Another Life (13 page)

* * *

T
he Prof listened to my account, nodding slowly. When I finished, he said, “Anytime you see a red-haired, blue-eyed nigger, you know you lookin’ at a born life-taker. That don’t necessarily mean he got to be spongy under the skull, but Quayshon, he’s the total package. That boy ain’t nowhere
close
to right. Probably been off the rails since his mama gave him that weird-ass name. Hear me? Quayshon tells you some scheme is insane, you listening to a man who
knows.
”
I just nodded, the way you do when there’s no reason to say anything.
“Tell you something else about Quay. The man is one serious schnorrer. Crazy as he is, motherfucker would still rather pick up gonorrhea than a check.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. From experience. Then I got back to business: “It wasn’t any White Night crew, Prof. They don’t have that level of discipline, for one. And they may call the Arabs ‘sand niggers,’ but they love anyone who thinks Jews need exterminating—a lot of them sent congrats on 9/11. This was way too professional. Some of the Valhalla boys may be ready to pick up the gun, but most of them just put up Web sites.”
The Prof looked down the hall, using the periscope-style tube the Mole had made for him. Satisfied, he turned back to me, lowering his voice:
“When I was a boy, they had some
creatures
down in Louisiana. You serious about finding you a mojo hand, that’s where you got to go. Zombies walk those swamps, boy. But even
they
walk light around those witchy old women. They can work roots, kill you from the inside out, you fool enough to cross them.
“Got some animals you wouldn’t believe, too. About a million years old, but still playing the same tricks. You know why, son?”
“Because they still work?”
“You listen good, Schoolboy.”
“I still am.”
He shifted position in the bed-chair they had just installed. “You know what an alligator snapping turtle is?”
“I can guess.”
“Nah. You can’t add words like numbers, boy. Alligator snapping turtle don’t mean alligator plus snapping turtle. I’m talking about a
demon.
Seen ’em this big,” he said, gesturing with his hands held about three feet apart. “Fucking dinosaurs, they are. Got tails with big spikes, heads like a chunk of rock with little red eyes. I saw one crack a broomstick in his jaws like it was a wooden match.
“Now, listen: They ain’t fast. Can’t hardly move on dry ground, and can’t swim for shit, either. You know how they get their food?”
I made a face to tell him I couldn’t imagine.
“The food comes to
them,
” he said, twisting his lips to show his own teeth. “They dive down
way
deep, bury themselves in that black mud so they look like part of it. Lie there all day with their mouths open. Inside those mouths, they got these…tongues, I guess they are. Anyway, they’re all pink and wiggly. Look like big fat worms, or maybe even little fish.
“Those boys are
gravely
patient. Never make a move. Sooner or later, something down there sees what looks like a meal, goes for it, and…
snap
!”
I closed my eyes, seeing it. Said, “So, if I backtrack…”
“Now you tuned in, Jim. You go looking for whoever snatched that baby, all you gonna do is spook anyone who’s listening to the drums. You always going to be too late to catch
that
freight.”
“But if I put word out that I want the same kind of job
done…
”
“
That’s
how you run, son!” the old man said, extending his clenched fist for me to tap. “Remember, now: we in the market for a fur coat, but it don’t have to be no mink, you with me?”
“I want a
particular
baby taken, but not an Arab one. I’ll pay what it costs, and there can’t be any killing—I just want the kid.”
“Not
you,
you. That pile ain’t your style, and anyone checking your pedigree gonna get in the wind. This is for a
client,
okay? You just the man putting it together…finding the man what he wants.”
“But that wouldn’t fit, unless…”
“Bring it,” my father encouraged me. Like he had from the day he claimed that title.
I let myself become the beast. “Kid’s being abused by his mother’s new boyfriend,” I said, forging the hook. Then I baited it with: “Father’s got a ton of cash, but he spent too much of it on hookers, so Mom got custody. She picked a new guy right off the Sex Offender Registry—that’s the one thing that Megan’s Law bullshit’s good for, freakish broads who want to hook up with a degenerate—and the father’s desperate enough to do
anything
to make it stop. So he asks around, hears about me….”
The old man put his hands together as if praying. Opened them to form a “V.” Waited a beat, then snapped them shut.

* * *

V
iolence is total commitment. Middle ground is a myth. Equivocation is quicksand. Where I live, selling wolf tickets buys you a one-way ride. Could be now, could be next year, but every hand gets called.
I remembered the Prof talking to me on the yard, back when I was still a stupid kid: “The biggest lie in the whole dictionary is ‘foolproof,’ Schoolboy. Ain’t no such animal, ’cause a fool is guaranteed to
act
the fool. You got to survive
before
you thrive. Only sure way to win a gunfight is, don’t show up for it.”
And Wesley’s mantra: “They’re easier when they’re sleeping,” whispered to me one night in the dorm. Both of us were children then, but only one of us was a kid.
What kept me alive was that I was always smart enough to listen.
I still am. So I put out the bait, and waited for the line to quiver in my hand.

* * *

T
he whisper-stream is never calm below the surface. Sifting truth from its depths isn’t an exact science, but you know it’s down there somewhere, buried among the lies, rumors, and myths. I’d worked for years to keep my “dead and gone” label certified. It was Burke’s “brother”—me, and my new face—who had been running the family business since I’d slipped away.
The old Burke they all knew would have solved my made-up client’s problem with a double-tap for the boyfriend and the mother. But that Burke had vanished years ago, when I’d gone “missing and presumed.”
I’d been born a suspect. I guess I died one, too.
The cop who’d made that possible was still around, but he’d never be questioned—he was part of the micro-glassed air that had once been the World Trade Center. Pryce always played it as if he knew the whole story, but he was really just working me: testing, probing, looking for a weak spot, as opportunistic as an infection. But I never gave him an opening. Pryce was like the malaria I still carried—it was in me forever, a permanent standoff: I couldn’t make it leave, but it couldn’t stop me from staying.
No matter how the people who live below the underground figured it,
any
version of the Burke they knew would never pass up the chance to make a pile of cash and take out a couple of baby-rapers at the same time. Some people were confused about my motivations, but nobody doubted my hate. If certain humans crossed my path, they were done. Pay me enough, and I’d go out and cross theirs.
So the whisper-stream’s Help Wanted board got a new entry. Some might wonder why our crew would subcontract work we could do in-house, but most would just put it down to me not being willing to risk those of us still left.
The first-responders were what I expected: wannabes, with no track record, the kind who used to put ads in
Soldier of Fortune.
They always exposed themselves quicker than a subway flasher.
The next wave wanted the kind of info a pro wouldn’t need…or even want to know. Too many idiots are using cable broadband for serious business. There’s a reason they call that a “shared pipe,” and the FBI wasn’t just monitoring the traffic, it was contributing some of its own. “Sex slavery” may be what got the trash-TV shows excited, but “domestic terrorism” rang the White House bell even louder than the one in their private chapel.
Next up, the usual dumbfucks demanding moral assurances. Meaning: make sure they didn’t blow a book-and-movie deal. “Rescuing” a kid—perfect. But abduction-for-dollars—now, that isn’t network material. Not even cable.
A few teams phrased their inquiries as double-edged as daggers. Very “define the mission” military, with just enough cred slipped in so I could find out if they were solid…provided I knew where to look.
Nice. Only none of them had any Stateside work on their résumés. Some countries sell citizenships like any other product, and they issue passports, too. Those deals always include no jobs on U.S. soil. They never spell it out, but it’s as clear as the image in a sniper’s scope. Foreign aid is America’s biggest weapon, and any country that’ll sell you a passport will sell
you
even quicker, if Big Daddy says the word.
Nobody had used the snatch job on the Sheikh’s baby as a prove-in credential. I hadn’t expected to get
that
lucky, but I had been hoping for some vague references to having done similar work.
I got a few nibbles, but none close enough for me to snap the jaws.

* * *

“T
his one is all wrong,” I told Rosie. She was curled up on a nest she’d made out of the rug Mama had sent over as a greeting gift for the new pup. “Persian,” she said, tossing it to me like it was a used rag.
The pit’s ears went flat against her skull. She hadn’t learned to speak my language completely yet, but I knew hers. I walked over, patted her, told her she was a perfect little beauty, and scratched behind her left ear.
She watched as I positioned the circle of mirror-polished stainless steel with a red dot painted in its precise center.
I sat lotus across from the transporter, got my breathing right, and fell into the red dot.

* * *

“P
ryce is lying, or he’s being lied to,” I told Max and Clarence much later that night. Like always, I was speaking aloud and signing, too. Max reads lips perfectly, especially mine, but I always used the silent language we’d taught each other anyway, so the others could learn it from me.
“No way the team that pulled off that snatch was doing it cold,” I said. “That’s the kind of thing you rehearse, over and over, until you can do it blindfolded. Like dry runs for a getaway man, or field-stripping a rifle in the dark.”
Max made a saluting gesture.
“Yeah. There’s military in this somewhere, past or present. And this was no snap decision; they had the mission way in advance.”
“And the equipment,” Clarence said. “Scopes, mics—maybe even a tap. Also vehicles, a stash house…”
“Uh-huh. And the manpower, too. This operation was running around the clock
long
before they made their move. That means they had people on the street, people who could blend right in.”
“This is not a city of just one color, mahn.”
Max nodded agreement, spreading his arms wide for emphasis.
I sat quietly for a few seconds. “One theory fits, but it’s got a real flaw in it…a deep crack in the foundation.”
Both men looked at me, waiting.
“It smells like G-men,” I said. “Hell, it
reeks
of them. But if the FBI was running the show, why bring Pryce in on it? He’s too dangerous to play those kinds of games with.”
Max tapped his heart, tilting his head to mean he was asking, not telling.
“Pryce? He’s got
some
kind of access, that’s right,” I said, remembering how quickly he was able to put a team in place outside Federal Plaza, remembering how only one of the RAHOWA boys survived—the one that turned canary on the spot. High-speed interrogation is easy when you can show one captive the price of a wrong answer by killing another one.
That had closed the books on our deal. Herk got to walk away. All the way into another life. But it wasn’t as simple as a man keeping his word. “Pryce takes government money, sure,” I told them. “But no way he takes orders. If the government hired him, the government wants the kid back. Why? That I don’t know. The only thing I’m sure of is this: the G-men might pay him, but they can’t play him.”
“Outlaw agents, then? High-rankers who know they will not survive for long after the new boss takes over?”
I considered Clarence’s hypothesis. “Can’t rule it out,” I said, after a minute. “You could be right. But there’s an even better candidate. The Agency’s been in a turf war over this whole Stateside terrorism thing. They didn’t win any points for getting suckered on the intel about Iraq, and they keep pointing fingers at the FBI over 9/11.”
“CIA, you’re saying, mahn?”
“Why not? What if they pull the snatch themselves, and
keep
it to themselves? They don’t even trust each other, so whoever’s paying Pryce wouldn’t have to be in on it. And if they end up making the Sheikh twist in the wind before they rescue his kid, maybe that convinces the White House to extend their territory to inside our borders. That’s what they’ve always wanted. When Hoover was alive, no chance. Now…”
“But that would be—”
“What, illegal?” I half-snorted. “It’s not like any of them gives a rat’s ass what the law says. Or Congress, for that matter. You think politicians who take habeas corpus out of the Constitution would draw the line at letting the CIA work local? If the Agency even bothered to tell them, that is.”
“So we have no chance, then, mahn?”
“Not if that’s what’s going on, no. But that would mean someone sent Pryce on a wild-goose chase, and
that’s
the part I don’t buy—they’d be trying to douse a fire with gasoline. If I’m wrong, we’re fucked anyway. But let’s say I’m not. Then there’s another path we could still take.”
Neither of them moved, so I answered their unasked question, signing to Max as I did: “We just ask Pryce.”