"You think he's a cop?" an anxious voice whispered.
Juan pulled his eyes away from the peephole. Ronnie Marzano was standing on his tiptoes trying to see through the opening. His black-rimmed eyes were worried.
"I don't know what he is, but he ain't no cop," Juan said with snide confidence. Without another glance out into the bar, he slid the cardboard shutter back over the opening.
Ronnie blinked hard as he turned his anxious gaze back to the storage room. "Yeah?" he said. "I hope you're right. I got a lot riding on this."
At that, Juan snorted. "You do?" he mocked. There were five more men arranged around the room. Each joined in the derisive laughter.
Ronnie felt like the odd man out. The other five were Cubans, like Jiminez. All six had come to the U.S. ten years ago, floating on a waterlogged boat made from rotted wooden planks lashed to four rusty oil drums.
There was a camaraderie derived from shared hardship among those six that Ronnie could never be a part of. Not that their friendship was anything he really needed. All Ronnie really wanted out of this deal was some free blow and a couple of bucks for his trouble.
A stack of corrugated cardboard boxes lined one wall of the big storage room. Each box was filled with two dozen tightly wrapped plastic bundles. More than a million dollars' worth of cocaine, smuggled by Juan Jiminez into the United States from South America. Ronnie had done his part by setting up the meeting between Jiminez and a local distributor out of Miami.
As Jiminez walked back across the room and plopped into a wooden office chair, Ronnie tracked him with his eyes.
"I'm the one who sets up the meetings here," Ronnie reminded the Cuban. "I'm the one whose neck's on the line."
He left out the fact that his brother-in-law owned the bar. Ronnie also neglected to mention that the heat had been threatening to turn up on the Roadkill lately. Word had begun to filter out into the surrounding neighborhood about what was really going on at the dingy little bar.
Ronnie rubbed his tired, bloodshot eyes. "I gotta go to the can," he mumbled.
Leaving the group of armed Cuban expatriates, he ducked through an ancient door that led into a short hallway. Down at one end was the main bar area. In the other direction were the rest rooms and an emergency exit.
Ronnie headed for the bathrooms. He was pushing open the men's-room door when he noticed that the exit at the end of the hall was open a crack. Through the opening bugs flitted around a tired parking-lot light.
"Someone skipped out on their tab," he muttered as he walked over to close the door.
An ancient cloakroom was next to the door. As he passed by the deep alcove, Ronnie saw a hint of movement from the shadowy interior.
Suddenly cautious, he stopped before the room. "Who's in there?" Ronnie asked.
It was quiet for a moment. So quiet that Ronnie thought he had imagined the movement. He was ready to chalk it all up to jangled nerves when a face appeared from the darkness.
The man was short. Had to be, since the face was only about five feet off the floor. The rest of his body remained obscured in shadow.
"Where is the money?" the stranger asked. His voice was flat, without any intonation at all. Almost mechanical.
"Huh?" Ronnie asked, his brow furrowing.
And in the moment he uttered that single, confused syllable, the rest of the man appeared.
Ronnie sucked in a shocked gasp.
The human head was grafted onto the most frightening creature Ronnie Marzano had ever seen. Spiky black hair covered the bulbous body. Four of eight legs had carried the beast out into the hallway. The rest were still hidden somewhere in the shadows beyond. The monster had to be huge.
Ronnie had seen the news reports of the giant spider on TV all day. Until now he'd assumed it was a hoax.
He wanted to run. Fear kept him from fleeing. Ronnie fell dumbly back against the wall.
"I have been sent to collect money," the spider said. "According to the human who sent me here, this drinking establishment is utilized as a secret exchange by elements of the subculture that traffics in illegal narcotics. Yet, despite this fact I am unable to detect particulates in the air that would indicate a large quantity of cash. Therefore, I ask again, where is the money?"
Ronnie gulped. It was hard to breathe. "Not here," he managed to say.
"This is unacceptable," the spider said, its voice cold.
The flesh-colored face looked down the hall.
"I detect slight airborne concentrations of an addictive drug derived from the leaves of the coca plant," Mr. Gordons said. "This drug generates money." The flesh-colored face turned accusingly to Ronnie. The tiny curls at the corners of the human mouth seemed to mock the drug dealer.
"It's n-not here yet," Ronnie stammered.
"How soon will it arrive?"
"I'm not sure exactly. Soon," he promised.
Gordons considered the information. "Very well," he said all at once. "Do not move."
Ronnie wasn't about to disobey. He remained stock-still against the wall as the spider skittered backward into the shadows of the cloakroom. There came a strange scraping of metal from out the darkness. When it was over seconds later, a man emerged calmly from the shadows. Ronnie was horrified to see that he wore the same face as the spider.
"Take me to where the money will be," Mr. Gordons said.
Ronnie dared not refuse. His legs felt as if they were dragging lead weights as he brought the manwho a moment before had been a giant spider-to the back room.
The Cubans looked up as the door squeaked shut. "Who the hell is this?" Juan Jiminez demanded. The man with Ronnie Marzano looked harmless in a bland sort of way. His blue suit was a little too perfectly tailored, his face too smooth.
"Hello is all right," Mr. Gordons said. "I would be able to offer you a drink, as this is an establishment that specializes in the selling of fermented-grain beverages, but unfortunately I am without the funds to do so."
Juan's brown eyes were clenched with tight suspicion. "Who you bring back here, Marzano?" he asked Ronnie very, very slowly. "This some kind of cop?"
Already the rest of the men were fanning out. With guns drawn, they surrounded the stiff-looking stranger.
"I am not a police officer," Mr. Gordons answered. "And I must ask that you cease your current course of action, as it could be perceived as a threat to my survival."
"Bet your ass it's a threat," Juan snarled. "And you're going down with him," he said to Ronnie. Ronnie Marzano was standing next to Gordons near the door.
"Please, Juan," he begged, shaking his head.
But it was already too late. The moment Jiminez threatened to endanger the survival of the man standing next to Ronnie, the drug dealer's fate was sealed.
Mr. Gordons moved his arms out to either side of his body, the fingertips angled toward the floor.
As Juan watched, the man's arms were suddenly very long. Much longer than human arms should be. There was something shiny at the ends of them. And when the stranger bent his arms at the elbows, the shiny something of his left hand was flying very quickly in Juan's direction.
The steel knife blade of the android's hand thunked deep into Juan Jiminez's forehead, splitting apart the hemispheres of his dead brain. At the same instant, a second blade shot through the skull of another Cuban drug dealer.