Kean's Edge Read online

  Kean takes a deep breath. “Please, Sasha.”

  “They had a fight.”

  “Oscar and Frank?”

  “No, Frankie and Ozzy, in the middle of the bar.” Sasha shrugs. “She hasn’t been back. They were fighting about you.”

  Kean steps closer. “What about me?”

  “That’s just what they say. I wasn’t here.” She kicks at the pavement with her platform Lucite sandals.

  “You okay?” She studies his face. “You’re kinda white.”

  “Yeah, sure, fine.” Kean nods. “Do they know who killed him?”

  Sasha shakes her head. “If anyone knows, no one’s talking. Frankie knew a lot of bad people.” She steps close, giving him a slow smile. “Hey, you wanna come in and say hi to the girls?”

  “Maybe next time.” He heads out the front entrance of the parking lot.

  “I’ll tell Ozzy you’re looking for her, when I see her.”

  “Great, thanks.” Kean throws over his shoulder. He remembers their last fight, in the hotel in Spain. Ozzy had already decided before she came back that day, to kill Frank. He now understood it had been the only way to stop her father.

  *

  Kean opens the throttle on his bike as he winds up the cobblestone drive. Rounding a bend, he gets his first glimpse of what remains of the house. Burned to the foundation, all that’s left are the chimneys at each end. The smell of charred wood and melted plastic is carried by the breeze.

  He parks in front of what’s left of the mansion and wonders why he came. He walks to the meditation garden. The shallow reflecting pool is empty. There’s a four-foot gaping hole, the metal frame that once held the azure glass is twisted and bent downward into the library. Kean leans over the pool edge and peers into the library. The moonlight only penetrates the darkness a few feet down, but he knows all the books are either gone or destroyed.

  He heads to the guest house. Curtains flutter out the broken windows, the front door hangs from a twisted hinge.

  “Honey, I’m home,” he calls inside the house. Startled birds take flight. “Shit.” He jumps back, his heart racing. Moonlight fills the living room. Kean crouches next to a pile of paintings, broken from their frames and slashed. Splintered wood and plaster chunks are scattered around the room where the floor and walls have been torn into.

  While checking the damage, it hits him why he’s here. He has nowhere else to go. A fugitive, Frank dead, Ozzy gone, and it all started here. A small wrought-iron wine rack over the kitchen counter catches his eye. He pulls several bottles and rummages through the drawers for a cork screw. Cradling the bottles, he backtracks to the broken meditation pool.

  After dragging a heavy patio chair to the pool’s edge, he opens a bottle of merlot and takes a long pull. Propping his legs up on the edge, he makes short work of the first bottle. He tosses it into the twisted opening at the bottom of the pool and reaches for another.

  “Yes!” He holds up the second bottle in mock triumph at the satisfying sound of glass shattering on marble. As he takes another gulp of fine dry wine, barking echoes from below. Choking, he wipes tears from his eyes.

  “Hey!” Kean leans over the pool’s edge. “Rat-dog is that you? Did the goon squad leave you behind?” The barking becomes a whine.

  Halfway through the second bottle, Kean steps out on what’s left of the stained glass pool bottom to take a closer look. He bounces gingerly testing its strength and wonders about the blast that created the hole. Holding his breath, he waits for any signs of weakness. Satisfied it will hold, he inches closer to the jagged opening.

  “Hey, rat-dog.” Kean peers into the darkness. “How long have you been down there?” A long whine comes back in answer. Kean takes a few quick steps back to avoid taking a header into the opening. He sets the second bottle down with exaggerated care before lying on his stomach and sliding to the edge of the mangled frame careful to push any glass fragments out of his way.

  “How the hell are we going to get you out of there?” He yells down. He feels a tremor and watches with drunk fascination as cracks race through the glass, splintering in every direction. He grabs blindly at the twisted metal as the glass gives way. He vaguely hears the dog barking, three-stories below. A cold sweat drips from his forehead, stinging his eyes. His legs swing wildly as he struggles to pull himself up. The jagged metal cuts into his hands, making them slick with blood. He looks around for something to pull himself up with but sees nothing but the outline of empty bookshelves.

  He remembers from his first visit the catwalk that circles the room. Adrenaline counteracts the wine clearing his head, and Kean realizes the only way to the catwalk is to fling himself against a bookshelf and fall to it. He estimates it to be ten feet away and the catwalk fifteen feet down. More glass rains down as he starts to swing his body back and forth, working up momentum. The steel frame moans in protest. Gritting his teeth and ignoring the pain in his hands Kean focuses on the catwalk. He lets go with a yell, arms pin-wheeling in an effort to land on his feet.

  Bouncing off the bookshelves several feet above the catwalk, he lands on the railing with his ribs. His feet kick at the air as he teeters headfirst into the darkness below. Pushing back from the railing, he drops onto the catwalk. He lays there taking deep breaths. After a few minutes he opens his eyes to a rough tongue and cold nose against his face.

  “Outstanding,” he groans.

  The dog sits on his chest licking his face. Pain shoots through his side as he pushes it away. He notices the pink tag hanging from the ugly dog’s purple collar. It spells Martini out in rhinestones.

  “Hello, Martini.” He gives the dog a clumsy pat. “I don’t know whether to hug you or throw you over the side.” The dog floats in front of him. He blinks rapidly then squints, his vision tunnels until it goes black.

  Kean groans as he slowly regains consciousness. He gingerly touches his throbbing nose. A quick intake of breath sends a sharp pain through his side and tears to his eyes. Martini is curled up on his lap, napping. He squints up at the sky through the hole in the dome. It’s the gray-purple of a cloudy morning. Pushing the dog from his lap, he grits his teeth and stands, swallowing several times to keep the wine from coming up. He starts down the catwalk with Martini racing in front, occasionally coming back to bark encouragement and racing off again.

  Reaching the marble floor, he wipes cold sweat from his forehead. A couch sits on its end, pushed up against the bar. The cushions are cut and stuffing bursts out. Kean manages to shove it over on its legs with one hand while holding his side with the other. He sighs as he lies down. Martini jumps up and curls into a ball between his legs.

  “This is all your fault, you know,” Kean says. He throws an arm over his eyes and is softly snoring in seconds.

  Kean wakes in starts, the afternoon light turns the inside of his eyelids bright red. Birds hop on the catwalks and peck at invisible bugs on the upper bookshelves. He looks up at the twisted metal he hung from, realizing how stupid he was and how lucky he is to be alive. If he had been sober or could have seen better he doesn’t think he would have had the nerve to make the jump. He snorts at this thought, waking Martini. The dog yawns, stretches and jumps down. It turns and gives Kean an expectant look..

  “What?” He inches to the edge of the couch, reaching down to scratch on the top of the dog’s head. Getting up with a groan, he surveys the empty library. Shelves are hacked from the cases and burned in the middle of the floor. Nests of wires hang from the inset walls where the recessed lighting has been yanked out. The furniture is slashed and broken, several pieces are burned. The bar is still intact. Broken crystal litters the floor. He remembers the bottle of water Fischer offered during their meeting. He shuffles behind the bar to the stainless steel refrigerator.

  “Bingo.” He pulls out several bottles. The first is empty in three long gulps. Tossing it aside, he opens a second. Halfway through it, he notices Martini licking the empty bottle for the last drops of water.

  P
ouring the rest of the second bottle into an crystal tumbler, he sets it in front of the dog. He rummages through the bar cabinets and finds a can of mixed nuts and two tins of caviar. He opens the caviar and sets Martini on the counter.

  “Bon appetite.” He shakes a handful of mixed nuts into his mouth. “How the hell are we going to get out of here?”

  Martini tilts his head, pondering the question after he gulps the caviar. Kean wonders if there’s a service ladder in the elevator shaft. He leans against the bar, absentmindedly rubbing under Martini’s collar. The dog pulls away; the collar has rubbed part of its neck raw.

  “Sh-sh-sh. Hold still.” He unbuckles the nylon collar. There’s a rigid half-circle inside it, the size of a child’s bracelet. Kean finds a kitchen knife and cuts away the nylon cover.

  Kean turns the dull black metal over in his hands. It has a single button in the center. He pushes it, hears a click, but nothing happens. He tosses it on the counter, thinking it’s be some kind of pet tracking device.

  “All done.” Kean sets Martini back on the floor. Barking, the dog pads over to a bookcase and disappears.

  “Martini?” he calls. The barking is muffled. Kean limps to where the dog disappeared into the bookcase, his body protesting with every step. A small section of the bookcase is hinged and ajar. Martini chuffs at him from the dark.

  He ducks his head and enters the small room. It’s damp and smells of concrete. He squints in the dark to see Martini disappear up a narrow staircase that is built on the backside of the curved bookcases. Kean grins, “Thank you, Ellis.”

  He starts up the stairs when something catches his attention. “I’ll be damned.” He recognized a piece of machinery as his eyes adjust to the dark. It’s the same one illustrated in the book he’s read at least a dozen times. It’s a manual printing press.

  *

  After tightening the last of the bolts on the manual press, Kean drops his wrench in a battered toolbox and crouches, admiring his handy work.

  It took three days to disassemble and almost two weeks to put it back together in the guest house. For the larger pieces he rigged a pulley and hoisted it out of the underground library. He boarded up the windows and nailed the front door on its frame.

  “Now what?” He gives Martini’s belly a scratch. For the thousandth time he thinks about Ozzy. A sad smile crosses his face as he wonders what she would think of his new hobby.

  He stares for a few more minutes, then making up his mind he starts to work on the typeset. It takes several hours to create one page of text using the small wooden letters. At the end of the page he sets a tilted letter “e” as his tag.

  Kean is mesmerized by the blank paper transformed over and over again. It’s slow going but at a hundred pages he stops. He sits down on a musty couch and drinks a beer, wondering what to do with the pages. Some are slightly off center and there is too much ink on the first several before he figures out the right amount. He pulls a sheet from the stack; the paper feels different than the pages of the books, thinner, easier to tear. It was hidden in the panels of the bar, stacks and stacks of it. The reason the CIC ransacked the library. He often wonders what Dr. Fischer was going to do with it. What story, thoughts or theories he was going to present, without the blessing of the CIC? Pushing Martini from his lap, he grabs the stack and heads for his bike.

  *

  Kean leaves pages on the subway out of the view of the security cameras. He leaves them in store fronts, park benches and sidewalks.

  After a couple of weeks the tilted “e” is spray painted in alleyways, on billboards and across street signs. He wonders sometimes if Ozzy ever sees the first story he printed. The one about the guy that does horrible things to save someone he loves. He rides the subway and sees a tilted “e” spray painted on a CIC poster and thinks about what he will print tomorrow.