They make me stock little Hello Kitty trinkets and action figures on creaky shelves for eight hours with only a thirty-minute break for lunch.
I spend that time on the pay phone outside, talking to the Fixer.
I don’t know his name, he’s a go-between. Talks to my lawyer for me. He’s been my buffer between the real world and the world of thieves for almost ten years. My father trusted him with his life and so do I, because it’s not just bad business for guys like this to sell out the people they protect—it’s suicide. That’s why you never know their real names. That’s why it’s always business and no small talk. There are friends and there are enemies and there are phantoms who walk in your place, selling the illusion that you actually exist. They buy your houses. They pay your taxes. They make sure there are no photographs of you on the Internet. The phantoms know the score, and they walk real soft, but they don’t do it for free. Good thing I happen to be a little rich.
I tell him I need a few things arranged by tomorrow morning. Money things. Cash in hand and the key to my safe deposit box. The gear I asked for last week. I’m about to take one hell of a risk and here’s the plan. He tells me sure, man, just call up anytime and make my life a living hell. We talk price and he calms down. We work it all out. All the leads are laid carefully from end to end.
Tomorrow morning, my gear. My money. On the grid again.
Back to the store and it’s all a blur. Everyone ignores me. No one makes eye contact. I’m invisible. I’m just going through the motions with my hands, pretending to be something I am not. They have no idea who I really am.
Perky little Sunshine tells me what a great job I’ve done when my shift is over at five. I should expect a raise soon. Awesome. I’ll be able to buy a car with the extra fifty cents.
She shakes my hand and sends me out with a big grin, feeling good about her contribution to the community. I leave the store through a glass doorway with silly bell-chimes on it that look like Mickey Mouse, and the black Lexus is on the curb, waiting to take me back to the halfway house.
We ride in silence.
Inside, I’m screaming.
And slowly . . . the rage solidifies into a stream of thought.
Focuses like a laser.
The plot begins to become visible again.
Two days to do it.
The prize, just beyond my reach.
3
00000-3
THE GETAWAY
The sun sneaks up and blinds me through the open window of the bunk room. I pull on jeans and a plain black T-shirt my father bought for me, and I wash my face and look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I ask myself if I know what I’m doing.
A voice comes back and tells me full ahead, no fear.
They serve us a breakfast of greasy bacon, eggs and home fries, and then we sit in a little room for a few minutes and “open up” to an underpaid social worker in a clean pink shirt who looks like he has a lot more problems than we do. He gives us a “worksheet” that has neat rows of way-too-general yes and no questions printed on it, which we have to fill out while we eat. Do I feel I can be of use to society? Am I feeling productive today? Is there something I would like to talk about with a friend or a relative? It’s a circle jerk that makes my stomach hurt. Maybe it’s just the bad food.
The rage, under control now, just enough.
So I can navigate.
Time to run like hell.
• • •
The law partners drop me off at Toy Jam and Franklin tells me to play nice at school. Guess he’s trying to be funny. Washington just grunts. Gives me a look of tired contempt I’ve seen many times before. Franklin just looks bored. I can tell they both had a long drive from the safe house, wherever the hell it is.
Perky Sunshine is happy I’m early. They got a new shipment of Godzilla toys this morning and I’ll be pricing them all day because they don’t have a point-of-purchase system in this ancient place. You have to tack little stickers on each toy card with a pricing gun that jams every fifth click. I’m carrying a kit bag over my shoulder which is weighed down with a Bible from the halfway house. Nobody notices that I wear it all morning. Nobody even makes eye contact with me in this place, not even Sunshine. Why should any of them care?
Everyone’s the hero of their own life.
An hour into my shift, I make an announcement that I need to use the bathroom, head right out the back door and into a narrow alley I cased yesterday that runs along the side of the place. I find my package in an empty garbage can next to the Dumpster.
The garbage can that wasn’t here a half hour ago.
I fill the kit bag, leave the Bible. Don’t have time to count the cash—it’s all in hundreds, should be twenty thousand, walking-around money. A small bundle. The key to my safe deposit box is in a little purple stationery envelope. I tear it open. The key has the number 344 stamped on it. Good, all good. I shove the key in my pocket, along with my new cell phone. It’s unregistered, hotter than the sun. The laptop is state-of-the-art. The Fixer had my man Jett Williams put together the kit for me. Me and Jett used to rip off ATMs together, back when you could still get away with cowboy moves like that. His handle in the hacker groups is Remo now—some guys even call him the Destroyer. He threw in a manual lockpick set, for old time’s sake. Never can tell when you’ll need to get past a real hunk of steel and plastic in our line of work.
I’m set.
At lunch break, I hit a trendy café next door that has wireless. It’s a free connection, wide open, but I have custom blackware that makes me invisible. The Destroyer is one of the best there is—way better than I am.
But I do okay.
Shields up, full-ahead maximum warp.
Over a secure IM, the Fixer tells me the rest of the money is safe. He’s good, too. That’s why he makes the big bucks. His house is one of twenty-three I sneak into through a wire in the next fifteen minutes.
My fingers move fast.
It was always this easy.
I find some of what I need, talk to a few of the right people. David Hartman’s lower on the radar than ever these days. My plot to circle his money and take him out where he lives and breathes is outdated. But I don’t make any inquiries about Hartman—not directly. I peck around the edges. I ask about Toni. Don’t have time to look for very long, either.
But I will.
Soon.
• • •
I’m back clicking the price gun on Godzilla one minute late from break. I see perky Sunshine write something on her clipboard.
She gives me a funny look I can’t read.
My shift is over quickly and it’s time for her to shake my hand again. She’s not so perky anymore. Damn.
I notice the Lexus waiting outside through the open glass door. Franklin isn’t in the car—he was before. Washington steps out and grins. Sunshine asks me if he’s a friend of mine and I tell her he’s a state employee, my ride back to the halfway house, no big deal.
She gives me the look again.
Writes on the clipboard again.
She steps outside with me and says hello to Washington, smiling, feeling important. She asks him what his name is. Writes it down. Damn.
And that’s when the world fills with thunder.
• • •
I see the two unmarked cars almost before they screech up to us, fast steel blurs ripping up the pavement and stopping hard. Doors fly open, Uzis spit rapid fire, one from each car, 9-millimeter semi-auto, aiming carefully at their first targets, which are me and the big guy. He goes for his gun as the shots chew his face off and I hit the pavement behind him with bullets bouncing all over hell and back, shattering the front windows of the toy store. I don’t think I get shot, but who can tell at times like these? A light spray of red salt water sprinkles me from somewhere. The windows in the Lexus pop like fireworks. I’m behind the door of the car and 9-mils won’t get through to me, but that won’t last long. The glass entrance to Toy Jam explodes behind me. I hear screa
ms, then more screams. Sunshine is dead on the pavement, still holding her clipboard. The bullets went through her and killed the glass. Agent Washington has his gun out, dead on his feet, firing as he wobbles sideways, then lands right in front of me. I push him halfway up on his side, using his body as a shield as I pry the pistol from his grip. The intersection in front of the store is crazy now, campus kids and moms shrieking in the crosswalk like it’s the end of the world, al-Qaeda style. A big black truck runs the red light and slams into someone, then skids straight into the two cars opening up on me, then smashes into the Lexus. I roll on the sidewalk just as it all comes thundering over the curb. A sound like metal monsters killing each other in broad daylight. The Lexus is persuaded to destroy the entire front of the store, with the two other cars and the truck right behind it. I think they run over Sunshine, too. That’s what it seems like, but I can’t tell for sure because I’m on my feet and running like hell away from the whole mess, clutching the kit bag for dear life. My gear rattles at my side, my lungs blowing bombs. Turns out I’m not shot. I’d be coughing up blood on the pavement if one of those guys had tagged me. And the gunfire has stopped. They’re all getting mashed back there instead—an epic pile-up exploding everybody’s ordinary world in a terrible series of deep-bass thunder hits. Another skidding metal blur zings out around the street corner ahead of me just as I duck for the narrow alley alongside the store. My lungs do double duty, my feet slapping pavement hard. More screeching tires, right behind me.
Shit goddamn . . .
A bullet eats concrete and bounces past my head. Car number three blasts down the alley, straight at me, the gunman at the wheel, the shotgun seat next to him empty. No room to roll out of the way. It’s shoot or die and I still have Washington’s 9-mil. I sight down in an instant, focusing my next breath into the first shot, just like my father taught me to, and I open up on the windshield. Not aiming at anything special, just trying to scare the son of a bitch. The driver ducks fast under the dash and I miss him with all three shots, punching a spiderweb in the glass instead.
The car keeps coming right at me, filling the entire alley.
I see it in slow motion.
I find my center.
The ground leaves my feet.
I land on the hood and keep on running just before impact, the soles of my shoes scrunching in the glass spiderweb, the roof of the car buckling like a little kid’s lunch box . . . and then I’m back on the ground as I clear the tailpipe, but it’s a bad landing.
Too bad this isn’t a James Cameron movie.
My ankle does the twist all by itself and my legs fly out from under me.
My ass hits the ground, still in slo-mo.
The car keeps on moving behind me.
The crash back there brings me to real time again with a jolt. My center is gone. I’m doomed instead. I can hear shooting and screaming inside the store now.
How did I bring this on these poor people?
What the hell is happening?
The car is smashed into the Dumpster near the back entrance to the store and wedged badly in the alley. I can see the gunman inside as he sits up in the wreck and starts screaming in my direction. Think he’s pinned in there. Good.
A thick black man wearing a sports jacket with tweed patches on the elbows and a turtleneck sweater half stumbles through the back door, slapping a new clip in the handle of his Uzi. I want to ask him how many people he just shot inside the store, but I aim the gun at him instead. I put my finger on the trigger, ready to kill a man.
It doesn’t happen.
This close, looking at him like this . . . my finger won’t move.
I can’t do it.
I can’t kill him.
He smiles at me, understanding, sensing my paralysis. Three of his teeth are missing, his face covered in razor slashes from broken glass. He spits blood and staggers over, until just ten feet separate us. Knows better than to get any closer. Sights down, grinning toothlessly, like a pissed-off jack-o’-lantern. And he says this:
“David Hartman says hello . . . and good-bye.”
His gun has a hair trigger.
When his finger hits it, I hear an explosion and the guy falls down dead.
• • •
Franklin steps through the back door and nudges the turtleneck guy with his foot, making sure he’s not a zombie. He sees the screaming gunman in the car thirty feet away and puts one round through the back windshield. A red paint bomb goes off inside there, and the screaming stops. Franklin doesn’t flinch.
“Sorry I’m late, kid.”
The shot echoes into forever, smoke rising from the business hole of his weapon, which is bad business indeed: a .375 Korth revolver, 38 caliber, the kind of gun that giants with big hands use when they wanna blow holes in nouns.
That’s people, places and things.
He covers the alley, putting his other hand under my shoulder to help me up.
“We gotta move. Now.”
It’s been a long time since I was in a war zone like this—since I ran with people who killed other people so casually. Thank God for small favors. He starts to run and I follow him. The ankle throbs, but it’s not broken. A genuine miracle, that. We move fast, climb the wreck of the car, get to the other end of the alley. I shove the 9-mil in my waistband. No more shots back there, but I can hear the first sirens in the distance.
“We need a car,” he tells me, the two of us scoping the next street over, which is almost empty. We cross to the alley behind Tom’s Tabooley. There’s a 1995 Honda Accord parked near the dishwashers’ entrance. It’s unlocked, no alarm. I use my kit bag and we’re on wheels in less than twenty seconds. The older the ignition switch, the easier it is. You can start a car like this with a screwdriver. Someone screams at us, running out of the back of the restaurant. I gun the motor and leave him quick, turning left onto the next street, snaking through a series of neighborhood back roads towards South Lamar, away from the whole circus.
Feels strange driving a car. Haven’t done it in years.
“I have to bring you in,” Franklin says, putting his pistol away, scanning the road, his Deep South voice amazingly calm. “We have to get back to our people. There’s gonna be cops all over that block inside of five minutes.”
“I’m working on it, man. Let’s get some distance, then we’ll talk about destination.”
“You’re going the wrong way.”
“Look, we’re alive, right? Anyway, where were you when those assholes started using me for target practice?”
“Getting coffee across the street. I didn’t see what happened but I heard the shooting. The guy who survived the truck crash started wasting people inside the store.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“I went after him, thought you might be in there. That guy was an animal. Shooting women and children.”
“Christ . . .”
I take the MoPac Expressway and we cruise north, ten miles across the city, past civilization and into the lake area. The radio’s already talking about the hit. Panic and confusion. Some of them think it really is a terrorist attack. Choppers are hovering downtown. I pull over in the gravel near an old filling station, leave the motor running. The sun is starting to go down. I have no idea what to do.
“We need to ditch this car,” I tell him.
“You need to let me drive. I have to get us back to—”
I remember Washington’s 9-mil in my waistband, pull it out and thumb the hammer right between Franklin’s eyes. “I don’t think I trust you.”
“Take that gun out of my face right now, kid.”
“Then start talking. I wanna know what the hell’s going on here.”
“I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going on. Someone just tried to make you dead and I saved your life. Now, if you want to stay alive, I suggest you let me drive.”
I keep the gun aimed at him while he stares me down. We stay that way for a few seconds. I try to calm myself. In a long moment of stupi
d incredulity I flash on the automatic nature of the actions I’ve been taking, and realize I don’t even know who manufactured the gun I’m holding in my hand. It’s heavy and compact, black and warm in my grip. Looks like it could be a Taurus or a Springfield. The serial numbers are sanded off and so is the brand name. I shake my head, checking reality, and Franklin scowls down the barrel.
The cell phone in my pocket rings.
I fish it out, not lowering the pistol.
UNKNOWN CALLER.
It could only be the Fixer on this line.
It isn’t.
It’s only the man who destroyed my life.
“Hey, buddy-boy, are we having fun yet?”
I don’t say anything. He laughs at me.
His voice is like a southern-fried pig who eats human flesh.
“I heard you got an early release. I also heard you got a new phone number. Unlisted. Well done. I’ll be sure to tell our mutual friend Mister Remo Williams that you’re all kinds of grateful. And nice job, running from my boys, by the way. One hell of a professional getaway.”
I can’t believe this. Jett sold me up the river. Or maybe they just beat my name out of him. Either way, I’m dead in the water.
About a million weird emotions trainwreck inside me, all those plunging wet feelings you get when the business comes down bad, when the whole world turns against you. But all I can think to say to him is this:
“You sick maniac.”
He laughs again. “Now let’s not get nasty, old boy. I don’t think you want me really-and-truly angry with you right about now.”
“Those people back there . . . they were nothing to you.”
“Fuck those people. This is just a warning, boy. I knew those morons would miss and I didn’t really care. Not this time. But from now on, anywhere you go, I’ll know where that is. And every day you’re on the street, someone is going to die. Maybe someone close to you. But mark my words: we’re covering all the bases this time and the sky is falling. Think about that while you’re running from me. Think about that really, really hard.”
Resurrection Express Page 4
