WELL, Collections is done. Ideally I’d have novels that had 52 chapters each and every time, but this time we shorted the year a little bit, but that’s okay.

If you’ve been reading along, I hope you’ve enjoyed the book. If you were waiting to download the whole thing so you could read it at your leisure like a normal person, now is your time to shine–links to the whole enchilada are below.

In a week or three I’ll ask for opinions on what the next weekly novel should be, based entirely on titles with zero other contextual information, because I am a tiny god here and can do as I please. Feel free to let me know your thoughts! Until then, thanks, as always, for reading!

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

Epilogue

“Well,” Rachel said, glancing down at her watch. “I gotta run. Job interview.”

I blinked. “What happened to the library?”

She smiled at me, standing up and gathering her purse. I leaned back and stirred my civet coffee in its white cup. I reached up and touched the thick bandage on my nose, and wished I healed faster. Then I shot my cuffs in my new custom suit—full canvas, one-fifty thread count, double-breasted, notched lapels—and looked around McHales, which The Bumble and I had made into our unofficial clubhouse. We’d footed the bill for Falken to move on and still had plenty of scratch to live on for a while between what I’d scraped from my own apartment and what we’d picked up in Newark, though it wasn’t a retirement plan. We were the only people in it aside from the bartender, who was a young musician of the usual sort struggling to stay awake in the afternoon sun, a coffee cup on the bar in front of him.

The Bumble sat at the bar, engrossed in the sports page. A tiny cinnamon-colored kitten with long fur sprouting from its ears sat on the bar between The Bumble’s beer glass and a bowl of milk. Billy had found it out back and adopted it, and named it Stanley.

Rachel looked like a million bucks in a nicely-cut suit, big cuffs spilling out over her jacket, her hair pulled back in a long, shiny tail. She looked expensive, but that had always been Rachel’s main grift: She just looked expensive, no matter what. “They fired me the third day I just didn’t show up, dummy. That tends to happen. You can’t take an unannounced vacation at the Holland Motor Lodge in New Jersey and just go back to your job whenever you’re ready.”

I nodded. “You need anything?”

She shook her head and slung her bag over one shoulder. For a moment she stood there looking at me. “No,” she said. “Connie and I are having lunch next week, if you want to join us.”

I frowned trying to place Connie. Then I blinked again. “You’re having lunch with Rusch?”

Rachel smiled again. “Why not?”

I shrugged. “No reason. Just seems … random.”

“We spent days locked in a motel together. You get to know each other a little, that way. Anyway,” she said, and hung there awkwardly for a moment. I had a feeling that with anyone else, this was where Rachel leaned down and kissed their cheek. Instead, after a moment she just nodded and turned away. “I’ll stay in touch,” she said as she walked out of the room, not meaning a word of it.

For a moment I sat there feeling blue, bored and restless. Then there was a noise out in the main bar and Billy stood up, glanced at me blank-faced, and went out to investigate, returning seconds later.

“It’s the Jew,” The Bumble said, resuming his seat at the bar and picking up the sports page.

As The Phin entered the back room of the bar, I sat up a little and pushed a smile to my face. He looked exactly the same and was trailed by Michael and Maurice, blank-faced in their standard-issue black leather coats. They pretended they’d never seen me before and stayed up near the door, visibly irritated that The Bumble paid them no attention at all.

The Phin walked briskly back to me, carrying a stout-looking walking stick with a solid-gold lion’s head as a handle.

“You look like someone tried to kill you, kiddo,” he said, breathless, his face pink. “Can I have a seat? Talk a little business?”

I gestured at the chair. “Sure thing, Phin. How’s tricks?” This was protocol: The Phin had tried to beat money out of me not so long ago, and I’d burned down one of his joints, but even so you started off every meet with polite chat.

He settled himself in the chair with some grunting and heavy breathing, setting his walking stick on the table and folding his hands in front of him.

“We’re fine, thanks. Any chance of a drop of something? It’s thirsty work, tracking you down. You’re off the grid.”

I shrugged. “There’s a chance of anything,” I said, gesturing at the bartender. “But he lacks a certain enthusiasm for his job, you know?”

The Phin waved his hand over his shoulder, and Maurice strode purposefully towards the bar.

I eyed him carefully, and produced a thick yellow envelope from my pocket. “This is what we took from your people during the, uh, disturbance,” I said. “Plus fifteen percent over three weeks, to be fair. I thought you might think of it as a loan you forgot you approved.”

He reached out and took the envelope, weighed it in his hand theatrically, and nodded, stuffing it into his coat pocket. I watched him carefully. The Phin could choose to view this as a closed episode, or he could decide I owed him a tax. I didn’t have any backing any more, there was no one to intercede for me, so if The Phin put my name in the books I was going to have trouble.

Mo arrived with a full glass of whiskey and set it gently in front of him. The Phin waved him back to his perch with an irritated gesture and took a swallow, wiping his gleaming lips with the back of his hand.

“I’m inclined to go along with that, and here’s why,” he said. “Since Frank McKenna’s untimely demise, it’s fucking chaos. Where’s Frank junior? No one fucking knows. Chino’s dead, Mikey D’s dead, the kid’s missing. It’s fucking chaos.” He shook his head, then leaned back and laced his fingers over his belly, staring at me from under his eyebrows. “It’s also an opportunity.”

I raised my eyebrows. My nose throbbed. I wasn’t taking anything for the pain. I hadn’t seen Frank Junior after he’d entered the warehouse, and I didn’t know where he’d flown to. It hadn’t occurred to me to check up on him.

“Frank’s little kingdom is still there,” The Phin said. “It’s still in one piece, for a few more days, maybe. Because the kid’s missing. Frank Junior might come back with fresh muscle, put the house in order, so people are hesitating. Who cares if he comes back. Someone could step in there, and just take over.” He shrugged. “Wait another week and it’ll be five thousand kingdoms, each a fucking block long.”

I frowned. “You’re thinking I step in there?”

He threw his hands up. “Why not? You know Frank’s operations. You know everything. And you collect, kiddo.” he waved his hands again, leaning forward to reclaim his drink with a moist-sounding grunt. “We had our differences, sure, and you do fucking owe me restitution. But for years you paid that fat Irish bastard like interest on a bank account. He used to brag about you. You know how to make people pay you when the last thing in the fuckin’ world they want to do is pay you. That’s the secret, kiddo. You cracked the code.”

I nodded, thinking it over. It was ridiculous … but it wasn’t. It was what I did, just writ large. “And you want to back me?”

He winked. “Sure. I can’t take on Frank’s territory, his people wouldn’t like it. I’d spend more fuckin’ money and time conquering neighborhoods than anything else. Fucking gunplay, body bags, my friends on the force getting cold feet.” He made a disgusted noise and snorted. “You’ll have some unhappy folks, but most of ‘em know you and could work for you. But you don’t have enough seed money, or muscle. You don’t have political contacts. You were never sitting at the table, huh? So, I’ll be your fairy godfather. I’ll stake you. You need muscle, call me and I’ll send you more legbreakers, gunmen, whatever. You get into a spot of trouble, I can clear it up. All you do is step into Frank’s shoes and keep things runnin’, and be my vassal.”

I nodded. “And tithe to you. How much?”

“Thirty beans,” he said immediately. “I’ll be workin’ hard for you, kiddo. Thirty off the top to me. But I’m giving you a fucking territory it took McKenna twenty-five years to build. All you gotta do is not fuck it up.” He shrugged, slugging back his drink. “It’s worth it, I think. You think on it. Let me know tomorrow.”

He stood up, and the kitten suddenly leaped up onto the table in front of me and sat down, sniffing the creamer and trying to figure out how to get its snout into it. I watched The Phin huff his way through the bar towards his goons. At the doorway leading to the outer bar he spun, raised his cane, and winked.

“Good to see ya, Kiddo,” he said. “If Billy Bumbles ever learns English, tell him I said hi.”

Billy snorted and extended a crooked middle finger over his shoulder without turning around.

The Phin and his boys trooped out, and I picked up the kitten and leaned back in my seat, putting Stanley in my lap and dragging a hand over him. The cat rolled onto its back and grabbed my hand with its paws, pulling me to its tiny mouth and biting. It’s tiny teeth didn’t hurt at all, and I could feel it purring. I looked over at The Bumble, who looked back at me, shrugged and returned his attention to the paper.

It could be done. I hadn’t thought about it at all, but now that someone had said it to me, I could see it, how it would work. I knew everything I needed to know. I thought about the work involved in getting everyone in line, everyone paying up the right amounts on time, and my heart beat a little faster, saliva flooding my mouth. It was bloody work, but it was work I was good at, it was work I enjoyed. And there would be a lot of it.

I looked down at Stanley, who had rolled back onto his belly and suffered me to pet him, still purring, his eyes almost closed and his pink nose wet and glistening. I rolled him around in my hands and felt their power, the energy I had in me. I could hurt the cat, I knew. It would be easy; I could feel him vibrating with energy, nerve endings and blood vessels. I opted instead to scratch behind his ear, making him rub his head into the palm of my hand with pleasure.

I could hurt him, but I chose not to.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

37.

Frank went down easy, collapsing under me like he was made of papier-mâché with an undignified squawk of shock. The gun went off between us, and then it was just gunshots in the air, a drumline of them like bombs going off, punctuated by shouts, like dogs barking. Frank was stronger than a lifetime of rare steaks and bourbon would have led you to believe, struggling beneath me, trying to bring the gun to bear on me again. I had no leverage; with both hands on his wrist I put my weight into play to hold his arm down. After a few seconds of this he reached around and took hold of my hair, yanking back suddenly and viciously, tearing a clump out by the root and jerking my head back painfully.

Then The Bumble crashed into my field of vision, leaping onto Frank’s chest with surprising grace and speed, bending over him, big arms working. Frank started kicking and twitching beneath us like a madman, the gun in his hand leaping like it had a brain of its own, wriggling and twisting in my hands while the noise level grew and grew around us.

Then, with a sudden heave, The Bumble’s shoulders rolled and Frank jerked beneath us, then fell still. His arm went limp under my hands and the gun slipped from his fingers.

I stared down at it, panting, sweat pouring into my eyes. I looked up at The Bumble’s back; he remained turned away from me, shoulders heaving as he sucked in breath. I’d always known Billy had come up the ranks, just like any other big guy with no skills except his muscles and a willingness to take orders, but I’d never really thought about what that meant.

As I stared, Billy whirled and took hold of my arm, scooping up Frank’s gun and dragging me behind one of the Rape Vans, bullets digging up the pavement at our feet as we scrambled behind it. We leaned against the van and struggled for breath, and suddenly The Bumble was laughing. We looked at each other, and I found myself smiling back into his red, boulder-like face.

After a second, his eyes started following something over my shoulder, and the smile faded. Silently, he pointed.

I followed his gaze and saw Alt James, suitcase in hand and Alt Rusch a few steps behind, struggling to keep up with the big man’s long strides. They were just running away. The cops and Frank’s boys were spitting bullets at each other, popping up from behind cover in a weird little ballet, oblivious, and Alt James was just walking away. I suddenly remembered the strange, distant noises I’d heard right before Alt James had shown up.

“Motherfucker,” I breathed. He was using an alternate world to teleport around. Someplace like where he’d tried to leave me, empty and abandoned, with no traffic or cops to slow him down, but with the same infrastructure and layout. Zap himself over there, drive wherever he wanted to go, then zap himself back. Avoid obstacles, get the drop on people—he was going to disappear into the night like a ghost and show up again on my doorstep, grinning, implacable.

I looked up and grabbed the door handle of the van, hauling it open and throwing myself inside, scrambling over broken glass to the driver’s side. The keys hung in the ignition; as I turned them, the passenger door slammed and I found The Bumble sitting there, carefully buckling his seatbelt. I had a moment of affection for Billy: He smelled like onions and he thought hot dogs were food, and maybe he’d started off life as Frank’s eyes and ears on me, but fuck if he hadn’t turned out to be my best friend in the whole fucking universe.

The van started up, smooth and powerful. Trust criminals to always have tip-top vehicles. A spray of bullets ventilated the side door as I put it into gear, making me jump. I slammed my foot down on the gas and we lurched into a skidding, screeching motion, clipping one of the cops’ SUVs as we staggered out of the OK Corral, another spray of bullets trailing us and shattering my driver’s side mirror. I reminded myself that even if I was, in fact, some sort of weird immortal, Billy wasn’t, and I didn’t want to end our freshly minted love affair by getting him shot to death in Newark.

I eased up on the gas and circled the van around, searching for Alt James. I spotted him on the edge of the parking lot, a hundred feet away, getting into his Cadillac.

“Hang on,” I said, and spun the wheel, goosing the van into a tight turn until I had the Caddy in my sights, then mashing the pedal down and fishtailing for a few seconds, the van leaping forward just as I saw Alt James and Rusch slamming their doors, brake lights popping on. The van felt like a coffin rattling towards the incinerator as the speedometer inched past forty, fifty, fifty-five, but I kept the gas on and clench the wheel until my knuckles hurt.

The Caddy leaped into life and immediately peeled out, turning sharply left and accelerating. I started to turn the van and cursed, feeling it lose its grip, pulling my leg up and tapping the brakes a little, easing it into a wider turn and loosing seconds on the deal. The van ran like a top but it was a fucking box on wheels and didn’t want to do anything strenuous. By the time I had the Caddy’s brake lights in view again he’d gained twenty or thirty feet on me, and at sixty miles per hour I wasn’t gaining on him. We were both, however, gaining on the fencing around the parking lot. We’d crash the chain fence easy enough, but I tried to imagine the van’s suspension surviving the low concrete wall at sixty miles and hour and I couldn’t do it.

The streetlamps flashed by like silver trees, the noise of their passing roaring in through the shattered door windows.

Suddenly I could see an arm poking out of the passenger side of the Cadillac, quickly retrieved. As I watched, the suitcase of cash was thrust out and held for a moment out the car window.

“Ah, shit,” The Bumble said.

The suitcase flew back towards us, and I jerked the wheel but too late, the windshield disintegrating into a mist of shards. The suitcase clipped my shoulder and tumbled into the empty rear of the van as we went into a spin, tires squealing. We smacked into one of the streetlamps and everything came to a sudden stop, my internal organs swimming around with unspent inertia, the engine dying with a wheeze.

I looked over at Billy. He was looking back at me, his big calloused hands held up in front of him in a comical gesture of shock.

“That motherfucker just threw a half million dollars at us,” he said.

I started laughing, grabbing hold of the keys and turning the ignition. After a gurgling hesitation, the engine roared back into life. I floored the gas pedal again and the van staggered forward with a groan of tearing metal. Mashing my foot down hard on the pedal, I crept up on the Caddy, the whole van shaking and shuddering, air blowing in and moving around us like a living thing, connected and sinuous. We pulled up alongside the Caddy and I looked down at them; Alt Rusch stared back at me in abject terror, her wrinkled face white, her mouth open. She was saying something, her mouth just moving in silence, as she stared up at me. Her arms were spread, like she was trying to hold herself inside the car despite a pressure trying to expel her.

Beyond her, I could see Alt James’ hand moving over something between the front seats, something with glowing lights.

The moment I saw it, the noise began: A deep, loud screeching noise that sank into my chest and vibrated my bones, smacked into my head and gave me a headache. I winced and the van veered and wobbled as I lost control for a split-second. Grabbing the wheel tightly, I checked the speedometer—ninety-five—and leaned forward, watching the fence approach at disturbing speed.

“He’s going to pop!” The Bumble shouted suddenly.

I looked back at the Caddy. It suddenly looked … blurry, as if it was fading away. The noise got louder, piercing—I imagined it was shaking the van even more, that we were going to start popping bolts if I didn’t shut it down soon.

I looked from the Caddy to the fence. Then I looked over the Cadillac and saw one of the lampposts zooming towards us, a few feet past the Cadillac. I sucked in breath and wrenched the steering wheel to the left.

Tires screaming, we veered sharply and hit the other car with a hollow thud, bouncing me in my seat. The wheel jerked and moved under my hands as the Caddy turned with me, the lamppost right there, immediately in front of it. The noise had reached a volume that made me want to stick pencils in my ears, and then there was an explosion, or the sound of an explosion, and the lamppost flashed by and suddenly there was nothing resisting the van and we spun.

In sudden silence, I felt my stomach lurch inside me and I realized we were in the air. The sky flashed by, and then a streetlight, like a dim, orange moon. The silence was wonderful, the sense of weightlessness was wonderful. It was like I’d hit a ramp at seventy-five miles per hour and launched myself into orbit.

We hit the ground with a bang and the steering wheel hit me in the face with a wet snap, pain flashing through my head like a spike being driven home, wonderful, clarifying. The van skidded on its side for five seconds or so, then smacked into another lamppost and stopped dead, glass shattering and raining down on me, my whole body flopping once like a ragdoll. Then we were still, and everything was silent.

I unbuckled my seatbelt as The Bumble pushed the passenger door up and open. He climbed up onto the side of the van and reached down, taking hold of my wrist and hauling me up. I felt jittery and weak, like I’d been in a coma for a year and was trying to walk. My head was ringing, and blood was pouring down from my shattered nose in a disturbing way. The pain felt good. I wanted to reach up and squeeze my nose, see how bad it was, but resisted. There would be time enough for scab-peeling and bruise-squeezing later.

Dizzy, I patted Billy on the shoulder and jumped down to the pavement. My legs gave out and I fell, hitting my head again and making my vision swim. I started to laugh a little, and tried hard to swallow it as I pushed myself back to my feet, my hands, I realized, cut up and bloody. Glass clung to my coat and fell off in random showers as I moved, limping heavily towards the lamppost I’d steer him into.

The Caddy was gone. Tire marks started about fifteen feet away and stopped abruptly right before the concrete base—he’d managed to jump into some other place, some other version of Newark. Was there a lamppost there? Had he suddenly materialized out of nowhere and slammed into it at full speed and killed himself? He had to have. He would have been heading for a Newark he could still navigate, a Newark with the same streets, the same layout—the same lampposts.

I turned and staggered a few steps to my left, almost losing my balance. Billy was walking towards me, smiling. He looked like he didn’t have a scratch on him, like he’d been sitting on the sidelines watching.

“Well,” he said, “we got this, at least.” He held the battered but still-closed suitcase up in front of him. It was silence for a second as I stood there shaking and laughing, no gunfire or shouting behind us. And then, dim, distant: Sirens.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

36.

Alt James noticed me looking at him and winked, making my leg twitch with the desire to kick him in the teeth. I imagined there might be an alternate universe where that would be possible, where I might take someone’s magic car through the noisiest invisible tunnel in the universe and track down some unsuspecting version of James and just assault him, but it wasn’t this universe. In this universe I was unarmed and standing next to The Bumble, and we were surrounded by Frank’s men on one side and the remnants of James’ cops on the other, guns fucking everywhere, dead bodies still staring in shock, chaos and open wounds.

I wasn’t entirely clear how Alt James had gotten his band of dirty cops to trust him, although having a dead body of his twin probably helped a little. There were only three of them left, led by the now-grimy and disheveled woman, short, a deep cut on her forehead and strands of dull brown hair hanging in her face. She watched everything from under her pale eyebrows, head tilted down, and looked fucking crazy, like she was going to go home and arrest some graffiti kids in her neighborhood and beat the living shit out of them just to relieve some stress.

It had started to rain, an annoying misty drizzle that you could ignore until you realized you weighed an extra fifty pounds because of the water your clothes had absorbed. Everyone else stood like they had more important things to worry about, like a fresh gunfight breaking out and everyone getting killed, so it didn’t seem smart to complain. I just stood there with the rain making me blink, getting in under my collar and dripping down my back. Everything had gone to fucking hell, but there was always hope things would go to hell again and all my problems would end up killing each other as planned.

About two blocks away, a car turned the corner, headlights washing over us. Everyone stiffened, but Alt James stepped forward immediately, hands up in front of him.

“These are my associates, is all. Mr. McKenna, let’s stay calm and do some business.”

Frank raised a hand and his crew did absolutely nothing, but that at least included not shooting at me, so I was pretty happy with the result. Everyone kept telling me I was immortal, but I had little desire to find out by direct experiment.

“All right,” Frank said laconically, smiling a little.

We waited in silence as the car pulled into the lot, rolled to a halt, and killed its lights. Everyone twitched a little when the doors popped open, but no one moved as Alt Rusch and the young red haired woman I’d met in the back of a car outside the Templar emerged, looking clean and pressed. They didn’t approach right away, just hung back.

“Go to this truck,” Alt James shouted over his shoulder, keeping his smile on Frank, “and bring me that suitcase.”

His version of Rusch glanced at the girl, shrugged, and set off, unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. She looked thinner and more wasted than my Rusch, her skin looser, more brown spots on her. She opened the passenger door of The Second Coming’s SUV and rummaged around, finally emerging with his suitcase full of cash, holding it with both hands and dropping it at Alt James’ feet like a lead weight. He grinned and glanced down at it.

“All right, Mr. McKenna, let’s make a deal. I got a lot of money in this case you can have. It’ll clear up your losses, and make up for your trouble to boot.”

Frank’s eyes flicked down to the suitcase and stayed there. “I’m curious what a bunch of civil servants thinks is a lot of money.”

James nodded and kicked the suitcase, sliding it forcefully into Alt Rusch’s legs. She yelped and jumped; all of the assembled goons snickered a little, eliciting a venomous glare from Alt Rusch I tried, and failed, to imagine on my own version of the woman. This version of Rusch would slit your throat for gas money, I thought.

The old woman knelt down and snapped the case open. The bills were still neatly stacked inside. Frank stared at it for a second too long, and then shrugged, looking back up at James.

“All right,” he said with the same careless drawl. “What would you want for that kind of money?”

Alt James gestured at Alt Rusch without looking at her, and she closed the case again and stood up to kick it back over to him. He was an impressive sight, tall and armored up, a big chrome-plated auto tucked in his waistband, the god of fucking war. I saw the cops behind them exchanging some looks—not liking that James was giving away that much cash, not liking that they didn’t know what the fuck was going on, not liking any of this shit.

“Wait a fucking second,” the woman said, stepping around to cut between Frank and Alt James. “Wait a fucking second. Captain, you got dead cops back there. Right behind you. That your fucking twin killed. And you’re just conducting business as fucking usual with this piece of trash?”

She was livid, and a small fire of hope lit inside me. Maybe this was going to go off the rails and get bloody again after all.

Alt James didn’t look at her. “Walker, we can discuss this later, okay? You all came into this knowing there was risk. You all are gonna retire young riding on my back. You got complaints, go talk to Internal Affairs, see where it gets you.”

She shook her head. “This shit—”

“Fucking cops,” Alt James snapped. “You’re all fucking the same everywhere. Think you can take the money and still set the tone. But the money sets the fucking tone. You want to take a vote and walk on out, go on ahead, but be fucking quiet about it, huh?”

She didn’t seem inclined to move. “This isn’t what we signed up for. This isn’t what you used to be all about. Now, we—”

With a fast, almost casual move of his arm, Alt James drew the shiny chrome automatic from his waistband, pushed it against her shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The noise was terrible, like a sonic boom, and her shoulder exploded, red pulp sprouting like a geyser. She seemed to think about it for a moment and then spin around from the impact, her other hand fluttering up to clamp down on the wound as she stumbled and staggered, falling over her own feet and landing with a wail of pain on the floor.

Behind him, the other cops all jerked as one. He pointed the gun at the sky and pulled the trigger again without turning around. “Any of you feel like you gotta express your displeasure, this ain’t the time or place.” He waited a beat, then lowered the gun and shrugged a little at Frank, rolling his eyes and grinning.

“What I want,” he said evenly, like he hadn’t just shot a cop in front of witnesses, “is your boy. Falken. Bodily.” He shrugged. “Alive or dead, don’t matter.”

Frank glanced at the cop on the ground, being helped by two of the burly, bald cops in jeans and tight T-shirts, both of whom looked like they’d just lost their cherry on shitting their pants. I was enjoying the show, seeing these assholes who strutted around like their badges made them untouchable feeling a little heat. I liked watching them squirm.

“All right,” Frank said, looking back at Alt James. I could almost see the thought bubble above his head: He thought this was the easiest money he’d ever make. “That works for me. One little problem, though, Captain: I don’t have Falken. I gave up on that shithead a long time ago.”

A feeling of hot frustration started to burn in me. All this, and both these motherfuckers were going to walk away, and I’d likely end up with a bullet in my head for my trouble.

“These two know where he is,” James said, cheerful. He looked around. “Looks to me like you were planning on beating some shit out of them tonight anyway. Why not see if that shakes loose? I can wait. I’m a patient man.”

Frank looked at us, his face still. His Thinking Face, I knew. He chewed on something for a few seconds, and then smiled. “Chino,” he said. “Billy Bumble, bring ‘im over here, okay?”

I tensed up. Chino, daydreaming, took a moment to get his fat ass in motion, and came up to Billy gun in hand, which was bright. Under normal laboratory conditions, The Bumble could bend Chino into interesting shapes and use him as furniture. The gun evened things out. Billy gave him a shrug as he approached, and stepped over to Frank without assistance, his jowly face blank, his eyes sleepy. The Bumble wasn’t going to let some fat asshole like Chino manhandle him.

Frank nodded at The Bumble. “How you doin’, Billy?”

The Bumble shrugged, massive shoulders rolling. Frank nodded cheerfully. “Chino, give me your piece.”

Chino handed it over. Frank made a show of weighing it in his hand for a moment, then raised his arm, putting his shiny automatic against Billy’s forehead. Everything got quiet; even the cops stopped their cursing and muttering to stare. I stiffened and started to take a step forward, but Chino and the rest of Frank’s mutts turned and covered me, almost casually. Chino even had the balls to wag a finger at me, shaking his head with a grin.

“Billy,” Frank said, sounding almost tired, his injured hand cradled up by his chest, his belly straining the faith of his shirt buttons. “I’m fuckin’ tired of this, and I hate bein’ in fucking Newark, so tell me where the fuck you got Falken stashed and then we all go home.”

The Bumble’s eyes had opened slightly when Frank had put the gun against his head, but now were their usual sleepy slits. He shrugged. “Can’t do that, Frank.”

I put my eyes on Frank and kept them there, trying to judge his body language. I couldn’t believe he would fucking shoot Billy Bumbles like that, but then Billy had been cast out; he wasn’t part of Frank’s crew any more, so it wasn’t against the rules or any bullshit like that. And then it occurred to me that this was a process: He’d ask Billy, and if Billy refused to answer he’d shoot Billy in the head, and then he’d ask me, and Billy would be proof that he was serious. He’d chosen Billy because he thought Billy was the tougher one between us. And he was probably right.

My heart started pounding.

Frank nodded, and shoved the barrel of the gun hard against Billy’s forehead, making the big man wince. “Sure you can. One last chance, or I fucking blow the top of your head off.”

Billy shrugged again, but didn’t bother answering. Frank’s whole body kind of sagged, a defeated sort of movement, and I realized immediately he was going to do it.

I took a deep breath, told myself I was immortal, and launched myself at Frank.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

35.

I knew The Second Coming of Alt James was going to ram the cops the moment he herded us into his sleek, stolen SUV with the heated seats and the individual television screens, and winked at me as he backed away to slam the door, gun trained on us. “Let’s see if we can’t draw my twin out from the shadows with a little rumpshaker, huh? Fasten those seatbelts, y’all,” he said, smiling.

“Shit,” The Bumble said, sounding happy. “He’s going to fucking ram them.”

We both sat there with ridiculous, inappropriate smiles on our faces. I wasn’t sure what The Bumble was thinking, but my heart was racing as I pictured it: Bodies in the air, sparks grinding between the vehicles, the thud and thump of the tires rolling over people, the chaos, the pain, the excitement of it. The glorious part of it was that I was a prisoner, powerless, and thus free from guilt.

The Second Coming of Alt James put the SUV into gear and it rolled soundlessly down off the overpass. With a little goose of the gas pedal he hopped the curb and cut over a small island of sidewalk, popping out onto the main approach to the warehouse parking lot. The lot was surrounded by a chain link fence sprouting from a low concrete wall, but the entrance was a double gate thrown wide open. Headlights off, he moved at a crawl towards the huge structure ahead. We could see the cops clearly enough; there were evenly spaced streetlamps sprouting from the blacktop every twenty feet or so, giving off an eerie orange glow. The cops, still milling about like they owned the fucking world, secure that their badges and guns would protect them from anything, didn’t notice us. For a few seconds we glided along in silence, wrapped in darkness. The Second Coming held his automatic up in the air so The Bumble and I could see it, one hand casually on the steering wheel, his own seatbelt cinched tight over his wide chest.

When we were half a long block away, he hit the gas, and we all jerked back into our seats.

It was eerie, but no one noticed us until right before we slammed into them. At the last second there was this moment of stillness, shock, paralysis, where all of them turned almost as one and stared into the grill of the truck. A surge of adrenaline swept through me, carrying away all the pain and aches, all the weariness, filling me with electricity and making my mouth dry up like a desert. Then we crashed into a knot of people as the night erupted into screams, and time snapped back to normal speed, everything in flashes. The SUV clipped the butt end of one of the Rape Vans and we spun, moving sideways and scraping over three or four bodies before smacking into the side of the warehouse, my teeth leaping in my mouth.

The Second Coming was out of the SUV before I could even orient myself, popping out with guns in both hands. I watched him feeling something akin to awe as he moved low and easy, throwing shots. With one hand he almost casually put bullets into the prone bodies littered around the truck, while with the other he tracked the surviving cops as they ran for cover behind the vans and trucks, pulling their own weapons and shouting. He put down one more with an impossible shot before he’d chased them all behind cover.

The Bumble started to move, but I put my hand on his shoulder. “Wait. No one but James knows we’re in here, and this is the whole damn point: Let them kill each other.”

He sagged back into the leather, grimacing. “Yeah,” he said, and turned his head to watch out the passenger window.

Almost casually, The Second Coming moved behind one of the vans between us and three cops who’d gathered behind one of their own SUVs. Two more were using the other van as cover. I counted five of them down, most likely all dead, and wondered how fucking lucky we were as a universe to have gotten my Stanley James, who hadn’t been above a shakedown and been kind of a pain in the ass, but generally a good enough cop, a good enough person. Reasonable. Not a bloodthirsty killer like every other Stanley James I’d met so far.

The Second Coming was moving, then, gingerly backing his way down the length of the van, popping out from behind it on the other end, completely exposed to the five cops crouching ten feet away. He poured fire at them, hitting two of them almost instantly and flushing the other three up and out, firing back as they scrambled to the next truck for new cover, their shots wild. The Second Coming took his time, following them to their previous spot.

Suddenly, some distance away, there was a second or two of a loud, eardrum searing noise, like static from the world’s largest radio. It there and gone, making my whole body tense up. When I focused on the parking lot again, James and the cops didn’t seem to have moved, but Frank’s men were pouring out of the warehouse, shouting, moving behind the SUV we were in for cover. Mentally I set my stopwatch for police involvement at about five minutes, with all the noise going on. Although it was Newark. That was a variable I couldn’t handicap.

Frank’s guys didn’t know what to do, at first. They didn’t know who any of these other assholes were. Just as Frank himself emerged from the warehouse, smoking a cigarette and holding his bandaged hand up like a talisman in front of him, his men spotted The Second Coming. With shouts and yells they started firing at the SUV he was hiding behind. The cops—who I was actually starting to feel sorry for—started firing their weapons more or less in every direction at once, displaying the sort of training and calm I’d come to expect from city police. I had to admit, in all fairness, that your Captain and chief dirty cop suddenly ramming into you with a truck and shooting at you was probably unsettling, and probably hadn’t been covered at the fucking academy.

Bullets slapped into our SUV, surprisingly loud, sending a shuddering vibration through the whole chassis that made The Bumble and me sink down in our seats, cursing and jerking. Frank’s men as one unit decamped for the Van The Second Coming had recently been using as cover. Peeking up over the dashboard I could see Frank just standing there smoking, like nothing in the world could ever hurt him.

I leaned over and eased the lock of my door open. “Stay here,” I said to Billy. Without waiting for a response, I pushed the door open just enough for me to slip out onto the pavement, silently pushing it closed behind me. Not ten feet away, Frank stood watching, red in the face and puffing away at his cigarette. It was amazing, but no one was paying any attention to him. The idea that I’d gotten everyone together just so Frank could miraculously survive was a sudden and heavy anxiety, and I thought if there was ever a time to get over my phobia of guns, this was it. All or nothing.

I dropped to the greasy, gritty pavement and pushed myself under the SUV. On the other side lay one of the dead cops, a big guy with a shaved head burned red and angry from the sun, peeling in spots, his gingerish hair in a monk’s halo just over his ears. His gun was still holstered in the small of his back, and I crawled under the car towards him, reaching out gingerly as shots banged out just a few feet away, making me cringe and wince each time.

Another drawn-out second of ear-bleeding static filled the air just as I managed to unsnap the holster and take hold of the gun, a snub-nosed revolver of some sort. By the time I’d rolled back towards the other side of the car, the noise had stopped again. I didn’t pause to think on it. I had a few moments while everyone was busy, while Frank was distracted, in which to enact a little insurance.

I crawled out from under the SUV and pushed up onto my feet. Moving slowly, I crept over to where Frank stood, holding the heavy gun down by my leg and angled away from me so if it went off I wouldn’t shoot myself. I’d fired a few guns in my time, when circumstances had forced me to, but they always seemed to vibrate in my hand like an unexploded bomb, waiting for one more little jerk or tremor to set them off. My heart was beating fast and my hands shook a little as I angled my way back towards the warehouse wall in shadows created by the amber streetlights I got myself lined up directly behind Frank’s pudgy, slump-shouldered form. Reminding myself not to get in too close where he could grab at me—Frank had gotten fat, but he was a scrapper, and knew how to fight—I crept forward until I was close enough to reach out and push the gun into the small of his back.

“Hi, Frank.”

I felt like an asshole. He went stiff and jerked his arms a little, then caught himself and went still, not turning around to look at me. I felt the moment draining away even as I arrived. I should have just shot him, I knew it. I told myself to just do it, to not stretch this out and let him think. But I couldn’t. I found myself frozen. I’d never just killed a man like that, cold, mechanical. I’d had a few moments where I knew I could have killed someone, but I’d warmed up to it, the violence boiling up and over and carrying me along until The Bumble or someone pulled me away, dragging me off. This was clinical and I found I didn’t have the belly for it.

“Jesus,” Frank said loudly over the roar of gunshots, turning his head finally to get me into his peripheral vision. In front of him, The Second Coming dashed behind the other rape van, dropping clips from his guns and crouching low, hunted by a dozen people but still looking like he was in charge. “You’re fucking supernatural, you know that?”

“Shut up,” I said. Ridiculous. I’d started the fucking conversation. Sweat rolled into my eyes and I thought I should just start beating him, get the blood flowing, and then I’d be able to do it. But I wasn’t angry. I didn’t feel angry and strong, untouchable like I usually did when I got into the mood to hurt someone. I felt stupid and hollow.

As I watched The Second Coming, the original Alt James walked into my vision behind him, like my vision had blurred.

He was wearing full police riot gear: SWAT uniform, body armor, helmet with visor up. A semiautomatic rifle was slung over one shoulder, and he held an automatic in one hand. He didn’t hesitate or say anything; he walked up behind The Second Coming, put the auto to his head, and pulled the trigger. There was a brief geyser of red jetting from The Second Coming’s forehead, and then he crumpled to the ground. I stared in dumb shock; it was like one Stanley James had been plucked away, rubbed out of the picture, replaced by a new version.

I heard something behind me, and then the barrel of a gun was pressed into my back.

“Drop it, asshole,” Chino breathed into my ear, his breath smelling like cigarettes and hot dogs. “I don’ wanna have to shoot you, and miss out on knockin’ your teeth out, entienda?”

Alt James looked over at us, and smiled, pointing his gun at Frank carefully. All the noise had suddenly stopped.

“What do you say, Mr. McKenna?” he shouted cheerfully. “How about a truce?”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

34.

The Bumble handed me the binoculars and leaned on his elbows, snapping gum in his mouth as he shifted his weight, leaning it all on the old yellow stone of the overpass, hunching down so that his head was even with my shoulders. The warehouse Frank had given us was a straight shot away, bathed in orangey streetlights, an empty parking lot out front, a single window glowing with yellow light on the second floor. A faded, splintered sign on the wall proclaimed it to be the home of Dawson Wood Treatments. I held the peepers loosely in my hands and proclaimed it to be the home of several million termites, cockroaches, and fat, lazy spiders.

Newark smelled like it was built on the dried up carcasses of their ancestors.

“You got the number for the motel, right?”

The Bumble snorted. “I got it, Boss. Don’t worry. I’ll check on ‘em.”

I opened my mouth, but as I did so two black vans appeared suddenly in the parking lot, moving smoothly to the center of our field of vision.

“Jesus,” I said, awed. “They’re fucking rape vans.”

They were cheap cargo vans, all the windows blacked out so that once you were inside no one would ever know. I couldn’t see, but I was certain the windshields were tinted, and there was probably some sort of soundproofing too. The kind of vehicle designed for snatching people off the street and swallowing them whole. Billy chuckled as the two vans came to a stop. Immediately all the doors opened as if on one automatic cue, eight guys spilling out into the night. One, I could tell from his pot belly and sloped shoulders, was Frank. Chino and Mikey D I knew from the stiff way they moved, their bandages gleaming in the fake light. Frank Junior, of course, unfolded from the front seat next to his father and bobbed about, light and airy, smoking a cigarette with his hands in his pockets. Through the binoculars he looked bored.

They extracted several big green duffel bags from the vans and headed for the warehouse door, which opened mysteriously as they approached.

“Jesus,” I said again.

“They’re lookin’ to have a little fun with you, I’m thinking,” The Bumble said, then paused for a second. “Before killin’ you, I mean.”

This was The Bumble’s idea of a joke, I knew from bitter experience. I didn’t look at him, because I knew he’d have a sly, amused look on his face, holding in the mirth and wondering if I’d gotten the joke. Seeing it would make me want to hit him, so I kept my eyes on the warehouse.

As I watched, three more vehicles arrived, all black SUVs of some sort, with tinted windows. They screamed plain-clothes police, and the dozen or so mean and one woman who emerged from them confirmed my suspicions: The guys were all in sloppy T-shirts and jeans, baseball caps, with handcuffs hanging from belt loops and neat little thirty-eights tucked into the back of their waistbands. The lone woman was short and had her brown hair pulled back into a pony tail that erupted from the back of her own baseball cap, and wore sneakers instead of boots. Alt James had a squad of dirty cops on his payroll and I was looking at them all right now.

I didn’t see James himself, though, and the cops all milled about around the SUVs like they were awaiting orders. I wondered if Frank’s people would spot them from inside, if things were going to erupt a little too soon.

“Call the motel,” I said. “Just make sure we’re not missing something.” I didn’t like that he wasn’t there, in sight. It made me jumpy.

The Bumble sighed and pulled the cell from his pocket. Flipping it open, he dialed the number, asked for our room, and waited a moment. “Me,” he said. Another second. “Okay.”

He snapped the phone shut. “They’re fine.”

We’d set up a simple code just in case: If everything was fine, whoever answered the phone would say they were fine. If there was anything wrong at all they couldn’t talk about (say, Alt James standing there with a gun on them) they would say they were okay. It wouldn’t sound weird to anyone else, but we’d know right away. I had a moment of terrible doubt that The Bumble could keep it all straight, but calmed myself down. If he couldn’t keep a two word code straight, we had bigger problems.

I squinted back at the cops in the parking lot. They’d noticed the Rape Vans and were going over them, but showed no real initiative or ambition—they were waiting for James, I guessed, and since he’d told them to be there they didn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary. That made me feel better; if they were waiting on James then I figured he was coming.

Tires on the road made Billy and me startle. We turned and watched a black SUV, part of the same litter as the ones down by the warehouse, roll slowly towards us, lights on, music dimly thumping out of the microscopic gaps between the steel. I watched, dumbfounded, as it rolled to a stop directly across from us, and just as I managed to think how in fuck did he know we’d be up here the driver’s side window rolled down, revealing Alt James, his teeth white and straight.

“Hello, boys. I thought we were meeting down at the spot. I came up here looking to park, and here you are. That’s fucking fate.”

My brain felt like it was in slow motion, filled with syrup. I looked around, but there was no sign that anyone else had followed James here. I spun around, trusting Billy to keep an eye on James’ doppleganger, and looked back down at the warehouse with the binoculars. Nothing had changed; the cops were still milling about, chatting, Frank and his people were still inside, apparently oblivious. I looked around again, but there was absolutely no sign that James had brought anyone else to the ambush.

Paranoid, I just watched as James opened his door and stepped out onto the cracked pavement of the overpass, lugging out a sizable briefcase as he did. He slammed the door behind him and then started walking towards us, his posture relaxed, still smiling.

“I don’t see my boy anywhere. Maybe he’s invited to the party down there?” He cocked his head. “You didn’t maybe plan on me walking into a trap or anything right?” He stopped a few feet away from us and stood there, shaking his head, grinning. “Naw, you’re a straight shooter, I can see that. That’s why I said to myself, when I saw you in court, I said, just hand this man your card, Stanley, just hand him your card and go have a good dinner, get some sleep, because he’s gonna call you and make a deal.” He set the briefcase down on the ground and pushed his big hands into his pockets, spreading his coat back enough to reveal a pair of shoulder holsters, each crowded with large guns. The cut of his suit was dramatic. I liked the way it moved on him, and wondered if the tailor lived here or … somewhere else.

He made a show of looking around. “So, where’s my boy? I brought your cash.” He nudged the briefcase with his foot.

I looked at the briefcase and then back at James. I started to say wait, you actually brought money? and then stopped myself. I swallowed and shrugged, struggling to kick my brain back into gear.

“I didn’t trust you,” I said slowly. “So I thought I’d play it safe and see what you did.”

James smiled. “Well, see, you ain’t a fucking bitch. That’s clear. Not going to wander in like some five-and-dime hood from Bayonne or some shit, thinking you’re tough. I get it. So, here I am. I’m keeping my end of the deal. Where’s my boy?”

I licked my lips. I was trying to see the angle. He wasn’t possibly really just going to pay me and walk away. There was something I was missing. “Let me see the money,” I finally said.

He laughed. “My man,” he said, shaking his head and bending down to pick up the case. He flipped it over and popped the clasps, revealing neat stacks of crisp-looking bills. If it wasn’t just cut-up newspaper with a single bill on top, it looked like plenty to cover Falken’s debt and even leave me something left over as a reward or a finder’s fee. I stared at it until he snapped the case shut again, trying to figure this out. Alt James had gone to some extremes to get rid of me, and now he was polite as hell and offering to buy me off. Maybe it made sense. I reminded myself that I didn’t know this man.

“All right,” he said, setting the case down again, relaxed and completely confident that any attempt by The Bumble or me to take it from him by force would fail. “Where’s my man? I drove all the way to Newark for this shit.”

I hesitated one more second, luxuriating in it, and then shrugged. “Falken’s not here,” I said, figuring I’d see where he took us from that, play for time. In the end, I could lead him to the warehouse myself, hope my supposed immortality kept me alive.

He nodded, thrusting out his lower lip and looking around, as if considering things carefully. “Falken’s not here,” he said slowly, then snapped his eyes back to me, his face blank and hard. “Who the fuck,” he said slowly, “is Falken?”

I blinked. Whatever Alt James’ game was, I waved at it sadly as it sailed over my head. “The man you came here to kill,” I said slowly. “He isn’t here. He’s—” I hesitated again, trying to think through the possibilities, and suddenly decided to take the risk. “He’s down in the warehouse.”

James nodded again. “Okay, Falken’s in the warehouse. That’s good news. But I don’t give a shit. I ain’t here to kill anyone named Falken.” He pulled one of his guns from its holster slowly, smoothly. “So let’s quit the bullshit, right? I’m here to become like you, to become a Terminus. And to do that, I need to kill Stanley fucking James.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

33.

The door opened and I smiled at Rachel, hands in my pockets.

“Jesus,” she said, making a show of looking me up and down. “You were in jail or the sewers?”

I smiled, making no move to enter. I glanced past her into the room; The Bumble was sitting on one of the beds, reading a newspaper with the frown of a the barely literate, and Rusch sat at the greasy little table, smoking cigarettes and staring out the window. “Jail’s a lot less pleasant than you might think,” I said. “And I wasn’t sitting here, taking like fifteen showers a day.”

She made a face. “Well, at least you’re better at showering than Billy.”

This last in a mock whisper, with a comic face of horror. I laughed.

“Got a second?” I said, stepping aside and waiting. She blinked, cocked her head in an adorable way I liked, and then nodded, stepping out and closing the door behind her.

“Let’s get a coffee,” I suggested.

The World’s Tiniest Coffee Shop shared floorspace with the office in the motel; you turned around at the front desk and found yourself facing a strange kitchen-like area. In the mornings they set out a selection of continental fare—muffins, cereals, coffee urns. The urns were kept hot and filled all day and night, sluicing out a bitter, thick coffee that made me want ham sandwiches and cigarettes. There were two tiny little tables with squeaky plastic chairs in a space that was just too small for four people to occupy comfortably. We trooped there in silence, made our complimentary coffees under the eyes of the desk attendant, a skinny black kid with a blooming afro he spent a lot of time grooming, wearing a clip on tie that was almost, but not quite, the color of rust—and took them outside to watch the traffic worming its way into the Holland Tunnel.

“Wow,” she said, sipping her coffee, the wind pushing her hair around. “New Jersey really is awful.”

I shrugged. “This is just up here. It’s been poisoned by New York—this is where all the toxic runoff gathers. Down south its nice. Farms and shit.”

“Which you know because of your extensive travels.”

I didn’t look at her. I sipped my coffee, laden with fake milk and fake sugar, sweet but horrible, and tried to feel my way around her. I’d been out of physical touch for hours and hours—long enough for Alt James to ferry in a pair of ringers to play head games, long enough, maybe, for him to ferry in some insurance.

“Do you remember,” I said, watching a beautiful late-1960s Mustang convertible edge its way past us, the driver yelping on his cell phone, gesticulating wildly. “The first night I drove for you?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Now, why are you bringing that up?”

This was dangerous ground for us, I knew—and on top of that she didn’t like being reminded of how she’d made her way. But I needed something that no one else could know.

“You remember what happened.”

She nodded, not looking at me. “I remember.”

“Tell me.”

She kept her face turned away from me, standing there with her arms crossed, her coffee held by her shoulder, like she was hugging herself. For a second I thought she wasn’t going to answer me. “You didn’t say two words to me for the first hour, just drove and ignored me. I liked you. Most of the guys driving always chatted us up, like they were going to get a tip at the end of the night, keep us company. Then that guy in the hat got frisky and I hit the panic button. And you almost beat him to death. Literally almost to death.” She finally turned a little to look at me. “And you fucking enjoyed it.” Away again, studying the gentle slope of highway on-ramps off to our left. “You looked up at me, blood droplets all over your face, and you were grinning. I’ve tried to get that grin out of my head, but I can’t. Sometimes even today I look at you in the right light, or rain’ll be shadowed on your face from the car window, and I see that grin again.”

I nodded. “I saved you,” I said.

She nodded without looking at me. “Yes.”

Sipping coffee, I took three precise steps away from her. “Rusch, Billy, and Falken—any of them out of your sight?”

“What?”

“Any of them out of your sight for an extended period of time? Any of them acting weird?”

She turned back to me. “Weird?” She shook her head. “No. Everyone’s been in and out, but no one for very long—coffee runs, cigarettes. We’re fucking bored to death and Elias’s terrified—he’s trying to look tough but he jumps at every noise like James is going to appear in a puff of blue smoke and strangle him—but aside from that everyone seems normal. Why?”

I nodded. “Last night I got picked up by you and Billy. ‘Cept it wasn’t you and Billy, right? It was another you and Billy.”

She stared at me for a second, then bit her lip and looked down at the ground. “Oh, shit.”

I felt awkward, standing there, this huge black memory between us, like I’d pulled it, wriggling and alive, from a box and dropped it onto the ground, where it twitched and bled, begging for mercy. We’d spent the last few years burying it, long, slow work, and now here it was again. I remembered the look on her face as our eyes had met: A last glimpse of fading, electrifying admiration, affection, joy, crumbling and collapsing into a singularity of horror and disgust.

We walked back to the room in silence, that night hanging around us, heavy and immobilizing. When I’d delivered her to the first address of the evening, I’d taken her hand and helped out of the car. Her hand had been small and dry, the nails lacquered and softly pink. I could remember the feel of her hand in mine, the way her small fingers moved as she shifted her balance and got to her feet, the way they slipped out of mine. It was the last time I’d ever touched her casually, when I wasn’t bleeding out from a knife wound.

I touched my abdomen where I’d been stabbed. I could feel the hard line of a scar, but felt nothing. It was like I’d been stabbed many years ago, in a another life.

When we stepped back into the room, everyone was standing and staring at us like they’d just been talking about us—about me. The Bumble grinned, conveying a general satisfaction that I was alive and at liberty. Rusch pursed her lips at me, eyes swimming behind her thick glasses, liver-spotted hands washing each other nervously. Falken, looking bloated and pale, like a guy on day three of a Vegas bender who’s just realizing he’s going to have to win big if he’s going home to the wife, just stared at me with his mouth slightly open. He was at the end of his endurance, I thought. He’d been running—between fucking worlds—for who knew how long, and this was the last bit of energy he had.

I smiled at The Bumble, I couldn’t help it. “Make the call, Billy,” I said. “Let’s get this over with. I’m tired of being hunted like a dog.”

He hesitated, then shrugged his eyebrows and fished for his cell phone. We all stood very still and quiet while his thick fingers worked the buttons, and watched him as he put the phone to his ear, looking around nervously.

“Give me Frank,” he said, looking down at the greenish carpet. We all waited, making a dumb show of examining things, looking into dark corners, inspecting the housekeeping.

“Frank, Billy. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, fuck you.”

I smiled down at my feet.

“Listen, I want out o’ this. I got into—I made a mistake, Frank. Lenmme buy my way. Pay a fine.”

I turned and walked slowly over to the window. The traffic seemed unchanged, as if the same cars were still sitting there, props for our amusement.

“Yeah, okay, I get that. Sure, I—I mean, I don’t feel good about it, y’know. But yeah, okay, if I haveta I can give him up.”

I nodded. Frank would have one price for Billy: Me.

The Bumble grunted a few times, assenting to terms. “Right. Okay, Frank, we’ll be there. And me? I’m wiped clean, right?” He nodded to himself. “All right, Frank. Thanks.”

I heard his phone snap shut and turned. The Bumble looked sad, his sagging eyes heavy, his face blank. He looked down at his phone.

“Tonight. Ten-thirty, a warehouse Frank owns in Newark. I’m supposed to bring you out there for some reason, he’ll grab you up.”

I nodded. “Give me the address,” I said, reaching for the phone. I pulled out the card Alt James had given me on the street outside The Tombs and dialed the number. He picked it up on the second ring, the familiar, smooth voice.

“Yeah?”

“It’s me. You still want to hear from me?”

“Sure, why not? We can always do business. I’m a businessman, where I come from. Why not?”

I nodded, turning away from everyone and looking back out the window. “All right. Good. Let’s make a deal, then, okay? I’ve got what you want.”

He chuckled. “Oh yeah? Okay: You’ve got him. What you want in return?”

I shrugged. “You leave me and mine the fuck alone.”

There was a moment of silence. “That’s it? Shit, man, I don’t trust fucking philanthropists.”

“The money I’m out. The debt. That has to be paid off, with interest, so I can level everything off.”

The chuckle again. “That’s more like it. I’ll even throw in a bonus. You take your lady out, show her a good time. How we do this?”

I gave him the address of the warehouse. “Ten thirty,” I said. “I’m going to lie to him, give him a story, so we won’t be coming in tied up and kicking, okay? Don’t spook him.”

“Sure, sure. I get it. Keep it smooth until the last minute. I’ll be there.”

The line went dead. I turned to face everyone, snapping the phone shut. They were watching me like I was supposed to do something dramatic. A smoke bomb, a flash of lightning, something. I grinned.

“Well, we’re all sold out.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

32.

I hesitated, a fuzzy feeling of shock and indecision settling over me like something heavy, hot, and wet. Behind me, I could hear steps coming up—Frank and his boys, guns reclaimed, and Frank so fucking enraged he might even pop me right on the sidewalk in full view of everyone. I looked at The Bumble, an eerie feeling of displacement rippling through me—he was standing right in front of me but it wasn’t him, and even though I’d spent the last two weeks with my head in this situation I still felt dizzy thinking about it. If this wasn’t Billy Bumbles, who the fuck was it? Doubles, brought by Alt James to trick me, sure, but that didn’t feel like an answer. It felt like a story.

Angry voices pushed at me from behind, though. I could run, but my legs felt rubbery and blood dripped onto the sidewalk where I stood, a dozen tiny wounds sizzling nicely, making me look like a lunatic. I still didn’t have a dime to my name, though I had a phone—I saw myself sprinting somewhere and hiding until Rachel and Billy—my Rachel and Billy—came to get me. Then I saw myself being shot to death in some booth in a dive bar, and leaped for the car.

“Let’s go,” I said without looking at either of them. “I think I may have irritated Frank a little.”

Just as Alt Rachel slammed the door and Alt Billy put the car in gear, three loud bangs made us all jump. Alt Billy gunned the engine reflexively and the car darted out into traffic, smacking into a beat-up old SUV with jersey plates.

“Go!” I shouted, mashing my foot into the carpet, gunning my phantom accelerator. “Go fucking go!”

Alt Billy steered the Caddy smoothly around the SUV and its screaming driver and punched it into traffic, goosing it up to fifty in a matter of seconds, eating up blacktop. I twisted around to look through the back windshield and saw Frank and his guys standing just outside Lee’s Empire, getting small. At the red light he tapped the brakes once for luck and popped through the intersection, and made his first right. I sat back and felt my heart pound, thinking if nothing else these fucking dopplegangers knew what the fuck a gunshot sounded like.

“Pull over,” Rachel said from the back seat. “Come on back here, let me clean you up.”

“Don’t stop,” I said immediately. I sucked in air and tried to look relaxed. “Frank’s got the word out,” I said, plausibly enough. “He’s got guys in cars trying to spot us.” I thought of Alt Rachel’s hands on me again and shivered at the memory: I could still feel where she’d touched me, like she’d left a slime trail.

“Where we going?” Alt Billy said again. On to me, a little; he’d nonchalantly locked all the doors when he’d put the car in gear. Falken, I thought. Alt James had set me up here so I could lead them to Falken, thinking we were all friends, that I’d just lead them straight there. I knew I couldn’t string them along forever; I needed to think of a place to take them where I could give them the slip, now that we’d shaken Frank for the moment. I’d done a pretty fucking good job of baiting Frank; I figured when he got the idea I’d be somewhere, he’d come running for some personal revenge, and that was exactly how I wanted him.

I pictured Alt Rachel in the back seat, the spitting image of my girl, but different. She was wearing makeup, for one, dark eye shadow and fake lashes, lip gloss—lip gloss, for fuck’s sake. And her manner—hard edged but sexy, fake sexy. I’d met a lot of girls like Rachel back when I’d been driving them around, and seeing her like that was fucking depressing.

The Bumble was more or less the same. More beard. A scar under his right ear that shouldn’t be there. A little more nervous in his manner than I was used to. But basically the same guy, it seemed. That was depressing, too, for some reason.

“Back to Queens,” I said, trying to make it sound casual. “Take the 59th Street bridge, I think, this time of day.”

Alt Billy nodded, steering smoothly. I settled back into my seat and hoped I looked sleepy and relaxed. I didn’t want to talk to them, and I had the feeling they didn’t want to talk to me, to try to guess what I was thinking, keep dancing. We floated along in uncomfortable silence, each one of us pretending it wasn’t.

The silence became almost unbearable as I pretended to nap. I wanted to open my eyes and make sure we were going where I’d told them to go, that I wasn’t going to find myself in another fucking deserted alternate world. I rode it out, my whole body tense as I strove to make it roll and pitch with the car like a disconnected puppet, ignoring every shift and noise they made even as I imagined them slitting my throat. Every time the car stopped I slit my eyes and tried to gauge where we were, and when I thought we were paused right outside the toll booths on the bridge, I sat up and stretched, looking around. Traffic was just a little clogged; Alt Billy inched the car forward a few feet here and there, never coming to a complete stop.

I realized with a start that I’d never gotten my knife back from Mr. Useless back at the restaurant.

I wrote a eulogy to that knife in my head, a second or two of powerful regret. Then I leaned over and put both hands on Alt Billy’s knee, mashing his foot down on the gas pedal.

The Caddy surged forward three feet and smacked into the bumper in front of us, a rusty old Nova from a previous age. Not hard enough to cause any real damage, but hard enough to jerk us in our seats and get the guy in front of us to pop out of his car, red in the face, arms in the air. I looked around, satisfied—unlike the streets of Manhattan, there was no place for Alt Billy to drive us, keep us moving, gain some speed. We were blocked in on all sides by the traffic.

“Pop the fucking lock,” I said, reasonably enough, I thought.

The Nova guy was outside Alt Billy’s door, tapping on the window gently, but calling him a motherfucking asshole in a stern if controlled voice. Alt Billy ignored him, smiling at him in such a perfect imitation of The Bumble I almost wanted to hug him. “Ah, shit,” he said. “How long you knew?”

“Fuck you, and open the fucking door.”

He looked around, tapping his fingers on the wheel. Stalling for time. I clenched my teeth, pulled my arm in towards me, and with a gleeful expectation of pain I slammed my elbow into the passenger window, shattering it. My arm went numb, fuzzing and vibrating, and the Nova guy shut the hell up, taking a cautious step back from the car as he realized with a sudden pulse of brainpower that this maybe wasn’t a routine fender bender.

I flipped myself around and pulled myself up and out of the car ungracefully, half expecting them to grab my feet. But we were in the middle of the highway, surrounded by people and cops just a short jog away. Grunting and twisting, I got my feet under me and staggered back from the car. I had a long way to go, but at least I was under my own power again. I looked around—the sun was up and the skies were clear, the air was crisp and smelled like gasoline and asphalt. Horns, a sad chorus, had started blaring around us as traffic choked up.

Before I could turn away, the back window slid down, and Alt Rachel leaned out a little, looking up at me.

“Too bad,” she said. “I woulda laid you. For free.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

31.

“Where to?”

I stared out the passenger window and watched Manhattan get classier as we moved through midtown, reveling in the lush agony that had spread all over me. I felt like I’d torn every muscle in my body, and it had settled into me like a pleasant burn, keeping me warm and awake. I turned to look at The Bumble and took a deep breath; the car smelled funny, though I couldn’t place the smell. It reminded me of burned plastic, but the interior was pristine.

I twisted around and glanced at Rusch and Rachel in the backseat, the old lady apparently asleep, Rachel staring cooly back at me, a half smile on her lips. They all looked like they’d gotten a shower and a change of clothes.

“The first Junior’s Papaya you see,” I said, turning back around. “Just pull over. I’m fucking starving.”

Billy frowned. “What?”

I waved a hand at him and closed my eyes. “Hot dogs, Billy, hot dogs.”

After a moment of dark silence, Rachel said “We need to make sure Falken’s all right.”

I closed my eyes and imagined a world where Rachel didn’t worry about Falken. “He was okay when you decided to leave him alone, right? I mean, the situation was so calm and relaxed you didn’t even leave the old lady behind to back him up.”

“What?”

I held my bloody hand up behind my head. “Hot dogs, Billy. They came through with peanut butter sandwiches. No jelly, just peanut butter. Fucking jail.”

“I like Rudy’s,” he said after a moment, eyes locked on the road. Traffic was firming up around us, rush hour blooming.

“Oh, fuck you,” I groaned. “You like Rudy’s because the hot dogs are free, you cheap bastard. You don’t mind breathing in three or four decades of other people’s cigarettes while eating them?” I snorted. Rudy’s hot dogs were store brand bought in plastic packages at a supermarket, boiled endlessly and given away free to drunks. They tasted like dog food wrapped in plastic. I wanted that sizzling, greasy taste of real beef and spices, fresh buns, tart onions.

No one said anything to that, and I kept my eyes closed. I had almost dozed off when Rachel leaned forward and put her face between Billy and me.

“I really think we ought to check on Mr. Falken.”

“Just tell me where to go,” Billy said.

I sighed, something smart on the tip of my tongue, but then I paused. “What time is it?”

“Almost seven,” Rachel said after a moment.

I nodded, smiling, my lips cracking open, tiny slivers of pain shooting through them. “Chinatown,” I said. “Mott Street.”

Frank didn’t run any gambling in Manhattan; the city had made too much of it legal enough for it to be worth his time. Small gangs worked neighborhood lotteries and after-hours card games, more or less running them straight just like the casinos and government did, taking their fair cream off the top and otherwise letting the odds go natural. Why not; you didn’t have to sex the numbers to make gambling work for you. It was god’s natural screw.

Frank did like a high-stakes game of old-fashioned poker. He didn’t like Texas Hold’em—bellyached endlessly about how that’s all anyone wanted to play any more. But put enough money on the table and you can find a bunch of guys willing to play you at anything, anywhere, and Frank’s weird obsession with five-card stud was easy enough to cater to. A Dominican gang had a couple of basements rented under restaurants in Chinatown; one grand buy in, free cocktails, professional dealers, custom-made chips. Couple of mornings a week you could find Frank still playing as the sun rose, moving thousands of dollars back and forth between him and the house.

We pulled up outside Lee’s Empire and I stepped out onto the sidewalk. The Bumble was in the street immediately, coming around the front. “Where is he?” he asked.

I waved him back towards the car. “Stay here,” I said. “I’m just going to break Frank’s balls a little. Bring it on home what we’re doing. Make sure he sees it the way I want to, so he’ll dance the moves I want.” I smoothed down the grimy lapels of my jacket and smiled at the tall Indian man leaning casually in the doorway of the restaurant. I sensed Billy hesitating, and then fading back towards the car.

I spread my hands and grinned. “Henley,” I said. “How the fuck are you?”

He smiled, extending a hand without shifting the rest of his body. “Hello, mate—you’ve looked better.”

Henley had a round accent that was sort of English, sort of something else. Each word fell to the ground like it had been carved from ice, melting through the air and tinkling around you, little tinny echoes everywhere. He was young and rakish, well-dressed in last year’s suit and shoes shined to a mirrorlike finish. He was one of those rare people I’d inexplicably liked the moment we’d met and continued to like. He was Middle Eastern of some extraction I’d never bothered to clarify, and had perfect coffee-colored skin and a bush of thick, lush black hair that grew straight up and then did interesting things.

“I’m in the air,” I said.

“So I’ve heard. Your former boss is downstairs. I suppose I shouldn’t let you in.” He put his hand on his chin and rubbed, looking off into the distance. “Then again, no one has ordered me to keep you out.”

I grinned. “I’m supposed to be dead. I’m going to haunt the son of a bitch. Can I owe you the cover?”

He nodded. “Sure, darling, why not. They’re closing up shop down there anyway.” He pushed his hands back into his pockets and looked up the block. “Rumor is you’re a dead man anyway. Can’t stop a ghost.”

I walked into the dim restaurant, through the empty dining room and kitchen and down the back stairs. As I descended I could hear the murmur of voices, and I could see a layer of bluish smoke literally hanging in the air around the halfway point of the staircase. The game room was a damp cellar, but it was done up in style, with a full bar at the far end of the room shining and glittering like a jewel, manned by a sleepy-looking black kid in a white dinner jacket. There were just six people aside from the barman: Frank, slumped at a green felt table with a feeble pile of chips spread out in front of him, his two bodyguards, seated at the next table over and trying hard to look attentive, two old men in suits sitting opposite Frank and sporting large piles of chips I assumed had once been his, and the floor manager, a big dark-skinned guy in a terrible light blue suit. He was bald and heavy-chested, like a guy who worked his arms constantly in the gym and did nothing else. He glanced at me as I entered and closed his eyes.

“We closin’,” he said, and shook his head a little, murmuring “Fucking faggot shouldna taken yo’ cover.”

“I just came to have a chat,” I said. Frank went noticeably still.

The fat manager sighed. “Then I gotta take yo’ weapons,” he said, pushing aside his jacket to show his holster off. “Even if it’s jus’ for a second.”

I held out the knife towards him; there was no point in being fancy. I wasn’t a killer, anyway, even if slitting Frank’s throat was kind of an appealing option. Fat Man looked at the knife, then at me from under his eyebrows, and finally plucked it from my hand like it was made of dead spiders, dropping it into a strongbox on the table beside him. He didn’t bother frisking me, and looked disgusted.

I circled around and took the seat next to Frank; his security detail rippled a bit, but he held up a hand and they both sat down again. I smiled at them. I didn’t know them, but they didn’t look like anything special.

“How you doing, Frank?” I said, still smiling at his bodyguards. “How’s your cash flow?”

He didn’t look at me; he stared down at his cards. His hands were shaking. “You got a lot of fucking balls, coming here like some asshole, to clown me.”

I looked around at Frank’s fellow players and winked. “What’s the matter, Frank? You can’t stand the competition?”

He slowly raised one hand and planted a finger on the green felt of the table and began tapping it slowly. “You had it good, kid. You earned, you were on your way up the ladder. Now you fucking steal from me. You work with that piece of shit cop. You fucked yourself up, kid. And now you come here and disrespect me?”

That pissed me off. Frank had fucked me over—needed my cash, maybe, or just didn’t like me much, and the moment I had a hiccup collecting on someone he’d hung me out, tossed my apartment, and now he was rewriting history—but I reminded myself that I’d come in to bait Frank, to make sure he was primed to jump after me wherever I went. I leaned forward a little.

“I came here with a message: Back off, or you’re gonna have more cops up your ass than you can handle. James will shut you down, Frank.” I sat back and thought I’d done my bit, it was time to stop pushing my luck and get going. “Back off, and there’s plenty of this city to go around.”

I started to stand, but Frank twitched, one of his hairy hands diving to his shoulder and coming up with a small automatic, pointed right at me.

“You piece of shit!” Frank snarled, his face dangerously red. “You’re gonna fucking steal from me?”

“Hey!” The useless guy working security in his borrowed suit said mildly, startling a little. “You supposed to hand over your fucking guns.”

“Shut up,” Frank spat.

“Hey!” Useless Guy said, a little more loudly, like he was actually getting pissed. “You can’t fucking waste a guy in here. Faison’ll fucking flip out.”

“My guys’ll handle it. It’ll never touch Faison.” Frank said, his eyes on me. This wasn’t potbellied, lazy-looking Frank you couldn’t believe ran half of Manhattan’s numbers. This was Frank McKenna, suspect in thirteen unsolved homicides. This was Frank McKenna who, if you believed the rumors, had killed his stepbrother when they were nineteen years old because he’d gotten in his way. I forced myself to look back at him and kept still. I told myself I was immortal. Everyone said so.

The gun looked bigger every time I glanced at it.

Useless stepped forward, producing his own gun, a nickel-plated cannon. He was smart enough to just show it, and kept it pointed down at the floor for the moment. “No way, Frank. Not here. Take it outside.”

“I’ll make it up to Faison,” Frank said, breathing hard. “I’ll pay him a tax.”

I promoted Useless as he rolled his shoulders—maybe a guy who’d earned his bones and a soft job because he’d done hard things. Because I suddenly very much believed he was willing to shoot Frank and Frank’s two slabs of muscle because those were his standing orders: Any trouble in Faison’s joint, put the fire out fast and heavy. “Sorry, Frank,” he said. “You want to waste someone in here, you talk to Faison, you get a permission slip. You got a permission slip?”

I took a deep breath. Immortal, I thought, and I stood up.

Frank twitched and pulled his trigger. There was a flash and a dozen sharp pinpricks of pain appeared over my face and neck, hot blooms. Frank was still sitting there, the gun in his hand smoking, fragmented, the hand itself a pulpy mess of blood. He just stared at it dumbly. My heart thudded in my chest as tiny rivulets of blood dripped off me—shrapnel, I realize, tiny fragments of Frank’s gun.

I stepped past him. I felt numb, like I was floating along—unreal. I’d stood up, with a gun two feet from my head, I’d stood up, and instead of being just another asshole mope killed while leading a dirty, criminal life, I was a Terminus. For the first time since I’d heard the word, I started to believe it.

Behind me, Frank started to scream, and then there were a collection of blurred, overlapping voices. I pushed myself up, floating on a humid cloud of numb air. When I passed Henley, still standing his post at the door, he didn’t look at me. I could just hear the shouts from below, but if I were Henley I wouldn’t want to know, either.

As I approached the car, The Bumble snapped his cell shut and turned to me expectantly, then blinked in surprise.

“What the—?”

I waved him off. Rachel leaned against the car with her hands in the tight pockets of her jeans, looking sleepy. Beautiful, warm, sleepy. The sort of thing you liked to wake up to. As I got close, I realized I was shaking. She squinted at me and then stepped forward.

“You okay?”

I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I said. I did feel good—alive, energized, healthy. But I was shaking like a lead in the wind and couldn’t stop myself.

She stepped up close to me and before I knew it she was pressed against me, her hands on my neck, her face close. The feel of her against me was electric, and a shock rippled through me, her hands burning on my skin. She smelled like soap.

“C’mon, baby,” she said quietly, looking down at my chest. I wanted to lean forward and smell her hair. “Let’s go check on Falken and get you cleaned up.”

My eyes stung like there was smoke, and I pushed away from her, the unfamiliar feel of her hands on me lingering like burns. I spun towards The Bumble. “Give me your cell,” I snapped.

He reached into his pocket. “Where we goin’, boss?” he said, tossing the phone at me. I snatched it from the air and turned away from them, looking back at Henley. As I dialed Rachel’s cell number, we stared at each for a moment, and then he shrugged and smiled a little, looking away. Enjoying himself.

Rachel’s phone didn’t ring anywhere near me. After a moment, Rachel answered.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF