Grant stiffened. “It’s the bayou from your vision,” he blurted out, then looked around in confusion, realizing suddenly that he was alone. “Maddy?” Looking over his shoulder, he watched—frozen in shock--as the elevator doors closed on Maddy, catching a quick glimpse of the two massive goons flanking her, one slapping a meaty paw over her mouth.
Grant raced across the lobby, obliviously leaving a single yellow chip on the floor behind him.
A beat later, the ten-year-old in the Longhorns cap slipped up and furtively scooped it up, thinking as he pocketed it that it had to be worth at least ten bucks.
The moment the second elevator door opened, Grant leapt inside, punching the button once, then twice more when it didn’t instantly respond. Finally, the doors started their agonizingly slow trek toward each other.
Just before the doors shut completely, Rudy Pedroza slid through, his right hand buried in his pocket and his hard eyes daring Grant to try and move.
Grant simply gaped at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
“Don’t worry. We're keeping your girlfriend company upstairs so she won’t get too lonely,” Rudy stated in a calm un-menacing voice. “They figured you might want an escort to show you the way.”
Grant took a deep breath and collapsed helplessly against the back of the car, his mind racing in circles to try and find a way out. Not just for his sake any longer, but for Maddy’s. But every turn he made, he kept running into walls.
Suddenly he heard Sadie’s voice from the not-so-distant past intrude on his desperate thoughts. Funny thing about walls, Grant. Some see them as barriers. Others see them as opportunities.
Rudy swung around to the side of the car and shook a cigarette out of a pack in the breast pocket of his shirt.
“You give up?” Grant commented.
Rudy gave him a look of complete confusion. When he finally realized that Grant was referring to the cigarette, he bristled angrily. “Fuck you, Frederickson.”
Grant turned away with a nod. “You can’t smoke in the elevator.”
Rudy gave a single honk of laughter. “What are they gonna do? Toss me out?”
Grant nodded. “Figures all this belongs to Torres,” he said as way of confirmation, more to himself than to Rudy. “What happens to Maddy when I'm dead?”
“I’m not privy to those details.”
Grant gave a weak laugh. “Cause you’re just doing a job, right?”
“See, we have a short-hand now,” Rudy replied with a smirk, removing a lighter from his jacket pocket.
Grant broke into a smile and gave a short laugh.
Rudy froze. The flame of the lighter stopped just short of the butt of his cigarette. He remained still, his eyes locked defiantly on the other man. “What’s so fucking funny?”
“I was just thinking about the first thing you ever said to me,” Grant answered. “You remember, right?”
The elevator chimes.
Shifting his back swiftly against the closed doors, Rudy dropped the lighter and reached for his jacket pocket.
Grant thrust all his weight against Rudy, driving his elbow up beneath his chin and using the other’s own momentum to throw the back of his head against the closed door of the elevator.
Rudy’s hand emerged from his pocket, loosely holding the grip of his handgun between two fingers.
The doors slid open.
In a flash, Grant snatched the gun out of Rudy’s fingers just as the other man tumbled out onto the entryway of the Bayou Blues Club.
Reacting to the sound of the elevator, Arturo Torres turned to face Grant. He held Maddy tightly at his side, one large paw around the back of her neck and the other holding a gun beneath her chin. Guns appeared in the hands of the two large suited men flanking him. Grant briefly caught Brigham backing into the shadows of a large open room with no chairs or tables before the Brit turned his back to him in obvious shame.
Grant sneered, feeling validated but no healthier for that awareness.
“Pedroza, you are such a worthless piece of shit,” Torres groaned.
Down at his feet, Rudy blinked in obvious confusion, his eyes attempting to focus as he grasped the back of his head.
“That’s not a toy, Frederickson. If you’re not careful,” Torres called out, “you might just put a hole in your girlfriend.”
“Brigham!”
The figure behind Torres froze and slowly turned, his palms turning instinctively up. “L-Look, I’m sorry. I owe Torres a bit of money. Otherwise, things might have…”
“Brigham, are we on the top floor of this building?” Grant interrupted loudly.
“Yes,” the Brit confirmed.
“No other rooms above?”
“No.”
Grant nodded, lifted the gun and fired a single shot up into the ceiling above them.
Recoiling in terror, Maddy gave a sudden sharp scream, followed simultaneously by the screams and loud voices from the floor beneath them.
Rudy rolled instinctively to his feet away from Grant, his eyes widening.
One of the thugs, a shaggy-faced Cajun, lunged toward Grant with his gun, and Torres lashed out, slapping him hard across the face. The broad-shouldered man sucked his lips in pain and glared at his boss in injured amazement.
“What did I tell you, Mack?” Torres chastised him.
“Sorry, boss,” the big Cajun murmured, lowering his gun again.
Torres shook his head and sighed.
“Now that I have everyone’s attention,” Grant snapped.
“Grant,” Maddy called out. “I do not see this ending well.”
“What could be worse than you dying?” he replied.
She gave a helpless laugh under her breath before murmuring, “Both of us dying.”
Torres gave her a warning glare, effectively quieting her.
“Listen to the girl, Frederickson,” Torres interjected, giving her a shake from where he held her by the back of her neck. “She sounds like she’s got a brain in her pretty head.”
“Are you okay?” Grant asked in a quiet tone.
She stared at him for a long moment, seeing something in his eyes for the first time--something that she had been looking for desperately. She blinked back a single tear. “Yes, Grant,” she offered, swallowing back a sudden lump. “I’m okay now.”
“Hold on a few minutes more,” he told her. “That gunshot should convince someone to call the police.”
Torres smirked. “So that’s your big play here, Frederickson? Get the cops involved?”
“Well… yeah,” Grant muttered a bit defensively.
Torres shrugged indifferently, his face still as calm as if he were waiting for the valet to bring him his sports car. “Cops. No cops. Doesn’t matter either way. I’m closing the books on the account you had with me here tonight.”
“We gave you your money,” Maddy pleaded in Torres’ arms. “Every cent and more! Tell him, Rudy!”
Standing beside his boss, Rudy glanced at Torres, whose dark eyes were glued to Grant.
“Tell her, Torres. Tell her what I’ve been trying to for the last few days. Maybe she’ll buy it if she hears it from you,” Grant said. “It was never about the money.”
Torres narrowed his hard eyes on Grant. “You’re going to die here tonight where you stand and there’s absolutely nothing anyone can say to me that can stop that from happening. You can fill this building with cops and it won’t make a shit of difference to me.”
“One of us will die, and believe me, when it's time for me to go, I will embrace it, because finally I'm at peace with this thing,” Grant told him. “How about you, Torres? Are you prepared to be judged for how you've spent your life?”
Torres snickered. “Love thy neighbor, say your prayers at night, and everyone gets a comp in the Garden of Eden, right? Well, I got news for you, Frederickson. The real world doesn't operate by those rules. Never did.”
“Is that what you told my wife before you murdered her?” Grant asked, taking a
step forward.
Torres tightened his grip on Maddy. “Did you have time to discuss philosophy with Frederickson's wife before you rolled her car into the river, Rudy?”
Rudy turned to look Grant in the eye.
Grant rushed Rudy and got one solid punch to his nose before Torres’ thugs grabbed him, ripped the gun from his hands, and shoved him to his knees.
Tossing Maddy to the floor behind him, Torres stepped determinedly forward, digging the muzzle of his gun into Grant’s hair. “See, I knew you would be good for something, Rudy. Now before I splatter this shit-heel’s brains all over the floor of this club, tell me how much of my money he gambled away before you stopped him?”
Grant gave a weak laugh. “Yeah, please tell the man how much I lost.”
Rudy pulled a bloody sleeve away from his nose. “Gave him all the time in the world just like you said,” he replied flatly.
“And?” Torres demanded.
“He never spent a dime.”
Torres glared at Grant with a furious expression.
Looking slowly up at him, Grant gave Torres a smug smile. “No, I get it now, but y’see, it’s not mine to give you.”
“What's that?
“My soul.”
Torres pulled the gun away from Grant's head and chambered a round.
Maddy rushed forward but one of the suited men caught her arm. “Killing him won't prove anything,” she shouted. “You already know he won!”
Torres leaned forward over Grant, his clenched teeth just a hair from his ear. “You think you're better than me, don’t you, Frederickson?”
“Grant, you're the strongest, most decent man I've ever met,” Maddy cried out from behind them. “I love you! And the only reason this monster wants you dead is because he can't be you.”
“Maddy,” Grant called out. “Did we change the arc?”
Giving Grant a look of concern, she squeezed her eyes shut.
Torres glared from Grant to Maddy. Rising quickly--his aging spine giving a loud whip-like crack--he turned the gun on her. “Love, huh? I'll give you one chance to prove it right here and now, bitch. Your life for his.”
Maddy blinked down at the gun. Giving it a nod of acceptance, she closed her eyes.
Grant gaped at Maddy in wide-eyed horror. He rolled to the balls of his feet, his leg muscles tensing. “Is that the deal you offered my wife?” he spat at Torres.
“No, he wanted something else,” Maddy stated. She opened her eyes and gazed directly at Torres, who narrowed his eyes at her, truly seeing her for the first time. “But she wouldn't let you have her, would she, because she was good too. As good a woman as Grant is a good man.”
Grant stared at her in disbelief, his eyes glistening.
Torres reddened, the gun beginning to tremble as the muscles in his hand tensed.
“She was faithful and moral. All those things you resent,” Maddy continued. “Because the darkness hates the light, doesn’t it, Arturo?”
Sidling back against the edge of the stage, Rudy looked up at Maddy with a dim smile and shook his head, laughing weakly as he drew another cigarette from the pack from his breast pocket with his teeth.
“Y’know, she tried the same shit with me,” he stated in a low voice, searching his jacket for a lighter. “It worked too. Got me so worked up that I forgot to focus on the job.”
“Rudolph, could you please shut the fuck up,” Torres grumbled.
Rudy snatched the cigarette out of his mouth in frustration and tossed it to the floor. “By the way, I killed your fucking dog, Arturo.”
A supremely wounded expression appeared on the large Latino’s face, looking briefly like a child who had been slapped without provocation. His gun arm wavered and finally dropped.
“Yeah, he was foaming at the mouth, because one of your genius mechanics at the garage in Houston figured it would be a gas to feed a dog crystal meth,” Rudy said, folding his arms across his chest in a clear show of bravado.
“You killed my Pepe?” Torres managed, turning to look over his shoulder at Rudy.
“Technically, I put him out of his misery instead of letting him suffer.” Rudy started toward Torres. “Why didn't you tell me we were running drugs out of the Houston office, Arturo? Why didn't you tell me the real reason you wanted me to kill an innocent man? And his wife!”
Mack’s radio squawked and he snatched it off his belt. “Go for Mack.”
Brigham rushed irrationally toward the fire escape, wondering what had possessed him to stick around this long.
Grant watched Maddy with concern as she stood with her eyes squeezed shut, despite the fact that Torres’ gun was no longer on her at all.
Mack turned to Torres. “Boss, we've got a couple of guys at the service entrance to the bar. They're...”
A couple of gunshots echoed from a distance. The radio exploded with static.
Rudy stared Torres in the eye. “I warned you about these guys, Arturo. And now here they are. In our kitchen!”
“Are these the ones that called earlier?” Torres barked, turning the gun back on Maddy. “Then we’ll give them what they want.”
Mack and the other bodyguard drew their guns and turned in opposite directions, placing their backs to one another.
Brigham reached the fire escape doors and pulled frantically on them. He wondered, How in the hell can they be locked?
Grant rushed to Maddy’s side. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes remaining closed, she whispered as if deep in a dream. “Here we go.”
“What?” he muttered in confusion.
She opened her eyes and took his face in her hands. “Do you trust me, Grant?”
He hesitated only briefly before saying, “Yes, I do.”
“Close your eyes and don’t open them until I tell you to.”
Grant nodded and closed his eyes.
26
Waves of color transformed the fire escape door from white to a deepening red that seemed to crawl with a supernatural kinetic energy.
Brigham stopped tugging on the handle of the locked door and glanced over his shoulder. Turning his eyes to the ceiling, he stared in confused wonder at the enormous blood red cloud blooming overhead.
Through a tiny hole in the ceiling--like the hot tip of a burning cigar--where Grant’s single gunshot must have gone, a bright pulsing light bubbled and spread slowly like lava across the four corners of the ceiling.
Brigham backed slowly away, watching in horror as the hole began to move upward before his bulging eyes. The whole ceiling seemed to be pulling itself up into the shape of a cone, like the tip of a tent.
Or the inside of a volcano, Brigham considered with increasing alarm.
He spun and threw himself violently back against the fire escape door, the lock finally giving way and swinging open to drop him down into the outer hallway. He looked up to discover a towering dark-suited man standing just inside.
Grabbing him by his collar, the giant tossed him out of the way behind him like he were a twenty-pound child and strode into the room firing a single shot to take out one of Torres’ bodyguards with barely a pause to aim.
*
Charging into the blues club, the Blank Man skidded to a stop and cast a look at the grey walls around him, which appeared to be melting like dark candle wax. He peered down to find his shoes sinking into the electric blue carpeting of the club. Yanking up his feet, the glowing carpet held tight with coiling tendrils that moved as if alive and attempting to feed on his shoes.
Tugging his legs with all his strength and unable to free himself, the Blank Man lifted his watch to his mouth. “An event is in progress. Keep clear and do not enter the room! I repeat..!”
The door behind the bar swung open and the other Blank Man swept inside.
Mack, the other bodyguard, rushed him, firing as he advanced.
The Blank Man dropped him with a single shot.
*
Rudy watched as the mural of the painted pelicans on the wal
l of the stage area begin to bulge and glisten. He stumbled backward, shaking his head in denial as the lanky birds pushed themselves out of the mural as if emerging from a birth canal. The creatures hopped down to the stage floor, flapping their wings as if to flex unused muscles.
“Arturo!” Rudy called out.
*
Torres’ attention was in the corner of the room, where the rickety wooden cabin sat, a scarecrow perched in silent vigil over a faux corn field, turned in his direction and slowly began to lift its raggedy head.
Torres lifted his gun and began to fire at the creature, the bullets piercing the soft grain of its innards and passing out the other side to strike the dark wall beyond, the pounding thumps of the bullets ricocheting around the enclosed space.
The scarecrow lifted its pitch fork as it pulled free of the nails pinning it to its wooden platform. “Time to pay, Arturo! I’m comin’ for my pound of flesh,” it croaked at an inhuman pitch.
Firing until his gun emptied, the large man scrambled awkwardly backwards, tripping over the fresh corpse of his man Mack, his head twisting back and forth in an instinctual denial of the reality that he was experiencing with eyes which had never betrayed him in the past.
*
Taking two steps at a time, Brigham barreled down the fire escape steps until he hit the exit door three floors later. He skidded to a stop just outside the casino building and looked both ways for any sign of Torres or his goons. Almost immediately, a uniformed man leaped out of the shadows and threw him expertly chest first against the building. Out of the corner of his eye, Brigham could make out an entire unit of similarly-dressed armed men storm into the fire escape doorway.
“Tell me what’s going on upstairs,” the man who held him against the wall demanded gruffly.
Brigham pressed his forehead against the wall and gave him a helpless laugh. “Frankly, I’ve got no goddamn clue what just happened to me,” he answered, his weak voice slowly regaining some of its moxie. “But I’m alive! The Brigster is alive and still kicking up the charts!”
The soldier rolled his eyes and cuffed him unconscious with a strategic punch to the back of his head.
Remember the Future Page 18
