Gun Games

by Faye Kellerman

  He stroked her cheek.

  “Promise me that you’ll come. I don’t want to go on like this. We’re both in bad places right now. Let’s be wrecked together.”

  Yasmine didn’t talk for a long time. Finally she nodded. “I promise, Gabriel. When I’m eighteen, I’ll come to New York to be with you.”

  “You swear?”

  “I swear.” Her fingers sifted through his long hair. “And you’ll wait for me?”

  “I swear I will wait.” He took her hand and planted it with kisses. “I still love you madly. The more I’m away from you, the more I realize that.”

  She managed a tearful smile. “I love you, too.”

  Gabe let out an exhalation of utter relief. “New York is a good place to go to school anyway. There are zillions of colleges.”

  “My parents will never pay for me to go to college in New York.”

  “You get whatever scholarship you can and I’ll pay for the rest. I have money.”

  “I won’t take money from you.”

  “Why don’t we worry about that in three years?”

  Yasmine thought for a moment. “Maybe they’d pay for Barnard. It’s a girls’ school.”

  “Barnard would be great.” He looked at her. “Did you know they have a music program with Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music? You could study singing.” A pause. “Do you still sing?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Now that is criminal. You have to come, Yasmine. Hannah goes to Barnard. She loves it.”

  “You see Hannah?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen her about once a month. She tries to feed me. If you go there, she’ll show you the ropes.”

  Yasmine nodded, then gave out a heavy sigh. “You know, my parents will disown me.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  “Yes, they really will.”

  He kissed her hand again. “Yasmine, when the time comes, have a little faith.” She regarded his face. “Give me a chance to win them over. I can convert. I know some Hebrew, but I can learn to be fluent. I can learn Farsi. I can eat koobideh and Persian rice with a broiled tomato. I can arrive unfashionably late and give ridiculous parties where you don’t start eating until eleven at night.”

  Yasmine laughed through her tears. “I would never ask you to convert.”

  “Why not?” Gabe answered. “You should ask me, because it’s important to you. People are always reinventing themselves. I mean I can’t change my skin color and I wouldn’t give up music for anyone, but everything else in my life is negotiable.”

  “You would convert for me?” Her voice was timid.

  “I would certainly and absolutely convert for you. My program is filled with Asians, Russians, and Jews. I might as well join a gang.” His eyes focused on her face. “More than that, I’d love to be part of a God and a culture that produced a girl as wonderful as you.”

  She started weeping again, uncontrollable sobs that came from deep in her chest. Gabe pushed his seat all the way back and opened the driver’s door. “C’mere, cuckoo bird.”

  Yasmine jumped out of the car, closed the passenger door, ran around to the driver’s side, and fell onto his lap, crying on his bony shoulder. After he closed the driver’s door, Gabe wrapped his arms around her. For the first time in almost a year, he could breathe without psychic and physical pain. “I love you, Yasmine.”

  “I love you soooooo much,” she said softly.

  He brushed his lips against hers, and she returned his kiss with a big juicy wet one. His reaction was immediate. Hallelujah, he thought to himself. Yes, I’m still alive.

  She giggled when she felt him press against her.

  He said, “As you can see, nothing has changed.”

  Yasmine giggled again. “Congratulations on your great reviews last summer.” Gabe was taken aback. She kissed his cheek and said, “I used to google you in the library.”

  “Okay.” He kissed her back. “They weren’t great reviews—”

  “The woman in the Oklahoma newspaper called you an exciting, vibrant pianist.”

  “That was the exception. One said that I showed a good deal of promise, one said that I was promising, and one said I was adequate. Okay, but not exactly stellar. But it takes time. More important is that you were interested in me. That’s worth more than a thousand great reviews.”

  Yasmine said, “I never stopped wishing for you, Gabriel. Never, ever.”

  “God, I missed you, too. And I’m so sorry your mom took your watch. Looks like I’ll have to start all over.” He punched the button on the glove compartment and took out a wrapped box. “Happy belated birthday. I sent you a card, but obviously you never got it.”

  She looked at him, grinned openly, and then tore open the gift. Inside was a very thin white gold bangle studded with diamonds. She brought it to her heart. “I love it!”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yes, it’s the most perfect gift in the world. It’s gorgeous!” She laid her head against his chest. “But honestly I’d be just as happy with the box . . . anything from you that I can hold during the night.”

  “Okay. So I’ll return the bracelet and you can keep the box,” he teased her.

  Yasmine’s cell buzzed. “That’s my carpool—”

  “You have a phone?”

  “My mother gave me a new one for Chanukah, but she still doesn’t trust me. Every day, she checks my texts and my phone calls. She knows your number, so you can’t call me up.”

  “Well, give me your number anyway.” When she gave it to him, he said, “Even if I can’t call you, it’s good to have you on my contact list again.” A sly smile. “You know, I can always change my phone number. I can even do a 310 area code, and we can pretend it’s one of your friends from school.”

  She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no. “I better go before they send out the search party.”

  “It’s dark outside.”

  “Then walk me to the corner,” she told him.

  The two of them got out of the car, arms around each other. He said, “You know you didn’t say anything about my spiffy car.”

  “Silver gray VW Cabriolet, black leather interior, carbon graphite dash with wire wheels. Very, very nice. I approve completely.”

  Gabe smiled. “Nothing escapes you.”

  “Just as long as you don’t escape me.” She hugged him fiercely. “And you didn’t say anything about what I got.”

  Gabe was perplexed. “What did you get?”

  She brought his hand to her chest over her sweatshirt. “I got boobs.”

  He laughed so hard, he buckled at his knees. “We’ll have to explore that much further one day.” They walked a block until she was across the street from her school. When the light changed to green, she stood motionless. He kissed her cheek. “Go. I won’t expect to hear from you regularly. But if you can write or text me once in a while, it’ll keep me going for a long time.”

  “I promise I will. I love you, Gabriel. You own my heart.”

  “I love you, too, Yasmine, forever and always.” He kissed her again. “Go.”

  Once inside the crosswalk, she yelled over her shoulder. “Go home and eat a steak!”

  When she got to the other side, she waved and twirled and jumped up into the air, laughing and dancing until she faded from view.

  Her own personal Viennese waltz.

  Chapter Forty

  The asphalt road was nothing but a rutted two-lane stretch of dust that cut a swath through the desert. The streets in the country sucked, Dylan thought, most of them studded with pebbles and potholes that wreaked havoc on the undercarriages of cars as well as the tires. Even in the major cities, the infrastructure was bad. He didn’t spend much time in the cities, though. Not that it was dangerous anymore, but Dylan had lost his taste for congestion. The place where he lived was fairly remote, as was the route he was traveling—almost empty with the occasional passage of a car or two.

  It had taken a while, but he fel
t he was doing okay, adjusting as well as could be expected. Time moved sloooowly. At first, he was so fucking bored he thought he was going to crawl out of his skin. But after a while—with enough meth coursing through the veins and enough whores sucking his dick—well, he kinda got used to it.

  It was the springtime, which meant wind and dust and a rise in the heat factor. There were two seasons down here: hot and very hot. Today, it was cool enough to drive with the windows open. The car had AC that worked about as well as everything else did, which was to say it didn’t work well at all. At least it was a step up from the junk heap he had when he first came down here. His current set of wheels still shaked, rattled, and rolled, but it could go a little faster than crawling; and it had a radio.

  Dylan planned on staying here through the year—just smoking and whoring and hanging out. After that, his Spanish would be fluent and he’d go south into the bigger cities once again: maybe Buenos Aires or even Rio although he didn’t know much Portuguese. But so what? With his new alias and his new passport, he knew he’d have no trouble starting over.

  He’d have to get back into shape, though: take off the extra fifty pounds he packed on from all the starch. He’d eventually enter Universidad and do what he could have done in the old USA if all those fucking idiots hadn’t gotten in his way.

  His new car, his gap-year plans to travel the world, his degree from Yale—everything flushed down the toilet because of a few fucking idiots! Next time, he wouldn’t trust anyone. Next time, he’d be a lot, lot smarter: shoot first and ask questions later. Still, an interlude of drugs and whores wasn’t all that horrible.

  In the beginning, all he thought about was revenge, sneaking back into the States and finishing them all off. His fantasies took on a sexual pleasure of their own. Every time a whore put her lips to his dick, he thought about the gun going off and exploding faces. To get the true sensation, he thought about Gregory Hesse’s bursting face because that had been for real. Later on, he could extrapolate. First it was Cameron who blew up, then Kyle, then the rest of them. He thought about raping the little brown girl constantly and then shooting her in the face.

  But then after a while, the fantasy faded and he discovered he really didn’t give a fuck about any of them . . . except for maybe Gabe. For some odd reason, he still liked the dude.

  The dude was cool.

  The dude was hot.

  Ah well. Time to forget the past and think about the future.

  Time to think about nothing, because there was always mañana.

  He jumped when he heard the pop and reached for his gun. The roads were constantly trawled by banditos and drug runners, and one couldn’t be too careful about anything. But then the car started to shake and he knew what had happened.

  Fuck!

  He pulled over by the side of the road, got out, and immediately started sweating. He shielded his eyes as he surveyed the road. Not a car in sight.

  He stared upward—a cloudless sky and a searing sun. Then he stared outward—red clay and sand and nothingness. He had a spare in the trunk, but his tire-changing skills weren’t so sharp. Nonetheless, it was either waiting for someone to come around or being self-sufficient.

  He’d try self-sufficient first. If that didn’t work, he’d just wait. He always traveled with food and water and a gun. That was just a given out here.

  Opening the trunk, he rooted around and lugged out the spare along with the tool kit. Then he bent down and examined the damage. The hubcap on the front passenger tire almost touched the road. He squinted in the sun as he regarded the tools—the jack, the crowbar, the lug nuts. He was studying the situation with such intensity that he hadn’t even heard the bike pull up until it was almost on top of him.

  Dylan looked up as the man gave the kickstand a whack. He was wearing a full helmet with goggles, a leather jacket, and thin black gloves.

  “Need help?”

  The voice was deep. “Yeah, man. Thanks a lot.” The man bent down, stared at the tire, but said nothing. Dylan said, “I think I had a blowout.”

  “Looks like it. No biggie.” The man’s eyes wandered from the offending tire to the boy’s back, specifically to a two-inch space of exposed skin between the waistband of the kid’s shorts and hem of his T-shirt—a nice bare patch of sun-kissed tissue at the lumbar region.

  The perfect setup.

  The entire operation took about thirty seconds.

  The man slid a razor-sharp shiv into Dylan’s back, expertly driving it between the boy’s vertebrae, slicing the tendons, pushing it deeper into the backbone. Several strong and deft strokes back and forth, and within moments, the boy’s spinal cord was cut. Severing nerve tissue, especially the spinal cord, wasn’t easy: the root was thick and strong and fibrous. It took muscle and elbow grease to slice it in half. The teen was lucky that the man had the strength and skill to sever it quickly and cleanly. It was done before Dylan could process what had gone down. With wide eyes and an open mouth, Dylan fell down onto the ground and moaned out some kind of guttural sound.

  If the paramedics got to him soon enough, the kid would have a chance to live. But his legs would be useless appendages, a sickening reminder of what he lost.

  Even more important, his dick would be just as useless.

  The injury was high up enough that Dylan would lose all sensation as well as motor function in the lower half of his body. And that’s exactly what Donatti wanted.

  Wordlessly, he took Dylan’s wallet and voided it of any bills. In this part of the country, robbery was always the main motive for crime.

  He left the kid slumped on the ground, got on the bike, and peeled out, his destination not far from where it happened. A few miles down, he abruptly shifted directions until he was riding on the open desert. He could have found the spot without navigation, but GPS made it just that much simpler.

  The twin-engine Cessna was waiting.

  He got off the bike and worked at top speed to take off the wheels and handlebars from the frame. After that, he took off his jacket, gloves, and helmet. He placed everything inside the baggage compartment of the plane.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was airborne.

  The plane was slow, but it easily slipped below radar as he followed his carefully mapped-out route. With two practice runs under his belt, he felt confident. When he landed the plane on a private strip three hours later, he finally felt his breath come back into his lungs. The touchdown wasn’t an easy one—a flat table of grass within the crags of the Sierras—and it was positively the hardest part of the entire procedure. He had bought 250 acres of forest five years ago, specifically because it contained a nice flat stretch for his unregistered plane. For business, Donatti flew either first-class commercial or on a time-shared jet. The plane was strictly for his flying pleasure or for when he did business off the radar.

  And this one was definitely off the radar.

  He took the motorcycle out of the hold and reassembled it, checking his time.

  Two hours before the meeting.

  No sweat.

  He put on his jacket, helmet, and gloves; mounted the beast; and roared off until he hit the main highway. Talia, his faithful secretary and lover, was there to meet him at the secluded, designated spot a half hour later. She handed him the keys to his Aston Martin.

  Donatti said, “Are you sure you can handle the bike?”

  “It’s not a problem, Chris.”

  “You’re a sweetie.” He handed her a cloth bag. “Take the shiv inside, wash it, soak it in acid, and luminal it. Make sure nothing glows. Be sure to rinse the drain for a good ten minutes. And do it several times. Then put what’s left of the metal through the shredder and toss the shavings out in the national forest.” He took off the jacket, helmet, and gloves. “Destroy all my clothing and the bag. Totally. Soak the helmet in the solution I gave you, luminal it, and if it’s okay, put it back in my closet.”

  Talia stuffed the clothes he gave her inside the bag. Then she opened the trunk to
the Aston as Donatti stripped down. She took out his suit, black T-shirt, suede loafers, and a fresh pair of underwear. “Are you sure you want to keep the helmet?”

  “We’ve been through a lot together. If it doesn’t glow, I want to keep it. But if it does, get rid of it.”

  Talia said, “What do I do with the bike?”

  “Give it to Mason. He’ll take care of it. You deal with my cell phone?”

  “It was completely destroyed by the water damage so no one could get through to you this morning. I got you a new iPhone and a new telephone number.” She handed him the cell. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” He had slipped on his clothing, and he placed the phone in his jacket pocket. “Where am I going again?”

  “What would you do without me?” she complained. “To the Barker Building.”

  “That’s right. And what’s the meeting about again?”

  “It’s with your broker from Utrich, LLC.” She handed him a briefcase and kissed his cheek. “All the relevant information is inside here.”

  “Good girl.”

  “By the way, Chris, I did what you said . . . called in the accident from a remote source.”

  “Did they get him to the hospital on time?”

  “He was alive when they picked him up. Last I heard he was in critical condition.”

  “Let’s pray for a speedy recovery.” He kissed her cheek. “With any luck, he’ll live long enough to see what a pathetic blob he is and kill himself.”

  Donatti slipped into the driver’s seat, put the top down, and sped off until he reached the highway. He blasted the radio on heavy metal and felt his heart’s smooth and steady beat. Even hours later, he could still taste the grit in his mouth. No matter how much protection, the sand seeps inside. Talia had left a bottle of water on the passenger seat. He reached over and drained it. Hydrated now, cruising down the freeway, seventy-two degrees outside . . . life was good.