Page 4 of Angel’s Doll

The fat man doesn’t chase her. Men like him stopped running ten years and forty pounds ago. He doesn’t shout either. No scene, no name yelled down a public street. He says one word to the driver and points.

The driver goes. He’s fast for his size.

And now I have a decision with a clock on it.

The lobby is right there. The talk I wanna have is thirty-two floors up but the girl …

I turn away from all of it and go after the girl.

The side street doglegs left past a loading bay. I don’t follow the driver. I cut through the alley one block short, the one the delivery guys use, because a running man watches what’s behind him and never what’s beside him. Rain is coming down soft now, the sort of rain Seattle can keep up for a week. Good, it kills the sound of my boots.

I come out of the cut ahead of him and let him run into me.

He’s a pro. I’ll give him this much. Most men lose half a second when an adversary appears out of a wall. He loses nothing. He plants, drops his weight, and his hand goes to his right hip in the same motion, so instead of hitting him I have to smother the draw, both hands on his wrist, driving him into the brick before the gun clears.

It scrapes out of the holster and skates away under a parked van.

After it’s gone, he doesn’t lose his shit. He knows how to work up close. He splits my lip with the crown of his head. Blood on my cut. Now I’m annoyed.

He swings wide once, which is a mistake. I step through the swing, put an elbow into his temple, and follow him down with two more he doesn’t need. He’s out before the rain finds his face.

He noticed, though. In the clinch, up close, I watched his eyes crawl across my chest and read the patches. Thunder Bastards. VP. He’ll wake up in twenty minutes with a headache and a story. By tomorrow someone in whatever outfit signs his checks is going to hear a Thunder Bastard took Hale’s girl.

Future problem.

I fish the pistol out from under the van, strip the mag, rack the slide, and feed all of it to the storm drain. I don’t leave armed men behind me, even sleeping ones.

Then I go find her.

The dogleg ends in a cul-de-sac, a dead pocket between the backs of three buildings. Brick on three sides. A fire escape with the ladder racked ten feet up. A steel door with a chain through the handles, padlock rusted shut. One dumpster against the far wall, city issue, lid down.

No girl.

Except the rain is doing me a favor. Every surface in this pocket is beaded wet and untouched, and the dumpster lid is sitting a half inch proud on one corner, propped on a fold of cardboard so it can’t slam. On the lip of it, printed in the grime, there’s half a handprint. Fingers pointing out, toward me.

Nobody leaves a handprint facing out throwing trash away. You leave it climbing in.

Here’s my Doll. Porcelain and silk in the photographs, posed on a shelf next to a man who collects pretty objects and breaks the rest.

She’s some smart doll. She read the street in one second flat, outran a professional, and picked the only hiding spot in a dead end with a lid she rigged not to slam. I put my boot on the wheel rail, take the corner of the lid, and lift.

She’s knee-deep in flattened cardboard with a broken piece of pallet wood raised in both hands, mascara to her chin, rain and worse in her hair, not screaming, measuring the swing.

“How did a corporate doll like you get into so much trouble?”

The pallet wood stays up. Her arms are shaking. Her chin isn’t. Under the fear, someone stubborn is looking out at me, deciding whether I’m an escape door or another wall to slam against. I stand very still and let her decide. It’s never wise to reach for someone that scared until they lean.

Then I break my own rule. I hold out my hand.

I came downtown today for Victor Hale’s blood. Instead I’m standing in the rain over a garbage bin, offering my hand to what could be the last piece of his shiny dead empire.

Works for me.

3

DOLL

The hand stays where it is. Big, palm up, patient.