The Unknown Knowns (2009) by Jeffrey Rotter

Author:Jeffrey Rotter
Format: epub
Published: 2009-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

But let’s get back to room 517 at the Denver Radisson. Like I said, the Nautikon’s door hung open a crack. I peered inside. Every light was on, but the bed was neatly made and his luggage was nowhere to be seen. As I tiptoed into the room, the panic climbed from the arches of my feet and drove its sour tentacles into my bowels. I felt the urge to crap. And then:

ZZAAAAHHHH! KUNK!

The last things I saw were two brown eyes and a green box. Then I was on the floor, my nose badly rug-burned. My left eye was showing nothing but purple fizz, but in my right I could see the toe of a man’s shoe. It nudged my forehead, and then I guess I blacked out again. The Mediterranean Sea glittered before me. And the sperm whale called my name…once, twice…

I sat up, trying to listen for the Nautikon’s footsteps, but my ears were ringing too loudly. There was no question about it, he must have used some kind of sonic stun pistol. That could be the only explanation. Somehow I managed to get to my knees, and then to my feet. I must have pressed the elevator call button sixty or seventy times before it came. The light inside the elevator car blared in my brain – directly inside my brain!

When the doors finally opened on the garage level, the ringing in my ears had settled into harmless background noise. ‘Music Box Dancer’ was playing on the elevator, I remember that. Somewhere in the near distance I could hear an engine turn over.

I wasn’t too late, but if I wanted to catch the Nautikon I had to act fast. I fell against my driver’s-side door, fumbling with the key, remembering too late that my car was parked right next to his. Through the windshield I saw his startled eyes. He threw the Ford into reverse and backed out, clipping my pelvis with his side mirror.

The Ford bounded up toward the exit so fiercely that its rear bumper scraped on the rumble strips. For some reason I thought about corduroy. In my rearview mirror I could see that the arm on the gate was down. He seemed to be having trouble finding his parking ticket. His brake lights throbbed red in anger. I threw the Corolla into reverse, swung the car around. He offered the ticket to the hungry machine. It swallowed. By the time I pulled up behind him, the candy-striped arm was rising in salute.

As for my parking ticket, it was right where it should have been, under the sun visor. It was just a matter of inserting it in the slot and the chase could continue. But when I lowered the window, a stiff breeze poured into the garage. The ticket slipped away and fluttered under the Corolla. I unbuckled my seat belt and threw open the door, but I was too close to the ticket booth to get out, so I had to climb through the passenger door.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.