“Because we got no choice anyway.”
“That’s how I see it. You?”
“Yeah. He’s crazy enough to try and hire the Motley Twins, he keeps on trying, he’s gonna find someone crazy enough to take the job.”
“So? Only place he knows to come is the club. He shows up, we just—”
“Wait! Hold up, brother. Your idea, it’s actually not a bad one. Not at all.”
“I thought you said—”
“Money’s money, right? So, if that bottom feeder has some, why shouldn’t we get it?”
JEAN-BAPTISTE DRESSED carefully, checking his reflection in the three-panel mirror he’d told Ronni she needed to have. “You got to be able to see what they gonna see, baby. Always keep your edge.”
Oh, he looked fine. Not flashy, not like some pimp on the prowl, more like a successful businessman out for a little fun.
And he was every bit of that. All that.
Jean-Baptiste pulled his custom ride inside the chain-link fence surrounding the Double-X. As he knew from his previous visit, the gate would swing open automatically as a car approached.
He braked to a stop just past the front entrance. The Maori known as K-1 to distinguish him from his look-alike cousin, K-2, moved as slowly as a man slogging through quicksand, but he somehow managed to block the car from proceeding any farther.
“Valet parking only, sir.”
If the man at the door recognized J.B., he gave no sign. J.B. palmed him a fifty, said, “A single, okay?”
In unspoken acknowledgement of the driver’s bribe-request to park the Lexus where it would be in no danger of being dinged, the doorman pointed to his right. J.B. walked toward one of the few unoccupied single tables in the place. But before he reached his destination, he felt a … presence of some kind behind him, herding him toward a larger table, using the air compressed between them as a push bar.
Some dark figure pulled out a chair, and J.B. found himself seated across from a man with unremarkable features. On his right, a real-life Indian. Like an Apache or something. On his left, a pudgy man with dark hair and darker eyes.
An instinct he trusted told him not to look around. He watched as the man facing him opened his left hand. A small flame leaped from that hand to the cigarette in his right. As he lit the smoke, J.B. noted the bull’s-eye tattoo on the back of the man’s hand.
In a voice as unremarkable as his facial features, the man said, “She’ll be coming on soon. Working the pole first. The lighting in here—I can see her, she can’t see me. That’s the way we set it up.”
“I don’t know—”
“Don’t be stupid,” the man said. “You’re here for Taylor. She cleaned you out. Told every girl in the place a couple of nights ago. So you need to do something to keep your face. And you need to come here to do it.”
“Bitches run their mouths, so what?”
“So this: When she finishes her set, she goes back to the dressing room. For the right price, she never gets there. Never comes back.”
“What about my stuff?”
“It’s in a storage unit. You got the coin, you get the key.”
“How do I know this is all legit?”
“Two reasons: One, you tried to hire the Motley Twins, but they know better than to touch anyone who works here. Two, you come back here tomorrow night, that girl won’t be here. You have my personal guarantee—you are never going to see Taylor on that stage again.”
“What’s that’s supposed to mean, your ‘guarantee’?”
“Think about it for a second. The Motley Twins turned you down, am I right? Everyone knows those two psychos would hit the Pope on St. Patrick’s Day if they got paid. So I figure they probably said something about Red 71.”
“Yeah …”
“And you didn’t have a clue. Not your line of work. When you want something done, you pay people to do it for you, whether it’s shining your shoes or sending a message.”
“Now, that’s true.”
“Well, what else are we talking about here? You got a gun on you?”
“No, man. I don’t mess with—”
“All right. You can rent one from us. Cost you five bills. You take the pistol, walk on back, shoot the bitch in the head, walk back out here, hand over the piece, and keep on walking.”
“In front of all those—?”
“Why not? If anything, it’ll just make you look even bigger. Nobody’s going to talk. Nobody wants to be a witness. We’ll throw in the body disposal, no charge.”
Jean-Baptiste was tempted. But, this time, what he’d been taught overcame his ego.
“How much for me to walk out now?”
“Still five. Only five large. I know you paid more than that just for the suit you’re wearing. So …?”
LESS THAN an hour passed.
“Thirty-five and change!” Buddha gloated. “Didn’t I say this was a beautiful idea?”
“He had that much left?”
“About ten on him, and twenty-five in a hideaway behind the glove box.”
“I guess you never know,” Cross said, his tone indicating that at least one person did. “Go back and find Arabella, you mind?”
“WHAT’S UP?” Arabella asked Cross, who was seated in his usual triangle spot.
“Your new girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend.”
“That boy’s nothing.”
“His money’s just as good as anyone else’s.”
“Meaning …?”
“Meaning he’s putting out a contract on Taylor. Ten for a kill, double that for a splatter.”
“A contract with who?”
“With the first person to snatch the offer.”
“So you’re saying …?”
“You know what I’m saying, Arabella. You think wearing that little schoolgirl outfit is going to stun me blind? You’ve got an angel’s face, and a scheming heart. The way you played this, Taylor’s got to be living with you. No way she ever had a good experience with any man, so …”
“Who said that about me? Some dyke at Orchid Blue? Maybe your little pal, that crazy Tiger?”
“What’s it matter? True is true. And something else is true, too. Taylor’s apartment was cleaned out. Wall to wall. Not just her stuff—his, too. All sitting in some big storage unit.”
“So?” Arabella pouted.
“So his stuff, nobody’s gone through it. And there’s money in there, somewhere.”
“And you want what?”
“Stop playing, Arabella. I look like a mark to you? You think I don’t already know where the storage unit is? Whose men did that work, anyway?”
“So you could just go and take it, that’s what you’re telling me?”
“No. I’m giving you another chance to come to her rescue. Figure an easy ten to take him out. Maybe twice that, depending. You know he was here, earlier. What do you think he was here for, a lap dance?”
“He wanted to hire your people?”
“Yep.”
“Oh.”
“You just tell Taylor the truth. Believe it or not, that actually works, sometimes. There’s only one way out for her now. We take the unit. You never go back there. The rent’s paid out ninety days. You just let it go. The contents, that’s a gamble. But I’ll gamble on him having something worthwhile stashed there. And he’ll never be a problem for Taylor, never again.”
“You’re going to—”
“That’s enough. You’re going back there and telling Taylor you just saved her ass again. For that, she should be letting you play with it a little.”
“That’s cold, Cross. Even for you.”
“You ever hear anyone say, ‘Okay, I’m going to give you the warm, soft facts,’ Arabella?”
“BOSS, THOSE vines are fine. We could get an easy—”
“Trip to the Walls,” Cross finished the sentence. “Guy like that, he was flash. Probably got monograms on everything, even places you can’t see. Cash, sure. Jewelry that can be busted up, yeah, we can do t
hat. But the clothes, they get razored—he could have cash sewn inside—and then they go into the fire.”
“This is real nice,” Princess said, holding up a lilac silk shirt with deep-purple collar and cuffs. “Can I have it?”
“Princess …” Rhino began, but Cross cut him off, saying, “Tell you what, Princess. If it fits, you can keep it, okay?”
“Sure!” said the hyper-muscled man with the heart of a child. A beast who always wanted to make friends.
The attempt was futile. Princess couldn’t even get one of his anaconda arms through a sleeve. Even though he persisted—maybe it could be a short-sleeved shirt?—trying to close the front of what was left turned it to tatters.
“That’s not fair!”
Rhino’s turn: “Princess, you know well enough that one size never fits everyone.”
“But it’s so pretty. Maybe a … scarf or something?”
“There’s money in here, Princess,” Cross said. “So you start ripping it all apart, okay? The first piece of money you turn up, you can go out and buy yourself a whole new outfit, how’s that?”
“See?” the armor-plated child told the one man who dwarfed his size. “Cross always figures out something.”
“I know,” Rhino said, barely suppressing the sigh of resignation that hovered near his lips whenever Princess turned intractable.
“HE HAD a fine little piece in that car,” Buddha said to Cross and Ace, as the three men stood outside the storage unit. “Kind of old-school, probably put together maybe thirty years ago, but the workmanship was all top-drawer. The whole thing was built for quiet. Just a Beretta nine, but it was cut down some, and the whole barrel was baffled. The magazine was all standard stuff, but if you took some of the powder out, and reworked the bullet tips, all you’d need would be to get close before you cut loose. Nobody’d hear a sound.”
“What, now you want to keep some of his stuff, too?” Ace half-laughed.
“Just saying.”
“Uh-huh,” Cross muttered, lighting a smoke.
“I mean, you wouldn’t think a guy like him would carry a piece like that.”
“So what?”
“So … maybe he got it from somebody who knows what he’s doing. And knows who he sells his stuff to.”
“And you think—what?—this gunsmith stays in touch with his clients, checks out how good his stuff is working?”
“Come on, brother. I was just … curious, like. There’s all kinds of losers dealing hardware, but not many who can custom-build. Guy like that, he probably knows who we are.”
“I thought we were real-estate investors.”
“About that, was I right or was I right? I told you this job was gonna be pure money! If there’s one thing So Long knows—”
“Yeah. You got rid of the car?”
“And him. The ride got the crusher; then it was torched into slices, and each slice got recrushed along with the other two. The punk himself, he got the acid bath, and then the grinder.”
“That’s good. Nothing like bone meal for fertilizer.”
“Fertilizer? Boss, sometimes you—”
“Princess loves flowers. Planting things. We’re going to turn those houses around, can’t hurt to have them look nice. Anyway, recycling, that’s the hot thing now, right?”
IT WAS still dark when the truck pulled out. Rhino used a bleach sprayer on the walls and floor of the storage unit, working backward, a gas mask protecting his face and eyes.
“There’s still the other one,” Cross told Buddha, speaking from the back seat of the Shark Car. Princess rode up front, the irony of calling “Shotgun!” lost on him.
“The girl Tracker found?”
“Yeah. Thing is, this guy wasn’t working a street-girl game. He was a ‘player,’ not a pimp. The ‘boyfriend,’ right? So this other girl, she wouldn’t know about Taylor.”
“So? What difference, then?”
“Remember how the pistol surprised you, Buddha? I think this boy was full of surprises. Probably has the same kind of stash he kept at Taylor’s place over at this other girl’s.”
“Why is that bad for us?” Rhino asked, in the high-pitched, squeaky voice. For a man who weighed somewhere around five hundred pounds, a voice a couple of octaves below bass was the expectation.
“Surprises are always bad for us, brother,” Cross said. As if the word “surprises” triggered a cinematic thread, the man-for-hire reflected that Rhino hadn’t been born with that voice. None of them had been born to be what they had become … a no-limits unit every gang in the city feared.
For the thousandth time, Cross watched the tape replay in his mind.
Viewed from above, the institution appeared to be a huge starfish entangled in wire, its five arms radiating out from a fat central hub. This man-made starfish had a rapacious appetite. Teenaged boys entered at various tips of the arms and were pulled inside, to be devoured. Loops of razor wire coiled from one arm to the next.
Inside, a fifteen-year-old boy walked the full length of one of the starfish’s long tentacles, his hands cuffed behind him. A burly guard kept one big hand on his elbow.
“Here,” the guard said, stopping in front of a door marked
DIRECTOR
The guard opened the door, guided the boy inside, and pointed at a long wooden bench already occupied by a slender black youth.
“Sit,” the guard snarled, then went through the inner door that led to the office.
The two boys did not look at each other, did not speak. They sat uncomfortably on the front edge of the bench, keeping the handcuffs clear of their backs only with continual effort.
The guard reappeared and gestured for both of them to go into the office.
The office was carpeted and air-conditioned, dominated by a large wooden desk. On that desk, a brass nameplate:
PAUL T. LANDERS, DIRECTOR
On the wall behind the desk were various framed photographs, certificates, placques … and, hanging from an embedded brass spike, a thick, heavy, well-worn leather strap.
Paul Landers was a big, beefy man with small blue eyes set close together. His brown hair was cut in a military flattop. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and a narrow dark tie; his thick wrist sported a gold watch with an expandable band. He pulled a file folder to the center of the desk and opened it slowly, as if the contents were sure to be disagreeable.
“Marlon C. Cain,” he said, glancing up. “Thief. Chronic criminal. Anderson Hall at age nine. Carleton Reformatory at age thirteen. Two escapes.”
Paul Landers closed that file, opened another, glanced at the boy next to Cain. “Vernon D. Lewis. Attempted murder. First offense.” The director of the Sterling Youth Correctional Facility looked up at the guard standing behind Cain and the other boy. “The little bastard stuck a butcher knife into his mother’s boyfriend,” he said, nodding his head at the black youth. “Damn near killed him.”
Paul Landers put one finger under the expandable band of his wristwatch, stretched it, and let it snap! back into place. Neither of the boys reacted. This practiced move had always made frightened boys flinch. Or at least blink. Probably too stupid to get the message, he thought to himself.
“Well, Mr. Cain, Mr. Lewis, welcome to the big time. Take the cuffs off them, Sergeant.”
The guard stepped behind the white youth first, removed the handcuffs, then stepped in behind Lewis.
“Face that wall,” Paul Landers ordered, his voice suddenly metallic. “Strip down to your shorts.”
While Cain and Lewis did as they had been ordered, Paul Landers moved in behind them.
“We don’t take any nonsense here,” he said. “None. No back talk. No escapes … no escape attempts.”
Suddenly Cain felt the heavy leather strop placed on his bare shoulder.
“No stabbings. No shakedowns.”
Paul Landers placed the strop on the nape of Lewis’s thin blue-black neck. “That okay with you, ace?”
“Yes, sir,” Lewis replied q
uietly. His voice was adolescent-pitched, but held as steady as a deeply driven tent stake.
“Good. Then we understand each other. Isolation. Fifteen days,” the director said to the guard. “Let them get the feel of this place.”
Cain glanced out the director’s window, taking one last look at the sunshine he knew he would not see again for over two weeks. Through the heavy steel bars, in the yard outside the fence, he saw the institution’s twin flags, American and state, on separate tall poles. As he looked, he saw the other boy watching him. They locked their glass-reflected glances. In that thin, ghostlike reflection, each recognized in the other the hard, hypervigilant gaze of an unbroken, still-dangerous POW.
The guard handcuffed the boys again, then walked them up one arm of the starfish and down another, parading them barefoot and in their shorts in front of the other boys. Unconsciously, Lewis imitated Cain’s relaxed stride, a silent communication to other inmates that he’d walked this path before and knew it well.
Months later, Cain walked onto the paved space between two arms of the starfish, which the prison called a “yard.” His eyes darted back and forth, taking it all in: a basketball game in progress, weight-lifting apparatus, handball courts, a young boy plucking his eyebrows.
He did not acknowledge the greetings and glances directed to him, walking straight ahead to where Vernon Lewis was leaning against the chain-link fence. The slender black youth had a dumbbell from one of the weight sets tied to his side with a shoelace that ran across his chest. As he spoke, he lifted the dumbbell and lowered it in measured repetitions, using his free hand as cover, hiding his words from any lip-readers who might trade information for a favor from one of the wall-posted guards.
“They just brought in a real monster—I heard he hit the scales in Processing at two ninety-five.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too,” Cain replied.
If Lewis was surprised that Cain already knew about the new arrival, he didn’t show it. But he didn’t doubt the other boy—Cain was immune to exaggeration, and would have triple-checked any passed-along word.
“We’ll get to him later,” the white youth went on, his eyes flickering across the yard. “Here comes company.”
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