The truck moved on at barely fifteen miles an hour for a short space until it pulled up next to a building; I could see the concrete base of the wall, plain and spare, in a dingy yellow artificial light. With the damn thing finally parked, I was able to unclench my fingers and with trembling arms let myself down to the ground. Every muscle in my body had taken on the consistency of overly boiled cabbage. Rolling over onto my stomach, I slid along the gravel to the edge of the undercarriage. I caught a glimpse of Elvis standing in an open door chatting up this place’s version of the lunch lady. Improbably red hair, pear-shaped butt, and thick hose on thick legs, she didn’t float my boat, but apparently she did something for Elvis. I didn’t judge. I simply recognized the chance and took it.
Propelling myself on my elbows, I crept out from under the truck and lunged into the shadows. Saul was hard on my heels, so hard in fact that he nearly ran me over. With a healthy sense of self-survival combined with those cutting-edge fashion skills of his, Saul was a true Renaissance man. With the building wall gritty against my back, I moved fast until I took a corner and passed into a deeper darkness.
“And that, Smirnoff, is why I refuse to marry. Once the ring is on, the ass immediately triples in size.”
The disgusted hiss was a puff of air against my ear. His comment on the mating habits of food servers and ex-Kings of Rock and Roll couldn’t have been heard from more than five inches away, but it didn’t stop me from jabbing a warning elbow into Skoczinsky’s ribs. It had passed from full twilight into early night and we were fairly well concealed by it, but there was no need to press our luck. Moving on, we found a stairwell framed by straggling bushes and concrete. It was thick with grime and dirt, indicating it hadn’t been used for some time. Settling down into it, we prepared to wait four or five hours until the place was tucked in for the night. There might be a few khakis on patrol on the inside of the walls, but at least the other personnel, including the maligned lunch lady, would be asleep. It made the process of breaking and entering a little less dangerous for us.
The hours passed. And that’s about the best that could be said, that they did pass. After ten years, you’d think a few hours was something I could handle; that in comparison it would be nothing—less than nothing; a drop in an angry, churning ocean. But it wasn’t. It was ten years all over again.
Finally a hand on my shoulder brought me out of a reverie of nothingness. “Time to go.” With his voice tight and controlled, Saul was all business now. He moved to the metal door and went to work with a skill that had me whistling low under my breath. Whatever branch of the service Skoczinsky had served in, he hadn’t spent his time peeling potatoes. It took nearly forty minutes, but he got us in, bypassing an alarm system I doubt I would’ve detected and cutting the glass from the tiny window set high on the door. After that it was a simple matter to manipulate a dead bolt with a long wire, and then we were in.
Out of the night and straight down the rabbit hole
It looked like a hospital operating room. There was the glitter of metal everywhere in the form of needles and probes, clamps and gurneys. Monitors upon monitors and trays of instruments put the finishing touches on the theme. And if that had been all in the room, it could’ve passed as a medical facility. But that wasn’t all; that was only half the picture. Recessed security lighting showed computers on standby, softly humming in oddly comforting song. It wasn’t one or two either, but an entire bank of them lining the wall. Screen after screen filled with a slowly rotating DNA strand shed a sickly green glow onto the shiny linoleum floor. That kind of tan and white checkerboard-patterned tile was cheap and easy to clean—especially of blood. I’d seen that theory proven true firsthand in the basement of Konstantin’s bar. A bucket of a water and bleach mixture and a mop and it was as easy as that . . . except for the cracks.
Close to the operating table, I knelt down and pressed a gloved finger to the thin brown line that ran between the tile. This place wasn’t just for looking pretty; they used it. Why was it I didn’t believe they were performing tonsillectomies down here?
“This is one creepy motherfucking place.”
I looked over at the whisper to see a child-sized hospital gown cascading from Saul’s hand in a fall of pale turquoise. It was an oddly forlorn sight, that scrap of material. Despite its cleanliness—there wasn’t a drop of anything on it, including blood—the sight of it made my stomach twist all the same. “Anything on the computers?” I asked, shifting my eyes to the safer target. I knew enough to surf the Net, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. On the other hand, Saul’s business depended on his expertise with the technical as well as the physical.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Saul shrug and move to take a seat at the nearest computer. Grunting at the spinning screen saver, he started typing. “Reminds me of biology class. Bacteria and fetal pigs; I’ve had better times,” he said.