Part 22:
Guess
Who?
Dan parked his car beneath
a broken-out street light on the corner of Demont and Rush and climbed out,
surveying the scene around him.
Walking to the east, he
couldn’t figure out why anybody would be walking down this street, with its
burned-out buildings and piles of rubble from discarded homes of the past. Aside from the fact that it would be a great
place for hookers and drug dealers to hide out and conduct business in the darkness
and shadows of night, there really was nothing else of much interest around.
Stumbling on the uneven
sidewalk, Dan flinched, looking over his shoulder, as a shiver ran up his spine.
“What are you afraid of,
Fortis?” he mumbled to himself, wishing he had brought a flashlight. “Are you afraid of the dark or something?” Laughing, he stopped looking to his left and
right, trying to figure out which way to go next.
***
Placing the gun back
beneath the sheet, Nick listened to the second hand of the clock making its way
around the dial, meshing with the steady swish of the machines and the click
that occurred every so often from his IV machine. He realized that he didn’t miss the crazy
noise from the big screened TV at his house or the beeps and corny music of his
favorite video games or even the pounding of the bass in his ears from the
headphones in the studio.
He found that he was quite
enjoying the sounds of nothing more than simple silence.
Lying his head back on the
pillow, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. He was tired and feeling more than a little
uncomfortable from lying in the damn hospital bed day after day. Not to mention the stress of what the world
around him had become in nine short days.
Closing his eyes, he gave
into the exhaustion, letting his body slowly relax. And before long, he found himself drifting
into a deep sleep.
***
Mo leaned against the wall
outside of Nick’s door, craving a cigarette. Tugging up the sleeve of his uniform, he
flipped over the Rolex and checked the time before peering through the window
in the door of Nick’s room.
“He’s asleep,” Mo
whispered, tapping lightly on the glass to see if it would make Nick flinch.
Nothing.
“This is going to be
easier then I thought,” he said, pulling the gun from his waistband as he
slowly opened the door.
***
Dan stopped walking, squinting
into the darkness at the outline of a house tucked back behind some wild
underbrush and a chain link fence with barbed wire looped clumsily along the
top. Walking up to the fence, he tapped
on the chain link, interested in the fact that out of all the places on the
street, this seemed to be the only one that could possibly be of any use to
anybody. Sure, the roof was caved in,
and it was obvious that, at some point, vandals had set fire to it. But aside from those things, most of the
structure still remained intact.
Following the fence around
the side of the house, Dan pushed at the branches that scratched at his arms,
following the fence as it curved around into the pitch black at the back of the
house. Using the fence as his guide, Dan
could no longer make out the house from his place in the bushes. Taking two more steps forward, he leaned into
the fence and found that the section he was leaning into was missing. Falling sideways, he tripped through the hole
in the fence, a stray chain link catching on the sleeve of his shirt and
tearing it as he landed on his side in the dirt.
“Shit.” Pulling up onto all fours, he crawled forward,
his instincts telling him that the hole was there for a reason.
And Dan Fortis’s instincts
were rarely wrong.
***
Kevin got out of the
elevator on the wrong floor and had to wait while two nurses pushing patients
in wheelchairs got on.
“Do you want us to hold
the elevator?” they said, as Kevin turned to get back on, hesitating at the
close quarters inside when his stomach was still queasy from the over-consumption
of beer earlier in the day.
“Nah, it’s okay. I’ll get the next one,” he said, waving them
off and letting the elevators slide shut before pushing the down button again.
***
Crawling forward, Dan went
slowly, not knowing what kind of garbage could be on the ground around a shithole
like this. Then, slapping his palm down,
he soon found out, as a piece of glass sliced into his skin, making him wince.
“Son of a bitch!” he
hissed, shaking his hand before wiping his palm, which was now dripping with
fresh blood, on his shirt. Sitting back
on his heels, he tried to inspect the wound, wondering if it would need
stitches, but it was impossible to see his own hand in front of his face, it
was so freaking dark.
“Fuck,” Dan moaned, grabbing at his hand. “I’m out of my God damned mind, crawling
around this shit heap.” He was talking
out loud as he slowly rose to his feet.
“I mean, what if, for once,
my instincts are totally wrong, and this Mo guy isn’t in this house? Better yet, what if there is no Mo at all?”
He realized then and there
that he had to make a decision. He
either had to go forward or backwards, because sitting in the same spot wasn’t
getting him anywhere. So he began
walking forward, swatting stray branches out of his face.
“This whole thing is
messed up,” he moaned, just as he smacked right into the side of the house.
***
Mo kept his hand poised on
the gun on his hip as he walked slowly across the room, the heels of his cowboy
boots clicking on the white tiled floor.
Looking at Nick now, it
was hard to believe that the little shit had survived what he and Gus had put
him through. And Mo realized that he
would miss the game of cat and mouse that had been going on between he and Nick
since the moment he crawled into the shiny black BMW over a week ago. He was going to miss the Kid once the bullet
left his gun and splattered Nick’s brain matter all over the nice, clean
hospital room.
Leaning down, Mo hesitated
for a split second, as Nick’s eyelashes fluttered lightly, his mind tangled up
in some pleasant dream.
And then he whispered the
words, “Hey St. Nick, guess who?” in Nick’s ear… setting in motion the wheel in
his mind that Nick had given up hope of ever turning again.
“I don’t buy that. Not for a minute. I think there is someone else involved. And I believe that someone else is the one who
shot you, killed Brian as well as Gus Monroe, and kidnapped Howie.”
“That’s right, Nick, you are hurt. You’re hurt really bad. And like I told you, there are some things
worth fighting for. So I am fighting for
you, and you are going to fight for your life.”
“We need help; a man’s been shot.”
“H-help… I-I-I’m… d-d-d-ying…”
“Nick, answer the phone…”
“SON OF A BITCH, THE KID IS GONE!”
“Everything is going to be okay, Nick. I’m going to make sure of it. You just need to hang on. You saved me back there, and I’m going to pay
you back.”
“How do we know he isn’t going to get away? Well, we know that because he has been shot
twice in the gut, and he is barely breathing.”
“Are you okay, Nick?”
BAM!
BAM!
BAM!
BAM!
BAM!
BAM!
“It’s me, you idiot, stop squirming.”
“Where the fuck are you, you little jackass…?”
“St. Nick knows our names, he knows what the car
looks like that we drive, and he knows where my apartment is.”
“Look, Kid, give up. You know I’m going to win.”
“….if you’re good and your friend does what I told
him to do, I might let you go.”
“Nickolas. That’s like Santa Claus, isn’t it? I think I will call you St. Nickolas.”
“Bri, I’m in trouble.”
“You try something like that again, and I will have
no problem blowing your brains out all over the interior of this fine car. Now drive.”
“Did you hear what I said to you? I said I liked your boots.”
“You’re not Brian… You’re not Brian… You’re not
Brian…”
Nick’s body jerked twice,
as his eyes shot open, and he whispered a single name.
“Mo.”
***
