“And all tribes—”
“No!” The Indian’s voice sliced the air. “All tribes are not fated to war with each other. There is no Great Book in which this is written—this is a Law of Nature. The human race is one race. We would be gone from this planet had we not mixed our blood. Somewhere, somehow, sometime—it does not change the result. We invented different gods because we could not explain what we knew to be true. Rain, storms, snow. Dryness so pure that there is not enough oxygen for most of us. Thunder, lightning…those are weather. And weather is within climate. So the nomads—”
“He couldn’t leave his climate!” Rhino’s voice rose to a high-pitched squeak. “It was as artificial as an aquarium, one even a whale couldn’t escape. But he could reach out past it….”
“That Circle of Skulls crew,” Cross said. “Whatever that…thing was, he wasn’t a rapist. He wasn’t a dealer. He didn’t need money. But he made that whole rape-tape gang. Created them.”
“I…I think I understand him.” Rhino’s voice dropped back to a whisper. “They made him…not exist. But he proved them wrong. All of them. Only one thing drives a person that hard.”
“Always the same thing, brother,” Cross said. “We always knew this. Somehow. But it’s just like Tracker said….”
“I’ve seen it ever since you escaped from that prison basement,” the mammoth suddenly admitted. “I didn’t want to say anything—I kept thinking it would go away on its own. That blue mark. It’s flashing now, like a signal.”
“A warning signal,” Tracker added, unsurprised. “That creature we destroyed years ago, we should have known. He would never have gone without leaving behind the one thing we must all fear now.”
“Descendants of descendants,” Cross said. “Whatever evil he created in some—and that’s what he must have done with that rape-tape crew—he could create in others.”
“He has,” Rhino said. “That’s why I can see your…brand. It’s letting me see it.”
Cross opened his left hand. A flame sparked in his palm.
The man with the bull’s-eye tattoo on the back of his other hand didn’t reach for a cigarette. He watched the flame, feeling Rhino and Tracker move closer to its campfire.
“TOO MUCH to be coincidence,” Cross said, speaking very quietly. “Same method used twice, that wouldn’t qualify. But maybe it wasn’t.”
“I’m not following you,” Rhino said.
“I’m not sure I’m following my own damn self,” the gang’s leader responded sourly. “Years ago, Buddha was lured out because of a threat to So Long, and we’re looking at it like the same game was played with Ace. But there’s really more differences than similarities, right?”
“I believe that is true,” Tracker said. “No matter who was involved in that ugliness with So Long, she would have been a random target. A woman of color living in a white neighborhood…what else would they need?”
“Buddha’s not the same as Ace,” Rhino responded. “No question but that Ace would respond were his wife to be the victim of a rape. But Hemp sent an assassin to kill Sharyn. Whoever was responsible had to know…something. Not who Ace is—that’s well known in Gangland, probably even to the police. But the house, that is not known. Ace would never endanger his wife and children. Remember, the authorities have his name from when he was locked up. Supposedly a juvenile record, so it would be sealed…but that’s a joke. I found it in their database easily enough.
“But Hemp couldn’t have gotten information on that house from Sharyn’s name on any marriage license. She bought the house under her maiden name—a cash purchase, so no mortgage. And she’s not on any public record, like Section Eight or Welfare. Her birth certificate wouldn’t show in Chicago. She purchases whatever she needs—a car, furniture—but those are all cash transactions.”
“Pays taxes, too,” Cross added. “In business for herself. Professional ghostwriter, and the terms of her contracts always include keeping her employer’s name a secret. Hell, you know all about that, Rhino—you were the one who set it up.”
“Her ‘agent’ pays her by check,” Rhino’s voice rumbled, as it did when he spoke quietly. “And he takes his fifteen percent off the top. He couldn’t say who the actual writers are even if he wanted to—he doesn’t know. All the contracts are close-ended: any other money the books make—a movie deal, foreign rights, all of that—Sharyn’s not even entitled to know, much less take a share.”
“It’s worked perfectly for a long time,” Cross said, opening his left hand—this time to light another cigarette. “And no one’s taken a shot at Sharyn all these years. Her kids, they’ve all gone to private schools, sure…but they never walked around with bodyguards.”
“So, for this to work, Hemp had to have found out not just where Sharyn lives, but that she was married to Ace. And that all her children are his,” Tracker said, thoughtfully.
“Yeah,” Cross said, slowly. “Buddha and Ace each being smoked out, those don’t have to be connected. All that’s in common is a threat designed to flush out a target. But with Buddha, it could have been no more than it looked like—a bad accident. That thing we killed, he could have been in the rape-tape business just to test his ability to pull off something like that without ever leaving that cage his parents kept him locked up in. We’ll never know.
“Anyway, we used the same tactic ourselves, didn’t we? On him, I mean. Princess harpooning that dirtbag, that would spook anyone. And it worked. But we never thought to stop and ask him anything. We didn’t have much time, and we wanted the money. Remember, all we have is what kicked us off…that letter So Long got. Not a rape, the threat of one.”
“So…”
“That’s right, Rhino. Time for another talk with Mike Mac.”
THE RUNNING track circling the football field had been kept in good repair.
The same could not be said about the man slowly churning out lap after lap, not increasing or decreasing speed but doggedly determined to finish whatever number of circuits he believed he should be doing. What do those doctors know, anyway? So he had a torn meniscus behind one knee, and they’d have to replace the other hip at some point. The titanium implanted in his forearm hadn’t stopped him from competing last year, had it?
“You always look the same,” he said, as he slowed to a gradual stop in the grandstand shadows.
“Clean living,” Cross replied.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” the detective said. “What I meant was, you look like you always do.”
“Uh-huh.” Cross nodded, lighting a cigarette, as if to acknowledge that the cop’s statement hadn’t been a compliment.
“Last time I saw you and Rhino here—”
“The same thing.”
“Are you serious? That rape gang was put out of business a long time ago. All we found were a couple of charred bodies in the wreckage of a car in Winnetka, of all places. And right across from it was a beautiful limestone mansion. ‘Was’ is right—a cracked foundation was all there was left. If anyone had been alive inside when that explosion went off, they weren’t a half-second later.
“It was a big case. Got checked out every way you can imagine. The owners of that house, they’d been done in by a drunk driver years before. A teenager…”
“Sure. No motive there. By the time the place went bang, the former owner’s kids were somewhere off the Bahamas, on their yacht. They’d left their kids in some boarding school. No live-in staff at the house.”
“Yeah,” the detective said, drawing out the word. “You seem pretty well informed.”
“I read the papers.”
“You make some headlines, too, the way I figure it.”
“Me? Come on, Mac; you know how much I love publicity.”
“I know how much you love C-4. Or whatever new witch’s brew you’ve cooked up lately.”
“Not me.”
“Actually, that’s true enough, I guess. Buddha’s always blowing things up, but his style is more RPG than plastiq
ue. Likes to admire his work, huh?”
“I’m not following you.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s just me, talking in riddles again, right?”
“I was just about to—”
“Ah, that’s right,” McNamara interrupted. “I forgot to tell you. The fire marshals are good at what they do, and they checked every little bit of that house. But in the car, the one that got firebombed in the street, you know what the CSI guys found? Strangest thing. The bodies were all charbroiled, but we recovered a few slugs. Tiny little things. Maybe .177 caliber, could even have been smaller, like whoever put them together turned them into armor-piercing rounds. Must’ve been close-range, too, that tight a grouping.”
“What’s that got to do with what I’m asking?”
“You haven’t asked anything.”
“I would, if you’d take a damn breath.”
“That case is closed,” the detective said. “The two men in the car, they must have been the ones who blew up the house. Probably took fire on their getaway from…who knows, maybe a bodyguard?”
“Then you wouldn’t mind telling me if that gang was sending warnings before they hit.”
“Warnings? You mean like…?”
“Specific threats. To specific targets. ‘Get out of the neighborhood or else,’ that kind of thing.”
The cop’s stare was implacable. Cross dropped out of any impending contest quickly, knowing it was a game he couldn’t win—not dropping his eyes wouldn’t get him what he wanted.
“No,” McNamara said, his voice hardening. “Targets of opportunity. Remember, none of the rape victims were killed…if that’s what you’re asking about. The Department is sure that if they’d gotten threats, any of them, they would have reported them. If not to us, to their families.”
“But they were always—”
“In mixed neighborhoods, so what? The way this city is shifting its borders, you can’t tell who’s going to be living next to you when you wake up in the morning.”
“Okay.”
“What do you want to know something like that for, Cross? Nobody’s looking at you for anything.”
“Somebody’s always looking at us.” Rhino’s low, rumbling voice joined the conversation. “It doesn’t have to always be the police.”
“You guys haven’t made a lot of friends, that’s the truth.”
“Legitimate businessmen, they’ve always been pushed around by organized crime, Mac. Ever since Capone’s day, you can’t run even a bush-league—”
“If you guys are legitimate businessmen, I’m a liberal. And don’t waste your breath on the Double-X, Cross. I admit even I don’t know what that’s all about.”
“I know you don’t dip your beak, Mac. For all I know, you might be the only cop in Chicago who doesn’t.”
“Now, that’s profiling.” McNamara smiled. “You think all blue is—”
“Nah. But tell me you don’t know about any shakedowns, never mind getting in bed with…”
“I’m not with Internal Affairs,” the cop said, the words coming out like he was spitting steel darts.
“Good thing you’re not. You’d need twenty-four/seven protection, and even then you’d have to stay off high floors.”
“You want anything else?”
“No.”
“You got anything for me?”
“No.”
“Always a pleasure,” the cop said.
“WE’VE BEEN looking at this all wrong,” Cross said on the drive back to Red 71.
“Just because we haven’t made any connection—”
“No,” the gang leader said. “Because we have. I just missed it. Looking for a ham-and-cheese sandwich in a kosher restaurant.”
“Meaning, what, there’s other restaurants?”
“Yeah,” Cross said, handing Rhino a burner cell. “We need everyone at the spot as soon as they can get there.”
“BUDDHA, YOU remember that time when So Long was threatened by that gang of rapists?”
“I already gave up my share of the take on that one, boss. What else do you—?”
“We’ve been trying to connect it with Hemp’s move on Ace.”
“It wasn’t?” Tiger half-sneered. “It was the same move. Lure one of us out into the open and—”
“You just said it,” Cross cut her off. “Nobody’s that patient. It was too long ago. But it doesn’t link to that creature in the fancy house.”
“Huh? Boss, I thought—”
“So Long wasn’t that one’s idea, Buddha. The others, the three of them, they must have liked what they were doing. A lot. The person in that fancy house, we don’t really know much about him. And we never will. But Rhino has a good read on him. It makes sense that he’d go nuts, being like he…was.”
“The best we can figure it, the…the man in that house, he discovered what those three were doing,” Rhino said. “And he dealt himself in. Probably by offering them a ton of money. That wouldn’t mean anything to him; he had an unlimited supply.”
“So those three scumbags, they decided to get some more of their jollies on their own. Who gives a damn?”
“Only one person I can think of,” Cross answered.
“The timing’s all wrong.”
“That’s why I’m saying it.”
“Saying what?” Tiger snapped. “Stop code-talking, ‘boss.’ The rest of us outsiders can’t translate.”
“Remember when I was brought in on that government job? Where they tried to capture that…whatever it was?”
“We were there,” Tracker said, his tone more measured than usual. “Tiger and I both.”
“And there it is,” Cross told them all. “As far as Blondie and his pals were concerned, they recruited you. But you were on board with us way before they ever contacted you. And when they brought me in, you both played it like you’d never seen me before in your lives.”
Tracker nodded. Failure to deliver that “specimen” Cross had never collected may have been more costly than they had first thought. If a nameless blond man and an Asian cyber-expert called Wanda were still alive, it wasn’t known to the Cross crew. The whereabouts of Percy—a human war machine who returned to an inert state when not on combat assignment, as though a switch had been thrown in his operating system—were unknown. The government wouldn’t have held the rogue nature of the entire operation against him: Percy would always be a high-value asset.
“WHY GIVE them any—?”
“Right. ‘Them.’ Not ‘us.’ Like Buddha’s always bitching about, neither of you go back to the beginning, Tracker. I was the one who brought Buddha in. I ran across him in the same place I met Rhino—not locked up, but he might as well have been. And he had So Long with him, even that far back.
“You and Tiger, you’re freelance, sure—but that just means you might take a job without bringing us in. And we might do likewise. But inside, we’re all the same. We hate them all.”
“So do the Simbas,” Tracker said, deliberately shifting his eyes to Cross’s face, seeing the confirmatory flash of the blue brand he expected. “That’s more than any prove-in you could come up with, Cross.”
“How come you’re so sure?”
“I can see their brand on you. Tiger can see it, too.”
“The little blue mark under his eye? It’s blinking like a damn neon sign now, bro,” Ace said to his brother.
“And you, too, now? Princess?”
“Sure,” the muscle mass said. “I just thought it was some kind of trick tattoo.”
“Buddha?”
“Yeah,” the agate-eyed killer said. “I could see it. Before tonight, I mean. Thought you were testing another misdirect, like that bull’s-eye on your hand.”
“There’s only one of us who could have known where Ace’s wife and kids lived. In that house, I mean.”
Buddha punched his cell phone.
“Go to Location Three. Now!”
The pudgy sharpshooter punched his phone again, as if he had a grud
ge against it. “Let’s get this done,” he said, dead-voiced. “Me, you, Princess, and Rhino, one car. Either of you two have a ride out back?”
“No,” Tracker said. “Just a borrowed cab. Can’t keep it long.”
“Driver doesn’t know it’s missing?”
“Not yet.”
“Me, either,” Tiger added. Then she turned to Cross: “But I’ve got one at Orchid Blue. You can pick up that stick thing you keep in my safe. And Tracker can leave the cab on the street.”
BEHIND RED 71, Cross tugged lightly on Tiger’s mane, pulling her close.
“When you get your own car, follow tight,” he whispered. “I don’t know where Buddha’s taking us.”
“Yes, sir!” the warrior-woman said, throwing a mock salute, before launching herself at the backseat of Tracker’s cab.
Tracker climbed behind the wheel, turning Tiger into a passenger, in case anyone might question the “Off Duty” sign on the roof.
“Follow that car!” Tiger ordered, in her best gangster-moll voice.
“JUST KILLING time,” Buddha said, answering an unasked question. “It’s gonna take her a little while to get to where we’re meeting, but we’re only five minutes away,” he continued.
“From Old Greytooth’s—?”
“Good guess, boss.”
“He’s not Lao, so why…?”
“We’re not visiting him. There’s a side door. Just opens into another room. Three-sided, one door per wall.”
“And the door that’ll be behind us when we step in?”
“Just you and me go inside, boss. Everyone else stays on the street. We’re not going in hot. Not coming out that way, either. But there’s no reason to—”
“Got it,” Cross said.
THE SHARK CAR slid to the curb.
“She’s inside,” Buddha said. “The dark-green Lexus we passed half a block past, that’s her car.”
Drawing Dead Page 10
