“But enough about the ladies. Let’s talk about this situation we’re in.”
He stood over the fat old man, who was begging for his life. I couldn’t hear it. Just Hartman’s voice, right in the guy’s face:
“It’s a king-hell shit pickle, ain’t it? But it also ain’t what you think. See, I could be real obvious about all this—just put some bullets in your head and be done with it. A lot of people like you think I’m a simple man. I’m here to tell you it just ain’t so. Men like me demand respect . . . but our needs are also very specific.”
The video windows tilted and swayed just a bit, but when the static cleared, I could see three of Hartman’s shooters holding the old man down in the alley, forcing his arm onto the concrete, fingers scraping along bits of broken glass. I could hear his old bones creak and break as they manhandled him, and his screams cut through the wire like needles. I winced away from the monitors for just one second.
And when I looked again . . .
The meat cleaver was flashing in Hartman’s right hand.
“This is what I need from you, old-timer. A little show of respect. A few fingers and we’ll call it even. Whatdaya say?”
David’s signature. Stainless steel, stained by blood. The old man, still begging in a broken garble I couldn’t quite hear. My father’s voice, sounding the all-clear again. Just about time.
Didn’t feel like watching what happened next.
I snapped the handheld closed, threw the rig over my shoulder by the leather strap and followed my boys out, trying not to think about what was going on in that alley on the other side of town: Hartman’s sick game, all twisted up and dumbed down in the most inhuman gutter. His cruel laughter and his evil redneck drawl, endless and numbing.
Toni told me about it a month later.
She was just a voice on the phone by then.
It was the last time I ever spoke to her.
She said they took all ten fingers right there in the alley, then shot the old man in the head while he begged them not to. Said she was in the hospital with a cracked collarbone for three weeks. And the whole time, Hartman was there, telling her the way things had to be from now on.
Telling her that if she went back to me, I was dead.
That was when she said I had to give her the divorce—or it would be my hands next on the carving block, and then my life. I knew Hartman would do it. He was crazy enough, foul enough. But I wasn’t going to let her go.
I’ll never let you go, Toni.
Never.
6
00000-6
INTO THE FUTURE
When I wake up, I’m slumped on the bed, and the photo is on the floor. I pick it up and fold it again. Stash it under the bed, with my getaway money. Steel myself for the workday ahead. Have to finish the rig. Have to go in hard and strong.
Back to work, boy.
Back to goddamn work.
Before that happens, I open up the laptop on my bedside table. It’s a small deck, compact but powerful. I spend a few minutes running the electronic version of the photo through a series of image manipulation programs, searching for digital anomalies—things that might tip off a forgery. You can always tell when someone messes with something in Photoshop because the pixels will be corrupted in specific ways that only happen when a digital brush or a cloning stamp is used. There’s nothing like that in this file. But that probably doesn’t mean much. Forgers are also experts at covering their tracks. I use a few other programs to enhance the image. I look for details in the room. Other faces. Things that might look familiar. I can’t see anything. I close the laptop and stare off into nowhere.
Back to goddamn work.
• • •
The rig is finished a day and a half later. The main deck is a series of X58 military-spec motherboards, with six core CPUs, each with 18 gigs of memory, all hotwired together in a foldout custom chassis that’s packed with more software and hardware. Two additional flat-screens, three for the blackware, two for the main run itself. Two keyboards, six removable hard drives, one terabyte each. Wacom pad, virtual mouse, plenty of external power—a Thanksgiving turkey with all the trimmings. Bennett reads off the specs with robot precision. She’s fresh from a war, knows her business. A state-of-the-art material girl.
When we’re done with the rig, she breaks out a big black briefcase. Spins it and thumbs the latches.
“This is my specialty,” she says. “Are you familiar with current deep protocol?”
“Some of it.”
Haven’t heard that term used in a while. A little dated, kind of like calling the hackers “cyberpunks.” It means specialized gear not yet on the professional market. Military-issue. Stuff you’re not allowed to talk about, even if you happen to be in the club. Especially if you happen to be in the club. She opens the case and it’s Christmas morning. Gadgets straight from Q-Branch, nestled in black foam.
She reaches in and holds up a thick slab of black metal and plastic with a two-inch touch screen on it. It’s about the size of a smartphone, but has a molded rubber grip, like the handle of a high-end pistol. She clicks on the power and smiles at the technology in her hand.
“This is a Breaker 248 handheld. Cuts through silent alarms. I didn’t get to use them on my last tour, but they would have come in damn handy.”
“It’s a Swiss army knife,” I say, plucking it out of her hand. “You wire straight into an onsite power box and it finds channels off the main power grids. It’s even got a cell uplink that talks to any satellites that might be watching the area. Shuts it all down. You can also wire remote sensors to kill certain circuit boards on command. This one is last year’s model. They replaced it six months ago with the 300.”
“I’m impressed. How did you know all that?”
“Friends in low places.”
She almost laughs. “I guess you really were keeping up on the inside.”
“If I’d had one of these bad boys, I could have escaped from that shithole easy. Their whole security grid was PC based.”
She takes another slab from the case and holds it up for me. “How about one of these?”
It looks like a modern radiation counter with an LED window, square with a Velcro harness so you can wear it on your arm.
“Kimble .5 Infiltrator,” I say. “Scans for anomalies in air density. Little micro-changes that give away a laser beam or a heat sensor.”
“They added the strap-on,” she says, peeling the Velcro.
If she was making a joke, I let it bounce off my head.
I reach for the nightvision goggles, whistling as I turn the array over in my hands. “Now this is something I haven’t seen yet. I had a pair like this, but there’s more bells and whistles here.”
She aims her finger at the switches and toggles on the side. “It has infrared in three spectrums. So those lasers don’t surprise you as much.”
“There’s easier ways to check for lasers.”
“I know. But it never hurts to be fully loaded. The nightvision is Tech Noir.”
Wow.
The marines don’t even have this yet.
I slip the goggle array quickly over my eyes as she turns off the lights, and I hit the switch that bathes the whole room in neon blue. She reappears instantly out of pitch blackness, the UV spectrum redefining her in shocking detail. It’s not like a white ghost in a sea of Day-Glo green, the way most military X-ray specs are. This is high definition. I can see the pores in her skin.
“Mission goddamn Impossible,” I say.
“These are new also,” she says, and her Tech Noir outline reaches for the case again. I pull the goggle array off my head and fumble blindly for the light switch. She gets to it first. When the room looks normal again, she’s opening a metal box, which is full of white plastic strips, about a foot and a half long. Holds one up for me to inspect.
“Look like wrist cuffs,” I say. “Your standard Hefty-bag cinchers.”
“Not these,” she smiles. “They’re lined
with a chemically treated titanium alloy compound. Impossible to escape from.”
“How do you get them off? Usually you cut the plastic with a knife.”
“You don’t cut them. These little buddies are time-release.”
“What?”
“You break the seal when they go on, and the compound begins to mix inside the lining. It’s on a six-hour reaction delay. So when your time is up, the lining gives and the alloy dissolves.”
“Pretty slick, Slick.”
She curls one part of her mouth into something halfway smiley. “That’s an old one, Elroy. Haven’t heard anyone say that since the eighties.”
“Wisdom of the ages, young Alex.”
She lowers her head, placing the cuffs back in the box. “Just don’t call me Alex, okay?”
“Sorry.”
Something bad there, something in her childhood. A woman never tells you twice unless it’s serious business. I find myself wanting to ask her why she hates her name, thinking about Axl again. But I think better of it.
“Okay,” I tell her. “You keep the MI6 gadgets handy for the run inside. You’re up on all the latest wrinkles, so it’ll go smoother that way. But once we’re in the vault, you follow my lead, understand? You jump when I tell you to jump.”
“I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t.”
We run a few final drills. We’ve plotted the attack run carefully, but I make her go over it again, and then one more time after that. You have to know it by feel. Play it on instinct. Like fists on a ladder. She is tense and quick and efficient. She is a haunted creature, like all the rest.
I decide that I like her.
• • •
The truck and the chopper show up the night before we go in—the big flying machine buzzing like a loud metal beast, hovering over the concrete landing platform that looks like a basketball court. The truck just parks.
I watch the beast, thinking about the monster.
• • •
I sit in the living room by myself and keep an eye on the cable and local news channels that night. No more murders in the street. Nothing public anyway. If Hartman’s killed anyone, he’s not gloating about it.
I use the satellite Internet uplink in my rig and try the Fixer through secure channels. Silence. He’s either dead or underground. One way or another, my life’s savings from being a crook could be long gone. Have to rely on the moment for now. Concerned citizen Jenison and her crazy plan. That scares the holy shit out of me.
Two million for a job that could kill us all.
Tomorrow morning we’ll do the final escape drills in the chopper. Then, at midnight, the monster. And after that . . .
I look at the photo of my wife again, the digital version on the machine.
I run it through some pretty sophisticated programs, but come up with nothing new. This ain’t no Blade Runner future yet, where you can see anything in a blurry picture of not much. I try hard and all I get is an enhanced blur. I turn off the machine and force myself not to think about it. Head to the kitchen for something to drink.
• • •
Agent Franklin is standing at the foot of the porch stairs, guarding the perimeter. It’s just now dark, eight thirty. Chilly. I push through the squeaky screen door, walk down and offer him a beer. He politely says no thanks and I just stand there for a few minutes. Crack open the Lone Star I was gonna give him and sip absently at the foam.
“I’m sorry I aimed a gun at you,” I finally say.
He almost smiles, looking off into the distance. “No worries. It was kind of a tense moment.”
“I like to be square with people. Just wanted you to know.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You’re welcome.”
Another long silence before I speak again. I pull a slug off the beer through a mouthful of suds. “So . . . was Washington a friend of yours? Or just another grunt?”
“Little of both, I guess. I’m not exactly broken up about him getting killed, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Why not?”
“I was in Special Forces. Gulf War.”
That explains a lot. Those guys get so jaded. They pull a trigger and nine hundred human beings disintegrate. You don’t get friendly on the front lines like that, it’s the death of you. Just ask Alex Bennett.
“Well,” I say. “I’m sorry he got killed. Seemed like a nice guy.”
“Not really.” And he laughs. Softly.
I can see this guy’s life now. Really damn clearly. Boot camp as a teenager, a couple of tours, discharged into the Texas underworld as a freelancer. Probably in the early nineties. Bennett had it a lot easier. Her hands are softer.
It’s just like I figured: Jenison got all her hired guns out of Soldier of Fortune, or something like that. Has them on constant rotation like mall security. I ask Franklin about it, and he senses my agenda right off, knows I’m trying to figure out who these people really are. Then he surprises me. Pulls out a cigarette and tells me he lives in a house downtown with a few other ex-grunts. One of them is a woman. They pool their money, live however they can. Franklin is leaving the compound when we go in tomorrow. They’re cutting half the people here loose, and he’s got another job lined up that he’s late for. He says it like a guy getting ready to go wash dishes.
“What kind of job?” I let the question hang in the air a few seconds before I realize how pointless it is. Why should he answer? What does he care?
He surprises me again with a jerk of his shoulder, lighting the smoke. “You know Jenny Rose’s Body Shop downtown?”
“Yeah, but I never went there. Don’t like strip clubs.”
“I’m supposed to be the doorman for the next six months.”
“Get out. Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“Doorman at a club can’t pay as well as this.”
“You’d be surprised. I’ve hired out on a lot of private security gigs, and one of them didn’t even pick up my hospital tab when I got shot.”
I have no idea what to say now. The guy who saved my life with a gun the other day is gonna be tossing drunks out the front gate of a titty bar with his bare hands tomorrow. That just seems wrong.
“Well, good luck, man.”
I kill the rest of the beer and turn to leave him, but he stops me with a strange smile. “Hang on a second. I got a question for you.”
“Yeah?”
He drags on the smoke. I notice for the first time that’s it’s a Lucky Strike, unfiltered. Didn’t know they still made unfiltered cigarettes.
“You said something when we first met that I never understood,” he says. “You said our names reminded you of a law office, then you said something about a California roll. What was that all about?”
“You know, Washington and Franklin. Like when you put a hundred dollar bill over a roll of ones so you look rich.”
“They call that a nigger roll, man.”
Ouch.
I give him a weak grin. “My wife called it a California roll. Then again, she was kind of big on sushi. She was probably hungry that day and short on cash.”
That happened a lot back then.
When we were younger.
He almost laughs again. “That’s good. For you, I mean. Washington wouldn’t have liked the other version at all.”
He goes into his jacket pocket and pulls out a card, hands it to me.
The card has his name and a number on it.
He gives me a high nod and says: “Get in touch if you need any legal advice.”
I know that nod. It’s the one they give you in prison, when you earn respect. I memorize the number and forget about it quickly.
That was another trick Axl Gange taught me.
Memorizing and forgetting.
• • •
I go upstairs to my bedroom. Dad is sitting on the tiny single mattress, staring straight into darkness. He has a flask in one hand. I ask him if he’s okay a
nd he doesn’t say a word. So I ask him again.
“Son,” he whispers. “This is an important thing, what we are doing tomorrow. Important for our family.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. This is important.”
I smell the whiskey on his breath. He always scared me when I was a kid, when he did this. That half-wasted fifty-yard zombie stare, the night before a job.
Before I grew up.
“You need to get some sleep, Dad. And don’t drink so much.”
“The medicine is cheap. I’m an old man at the end of his life. You’re still young.”
“I’m into my thirties, Dad.”
He laughs. “Forty is just when you start to live. Try pushing seventy, son. Try waking up every morning with aches you have no idea what to do with. Or not being able to eat a slice of bread because your guts are on strike and it hurts to take a shit.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I guess I just feel old sometimes. Even now.”
“This business makes us feel old. But there’s a lot more living to do.”
I flash on a memory of my mother for a long second.
She has black hair and gray eyes, a lazy chin that droops to her skinny neck, a face filled with resignation to the inevitable—she is beautiful in the way plain women are beautiful. In the way hard women are beautiful. I usually don’t like to think about her for long. It makes me angry.
I stare at my father, my upper lip trembling. “Do you still think about Louise?”
“I think about her every day. If she were still alive, we’d never be in this mess. I might not have gone to prison, and you might have gone to school like a normal kid. But she’s gone and that’s that. We just have to roll with the weirdness.”
I remember looking right into the eyes of the man who killed my mother, in a courthouse, when I was just five years old. He was driving a car drunk. She was crossing the road with a sack of groceries. The guy was let out of prison after serving three years of a life sentence.
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