What Came After by Sam Winston Read Free Book Online Page A

and gleaming in spite of the ash but some brushed down to a matte finish and some not entirely metal but made partly of plastic or rubber with one or two little knobs or protrusions jutting out. Six or eight different configurations altogether. “These are where the money is,” he said. Tapping his ashy finger on the tabletop. An old prospector done with his panning. “I don’t mean these particular ones. They’ve been scanned off clean. Once they’ve been scanned off they’ve got no value except as souvenirs.”
    “Souvenirs.”
    “Like how the Indians used to take your scalp. Counting coup.”
    “Those are brands, then.”
    “Yes sir.” The old man picked out a rectangular slab with a narrow black stripe. “This one’s AmeriBank,” he said. Alongside it was a tiny one not much larger than a ball bearing, perfectly round. “Mutual Electric.” A glistening square with a metal prongs like antennas mounted in rubber on either side. “Black Rose.” He tapped at the side of his own throat. “Extremely rare.”
    “I’ll bet it is.”
    “Extremely hard to come by.” He tapped ashes over the little metal bits. Drew on the cigarette one last time and stabbed it out and stabbed it out again just to be sure and began circling the table. “What happens is people come around. People with different ideas about how a man might make a dollar. As a rule they’re Management types like you, slumming in the Zone. Got some deal they’re running when they ought to be minding their company’s business.”
    “I’m not Management.”
    The old man winked. “Sure. Sure. None of the other fellows are, either. Just so you know.”
    “I’m not Management. Honest.”
    “Time will tell,” he said. “Anyway, you know what I’m talking about. Black markets. Gray markets. Every kind of market there is.” He kept walking around the table. Behind Weller now. The sound of that locker opening again. “Contraband and so forth. Situations develop where the companies that pay for my services just aren’t getting their fair share of certain transactions.”
    Weller turned to see what the man was up to in the locker. He was opening a brown bottle and he was soaking a rag with what was in it, and the air was choked all of a sudden with the high smell of a chemical solvent, and before Weller could move the old man was on him and he had the wet rag tight over his mouth with that solvent smell intolerably strong and he was out. He didn’t even hear his own daughter scream.
     
    *
     
    He awoke on the cold floor with adhesive tape around his wrists and a sick feeling in his stomach and a slit in his throat that wouldn’t quit bleeding. Crumpled on the floor in the corner, picking at the sticky tape and wanting to vomit but not knowing where. Feeling blood run down his neck. A little warm trickle of it dripping slow, with his heartbeat behind it.
    He came up to his elbows and saw the old man bent over the table. The back of him, working at something. Holding his breath and letting it out and drawing it in again hard, and then letting it out with a curse on it. The girl’s blond hair spilling.
    He got to his feet and nearly toppled but didn’t. He tried to go noiselessly but his feet went any way they wanted. He reached the table and picked up the big glass ashtray and the old man looked up at him without really looking, and he raised the ashtray and swung it but missed. Miscalculated. Threw himself off balance and the ash tray smashed on the concrete floor. Ash and glass and old brands everywhere. The old man ducking and a scalpel in his hand snagging Weller’s forearm, drawing more blood. The girl on the table wasn’t taped down like her father had been. She was just lying there limp. A narrow cut in her throat gaping a little, and blood smeared around it, and the old man’s index finger red to the first knuckle.
    “Go easy there,” said the old man. Dropping the scalpel. Raising up his hands and stepping back to let Weller