Authors: Peter Spiegelman
I crouched, listening, and a low growl came from the other side of the hedge. In the yard behind Trautmann’s, the Rottweiler was running in agitated circles, snorting and grunting. His growls grew angrier, and his grunts became barks. Shit. I moved slowly along the back of the garage and then down the side. The dog quieted down. I stood in the shadows for a minute, getting my breathing under control, listening. Nothing moved. I peered into the small garage window. No car.
The rear of Trautmann’s house was dark, except for some windows on the far side. I crossed the driveway and edged toward them, staying close to the back of the house. As I drew nearer, I saw that they were kitchen windows, set on either side of a metal storm door at the top of four concrete steps. I put my hand on the iron railing and my foot on the first step. I heard a scraping sound and a crackling noise.
And something white exploded behind my eyes, and swallowed me whole.
Chapter Twenty-six
Something cool was resting on the side of my face, pressing up against my cheek. It was smooth and flat. It was heavy. I opened an eye, and the world was dim and red and tilting away. I shut my eye, but things kept on tilting in the darkness.
Something cool was resting on the side of my face, pressing up . . . no. My face was resting on something cool. My cheek was pressed against something cool and smooth and flat. A floor. I was facedown on a floor. My body was loose and liquid and drifting, and I was tethered to the earth only by my face on the floor, and by my head, which was as dense as a crate of mud.
I heard sounds—murmuring, rising, falling, loud bursts. After a while, the sounds became words, many of them, coming rapidly, one after the other. I strained to catch them, but they were like live fish, slippery, wriggling, and I couldn’t hang on. After a longer while, the words became speech.
“Stop whining, for chrissakes, and bring that box from the hall.”
“You’re sure he’s not awake? His arms and legs keep moving.”
“I told you, a jolt like he got, they twitch around. I gave him a pretty good boot in the head, too. He’s not going anywhere. Just keep your pants dry.”
“Shouldn’t we put a plastic thing on his ankles too?”
“Go ahead, if you plan on carrying him around. Me, I’d rather he walk. Listen, take a deep breath and shut the fuck up for a couple of minutes, will you? Make yourself useful, bring that box in here.”
“You fit it all in three boxes?”
“Everything we picked, videos and all.”
“What about the rest?”
“Had a little bonfire on Sunday. Don’t need any of that shit, and I sure as hell don’t want it turning up around here. They’ll be on our butts soon enough, thanks to you. Don’t want to make it any easier for ’em than you already have, huh Millie?”
“I told you . . .”
“Now is not the time for you to talk. I don’t give a shit what you told me. If you could’ve held your fucking water, none of this shit would be happening and I wouldn’t be packing my fucking bags now.”
“He knew . . .”
“Didn’t they teach you English at prep school? What don’t you understand about ‘Shut the fuck up?’ Christ . . . and this was such a sweet deal, too. Bought you that fucking hacienda down in Santa Whatever. Got me my place in the islands. And it had legs. We could’ve run this out for years. But you have to shit your pants the first time somebody asks a question. And calling the
Federales . . .
fucking incredible. Make us rush things with ’ole Ricky P. And now this.”
“He knew about Welch . . .”
“How did you get this far, being so stupid, huh Millie? If he knew so much, he wouldn’t be making phone calls, telling you to meet him on some street corner, you putz. He was fishing, and you were the fish. And he hooked you and gave you lots of line so you could fucking drag him here. And now what? Now I’m getting out of Dodge, thanks to you.”
The voices approached and retreated, accompanied by footsteps, the hard sounds of heels on bare floors. The voices were familiar, but I couldn’t find the names. A twitch shot through my shoulders and arms, and I realized my wrists were bound behind me. I tried opening my eyes. One was pressed against the floor and squeezed shut. The other was sticky, crusted with something. I worked it open, and when I did, the world began to spin and tip again, and I was sliding off the floor. I shut it quickly.
“I’m telling you, he’s coming around. I just saw him blink,” a voice said from close by. Footsteps approached.
“Yeah? Let’s see,” the other voice said, and something hard prodded my broken rib. I gasped involuntarily, and jerked away. “Shit, you’re right, Millie. Get him up.” They grabbed me roughly by the arms and hauled me into a chair. A spike of pain rode up my side, from hip to armpit. I opened my eyes, and the world started sliding. I squeezed them shut and opened them again. And again. Things steadied.
I was in a kitchen. It was a medium-sized, rectangular room, with a door and two windows at one end, a passage into a dark hallway at the other, and all the kitchen stuff massed on the long wall in between. The fittings were circa 1960-something: pea green cabinets, orange countertops, speckled linoleum floor, appliances the color of old mustard. Yellow roller shades covered the windows. A dim, ugly light came down from a fixture overhead.
I was sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair, near a square wooden table. Three cardboard boxes took up most of the tabletop. They were open, and I saw bulky manila envelopes inside. The counters were bare except for an uncapped gallon bottle of vodka, an ice tray, my gun, my cell phone, and some plastic handcuffs, the disposable kind they use for mass arrests. Mills’s briefcase was resting against the dishwasher.
“Yo, earth to Johnny! You in there, pal?” Trautmann snapped his fingers in front of my nose. He was wearing jeans and a black Metallica T-shirt. He had a highball glass in his hand and a big automatic under his arm. His hands were huge, and the red scar on his forearm seemed to glow. There was tape across his nose and bruising under his eyes, and he made me think of the Vandals sacking Rome. He raised his glass and took a big swallow.
Mills stood behind him. He looked a thousand years older than the first time I’d seen him, and his steady stream of chatter had gone dry. His eyes were shadowed, and the bones of his face seemed very close to the surface. His lank hair fell forward over his forehead. He crossed his arms on his chest, hugging nothing. He looked at Trautmann and me like we were zoo animals out of our cages.
“How you feeling, Johnny? Not so hot, I bet.” Trautmann chuckled and took a swig from his glass. He was right. Besides the pain in my side and the dizziness, twitches still jerked through my arms and legs, my eyes were jumping around in my head, and nausea was rippling through me in waves. Worst of all, my brains were Jell-O. My attention kept wandering, like an energetic drunk on a street full of bars.
“Got your wires all jangled up, huh? Sparky will do that.” Trautmann picked something up off the kitchen table and flipped it end over end in the air. It looked like a long, black flashlight, but instead of a lamp at the end, it had a wide, flat head, tipped with two pairs of metal fangs. He caught it and pressed a button and a blue ribbon of electricity arced across two of the fangs. A stun gun.
“Not exactly street legal,” he said. “It cranks way higher than what the cops can use. Really eats up the batteries, though. But don’t worry, I got plenty on hand.” Then he made a sudden, grunting noise and feinted at my chest with the stun gun. I didn’t move, but only because I was processing things too slowly to be startled. Trautmann laughed massively.
“Who’re you working for, anyway—the widow Welch, maybe? Pierro? I think it’s Ricky, but Millie doesn’t buy it. Tell me I’m right, Johnny.” I looked at him but said nothing. Trautmann smiled. “Any friends of yours out there now?” he asked. “Your buddy, Neary, maybe? I’m betting no. I didn’t see anybody, and I’m pretty careful. And you’ve been in here long enough that anybody outside would be good and worried by now. Would’ve come to take a look maybe, or called the cops. But it’s all quiet out there. I figure you for the lone wolf type, anyway. Am I right?” I kept looking at him, and kept quiet.
“See,” he turned to Mills, “you can take a lesson from this guy. He’s a prep school faggot like you, but he doesn’t piss his pants. In fact, I was reading up on Johnny, and it turns out he’s a real trip.” Trautmann drained his glass and went to the kitchen counter to fill it again. He poured liberally from the vodka bottle. He was putting it away pretty quick, and I thought maybe he was drunk, but he was such a head case it was hard to tell. Mills gnawed his lower lip and looked at Trautmann.
“You should see his press clippings, Millie. Next to naked pictures, it’s some of the best shit I’ve found on the Internet—a fucking hoot. It turns out Johnny used to be a cop, somewhere up in North Bumfuck, New York. About three years back, he’s carrying water for the feds and the state cops, who’re in his neighborhood working a serial killer.” Trautmann looked at me. “Dead broads in New York, Vermont, up in Canada. What, eight or ten stiffs in all?”
“Twelve,” I said. Trautmann whistled. He flipped the stun gun and caught it one-handed.
“Busy boy. So, Washington’s finest are on the job, sweating every fucking bear in the forest, I bet, and getting nowhere. But Johnny, here, he’s got a theory—some local guy he likes for the killings. So, he goes to the feds and the state boys, and he tells them all about it. And what happens? They blow him off. Think he’s full of shit, I guess, just some weird rich kid playing cops in the woods. Told him to shut up and stay out of the way. Which must’ve pissed Johnny off something fierce, ’cause he decided to become his own one-man task force, and he gets in this guy’s shit in a big way.” Trautmann swirled his drink around.
“But this woodchuck was even more of a psycho than anybody figured. After a couple months of having Johnny in his drawers, the guy flips out—flips out some more, I guess. And what does he do? He fucking offs Johnny’s wife, for chrissakes!” He chuckled and took another swallow.
“It was real neat. No knives, no sex, nothing like his usual act, just one in the eye with a .22 target pistol. But he made damn sure Johnny knew who’d done it. Left a shell casing with a nice clean print, palm print on a window, tire tracks, everything. And then he goes home and writes it all down, full confession with names and dates and stuff nobody but him could’ve known. And then he sits and waits for the cops to come and take him away.” Trautmann chuckled and went to the back door. He raised the shade and peered into the dark for a moment. Then he returned. He flipped the stun gun and caught it again.
“Except it didn’t quite work out that way, ’cause the first cop on scene was Johnny.” Trautmann laughed and emptied his glass. He set it on the kitchen counter. “I guess there were some . . . questions about what happened next. Some different versions of what went down. I know how that goes, pal, believe me. Anyway, the upshot is that when the cavalry arrives, they find Johnny and this crazy bastard. The guy’s dead, of course. Got like ten holes blown in him, and he’s got a gun in his hand, some cheap piece of shit with the numbers missing. Not too suspicious, huh?” Trautmann fished an ice cube out of his glass and put it in his mouth and crunched loudly.
“Johnny caught all kinds of shit for a while, most of it from that fat bastard Pell. Small world, ain’t it? But did he get all jumpy and start crying like a baby? No. He just shut his mouth and toughed it out. Held his water, til it was declared a righteous shoot. See, that’s a lesson for you, Millie. To keep your fucking mouth shut.” Trautmann laughed again and punched Mills not so lightly on the shoulder. Mills rocked back and steadied himself on the refrigerator.
I didn’t pay much attention to Trautmann’s story; it was basically the official version, and I’d heard it all before. Instead, I watched Mills. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, making a distracted box step over a small parcel of floor, and staring at Trautmann. Fear, anger, and disgust played unhidden across his face. And something else was going on too, something concentrated and furious, as if he were working elaborate formulas in his head. Trautmann checked his watch.
“Time flies, Johnny, and I got a little more cleaning up to do before I split. But don’t worry. We’ll have plenty of time to talk once we’re on the road.” A chill ran through my belly. Going anywhere with Trautmann was a bad idea, fatally bad. I needed some time to clear my head, some time for Neary to get there.
“Where are you meeting him?” I asked. They looked at me, puzzled. “Where are you meeting Nassouli?” Mills’s puzzled look grew. Trautmann smiled.
“What the fuck are you talking about? You think that rat bastard Gerry is in this?” he said, with a sour laugh.
“Everyone thinks he’s pulling the strings,” I said. My voice sounded brittle and unfamiliar in my ears. “And that you two are the errand boys.” Trautmann guffawed.
“Hey, that’s nice. I like that. That motherfucker skips on me, he ought to make up for it somehow. Let that prick do me some good for once—let him take the heat on this. But between you and me, I don’t need fucking Gerry’s help, not when I got my boy here.” Trautmann laid a massive hand on Mills’s shoulder and looked at him, smiling large.
“That’s one thing about Mr. Mills, John, he does know his shit. Yep, it was a lucky fucking day when you found me going through those files, Evan.” Mills shrank away, as if he didn’t like being touched or having Trautmann say his name. Trautmann ignored him and looked at his watch again.