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"Louie sent you," he said.
"So you were listening."
"You tell that son of a bitch I'm not afraid of some cheap hood in an expensive suit," he snarled, and through the saggy skin around his eyes, the sores at the corners of his mouth, and the last stubborn wisps of hair clinging to his freckled skull, I saw the kind of man Tom Mason must have been back in the day when you carried a gun on your hip instead of in your pocket.
"I don't need you to be afraid of me," I said. "I just need you to tell me you ain't going to go blabbing whatever story Mr. Montrose is concerned about you blabbing." Tom Mason snorted, and I drew out the bottle. "He told me to give you this, but I don't want you to take it. A loopy old junkie is a lot more chatty than some ornery cuss with a forty-four."
His eyes lit up at the sight of the thing, and I sighed and put it on the table between us. Tom Mason snatched it, rolling it in his fingers. Then, surprising the hell out of me, he shoved it back at me. "I can't. I promised her."
Here was something. A junkie will do whatever it takes to get his next shot. He can justify anything, and if the worst of it is shutting his mouth about some bigwig roughing up some bit player fresh off the bus from Nowhere, Indiana, then he's getting off light.
Whatever was happening to Tom Mason, it had spooked him. Spooked him clean and mostly sober. "So who are we talking about, Tom?" I sat back and waited. At least the bleeding had stopped.
"No." He stood and opened the door. "You need to go."
Threatening men like Tom Mason gets you nowhere, and cajoling them only a little further, so I stood up, pulled my jacket over the bloody hole as well as I could, and left.
Tom watched me, and then pulled the curtains tight. I slipped through the neighbor's yard and over the back fence. The basement bulkhead was locked with a chain, but dry rot had claimed the sash. Since it was ruined anyway, I threw my jacket over the spot to muffle the noise and dislodged the lock with one good kick.
Blackness trickled out, and cool air, stale from a long time underground. Around me, dust whipped through the fences and overturned one of the rusted lawn chairs that populated Mason's backyard.
I flipped the top of my lighter and sparked a small pool of bright in the darkness. The stairs were half-rotted and sounded like gunshots when I descended.
The cellar smelled like earth, like a greenhouse th
at had died. Like a hundred other dark and shut-up places I'd been in my lifetime. I knew what I'd find before the flame searched them out--two indents of freshly turned dirt. A little scraping revealed a hand, pale and blue veined, presumably attached to an arm and the rest of the poor bastard buried in Mason's basement.
I sat back on my heels, considering what I'd found. This would account for Mason's performance up in the living room, but not for Montrose's sending me over here. Unless Louie's friend had gotten a lot friskier with the starlet than I'd imagined, there was no way he'd send me solo to clean up two bodies.
Lost in thought, I almost jumped out of my shoes when the hand moved. Twitched, clawed at the earth. The other dirt pile heaved, giving birth to a form that gave out a low moan.
A shadow dropped across the cellar stairs, and I managed to catch a glimpse of a pair of hands gripping a shovel before a flashbulb exploded inside my skull and I went dark.
"He's awake."
I floated slowly back to consciousness, a soap bubble rising and bursting in my brain. The scent of the cellar still clung to my nostrils, and the brick and dirt told me I hadn't gone far.
Tom Mason regarded me. He took a pull from a fresh bottle and spit on my shoe. "Told you he was a tough nut."
The woman who'd clocked me was a looker. Dim light and a concussion didn't change my opinion on that.
"Is he one of Drago's boys?" she asked. Her accent was soft and nubby as old velvet.
"Nah," said Mason. "Said he was with Montrose."
"Merde," the girl said. She leaned in, arms on either side of me. I did a little experimenting and found I was tied to the chair they'd sat me in. Behind the girl's bare brown shoulder, pale things moved in the dark.
"So what are you, dead man? Montrose doesn't have the kind of juice required to make something like you."
"That's 'cause he didn't make me," I said. "He just pays me, and not well enough to put up with this shit."
She leaned into my neck and inhaled deeply. Her perfume was light and airy, a direct contrast to her golden eyes and the dress that wrapped her so tightly it might as well have not been clothing at all.
"Saw him get right up with my own eyes," Mason said. "Reckon he's one of them?"
"Of course not," she snapped. "Don't be an idiot. Drago can barely keep his zombi walking, never mind make a dead man stand up and talk like this one."
Mason hefted his gun. "I still say we plug him. Montrose is no joke."
