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Chapter Eleven
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Sooner or later this is all going to go ka-boom. You know that right?
Kaboom.
Ka.
Boom.
Grady dug knuckles into his eyes, trying to shove Miguel's voice out of his head. They both knew the reality of the situation. He didn't need the echo to remind him, over and over, that this was going to blow up in his face.
It didn't stop the echoes from coming.
Dropping his hands from his eyes, he glanced both directions down from the side road where he was hidden, crouched near the bricks in the alley off Piedmont, two blocks from the docks where he'd ended up after staying on the move most of the day. He felt like a vagrant again. And with the hood from the sweatshirt Miguel had found and given him to wear pulled up over his head, obscuring his face, he felt kind of like a kid again too, trying to hide in a foxhole.
The sensation was disorienting. His fingers kept inching into his pockets, itching for that stupid picture of Beaudreaux—the one he used to show around the orphanage and the camp to prove to people that someone was still coming for him.
'This is my father,' he'd lie. And lie and lie and lie.
Stupid.
How naive had he been?
Flexing his fingers back over his eyeballs, he pressed so hard he made sparks flash under his eyelids, but it wasn't nearly distracting enough. There was a low throb at the base of his skull that'd started pulsing in a steady beat sometime early that morning. It wouldn't abate. He tried counting time to it, but he kept losing track of the actual numbers.
Ka-boom, he heard Miguel say again instead, in cadence to the thudding. Ka. Boom. Ka. Boom. Then…
Pet-rov.
And Pet-rov?
This Pet-rov guy?
This dude has a lot of power over you.
"Grady," said Miguel.
Grady yanked his knuckles from his eyes and shot a hand out, nails digging reflexively around cotton and flesh. When his eyes focused, he saw Miguel was hunkered in front of him, frozen, one of his wrists snared tightly in Grady's grip. Balanced on the balls of his feet, Miguel forced his position to look nearly as casual as standing on a sidewalk. Perfect façade of calm on his face.
Involuntarily, and for no specific reason he could name, Grady flinched hard. Just once. As if to ward off a shiver. Then he held very still and didn't do it again. "Miguel," he acknowledged finally, letting go of the wrist slowly and deliberately, drawing his hand back, watching the blood return pigment to Miguel's skin through the capillaries.
Miguel rubbed at it slowly. "You with me?"
Leaning forward, away from the bricks, Grady cleared his throat, wondering if one more sorry could void the word. Swallowing roughly, he chose not to say it. "Where are we?" he asked instead, and watched Miguel's face track his to see if he meant it literally or not. "Miguel," he prompted again, trying to make it clear that he was lucid.
Miguel's eyes held steady. "With some luck," he finally began, "we're where we've bought ourselves some time. Scolari and Chen Dao are on the move, but whether this goes too slow or too fast will probably depend on Rafferty's man Mahoney and whether or not Beaudreaux picks up the right trail. Even then…" He tipped his chin up with a frown. "Everything I've been hearing out there—this Petrov guy is thee hombre escondido. A shadow. People are scared, and nobody seems to know his name."
Pet-rov.
This Pet-rov guy.
Ka-boom.
Grady's mind ran with the echo. He grappled towards his pockets silently, feeling for Beaudreaux's photo, before he remembered the stupidity of the reflex, and forced his hands to his sides, shaking slightly.
Miguel twitched his eyebrows to a frown. "Grady?"
Grady turned his gaze sideways, gathering his voice together in the back of his throat. "What about the other… thing?"
Checking both directions down the alley, Miguel slid his teeth together until they locked. After a moment, he sighed and reached behind him—under his shirt and into his belt. With the comfort of someone long practiced in handling weapons, he drew out a mouse gun and lifted into the air between them. A Beretta Bobcat with a wide, black grip. It dangled in Miguel's hand, pale afternoon sunlight glinting off the short barrel.
"I know you know how to use this," Miguel said seriously, "but I also know how you feel about it. Are you sure you want to take it?"
Grady reached for it, pressing the balance of his fingers against Miguel's. There were divisions here. Discord in code. Just the same, he pulled the gun fully into his own grip and dragged his knee up, working with overly-intent precision to secure it to the ankle on his bad leg.
"And if they search you and find it?" pushed Miguel, watching him.
Easing down the cuff on his jeans, Grady answered, ignoring the hollowness in his own voice. "You said yourself—this is going to go sideways anyway."
"They'll kill you if they find it. You won't even get a shot off."
"It's not me he'll kill," he corrected.
Miguel bit his mouth closed but Grady could see the words trapped behind his teeth. "What?" he said.
Flexing his elbows out a little, Miguel shrugged. "It's just… this could go sideways faster than we expect. You can't even stand. That gun isn't going to do anything for you but get you in more trouble."
"I can stand," insisted Grady, stretching his leg out. His knee pulsed, stable as jelly.
"If you can stand, why do you need it? Your hands and your feet have always been your most reliable weapons. As you have told me, many times."
Grady didn't respond to that, moving instead to climb to his feet, trying to be subtle about the way he was bracing his ribs.
Miguel stood with him—hands hovering but not touching—tilting his head a fraction of a fraction. "I should shadow for you."
"No," said Grady, the bite in his voice like metal. "I've already involved you way more than I should have. You follow me—you get a bullet in your brain." He pointed to his temple to illustrate.
"This isn't like Nigel. I'm already in this."
"But it's still my problem." Grady swallowed against his windpipe, trying not to yell. Consciously, he relaxed his throat, and spoke with quiet precision. "Miguel. When I leave here, as soon as you can put the call in, you do it, then you get the hell out. I shouldn't even be letting you do that much."
"You're not letting me do anything, homes."
"I can't have you in the line of fire." Grady held a hand up. "Just… please. Miguel. Please. Just tell me after you make the call, you'll go wherever you can to hide out for a while and you'll stay there. Please."
"I don't like it."
Gripping Miguel's sleeves roughly, shaking him slightly, and trying not to overbalance, Grady drew down on the material, eyes dark and sincere as they bore into him. "You've done everything you can for me, man. Everything. I appreciate it more than I can say. Now do this. I just... I have to know you're going to come out of this okay." After a final pull, he let go of the jacket, balanced back and held his hand out, waiting.
Miguel flicked his gaze silently down at Grady's fingers, frowning. Finally, he hooked their palms, knuckles tightening to white around the base of his thumb.
Grady nodded in relief when he let go, thumbing his eyebrow as he turned away to move towards the street. He paused before he got there, knuckling the wall. "Hey, Miguel," he called back, turning around again. "If this doesn't work… tell Beaudreaux… Tell him I'm sorry, okay?"
Miguel blinked at him without changing expression. A stoic-chinned draw to the angle of his head. But after a moment he lowered his eyes in what seemed like a nod and Grady turned away and kept going.
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Trang slung a skeptical stare in Grady's direction when he saw him, eyes wrinkling at the corners, somewhere between amusement and disapproval. Settling hands in the pockets of his long jacket, he paced lazily from the roped post by the parking lot, towards the bay and back again.
Grady purposely tore his hand from the railing at his side, balancing without it. There was a hazy, otherworldly sensation slugging through his body. Like a warning. Like he was about to forget things he needed to remember if he didn't just get a grip. "I'm here," he said. "I've kept the rules. I'm here, and Beaudreaux didn't find me. Tell me my assignment."
Trang turned back towards the water without saying anything.
"What are we waiting for?" Grady growled.
Trang's smile became ambiguous and predatory, like a cat toying with a mouse. "Impatience? From you? Is there another appointment on your docket I don't know about? You'll know what you need to know when you need to know it. Just wait."
Clenching his jaw, Grady traced the line of one of the woven ropes framing the dock with his eyes, squinting into the distance at the fogged-out sun sitting low above the wide-spread ocean. He slumped against the post behind him, leaning his weight off his kneecap. His legs were trembling.
Feeling the jittery edge of pre-anxiety overtaking his muscles, he glanced at Trang's relaxed shoulders and swallowed tightly. For just one moment he felt that maybe he would prefer being back in the camps compared to this—that maybe it would have been better if he'd never made it out.
As soon as the thought appeared, he clamped down on it in panic—as if just thinking about it could make it happen—but it was already too late. The memory was suddenly inside his skin. Behind his eyes. He was somewhere far away, sitting next to a wired fence, clutching that stupid picture of Beaudreaux.
He could smell the burnt earth and thick air. He could feel the crumpled edges of the photo beneath his fingertips.
And he could hear Petrov speaking—an abstract, passionless cadence without decipherable words. Like everything else regarding Petrov in his memory, it was more shadow than form. A not-quite-clear conversation in a not-quite-clear-memory. An intangible fear.
The fog over the water drifted, splitting and thinning.
In the sudden glare of the sun, Grady blinked, bringing the bay back into focus. Out of his trance, he glanced at Trang to see if he'd noticed. Absently, he found himself patting his pockets, hands moving of their own accord, like it should be there. Like that photo wasn't already ten years gone. Maybe more. He'd carried it until it'd been in tatters, yellow at the edges with cracks and streaks through the faces, like broken ice.
He couldn't even remember where he'd lost it.
The rumble of a vehicle entering the empty parking lot behind them had him jerking around, barely registering that it was a patrol car before the brief jump of the car's siren sent his breathing into overdrive. "Relax," said Trang as the siren cut with the engine and the two patrolmen stepped out. "They're with us."
Grady palmed his bruised ribs and dipped his head, taking slow, measured breaths in order to drag himself from the frazzled edge of panic. This wasn't helping. He wasn't a kid. Petrov wasn't a ghost. And this wasn't Vietnam.
Jaw tensed and teeth aching, he closed his eyes and imagined the photo one last time. Every crack. Every tatter. When he had it before him, pictured clearly, he rent it in his mind, tore the memory to pieces, then took the remnants and shoved them down deep inside a long dark box, where he wouldn't think of them again.
He hoped.
Some things needed to die for survival. Even good things.
Where had he learned that?
Focusing instead on the pressure of the weapon at his ankle, he opened his eyes to stare at the cement beneath his feet. The weight of the gun bringing a clarity to his thoughts, settling his intentions.
Finding that center, he lifted his gaze to watch the officers' approach. In the midst of everything, he felt a hitch of disappointment at the sight. It was an odd thing to hope for—that all of Beaudreaux's people really were good guys—that the faith B had in his system and his uniform could actually make it work. Then again, reality and Beaudreaux's faith had never quite been the same thing, and Grady had always known that not all cops were good guys.
As they neared, he thought he recognized one of the officers, vaguely, but not the other. Neither seemed bothered by his presence and he took that as a bad sign. Petrov had made it clear, he didn't like dots that connected. Not without intending to sever them. Maybe this cavalier meeting in front of him meant that the smashed piñata had finally run out of prizes. Maybe it meant he would get his death sentence after all. Maybe they all would.
"Patrols are covering the north ports," said the patrolman on the right, readjusting his hat while the other passed a piece of paper into Trang's hand. "That's the duty roster for the remainder of the day, straight from the commissioner. You're clear from dock 17 down."
"And Sergeant Beaudreaux?" questioned Trang.
Grady held his breath.
"Following some lead on something going down with Rafferty—seemed to spend most of the night on that."
"That and looking for that kid," said the other.
"What kid?" asked Trang.
"Mendez, I think. Miguel or Manolo or something—some gangbanger—one of the sergeant's projects. Had an APB on him at least half the night. Didn't seem to turn anything."
Trang glanced at Grady, and though Grady's heart was pounding, he froze his features into poker-faced neutrality. He thought too late to try to close his eyes. They never held the lie as long as he needed them to.
"Miguel," said Trang with a lazy smile. "Mendez?"
"Yeah," said the officer. "And we did like you said and called that girl of his at the bar he owns—couple times last night. She kept thinking we were him." He jerked his head in Grady's direction, vaguely dismissive. "Just kept asking where he was. Didn't seem to have a clue about much else."
"Thank you," said Trang, smiling placidly, folding the paper in half before handing the officers an envelope. "You've been very helpful."
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The sun had dipped below the horizon and the waterfront had melted to grey.
After hours.
The dock house Grady had pressed his back into had no stairs. Just a long platform of planks around a floating entryway set into a wall with thick double-paned windows and no railing. He glanced behind him, up the iron ramp on the port, seeking Trang's position without finding it and wishing like hell he'd been smarter and kept Miguel out of this entirely.
He imagined the conversation Trang and Petrov would have when reporting the information from the officers. He imagined watching the unraveling threads lead from Miguel to Malloy, to Beaudreaux, back to him and to the people in the cages, and he shivered.
In the end it was just one more thing he couldn't control. One more inevitability.
Getting down to it, and hoping he could steady his hands long enough to jimmy the port building's lock, he got a grip on the main door handle and felt his vision blur, the throbbing in his skull increasing in rhythm.
No, he cursed, breathing to find his center by hissing the word. No. No. No. He couldn't lose it yet.
A sound whispered from behind him—the delicate tap of boots on wood. He turned just in time for the taser to nail him in the chest. This time, he didn't tumble off the edge of anything. The jolt simply dropped him to the deck—hard—stole his breath and set his ears to ringing. His vision greyed as he fought for oxygen, fading out as a shadowed figure stood over him, distinction of form lost in the haze of his confusion.
"You're too slow for this one," a voice said with a twist of accent. Italian maybe, but he couldn't tell for certain. Warm fingers reached down and patted his face just as the air came back to his lungs. "Too slow by half," continued the voice. "I think it might be time your boss and me had a little chat."
Grady gasped. "I don't… have a boss," he said, even as his brain answered Pet-rov, Pet-rov, Pet-rov and he hated himself for it.
It was unraveling—the whole grasping-at-threads plan he and Miguel had come up with was fraying into a pile of messy strings. He coughed, gasped, filled his lungs, and coughed again. "I don't have a boss."
The face blinked down at him knowingly.
Grady blinked back. This was it, the fuse burning down.
Ka-boom.
/
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tbc