“
“You like the stuff I mailed you? All true, right? You checked it out. That’s what you blue boys do, check things out. After some snitch tips you. You know how many men I killed? You ever solve one of them?
“So you’re saying, maybe he made this tape before he blew himself up. Maybe he’s just fucking with us. You know, like the way we fucked with him when he was just a little kid. You know who I mean. All of you, you know.
“I hate you. I hate you all. So here’s your personal nightmare, pigs. Ask your Bronx boys where Fernando Quinones is. Nobody’s seen him around lately. Big-time politician like him, missing. Been all over the papers. You’re never going to find him. The people who paid me didn’t want him found, but they had to be sure I did my work. So I brought them the pieces. I hear there’s certain Cuban restaurants in the South Bronx you don’t want to order from for the next few weeks. Nothing with meat in it, anyway.
“I had to go away for a while. Not because of you clowns. For a job. A big job. Out of the country. Took me a long time to plan it out, get everything in place. But I got it done.
“And now I’m back. With a long list. Watch your backs, pigs. You got a lot of men locked up, but you never found their money.”
Claw clicked off the camera. He reached over and rewound the tape we had made.
“Here,” I said, handing it to Thornton.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Just stick it in the player, make sure everything works.”
“I believe—”
“Do it,” Claw said.
Thornton inserted the cassette, hit “play.”
And there I was, confessing to a murder.
“Rewind it,” I told him. “Then pop it out.”
He did it.
“Now take it with you.”
“Huh?!?”
“Take it with you,” I repeated. “Stick it in any machine you want. And play it again.”
“Why? What’s all this—?”
“It’s all about showing you how we’ve got you covered,” I explained, bringing him under the partnership blanket that he needed to feel around his shoulders if he was going to go all the way we needed him to. “You hit ‘play’ and that tape is going to be nothing but static.”
“But I just saw—”
“What you just saw cost us fifty grand. It records anything perfectly. Plays it back perfectly, too. Once. That activates the software. It’s all digital—for every frame it plays, it goes back and wipes it. Not ‘erase,’ wipe. Like a computer doing a total overwrite, understand? Instead of data, or images, or whatever, you get random-generated ones and zeros. It can’t be recovered, can’t be repaired. It is fucking gone.”
His mouth dropped open, but no sound came out.
“I just told you my real name. And confessed to a murder that just happened, too—check it out for yourself. I put it on tape. Would I give it to you and let you walk out of here with it if I wasn’t absolutely sure it would work?”
“How do I know this isn’t a bluff? Or some kind of test?”
“You know it’s not a bluff because you are going to take it. And you are going to see for yourself. And, once you see for yourself, you know this is no test.
“Because then you’ll know what it really is. It’s us, protecting you. I already told Claw what you’re going to say on the tape we’re going to make. He knows it’s all a shuck, total fraud. But we need to deliver them something to make all this money happen. And the only thing they’ll take is you, on tape, saying what we worked out. What we rehearsed.”
“So they’d have to play it…”
“To be sure we delivered, exactly!” I congratulated him. “But when they try to play it again…”
“They’re fucked!”
“No,” I said, very seriously. “They’re not. You’re in the Philippines, with your half-mil, and you’re not coming back. Sure, they don’t have a tape, but, for real, you’re no threat to them anymore. They’ll get what they paid for, even if it wasn’t in the way they expected. And they got something else, too.”
“What?”
“They’ll get the message,” I said, dialing up the freak’s rheostat. “You’ve got people. People who know things. People who know how to get things done. You know what that spells, Thorn. Protection! They’ll know you’re not a threat to them because we’ll tell them. And we’ll tell them something else: they fuck with you, they fuck with us. And there’s no way they want to do that.”
I watched the freak swell with the surge of power flowing through him. I knew what turned his crank, even if he didn’t.
When he left—with the tape—Claw and I exchanged the slightest of nods. A prison-yard gesture: the shot-caller giving the okay to take someone down.
“Let me tell it,” the Prof commanded, silencing us all. We were gathered in Gateman’s back room. The mirror on the wall separating the wheelchair-bound shooter’s living quarters from the flophouse desk he supposedly manned around the clock was a see-through, just in case someone wandered in, looking for a room. For the first few years, Gateman had expected his PO to drop by, but he’d given that up after a while.
Anyway, he was finally off that paper. The plea deal Davidson had worked out for him last time ended up being a Man Two, which translated to almost eight in, because Gate was a predicate felon. He’d done the time the way you’re supposed to do it.
By the time he was out of Processing and rolling onto the yard, the word was out about his last time in court. The judge had offered to cut the deal lower, all the way down to a simple assault beef: “In consideration of three factors, sir: one, the Court agrees with your counsel that your justification defense might well have, at a minimum, cast a significant shadow of reasonable doubt; two, your physical handicap; and, three, an equitable cooperation agreement, to be negotiated between—”
Gateman cut the judge off at the knees, his voice booming through the crowded court. “You got that whole ‘handicapped’ thing wrong, Judge. Just because a man’s in a wheelchair don’t mean he can’t stand up. Cooperate this, you miserable whore.”
Gateman never lacked for friends Inside. Old-school cons made it a point to go over and shake his hand, as clear a message as if they had Day-Glo-ed it on those big gray walls.
The Prof held center stage. On his feet, ready to preach, the way he used to do. “Back down home, son, they said I had the spirit in me when I was just a little boy. They got that right, in church. But they never came to my house.
“Okay, now,” he said, “here’s how it goes, people. My boy”—nodding in my direction—“he figures this guy Reedy tried to follow him once, he’d try it again. But last time he did? Flop City. So what’s the man gonna do now? That’s right!” he said as if anyone had spoken. “Gonna send someone back to the vanishing point. No ghosts this time, though. Gotta be someone who can speak the language. No teams, this scene. One guy. Thai?”
Max nodded.
“Anyway, he strolls in, sits at a table. Asks the waiter who comes over if any of his friends have been in lately. Only he’s not speaking Thai, he’s speaking…Chinese?”
Max nodded again, making a patting-something-down gesture: Cantonese, not Mandarin. Not a language you learn in college.
“These ‘friends,’ he’s talking about Max’s friends. You know, the boys with the…Anyway, he figures, I figure, that someone’s gonna make a call, bring them all. Then he’s gonna negotiate. Had fifty large in this little leather bag he brought with him.
“Call goes to Mama’s. So, when the boys show, they got Max in tow.”
“Oh,” Michelle said. Not to rhyme, just to show she was part of the congregation.
“That’s right!” the Prof said, again. “Man thinks he’s looking at gang boys. Shooters, sure. He’s relaxed behind that. All he was packing was the money. Not even a blade. Kind of man, he’s walked into guns before. But when he got to the roof—the part you can’t see from across the street, because of
that old water tank they never took down—there was Max.”
“You saw this?” I asked him. Wondering why Max was letting the Prof do all the talking.
“These eyes don’t lie,” the little man fired back. “I was on the spot. In fact, my son took us all there.”
Clarence nodded. Apparently, he’d been left at the curb. Not because he was being disrespected—in case the visitor had brought friends.
“I was in the corner. Bundle of rags. Both barrels cocked, ready to drop if anyone came to bop.
“Now listen, people,” he exhorted us. “This guy, he showed a picture of Burke. Big, clear picture. Close-up. Looks just like him, except for his hair and…something around his eyes.”
“That was me,” Michelle said, proudly.
“It was still a nice picture, sweet girl. Whatever those boys use, it’s the best. So, anyway, he shows the picture around. Opens his bag, shows the cash, too. The boys all give him the ‘never seen him’ routine. But then one of them screws up, blows the role. Pulls his iron, says, ‘You don’t come back.’”
“This guy they sent, he was fast. I mean, the kind of fast you got to wonder if you even saw what you think you did. He flashes his foot, the gun goes flying, and the boy who pulled it, he’s going to need steel pins in his wrist. The Thai guy, he’s back to where he was, still holding Burke’s picture, like he never moved.”
“Fuck!” Gateman said. “Didn’t they all—?”
“No,” the Prof cut him off. “They stepped right off. You know why? Because, all of a sudden, Max the Silent was just…there. And when the life-taking, widow-making silent wind of death walks, these boys know the show: step aside or die.
“But the guy with the moves, you could tell he’s not from around here. An import.
“Max points. You don’t have to know no sign language to read what’s he’s saying. And then the Thai fucking jumps him.
“Max lets him come. Like watching a breeze rush a rock. The Thai lands a kick to Max’s leg, below the knee, then he grabs Max behind the neck and fires a triple knee-strike: thigh, chest, head. Only the last one never gets there.”
“Jesus!” I blurted out. I’d seen Max go against a Muay Thai fighter before. He had blocked the long-distance strikes, feinted a slip, and let the other guy get in close, where he’d want to be for the climbing knee-strikes that they specialize in. Max had stabbed a nerve on the Muay Thai man’s left side. In a split-second pause, the Mongol drove his blue-knuckled fist to the guy’s sternum. Stopped his heart.
“So he never came out?” Gateman asked, way ahead of me.
“Sure, he did!” the Prof scoffed. “He disappears, what kind of message is that? Maybe a dozen guys ventilated him. That’d be okay with his boss. The guy he sent was good, real good, but he was just cannon fodder. So he walked right out the front door. After he came to.”
“Max choked him out?”
“Bingo!” the little man congratulated me. “When the Thai comes to, he’s back in the same booth he started from. With his bag of cash. He walks out the front door and walks a few blocks. Makes a call from a cell phone. Probably for the pickup.
“Don’t know what story he told, people, but I guarantee you this: no way it made whoever sent him sleep easier that night.”
Thornton was telling me and Claw how the tape I’d made had disappeared when he’d tried to play it. This was the third time he told us, and he was still slack-jawed with amazement.
“Enough,” I told him. “If you’re not ready to do it now, then you’re—”
The Mole’s phone-bomb rang. I stepped out of the concrete box to take the call, said, “What?” when I was far enough away.
“We can do it this Friday.” Reedy.
“Which means—?” I pressed him.
“All three.”
“With the—?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, annoyed at the trivia. “You’re going to bring what you said you had to show us. We’re going to authenticate it—we’ll have our appraiser on the premises, as agreed—and, should it prove to be all you promised, the transaction will be completed on the spot.”
“Friday’s fine. Where and when?”
The silence that came back over the satellite connection was the sound of a boxer who’d been warned about your jab and never saw the hook coming.
“You want us to pick the site?”
“Why not?” I said, with an innocence as real as Russian democracy. “You already know you’re dealing with more than just me, so why should you get all stupid when we’re so close?”
“Why indeed?” he agreed. “I admit, this is a little unexpected. You understand, there is a need for privacy, so it can’t be at my—”
“Call me back with the time and place,” I told him, and cut him off.
“Three days,” the Prof said, solemnly.
“You want me to make sure he—”
“No!” I cut off Claw, sharply. “I told you we were doing this my way. No threats. And absolutely no rehearsals. This has got to be live. And come across that way. Besides, he doesn’t need any practice; he’s got this one down pat.”
“I know,” the guy I’d been calling “the cancer-man” in my head ever since we first spoke said. “Your man”—he meant the Mole, who hadn’t said a word all the time he was working inside the concrete box—“has got it perfect. All I have to do is wait for this one to ring”—he held up a cell phone with a band of red duct tape across the back—“to let me know that we’re coming through, and this one”—this time, the tape was yellow—“to tell me that we’re done. I don’t answer either one; I just make sure it’s ringing.”
He looked to me for confirmation. I nodded.
“Couldn’t you use someone else? For my part, I mean?”
“Why?”
“You’re not going in bareback. I know you’ve got a crew, but me and that big guy”—nobody who’d ever watched Gigi work ever called him “fat”—“showed you we can do work, right?”
“Thanks,” I said, meaning it. “But without you right there, in the room, the maggot could always get stupid. He couldn’t pull this off if he was scared. He needs you right there with him. Needs you to believe that the whole thing is a scam. He needs your…approval, I guess is the only way to say it. He needs to be with someone, feel like he’s part of something. Sure, Inside, he paid. But that was for protection, not membership. Now he’s earning, see? Contributing. That’s your job, your piece of this: you’ve got to let this freak feel your respect, understand? He’s showing you something, and you’re going to admire how slick he pulls it off.”
Claw said nothing for a minute.
“You can do this,” Michelle told him, using her spell-caster’s eyes. “Then you can do that other thing you have to do.”
“I can see it in you,” the Prof said, softly.
“What?”
“You’re going to kick its ass,” the little man said. “I can see that in a man. You think I don’t have the sight, you ask Silver about the night I was right.”
Claw stuck out his hand.
“If it had been a different place—”
The Prof took his hand. “You’d be with us,” he said. “I know this, too. I do now, anyway.”
“Can you get this whole thing ready on time?”
“For the kind of money you’re talking, I could get it done tonight,” Gigi assured me. “But what’s that ramp thing you want out back for?”
“Wheelchair access,” I said.
“Your car, mahn? Your own car?”
“It’ll be a different color. With dead-end plates.”
“Still, Burke. How many cars—?”
“You know a faster one? Or a better corner-carver?”
“No, mahn. Your machine is the work of a magician.”
“Yeah. And what we might need is a disappearing act.”
“That is heavy matériel,” the man I knew as Yitzhak said. He wasn’t talking weight; he was talking cost.
“Did I lie
to you?” Meaning: the last time we dealt with each other.
“You did not.”
“There’s plenty of them out there for sale. I came to you because I believe you are a man of honor. You won’t cheat me on the price, but that isn’t what I’m worried about.”
“You have to know it is going to work.”
“That’s it,” I confirmed. “The SCUDs were duds.”
“And they came from…Yes, I understand. It is none of my business, but…”
“What?”
He looked at me for a long moment. “I understand you have…friends. Some of those friends, they consider us, what our people do, a disgrace.”
“Because you’re not out hunting Nazis?”
“Because we are businessmen.”
“Plenty of businessmen—”
“What? Write checks, and call themselves freedom fighters? You don’t know everything that we do,” he said, hurt, but making it sound like an accusation.
“Like you said: Business. Not my business.”
“You come back here,” he said, consulting a massive wristwatch—if you weighed it, the measurement would be twelve ounces to a pound—“in twenty-four hours.”
They were waiting when I pulled up. Two men, standing outside their car, so I could see Yitzhak hadn’t come alone.
I had. I followed their hand signals, backed the Plymouth in so our cars were trunk-to-trunk. Mine was already lined with quilts, covering the fuel cell and the relocated battery.
Yitzhak offered his hand. A signal to the man next to him. The man wasn’t wearing a uniform, but everything about him screamed “military.”
No introductions.
“We have an Igla,” the man said, meaning whatever was in the trunk of Yitzhak’s car. “You have used one?”
“I don’t even know what it is.”
He exchanged a look with Yitzhak, then turned to face me again.
“It is also called an SA-16 Gimlet,” he said, as if that would explain anything. “This is perhaps twenty-five years old. I say ‘old,’ although it has never been used. But it has been properly maintained. It is as good now as it was the day it was made. I have a model with me. In case…”
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