“Auction? What auction?”
“You know that stunt Danger Man said he was going to do in his video? The private one?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Some guy on his stunt team says he knows where it’s going to happen. He’s auctioning off the GPS coordinates.”
How had this slipped by me? How did my e-mail alerts not catch this? This is huge, and if I want it this badly, I’m sure at least a few of his seekers will be in on the bid as well. “Thanks,” I say.
“No problem, princess,” he says. “Take care and good luck.”
“You too,” I say and hang up the phone.
An auction. I might get outbid. He might die before the auction even ends. It could be a wild goose chase, an Internet scam to make a pile of cash and then disappear. But it’s a start.
Chapter 17
JAIME
DROWNING IN MY SHAME AGAIN
I paced about the half star hotel room we found off Highway 29 in Warrenton, Virginia, my raw nerves screaming. Reflexively, my fingers squeezed and stretched over and over until I was afraid my nails would wear my palms to the bone. I wanted to smoke. I wanted to kick in a wall. I wanted to do something, anything. But I knew I didn’t really want any of that. I knew deep down what I really wanted. I wanted to shoot up. The rest was just me trying to force the need onto something else, anything but that.
“Where the hell are you, Dan?” I muttered to myself through clenched teeth. “I could have murdered a whole cow and had burgers by now.”
He was gone again on another food run, paid for with moneys the Marquis fronted us until auction cash rolled in. We had both been eating a lot, me to settle my nerves, and him, I assumed, because he was young again and wouldn’t have to worry about cholesterol for at least a decade. I didn’t know what he expected to find open so late at night, but good luck to him. I needed to eat, to shove a different kind of hunger on top of the addiction and hope my body didn’t notice the switch. Geez, how had I beaten this thing before? I let out an animalistic amalgamation of growl and scream, squeezed my eyes shut and practically broke my hand just resisting punching something. It was too soon to be getting these kinds of withdrawal pains. I was high just earlier today. But here they were. I was fighting the trifecta of triggers. The physical pains of age, of running, of escaping, of walking around with every muscle tense for the past few hours. The mental pains of constant attention, watching every flicker of shadow, jumping at every creak in the walls, of fighting addiction while coming down from an all-day adrenaline bender. The emotional pains of destroying Dan Germany, calling him worthless, preying on his insecurities because I had been too weak to keep my stress in check. That was a whole lot of pain to say no to at once, especially when one act, one shot could make every last drop of it go away.
I crawled under the blankets, bundled myself up tight, and did my best to flail, wearing myself out. Perhaps I could physically exhaust the need, break myself down so much that I would be too tired to go crawling through those broken glass streets looking for a fix. It was bad enough the things I would have done right then for a dose. Vile filthy things. Deviant things. Violent things. To do them in Dan’s body? That would only make them worse. The last days of famed stuntman Dan “Danger Man” Germany. A week before his farewell stunt, caught performing dirty deeds on a disease-ridden drug dealer in a filthy gas station bathroom for heroin that’s been cut more than a suburban lawn. There’s your legacy, Dan. I hope your stunt goes well.
I howled with need into my little cocoon and longed for the violent, burning agony of being dead. Even that would be better than this, lying here, my skin crawling, nerves raw like sandpaper stretched thin. And when I came back to life, I realized, there would be heroin, beautiful, sweet heroin coursing through my veins.
I could satiate myself any time I wanted, I realized. I just needed to die.
“Keep it together,” I said, scolding myself aloud to an empty room.
Something clicked in my head. It was perhaps a little wrong, but the gallows humor coupled with the pain had me laughing hysterically as I wondered if I could charge Danger Man the five-grand-per-day fee for torture.
The door opened as I sat erupting over with laughter, and I could only imagine what I must have looked like, a madman cackling, bound tightly in a blanket cocoon like someone from a mental institution who had convinced himself he was a caterpillar. My laughing fits sent me rolling onto the floor between the bed, and it only made me laugh harder.
“I see you’ve been having fun in my absence,” Dan said and threw a bag of burgers near me. They smelled like they came from God’s own grill, so great was my hunger. It was a shame I’d gone and wrapped myself up in these blankets. I had no idea how I managed to bind myself so tightly that I couldn’t get out, but then who knew how junkies got themselves into half the scrapes they did?
“Aren’t you getting any?” I asked Dan as he disappeared into the bathroom.
“Already ate,” he said and he was gone, leaving me alone with my burgers.
I rolled along the floor to the grease-soaked bag, and after fumbling madly with my arms failed to set them free, I went to town on the burger sack like a savage beast, tearing at the paper with my teeth. I was halfway through the pack of French fries, which being unwrapped, were the easiest thing to eat, when the blanket snagged on the edge of the bed and finally gave me enough slack to work my arm free. It felt so good sinking my teeth into meat that I felt like a vicious, blood-thirsty predator. The primal assault on the fast food meal took my mind off my deeper hunger, and for a moment, I could almost forget the scratching at the back of my thoughts, the clawing need that would someday soon break down the door and destroy everything in its path until it was once more sated.
Maybe devouring those burgers so quickly wasn’t the best idea, but I wasn’t thinking at the time. My stomach churned in queasy regret, and I pulled myself free from the last of the blanket cocoon to purge what I had consumed. My body had discovered my plans to trick the need with food, and it was angry. It sought to punish me for my ruse. I fumbled for the bathroom, but it was locked. “C’mon, Dan,” I said, struggling to keep my food down. “Open up. I gotta puke.”
He said nothing.
“I need the toilet, man. Let me in.”
No answer.
I took several steps back and slammed my body into the bathroom door. It groaned, but otherwise did not yield. So I slammed myself over and over again ignoring the sink, ignoring the ice bucket. Something in me needed to vomit, something that insisted only the toilet would do, that to be sick anyplace else would be wrong. I went to the bed and grabbed the lamp, not even bothering to unplug it. The bulb sparked, then died out as I yanked the cord from the wall. Not my concern. My focus was the door knob and how to use the base of the lamp to break it off.
The clang, clang, clang of metal against metal assaulted my senses, but I didn’t stop. I needed to get in there. After an amount of time longer than my attention span, the door handle gave, clattering to the floor. Shoving the door open, I lurched for the toilet, vomiting up my burger and fries before I even bothered to make sure the toilet seat was up. It was, thankfully. I disregarded Dan, passed out in the tub, until after the last of the dry heaves had faded and I slumped against the cool tile floor.
Like a cat, I batted weakly at Dan’s hand, dangling out of the tub, letting its lazy arcs distract me from the gnawing, burning need. It took me a moment to notice Dan’s belt also dangled down, hanging from where he tightened it around his arm.
The son of a bitch scored while he was out. In the middle of Bumsville, Virginia, in the middle of the night in a strange town, he managed to score. Thanks, opioid epidemic. Seeing it so close that I could smell it, my resolve crumbled and the addiction took over. Pulling myself to my feet, I slapped him around a bit to ask if he had any left, but he only gave the non-committal moan of someone deep in. The needle laying loosely in his other hand was likewise empty. There wasn’t even
anything on the spoon to lick off.
“Oh churl, drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after!” Even in such a sorry state, I still found myself quoting Shakespeare. I guess it was a side effect of having several centuries’ exposure to it. The rest of the scene flashed through my mind and I remembered that I was not without options. I had no happy dagger, but I could still get my fix. You can die, the addiction whispered in my ear, and I knew the voice was right.
I didn’t want to burn. I just wanted to die. My death needed to be quick and clean, something I could resurrect from in seconds. I cast my desperate eyes to the toilet, still caked in vomit, and knew that drowning recovered almost instantly.
Too consumed with need to even flush, I dipped my head in the bowl and drowned myself in my own sick.
Ahh, the things we do for love.
Chapter 18
OLIVIA
I DARE YOU TO SEE WHO YOU’VE BEEN
How do you find a man on the run who lives solely on cash?
You find the people working for him. It doesn’t take long to track down the auction Houston mentioned. TGN has been sharing the link like crazy. Even if the guy running it is legit and the information he provides is factual, I’m still convinced it’s a scam. The highest bidders when the auction closes get the GPS coordinates, but he doesn’t say how many high bidders he’s taking. Maybe all of them. I register for the auction and place my bid. I don’t expect to win. There are already a few people bidding more than my car note, so my fifty bucks probably won’t cut it. Doesn’t matter. For what I’m doing, I don’t need the high bidder. I just need the server. I throw Armitage at it, a big open-source, all-in-one easy-mode hacking tool. It can be loud. It can obvious. If their security admin is any decent, they’ll know something happened. I know it’d be better to use a stealthier approach, but I’m on a bit of a time crunch. I’ll have to use the battering ram instead of the lockpick.
Once I’m in, I start checking logs to see who’s monitoring it, our auction poster and inside man. From there, I trace the data to a cell phone with clearly falsified customer information, and then, using a digital back door I left behind from a job long ago, I sneak into Ma Bell’s records to see who he’s been talking to. Surely if he’s connected to Dan, one of these calls will be to someone who can track him down.
I run down the list, ticking off the numbers one by one. TGN sits at the top. Makes sense. If I were trying to capitalize on a macabre spectacle like a washed-up celebrity killing himself, they would be the first person I would call too. GPS coordinate auctions? That’s a lot of unreliability, payout-wise, and probably for peanuts compared to what the biggest gossip network on the planet would pay for that kind of info. There’s a call to a number I recognize from a couple of days ago. The most pitiful Mister Smith I’ve ever met. Our employee knows about the hit and may even be working it. But that didn’t make any sense. If he knew about the job, he wouldn’t be chasing it for the five grand the Fist was throwing out there. He would be getting paid the full price without the competition. Unless he turned the job down too but figured he could still make a little cash without having to pull the trigger himself, like the Fist, but somehow both more and less ethical. I brush it aside for now. It’s a mystery too involved as it is for the time I have. Find Dan Germany first. Question the motives of those around him later.
The other two numbers are both disposable smart phones. They could belong to anyone, be used by anyone. Thankfully, with the right commands from the right programs, they can be used by me. I send them both a text similar to the one my gullible Mister Smith got and before long, I’m getting GPS details. One phone tells me it’s in Chicago and has been for a while. The other, however, tells me it’s in West Virginia, and not long ago, Philadelphia.
I glance at my clock. Three thirty in the morning. Not bad. Maybe somewhere out in the real world there are people who can just get into all sorts of systems with the greatest of ease like they do in Hollywood. I’ve never been that good. It’s usually a slow, methodical process for me. I pat myself on the back for how much I was able to accomplish in so short a time and reward myself with a night’s sleep.
I wake in the early afternoon. It’s a bit later than I wanted, but not so late the whole day is wasted, so I check the GPS feed on my new-found phone friend. Still in Warrenton. Looks like I’m taking a road trip. I climb into my Sedona and make quick stops at White Castle for a Crave Case and Taco Bell for a Party Pack, all soft. Here’s a life lesson: never get crunchy tacos on a road trip. They are disappointingly not crispy after the first hour, but a soft taco is exactly as it should be even a day later. What can I say? I’m in a rush and don’t want to waste time pulling over for food more than once. Besides, I’m in my twenties, thank you very much, and too young to regret my food choices just yet the way Houston does. I gotta say, though, the three liter of orange soda is a bit excessive, but only because it’s hard to drink while driving.
I’m able to slip out of Pennsylvania without incident, an advantageous byproduct of my car chase only having been called in by the police without the police ever actually catching up to us to grab license plate numbers. Rush hour turns out to be good for something after all.
Aside from traffic in D.C. and to a lesser degree, Baltimore, I make pretty good time. I even indulge myself and make a detour to see if that undying person I met last year is home, but he isn’t. Of course. Never home, never answers the phone. He’s like a ghost or something. Only, you know, not dead.
It’s late when I arrive at the Starlight Motel in Warrenton. Night has fallen and the usual riff-raff have come to see what pieces of it can be salvaged and sold. The motel reminds me of old movies, with its fifties style sign and paint job. Only half the lights still work, and a couple that do flicker like bug zappers without the satisfying crackling sound of bugs shuffling off their mortal coils. This far out, I’m having a hard time getting a good cell tower pinpoint. If it weren’t for the car I recognize from yesterday in the parking lot, I wouldn’t even be able to say with certainty that Danger Man was here.
Hoping things might go smoothly for me, I ask the overnight clerk if she recognizes a picture I show her of Dan Germany, but she doesn’t. Yesterday, she tells me, was her day off. Why is it every single cashier, bouncer, and hotel employee on TV recognizes victims from months ago, down to what they were wearing and relevant details so inanely specific to the investigation you would think the killer paid them to remember, but you try that trick in real life and they can’t remember the guy they sold cigarettes to five minutes ago?
“Do you at least know what room the guy who drives that car is in?” I say, pointing out the window.
She smacks her gum in her mouth like a cow chewing cud. “Nah,” she says. “Sorry, ma’am. I just got in.”
I groan in frustration, rent a room, and cross the street to the liquor store for a fifth of whiskey. Gargling a shot to get that out-all-night-drinking stench to my breath, I rumple my clothes and then move from room to room banging on doors. I don’t dare ask for Dan. I don’t want to spook him, so I use a fake name.
“Jamesh,” I slur at door after door. “Dammit, are you in there? Open up! I’sme, Claudia!”
A few people call out saying I have the wrong room, but I don’t recognize any of the voices. A few people open the door to send me on my way, but no Dan Germany or Blondie. One guy says he’ll be my James. Another creep tries to talk me into going on in to his room, telling me I can sleep it off in his bed. I almost break the bottle over his head, but he backs down right before I swing. Lucky him. I suppose I should expect it. Stay in a skeevy hotel, meet skeevy men. It’s still not pleasant and made less so by the fact that I found no sign of Danger Man at any of the rooms. Maybe he’s out drinking. It’s not so late that last call has come and gone. I shrug off my bad luck, plant a tracking device on the car, and steal another night of well-deserved sleep. I crash harder than I have in a very long time.
In the morning, I shove a day old
soft taco into my mouth, wash it down with a swig of half flat orange soda, peeking out the window to see that Dan Germany’s car is still in the parking lot. It is, which is good by me. I wonder, with them kicking it in the same hotel room for two days if maybe this is where the stunt will be. Otherwise, you’d think he would have hit the road by now. Of course, an extended stay motel might have been cheaper. Maybe they’re having car problems?
The rest of the morning is spent surfing the Internet and peeking out the window at the car that never moves. Come on, guys. Get some breakfast, I think to myself as I down a White Castle burger. It’s the most important meal of the day.
By lunch, or at least normal people lunch time, I’ve grown bored and frustrated with watching for Dan Germany. I’ve hit the refresh button on Facebook so many times that if it were a real button, it’d be broken by now. A girl can only kill so much time before time fights back, all the minutes and hours ganging up on her and beating her down.
“Screw this,” I say as I step away from the window and throw on some shoes. “There are easier ways.”
I load my things into my car, tuck Queen Mary into the waistline of my jeans, and pick the lock on Dan Germany’s car. Once I know I can slip into the back seat quickly, I bring the daredevil target to me. Glancing quickly around the parking lot to make sure no one is looking, I pull the fire alarm and then race to hide in Danger Man’s back seat. He won’t be getting away from me this time.
Unsurprisingly, most rooms are empty. It’s past check out but before check in, so only the long termers and late sleepers are left, and most of them are gone for the day. The only people still here are the slackers, the addicts, and the people having affairs. Strangely, no Dan Germany and no Blondie. Determined, I once more scan the scattering of confused faces, many of whom are eager not to be seen but aren’t as discrete as they think. Still no sign of the dynamic duo. Just my luck. The plan seemed foolproof, so of course it would fail.
The Daredevil Corpse (The Departed Book 2) Page 10
