Bad to the Bone (38 page)

“You must take this,” Blossom interrupted. “Before he comes back in to check on you. Please.”

Betty took the syringe from Blossom and injected herself quickly. The rush of PURE threatened to overwhelm her and she sat down on the edge of the bed. Satisfied, Blossom knocked once on the door. Scott opened immediately, allowed her to leave, then slammed the door and locked it behind him.

Michael and Betty moved slowly toward the tray of food, canned chili on a bed of white rice. There were no utensils and they had to eat with their fingers. Neither had an appetite. Caught up in the effect of the drug, eating was closer to an obligation than a pleasure. Nevertheless, they picked at the single plate of food and Betty, looking at the bits of rice clinging to her blistered fingertips, suddenly and without warning, had the answer to the problem of a handle for her weapon.

She left the table, Michael trailing behind, and went back into the bathroom. Opening the top of the water tank, she retrieved the plastic float and examined it closely. The round ball was much too large to make a handle, but a small nipple, two inches or so, projected from one end of the ball and was threaded to accept the rod. Working on the other end of the ball, Betty began to break off small pieces of the plastic.

She worked carefully, forgetting that Michael wasn’t at his listening post, ignoring the sharp pain in her fingertips. Ten minutes later, she was left with two inches of threaded plastic with a small flare at one end. She twisted it onto the rod as far as she could, until an inch of the thread projected from the back end. Then she filled the sink with hot water and methodically softened the bar of soap. Once the outer surface was pliable, she squeezed it in her fist to create finger grips, then pushed it onto the dull end of the rod until it was tight against the plastic nipple.

“C’mon, Michael, we’re almost done.” Without waiting for an answer, she walked swiftly to the bureau in the other room and took Michael’s extra pair of jeans out of the drawer. The denim was tough, the cuff tightly stitched, but she managed to separate a long strip of material from one leg. She wrapped the fabric tightly around the softened bar of soap and tied it down over the plastic nipple. It was a weapon, now, an icepick. Solid and deadly.

“Are you going to hurt my daddy?”

W
ENDELL BOGARD WAS A
happy man. The first phase of his plan to become the Emperor of PURE was almost complete. After weeks of frustration, he’d managed to get an appointment with a Los Angeles wholesaler named Dinky Thomas—the plane tickets were in his pocket. Dinky’s Los Angeles—based posse was dealing all up and down the West Coast, from San Diego to Seattle. If Dinky Thomas decided to buy (and he would, just like the rest of them), Wendell would have orders for every last gram of Craddock’s run before the manufacturing was completed. Life was good. Damn, but it was good. And getting better all the time.

Unfortunately, the sample Dinky was demanding, a thousand packaged doses, was larger than Wendell’s reserves, but Davis Craddock had come through, right on schedule. The man had sent one of his slaves to Hanover House with a small package and instructions to leave it in a place Wendell Bogard remembered well. The delivery had been scheduled for early afternoon and Wendell, with no wish to be seen by the messenger (eyeball witnesses make prosecutors drool), had arrived in the early evening. He’d gone directly to Craddock’s living quarters, to a familiar closet, lifting several floorboards to reveal three large Ziploc bags resting on a pile of video tapes. He removed the bags, casually stuffing them between the silk underwear and T-shirts in the suitcase he’d brought for his trip to the coast.

Wendell glanced at his Rolex (all the big players wore Rolexes; it was almost an ID card) and frowned. It was five-thirty-five and his plane was scheduled to leave at nine-fifteen. Well, better to see the bright side, maintain that positive attitude. Now, there was time to play. He reached back into the hole and took up the video tapes, remembering Craddock’s documentary on the demise of Deeny Washington. Unfortunately, Davis had removed
that
little gem. The man wasn’t entirely crazy, after all. But the triple-X porno tapes in Wendell’s hand would serve to pass the time.

Wendell thought of Marcy Evans and little Blossom Nol and Davis Craddock’s personal style. The dope business was so grim. Brothers walking around in thousand-dollar suits, wearing diamonds on their fingers, and still looking like they wanted to kill every motherfucker in the room. But Davis Craddock was
always
ready to play. Not that there was any soft to the man. The man did what he had to do, bad as any brother, but he played even when he had to be hard.

His own life had always been hard, hard and unforgiving. The street didn’t allow for slack. It demanded unrelenting vigilance. The street would take anything you had, even if it was a pair of raggedy sneakers and a Yankee baseball cap. That had happened to him. He was eight years old and trying to stay away from his alcoholic auntie when a crew he didn’t know dragged him into an alley and stripped him down. The sneakers and jeans they snatched were old and worn (though his auntie would still put a whipping on his butt for losing them), but the cap was brand-new. A sympathetic social worker had bought it for him at the only baseball game he’d ever seen.

Crying didn’t help. It didn’t make him feel better. What made him feel better was catching some other street kid and taking
his
baseball cap. And his goddamn sneakers which were only ten times better than Wendell’s. And then smuggling an eight-inch carving knife past his drunken aunt in case some other crew decided to renew the cycle. He was eight years old and ready.

Well, there was no doubt about it, the streets were hard. Even the basketball games were like wars. Play meant prey. That’s what really made the little street rats happy.
All
the little street rats and, Lord knows, there were plenty of them. Hungry kids everywhere. Looking to grab a piece of the nothing they shared.

Wendell flipped on the TV and the VCR, pushed in one of the tapes and sat back in an overstuffed chair. The label on the tape said
Lickety Split
, but the tape was homemade. It began with Davis Craddock lecturing four women.

“You can never be free,” he proclaimed, “if you’ve never been a slave. Freedom isn’t natural. You’re not born with it. It’s not like eyesight or hearing. It’s a higher state and can only be achieved through personal effort. You have to dump every vestige of the conditioning that imprisons you. It doesn’t happen overnight. There’s no sudden flash of insight to lift you into higher consciousness. Freedom flows directly from years of grueling work. Do you understand what I’m saying?” The women nodded gravely. “All right, you may begin.”

Wendell shook his head in wonder. The bitches didn’t waste any time getting into it. Ordinary women stripping out of their clothes. Hugging, then kissing, then moving on. Not even attractive. See them on the street, he wouldn’t turn his head if they were strutting down Avenue B with a finger up their ass. But, somehow, Craddock’s video was incredibly erotic: It was hotter than any porno film he’d ever seen. That was because they
wanted
to do it, because their cries of pleasure were genuine, as were their gyrating hips. They were saving their souls, putting their hearts, minds, fingers and tongues into the effort.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. It doesn’t matter how many bitches are begging for a chance to sit on your cock if you’re alone watching four women gobbling away on the goddamn TV. Wendell did what he had to do, then, his objectivity (and his equilibrium) restored, sat back to enjoy the rest of the show.

Ten minutes later, the women finished the exercise, dressed and returned to their seats. Craddock’s face reappeared on the screen and he began to lecture once again.

“Children, up until the age of five, should be understood as sponges, soaking up the world around them. This is not to say that heredity plays no part in human development, only that environment flows into heredity like a river flowing into the sea. Using the analogy, it’s easy to see that, while the sea remains fixed, while an individual’s genetic inheritance cannot be altered, the more rivers flowing into the sea, the greater the mix of cultural nutrients. The nuclear family overlooks this simple truth altogether. During those crucial five years in an individual’s development, the influences come almost entirely from the mother, father and siblings.”

Wendell laughed out loud. Crazy white fucker making sugar out of shit. The four women staring at him through worshipful eyes. And the man didn’t believe a
word
of what he was saying.

Wendell shook his head and, out of the corner of one eye, saw Stanley Moodrow come into the room. “Damn,” he said, his hand streaking toward the .45 tucked into his trousers.

An ordinary citizen confronted by a very large man reaching for a very large gun will freeze, at least momentarily. Long enough, certainly, to make a perfect target. Moodrow, on the other hand, was well trained. A seasoned veteran. Which is not to say that he reacted calmly. His heart rate shot up with the suddenness of a jazz drummer beginning a solo. A voice in his head began an unrelenting scream:
oh no no no oh oh no no oh no oh no oh no no no no no gun gun gun gun gun
. It played a violent counterpoint to a second voice whispering calm instructions:
He’s got a gun
.
A
.
46
.
He’s faster than you
.
Reach for your weapon
.
Don’t make a mistake
.
He’s got the first shot
.
It’s an automatic
.
He’s right-handed
.
He doesn’t practice
.
The gun will pull
.
High and to the right
.
Step to his left
.
Don’t touch the trigger
.
Clear the holster
.
Watch the hammer
.
Watch your jacket
.
Come straight up
.
Sight the target
.
Before you shoot
.
Sight the target
.
Don’t jerk
.
Squeeze
,
squeeze
,
squeeze
.

Moodrow watched Bogard’s .45 sail through the air, watched Bogard fall backward to the floor. He turned away and saw the neat row of holes in the wall behind him. The first hole was two inches from his head, but each succeeding hole was farther to the right and a little higher on the wall. Funny, he hadn’t heard the roar of Wendell’s .45 while the report of his own well-worn .38 still echoed in his ears.

Wendell couldn’t move. Kept asking his body to get moving, go after the .45.
Do
something. But the only part of him that moved was his head.

The blood was running, though. He could feel the blood running down his belly. Hear it dripping onto the carpet. He could see the white man with the revolver coming toward him. Could hear him draw back the hammer. Could understand the words he spoke: “Where’s Craddock? Where’s he hiding?”

But he couldn’t concentrate on the questions. Abou was crowding into his mind. Abou and his warning not to trust a white man, not even a
crazy
white man. Craddock was sitting out there somewhere. Sitting on a pile of white powder that would turn into more money than Wendell had ever seen. Meanwhile, he, Wendell Bogard, was listening to his life drip onto the carpet. He tried to say “Motherfucker,” but the only sound that came from his mouth was the liquid gush of dark arterial blood flowing over his lips.

Moodrow’s heart began to slow as he stood over Wendell Bogard and realized that the man would never tell him anything. If someone outside had heard the shots and was even now dialing the police, he, Moodrow, was going to be in a lot of trouble. He was tempted to leave immediately, but he knew that gunfire was common on the Lower East Side and the Chinese living in the surrounding tenements as clannish as any ethnic group in New York City. No one had come to investigate the gunfire, which meant that Hanover House was empty. He wouldn’t get this opportunity again.

He took off his coat and jacket, then rolled up his shirtsleeves. The blood would come off his skin with the application of a little soap and water, but once it sunk into fabric, it would be almost impossible to remove. He dropped to his knees and began to go through Wendell’s pockets, retrieving the bags of PURE as well as the plane ticket to Los Angeles. He noted the departure time, then glanced at his watch. It was just possible that Wendell was making the trip alone, that he wouldn’t be missed for a few days.

The PURE went into Moodrow’s pocket. He had his sample, now. The lab would be able to prove that Davis Craddock’s dope had reduced Flo Alamare to a vegetable and poisoned at least three other people. The case was made. He rolled Wendell Bogard over and dug into the carpet with a small pocket knife, retrieving the single slug he’d fired. Cushioned by the carpeting, it was, as expected, in excellent condition. He put it in his pocket. The cops would find Bogard eventually, but they wouldn’t be able to trace the shot that killed him to Moodrow’s .38.

Craddock’s private quarters, thoroughly searched, revealed nothing. Moodrow was looking for business records, filing cabinets, office desks. He went from room to room, flicking lights on briefly, glancing at dormitories, meeting rooms, kitchens, dining rooms. He crossed to the center building and worked from the bottom up, finding more of the same until he got to the top floor, the combined offices of the Hanover Foundation, which ran the commune, and Hanover Housekeeping, Inc. A row of gray filing cabinets lined the wall beneath the windows. They were still full, proof of the haste with which Craddock had abandoned the commune.

Moodrow pored through the drawers, looking for accounts payable, thumbing folder after folder until he found the ones he wanted: Citibank, Chase Manhattan, New York Telephone, The Long Island Lighting Company. He stuffed them into a large manila envelope lying on one of the desks. There might be more, but he couldn’t afford to wait around. He turned the light out behind him as he left.