Takedown, page 12
“What’s happening?” she whispered, no more than a breath. She didn’t seem to be able to open her eyes.
“There’s been an accident. Don’t try to move. Help will be here in a moment,” he said, holding her hand. He squeezed it, but she didn’t squeeze back.
The sirens were loud, and so were the racing engines ahead of them. There was the screeching of cars coming to a stop outside. He reluctantly let go of her hand and went to the window. The thought of six or seven men handing Amy through the window was alarming. He called out for help, then ordered the first person he saw, a uniform, to gather help to move aside the fallen roof section. Within minutes the voices of many men were on the other side of the roof section and paramedics were coming in the hall window. They went right to Amy and he went right to the blockade. He pushed as they pulled and tore and ripped, jamming in boards for leverage. Cracking, squeaking, popping, and finally an opening large enough for a stretcher.
Once outside, Gavin held Amy’s hand while the paramedics strapped her more tightly to the stretcher. The light also revealed a large bruise on her temple.
“Somebody shut that thing off,” Gavin heard a cop yell regarding the cement truck.
Fire trucks, patrol cars, and ambulances were everywhere, a smaller version of the night before. A dozen firemen and police surrounded Larry the decorator, none of them moving very fast.
“Gavin!” a panicked but familiar voice cried out. Chris was running up to the house much the same way Gavin had.
“Somebody slow him down before he kills himself,” Gavin said to nobody in particular.
“What happened here?” Chris yelled as he jumped up to the floor level. He seemed to be looking everywhere at once.
“She’s alive, Chris. Right now that’s all I can think about.”
“What the… How did…”
Gavin pointed to the cement truck.
Chris stared for a long moment, then turned and looked up the street as if trying to imagine. He turned back to Gavin. “Anyone else?”
Gavin pointed again to the cement truck. “Why don’t you check it out, Chris? It’s really the last thing on my mind right now.”
Chris paused to look at the help Gavin was getting, then nodded and headed to the cement truck in the backyard.
18
For the last few hours Krogan had been busy enjoying and exploring the physical and mental worlds of his new host. Early possession was often very rewarding in this respect. He was renowned for his ability to meld a host’s mind into his own quickly, often not needing more than one or two earth days. Some of that he credited to his meticulous, albeit painful, selection process. But most of the glory belonged to his own fierce determination and power to dominate.
This Hoban was particularly amusing and easy, blaming early mind saturation on hallucinations brought on by his drug use. Krogan had to admit, drugs made the job easier, but he would find his challenges in unique places with this one.
The front of the WWX building had a huge black flag with red WWX letters hanging from a horizontal flagpole. Krogan was about to enter the building when something caught his eye. He went to the newspaper dispenser, ripped open the glass door, and took a paper. The headline read “Terror Strikes,” and the photo of a train wreck was reminiscent of a head-on collision he had caused forty years earlier. He nodded approvingly and wondered how long it would take him to find the terrorist if he decided to switch hosts. Another time, he thought, then dropped the paper and went into the building.
Krogan walked into Michael Grossman’s plush outer office. A buxom blonde secretary spotted him from behind a polished green granite desk. Behind her were gold WWX letters on an oak wall. Hoban had been here only a few times, each time very awed by what he thought was success on display to breed more success. He’d always felt the man behind it all, Michael Grossman, was God personified. His inexperienced, untraveled mind fell easily to Krogan here, and consequently was now quite unimpressed.
“Oh, Mr. Hoban!” the woman said with a wide smile. “Please have a seat. Mr. Grossman has been expecting you.” She furrowed her brow with a chummy nod and whispered confidentially, “Actually, waiting, if you know what I mean. He can get—”
Her eyes widened. “You’re bleeding,” she said, then apparently realized he wasn’t listening to a word she was saying. “Wait a second. You can’t just—”
Krogan pushed through a huge oak door. Grossman looked up from his thronelike seat behind a massive, thick glass desk with WWX etched into the top from underneath. Except for a small stack of papers in front of him and a glass box of cigars at the far corner, the desk was devoid of anything. No computer, no pictures, nothing. Another man, balding, with a dark-blue suit, big tie, big rings, and big watch, looking annoyed, stood up from a seat. Presumably Mark Bodder, the lawyer Grossman had mentioned. And next to him, one of the WWX’s most recognizable celebrities— Grossman’s daughter, Tanya—or Tanya the Terrible as she was better known—dressed in her trademark black leather everything.
“Jackhammer Hoban,” Tanya said with a thin smile, as if she was introducing him to the others.
“How long were we supposed to be waiting here for you?” Bodder squeaked. “You told us to wait for you”—he checked his gold watch—“six and a half hours ago.”
“Okay, okay.” Grossman motioned for his lawyer to calm down. “This is not about who’s late.”
“But—”
“Nice outfit,” Tanya said as Krogan walked by wearing old, ripped jeans, his chest bared under a vest made from a cut-off denim jacket, also ripped and soiled, and a newly acquired dog collar around his neck, tags jingling as he walked. “I think you’re bleeding.”
“The one who rules is never late.” Krogan flipped open the lid on the cigar box and helped himself, biting off the end and spitting it on the floor. He took an extra one and stabbed it into his vest pocket, leaving the glass lid for someone else to close.
Bodder started to stand again, but Grossman eyed him down.
“Allow me,” Tanya offered, rising to Krogan’s side. She took a cigar from the open box, bit, spit, lit with a strong drag, and blew the smoke in a considerate direction. She gently removed the cigar from Krogan’s mouth, inserted hers, then lit his for herself.
Krogan looked into her eyes, deeply, sniffing at her thoughts. He liked what he saw and thought of being inside her body, controlling, possessing. That of course was impossible while the wrestler Hoban still lived, but the thought continued to interest him as he made a simple suggestion to her focused mind.
Grossman wore a confused frown. “Were you in some kind of accident on the way over here?”
Krogan continued to hold Tanya’s stare as he replied, “There are no accidents.”
“Hmm, I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that, but there are mysteries, and right now, you’re one of them. I watched you last night. You were… different. You’ve changed. What happened?”
Still eye to eye with Tanya, Krogan smiled and whispered in his usual deep rasp, “I’ve been born again.”
Bodder snorted. “Uh, right. Look, I suggest we get down to business. We have a lot to cover and it’s already late.”
Tanya, unblinking, turned to Bodder and yanked a white handkerchief from his suit pocket. She turned back to Krogan’s gaze, licked the end of the cloth, and dabbed the wound on his forehead.
Grossman cleared his throat. “Uh, Jack. About last night, again. We’ve been getting some pretty strong feedback and, well, let’s just say you’ve created the kind of conflict that draws a lot of attention. E-mails, faxes, website hits are all off the chart. Everyone wants to know when your next fight is. Some can’t wait to see you destroy your next victim, some can’t wait to see you destroyed. Figuratively speaking, of course. After all, this is pro-wrestling. A small fact that might have gotten away from you in your bout with Tyrant.”
“What Daddy’s trying to say is the fans love you… and hate you.”
“Exactly. Thank you, baby. So we’d like to talk to you about your next fight. The way we see it, Jackhammer Hoban is announced again as the new champion and you—”
“Silence,” Krogan snapped with an energy that seemed to command their mouths shut. “I’m not interested in what you see. And I am not interested in your make-believe games. I will fight when I decide and where I decide. I do not travel to fight. All will travel to me, to this place you call New York, like they did in Athens. And I will not be called ‘Hoban’ any longer.”
After Krogan finished they all looked at each other as if to ask if it were all right to speak.
“This place you call New York? Athens? What are we talking about here?” Bodder said, as if asking himself aloud.
“Then what shall we call you?” Tanya said sweetly.
“Krogan.”
There was a brief moment of pause before Tanya asked, “Why does that name sound so familiar?”
“You can’t be serious,” Grossman said, frowning. “Krogan was the name of that serial-killer maniac.”
“Great,” Bodder scoffed. “There goes the crowd conflict. Everyone will just hate you again. Why don’t you just call yourself Hitler, or better yet… Satan?”
Krogan walked to the window, puffing, looking at the sunset. There was something about smog that seemed to turn the crimson sky into flames. He turned to them. “This is not a suggestion. My name is Krogan and I will fight in this,” he said, pointing his cigar to a large glass-framed advertisement on the wall. All heads turned.
ARMAGEDDON
WWX
HELL ON EARTH
“Armageddon?” Bodder said incredulously. “That starts tomorrow night. There’s no time.”
Grossman shook his head slowly, then turned back to Krogan. “Armageddon has been a long time in the planning. It runs for ten days starting tomorrow, and every slot has been filled. Everything, and I mean everything, is already set.”
“You will issue a challenge to everyone… your phony wrestlers and the rest of the world. They will all prove that I am above all… and I will enjoy myself.”
“Impossible,” Grossman said.
“It must be the drugs,” Bodder said, shaking his head.
Krogan took a long, confident drag, then dropped the cigar; it landed, smoldering, on the plush beige carpet. All eyes went to the cigar, then back to him. “To resist me will prove very expensive,” he said, then turned and started away. “And I have a long memory.”
“No, wait! Jack, I mean, Krogan,” Tanya said, giving her father a desperate eyeful. “Let’s think about this for a second. I mean… it’s not like we don’t have any time to put this together. There’s… there’s the rest of tonight and all day tomorrow.”
Krogan kept walking.
Bodder was about to issue another whining complaint, but Grossman spoke over him. “I suppose we could announce a special guest appearance,” he suggested.
“And that the following nights will have a change of venue,” Tanya added.
Bodder sighed. “If we extend the programming and shorten each program incrementally, we could probably bill him as—”
“The main event!” Tanya interrupted.
Krogan heard a splash of water and turned to see Bodder standing over the cigar with an empty glass of water.
“Main event?” Bodder said incredulously. “Why don’t you set up a ten-thousand-dollar prize for anyone who can unseat him? See what he’s really made of… see if he’s all talk. I mean, isn’t that what promoters did in the old days with their house champ?”
Right then, Krogan decided there would be a time to meet Bodder alone—to let him know exactly to whom he was speaking so sarcastically.
“I like that idea,” Tanya said, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. “Only it should be more than ten thousand. Make it a half million and we’ll have half the country watching.”
“I was only joking,” Bodder spat.
Grossman stood up from behind his seat. “Make it a million and the whole country will watch.”
Bodder plopped into his seat, his open hand dragging down slowly from his forehead to chin.
“Yes!” Tanya yelled. “It’ll be a full-page ad in tomorrow’s paper. A million dollars for anyone who can complete a three-minute one-round bout with King Krogan. If that doesn’t make the action real enough for you, nothing will. It will be the biggest open prize and the biggest show on earth.”
Bodder stood up. “And what about when he loses in the first bout? What do we do with the rest of Armageddon?”
“The winner continues, whoever it is. If they don’t agree to that, they can’t get in the ring,” Grossman said emphatically. “But if Krogan here continues to win, we’ll make billions.”
“See that it’s done,” Krogan ordered, then left.
19
Gavin anxiously paced the vinyl-floored hallway of North Shore Hospital’s trauma center. He had been asked numerous times to sit in the waiting room, but he simply couldn’t sit. On the other side of the double doors an emergency operation was being performed on Amy to remove her ruptured spleen, a fairly routine operation had she not been eight months’ pregnant. She also had three broken ribs and a concussion, but the spleen had to be taken out now or she would bleed to death. This was the good news. The doctors had told him that it didn’t look good for both the mother and the baby making it. Something about the possibility of a detached placenta.
He turned quickly at the sound of a door opening. Chris was walking toward him with his palms up.
“So what’s going on?” he said.
“Splenectomy, for starters.”
“What’s that?”
“They’re taking out her spleen.”
Chris frowned. “What’s a spleen do?”
“I don’t know. They don’t even know. It has something to do with cleaning your blood.”
“I thought the liver does that.”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever it does she can live without it. The problem is the pregnancy. It complicates everything. They …” He had to pause to fight back tears. “… they said they don’t know if the baby will make it because the placenta may have been detached from the impact, and they don’t want to do a C-section unless they absolutely have to because of the trauma Amy’s been through.”
Chris cursed under his breath but didn’t have anything to say.
“How could this have happened?” Gavin said to the ceiling, then looked Chris in the eye. “Can you tell me how something like this can happen? A cement truck, for crying out loud? A cement truck? What, did I have a sign out that said, ‘Drive-in House’?”
Chris sighed. “We need to talk a minute about what happened.”
Gavin shook his head in disbelief. “Sure, why not?”
“Okay, why don’t you start by telling me what you saw and who the dead guy in the backyard was.”
“Larry… Larry Larson. He was the decorator Amy hired.”
“Decorator? You?”
Gavin shrugged. “She said the house was too masculine.”
“Whatever. Go on.”
“He was going over colors with her,” Gavin said, then paused to reflect. “I think I was talking to him when you called me. The next thing I know I’m driving up the block and this cement truck runs me off the road and plows into my house. What am I—a magnet for this kinda crap?”
“Is that it?”
“That’s all I can think of at the moment. Tell you the truth, my mind hasn’t been there. It’s been here… just here.”
Chris nodded, but then sighed. “There’s more. It gets weird. I’d tell you to sit down, but there’re no chairs here.”
“What gets weird?”
“Did you see the driver?”
Gavin remembered the driver laughing as he passed. “Not really. Just a glimpse. Why?”
“Did you know the truck had a passenger?”
“Yes! I remember that. And I remember thinking that was strange.”
“It gets stranger, Gav. The passenger was the operator. He’s dead. The driver’s missing,” Chris said, nodding, as if what wasn’t said was what Gavin needed to sit down for.
Gavin’s first thoughts didn’t seem to come from his mind so much as from his chest, where two drills were busy boring holes— one of anger and the other of fear. When his brain finally caught up to his heart, he said, “A copycat? Someone trying to gain instant recognition?”
“That was the second thing I thought of,” Chris said.
“What was the first?”
“That Karl Dengler had escaped.”
In that instant Gavin wondered why he hadn’t thought of that. Did he really believe, deep down, that the Krogan demon did in fact exist and Dengler was no longer a threat? “Dengler’s in solitary, Chris. To escape would be impossible.”
“That’s what I thought, too, until I saw this.” Chris reached inside his jacket and pulled out a plastic bag, handing it to Gavin.
“What’s this?” Gavin looked at Chris and then the bag, which had enough gray dust inside to obscure the lightweight but hard object inside.
“Go on. Open it.”
Gavin opened the bag and looked in. What the… “Where did you get this?”
“The, uh, ashtray… of the cement truck.”
Gavin’s eyes were paralyzed, staring, staring. “Forensics. One of the sickos who were at the marina when the boat went off the ramp into that sailboat. One of those guys knew about the lobster-claw roach clip. One of them handed it to me. One of them could have planted it.”
Chris shook his head. “Not possible. I found it, Gav. I checked the ashtray for drugs and there it was, just like then. Forensics hadn’t even been there yet.”
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Gavin said angrily.
Chris shrugged his shoulders. “If it is, it’s a pretty damn good one. I can only think of a handful of people who know the punch line… and Dengler’s one of ’em.”
“Did you… ?”
“Of course. It was the first thing I did. He’s locked up snug as a bug.”
“Then who else c—”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you might be able to shed a little light on this.”
“There’s been an accident. Don’t try to move. Help will be here in a moment,” he said, holding her hand. He squeezed it, but she didn’t squeeze back.
The sirens were loud, and so were the racing engines ahead of them. There was the screeching of cars coming to a stop outside. He reluctantly let go of her hand and went to the window. The thought of six or seven men handing Amy through the window was alarming. He called out for help, then ordered the first person he saw, a uniform, to gather help to move aside the fallen roof section. Within minutes the voices of many men were on the other side of the roof section and paramedics were coming in the hall window. They went right to Amy and he went right to the blockade. He pushed as they pulled and tore and ripped, jamming in boards for leverage. Cracking, squeaking, popping, and finally an opening large enough for a stretcher.
Once outside, Gavin held Amy’s hand while the paramedics strapped her more tightly to the stretcher. The light also revealed a large bruise on her temple.
“Somebody shut that thing off,” Gavin heard a cop yell regarding the cement truck.
Fire trucks, patrol cars, and ambulances were everywhere, a smaller version of the night before. A dozen firemen and police surrounded Larry the decorator, none of them moving very fast.
“Gavin!” a panicked but familiar voice cried out. Chris was running up to the house much the same way Gavin had.
“Somebody slow him down before he kills himself,” Gavin said to nobody in particular.
“What happened here?” Chris yelled as he jumped up to the floor level. He seemed to be looking everywhere at once.
“She’s alive, Chris. Right now that’s all I can think about.”
“What the… How did…”
Gavin pointed to the cement truck.
Chris stared for a long moment, then turned and looked up the street as if trying to imagine. He turned back to Gavin. “Anyone else?”
Gavin pointed again to the cement truck. “Why don’t you check it out, Chris? It’s really the last thing on my mind right now.”
Chris paused to look at the help Gavin was getting, then nodded and headed to the cement truck in the backyard.
18
For the last few hours Krogan had been busy enjoying and exploring the physical and mental worlds of his new host. Early possession was often very rewarding in this respect. He was renowned for his ability to meld a host’s mind into his own quickly, often not needing more than one or two earth days. Some of that he credited to his meticulous, albeit painful, selection process. But most of the glory belonged to his own fierce determination and power to dominate.
This Hoban was particularly amusing and easy, blaming early mind saturation on hallucinations brought on by his drug use. Krogan had to admit, drugs made the job easier, but he would find his challenges in unique places with this one.
The front of the WWX building had a huge black flag with red WWX letters hanging from a horizontal flagpole. Krogan was about to enter the building when something caught his eye. He went to the newspaper dispenser, ripped open the glass door, and took a paper. The headline read “Terror Strikes,” and the photo of a train wreck was reminiscent of a head-on collision he had caused forty years earlier. He nodded approvingly and wondered how long it would take him to find the terrorist if he decided to switch hosts. Another time, he thought, then dropped the paper and went into the building.
Krogan walked into Michael Grossman’s plush outer office. A buxom blonde secretary spotted him from behind a polished green granite desk. Behind her were gold WWX letters on an oak wall. Hoban had been here only a few times, each time very awed by what he thought was success on display to breed more success. He’d always felt the man behind it all, Michael Grossman, was God personified. His inexperienced, untraveled mind fell easily to Krogan here, and consequently was now quite unimpressed.
“Oh, Mr. Hoban!” the woman said with a wide smile. “Please have a seat. Mr. Grossman has been expecting you.” She furrowed her brow with a chummy nod and whispered confidentially, “Actually, waiting, if you know what I mean. He can get—”
Her eyes widened. “You’re bleeding,” she said, then apparently realized he wasn’t listening to a word she was saying. “Wait a second. You can’t just—”
Krogan pushed through a huge oak door. Grossman looked up from his thronelike seat behind a massive, thick glass desk with WWX etched into the top from underneath. Except for a small stack of papers in front of him and a glass box of cigars at the far corner, the desk was devoid of anything. No computer, no pictures, nothing. Another man, balding, with a dark-blue suit, big tie, big rings, and big watch, looking annoyed, stood up from a seat. Presumably Mark Bodder, the lawyer Grossman had mentioned. And next to him, one of the WWX’s most recognizable celebrities— Grossman’s daughter, Tanya—or Tanya the Terrible as she was better known—dressed in her trademark black leather everything.
“Jackhammer Hoban,” Tanya said with a thin smile, as if she was introducing him to the others.
“How long were we supposed to be waiting here for you?” Bodder squeaked. “You told us to wait for you”—he checked his gold watch—“six and a half hours ago.”
“Okay, okay.” Grossman motioned for his lawyer to calm down. “This is not about who’s late.”
“But—”
“Nice outfit,” Tanya said as Krogan walked by wearing old, ripped jeans, his chest bared under a vest made from a cut-off denim jacket, also ripped and soiled, and a newly acquired dog collar around his neck, tags jingling as he walked. “I think you’re bleeding.”
“The one who rules is never late.” Krogan flipped open the lid on the cigar box and helped himself, biting off the end and spitting it on the floor. He took an extra one and stabbed it into his vest pocket, leaving the glass lid for someone else to close.
Bodder started to stand again, but Grossman eyed him down.
“Allow me,” Tanya offered, rising to Krogan’s side. She took a cigar from the open box, bit, spit, lit with a strong drag, and blew the smoke in a considerate direction. She gently removed the cigar from Krogan’s mouth, inserted hers, then lit his for herself.
Krogan looked into her eyes, deeply, sniffing at her thoughts. He liked what he saw and thought of being inside her body, controlling, possessing. That of course was impossible while the wrestler Hoban still lived, but the thought continued to interest him as he made a simple suggestion to her focused mind.
Grossman wore a confused frown. “Were you in some kind of accident on the way over here?”
Krogan continued to hold Tanya’s stare as he replied, “There are no accidents.”
“Hmm, I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that, but there are mysteries, and right now, you’re one of them. I watched you last night. You were… different. You’ve changed. What happened?”
Still eye to eye with Tanya, Krogan smiled and whispered in his usual deep rasp, “I’ve been born again.”
Bodder snorted. “Uh, right. Look, I suggest we get down to business. We have a lot to cover and it’s already late.”
Tanya, unblinking, turned to Bodder and yanked a white handkerchief from his suit pocket. She turned back to Krogan’s gaze, licked the end of the cloth, and dabbed the wound on his forehead.
Grossman cleared his throat. “Uh, Jack. About last night, again. We’ve been getting some pretty strong feedback and, well, let’s just say you’ve created the kind of conflict that draws a lot of attention. E-mails, faxes, website hits are all off the chart. Everyone wants to know when your next fight is. Some can’t wait to see you destroy your next victim, some can’t wait to see you destroyed. Figuratively speaking, of course. After all, this is pro-wrestling. A small fact that might have gotten away from you in your bout with Tyrant.”
“What Daddy’s trying to say is the fans love you… and hate you.”
“Exactly. Thank you, baby. So we’d like to talk to you about your next fight. The way we see it, Jackhammer Hoban is announced again as the new champion and you—”
“Silence,” Krogan snapped with an energy that seemed to command their mouths shut. “I’m not interested in what you see. And I am not interested in your make-believe games. I will fight when I decide and where I decide. I do not travel to fight. All will travel to me, to this place you call New York, like they did in Athens. And I will not be called ‘Hoban’ any longer.”
After Krogan finished they all looked at each other as if to ask if it were all right to speak.
“This place you call New York? Athens? What are we talking about here?” Bodder said, as if asking himself aloud.
“Then what shall we call you?” Tanya said sweetly.
“Krogan.”
There was a brief moment of pause before Tanya asked, “Why does that name sound so familiar?”
“You can’t be serious,” Grossman said, frowning. “Krogan was the name of that serial-killer maniac.”
“Great,” Bodder scoffed. “There goes the crowd conflict. Everyone will just hate you again. Why don’t you just call yourself Hitler, or better yet… Satan?”
Krogan walked to the window, puffing, looking at the sunset. There was something about smog that seemed to turn the crimson sky into flames. He turned to them. “This is not a suggestion. My name is Krogan and I will fight in this,” he said, pointing his cigar to a large glass-framed advertisement on the wall. All heads turned.
ARMAGEDDON
WWX
HELL ON EARTH
“Armageddon?” Bodder said incredulously. “That starts tomorrow night. There’s no time.”
Grossman shook his head slowly, then turned back to Krogan. “Armageddon has been a long time in the planning. It runs for ten days starting tomorrow, and every slot has been filled. Everything, and I mean everything, is already set.”
“You will issue a challenge to everyone… your phony wrestlers and the rest of the world. They will all prove that I am above all… and I will enjoy myself.”
“Impossible,” Grossman said.
“It must be the drugs,” Bodder said, shaking his head.
Krogan took a long, confident drag, then dropped the cigar; it landed, smoldering, on the plush beige carpet. All eyes went to the cigar, then back to him. “To resist me will prove very expensive,” he said, then turned and started away. “And I have a long memory.”
“No, wait! Jack, I mean, Krogan,” Tanya said, giving her father a desperate eyeful. “Let’s think about this for a second. I mean… it’s not like we don’t have any time to put this together. There’s… there’s the rest of tonight and all day tomorrow.”
Krogan kept walking.
Bodder was about to issue another whining complaint, but Grossman spoke over him. “I suppose we could announce a special guest appearance,” he suggested.
“And that the following nights will have a change of venue,” Tanya added.
Bodder sighed. “If we extend the programming and shorten each program incrementally, we could probably bill him as—”
“The main event!” Tanya interrupted.
Krogan heard a splash of water and turned to see Bodder standing over the cigar with an empty glass of water.
“Main event?” Bodder said incredulously. “Why don’t you set up a ten-thousand-dollar prize for anyone who can unseat him? See what he’s really made of… see if he’s all talk. I mean, isn’t that what promoters did in the old days with their house champ?”
Right then, Krogan decided there would be a time to meet Bodder alone—to let him know exactly to whom he was speaking so sarcastically.
“I like that idea,” Tanya said, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. “Only it should be more than ten thousand. Make it a half million and we’ll have half the country watching.”
“I was only joking,” Bodder spat.
Grossman stood up from behind his seat. “Make it a million and the whole country will watch.”
Bodder plopped into his seat, his open hand dragging down slowly from his forehead to chin.
“Yes!” Tanya yelled. “It’ll be a full-page ad in tomorrow’s paper. A million dollars for anyone who can complete a three-minute one-round bout with King Krogan. If that doesn’t make the action real enough for you, nothing will. It will be the biggest open prize and the biggest show on earth.”
Bodder stood up. “And what about when he loses in the first bout? What do we do with the rest of Armageddon?”
“The winner continues, whoever it is. If they don’t agree to that, they can’t get in the ring,” Grossman said emphatically. “But if Krogan here continues to win, we’ll make billions.”
“See that it’s done,” Krogan ordered, then left.
19
Gavin anxiously paced the vinyl-floored hallway of North Shore Hospital’s trauma center. He had been asked numerous times to sit in the waiting room, but he simply couldn’t sit. On the other side of the double doors an emergency operation was being performed on Amy to remove her ruptured spleen, a fairly routine operation had she not been eight months’ pregnant. She also had three broken ribs and a concussion, but the spleen had to be taken out now or she would bleed to death. This was the good news. The doctors had told him that it didn’t look good for both the mother and the baby making it. Something about the possibility of a detached placenta.
He turned quickly at the sound of a door opening. Chris was walking toward him with his palms up.
“So what’s going on?” he said.
“Splenectomy, for starters.”
“What’s that?”
“They’re taking out her spleen.”
Chris frowned. “What’s a spleen do?”
“I don’t know. They don’t even know. It has something to do with cleaning your blood.”
“I thought the liver does that.”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever it does she can live without it. The problem is the pregnancy. It complicates everything. They …” He had to pause to fight back tears. “… they said they don’t know if the baby will make it because the placenta may have been detached from the impact, and they don’t want to do a C-section unless they absolutely have to because of the trauma Amy’s been through.”
Chris cursed under his breath but didn’t have anything to say.
“How could this have happened?” Gavin said to the ceiling, then looked Chris in the eye. “Can you tell me how something like this can happen? A cement truck, for crying out loud? A cement truck? What, did I have a sign out that said, ‘Drive-in House’?”
Chris sighed. “We need to talk a minute about what happened.”
Gavin shook his head in disbelief. “Sure, why not?”
“Okay, why don’t you start by telling me what you saw and who the dead guy in the backyard was.”
“Larry… Larry Larson. He was the decorator Amy hired.”
“Decorator? You?”
Gavin shrugged. “She said the house was too masculine.”
“Whatever. Go on.”
“He was going over colors with her,” Gavin said, then paused to reflect. “I think I was talking to him when you called me. The next thing I know I’m driving up the block and this cement truck runs me off the road and plows into my house. What am I—a magnet for this kinda crap?”
“Is that it?”
“That’s all I can think of at the moment. Tell you the truth, my mind hasn’t been there. It’s been here… just here.”
Chris nodded, but then sighed. “There’s more. It gets weird. I’d tell you to sit down, but there’re no chairs here.”
“What gets weird?”
“Did you see the driver?”
Gavin remembered the driver laughing as he passed. “Not really. Just a glimpse. Why?”
“Did you know the truck had a passenger?”
“Yes! I remember that. And I remember thinking that was strange.”
“It gets stranger, Gav. The passenger was the operator. He’s dead. The driver’s missing,” Chris said, nodding, as if what wasn’t said was what Gavin needed to sit down for.
Gavin’s first thoughts didn’t seem to come from his mind so much as from his chest, where two drills were busy boring holes— one of anger and the other of fear. When his brain finally caught up to his heart, he said, “A copycat? Someone trying to gain instant recognition?”
“That was the second thing I thought of,” Chris said.
“What was the first?”
“That Karl Dengler had escaped.”
In that instant Gavin wondered why he hadn’t thought of that. Did he really believe, deep down, that the Krogan demon did in fact exist and Dengler was no longer a threat? “Dengler’s in solitary, Chris. To escape would be impossible.”
“That’s what I thought, too, until I saw this.” Chris reached inside his jacket and pulled out a plastic bag, handing it to Gavin.
“What’s this?” Gavin looked at Chris and then the bag, which had enough gray dust inside to obscure the lightweight but hard object inside.
“Go on. Open it.”
Gavin opened the bag and looked in. What the… “Where did you get this?”
“The, uh, ashtray… of the cement truck.”
Gavin’s eyes were paralyzed, staring, staring. “Forensics. One of the sickos who were at the marina when the boat went off the ramp into that sailboat. One of those guys knew about the lobster-claw roach clip. One of them handed it to me. One of them could have planted it.”
Chris shook his head. “Not possible. I found it, Gav. I checked the ashtray for drugs and there it was, just like then. Forensics hadn’t even been there yet.”
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Gavin said angrily.
Chris shrugged his shoulders. “If it is, it’s a pretty damn good one. I can only think of a handful of people who know the punch line… and Dengler’s one of ’em.”
“Did you… ?”
“Of course. It was the first thing I did. He’s locked up snug as a bug.”
“Then who else c—”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you might be able to shed a little light on this.”
