I nod down at the sink and say to him:
What do you think? Porcelain?
What? he says.
The sink, I tell him. Think it’s porcelain?
Fuck all, he says. But he raps the knuckle of his middle finger onto that shining white curve and there’s a ring, deep and dull, like a distant cathedral bell.
Yeah, he says.
Of course it’s porcelain. Like I said, the Hotel Du Pont, it’s a swell place.
I close the drain on the sink and I pull the Glock from the holster at my back, the barrel is still warm, and I yank the magazine and drop the pistol into the sink. I do the same with the Glock in my shoulder holster and then with Renny’s cell phone and, what the hell, in goes my cell phone too.
Then I get the juice out of my duffel bag.
I pour the whole bottle over the pistols and the phones and the juice goes to work, melting things into a messy stew. It’s acid, something like that, and it’s nasty. There go the fingerprints and the sweat, the polymer and the plastic.
I can tell that Jinx has never seen anything like this, and he’s never smelled anything like it, either. The FBI can trace the bullets back to the pistol by the barrel groove; the marks are as good as DNA. The fucking FBI can even trace the bullets back to the manufacturer by the acid residue. Which means, if they work hard enough, they’re going to learn that the nines in Lukas, Ernie Gonsalves, and Mackie the Lackey were all part of a shipment straight from the factory to the Memphis Police Department. Ha-ha. So without the guns, they got jack nothing.
Unless they’ve got the firing pins. Which the FBI can match to the shell casings. Which is why I open the drain and let the melted muck seep away, then turn on the tap, washing off what’s left. The pins are too large for the drain, so I fold a paper towel and use it to pluck them out and drop them into a commode and flush. Bye-bye. I wrap the barrels and slides in the paper towel, wad more paper towels around them, and bury the wad at the bottom of the trash receptacle.
End of that little game, and time to start another one. So I say to Jinx, I say:
The suitcase.
He’s lost, still looking at the sink. I pop the locks and unlatch the deep blue suitcase. First is a new white shirt. Folded and pressed, a bit wrinkled, but nowhere near the dirty and sweaty and bullet-holed one I’m wearing. I take off my suit coat, my shirt, and then I peel off the Kevlar vest.
I wash my chest and pits, check out the fist-sized bruise purpling the left side of my back. Talk about a nice shot: Just below the shoulder blade, just above the kidneys, just left of the spine. Anything higher or lower or to the right could have done some real damage. Guess a certain someone wanted me alive.
I put on the vest and I button up the new shirt. I take a tie out of the suitcase and knot it up. What the hell.
What the fuck you doin? Jinx is finally catching up. You tryin to look good for when they come and snap the cuffs on us?
Nope, I tell him. Look, there’s another shirt and tie in that suitcase. And two suits. You take the navy one, let me have the grey. The stuff ought to fit you.
I unfold the grey suit coat, and it’s identical to the one I was wearing, although it’s clean, pressed, and lacking the bullet hole.
Changed my mind, I tell him. I’ll take the navy blue.
I hand him the grey coat and I lose the old pants and pull on the clean blue pair, then check myself in the mirror. Not bad for a guy who’s gone through this kind of day. Lost his job. Got his ex-girlfriend killed. Got his best friend killed. Got a Time magazine Man of the Year killed. Got shot in the back. Murdered some guys.
Not bad at all.
I lamp my Timex and I tell Jinx:
Get dressed. I’m taking us home.
Jinx says: And how the hell you doin that?
My way, I tell him. We’re getting dressed. Then we’re going to the train station.
That’s crazy, he says.
They got a train leaving for Dirty City every hour. We got about thirty minutes.
That shit is crazy, he says.
That’s right, I tell him. Because it is crazy, and there’s a moment when I wonder about him and then his eyes whiten that little bit, just enough, so I know he knows it’s crazy and that’s exactly why we’re going to do it. Maybe the last place in town, the last place on the planet, that anybody will be looking for us right now is that train station.
Jinx reaches a stack of clothes out of the suitcase and heads for the stall. Funny guy. Guess he likes his privacy.
I fold back the other side of the suitcase and remove the taped bricks of foam that are packed there. I tear open the first one and there’s a new Glock 19 inside. Another Glock waits in the second brick. The third has four magazines and two boxes of Winchester 9×19 JHPs: nine-millimeter hollow points. I’ve about finished loading the magazines when Jinx wanders out of the stall, and it’s a miracle, the guy went in Hyde and came out Jekyll. The hoodlum is gone, and we’ve got ourselves a preacher man. I’m shaking my head and hoping not to show a smile and that’s when I see the boots. He’s still wearing those boots.
You got to lose the boots, man.
Yeah? Jinx tells me. You got another pair of shoes?
I don’t and something tells me that, even if I did, he wouldn’t be wearing them. So I guess we deal with it.
I nod a final time to the suitcase and I say:
There’s a folding-stock Mossberg in there, that long piece of foam. And a dozen boxes of buckshot and slug. All yours. We put the old clothes into the suitcase, and that can be your luggage.
Time to go. I armpit the first of the new Glocks, put the second into the Bianchi at my back. While Jinx wrestles with the suitcase, I slip the bearer bonds from my discarded shirt and into the pages of my mother’s book. I fit the book into my hip pocket. But I’m forgetting something. I check my old pants, my old coat, and there it is, in the pocket of the coat, that nine-millimeter bullet, the one from Renny’s hand. I slip it into the right outside pocket of my blue suit coat. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s for luck. Or for not forgetting.
I take a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from inside the blue suit coat and put them on. Look in the mirror. And there he is, staring back at me. That guy. You know … him.
The old clothes and the foam packing go into the suitcase and we’re almost ready.
Two cabs, he says. I’ll be behind you all the way.
Right, I tell him. Next time I talk to you, next time I even look at you, it’s gonna be Washington, D.C.
No, he says. Not D.C. Maryland. He says it like it’s that wizard guy, the one with King Arthur: Merlin. Then he says:
New Carrollton.
That’s a suburb northeast of the District. Best I can remember, it’s got an Amtrak station and a Metro station and not much else. He’s got his reasons and they’d better be good ones. So:
Okay, I tell him. New Carrollton.
I grab my duffel bag. I’m out of that bathroom and through the lobby and I’m an impatient business guy again. I go to the bell stand and there’s the bellman and the bellman doesn’t remember me, doesn’t have a clue, and I check the duffel and then I’m outside, I push through the revolving doors, and there’s the doorman and the doorman doesn’t remember me, either, and I tip him a couple bucks and tell him:
Philadelphia Airport.
The cabs are lined up like vultures. The doorman waves the first one in and he tells the cabbie, Philadelphia Airport, and I settle into the back seat and I wait until we reach the end of the block to say to the cabbie:
Guess that guy misheard me. Take me to the train station.
We weave the few blocks to the train station, and there’s a detour around the front, there’s a red Mercury Capri parked there and the Mercury is surrounded by yellow tape and blue uniforms and I don’t want to see that Mercury, I don’t want to see any of it.
Five minutes after that I’m standing in line to buy a coach ticket, and ten minutes after that I’m standing in line to board
the next Metroliner to Washington, D.C., trying to look interested but not too interested in whatever’s happening way south of the platform, more yellow tape and more blue uniforms, and farther along, on a siding, where there’s a train car with a broken window and some paramedics who don’t have any work to do.
Ten minutes after that I’m riding the rails, and Jinx is sitting a couple rows back like he doesn’t know me. I’m sitting with a newspaper folded open on my lap, and yes it’s the Philadelphia Inquirer, and yes it’s the fucking Sports section, and why not, because underneath the newspaper is my right hand and my right hand is holding a pistol and, let’s face it, I’ve only just started pulling the trigger.
I wonder if Jinx knows that.
I wonder if he knows I know he made another phone call. At the train station. While I was buying the newspaper and fading to grey.
I wonder if he knows how bad I have to make a call of my own. Fiona will be home soon. I check my watch for about the tenth time and I think about that Railfone thing, takes credit cards, but it’s a bad idea. If there’s a tap, then there’s probably a trace, and nobody needs to know I’m riding on a train.
When the conductor guy announces Baltimore in three minutes, Baltimore next, it’s like crossing a border, this irrational feeling of safety that I shrug off because Baltimore is the place where shit may happen, and the train slows and the train stops but shit doesn’t happen and when the train chugs on out I relax enough to read my book, and Wilmington and the flaring lights, the yellow tape and the blue uniforms and the red, red blood, poor Lauren, it’s all gone, it’s back there with the other memories and we’re getting on with the rest of this story.
Which is getting both easier and harder to figure.
Check this out. They were tapping her line. They were tapping Lauren’s line. Or they had a guy on the ground in Philly, watching her, watching her place, waiting for me. Either way, it’s shit on crackers. Because the Reverend Gideon Parks went down, what? Five hours before Wilmington. So the tap, the look-see, whatever, it was already in place. Which means—
What? They’ve been checking up on me, maybe. Or they were planning to take me out too. To let me do Jinx, and then take me out somewhere closer to home. Or—
It means what wiretaps usually mean: Feds. It means they got friends in high places.
The run that’s not a run. The buy that’s not a buy. The hitters that aren’t the hitters. On the television screen, the helicopter boarding an FBI SWAT team that’s not an FBI SWAT team.
So I think about this and I think about that and I watch the places and the spaces go by, and after a while I ease my hand off the pistol and I read my book some more and I find myself between afternoon and evening.
And this morning was six hours ago.
And this morning was seven hours ago and the sitting and the waiting start to get on my nerves until:
New Carrollton next, the conductor guy is saying. Next stop, New Carrollton. Three minutes, New Carrollton Station.
Which is where things get interesting again.
Jinx slaps my shoulder on the way up the aisle, and he’s leaving the suitcase behind, which is fine. It’ll go to Lost and Found, or maybe just get lost.
I tuck the Glock back beneath my suit coat and leave the Sports section on the floor.
Out on the platform, it’s New Carrollton, this vague concrete space, one big parking lot with trees in the distance. The sky is dark and cloudy but the air doesn’t smell like rain, it smells like autumn, something thick and grey and dying.
Jinx pulls up short. He smells it too.
I read the station and it’s clean. Looking good. So I say to Jinx:
I got to get to a phone.
There’s a bank of pay phones over there, but I don’t think so, I think I ought to walk outside, to the Metro station across the way and I see a telephone kiosk and I find a free phone and I feed it my quarters and I call Fiona. The number’s bugged, I don’t give a damn, they can hear whatever I say, and it’s not what I’m saying that counts, it’s what I have to hear.
On the second ring I realize I’m sucking on a breath. On the third ring she answers.
Hey, who’s there?
Fiona, I tell her.
Fiona who? she says. Just like I told her to do when I called and spoke her name. Unless there’s a problem. So: Everything is cool. Everything’s fine.
I’m breathing again.
Then she laughs and she says:
Hey, baby. You coming home?
Wait, wait, wait, I tell her. You okay?
Yeah, she says. What—
Any of the boys come round?
Birdman, she says, what is going on?
Honey, I tell her. Not now, okay? Just tell me—
Trey’s here, she says. Been here since … I don’t know when, baby. He was here when I got home, sitting out front in his car. He won’t tell me why, he said to wait for you. So are you going to tell me? What is going on?
Okay, okay, I tell her. Look, just take it easy, okay? I’ll be there before you can whistle.
I can’t whistle, she says. But hey, Birdman. You got a great horoscope today, did you know that?
No, hon, but—
It’s something about … wait, here, listen now, it says, um: Bright light shines where previously was dark. Emphasis on direction, motivation, partnership, marital event. Business outing proves fascinating, productive. Isn’t that nice, Burdon? Isn’t that—
That’s nice, hon. Nice, but—Fiona? Put Trey on the phone, okay?
Just a sec, she says. Things start to break up. She’s using that damned portable phone. Then: Trey?
Hang on, she says.
I cover the mouthpiece with my hand, say to Jinx: Trey Costa is there.
Jinx says: Who the fuck is Trey Costa?
My other man, I tell him.
How do you know he’s still yours? How do you know he ever was?
I don’t know, I tell him. But what does anybody know? I believe in this guy. That’s what counts, isn’t it?
Another burst of static. Shit, shit, shit, I say. Then: Trey?
He’s in the garage, Fiona says. Wants to know where you keep the, the—
Strange sounds. I don’t quite realize she’s crying.
Burdon? she says. What is he doing here? He’s got a shotgun. He keeps looking outside, like, like— What is going on, hon? Where are you?
Fiona, I tell her. Listen. Listen real close, baby. I’m where I should be, and so are you. I’ll call you again, inside the hour, okay? Then … now listen to me, hon—and I speak a little slower—then I’m coming home.
That’s when I pause, and I say for the guys who are listening, those fucks, I say: I’ll come in a cab. A Diamond cab. You see anything else, there’s a problem, okay? Make sure Trey knows too. A Diamond cab, right? Okay?
Burdon—
Sssh. Everything is fine. Okay? And listen, Fiona. If I’m not there by the time your show’s over, you get out of the house. You tell Trey to take you to see the world. You tell him that. He knows what to do. Okay?
You tell him that.
Burdon, listen, I—
When your show’s over. See the world, hon. Okay? Now I got to go.
Burdon?
I got to hang up the phone and go now, okay? I love you, baby.
I love you too.
And I try not to listen, I just hang up the phone, and I look at Jinx and I tell him what we both know:
I got to go get her.
Right about then we get a screech of tires and somebody’s laying on a horn, honk honk honk honk, like it’s never going to let up, and Jinx lets a laugh out and across the parking lot is a fucking pimpmobile, a platinum Lexus convertible with a noose of gold chain choking its rearview mirror and these evil black Doublemint Twins in the front seat, straight out of the life, living so large that their license plate ought to read gang RELATED, in neon lights.
Yo yo yo, Jinx! says the guy on the driver’s side. My man! He pop
s out of the door and does the swing-and-sway, coming our way.
Subtle, I tell Jinx. Why didn’t they drive a white Bronco?
Jinx says: You in another world now, Burdon Lane. Startin now, we be doin things my way.
Yo, Jinx, the guy says, cruising in close. Like I’m not there.
Yo, QP, Jinx says. QP Green, my man.
There’s some of that hand-slapping jive shit and this QP Green guy doesn’t even look at me. After they press enough flesh, the QP Green guy says to Jinx, he says:
Yo, nig. See you got yourself a cracker.
Then, at long last, QP Green slides his eyes toward me. They’re dull, tired. He’s toking. Or maybe he’s had a long day too.
Polly want a cracker? QP Green says. Then: We gonna take a ride now. In my Lex.
Says who? I tell him.
With a grin out of midnight, QP Green says: Mr. MAC. And damned if he doesn’t slip one of those fine compact autos, a MAC-10 machine pistol, out from under his sweatshirt. He rocks the action, clickety-clack, clickety-clack. Like it’s some kind of toy he’s showing me. Right there at the station. In the open. In what’s left of daylight. And no one’s paying any attention.
I shrug and say: Guess we’re going to U Street.
Guess so, says QP Green.
Which is when Jinx says: Yeah. And hey, Burdon Lane … welcome home.
He points toward the horizon and I look and I smell and I see.
That’s my town, I mean, our town—the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.—in the distance. Smoke curls up from the horizon into storm clouds.
Something’s burning.
dirty city
QP Green weaves that Lexus through the highways and the byways of the Maryland burbs until everything fades to a grey that’s as dirty as the sky. We cross inside the Beltway and wiggle on and off New York Avenue, heading south, I think. The geography around here is all screwed up, but we’re into the District of Columbia, that’s for sure, what with the ragged pavement and the broken buildings and the abandoned cars and abandoned people and a funnel of smoke that’s brewing ever closer, and sooner or later QP Green is saying Hey hey hey hey hey, and my pal Jinx says to me:
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