by Dan Simmons
Kurtz ate the bread, took a bite of apple, and sipped his scalding coffee. It was one of the best meals he'd ever tasted.
Pruno blinked and said, "Leviticus also advises, Ye shall eat no manner of blood. But I think that is what Joseph has in mind when it comes to this Satan, Malcolm."
Soul Dad shook his head. "Malcolm Kibunte is no Satan… the white man who provides him with the poison is Satan. Kibunte is Mastema from the lost book, Jubilees…"
Kurtz looked blank.
Pruno cleared his phlegmy throat. "Mastema was the demon who commanded Abraham to kill his own son," he said to Kurtz.
"I thought God did that," said Kurtz.
Soul Dad slowly, sadly shook his head. "No God worth worshiping would do that, Joseph."
"Jubilees is apocryphal," Pruno said to Soul Dad. And then, as if remembering something obvious. "Diabolos. Greek for one who throws something across one's path. Malcolm Kibunte is diabolical, but not Satanic."
Kurtz sipped his coffee. "Pruno sent me a reading list before I went into Attica. I didn't think it was that long a list, but I spent the better part of ten years working on it and didn't finish it."
"Sapientia prima est stultitia caruisee,'" said Pruno. "Horace. 'To have shed stupidity is the beginning of wisdom.'"
"Frederick was always good for self-improvement lists," said Soul Dad, chuckling.
"Who's Frederick?" said Kurtz.
"I used to be," said Pruno and closed his eyes again.
Soul Dad was looking at Kurtz. "Joseph, do you know why Malcolm Kibunte is an agent of Satan and why the white man behind Kibunte is Satan himself?"
Kurtz shook his head and took another bite of apple.
"Yaba," said Soul Dad.
The word rang a faint bell for Kurtz, but only a very faint bell. "Is that Hebrew?" he asked.
"No," said Soul Dad, "it's a form of methamphetamine, like speed, only with the punch and addictiveness of heroin. Yaba can be smoked, ingested, or injected. Every orifice becomes a portal to heaven."
"Portal to heaven," repeated Pruno, but it was obvious that he was no longer a part of the conversation.
"A devil drug," said Soul Dad. "A true generation killer."
Yaba. Shooting yaba. That's where Kurtz had heard the name. Some of the younger cons used it. Kurtz had never had much interest in other people's addictions. And there were so many drugs available in prison.
"So Kibunte is dealing yaba?" said Kurtz.
Soul Dad nodded slowly. "He came first with the usual—crack, speed, heroin. The Bloods were the victors in the gang wars of the early nineties, and to the victors belong the spoils. Malcolm Kibunte supplied the spoils. The usual mindkillers at first—crack, meth, speed, angel dust. But within the past eight or nine months, yaba has flowed from the Seneca Social Club to every street corner. The bangers buy it cheap, but then need it soon and often. The price goes up quickly until within a year—or less—the price is death."
"Where does yaba come from?" said Kurtz.
"That's the fascinating part," said Soul Dad. "It flows in from Asia—from the Golden Triangle—but its use has been limited in the United States. Suddenly here it is in great quantities in Buffalo, of all places."
"The New York Families?" said Kurtz.
Soul Dad opened his large hands. "I think not. The Colombians controlled the drug trade here for decades, but in recent years, the Families have come back onto the scene, working with the Colombians to regulate much of the flow of opium products. The sudden introduction of yaba, although terribly profitable, does not appear to be part of the plan of organized crime."
Kurtz finished the last of his coffee and set the tin cup down. "The Farino family," he said. "Someone in the family is supplying Malcolm. Could it be coming from Vancouver? What source is in Vancouver—" Kurtz stopped in mid-sentence.
Soul Dad nodded.
"Jesus!" whispered Kurtz. "The Triads? They control the flow of junk into North America on the West Coast, and they have plenty of meth labs in Vancouver, but why supply a mob family here? The Triads are at war with the West Coast Families…"
Kurtz was silent for several minutes, thinking. Somewhere in the shack city, an old man began coughing uncontrollably and then fell silent. Finally Kurtz said, "Christ. The Dunkirk Arsenal thing."
"I think you are right, Joseph," Soul Dad rumbled. Closing his eyes, he intoned, "Our contest is not against flesh and blood, but against powers, against principalities, against the world-rulers of this present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places." He opened his eyes and showed strong white teeth in a grin. "Ephesians 6:12."
Kurtz was still distracted. "I'm afraid my contest is going to be against flesh and blood, as well as against powers and principalities."
"Ahhh," said Soul Dad. "You're going up against the shit-eating Seneca Social Club."
"And I don't have a clue as to how to get to Malcolm Kibunte," said Kurtz.
Pruno opened his eyes. "Which book on my list did you like the most and understand the least, Joseph?"
Kurtz thought a moment. "The first one, I think. The Iliad."
"Perhaps your solution lies in that tale," said Pruno.
Kurtz had to smile. "So if I build a big horse for Malcolm and his boys and seal myself in, they'll wheel me into the Social Club?"
"'O saculum insipiens et inficetum,'" said Pruno and did not translate.
Soul Dad sighed. "He's quoting Catullus now. 'O stupid and tasteless age.' When Frederick gets like this, I am reminded of Terence's comment: 'Me solus nescit omnia.' 'Only he is ignorant of everything.'"
"Oh, yes?" said Pruno, his rheumy eyes snapping open and his wild gaze fixing on Soul Dad. "Nullum scelus rationem habet—" He pointed at Kurtz. "Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus—"
"Bullshit," responded Soul Dad. "'Dum abast quod avemus, id exsuperare videtur. Caetera, post aliud, quum contigit, Mud, avemus, Et sitis aequo tenet!'"
Pruno shifted to what sounded like Greek and began shouting.
Soul Dad answered in what had to be Hebrew. Spittle flew.
"Thanks for the dinner and conversation, gentlemen," said Kurtz, standing and moving to the low doorway.
The two men were arguing in what sounded like a totally unknown language now. They had forgotten that Kurtz was there.
Kurtz let himself out.
* * *
CHAPTER 30
« ^ »
Kurtz parked next to Doc's old rusted-out pickup with the camper shell on its back. It was starting to snow harder, and the black sky seemed to blend with the looming black buildings. Kurtz put the little .38 in his coat pocket, made sure he had extra boxes of shells in the other outside pocket, and walked across the dark and slippery parking lot into the open maw of the abandoned steel mill.
As soon as Kurtz stepped through the open doors, he felt that something was wrong. Everything looked and smelled the same—cold metal, cold open hearths, huge crucibles hanging like looming soup ladles high above, towering heaps of slag and limerock, a few pools of light from hanging lamps, and the distant glow of Doc's control room thirty feet above everything—but something was definitely wrong. Kurtz's neck prickled and cold currents rippled across his skin.
Instead of walking across the open area between heaps of coal black rock, Kurtz ducked and ran toward a maze of rusted machinery to his right. He slid to a stop behind a low wall of iron, the .38 in his hand.
Nothing. No movement. No sound. Not even a flicker of motion.
Kurtz stayed where he was for a minute, making sure that he was concealed from all sides, catching his breath. He had no idea what had spooked him—but paying attention to such nothings had kept him alive for more than eleven years of prison life, much of that time with a price on his head.
Staying to the shadows, Kurtz began working his way toward the control room. He had briefly considered making a break for the door and then sprinting back to the Buick, but it involved too much open space. If everything was all right
and Doc was up there waiting for him, Kurtz might be slightly embarrassed by this melodramatic approach, but he always preferred embarrassment to a bullet in the brain.
Kurtz moved around the edge of the huge space, advancing toward the control room in short sprints of five yards or less, always keeping to cover behind pipes or mazes of I-beams or half-removed machines. He stayed to the ink-black shadows and never exposed himself to fire from darker areas. He made very little noise. This worked for two-thirds of the distance, but when he came to the end of the machinery, he still had sixty or seventy feet of open space between himself and the steel ladder to Doc's control tower.
Kurtz considered shouting for Doc, but quickly decided against it. Even if someone had watched him enter, they probably did not know precisely where he was at the moment. Unless they have long guns and night-vision goggles like the good old boys in the icehouse. Kurtz shook that thought out of his head. If they had rifles and scopes, they almost certainly would have taken him when he came through the main doors, still a couple of hundred feet from the control tower.
Who the hell is "they?" thought Kurtz, and then tabled that question for later.
He moved backward, crawling under a latticework of pipes that were each at least a yard across. The metal was inert and empty. Cold seeped up from the concrete floor and made his feet and legs ache. Kurtz ignored it.
Here. Doc's control room was connected to every corner of the huge space by catwalks and here against this brick wall, far from any light, a man ladder ran up to the maze of catwalks.
Kurtz crouched next to the ladder and hesitated. This part of the ladder was cloaked in darkness and shielded from the main space by vertical beams and pipes, but what if the intruders were up on the catwalks, hiding in that very darkness? Or even if they were on the main floor, Kurtz would have to move through relatively lighted areas up there to get to the control room. Despite all the James Bond movies where the secret agent ran across endless catwalks with automatic weapons just kicking up sparks around him, Kurtz knew that there was very little cover on any exposed steel. One aimed slug would probably do the job.
No guts, no glory, said part of his mind.
Where the fuck did that thought come from? replied the sensible majority of his brain. He would do a commonsense audit later.
Kurtz glided up the ladder, his long, dark coat billowing behind him. When he was level with the distant control room, Kurtz threw himself flat on the catwalk, wishing that the steel were solid instead of a grille.
No shots. No movement.
Kurtz moved out from the wall, crawling, his knees and elbows being abraded by the rusty metal, pistol aimed. At the moment, he wished to Christ that he had kept the Kimber .45, incriminating bullet-matches or no. Another reason to get to Doc's control room and supply closet.
At the first juncture of catwalks, Kurtz paused. There was enough metal beneath him and around him here to act as a partial shield for a shot from below, but there were also two tiers of catwalks higher up. Kurtz did not like that. Up near the ceiling, sixty feet above the mill floor, the shadows were almost impenetrable. Anyone already up there would see him silhouetted against the few lights on the floor below, and it was always easier to fire downward with accuracy than up.
Kurtz rolled on his side and studied the approach to the control room.
Three catwalks on this level connected to Doc's glass and steel box, but all three were illuminated from trouble lights below and the glow from Doc's lighted shack. One catwalk ran east and west a dozen or so feet above the control room and connected to this level with a ladder. Twenty feet above that second catwalk, three higher catwalks—and very thin ones at that, as far as Kurtz could tell peering up at the shadows—ran out from the walls to various old crane beams and girders. The highest catwalks crisscrossed above the control tower. This would be the most concealed avenue of approach, and the height—at least sixty feet—might hinder a shot from a handgun. The only problem was that no ladder or stairway ran down from these highest crane-maintenance catwalks to the second level above the control tower. There were a few steel support cables running down, but these looked very thin from this distance.
Fuck it, thought Kurtz and began climbing again.
The high catwalk was half the width of the one he had climbed from. Kurtz's elbows almost slipped over the side as he began crawling out toward the center of the open space. He could feel the narrow catwalk sway to his movement, so he kept his motion as fluid as possible.
It was so damned dark up here that someone could be sitting on the same catwalk ten feet in front of him, and he wouldn't see him. Kurtz thumbed the hammer of the .38 back as he crawled, pistol extended.
Don't be an asshole, came the condescending thought. Nobody else would be stupid enough to come up this high.
It was high. Kurtz tried not to look down, but it was impossible not to see through the open metal grate of the catwalk. He could see the filthy, littered tops of the floor-level office roofs to his right, the mounds of dark rock heaped like sandbox piles littering the main floor, and the black spiderweb of catwalks and cables below. Kurtz felt a pang of sympathy for the mill workers who would have to crawl out on this exposed, wobbly catwalk to work on the high cranes.
Fuck them. They were probably paid hazardous-duty pay. Halfway out, Kurtz noticed that the catwalk was so unstable primarily because the company had ripped out the crane itself, obviously selling it and its motors and primary support equipment. The catwalks ended thirty feet above and twenty feet beyond the control tower in… nothing.
How much support did the crane and its superstructure provide? Kurtz paused and tilted his neck, looking up at where the pitifully few and thin steel cables ended in the ceiling just ten feet or so above him. It was too dark to see cracks or missing bolts, but it was obvious that the cables alone had not been designed to support this catwalk system.
He kept crawling.
Just above the control tower and—despite the shadows—Kurtz began doubting just how invisible he was < here. Everything felt exposed and tenuous.
The roof of Doc's control shack was flat and black. The catwalk below looked thin and shaky, and the three catwalks below that were obviously impossibly distant. The only good thing Kurtz could find to think about his present position was that it provided a good vantage point. Nothing moved in the cold, empty space, but much of his field of vision—and fire, if he had been carrying a better pistol or a rifle—was blocked by limerock heaps and hidden by shadows.
Kurtz lay on his side to give his elbows a rest and found that he could feel his heart pounding. Close up, the steel cables he had seen from far away looked even thinner and less substantial man they had from a distance. Each cable was thinner man his little finger, almost certainly was saw-toothed with steel burrs and razor-sharp loose strands, and was attached to the outside of the lower catwalk, making it difficult for him to see how he could even swing over the handrail down there without exposing himself for lethal lengths of time.
I'm wearing gloves, he thought. He flexed his fingers in the thin leather and almost laughed out loud at the thought of the cheap gloves protecting him from steel burrs.
Well, it was either start crawling back toward the wall or do something.
Kurtz thumbed the hammer down, secured the pistol tight in his waistband, swung over the catwalk, grabbed the cable, felt his heart leap into his throat, and then started down as quickly as he could, swaying, using his shoes and hands as brakes, going down hand over hand rather than running the risk of sliding. The control room was thirty feet below and ten feet to his right. There was nothing beneath him except for empty air and cold stone sixty feet down.
Kurtz reached the lower layer of catwalks, swung, missed his first try, and then swung again. He dropped onto the wider catwalk. It swayed, but not as violently as the higher one had.
Not resting for a second, Kurtz loped to the intersection of the three walkways, swung over the side to the man ladder, ignored the rungs
, and slid down the outside rails in pure U.S. Navy fashion.
He hit the lowest catwalk hard, illuminated now by the glow through the dirty control-room windows just fifteen feet away. Kurtz rolled, crouched, and moved in a fast duckwalk to the wall of the control room.
Panting, he moved fast, kicking the unlocked door open and throwing himself into the room.
Doc's going to laugh his ass off, was his final thought before hitting and rolling.
Doc was beyond laughing. The old man was lying in front of the padlocked supply closet. There were at least four large-caliber entry wounds visible: three on his chest and one in his throat. Doc had bled out, and the pool of blood had covered a third of the floor space. Kurtz swung his little .38 left, right, and left again, but other than the corpse and him, the control room was empty.
* * *
CHAPTER 31
« ^ »
Kurtz duckwalked closer to Doc's body, keeping his head below the level of the windows, ignoring the blood on his shoes and knees. The padlock to the back room was still secure.
Pistol still covering the doorway, Kurtz patted down Doc's old leather jacket and his bloody trousers.
No keys. Doc kept the padlock keys on a large ring with his other security-guard keys. The key ring was gone.
Kurtz crawled over and checked the desk drawers and even the low filing cabinets, but the keys were gone.
He considered shooting off the padlock, but even as he weighed the pros and cons, he heard footsteps on the floor below. One man. Running.
Shit! Kurtz reached up and turned off the single desk lamp. His eyes adapted quickly, and soon the rectangles of windows and doors seemed very bright. There was no more sound.
Kurtz grabbed Doc by his jacket collar and dragged the old man across the smeared floor. His old acquaintance felt very, very light, and Kurtz wondered idly if it was a result of having bled out.
I'm sorry, Doc, he thought and wrestled the old man to his knees and then upright in the open doorway, using his left arm around the body while he kept to the side of the door, peering around the door frame.
