The Infiltrators Page 14

  “You hang in there, boy,” Pitkins said. “You’ve had quite a scrap. I just gotta go get something.”

  Pitkins was of a mindset that rarely was anything purely bad, and in spite of Lookout’s soiling of the culinary form of Smokeless Green (“Spicy Green”) that Donive had brought home long ago when it was perfectly legal, Pitkins had acted on a hunch and saved a separate bag but hid it deep underneath the kitchen counter, surrounded by many other spices so that the troublesome cat wouldn’t take it upon himself to damage any more of it.

  As he pulled it out, he took solace in the fact that, while it might not work, Mervin was minutes from death if extreme intervention didn’t occur. He could live with attempting a failed cure. Watching Mervin pass away with his arms crossed, he could not.

  “This is gonna be a little strong boy, but it’s gonna help you.”

  Pitkins caressed the noble beast gently while he began daubing a little Spicy Green into the wound on his head.

  Then, he went back to caressing his side gently.

  “You’ve been a brave doggie. You did good,” Pitkins said, pointing to the fingers.

  Mervin looked at them briefly as if to say he saw them as insufficient evidence of valiant resistance.

  Pitkins put his head to the dog’s side. He could sense his heart beating faster and faster.

  “Mervin?”

  Two big, brown eyes looked up at Pitkins.

  “I have to go find Donive.”

  Pitkins immediately, but gently, put his hand against Mervin’s side when he attempted to rise.

  “You’ve already done too much, pal. You need to rest. Donive’ll be awful sad if you don’t recover. That’s what you’ve got to do now. Rest.”

  He leaned down and listened again to Mervin’s heart. It seemed to be beating normally now, perhaps just a little faster than normal.

  Pitkins brought Mervin some water.

  “You get better, buddy. I’ll be back.”

  Mervin looked up at him anxiously and then lowered his eyes again in what seemed to be assent.

  Pitkins gave him a couple pats on his side so lightly they wouldn’t have disturbed a feather, and then he dashed upstairs.

  He stripped himself to the buff in five seconds flat and then began strapping armor onto his legs, arms, and groin.

  No more than two minutes later he finished and then threw his clothes back on.

  Inspired by the weapon Mr. Simmers had long ago requested, Pitkins had crafted himself multiple concealable swords, and he quickly inserted them into sheaths underneath both forearms and one into a back sheath.

  Then, feeling only a second’s hesitation, he kneeled before a window facing east and beseeched the Sogolian god of war and vengeance:

  “Leol, hear my prayer. Guide my sword. Boil my blood. Kill my remorse. Freeze my heart.”

  He then sprinted outside, leaped on top of Frederick, and took off, headed for town with more zeal than he had ever gone to war with.

  Chapter 27

  Pitkins knew as he headed into town he was like a rock lobbed out of an unaimed trebuchet, but that would just have to do.

  “Hey,” he said to a passerby. “I’m lookin’ for a whorehouse. Can you point me in the right direction?”

  “Well,” said the man, taken aback by such unusual frankness. “There’s one not too far from here. Let’s see . . . .”

  Pitkins tossed a gold coin at the man.

  “Today, would ya?!”

  The man looked up at him ready to make a snide remark, but when he took a look into the tornadic eyes of fire and death he lost his anger and regained his memory all in the blink of an eye.

  “Go down two blocks. Turn right. Go three blocks. You won’t miss it.”

  “Kasani bless you, friend,” Pitkins said, and then he nudged his horse forward quickly but not to a full gallop.

  Sure enough, the pictures on the exterior, while far from pornographic, didn’t require a genius to infer the place was a brothel.

  Pitkins tied up Frederick and then approached the door.

  For a moment, he thought the mammoth-sized man at the door was the beast Rucifus had brought to his shop earlier today and convinced him unequivocally to never put a sword into her hands or those of her men ever.

  But as the stern-faced man turned his attention towards Pitkins, he realized it was not. The man’s brother perhaps. But not him.

  “Howdy, sir.”

  “Good afternoon,” Pitkins said warmly, pulling out a bag of money.

  “Hold your horses, there,” the man said snickering. “You are ready to go, aren’t you?! Just go ahead and lift up your arms; I’ve got to pat you down.”

  “I’m here to be touched by women, not men.”

  “Hey, it’s my job, bud.”

  “Is this owned by Rucifus? I hear her girls are the best. And I aim to find out.”

  “She don’t exactly like to be the focus of attention, but, yeah, she owns it. Now, if you can just raise those arms for me . . . .”

  Pitkins raised his arms.

  As soon as the hulk’s hands touched his ribs, Pitkins said, “This is one time you should have just taken the money.”

  Pitkins overhooked the man’s left arm and grabbed firmly onto his jacket. Then, he turned sideways away from the man, stuck out his right leg, and tossed him in a twisting motion to the ground.

  Pitkins landed on top, and his two hundred-plus pounds did little to soften the man’s fall against the hard ground below. No sooner had the wind begun to whistle out of the man’s deflated lungs than Pitkins released his grip on his jacket, snaked his right arm behind the man’s neck, placed his right hand underneath the man’s armpit, and then arched his body upwards to the sky.

  Had the man not been winded, there may have been some tug of war with a doubtful outcome, as his neck was almost the size of Pitkins’ thighs. But with the wind and energy drained from him, a sickening pop was heard seconds later as two neck vertebrae snapped.

  Several gawkers had clearly seen the whole thing and were whispering to each other frantically.

  Pitkins stood up and marched inside the bar.

  “What’ll you have, partner?”

  “Information,” Pitkins said, slapping a small bag of gold coins down onto the bar.

  “Well,” said the man, eyeing the money with no little curiosity, “just what kind of information?”

  “Rucifus—where does she live.”

  “He-he-he,” the man chuckled nervously, shoving the gold back to Pitkins. “Let’s just trade money for whiskey. That sound fair?”

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  Pitkins grabbed the man’s hand before he could retract it from the bag he had just pushed forward, shook his compressed sword out of his right sleeve into his right hand, and then lopped the bartender’s hand off.

  “AHHHHHH!!!!!! KASANI!!!!”

  Pitkins leaped atop the bar like a leopard, spun the man around, and put the dagger to his throat.

  “I’d cut your head off with as little hesitation. WHERE’S RUCIFUS?!!!!”

  “She-she—”

  Pitkins saw he had company.

  Five gorilla-sized men were tumbling his way on legs that could barely support their massive torsos. Three had clubs; two had large knives.

  Pitkins sliced the man’s throat, lifted him up, and hurled him at the infantry charge.

  He landed against one of the men’s head, knocking him slightly off balance.

  Pitkins jumped over the bar in one leap, ducked beneath a club swing that would have caved in two men’s heads, and sliced the man’s right leg in half at the knee.

  In a move so graceful it combined beauty with slaughter, Pitkins continued with his body’s rotational movement and spun around just in time to greet the falling man with an upward slice that cut his head from his body before he even hit the floor.

  Over his left shoulder, he saw a man coming towards him with his club raised overhead like a wild barbarian. Pitkins adjusted
the grip on his sword, placed his left foot behind his right, and spun to meet invader with a snappy thrust that pierced through several inches of fat and muscle until punching right through his abdominal aorta.

  Pitkins adjusted back to normal grip on the hilt and then pulled the sword out in a downward slicing motion, cutting the man down to the groin.

  He saw an overhand club swing coming towards his left ear, and he immediately brought his sword up, while stepping to his right at a forward angle, and sliced the incoming forearm in two and then swiveled to his left bringing his sword in a horizontal slicing motion towards the guy’s head. The man, seeing the sword coming, found it in himself to attempt to defend his head even while his severed arm was clamoring for attention, and he raised his left arm in a futile attempt to block four feet of razor-sharp steel.

  His left forearm failed to even slow Pitkins’ blade as it sliced through this petty nuisance of an obstacle and hacked the man’s head clean off his shoulders.

  This display had prompted the remaining two thugs to question whether dealing with such patrons was included in their job description, and both seemed content to keep their distance, each inviting the other to be the hero.

  Pitkins didn’t have time for a standoff, so he immediately lunged at one of the two muscle-bound oafs. The man took one, then two, steps backwards before turning tail and running for the door at a full sprint. He knocked over a patron who was making a subtler escape like a charging bull knocking aside a field mouse.

  “Tell me where Rucifus lives, and you leave alive!” Pitkins shouted at his one remaining foe.

  “Rucifus?! Heck! I just started here last Monday! Startin’ to regret it too! Just let me leave in peace!”

  “Drop the knife!”

  The man glanced at it briefly before turning his frightened gaze back to Pitkins. He chucked it to the floor and turned to run.

  Pitkins quickly sidestepped and cut him off.

  In a series of movements so quick they blurred together, Pitkins collapsed his sword to dagger size, thrust it into his right forearm sheath, grabbed the man’s right bicep with his right hand, and pulled him towards him, snaking his left arm underneath and around the man’s arm, forming a shoulder lock that he immediately used to slam the man’s face into the bar.

  Pitkins then spun the man around 360 degrees to check his surroundings and then backed the man towards the wall so that he could survey the room without having to worry about his flank.

  “I’m gonna follow my gut on this one!” Pitkins announced to the handful of patrons still in the room. Those remaining were either too drunk to realize leaving might be a good idea or too scared to try.

  “Something tells me one of you knows where Rucifus lives!! Or knows someone who does!”

  Silence.

  Pitkins began torquing on the man’s shoulder.

  “AHHHH!!” he screamed.

  “Why don’t you go ask one of the whores, mister?” a sincere voice asked, peeking out from behind a deck of cards so that his eyes barely showed.

  “Why would they know?”

  “They say sometimes they get invited to the boss’s house for parties.”

  “Is that true?” Pitkins asked the subdued bouncer.

  “Yes.”

  “You seem to know more than what you were saying a moment earlier,” Pitkins said, tightening his torque. “What happened to ‘I just started here last Monday’?”

  “AHHH!” the man screamed.

  Pitkins relieved the pressure slightly. “You better do more than just scream, ‘cause you’re not getting up till you tell me something.”

  “The parties are well known. I’ve heard the rumor. That’s all!”

  “Careful who you work for next time. Associating with bad people can be dangerous.” Pitkins ripped the man’s shoulder out of socket and then threw him to the ground.

  Pulling out his right forearm sword again, he headed upstairs.

  He immediately disemboweled a bouncer who leaped at him as he turned a corner on the stairs and kept walking without pause.

  He approached the first door and kicked it open. A whore was in reverse cowgirl position and seemed to be thrusting so hard the man’s hip bones were surely seconds from shattering.

  Yet it was a shout of rage from her victim, rather than appreciation, that Pitkins was rewarded with as he yanked her up into the air, put his arm around her throat, and put his sword to her face.

  “Tell me where Rucifus lives, or you’ll be charging half-price from now on, if you keep your job at all.”

  The silence, rather than the typical excuses, told Pitkins he was on to something. It seemed perhaps she was weighing the lesser of two evils.

  “If it’s Rucifus that’s got your tongue, you just put it right back in your mouth and start talking. You help me find her, and you’ll never have to worry about her harming a hair on your head.”

  Pitkins pressed the blade against the flesh a little, but not enough to cut it.

  “TWO SECONDS!” he shouted.

  He felt warm tears tickle his left forearm, which was around her neck, but Leol was holding the reins, and Pitkins’ heart was as frozen as an iceberg.

  “Tears won’t help you with me, lady, not when Rucifus has my wife!”

  “Find Rose.”

  “WHO?!”

  The prettiest ten percent or so of the girls had been to Rucifus’s parties, but most of these were held at lavish hotels that had been built in the last year or two due to the economic boom caused by the drug money. An elite handful had also been to several of Rucifus’s luxurious apartments.

  But the rumor passed around in soft whispers amongst the bordellos was that only Rose had ever gone to Rucifus’s mansion and lived to tell about it. She had made the mistake of telling her best friend, Heather, who in turn told her best friend, Marie, and so on until it became known amongst any girl who lasted there several months.

  How they had kept it from the bouncers was a phenomenon worthy of a sociologist’s inquiry, but did not arouse a shred of curiosity in Pitkins.

  “She’s a . . . she’s one of us. She’s been there.”

  “WHERE?!”

  “She doesn’t work at this bordello.”

  “But you know where she does!”

  A nervous sigh.

  Pitkins shoved her towards her clothes like a brute.

  “Put ‘em on and don’t dally!”

  He then tossed several gold coins towards the saucer-eyed man on the bed. “For your troubles.”

  As soon as the whore had a dress on, Pitkins lifted her up like a sack of potatoes and threw her over his shoulder.

  “You’re taking me to Rose’s bordello, and I’ll warn you now that any memory troubles will put your life in grave danger!”