Game of Cages

“Hey!” His voice was bullish and thick. “You don’t get to tell me what to do! Not after all this. You’re lucky I don’t fuck you right here and now.”

I grabbed hold of his shirt. “That’s enough out of you! You keep running your mouth and I’m going to cuff you again.”

“And give up five hundred bucks?” he said, as if he was calling my bluff. There was something off about the guy, but I didn’t know what it was. He seemed like a brainy guy who wasn’t very smart. It wasn’t until he looked at my face that he backed down, muttering something about jocks.

I turned back to the professor. “Where can I find the tattooed man?”

“Forget him,” she answered. “He’s a big, bad grown-up and you’re just a little boy. And his boss is something else entirely.”

“Let me worry about that. Where can I find them?”

“Hah. What’s in it for me?”

“She can’t tell you,” Kripke interrupted. “She won’t ever admit that she doesn’t know something or that she’s in over her head. That’s how she ended up like this.”

Solorov sighed and closed her eyes. For a moment I thought she’d died, but when she spoke, her voice was whisper quiet. “Get out. Both of you. I don’t want you near me. Just go.”

I grabbed Kripke’s shirt and pulled him out of the trailer. He complained about the cold and the drizzle and the mud on his shoes. The sound of his voice put me on edge, but I didn’t tell him to shut up. I wanted him in a talking mood.

Ursula had come around and was working furiously at her cuffs, scraping them back and forth along the bottom of the axle. She was tenacious, if nothing else.

I put Kripke in the backseat of my Neon and climbed behind the wheel. My muddy clothes were cold against my skin. Catherine sat up and looked at me in silence.

“Before the cops get here,” Kripke said. “Five hundred bucks. I’m not kidding.”

I took Ursula’s handgun from my pocket and gave it to Catherine. “If he does anything stupid, shoot him.”

“Okay,” she answered.

He was silent as I pulled out of the campground. I didn’t hear sirens.

I glanced into the rearview mirror at Kripke. He was sulking. I’d interrupted my search for the pastor and the sapphire dog, and he was all I had to show for it. He’d better be worth it.

I drove by the school and beyond that the little houses and cross streets. I looked at Kripke in the mirror again. “Where have you been staying?”

He rolled his eyes. “Nowhere. I came to the auction. I was kidnapped. That’s where I’ve been staying, with my kidnappers.”

I wanted to question him, but where? Steve Cardinal might look for me at the Sunset. The Grable was a wreck. It was late enough that the bar would have closed. I wondered how Steve would react if I showed up at his house.

Kripke blew out a long, slow breath. “I shouldn’t have come anywhere near this place. I just want to go home and pretend none of this ever happened.”

“What about your buddy?”

“Who? Oh. Paulie. We weren’t close. Besides, he was supposed to be my bodyguard. It’s not my fault he blew it. Look, if you can get me out of town, I can get you two hundred dollars right away. That’s the ATM limit. I’ll send you a check for the rest.”

I parked in front of a narrow house with a lopsided porch. A six-foot-long baby Jesus had been mounted on the siding, and it watched us with big blue eyes. I turned off the engine, then turned around, took the gun from Catherine, and dropped it into my pocket. She went back to doing nothing. I wished I had the real Catherine here. This next part needed an investigator.

“I heard you talking to the professor outside the Wilbur house. Right before the floating storm was summoned. How much of that was true?”

He ran his fingers through the hair above his ears, fluffing the frizzy tangle. His motions were sharp and annoyed. “Oh, come on. Really? Are we going to do this here, on a public street? Are you going to threaten to shoot me in your own car? Please.”

“You don’t have to be impressed. Just answer my questions.”

“What if I don’t?”

“More people will die.”

He snorted. “Oh, noes! More people like the kidnappers who killed my bodyguard! Let’s do everything we can to prevent that!” His voice was raw with contempt.

I’d had more of him than I could stand. “I don’t think you understand the situation you’re in.”

“You don’t scare me any more than Paulie did,” he said. “You think this is still high school? You may have been King Dick among the jocks back then, but I have the money, the house, and the job. What do you have except a Walmart name tag?”

For a moment I just stared at him, astonished. If he’d given that little speech to Arne or one of my old crew, he would have gotten a beating so ferocious he would never stand up straight again. He’d lived all his life in the straight world. He had no idea how to behave in mine.

I took the pistol from my pocket and fired off a round. It passed through the back window about a foot from his head, but I’m sure it felt much closer.