Free Screwed by Eoin Colfer

Maybe with a garden. Someplace the neighbors would be horrified when they found out it was a porn studio.
    I cannot believe it. That house was always so quiet. Kept itself to itself and never threw parties.
    But as I settle enough to take stock, I realize that my spatial sense has probably been bamboozled by the porn room’s soundproofing. I am in a New York high-rise hallway, no doubt about it. I can tell by the street noises jostling each other in the stairwell. Traffic and fat throngs of pedestrians. New Yorkers shouting terse messages into their cells, the delighted cooing of tourists getting their first glimpse of the Donald’s golden tower or the Apple Store, and a blend of Middle Eastern dialects that you wouldn’t find in Guantanamo. The smells are familiar too; street food, hot asphalt and the rubber of a million tires.
    New York. Those clowns humped me to New York.
    There is a tight elevator cab to my left, which would take me down to a back door but I choose not to trap myself inside. Contrary to what the movies would have us believe there is often not a handy escape hatch in the roof that is left unbolted in case of action-hero distress. If you get caught in a lift, then you are, as the gamers say, totally pawned.
    It’s hard to keep up with the kid lingo. I said FUBAR to a college jock in the club recently and he looked at me like I was in black-and-white.
    Tango and Cash, junior. Buy a DVD, why don’t you?
    So I don’t get in the lift for that reason. But also because I have a phantom memory of being manhandled into that shaft with Fortz’s snide laughter wet in my ear and just looking at the steel door gives me the shivers.
    Feck it. I’m just gonna kill them.
    No. I’ve done a lot of desperate things in my life, but I’ve never killed a person when there was another way. Any other way.
    That arsehole Fortz better learn from his mistakes, because next time I can’t promise this level of self-control, especially when I’ve had time to brood on the wrong done to me.
    After a few breaths to steady myself I take the stairs. Three stories down past a nail spa and a meat refrigerator and I’m out on the street. I turn right and walk head down just in case there is some sort of surveillance. Putting a little mileage between me and that building is my priority. When my heart stops pounding, then I can try to figure my whereabouts. It shouldn’t be too difficult. All I have to do is ask my phone.
    As it turns out, I’m way down in Manhattan on Forty-second and Eighth, which is an area I know pretty well from my years bouncing the Big Apple clubs. I could jump a cab to SoHo and get this accursed envelope dropped off, but I need a little headspace to ride out the after-tremors of combat neurosis that I feel coming my way, and also food would be a very good idea. It’s after two and I haven’t eaten a crumb.
    After two? How the hell did that happen?
    Krieger must have given me a shot of something in the car, to make sure I stayed out. Another reason I should have finished those guys off. I decide to ask Zeb for a thorough once-over if I make it home, to make sure there are no alien chemicals floating around my system. A lot of sedatives cause side effects unless you get them flushed. Anything from amnesia to paranoia can crop up for days after taking a shot. The last thing I need is to be wandering around, convinced that people are trying to kill me but unable to remember who exactly.
    I’d probably ask a cop for help and that cop would be Dirk Fortz.
    I hike the dozen or so blocks to the Parker Meridien, glad of the density of human camouflage on the streets, and grab myself a small table in the famous Norma’s breakfast restaurant.
    Dirk Fortz. What kind of stupid name is that? It’s like his parents couldn’t decide if they were in Dynasty or Star Wars.
    This guy has gotten under my skin in a way nobody else ever has. He didn’t just want to kill me, he wanted to go beyond that.
    My hands are