Chapter 19

The knock came again, the knocker not realizing that Honey was already at the door and peeking through the peephole to make a positive identification. She withdrew the chain lock and sliding bolt, using the noise of his pounding to mask the click as she disengaged the lock on the doorknob, then backed quickly away into the deep gloom of her flat.

I had turned off the floor lamp, now the only light in the flat came from the lamp in her odd little bedroom. It cast narrow, slanting beams through the lattice top of the partition and made odd shadows around the questing vines of the Devil’s Ivy.

“Come in, come in!” She called out in mock exasperation as she slipped back into the full glow inside her private corner of the flat, then laid back on the overstuffed cushions of her eccentric little wicker bed.

The knocking ceased, but for a few seconds no one came inside. For a second I could only wonder, then the flaw in my plan came clear to me. No doubt he’d tried the door and found it locked before resorting to knocking.

Did he smell trouble brewing? Did he sense a fast one in the making?

Almost surely.

Then he did open the door, I could hear the minute creaking of its hinges. There was a long moment of stillness, perhaps ten seconds, perhaps more, then the door creaked shut again and latched with a resounding click.

From my hiding spot in the bathroom, crouched behind its cracked door, I saw Honey flinch at the sound, but she looked otherwise calm.

Good.

Maybe she hadn’t seen the flaw in my plan yet. Maybe she hadn’t realized I was no good at this kind of shit.

Then I saw a man’s silhouette as he passed between me and the light, and tensed, keeping my gun trained on him, ready to resort to plan B, shoot and get the fuck out, if he showed his gun.

He didn’t, not yet at least.

“Hi, Honey,” he said, and I could hear a kind of jolly good cheer in his voice, laughter only barely suppressed. “Long time no see, darlin’.”

Not Finke, I could tell by the voice even if I couldn’t see his face.

“Not long enough.” Honey’s voice was even, calm, disdainful. “What do you want?”

“Hey, now,” he said, hurt on the surface, amused underneath. “That ain’t nice. I only came to talk.”

She yawned hugely. “Then do it quickly and leave. I’m trying to sleep.”

Pretty good, I thought.

“You know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important,” he said, sounding put upon, sounding regretful, the unwilling bearer of unhappy news. “It’s Candy...she’s had herself a bit of an accident and I thought you’d wanna know since you’re so close and all.”

“Really? Did she slip and fall on a needle again?”

“Something like that,” he said, and now he had to work to hold the laughter back.

He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself, a condition I hoped to remedy very soon. I pulled the door open, slowly, and stepped out of the bathroom, closing the ten feet between us in soft, tippy-toe steps.

“You see, a horse bit her. Bit her good, but don’t worry, I took care of her.”

“And now you’re here to take care of me too,” Honey said, her voice still holding that uninterested tone. She yawned again.

His hand moved around the small of his back, toward a small bulge under the hem of his shirt.

“I wouldn’t do that,” I said, closing the remaining few feet in a single large stride.

His hand paused behind his back, his fingers twitching in surprise, and as he began to spin around to face me, I brought the butt of my gun down against his temple in a single, hard arc.

It made a soft, yielding thud, like a hammer hitting a pumpkin, the man grunted once on his way to the carpeted floor.

I smiled, slipping the piece back into my pocket. Turned out Finke’s crappy 9mms were good for something.

I heard a thump behind me, an elbow bumping a wall maybe, or the toe of a boot striking one of Honey’s potted plants, and knew I was screwed. I tried anyway. Spinning clumsily on the spot, damn near tripping over my own feet, fumbling for the gun again, I found myself facing Musclehead.

He grinned at me; zircon studded gold grills glittered in the low light, making his grin something more mechanic than organic.

How had I missed those choppers before?

His smile was like the grill of some ugly old car, a muscle car.

I reached for one of the guns stuffed into my pocket, but too late. Musclehead’s large fist looped around and came at me from the left before I could draw. I abandoned the attempt in favor of a good old-fashioned tactical maneuver. I ducked, just avoiding my second power-nap of the night as his bling-covered fist glanced off the top of my noggin, then sprang forward into him.

No one sucker punches me twice in one night!

I hit him with as much force as I could manage, but it was like trying to tackle a statue. He rocked back slightly when I hit him, and shoved back hard enough to send me stumbling. I lunged forward again before he could decide how to kill me and punched him in the stomach.

It was like punching a statue.

I shouted in pain.

He chuckled, grabbed me by the throat, began to squeeze.

I punched him in the stomach again.

He seemed not to notice.

His grip on my throat tightened.

The darkened room began to grow even darker.

I punched him in the balls.

He noticed that.

Musclehead let out a low groan of pain and seemed to shrink a few inches. His grip on my windpipe loosened, and I pulled in a painful breath.

I went for my gun again, pulled it free, but didn’t get a chance to use it. He swatted it out of my hand, and before I could dig for another of my weapons, he swatted me into unconsciousness.

* * *

When I came back no more than a few seconds had passed. I was on my back, the old floor cool beneath me, staring up at Musclehead’s wide, shining grill. With the hanging tendrils of Devil’s Ivy hanging above his head and Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, another tapestry, of course, hanging behind him he looked like a strange monolith standing tall into some alien sky.

Transfixed by the image, I groped blindly for my gun, not finding it. I had others in my jacket, two or three now, couldn’t remember for sure. I’d never get one out in time though, because the grinning monolith above me did have his. He seemed to take great joy in pulling it from the snug waistband of his shorts, pulling the hem of his Gold’s Gym shirt up to free the butt, revealing a ripped abdomen that looked like something forged from iron and wrapped in skin.

“Fuck,” I said. At least I think that’s what I said. To be fair I was under a moderate amount of strain, so if my memory isn’t one hundred percent clear on that one point, you’ll just have to forgive me. Fuck would be a very close approximation at any rate, if not dead on.

What happened next was unexpected enough that it took me a few moments to register it properly. That sparkling grin exploded red, a bright supernova of a smile that outgrew the man’s face. He seemed to forget about the gun in his hand, took a few stumble-steps in my direction, leaning down toward me as he did so, and I could imagine him thinking fuck the gun, I’m gonna eat that sucka.

Then he was falling over me, that great, gaping red smile expanding as it fell toward my own face. His eyes were no longer in their sockets, they’d popped out and swung from a thick gristle of tendons and optic nerves.

I smelled burnt powder, and my understanding finally caught up with my senses.

I tried to roll out from under Musclehead’s falling body but wasn’t quite quick enough. A second later I was covered by a heavy heap of slack muscle and the exploded, dripping meat that used to be a face. He’d landed on top of me in a sprawl, his limp arms and legs pinning me like the fleshy bars of some gruesome cage, the large hole that used to be his mouth covering my own. His eyeballs pressed between his cheeks and mine. One of them popped like a squeezed grape. His tongue fell across my lips like a large, slick slug.

It was like a prison rape scene with zombies.

I had the presence of mind to turn my face away before screaming, then I rolled his limp rag doll body off of mine and sprinted the half-dozen steps to the bathroom, slamming the light switch up as I entered it. Forgoing the small sink basin, I charged into the shower stall and bent, whacking my head against the old tile of the wall as I cranked the hot and cold taps simultaneously.

I’m going to have to get tested now, I thought, and puked like I’ve never puked before.

When I’d finished washing all the blood from my hair and face, I turned the taps off and stumbled back into the living room dripping wet.

Still reclined on her wicker futon, her small, silenced Glock in one hand and a cigarette in the other, she regarded me with an expression caught somewhere between pity and embarrassment, the kind you get for someone else when you see them do something patently dumb. She shook her head.

“You really are not very good at this kind of thing, are you?”

After a few moments spent trying to master my gag reflex, I said, “Sorry, Honey. I’m learning as I go.”

The guy I’d thumped into dreamland gave a feeble groan, then snored as if to say he was thoroughly bored with the night’s business.

* * *

We went out the way I came in, and I led the way with my Beretta drawn. To my surprise, the coast was still clear. I didn’t trust it, but it was either this or the front door, and we knew there was company waiting impatiently out there.

Honey followed me out, then down, her dress shivering around her thighs.

I was a good boy, I only looked up once. The most interesting thing I saw on my quick glance was a small holster, a simple rigging of cloth and Velcro, currently empty, strapped to her inner thigh.

I landed on the empty back road, my gun raised and ready. A moment later Honey was beside me.

“I hope you don’t plan on leaving a trail of bodies for Finke to follow.” Honey motioned to the broken heap of humanity bleeding out in the far gutter of the narrow street with the barrel of her Glock. “Your handiwork, I take it?”

“Naw. He slipped on a banana peel.” Both hands free now, I pulled the Wasp from my jacket’s front pocked and flicked the on switch. I liked it for close work, and I thought there might be a bit of that between where we stood below her flat window and my car, parked a block away.

“Let’s go.” I strode past her, then several paces beyond before I realized she hadn’t moved. When I turned to see what the holdup was she stood, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, giving me a look that would have hurt my feelings under less deadly circumstances. “What?”

“Why should I trust you?”

Okay, so the girl had trust issues, and probably well founded.

I struggled internally for an answer that she might accept, and perhaps the pause in the conversation was answer enough to her. She raised the gun again, only a little. Not pointing at me, but all it would take was a single twitch of her hand and it would be.

“You’re not inspiring confidence,” she said, and backed away a step. “I can go my own way now. Goodbye.”

“Honey?”

“Yes?” She sounded mildly amused, but skeptical. Polite enough to hear me out but not stupid enough to actually believe me.

“Come with me or don’t, but keep in mind I’m the one who didn’t try to kill you up there.” I thought about turning away and going it alone right then, probably would have been simpler, but gave her a second to think it over.

She regarded me with the same distrustful expression, arms crossed. Then she pointed her Glock at me.

“Drop!” She shouted, and I obeyed.

There was a single pop from Honey’s Glock, then cursing behind me and the sound of retreating feet.

I rose to a crouch and spun, gun raised, saw the flutter of a shirttail at it turned the corner into the alley. He shouted an alarm. There would be more on the way now and stationed between us and my car.

“This way,” Honey shouted, and a moment later her hand clenched on my shoulder.

A head poked around the corner, eyes widened as he found two guns pointing at him, then popped out of sight again. “They’re here! Tell him they’re both here!”

“There will be more soon,” Honey said. “Come with me.”

I pined for my wheels. Cars really are wonderful things, able to whisk you safely away from countless bad situations—Thanksgiving dinner with the in-laws, psychotic blind dates, their disgruntled former owners, murderous thugs with poor personal hygiene and armor piercing rounds.

There’s a lot to be said for a good pair of boots too. I used mine and joined Honey.

A half-block later I felt her hand close over my wrist again and she pulled me off course. I saw where she was headed and balked. Another alley leading to Main Street. I didn’t like it and was about to say as much when the banging behind me started. Two shots, neither striking me, although they might have if Honey hadn’t pulled me off course, but any bullet fired in my direction is a bad thing, to be avoided if possible.

“Hey, knock that off!” A shout from ahead stopped the gunfire, and was therefore not an entirely bad thing, but the man-shape that stepped from the shadows a moment later meant that we now had trouble coming from two directions.

Honey’s alley was now officially the only route left. I allowed her to drag me into it.

“Stop!” Again there was pressure on my arm, and I could have plowed on anyway, maybe dragging her in my wake, but then I saw what she was looking at. A service door set inconspicuously into the brick of the old building. I stopped but reserved the right to flee in panic.

“What are you doing?” I tested the knob, found it locked. I had expected nothing else.

“Shut up,” Honey said, and shoved me aside.

I could hear running feet approaching at the backstreet end of the alley.

Honey tapped on the door, once, twice, then a quick double-tap. A long pause, then once more.

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” I said, and then four men appeared at the end of the alleyway. Four armed men. Armed, as I think I’ve said, with deadly body odor and deadlier armor-piercing slugs. The last bit in particular is worth repeating.

I turned to the Main Street end and found three more advancing toward us, Finke himself flanked by Tattoo’s and Musclehead’s replacements. I didn’t like the looks of his new guys. They were a little too alive for my taste.

I looked at Honey, who was still facing the door expectantly, and to my surprise, the door opened.

I didn’t need Honey to drag me in by the arm this time. I was very willing enough to take this new and unexpected detour, wherever it led.