|
|
AS I WAS racing back to the door, I could hear Kern shuffling around in the hallway, muttering curses under his breath, then the slight squeak of a door hinge.
I sneaked inside again. As I could tell from heartbeat and breathing, both Driver Dude and Bricky were still unconscious.
Ironically, Kern's powerful scent wasn't easy to track. Most people left what I can only describe as a thin vapor trail of a scent in an area and perhaps some cloying splotches of their scent on objects they touched.
Kern's odiferous stench didn't just linger in the air – it suffused it, drenched the entire area. I supposed the best way I could describe it was the difference between being able to smell the pleasant scent of a woman's recently washed hair as she passes, and if you're walking directly behind her, staying in the path of that scent even when a dozen or so steps behind. That's the kind of scent that a normal person leaves behind as they move.
Then there's the scent that Kern left behind. Rather than that straight line of scent hung directly behind the path, it was like someone had opened a container of Chlorine or rubbing alcohol in a small room. The scent immediately spread to the far reaches of the room, infusing the room with its scent.
I had a friend back in college who was a chemistry major attempt to explain how scent molecules work. He was highly intelligent but a somewhat cheeky sort of fellow and always liked to use lowbrow and "common man" sorts of analogies for explaining scientific concepts.
As he'd been explaining to me how the molecules of an airborne substance diffuse into a room, he began talking about molecular bonding on objects around. Of course, none of this made sense to me – I had been an arts major and hadn't taken any science related classes since the 11th grade. It was only after acquiring my unique wolf traits such as my super enhanced sniffer that I could fully appreciate what he had been saying because my nose could in a way "see" those scents he had been talking about.
Of course, I think that the only reason this particular scientific lecture stuck with me all these years was the lowbrow way in which he summed it up in a way for my non-scientific mind to grasp it.
"You fart," he had said, "and it sticks to me."
Simple enough concept. But frightening, too. Particularly given Kern's uniquely raunchy smell. The touch of the molecules of Kern's scent sticking to me in any way immediately turned my stomach. But like my pal from college said, different scents diffuse and bond in distinctly different patterns. And Kern's was that all-consuming, all powerful scent that virtually "took over" a room.
In a nutshell, it made it hard to at first determine exactly where Kern had moved – particularly in such a small hallway. And particularly since his struggle with me seemed to have made him sweat even more profusely than normal.
So it hadn't been by scent that I knew Kern had moved through the doorway on the right hand side – but rather, because I could hear his heartbeat and his heavy breathing immediately on the other side of the door.
I listened for the sound of other movement, of someone else, and could tell it was only Kern. He was waiting on the other side of the door, perhaps to ambush me.
I then thought about the weapons the other two carried and wondered if Kern had retrieved one of them before moving on. But I couldn't detect the movement of gun oil through the air.
Of course, like I'd said, Kern's scent kind of overpowered the hallway, so it was a bit difficult to pick anything out.
He was waiting, then, on the other side of the door to ambush me. This told me that this door on the right must be the one leading to where Howard was. I strained to pick up Howard’s scent trail, and thought I sensed the tell-tale Old Spice leading through the right-side door.
I considered my options. Kern was wounded. I was sure that the kick and punch I'd given him would have slowed the beast of a man down. Nonetheless, I figured I'd still be able to overpower him, move faster than him, and basically beat him in hand to hand combat.
Again, it all hinged, in my mind, on whether or not he had a gun. I still wasn’t all that fond of the idea of being shot. Sure, I healed quickly, but the gunshot wound still healing in my leg continued to issue forth a dull pain.
I shuddered.
Then reached for the door.
Pausing to gauge Kern's heartbeat and breathing, and attempting to wait until the moment he would be least prepared to jump me, I grasped the door handle and slowly attempted to turn it.
It didn't move. Locked. Not that door-handle locks were much to get past, but so much for a subtle entrance.
I sighed, stepped back and threw my shoulder into the door.
While I could hear the surprise in his heartbeat and the sudden intake of breath, Kern was still prepared to attack and launched himself at me as I entered the room behind the open door.
All three hundred pounds of him crashed into me and we hit the opposite wall hard enough to make a body-sized impression in the drywall. Kern punched my head, slamming it sideways through the drywall.
I ducked, slipping out of his meaty, sweaty grasp, and, with my hands both wrapped around his side, I pushed my head into his stomach with the intent of knocking the wind out of him.
Huge mistake.
The physical proximity to this hulking mass of sweaty stink had a weakening effect on me. Similar to what I would imagine taking a quick whiff of chloroform might have on a person.
But driving my head into his belly was about as pleasant as dunking my head into a barrel of sour milk.
My eyes began watering and I actually began to gag.
Kern hit me hard right between the shoulder blades, and with the extreme body odor having a weakening effect on me, I collapsed to the floor in front of him.
Sprawled on the floor, I tried to lift my head, still dizzy with a combination of the overwhelming stench of the man and the blow to the back of my neck. As I was looking up, I saw his foot coming right at me and I blacked out.
I must not have been out for more than a few seconds, because the next thing I knew, Kern had hoisted me onto his shoulder. I was still dizzy and disoriented, more from the nauseating proximity of the man's body odor than from the blow to the head, but I was still able to determine we were in the same room he'd knocked me unconscious in. Although awake, I feigned unconsciousness and let him carry me.
Admittedly, I'm not sure if I would have been able to fight him anyway, not with my nose pressed into the back of his suit, which smelled of stale farts and sweat.
Kern headed up a flight of stairs.
In the room above of us, I could hear the same raspy cough I'd first heard when we entered the building.
At the top of the stairs, Kern opened a door, and a blast of cool, refreshing air from a larger space greeted us. It was like a giant bucket of ice water poured on a man who'd just crawled three hours through the desert.
I picked up a strong scent of Howard as well as one belonging to someone new. One I imagined belonged to the cougher.
"Jesus Christ, Cheesedick! What the hell took you guys so long!" His voice was a throaty gravelly kind of sound. Kind of a cross between Clint Eastwood and Marlin Brando as, appropriately enough, The Godfather.
"We ran into some, uh, problems," Kern said.
I was surprised at his response, particularly since he didn't utter a single curse word. Not only that, but he spoke in a hesitant, nervous fashion, and he didn't react negatively to being called "Cheesedick" – at least on the surface. When the gravelly voiced man, who smelled subtly of menthol throat lozenges, called him that, I detected the briefest whiff of bitterness and a slight elevation in his heart-beat.
He obviously didn't like the name, but seemed to weather it when coming from this guy. That led me to believe he must be the Monty character these guys had mentioned earlier. The group's ringleader.
"What kind of trouble?"
"Uh," Kern began, but Monty cut him off.
"I said, what the fuck kind of trouble could happen? I sent half the crew over there, along with you, the brick shithouse. Lord knows you’re not only built like one, but you smell like one too."
Kern's bitter anger increased and his heartbeat started doing back flips, but he didn't change posture or let on how angry he was. He must have been used to hiding it.
There was a moment of silence.
"Well?" Monty asked.
"Well, what?"
"I asked, what the fuck kind of trouble did you run into. Let me guess. It perhaps has something to do with the body you've got slung over your shoulder?"
"Yeah," Kern said. "He, uh, was following me when I got back to the car from the pickup. Said he was Howie's biographer."
"So you what – brought him along for the end of the story?"
"No, he was followin' me. We figured he might be on to us, so we took him with."
"And?"
"And when we get here, this budinski shows up, some friend of his, starts yakking our ears off just outside. Wouldn't shut up, know what I mean? We was standin' there just wantin' to get inside before anyone saw us, but he wouldn't shut his yap. So we clocked him.”
“You had two of them following you around? What are you doing, putting up billboards advertising your whereabouts?”
“No, he wasn’t following us. He just stumbled upon us. But we took him out.
"When we was carryin' him inside, this joker who'd been nothin' but a scared little shit the whole time he'd been with us, gets some balls and got a few lucky hits on Bricky and Vince."
Ah, the driver's name is Vince. Good to know. Much better than the nicknames I’d given them in my head.
I was also amused how Kern failed to mention the fact that I got the better of him and that the "budinski" he'd mentioned was nowhere to be found when he woke up. Selective memory.
Despite not knowing where Howard was or having a plan on how I was going to get out of my current situation, this certainly was an interesting dialogue. I'd written tons of conversation between bad guys before but had never realized it could be so banal and entertaining at the same time.
"So where the fuck are Bricky and Vince? And, more importantly, where the fuck is the laptop?"
"Uh," Kern began, and his heart started doing triple back flips. He'd obviously completely forgotten about the laptop, apparently the whole purpose of the afternoon's adventure. "It's ah, it must be, uh, back in the car."
Monty's voice cracked and broke as he growled, apparently not capable of making higher pitched noises than an engine starting up. "It's in the car? In the fucking car? Jesus fucking Christ, Cheesedick! I'm beginning to think the shit isn't just soaked into that suit and pants, but stuffed in that fucking melon you call your head.” He punctuated that last sentence with a cuff to the side of Kern’s head.
"Put this joker down and get your fat ass outside and get the laptop."
Kern, whose anger continued to seethe, let me slip off his shoulder and to the floor. I continued to feign unconsciousness. And while I was able to take most of the brunt of the fall to the wooden floor with my left arm and shoulder, it still hurt when my head hit the wood.
The hit brought on another quick flashback.
Lunging through the air, over a brick wall, the intense heat and burning of chasing prey burning inside. That same burning hunger of attack, the dank, dark and musty smell of an alley as old faded brick moved by in the shadows.
The flashback cut, this time to an attacking lunge, tense and filled with fury, arching down with my fangs just a few hairs shy of the other wolf’s throat. Our bodies slamming together and rolling as he broke free, turned and faced me.
The flashback ended.
" . . . and wake up Bricky on the way back. We can't do any of this without him. Think you can do that without fucking up, Cheesedick?"
I didn't hear Kern say anything in response.
I snapped back to the moment, focusing my attention on the room. It was certainly easier now that Kern's offensive body odor wasn't so strong. The flashback seemed to help focus me, partially overcoming the ringing from Kern's nasty kick to my head.
I smelled a new distinct gun-oil scent. And Monty's anger. And Kern's. Kern’s hostility was that bitter, deep, festering anger, tinged with the essence of familiarity and comfort. It seemed to me the bitterness and anger he felt wasn't new, but perhaps something that had wormed and festered in him for a long, long time. That made me curious most of all.
From somewhere a bit further removed, perhaps an adjacent room, behind a closed door, Howard's scent, coming with an intense fear, and if I wasn't mistaken, a low whimper.
"Okay," Kern was saying as he moved back toward the stairs.
I couldn't believe it.
Kern was leaving the room.
Leaving me alone here with Monty.
I simply could not believe my luck.
The farther Kern moved away from me, the more the sense of nausea and dizziness left me.
As the door slammed behind Kern, Monty started grumbling under his breath.
"Fuckin' Cheesedick idiot. No good stupid shit-for-brains cock sucker. Going to blow this whole operation. Jesus fuckin' Murphy." He went on mumbling under his breath as he moved away from me.
Chancing cracking open one eye, I saw he was pacing back and forth in front of a table with round steel legs and a set of chairs with blue seat pads. Beyond that was a kitchenette area with a small stove, counter and refrigerator – no, not so much a refrigerator as perhaps an icebox.
On the other side of the icebox was a closed, wooden door. Another couple of quiet whimpers came from behind the door, informing me that was the room they had Howard in.
Okay, so I knew where Howard was. Now I had to focus on Monty, figure out the best way to get the jump on him.
He hadn't given me more than a few quick sideways glances as he continued to pace. His steady stream of mumbled curses continued. He was a big man, like Kern, perhaps six and a half feet, with a thick head of black hair, and a fat nose not dissimilar to Kern's large, flat honker. He wore a suit matching the others’ and he was stocky. Not as large and ominous as Kern, but he walked in a similar fashion. The deep crease of his eyebrows was also similar to Kern's and I finally understood a bit more about the dialogue I'd just heard, as well as Kern's reaction to the insults.
I stopped the conscious repression of scent I’d been attempting and focused on Monty’s scent. More masking menthol throat drops than anything, and his body odor wasn't as distinctly nasty as his Kern's, but there was a subtle similarity in the smell coming off him.
The two were brothers.
It made sense of the deep-rooted reaction Kern had. I imagined that "Cheesedick" might have been the name his older brother, Monty called him when they were kids. As I'd suspected, life as a fat, smelly kid had likely not been easy on my old buddy, Kern. And his older brother had likely been one of his worst critics. I thought about my brother Randy, and the masterful way in which he could tease me like no other – get completely under my skin as if it was a talent he'd been born to perfect.
Yeah, only a brother could have that kind of effect on someone.
So Monty and Kern, then, were brothers who had turned to a life of crime. Fortunately for me, there was clearly a lot of tension there between them that I could likely use to my advantage.
Their entire scheme seemed geared towards keeping Howard under their thumb and potentially using him to gain access to some money or funds available from the company Howard worked for.
That at least seemed to explain their kidnapping. It was good to understand these details
I had to remind myself not to be too cocky – that despite the disorganization, the infighting and confusion going on, there were still four of them, they all bore weapons and they weren't at all nice people. I had to remember their threat of killing all of us and that despite the fact I had an opportunity here, Howard and I, and possibly even Buddy, particularly if he walked right back into the situation upon waking up, were all in potentially serious trouble.
I figured I only had a few minutes before Kern returned. And he might return not just with the laptop but also with his buddies.
Along with Kern's receding footsteps down the stairs, I detected some stirring farther down in the hallway – likely one of the thugs waking up.
Which certainly meant that not only would Monty and Howard and I not be alone for long, but we'd likely be joined by two other guys who'd be pretty pissed about the beating I'd given them.
I was watching Monty, cautiously trying to figure out how best to close the eight feet between us without him reaching for his gun when I heard Howard call out from behind the door.
"Guys?" His voice was exhausted and filled with a tinny fear.
Of course, based on his picture and how I despised him both for being Gail's fiancé as well as for violating her trust, I imagined his voice always had an annoying tinny flavor to it – I found that somewhat satisfying.
"Guuuuuuys?"
Monty stormed over to the door and yelled at it.
"Whadda ya want?"
"I, uh, need to go to the bathroom."
"Again?"
Monty turned the lock and pulled the door open.
"Jesus, Howie, you just took a piss. How about I cut that cock of yours off and see if that cures your pansy-ass bladder problems?"
"C'mooooooon," Howard whined again, stretching that one word into a multi-second, multi-syllabic sound.
I didn’t even feel bad about how much I enjoyed hearing Howard whine like that. It felt good to hear him sound like a veritable coward, but it did make me wonder what Gail could possibly see in him.
I didn't revel in those thoughts, long, however, since with Howard distracting Monty, it was my perfect opportunity to act. I started to slowly get up.
"I've done everything you guys asked," Howard said in the same annoying, whiny tone. "I've given you the information you wanted. I set up the automated penny skimming, generating hundreds of thousands in re-routed funds. Never once did I deny any of your requests – never once have I breathed a word of this to anyone, despite the fact that you still haven't given me the original cut you promised. All I'm asking is for you to let me take a pee. Please?"
It was interesting to hear the balls come back into Howard's voice as he ranted. But what the hell was Howard talking about? He seemed to be in on a bunch of schemes with these bozos.
Which meant that while he might still have been kidnapped by them, there was something more going on than just a simple financial officer getting kidnapped. He'd been involved with these guys for a while. And, apparently, so had Howard's secretary.
Come to think of her, the memory of her scent closely resembled both Monty and Kern's – without the obvious match on overpowering garbage reek scent of Kern; I mean, nobody smelled like that, not even a sibling.
No, when I thought back to her smell, there was a familial scent to her that matched both her brothers. She, then, was the sister of the gang leader and one of the thugs.
Fuck—she was their sister. And she'd been screwing Howard, and Howard, in turn, had been screwing clients out of money. Apparently, small enough amounts that nobody caught on. But, do it long enough, and with enough accounts, and you could work yourself up a small fortune.
It started to fit into place. Enough so that I could trust the story I was piecing together in my head.
And, again, that same smugness that overcame me when I'd learned Howard was screwing his secretary hit me again. He wasn't merely unfaithful to his fiancé, but he was also scheming with crooks. The building rage I felt regarding how he was going to hurt Gail made me want to just leave him.
So Howard was involved with these guys, seemingly working with them on their little scheme. Apparently they'd been at it for a while. And, in turn for going along with them, he seemingly wasn't getting a cut, but he was getting some hot sex on the deal. I still didn't understand how someone who could have Gail would even look at another woman. Perhaps it was the thrill of the deception, the excitement of the tryst. Howard was willingly fucking their sister and a ton of clients.
So what, then, had happened to their little scheme? Why was Howard now locked up in this room instead of continuing to run their little operation? What had gone wrong?
Monty let Howard step out of the room.
I took in the sight of him and could tell that he certainly hadn't come here voluntarily. His hair was mussed, he sported a fat lip and a small trail of blood had caked around his one nostril and in a small smear below his nose. His dress shirt was torn across his left shoulder. His tie was loose and hanging down in a large wide loop from his collar, like he'd been interrupted in the middle of removing it completely.
He smelled of urine, and I remembered the guys in the car laughing about how Howard had wet himself.
So here I was, having survived a face full of the fatty flesh of Kern, lying on the floor of some gang leader's hideout all to save the life of a man who was running around on the girl I wanted.
I'd be better off with Howard gone. So would Gail.
I could easily escape and not have to face these guys. Then, once they extracted whatever it is they wanted out of Howie-boy, they'd likely put a bullet in his head and dump his body off of a pier. And that would be the end of that particular challenge to my love-life. And the end of an unfaithful, scum criminal fiancé for Gail.
But I wasn't going to let these guys kill Howard.
Why do I always have to listen to my damn conscience?
As Howard stepped out of the room, I prepared to launch myself at Monty.
Half a second later Howard looked my way, his jaw dropped, and he said in a loud voice, "What the hell is he doing here?"
The word "he" stuck in the air the way a piece of wet dog shit sticks to the sidewalk on a hot summer day.