The Spaces in Between (10 page)

“Now, lady,” he spoke, “Stop struggling or I’m going to fuck you.” He pulled back his cap so she could see the seriousness in his eyes, and the fear in her eyes. “Now I’ll tell you what. I prefer blokes myself, but I’m a pro. So if I have to I will. And I’ll do it in the most comfortable way for me and the most uncomfortable way for you. Catch my hint?” He finally spotted what he was looking for in Janet’s eyes – defeat. There’s bluff two.

The Irishman helped Janet to his feet, and there was almost a certain gentle quality to it. Then he snapped a pair of handcuffs behind her back so tight that they cut into her wrists.

“Follow me. Stay behind this pillar. And not a peep – not that it matters anyway.”

Parked behind the pillar beside her car was a blue PT Cruiser and he unceremoniously shoved her into its hatchback. He entered on the driver’s side and adjusted his rear-view mirror so he could watch her. The engine roared and Janet could see the ceiling of the parking garage pass and open into the gray skies of Baltimore. In the front seat the Irishman pulled her cell phone from his pocket. She never even saw him grab it.

Was it still in my hand when he pulled me out of the car?

He found Warren under the contacts and hit ‘Send.’

9

Warren stood silently in the intersection a task that was dangerous when there wasn’t a maniac in a black Cadillac after you. It was far too late for him to realize that the man in the black suit had him like a deer in the headlights. He considered for a nano-second the merits of prayer, but he didn’t believe in God. He did at one time, but could not bring himself anymore after what God did to his parent’s marriage. Also Warren had no belief in himself, but there was something he did believe in – technology.

“I don’t care if you’re a hallucination or if it’ll cost me my soul and sanity! If you can help me then damn the costs, Teftin!”

Mists swirled around Warren, and when they cleared he was in the twilight forest again. The old man was waiting for Warren there and passed the tablet PC to Warren. “Press your thumb to the screen.”

“I’ll leave a fingerprint,” Warren said.

“That’s the point,” Teftin smiled. “Think of it as a signature.”

Warren pressed his thumb against the LCD. “And the payment?”

“We’ll worry about that if you get out of this mess. We are bargaining for your protection so of course if we fail to protect you then the contract is null and void. I must add that if you bring danger to yourself then there are sever consequences.”

“I understand,” Warren said, but he had already returned to reality. He was once again standing in the intersection with a car seconds away from plowing him over. Somehow reality had changed. There was a hazy and slow dreamlike quality to it. The buzzing of electricity was all around them. No, not a buzz - whispers. A cacophony of whispering voices telling secrets to each other over data lines.

“Save me,” Warren pleaded.

The traffic light crashed into the windshield of the black Cadillac. The light still shone Stop and the driver obeyed. At least for the moment.

“Thanks.” Warren reached the other side of the street. Then he rolled his eyes for a moment.
Just luck
.

Not one, but three men stepped out of the Cadillac each one bearing an automatic handgun. It might just be their clothes, but Warren could swear that all three men looked alike.
Why didn’t anyone notice yet? Could they not notice?
Police cruisers with their lights flashing were positioned around the crashed bus, and two officers were running over to the Cadillac.

They looked it over, and scratched their heads. The other officers at the bus crash waved them back over. Warren’s legs screamed in protest when he went into a full run, and the men in black suits followed him in sprints. He bolted in the direction of West Lafayette. It was almost a blessing that the police did not notice them. Warren was sure that this man would be convinced that these men were police. Maybe they would kill one another?

One of the men in black suit’s hands grazed the back of Warren’s coat. An infant could cover more ground than Warren. The man in the black suit made another mad grab for Warren, but he saw through his peripheral vision that the Walk Sign was lit. Without thinking he evaded the man’s grasp by darting across the street.

Just how unnoticeable are they?

Warren glanced over his shoulder once he was on the other side of the street and saw the three men change direction to charge him. He instead focused on the streetlight hanging over the intersection that kept the Baltimore traffic at bay, but only for a short time.
Green light.
The light suddenly changed to green and the Baltimore traffic poured through the intersection. He wanted to look away, but he had to be sure they wouldn’t follow him anymore. They didn’t. Well, couldn’t.

Warren lingered no longer and lost none of his pace. His legs pumped and carried him to the Mental Hospital, but so many of his tendons twanged like burst fans belts under the strain. He stopped for a moment. His lungs burned and screamed for oxygen. His leg wobbled like Jell-o. He leaned against the door of the building, and his cell phone rang.

Once again it was Janet’s number.

“I…swear! If you hurt a hair on her head! I’ll-”

“I’ll tear every hair out of her body if you don’t cut the clichés and I mean every hair. Now it’s five ‘til, and if you aren’t here I’m going to cut off a finger for each second you’re late. Starting with the one with this cheap ass bauble. Then her toes. Then I’ll put out her eyes. I’d go further, and if I have to I will, but I’m wasting your very precious time.”

The call disconnected. Wherever this man was he must not have noticed that Warren was standing at the front door to the old Mental Institution. Could whatever hid the men in black still be hiding him?

He tried the door, which he was not surprised was unlocked. Inside the first floor was musty and dark. What little light came into the building illuminated the graffiti on the wall. An old building like this was probably party central or at least a hobo junction.

Maybe it was just the exhaustion or maybe belief is like a muscle. A strange thought bubbled to the surface of Warren’s mind.
What would Cameron do?
He pulled out his cell phone and saw that he had four minutes left.

He shut it off and stared at the black screen for a second. Then a mental image came to Warren. Sonar bouncing off cellular signal waves. He saw a wall of a man with ginger hair watching the door with a revolver drawn. Sitting across from him at the table was Janet bound, gagged, and both hands cuffed to the armrests – but unharmed. Warren noticed another door leading into the room. One that the Irishman didn’t bother to watch.

He walked through that door in his mind and followed his mind’s eye down the stairs until it came back to him. Warren opened his eyes, took his shoes off, and climbed the stairs sometimes having to lift his legs with his hand. It took a couple of minutes, but he made it up. The door was padlocked.

Did the Irishman put this lock here?

No, but he knows about it. That’s why he’s not watching this door. Warren pulled on the padlock, but it stayed true. There was not enough time for him to go back downstairs, but maybe if he beat on the door the man will let him in. There goes the element of surprise.

Warren noticed the brand on the locks. He had a routine for this when he saw a client using one of the Masterlock combination locks to guard the servers. He gently pulled on the lock while turning the dial. He made a quick note of each number that caught on his note pad. He knew how Masterlock calculated these combinations and like all things worthwhile it could be solved with math.

It would only take him one or two minutes tops.

10

The Irishman’s hand pinned her wrist down. She could barely move her hands that were cuffed to the arms of the wooden captain’s chair anyway.

“Struggling will just ensure that I have to take a second swing,” the Irishman had said. “Now if you feel the need to hold a grudge take it up with your beau. This is all his doing.”

He raised a hammer claw first over his head.

For God sake’s Warren of all the things you’re late for…

Her heart pounded, but her mind was not racing. She watched the Irishman’s green eyes dart from the door to the clock in almost perfect unison with the second hand. Janet was resigned to the fact that as soon as the minute hand landed on the three she would be missing a ring finger. The Irishman was like clockwork. Every movement had a purpose. Waste not, want not.

When they got to the building he pulled a pocketknife from his coat and forced the lock on the door with just one flick of the wrist. While he said that if she moved he might not get her finger off in one shot, Janet was sure that if the Irishman wanted to he could take that finger in one swing if she was running as fast as she could. She watched the claws of the hammer and waited for them to descend. She didn’t need to look at the clock. The Irishman’s wrath is a far more reliable timepiece.

She steeled herself for the strike and felt that it was 10:15.

In a cruel streak the Irishman actually stalled by twirling the hammer in his hand once. She jumped in her seat and flinched at this sudden change.

“Stop skulking in the shadows and come out Warren,” the Irishman said, “I see you there. You almost got the drop on me by coming in that way. I don’t know how the hell you did, but that doesn’t matter none. What does matter is if you don’t drop that bag and come into the light with those hands in the air then I’m taking her fingers. And I can guarantee that it will take more than one strike.”

Warren did as he was told and stepped out of the shadowy doorway on the other side of the room. His eyes stayed on the floor. Seeing that the fight was out of Warren, not that he expected there to be any at all, the Irishman put the hammer into the carpenter’s loop in his jeans and pulled out his revolver.

Warren noticed the square bulge in the Irishman’s front pocket.
I bet that’s Janet’s cell phone.
Warren slipped into an almost fantasy. He saw the phone malfunction and the lithium battery burst to deliver its payload into the Irishman’s thigh. The third eye inside his mind as atrophied as it was opened without thinking about it. There was a flash of light and the Irishman cried out.

He summoned more speed than he had ever used before and far more than he could ever coax out of his torn tendons and ligaments. He picked up his laptop bag and struck the Irishman across the face with it, and then pulled the bag into a downswing. The Irishman’s hand was smashed, and the Smith and Wesson skittered across the floor. He let go of the laptop bag and its contents shattered on the floor. Warren grabbed the collar of the Irishman’s denim jacket and gave him not one but three good knees to the groin.

The Irishman went to the ground with a grunt, and Warren made a dive for his gun. He lined the Irishman’s fallen form into the sights and squeezed the trigger. Neither the trigger nor the hammer would budge. He looked down and clicked the safety off with his thumb. The Irishman got back up, and a wicked smile stretched across his face.

Warren pulled the trigger and there was nothing but a click. The Irishman gingerly walked over and gave Warren enough time to go through the cylinder twice. When the Irishman towered over him, Warren got up to brain the Irishman with his own gun. The Irishman’s hand leapt forward and engulfed the pistol, and a quick hit to Warren’s teeth with one of his Doc Martens wretched it free.

Janet thrashed in her chair and cursed herself for being brought here at the point of an empty gun. He glanced at her for a moment to remind her he’s just as dangerous without the gun. He emptied the shell casings from the cylinder into a coat pocket, and loaded five more with an autoloader. The gun was pointed at Warren long before he was aware of his surroundings again.

He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of the Irishman’s smile.

“That was feckin’ brilliant!” the Irishman almost cheered, “You had your moment and you took it. Don’t feel too bad how could you have known that my gun wasn’t loaded? No one would blame you for that, and I’m not going to hold it against you –
this time
. Hell, I’m impressed I would have never pegged you as the type that would have it in you.” His expression darkened. The Irishman pulled a pair of handcuffs from the duffel bag on the table. He locked Warren’s right arm to his dead arm behind his back.

“I don’t know what my employer has in store for you, but you’re going there nonetheless.”

11

The next ten hours were excruciating. Not because anything horrible was done to them, except for nothing. The worst part was the Irishman forcing them into the back of his PT Cruiser at gunpoint, and how no one in the neighborhood seemed to care. Didn’t want to get involved. Warren wasn’t even convinced that they’d call the police once they got home.

In the hatchback of the car Warren could barely notice the features of the city around him. Not that he knew the city that great – it scared the shit out of him. He had every reason to be afraid of it since this was the city that produced the Irishman. It was a den of monsters. Warren wasn’t sure where they had gone, but the Irishman had driven far. Or at least he drove around the block several times to disorient them. There was even a pit stop at Wendy’s, and the Irishman ordered while scowling at them through the rear view window. Warren was barely able to see the woman at the window. She was seventeen, tops.
If she notices you the bitch’ll be killed over some Biggie Fries, do you want that on your conscience?

A dagger of shame slipped into his gut. He was ashamed in himself that he was this utterly defeated by the Irishman. They were lead into a room where he left them there for the remaining eight hours still cuffed. The room connected into a restroom, but they’d rather die than to be caught with their pants down. There were two Frostys on the table for them and a black and white TV set to channel three. The room was bare, but for its wood paneling.