He’d have to think on that.
He got out, was approached by one of the heavies, a short squat Hispanic who spoke very good and unaccented English.
“How you doing?” the man said. “I’m Ruiz. Got to do the pat down thing, you know? No disrespect.”
“None taken, oke,” Deon said. He assumed the position, hands up, legs spread, and Ruiz went over him first with a metal detector, then patted him down carefully, feeling for wires or recorders, then ran a radio frequency detector over him looking for hidden sub-miniature transmitters.
“Good?” Deon said.
“Yeah, man. C’mon.”
Ruiz led him into the farmhouse, a funny thing to call what looked to be a farmhouse from the front but sprawled out in the back in a long add-on. In the big front room, a wall sized window looked out over the lawn and the long driveway to the gate and the lonely country road below. Irina sat in one of two matched arm chairs, a tumbler of something that looked like Scotch in her hand.
She didn’t stand when Deon came in, just gestured at the chair beside her. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Beer, cold, if you have it.”
Deon settled into the chair, the leather squeaking beneath him. Ruiz brought him a cold Heineken’s.
“Thanks, oke,” Deon said. He took a long draught and looked at Irina. Her face was still and cool. It reminded him of a frozen pond, something he’d never seen till he came here to Lake City from Africa, something that would be in motion captured completely still, with a hint of something moving beneath the surface, hidden.
“So,” Irina said. “Why did you kill my husband?”
Right to business.
“He came to kill me,” Deon said, reasonable to his ears, anyway. “Matter of self defense, I’d say.”
“You stole from us.”
“That’s not true,” Deon said. “You thought I stole from you. Or else you thought that was the perfect excuse to knock the competition off the table in one fell swoop.”
“Who else would dare, who else would benefit?”
“I’m happy, and a little flattered, that you would think that way about me,” Deon said. “But I’m first and foremost a business man, and this, all of this, is bad for business. My business, your business. It’s never pretty when there’s dispute in this business…as you know. I’m sorry for your loss, but there’s nothing I can do for that now.”
Irina digested this, let it sink below the impassive mask, sipped her Scotch.
“Why should I not kill you?” she said.
Deon shrugged. “Would most definitely not be good for your business. There is always comeback from that sort of thing. Man with a lot of friends, well, sometimes it’s best just to let it alone. It’s all done. I’m sorry for it, but we didn’t have much choice, now did we? We could have talked, but you wanted to go the hard way. So you did. And that’s the price you pay. This isn’t like the civilians, but I don’t need to tell you all this. So where do you want to take this?”
She sipped her drink. A single red crescent of lipstick smeared her glass. Closed her eyes, was silent. Deon tipped up his beer, lowered it, clasped it in his hands.
“What is your proposition?” she said.
“Join forces,” Deon said. “Make the peace. Do business. Find out who ripped you off, make an example of them. And get back to what we do, which is making money. And having a few laughs along the way.”
“We have a well established business…” Irina said.
“Yes. You do. As do I. So don’t think of it as competition, or giving anything up. You’d run your operation, but we’d…consult with each other. Share resources, security, transportation, sales leads…work together instead of against each other. Share the profits accordingly. Expand…”
“I’ll have to think about this.”
“Of course,” Deon said. “This is just an offering, to get things started. If you can agree to the concept, we can work out the particulars. We can be more specific as we go along. Can I take this as a sign of interest?”
“You can take it any way you like. I’ll have to think about this.”
Deon set his beer bottle down on the carpet beside the chair, stood. “I’ll look for your answer.”
“You’ll have it,” she said evenly.
He smiled, looked her up and down, looked around at the men in the room. Paid for, he thought. Loyalty to the paymaster. She’d have to do something quick to put their allegiance to the next level, and she certainly wouldn’t be fucking them all.
So.
“Till we meet again,” he said.
Ruiz showed him out.
On the drive down, he slowed to take notice of the security. They were reasonably fit looking, reasonably alert, but then he was right here, wasn’t he? No visible weapons, but there would be long guns handy, no doubt.
He’d have to get Jimmy’s eye on it. He was the expert on this sort of thing.
***
My eye was on Lizzy.
My name was on the VIP list now at The Trojan Horse. When I came to the door, Kai’s partner, the tattooed Hispanic, stern faced and Latin, was running the door.
“How’s Kai doing?” I said.
“Better, man. He’s a hard man. Not going to talk too good, that blade, it fucked up his larynx. But he’ll be back. Come on it, Ms. Lizzy, she got you a table.”
He waved over one of the girls, got me a great table, back from the runway.
So I could watch my girl.
As soon as I thought that, it felt strange. My girl. I saw her up on that stage and thought that she would never be anybody’s girl. She was a woman. A stone woman. The lights gleamed on her white flesh, her red hair flashing, face gleaming with make up and paint like an alabaster statute come to life. In the spot light, she almost seemed alone, if you could ignore the crowd of men leering up at her.
I don’t know if she was pretending not to see me or not.
I ordered a beer, tipped it up, sat back and watched her work.
It was her untouchable quality that brought these men back again and again -- she was like this goddess dancing for them, deigning to dip down and accept tribute in the form of greasy bills folded into her thong, tossed at her feet.
I reached for the word I was looking for…
Serene.
That’s what she looked like. Serene. Untouched by everything around her.
I didn’t know what to expect. From myself, I mean. I’d never seen her dance in the club, since the time I’d met her, after the introduction from her friend who I’d helped. Looking at her up there, for the first time I realized, really realized, how little of herself showed on that stage, though you could see all that she had come into the world with.
What was essential was hidden.
She smiled, professionally, at the men close and far, her eyes locking with men all across the room.
Met mine.
Touched her tongue to her lips.
Just for me.
***
Lizzy never worked the floor. No lap dances, no privates. Just her routine, but her following was so huge that it was enough. She was a show in herself, and could have tripled her income if she wanted to do privates or lap dances.
But she liked it the way she liked it.
I wasn’t allowed in the back, special friend or not.
So I went out the front, thanked Cruz, waited at the back door. After a while, the door opened and a security guy I’d never seen before walked her out. He drew up short when he made me, but Lizzy touched her hand to his shoulder.
“It’s all right. He’s my friend. And Kai’s.”
He nodded elaborately. “Cool, then. Night, Lizzy.”
“Good night. Thank you for walking me.”
He went back inside, leaving us alone with the hiss of passing cars, the late night falling around us.
She stood before me, silent. Her face was stripped of make up, her red hair pulled back in a business like ponytail that hung ov
er her leather car coat, a red stripe down her back.
Touched my face.
“Hey.”
I took her hand.
“Hey, yourself.”
She smiled, looked around. “Shall I follow you?”
“Anywhere.”
I got into my FJ Cruiser, cranked it up. She pulled up behind me in her midnight black Mercedes and followed me to my apartment. We lucked out and got two spaces behind one another right across the street from my apartment.
“Hungry?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Out or in?”
She considered that for a minute. “Out, I think. It’s lovely out tonight.”
There is a good Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood, Rainbow Dragon, just two blocks from my place. So we strolled, her arm tucked in mine, enjoyed the night air, to the Rainbow Dragon. They were open to midnight on the weekends, one of the pleasures of living in Lake City. There were only a few tables occupied, plenty of booths. We took one in the back corner, where Lizzy smiled and let me take the seat with my back to the wall and a clear view of the front door.
We ordered.
I admired her.
We didn’t say a word.
“Have you always lived like this?” she said.
“Like how? Infatuated?”
She smiled, a hint of dimple I somehow had never noticed in her left cheek. “Are you infatuated, Jimmy?”
“I don’t know.”
“A true answer.”
“I always tell you the truth.”
“Yes. You do.”
“What I mean is how you are always looking. What are you looking for, Jimmy?”
I had to consider that. “Is that like a deep philosophical insight question? Are you looking for the compleat metaphor of Jimmy Wylde?”
Real laughter, belly laughter.
I loved that sound from her.
“Yes, Jimmy. I’d like the compleat metaphor.”
Our food came. Peking Duck for me, Moo Goo Gai Pan for her. We ate.
“So…?” she said, after awhile.
“I’m not sure if I fully understand the question.”
“When you are out in public, you are always looking. You look at people as though you are searching them with your eyes. What are you looking for?”
“Ah,” I said. The bane of situational awareness. I’d been chided by women before for what they called my wandering eyes. “I’m looking for…intention.”
She leaned forward, crossed her hands, intent as a sleek predator intent on her prey. “Intention? What intention?”
I felt uncomfortable. “I assess.”
It was her turn to say, “Ah.”
She mulled this for a time. “In the Buddhist tradition we believe that our thoughts create our reality. That what we fear, we manifest into being. That what we intend to see, we see. What do you think about that?”
It was never easy with her. Never, hey how is your food, or how was your night tonight. Lizzy didn’t live for the superficial, wasn’t interested in that. Passed through her days and nights in a serenity that seemed completely unnatural to the outside observer, as though everything she worked in rolled off her like rain off a marble statue.
Always the deep philosophical question.
Even in the rawest moments of our sex, afterwards, that sense of knowing she carried in her eyes, looked deep in me, never satisfied with what was on the surface.
“I don’t know, LIzzy. I don’t think about it.”
She considered that. “A true thing, Jimmy. Do you know about Zen?”
“No. Not really. A kind of Buddhism, isn’t it?”
“Yes. A kind of Buddhism. It’s Buddhism with all the trappings stripped away. Down to the raw naked core. Nothing but the bones of it. It was the favored religion of the Japanese samurai.”
“Why did they favor it?”
“Because it’s not about contemplation. It’s about action. About being still in the moment, until the perfect moment. Like an archer drawing back his string, quivering, till the moment of release. Being completely in the moment. Mind like a mirror. Heart like a still pond. Mizu no kokoro.”
“That sounds like a poem.”
“Yes,” she said. “Zen poetry is beautiful, spare. Famous haiku poets, and other masters of the short form, they were all Zen Buddhists. And many of the famous warriors were Zen masters as well. Miyamoto Musashi.”
“Who’s he?”
She laughed, a girlish sound ringing with delight. Two men at a nearby table turned to look at her, grinned at each other, looked away. I ignored them, leaned into the warmth of her laughter.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You are such the complete warrior, Jimmy. And so was Musashi. He wrote one of the great texts of all time on warriorship. It’s called the Book of Five Rings. He fought and killed over 45 men, and then when he was 50 years old, retired to a cave and painted and wrote poetry and wrote this treatise on swordsmanship and tactics and the warrior philosophy. I have to buy you a copy now. It really is the story of your life.”
I considered this. “How do you know all this stuff, Lizzy?”
“I read a lot.”
“Never been no place but the library, right?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” she said, tossing her hair braid back over one shoulder. “But I’ve had plenty of time on my hands.”
I stopped and thought for a moment, something rare in my time with her. We never talked about our pasts; only a few passing references to the time before we met, hints and oblique references. I wanted to ask her about her past, but that felt as though I would be crossing a boundary, going into a country that I didn’t want to enter. Or maybe I wasn’t ready to enter, I wasn’t sure. Being with her was like sailing into the deep blue waters of the distant sea without a compass or a map. I didn’t know where we were going, I only wanted to keep going, and I didn’t want my clumsiness to set us on any shoals.
“Someday I’d like to hear about some of those times,” I said.
She crossed her hands on the table, back straight and alert. “And I’d like to hear about some of your times, Jimmy.”
“Would that mean we’d be taking the relationship to a new level?” I said, half seriously.
“Yes,” she said. “It would.”
***
“Please stop,” the boy whispered. He’d long since stopped screaming. Irina’s arm had gotten tired, and she had to take a break anyway, wipe the blood spatter from her face and hands.
So she did.
Threw the metal flail onto the floor, went to the sink and washed her hands, dabbed at her face with a fresh washcloth. Blood swirled in the sink, a red eddy in the water circling into the dark drain in the metal basin. Turned and looked at the boy stretched out on the cross bars of her play set.
He was a real mess, she thought. Probably wasn’t going to make it out of here alive.
It wouldn’t be the first one, but it was the first one in a long, long time.
She considered that. There were disposal considerations.
And then fresh toys to procure.
So many things. It was so hard to have such a demanding leisure pursuit.
But then, a woman in her position had to be discreet about how she relieved her tensions.
The boy was crying now, a soundless shudder that she watched dispassionately for a few minutes before she decided she didn’t want to hear that.
Picked up her flail and went back to play.
Chapter Thirty Eight
Bap, bap.
Pause.
Bap, bap.
Nina studied the four holes in the 3x5 card she had taped onto the silhouette head of her target. Two little groups, the holes not more than an inch apart. Not bad. She dropped her pistol to low ready, touched the Go button on her Pro Timer. At the beep she brought her pistol up and broke the trigger twice, two fast aimed shots. Checked the timer. .8 seconds.
Not bad.
She ke
pt working the doubles till the slide locked back, and she did a speed reload from her CTAC speed rig.
Slick and fast.
She worked her weak hand for awhile, just the left, the big pistol bucking in her small strong fist, her strong hand clenched to her breast.
“Looking good, Capushek,” someone said behind her, the voice crackling in her active hearing set.
She reloaded her pistol, scanned her targets, left and right, tucked the pistol in close, reholstered. Then turned. The man standing a respectful distance from her was short, stocky, a pit-bull on two legs. Bald shaved head, a longish scar on the left side, hard brown eyes with a hint of humor to them. Blue 5.11 pants and a T-shirt that had the Lake City PD shield and the letters SWAT beneath it.
“Hey, Nico,” she said.
“How’s that CTAC working out for you?”
“Like it. Fast. I can tweak the retention screws to just how I like it.”
“You worked it in DT for retention?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“The only guy who got it from me got my Hideaway shoved up his nose.”
Nico laughed. “That’ll work.”
“I think so.”
“SWAT’s having try-outs next month.”
“Yeah? So?”
“You ought to come down. Go for it.”
Nina squared up, looked at the SWAT Team Leader. “That an invitation?”
“You know it is. How about it?”
“I don’t know, Nico. All that door kicking is well and good, but I like my job.”
“You’d be the first woman on the team, Nina. I won’t promise anything, but I think you could kick it in the ass if you wanted to.”
“Nico, I’m grateful for the invite. Believe me. Anybody else, I’d tell them to fuck off. But you, I’m grateful for that. I like my job. I’m an investigator.”
“You’re a gunfighter, Nina. One of maybe three or four on this department.”
He was one of those, Nina knew. Nico had dropped the hammer twice himself -- once with an MP-5 on an entry, once with his Beretta when he was a patrol sergeant backing up a rookie taking a beating outside the Levy Hill housing complex, one of the most dangerous places in Lake City. She was warmed by his respect. And he wasn’t bad looking, either. But she didn’t want to be involved with anybody, especially a cop on the job right now.
Johnny Wylde Page 20
