And Weiss. He was no different. It was all well and good for Weiss to say Don’t cross the line. But the truth was he could’ve pulled Bishop off this case before Bishop had had to kill Mad Dog. He could pull him off now before this warehouse job went down and Honey dodged the law and whatever happened to Cobra happened. But Weiss didn’t pull him off; he wouldn’t. Because he wanted Honey’s father to be a happy customer and to tell all his rich friends about Weiss Investigations. Weiss was looking out for his business, for himself. Everyone was. Honey was definitely right about that.
“What’s this got to do with killing Cobra?” he asked her.
She moved, drew away from him, lifted up so she could look at him, so he could see her face. The room was dark, but the glow from the streetlamps on Telegraph came through the window, and he could make out her features, smooth and sweet-looking. It was easy to imagine her in church or in the high school choir.
“If Cobra was dead, I wouldn’t have to go home,” she said. “I mean I would, you know. I’d go home so you could say you’d done your job, so you could get paid and everything. But I wouldn’t have to stay. Because I wouldn’t need my father to protect me.”
“How the hell do you figure that?” Bishop said. “There’s still the rest of the gang. I mean, they won’t come after you like Cobra would. But someone’s sure to cut a deal with the cops, spill his guts, tell them all about you. You were there at the Bayshore, Honey. It’s felony murder, like I said. You’ll need your father to buy your way out of this, one way or another.”
“Not if I had my own money. I mean, I couldn’t run away from Cobra. Even if he was in prison. He’d find me wherever I went, whatever I did. I’d need my father then. He’d hide me out of the country somewhere, hire bodyguards and all that. But if it was just the law, just the law looking for me, just the cops or whatever, that wouldn’t be so hard. I could run, I could get away somewhere myself—if I had money of my own.”
“But you don’t,” said Bishop. “Your father told me. He cut you off after you ran off with Santé.”
Honey’s eyes glinted in the dark. “Cobra does,” she said. “Cobra has money. A lot.”
Bishop propped himself up on his elbows. “He does? Where?”
“Hidden. I know where. It’s all the cash he’s saved from all his stuff he’s got going. Not just the robberies, you know, and the hijacks and stuff. Also meth labs, coke connections, all kinds of shit the other guys don’t know about.”
“How much is it?” said Bishop.
“I’m not sure. But close to a million, I think. That’s what he told me, anyway. He said after he did the warehouse job, we were gonna leave the country. Go down to South America. Just blow out and fucking…just…you know.”
Bishop nodded.
She touched his cheek. “It could be us instead, Cowboy. Shit, I’d like it even better if it was us. I mean, with you, I wouldn’t have to listen to all Cobra’s speeches all day and pretend to give a shit what he thinks about anything. And you wouldn’t have to waste your time with all the boy-girl crap, pretending you want me for my little pink soul or whatever. There wouldn’t be any of that. There wouldn’t be anything, just the money and fucking. And you gotta admit, the fucking rocks.”
He nodded again in the dark. “The fucking rocks,” he said.
“So we do it till we’re sick of each other, then walk away, no hard feelings. A million bucks would take us places, Cowboy. And when we’re done, we walk away.”
Bishop stayed where he was, propped up on his elbows, looking at her. Her eyes still glinted with the tears gathered in them. And that scent, that mingling of perfume and sex and her, was like a cloud all around him. He looked at her lips and felt her breath against him when she spoke.
“It would be so cool,” she said. “Everything would just be us, just us the way we are. Wouldn’t that be so cool, Cowboy?”
After a while, Bishop laughed again. He laughed and lay back on the bed. She swarmed over him. She stroked his face.
“Wouldn’t it?”
“Sure,” he said up at her. “Sure, it would be cool.”
She laughed once, too, gazing down at him.
“If Cobra died,” he said.
Thirty-One
Another summer’s day went by, and then it was the twilight of the crime.
Bishop waited for her as darkness fell. He paced at his apartment window, smoking one cigarette after another. He glanced outside from time to time, past the bank advertisement on the billboard, at the sky. He watched the slender moon rise above the city.
It was ten o’clock, then ten fifteen. Then the buzzer sounded. There she was in his doorway, breathless. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were bright. She had a suitcase with her, a small red bag stuffed fat.
She dumped the bag on the foyer floor. Stepped to him, and kissed him. He pulled out of it, looked at her. Stroked her hair from her face. She was nervous and frightened and beautiful, so beautiful it made him ache. And if he did not kill Cobra tonight, he thought, he would never see her again. He hadn’t put it that plainly to himself before, but now he did. As long as Cobra was alive, she would be afraid like this. She would let her father spirit her away somewhere and surround her with guards, and he would never see her.
He stood there and held her and looked at her face and she looked up at him and she was flushed and breathless and for a moment he forgot everything else and he did not know what he would do.
“What did you tell him when you left?” he said.
“I just ran,” she said. “I wrote him a note.”
“Okay.”
“To make it look natural, like a breakup, so he won’t suspect about tonight.”
“Sure. That’s good.”
“He’ll know, though. When the police show up, he’ll know I was in on it.”
Bishop didn’t answer. He already knew what she wanted from him.
After a while, they moved apart. They went to the table by the window. They sat on the wooden chairs. They smoked cigarettes. They touched each other’s hands, played with each other’s fingers. He looked at her fingers with his and thought that he would never see her again.
Ten-thirty sharp. The buzzer. Honey sucked in a last drag of smoke, crushed out her cigarette quickly. Bishop went to the door. He pulled it open. Philip Graham stepped in.
Honey stood up out of her chair. Father and daughter faced each other across the room. Graham, with his perfect hair and his forthright chin and that never-changing look of disapproval behind his big glasses, looked almost unaffected by the meeting except that he seemed somehow to vibrate inside with suppressed emotion.
“Look—” he said with a quick frown. And he raised his hand as if about to continue, to make a pronouncement. But he didn’t continue. That was all he said.
Honey picked up her suitcase. “Whatever,” she muttered. “Could we just go?”
Graham lowered his hand. He released a breath. He nodded unhappily.
At the door, he stopped to speak to Bishop. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll tell Mr. Weiss I’m pleased with your work.”
Bishop smiled a little at that. He liked the way Graham said it: straight, looking right at him. They both knew he had hired the detective to seduce his daughter away from Cobra, and they both knew Bishop had done it and Graham would not pretend otherwise. Bishop liked that in him. It reminded him of Honey.
“I’ll wait in the hall,” Graham said, and he went out.
Honey came to Bishop and kissed him. A light, soft kiss, the last kiss. She didn’t say anything but it was all in her glance. If he did not kill Cobra, he would never see her again. Bishop kissed her back and tried to hold the taste of her on his lips.
He watched her go and he watched the door close. Then he stood in the center of the room alone and watched the closed door.
He was still standing like that a few minutes later when the phone rang. Reluctantly, he turned from the door, went to the phone on the table, snapped it up.
&
nbsp; It was Cobra. His voice was harsh and tense.
“Twenty minutes” was all he said. “Shotgun Alley.”
Thirty-Two
The bar was packed. The juke played country, loud. To the right, on the stage, a woman was dancing. She was wearing a short denim skirt and a white T-shirt. A red spotlight was on her. Her dance was slow and ecstatic. She swung her hips and ran her hands over her torso. The bikers thronged on the dance floor below her to watch. They clapped and whistled and raised their beer bottles. They shouted at her to bare her breasts.
Across the rest of the bar, the tables were full. A haze of cigarette smoke hung over them. Conversation was loud, and there were rising bursts of laughter. There were also cheers and whoops from the dance floor as the girl onstage slowly lifted her T-shirt to her throat.
Bishop walked slowly through the smoke to the gnarly corner. He was the last of the gang to arrive. The others were ranged around their table. Shorty was standing with one foot on a chair. His shaved head glinted in the hazy light. He lifted his chin to Bishop by way of hello. Charlie, the muscle boy, was tilted back in his chair, smoking. Steve leaned against a wall, his arms folded. His scarred face was expressionless. He watched Bishop approach through heavy eyelids, through canny, clouded eyes.
Cobra sat hunched at the table’s head. He was rolling a cigarette, working it with the fingertips of both hands. There was a map laid out in front of him, tossed there aslant. A tobacco pouch lay on top of it spilling scattered strands of shag. Cobra frowned down at the cigarette in concentration.
Bishop reached him, stood by him, resting one hand on Mad Dog’s former chair. The outlaw didn’t look up. Bishop waited, holding his helmet down by his side.
Finally Cobra was done. He moistened the cigarette paper with his tongue and sealed it and wetted the end between his lips. Now he did glance at Bishop. He smiled around the weed. It was a dead smile. The V-shaped crags of his face never lifted. His green eyes were dull and furious. His skin was papery, pale.
He’d found the note from Honey, Bishop thought. He knew she was gone.
“Change of plans,” Cobra said.
“All right,” said Bishop.
“We go in without the truck.”
Bishop made a show of looking round at the others. “Where’s Honey?”
“Honey.” Cobra drew the name out. He filled it like a vessel with the acid sound of his hurt and anger. “Honey’s gone.” He lit a match. It flared as he touched it to the cigarette’s twisted tip. “Honey left a note. ‘Can’t stand the heat. Bye-bye.’ ” He made a kissing noise, then blew smoke out in a gust.
The other men stood in silent sympathy—sympathy tinged with quick-eyed fear. They were afraid of Cobra’s sudden temper and his sudden bayonet.
But Cobra shrugged. “Well, the women. They do come and go. But we are who we are. That’s the way of it. They think they want in, then they go, and we do what we have to do. Yes? No? A show of hands?” He laughed flatly, joylessly. He studied the red-hot tobacco. He nodded as if at his own deep wisdom.
Then he looked up, and he was all business. “Here’s how we’ll do it now. We come in on our exit routes, five different directions. Park separate. Look at the map. It shows you where to go. We come together on foot at the warehouse corner. Just like before: I key in the code, we go in all at once. Guards give us trouble, we kill ’em then and there. They play along, we tie ’em up and cut their throats quiet before we go. I’m saying it again, okay? No witnesses. It’s not just the cops we gotta worry about on this, the dealers’ll be looking for us, too.” He checked their listening faces to make sure they’d heard. “Okay. Then we walk out. Separate. Nobody rides together till we hook up at the clubhouse and divide the cash.”
Bishop tilted his head to look at the map. He saw where he was supposed to park his bike. Saw where the others would park. “Sounds good to me,” he said.
The other men nodded.
Cobra breathed in more smoke. Held it, savored it. Let it drift up out of his lips. He studied the others, man by man, through the rising tendrils.
“Christ,” he said. “Look at you dickheads. You don’t know.” He smirked at them bitterly. “You don’t even give a shit. Do you? Nah. Just some money in a warehouse, right? Who cares? You don’t have a fucking clue.” He shook his head in pity for them. Leaned forward on his elbows, his hands wrapped together, the cigarette poking up through his fingers. “It’s the assumptions we’re going after. See? The assumptions we’re stealing away. Because it’s drug money from the oh-so-mysterious East. It’s a payoff. For smuggled cigarettes from the oh-not-so-mysterious West. Now do you get it? The drug boys wash their money and the tobacco companies beat billions in taxes. And you think the governments here and over there don’t know? They know. Sure they know. They go about their business, all very respectable, all very shirt-and-tie. But it’s all of a piece. Corruption, respectability. Hypocrisy, the status quo. All of a piece the whole world over.”
Cobra tilted his head, a coy, catlike gesture of superiority and secret knowledge. “Well, we are taking that piece apart tonight. We are taking that piece apart piece by piece until it’s all in pieces. And that’s what this is about. Okay? The assumptions. They assume their privileges, they assume the lowdown bedrock of their upright lives, they assume the whole system is clicking over and in place, and we are taking that apart. We’re injecting ourselves into the mix, we’re—” Then suddenly—since Shorty and Charlie and Steve and even Bishop were nodding openmouthed like husbands half-listening to their wives—he slammed his hand down—wham!—on the tabletop. “This means something!” he growled from deep in his throat. He glowered darkly at them all. “It’s important. We’re important. We’re the leading edge. The leading fucking edge of the new thing, you hear me? We’re…”
His shoulders sagged and his gaze grew vague and for a moment it seemed he had lost track of himself, lost track of everything. “The bitch,” he muttered. Then he went taut. Cast a sharp look at them, one by one. Shorty, Charlie, Steve. They had all gone ramrod straight at the sound of his slamming hand. They all went on nodding as Cobra’s eyes went from each to each. Then he got to Bishop—Bishop, resting a hand on Mad Dog’s former chair.
Bishop looked down at Cobra steadily. He understood that all this talk was really about Honey somehow. All this blather about what things meant and how important they were: It was all about Honey and the fact that she had left him, and the fact that he loved her, in his own way. Bishop looked down at him and there wasn’t much but scorn in his heart, scorn for Cobra’s weakness and the nonsense he rattled off, and scorn because he, Bishop, had taken the man’s woman from him and she had cried out under him and her tears had pooled on his chest. One way or another, Bishop thought, Cobra was over. Cobra was over this very night.
As for Cobra, he went on searching Bishop’s face. He searched his expression a long time. How much of these feelings he saw in Bishop’s heart, it’s impossible to say. In the end, he just answered with a grin—and managed a real grin this time, full of wickedness and irony, with the devilish angles of his face all raking upward in the force of it.
He shoved his chair back from the table.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Thirty-Three
Midnight then. China Basin. They came together out of the dark.
A film of mist from the water hid them first. It turned and drifted silently in the glow from the city and the light of the crescent moon.
Then there they were, Cobra and the others. Striding out of that mist from every direction. Each wore a leather jacket, a T-shirt, jeans. Each carried a gun held down by his side. Steve had a ball-peen hammer clipped to his belt. The hammer slapped against his thigh with every step. It kept time as the five swaggered toward each other.
Bishop came across the construction site—the same one Weiss and Ketchum had crossed. His boots crunched on the broken stone as he passed under the silhouetted framework of steel and concrete with its weirdly twiste
d offshoots of rebar. He saw the other oudaws converge at the street corner. He stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the broad avenue to join them.
They stood all together, a loose circle of them. Cobra had his .45 in his hand, and Steve and Charlie had their Glock semis. Shorty had a shotgun propped up on his hipbone. Bishop went for his belt, drew out his .38. Cobra smirked at the measly snubnose.
“Don’t hurt anybody with that,” he said.
He gave a wink to the others and strode to the warehouse.
There were two doors in the hulking gray box of a building, plus the wide bay entrance blocked by a security screen. Cobra took the near door. Bishop and Shorty pressed to the wall on either side, ready to go in. They waited while Charlie and Steve marched on across the bay entrance to station themselves outside the far door. Charlie nodded when they were set, a gesture just visible in the mist and city glow and moonlight.
Then Cobra moved. There was a small number pad to the right of his door. There was a small red light on the pad. Cobra pressed the buttons on the pad. Each button made a small beep as his finger stabbed at it. When he pressed the fifth button there was a longer beep. The red light turned green.
That was it. Cobra stood back, lifted his weapon, took aim at the lock, and fired. Charlie did the same at his door and the two shots went off at once, made one muffled blast in the night.
Cobra lifted his leg and Charlie lifted his and they kicked out, their heavy boots striking the doors just beneath the knobs. The doors flew open. Cobra charged in. Bishop and Shorty peeled off the wall and went after him. Across the bay entrance, Charlie rushed in with Steve right behind.
Bishop looked around, looked everywhere, his head moving in quick, staccato jerks, his heart pounding. It was shadowy in here, but there was just light enough for him to see by.
They were in an office. He could make out the shapes of the desks and filing cabinets. He could make out the open doorway into the main bay. There were bulbs burning dimly above the bay door; that’s where the light was coming from. But there was no sign of the police ambush in there. Just the shadows and the quiet.
Shotgun Alley Page 17
