“Just like that?”
“A hit man went over to where my wife was. My wife and my kids. He was supposed to leave them all there. The people running that house over there, they know me; they know what I do. I told them the stone truth: whoever called that blackout, they’re dead. What the guy running that house told me? They ain’t there. He wasn’t lying. He knows—they all know. I don’t mess with dope. And I ain’t no tax collector.”
“You telling me to back off?”
“You want to hit that house, don’t mean nothing to me. I’ll just fade. You want to make Blondie and Wanda dead, I’m telling you two things: They ain’t in that house. And I am going to kill them.”
“That’s my job.”
“You want to come along with me, I’ll let you take all the cell-phone snaps you want when we’re done.”
“I don’t work with partners.”
“Me, neither. Not when I’m…doing what I do. This is different. Not about business. Personal. If it’s same ol’, same ol’ for you, go ahead and do whatever you feel like doing.”
“You just happened to be here, right? And you figure, why not keep me from wasting my time?” Percy said.
“I was here for the same reason you are. Like I said, I was already at that house. So I figured you’d be along soon enough.”
“That isn’t any—”
“What, explanation? I don’t owe you no explanation. Didn’t ask you for one, neither. Why I waited was to offer you what you just turned down.”
“You mean a…?”
“Yeah. A partnership. You’re hunting what I’m hunting. I want them dead; you want the proof they’re dead. You’re a good man in a gunfight, and you got some kind of G-man thing working for you, too. So, even if your info is half guesses, it’s got some facts mixed in. I could use that.
“I got to be close to do what I do. But I got something to ante up that you don’t. I can work this area. I can get ground info. You want them wasted; I don’t have time to waste. You’re walking with me or you’re walking alone, your choice.”
Percy did the math at combat speed, his internal Threat Level Meter dropping like an anvil from an airplane. “Let’s go,” he said.
The pressure between his kidneys disappeared.
“WHAT THE hell is that?” Cross asked So Long, pointing at a sign over a black-glass storefront over which fleeting images played, none long enough to actually identify:
NO-CHANCE GAMING PARLOR
If being wedged between Rhino and Princess bothered her, it did not show in her voice.
“That sign is a message. ‘No-Chance’ means this is a place for games of skill, not luck. The people in there, most are…I cannot describe them, but they know each other by something more than appearance.”
The black-masked Akita nudged So Long’s sleekly silked legs, as if in agreement.
“See!” Princess half-shouted in excitement. “Sweetie understands what people say. I told you!”
“Do not!” Tiger snapped at Cross, anticipating his response to a male dog nuzzling So Long.
“I could not go in there,” So Long said, as if none of the surrounding nonsense—spoken and otherwise—was any of her concern. “Not you, either,” she told Cross, clearly assuming that Buddha and Rhino would not even entertain such a thought.
“Me?” Tiger asked.
“You and Princess,” So Long answered. “None of those playing inside would feel out of place at ComicCon, and you and Princess would fit—”
“And Sweetie, right?”
“Certainly,” So Long replied, as if this had never been in question.
THE SHARK CAR’S doors hissed open.
Princess stepped out onto the sidewalk and waited patiently for Tiger to climb over Cross from her position between him and Buddha.
Tiger and Princess entered the gaming establishment together, her hand resting lightly on the cartoon-muscled arm of her gentlemanly escort. The three proprietors, identically dressed in white T-shirts sporting the game cave’s logo that draped down to the knees of their jeans, stopped whatever they’d been doing to stare! at the invasion. The blazing-color comic book covers that lined the entire back wall had sprung to life, leaving them stuck somewhere between fascination and terror.
Others were so deeply engrossed in whatever was on the screens of the hexagonal tables scattered throughout the room that they didn’t notice. At first. But the rolling wave of gaping silence coated the room like the spray from a slow-motion tsunami—even the faint pings from the demanding screens seemed to be muting of their own accord.
“Hi!” Princess boomed, as Tiger pranced around him, whispering, “Rip your shirt off, honey,” to the monster child. Princess fisted his tearaway lilac mesh shirt and stood silently, still waiting for the dumfounded crowd to respond to his greeting. He was utterly without makeup, a ridiculous .600 Nitro Express pistol holstered under one arm. His body gleamed, its armor coating flexed and popped, as if acting on its own instructions.
He’s right out of Geof Darrow’s pen! a few of the more sophisticated watchers thought, in one single, soundless a capella.
“You and Sweetie just watch the back wall, honey. I want to talk to those boys over there, okay?”
Princess dropped Sweetie’s chain. It hit the floor like the sixty-pound linked iron it was, but all eyes remained glued to Tiger as she stalked over to the counter. Her every move threatened to crack the coating of the scarlet body paint she must be wearing—Nothing else could be that tight! being the universal, albeit unspoken, verdict of the watchers. It looks like she stepped right out of that poster. That big one over on the far wall…
“Don’t do that,” Tiger said in a sugar-sprinkling voice, as she snatched a cell-phone camera from one young man’s hand. “I don’t like having my picture taken with all these clothes on.” Without looking back, she flung the phone over her shoulder at Princess, who deftly caught it in one hand and closed his fist around it. The crunching sound that emerged didn’t frighten any of the gamers—this had to be some kind of illusion, right?
When Princess opened his hand, the shattered remains of the phone drifted to the floor. By then, none of the gamers were watching their consoles, not even those who had been utilizing the slide-out panels on either side of the individual seats for “private play.” All eyes were on Tiger as the Amazon hip-switched her way to the counter.
“Who’s the boss?” she purred, leaning on the counter. Her scarlet-soled, black spike heels combined with her natural height to make it appear as if she were bending over extravagantly. The tables were filled with youngish males whose minds were too overwhelmed even to think the string of “OMG!!!”s that would otherwise be filling the micro-keyboards they all carried.
“We…we three are,” a long-haired male with a wispy mustache said. “I mean, we divide—”
“Sssshhh, baby,” Tiger said, so softly that he had to lean forward to be certain he could hear her. Tiger’s body perfume wafted toward him, as if released by pressing her elbows together. Fortunately for his equilibrium, he was down to mouth-breathing by then. “I’m just…curious, about this place. Is that okay?”
“Sure! I mean…”
“Oh, stop teasing! I just want to show you a picture. A photograph, that’s not much to ask, is it?”
As the other two partners moved closer to the man between them, Tiger reached down to her gorgeously sculpted thigh and pulled one of the twin daggers strapped around it. Her hand flashed; the dagger spiked into the wood counter. It stayed there, vibrating, as a photograph that had been tightly wrapped around the handle unrolled itself loose.
The dagger was back in its holster before any of the three could look at the photo. But when they did, they were silent.
“Come on, now,” Tiger whispered. “You don’t want to make me beg, do you? That would be a shame—the last man who tried to make me do that won’t be back anytime soon. Unless those zombies you’re always watching in your movies are real. Maybe they are, fo
r all I know. But here’s what I know for sure: I’m real. And so is my friend back there. And that darling little puppy.”
“If we let you—” one of them said, stopping when he caught a look from the others.
“Oh, I know he’s not back there now. But this place, it’s got some more depth to it, doesn’t it?”
“Uh…”
“I understand. If all those boys watching me see me go behind that nice blue velvet rope and disappear, they’ll stay until you close up, waiting for me to come out. That wouldn’t be good. You’ve got another way for people—certain people—to get back there, yes? Sure, you do. And they pay real money to do that. You want to know how I know?”
None of the partners spoke.
“Never mind. I know, that’s all. But I still have to see it for myself,” Tiger said, not asking permission. “I’ll just disappear behind those two staggered mini-walls you flash stuff against…like those tarot cards that are being dealt right now. It’s so clever, the way you have it set up.”
“There’s no one in—”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. The way we’ll work it is, I’ll just walk back there and disappear. See this cute little glass ball? When I drop it—Poof!—a lot of pretty scarlet smoke. By the time it clears, I’ll be gone. Cool, huh?
“Now listen, after tonight, you’ll be able to double your prices. ’Cause I’m going to walk out of there the same way people walk in. You follow me? Ah, never mind, here comes the really cool part. In a couple of minutes, I’m going to walk in the front. And drag my friend back out with me. By the time anyone blinks, we’ll be gone.
“They’ll all have different stories to tell, but they will tell them, am I right?”
The man in the center risked leaning forward again. “There’s someone back there now. Only one person at a time. If he—”
“When I leave a room, every man in that room follows me, believe that. When we’ve cleared out—just the way I told you we would—that room will be empty. I promise,” she said, licking her lips as if to make certain her lipstick was going to stay painted on.
WHEN THE scarlet mist cleared, Tiger was gone.
As she silently entered the inky back room, she could make out an indistinct form hunched over a holographic keyboard projected onto the black surface of a small table in front of him. Another soundless step and she could see the images on the sixty-four-inch 3-D monitor that transfixed the viewer, pulling him virtually inside the screen.
The viewer pushed back his monk’s cowl, lightly tapped a key, and an audio icon blinked. That’s when Tiger noticed he was wearing an elaborate set of earphones. She quickly glanced at the screen. He’s scoped onto the kill-spot! filled her mind. Just like there is on an alligator. Only alligators don’t have any choice about what they are….
The Amazon came back from wherever she’d gone. Looked through the red mist as it wisped away from her vision. The man was nice-looking; well dressed, nothing extreme except maybe that oversized wristwatch. One of Tiger’s daggers protruded from his spine, a surgically bloodless strike between the C1 and C2 vertebrae.
Deliberately looking away from the screen images, she ran her forefinger down the dead man’s back, found a belt—alligator, she thought grimly, her thumb against its grain. Hoisting him like a golf bag in one hand, she used a blue LED flash to guide her out the door of the private cave.
Kicking a heavy black rubber wedge under the door, she stepped into the night air, drawing a deep breath in through her nose. The Shark Car was where she’d expected it to be, trunk already slowly opening on its own. She tossed the dead man inside, knowing the trunk would be lined with a triple-thick black plastic wrap.
The Shark Car waited, as silent as its namesake.
As Rhino entered the now empty back room, Tiger walked around the corner and entered the gaming parlor.
Heads swiveled. Tiger waited until the owners were looking directly at her, pointed at the back of the room, shook her head with a clear message: “No.” Turning to Princess, she whispered, “Let’s go, sweetheart.”
They were inside the car in seconds. It was gone in less.
“ROLL NOW, Buddha,” Cross said. “I’ve got to pick up a car in the Badlands, and then come back for Rhino.”
“I could—”
“Take her back to our spot,” Cross said, cutting him off. Turning to include Princess, the gang leader said, “Getting rid of that outfit isn’t going to make you invisible, Tiger. And, Princess, you go with her, make sure nobody—”
“Nobody’s going to be a problem.” Tiger stopped Cross’s instructions with the pad of a talon pressed against his lips. “I’ve been over at my place for hours. Princess has always been after me to take him along, so…tonight was the night.”
“Me and—”
“Oh, honey, please! Didn’t I promise you? All the girls are going to love Sweetie, I guarantee it. Fair enough?”
“Sure! You hear that?” Princess crooned to the beast. “The ladies won’t be as beautiful as Tiger; that’s ’cause they couldn’t be. But they’ll all be nice to you.”
THE SHARK CAR ripped past the abandoned semi that marked the entrance to the Badlands and spun into a J-turn.
It blasted away while Cross was still rolling on the pavement.
A pale-yellow Scion xB, its flanks generically flamed in blue peel-offs, was waiting less than twenty yards away. The car was running, its undersized engine virtually silent. A young man, with the bowed spine that had given him his name and a bright-blue Mohawk that could be gelled down flat, stood next to the opened doors.
Condor was watched by the pack of runaways who had made a home on top of what the city called a toxic waste dump. As their leader, he had the honor of personally handling the instructions Cross had barked into a cell phone on the way over.
Secretly basking in his reaffirmed status, he listened intently for the gang leader’s next words:
“Get behind the wheel. I’ll be in the back. We want Uptown and we want it quick. I’ll give you the street-by-street once we get over the border.”
“Me?”
“You got a number two already named?”
“Sure. Just like you said—”
“Then whoever it is will know what to do until you get back. We get stopped, the cops are gonna expect someone who looks like you to be behind the wheel.”
“I don’t have—”
“If you mean ‘time,’ we don’t, either,” Cross snapped, tossing a rubber-band-wrapped wad of paper into the front seat. “License, registration, insurance. Your name is Johnny Lee James, got it?”
The Scion was already in motion.
“You live on Wilson,” Cross continued. “The address is good. You were born here. Chicago, I mean. But that hillbilly name, that was from your parents. Kentucky. They’re deceased. You work at the Tomahawk Chop Car Wash. And you’re just out for a ride tonight, got it?”
“Got it,” the young man said, an Appalachian twang already at the edges of his voice.
“We got one pickup to make. You probably won’t get stopped. If you are, just be polite, you got that?”
“Yes, sir, officer.”
“Cop wants to look in the back, fine with you, understand? We’ll bail before anyone checks.”
“You and—?”
“—sure. If things get stupid, you’re not going to outrun anyone in this crate. That happens, just cooperate, okay? Car’s not stolen, papers’re good. Worse they can do is toss you into County on some flake charge. Don’t say anything. To anybody. A lawyer will be there to spring you in the morning, when they call the new line down to court.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“SLOW IT now. Next left. Sit there and wait. We’ll be out soon enough.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Don’t play hero on us, Condor. You’re not carrying…?”
“Just my blade.”
“Toss it back here.”
A rustle of movement, a glove-muffled sound.
Then Cross said, “Kid, I thought you knew better. This thing, it’s way over regulation.”
“I thought, if—”
“Being a leader, that takes more than just heart, Condor. You’ve already been on the run for, what, years? And nobody’s looking for you. But if you get popped, your prints are gonna fall. We can deal with that, like I told you. But a new charge? That’d be dumb.”
“I…I know.”
“Forget it. It never happened. Now, slide in right ahead of that white Crown Vic, and—”
“That’s an undercover car.”
“That’s an empty car. Understand?”
Without waiting for a response, Cross pushed open the still-wedged back door of the No-Chance Gaming Parlor.
CONDOR SETTLED down to wait, using the panoramic mirror he held in one hand to eye-sweep the block in all directions.
It wasn’t long before the back doors of the Scion opened, then closed soundlessly.
“Go,” Cross said, pulling another phone from the coveralls he wore. “Nice and smooth.”
“THERE CAN’T be a trace of this thing left,” Condor told his crew as he climbed out of the Scion. “But no boom and no fire. Take it apart, then—”
“We got this,” a tall, muscle-and-bone young man said.
“Counting on you, M.Z.,” Condor said. “On all of you.”
“Did they really take you with?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, ’Zeus. And you don’t, neither.”
“Just sayin’. I mean, you came back alone….”
“I never left,” Condor spoke over his shoulder as he walked off into the deeper darkness.
“WHERE’S JOHNNY EYES?” Condor asked, pointing at two of his crew with forked fingers.
“Crow’s Nest,” answered a girl with two tears tattooed under her left eye, using her hands to speak.
Condor gestured “Send him down.” And then made a “sit down” motion, which he knew would be interpreted as “Take his place until he gets back.”
The girl left without a sound. This wasn’t some kind of submissive gesture—Q.T. had been left profoundly deaf from the last beating her mother’s boyfriend had dished out, before calling the police. His story was he had kicked her out for “whoring to buy drugs” but she’d broken back in—“with that big knife, the one right on the floor there—probably to kill both of us.”
Drawing Dead Page 18
