Cirilio Vega is smiling when he brings the vodka and the club soda to the booth. “Here,” says Vega as he sits across from Scrbacek and slides the club soda toward him.
Scrbacek’s face is misshapen with bruises, a filthy bandage spans the ridge of his nose, his five-o’clock shadow is well past midnight. Vega squints to get a look into his eyes and stiffens slightly at what he sees. There’s something fearsome and keen about the man across the table from him, something dangerous. Whatever blows he has taken, Vega imagines Scrbacek has given worse. Vega tells himself to be careful before he says, “My God, J.D., what happened to you? You look like you’ve been caught in a washing machine.”
“And then tumbled dry.”
“Are you all right?”
“For the time being.”
“We’ve been worried, so worried. Can I help? Do you need anything?”
“I could use some money,” says Scrbacek flatly.
“Sure, J.D. Yes, of course.” Vega digs out his wallet, pulls out a stack of bills, counts them quickly. “Two hundred? Two fifty?”
“As much as you can spare.”
“Here, take it all. I can get more at the bank if you want to wait.”
Scrbacek stuffs the money into his pocket and smiles. “No, I don’t want to wait. This is enough, thanks.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to get the hell out of here. I’ve been hiding, running, but they’re getting closer.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, Cirilio. For a few hours I was hiding out at Jenny’s. Remember her? Jenny Ling.”
“Yeah, sure. Nice girl.”
“She speaks highly of you, too. She says you helped her out when we were going through our rough patch.”
“I try to be helpful.”
“And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. Well, I went to our old place in the Marina District, tried to get just a few hours’ rest, but somehow they found out and came for me there. At Jenny’s house. With their guns. They killed her dog, our dog. They killed my dog, Cirilio. It’s that bad. All I know is that I have to lose myself. You want to get lost, the best way is to hunker down on a bus heading nowhere. It can take a week to get to California by Greyhound if you go first through Austin and then through Jackson Hole. Now I have enough for the ticket.” Scrbacek glances at the clock above the bar. “My ride leaves in an hour.”
“This is crazy, J.D. You can’t just run away. Go to the cops. Get yourself some real protection.”
“We never trusted the cops before, so what makes you think we can trust them now? No, it’s just you and me. That’s why I asked Sweeney to set up this meeting on the sly. I knew you carried enough money for me to get out, and I wanted to give you a chance to come with me.”
“What? Why would I want to come with you?”
“Because they’re after you too, Cirilio.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“No. They’re not. You’re crazy. No one wants to kill me. What are you talking about, J.D.?” He blows air out of his mouth. “You’re talking crazy.”
“That’s exactly what I said after they blew up Ethan Brummel. Surwin suggested they were trying to blow me up instead, and I used the exact same words. But, Cirilio, since then, as best I can count, there have been four more attempts on my life. They’re getting closer each time. Next time they win, I lose, game over.”
“Who’s trying to kill you? Kill me? Why? None of this makes any sense.”
Scrbacek leans toward Vega and lowers his voice. “They think I know something. When they burned down my building, they napalmed my files. There was something in my files they wanted to keep a secret, and I have no idea what it is. But it’s something brutal enough for them to kill me simply because I might have seen it. And, Cirilio, they’re going to kill you, too.”
“You keep saying that. Why, J.D.? Why me?”
“Because you’re Caleb’s lawyer now.”
“I was just trying to help you out. After you disappeared, Joey Torresdale called me to see if—”
“Somehow this thing I’m supposed to know involves Breest. You took over the case, so you’re involved, too. Do you have any idea what it is they’re trying to hide? Do you have any idea what was in my files?”
Scrbacek looks searchingly into the eyes of Cirilio Vega, and Vega knows better than to give in to his instincts and let his gaze fall away. You do that with a jury, let your gaze waver in the crucial moment of an argument, and all twelve know right away. What you do, instead, in the crux of the argument, is pin your eyes to the juror you know is most against you—the old man with the jowls and the American flag pinned to his lapel, or the woman with the pursed mouth and the hair done up church-tight—you keep your eyes right smack on that juror as you emphatically make the point until the doubts begin to dissolve under the shining light of your certainty. So that’s what he does, Cirilio Vega, well-trained trial lawyer that he is, keeps his gaze bolted on Scrbacek’s eyes as he says, “No, J.D. I don’t. I have no idea.”
Scrbacek’s eyes narrow, as if in pain. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “I was counting on you for answers.”
“I wish I had them. Believe me.”
Scrbacek sticks out his jaw, nods, and takes a gulp from his club soda. “Do you remember Remi Bozant?”
“The cop in the clown suit?”
“The bastard I got kicked off the force and into jail.”
“He left town, I heard, years ago.”
“He’s back, and he’s the one leading the hunt for me. When I was running through the depths of Crapstown, I met someone who heard him shooting his mouth off in a bar. He said Scrbacek was only the first, some fat shit was second, a crooked judge was third, and then the Cuban lawyer. This is what he was supposed to have said, Cirilio. He’s working for someone, I don’t know who, but someone who wants to wipe out anyone who might know anything he needs to keep secret.”
Cirilio Vega’s dark feral face turns two shades paler. His tongue licks his mustache nervously. He takes a sip of his vodka and then another. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know anything.”
“It doesn’t matter what you know, it only matters what they think you know.” Scrbacek checks the clock once more, finishes what is in his glass, stands. “I have to go. I have to catch a bus. Thanks for the money. You’ve always been a friend, Cirilio. Remember what I said and take care of yourself.”
“Wait, J.D. Wait. Where are you going? Where can I get in touch with you?”
“Santa Monica Pier, one week from today,” says Scrbacek. “Good luck, Cirilio.” And then he leaves, does J.D. Scrbacek, turns and walks out of the bar with only a quick nod toward Sweeney before closing the door behind him.
Cirilio Vega stares at Scrbacek’s back as it disappears through the door before violently throwing the rest of his vodka down his throat, coughing as it tumbles its way into his stomach.
Did Scrbacek see the panic in his face? Probably, yes, but it was understandable, considering. How else should he have reacted to being told someone was trying to kill him? No, he did fine, played the part of the unknowing friend to perfection. It was Scrbacek whose behavior was strange, no anger or fear twisting his features. His whole being was suffused with serenity, a dangerous serenity, something slow and suppressed and ready to erupt. Vesuvius the day before.
For the first time in all the years he had known him, Cirilio Vega had been afraid of Scrbacek, as if he had underestimated him from the first. It’s a good thing Scrbacek doesn’t know about that night with Jenny, a very good thing. Vega wouldn’t want to go head-to-head with that violently serene J.D. Scrbacek, and now, thankfully, with one call, he won’t have to. He grabs his cell, flicks through his contacts, and darkens it before he can dial. He can’t use his own phone, can’t have the call on his records. He heads to the pay phone on the wall to make the call, lifts the receiver, hesitates.
What about Bozant? Vega doesn’t put it past
Bozant, that animal, to blab with pride over beers in some ragged Crapstown joint about who he was going to kill. First, Scrbacek. Then the fat slob Trent Fallow, for sure, the idiot who had given Scrbacek the file in the first place. Then the crooked judge, Dickerson. And then the Cuban lawyer, Vega. Why him? Because he’s Cuban, which makes him expendable. It’s always been that way; when things turn bad, turn on the Cuban. Was it all a lie, what Scrbacek had said? If it was, then Scrbacek had indeed read the file and put it all together and knew everything. But Scrbacek was clearly a man who knew nothing, desperate to figure it out but even more desperate to get out of town. No, the way Vega figured it, Scrbacek had never read the file, or had not put the disparate facts together. And if Scrbacek doesn’t know, then Bozant must have said exactly what Scrbacek said he said. Bozant had a list, was checking it twice, and Vega was on it.
Jesus. This has turned worse than he ever could have imagined. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. The telephone handset is still in his hand, and he bangs it against the wall. Dammit. And then, suddenly, he is seized by terror.
He looks around, first slowly, with a dawning awareness, and then desperately. Someone is there, he is certain, watching him, readying to off him right where he stands. Maybe aiming at him right now from the other side of the window, through the space made by that weirdly bent venetian blind. He doesn’t want to die, and he especially doesn’t want to die in this shabby place, amidst the numbers scrawled beside the pay phone, the stains on the walls rubbed there by pathetic slatterns giving up an end-of-the-night screw, the uneven browned ceiling tiles loosed helter-skelter from their places in the grid. Not here, not here, not now.
Bit by bit he gains a grip on his calm. No one is here. The venetian blind has always been bent that way. He is safe for the moment, reassured finally by the broad hunched figure of Sweeney still behind the bar. He is safe here, but he has to do something, and fast, and he knows exactly what it is he needs to do. He isn’t some tragic refugee right off the raft, wading onto a Florida beach. He is Cirilio Vega, the Cuban fire-eater on the rise, a man not to be trifled with. A man who has already taken the necessary precautions. He’ll have a busy morning, for sure, but he’ll pull himself out of this mess. First, he’ll make the call, take care of Scrbacek once and for all. Then he’ll have another double vodka to fire up his courage. Then he’ll pay a visit of his own, right away—go straight to the man and make sure that bastard understands the price they all will pay if something untoward comes to pass.
He turns to the phone, punches in the numbers, waits for the ringing to stop.
“Let me talk to Dirk.”
39
MAI TAI
Scrbacek peered over the lip of the wall surrounding the flat roof of the building across the street from Sweeney’s. He watched as Cirilio Vega, that bastard, slipped out of the front of the tavern and looked first right, then left, like a little thief, before heading away from his office, away from the courthouse, heading toward, Scrbacek was certain, a confrontation with the man behind everything, the man pulling the strings.
The magician.
Scrbacek had scared him, he could tell, forcing a doubt into those arrogant lying eyes. And now Vega, that bastard, would take that doubt to the person who was giving him his orders. Who was it? Breest? Galloway? Torresdale? The great James E. Diamond himself? Scrbacek slipped across the roof to the corner to get a better view of Vega, that bastard, making his way down the sidewalk.
As Scrbacek watched, a dark presence alighted beside him.
“Did you catch it?” he said without looking around.
“He called Dirk’s,” said the Nightingale. “The view was clear as day through the venetian blind you bent.”
“That bastard. I need to find out where he’s going, but I can’t be seen on the street. Can you tail him?”
“Sure.” She slipped off her rifle and laid it by the side of the roof. “Keep your eye on baby.”
She skipped across the roof, jumped the gap to the roof next door, and kept moving. Scrbacek watched as she moved, lithe and quick, like a cheetah on the prowl. When she finally disappeared, he was left alone, on the roof, with her gun and his emotions.
Cirilio Vega had sold him out, that bastard, had sold him to those who would build a trench through the heart of Crapstown. First, Vega had fucked Jenny, of that he now was certain, and then he had fucked Scrbacek. Scrbacek would be having a postcoital cigarette if his lungs could bear it. He had seen it all in Vega’s eyes when Scrbacek asked him if he knew what was in the file. Vega knew, that bastard, and the fear in Vega’s eyes was the fear that maybe they wouldn’t get to Scrbacek in time.
He took Jenny’s phone from his raincoat pocket, powered it up, and made a call.
“I’m surprised you’re still alive,” said Surwin.
“I’m surprised myself. You sound beat.”
“Late night.”
“Want to have some fun?”
“Always.”
“Show up at the bus terminal in about half an hour. They’re going to come in full force to find me. There’s a bus leaving for Austin that they think I’ll be on.”
“And how’d they get that idea?”
“A rat in a double-breasted suit whispered the word in Dirty Dirk’s ear.”
“You want to come in? I could have a squad anywhere in the city in fifteen minutes to give you full protection. You ready?”
“Not yet. I’m getting closer.”
“To what, Scrbacek? To you finding an answer or to us finding your corpse?”
Scrbacek didn’t respond. Instead he pressed the “End Call” button and kept it pressed hard, as if he were choking the damn thing until the good-bye screen died. Scrbacek was scared, no doubt about it, but he felt the fear giving way to something else, something dark and sharp and vicious. It took a moment for him to recognize it.
Anger. Ruthless and predatory and breathtakingly familiar.
It had been in him from the start, from the moment someone blew up Ethan Brummel. It had been superseded by fear and then confusion and then the raw purpose of survival, but now it burst from its hiding place and spread its wings like a huge hideous raven. Its great black shadow covered at first only Cirilio Vega, that bastard, but then spread to everyone who was behind what had happened to him, and then spread even farther, to anyone who had stood by untouched as it all rocked out of control, until it encompassed the whole of humanity. The muscles in Scrbacek’s jaw tensed, his fists balled, blood reddened his sight. He called out in frustration, and the sound from his throat was like a great angry caw. He flailed his arms about and slapped his fist into the barrel of the Nightingale’s Kalashnikov.
He picked it up and felt its heft, its brilliant sense of direction. He snapped the gun into firing position just over the edge of the roof. He could stay atop here and pick them off, one after the other, keep firing until he shot a hole in the center of the universe. He could feel the anger drag him up to the bell tower of the University of Texas, or through the halls of Columbine, gripping his shoulders in its claws as it swept him away from his life. His life.
He turned onto his back and tossed the gun away, the stock skittering loudly on the roof.
His life. It was gone, torn apart as surely as his cherished Ford Explorer, and the building he owned, and the law practice that had defined him now for too many years. His life was like Crapstown—abandoned, lost, left to rot and ruin. And who could he go to for help? Donnie and Elisha Baltimore? Blixen and the Nightingale? Nomad Aboud? That a bunch of Crapstown freaks were all that he could rely on anymore seemed unbelievably sad to him. A rush of loneliness rose to choke his throat. He wiped at something wet running down his cheeks and was embarrassed at his weakness. He moved across the roof, picked up the Nightingale’s gun, and squeezed it tight to his chest as he swallowed down the tears.
Scrbacek was a hard guy. Scrbacek could take whatever the hell they dished out. He had built his practice from nothing, had faced down the toughest prosecutors the
state could throw at him, had whipped Thomas Sour-Wine in the biggest case of his career. Scrbacek could lick what ailed him, just like he licked his little addiction, all by his lonesome, cold turkey. He had taken off in the middle of winter for some seaside place where he could drink himself silly out of coconut halves, screw divorcées, and let the poison drip out of his system. That was his twelve-step program, three piña coladas, four mai tais, a double hurricane, a pack of Marlboros, a night with Val from Toledo, a night with Glynna from Santa Fe, a night with Charlotte from Savannah, who wasn’t technically divorced but had a husband who didn’t understand her. Scrbacek wasn’t the kind of guy to cry about his loneliness. They could blow up his car, burn down his home, send their hit squads through the city hunting for him, and still here he was, ready and willing and able to bring the fight to them. He was so tough he thought about himself in the third person. Scrbacek was a hard guy.
He wiped again at his face, suppressing a sob.
Suddenly the sun burst over the edge of the taller roof to the east, shooting flares into his eyes, forcing a squint. It felt good, the sun. He had been running for so long now. How many nights? Three, heading into his fourth. And in all that time, this was the first he had seen of the sun. And before he was on the run he had been on trial, working nights and mornings, glimpsing the sky only as he grabbed a quick lunch from a vendor before rushing back to the courtroom to prepare for the afternoon session. The kiss of the sun on his face felt lovely and loving. Maybe that was what was wrong with him, maybe all he had was a seasonal affective disorder, maybe all he needed was a tan. He stood on his knees, took off his coat, balled it up, put it on the black tar of the roof, laid his head upon it. When had last he slept? At Jenny’s, yesterday. In her bed. With her scent.
The sun lapped at his face, and he fell asleep hard, as if he were dropped from a great height into the flat black earth east of Eden in the Land of Nod.
The Four-Night Run Page 25
