Catwalk: Messiah Read Online Free Page B

fight. The surgery had left Hitch with a limp and a permanent feeling most closely resembling sciatica. The painkiller addiction and bouts in prison had cooked his brain. If there was anything left of his conscious mind, it was controlled and manipulated by his employer. On any night, Hitch would be an easy hit, if not for his connections. The limping miscreant was well known as a handyman and occasional lab rat for one of the more demonstrative criminals in all of Downtown, the character who called himself Midas.  
    Tonight, Hitch was up to his old tricks, scouring the worst parts of town with the seediest of unspoken appetites. Usually he killed anyone innocent, stupid, drunk, or high enough to join his company. It was after they were dead when he chose to violate them, able to perform any of the variety of sick acts of sodomy, which drifted through the cobweb-filled rafters of his brain. Given his limited strength, death would ensure success and eliminate any witness testimony outside of the sordid story he created. His modus operandi, combined with bribes and crooked cops and lawyers, had held up so far. For all the charges against him, Hitch only served a combined three years in prison over two convictions. Midas held that kind of power in Nitro City.
    Cat didn’t like the setup. It was too easy. Hitch tried to copy his boss in the game of flash and reputation. His attempts to appear rich and famous made him an easy tail. Any competent investigator could track the weasel down. The fact someone had been willing to pay him to retire such a waste of flesh was either a bonus or a trap. From Frame One, Cat’s gut told him that Midas himself was hiring him to either off his Renfield, or using Hitch as bait to draw Cat into the open. Either way, it could be a fatal mistake. Midas had more connections than an international telecom switchbox, but Cat made a mission of tracking his transactions for almost three months. He knew more about the pimp-turned-godfather than Midas knew of himself.  
    Cat wasn’t moved by the idea of Midas targeting him. He’d had hits taken out on him in the past. That was the ante if you wanted to play the game. If you didn’t have someone aiming to put steel between your shoulder blades, you weren’t really a player. Cat learned to sleep lightly, shoot straight, and cover his tracks long before he came to the former City of Angels.
    Hitch’s rental limo was the cheapest Cat could remember tailing. The obvious kit-car was little more than a four-cylinder under the hood, with a fiberglass cover-up. The engine could hardly drive a scooter uphill. It clearly couldn’t handle the weight of an armored, professional escort service. It was held together with the cheapest of materials. Cat scoffed. The same could be said of the passenger’s sanity. When the driver eased up to the corner of Ocean Park and 4 th , it was a welcome relief. He’d followed them so far west they’d run out of land, nearly reaching the polluted Pacific Ocean itself.
    Cat slid his motorcycle into a parking lot, sliding a chip into the meter with a quick and silent payment acknowledgement. He armed the anti-personnel alarm and traversed the thirty meters between his vehicle and the opposite corner from Hitch’s limo in seconds. From the camouflage of a vacant newsstand, he watched the working girls approach the limo. One after another, they walked away, rejected by the disfigured man inside.
    Finally, a slight man, his hair dyed blacker than an eclipse, approached nervously. Even across the intersection, Cat could read the surprise on the young man’s face. A one-sided conversation followed, with Hitch offering the stunned man a myriad of treasures. The youngster hardly remembered to negotiate price. Catwalk cursed under his breath, turned and ran back to the motorcycle as the pale male prostitute was led into the limo.  
    “You gotta be shockin’ kiddin’ me,” he mumbled, the tires burning as he ripped into gear and