Drawing Dead

by Andrew Vachss

  The police had taken the girl’s silent response to their questioning as defiance, ignoring the blood already flowing down the side of her face. Unceremoniously dumped into a holding facility, she was eventually transferred to an institution for “juvenile incorrigibles,” where she earned her second tear by pressing her thumb so deeply into the eyeball of a “heavyweight” that she would have faced an attempted-murder charge if she hadn’t gone over the concertina wire that same night, following a crudely drawn diagram to the Badlands one of the other girls had given her.

  This is the last time, Condor promised himself. It’s like Cross is always saying: if you want to be the boss, you can’t use your people; you have to make sure they get what they can use. I don’t know if Maria could possibly take another one in, but, first thing tomorrow…

  “NOTHING DOING, chief.” Johnny Eyes interrupted Condor’s reverie. “Not since that rolling boxcar came back in.”

  “Bounce this over to them: ‘Boxcar back in the house, full empty.’ ”

  “On my way,” Johnny Eyes said, making it clear he knew who “them” was, and what he had to do.

  As Q.T. came down the steel ladder, Condor was already handing out more assignments:

  “We got anyone working outside tonight?”

  “Donnie and the new guy,” an Asian kid said, consulting a tablet.

  “You can get word to them?”

  The Asian kid worked hard to keep a “Du-uh!” expression off his face and nodded once.

  “I need a looks-like-them-all ride. Keyed correct. By tomorrow, sunrise.”

  The Asian kid was already tapping at his tablet.

  “THIS IS it,” Condor said, pulling to the curb of a two-story cottage with a good-sized yard and two-car garage, letting that action substitute for the words the girl in the seat next to him couldn’t hear.

  She followed him to the back door of the house, where they waited patiently. A handsome young man opened the door. He looked calmly competent—not crazy-fearless, like some of the boys in Condor’s crew. But Q.T. could tell that getting past him could take some doing.

  Condor slid back the hoodie just enough for the young man to recognize him. The response was immediate: “You know where to sit. I’ll get Maria,” the young man said, leaving the two of them alone.

  “What now?” said a strong-boned blonde woman with a still-beautiful face despite soft blue eyes that had seen too much, too many times. She wasn’t as annoyed as her words should have sounded.

  “I’ve got—”

  “Condor,” she said, playfully pushing his Mohawk against the grain, “no sales pitch today. Just give me what I need.”

  “This girl,” Condor said, making certain that she was included in the conversation, his gestures making it clear that she wasn’t some package he was dropping off, “she’s with us. You already know how that happens. Only, she—we call her Q.T., because one of the newbies called her ‘Cutie,’ and grabbed her…you know. We had to pull her off before she blinded him, but the name kind of stuck. She can’t hear. And she can’t speak. Wasn’t born that way. You know the rest. You know what those tears mean. She’s wanted. Not for the usual runaway stuff—looking at serious time downstate. Only she had no choice.”

  “You want me to take her in?”

  “I know it’s a lot to ask—”

  “Don’t work me, young man. But you tell that ‘friend’ of yours I can’t risk giving up nine other kids just for her. So I need prints to disappear. And—”

  “I’ll get it all for you,” Condor said, chastened. “Give me a few days. Just keep her inside. If I can’t get it done, I’ll take her back with us.”

  “All right, you do that. She’ll be here when you come back, either way.”

  She bent down and kissed Condor on the cheek, ignoring his flaming face. Then she held out her hand to the girl—half invitation, half command. The two of them walked out of the room, together.

  “YOU KNOW what you’re asking?” the cheap-suited man with thick wrists and a prizefighter’s face said.

  “I know what I’ve been asked,” Cross said quietly, leaning into the front window of McNamara’s white Crown Vic. “And I don’t recall ever passing.”

  “All I can get is the codes,” said the ex-cop, whom the department had allowed to keep the white unmarked as a retirement present. “After that…”

  “Ghost in, ghost out,” Cross said, and walked off into the darkness.

  “WHERE WE dropped you. Ten minutes.”

  Cross popped the SIM card, then used two pairs of pliers to crack it into tiny pieces, all dropped into a handkerchief spread across his lap. He tossed various bits and pieces out the passenger-side window of the Shark Car as it motored toward that private back room of the No-Chance.

  Buddha rolled into the space recently vacated by the white unmarked as Rhino stepped out the door, a canvas bag in each hand. The back door hissed open. The mammoth climbed in.

  “Wait till we all get back,” Cross said.

  The Shark Car passed a solid-front building, marked only by a narrow strip of inset neon spelling out…

  O

  R

  C

  H

  I

  D

  B

  L

  U

  E

  …and continued on to the first alley opening. Cross was already tapping a numbered keypad.

  Tiger and Princess strolled out the back door, the black-masked Akita now unleashed and walking between them. Tiger got in front, Princess and his dog in the back.

  “Well? What did you—?”

  “When we get back,” Cross interrupted the Amazon. “There’s something we’ve got to do first.”

  AS THEY entered the back of Red 71, Cross saw a tiny blue light, blinking on one of the sawhorse struts that held his desk.

  “Message out front,” he said, parting the ball-bearing curtain and stepping into the poolroom.

  The tables were about three-quarters occupied, but nobody glanced at the unremarkable-looking man walking to the front desk.

  “Cop left this for you,” the old man in the ancient green eyeshade said, handing over a baseball-sized wad of paper, tightly wrapped in black duct tape.

  “Cop?”

  “Not a blue boy.”

  “Say anything?”

  “Not even that he was a cop. Just rolled it across to me and walked back out the way he came in.”

  Cross completed the round trip as invisibly as he had the first half.

  Entering the back, he tossed the wrapped ball to Tracker, saying, “Rhino will need whatever’s inside. Probably alphanumerics.”

  Rhino, hearing this, began assembling his cyber-B&E materials.

  Tracker was already at work with a piece of flexible razor steel, carefully working it under the outermost roll of duct tape.

  Cross went back behind his desk, lit a cigarette.

  A few minutes passed in silence.

  “Ready?” Tracker finally asked.

  “Go,” Rhino said.

  As Tracker read each line, Rhino touched his immense laptop’s keyboard, checked the black-and-white screen, and repeated, “Go.”

  Within a minute of Tracker’s saying, “Thirty,” Rhino announced, “I’m in.”

  Cross recited from memory all the information Condor had taken from Q.T.

  Another minute passed.

  “No record,” Rhino said. “No wants, no warrants. No prints.”

  “None now?”

  “Yes. Erasing footprints, just a…There!”

  “She was never arrested?”

  “Erased,” Rhino answered again. “And nobody ever glanced at whatever record used to be there.”

  “Mac’s good as gold,” Buddha said.

  “He’s better,” Cross responded. “Price of gold fluctuates, right?”

  “Got it, boss.”

  “Now can we—?”

  “Reloading now,” Rhino said. “Another couple of minutes.”<
br />
  “IT’S JUST one station back there,” Rhino said.

  “One keyboard, one screen,” he continued. “On that screen, it’s something out of a movie set. Tower stack, empty slots. Probably each person who uses it has his own—the slots are the wrong size for anything I know about, too big for any USB key, and they’re shaped more like a triangle than a rectangle.

  “The cable isn’t co-ax. As thick as—I’m guessing now—six, seven inches. I didn’t know how much time I had, so I just took measurements as best I could. But storage went off my scale, and I could tell there was plenty more left. Tetrabytes by a factor of…maybe a few hundred. Connected underground, private feed. My tach topped out, too…and it covers all the way to speeds that aren’t supposed to exist. So at least fifteen hundred megs. Nobody can type that fast, so it has to be for streaming at an insane rate—much more than you’d need for any movie.”

  “Back-channel?” Cross asked.

  “Deeper than that. There’s layers and layers in there. Getting to the channel isn’t the deal. That would only let you watch, not…participate.”

  “Pay to play?”

  “Must be. It’s too complex for gaming, even with thousands of players on at the same time. There’s really no way to tell, not without going in…and I didn’t want to try that. Probably self-destructs without an access card.”

  “That room’s too small for more than one at a time. Two at most, and only one at the keyboard,” Tiger said.

  “They must make appointments,” Tracker added. “With plenty of space between them, so they never eyeball each other.”

  “That’s why there’s two ways in!” Tiger burst out.

  “It’s blackmail waiting to happen,” Buddha said. “They gotta have cameras—”

  “They used to,” Rhino squeaked.

  “So Long was right,” Buddha said, unable to keep pride from his voice.

  “She was on the money,” Cross conceded, letting the double meaning of that compliment hang in the air. “Too bad you had to make that Lao dead, huh?”

  “I—” Buddha began, before a look from Cross silenced him.

  “She’s at your house, now?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Okay. You need to talk to her. Not on the phone. Does anyone know Pekelo’s gone? Can she find out where he lived? If the cops have already visited, no point in us taking a look. But it hasn’t been that long….”

  Buddha was already exiting.

  “ACE CALL any of you?” Cross asked.

  Silence was his answer.

  “Okay, this much we know, then: He’s looking for Percy. If Percy’s looking for Blondie and Wanda, okay. But if he’s guarding them, Ace is all done.”

  “How can you say that?” Rhino demanded. “Ace is as good as—”

  “If Ace took them out, he would have gotten word to us. If he’s still looking, he wouldn’t call. The way things stand, that last, it’s the best we can hope for.”

  “For Percy, it would be a job,” Tracker said. “Whatever he is told to do, that is his job. The mission is defined. He had nothing but contempt for those two, but if he was told to protect them, he would do that. All of this is true. But I know they—Percy and Ace—they have made a decision to hunt together.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “I was…present when they discussed things.”

  If the gang boss was surprised at Tracker’s quiet announcement, he didn’t change expression. “Percy’s job was to make those two disappear, he’d do that job,” Cross said. “So we won’t know until we hear from Ace. The G has its cyber-slingers on full go—Wanda wouldn’t open any channel that could be traced.”

  “I can think of a channel I’d like to open,” Tiger added.

  No one responded; it wasn’t a statement that invited questions.

  Cross closed his eyes and lit a cigarette.

  Don’t push it! his mind admonished him. You can’t get to wherever it is. But if you wait, it might come to you.

  Time passed as the urban mercenary let his mind drift.

  “What else am I gonna do?”

  “You can still go anyway you want once you’re free,” Cross told his only friend. “Me, all I can do is get over that Wall. And keep moving.”

  “Yeah, you so special? I got a parole coming; sure, I know that. But what then? Go to night school, get a GED, just for some slave job? The only trade I know is the one I learned in here. Be yourself, brother.”

  “I had to—”

  “What? Try? I called you ‘brother,’ right? Not ‘Pops’ or any of that stuff. I didn’t have no father. And my momma didn’t have no judgment. I’ll be by myself.”

  “Not once I figure out a way to—”

  “Oh, you’ll do that. You been doing it since you was a little kid, the way the guards tell it. So…you’re saying we keep on working together? Sure. Why not? Ain’t neither of us coming back Inside, I’m telling that true?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you are. But if we’re gonna work, we might as well ramp it up—pass on all the small scores. You know I read all the time, right? Well, you know what I’ve been reading lately?”

  “No.”

  “Lies. ‘Money can’t buy happiness’—how many times you heard that? But here’s the thing: Happiness is…what? For me, it’s not coming back. For you, too, now. And that’s something money can buy.”

  “Like lawyers and—?”

  “Sure. But even that’s not the whole thing. As crooked as this town is, name something money can’t buy. But you remember what that rhyming guy is always saying? About money?”

  “You flash the cash, people be looking for your stash?”

  “On the nose. But I don’t want a fancy car, or jewelry, or even nice clothes. I want to be safe. They’ll be looking for me until they get tired, or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Or until I stop being me.”

  “Man, talk sense.”

  “All I am is a name. In here, not even that—I’m a number. But I can lose my name. And I won’t have a number on the other side of that wall.”

  “Yeah? What about your prints? I didn’t get in any kind of trouble until I landed here. But they took my prints, same as they did yours.”

  “There’s only one way they get to use those prints, brother.”

  “Not mine, not yours, not ever,” Vernon Lewis said to Marlon Cain, holding out his fist. The other boy touched that fist with his own, sealing the pact.

  CROSS OPENED his eyes.

  “I don’t need any damn messages from space to tell me what I already know,” he said aloud. “Ace is still here. I don’t know where he is, but I don’t have to. I know he wouldn’t leave without me.” The hackles on the back of the Akita’s neck rose, but the dog made no sound.

  “Someone’s coming,” Princess said. “Sweetie always knows before I do.”

  Soon enough, Buddha proved the truth of Sweetie’s sensory powers.

  “I got the address, boss. But…”

  “Buddha, there’s no time for this. What]”

  “So Long, she’s out there. In the car. Said it would save time if she could call while I was rolling, and I know we’re short on—”

  “Tracker, you got a ride around?”

  “You can use my—”

  “Thanks, Princess, but we might have to carry some stuff out, and your bike doesn’t have a lot of storage,” Cross said, not mentioning that a Pepto-pink Harley with open pipes wouldn’t promote a silent approach…or an unnoticed departure.

  “I’m driving,” Buddha said. “But I have to leave So Long here. That okay?”

  “I’ll keep her company,” Tiger said, as innocent as a felonious schoolgirl.

  “You—”

  “She’s playing, Buddha. Let it go.”

  “Boss, I…”

  “Let it go, or take your woman back home. Just leave us that address.”

  “DAMN! THAT is one fine-looking tower,” Buddha said. His eyes flicked upward, measur
ing. “Twenty-one-B, that has to be top floor.”

  “Yeah. Probably half the floor, too.”

  “Doorman,” Tracker said.

  “No time to scam our way in,” Cross said, pulling a small aerosol can from inside his jacket and tugging his watch cap down into a ski mask. “Buddha, that uniform better fit you.”

  “DOORMAN WON’T wake up for thirty minutes, minimum,” Cross whispered to Tracker. “And he won’t remember anything when he does. You already fuzzed the lobby cameras. Ready?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Cross started up the stairs. If there were any more cameras along the way, they’d record only two shadowy figures, climbing.

  “It is half the floor. But no yellow tape. Now, if Rhino’s code reader works…”

  The door was zebrawood, with a heavy block of cut crystal set into its center. The lock popped silently.

  The two men entered and found themselves facing a solid wall of glass.

  “Divides down the middle,” Tracker said quietly, moving to his left.

  They each scanned carefully, using blue-light LEDs aimed at the floor.

  Cross heard Tracker’s tongue-click signal. Followed it back down the hall and over to the left side of the apartment.

  “It can’t be that easy,” the Indian said, pencil-beaming his light over a dull-silver desk. The light tracked a closed laptop, so color-matched to the desk surface that it visually merged into it. Then to a back panel of the same material, constructed of what looked like pullout drawers without knobs, an oval cut into the top of each serving that purpose.

  “Arrogance” was all Cross said, stepping to one side and pulling the drawers out, one by one, starting at the bottom.

  Tracker followed his lead.

  Most of the drawers were empty.

  “Here!” Cross hissed.

  Tracker pulled open the Velcroed pocket of his field jacket, city-camoed to match the Shark Car’s skin. Cross dumped a single handful of triangulated disks into it.