Free Darkman by Randall Boyll Page A

patent-leather shoe. Amber plastic crunched. “Nice touch,” he snarled at Rick, making him back away. He turned his face to Peyton. “We’re out of time, Doc. Give me the fucking paper I came here for!”
    “I do not know what in hell you are talking about,” Peyton said evenly while blood drooled down his chin and spattered on the floor.
    Durant sighed. “I have an appointment in less than fifteen minutes, and I do not expect to have to drag you along. Perhaps if we asked your lady friend? Julie?
    Peyton jerked. He shook his head. “If you touch her, I’ll—”
    “You’ll what?” Durant shouted. “Look around yourself, Doc. We don’t horse around. If we don’t find the memo here, we’ll find it at her place. Maybe even your place. I don’t have much time, and I’m not famous for being patient with raw assholes like you.”
    Peyton frowned, his eyes shifting back and forth. He nodded to himself. “Wait,” he said. “I have a piece of paper in my breast pocket. That’s as close as I can come to a document.”
    Durant stepped forward and ripped open Peyton’s lab coat. He slipped his fingers into the pocket of his shirt. The hand came out holding the trophy he had been seeking. He spread it open and grinned.
    “I like you a lot better now, Doc. I really enjoy mutual cooperation. Guys?”
    Smiley handed his leg gun to Rick. “My turn, boss.”
    “Bullshit,” Pauly snapped. “He’s mine.”
    Durant waved his hands. “We’re a team, men. You can both have him.”
    They lunged at Peyton. He looked quite surprised to be so popular. They jerked him backward, away from Yakky’s bleeding body, toward the ThinkTank-PinkTank, where electricity hummed and porcelain insulators stood naked and obvious. Smiley smiled, seeing them. He would have smiled at an enemy battle tank just as much. He and Pauly spun Westlake around and pulled his hands toward the insulators, where naked wire was coiled and exposed. Peyton struggled uselessly.
    “Ain’t this dangerous?” Pauly asked Smiley.
    “Only if you touch both sides at once.”
    “What are you, an electrician?”
    “Idiots!” Durant shrieked. “Shut up and torch him!”
    Smiley wrapped Peyton’s left hand over the exposed copper wires, then nodded to Pauly. Pauly held on to Peyton’s forearm and forced his hand around the insulator. A brief shower of yellow sparks shot across the room. Peyton, electrified and unable to let go, performed a fantastic shake, rattle, and roll, shrieking with pain. Smoke boiled off his captive hands. The skin popped and split, exposing white twigs of bone where the muscle was cooking and bending. He screamed and screamed and screamed.
    “God,” Durant muttered, plugging his ears. “I’ll bet that hurts!”
    Smiley tried to pull Peyton away. He was as good as welded there. Pauly punched him hard in the face, knocking him backward. His hands jerked free from the insulators and burst into flame, sending the stench of burned hair and cooked meat into the air. Rick gagged, standing at the doorway with an empty bottle in one hand and nothing at all in the other, where a prescription bottle usually resided. He looked horrified because he was.
    Peyton fell on his face with his hands tucked underneath him, extinguishing the flames. Rick was oh so glad. The stink was enough to kill a buzzard, to his way of thinking. He turned to go, but . . .
    . . . but Durant wasn’t finished yet. He nodded once more to Smiley and Pauly, and they understood well enough what he meant. They lifted Peyton by the clothes and charged at the ThinkTank-PinkTank. At the last moment they applied the brakes and let Peyton dump headfirst into the fluid. Electricity flashed and popped, hurling sparks in random patterns.
    Smiley went into a squat to watch him. Inside the pink stuff, his head was turning back and forth while scream bubbles boiled out of his mouth. Smiley was aware that something was humming that hadn’t been humming before. It sounded like a