Black Friday

by James Patterson

  “Yow play game? Yow play game me, Hud-sun?”

  David Hudson’s eyes were riveted to the low-slung game table, trying to gain focus.

  Play a game with Lizard Man?

  The board appeared to be real teak. It was precious wood, exotic and beautiful, incongruous in this sodden armpit of a place.

  Even more striking were the hundreds of polished black and white stones, exquisite game playing pieces. They were circular in shape, convex on each side.

  For a nearly lucid moment, David Hudson remembered a marble collection. Something magical and forgotten from his youth in Kansas. Father’s farm. Collecting solids and cat’s-eyes. Had he actually been a boy in this same lifetime? He couldn’t seem to remember. Die with dignity! Dignity!

  “Play game for your life? Ho?” the Lizard Man asked.

  The game board was divided into vertical and horizontal lines creating hundreds of intersections. There were 180 white stones, 181 black.

  Beside the pile of black stones, the Lizard Man’s hand rested on a bulky Moison-Nazant military revolver. One of his long yellowed fingers relentlessly tapped the table.

  “Yow play. Play game me! Loser die!”

  Captain Hudson continued to stare hard at the game board, at the beautifully gleaming teak table. Focus, he thought Concentrate. Die with dignity.

  He only vaguely understood what was happening. What did this man want from him now? It was some kind of joke, Hudson knew. One more way the Lizard Man had of torturing him.

  The black and white stones seemed to be moving by themselves. Spinning, crawling like insects in his badly blurred, tunneling vision.

  Finally, Hudson spoke up. His voice was surprisingly strong, angry, even defiant when he finally found it.

  “I have never lost at the game of Go,” Captain Hudson said. “You play, asshole!” Dignity!

  Chapter 15

  THE NEW YORK SUBWAY noisily braked at a Mid-town station stop. The platform was bathed in eerie blue.

  A few passengers on the early morning train were absently staring at David Hudson.

  Hudson stared back at the passengers. He peered into their eyes, until most glanced away. The majority of American people were devoid of any basic integrity, any sense of themselves. Civilians tended to disappoint David Hudson again and again.

  More listless passengers struggled onto the subway train at the West 86th Street stop. There were mostly older whites, time-bent men and women, small merchants, ciphers who managed or owned the rip-off clothing stores, the rip-off food markets, in Harlem and Upper Manhattan.

  One of the men boarding at 86th, however, was completely different.

  He appeared to be in his mid-thirties. His black hair was brushed straight back. He wore a tan cashmere overcoat with a paisley scarf, pressed navy dress slacks, super-Wasp duck boots. The impression he gave was of someone boarding a subway for the first time in his life and finding something amusing in the phenomenon of a slum on wheels.

  He sat beside Hudson and immediately snapped open Saturday’s New York Times, idly coughing into his fist. As the subway rumbled forward, he crisply folded the newspaper into quarters.

  “You made me front page. Congratulations.” Laurence Hadford finally offered a guarded, casual whisper.

  His voice was controlled and as smooth as his expensive silk scarf. “I watched the intriguing spectacle on the six o’clock, the seven o’clock, the ten and eleven o’clock news shows. You’ve succeeded in baffling them.”

  “We’ve done reasonably well so far,” Hudson nodded in agreement. “The difficult steps are still ahead, though. The true tests of the plan’s legs, Lieutenant.”

  “You brought me a present, I hope? Christmas present?” As Laurence Hadford slid closer to Hudson on the plastic subway bench, Hudson could smell the man’s citric cologne.

  “Yes. Exactly as we agreed the last time.”

  David Hudson turned his head sideways for the first time. He stared into the blue eyes and persistently mocking half smile of Laurence Hadford. He didn’t like what he saw. Never had. Not now and not back in Viet Nam either, when Hadford had been a smug young officer.

  Laurence Hadford was impassively cool. He showed nothing of his emotions. The well-shaved face might have been a door closed on private rooms.

  Reaching inside his coat, Hudson handed over a thick, overstuffed manila business envelope. The package bore no external marking, nothing to identify it in case there was any problem.

  The envelope disappeared inside the rich softness of cashmere.

  “There’s one small hitch. A tiny problem has come up. The amount here isn’t enough.” Hadford smiled easily. “Not considering what’s happened. What you’ve gone and done now. You’ve made this a very dangerous business arrangement for me. If you’d told me what you actually planned to do—”

  “You wouldn’t have helped us. You would have had too many doubts. You would have been scared shitless.”

  “My friend, I am scared shitless.”

  The subway train buckled slightly, but only seemed to slow minimally as it charged into the 110th Street station.

  “We agreed on a figure before you did any work for us on Wall Street Your fee, half a million dollars, has now been paid in full.” Hudson felt a familiar alarm sounding inside him. “Any information you’ve supplied us, any personal risks you took, were infinitesimal considering your financial gain.”

  Hadford’s perfectly capped white teeth gritted slightly. “Please. Don’t tell me how well I’ve been paid. I know what you’re all about now. You’ve got so much money, you couldn’t possibly know what to do with it. Another half million is meaningless. What’s another million for that matter? Don’t be so uptight.”

  Colonel David Hudson managed to smile. “You know, perhaps you’re right. Under the circumstances—what is another half million?… Especially if you’re willing to do a little more investigation for us.”

  “I suppose for the right price I could be convinced, Colonel.”

  The next station David Hudson noted was 157th Street Between 110th and there, he and Laurence Hadford talked of the next steps to be taken on Wall Street; the kinds of information needed.

  Stenciled numbers announced the train stop on mottled, blue standposts. A sullen black face slowly supped past the spray-painted train windows. The brakes screeched, then let out a loud, gaseous whump.

  The last few passengers besides Hadford and Hudson exited at the 157th Street stop. The subway doors slammed tightly shut. They were completely alone.

  David Hudson felt himself tense. The blood coursed rapidly through his veins. All his senses were suddenly alert, and his perceptions had an astonishing clarity. Everything around him stood out as if illuminated by a harsh arc light.

  “I’m sorry, Hadford.”

  As the train rumbled out of the station, the flashing knife appeared. What made David Hudson’s parlor trick so unexpected was that the blade was so long—six inches at least, the handle another four.

  The sharp blade jabbed hard and disappeared into Had-ford’s underbelly, just below the wall of his rib cage.

  It shredded the cashmere coat, tearing fibrous material and parting soft flesh and clenched muscle with no effort Almost instantly, the long blade reappeared.

  As Laurence Hadford was sliding face up off the subway bench, Hudson relieved him of the weighty envelope. Hadford’s eyes were staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

  Colonel Hudson quietly slipped off at the next stop. He was shaking. His mind was filled with tiny white explosions. It was the first time he had ever harmed a fellow officer.

  Once he was out on Broadway, David Hudson struggled onto a city bus headed south. The Lizard Man screeched at him like a jungle monkey as the bus lurched forward. The Lizard Man screamed so loudly, Hudson had to grit his teeth. The Lizard Man laughed and laughed as David Hudson escaped into the awakening daytime city.

  Dignity!

  Revenge!

  Chapter 16


  A LITTLE MORE than an hour later, Hudson reached the Washington-Jefferson Hotel. He had a room at the far end of a depressingly drab second floor hallway. He’d had this room for almost five weeks, and that was pushing his luck perhaps.

  But the northern Times Square district was perfectly anonymous, and so convenient for the work he still had to do.

  Hudson sat on the edge of his hotel room bed for a moment. His thoughts turned idly back to Laurence Hadford, but he knew he couldn’t allow himself to dwell on the man.

  He picked up the telephone, and dialed a local number in Manhattan.

  “Hello, this is Vintage.”

  “Yes. This is David My number is 323.” Hudson spoke in his usual soft but firm voice. “I can tell you exactly the kind of escort I’m looking for. She’s between five foot six and five foot ten. She’s between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six. I’ll be paying cash.”

  Hudson waited, then he received a time, and a name for his “date.” “In thirty minutes at 343 West Fifty-first. Thank you. I’ll be expecting … Billie.”

  As she walked down the dimly lit second floor hallway Billie shut off her Vintage beeper. It would be tacky to get an electronic message while she was in the middle of a session.

  The Washington-Jefferson, though? She shivered involuntarily.

  Billie tapped on the hotel room door. The door swung open almost immediately—and she found herself surprised. He was good-looking, actually. His smile was open and pleasant. He was tall, slender, and… uh-oh.

  She saw the catch! The left sleeve of his mufti shirt flopped open…

  Billie couldn’t feel too sorry for the man in the hotel doorway, though. There was nothing about him that inspired pity. He was certainly attractive, and his disability didn’t seem to trouble him because he was not at all self-conscious.

  “Hi. I’m Billie.” She smiled courteously. “You’re David?”

  Colonel Hudson stared at her for a few seconds before answering. Her hair was rich, ash blond with thick bouncy curls. She was long-legged and thin. Her breasts were firm under a silk blouse. She wore a flattering straight skirt, dark stockings, and polished high heels.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally managed a smile. “I was staring, wasn’t I? Come in. I didn’t expect so beautiful a girl.”

  Billie smiled—as if she’d never heard any of this before. The hint of a blush rose along her cheekbones. The color sloped down her neck to the hollow of her throat.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. It was Billie what? Your last name?”

  “Just Billie,” she smiled again.

  Hudson gestured around his Spartan hotel room. “I know, it isn’t exactly the Plaza.”

  For some reason, Billie found herself slowly relaxing with this one. He was easy to be with, and he sounded halfway intelligent.

  Billie sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Very nonchalantly, she unfastened the top button of her blouse, then the next.

  “Sit down by me.

  Hudson did, and she lightly kissed his cheek. Her perfume drifted luxuriously up into his face.

  “You said I was beautiful. I’d like to repay the compliment—you’re very handsome.”

  Billie lightly slid her hands inside his shirt. She unbuttoned the middle two buttons.

  Her touch was light and warm. Suddenly something extraordinary happened. Something unusual: Hudson began to feel.

  A warning went off deep inside. He ignored it. But something was wrong.

  She was so natural, so relaxed with him.

  The lightest touch of fingers.

  She was massaging him as she undressed.

  The silk blouse delicately shushed off. Then the straight black skirt.

  She stood over him—sheer dark stockings, garters, high heels.

  There was a glistening droplet on her golden patch of hair.

  He felt as if he were sinking through the mattress.

  The inner warning sounded again. He ignored it.

  He stopped and watched her breathe—so unexpectedly beautiful—and she smiled when she realized what he was doing.

  “You are beautiful.”

  Her breasts were swelling. Hudson gently touched them, exploring their roundness, exploring each pink aureole.

  She slid on top of him, and her blond hair glowed in the light from the overhead lamp. She rocked back and forth on top, a peaceful, swaying motion. Everything seemed so natural. The warning signals quieted, like a siren fading in the distance.

  He was breathing faster and faster.

  Her eyes shut, then opened, shut again.

  Faster and faster, faster and faster.

  He played with her as she gently rocked on top of him like a cresting sea wave. He manipulated her with his hand as she moved to her own rhythm.

  Then her body stiffened and she began to fall forward against his chest. She arched dramatically backward, and jerked forward again. It was as if currents of electricity were passing through her body.

  He was almost certain…

  She was coming, her body shuddering.

  This expensive escort from Vintage.

  This beautiful prostitute was having an orgasm with him.

  Billie. Just Billie.

  Warning signals were going off like police sirens in his head. David Hudson listened this time. He didn’t come. He never did.

  Chapter 17

  ARCH CARROLL WAS flying on People Express to Miami that morning. It wasn’t the most enjoyable experience he’d ever had.

  The airline service crew was young and inexperienced. They giggled during the seat belt and air bag pep talk. They sold cellophane-wrapped danishes in the aisle for a dollar.

  The first possible break in the Green Band mystery had come quickly. Almost too quickly, Carroll thought cautiously. He’d spotted the clue himself the night before. Immediately, he was on the first flight to Florida to check it out.

  He opened his eyes and stared the length of the aisle at two stewardesses talking in conspiratorial whispers. Then, about halfway through the two-hour-and-forty-minute flight, he got up wearily and trudged to the bathroom.

  Everyone on the early bird flight looked thoroughly depressed and groggy, as if they’d risen way too early and their constitutions hadn’t had time to quite catch up. Several business people had early edition newspapers with stark Wall Street bombing headlines.

  Inside the bathroom, he cupped water in his hands and splashed it over his eyes. He took a tiny red plastic case out of his pants pocket.

  When Nora had been sick, she’d used this container to hold her day’s supply of Valium and Dilantin, and a few other prescriptions to help control seizures. Carroll slugged down a small yellow pill, a light upper to keep him alive.

  He would have preferred a drink. An eye-opener Irish whiskey. Double Bloody Mary. But he’d promised Walter Trentkamp.

  Carroll continued to stare at himself in the clouded airplane mirror. He thought about Green Band, as he examined the puffed, purplish bruises sagging under each eye. When it came to terrorists and their various specialties, Carroll had a long, reliable memory. During his first year with the DIA, all he’d done was to catalogue terrorist activities. He’d learned his early lessons well.

  The hard evidence so far suggested … what? Maybe Soviet-inspired GRU activity? Why, though? Qadaffi? A very long shot there. The Wall Street plan showed too much patience for the usual Third World types.

  Cubans? No. Provos? Not likely. Crazed American revolutionaries? Doubtful.

  Who then? Most of all—why ?

  And how did the latest sketchy report from the Palm Beach Police Department fit? … A South Florida drug dealer had been talking about the Wall Street attack the day before it happened? The local hood had even dropped the unannounced code name—Green Band!

  How would a South Florida drug dealer know anything about Green Band? What possible connection could there be?

  Like everything so far, it didn’t make much sense yet. It
didn’t seem to lead anywhere Arch Carroll particularly wanted to go. Certainly, he didn’t want to be in southern Florida at this hour of the morning.

  He rubbed his eyes, splashed more cold water on his face and looked back at his reflection. Death warmed over, he thought. It was like one of the photographs on wanted posters inside Post’ Office buildings, the kind that seem always to have been taken in dim lighting.

  Carroll turned away from the mirror. It would soon be time to come down in the fantasy land of orange juice, Disney World, multimillionaire dope dealers, and hopefully Green Band.

  Chapter 18

  THE LOCAL FBI CHIEF, Clark Sommers, accompanied by an assistant, was there to meet Carroll at the arrival gate. As usual, Miami International Airport was experiencing an electrical brownout.

  “Mr. Carroll, I’m Clark Sommers of the Bureau. This is my associate, Mr. Lewis Sitts.”

  Carroll nodded. His head ached from the flight and the effects of the upper he’d swallowed, which was just kicking in now, buzzing through his bloodstream.

  “Walk and talk?” Sommers suggested. “We’ve got an awful lot of ground to cover this morning.”

  “Yeah, sure. Tell me something, though. Every time I come through this airport the lights are half out Am I just imagining that?”

  “I know what you mean. It can seem that way. Dope dealers claim the bright lights hurt their eyes.” Clark Sommers flashed a very low key, cynical smile. He was definitely FBI all the way.

  Sommers’ assistant, Mr. Sitts, was wearing a lightweight blue sweater, tan golfing slacks and a matching Banlon shirt. The only thing missing were some espadrilles. Probably getting a promotional fee from Jantzen, Carroll thought. He tried to picture himself as a successful Florida police officer, but he couldn’t make the right visual or emotional connection.

  As they walked down the corridor, Carroll glanced at the cheery posters depicting surf and sun. They seemed to assault him personally. The sea was a shade too blue, the sun a touch too garish, the people having fun in the photographs a little too all-American beautiful for Carroll’s taste. He yearned for New York, where at least there was a sense of reality to the gray, wintry half-tones of the familiar streets.