The Daredevil Corpse (The Departed Book 2)

by Sean Arthur Cox

  Where could they be? I weigh the possibilities. They may have sold the car. I check my laptop for a signal on Danger Man’s phone, but it’s not broadcasting its location anymore. Either it’s dead or disabled or they ditched it. Maybe I spooked them last night and they made a run for it, figuring correctly I was watching the car. I make a mental note to check bus depots to see if anyone matching their description has been through in the past couple days. It’s possible, not likely, but possible that he’s been killed. Tracking him down was no easy task. It seems unlikely that one of those psycho killers has that sort of computer savvy. That being said, you have to have at least a little know-how to get to the Hide and Seek site in the first place, so maybe I’m underestimating them.

  By this point, the fire department has arrived and begun storming room to room, none of which contain any fire, surprise surprise. From one room, however, they do pull Blondie, who looks out of it. I sink low in the back seat and peak through the gap around the driver’s side headrest. Blondie paces the parking lot nervously, casting his eyes at everyone, and then down when they look back at him. He’s hiding something. The firemen move on to the next room. Are they not sharing? Did they rent two rooms? They didn’t seem to have that kind of money, not in this car at this hotel. I try to convince myself Dan Germany just stepped out for food while I wasn’t looking. Stepped out and stayed out for several hours. It’s really hard to talk yourself into believing something you know is a lie.

  Once the firemen give the all clear, Blondie rushes back into his room. I’m about to follow when he comes out again, holding his things and fumbling with a set of keys. It’s all I can do to drop low in the back seat and hope he doesn’t notice me until it’s too late for him to get away. His panting breath unsettled the silence from the front seat and I hear the car sputter, then lurch forward and out onto the road.

  As quietly as I can be, I sit up in the back seat and ready my weapon, letting the cocking of Queen Mary’s hammer introduce me.

  “Where’s Danger Man?” I ask.

  “What?” he shrieks, and the car swerves. “Who…? Who are you?”

  “Dan Germany,” I say firmly, holding my aim. “Where is he?”

  “What’s going on? Where did you come from?”

  “I need to find Dan.” My voice turns icy, each word pointed and deliberate as a gunshot.

  “I’m Dan,” he stammers.

  “Dan Germany,” I say.

  He looks like he’s about to speak, then stops to think deeply. “Oh, yeah,” he says finally. “I’m Dan Rierson. You have the wrong Dan.”

  I wonder what this man’s problem is when I notice the fresh needle mark in his arm. Suddenly his problem is all too clear, and maybe mine too.

  “There was an old man,” I say. “He had a smart phone. Did he trade it to you? Is that why my computer says he’s here?”

  “What? Lady, what’s going on?”

  “The old man you’ve been traveling with,” I say. “I need to find him.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” he says.

  “Bullshit,” I reply. “Now, I understand you may not be terribly intimidated by me. You may not want to talk to me. But my friend here is very persuasive.”

  I flash the pistol in case he somehow forgot I was armed.

  “Really, lady,” he says between sobs. “I don’t know.”

  “That needle mark in your arm says I shouldn’t believe you.”

  He glances down and realizes what I’m talking about. Geez. How much has this guy had? I don’t see any track marks, so it’s not like he’s a frequent user. He must have taken a big first hit with no tolerance to help him manage. I do not envy him.

  “The… guy you’re looking for? I don’t know where he went. Yeah, I get it. I’m a junkie. I’m a fuck up. I’ve done some pretty awful things in my time and you might not want to believe me because of that, but honestly. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you should tell me what you do know then,” I say.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he stammers. “Yeah, no problem. We were on the road and he said something that made me feel like shit, you know? And I guess I couldn’t take it after the day we been having so I fell onto some bad habits, you know?”

  “Get to the part where you tell me where he is.”

  “That’s the thing,” he says. “I went to the bathroom to shoot up, you know, gave him some burgers, and when I woke up there was vomit all over the place and he was gone.”

  “How long ago?” I ask.

  “I dunno. Sometime yesterday afternoon.”

  “And you did what? Did you go looking for him?”

  “A bit,” he said. “I called a guy I thought could find him, but…”

  “But?”

  “I couldn’t find him,” he says. “Look, I screwed up. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d have been sober enough to look after him. He’s still adjusting, you know? It’s all my fault, everything he’s going through.”

  Too high to help a friend going through withdrawal. I can’t imagine that possibly ending well.

  “So you found something to make you forget about how bad you screwed up?”

  “He was right,” he said. “About everything. I am useless.”

  Poor bastard. Yeah, he’s a screw up, but I still feel bad for the guy. It’s this sort of soft heartedness that gets me into problems like this in the first place. Meanwhile, he’s turning into a blubbering mess in the front seat and it’s beginning to impact his driving.

  “It’s cool,” I say. “Relax. I want to help, but in order to do that, you need to pull over and slide into the passenger seat.”

  He does, and I take the wheel.

  “I’m going to help you find him,” I tell him, “but I need you to answer some questions.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  “First off, who are you? How do you know Dan Germany?”

  He laughs. “Dan and I go way back. I’m planning his last big stunt.”

  “You’re not the leak, are you?” I ask. “Don’t you even think of lying to me because you’re not that good and I will shoot you for it.”

  “The leak?”

  “The guy who’s selling the location of the stunt online.”

  “No, that’s another guy,” he says.

  “You know him?”

  “Oh sure. He’s the guy who helped organize this whole thing.”

  “And he’s selling Dan Germany out. Shameful.”

  “No,” says Blondie. “No, it’s not like that. The auction is paying for the stunt, see? We ain’t exactly rolling in dough, so we sell tickets to pay for stuff, but if we sell tickets then it’s a performance and then we need permits so we can’t sell tickets, but if it’s leaked information then it’s not a performance and we save a ton on permitting and licenses and stuff. It’s a scam, see? It’s all a big scam!”

  “Do you know where it’s happening?”

  “Sure,” he says. “Grand Canyon. Not that it matters.”

  “Why doesn’t it matter?”

  He glares at me. “Are you sure you’re not the screw up?”

  “Oh, right,” I say, catching on. “He’s gone. No Dan, no stunt.”

  Blondie awkwardly tries to snap his fingers, fails, and sort rolls his head against the window in consolation.

  “So, what’s your deal?” he asks. “You look familiar. Why are you looking for him?”

  I don’t tell him who I am or how I’m involved, but I do tell him about the contract out on Dan Germany. I tell him about the Fist and the Hide and Seekers. I tell him about the different attempts on Danger Man’s life already.

  “Really?” he says. “ten thousand bucks if you prove you killed him?”

  “I know,” I say. “It’s disgusting how low that pay is for a job like this.”

  He eyes me suspiciously. Crap. I haven’t told him I’m an assassin myself, and it’d be an unlucky turn of events if he pieced it together himself.

  “Dan Germany is famous,” I say. “
You would think they would at least pay more than that. The guy is a legend.”

  Blondie perks up at this. “Yeah, he’s pretty great alright.”

  I steal a glance at him and notice he’s still a little cloudy around the edges. I’ll probably need to sober him up to get the most out of him.

  “Are you hungry?” I ask. “I mean, I know some drugs make you hungry, but I don’t know if your particular… choice… does. I’ve got some food back at the hotel.”

  “I won’t say no,” he says, so I let the GPS lead us back to my room.

  Inside, I toss him a couple of sliders and a soft taco, which he devours ravenously. I don’t know if it’s the drugs that make him hungry or the drugs that make him forget to eat, but he practically bites my hand off when I offer him another burger.

  “So, tell me about these killers coming for me. Or Dan. Or Dan and me. We were both in the car when the guy tried to run us off the road.”

  I nod and bring up the site, which he clicks through in amazement.

  “How are the police not all over this?” he asks, utterly confounded.

  “It’s deep web stuff,” I say. “Hard to find. Hard to track. Very anonymous.”

  “Well, how do you even get there in the first place?”

  I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’m tired from the chase. Maybe it’s because I so rarely socialize and when I do, it’s usually professional and everyone almost always knows more than me, but I stop to explain to him how to access sites like this one and how it all works, which he pays surprising attention to. I know I should be tracking down Dan Germany, but it feels good to be the expert in the room. It’s been so long since anyone has expressed real interest in things I know. It’s been longer since I’ve had someone to really talk to who isn’t Houston. Not counting Internet friends, of course. I indulge myself, and chat away.

  “That’s amazing,” Blondie says. “And it’s all out there for anyone to find?”

  “If you know the way,” I say.

  “Crazy.”

  “But we aren’t here to talk about how the Internet works,” I say. “We need to find Dan Germany. First things first, though, is to make sure he’s not dead.”

  We log in to the Hide and Seek site. His game is still marked In Progress, but there’s a new post from the Fist.

  Hey seekers! Good news and bad news! Bad news first. It seems our hider has found out we’re seeking him, so he’s gone on the run. I know it’s all fun and games, friends, but when you charge in guns a-blazin’, make sure you do the job right, or people get spooked, to say nothing of some accusations of unfair play going on out there. Tsk tsk.

  The good news is the game is still in session. What’s more, I’ve been following things pretty closely, and I have confirmed reports that Dan Germany was seen in Warrenton, Virginia as recently as afternoon yesterday. He’s driving a rusty white 1976 Chevy Impala. Be on the lookout, and happy seeking!

  “Shit,” I say, slamming my laptop shut. “We need to get out of here.”

  “I’ll get the car warmed up,” Blondie says.

  “Didn’t you read the post? They know what your car looks like!”

  “We can’t leave it,” Blondie says. “We need it for the stunt.”

  “We take my car or you find him yourself.”

  Blondie grits his teeth in anger, then relents. “Fine,” he says, “but I need to get some things out of the room and the trunk of the car.”

  “I understand,” I say. “I’ll pack up my stuff and meet you out front in five minutes.”

  He nods and scrambles out of the room. My stuff packs easily. It’s mostly shoving my clothes in a back pack and grabbing the last of the food. Blondie is still unloading gear from the Impala when I pull up beside him. His eyes go wide in terror when he looks up to see me behind the wheel.

  “Shit!” he shouts. “You’re her! You’re that hit woman that was chasing us out of Philadelphia!”

  He begins to edge away in a terror, stopped only by the car to his back.

  “No, I’m not,” I say. “I mean, yes, but no. You have it all wrong.”

  “So, you’re not a hired killer?”

  “Well, I am, but-”

  He tries to bolt, but in his panic runs straight into the open door.

  “But I haven’t been hired to kill Dan Germany.”

  “Then how did you know about the website?” he asks, now backing into the car.

  “Because I caught and interrogated someone who was trying to kill him. I needed information.”

  “So why were you chasing us?”

  “I was trying to warn you!”

  “A likely story,” he says.

  I groan and point my pistol at him. “Look, I don’t have time for this. Get in car so we can go find Danger Man.”

  “I’d rather die,” he says. As if on cue, the sound of gunfire fills the air, and several holes appear in the Impala’s windshield.

  “You sure about that?”

  “You tried to kill me!” he shouts as he ducks. “If you’re trying to save Dan Germany, why would you try to shoot me?”

  “Take a look at the bullet holes, genius,” I say. “I didn’t shoot. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. Now get in.”

  He hesitates, but a few more gunshots help him make up his mind. Without even looking, he tosses his bag through my passenger window and dives in after it. His legs are still dangling wildly out the car as I leave the motel.

  As I peel out into the street, I spot a sporty SUV pulling out of a Waffle House parking lot behind us way too aggressively to be a coincidence. I weave through what light traffic there is and get onto a side road where there’s less a chance of someone getting caught in the crossfire and becoming collateral damage.

  The SUV draws closer, and a bearded guy with long stringy hair leans out of the passenger window, looking something like Fischer Stevens from the movie Hackers only trying even harder to look like a badass. It would be sadder if he weren’t opening fire on us, punching tiny holes in my rear window.

  “What kind of tough guy uses a nine mil?” I wonder aloud.

  Blondie still scrambles to get in, but mostly he’s flailing around in my way. If this were a manual transmission, it’d be impossible to drive. As it stands, it’s just particularly difficult.

  “Come on, Blondie,” I say. “It’s not rocket science. You’re just sliding in a window.”

  More shots, more window damage, plus some new holes in my dash board. I like to think of myself as a good person, but I may have to squeeze a little out of Danger Man to cover repairs to my car. This pro bono stuff does not pay enough.

  “Oh, screw this,” I say, and swerving into the oncoming traffic lane, I slam on the breaks before the SUV can follow. As it races by I pull Queen Mary from my pants and level it at the SUV now in front of us. “The windshield needs replacing now anyway.”

  I unload on the car, littering its back end with bullet holes of my own. Nothing seems to stop the driver or the shooter, or even pop some tires, but at least now I have the advantage. I’m chasing them.

  Placing my pistol in the cup holder, I grab Blondie and drag him into the car. “Take a moment to get settled,” I say. “I can’t do my best driving with you hitting me in the face every few seconds.”

  He turns around a few times, but finally manages to find his seat.

  “You feel up to making a switch?” I say. “You drive, I’ll shoot?”

  “How many times do I have to tell people I’m not a stunt driver,” Blondie says. “Daredevil stuff and stunt driving are not the same thing.”

  “Alright,” I say, taken aback at his sudden outburst. “Sheesh. I’ll drive and shoot.”

  A small burst of bullets erupts out of the back window of the SUV and I swerve just in time to keep from getting hit. The smell of singed fake leather rises up from the head rest beside me.

  Testing a theory, I weave the car back and forth, and the gunner ahead of us tracks our movements with single m
inded devotion. Always firing in bursts when he thinks he has a shot.

  “Does that guy with the gun look very bright to you?” I ask.

  Blondie hazards a peak. “No.”

  “Me neither. Sit down, buckle up, and lean the seat back as far as you can.”

  He obliges and I punch the accelerator to the floor, swinging up alongside the SUV. As I draw in, I can see the silhouette of the gunner tracking the car, moving his aim closer to the front of the vehicle as we pull up almost parallel, readying to shoot.

  Finally even with the SUV, I glance over and wave them down. I’m not a good shot. I’m hoping he isn’t either.

  “Hi! Is this the way to Kalamazoo?” I ask with a smile.

  The gunner’s line-of-fire points straight across the empty space in front of his partner, a woman of middle age, or perhaps a very hard living mid-twenties. She turns to give me a wicked smile and mouths something I can’t make out but am sure is offensive. Live fast, die young. Isn’t that what they say?

  The gunner squeezes off a single round before I slam on the breaks and watch as he instinctively tracks our movement backward. Three more shots fire, and from several feet back, I see blood paint the windshield of the SUV. The vehicle swerves wildly across the road before careening into the ditch and slamming into a tree.

  The gunner is in a blind panic as we pass, trying desperately to stop the blood gushing from his driver. The last I see of them in my rear view, he’s pulling her from the vehicle, and they lie there, both soaked in blood. He fires a few parting shots at us, but he’s too broken up to aim. He has other things on his mind.

  We all do.

  Chapter 19

  JAIME

  HOLDING OUT TO DIE ALONE

  Some days I felt like an afterschool special in fast forward. A week ago, I was a respectable women’s shelter worker. Then I started hanging out with a heroin addict, got hooked myself, drowned in my own vomit, and now I found myself hanging upside down nude in a cabin in the woods staring down a branding iron and a VHS video camera with a stack of tapes beside it. Sadly, I highly doubted I would live long enough for my mother to show up and tell me she still loved me and together we could get me away from these bad influences and off those devil drugs.