DARKMAN
Once, he had a normal life, a beautiful girlfriend, and a brilliant medical career—creating synthetic skin for accident victims . . .
DARKMAN
Then, he was a victim himself, brutally attacked by sadistic criminals—his face and body burned beyond recognition . . .
DARKMAN
Now, he walks the night, searching for the woman he loves. A man who looks like a monster, he hopes to salvage his scorched flesh . . . and take revenge on those who destroyed his life.
EVERY SOUL HAS A DARK SIDE.
THIS TIME, IT WALKS LIKE A MAN . . .
DARKMAN
A Jove Book/published by arrangement with MCA Publishing Rights, A Division of MCA INC.
PRINTING HISTORY
Jove edition/August 1990
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1990 by MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA INC.
ISBN: 0-515-10378-0
Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
The name “JOVE” and the “J” logo are trademarks belonging to Jove Publications, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Prologue
Eddie
HIS NAME WAS Eddie Black and he didn’t take grief from anybody. He was a big man, Eddie was, a dockworker who had spent twenty years hoisting crates as big as Volkswagens, hauling chains as thick as telephone poles, sweating under a hot Midwestern sun with the putrid stink of the river around him and the savage knowledge that he was real tough burning inside. The fact that he was an asshole did not faze Eddie. The fact that his employees generally considered him to be insane bothered Eddie even less. All he wanted at this moment was to beat the living daylights out of Robert G. Durant, and Mr. Durant was on his way to see Eddie.
Eddie was leaning casually against his car, a brand-new Dodge, waiting, not worrying much. The car was parked inside a huge, empty building on a riverside pier. Weary light bulbs burned overhead in a futile attempt to stave off the dark. Shadows moved in the corners of the buildings while empty crates, slowly rotting, stood silent watch. The orange fireworks of burning cigarette tips flared periodically in the darkest recesses of the warehouse. Eddie nodded to himself. Just wait and see what thirteen husky dockmen could do. That punk, Durant, was in for the surprise of his life.
Something inside the Dodge emitted little electronic beeps. Eddie leaned inside and plucked a remote phone from its holder on the dash. In the years since his retirement he had found himself growing fairly rich, at least as far as dock-workers go. As a younger man, he had worked in this very building, sweated and slaved, sweated and saved. By the time he had hit fifty, the mandatory retirement age, he had a nest egg big enough to put a down payment on this waterfront property and the buildings that stretched forty yards on either side of the pier. Handsome little investment, handsome profits. He had considered buying a river barge but came to his senses in the nick of time and bought the Dodge instead. Barges had a nasty tendency to sink, especially if some angry union boss found out that Eddie hired non-union men and paid them under the table. It was kind of illegal and kind of dangerous, but Eddie had faced danger before. Surely more than that slicked-back greaser named Robert G. Durant.
He put the phone to his ear, feeling smug and important. He loved getting calls on the car phone. He wished he could hang one on his belt. It made people think he was dashingly cool.
“Yeah?” Eddie said.
A tinny voice squawked at him. Reception was bad on this Thursday. Perhaps the tin wall of the warehouse blocked the radio waves. He made a mental note to park closer to the door next time.
It was his secretary on the line, a scrawny, brainless bimbo who was actually dumb enough to work for two dollars an hour. Not that she had much to do except screen his calls, and she wasn’t even very good at that.
She rattled off a few names. Eddie ran them through his mental Rolodex. “No . . . because he’s an idiot. Tell him no way . . . Okay, tell him no way too . . . Him? Tell him to drop dead.”
He struggled to get a cigarette out of his shirt pocket while clamping the phone to his collarbone with his chin. The brain-damaged bimbo rattled on and on. He tweezed a crumpled Chesterfield out of the pack and began patting his pockets. The phone felt greasy against his chin, threatening to fall to the cement floor. He tried to elbow it back into place. It was a feat for a contortionist but not for Eddie Black. The phone slipped away and smacked the floor. A piece of plastic popped off and skittered under the car.
“Oh, hell!” he bellowed, dropping down to pick up his favorite toy. On his knees, he stuck it back to his ear. The bimbo was still babbling. “Stop,” Eddie barked. “I dropped the damn phone.”
She kept on talking. Eddie tapped the phone on the floor. Because the plastic had broken off, a small green circuit board was exposed. He stuck his finger on it. Nothing.
“Mabel,” he shouted, “shut up for a minute!”
“Blah blah,” she said, after a fashion. “And blah and blah and blah.” Eddie realized that he could no longer understand her brainless voice. He hammered the phone against the Dodge’s door, digging neat little chips out of the brand-new paint. Seeing this, he attempted to repair the damage by covering it with the phone.
And still his secretary talked, sounding oddly metallic against the door and its peppering of fresh paint holes. Eddie cranked his head back and screamed to the high ceiling, beseeching God to end his suffering. Mabel droned on.
A figure emerged from the shadows and skirted the car, a beefy man in a sweaty white sleeveless T-shirt. He was all hair and fat. He went by the name of Hank.
He bent down. “Trouble, Mr. Black?”
Eddie snapped his head around. His eyes were wild and wet. Saliva bubbled at the corners of his lips. “No, Hank, I’m fine. Durant’s on his way to muscle me out of my property and we’ll probably have to kill him. This building is costing me a fortune every minute it stands empty, my phone’s broken, and to top it off, my secretary has turned into a robot. Why shouldn’t I be fine?”
Hank, not the brightest of men, nodded solemnly. “That’s really weird, Mr. Black, because you don’t look all that fine to me.”
Eddie jumped up, intending to shove the now useless phone up Hank’s stupid nose when the rectangle of light that was the open doors behind him went dim. A snazzy blue Lincoln Continental idled into the building, its tires crunching over gravel and debris. Eddie threw the phone into the car and motioned to his men in the shadows, no longer concerned about Hank’s nose. Rumor had it that Durant was one tough hood for a small-timer, a little dope here, a little prostitution there, a few riverfront property owners roughed up and forced to sell. He was about to learn a lesson in diplomacy from Eddie Black.
Eddie’s men formed a line. Each carried a weapon of their choice: six had knives almost as long as machetes, two others had short shovels, one had a crowbar, and the rest had rusty lengths of chain. They leered at the car, whose windows were tinted black.
The car doors popped open and six men got out. Aside from Durant, Eddie had no idea who the others were, though it wasn’t hard to tell what they were here for. Backup for Durant, simple as that. But they were very much outnumbered and were about to lose their weapons.
“Okay,” Eddie said, smiling with a mouthful of yellow teeth. “Against the car, boys. We’re going to do a little searchy-searchy.”
They went obediently to the proper stance: hands flat on the roof, feet spread wide. Eddie waved a hand at two of his biggest workers. They ambled over to Durant’s car and began patting them down. No one protested. A large pile of pistols grew on the floor as Durant’s men were stripped of hardware.
“Don’t the ladies look better now
?” one of Eddie’s men said.
Another nodded. “Bunch of cuties, huh?”
“Put skirts on them and I’d marry one.”
The dockworkers laughed. Eddie breathed a small sigh of relief, amazed to find that he had been mildly worried all along, though he hadn’t been aware of it. He smiled again. Chalk one up to nerves of steel.
“Well, now,” he said, strolling around with his fingers laced behind his back, feeling idiotically like a drill sergeant with a platoon full of recruits, “I believe we have some business to discuss.”
Durant nodded. He was wearing what had to be a six-hundred-dollar suit. The aroma of fine cologne drifted on the air. His hair was slightly greased, combed perfectly in place. Eddie had to hand it to him: He looked like a million bucks. A dope for coming here, but a pretty dope.
Dope Durant looked at Eddie. “Mind if we quit holding this car down?”
“Be my guest,” Eddie said. “Unarmed, you guys are about as scary as Daffy Duck. This shouldn’t take too long.”
They pulled away from the car. Eddie noticed that one of them was limping. No, more than limping. He was hobbling.
“Bum leg?” Eddie asked conversationally.
The man shook his head. “No leg.”
“Ah. I was engaged to a girl with a wooden leg once.”
Durant’s man brightened. “Yeah? What happened?”
Eddie shook his head glumly. “Poor girl. I had to break it off.”
His workers howled. Eddie chuckled. How fine it felt to be in charge. “Well,” he said, “it’s time to cut the chatter. Durant, I’ve only got three things to say to you.” He held up one finger. “First, I’m not selling you my property.” Another finger. “Second, nobody muscles Eddie Black. Especially a bunch of jerks like you.” Third finger. “Last, if you are unhappy with the previous two, we’ll be more than happy to amputate your privates and nail them to the wall. Sort of like a poor man’s doorbell.”
The workers screamed laughter while Eddie basked in the limelight of his own cutting wit. How great it was to be onstage with an admiring crowd. He turned to his men, good men all of them, every one, and while they howled and screeched and pounded each other, one of Robert G. Durant’s goons jumped at the one-legged man and pulled his wooden leg out of his pants. Something metallic flipped down from the wooden calf, a handle of some sort with a trigger. He pressed the wooden foot to his shoulder, took quick aim, and fired.
At any other time Eddie would have found this trick quite laudable; after all, Durant was in the business of high-pressure sales tactics and should be as prepared as possible for any upsetting little detail, such as thirteen dockworkers armed only with clubs and chains. The machine gun blatted, spitting smoke and fire, drilling through the uneven line of men, bowling them over. The machine-gun-in-the-leg trick was absolutely stunning to Eddie, because now he was seeing thirteen men fall in bloody heaps while body parts—arms, legs, guts, brains, unidentifiable red blobs—flapped through the air and spattered down on the cement. There was groaning; there was screaming. Eddie did not realize that it was he himself, Eddie Black, who was screaming the loudest. His fingers had dug themselves into his cheeks, pulling his face down into a mask of insane horror.
The machine gun swung toward him. He dropped to the floor without saying so much as howdy to the cement, and hugged it for dear life, eyes squeezed shut, heart pounding in his throat, sweat beading on his forehead, while the machine gun—good trick—hammered away at his new Dodge. Glass exploded and rained down on him. A tire blew with a bang, then farted its air out. The car clunked down when another tire blew. Bullets perforated the shiny new paint with a sound like small hammers hitting steel. Eddie screamed some more, screamed until he realized the gun had shut down and the only noise left were echoes of gunfire and his screams booming off the walls and high ceiling.
He raised his head. Glass pebbles slid off his hair. Gunsmoke as thick as fog wafted in the still air, smelling like burned chemicals and sulfur. The one-legged man was hopping around on his only foot while his leg was put back together. He accepted it and stuck it back in his pant leg.
Feet shuffled. Eddie was hauled upright. He tried to stand but was forced to his knees. His terrified mind showed him a horror house of things yet to come. Knives in his eyes. Decapitation. Strangulation. The cutting out of his tongue. Castration. Any number of new and interesting things.
Durant stood over him, grinning. A hand grabbed Eddie’s hair and jerked his head up. Oh, yeah, Eddie thought, wild with fear. Gonna cut my throat. Jesus God, my throat!
Durant reached inside his suit coat and withdrew a long cigar.
Burn my eyes out, oh God, oh no, HELP!
He reached into another pocket and produced an unrecognizable gold gadget. It looked like a small guillotine. He thumbed it and a hole appeared. He stuck the end of his cigar into the hole. Snip! A small piece of cigar dropped to the floor. He stuck the clipped end in his mouth and withdrew yet another gold gadget from a pocket. Eddie looked on, his thoughts a chaotic and useless whirl. What the hell did Durant have in mind?
Durant touched a button. A tiny finger of flame burst alive. He lit his cigar. Nice lighter, Eddie screamed inside. Let me live and I’ll buy you a truckload of them. What is that, anyway? Electronic ignition? One little button, and presto, you’ve got fire. Question is, what do you intend to do with it?
Durant went into a squat, facing Eddie eye to eye. The lighter burned. Better blow it out, Eddie was able to think. Blow it out or that fancy gold job will overheat and burn your hand.
“Let us negotiate,” Durant said evenly. “I believe we have a sale to discuss in very fine detail. Stop whimpering so. You haven’t been hurt.”
Yeah? Not yet I haven’t. But if you do not extinguish that lighter soon, it will be very, very hot.
Ooops. Hot lighter. Perhaps as hot as, say, a branding iron?
Nope.
Durant touched the flame to Eddie’s hair. At his age Eddie was not blessed with a bountiful crop, but for a man nearing sixty he wasn’t all that bald. His hair crackled alive. In seconds it was a burning cowl. The stench of it filled the building, making some of Durant’s boys hold their noses and giggle through their mouths. Eddie, meanwhile, began exercising his voice again. He whooped and bellowed while his hair evaporated as if by magic, leaving only burned stubs and a scalp gone pink and black. He was inclined to get up and run, but the strong hands holding him down changed his mind. Instead he had to content himself with whipping his flaming head back and forth and screaming.
“Jeez,” Durant said, looking apologetic. “Did I do that?”
More giggles. Durant blew on Eddie’s head, making the last remnants of hair glow brightly before going out. Eddie moaned and gobbled. He was unaware that one of his hands had been captured and was being held out, pointing at Durant.
“Now,” Durant said, withdrawing the cigar trimmer, “I want you to consider these points one by one.” He clicked the trimmer, making a hole appear. He slid the device onto Eddie’s forefinger.
“Number one: I try not to let anger get the better of me.”
He squeezed the trimmer, hard. Eddie screamed as the razor-sharp blade dug past his flesh and into the bone. Durant grunted and the blade clicked home.
Eddie looked down at his newly trimmed hand with bulging eyes. Instead of a finger he had a spurting stump. Durant waddled backward, to avoid staining his suit.
“Point number two!” he shouted over the noise Eddie was making. “I don’t always succeed in overcoming my anger.” He slipped the trimmer over another finger, the second one. Eddie struggled against the hands that held him.
Snip!
Eddie saw everything through a blood-red mist of pain. His screaming was winding down to sloppy chuckles.
“Point number three,” Durant said, and snipped again.
Eddie swayed, moaning, drunk with pain.
Durant grinned cruelly as he fitted the trimmer over yet another finger. “Point nu
mber three, Eddie, is this: I have seven more points.”
Everyone laughed at this—everyone except Eddie, of course. Eddie was too busy with his own problems to see the humor in this, or anything else.
PART ONE
Destuction
1
Yakky
FOR YAKITITO YANAGITO—a name so unpronounceable that his friends at Wayne State University called him Yakky, which sat just fine with Yakitito, because he had no idea what Yakky might mean—the first Thursday afternoon as lab assistant to Dr. Peyton Westlake was a memorable one. Westlake was a tall, loose-jointed man just easing into his thirties. Likeable if a bit skittish, he was the kind of guy who might kill you in a basketball game or nail you to the wall with an impossible Chem 101 exam, and then go home and invent Flubber. He could be seen dashing across campus in his white lab coat on some inexplicable mission, deaf and blind to his surroundings or hunched over a microscope at the biochem lab, jammed so tightly into his own little world that there was no room for anybody else. Yakky had indeed heard a lot about Peyton Westlake, even seen him a few times charging from building to building with his lab coat flapping. As a foreign graduate student at the university, Yakky could easily understand what it meant to seem strange, even bizarre, to the rest of humanity; he felt that way all the time.
Standing now at the door to Peyton Westlake’s private laboratory, ready to peck at the glass, Yakky felt a surge of fresh apprehension. This place was strange. A two-story red clapboard affair, it was seedy and generally run-down. Some windows were boarded over with plywood that was slowly surrendering to rot, other windows were broken and gaping, even the tin roof leaked. The whole sorry structure was located within fifty yards of a sludgy river that smelled of toxic waste and dead fish. Yakky felt decidedly nauseated as he stared at his own pale reflection in the glass of the door, the only thing around here that appeared to have survived the ravages of time and vandals. He smoothed his hair. He adjusted his tie. He took off his Coke-bottle-bottom glasses, which weighed nearly half a pound, stuck his nose to the glass, and searched his face for pimples until it occurred to him that he had not had a pimple since he was seventeen.
Darkman Page 1
