13.
My stint at Eisenberg Correctional flooded back in a heartbeat and stole the breath from my lungs. I was standing on a yellow line, shoulder to shoulder with hardened felons, stripping down on command and tossing our clothes into a cardboard box. My prison uniform was tight in some places, baggy in others, scratchy as the barber ran his shears across my scalp. I watched my curls fall to the floor, mingled with all the other fresh convicts’, while they turned me into a man with a number for a name.
I was lying in the dark in my prison cell, listening to the snoring, the whispers, the faint sound of someone in tears, shivering under my paper-thin blanket. Still aching from the beating I’d taken earlier that day, and realizing that this was the shape of every single night for the rest of my life. Realizing that I was going to die in this cell and never breathe free air again.
I closed my eyes.
I felt my cuffed hands behind my back, brushed my fingertips together, then patted the cruiser’s seat. I wasn’t in Eisenberg. I was here. Now. And I wasn’t going back inside.
“What am I being arrested for?” I asked.
The two cops in the front seat didn’t say a word. Keeping up the silent act.
“I want to know why I’m being detained.”
Nothing. The sedan rolled through a green light. If they took me to the lockup and ran my fingerprints, I was finished. So I calmly, rationally decided that wasn’t going to happen.
“I don’t know what your game is,” I said, “but I’m guessing you were given an arrest quota tonight, am I right? So you figured you’d find some tourist and run him in on a drunk and disorderly.”
Silence. The driver’s face was a shadow in the rearview mirror, a dark-eyed sliver that flicked a glance at me then back to the road.
“I’m not a tourist,” I told them. “And ten minutes after you book me, you’re going to have everybody from the mayor’s office on down burning your phone up. The best thing you can do right now is pull over and let me out.”
Another glance in the rearview. No words.
“I’m trying to help you guys out, okay? Listen, you don’t want to—”
“Shut up, Faust.”
I stared at the driver’s reflection. A chill crept its way up from the base of my spine, where my cuffed wrists rested against my belt.
“You’ve got the wrong guy,” I said. “My name’s Emerson. Check my wallet, look at my driver’s license. You’ll see.”
“We know who you are.” His voice carried the trace of a Spanish accent. A passing streetlight strobed against the windshield, casting a glow across his face in the rearview. I caught the curve of a sneer and his black bristle-brush mustache.
I slumped back in my seat.
“Santiago,” I said.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I sensed an invisible hand moving pieces around a chessboard.
Check.
Either the Network had dirty cops on their payroll or access to fake badges and a stolen cruiser. I’d predicted every layer of their trap except one. The one where they staged a police raid, swooped in, and grabbed me in the confusion.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
Santiago’s partner, with eczema on his cheeks and a beetle brow, glanced back over his shoulder at me. “Something funny?”
“No, just…kind of relieved.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“No, I really am,” I said. “See, I don’t hurt cops if I don’t have to. It’s not a moral thing, it’s just good business; I try not to mess with the biggest gang in town. So here I am, trying to figure out how I’m going to deal with you two, you know, with the least necessary mess. But I’m guessing you’re not taking me to lockup, are you?”
The cruiser swerved at the next intersection. We jetted down a side road, leaving downtown behind.
“You’re not cops. You’re a couple of Network thugs. Which means I don’t have to decide if I’m going to kill you. I am. The only question is how and when.”
Santiago’s partner snorted at me and turned back around.
“We got a file on you half an inch thick,” he said. “We know you can’t do shit without your cards. Now pipe down, we’re almost there.”
I tried not to be offended. True, most of my magic was long-form and required a handy prop or two, but I wasn’t without a few emergency resources. For instance, their file apparently didn’t warn them about how one of the men who taught me magic was also a former stage magician with a sideline in escapology.
I remembered the day Bentley taught me Houdini’s mailbag escape, demonstrating it himself before walking me through it. He sprang from the canvas sack with his cuffs, three padlocks, and a serpentine coil of chains all lying at his feet.
“The first key to success,” he had said, brandishing a tiny twist of steel, “is exactly that. Standard-issue handcuffs open with a universal, generic key; the design hasn’t changed in decades. I’ll show you a few ways to shim cuffs open with common objects you might find lying around, but you’ll never need to if you keep a key handy at all times.”
Bentley had turned and pulled at his faded leather belt. There, square at the center of his back and hidden against his slacks, a handcuff key sat nestled in a blob of beige putty.
“Never leave home without one. You never know when you’ll need a handcuff key…and if you ever need one and don’t have one, well, that’s when you’re really in trouble.”
The technique was harder than it looked. Getting at a fingernail-sized key, prying it from its hiding spot without dropping it, then opening a pair of cuffs all with your hands behind your back demanded serious practice.
But I had a great teacher. And I practiced.
I almost went for the key; then I stopped myself. They’d snatched my cards, they both had guns on their hips, and I didn’t care for the odds. Besides, even if I took them by surprise and won, I’d probably have to kill them to do it. Which meant no prisoners, no new intel, and this entire night would be a wash.
On the other hand, they were probably driving me straight into the Network’s den. At least the Vegas branch. If I was willing to risk it, and if I timed my moves just right, I wouldn’t be empty-handed when I made my escape. I might even find out who the King of Worms’ little friend was and take him off the board before he got another shot at me.
I made my choice in the space of a single red light. I had to risk it. My key stayed hidden where it was, for now, while I played the helpless prisoner.
Santiago showed off his tradecraft. He pulled all the usual tricks to shake a pursuer: doubling back, sudden bursts of speed, weaving through parking lots to jump onto adjacent roads, the works. I didn’t know if any of my people had managed to track the cruiser, but if they had, they’d turned invisible. Not a single pair of headlights on our tail, just a dark and lonely road.
I couldn’t count on the cavalry showing up. Getting out of here was all on me now.
“Call and make sure we’re good,” Santiago told his partner.
“We’re good.”
“Call,” he said, “and make sure.”
His buddy tugged out a phone. I perked my ears, but all I could make out on the other end was a faint, unintelligible squawking.
“It’s us. We’ve got the package. Night shift on the scene yet? Can we bring him inside?”
More squawking. He hung up the phone and looked at Santiago.
“No civvies for a mile around. We’re good. I said we were good.”
“The man likes things done in a very specific manner,” Santiago told him. “Very. Specific. You start half-assing this job, it’s not me you’re going to have a problem with.”
“Sounds like your boss is a micro-manager,” I said. “That’s never fun. Look, it might be pointless, but I’m professionally obligated to make this pitch: leave the Network, come work for me. Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll beat it by five percent.”
Santiago’s partner arched a bushy eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to say you’ll double it, or triple it?”
“No, because that’s what desperate people say when they’re staring down the barrel of a gun, and they’re always lying when they say it. I’m making you a serious business proposal. Five percent. If you want to make a counteroffer, I’m open to negotiation.”
“I got a proposal,” Santiago said. “Shut up.”
“Have it your way.” I leaned back and got as comfortable as I could with the cuffs digging into the small of my back. “But trust me. Real soon now, I’m going to remind you we had this discussion. And you’re going to wish you took the offer.”
Of course, I was lying too. Santiago was Todd’s handler and he’d orchestrated the house-party massacre. One way or another, he had a pine box and a crematory oven in his near future.
We drove past a rail yard, silent freight trains like jointed steel bones in the dark. Then a stretch of fence, prison-yard tall and topped with coils of concertina wire. A gate up ahead rumbled open. The sign beside it, pea-soup green with faded yellow letters, read Donaghy Waste Management.
The company Nicky never managed to get his hooks into, back when he was running this town. Now I knew why. How long had the Network been operating this place as a front? How long had they been in Vegas? Fighting these people was like punching at smoke. I could swing until my arms got tired and never hit a damn thing.
The gate rattled shut behind the squad car, sealing us inside.
A garbage truck backed up to a dimly lit loading dock. Electronic beeps split the cold night air. Men in blueprint-colored overalls were milling around, lugging barrels and boxes, directing more trucks along the asphalt lot. Donaghy’s night crew had bloodless, slack faces and sunken eyes. They lurched and lumbered, like their brains couldn’t quite deliver the orders to their arms and legs, something lost in synaptic translation.
I’d seen moves like that before, from dead men walking. Damien Ecko, the last emissary of the King of Worms, raised corpses to serve him. I wondered if his would-be successor had the same bag of tricks. I was studying the workers on the loading dock, trying to get a read on them, when I saw two of them pause for a short conversation.
Not zombies, then. Ecko’s creations were relentless, not to mention capable of punching a hole through a man’s rib cage, but they were basically machines made of meat. Still, something was off about the night crew. I tried relaxing enough to stretch out my psychic senses, then yanked them back like I’d touched a red-hot stove.
This place was radioactive. Maybe literally. A giant, festering boil of toxic power seeping into the ground, the sky, poisoning my city. The squad car pulled around the back of the building, and Santiago killed the engine.
Whatever was in there, I was about to meet it.