He opens his eyes.
—You understand, yes? I nod.
—Yes sir, Mr. Predo, I understand.
The corners of his mouth crimp.
—Ah, there it is, that air of sarcastic servility.
He snips away the knuckle.
—I’ve so missed that.
He lowers the shears from my hand, and rises, standing over me, looking down.
—And it appears you’ll get one last chance to employ it, won’t you?
He steps away, tilts his chin at the enforcers, and they release me.
I stay where I am, and hold up my mutilated left hand.
Index finger, middle finger, stub of a ring finger.
I show it to Predo.
—Got to thank you, Mr. Predo, you left just enough so I can still tell a guy to read between the lines.
Turns out you need two opposable thumbs to roll a cigarette.
—Are you going to fumble endlessly with your bad habit, Pitt?
I rip another rolling paper and spill more tobacco on the ground.
—I’ll take any help I can get right now, Mr. Predo.
He looks at the three enforcers, they all shrug.
He unfolds his arms, comes away from the limo he’s leaning against, and takes the pouch from my good hand.
—A lost art, it appears.
He tugs a paper from the folder.
—It has been some time for myself.
He settles tobacco into the crease, rolls the paper back and forth around it, shaping a cylinder, pinches lightly and spins it into a tight bundle.
—Ah, like a bicycle.
He licks the glue, seals the edge, and passes the smoke to me.
—And the match?
I dig the pack from my pocket, fold one down and under until the head touches the sandpaper, and give it a snap that brings it to light.
—I got that covered.
He nods.
—Useful, should you live for any time at all.
He drops the tobacco pouch into the tacky glaze of my blood that I’m sitting in.
—Unlikely as that may be.
He walks back to the limo and resumes his posture, leaning against the front fender, arms folded at his chest, ankles crossed.
—About that treaty you mentioned. It does not exist.
My hand has stopped bleeding. Stumps scabbed over, scabs drying and falling away, revealing fresh pink scar tissue. The fingers will never grow back. Something like a slender wart might sprout where my thumb was, but that’s at most. And I’d just as soon it didn’t. Cuts in my face feel all healed over. I can brush the dry blood off and find slightly stippled skin. If I don’t move around too much, the ends of my ribs will finish knitting back together. Feels like a couple of them may end up crooked. I can still taste the pepper juice, I reek of it, but my throat and stomach have stopped burning, so that’s OK.
I wonder what it’s gonna be like to punch someone with a fist made out of two and a half fingers.
—Yeah, the treaty, you’ll be negotiating it pretty soon.
—Details.
—Lament is dead.
He looks at his shoes.
—How. Unfortunate.
I take a drag.
—Yeah, that was my reaction.
He looks up from his shoes, long bangs in his eyes.
—Not that you had anything to do with it, I assume.
—Oh hell yes, I shot him a bunch and then I scalped him. Good night’s work.
He pushes the hair off his forehead.
—I would add the killing of another Coalition officer to your record, but it is more than redundant at this stage.
—I’d hate anyone else to get credit for killing the fucker.
—Noted. I can assure you that when morning comes and you are staked out in the sun it will be included on the list of charges proved against you.
He puts a hand on top of the clippers he set earlier on the hood of the limo.
—And this treaty that does not exist, you foresee it for what reason?
I pick more scab from my finger stumps.
—Lament is dead. All his enforcers are dead. The Hood have cleared out the top of the rock. They got nothing distracting them up there anymore. No threat from inside their own border. Digga’s going to clean house. Anyone on opposition. Papa Doc, that mouthpiece you keep up there, I expect Digga already executed him by now. He’s done fucking around. By morning he’ll have a unified front. And he’ll be looking at One Ten, ready to get serious about war. Especially if it will force you to broker an agreement. Official cease-fire, and a resumption of trade.
He touches the tip of one of the shears’ blades.
—They are starving.
—Sure. So they can either fight it out with you and try to expand their borders and their hunting ground, or they can settle and start buying your blood again.
He removes his finger from the blade.
—Digga made it clear he is not interested in our blood.
He looks at me.
—Having learned where it comes from.
My smoke is down to a nubbin. Knowing how hard it’s going to be to get another one rolled, I pinch it like a roach and try to eke a last couple drags.
—We going to cry over spilt milk?
He picks up the shears.
—No. We are not.
He moves from the limo.
—So, you are telling me that Lament is dead, the top of the rock has fallen, Digga is assassinating his opposition in order to prepare for aggressive action along the border, but he is open to negotiating a treaty that he will then break at the earliest convenience.
One of the enforcers slaps the remains of my cigarette from my hand and the others close and I’m pinned again.
Predo cleans some of my dry blood from the blades of the shears.
—All terribly shocking to me. Indeed, how could it be that I did not already know the single most disputed piece of real estate in Manhattan had changed hands? Being only the head of Coalition intelligence, how could that bit of information have slipped past me? Ah, yes, but of course. Because it did not.
He snaps the shears open and closed.
—Truly, Pitt, is that your bid? As if I would not know. As if I could not surmise the rest. Of course we will negotiate a treaty. Of course Digga will plan to break it. But not before we break it first. There are machinations at play, Pitt. Upon whom would you care to place your bet, D.J. Grave Digga or myself?
He makes certain his tie has not become untucked from his shirt.
—Now, regarding that other thumb.
I wrap the fingers of my right hand around my thumb.
—The girl with the baby is inside the Cure house.
He’s at my feet, looking down at the shears in his hand.
—Yes.
He turns away.
—That would give us something of value to talk about.
They keep coming.
SUVs and vans full of them.
Enforcers filling the top level of the garage.
I don’t have nearly enough fingers to count them all. Even very recently I didn’t have enough fingers to count them. Dozens. Over a hundred maybe. The full force. Fewer of the stylish black suits. More coveralls. Black slacks and windbreakers. Sweats. I see four dressed in police uniforms. A team of six in black tactical outfits including body armor, coiling ropes, snapping open carbon-fiber grappling hooks.
Sitting in the corner where they stuck me when the vehicles started rolling up the ramp, I remember something. I remember from the time I was on the Upper East a year ago, when I first came to the Cure house, I remember the parking garage just a few addresses west on the same block.
Lydia’s sense of what the Coalition will or will not shoot up on their own turf appears to be for shit.
I think about that some. Mostly I think about mastering the one-hand cigarette roll, but I think about a shoot-up some as well. There are just too many guns not to think abo
ut it a little. Still, the cigarette roll is pretty all consuming. The tobacco I keep spilling isn’t that big a deal, I just scoop it up and try again, but I’ve ripped a lot of papers trying to get this right. Those I’m running low on. Truthfully, it’s not a one-hand roll, it’s more a seven-finger roll. And after about ten shots at it I end up with something I can stick in my face and light on fire. It looks like a crooked Tootsie Roll more than a cigarette, but I can live with it.
I’m making do with that smoke when Predo comes over. He’s still in shirtsleeves, but he’s untucked his tie and gotten rid of the gloves. For now. I’m sure he could be ready to get back to work on my digits at a moment’s notice.
He takes a second to look at a phone one of his boys holds up for him, taps the screen a couple times, nods, and the guy with the phone and the enforcer who’s been watching me back off.
—We will be brief, Pitt.
I take a puff.
—Sure, I can see you have a set piece to coordinate here. Didn’t realize you’d gotten into the action movie business.
He’s not biting today.
—How do you know the young woman is in there?
—Digga’s man, Percy.
—He told you.
—He told me.
—Reliably?
—Dying words.
He ponders that one.
—Quote them.
—Best of my recall, he said they were in the Cure house. Said he sent them there and they sent word back they were inside.
He stops pondering, puts his eyes on me, focusing.
—They sent back word. To the Hood.
—What he said.
He stays on me.
It’s uncomfortable.
Those eyes of his, very old, staring out of that baby face, that skin kept taut and glowing by probably a pint a day. Those eyes have always been hard to meet. And with the years he’s had in the game, he’s seen about every tell any man’s lie can give. He’s sussed out most of my lies before they got past my lips. Half the lies I’ve told him, I got the idea to tell them from him in the first place. Because that’s what he wanted me to do. Sometimes when I talk to the man, I have to look at his fingers, to make sure I’m not wrapped around one of them. He plays me that well. Always has. Only way I’ve ever played him back is with a smart mouth and the truth. And they don’t stack up to much in the game he plays, not with the chips he’s piled on his side of the table.
Those old eyes. That young face. That blood.
Knowing. Knowing where the blood comes from that keeps him so fiddle fit, it does something. ‘Cause I scrabble out a living. I don’t turn down what comes to me on a plate, but it’s not offered too often. Mostly, I hustle or hunt for what I eat. It’s not raised in a cage for me. It’s not bred for me. It’s not slaughtered for me.
I kill for myself.
His eyes, they may or may not know if I’m lying, I just don’t fucking care anymore.
So I look right back into them, and let him play it how he wants.
He blinks. Which means fuckall. But he does it.
—I’d be interested in knowing through what channels that message was sent.
—Telephone.
—He told you that?
—He told me they picked up a phone when they were safe inside, called him, so he’d know.
—The girl, her unborn baby, and who?
—The baby daddy.
He turns, waves over the enforcer with the phone, takes it and looks at the screen again, taps, hands it back, looks at me.
—And they’ve not left?
I’m at the bottom of my skanky little smoke, the last drag burns my lips, but I take it anyway.
—You’re the one with the stakeout. You tell me.
He nods.
—Yes, but if they got in without our seeing.
—Yeah, sure, they might get out. But as far as I know? Inside.
His hands go in his pockets.
—And your interest in this?
I push myself off the concrete and stand.
—I know the girl’s dad. He asked me to find her.
—So you are a humanitarian.
—He offered me a shitload of money. Enough I thought I could maybe get off this rock and go find someplace new to hide.
He gives a little smile.
—New Jersey, perhaps.
I smile myself.
—Yeah, something like that.
He loses the smile.
—You can get inside?
—If your boys don’t shoot me first, I think maybe yeah.
His phone guy shows him the phone again.
—And you can get them out?
—Hell if I know.
—Some confidence would help your case, Pitt.
I’m doing a seven-finger roll.
—Some confidence would be a lie. I haven’t seen anyone in there for over a year. And things were tense. Sela could rip my head off on sight.
—But not the Horde girl.
—No. Maybe. Could be. I don’t know. Any case, she wouldn’t rip my head off herself, she’d have Sela do it.
He sends the phone guy away.
—It does sound very like a win-win for me. Either you come out with the girl and her baby, or Horde and Sela rip your head off.
I light up on another spavined reject from the cigarette family.
—Or I squat in there and you can go fuck off.
He nods.
—Well.
He gestures at the preparations going on around us.
—I wouldn’t count on squatting unmolested for very long.
—There are time issues.
—So I gather.
—But there would be advantages to having them out. The girl and the baby. The father I do not care about.
—Sure, I get it. You don’t want to see the symbol of the future accidentally shot.
He’s unrolling his sleeves.
—Symbol of the future. Indeed. I think it might be more apt to say that they are a symbol for the virtues of proper birth control practices. But not everyone is as clear-minded. The Coalition is purely socio-political in nature, but even here there have been whispers of the significance of the unborn. Until I can eliminate that whiff of mythology, I’d rather avoid any unfortunate mishaps that Bird might publicize to his advantage.
—Always best to minimize the potential collateral dead bodies before you go crashing through the windows.
—We will be using doors. It is not a spectacle we are performing here. It is an action. One made unavoidable by the untenable presence of the Cure house on Coalition territory. It has become hermetic. Information does not flow out. We cannot have a mystery box full of infected, lorded by a mad girl, in our midst. Not now. Not with tensions as they stand.
—Especially not when you don’t know if they’re secretly allied with the Society and the Hood.
He buttons his cuffs.
—Irrelevant.
I run a hand under my shirt and over my chest. I can feel a couple knobs of bone where the ribs have healed out of true. They don’t hurt, but they’ll be weak points that will snap easy the next time they take a shot.
I point at some of the action going on in the garage. Weapons being stripped, blueprints reviewed, a couple laptops set up in the back of one of the SUVs, a tiny mobile communications center.
—Pretty heavy action for irrelevant.
He reclaims his jacket from an enforcer.
—They have been starving for months. They possess no coordination as a military force. But in the absence of any knowledge to the contrary, we must assume they are a threat to expose themselves at any moment. However many of them are left inside, they must emerge sooner or later. When they do, they will not be in control of their appetites.
—So this is a mercy mission.
He slides his arms into the jacket.
—No. This is a tactical operation that will eliminate a threat to the Coalition.
I’m looki
ng at some guns that look big and useful.
—Always thought this kind of action on your turf was verboten.
—Events progress. We must adapt.
I point at the guns.
—Can I have one of those?
He squints.
—One moment while I think. No, you may not.
I point at the ramp.
—Whatever’s going on in that place, it’s gonna be hairy. I know you won’t be shedding tears at my funeral, but the point is for me to save the girl and the baby, yeah? Get them out before you come in with the goon squad. I may need to be armed to make that happen.
He shakes his head.
—No. You are far too spontaneous in how you choose to distribute bullets.
He looks up at a flickering light fixture.
—But yes, you should have something. The knife and the garrote you were carrying.
—I’d rather not have to get so intimate if Sela has a beef with me.
He looks down from the light.
—Truly, Pitt, if Sela is no longer amused by your monkey tricks, do you believe a gun or any number of bullets will keep her at bay?
I think about Sela, six foot plus of weightlifter muscle grafted onto a Vampyre and combined with the particular hormonal imbalance of a pre-op tranny. She is unique and dangerous and I don’t understand a thing about her. Except that she’s one of the six most dangerous people I’ve ever met. And she once took on two of the others at the same time and came out on top.
—No, I don’t think it would help much. But I do like to have a gun.
An enforcer approaches with my wire saw and amputation blade. He hands them to Predo.
Predo slips a few inches of the blade from its rubber sheath.
—Have you ever seen one employed by a surgeon?
—Can’t say I have.
He pulls it the rest of the way free.
—To amputate a leg above the knee, one must wrap their arm around the limb, from underneath, bringing the blade toward oneself, angling the tip downward. The goal is to cut into the flesh deeply, to the bone, while whipping one’s arm away, unwinding it from around the leg. When perfected, the maneuver leaves a single incision that circles the femur. A moment’s work with a bone saw and the leg is off.
He studies the edge of the knife, slips it back in its sheath, and hands it to me.
—Please do not lose it, Pitt. Should you survive without the girl and the baby I may want to put it to use.