The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(37)

I looked for too long. Raymundo locked eyes with me. Then he shot to his feet, curling his hands into stony fists. Quick hands tugged him back down, heads shaking wildly, raised voices halfway between appeasement and dread. He shook them off, slammed his palms down on the table, and took a deep breath.

I turned away, but I made sure to keep him in my peripheral vision until I was done eating. Just in case.

I hadn’t seen Brisco or his entourage in the crowded hall, and I found out why soon enough. On my way back to the hive, he fell in beside me and spoke in a low murmur.

“Found your guy.”

“You got him?”

“Found him. Cornered him. Little f*cker’s got a knife like something out of a Rambo movie. He’s fast, too. Slashed Ray-Ray’s arm open from his elbow to his pinky finger, made us fall back. He’s pinned down, though. He ain’t going anywhere ’til you say so.”

“Where’s he at?”

Brisco jerked his chin upward. “The bathrooms,” he said, “on tier three.”

*

Stay out of the bathrooms on tier three, Paul told me on my first day in the Iceberg. The security camera in there’s been broken for a month, and either nobody’s bothered calling in a repair order or the bean counters don’t want to pay for a new one. The guards only poke their heads in once a day. That place is Grand Central Station when it comes to dirty business.

Great place for an ambush. Like if Brisco wanted to take another shot at me, for example. How many guys could he throw at me if he felt motivated enough? Five? Six? The second I stepped into that bathroom, I’d have nowhere to run and no hope of rescue.

I tried to never go into a room with only one exit. This whole prison was nothing but rooms with only one exit. Too many blind corners and too many ways to die. So I told Brisco I’d meet him up there, then stopped off at my cell.

I reached under my cot and curled my fingers around the hilt of the black carbon steel knife I’d taken off the other hitter. I slipped it under my waistband, the cold blade dangerously close to my hip.

Brisco and three of his hangers-on loitered outside the bathroom door, arms crossed and leaning against the dirty eggshell-white walls. Brisco jerked a meaty thumb toward the entrance.

“He’s right in there.”

As I approached the door, my heart thudded against my chest. I flexed and unflexed my fingers to keep the jitters away. Brisco’s boys were close, too close, and it wouldn’t take more than a moment to follow me inside and jump me from behind.

One hand drifted toward my hip. I worked a plan on the fly, the best one I could come up with. First one to follow me inside gets cut, I thought. Five quick stabs, don’t aim, don’t stop to check your work, just stab until he goes down. Second one should be surprised, at least for a couple of seconds. That one, go for the vitals.

They didn’t follow me in, though, and the swinging door groaned shut at my back.

The bathroom was a janitor’s nightmare, smeared with grime and human waste. Mirrors made from sheets of stainless steel stood hammered with dents, throwing off distorted funhouse reflections. One light was smashed; the other gave off a dim, flickering yellow glow and a hum that filled the room like droning flies.

Three toilet stalls. No doors on any of them. And no signs of life.

I slipped the knife from my waistband.

“I’m not looking for a fight,” I said. “I just want to talk to you.”

The only reply was the electric hum.

I inched forward, craning my neck to check the first stall. Empty. Sodden toilet paper clogged the filthy bowl, lapping over one side of the seat.

“We can still work this out.”

Second stall. Empty.

I turned the knife in my grip and bent my knees, keeping limber. I wasn’t any kind of a knife fighter, not like a real pro, but I knew the basics. It took a special kind of reptilian cold to work with a blade. Anybody could pull a trigger, killing from across the room or across the street, but getting in close and personal—embracing the bile and the blood like a natural-born butcher—was a kind of violence I never wanted to get too comfortable with.

Even I had my limits. Problem was, the guy I was maybe about to fight with—he didn’t. And the most dangerous opponent in the world was the one backed into a corner.

I stopped just shy of the third stall and risked a quick glance to my right, toward the battered steel mirror. I was a distorted blur in the reflection—and so was he, standing a heartbeat away on the other side of the plastic partition.

“Tell me one thing,” I said. “Love or money?”

“Meaning?” he replied. Only one word, but it dripped with loathing.

“You’re no punk with a zip gun. You’re the real thing. An operator. So. Do you get paid for your skills, or is this a passion project?”

He paused a moment.

“I charge ten thousand dollars per hit,” he said. “Plus expenses.”

“Good. You’re a businessman. So am I. See, if you were doing this out of some…fanatic devotion to your boss, or maybe you just get off on it—well, we wouldn’t be able to have a rational conversation, now would we? But we can. And we are.”

He didn’t reply. His blurry reflection crouched a little lower. I tightened the grip on my blade.

“I know you’re good,” I said, “real good. But I also know one of your arms is fractured. You’ve been running yourself ragged, hiding out, haven’t had anything to eat…you’ve gotta be coasting on fumes by now. So if it comes down to dancing, you’ve got to know our odds are pretty even. I don’t want to die tonight. Do you?”