Hardbingers

3

Jack hopped out of the cab at Hudson and Worth and looked around. He hadn't taken time to change. Kept the jeans and beat-up bomber jacket he'd worn to the doctor's. He noticed a bearded guy on the corner. A ragged-cut square of cardboard with a crudely printed message dangled from his neck.

The guy could have been anywhere from forty to seventy. A flap-eared cap covered much of his head. A dirty, gray, Leland Sklar—class beard hid pretty much everything else. He wore what looked like a dozen layers of sweaters and coats, none of which had seen the inside of a washing machine since the Koch administration. He jiggled the change in the blue-and-white coffee container clutched in his gloved hand.

Louie had said look for a beard hanging around Worth and Hudson. This could be him.

"Cool sign," Jack said. "How's it working for you?"

"A gold mine," he said without inflection. He kept his eyes straight ahead. "Get 'em to smile and they part with some change."

"Mickey's got an V in it."

Still no look. "So I been told."

"You Rico?"

Now he looked. "Yeah. You Jack?"

"Hear you saw something."

"Maybe. Heard there was a reward for finding a red-haired kid, so I been keeping my eyes open."

"And?"

"Follow me."

He led Jack around a couple of corners, then stopped across the street from an ancient five-story, brick-fronted building.

"I seen three guys carrying a red-haired girl through the cellar door over there."

The building looked deserted. The scaffolding and boarded-up windows said remodeling in progress.

Rico said, "Lucky thing I was looking that way because it happened so fast Fd'a missed it."

This didn't sound good, even if she wasn't Timmy's niece.

"What was she wearing?"

"Couldn't tell. Had her wrapped up in a sheet but I saw her head. Had Little Orphan Annie hair."

Jack pulled out Cailin's photo.

"This her?"

"Never saw her face, but the hair's pretty much the same."

"When did all this go down?"

"Soon as it started gettin' dark."

"I mean what time?"

"Ain't got no watch, mister."

Jack did. He checked it: 5:30. Full dark now. Sunset came between four-thirty and five these days, but the streets started to murk up before that. She could have been in there for an hour or more.

"Struggling?"

"Nope. Looked asleep. Or dead maybe."

Cailin or not, he'd have to go take a look. As he stepped toward the curb Rico grabbed his arm.

"Don't I get my money?"

"If it's the right girl, yeah."

"How's about a little advance? I'm a tad short."

Jack nodded toward the sign. "I thought that was a gold mine."

"Traffic's been light. C'mon, man."

Jack fished out a ten and gave it to him. Rico checked it, then grinned, showing both his mustard-colored teeth.

"Bless you, sir! I'm gonna use this to buy me a nice bowl of hot chili!"

Jack had to smile as he crossed the street.

Right.

He approached the rusty, wrought-iron railing that guarded the stone steps to the cellar. He leaned over for a look. Light filtered around the edges of the chipped and warped door at the bottom. But no window.

He stepped back and looked around. To his right he saw an alley just wide enough for a garbage can. In fact, two brimming cans stood back to back at the building line. Behind them, faint yellow light oozed from a small, street-level window. The alley dead-ended at a high brick wall.

Jack placed a hand against each of the sidewalls and levered himself over the garbage cans, then knelt by the window. He wiped off the layer of grime and peered through. Took him a few seconds to orient himself, to make sense out of what he was seeing.

"Shit."

A naked red-haired, teenage girl was strapped to a long table. Jack didn't need to pull out the photo again. He recognized her. Cailin wasn't moving. Her eyes were closed. Could have been dead, but the duct tape over her mouth said otherwise. Didn't need to gag a corpse. She looked unharmed.

Three lean, shaggy-haired men dressed in jeans and sweatshirts hovered around her. Two stood watching as the third drew on her skin. Looked like he was using a black Sharpie to trace weird free-form outlines all over her body. The pattern reminded Jack of Maori tattoos, but much more extensive.

On the wall behind them someone had painted an inverted pentacle in a circle.

Jack nudged the window and felt it move. Slowly, carefully, he eased it inward but it wouldn't pass the inch mark.

"Come on, Bob," said one of the watchers. "What's taking so long?"

"Yeah," said the other. "Get it fucking done."

"Get off my back!" Bob said. "This has got to be done rightl I do a half-assed job, it's all for nothing."

"Nothing?" The first one nudged the second and grinned as he stared at Cailin's naked body. "Oh, 1 wouldn't say that."

The second guy thought that was real funny.

Someone needed to bring this party to a screeching halt. The window was too small to fit through, but he could pull his Glock and break the glass. Or he could go around front and kick in the door.

He'd promised Gia to stay arm's length and do the 911 thing, but he couldn't count on the cops getting here in time. Had to go in.

He'd reached the garbage cans and was just about to hop over them when a big black Chevy Suburban chirped to a halt at the curb before the building. Jack ducked as three men dressed in black fedoras, black suits, black ties, and white shirts stepped out. Despite the darkness, all wore sunglasses. They were either trying to look like the Blues Brothers or the mythical Men in Black from UFO lore.

Or like the two similar-looking characters Jack had dealt with last spring.

The three made a disparate group. One was huge, one short and skinny, one somewhere between.

They looked like they knew where they were going as they crossed the sidewalk and hurried down the cellar stairs. When Jack heard them kick in the door, he scrambled back to the window.

The trio with the girl had heard the sound of the door—how could they not?—and drawn long knives.

The three men in black burst in with drawn pistols.

"Who the fuck're you?" said the artist.

The big guy pointed a suppressed H-K Tactical at him and fired. The bullet hit him in the nose and flung him back against the table. He hung there against Cailin's body, then slithered to the floor, very dead. The other two immediately dropped their knives and raised their hands. But the big guy wasn't impressed. With no hesitation and no sign of emotion he shot each once in the head.

Phut!

Phut!

"Damn you, Miller!" the middle-size guy shouted. "What'd you do that for? What's the matter with you?"

Miller bolstered his pistol. "Just improving the gene pool."

"What about the plan? Tag them and track them, see where they hang out. See if there's any more like them. Remember that? Ever occur to you that they inürht have been useful alive?"

"Buncha fucktards. Nothing useful ever coming from them." The corners of his mouth curled up in a barely noticeable smile. "Least not now anyways."

The medium guy shook his head. "All right, let's wrap her up and get her out of here."

"Let Zeklos do it. He's gotta be good for something.""

The third, a buck-toothed weasel guy, shot him a venomous look, then approached Cailin.

What the hell?

Jack could still call the police, but the group would be long gone before they got here. Besides, he wanted to know what was going on. Who were these guys? And what did they plan to do with Cailin?

He pulled a knit cap from his jacket pocket. Had an idea of how to find out.