The Barkeep (43 page)

The creaking turned to footsteps. He gently stroked the trigger with his finger. The footsteps rose higher up the stairs, the climber not anymore trying to hide his presence. How arrogant was that? Like death presenting a calling card. And then he heard a voice.

“I’m coming up.”

The voice was slow, thick, with a lazy tongue, the voice of a big child trying to enunciate each word very carefully. Justin recognized it right off, the voice of the strangely shaped man
who had beaten him in the first floor of his house and given his rote warning.

“Who the hell are you?” said Justin.

“Derek.”

“What are you doing in my house?”

“Birdie told me to come.”

“Did he send you the last time when you shoved my face into the floor?”

“Yes. Can I come up?”

“Why?”

“To get the money. Birdie told me to get the money.”

“He did, did he? Are you alone?”

“Only I am coming up the stairs.”

The last couple of answers comforted Justin a bit. This Derek hadn’t lied about beating the hell out of him or being alone, maybe he wasn’t lying about just being an errand boy sent for the money.

“Stay where you are,” said Justin. “I have the money, but I’m only giving it to Birdie himself.”

“He cannot come.”

“Where is he?”

“Somewhere else.”

“It has to be him. Go down and find Birdie and tell him to come himself. I’ll be here, waiting.”

“I cannot tell Birdie that.”

“Why not?”

“Birdie would be mad. He hits me when he’s mad.”

“Then you should find a better companion.”

“I am trying.”

“Don’t come up.”

“I am coming up.”

“Don’t.”

Justin waited nervously as the footsteps started up the stairway again. The gun suddenly felt heavy in his hand. It was one thing letting your baser instincts take you on a ride—anger and lust both could be so damn exhilarating—but it was a whole different thing when the other party was there in the flesh. How could he shoot someone like Derek?

He was still wondering that same thing when the strangest sight imaginable became visible in the doorway.

Derek likes the sound of the job’s voice. He does not sound mean or arrogant, mostly just scared. That is good. But the way he is talking makes it clear to Derek that Vern was wrong again and the job has a gun. But even though he has a gun, he does not sound like someone who wants to use it. Occasionally, a job will have a gun but not know what to do with it. Or even if the job knows what to do with it, he does not want to do what he has to do with it. It is not easy jumping over that barrier. Derek had leaped it with Pinsky, but there was a cat involved. There is no cat here, just Derek. Derek is able to do what he has to; the job, maybe not. That is an advantage.

But Derek does not want the job to see his face. He likes working in darkness; the shadow is his natural habitat. Some people can look at Derek’s face and see everything he is thinking. “You got no guile,” Rodney used to say, whatever “guile” means. Derek just assumes it means that Derek is not a good liar. One look at his face, and the job will know exactly what Derek intends.

With the old druggie guy, the place was too dark to get a good look, but the room on the third floor is brightly lit. There is no way to get into the room and to the job without the job
seeing his face. Then if something goes wrong, the agitation will start again. Somehow Derek has to turn off the light in the upstairs room before the job sees his face. He should have done it before, gone into the basement and cut all the power like Tree taught him, but Vern said the job would not have a gun and he was afraid Cody might leave if he did not move quickly. So now here he is, up the stairs, and Vern was wrong again.

From the sound of the voice, Derek can place the job toward the back of the room, just in front of the wall opposite the stairs. There is only one way to go into the room so that the job does not see his face.

Derek turns around and walks backward up the stairs, turning his head away from the entrance as he reaches the top landing. Then he raises his hands high and stands at the entrance with his back to the room.

“What are you doing?” says the job.

“I need to get the money,” says Derek. He takes a step backward into the room, his hands still up in the air. His back feels like there is a cockroach scratching at the skin between his shoulder blades. Derek is feeling the gun aimed right at his back. That is interesting. He takes a step further back and the scratching grows deeper. It feels good.

“Don’t be an idiot,” says the job. “Get out of here.”

“I am an idiot,” says Derek, examining the area around the door and finding exactly what he is looking for. “But I need to get the money.”

“I have a gun.”

“I know.”

“I’ll shoot you.”

“I am only doing my job.”

“Where the hell is Birdie?”

“He said he had to give someone a message.”

“Who?”

“He does not tell me things.”

“Turn around.”

“You will shoot me if I turn around.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“Okay,” says Derek.

Derek lowers his hands and begins to slowly whirl to his left. As he does, he reaches his now-hidden right hand toward the light switch he had spotted beside the door. In one quick and savage sequence, he clicks off the light, leaps to the side, and rolls with all his weight toward the man with the gun.

As soon as Derek feels his weight slam into the man, a huge sound explodes next to his ear.

63.

BLACK-EYED CODY

T
here was an instant after the lights went out that Justin was functionally blind. It was only a blink and a half, if that, before his eyes adjusted enough to see clearly what had happened. But by then it was too late.

Before the lights went out, the strangely shaped Derek was standing just inside the entrance of the tatami room, his arms up in the air. The way he was standing, he was like an optical illusion; by the mere shape of him, it was impossible to tell if Derek was facing Justin or not. But if he was facing Justin, then the hunched figure was made even more grotesque by a face that was full of short cropped hair, like a freak show attraction or a Magritte painting. Justin had his gun pointed right at the man’s back, but there was no question of firing. He had been indoctrinated by too many movie westerns, he wasn’t going to shoot a varmint in the back, especially a varmint that seemed as limited as Derek. So Justin told Derek to turn around, and as Derek began to turn, the lights suddenly went dead.

In the instant it took for Justin’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, Derek was gone. And then something huge and hard slammed into Justin’s left side. His finger slipped on the
trigger and the gun went off with a shocking crack as a blue flash spurted from the barrel.

Before Justin could recover from the trauma of the shot, something grabbed hold of his right arm, and his arm was slammed elbow first into the mat. Another futile explosion. Justin tried to bring his hand around so that he could shoot off this huge mass of muscle that had latched onto his back, but as he tried, his arm was slammed again into the tatami floor, and suddenly he wasn’t anymore gripping the gun, just gripping air. And something close to steel was wrapping itself around his neck.

He could feel him now behind him, this Derek, one arm around his neck, another gripping his head, putting unbearable pressure on Justin’s nose.

Justin tried to kick himself violently into his attacker, but the kicks swished empty in the air. He grappled at the arms entombing his face and neck, grappled and failed, his own feeble hands no match for his attacker’s iron limbs.

He reached backward, felt the short bristly hair on the man’s scalp, tried to slip his gouging fingers down to the eyes, but this Derek was burrowing his face so hard into Justin’s spine that it was impossible.

The darkness grew darker, Justin kicked for air. He grabbed one of Derek’s tiny ears and twisted, and twisted harder, and tried to pull the damn thing off, eliciting a roar from behind him.

But things were growing blacker, and the struggle to breathe overtook him. He let go of the ear to grab futilely at the unmoving arm around his neck. He kicked again, involuntarily this time, listlessly and again to no effect. He felt things slipping away, his breath, the light, his anger and fear, his hatred.

And in a moment of stillness, he heard the words from the book he had been given in the asylum, the very words he had wished he had known to whisper into his mother’s ear as she lay in her blood on that marble floor, words being spoken now directly to him.

The time has arisen for you to seek the path.
They came to him, those words, in a soft, lovely voice, a voice as familiar to him as his own breath.
Your breathing is about to cease, and you are about to experience that reality wherein all things are like the void and the cloudless sky.

It was the voice of his mother, guiding him through the next stages of his existence.
At this moment, know thyself and abide willingly and peacefully in that state. For I, too, am with you.

And he felt just then the strangest bit of grace, as if his greatest fear had been soothed, as if his mother had found her salvation, as if she were coming back to help him find his own, as if the sufferings of the world were already peeling off him like the bitter skin of a rare and precious fruit. And he could simply close his eyes and drift away into the void. Toward the voice. Toward the sweet and loving voice of his mother.

A light burst through his closed eyes, a painfully bright light that jerked him from the realm of utter peace and dragged him back into a harsh and painful reality. A reality where some deranged goon was choking him to death. His eyes opened and, even as the brute strangled him from behind, there was someone standing in front of him with a gun in his hand.

“Let him go, Derek,” said the man standing in front of Justin, in a voice familiar but wildly out of place. A few blinks later, as the disappointment of being jerked back from the lovely void alighted off him like a flock of birds, Justin knew exactly who it was standing there with the gun.

“I need to finish,” said Derek.

“No, you don’t,” said Cody. “Not this one. Let him go.”

“But Vern will be mad.”

“Don’t worry about Vern.”

“I need Vern.”

“No, you don’t, not anymore. Let this one go and I’ll take care of you.”

“Promise.”

“Yes, I promise,” said Cody.

“Okay.”

A blast of fresh air gushed down Justin’s throat as the brutal pressure eased on his face and neck. Justin greedily gulped down more air, even as he grabbed at the loosened arms, trying to pull them off.

“What the hell?” gasped Justin. “Cody?”

“Shut up, Justin,” said Cody. “There’s nothing you can say that will help. Let him go, Derek.”

Justin, completely released now from Derek’s grip, collapsed onto the tatami mats, still wheezing, grabbing at his own neck, as if the arm were still wrapped around it.

“He saw my face,” said Derek, standing behind Justin.

“He won’t say anything.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ll take care of it. That’s what you want me to do, take care of things, right?”

“Yes. I have to go. Will you go with me, Cody?”

“Sure I will.”

“Away from the city.”

“That’s the deal.”

“As soon as I tidy up Vern.”

“I figured that would have to happen. Just leave Justin be.”

“If that is what Cody wants.”

“That’s what I want. Now go downstairs and wait for me.”

Cody stepped aside and watched as Derek walked by him and started climbing down the stairs. Cody, still with the gun, weighed it in his hand as he looked at Justin.

“Nice shooting,” said Cody. “You riddled him.”

Justin struggled up to lean on an elbow. “I wasn’t trying to kill the kid. The gun just went off.”

“Twice by accident?”

“Sort of.”

“I told you they loosened the pull.”

“It was looser than I thought.”

“I’m going to have to take this back to protect you and the innocent people of Philadelphia, if there are any left.” He gestured at the envelope and the mess of bills scattered now over the floor. “Is that the money you were going to pay that Vern guy?”

“All of it but the four hundred I paid you.”

“I’m going to have to take the money, too.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Why don’t you pick it up for me. And don’t forget I have your gun.”

“There’s that, true.”

“And I saved your life.”

“Yes, you did. Who the hell is that guy anyway?”

“That’s Derek. I met him outside the hotel when I followed your guy Birdie.”

“He’s a menace.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Cody waved the gun. “Let’s go, I need to get the fuck out of here, and fast.”

“You’re serious.”

“As a fifth of bourbon, baby.” Cody leaned over, picked up the empty envelope, tossed it at Justin. Justin stared at Cody
for a moment, and then rose to his knees, crawled over to the money and started stuffing the envelope with it.