Chase Baker & the Humanzees from Hell (A Chase Baker Thriller Book 8) (6 page)

12.

Because of laws basically banning handguns in New York City, I would leave my .45 at my place in Albany when I went to visit my daughter, Ava, in Gramercy Park. Although that’s an affluent part of Manhattan, the walk back to the subway could get dicey at night. So instead of my usual sidearm, I carried a 12-inch flashlight. As I passed a particularly sketchy stretch, I’d fire a beam onto the ground by my feet.

Paranoid? Depends on your perspective. No one ever bothered me because the flashlight brought to mind law enforcement. Who else walks around with a flashlight at night? And if some low-life had tried to pull something on me, I carried a battery-packed club to defend myself with that fell within the legal boundaries of New York City and easily fit inside my bush jacket. Reasonable or not, this is how my brain works. 

Perched up on this hill overlooking the museum, I deploy a tweaked version of the flashlight trick with the laser sight on the .45. A bright, red line connects my position to the shadowy figure near the museum. It doesn’t matter that I’m not going to pull the trigger. I want whoever is down there to
think
that I’m ready to shoot, that I’m actually a SWAT team armed with assault rifles. This is why there are prank videos involving laser pointers and giggling idiots on YouTube.

The human-shaped, shadowy blob stops in its tracks as soon as the laser connects with what I assume is its center of mass. I can’t let whoever that is panic and bolt off to the vehicle, though, so I thumb the laser sight off, allowing the incident to be written off as a product of imagination. I’m not the only paranoid scab around with an overactive brain.

I play cat-and-mouse with the laser sight to keep this shadow blob of a person guessing. The point isn’t to mess with anyone’s head, although I’m seeing now why those YouTube videos are so popular, but to buy us some time for what comes next.

What’s coming next is Hillary in the Jeep, closing the quarter-mile dash at 75 MPH on a road designed for 40. The blur of the Jeep racing toward the museum is a fitting portrait of her rage.

She hits the brakes in time to come to a skid behind the vehicle parked against the museum ruins, blocking it in. I keep the laser sight trained on the shadow blob until the dust settles. Between Hillary and I, we probably come across as a police sting operation, which would only be partly true.

I hear muffled shouting as Hillary exits the Jeep. That’s my cue to holster the .45 and hike down the hill to join her. She’s armed only with the experience of the last 24 hours, which in all likelihood is more than enough to see her through until I show up.

Good luck, whoever you are down there. For the sake of the attorney’s fees, I hope you’re not some gawker who stopped by the wrong place at the wrong time.

The shouting becomes clearer as I approach the museum. Hillary’s voice cuts through the sound of gravel crunching under my feet as I hustle over.

“…dumb bastard…son of a bitch…,” I hear her say.

My morning jogs pay off, and I’m not out of breath by the time I finish the quarter-mile dash. The moonlight shows what my laser sight couldn’t. The shadow blob reveals its true identity as someone out of a James Bond movie. It’s not the well-tailored hero, though, but one of the villains. Bald, older gentleman. Eye patch. Bad teeth that are obvious even at night. Dark military fatigues. A Russian accent thick enough to stand out in the labored breathing coming from his position on the ground. Pretty textbook bad guy. He’s lying on his back with a pistol in his right hand. He’d be firing it were it not for Hillary’s shoe keeping his hand in place. Her other foot plants itself on his throat.

I take out the .45, making sure its stainless steel frame catches the moonlight.

“Damn, Hillary. Nice work,” I say.

Hillary stares at me like we’ve never met before. Her lizard brain is still catching up to the situation.

I reach down and rip the pistol away from the bald man with my free hand. I release the magazine, letting it fall to the ground, and rack the slide to clear the chamber. I stuff the empty pistol into a pocket of my bush jacket, then flip on my .45’s laser sight. I’m not done playing with this guy yet.

“Let off him, Hillary. Do it slowly,” I say as I plant a red dot between the bald man’s eyes. This time I’m close enough for the threat of a shot to actually mean something.

Hillary steps away, although I notice a bit of reluctance in her movements.

She actually enjoyed kicking this guy’s ass.

“We haven’t met before, have we? My name is Chase Baker. All you need to know about me for the moment is that I’m a trigger pull away from delivering a bullet at 2,000 feet per second into your forehead, which is a hell of a lot faster than you can do anything,” I say. “Since you’re carrying a pistol and poking around the site of an explosion late at night, I take it you’re not some gawker. Then again, this is Texas. I could give you the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not feeling generous tonight.”

Always open with a joke. Chase, the comedian.

The bald guy coughs and rubs his sweaty throat with coarse hands. It sounds like sandpaper skinning a trout.

“Do you always greet people this way? You point a gun at them?” he says, his rich baritone smothered in a Russian accent.

“If I don’t know them, yes. So why don’t you tell me your name and I’ll see what I can do about this gun?” I say.

“My name is Doctor X,” the man says.

Hillary paces nearby, burning off the excess adrenaline in her system. She keeps muttering something. I assume correctly that it’s profanity and continue with the interrogation.

“Doctor X, huh? Must make you the only doctor with a signature anyone can actually read on those prescription slips,” I say.

“I don’t write prescriptions, idiot,” Doctor X says.

“No shit. This isn’t exactly a Walgreens,” I say, nodding to the wreckage. “What brings you to the Museum of the Bizarre, Doctor X, other than finally finding a place where your look fits in?”

Doctor X doesn’t appreciate my sense of humor. Good. I use humor like a weapon, even if I’m the only one laughing. It keeps me focused and in control.

“Let me up and I’ll tell you,” Doctor X says.

I look over to Hillary, still wearing a hole in the moonlight on the ground. “You good with that?”

“Yeah. Let him up,” she says, taking the reins back from the adrenaline.

Doctor X shuffles to his feet a little too quickly for my liking.

“Easy pal,” I say and take a step back. “Up against the Jeep. Hands on the hood.”

Doctor X complies, although not without a string of what I assume is an insult about my mother directed at me in Russian. I keep the laser sight on him as Hillary pats him down. She finds a quartermaster’s bounty of daggers, ammo and gadgets, all of which she sets on the ground. It’s the wallet or ID I’m most interested in, but those are missing.

“Doctor X” it is then.

“OK, Doctor X, let ‘er rip. Who are you?” I say once Hillary is finished.

“I’m someone who can offer you a lot of money to stop what you’re doing and forget this ever happened,” Doctor X says, his hands still resting on the hood.

“Oh, yeah? How much?” I say.

Hillary shoots me a dirty look.

Then again, too much humor can be a bad thing.

“I mean, what makes you such a hotshot?” I say.

“Because I possess something far more important than money. It’s why I came here. I needed to make sure the museum was properly handled,” Doctor X says.

I watch Hillary pick up a dagger and squeeze it tight in her hand. She’s thinking what I’m thinking.

“What are you in possession of that’s so important?” I say.

Doctor X pauses and cranks his head around to look at Hillary. “I’m the one who has your Iceman.”

13.

The revelation about Doctor X’s connection to the Iceman comes as little surprise, but Hillary still looks shocked. It’s as if the revelation confirms this isn’t a dream.

Doctor X takes a step back from the Jeep and turns to face us. The laser sight from my .45 continues to plant a red dot in his vitals, but he knows I may as well be holding a foot-long sub. I’m not going to shoot him, not even if it would do his ugly mug some good. The moonlight accentuates the crooked peaks and hollow valleys of his face.

“Me. I took the Iceman,” Doctor X says. He raises his hands to mock the .45 in mine.

Hillary corrects him. “
Stole
. You stole
my
Iceman.”

“No. I’m returning it to its rightful owner. It was never yours to begin with. Not you, not the wretched capitalists who whored out its body almost 50 years ago and absolutely not the so-called collector you purchased it from,” Doctor X says to Hillary.

“With the check I wrote to buy it, you better believe I own the Iceman,” Hillary says.

Doctor X erratically rubs the eye not covered by the patch like he’s shining an apple. He blinks and says, “You’re wrong twice. First, the Iceman is the property of the Russian government. Second, your laws forbid you from owning a human being.”

The plot thickens, but so does my bullshit detector. He’s an opportunist trying to con us out of something. The Russian accent is probably a fake.

“Nice try, buddy, but even if you’re telling the truth, you’re the one who is mistaken,” I say. “The Iceman hit the scene in the 1960s, which means it would technically fall to the Soviet Union, a country that no longer exists. Second, it’s not a human being. It’s a…a…”

I want to say, “fake,” but I lose my appetite to kick the Museum of the Bizarre while it’s down. Instead, I turn to Hillary and ask, “What is it exactly?” because I can’t imagine she’d put a human corpse on display for profit.

“It makes me a lot of money. That’s what it is,” Hillary says without a hint of remorse.

“You never confirmed what it actually is?” I say. I’m unpleasantly surprised by her lack of empathy. What if the Iceman is just some guy who found himself locked inside a freezer back in the ‘60s?

Doctor X chuckles and mutters something in Russian before switching back to English to say, “All you need to know is it’s human and it belongs to the Russian government. The fall of the CCCP doesn’t change either of those things. Indeed, it is
you
who is the criminal. I merely reclaimed stolen property and pulled over on the side of the road, where I was attacked by a woman in a vehicle and a man with a gun.”

He’s got a point, even if it’s only logical in the vortex of conversations like this one. I lower the .45 while Hillary looks on incredulously like I pulled a severed head out of my pocket.

What the hell am I doing here? Is Hillary who she says she is? Should I really be helping her reclaim a human body so she can turn a buck? And what’s the true story behind the Iceman?

I need answers before I can even think about using that .45 again.

“Good to see you’re a reasonable man, Mr. Baker. I wish I could say the same for Ms. Carter,” Doctor X says. “We tried the easy way, but she refused. We had no choice. Our agent gave his life to cover our tracks, to make this look like a random act or an accident. The Iceman is that important to my country.”

“And why is that?” I say.

“That’s not for you to know,” Doctor X says. He nods to the Jeep. “Now move that vehicle so I can be on my way, and so you two can live to see tomorrow.”

Hillary holds the keys, and she isn’t in a hurry to move the Jeep away from its position blocking in Doctor X’s car.

“Not until you tell me where you’re keeping it and when you’re bringing it back,” she says to Doctor X.

“Fine. Have it your way,” Doctor X says and whistles.

Whistles?

Suddenly, I’m not the only one with a laser sight out here. A spider web of lasers stretches out across the night, ensnaring Hillary and I like two trapped flies.

“Did you think I travel alone?” Doctor X says. “This is your last chance. Move your vehicle and let me leave, or die.”

The laser sights trained on our bodies make a convincing argument. Hillary stomps to the Jeep, fires it up and eases it back just enough for Doctor X to leave in his car, which he does after gathering his belongings from the ground. The lasers disappear as he drives away, taking any chance of finding the Iceman with him. That is, unless we follow him in the Jeep.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” I say into the open driver’s seat window of the Jeep.

“Get in,” Hillary says. “There’s no way this ends here.”

I ride shotgun in the passenger seat with the pistol while Hillary does her best NASCAR driver imitation. The laser sights from outside streak through windows as we haul ass down the road in pursuit of Doctor X.

Things are going to get interesting.