Death Kingby Danielle L. Parker |
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| Chapter 3 |
Jim Blunt, Captain of the starship Pig’s Eye, earns a living the hard way at the raw edge of human space. Caught between Earth’s long arm and the unwelcome attentions of humanity’s alien rivals, the Asp, the captain sometimes finds himself in more trouble than even an outlaw trader can handle.
A skeletal child sat on the step Blunt was about to put his boot on. The captain paused to silently consider the unexpected obstacle.
The child was perhaps twelve, its sticklike arms wrapped around a twig-thin torso. It was dressed in nothing but multicolored plastic sheeting, probably torn from garbage sacks or tarps. The head seemed too large for a neck the captain could have snapped between two fingers. Its face was gaunt and hollow, scarcely recognizable as human. Was it male or female? He could not tell.
Its eyes were no longer human at all. Strange sparkles, bright lights flashed and glittered from deep within. Those eyes met the captain’s, but could they truly see him? He thought not.
A languorous female voice spoke from above. “Don’t give her anything. She’ll just score more dust!”
The captain looked up. A woman leaned upon a sill in the upper story of the brownstone. Her ample bosom, pressed between her arms, filled the width of her open window. She wore a vast, curling, auburn wig, slightly askew, and her lips were carelessly slashed with red.
“You could give her food.”
The woman shook her head, setting all her curls and double chins a-tremble.
“They don’t eat when they’re that far gone. They only want one thing... they’ll do anything for it. Anything. You’ll see!”
Indeed, a bone-sharp hand quested forth and slyly touched the captain’s leg. As he glanced down, wordless with shock, the child on the step tugged open its plastic skirt and parted its little legs. It was too young to have hair on its genitals — only bruises.
Blunt hissed a vicious oath. As gently as he could, he detached the clinging hand. It was like twigs, fragile and fleshless. The sensation of its clutch seemed to linger on his skin like slime.
“I’ll be down to let you in,” the woman called, and withdrew her head.
Blunt went past, up the remaining three steps, wiping his hands on his trousers. The sensation lingered, all the same. Pig’s Eye held a full cargo of pixie dust, enough ampoules to destroy thousands of such children. What hell was he descending into? Would his hands ever be clean again?
He heard a heavy creak. Through the iron grating protecting the glass door, Blunt glimpsed red slippers and stout ankles. The rest of the woman descended into view. She moved with difficulty, clinging, white-knuckled, to the railing, feeling for each step with a questing toe. She was wide and enormously fat: three hundred pounds or more on a five-foot-two-inch frame draped in a tent-like red dress.
He waited. At last the woman, snorting like a driven horse, threw open her three separate locks and held open the door.
“I’m too fat for this,” she gasped. “Too fat. One day I won’t be able to come down these stairs. Then where will poor Lucille be? Who’ll look after her?”
The stairwell smelled of stale incense and cheap pine oil cleaner and an acrid under layer of dried urine. Lucille herself smelled of unwashed bodily creases and a heavy perfume. The captain coughed involuntarily, trying not to breathe, and his hostess smiled proudly.
“Tabu,” she explained. “A classic. I’ve used it since I was a girl. It still drives the men wild. Go in. Up the stairs, you’re expected.”
“Ma’am,” the captain said, “you’ll have to step out first. There’s not room for both of us in that stairwell.”
The woman put her fists on her wobbling layers of hip and looked up at him.
“You’re a mighty fine-looking man. I’m not in the business anymore, but I might have let you have it for nothing, when I was. I liked the really big ones, when I was younger. They liked me, too.”
She pushed past him, swamping Blunt’s bone and solid muscle like a passing ocean liner, and stood on the stoop, wiping her face with a well-used handkerchief and breathing heavily.
“Go on,” she panted. “It’ll take me all day to get back up those stairs. I’ll rest a bit first. First door on your left, upstairs. He’s on his way.”
The captain resettled his hat and wordlessly obeyed.
The narrow stairwell led up one flight to a hall that ran the width of the brownstone. Two doors at opposite ends opened on the hall. The left-hand door stood open; the right-hand door, when the captain gently tried its knob, proved locked. He heard no sounds behind it.
He drew his gun as he softly returned to the open door, but the precaution proved unnecessary. Beyond was only a fusty apartment, its ancient carpets shining with years of neglect, and every drape gray with dust. A collection of dated erotic classics, clearly the owner’s pride and joy, was displayed in a glass-fronted library cabinet. The overall décor was shabby pink boudoir, and on every available surface perched unwashed plates and lipstick-ringed glasses. A television mumbled a grocery advertisement in the living room; its color-saturated apples and red raw meat looked vaguely obscene.
He prowled through the small kitchen. The sink overflowed with the same neglect and clutter. The countertops were invisible under tumbled stacks of vacuum-packed Spaghetti-Os and like items. The stale, musty odor was overwhelming.
But where was the man he had come to meet?
He returned to the outside hall. Once more he pressed his ear to the closed door. Still nothing. What were the chances, though, that an innocent party lived next door to a connection of one of the biggest dustmen in the business? The captain stepped back and kicked with all the force of his steel-toed boot and two-hundred-plus pounds.
The wooden door crashed open. The captain crouched low in its wake, ready to fire, but saw only a long-unused apartment beyond.
Perhaps the place was not quite abandoned. Blunt soft-footed, following tracks in the thick dust. They led him to a third door in the empty living room, this one connected to the adjacent brownstone. Its handle was dust-free and shiny with use, the door itself a no-nonsense steel. The handle turned when he lightly tried it.
Blunt bent his ear to the metal. He heard sounds behind it, as of persons approaching. He retreated hastily. Someone had ripped out the sinks from the ruined kitchen. The door of an ancient refrigerator swung half-open, displaying its mould-wrapped offerings listlessly. But still, it provided solid cover. Blunt crouched behind it, gun in fist, and watched the handle of the steel door turn.
The first man through was muscle, a giant whose South Seas features were obscured with intricate blue-inked tattoos. A long military gun rested in the crook of his equally tattooed, bulging forearm. On his heels was a small man in a drab gray business suit, his scanty hair combed carefully over his balding pate. His pinched, pale face was ferret-sharp; his light-colored eyes wandered restlessly. Last came a husky young man who turned to close the door behind him. The handgun he wore spoiled the cut of his natty blue jacket.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
“Toss that over here,” Blunt said, stepping out from behind the refrigerator. “There’re still four bullets left in this gun. I always thought seven was a lucky number.”
The man in the shiny blue jacket groaned. With trembling fingers, he tossed the half-drawn gun to the captain’s feet. Then he bowed over his broken knee, pressing his ruined kneecap with his bloody fingers.
“You killed Sammie,” the small man remarked in the nasal accent of the Bronx. He looked down. “Right through the eyes. Shot out his very pupils, looks like. You’re pretty good with that antique popper. What is it, an old .45?”
Blunt stuffed the tossed gun in his belt. “You told me you’d come alone, Scherensky,” he answered. “Just helping you keep your word.”
“I never travel without protection,” the small man commented, stepping over his fallen protector. “Just good business sense, just business. Nothing personal in it, nothing personal at all. Do you want to go next door for our talk?”
“I like it here.”
“Suits me. Suits me just fine, then.” The small man fumbled at his breast pocket. Paused. “Just a smoke, do you mind? May I offer you one? No? Like to settle my nerves. My nerves are bad all the time in this business.”
He lit his cigarette and blew whitish smoke through his nostrils. “See you’re a man of few words and quick action,” he continued. “Suits me. Suits me just fine. Let’s see what you got, then. Lay it on me. Folks don’t pay much attention to noises here but you never know, you never know. Let’s see what you got.”
Blunt reached inside his vest. On his outstretched palm, he displayed three blue ampoules: three cobalt-colored ovals the size of horse pills.
The small man studied them with his ferret-sharp eyes. “My eyes aren’t that good,” he said. “Lay it on me, lay it on me. I won’t bite. Need to feel ‘em.”
He took the ampoules and rolled them between his hands. He bent and scrutinized them with narrowed eyes; he sniffed them, and licked one delicately with his tongue.
“Don’t look like the usual,” he commented at last. “I admit, don’t look like the usual. But there’s only one way to tell if it’s echt. Only one way to tell for sure. Artie! There’s a fairy on the step outside. You take one of these and give it to her. See if it’s the real deal.”
The young man groaned. “My leg’s shot up, boss! I’m bleeding to death! I can’t make it down those stairs!”
“Well,” the small man said, “then you can take this amp yourself, only you know I got no use for fairies in my organization. Suit yourself. Suit yourself, boy.”
The crew-cut man bowed, gasping over his shattered leg. “I’ll need a brace,” he replied at last, white-faced.
An old broom leaned beside the refrigerator. Blunt broke the handle off with his hands.
“You can use this.”
They watched in silence. The bodyguard pushed himself up with the aid of the broom handle. He lurched to the wall and rested there, panting and ashen-faced, for a few minutes.
He left a trail of blood behind him. Blunt heard the erratic tap-tap of his broom outside in the hall then on the stairs.
“We’d better go out in the hall,” the small man said at last, dropping his cigarette. “There’s a window looks out over the street.”
He walked with quick steps, paying no further attention to Blunt. He leaned over the sill.
“She’s taking it,” he murmured. “She’s taking it — yes, you can see the sparkle — it’s the real thing, looks like. The real deal! Mister, you did it!”
He turned. His pale eyes glittered. “What you telling me true, then?” he demanded. “You got a source that don’t belong to him? You telling me the truth, mister? Someone broke the formula? I got three hidden labs working on it all the time, the best chemists I can buy. None of ’em have cracked the formula. None of ’em have come close!”
Blunt leaned against the wall with his arms folded over his chest. His eyes were bleak and cold. “All the dust you want, Scherensky. None of it from Thanatos. I’ve got a new source. Thanatos doesn’t own the magic formula anymore. He won’t own the market anymore, either, not if you’re game to throw in with me.”
The small man strode up and down the hall, cracking his knuckles in painful excitement. “This’ll blow things wide open,” he said. “Wide open. There’ll be war. Thanatos won’t take this lying down! But the money — the money! How much product can you deliver right now, mister?”
The captain shrugged. “How much do you want?”
The dustman stopped in his tracks. His pale eyes widened. “That much?” he whispered. “I got a pretty good appetite, mister!”
He cracked his knuckles jerkily again. “The deal still stands,” he continued at last. “Your side gets fifty percent of the street. Street will be going down, if we bring in too much product at once; we’ll have to manage that. There’ll be new markets, of course. This is a growth business if I ever saw one. I’ll tell you where and when to deliver the product in a few days. I want at least fifty kilos to start. I’ll need a week to get ready. A week! It’ll take that long, at least.”
He leveled an accusing finger suddenly. “You break something, you gotta pay for it! You broke two of my best guns. You gotta pay for that. I’ll need good guns. Thanatos isn’t going to take this without a fight. That wasn’t part of the deal, mister!”
“You’ve got two more ampoules,” Blunt said.
“Guess the beef ain’t worth much more than that.” Scherensky bit at his finger. “This better be an exclusive,” he continued. “An exclusive: you and your partners don’t cut in no one else. You supply the product, I market it. Is it a deal, mister?”
He held out his hand. There was blood beneath the bitten nail. “Shake on it,” he said. “Shake on it, then, mister!” His hand was damp and cold.
“I’ll tell you when and where in a few days,” he said. “Same channel as before. You lie low. I don’t want Thanatos to get wind of this, not a hint. Well, goodbye till then, mister!”
He walked rapidly away.
Blunt wiped his hand upon his trousers. But the slimy sensation lingered. He could not get rid of it. He holstered his gun and went slowly down the stairs.
The young man had dragged himself back inside. He rested against the lowest stair in a puddle of darkening blood, his broken leg bent beneath him. Blunt, pausing before he stepped over the prone figure, thought him already dead. But the brown eyes opened suddenly and stared accusingly up at him.
The fat woman was still outside. “She’s dead now,” she said softly. “Her, too.” Two tears tracked down her pasty cheeks. “I used to feed her. I can’t get down the stairs no more. I used to throw her food out the window. Look, she still has stars in her eyes!”
Sparkles flickered in the glassy eyes. Whatever was in there, was still moving, still hungry. The blue ampoule, broken now, lay in her tiny palm.
Blunt looked down at his hands. He stroked them jerkily down his thighs. “I can’t save them all, lady,” he whispered. “I can’t save them all.”
She looked at him without comprehension. “I’m a fat old woman. I can’t get up those stairs no more. I can’t do nothing no more. Nothing. I can’t do nothing!”
“You said it, lady.”
He left them. The street was still and watchful. The empty eyes of the broken brownstones peered down. He lifted his face to the gray sky as he walked swiftly away. “I can’t do nothing,” he breathed. “Not anymore. Verity, you son of a bitch! What the hell have you done to me?”
Copyright © 2010 by Danielle L. Parker
