Everything but the Squeal

“And we'll count,” I said as yet another bruiser climbed out of the car in front of the warehouse. The same little sharpie came out to serve as rear guard to the little girl who emerged from the passenger side. “We'll count very carefully. Right?”

The two of us crossed the street. I sat on a strip of grass that paralleled the sidewalk.

“Right,” the Mountain said, still standing. “That's three fatsos, six kids, and the little coat hanger.”

“Who has something in his hand,” I said.

“It's probably a vitamin,” the Mountain said, sitting next to me on the wet grass. “Weensy little guy like that needs building up, probably worries his mother sick. You could X-ray him with a squint.”

A couple of urban crickets chirped in a ratchety fashion as we sat there. The drizzle continued. My confidence, such as it had been, was being washed away. We'd gotten them there, all right. If the ones we'd seen were the only ones coming, maybe we could handle them. Maybe. I'd have felt a lot better if the Mountain had been president of the local chapter of the National Rifle Association instead of a benevolent fat guy whose idea of mortal combat was throwing Jackie Gleason out of a six-foot circle.

Nonetheless, I worked on pumping my adrenaline. I'd just finished a deep-breathing exercise that Eleanor had taught me, the New Age equivalent of “Whistle a Happy Tune,” and was starting to stand up so I could go in and massacre everyone more than five feet tall, when the Mountain gave my arm a yank that almost dislocated it.

“Squat,” he said. “Somebody coming.”

Another car, the fourth that we'd seen, cruised through the gates and pulled up to the door of the warehouse.

“One fatty or two?” the Mountain whispered. “Five dollars says one.” The car's horn honked.

“Two,” I said. We shook. I lost. The coat hanger came out again, vitamin in hand, and escorted a single guy with the bulk of a mature elk, plus one child, into the warehouse. Same procedure: the fatty went first, the kid was in the middle, and the little guy brought up the rear, brandishing his vitamin.

“They've got it down,” I said. “They've done this before.”

“Give it three minutes,” the Mountain said, assuming command. Maybe he heard the uncertainty in my voice. “Then we move.”

Four minutes later we were running down the block and through the gate, heading toward the left side of the warehouse. We'd decided not to go for the door on the first pass. I didn't know whether it was locked from inside, and I also wanted to see whether there were people in there who might have arrived before we did. The finish line for our run was the second transom window, which had been propped open.

By the time we reached it, the Mountain was wheezing like a man in an iron lung. Nevertheless, he squatted down and held up his arms. I stepped onto his shoulders and he braced my legs with his hands, exhaled an imperial gallon of air, and stood up.

He rose so fast that I scraped my forehead on the stucco and almost toppled us backward by pushing myself away from the wall. Nothing bleeds like a cut on the head. I could feel blood running down my face as the Mountain steadied himself and I peered in through the window.

What I saw at first were trucks. There were three of them, big mothers, with the Cap'n Cluckbucket logo painted on their sides. They were standard refrigerated tractor-trailer semis, the same models that cart California lettuce to salad bars all over the continent. These trucks held kids: special orders being delivered in response to requests. The kids who traveled in the backs of the trucks were used to the cold. They'd been through obedience school.

It was hard to get a grasp of the internal geography of the warehouse. Bare bulbs under iron cones hung at the ends of wires here and there, creating islands of bright light that gleamed off the tops of the trucks. In the spaces between the splashes of light, it was dark. I felt the Mountain tremble beneath my weight as I waited for my eyes to adjust.

High up on the opposite wall was a large picture window. On the other side of the window was undoubtedly what had been the foreman's office when this had been a legitimate operation, a vantage point from which the highest-paid guy in the room had supervised the loading and unloading of the trucks. Lights were on behind the glass, but I couldn't see anyone. Then a child let out a shrill scream, and I followed the sound all the way to the right and found myself staring at a small circle of people gathered in a dark spot near the door.

There was a sudden disturbance at the center of the circle as people took a step back, and the child screamed again, and my heartbeat began to pound in my ears. Somebody laughed. It took all my willpower to ignore the screams and the laugh, and count the people.

Mrs. Brussels was the first one I spotted, still in her trendy wrinkled linen. She had her back to me. The children were probably in the middle of the circle, since I couldn't see them. I counted five grim giants on the circle's perimeter. That was one more than we had counted, so someone had arrived before we had. As far as I was concerned, that cinched it. We were outweighed, even with the Mountain in reserve.

I grabbed the edge of the transom window with one hand and leaned down to tap the Mountain's wrist with the other. At the signal he crouched, and I stepped onto solid ground. ‘There's another one,” I whispered. “That makes five. I don't know how many kids. I didn't see the little one, but I think he's hurting a kid.” Another shrill cry shivered through the window, and the features on the Mountain's face squeezed together, tighter than the knot at the end of a sausage. He started to move toward the door, and I put a hand on his arm.

“It's too many,” I said. “We've got to call the cops.”

“Forget it, asshole,” Max Bruner said from behind me. “They're already here.”

28

The Boys in Blue

T he Mountain heaved himself around with such force that he grunted. Then he froze.

Framed in the pale pool of light falling from the transom window, Bruner's usual impeccable wardrobe looked damp. He made up for it, however, with the perfect accessory: a nickel-plated automatic aimed at the center of my stomach. Behind him, looking much wetter and more wrinkled, was a man who seemed only marginally smaller than Ship Rock, New Mexico. The man also held an automatic. His was pointed at the Mountain.

“Hello, Fat Boy,” Bruner said to the Mountain. “You should've stuck with the burgers.” To me he said, “I really didn't think you'd get this far.”

“Max,” I said, swallowing my heart to clear speaking room, “you shouldn't be out in this weather. You'll ruin your creases. Your dry cleaner is going to be furious.”

He moved the barrel of the bright little gun in a tight circle. The top of the circle was my nipples and the bottom was my groin. Not much of a choice.

“Pissant,” he said. He shook his head. “I tried to tell you. I tried to get you out of it.”

“I've always had a hard time with advice,” I said.

Bruner's mouth twitched into a straight line that made his upper lip disappear. “Fatal flaw,” he said. “And contagious, too. You're going to take Tubbo here with you.”

“You snotrag,” the Mountain said between heavy breaths. “You're supposed to help them.”

Ship Rock took a step forward and raised his gun so that it pointed at the Mountain's forehead.

“Help them what?” Bruner said, putting a restraining hand on Ship Rock's forearm. Ship Rock stopped like he'd been freeze-framed. “Help them go home to the people who chased them away in the first place? Home to all those hugs and kisses and sweet words? This may be hard for you to believe, Tubbo, but the people who write Hallmark cards aren't in charge of the universe.”

The child inside shrilled again. At the top of its arc the sound tore itself into confetti and mingled with the drizzle settling around us.

“Neither are you, snotrag,” I said, borrowing the Mountain's phrase. It had seemed to nettle Bruner.

“Over the long haul,” Bruner said, “over the millennia, probably not. But what you're looking at here,” he