Total Immunity

by Robert Ward

  No dreams, no sounds, no brother, nothing. Nothing at all.

  The bearded man did the same thing to Mike, and watched as he fell over on his side.

  Then the bearded men checked the two boys’ bonds and, finding them satisfactory, he went back the way he’d come, back into the light of Pier Two at the docks in San Pedro.

  6

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Jack waited at the parking lot of the United International Terminal at LAX with an attractive young Chilean woman who this week was using the name Maria Vasquez. Today she had dyed blond hair, which she wore in a knot at the back of her head. She dressed simply, in a plain blue shift, so as not to call attention to herself, and unless she was looking around for spies or for Karl Steinbach’s people, she mostly kept her head buried in a mystery novel. But right now she was reading Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book that fascinated her and seemed to have everything to do with her current life.

  “You’re sure you’re going to be all right, Maria?” Jack said. She nodded and looked at him with her soulful brown eyes. “I’m fine.” Jack took her hand and felt a surge of affection and admiration for her.

  “Before you go inside, I want you to know that I can still get you into Witness Protection, if you want to reconsider. New name, new face. Whole new life.”

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “Like I’ve told you before, Jack, I know of other people who did that and it didn’t work out well at all. They had to live in places they hated, where they had no family . . . and the jobs they had to take were not anything at all like what they were used to.”

  “True,” Jack said. “The Program’s not perfect. But as long as people have gone along with our rules, we’ve never lost anybody yet. What happens if Karl decides to come after you? You know he has the money and funds to track you down.”

  Maria sighed. “Then I will defend myself, with the help of my friends and family in Chile. They will watch out for me, Jack.”

  Jack felt a twinge of fear for her.

  “Listen, Maria,” Jack said. “Steinbach said it the day we busted him. He has a long reach. He’s got people under contract to hunt you. Now that he knows you helped me set him up, he won’t give up.”

  “I know,” Maria said. “But he doesn’t know my new name. He doesn’t know which country I’m going to, and he doesn’t know my friends, either. Where I am going is a small town in Chile. Controlled and run by my cousin Tito. We know everyone who works there, who drinks in the bar, stays in the hotel. It’s kind of like your Old West, Jack. Anyone new who comes into that town is big news in about five minutes. If they are at all threatening, I will know about it immediately. And the threat will be . . . eliminated.”

  Jack shook his head.

  “I hope so.” He laughed ruefully. “You are such a goddamned stubborn woman.”

  She smiled and patted his hand, as though she was comforting him.

  “Yes, I am, Jack. That’s the one thing Karl never counted on.”

  Jack laughed and nodded in agreement.

  “You’re right,” he said. “He had no idea who he was playing

  with.”

  Suddenly she looked sad. Her beautiful smooth face nearly caved in.

  “When I worked for him as his assistant, I could take everything. His abusive ways, the fact that he hit me once in a while if a shipment was late . . . or if we had trouble with the officials, but when he . . . when he struck out at Hector, that was the end.”

  Jack nodded and remembered the circumstances. Maria Vasquez was a secretary/assistant to Karl Steinbach. She knew whom he paid off to get his blood diamonds. She also knew whom he wanted to deal with, and if she liked you, she could get you right into Karl’s inner circle. Jack had been working undercover for six months, trying to set up deals with Steinbach. But he got nowhere until he managed to get close to Maria Vasquez at the El Tropical Restaurante in Sierra Leone. It was there that he met her, and there that she confided in him that she wanted to strike back at Karl Steinbach for killing her cousin, Hector Rodriguez. She had no proof of the murder. Steinbach was always careful to give himself plausible deniability when he had someone “disappeared.” But Maria knew. Hector had a wild streak, talked too much, and made the mistake of taking one of Karl’s women away from him. That was enough for Karl. One day Hector had been taken into the jungle, tied to a tree, and devoured by wild animals.

  That was how Karl dealt with traitors. It wasn’t enough merely to kill them, you had to make them suffer, serve as an example to any other fools who might want to set themselves against him. He and his kind specialized in revenge.

  Jack had cultivated Maria, listened to her growing hatred of Steinbach, and when the time was right, had turned her, made a deal for her that she wouldn’t be prosecuted for her part in earlier diamond capers.

  It was Maria who had vouched for him, Maria who got him in tight with Karl. And if Karl found her, it would be Maria who would be tied to a tree somewhere, covered with honey, her entrails hanging out . . .

  But it was also her choice. If she didn’t want to go into the Witness Protection Program, there was nothing Jack could do about it.

  Besides, Jack could understand it. She’d been used to a life in South Africa and, before that, Peru and Chile. She wouldn’t be happy living as a saleswoman in some godforsaken Midwestern town or down south in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where the latest members of the Witness Protection Program were planted.

  She was a gambler, not unlike Jack himself, and she liked to live life close to the bone.

  Maybe she’d be fine down there. With a new name, and maybe after a year or so, with a new face (Maria was considering having plastic surgery), she’d be untraceable.

  Jack hoped so, anyway.

  Just then they heard the announcement over the speaker. “United International Flight to Santiago, Chile, will now begin preboarding.”

  Maria Vasquez looked up at Jack and smiled, but there was sadness in her eyes.

  “You know, Jack?” she said. “There was a time when I thought . . . really thought we could have made it together.”

  Jack kissed her on the cheek.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know what you mean. But, in the end, we’re too much alike.”

  “You think?” she said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jack said. “You and me . . . we’re both addicted to life in the fast lane. That doesn’t make for much of a marriage. In fact, that’s the one thing I’m still a little worried about with you.”

  “What?” she said, standing and gathering up her leather handbag.

  “This town you’re going to down there. Zato? I wonder if it’ll be big enough for you?”

  She smiled. Touched his cheek with her hand.

  “That’s where we’re different, Jack. This whole thing with Karl, losing Hector, seeing all the hatred and killing and ugliness in the diamond business . . . that’s cured me. I mean it. Maybe it’s made me old before my time, but I can’t think of anything I’d rather do now than go back there to my small town. Perhaps I’ll marry and have children. That sounds like something real. You know, real friends, real family. People you can always count on. And they can count on you. After the lies and hustle of the diamond-smuggling business, that sounds exciting to me.”

  Jack smiled and hugged Maria tight. “You know that if ever you need me, I’m right here for you.”

  “Yes. I know that.”

  He let her go and looked into her tearful eyes.

  “Anything,” Jack said. “Anything you need. Don’t hesitate to ask. You have my numbers.”

  “I do.” She wiped away the tears from her cheeks. “I am going to miss you, Jack.”

  “Me, too,” he said. “But who knows? Maybe we’ll meet again.”

  “If it’s fated,” Maria said with a sad smile.

  Then she kissed him on the cheek, turned, and got out of his car. He watched her go through the shadows of the parking garage, out into the
light, and her new life in Chile.

  As Jack started his car, he silently wished her well.

  But somehow, he doubted that her future would be a happy one.

  7

  KEVIN WALKED DOWN Venice Boulevard alone. He looked down at the watch Jack had given him for his fourteenth birthday and smiled to himself. It was such a kick to walk away from school. To just go out for lunch, grab a burger at In and Out, and then, instead of walking back to the playground, just keep on strolling away.

  What was weird, he thought, was the way things looked when you were free. Like if you were in a school bus or being driven around by freaking Julie, his dad’s so-called new girlfriend (What the hell was wrong with Mom? He’d never found out an answer to that.) who was always talking to him about spiritual shit . . . “Oh, look at that tree; it’s so spiritual.” What a moron . . . Anyway, if you were in a car with an adult, you just drove by junky old Lincoln Avenue and you didn’t actually look at the cool places that were out there . . . or you kind of looked but you didn’t really see stuff . For example, you might see the Exxon station right here, but you would never notice the guy sleeping on the side of it, with a bag over his head, like some kind of dude waiting to be executed by the chopper . . . And that wouldn’t remind you of the great old AC/DC song, “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”. . . like your brain was exploding with connections right and left when you walked along . . . away from freaking school, and away from freaking Julie who would come to pick him up and like have her mind blown when he wasn’t there . . .

  He felt a little shot of guilt when he thought of that.

  Julie would be worried as hell, probably thinking that he was going to end up on a milk carton or something . . .

  last seen in venice, california. If you see, please call 310-876-1167.

  Yeah, she’d be freaked, but so the fuck what? Dad would be able to handle it, and it wasn’t like he was around much anymore, anyway. Since Mom left for Baltimore (which proved she was nuts — who would leave L.A. for freaking Baltimore?), Dad had been out every night chasing down bad guys; Christ, Charlie was more of a dad than Jack was. Charlie picked him up for practice, and Charlie made him dinner and got him home on time . . . so Julie could tell him some spiritual discovery she’d had today . . . “Oh Kevin, I saw a pod, and I knew all life came from pods.” Which was because she was a freaking pod herself. A pod from Podsville!

  She’d never look at the dead cat in the gutter, which was right in front of him, dead-as-a-doornail orange tabby cat with a slightly crushed head, where some truck had run over it, no doubt . . . nor would she look at the sixty-four-year-old bum with a three-foot beard as gray and gnarly as steel wool, who was skateboarding by, turning up the street toward the boardwalk and the beach, where all the free people lived.

  He could already smell and hear the ocean lapping in on the sand, and he saw a kid break dancing to some rap thing . . . Bow Wow, he thought it was . . . yeah . . . and there was a guy with a bright pink Mohawk, and tats all over his arms, and Kevin wished he could get a tat, but his dad would kill him . . .

  But he might just do it anyway . . . not today but soon . . . ’cause walking away from school made you feel free, and once you had a little bite of freedom, you didn’t really want to go back and see things like a freaking slave.

  Okay, slave was a little melodramatic, but it was practically true. Walking around down here in Venice, watching the kids rocking around the boardwalk, people going in and out of Small World Books, stopping at the Wishing Well Tavern, drinking and eating in the middle of the day, laughing, being alive.

  Not wandering around talking about spirit, whatever the fuck that was, or worrying every minute about terrorists blowing the entire world up (and those dreams he’d had for the past three months of all of L.A. blowing into a billion fragments of blood and human flesh and concrete, and palm trees ripped from the ground, and hurtling like guided missiles through human bodies . . . oh, man, he couldn’t use those dreams anymore, no thank you) . . . that wasn’t the way life should be. It should be like this . . .

  Walking away from dead school to have an adventure on the streets and boardwalks, to find other adventurers like himself who would understand his need to get to the heart of the real world, to fathom everything at once, as he remembered some poet saying . . .

  Or maybe it was Jack Kerouac in On the Road, which he had already read three times, and certain parts, ten or twelve . . .

  That was what he needed, wanted, and . . .

  “Hey, dude, you got any pot?”

  Kevin turned around and saw a kid with blue hair, which looked like it had been chopped off with an ax. He wore camouflage pants, Doc Martens, and a sleeveless black T-shirt, which revealed scrawny, pale white arms.

  “You deaf, man?”

  “No way,” Kevin said. “But no, I ain’t got any.”

  (And he felt silly saying “ain’t,” trying to sound street black, which was so pretentious and dumb, but he kind of wanted to impress the kid, couldn’t help himself . . .)

  “Got any money?” Blue-hair said.

  “A few bucks,” Kevin said.

  “I know where we can get some. Rainey’s place just down on the canal.”

  Kevin had not only never smoked pot, he had never seen it. The very idea of an FBI agent’s son taking drugs was almost inconceivable. Totally taboo, utterly wrong.

  And thus, suddenly, now, this second, irresistible.

  Why should he not experience everything? Wasn’t he a free man now? On his own? Out there at the crossroads.

  He smiled and looked at the blue-haired kid.

  “Kevin. Who are you?”

  “Flyboy,” the kid said. “How much money you got?”

  “Fifteen dollars,” Kevin said. That was a lie. He actually had almost fifty dollars in his pockets, money he had been stealing from Julie’s purse for the last month.

  “That’ll get us a couple of joints,” Flyboy said. “C’mon, man.”

  They headed down the boardwalk past a flame-throwing clown who was scorching the air in front of the Sidewalk Café, and just beyond him on the beach there was a sand sculptor who was making what looked like a giant giraffe out of sand. People gathered around, enjoying the sun.

  “You live down here, K?” Flyboy said.

  “No,” Kevin said. “I crash over in the marina. Live with my big brother.”

  As he said it — invented it — Kevin started to believe it.

  “How about you?”

  “I stay here and there,” Flyboy said. “No home too long. Man, you stay somewhere too long, they might come creeping up on ya.”

  “Yeah,” Kevin said. “That’s how I feel. I might drift on down to Mexico in a couple of months.”

  “Cool,” Flyboy said. “Before you make that little jaunt, let me know. I know people down there.”

  “Cool,” Kevin said. He felt such a wonderful sense of freedom. Talking about living with his brother, cruising on down to Mexico, made him feel that such things were possible. A whole new way to live, a life of freedom, danger, adventures.

  His old man wouldn’t approve, but what did he know?

  All he saw were scumbags, and germs. He didn’t understand people like Flyboy (and himself?) who were free, who didn’t worry about the straight world.

  They wandered up and down the streets, and ended up off Dell, and suddenly there was one of the canals. It was beautiful, but had this strange odor coming off it.

  “Wow, what’s that smell?” Kevin said.

  “You don’t know?” Flyboy said. “That’s the ducks. They land here and shit here . . . gets pretty bad sometimes.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Kevin said. Trying to act like he had known that, but somehow forgotten it. “Hey, is this where we get the pot?”

  “Yep, just around this corner. Guy lives in a guesthouse along here.”

  Flyboy gestured with his left arm that Kevin should go by the small hedge, which turned into an alley. Kevin was eager to do as hi
s new partner said, to prove to him that he wasn’t afraid at all. He was ready . . . soooo ready for a new life.

  He took a step around the hedge and came to a small red house with blue trim. It looked like something he might have read about in a fantasy novel. The Hobbit Visits Venice . . . or something like that.

  He started to make a comment about how quaint the place was (without using the word “quaint,” which would mark him as some kind of fag) . . . when suddenly a blow struck the back of his head.

  For the first time in his life he understood people saying a blow to the head made them see stars.

  Because there they were, stars up above him and stars on his shoulders. It was so strange, he felt like laughing, and would have if his head didn’t throb so badly.

  He wanted to tell Flyboy, though. He wanted to tell him how stars seemed to be whizzing by his nose, his lips. He could almost reach out his hand and catch them . . .

  But then there was another slam on the back of his head, and when he turned, he saw a very different Flyboy . . . a much older guy who was looking at him in what could only be described as a look of repulsion and disgust.

  In the guy’s hand was a steel bar, like a crowbar or something.

  As Kevin fell to his knees, he still wanted to explain to Flyboy that none of this was the way things had to go.

  They were both beggars on the street, weren’t they? Brothers, friends . . . Didn’t Flyboy know that? He should.

  What the hell? Wasn’t it obvious?

  Kevin fell over on his side and felt blood running down his face. It was hot and ran in streams.

  Polite streams, he thought as he fell asleep. The second and third streams of blood seemed to wait until the first stream had worn itself out, rolling down Kevin’s cheeks, over his chin and down into his shirtfront before they started on their short journey.

  “Polite blood,” he thought. The words seemed funny, and he started to giggle a bit.

  Then he was down on the ground, like a dumb animal . . .

  Down but not quite out.

  He could still feel it as the guy rifled his pockets. (Was it Fly- boy? His hands felt too big for Flyboy.)