Trent parked the moving van in one of the three parking spaces in front of City Pawn, right next to a clean, polished black sedan with tinted windows. He got down from the van and stared at the other car for a moment. It looked entirely out-of-place in this part of the city. He shrugged and made his way to the shop entrance.
A small bell let out a tinny ding as he opened the iron-barred door and stepped into the pawnshop. He immediately searched the place for Charlie V, and saw him behind the counter at the far end of the store. Charlie looked to be engaged in a heated discussion with two blond men in sharp gray business suits. The men had identical, short haircuts and stood at the same height and build, and Trent wondered if they were twins. They even seemed to share similar postures, confident and straight through the back as they argued with the much smaller Russian behind the counter, who seemed to be shifting and nervous.
Charlie looked past the two blondes and caught Trent’s eye. Trent thought he looked surprised at first, and then Charlie frowned and his expression became one of frustration and concern. “Good morning, sir,” he said with his thick accent. “I will beink right with you, soon.”
At first, Trent wanted to protest at the non-acknowledgment, but something in the older man’s look gave him pause. Why is he acting like he doesn’t know me?
Both of the blonds turned then to look at the newcomer, and Trent saw that they were, indeed, identical twins, save one strange feature: though both men had one blue eye and one green, their faces seemed to be mirrors of each other. Other than that, everything about them was the same, right down to the same quizzical expression they both held as they analyzed him.
“Hi,” Trent said, and waved politely, before turning away from their gaze in order to pretend to browse the shop’s wares. If Charlie didn’t want him to know, then he would gladly play along. Maybe these guys are GCB, he thought. Or worse. Could be casino folks looking to settle a score. He had never met the two blonds, but then, he didn’t know all of the big names in town, and some he knew of but had never met in person. And besides, the top of the ladder never came after you himself–he would send a messenger to break your legs, or worse. These looked like just the kind of freaks that some of the more eccentric bosses liked to employ for the more delicate ‘errands.’ Trent had pissed off some important people when the GCB declared him a serial cheater. Maybe a year away from the city had not been long enough.
He watched out of the corner of his eye as he idly browsed some of the shop goods. Charlie had a penchant for taking in the more unusual trades: strange art objects, bizarre and grotesque furniture, even prop pieces from casino shows, bankrupt wax museums and funhouses. He also did a solid trade in antique books, of which he maintained an entire wall, with shelves from floor to ceiling.
Trent randomly picked a small, green journal-sized book from one of the shelves and absently looked it over, while focusing on Charlie’s conversation with the two men.
“...and anyhow, I am not findink that for you,” he was saying. “I am a seller of goods and thinks, not a bounty huntink service.”
“You cannot hide him,” said one of the blonds. His voice, like his companion’s, was calm and even, almost monotone.
“Protecting him will only further degrade your situation,” said the other blond.
His companion added, “The rules must be followed.”
“Damn you and your rules,” replied Charlie, almost spitting out the words. “You are not welcome here. Get out of my store.” Charlie pointed forcefully toward the door.
Trent turned away quickly, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping. He looked down at the flimsy book in his hands. Though it was bound in a green binding, it seemed to be composed of leather, apparently dyed that color. The pages were worn and frayed at the edges, and not a single inch of paper bore ink or markings of any sort. Trent turned it over in his hands, eyebrows furrowed. Even the cover bore no indication of the book’s title or purpose. It was an empty journal, albeit antique, judging by the age of the paper.
He had never had an interest in writing before, and he never carried a notebook, but suddenly Trent found himself wanting this one. He liked the strange, embossed artwork on the cover that resembled interlocking snakes and flowers and a multitude of tiny circles connected by razor-thin lines. It had no price tag, and he wondered how much Charlie wanted for it.
The bell above the door jangled. Trent glanced sidelong at it and saw the two blonds walking out. The door shut behind them. After a moment, he saw Charlie hustle around from behind the counter. The little man went to the door, closed the deadbolt with a clunk, and then turned back to face Trent.
“Mister Trent,” he said, angrily. “You are not supposed to beink here.”
Trent, taken aback by the tone, returned the green journal to the shelf and faced his diminutive friend. “Who was that, Charlie? The Board? Somebody’s thugs?”
Charlie shook his head. “You are forgettink about them now. Are very dangerous men, those two. You do not be wantink to know them. Not at all.”
Trent had no patience for secrecy. He wanted real answers, not pacification. “They looking for me? Is that why you blew me off?”
Charlie stepped closer, and Trent could smell alcohol on the little man’s breath. “Please, trust me. As a friend. Be leavink this one alone. You must go away from here.”
Trent was astonished. “Are you kicking me out of your store? After all the stuff–”
“No, no,” Charlie interrupted, holding up his palms in defense. “Not the shop. You must be leavink this city, Trent. Las Vegas. It is not a good time for you here.”
Trent chuckled at the mangled English. “I haven’t had a good time here in a while, Charlie. You know I didn’t wanna come back. But I owe it to Susan. After all she’s done for me, after all of the shit she put up with while I was here...” He shook his head. “She deserves this chance, even if it means I have to come back to this fucking place.”
Charlie’s frown deepened. He sighed. “No good will be comink of this.”
“Who’s after me? Is it that slimy shit, Mars?”
Charlie stepped away and began eyeballing the shop, as though worried that someone else might be lurking in the shadows of his store. “No,” he said. “I have not heard from Jack Mars in a long while. But there are...” He paused, thinking. “There are other concerns here for you.”
“The only thing I’m concerned about right now is finding a job,” said Trent. He was tired of trying to talk down the obviously paranoid shopkeeper. “I came to you because I figured you might know of some work. Construction, service industry, hell, I’ll bag groceries. I just need a paycheck.”
“So you are not leavink, then?”
Trent rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Charlie!” he said. “No! No, I’m not leaving. But if there’s heat on me from the casinos or something, well, I promise not to push any buttons. Just get me an ordinary job, I’ll stay under the radar, ya know? It’ll be fine. I haven’t broken any laws.”
The anger melted from Charlie’s face. A faint smile appeared at one corner of his mouth. “How are you, Trent?” he asked quietly.
Exasperated, Trent replied, “Fine. I’m fine.” He glanced toward the door, half-expecting the two blonds, or even the cops, to come barging in, guns drawn, based on the way Charlie had been acting. “I’d be better if this city wasn’t giving me the third degree for coming back. Fucking fish fall out of the sky on me last night, nearly wreck the van, Susan ends up late for her first day, and now here you are, treating me like a leper. I’d be better if things would straighten the hell up.”
Charlie’s smile seemed sad, and he shook his head again. “You are lookink good. Strong. No more drinkink, yes?”
“Can’t say I’ve quit entirely, but I don’t drink much. Another promise to Susan, ya know?”
Charlie nodded.
“Still smoke like a chimney, though.” Trent grinned.
“Is bad for your lunks.”
“Jobs,” said
Trent, trying to redirect the conversation. “Heard of anything?”
Charlie sighed and walked away. After resuming his place behind the glass counter, he answered, “Don’t know what to be tellink you right now, but there are always thinks to do. Maybe job on the internets? Work from home?”
“No computer skills, Charlie. All I am is lucky at poker and I’ve got most of a History degree. What can that buy me?”
“Not much.” Charlie smiled. “You should try beink a dealer in a casino.”
Trent gave him the middle finger.
Charlie winked. “Perhaps,” he said, “I can be hearink about some construction jobs. Or grocery, yes? But I have nothink right now.”
“Damn.” Trent frowned. He looked around the small pawnshop, as though he might find a job hiding on one of the shelves, or behind a rack of once-worn Halloween costumes. “Nothing?” he asked.
The Russian waved his head from side to side, as if he had some idea that only motion could work out of his brain. “Eh,” he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, “perhaps be checkink tomorrow? I might be havink something then. Must make some phone calls, ya?”
“Fine, fine.” Trent retrieved another cigarette from the pack in his jeans pocket. He lit up, inhaled, and blew out a smoke ring while pondering his lack of any real options. “Tomorrow, then. I’ll come back.” He turned to leave the store and then stopped halfway to the door. “Hey, Charlie.”
“Ya?” Charlie had already begun rearranging items in the display case at the counter. It consisted of a weird assortment of small metal figurines.
“You ever sell that bike I gave you?”
Charlie looked up and smiled. “No, Mister Trent. I am tellink you that it is always here for you when you want to buy it back. That motorcycle is for you–nobody else, ya?”
Trent laughed. “You could get a lot of money for that bike.”
Charlie shrugged, still smiling.
A digital tone interrupted them. Trent fished his cellphone out of his pocket and looked at the tiny screen. Susan. He put the phone to his ear. “Hey, babe.”
“Hi,” she said. He could tell by her voice that she was stressed out. “What are you up to?”
“Just job hunting. You okay? You sound stressed.”
He heard a long sigh on the other end of the line, and then, “Yeah, it’s a zoo here. Marcus still hasn’t shown up this morning and nobody can get hold of him. Half the staff quit last week because of the kids– they’ve only given me one case and I’m already overwhelmed.”
“They quit because of kids? I thought it was the Children’s Center? Aren’t kids normal?”
“No, it’s the kidnapped kids. The ones that’ve been turning up all over town a few days later?” She waited for a response from Trent. When she didn’t get one, she explained, “Some freak has been taking kids, and then a day or so later they show up on a sidewalk or a street corner, alive but totally gone.”
“Gone?”
“Vegetative state. Our wing has twelve of them. They just brought in the twelfth kid this morning. Poor little boy they found in the loading dock behind the Luxor.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, it’s awful. The place is filled with parents. They’re all a wreck. A lot of nurses just couldn’t take it anymore and quit. Others have called in sick.”
“Jesus, that’s terrible. Anything I can do?”
“Yeah, actually. I left my purse at home. Don’t have money for the bus home tonight.”
“Oh, sure,” said Trent. “I’ll run by the apartment and get it. I can bring you a sandwich or something, too.”
The relief in Susan’s voice was almost palpable. “Oh, God, you’re the best.” She let out a long exhale. “Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you here.”
Trent chuckled. “Oh, you’d be fine. I’m the one that would be lost. See you in thirty minutes or so, okay?” He turned and caught Charlie’s eye and gave him a short wave goodbye.
Charlie waved back.
“Okay,” said Susan. “Love you.”
“Love you too, babe.”
6
SALVATORE’S EYES OPENED TO SLIVERS of light streaming in through the partly opened manhole cover eight feet above him. His back ached terribly and his clothes had been so drenched that they lay around him in a sopping wet fabric halo. A faint trickle of water still moved along his throbbing sides and under his legs. The concrete beneath him felt ice-cold, hard, dead.
He blinked a few times. The migraine had retreated, but he only had a vague sense of how long he had been out. Sometimes the migraines came like that–so intense that he would blackout for hours at a time. Sometimes he would even wake up somewhere other than where he went down. Some of the other squatters accused him of sleepwalking through the tunnels, muttering incomprehensibly and snapping at anyone that tried to help him.
After a few minutes of self-assessment, Salvatore finally built up the courage to move. With a pained groan, he lifted himself from the tunnel floor. The soaked clothes weighed him down, but he finally managed to struggle to his feet. Hunched over and shivering, he looked up and down the nearly pitch-black tunnel and thanked God that he had somehow survived.
Then he tried to walk. His first step nearly sent him back to the floor as his foot slid effortlessly out from under him. With a wrenching snap of his back, he threw his weight forward and managed to retain his balance. Gingerly, he squatted and touched the floor. Solid ice. He looked around, confused and squinting to try and make out some detail in the darkness.
Behind him, where he had been lying on the tunnel floor, he could dimly make out a man-shaped imprint in the ice, as though it had frozen into place around his supine body as he lay unconscious.
He wondered how he had even gotten here in the first place. His last memory had been in the alleyway, victim of a near-mugging and his meeting with the strange man in the hooded sweatshirt named Snake. And ice? In the Las Vegas tunnels after a summer rainstorm?
Nothing made sense anymore. The forgetting was growing worse and worse by the minute, it seemed.
He blinked a few more times and then took another tentative step forward, back toward his encampment farther down the tunnel, back toward the propane heaters that he hoped had been spared by the flood.
This time, when his foot touched down upon the ice, it plunged through a thinner spot. His foot splashed into freezing water that clawed its way up his ankle. He whimpered at the unwelcome surprise, but brought his other foot forward for another step. He had to make it back to his heaters.
Every footfall sent more lightning flashes of frozen pain into his legs, but he pushed on, desperately trying to reach the one place he knew where he might find warmth. He briefly considered turning back, trying the ladder to the surface, but he banished the notion. Coated with ice, the rungs would be almost impossible for him to climb. He knew he had only one option.
His shivering turned to violent trembling, and then seizure-like spasms, but still he pressed forward. His fingers, splayed with pain, clawed at the icy concrete walls of the tunnel, and he began to notice that as he moved farther away from the place where he had awoken, the ice grew thinner and wetter and soon vanished entirely. And then, up ahead, he saw the dim light that must be the lantern he had hung from the ceiling of his camp.
As he rounded the corner of where the tunnels joined, his momentary relief turned to frustration and intense disappointment. His encampment had been ruined. The lantern overhead still hung as it always had, but the pallets supporting his cooking equipment had been toppled by the floodwaters. The table was on its side, most of the shelves had collapsed, and bits of glass and empty plastic bags lay scattered about the place. The propane tanks had come loose from their moorings and now lay half-submerged against one side of the tunnel. Salvatore suspected that the tanks would still operate if he could get them dry and righted, but he needed a means of lighting them. With the shelves collapsed, his books of matches, painstakingly collected from each of t
he casinos, were nowhere to be seen, likely washed down the tunnels with the rest of the debris.
Trembling, he sloshed over to the biggest mass of refuse and began to sort through it, tossing aside plastic bits and waterlogged food packages and shreds of cardboard, desperately searching for even one book of matches that had somehow stayed dry.
He did find a few of the books, but they had been so thoroughly soaked that he knew they wouldn’t light. He tried anyway, but with no success. Defeated, aching, freezing, he put his hands and forehead against the tunnel wall and began to wail quietly. He had survived a mugging, but was now going to die right here, in his own home, of exposure, surrounded by propane tanks and no matches. He thought it fitting, after the events of his life, that he might die desperately craving fire. He let out a series of curses in Italian.
And that’s when he saw the envelope floating in a puddle amidst the trash.
His wailing ceased and his shaking fingers reached into the muck. It was a manila envelope with a metal clasp on the back, closed tight. He undid the clasp and, standing beneath the lantern, peered inside. The sense of relief was overwhelming. Inside the envelope was a document, a plastic card of some sort, and a book of matches, all miraculously dry.
With a hoarse cry, he thanked God and the Virgin Mary and Jesus and any religious figure he could think of. Hungrily, he pulled the matches out of the envelope, placed the remaining items on one of the few shelves that had not collapsed, and then set about lighting one of the propane heaters.
He finally got the tank setup on one of the wooden pallets again, and then fumbled open the matchbook, noticing absently that it was from the Luxor, one of the few he had never gotten around to collecting. A compulsive part of him reveled in the inadvertent satisfaction of that, in the order that his collecting represented, especially now, in the face of such chaos.
With the tank lit and the hissing flame finally providing Salvatore with much-needed warmth, he pulled an old plastic drywall bucket over and flipped it upside-down to use as a seat. He retrieved the strange envelope and sat down next to the fire, beneath the flickering lamp, his feet propped up on the edge of the pallet to keep them out of the cold filth.
Devil's Hand Page 4
