,” Andy said. “I’m going to stand here and see what happens next.”
Brick Camo never got the chance to respond. Agnes took him out. Nothing high-tech or fancy. No blow darts or stun guns for that scary lady. She threw something. Some metal cylinder. Whatever it was, she had a closer’s cannon. Strike three, the man was out. It plonked off his head, knees spaghettied, and he dropped like a ton of camouflage bricks. Barely a sound.
The projectile rolled near Andy’s feet. A can of soup. The woman had weaponized Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom. Take that, Andy Warhol.
Andy grabbed the pistol from the unconscious man’s hand. The trash in front of the store shifted. Brick Camo wasn’t the Chief’s only line of stealth defense. If not for the slight movement, Andy might have missed the man in a ghillie suit made out of garbage sitting among the trash cans near the entrance.
Before Garbage Suit could form a battle plan, Agnes went Wile E. Coyote on him. Higher ground appeared to be the advantage everyone claimed. She dropped something square and heavy directly on his head. A car battery. The sound made Andy queasy. If Garbage Suit was alive, his days of advanced calculus were behind him.
Andy waited for whatever came next. For the trash cans to become some kind of Gobot or the building itself to turn into an army of ninjas. He felt surrounded but couldn’t detect the threat.
Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. A whole rectum-loosening load of nothing.
Andy stood frozen. That was his plan. He was going to stand where he was and wait for someone to tell him what to do. He didn’t care who it was. The next person he saw, he was going to do what that person said. Probably how Jehovah’s Witnesses recruited.
After a minute, Agnes walked toward him, dragging a third man behind her. He was missing a foot, his leg wrapped in a tourniquet. The man left a wet trail in the dirty alley. Agnes leaned down to the one-footed man and spoke softly. She crossed herself and whispered in his ear.
“What did you do to him?” Andy asked.
Agnes looked up, her finger at her pursed lips. Andy shut up. She finished giving the man his last rites.
When she was done, she walked past Andy toward the town car.
“Where is that guy’s foot?” Andy asked.
“The roof was covered in bear traps. He slipped.”
She opened the trunk and lifted the spare tire. An organized arsenal rested underneath: pistol-grip shotguns, rifles, automatics. Agnes grabbed a handful of throwing knives.
“Firearms are for people that do not know how to fight,” she said. “They are for the weak.”
Andy watched her walk toward the store. He looked down at the pistol that he’d taken from Brick Camo, thinking about what Agnes had said. He shrugged and followed her. Because what the hell else was he supposed to do?
The guy working the counter didn’t reach. His hands were in the air the moment Agnes walked inside. Arms stretched so high, he probably pulled his latissimus dorsi.
The store was jam-packed with narrow aisles of camouflage gear, camping supplies, and military surplus. Everywhere Andy looked he found something that could kill, maim, or keep you alive in the event of Armageddon. Crossbows, throwing stars, knives, and swords. More swords than seemed practical. For all the potential destruction, it felt like a toy store.
Jesus Christ and God were represented, as well. Posters, Bible quotes, a staggering number of crucifixes, and what looked like life-size faux-stone Ten Commandments with an eleventh commandment scrawled into it: “Thou Shalt Not Trust the Government.” Amen, brother.
“Heavy on the God stuff,” Andy said.
Agnes gave him a look.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Sorry.”
She motioned to the door behind Counter Guy. A mounted sign over the door read SHOOTING RANGE—LOYALISTS WELCOME handwritten in a scrawl with a childlike drawing of a stick figure on a staircase. The frightened counterman found a key, unlocked the door, and threw it open. Without any prompting, he dropped to the ground facedown and spread his arms and legs.
A set of stairs led to the basement. Two gunshots echoed from below. Muffled and distant.
“What’s the plan?” Andy whispered.
She pointed at the man on the ground and headed into the basement without answering. Andy assumed that he was meant to guard him.
“Don’t worry about me, man,” Counter Guy said. “I ain’t moving. That’s Lady Luthor, for sure. No joke. She’ll ghost you.”
More gunfire erupted from the basement.
CHAPTER 25
Aggression is the wise man’s diplomacy. Rather than wasting time in compromise, empathy, or forgiveness, all one has to do is slap a face. Beautiful in its simplicity. There are millions of faces that would benefit from that slap. The slap of true awakening.
—From the seven-volume My Life on Seven out of Nine Planets: A Chronology of the Divine, by Milt Walsh (aka Kinsman Titus), former leader of the Auction City–based Chosen Children of Ch’lil. Died by self-immolation minutes before the FBI raided his yurt (1975).
Andy took aim at the open door to the basement. Hands steady, old instincts coming back. Ready to shoot someone. It wouldn’t be the first time. Hell, it wouldn’t be the first time in the last twenty-four hours.
Agnes’s voice rose from the basement. “Tie the man up and then come down here.”
Andy’s knot skills proved seriously wanting. Gigantic mounds of rope, all quantity, no quality. The man he was trying to restrain talked him through a trucker’s hitch, but Andy assed it up.
Andy slowly descended the stairs. In the narrow shooting range, an old man sat in the corner on a stool, holding his bleeding arm. A knife protruded from the wound. A pistol on the ground. Agnes stood near him, a throwing knife cocked. She’d caught a graze across her leg, some blood staining a tear in her pants.
“You didn’t have to get violent, Agnes,” the Chief said. “I wasn’t going to hurt Girard none. Making a point about a thing is all. Making liars honest is what. There’s a way I do things.”
Kate sat tied to a chair at the far end of the shooting range. The target behind her had holes in it. The old man had shot around her. Some were inches from her. Andy did his best to undo the knots, but he was as bad at untying ropes as tying them. Fingernails bitten to nubs long ago, he couldn’t get a good grip. After some clawing and biting, Andy ran upstairs and grabbed a survival knife that John Rambo would have called overkill. It sliced through the ropes like—well, like a knife through rope.
Feeling her red wrists, Kate walked with Andy to the Chief and Agnes. She leaned down, taking a look at Agnes’s wound, but Agnes pushed her away.
“The pain keeps me sharp,” Agnes said.
“You’re ridiculous,” Kate said.
The Chief looked closer to annoyed than scared. He wore a Hawaiian shirt, yellow shooting glasses, and a blue veterans’ cap that read: USS TANGIER—PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR. He was about sixty-five, a trim white beard and chest hair meeting at his throat. Loose skin revealed toned muscle underneath.
Kate put a finger in the Chief’s face. “What the hell, Chief? How long have we known each other? Didn’t give me a chance to tell you why I was here. Went right to shooting at me.”
“I wasn’t shooting at you. I was shooting around you,” he said. “I have to assume that people—especially you people—are here to kill me. Best offense, you know.”
Kate shook her head and turned to Agnes. “How did you know I was in trouble?”
“You were in trouble the moment you walked inside. The Chief is mad.”
“How many bodies?” Kate asked.
Agnes looked down at her feet. Kate turned to Andy.
“One dead, one alive, one maybe,” he said.
“You killed one of my boys?” the Chief said.
“He had trouble negotiating your own defenses. The roof is dangerous,” Agnes said.
“They’re still outside?” Kate asked.
“In the alley. In a pile,” Agnes said.
Kate shook her head. “Take Destra. Clean up whatever mess you made. The Chief and I are going to chat.”
“You want me to talk to him?” Agnes winked at the Chief.
“That won’t be necessary, you bald psychotic,” the Chief said. “I’m a survivalist. And survival is all about adapting to the environment.”
“You sure this is the guy we should be talking to?” Andy said. “The Chief looks to me like any other end-of-the-world whackjob. All Jesus and guns.”
“Jesus is our Lord and Savior.”
“Right,” Andy said. “I knew that.”
“Do not underestimate the Chief,” Agnes said. “He’s a decorated war veteran. Auction City’s main source of third-party guns, information, and, on occasion, he brokers paramilitary activity in town.”
“Is there a big need?”
“These are troubling times,” Agnes said. “Now grab the garbage-covered man’s feet.”
Andy reached down and picked up his half of Garbage Suit. A slight groan told him that the man was alive. Andy was relieved that the ghillie suit covered his face. He never wanted to know what kind of damage the car battery had done to the man’s head.
Agnes slapped Brick Camo hard. He came out of his daze, staring glassy-eyed at Andy and Agnes. Sweat streaked some of the greasepaint from his face. He tried to focus.
“Y
ou could’ve killed me, Agnes,” the man said.
“But I didn’t. Did I, Steve?”
“You two know each other?” Andy asked.
“We train at the same dojo,” Agnes said. “Master Hong would never forgive me if I’d killed him. Teacher’s pet.”
Andy helped up the man and walked him toward the store.
“How long did it take to put on that paint?” Andy asked.
Walking into the store from the basement, Kate wiped the blood on her hands onto a handkerchief. The cuts on her knuckles looked red and raw.
“There’s more than violence, you know? Other ways to get answers. Subtler ways,” Andy said. “The man said he would talk.”
“This?” Kate looked at her hands. “This is from after he talked. For tying me up and shooting at me. You let things like that go, people do it again. The Chief actually asked to be hit one extra time to ensure there was no grudge. Although I’m thinking now, he may be into that kind of thing.”
“It’s your world, not mine,” Andy said.
“He supplied weapons to the convicts we’re looking for,” Kate said. “At least he’s pretty sure it was our guys. And the timeline makes sense. The same kind of deal as the guards. A blind drop. Money in one place. Weapons in another. Never had direct contact. Third-party contacts. A truckload of firearms and explosives.”
“Another dead end,” Agnes said.
“He gave us what he knows,” Kate said.
“Are you kidding me?” Andy said.
“If you’ve got a better way of doing this, feel free,” Kate said.
“All I’ve seen you guys do is bust heads. Lazy shortcuts. Beating confessions. Have you ever actually run an investigation? A real one? One that requires work?”
