Rivers of Gold

by Adam Dunn

  “So,” Santiago said jauntily, trying hard to tamp down the anxiety rising in his throat, “you’re ready to call in an airstrike, how nice. What coordinates do you plan to blow away?”

  “Here,” More checked the action on the Benelli, then reached into the ballistic case and pulled out a box with the number 12 stenciled on it.

  In this environment devoid of music, the theme from Deliverance had been playing through Santiago’s head. Now it changed to the theme from The Exorcist. “You have an airstrike ready to go on your own house?”

  “Yeah.” More took a handful of shells from the box and started filling the Benelli’s sidesaddle. Santiago had never seen shells like these before.

  “May I ask why you did that?”

  “If my position is overrun, I can’t leave anything behind,” More grunted. He loaded five shells into the magazine, checked the safety, and reached into the case for a tactical light, which he affixed to the barrel beneath the muzzle.

  Santiago’s inner soundtrack now switched to the theme from The Twilight Zone. “And how do you intend to do this? You have a code word that I hope I don’t accidentally say?”

  “No,” gurgled More, slipping a tactical nylon shoulder harness on the Benelli, “I just change the batteries every so often. The receiver resets to default coordinates. Itself.”

  Santiago watched More put down the modified Benelli and set to work breaking down the M4, feeling as though his head were filling up with Xylocaine. I must be dreaming, he thought, counting the seconds it took for More to break down the carbine. This isn’t really happening. More went to the gun closet and came back with another plastic case with white stenciling. Santiago’s eyes registered socom and sopmod before he squeezed them shut in terror and frustration.

  He forced himself to watch as More stripped down the M4, tossed the receiver aside, and began reassembling the weapon with completely different components. A long ported barrel. A carbon-fiber hand guard. A thick sound suppressor. A vertical forward grip and bipod. A skeletonized stock. Along the flat top of the new receiver More attached a series of chunky objects Santiago could only assume were sighting devices that would probably allow More to draw a bead on the target in the dark, or maybe, he wondered (gorge rising), even through walls.

  “What … is … that?” Santiago managed.

  More reached into the case and pulled out a pair of box magazines. Flashing his lunatic grin, More tossed one to Santiago, who caught it one-handed and nearly sprained his wrist in the process. Santiago had handled .223 magazines before. This magazine felt like a fucking cinder block. He tossed—heaved, actually—the box back to More.

  With the modified rifle assembled and loaded, More replaced the plastic cases (together with the original parts removed from the police M4) in the closet. He pulled out something that looked and smelled like an old fishing net. This he slipped over his head, struggling a moment to get his arms aligned. With the thing on, More looked like a walking brush pile. From the closet of terrors More produced the most elaborate piece of bondage headgear Santiago had ever seen, to which was attached some kind of monocular device that projected from More’s face like some horrific insectine proboscis. Next came a three-tiered backpack from which two thick, ribbed hoses extended. The pack went on the back, the proboscis stuck out from the Fish Face, and the hoses went round and round the brush pile.

  More hefted his modified rifle, which to Santiago looked less like a firearm and more like George Lucas’s take on a cattle prod. More no longer looked like a bum or an NYU student. In fact, Santiago realized, he looked no longer human at all. More had successfully transformed himself into a monster from a science fiction horror film.

  “Season’s open,” said the monster.

  Santiago was horrified. He would admit this to no man.

  Santa Maria, madre de Dios, he silently prayed to himself. Please deliver me from this crazy fuck More.

  Santiago could not understand how cabdrivers did it.

  Twelve hours a day, maybe more. Six or seven days a week. Being trapped in these vile yellow boxes alone was bad enough. But to be confined with a passenger (maybe more than one), with all their sounds, their smells, their elation or exasperation over the most trivial matters—that would be enough to drive anyone insane.

  But worst of all was to be trapped in a cab full of fear.

  It was raw, primordial, I-want-to-get-the-fuck-out-of-here fear, and it had oozed from the kid’s pores since they’d bundled him into the Crown Vic’s front seat. The kid had refused to get into the back with More, couldn’t even look at him in the rearview mirror. He’d merely slunk down in the seat where Santiago had dropped him, feather-light and brittle as crystal, his eyes huge and glassy and sightless. Santiago took in the looks on the faces of the CAB backup team as they silently wrote Renny off for dead, and he wanted to swing massively at all of them, even McKeutchen. It was a suicide run, Santiago knew it, and he hated himself for being a part of it. McKuetchen had even pulled rank to make him go. Oddly, it was the kid who’d finally decided it, back in the interrogation room, saying he’d be better off taking his chances with them than those for whom More was laying another diabolical trap. The kid’s voice was gnarled and caked, like roots pulled from wet earth, and it scratched Santiago in a place he could not define.

  There hadn’t been much room in the backseat anyway, he reflected, not with McKeutchen’s girth and More’s huge black duffel full of mayhem. The captain had insisted on riding with them. Santiago knew he was there to keep the kid together until More could pull off whatever carnage he had in mind for whoever Nightclub Guy sent, but in the end it didn’t matter. The kid reeked of fright and terror and shock, and Santiago was glad McKeutchen had the foresight to keep some EMTs from the closest hospital, New York Downtown over on Gold Street, standing by five blocks from the site, tuned to the same radio frequency as the CAB team.

  The ride down to Chinatown had been awful, the usual rush-hour miasma paling in comparison to the fog of anticipation, tension, and terror swirling inside the Crown Vic. Santiago was sweating, the kid was bruxing and swallowing uncontrollably, and McKeutchen was loosing off round after round of stress-induced flatulence. The only still being in the taxicab was More, who had gone someplace far away inside himself to prepare for whatever maelstrom he was orchestrating. Santiago hated More on that long drive downtown, hated him fully and without reservation, and he swore to himself that when it was all over and they had Nightclub Guy’s people in bracelets on their way to Central Holding, he would tell McKeutchen he was done with More for good.

  And he would have told More the same thing himself, except when they were about eight blocks from the site, riding down Division Street with the bridge looming overhead, More left. Just left the fucking cab, stepping out of a moving vehicle on a darkened street strewn with broken glass, humping that huge black bag like it was filled with straw. If not for the sound of the passenger door softly being closed and the kid jerking like he’d been hit by a Taser, Santiago might not have known at all. He scanned the street—discarded pallets, rusty fencing topped with barbed wire, cracked concrete and faceless, oblivious Chinese—but More was gone. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw McKeutchen’s broad head, half in shadow, shake slowly left and right, once. He turned back toward the windshield, put both hands on the steering wheel and slowly squeezed until the tendons in his wrists locked.

  Fucking More.

  He’d parked the cab about forty feet from the playground fronting the alley More had selected, he and McKeutchen taking turns getting the shotguns from the trunk so that Renny was never alone in the cab. Santiago didn’t like it, the kid sitting up in the front seat for anyone to see. For a moment he thought the kid would crack and run, but Renny seemed to have eased up somewhat. At least as much as a battered, borderline shock trauma case about to be murdered could ease up. Santiago figured that was only because More was gone.

  Then they’d waited.

  At dusk, Santiago wa
lked him from the playground to the alley while McKeutchen repositioned the cab by the playground’s entrance. The backup team was two blocks away. Santiago walked about three feet off Renny’s right shoulder, his Glock in his pocketed hand, the Benelli on the Crown Vic’s front seat with McKeutchen, who toted a Remington 870 12-gauge. At the end of the alley, between a struggling semi-permanent Chinese greengrocer and a thriving heap of garbage, they’d turned around to face the way they’d come. Back down the alley to the playground. Where Renny was supposed to meet Nightclub Guy’s contact. For the umpteenth time Santiago cursed the lunacy of it all. The kid would be alone, not even wearing body armor, the nearest help a good hundred yards off. But that had been part of More’s plan, and McKeutchen backed it all the way. How could he have gone with such a fucking—

  “Six, Ever, radio check,” crackled his earpiece. The kid didn’t flinch more than a foot.

  “Ever, Six, copy.”

  “Six, Ever—get out of there.” More was using his command voice again. Santiago thought longingly of the shotgun for a second, then felt a fluttering beneath his ribcage.

  It was happening.

  He glanced at Renny, mentally preparing to take him down should the kid try one last time to make a break for it. But Renny appeared to have gone into some sort of fugue state. His lips were parted, even moving slightly, though no sound issued from them. Santiago doubted he’d be able to make the whole walk.

  “Don’t worry,” he managed, “the backup team’s ready, and Captain McKeutchen and me will be watching you all the way. We’ve got uniforms at your mom’s house, she’ll be okay. Your dad isn’t—” Santiago broke off, cursing, remembering too late what had been in the kid’s file. No father.

  Finally Renny made a sound. It was somewhere between a snort and a sigh, as though his wiring had frayed so badly he couldn’t decide which one he wanted. But something else, barely audible, came with it: “My dad,” he whispered.

  Santiago’s radio crackled again. “Six, Ever, clear the area now.”

  He didn’t know what else to say, besides telling More to fuck off. It was happening.

  “I gotta go,” he said with a steadiness he did not feel. “We’ll be with you the whole way.” He forced himself to look at the kid directly, but Renny was staring off somewhere in the vague direction of the playground, lost to him.

  Santiago ran.

  As arranged, he circled the block instead of heading back down the alley. He took the route at a dead run, up and over and down Henry Street, one hand on the radio, the other on his pistol, Renny in his head stumbling down the alley like a zombie. His heart was hammering by the time he reached the cab, the captain, and the Benelli, which was the first thing he touched. McKeutchen was now in the passenger seat, his shotgun out of sight beneath the dashboard. Santiago brought the Benelli to port arms and cocked it, thumbing the safety off, the barrel pointing out the window behind the driver’s-side mirror, just like he’d done during the riots. The street was full of people and devoid of cars. His pulse thudded in his ears. A minute passed. Five. Was it happening?

  “Maybe Nightclub Guy called it off,” he whispered to McKeutchen. “Maybe—”

  But McKeutchen cut him off with a wave and a gesture of his chins. Squinting out through the windshield, Santiago only saw the vampish Chinatown night.

  “Uptown lane, just passed the traffic light,” McKeutchen grunted, reaching for the door handle.

  Now Santiago saw it, realizing he’d been anticipating twin headlights—a car. But now he saw it, arcing slowly towards them past a row of ducks hanging by their necks in a greasy, neon-lit restaurant window. A single disc of light, like a phantom Cyclops, hovering impossibly high above the street. Santiago’s sweaty fingers slipped twice on the door handle. The Benelli and the steering wheel seemed to fight each other, slowing him down, blocking his way. In the distance, he could hear the motorcycle’s engine growl.

  My favorite memory of my father is of him singing me this lullaby:

  Sing a song of thunder

  A long and echoing tone

  A song to keep nightmares at bay

  A song that’s all your own.

  Send it down the path you take,

  Past every unknown zone,

  Through wood and fog and snowbank break

  Through pitch and glare and roan.

  It always comes right back to you

  As though it’s always known

  Just where you are and where you’ll be,

  You’ll never walk alone.

  So if you find yourself distressed

  With faculties o’erthrown,

  Just sing a song of thunder

  And you’ll find your way back home.

  The sunlight never gets down here during the day, so the stone stores no heat and the dampness never dries. I’ve seen them clean up at night but somehow it’s never really clean, there’s always garbage and always the smell of decay. Reza would know how much I hate this place, its squalor and stench and darkness, the fetid, sclerotic eastern auricle of Chinatown with its teeming oblivious hordes. He would know because L would have told him. Sooner or later we all end up working for Reza. I should have known that L was a liar and a manipulator. I should have known that N was an atavistic opportunist. I should have known because I am all these things. I became them with every decision I made. I rationalized my life away. All the way down here, this awful alley beneath the Manhattan Bridge, where I’m going to die.

  I used people thinking I’d avoid being used, but now it’s come full circle. Wait, I want to say to them, wait, I’m not what you think I am. Yes, I made bad choices, but what choice did I have? I had to survive, to rise, to keep moving. Is it wrong to want more? Is it a crime to want to live better than your parents did? It must be, for here I am walking through Hell’s vestibule. I can see the taxicab waiting at the curb next to the playground that will take me away. I hear the rising grinding roar of a Manhattan-bound Q train passing overhead, and now there is a closer roar, yes, a fiery chimera unfurling one great clawed wing toward me, and now I can see my father but I don’t know the way home—

  (Thunder’s song.)

  Q U I E T U S

  Santiago had never before seen a federal pissing contest settled so fast.

  Treasury Agent Reale had been figuratively bitch-slapped and sent scowling from the station in seconds.

  FBI Deputy SAC Totentantz had gone stomping and braying down the stairs in minutes, vowing to bring down a full-bore Justice Department colonoscopy on the NYPD.

  “Wouldn’t be the first,” McKeutchen muttered, hands in his pockets, chewing more of his disgusting apple gum, to Santiago’s chagrin.

  They’d kept More bottled up in an interrogation room for nearly two hours. They’d stayed behind the glass, of course. More reeked to high heaven, a wall of putrefied offal and mulched vegetable matter, congealed oil and grease, urine, and ashes. There were still papers strewn about the floor where a city ADA had dropped them when he turned tail and ran, two seconds after he’d entered to be greeted by More’s Fish Face and his stench. The only Fed who’d been able to stand it was Totentantz, who seemed oblivious to the odor. More was oblivious to everything and everyone. He sat in a chair, hands in his lap, eyes hooded, utterly silent. Maybe, Santiago thought, More was immune to people; an enviable trait.

  The man who’d shooed the Feds off in such record time was a compact, dapper fellow in his early fifties, with a rough crevassed face that put Santiago in mind of star anise. His hands were square and his dark blue suit fit him like neoprene. He’d given his name as Devius Rune. He offered no badge, business card, nor ID of any kind. He had two men with him who made Santiago feel like a kid on the playground basketball court again. Looking up.

  “I had hoped,” said Devius Rune in a measured, methodical voice, “to draw a bit less attention.”

  There were news crews and stringers and photographers and bloggers and students from the Tisch School of the Arts and the New York
Film Academy and the Columbia School of Journalism swarming like gnats over the Sophie Irene Loeb playground in front of the alley between East Broadway and Henry beneath the Manhattan Bridge, trying to get a few frames’ worth of blood and gore. Not to mention about a million local Chinese gawkers, their camera phones held high.

  “It was a clean shoot,” McKeutchen repeated for what seemed like the umpteenth time that night. “My men identified themselves as police officers. The shooter drew anyway and made to fire. I was there. I’m not telling you anything I won’t say in court.”

  McKeutchen was standing up for them all the way, and Santiago was supremely grateful, even if he was only telling half the truth. It had been McKeutchen’s idea to go along that night for this very reason. More important than IAB, more important than the commissioner, more important than the DA, McKeutchen had to sell their story to Devius Rune. If he could do that, McKeutchen assured Santiago, the rest of the ducks would line up in a row.

  “Oh really,” said Santiago in a dull monotone. There were still spots dancing on his retinas from the muzzle flashes. And what had followed.

  “Yes, really. C’mon, snap out of it.” McKeutchen was all business. Maybe, Santiago thought distantly, he’d been through something like this before.

  Santiago certainly had not.

  He could still feel the burn, from his hands to his shoulders, from the shock delivered to his muscles when he’d squeezed the Benelli’s trigger. This was after screaming “FREEZE, MOTHERFUCKER” at the huge, leather-clad specter on a gigantic white BMW R14 GSX trail bike. After the specter had turned its helmeted head from the kid, shivering and crying just a few yards beyond in the archway where the underpass opened into the playground, around toward Santiago and the muzzle of the Benelli, and still had drawn out the suppressed HK MP7 they’d recovered later.

  And around the same time that More, ensconced in the sniper blind he’d been in for hours, had fired a single .458 round from his modified rifle from a distance of forty-six yards.