Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [74]
“We don’t want nothing with her,” the man said. “She’s someone else’s property and we just fetching it for him. The other lady, though, her we can probably find a use or two for. For a little while at least. Yhandim tends to use them up pretty quick, and he has this problem with people who have normal eyes.”
“What have you done with the others?” I wasn’t really playing for time, not yet. I was just asking whatever came into my mind, as much to know the answers as for any other reason. The gun trained on me didn’t waver, and I knew I’d been lucky to jump the man last time. What little time there was left seemed already to be condensing down to a line a minute hence, a barrier I had no real confidence of crossing.
“Don’t matter to you,” the man said. “You ain’t going to be around to care.”
“I’m surprised I’m still alive now. Also, that you are, too. Doesn’t that hole in your head at least hurt? Or the one in your neck, or shoulder?”
“You don’t understand nothing at all,” he said, with a trace of anger. “You got out. You don’t understand shit.”
“Why don’t you explain it to me,” I said, trying to be soothing. “You must be keeping me alive for something. I was there. Maybe I’d understand.”
The man laughed suddenly, destroying whatever hope I’d had. He wasn’t stupid. He was just completely and utterly insane. He clicked back the hammer on his gun, and I realized the line was right in front of me. “You alive because we need to find someone else,” he said. “And we think you know where he is. You going to tell me now, and then I going to kill you.”
“Who?” I said, though I knew.
“Vinaldi,” the man said, with a snarl of utter hatred. “We want to see that boy real bad.”
“Hey, you should have said so,” said a voice, and Vinaldi stepped suddenly into sight behind the man. As he whirled around to face him, Vinaldi swung a heavy wooden barstool into his face with an elegant precision I couldn’t help but admire. One of the wooden legs shattered, bones broke like eggshells, and the man crumpled to the floor.
Vinaldi smiled grimly at me as he strode into the room. “You’re out of practice, Randall, I knew this was going to be a trap. That’s why I insisted on coming along.” He stepped over the guy on the floor and pulled out a gun, his face suddenly dark and implacable.
“Don’t you fucking shoot him,” I shouted, pulling my own gun, grateful to have it in my hand again.
Vinaldi looked up at me. “What the fuck are you yelling about? Of course I’m going to shoot him.”
“If you do I’ll shoot you,” I said, holding my gun steady as I walked toward him. “And as for being out of practice, if you’d stayed the fuck back at Nearly’s then they’d be all right now.” Vinaldi frowned, but flicked his safety back on. I turned to Howie, who was still pressed against the wall, probably wondering whom he was now in most danger from. “Howie, go get some tape.”
“Jack, I’m…”
“Yeah, I know. It’s not a problem.” He wasn’t convinced. “Seriously. In your position I’d have done the same. Now please go get us some tape.”
As Howie ran out, I knelt beside the man and listened to his breathing. It was ragged, but steady.
“Randall, what are you doing?” Vinaldi said, with more than a trace of impatience, “Here is a man who had nothing but your death, and mine too, I might add, on his mind, and you decide this is the time to go round supporting the right to life? You should be running after your women, not worrying about this scum.”
“Yhandim has already got Nearly and Suej,” I said. “He was probably in there two minutes after we left. This guy may know where they’ve been taken. He may know where the other spares are. He may even know what the fuck is going on. You spread his face over the walls and we’re never going to know—added to which I’ve already parked metal in this man’s head and he’s still up and around. Doing it again may only make him pissed.”
Howie came back in with the tape and I rolled the body onto its chest. Using large quantities of very secure masking tape, I quickly bound the man’s hands and legs. His fatigues seemed