Blues Highway Blues (A Crossroads Thriller Book 1) Page 31

  “Ahhhh!” the mad Russian called out. “Look who’s returned from his cross-country vaca—” He stopped midmock when he noticed Daniel’s condition. “What is this? Did I ask any of you beat him? No. I deed not!”

  “No.” Potbelly looked like he’d been caught peeing in the hotel pool with the telltale blue ring of Wee-Wee-See spreading out across the water all around him. It was time to shift the blame. “It was Dragon. I never touched the guy.”

  Filat rolled his eyes the way he used to do with his kids (before he’d had to kill them) and called for his disobedient biker. “Dragon! Get in here!”

  A couple of seconds later, the muscle-bound biker walked into the living area, still trying to wipe Daniel’s blood from the assortment of inked demons, monsters, and naked women that wrapped around his massive forearms. “What?”

  “What is this?”

  Dragon looked disinterestedly at the man he’d just beaten. “What?”

  “He is broke-een already!” the little man complained. “Did I not say no one touches him?”

  “I had a score to settle with him.” Dragon shrugged it all off.

  “No. No! NO!” The Russian jumped to his feet. “If I ask you to my table, do you eat before me? If I ask you to par-tee, do you drink before me? Fuck my girls before me?” He gestured at the strippers, who’d all stopped their gyrations and were staring at their patron like so many heavily medicated fawns caught in high beams.

  Dragon still wasn’t seeing the problem with the warm-up ass-kicking he’d delivered. “What do you want me to do? Un-punch him?” He might not have meant it to come out of his mouth as flippantly as it did, but the offhand comment made everyone in the room suck in their collective breath.

  “Un-punch him?” Filat asked the question almost gently. “You talk to me like this?” He took a step or two toward the biker, picking up a bottle of Jack Daniels from the coffee table as he went. “That funny. Un-punch him?”

  Dragon took it as a good sign, a conciliatory draw on a shared bottle of Jack. “What? I can’t do nothin’ about it now.” And as far as he was concerned that was all there was to it.

  He was wrong. Filat smiled and then a second later he swung the whisky bottle with incredible speed up toward Dragon’s head. It shattered against his left temple. Some of the strippers squealed at the collision of flesh and glass. Some of the bikers winced, but everyone in the room knew better than to interfere.

  Dragon collapsed to the floor in a shower of Jack and glass shards. A second later there was a psychotic Russian on him too.

  The Raging Runt of Rublyovka slashed wildly at the unconscious biker’s face. The wounds were so deep that the body jumped and convulsed as each was opened, but the pain was never enough to stir him back to consciousness. Again and again, Filat cut at the face until the only thing vaguely human about it was the gaping mouth where bubbles formed in the pooling blood as Dragon struggled to breathe.

  Filat stuck the razor-sharp end of the bottle neck into Dragon’s mouth and began moving it about like it was a plumbing tool and he was laboring to get something out of a clogged sink. As he worked, he screamed, “Nobody talk to Filat like that! Nobody! Nobody!”

  When he was finished or exhausted or simply figured his insubordinate biker minion had had enough, he rose to his feet, leaving the broken bottle protruding out of Dragon’s mouth. It was clear the adrenaline rush (and crystal high) had left his legs a little shaky and Filat took a deep breath and a moment to collect himself. He shook out his robe, as if that did anything for the blood patterns that were splattered all over it. “Now. Where were we?” He returned to his spot on the couch.

  None of the girls wanted to sit next to the blood-drenched psychotic, but he patted the seat next to him insistently and a blue-haired girl who looked like she might still remember faintly what it was like to be happy took the seat, figuring it was better than taking a chance on pissing him off. He put an arm around her and she tried not recoil at his blood-covered touch.

  “Right,” Filat said flatly and then turned his still-crazy-wide eyes on Daniel. “That was regrettable. It’s been so long, I wanted to be the one to welcome you personally.” He fingered one of the necklaces around his neck, a gold chain that featured a severed finger dangling from it. “I had a whole thing where I tell you I keep promise and keep finger until you return.” He looked disdainfully at the corpse on the floor. “But Dragon ruined all that.” Daniel didn’t say anything and that seemed to please the Russian. “We were talking about vacations, da?”

  “Mine was sort of a working vacation,” Daniel conceded.

  “Moog—” The Russian turned like he was a trial lawyer and this was the time to call the surprise witness. “You enjoy your vacation?”

  The big man didn’t seem to be actively restrained, but he was surrounded by four bikers, all of whom had their attention and their best “I’m a badass” looks focused on him. Daniel remembered them all from New Orleans: Zit-face, Shorty, Toothless. And Ape-Face.

  “There wasn’t no vacation ’bout it, Mr. P.” Moog sounded respectful but unshakable. “It was all business.”

  “Good. Good. That’s what I like to hear: all bees-ness.” Filat laughed and everybody in the room was too scared not to laugh along—everybody but Moog and Daniel.

  “Speaking of the bees-ness, Moog.” Filat sat up and adjusted himself on the couch, like he was getting ready to say something important. “Where is Rabidoso?”

  Moog had expected the question and answered it as simply as he’d planned. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know?” The Russian’s brow furled. “I send with you. Ask you show him ropes. Why you no know, Moog?”

  “He was kinda crazy, Mr. P.”

  “He was fuck-eeng cra-zee, Moog!” The Russian laughed and everyone who was afraid of sucking on a broken Jack bottle chortled right along. “That why I hire him. What I want to know is where he is now?”

  “I don’t know.” And that was the truth. “He’s just gone.”

  “You try to be the funny?” He asked the question looking pointedly at Dragon’s still-warm corpse. “You see what happen with the funny.”

  Moog squirmed, not afraid but knowing he’d have to offer some explanation. “He was shooting everything that moved.”

  The Russian smiled proudly. “That sounds like Rabidoso.”

  “We had our differences and he took off.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but he thought it was close enough to work.

  “Took off?” Preezrakevich scoffed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Russian seemed to weigh the plausibility of the explanation Moog offered and surprised everyone in the room by accepting it. “Well, maybe we see him soon.”

  “Yes, sir,” Moog answered, confident that no one was likely to see his pint-size antagonist until King County’s trash pick-up day.

  “Enough of this,” the mad Russian declared with a grand gesture. “It’s party in here with all these pretty girls.” All the women had stopped dancing and gyrating, paralyzed like statutes by the rising tension in the room. “We men go out on balcony. Finish business out there.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. P.” Moog wasn’t intimidated by the offer.

  Waiting for them out on the balcony was the Viking biker Moog had first seen charging up the stairs of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was a good head or two taller than Moog and at least a hundred pounds heavier. Almost every inch of flesh not hidden by his club colors and jeans was covered in tattoos, including a Nordic pattern that ran from one scarred cheek across his often-broken nose to his other scarred cheek. He stared straight at Moog like a linebacker picking up his assignment.

  It was impossible not to take immediate notice of the Viking giant, like Bigfoot just hanging out on the balcony, but Moog pretended not pay him any particular attention. Instead, he pushed open the sliding glass door and calmly stepped through. His escorts followed closely behind but stopped as soon as they got outside, as if their orders were to gua
rd the door, not the big man. Moog walked to the far end of the deck and stood alone, careful not to let on he was watching the Viking out of the corner of his eye.

  Ponytail dragged Daniel out onto the balcony and pushed him toward the railing over which there was every chance he’d be sailing soon. The night air was bracing and the winter wind blew away the thick layer of daze that had clouded Daniel’s thoughts since his stomping in the elevator. He looked out at the lights of the city below and the stars up above, marveling at their brilliance and wondering which were brighter. They seemed so much more beautiful since the last time he saw them.

  Filat Preezrakevich was the last to come out, making a dramatic entrance by stepping through a curtain of biker outlaws. “So, I ask for money back in twenty-four hours. You come, what? Twelve days?” He was clearly biting back on his anger.

  “Eleven days,” Moog corrected after checking his watch. “It’s not midnight yet.”

  “Eleven days?” The Russian laughed, but the four behind him only tittered nervously. He drew his blood-soaked bathrobe around him. “Not argue about little things.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I ask for my money. But what is this?” The Russian pointed to the amp one of the bikers had brought out with them.

  “It’s a Marshall Class Five tube amp,” Daniel was quick to identify.

  “And you bring this why?”

  “Because the cash is in it,” Daniel answered. And then added with a smile, “And ’cause you can’t rock a satchel.”

  “The whole million?” the Russian wanted to know.

  “About half.” Daniel shrugged, surprisingly calm about it all. “Give or take.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Filat said dismissively, not willing to concede he’d been disrespected. “You owe me far more now.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Interest of fifty percent for,” Filat turned to Moog, “eleven days, right?”

  The big man nodded, although it was clear he didn’t want to.

  “Expenses. Not cheap tracking you down. My men don’t work free. Do they, Moog?”

  The big man reluctantly shook his head again. “No, sir.”

  “And penalties! For thinking you can make fool of me! Of me!” His voice was so filled with furious psychoses that Moog and Daniel were the only ones on the balcony who didn’t flinch. He looked up at the night sky as if there were a calculator up among the stars. “Twenty-five million will cover it. If you don’t have that, my friend, then we have very serious prob-leem.”

  Daniel looked over at the amp and then back to Filat. “I started out thinking I could come here and beg you.”

  “Oh, you will beg me.” The Russian seemed certain of it.

  “No, I don’t think I’m going to.” It was one of those rare moments when a person naturally realizes the importance of words, and Daniel paused to collect exactly what he wanted to say. “As I was running around chasing down this money—Memphis, New Orleans, Chicago, Ruleville.” He laughed at a dozen memories all at once. “It’s a long story. But I found,” he corrected himself, “I rediscovered something.”

  “And what is that?” Mr. P. asked sarcastically.

  It was a simple lesson, really. “The goddamn necessity of living your whole life like you were playing Today music.”

  The Russian looked at Moog, equal parts confused and outraged. “What is he talking about?”

  Moog stammered, but Daniel could speak for himself. “I’m telling you I set out to beg you, but along the way I realized I never got a goddamn thing by begging for it. And I’m never going to beg for anything ever again in my life.”

  “Lucky for you that won’t be much longer,” Preezrakevich snarled.

  “Maybe.” Daniel seemed, not indifferent, but situationally confident. “But I got the feeling that something’s going to turn up. So, before things get all shooty and stabby out here, I’m going tell you something I’ve wanted to tell you for the longest time.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Go. Fuck. Yourself!” Daniel shot the words out like bullets.

  It had been so long since someone had said something like that to the mad Russian that he stood silently for a moment or two, wondering whether it was even humanly possible. “What?”

  It was more than possible. “Go. Fuck. Yourself,” Daniel repeated, relishing each syllable like a fine cigar or an aged Scotch. He was living. Even if there were only moments left, he was playing Today music.

  “You think you have ya-eechko say that to me?” The Russian would have had to calm down just to be furious. “We see what music you make on way down to street!”

  “It won’t matter,” Daniel said confidently. “No matter what you do to me now, I’ll always be in your head as the one man who stood up to you and called you out as the malignant little cocksucker you are. You’ll always remember me looking you in the eyes and telling you to fuck yourself. And no matter what you do or buy, no matter who you kill or fuck, no matter what you do, that’ll always make you feel just as small as the twisted, pathetic piece of shit you are.”

  “I want him dead! Now!” Preezrakevich turned to Moog. “Throw him over railing, I want to see him pop like meat pie when he hits street.”

  Nobody moved. Not Daniel. Not the bikers. And not Moog.

  “I said, throw this fuck over railing!” Preezrakevich screamed, but the extra volume didn’t move Moog either.

  He decided to take a different approach. “You already piss me off, Moog. Throw him over.” He stared at the big man, who didn’t do anything but stare right back. “Or you can take his fucking place!”

  “No.”

  It had been awhile since anyone had said that to the Russian too. “Maybe you not hear me—”

  “I heard you fine. You’re all screaming and shit, but I’m not going to throw him over any damn railing for you.” Moog shook his head, disappointed with himself. “I’m my own man.”

  “You’re nobody’s man!” the Russian screamed. “You my boy!”

  Moog’s eyes got crazy wide, dilated by the rage inside. “What did you just say?”

  Daniel leaned back to tell Ponytail, “I told you things were about to get all stabby and shooty out here.”

  Moog started toward the man he’d called “Boss” for most of his adult life. “Don’t you ever—”

  Of all of the club members who’d been hired on as security, Ape-Face was the one who thought he’d be the boss’s new hero. As he moved to intercept Moog there was a sharp click, and a thin blade appeared in the biker’s right hand.

  It was like hunting a grizzly with a butter knife. Moog looked past Ape-Face like he wasn’t even there, already calculating in his head how he was going to kill the others. When the biker brought up the blade, the big man caught his arm, twisted it back on itself till it made a terrible snapping sound, and then forced the limp limb back, driving the knife into Ape-Face’s belly. Before the simian-looking tough guy could even cry out, Moog struck him with the palm of his oversized hand, shattering the nasal bones and driving them up into his brain. The man whose mother had named him Kevin dropped to the deck like a two-hundred-pound sack of ground meat, nobody’s boy any longer.

  Zit-Face and Shorty stepped in front of Filat, inexplicably eager for their turns at Moog.

  Meanwhile, Toothless reached behind his back and pulled a blued .38 out of his tattered jeans. He drew down on Moog, but before he could pull the trigger, Daniel ran for him, tackling him and knocking the revolver from his hand.

  Preezrakevich’s new security crew had searched Moog when he came in and taken his Desert Eagle from him. For some reason, however, the jeans-and-T-shirt-wearing bikers had never thought to check the necktie that Moog was never without. It was a fatal oversight. Concealed in the dapper neckwear was a single throwing blade. It whistled through the air and then buried itself in Shorty’s left eye.

  At the same time, Ponytail and Potbelly descended on Daniel, who was already getting more of a fight th
an he could handle from Toothless. Together, they pulled him off their comrade and held his arms back as Toothless got up to his feet.

  Zit-Face had a gun too, but he was late in pulling it. The Colt wasn’t even cocked when it dropped to the ground as Moog twisted his head violently to the right until vertebrae snapped.

  As the big man bent down to pick up the weapon, Shorty—still screaming with a knife in his eye—jumped on Moog’s back, perhaps thinking he was going to rodeo the big man to death. Moog flipped him over his shoulder like he was a doll and then reached down and grabbed the man by his ankles.

  “I’m going to cut you balls to chin,” Toothless bragged to Daniel as he produced a blade. But before he could use it, he was struck from behind by Shorty, who was being wielded by Moog like a human Louisville Slugger. The collision sent Toothless sprawling across the deck.

  Moog swung Shorty again and hit Potbelly with a force that sent him staggering back to the balcony railing.

  Moog lifted Shorty a third time, over his head, and then brought him straight down into the concrete deck. His head slammed into the surface and produced the same sound and effect as a Halloween pumpkin being tossed off a highway overpass by a costumed prankster.

  Ponytail was debating whether he was going to be the next to move on Moog or whether he might just exercise some sound judgment and make for the door when Daniel came up behind him and grabbed him. He couldn’t do much more than clench Ponytail, but it prevented the biker from raising his hands to defend against the knife-edge chop Moog delivered to his throat. There was a savage popping sound and then it was Ponytail, his breath leaking out of his shattered throat, who was hanging onto Daniel. He tried to say something, but his last words came out as an unintelligible hiss. Daniel let him fall and Potbelly realized it was his turn to spin Moog’s Wheel of Pain.

  It turned out that the rotund little man was the smartest of his brothers. He decided to make a run for it, pushing Daniel to the ground as he rushed toward the door. If he’d carried a little less weight and moved a step or two faster, he might have made it.