Doubletake can-7

by Rob Thurman

  This time he slapped me. It wasn’t a real slap but the Godfather kind. The “whatta I’m gonna do with this boy?” light one. The anger was gone. The frustration remained, but it was tempered with empathy. “As I said: idiots. Using an Auphe game for a human reason.”

  He opened my hand and put something in it, concealing the object until he closed my fingers around it. “You’re twenty-four, twenty-five next month. You’re a man, Cal. You have been long before you could drive. Be as practical as you were when you were four, little brother. You don’t play to win. You just win and screw the games.”

  He lifted a bunch of the hair hanging in front of my eyes and added, “And for the love of all that is holy, will you do something with your damn hair? You can fight blind, but your chances are better if you don’t.”

  Orders given, he went to his room. When his door shut, I opened my hand and saw a ring. It wasn’t the Vayash solid-silver ring of manhood. The top half was black metal and the bottom half bronze. Or the other way around, depending how you flipped it.

  Black for me, bronze for Niko, and it may as well have been case-hardened steel. We wouldn’t be Vayash; neither of us would want a ring attached to that name. He might mean this as my “Leandros” ring of manhood. Niko putting the lie to the black-market monsters who accused me of being much more of a nightmare than they were. Niko denying Grimm’s games and plans and lures.

  My genes didn’t matter one way or the other in what Nik knew and had always known. I wasn’t a monster.

  I was a man.

  He must’ve bought it from Mr. Chen before we left. It fit my middle finger, which would be at the forefront of any punch I threw. It not only said I was a man, but it was…I grinned.

  Practical.

  20

  Three hours later we were going into a bakery on Melbourne Avenue. Robin hadn’t called back yet and that was beginning to worry me. Niko had called Promise to check on his condo and we were waiting to hear back from her. It wasn’t like Goodfellow. Okay, honestly, it was like him with everyone else, but not with us and not now.

  The bakery wasn’t much to look at. Plain. Blue and pink cupcakes had been painted on the smallish window by hand, and not a good one. The paint was peeling now, giving them a slowly advancing case of sugar leprosy. But as with most dives, that’s where the food was the best. When I opened the door, the smell was unbelievable. Bread, pies, fudge, and ten kinds of cake. The place was called Rapture’s Buns. The paint on that was flaking too, but it wasn’t making the business suffer. The place was full of people lined up at a glass case, squabbling over who was first in line and snatching free samples off the top of the counter.

  Repeat customers like me didn’t have to go through that. Rapture bumped them to the front, actually the back technically, as soon as you walked in. She saw me as she was putting a cake in a box and handed it over to one of the guys who worked for her. They were all guys. All tough, some with prison tats, but all good-looking. Rapture liked her baking harem.

  She beckoned impatiently toward the door in the back. “Bebé, where have you and your hermano, el buenorro, been? My best customers and you desert me. Where is the lealtad these days? Ay, the world, she is falling apart when my children starve because your wallet is too tight to buy some of my sweets.” She didn’t have kids, but it was a good line when bargaining.

  Rapture had been thrown into hooking when she was sixteen, two years after coming over from Puerto Rico. Her favorite line had been, “My name be Rapture, honey. I’m so good, sugar pie, I’ll make you see God.” I think she came up with the line first and then picked her street name. I had no idea how big she’d been then, but she was large enough now to bring her chosen name to the whole world or at least an entire continent. I had a feeling she’d been close to the same big and beautiful three hundred and fifty some-odd pounds she was now as when she’d shot her pimp’s cousin at the same time she sat on her pimp’s head and suffocated him. She said they called him Tiny Tino for a reason. It was a good story and I believed it.

  After two years of hooking she’d decided it was time for a career change. She loved telling her success story. It gave hope to other whores with stupid pimps, she said. Tino had a cousin who sold weapons, and he made money Tino couldn’t dream of. And he didn’t have to give blow jobs in alleys. She watched and learned and made that profit when she brought the Rapture to Tino and shot the cousin with one of his own guns. Of course, then it was her gun and that was a quicker profit than a BJ any day. Now Rapture was thirty-five and not the only gunrunner in the city, but one of the top ones. And she gave you a free cupcake with every purchase. How the hell can you beat that?

  We’d left Kalakos driving the car around a few blocks until we were finished. With what I was buying, those random checks on public transportation these days would give a transit cop a heart attack and have us running before the government buried us so far under that the word “lawyer” was a myth.

  She closed the door behind us and stripped off her baker’s jacket and hairnet. The last thing she’d want was the health department coming around and finding even the rats carried Uzis. She fluffed her curly black hair and pulled down a sequined tube top that Niko, Kalakos, and I all three could’ve stood in. “I had the boob job. What do you think? I have money. Why should I not give the angels a look at what they’re missing?”

  They were perky, and as she was half an alphabet past a D cup, that made me both doubt gravity existed and think she had one damn talented doctor…who used concrete instead of silicone. “They’re…damn. I’ll bet men fight to the death for you when you walk down the street.” Hey, I didn’t want to get shot by my supplier. If they made her happy, good for her. For someone who sold guns and had put a few people six feet under, she wasn’t bad.

  She hugged me thoroughly until my bones creaked and I was inhaling sequins. I heard the click in Niko’s throat he made when he was desperately trying not to laugh. His laughter was rare and I’d have wanted to hear it if it weren’t at my expense and would get him shot as well. Rapture let go of me, pulled up the glittering top again, and then waved her arms. “So? What is it you need? Wait. My book.” Opening the book, she flipped pages and ran a finger down.

  “Ah, here. Cachorro Gruñón.” She didn’t know any of her customers’ real names in case the police ever tracked her down. She gave us code names, and I got Grouchy Puppy, as I’d started buying from her when we’d first moved to New York. I’d been seventeen. Apparently that had gotten me “Puppy.” “Grouchy” I’d earned on my own. She always tried to get me to smile. At that point I was being chased by the entire Auphe race. I didn’t have a lot to smile about.

  “Yes, tsk, you take vacation? You should be low on everything. Explosive rounds. Jaivin made a good batch last night. Your usual forty?”

  “Nah. Thirty should do it. They’re not quite getting it done on my current job. What I really need is about twenty grenades,” I’d want some spares around if we survived Janus. “C4 with military detonators, all you have. A grenade launcher. A little more distance than my pitching arm would be a good thing.”

  Her round face beamed. “With this, I might get the butt lift too. Very popular in Brazil.” She wrote a couple of check marks in her book and then, unusually, scribbled what looked like three words. “I am sorry, Cachorro. I sold my last grenade launcher last week. Am waiting on new batch to fall off truck. But lucky, lucky you, bebé, I have something that would have you spit on that. I have a thing of such beauty. For almost a year, it sits sad and unwanted on the shelf. I should know you would be the one to buy it. To appreciate the virilidad magnifico.”

  I knew a few Spanish words, but that wasn’t one of them. I glanced at Nik. “Virility,” he supplied dryly. That sounded right. If it swung a bigger metaphorical dick than a grenade launcher, bring it on.

  She opened yet another door at the back of the room and shouted, “Marco, bring us the Javelin.”

  That word I knew, and not in the Olympic throwing-
competition category. “You have an antitank rocket?” I asked, incredulous at that as I was at the fact that her tube top was staying up.

  “An antitank system.” She planted a kiss on my cheek. I could feel the thick coating of bright red lipstick. I carefully waited to wipe it off until she was focused on Niko. Do not offend the woman with the antitank system. “Your puppy brother. He has vision and like all good men knows the perfect tool for the job.”

  Niko said, “You mean as a terrorist would?”

  She waved her hands vigorously. “I sell to no terrorist and your brother has good heart. He doesn’t want to think so. He hides it. But one day, you will see, your brother is a hero. One day he might save the world. My abuela had the sight. Me some too. You will see.”

  Before I could tell her she’d better get some glasses for that sight, as she was way off about world saving and hearts, she was shouting again. “Marco, you lazy, worthless bastard. I have the order of the week. Are you back there with the porno magazines pulling on your polla again? I told you next time I would cut it off and bake it in a turkey-apple cobbler.” That was the Thanksgiving special. “This is work time, not pervertido time.”

  Marco was up for the list in less than five seconds and his belt was buckled in the wrong hole, pants bagging low on his hips. I wouldn’t be eating the cobbler here for a while, on Thanksgiving or otherwise. While he was back pulling the inventory, Rapture added up the bill. “Since you are good customer, Cachorro, I will give you discount.” That and the fact that she was having a hard time selling the antitank rocket. Discount or no, it was about half a year’s pay. It was a good thing I’d brought almost all the cash we had on hand, because at this rate we’d be lucky to pay the six-fifty toll on our way to Tilden.

  When we left, I was carrying three large bakery bags by white twine handles. Each bag had pink boxes with RAPTURE’S BUNS written in flowing white script. The boxes were cake-size but held C4, detonators, grenades, and a small box of explosive rounds. Niko was carrying the Javelin on his shoulder. It was wrapped in brown paper painted and dried ahead of time with garlic butter. As far as anyone was concerned, he was toting a piece of Italian bread almost four feet long…and close to thirty pounds.

  “Grouchy Puppy.” This time Niko did laugh as we walked along the sidewalk waiting for Kalakos to come by. “She labeled you impeccably on your first visit.”

  “I wouldn’t push it.” I snorted. “She thinks you’re my ‘hot brother.’ She’s got brand-new boobs ready to try out. I could tell her you’re up for some mountain climbing.”

  Before he could get me back, and he would have, his cell rang. It was Promise. Robin’s condo was empty; his phone was gone; nothing appeared out of the ordinary except that our couch was still beside his. Salome and Spartacus weren’t perturbed. What would perturb a dead cat, I didn’t know, but they were batting around an old skull Goodfellow had given them. Yorick. It was their favorite toy. It seemed as if Goodfellow had taken his cell phone and gone. “What about his coat?” I prodded Niko. “He wouldn’t go out without his coat to cover his sword.”

  Promise’s answer to that was that he had so many coats that Armani flew him free to Italy every year for the new line, and how could she possibly know if he’d gone on his own with a coat and sword or unwillingly without either.

  Shit. Now I was worried. But it was Janus and Grimm prep time. Niko asked Promise to try to find the puck. We needed her help, but Robin might need it more. She said she would do her best. I heard her voice from Niko’s cell. Her best didn’t sound too enthusiastic. Granted, Goodfellow had tried to steal Niko from her, but Niko was straight. She should be over that. He had stolen some jewelry from her, had orgies in her penthouse when he’d been hiding out there on the run from an ancient Arabian death squad. He’d tried to give her two undead mummified cats out of the eleven I’d dumped in his condo. When she turned them down, he’d waited until she was out at dinner with Niko one night and given her three instead. Each had engraved collars: Vlad, Spike, and Elvira.

  And they wouldn’t leave. As strong and quick as vampires are, Promise hadn’t been able to catch a single one. She was stuck with them and not a cat person. Every cat person knows that not liking them makes cats like you and enjoy torturing you all the more. I had no sympathy. If you weren’t an undead mummified cat person, there was something wrong with you.

  “She sounded pissed,” I said after he disconnected.

  “She is—a good deal lately.”

  Women, can’t live with them. Can’t screw them without passing on monster-Auphe babies. It wasn’t fair.

  “Maybe it’s because the cats line up on her headboard and watch the two of you when you have sex?” I suggested. “Jesus, finally. There’s Kalakos.” I waved him down.

  “How did you…” Niko frowned. “I meant, that does not happen.”

  I grinned at him. “Mummy cats talk, and I don’t know how, but Salome talks to Goodfellow.” I didn’t think she actually did. It was another trickster lie for the entertainment of it. “He had some tips for the two of you, but I told him if he wanted to keep his head, he might want to forget about that.” I put the bags in the trunk and went around to the passenger seat. Kalakos moved to the back and had the antitank rocket dumped in his lap by Nik. Hard. Who was the grouchy puppy now?

  Niko got in the driver’s seat, silent until we were at the Brooklyn Bridge. “That son of a bitch.”

  “He did say there was a position called the Seventh Posture from a book called The Perfumed Garden that for the not very skilled would improve—” I ducked and his hand smacked the window glass of the passenger door instead of me.

  “One more word and that antitank rocket will be used on you, not Janus,” he threatened. He wasn’t serious, not completely serious. The thought of the puck having eyes and ears in your bedroom, that was worse than a sex tape on the Internet. That might be worse than anything in creation.

  “We have an antitank rocket?” Kalakos asked, lifting his hands cautiously off the package that lay across his lap.

  “You are definitely not in the union. When this is over, you should retire and go home to roll dice with the old men,” I said lazily, before tossing him one of the dozen cupcakes Rapture had given us. “A rocket is nothing.

  “We once had a nuke.”

  21

  It was about seven when we made it past Rockaway Boulevard, turned left, and found a well-hidden restricted road. Restricted meaning: Park Here, Please. Niko drove around the horizontal metal pole that acted as a gate and his junkmobile disappeared into the tall grass. There was salt water saturating the air, and the sun hung low in a clear violet sky. If you were into nature, it was the place to visit.

  Goodfellow hadn’t visited. He hadn’t shown up or called and Promise hadn’t found him yet at any of his usual haunts. Worried as I was, there was nothing we could do. Janus and Grimm would be coming soon. When the sun set would be a good guess. Grimm would think the dark would give him an advantage, but around Janus it wasn’t completely dark, with the red light pouring from its eyes and the cracks between the metal shields that constructed its outer shell.

  I checked my phone one more time in case somehow I’d missed a call. Nothing. Shit. We were all, him and us, on our own now. At least he wasn’t going to be around Janus. That was something. A bleak hope but better than none at all. We hoisted the bakery bags and our other equipment and started hiking through the grass. It was taller than waist-high, not good terrain for the type of fighting we planned on. Or Nik and I planned on. Kalakos was protective of Niko now and a damn good sword fighter, but I’d told him before: He was out of his league. He was a babe in the woods with this gear, and babies didn’t need to be touching explosives or things that set them off.

  When we reached the Battery Harris East portal we pried open the gates with a crowbar and not a lot of effort. Nothing erodes like salt water. We walked down the middle of the battery corridor and the two metal frames of what had once been working trai
n tracks. My footsteps gritted against the concrete dust. Niko and Kalakos were ghosts. “What was this place?” Kalakos studied the passage and the graffiti on the walls.

  “The Battery Harris. A battery for a gun, one of two large ones, during World War Two. The cannons were sixteen-inch bore, something for their time. The east and west batteries are about two hundred feet long, fifty feet tall, and eventually covered in concrete to keep the guns from being used against the country back then.” When Grimm had said Fort Tilden was the place, Niko had researched it until there was nothing he didn’t know about it. “It’s a tourist attraction now during the day.”

  I jiggled our bags. “But maybe not after tomorrow.”

  “Behave. Don’t bounce the weapons of mass destruction,” Niko said.

  “It’s C4,” I complained. “Stable as it comes. More a weapon of minidestruction.” Depending on how much you had. If we weren’t used to keeping our identity hidden and avoiding credit cards, real or fake, like the plague, I’d have said we would’ve maxed them out on what I was hauling. All right, I’d give it to Nik…mass destruction wasn’t totally out of the ballpark.

  Coming out into the open between the east and west batteries we kept moving as I said, “This is good. Like you said, Nik. It’s practically a small coliseum. Grimm will eat this up. Lions and Christians, bread and circuses.” The two structures about two hundred or more feet from each other hemmed in either end, and vegetation, thick and tightly intertwined, had grown tall enough to provide a natural wall on each side. It really was the next-best thing to a coliseum. Where was Russell Crowe in his leather skirt when you needed him?

  Grimm hadn’t specified where at Fort Tilden he wanted us, but he wouldn’t have any difficulty. Either he would pick up our scent or Janus would find us, however Janus did that. We had problems, but that wasn’t one of them. After walking another hundred feet out of the first battery, I put down the bags and started opening cake boxes to mold gray bricks around the base of the powder magazine that sat square on the combination concrete road and track. It was about twenty feet high and had a large square entrance that the ammunition train would’ve gone through.