Chapter 14

My first impulse was to call Gina White, my old acquaintance in the FBI, the one law person I knew I could trust. I searched the contacts menu for several seconds before I remembered this wasn’t my phone. Since I couldn’t remember her number I called the only one I could remember, my Uncle Higheagle. No answer. Either he was asleep or out of range. I hoped for the former but thought the latter was most likely. He told me he might be away for the rest of the weekend, which probably meant somewhere so off the path that the wildlife needed permits to graze, and forget cell reception. A camping nut was my uncle. I waited for his voice mail then briefed him on my situation, one hundred words or less, then redialed and sent him Phil’s confession.

If my predicament wasn’t solved by the time he made it back to civilization then it would probably be too late to help me, but I could at least die with the satisfaction of knowing that Finke’s days as Paradise Valley’s Scumbag-In-Chief were numbered.

Next I called Honey, who was in his contacts list.

The force was not with me.

After three rings I got her voice mail, and it was not at all what I expected. No sexy come-on, no purred invitation to leave a message with a return number, no promise that she’d give me a good hard spanking if I promised to be a bad boy. Just a simple monotone voice, a computer’s voice, telling me to leave a message at the beep.

I’ve don’t like talking to machines, I’m always afraid they might talk back, and I wasn’t sure a recorded message was the way to go. The situation being what it was, semi-complicated and deadly, I thought it required a slightly more personal touch.

Hi there...sorry, no, I don’t require a hand job today. I just wanted to let you know your friend is dead at the bottom of the river and some bad people are on their way to get you. Probably they’ll rape and kill you, maybe even in that order...who am I? I’m the repo man.

Yeah, so the personal touch probably wouldn’t be much easier, but I hung up without leaving a message. I’d give it a few minutes and try again.

I wondered how many goons Finke had working for him and how many he could call up in an emergency. How many were closing in on Honey. How many were out looking for me. Too fucking many I thought.

When there is no way to know for sure, always assume the worst. It’s the only safe assumption there is. I also thought he’d have most of them out looking for me, since I knew they were after me and was already on the run. If I was lucky, they’d be concentrating their efforts west of the river. Honey probably didn’t have a clue yet, wouldn’t know anything was wrong until they came knocking on her door.

Unless she was out working, or already dead.

Cup half full, I reminded myself.

If she was still alive they wouldn’t bother with a trip to Granite Rock, they’d take her at her apartment, catch her sleeping, eating or fucking, and put one in her skull before she could make a fuss. With Candy in the wind she’d look really good for Honey’s murder. A couple of whores got into a fight over money and one, quite possibly with her own growing rap-sheet of drug and prostitution offenses, killed the other and ran for it. Simple.

I was making assumptions again, but I felt comfortable with them. Exotic dancers work at clubs. Hookers post their services on craigslist.com and skirt the rules by calling themselves Exotic Dancers. As for Candy’s imagined police record, she was a junky, and junkies tend to get busted doing stupid junky shit. It’s all part of the glamorous junky lifestyle.

I checked up on Phil one last time and found him still nicely trussed up. He had no choice but to behave. I poured myself a final half-cup of coffee and drank it in a single gulp. I was going to need the caffeine.

I kept some extra clothes and a ratty pair of coveralls in a locker next to my workbench. I found a light jacket inside it, old, almost the same shade of green as my old Ventura. It was summer’s ass end and still hotter than hell even this late in the night. Not necessarily light jacket weather, but the jacket had two inner pockets, one for my borrowed Beretta and one for the Wasp.

I could quit worrying about shooting my dick off now.

I turned off the lights before opening the bay door and hopping in the Ventura...

And noticed Trouble’s cage still sitting in the passenger seat. The bird was silent, still, finally asleep. A short internal debate ensued; bring the bird or leave it?

I decided to bring it, not because I was starved for conversation, I wasn’t, or because I thought it’d have something useful to say, there wasn’t an insult it could throw at me that I wouldn’t already have heard. I brought Trouble along because I thought having the bird with me would go far toward convincing Honey I was telling the truth.

If it got to be too much of a pain in the ass, I could still toss it out the window.

* * *

I called Honey twice while I was on the move, once only a few miles from my office, just before dropping down the short grade from the East Valley Heights toward downtown, and a second time as I passed from the East Valley’s old brick monstrosity of a high school, the dividing line between the sleepy residential and lively business districts. I got her voice mail both times and hung up without leaving a message.

Then, just as I entered true downtown, still alive and crawling with East Valley yuppie spawn, she called me.

When the phone rang I assumed it was Finke again, trying one last time to contact the shithead this phone belonged to, but I checked the caller ID anyway, and was surprised to see the names Candy/Honey glowing up at me. Distraction free driving is the law of the land in Washington State, but after killing a couple of guys, stealing a car and a cop’s gun, and kidnapping another man all in one night, I decided the distracted driving law could go fuck itself.

I answered the phone with a tentative, “Honey?”

There was a pause, a silence that seemed to stretch on for a long time, then, “Where is Philip?”

Her voice was everything I could have hoped for, more than making up for the bland computer voice on her messaging service. She had a thick Slavic accent, Russian, Serbian, or Ukrainian. From the same part of the world as Finke’s illegal ammunition. Her English was not hesitant or awkward, just a little slow. It was probably her second language, but I guessed she’d been here long enough to learn it well. Her voice was as light as smoke, smooth as silk, and sweet as, well, sweet as honey.

I imagined a real-life Natasha Fatale, posed on a leather sofa wearing nothing but stilettos and gloves.

I found myself momentarily speechless.

“Who is this?”

“Sorry, Phil is tied up at the moment.” The pun was unintentional. “Listen, we need to...”

“No, whoever you are, you listen to me.” There was real anger in her voice. No fear or rage, anger’s awkward cousins. Her tone was cold, controlled, and shot through with a blue-steel thread of real hate.

“You tell that dripping prick I am not interested in doing business or pleasure with him.” She was not a fan, apparently. I hoped it would make my work that night easier. “Tell that Drugstore Cowboy to get out of my building. He may have Candy hooked through the cunt, but I have standards!”

Honey’s perfect English blurred in her fury, wilting at the edges and becoming something even more exotic, a porn-grade Natasha Fatale.

Something near the end of her angry speech startled me out of my fascination with her exotic voice.

“Finke’s in your building?”

“Yes!” She was shouting now, “down the hall by the elevator.”

I shushed her, eliciting an angry caw from the other end of the line.

I scanned the upcoming intersections and pressed the accelerator a little closer to the floor.

“Don’t let him hear you! Don’t let him know you know he’s there, and don’t even think of leaving your apartment.” There was a pause, during which I considered what I was about to say next, wondering if it would sound too melodramatic.

Honey said nothing, waited.

“If he sees you, he’ll kill you.”

More pause, I could hear her breathing, then, “Who the hell are you?”

I gave her a heavily abridged version. We didn’t have time for the full story. I was only a few blocks away.

By the time I was finished and enduring another of her uncomfortable silences I could see her Main Street building only a block away. I pulled over alongside the grimy picture window in front of Dr. Rock’s Records, a local mom and pop music place that still did a good business but hasn’t actually sold a record in well over a decade. It was just out of sight of Honey’s flat and anyone who might be keeping an eye on it. Then I walked back, turning left down the narrow lane behind the block of Main Street buildings.

I stopped there, safely hidden in the shadows, and scoped out the fire escape on the backside of Honey’s building.

“Sit tight, Honey, and don’t panic. I’m coming for you.”

* * *

Sit tight, honey, I’m coming for you.

I still dream of saying those words to Daphne as she calls out to me over her cell phone, and tearing up the road to Redwolf Bridge, to find them before the monster could hurt them. In this dream my girls are there, but I can’t see their faces, only blank pink, featureless flesh where their faces should be. The monster is there too, just a shadow in human shape. I run it down, smash it into puffs of black vapor, but somehow I know it’ll come back. I haven’t killed it, only frightened it off for a while.

I reach for my girls, and even with no faces I know them by their clothes, their postures, the way they hold hands.

That’s when I wake up, alone in my little cracker box cabin with its bare walls and no love.

I have worse dreams, scarier dreams, nastier dreams, but this is the cruelest dream of them all.