Knuckleduster

by Andrew Post

  “Do you know where they may’ve had another Mothers hideout?” Brody asked. “Any mention of where they may’ve kept a backup of research?”

  “Abby couldn’t keep the lights on in this place. I doubt she could front the rent for a hideout. They worked strictly on hard copy, no backups. With nothing digital, there’d be no risk of a hack.”

  “What were they planning before they went missing?” Brody said.

  “They were going to sign up—that’s the last I heard from them. They’d decided right out there on the sidewalk after Alton’s funeral.” Mateusz paused, the hollow in his cheek flexing in and out as he ground his teeth. “The release, the waiver. That’s what it all hinged on.”

  Brody recalled when he had decided to join the Army. He had gotten arrested, and his father gave him an ultimatum the morning he picked him up from jail. Either he could join the service or take the Greyhound to his uncle’s in New Orleans and work on prefab houses, every one of his paychecks coming back to his father to recoup for court costs and bail.

  Brody chose the Army. He remembered the recruiter’s office in St. Paul, and it was there he met Thorp, who had decided to sign up in Minnesota on a whim after a particularly bad road trip Brody never got the full story on. He was standing outside in the summer heat, running hands over his freshly sheared scalp, when Thorp walked up to bum a smoke, commenting that Brody didn’t have to cut his hair himself, that they had someone to do it. Brody laughed, said he thought it’d look like he was taking things too serious. They shared a chuckle and were called inside a moment later to start the filing process. They sat down at separate desks, and the sergeant handed them each a pen and a phone book-sized tome of forms to fill out.

  As Brody flipped through the forms, the sergeant put his hand atop the pile. “This is just saying if you get hurt in the line of duty, you want your organs donated.”

  Did he want his organs donated?

  “Sign it,” the sergeant said. “There’s about fifty more of you goons I have to get through here today.”

  Brody signed, flipped to the next page. The title of the next form was something about deciding to waive any ill will toward a third party group that wished to—

  “This is just saying that you don’t mind being exposed to certain plastics that have been discovered in some rare cases to cause cancer. You’re young and strong; you’ll be fine. Sign it.”

  Brody clicked the pen twice and jotted his signature.

  “Yeah,” Brody said, blinking back into the present, “they make you sign all kinds of forms. A lot of forms.”

  “Right,” Mateusz continued, “and Abby and Nectar wanted to get far enough through the process that they’d be asked to sign the waivers, then they could snatch the sheets and bolt. They had a lawyer. All he needed was proof—a copy of that release—showing that this certain unnamed third party wanted to test the effects of microwaves on the human brain during the recruit’s duty. In the really fine print it said that even after the recruits were retired from active service, they permitted the Army to test on them even further.”

  “Did they get them?” Brody asked.

  “No. What I just told you is all Alton could remember from what he’d read.”

  “He saw that and still signed?”

  Mateusz shrugged. “Needed the bread.” He turned to Thorp. “I’m really surprised she didn’t say anything to you, let you in on the plan.”

  Thorp stared at the floor, watching the smoke curl from the end of his cigar.

  In his silence, Mateusz added, “It’s honorable what she did, and it’s honorable what you did, you know, signing up initially and everything. It’s … it’s kind of fucked up, how it all turned out. I’m sorry. If I could make it different, I would.”

  With that, Thorp walked across the room, turned the corner at the door, and headed downstairs. He called over his shoulder, “I’ll be in the car when you’re ready.”

  Brody waited until he heard the back door of the shop below close. He turned to Mateusz. “Do you think Titian Shandorf might have any direct involvement in this? Abigail’s body was found in his club.”

  “Who’s to say? They—and I do mean they in the classic conspiracy theorist definition of the word as nefarious persons unknown—may just as well be trying to pin something on him by putting Abby’s body there. Clear any possible ties between them and us by throwing a wanted serial killer in the mix.” His face twitched. “But when some scrawny dude with the nastiest teeth I’ve ever seen on a living person comes wandering off the street and says he hears it from a good source that he should circle the block every couple of days, check up on us, make sure we’re playing safe—one has to wonder.”

  “You think it was him?”

  “Sure as hell looked like the sketches they got up everywhere online to me,” Mateusz said.

  “Any advice on how I can find him?” Brody asked. “I really think he’s our best lead.”

  Mateusz sighed, peeking out from underneath his messy tangle of hair, one strand twitching every time he blinked, the lashes snagging against it. “I’ll tell you how it is. This whole deal is one big fucking machine. And you and I, we don’t even get the credit of being a cog—no, we’re not even cogs in the machine; we’re the fucking particles of shit stuck in the teeth of those cogs. And my best advice is to make like shit and go stink it up somewhere else where they can’t find you. Because whoever they are, they’ll just roll right over you. They saw to it that Abby and Nectar aren’t making any more noise. You should consider yourself lucky you haven’t gotten their attention yet.”

  “Do you think Titian is working as a hitter?”

  “The only one who would have any knowledge of that is six feet under.”

  Brody grimaced. “Who?”

  Mateusz took the gritty shoe box and shoved it to Brody’s chest. “Alton Noel,” he said as if he were handing over the man’s ashes.

  Brody held the box and noticed it was astonishingly light. “You want me to have this?”

  Mateusz leaned forward and whispered, “You want to continue the dig, you’re going to need the map. All you can do is check for an online diary or something. Maybe Alton kept one in the service. Maybe he put those holo-videos online. Maybe he was an astute notetaker in the classroom of life. Who knows. But he understood what was going on, and it’s a serious wonder how much of it he took with him, you know, to the grave. For what it’s worth, I hope you guys at least find her body. Nectar was a cool chick and her brother deserves closure.” The surviving member of The Mothers got four steps in the direction of the door.

  “Wait,” Brody said, holding the shoe box. “How many? What’s the percentage?”

  “Of what?”

  “The soldiers they used.”

  “What, you’re worried you might be one?” he asked.

  Brody nodded.

  “One way to find out.” Mateusz nodded at the Geiger counter. “Abby got that thing perfect. You click it on, and you’ll have your answer once the capacitor warms up.”

  Brody looked at the ramshackle machine on the floor, the leather-wrapped handle, the frizz of wires sticking out all over. Had both of them set it off when they walked in or just Thorp? Headaches … nosebleeds.

  “Only way to know without a body scan.” Mateusz checked his watch. “I’d hang out, but my bus is leaving in a half hour. Take care of yourself. I wish I had the balls to stick around and see it through …” He turned and left.

  Brody listened to him walk down the hall and descend the stairs. He heard the door shut and the cadenced, squeaking tramp of ornate sneakers on the sidewalk. Brody looked out between the wooden slats and watched Mateusz cross the street, moving quickly like a mouse, and vanish into the shadows when he reached the end of the block.

  03:59:59.

  Brody surveyed the contents of the room. The scattered, empty folders in autumnal shades littering the floor, the yawning accordion files, and the stacked, bent columns of cardboard boxes unloaded of their
cached information. The Geiger counter. He pulled his flashlight beam away and left it where it lay on the floor in the dark. He navigated his way downstairs, taking only the shoe box with the transparencies with him.

  Walking through the disarrayed shop, he thought about Thorp and his frequent smile, dirty limericks, and trademark laugh. He knew his friend hadn’t hardened with age, that his personality hadn’t turned dour due to war. Instead, the inside of Thorp’s head probably resembled Alton Noel’s CT scans he now carried under his arm and deposited into the backseat of the Fairlane.

  With his head dropped back on the headrest and his eyes closed, Thorp appeared to be utterly drained, pale. He was breathing with slow, deliberate inhales as if fighting just to keep from vibrating to pieces.

  After lighting a cigarette, Brody flung the pack onto the dashboard, where it skidded across the ice that formed around the vents. They sat in silence, staring through the open windshield frame at the deserted street ahead. There was nothing to see except the snow.

  Brody started the car and rested his hands on the wheel. “Still on board?”

  Thorp drew in a breath and sighed. “Yeah.”

  21

  The coffee at the truck stop tasted like highway runoff. Brody set the polystyrene cup down on the metal ledge of the MetroTab phone booth and gave it a dirty, distrusting look. From inside the enclosure, where one could upload new versions of GPS that included up-to-the-second address listings, Brody watched Thorp tape Saran wrap to the edge of the windshield frame, then pull the roll across. He carefully walked around the car holding the roll at arm’s length so it wouldn’t tangle, and, after biting a strip of duct tape, he secured the other end. He did this until there was a new shrink-wrapped windshield installed.

  As the bar glacially filled on the MetroTab patch download, Brody glanced away from his phone to watch Thorp carry the empty roll to the wastebasket.

  While dusting off his hands after a job finished, Thorp seemed to feel his friend’s gaze and looked up. Brody saw in Thorp’s eyes a mounting worry that the man was swiftly trying to cover by busying himself.

  Thorp took a seat on the trunk of the Fairlane, folded his arms, and waited, watching the interstate’s gold and crimson lights ebb and flow. A second later, he popped up and went to the front of the car again, this time to lift the hood and check the fluid levels. Understandably, he was seeking busywork.

  The download booth with the key-scratched fiberglass windows told Brody, “Thank you for using MetroTab. Every listing in the Chicago, Illinois, area has now been downloaded to your mobile phone and/or handheld device.”

  Brody stepped under the pump awnings that buzzed with a million watts of fluorescent white. He queried Alton Noel on his freshly downloaded program.

  “We’re about half a quart low,” Thorp said.

  “We’ll be sure to tell Seb when we return it to him,” Brody chided.

  “I’m just saying,” Thorp complained, “if we’re going to drive all over Chicago, we might as well have one thing marked off the list that won’t go awry on us. In most cases disaster can be prevented by keeping equipment in decent working order, you know.”

  Brody turned his phone around to show Thorp the display. He stared at it. Brody narrated for what the program was displaying, “Al Christmas has an online journal.”

  “Who the hell is Al Christmas?”

  “I searched for Alton Noel and got no results. Mateusz mentioned Al Christmas, and lo and behold, I dropped it in a search engine and got a hit.”

  “Well, what’s it say?”

  “Can’t access it.”

  “Suppose it’s them.” Thorp squinted. “Blocking it.”

  “Possibly,” Brody said.

  “It’s still up, though? You can see the address is operational, yeah?”

  Brody nodded.

  “That means it hasn’t been shut down all the way; it’s just been blocked. Could probably access it if we could get to whatever he used to create the journal. Most people don’t bother ever signing out of things like that because—who would? It’s only a blog. I mean, how often does this shit happen to a person, right?” Thorp snorted. “It’s probably under his reader application’s Favorites folder. One click and you’d be right in.”

  “Are you suggesting breaking into yet another person’s home?” Brody asked, lowering his phone.

  “You never know what he might’ve put on there. The guy hadn’t been back long. He probably needed a way to vent. I’m sure if something was up, he wrote it on there. You should see this box that I got out in the barn chock-full of composition books.”

  Brody raised his phone to examine the page again. “Just like Mateusz said, his last known address was at a YMCA.”

  “Nothing surprising about that. I shacked up there for a while when I first got back.”

  “Suppose it’s even worth checking? He’s been dead for over a month. Wouldn’t they throw out his stuff?”

  Thorp grinned. “You see this coat I’m wearing? Courtesy of the YMCA lost and found. Those people don’t throw anything away. What the police didn’t take following the shooting without a doubt ended up in the lost and found bin. And if Alton was using an ordi or some other device to write the journal, it’s still probably there and transmitting especially given the fact that there is a journal to deny you entrance into, right?”

  For a second, all that could be heard was the ceaseless hum of the interstate and droning of the fluorescent lights above their heads.

  Brody unbuttoned the collar of his coat. “What do you want to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have two leads here. We have Alton Noel’s place at the YMCA; there’s only one in town with rooms for rent. And we have Seb. With one simple flip of the switch we can have instant access to a potentially in-the-know criminal. Which way do you want to go?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. You’re the gumshoe. Say you’re on the trail of some … person or whatever. Which leads do you follow?” He paused. “We could always split up and see what that got us.” Thorp looked at Brody, at the interstate, back at Brody. He chewed his lip, twitching and flexing his pinkies back and forth, back and forth, the orchestra of actions seeming wholly unconscious.

  “You all right?”

  He groaned, a trumpeting that signaled all his jittery mannerisms to cease. He looked down his nose at Brody. “Just stop. Come on, man. We get some news about the wires over my house potentially making me weird, and now you’re going to look at me sideways every time I say anything. Trust me. Fit as a fiddle. I’m good. I think we’re finally onto something. On the drive over here, I was giving it some thought and …” He nodded, never finishing his sentence. “Yeah, I feel fine. Why?”

  “Never mind. And no, by the way. Splitting up: bad idea. You don’t have a phone.”

  “Fine. We can stick together. No big deal.”

  “But which do we do first?”

  Thorp leaned to one side to get his hand into the back pocket of his jeans. He withdrew a quarter. “Heads we go and pay this Seb fella a visit. Tails we go take a swing past the YMCA.”

  Seb’s phone issued a couple notes of music. He had it flipped open before the song finished. He was out with his dudes at a bar, trying to rid their minds of a particularly sour day they had just experienced. Their boss was in no uncertain terms a slave driver. Working in the yards was a killer. A man could feel like his ass would bond to the seat of the forklift after what felt like days without a break. Sure, he had the Slavic cunt and her sow daughter to count on for bonus finances, but a man of appetites needed a lot of dough to fund not only overhead but a means to go out and have the big fun sometimes, too.

  They were about to split for another locale to continue their night elsewhere since the she-beast behind the counter decided they were already lit enough and denied them another round. Seb found it fortuitous, since now out of the bar he could hear his cell ring—something that would’ve been drowned out inside the last wateri
ng hole. He smiled. The text informed him that his car’s tracker had just been turned on. After the dry cleaner bitch had boosted his ride, he’d kicked himself for not having the thing on all the time. Now here she was probably in the parking garage of whatever dump she lived in, fiddling with the settings of her newly procured ride, trying to find a way to turn on the windshield auto-tint, but she had tripped the tracker instead.

  He grinned. “Silly broad,” he said, the cotton ball in his cheek partly slurring his speech.

  “What’s going on?” Spanky asked.

  Seb showed him his cell, the map displaying downtown and the flashing arrowhead in the middle representing his ride.

  “That your whip?” Spanky inquired.

  Seb nodded.

  “Well, what you gonna do?”

  “I’m about to get my ride back from a very, very silly little bitch. Let’s get moving before she realizes what she’s just done to herself.”

  Spanky ground his gaudy Zäh—the SUV that was famously only available in a pearlescent paint job—to thrumming life. The Zäh growled out into the freshly plowed street, ignored the red light, and thundered due north.

  They approached the parking lot of a closed-down porno theater and among the flickering streetlamps saw the lonely Fairlane sitting by itself. Spanky angled his vehicle behind the stucco-colored car. The piercing blue-white of the Zäh’s twelve headlights bounced off a rust-barnacled bumper, the license plate nearly hidden under a chalky layer of road salt. The running boards were splashed with dirt and more salt, evidence that the girl had really made use of her new ride and taken it all around town.

  Seb sat forward, anxious.

  “That it?” Spanky asked.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Cut the high-beams on.”

  The Fairlane was washed in even more brilliant blue light. The Zäh’s high beams passed easily through the rear window into the car. There were no silhouettes occupying the seats.

  He motioned for his friend to pull forward. They crunched ahead cautiously, the massive tires roped with chains clinking and grating on icy tarmac.