Hell and Gone ch-2

by Duane Swierczynski

  Or maybe more of these mysterious killers had caught up with them, and the family minivan was somewhere in the hinterlands outside of L.A., parked in front of a motel, and inside a room would be the cold and blood-splattered corpses of the Hunter family, and a revolver in the dead stiff hands of his “boy.”

  More bad news at Presby:

  Only four victims had shown up.

  “I was told they sent you five,” Deke said.

  The harried supervising ER doc shook his head. He looked like he hadn’t slept, combed his bushy hair, or shaved his gaunt face since the previous weekend. Strangely, his teeth were freakishly straight and white and perfect, as if he were merely an actor playing a harried ER doc on TV.

  “No. We got four. Three were DOA. The other one doesn’t look too good.”

  “Where’s the fifth one?”

  “We weren’t sent a fifth one. Just the four.”

  “I mean the fourth. Let me see number four?”

  The ER doc swept his arm out in a help-yourself gesture. He’d probably dealt with cops and feds before. He knew the futility of arguing for patient privacy.

  Deke was directed down a hallway into a receiving area. At first he thought he’d been misdirected, but then he came to a room where he saw three bodies on gurneys. There hadn’t even been time to cover them with sheets. All three of them, dudes. None of them Charlie Hardie.

  Back out in the ER, Deke tapped shoulders until he finally had someone take him to the fourth victim from the 11804 Bloomfield massacre. Deke wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed that it was a woman, and definitely not Charlie Hardie. She was a plain-looking thing, tiny face and deadly serious eyes. She was dying, the ER doc whispered.

  Deke looked at the woman. A girl, really. The doc was telling the truth. She couldn’t even speak, and she kept fading in and out of consciousness.

  The idea of a fifth victim nagged at Deke.

  What if the ER staff had been mistaken, and Hardie had been brought here? Maybe he was languishing away in one of these rooms while Deke kept spinning around out here. It was something to check out, at least. Otherwise, Deke had nothing. No choice but to return to 11804 Bloomfield and liaise with everybody.

  But after checking a series of rooms again and finding no sign of Hardie, Deke had a brainstorm to check the security footage from the ER. Maybe Hardie had been here and gone. The man had an uncanny ability to survive an insane amount of injury. Unkillable Chuck, they called him back in Philadelphia, and Deke couldn’t disagree with that. Considering what Hardie had been through.

  Deke went to the security office and had the old man with the runny nose behind the desk roll back the last two hours.

  And there he was.

  Charlie Hardie, in a neck brace on a gurney, rolling right into the front doors. Goddamn it, he had been the fifth victim. He had been brought here.

  So where was he now?

  The old man rolled the footage forward; Hardie was not seen again. Deke asked if any cameras covered any other exits. The old man groaned and nodded, then cued up the footage from a side exit. After a few minutes of fast-forwarding, Deke told him to stop. There was Hardie again, same neck brace, same gurney, only rolling out the doors of the hospital and into the back of a waiting ambulance. The camera angle, of course, only revealed part of the vehicle. A partial license plate, not much else.

  “Get what you wanted?” the old man asked.

  “No,” Deke muttered. “Not at all.”

  4

  I don’t know if I’m alive and dreaming or dead and remembering.

  —Timothy Bottoms, Johnny Got His Gun

  KENDRA HARDIE NEVER liked it when her husband got sick.

  Which wasn’t often. A cold in the summer, usually, sometimes a minor bout with the flu in winter. But when it hit, Kendra pretty much left him to die. For the longest time he couldn’t figure it out. Weren’t wives supposed to be all mothering and shit when their spouses were ill? Was she just keeping her distance, afraid she’d fall ill, too? No, it was more than that with Kendra. She’d seem actively mad at him, as if he’d done this to himself, going out and licking subway seats or running naked through the streets of the Philadelphia badlands during subzero season.

  So three years ago, when Hardie been nearly shot to death and was clinging to life in an ICU, Hardie half expected the reaction he received: the cold shoulder. Didn’t mean it hurt any less. Here he was, going through the most traumatic moment of his life—the senseless slaughter of his closest friend and his family—and still, Kendra kept her distance. As if he had nothing more than a bad cold.

  The day he arrived home from the hospital Hardie wanted to shout at her, Please, put me out of my misery. What’s going on? Why aren’t you speaking to me? Isn’t this what you wanted? Me, not working with Nate? Me, home more often? Was she furious because the Albanian hit men had shot up their house—and it was a stroke of luck that she and the boy weren’t home? If so, fine, let’s have it out, yell at me, do something…don’t ignore me.

  But at the time, Hardie believed himself too weak for an argument. He merely asked if she’d call his doctor to find out whether he would up his pain meds a little. She did, and the doctor said no, he should try to cycle down, in fact. Kendra Hardie didn’t like her men sick.

  The next time Hardie woke up he was staring at a bright light, listening to the murmured conversations around him. For a moment he thought it was three years ago, that he was at Jenkintown Hospital, fighting for his miserable life, and that his recent limbo-style existence was just a fever dream. He blinked. The light was fiercely bright, ridiculously bright. Like the shining gleam off a tooth in God’s own pearly smile. The voices kept murmuring, which was rude. Didn’t they know he was dying over here?

  “…seen anything like this, have you?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Don’t you wonder?”

  “Wonder what?”

  “Where he’ll end up.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I’ve been hearing stories.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “No, seriously, I hear that these near-death cases we get, we end up patching them up just good enough so they can be transported to, like, Kosovo or Thailand, only to be pulled apart again a piece at a time, packed in ice, and—”

  “Hand me a suture, will you? Anyway, I recognize him. We’ve got a minor celebrity here.”

  “So who is he?”

  “If you don’t know, you don’t want to know.”

  “Give me a hint.”

  “I did, actually, and no, I will not give you another.”

  “Dick.”

  “What time is it?” Hardie asked, his voice dry and weak and cracked.

  “The hell?”

  “Was that…?”

  Hardie tried to blink, as if that would help his eyes adjust.

  “Christ on a cracker. Our guy’s awake.”

  “You’re the anesthesiologist. What did you give him?”

  “Not enough, apparently.”

  “What time is it?” Hardie asked.

  “Take care of it. He’s fucking open, man!”

  Hardie’s eyes rolled around in his head. He couldn’t feel his body, not really, but he had the sense that it was still there, that he wasn’t some disembodied spirit rushing up toward the immaculate light. No. That would be too easy. He’d been given something. The guy in the ambulance was going on about cc’s.

  A man’s face appeared in Hardie’s vision. A white mask covered its lower half. Fuzzy caterpillars clung to the man’s brow line.

  “Shh,” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Hardie was not put at ease. He knew “everything’s going to be all right” was code for “everything’s fucked up beyond all recognition, and it’s not going to get any better.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Let me give you something.”

  Really, he wanted to know what time it was. Was that such a hard question to
answer? Not knowing where he was, or what condition he was in—Hardie could deal with that. But time meant everything, and it bugged him to the point of insanity that he couldn’t connect the dots on the time line in his brain. Had an hour passed since he was in the Hunters’ living room, getting blown away? Two hours? Or had it been a day? Hardie didn’t know which answer he’d prefer, to be honest. A day would imply he was out of the woods, that he was stubbornly clinging to life. An hour could mean he was on his way out, and it just seemed like this whole death thing was taking forever.

  “Just relax,” the masked man said.

  No.

  Hardie would not relax.

  In fact—fuck this shit.

  He needed to move his hands. Where were his hands?

  But before he could find them the man was pumping something else into his veins and he felt the horrible cool rush all over his body, not a reassuring peaceful rush, but the rush of icy death, your body’s way of saying “fatal system error,” warning you that this shit was real, you may not come back from this…

  And as he went under he thought of his wife and his son and Deke, praying once again that Deke had doubled up the protection like he’d promised and that he’d follow the bread crumbs and figure this shit out.

  Because Hardie was okay with death; he probably deserved as much. But not his wife. Not his boy…

  5

  You know why so many people came to my funeral?

  They wanted to make sure I was dead.

  —Larry Tucker, Shock Corridor

  DEKE CLARK DROVE up and down the 101, burning gas.

  Deke didn’t know what he expected to see, really. The mystery ambulance? Not a chance. Some little random forensic clue that would unravel the case? Yeah. Like that ever happens. Besides, he’d done as much of the forensic-type work as he could, tapping traffic cameras everywhere from the Studio City crime scene all the way out to the hospital, and then out again to the major highways. He’d spent days trying to account for every ambulance on camera, retracing their routes, trying to find his phantom vehicle. It was a hard task, and hard to stay focused, since he kept pausing to check his cell phone and e-mail accounts—both official and private—hoping to hear from Hardie. Nothing. Exacerbating the whole situation was an awkwardness with his wife. When she’d call to check in, Deke would invariably be distracted, and it would leave his wife hurt. Later he’d feel bad and want to call back, but then would feel guilty about not using every waking minute to search for Hardie. Five days in, and nothing to show for it except half a license plate.

  Deke knew who would have been great at this: his buddy Nate Parish.

  Until his untimely death, the man was the secret genius of the Philadelphia police department.

  Nate and Charlie Hardie had worked together—only semi-officially. Their mission: clean up the streets of their hometown, using whatever legal or extralegal means necessary.

  Deke himself had almost busted the two of them during the infamous mob wars that permanently finished the Italians, crippled the Russians—but also opened the way for the Albanians.

  Only reason he didn’t bust them was that Nate knew what he was doing, and he was doing the right thing. And he wouldn’t work without Hardie.

  So what would Nate Parish do?

  He had this gift for boiling things down to their simplest and purest form. Crime was not complicated, he’d say. Sure, criminals would obfuscate and try to make it seem as clever and confusing as possible, but it always boiled down to something simple. Almost always money. If you can strip away the drama and the clues and bullet casings and the blood-splattered walls, boil it down until the fat and meat fall right away from the bone…what do you have? You have some kind of financial transaction.

  That’s when it hit Deke—the ambulance.

  Keep digging until you find out who owns it.

  Whoever owns it might know who was driving it.

  Whoever was driving it would know where Hardie was.

  The ambulance was owned by a small private company based out in Arcadia, California, now defunct. Calls to that company were directed to a San Francisco law office called Gedney, Doyle & Abrams.

  Deke called GD&A.

  GD&A stonewalled.

  The essence of their exchange:

  GD&A: We don’t own ambulances. We handle insurance litigation.

  Deke: I’m looking at the papers right here; you represent the company that owns this ambulance.

  GD&A: Must be a filing error. Because we don’t own ambulances. We handle insurance litigation. Can I ask what this is regarding?

  Deke: You may not.

  GD&A: Well, go fuck yourself and have a great day.

  Deke: This company in Arcadia, do you still represent them?

  GD&A: No, really, go ahead and fuck yourself and have a super-awesome day.

  Four hundred miles away, in San Francisco, in a hotel suite overlooking Union Square, Gedney was deep into another one of his conversations with his partner Doyle about the events of the past few days.

  As usual, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue sat unopened on the marble desk between them, along with a fine array of artisanal cheeses and hand-carved meats. The management was trained to send it up no matter what. Neither Gedney nor Doyle ever touched the stuff. Not when they met in this room, anyway. This was reserved for private discussions; the Industry had equipped this room with the latest anti-eavesdropping devices and bug detectors. It was an utter dead zone. Plus, the view was nice.

  “How’s the asset?” Doyle asked. He was wearing a suit but still had traces of grease under his fingernails.

  Gedney sat on the edge of the bed, his feet barely touching the floor. “Surgery went very well, I hear. He’s going to make it. Just like I thought he would. I told you about what happened to him in Philadelphia three years ago, right? The man is a born survivor. Maybe it’s good fortune he crossed our path.”

  “Yeah,” Doyle said. “I’ll be sure to pass that sentiment about fortune along to our friends over in Burbank. But you still think he’s right for our project?”

  “He will be in a few months. Soon as he’s healed we’ll begin training.”

  “Can he be trained? I worry about all that tech. Not that he can really do anything, but he’s kind of the proverbial bull in a china shop. I just want some assurances that he’ll behave.”

  “Anyone can be broken,” Gedney said. “And if not, we’ll flush him down the toilet. Whatever.”

  “We have any other loose ends? For instance, is anyone looking for the asset?”

  “Asset apparently has a friend in the FBI—Philadelphia field office. But that won’t be a problem. In fact, it may work to our advantage in other matters. We’re looking into it.”

  “The Hunters are still missing.”

  “They’ll be found and eliminated. They’re staying underground, which is good. Some of the teams have worked up about a half-dozen scenarios that fit the situation. Sooner or later they’ll emerge, and then…”

  He allowed the statement to hang in the air for a few moments, spreading his hands as if they were blown apart by an invisible explosion.

  “Good,” Doyle said, nodding.

  Outside, down on the square, a saxophone player started running up and down some scales, warming up. The notes bounced off the buildings.

  “Well, anything else on the agenda?” Doyle seemed eager to leave. Gedney knew he was a lawyer in name and degree only; what he really loved was screwing around with machine parts.

  “Go with God,” Gedney said. “I’ll keep you posted on the asset.”

  6

  His brain has not only been washed, as they say…it’s been dry cleaned.

  —Khigh Dhiegh, The Manchurian Candidate

  WHEN HARDIE WOKE up for the third time, he was in bed, tucked in tight under warm blankets.

  Kendra always loved to tuck in the sheets and blankets at the bottom of the bed, forming a kind of pouch, which was great unless you were a adult human b
eing the size of Hardie, which made going to bed like trying to slide a .357 Magnum into a holster meant for a .22. So Hardie would push his feet down and try to unwedge some of the sheets from between the mattress and box spring so he could actually straighten his legs while he slept. This only pissed off Kendra, because he was ruining the whole pouch effect. Every night they fought this battle, for their entire marriage, sometimes one side surrendering to the other (Hardie would spend a few weeks at a time simply curling up like a fetus; Kendra would occasionally skip the pouch thing, if it was warm enough). The happiest nights of their marriage were the months after Hardie had been shot and almost killed. For a few weeks he was in a hospital bed at the hospital; then later he was in a hospital bed in their spare bedroom. Kendra was free to slide into that pouch without fear of someone ripping it open in the middle of the night.

  Now, though, it felt like more than a pouch. He was really wedged in tight—strapped down, maybe? Hard to tell. Sometimes when you sleep, a body part will go numb; Hardie’s entire body felt numb.

  But what came back online almost instantly were his memories, the whole thing, in a violent blood-splattered flood: the explosion in the house, the race up the Hollywood Hills, the hotel room, the crashing police car, the gunfight at the Hunter home, the cold chill at the bottom of the pool…all of it. The fact that he was being held against his will by people he did not know and in a place that he didn’t recognize.

  And even if his body were completely numb, 100 percent paralyzed from the Adam’s apple down, he was going to escape from this place. Even if he had to decapitate himself and drag himself along the floor using only the suction of his tongue, one inch at a time.

  They were not going to win.

  He had been thinking about Kendra and he was overcome with worry about her now. On the phone, Deke had promised to double her protection. She and the boy, Charlie, Jr., lived in a quiet, nonflashy Philadelphia suburb, a small but pretty house, built in the late 1940s, the dawn of the postwar boom. Hardie had never set foot inside it—he had only driven by it. And Kendra didn’t know about the protection provided by Deke and his fellow Father Judge High School boys at the FBI. That had been part of a complicated deal in which Hardie had given up essentially everything—his career, his past, his life—in exchange for his family’s safety.