by English, Ben
The elevator doors sighed open and Alonzo stepped out into a Roman hallway. High, arching ceilings were lost in the feeble light let in by the tall, wide window at the end. The tile gleamed. At least he’s managed to look after the place, Alonzo thought. He stepped around the small table and walked the length of the hallway, ignoring the gaze of the Greek statues in alcoves to either side. There was something spooky about them now. At the end of the hall on the left was a door; stairs on the other side led up and around to the master apartment. Alonzo turned to the right and stepped inside an empty alcove, hands questing for a slight unevenness in the curving plaster.
A click, and he was in.
Whatever original use the builders of the old apartment had in mind was long since forgotten by its latest owner. The first room held little more than a table, some empty shelves, and a miniature refrigerator. She’d always have sandwiches waiting for us when we came in, Alonzo recalled against his will. He’d forgotten that. A weak, sickly light trickled in through frosted windows spaced evenly along the wall. He listened, and thought he heard his own heartbeat echo back at him. The whole place was as silent as a tomb. He got the sense the air hadn’t been disturbed in a long time. Not by the living, anyway.
The hallway beyond led past three rooms, each filled with its own curiosity. Peering into the first, Alonzo saw a mass of circuit boards, all state of the art and all in various stages of assembly. It looked as though someone were trying to build something fantastically high-tech but couldn’t decide exactly what it was going to be. The morass of electronic equipment looked . . . pointless. He shrugged his shoulders and moved on.
Water leaked under the next door, which Alonzo thought was slightly ajar until he drew abreast of it. He swore softly. The two-inch hardwood had been slammed, perhaps kicked, off its hinges, then replaced almost as an afterthought. He looked in, and saw splinters on the floor around what had once been a martial arts practice dummy, a thick wooden opponent made to spin and fashioned with wooden “arms” that had stuck out at right angles. It lay in four pieces. Jack had built it himself, spending hours tightly wrapping coarse rope around it.
Beside the dummy sagged the remains of two punching bags, one made of horsehide leather and inner nylon filler, the other one of the new, water-filled bags. She’d given it to Jack as a present. The water Alonzo was now standing in had come from its inner bladder bursting. Alonzo had never seen a ruptured punching bag.
*
“If you have to confront a kickboxer, always watch his feet,” the tall man told the two of them. “You can always tell right before they attack by the position of their feet.”
Jack turned to Alonzo, grinning. “I’m going to learn this stuff.”
“Think you’ll ever need to use it?” Alonzo was almost kidding.
“Nah!” Jack caught the joke. “But Toria will think it’s cool!”
*
The small man blinked at the wreckage, biting his lower lip, then moved on. Following the building, the hallway angled sharply, and Alonzo breathed a sigh of relief when he turned with it.
For all the furniture piled in front of it, he could barely see the door. A gigantic armoire was the biggest piece, supplemented by an old French stove, a fire-blackened safe, and two heavy chairs. How’d he manage to move all this? Alonzo wondered. He squeezed around the blockage, then stooped when he saw a dull, golden glimmer. A broken key, smashed with a hammer, and beside it the torn splinters of a more modern, credit card-type key. He looked at the door, and felt more than heard the thrum of the technology beyond it. At least the weapons room was safe, he thought.
The next two rooms were storage for food and such, and Alonzo passed them without a thought. At the end of the hall a narrow spiral staircase wound up briefly to a trapdoor. Now he was really putting his head into the lion’s mouth, he realized. He set his jaw, and pushed the trapdoor open. He could reach his gun quickly if he had to.
The top level was much more lavish. The ceilings were half again as high, and artwork graced the walls. He moved soundlessly down a hallway, pausing to straighten a picture of himself and Jack and two huge fish. Sturgeon. Other pictures followed, all dusty: Jack smiling tiredly, framed by a magnificent Himalayan vista; Jack in a tuxedo sheepishly raising a golden statue; and finally, Jack and a strikingly beautiful dark-haired woman, both in camping gear, frying fish over an open fire.
The wooden floors were clean but beginning to lose their polish. Somewhere, probably in the living room, slow, moody jazz was playing on a stereo. Alonzo’s eyes darted back and forth, past the pantry and the guest bedroom. He could hear the alto sax and the piano accompaniment. No one in the dining room. Someone should definitely dust that chandelier.
An old laptop had been left open and on in the adjoining kitchen. Alonzo bent over it, curious. It was one of Jack’s novels. I wonder if I’m in this one, he thought, skimming over it. He wrinkled his nose. The story, from what he could get of it, was hopelessly maudlin. Something about vampires and lost loves. The last line on the screen caught his eye. It had nothing to do with the mysterious nighttime guest that had loomed in the helpless heroine’s bedroom for the past few paragraphs. It read, ‘My aching heart.’
Alonzo sniffed and stood. The place was still quiet, but over the sax he thought he heard the sound of someone tapping away on another keyboard.
Alonzo felt a breeze move through the penthouse. That left one place.
Alonzo stepped around the corner and into the light. Jack sat behind a desk at the end of the library, his face angled away from the growing light that shone in through the open balcony doors. A plate of half-eaten bread and a laptop computer sat before him, set unceremoniously on a layer of official-looking documents. He looked thinner, but that was just in the careless way he sat. Alonzo hadn’t seen Jack in jeans and a flannel shirt for years, and they now seemed to hang on him in tatters. His hair had become an afterthought. Jack had shaved, but not recently. His face was drawn. Lines that normally appeared only when he smiled now knifed down the sides of his face. The skin under his eyes was as hard and gray as Paris stone. Jack looked up from the laptop. His eyes—
“How the hell did you get in here.” Not necessarily a question, but . . .
Alonzo tried for nonchalance. “Somebody left the back door open, and I was passing by—” So much for inspiration, Franz, he thought.
”Why’d you come? Trying to cheer me up?” Jack’s voice was raw, as if he’d been shouting for hours.
*
The mineshaft was dark, and the dust burned Alonzo’s eyes and throat. His ears rang from his own screams, his breathing ragged. He hated his ten-year old arms for not being able to pull himself up out of the hole he’d fallen in. Why couldn’t he be bigger? This wasn’t like Tom Sawyer at all!
His feet windmilled against the shaft’s wall, and he lost a shoe for his trouble. It splashed into the water far below.
His arms felt like hot lead, and he could feel his grip weakening with each hesitating thud of his heart. Hail Mary, full of grace. Nobody was coming. Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Nobody was there to–
“I’ve gotcha.”
The hands that wrapped themselves around his wrists weren’t much bigger than his own, but they were full of warm strength. All Alonzo could see was the top of a blond head against the clear blue sky. He couldn’t believe it.
“Hey, stupid, let go of the beam so I can pull you up. What a moron.” Definitely not an angel. The other boy, legs planted against the edges of the mine shaft, gave a tremendous heave, and then another, arching his back, and then both boys were out of the hole, the dry grass of late summer pricking their skin. The Lord is with thee.
All Alonzo could think to say was “Thanks...a lot.” Amen.
His rescuer smiled lopsidedly, also panting from the exertion. “You’re welcome. You’re the first person I’ve met around here. My name is Jack.”
“You always pull people out of mineshafts, J
ack?” Alonzo asked when he had rested a bit.
“Hey, what are--”
*
“—friends for?” Alonzo said.
Jack stared at him. Alonzo could see conflict in his friend’s eyes. Jack’s hand darted across the desk, and Alonzo almost went for his gun right there, but Jack merely tapped a key on the laptop, then rocked back into his chair. It was a match for the other two used in the barricade downstairs.
“What do you want? It’s not another job, is it?” Alonzo had expected him to be tired, empty. Instead he got the distinct impression of a restless panther, pacing beyond Jack’s dark eyes.
Alonzo walked slowly to the desk, taking a circuitous route around the furniture. Calm was the operative word here. He unbuttoned his coat and draped it over the back of the couch, watching Jack’s eyes flicker to the gun. Alonzo tried again for a smile. “Nobody’s heard from you in weeks; Solomon bet me ten bucks you’d be sacked out up here with a bottle of tequila.” He leaned against the windowsill.
“Looks like you win again.”
Alonzo looked at his friend. “I know you better than--”
“Yeah, you know me, all right.” His voice was like a razor. “You’ve got a pretty good idea what I’ll do to you if you don’t turn around and get your--”
“Listen, we haven’t much time,” Alonzo began tersely. “There’s been an incident, a kidnapping.”
“I don’t care.”
“Solomon, Steve, and Brad came in from Vienna, you know the drill. I called Pete and Ian and a couple of the others back in the States; Ian’s flight arrives this afternoon. And there’s this woman who thinks she’s calling the shots, this Major--”
“You don’t get it, do you? Jack’s not playing anymore. I’m out. Done!” Jack’s eyes were stark, inhumanly fierce as he rose from his chair. He continued in a hoarse whisper. “You were there when it happened, and you have the nerve to come up here and ask me--”
“People need you, Jack!” Alonzo shot back. He took a step back, suddenly confused, disbelieving. This wasn’t how he’d imagined it at all.
He saw guilt pass briefly behind his friend’s eyes as Jack began to turn away. “Just go . . .”
No.
Without warning, Alonzo launched himself from the wall, covering the distance between them in an instant. Jack stumbled up and back, stunned, as the smaller man raked his arm across the desk, scattering papers and shards of china. Furious, Alonzo swept up the laptop and hurled it against the glass window. The big pane trembled under the impact, and the screen snapped off with an electronic squeal. Alonzo whirled back to face the desk, slamming his palms down with a sharp, loud crack like a pistol shot. He leaned against it, as if to pin his friend behind it with a shove. Jack raised his hands against the attack. Alonzo looked him in the eye, matching madness for madness.
“I miss her too!” He bellowed. He held Jack against the wall by the sheer force of his gaze. Both men were panting slightly, breathing through their teeth.
Jack’s arms fell to his sides. He regarded Alonzo curiously, almost desperately. The smaller man seemed to relax and fall inward slightly as he stepped back from the desk. He slowly moved to the balcony doors, massaging his neck with one hand. Crossing the threshold, he almost didn’t hear Jack’s whisper.
“What?” Alonzo turned.
“I never thought it would turn out this way.” Jack stepped dazedly toward his friend on the balcony, squinting against the swelling light. “Do you know what it feels like, Alonzo? Do you? Do you really know?”
Alonzo nodded, not in affirmation, merely to keep the other man talking.
Jack looked slowly around himself. He stared at his apartment, not letting his gaze rest on any one thing. “You live your life,” he said. “You live your life a certain way, and you obey the rules, you...eat the right stuff, you do the right thing. You . . . stop at the yellow light, and you think you’re safe.”
Jack began to pace. “It feels like I’ve forgotten something. Every day I wake up and I try to live, to get back to what my life was, but...but I can’t shake the feeling like I’m overlooking something, some important detail I’ve lost or misplaced, or...forgotten.” He plucked at his shirt absently. “I locked all my guns downstairs and destroyed the key–you don’t know the dreams I’ve had, I mean, if it were just a matter of finding something to make the pain go away, or losing myself in work. But it’s all—it’s ashes. Nothing feels good anymore.
“And I keep telling myself that it wasn’t my fault, that it wasn’t the job, or you, or anybody’s fault.” He spoke somberly, slowly. “But that doesn’t help when I wake up fast in the night, reaching for her–like, if I can just reach out quick enough and far enough, I can catch her before she falls away into the dark.
“And leaves me all alone.”
He shuddered as Alonzo’s hands rested on his shoulders. The smaller man turned him about, and led him onto the balcony. Jack let out a jagged sob as he leaned into the balustrade. The sunlight trembled as it touched his hair.
Alonzo gripped his shoulder firmly. Below, on the street, he could see Major Griffin marching purposefully toward the apartment’s entrance. She was carrying a briefcase or bag of some kind. He squeezed Jack’s shoulder tightly. “You’ll be all right, my friend.”
He watched Jack shake there for a few minutes. He never moved from his friend’s side. Nothing he thought of to say would be the right, exact thing, Alonzo knew.
Finally, Jack shrugged away from the stone railing and walked back into the house. Alonzo followed him to the couch, where Jack sat, staring at a small crystal bird on the coffee table before him. At length he turned. “What sort of job did you say it was? A kidnapping?” His voice sounded a shade closer to normal.
Alonzo pursed his lips. “Christine Windsor’s been abducted.”
He couldn’t have gotten a stronger effect had he dashed a pail of water upon his friend. Their eyes locked over the couch, Alonzo actually saw the moment when Jack’s mental wheels shrieked back into operation.
The other man was instantly electrified. His eyes darted around the room. His hands clenched. Alonzo could almost hear Jack take a slow, small step back from whatever precipice on which he’d been balancing.
“You said . . .” He swallowed. Began again. “Who’s our tech?”
“Steve.”
“Materiel?”
“Ian.”
“Sniper?”
“Sol.”
“Medic?”
“Also Sol.” Alonzo hesitated. “Brad’s the other sniper.”
“His father won’t like that.”
“When was the last time you visited the Joss House to ask permission?”
Jack made a face. “You said something about Pete?”
Alonzo nodded. “He’s on the West Coast. This thing is going to get wider.”
“Let’s go,” Jack said. He stood, unevenly, reaching for the closet. “You still a fair lockpick?”
The smaller man grinned tentatively. “You still the world’s worst pistol shot?”
Jack almost smiled, but it never got as far as the corners of his eyes. He shrugged into his jacket. “This is terrible. How’s her father?”
“Will’s frantic, but he’s sure she never left England. Everybody else thinks otherwise, that’s why he called for me, for us—for you.”
“Well, come on then, help me break into my own house.” The two men walked briskly toward the trapdoor. Jack stopped halfway and turned toward his friend. His eyes were still haunted, but he was closer to an honest smile. “You brought Greta flowers, didn’t you?”
Alonzo smiled, more to himself, and kept walking. He felt like he’d just pulled the sword from the stone.
Into the Woods
Studio City, California
11AM
Mercedes heard the truck coming long before it made an appearance in front of her quiet, shaded house. Climbing gear, water, and snack bars went into a small backpack, along with extra batteries an
d memory for the cameras. She picked her favorite digital, a Nikon D3X, and an old-school non-digital as well. Some of the best shots came from the old film cameras.
Her luggage sat unpacked on her bedroom floor. It would have to wait a day; the raptor center called while she and Irene were still in the airport, fishing for their suitcases. The golden eagle chicks were starting to hatch, and the young ornithologists currently on-site were beside themselves. Mercedes was going to have to sprint—literally—if she was going to make any pictures of the event.
Not that she would mind; the plane ride left kinks and knots in her legs that only a good hard run could work out. Mercedes set her cross-trainers next to her climbing shoes, and wriggled into a pair of thick canvas pants that could take a thorn or a rock’s edge well enough. Must remember to dress in layers, she thought, pulling on a fleece top. The San Jacintos could still freeze this late in the spring; she wedged a set of Softsilk thermal underwear into the backpack.
With any luck, she wouldn’t need to stay in the mountains overnight. The Raptor Center at the University of California, Davis, had a helicopter pilot coming down-state with a load of professional birdwatchers, and she could catch a ride back into the city before midnight.
She hesitated over her cell phone. There wasn’t room for it in the pack, and the battery charge was two weeks old. Besides, she was going into the woods, and Mercedes doubted the Forest Service had gotten around to installing cell towers in the San Jacintos.
Nobody besides Irene and the kids at the studio knew she was back in town, anyway.
