Brink by Mikel Parry
Chapter 11 - Pipe plumber

CH-PIPE PLUMBER

A clock slowly ticked away another second in time. A cramped room smelling of burnt incense was dimly lit and silent. Both Thomas and Banks had no idea what to expect. Neither of them seemed too familiar with the setting, let alone the purpose for being here. Thomas had tried to explain the situation that was unraveling in his head to Banks, who quickly fell into a sloshing pit of confusion. It all seemed so clear to Thomas; why was it so hard for Banks to understand? Feeling annoyed with their sluggish progress, he slammed his fist down on the tiny bell sitting on the entry table one more time.

This is a joke. Could anything else possibly go wrong?

“Maybe nobody’s home; it’s pretty early.”

Thomas shook his head. She had to be here. He needed some answers and he needed them now. Looking back out of the door through which they’d entered, he saw the morning’s light showering down. He had lost all track of time in the present. He hadn’t slept. Mental and physical fatigue was crying out to him, begging for some rest. But he couldn’t rest. He couldn’t let himself slip—not again—not like before.

“What the hell is it? Can’t you read the sign? We’re closed! Just how did you get in here anyway?”

A wiry looking woman stepped out adorned in eccentric cloth. Her head was draped with what looked like a festive tablecloth. She reeked of multiple layers of old smoke and perfume. The smell was nauseating.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Instinctively, Thomas reached for his pocket to pull out his credentials; only there was nothing there, nothing but an empty pocket void of any real authority. Luckily, Banks was on tap to produce his own. He pulled out just one of his many identities from his pocket.

“The Feds? What you want with me? I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

The woman produced a cigarette like magic out of thin air. She lit it casually and began puffing away.

“This isn’t about you. We’re here looking for some information,” said Banks as he tucked his credentials carefully back into place.

“I don’t have anything and I don’t know anybody. I’m a tarot card reader—I just read cards—I don’t go diving into anybody’s life here.”

The woman took another long drag of her cigarette and released a small, noxious cloud of smoke in Thomas’ direction. She was eyeing him curiously. She seemed to be deeply interested in him.

“We’re here about one of your clients; one David Schilling.”

The woman shrugged.

“Doesn’t ring any bells. You’ll have to do better than that, honey.”

As the puff of smoke passed over Thomas he felt sick to his stomach. He definitely felt completely out of place here. But his patience had run its course.

“Look—we’re trying to replace a guy who has some high interest in signs. He would have come in here rambling about astrology, Mars, or something along those lines. I’m sure you don’t get that type every day.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. She tightened her lips around the end of her slender stick of poison and inhaled.

“Oh, yeah . . . I remember someone. A few months back some weirdo came barging in, telling me he just received a sign from god or something crazy. I seem to remember him being rather good looking.”

Thomas exhaled. Finally, there was what appeared to be a potential break.

“That’s the guy. Can you remember what he said, when he came?”

The woman put out her cigarette on the counter before flinging it off somewhere into the room carelessly.

“Look, honey . . . I can barely remember my own name most days, let alone conversations with some nut job three months ago. I just read the cards and let their imagination do the rest.”

Thomas took in a deep, slow, breath of air. The woman was truly testing his patience. Banks interjected.

“Well, you’re a business, of sorts. You’ve got to keep some kind of records of your clients and appointments.”

The woman looked displeased.

“I keep some books, sure. Doesn’t everybody? But I don’t take kindly to peeping Toms.”

Banks gave the woman a very stern look, reminding her of who he was.

“Fine, have it your way. I’ll go dig out the old pencil scratches. But don’t think you’ll replace much information there—just times and names.”

It’s the time we care about, lady.

The woman dug her cat-like, acrylic nails into an old Rolodex. She took a couple of long drags off a new cigarette that had, again, magically appeared in her hand. The smoke slithered out of her mouth like a vanishing snake.

“Here, here’s what I’ve got. That’s strange . . .”

“What?” demanded Thomas.

“Seems like your little pal was here bright and early once, but only once; I thought I remembered him. We had a few words . . . he didn’t like what the cards were saying. Burst out of here in a temper tantrum.”

Thomas turned to Banks and shook his head.

“We’re behind. Whatever needed to happen has. We need to move now.”

Banks looked from Thomas to the woman. He appeared momentarily flustered.

“And so where do we go now?”

Thomas closed his eyes. He was allowing the electric freeway of his mind to open up. There was one question above all others he needed answered.

“We need to replace him. I need to know just exactly what David Schilling the plumber does.”

Banks’s flustered look came to an abrupt end. They stepped back through the door, leaving the crabby woman behind.

“Bunch of freaks!” she screamed after them.

Thomas glanced at Banks who was already dialing his phone.

“Can you pin this guy? We won’t have much time. Whoever is doing this has always been a step ahead. I feel like we’re close now.”

“I’m on it.”

Thomas turned away from Banks. He examined the world before him for a moment. Colorful, animated humanity was skittering about the streets. The city had come back to life, switching from night to day. Its nocturnal dwellers receded back into their homes.

Where are you? Are you watching right now?

He knew that whoever the killer was needed to study his victims. He needed to know every intimate, intricate detail he could in order to orchestrate the perfect set-up. Despite the killer’s obvious aptitude towards deviant perfection, he had flaws like anyone. It was possible that he would need to try more than once. A memory from the recent past came into full view—the bus—the bus that had so nearly thrown its force right through his body. He had dodged it by mere inches. Were the darts already being thrown at the target?

“Got him. He’s downtown working at the stadium.”

“Perfect. Let’s go.”

Banks looked down at his watch fervently.

“What is it with you and that watch? Let’s go!”

Banks grimaced at Thomas’ remark. He hurriedly put his arm down.

“When you’re in the business of time, it’s good to keep track of it!”

Thomas rolled his eyes. They jumped into their parked car and drove away. Inside the car there was a quiet hum of energy. Both men appeared to be stewing away on their internal suspicions. Were they as close as they thought? Who was the target this time? He didn’t know why, but he felt like he was making a connection with Banks. Their recent time together had forged an unspoken bond. It truly felt as if it was them against the world. Maybe there was a future for the bickering partnership.

Thomas watched as the massive silhouette of the football stadium could be seen through the murky clouds of smog. There was something primal about the place; an arena for modern day gladiators to bash each other into oblivion. He had no real interest in sports—it was just the idea that grabbed him. In truth, he didn’t know what to expect in such a barbaric place. Maybe one day he’d give in to his inclinations and see what all the fuss was about.

Weaving through a few more lanes of traffic, Banks pulled the car to the front entrance of the stadium. He looked out of his window.

“What’s all this about?”

“What?”

Thomas glanced over to see a man being escorted from the stadium in handcuffs. In a sheer moment of panic, he burst from the car and yelled.

“Hey! What’s going on here?”

The policemen hauling away the squirming man looked over at him and scowled.

“Pipe down, buddy. This is none of your business.”

Instead, Thomas escalated things by approaching them aggressively. He couldn’t miss his chance to replace the man of interest.

“Who is that man? What’s his name?”

The police officers pivoted and reached for their side arms. It was clear they weren’t about to budge on the issue.

“That’s none of your business, sir. Now step away!”

Thomas looked at the man in handcuffs. His eyes darted wildly about. It was clear that he was beside himself.

“I just want a name!” screamed Thomas, taking another step.

“Sir, I’m warning you!” one of the officers yelled as he unhooked the strap to his gun.

“Hold up!” roared Banks, finally catching up.

He flung open the badge he was carrying in his hands.

“We’re with the Feds. Just looking for a man who goes by David Schilling.”

The officers slowly removed their hands from their guns. One looked over the badge carefully before responding.

“Well, you’re in luck. You’ve found him. Got a call about some erratic behavior and vandalism this morning. Guys been spouting off for hours. We’re taking him downtown to clear him up a bit.”

Thomas swooped in on Schilling quickly. He was finally getting to see the man he had been dissecting. His eyes looked tired; his posture, decrepit. He looked wildly unkempt. Large brown puppy dog eyes looked up at Thomas intently. A bristly beard covered most of the finer points of his face. He looked to be out of his mind.

“These bastards don’t understand. This is the place! It’s here! I didn’t understand for so long, but now I do. You’ve got to believe me!”

Thomas shook his head in an attempt to clear out the sticky cobwebs and crossing paths of logic in his head.

“What are you talking about?”

David fought with one of the officers who kept trying to move him along.

“The signs . . . the signs are everywhere—it’s changing us all—this is where it will happen!”

One of the officers pressed Schilling’s head towards the ground. He howled in anger, doing his best to fight back.

“Alright, buddy, you’ve had enough prophesying for one day.”

“Wait—I need to talk to him; I need to know more.”

The officer nearest to Thomas put on a smug smirk.

“Sorry, buddy. I’ve got a schedule to keep and I’m already behind. You want any more answers, you can come downtown.”

Thomas began to move towards him but was stopped by a stern hand from Banks.

“Let it go. It’s not worth it. We’ll just follow them down.”

Waves of frothing adrenaline surged into Thomas. He couldn’t stand it.

“We can’t just let him walk away!” Thomas growled as David was being shoved into an awaiting police car.

The two of them watched as the car sped away. Thomas’ heart sank. He was so close, so very close. As the car roared away, his mind latched onto its details. There was something peculiar about it . . . He realized it was the exhaust pipe just as its poisonous output disappeared around a corner.

Gas . . . what about gas?

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a deafening round of gunfire. Both men threw themselves behind the car. In a flash, Banks pulled out a gun from his suit.

“What’s going on?” screamed Thomas.

They looked up ahead and saw a terrifying scene unfolding. A man with a small pistol had burst from an alleyway.

“Death to the pigs!” was the man’s lunatic decree.

He blasted a few rounds directly into the back-seat area of a cop car. When his pistol was emptied he quickly ran off. The police officers were stunned but reacted rapidly. Bursting from their car, they fired off a few rounds before following the shooter in hot pursuit. Thomas erupted from his safe spot and sprinted towards the stopped car.

“Get back! Don’t run out into the open!”

Thomas disregarded Banks’s plea and pressed forward. He had seen the officers leave the car abandoned. To him, there was only one conclusion. But it was a conclusion that horrified him in its bitter reality.

“David!” screamed Thomas as he approached one of the cop car’s back doors.

He pulled on the handle but his hand slipped out under the abrupt force. It was locked. He could see that a few rounds of bullets had blasted their way through the car window. Inside, David’s limp body was bent over to one side. Streams of blood ran from his chest. He was clearly dead. Thomas furiously kicked the side of the car before collapsing against it. He put his head into his hands.

What’s happening? Why can’t I stop this?

“Thomas, what are you doing?” demanded Banks as he rushed to his side.

“That guy could still be out there! Darting out like that could make you a target!”

Thomas heard Banks but didn’t care. David Schilling was gone and with him all the answers Thomas needed. The timing had been immaculate; the set-up superb. Everyone had been in the right place at exactly the right time. Were they just victims of circumstance, or was there something more? Had the killer caught their scent?

“Forget it. We’ve failed. He’s gone, along with everything he knew.”

Banks slammed the back end of his pistol into the car after seeing the dead body. It was obvious that it disturbed him to deal with this twisted form of reality.

“So, what? We just wait until another agent dies? We just give up?”

Thomas squeezed his eyes shut. The swirl of human emotion inside him was taking precedence over his sharp logic. He needed to separate the two; he needed to survive.

“The stadium—he kept saying it was there—we need to replace out what he was talking about.”

Banks kept his eyes on the dark alleys around them. He looked anxious, as if he was expecting another wave of fiery lead to blast out from their depths.

“Fine—but no more running off. You’ve got to start being a team player.”

“Team? Since when did you think we were a team? I’m not here to be on a team.”

Banks’s chest heaved in and out as he did his best to contain his anger. Thomas’ attitude was melting over him like a suffocating wax.

“Look—let’s just focus on solving this—this isn’t about you and me at this point.”

Banks spun around wildly facing the other direction. Through gritted teeth he responded.

“Let’s hurry up. Unless you’ve got something better to do.”

Thomas got up off the ground. The image of the dead body in the car was now permanently affixed forever in his mind. He’d never forget it. Looking down at his own watch, he saw the time glaring back at him. They were losing the battle; with each passing second they were that much further behind.

Sprinting to the stadium, Banks flashed his credentials at a man near the door who let them in. Once inside, they found themselves lost in its labyrinth.

“Now what? This place is massive.”

Thomas had an answer this time; one he’d been working on for what seemed like an eternity to him.

“He’s a plumber—probably stopped by to do some maintenance—that means he left a log somewhere. These places usually keep track of who fixed what and when. We just need to replace it.”

Looking back at the door they had just burst through, he targeted the man who had let them in. “Where do you guys keep records for maintenance issues?”

The man looked taken back. He seemed to be fumbling around for the right words to say.

“Please hurry. We’re running short on time here.”

The man blinked then nodded.

“We’ve got a list of who comes and goes in the main office. But what’s that matter now? Didn’t you see that guy get blasted? This whole place is going down the toilet!”

“Just take me there, alright?”

With a huff and a puff the man ushered the two of them along. Banks began prodding at Thomas for some answers. The truth was, he didn’t have any; at least not yet. He needed to solidify some ideas that were floating aimlessly around in his ocean of logic. He needed more info.

The man led them up a few flights of stairs before he jostled out a massive set of keys.

“Guy came in this morning on some maintenance call. Seemed normal enough until, well, you saw. I swear this city’s got some sort of disease or something. Should have listened to my mother when she told me to get out young. Now look at me, just a bag of bones.”

Thomas watched as the man tried one key then another. His anxiety was palpable. With each failure, he had to resist the urge to snatch the keys from the man’s hands and do it himself. It was all happening so slow.

“There she is . . . always the last one you try. You guys aren’t going to tear this place apart are you?”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll be in and out no problem,” said Banks.

The man stepped into the room and brought out a clipboard. His long eyebrows twitched around as he read through the list.

“There he is—one David Schilling, the plumber—must have been the on call for the burst pipe we had.”

“Where? Where was the burst pipe?”

The man gave Thomas a look of exhaustion, as if begging him to let it go. But he wouldn’t. Letting out an apathetic sigh, he looked back down at the clipboard.

“Downstairs. One of the snack bars. Looks like it was the hotdog stand Astro Buns. Fixed a faulty gas valve and pipe. Things are so oily, it’s no wonder to me. Speaking of oil, been trying to do one of those cleanse diets to clear me out, you know what I mean? Wouldn’t believe what that stuff does to you.”

Without warning, Thomas darted out of the room.

How did I not see this? It was all right there in front of me!

“I thought we agreed to no more running away?” Banks grunted, doing his best to follow.

Thomas charged down the stairs, passing a few weary-eyed janitors on the way. Once in the main commons, he unleashed his pragmatic mind. A solid row of commercial, food, gluttony ran through the stadium only broken apart by a few cliché signs. His eyes searched as his feet hammered against the ground. Suddenly—he found what he was looking for—Astro Buns. Jumping over the counter, he slid into a ketchup dispenser which fell onto the ground, spewing its contents. He was looking for something specific; a trigger. Something that would have set off the time bomb that had been festering inside of David Schilling and eventually led to his murder. The place was completely trashed, but there it was. It would have most likely been overlooked by anyone else. It was so subtle, and yet so deliciously suggestive. The special of the day was none other than the Astro Mars Dog.

The playful cartoon figure of a dog in a spacesuit, holding out a ketchup-dosed hotdog, came into view. Tomatoes, red peppers, and paprika—the perfect combination of reds to symbolize the red planet—but it was the ads that had pushed the boiling mental state of David over the edge.

“It’s coming for you!”

“It’s almost here!”

“Mars’ best hotdog!”

“Time is running out!”

Thomas immediately felt his inside shift around. A squeamish feeling percolated up him like a toxic poison. The subtle yet direct nature of the signs around him divulged a truth that he had not foreseen.

“What is it? What did you replace?” asked a breathless Banks.

Thomas could feel the hopelessness of it press in on him with a chilling embrace.

“This is what broke him. It’s absolutely magnificent. I didn’t see it coming.”

“What are you talking about?”

Thomas shook his head. He was searching within himself for something to grab hold of to pull himself out of the dark pit he was in. Then, like magic, there it was, sitting right in front of him—a grill.

“He works on grills and gas pipes. He’s not the kind of plumber I assumed he was. He’s been playing our ignorance. I’ve never been here, I’ve never cared about any of this, until now. This is unbelievable.”

Banks began to speak but was cut off by Thomas’ panicked voice.

“Find the remaining agents. We need to get to them now! If I’m right one, of them is going to die soon.”

Banks immediately dialed his phone, sending out the dire message. Thomas drew himself closer to one of the animated signs.

“Time is running out,” he mumbled.

But with David now murdered, whose time was it?