Badge of Evil (18 page)

Despite their long association, Brock didn't really know Abdullah very well at all. There had been times when Brock tried to uncover his history, to learn something about his background. But he always came up empty. Every road was a dead end. Even when he'd question his wife about her cousin, she'd feed him some crap about how Muslim women were always kept in the dark, or how while they were cousins in name, it was not like being cousins in America, where you spend the holidays with your extended family. They were never close, she explained, and why would they be? Her cousins numbered in the triple digits, and while she knew many of them by name, that was really all she knew.

Abdullah finally broke the silence. “What are you thinking, my friend?”

“I always knew I'd get here,” Brock said. “But it's amazing now that I actually have.”

“You have done well. This is only the beginning,” Abdullah said, “the beginning of what Allah has planned for us.” Abdullah had already begun to circle back to where he picked Brock up. “This is quite possibly our last meeting,” Abdullah said. “You will be too visible. Any information we need to deliver will pass through Oz.”

As the cab pulled over to the spot where Brock had gotten in, the two men said good-bye. “Take care,” Brock said as he moved toward the door.

“You too, my friend.”

Brock nodded and got out. He shivered for a moment as a strange chill ran down his body from his head to his feet. Then he started walking back to meet Sam and Chester. When he was about halfway there, he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. It was the disposable. There was a text from Oz. “P
ROBLEM PUT TO REST. 3 DWN.
C U
SOON.”
Brock stared at the message for a few moments as he walked and then put the phone away.

When he emerged from the park, Sam and Chester looked relieved. “That got the blood flowing,” Brock said, rubbing his hands together. “Anybody hungry? I'm fuckin' starving, let's go get some dinner.”

“IT'S DEPRESSING TO
say it, but I'm getting too old for this.” Lucy was talking to Bishop at the bar in a club called Roxx. It was just past eleven thirty and they were having a drink while they waited for Supreme, who was supposed to arrive at midnight. Roxx was in Brooklyn, in a former warehouse on Dock Street, literally under the Brooklyn Bridge. The out-of-the-way location was part of the club's exotic aura, amplified by the décor; Supreme was a silent partner in the club and had it designed to look like a forest, filled with rocks and trees and a couple of man-made waterfalls. It was an ideal setting for the live animals Supreme had brought in to create a little additional excitement. There were several tigers, two bears, and a leopard.

The dance floor in the main room could probably hold a couple of thousand people; there were nearly that many out there already, and Supreme and his crew hadn't even arrived yet. There were also several smaller private-party and VIP areas. The back wall of the main room was almost all glass, providing a stunning view of lower Manhattan and the dark underbelly of the bridge. Several well-known young rappers were in the house as well; word had gone out that Supreme was throwing a party for his latest protégé and everyone wanted to be there.

“I wouldn't worry about feeling old,” Bishop told Lucy with a smile. “It happens to the best of us. Especially when this kind of shit's going on. I mean, what the fuck is this? Live animals? The hookers, strippers, and rappers aren't enough? Shit, I'm an Olympic gold medalist in partying with marathon-runner stamina, and this crazy shit makes
me
feel tired.”

“Thanks,” Lucy said. “But that doesn't make me feel any better. You actually
are
a lot older. I still can't believe this place. You know Supreme prepaid sixty thousand dollars for alcohol for his crew tonight? In cash.”

“See, I don't understand black people. No, wait,” he said as Lucy rolled her eyes at him. “Hear me out on this. Supreme is obviously a smart guy, but c'mon, you gotta admit this is fucked up. I mean, as soon as black people get some money, they get stupid. Look, I'm half Puerto Rican, so I kinda understand. But you don't see Bill Gates and Warren Buffett throwin' parties like this. Fuckin' tigers and leopards? No way. You ever see that movie
Soul Plane
, where the plane's painted purple and it's got chrome rims and big fish tanks and huge flat-screen TVs? I'm telling you, that's how black people think.”

“Thanks for the sophisticated analysis of race and consumer spending in America. Nicely done.”

“C'mon,” Bishop said, laughing, “you know I'm right. You're just too politically correct to say so.”

“Actually, I'm too politically correct to tell you how ridiculous and racist your remarks were. I'm afraid I'd offend all the half Puerto Ricans—not to mention all the other half-wits.”

Bishop laughed a little too hard and a little too long at this. Truth was, he had no comeback. Again, Lucy had left him speechless. She was just too quick. Wherever he went, she was already there, blocking any potential opening. But he was not about to give up.

“Bishop,” Lucy said, smiling, “if you're gonna sit there with your jaw hanging down like that, don't embarrass yourself. At least have one of these.” She handed him one of the shots of vodka she'd ordered for the two of them and threw down her own glass. Bishop did his best not to wince as he downed his shot, but he did. She smiled.

“Hey,” he protested, “the first one always goes down hard. But it's the last man standing that wins the prize.”

Feeling ballsy again, Bishop decided to take another whack at it. “I know that in this new spirit of cooperation between my team and A. J.'s, we're sharing information and helping each other out, but I'm still wondering why you invited me tonight. I have to believe it goes beyond professional courtesy.”

“I like you, Bishop,” Lucy said in a tone he couldn't read at all. “But you gotta stop trying so hard. And give it up with the canned banter . . .”

Bishop hesitated for a moment, trying, despite the thumping music, the crowd, the flashing lights, and the vodka, to think about Lucy's remark before responding. “What do you mean ‘canned banter'?”

“C'mon, do you really want to talk about this? I don't want to insult you.”

“I've always been able to take constructive criticism. But just understand that in the days of the caveman, when Fred Flintstone would see a woman he liked, he'd walk up to her, hit her with his club, and pull her by her hair back to his cave. Then he'd hit her with his other club.” He winked when he finished.

“See what I mean?” Lucy said with a straight face. “That's just so lame. Don't you have any cultural references from, oh, I don't know,
now
? It's like you're stuck in some kind of weird time warp. Every TV show or movie you mention is several decades old. Have you just totally tuned out the last twenty years?”

“That's the stuff I like. And as far as the banter thing goes,” Bishop said, undeterred, “a guy's got two things, either a black Amex card, which I don't have, or good verbal skills and a sense of humor, which I do have. I like the give-and-take, the mental fencing, you might call it. It's like a love dance.”

“So, you consider yourself a romantic?”

Bishop caught the bartender's eye and signaled for another round. “Yes,” he said, “I consider myself a twenty-first-century Renaissance man.”

“Really. Then explain to me how four of my girlfriends in this town all claim to have dated you within the last year. And I use the term ‘dated' loosely. Whenever your name comes up, the story's always the same. After the introductory conversation—let's call it your entertaining little sales pitch—it leads to nowhere except the same old tired MO. You take them to Bell's to try and impress them by having the boldfaced names come by your table to chat. Then, around eleven thirty—by the way, feel free to interrupt at any time if I'm getting any of this wrong—you leave Bell's and take them to Marquis. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's the hottest club in Manhattan at the moment. With the line of people dying to get in stretched around the block, you walking right to the front, finding one of your good friends, Jason or Noah, never neglecting to tell the girl that they're the owners.”

Bishop interrupted to hand her the next drink. “Well, they are the owners.”

She waved off the drink but motioned for him to feel free. He did this shot without a wince and, putting the glass down on the bar, said, “Continue.”

“Anyway, after you get into Marquis, you sit at a table with a celebrity. Brianna was quite impressed and told everyone at the dinner party how she got to sit at the same private banquette as Chelsea Clinton. By the way, how do you know Chelsea Clinton?”

“If I answered that, it'd just look like a lame attempt to impress you. Continue.”

“Fine,” Lucy replied with a genuine smile. “Now, that puts you at Marquis around two a.m. As if setting your watch by it, you then head to your ‘unofficial office,' V, where you finish the night on a high note by getting them lap dances and massages from all the highly evolved, postfeminist Ivy League grads who work there. Then, more often than not, you attempt a little heavy petting in your convertible, like Fonzie at make-out point.”

“Hey,” Bishop interrupted, “that's one of my favorite seventies cultural references.”

“I'm sure,” Lucy said. “Finally, you drop them off between six and seven a.m. So, how'd I do?”

“Well, if you wanna reduce my finely honed, carefully choreographed seduction dance to a simple schedule of events, you did very nicely. But that ignores the charm, the humor, the romance.”

“I'm sure there's plenty of all that,” Lucy said, laughing a little. “But here's my question. Why don't you take them home?”

“I'm saving that for you,” Bishop responded. “Only a really special girl gets to go back to the cave with yours truly. That's a pretty good job profiling me. Four girlfriends, you say? That's not that bad.”

“Actually it is,” she said, “considering I only have five girlfriends in this town and the only one you haven't dated is the one who's not a model.”

“Let's be fair. I obviously want to take you out. You're not a model.”

“That's right, but I was. That's how I paid for school.”

“Well, I still think it shows I've gotten past my really bad-boy stage. That I've matured. My turn-ons are not what you'd probably think—at least not anymore. It's not about big tits or a great face or money or celebrity or any of that stuff. I mean, it is sometimes, but mostly now it's about content for me. It's about what kind of game you bring. The other shit gets boring real fast.”

With that, she did her shot.

“What about you?” Bishop asked.

“What about me?”

“Let me profile you, Clarice, darling.”

Whether it was the music, the alcohol, or maybe the fact that she was actually curious about Bishop, she begrudgingly decided to indulge him. “Okay, Dr. Lecter, ask away!”

“Are your parents still married?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Very happily devoted to each other for thirty-nine years.”

“Well, that explains a lot. Especially the confidence you have in who you are.”

“Uh-oh, you're not trying to analyze me with a bunch of psychobabble bullshit, are you?”

“No, no,” Bishop said quickly, hoping he hadn't screwed up again. “I just think it's interesting that people whose parents stay together seem to have a certain comfort level that . . . Uh, okay, never mind. So where'd you grow up?”

“My formative years were in Orange County, California. The infamous OC. I was pretty athletic and competed in all the OC glamour sports: tennis, swimming, softball, volleyball. Oh, and I surfed a little, though not well.”

“What about boys?”

“I had to beat them off with a stick. Is that what you want to hear? Look, I had my share of fun, but I kept everything in perspective. My parents taught me what was important. I wasn't turning my life upside down for some pimply-faced, horny primate. School and sports were the dominant things in my life through most of college.”

“Maybe sometime I'll get you to give me some of the details of the fun you've had with boys.”

“C'mon, Bishop, even you can do better than that.” Lucy suddenly seemed a little distracted. She looked at her watch. “Listen, I'd love to continue this fascinating dialogue, and especially to talk more about me, but it's time to go to work. It's almost midnight and Supreme wanted me to meet him out front. And remember, I fly solo when Supreme gets here. You can be my wingman and watch me from the bar or wherever.”

Bishop tried to protest, but she cut him off. “Listen, this is my call, my lead, A. J.'s story. I'm sure you want to give me all that macho bullshit about how you've got my back. Save it. That's a given. Otherwise I never would've asked you to come with me. You can pout while I party with Supreme. But don't feel too bad. If this goes well, maybe I'll consider letting you take me where I've never been before.”

Bishop suddenly had the bright, expectant look of a kid on Christmas Eve. “You'll come back to my place?”

“Are you nuts? Of course not. You think I wanna get hit with your club, Mr. Flintstone? I'm talking about V. But it'd have to be our secret.”

•  •  •

The scene out on the street in front of Roxx was a kind of controlled chaos. The lines of people hoping to get in now flanked both sides of the main doors. The people were six deep behind the barricades and the lines stretched well beyond where Lucy could see. Limos and SUVs were double and triple parked, a small but active swarm of paparazzi and reporters bumped and elbowed one another in a penned-off area near the entrance, and security seemed to be hovering everywhere.