Blackjack (3 page)

“Not out here. On the boulevard, you point your pistol, you pull the trigger, and death follows the bullets. Inside, to kill, you must be close to
el enemigo
. To shoot, yes, that takes heart. But to stab, that is what takes the heart,
verdado?
”

“Sí, ese.”
The three acolytes spoke as one.

“Inside, just being there, you get old,” their leader continued. “If you lucky. Out here, bang-bang! You live or you die. But in there, it is twenty-four/seven pain.”

“I been Inside—” the youth with the headband started to speak.

“I know you have,
hermano
,” the leader said. Although still young, he had learned that a vital part of his role was to provide support and encouragement. “I ain’t downing you. But the Walls, it ain’t like the kiddie camps. Only one game gets played in the Man’s House. War. Race war. And there ain’t no neutral ground. No place to get out the way.

“Out here, we fight among ourselves. Like fools, perhaps. But that is how it has always been. But in there, it does not matter—even united, we would never be strong
enough. This ain’t the West Coast, you feel me? It ain’t even Chicago. So we outnumbered, very bad. Downstate, you look around, you see nothing but wrong colors.
Blancos y negros
. Nazis and Zulus. How you gonna ever be safe between those
psicópatas?
They try and wolf-pack you on the way back from Commissary, you expect that, no? So you never go to that window alone. But how can you protect yourself when you get jammed right in your own cell? Some of them, they so
loco
they even take you out standing on the mess line.

“And the yard … 
pantano de la muerte!
They do their drive-bys walking! When that black-white thing gets hopping, even if we ever
could
outnumber them, there ain’t no place for us but the middle—we still too busy fighting each other to see the truth. And you know what happens if you get caught in the middle:
crunch!

“Body counts, that’s like status for some of them maniacs, specially those Nazis. They already under a load of Life Withouts, so there’s nothing to hold them in check. Even Ad Seg—fancy name they use for Solitary—that’s always all full up, so what those psychos got to lose, a little yard time?

“No place to stash them
all
, so the COs just let them cruise around and do their thing. Which is making other people dead. They got, like,
contests
, man. One Nazi dude I heard about when I was in there, he had, like, thirteen kills. Confirmed kills.”

A micron-thin shadow rippled faintly inside the elaborately painted panel on the hood of the low-rider. As in another jungle, on another continent, its presence was undetected.

If any of the group had been able to tune in to that throbbing shadow, they would have heard a faint whisper:

“Asesinatos confirmados.”

From a rooftop several blocks away, a shape similar to that
which had emerged from the acacia tree formed itself from a pile of debris.

Suddenly, the girl twitched as if from a cold chill, her mother-to-be senses picking up … something. The leader patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry,
mi amor
. I am here. With me, you
always
be safe.”

The girl nodded as if reassured, but her hands remained clasped defensively across her stomach.

From the shadow, another one-word sentence, now in an Aztec language no longer spoken anywhere on earth. Translated, it would have been:

“Stay.”

Unaware of his reprieve, the leader continued his lecture.

“Out here, a man don’t be talking about who he took out, but it gets
known
. We not
Los Peligrosos
for nothing. You want to carry the brand, you got to take that
stand
, hear me?”

Unnoticed by all, the infamous “dead man’s hand”—aces and eights—depicted on the white wall behind them incorrectly as a full house—had morphed: all the cards were now arranged correctly, but as duplicates, not pairs: the aces and eights, all in hearts.

THE INTERIOR
was a scaled-down version of a Pentagon war room: maps, charts, and graphs, blinking computer terminals, two long conference tables, angled so they formed a V, at the apex of which was a giant-screen LED monitor. On one side of the monitor was a series of Insta-Graph meters; on the other, a larger row of instruments with read-out dials. Next to the graphs and meters on each side stood a stack of CDs, all neatly labeled by the same process that slid them out every few minutes.

The room itself was underground and windowless. The
only sound was the whisper of the machines used to keep the computers at a constant temperature.

On the monitor: projected views of crime scenes, all slaughter-homicides.

Five people were present, their eyes fixed on the screen.

“What makes those Pentagon pussies so sure this guy knows any more than they do?” The speaker was a double-wide male—not especially tall, but almost frighteningly massive. His body lacked sharply defined muscle; it looked more like extruded power, stretching the man’s skin to its limits. Even his black-and-gray hair appeared to be a tightly plastered cap.

The man was wearing a T-shirt, with a hard-plastic shoulder holster hanging under his left arm. The MAC-10 it carried looked like a toy against its bulky human backdrop.

“It won’t hurt to hear him out. Just let him take a look at what we’ve got, Percy.” The speaker was a slim, blond man, neatly dressed in agency-issue standard. Every aspect of his appearance was bland.

“He’ll go along with our conditions?” a thickly built but very shapely woman with a mane of tiger-striped hair asked. She was wearing a one-piece spandex outfit, a pair of long, thin knives strapped to the outside of one thigh. That same thigh’s muscle-flex was clearly visible as she swung one booted foot up onto the table.

“He’s already on his way, Tiger,” said a doll-faced Asian woman in a white lab coat. She held a clipboard in one hand, studying it closely through oversized round glasses. “That’s confirmed, Tracker?”

The man she addressed simply nodded. He was an American Indian, with high, prominent cheekbones, red-bronze skin, jet-black hair, and dark, hooded eyes.

“Excellent, Wanda,” the blond man said. “He’s supposed to be the leading authority on serial killers. Not only solved
a number of significant cases, but predicted their moves as well. The FBI wants nothing to do with him. Probably because he’s publicly mocked their alleged ‘profiles.’ ”

“This has got nothing,
nothing
to do with serial killers, damn it!” Percy barked out. “What the hell’s wrong with these wimps? They want to
study
this thing? That ain’t the answer to the problem.”

“What
is
the answer?” Wanda asked, a wisp of a smile playing across her lips.

“The answer?” Percy grunted his disgust. “Same as it always is. We find it; we kill it. No different from what
it’s
been doing all over the world. Am I right?” he demanded, opening his arms in a gesture meant to involve the whole room.

Only Tiger nodded in agreement.

A light glowed on a console in front of Wanda. “He’s here,” she said. “Everybody ready?”

Only the blond man responded. To Wanda, only the blond man mattered. She leaned forward, her mouth close to a tiny microphone, and whispered, “Bring him down.”

THE FOUR-INCH-THICK
, bunker-style door opened slowly and silently. A short, husky man entered. He was in his fifties, with close-cropped hair, wearing slightly tinted glasses. His stride was that of a man heavily endowed with “no need to prove it” self-assurance.

Everybody in the room had been told what to expect: a top-tier professional, the best at what he did.

Tracker scanned for egotism; Tiger for her version of the same weakness. Percy performed a lightning-quick threat assessment, all three warriors operating on autopilot.

The blond man and Wanda simply waited.

The man did not enter alone—he was air-sandwiched between two others. One stepped ahead of him, the other close behind. Both were dressed in simple gray jumpsuits and matching watch caps. One carried a submachine gun in a sling, the other held a short-barreled semi-auto, blued against glare. Their faces were so alike they could be twins—human robots who would respond to only one source of orders, acting as a single unit.

At a nod from Wanda, they walked the man between them over to a waiting chair. He took the intentionally unsubtle hint and sat down, still not having said a word.

As if on cue, the two men backed out of the room, their weapons trained on the now seated man up to the moment the door closed.

“Thanks for coming, Doctor,” the blond man said, not offering his hand.

“Glad to be of help.”

“We’ll see,” Percy muttered, obviously unconvinced, and not disguising his skepticism.

Tiger gazed at the new arrival with measured intensity; Wanda consulted her clipboard. Tracker remained motionless.

Finally, the new arrival spoke. “You said you had something you wanted me to see.…”

“That is correct,” the blond man responded. “Wanda?”

Wanda walked briskly to the giant monitor, prepared to hit a switch, and asked, “You’ve been briefed …?”

“I believe I have,” the consultant replied. “This is about the Canyon Killings, right?”

“Yes. You’ve seen the crime-scene photos?”

“Uh-huh. Same as these blowups over on that wall,” he said, nodding at the poster-sized photos of demolished human remains.

Nobody made a sound.

“Roll it already,” Percy snapped.

Wanda’s long, lacquered nails floated over the console. On the ring finger of her left hand was the rarest of star sapphires: white, with a black star, set in platinum.

THE MONITOR’S
screen snapped into life. A white male—thin, with a receding hairline and matching chin, was smoking expansively, gesturing as if addressing a legion of adoring fans at a press conference. As the camera dollied in, it became clear that the man was clad in a prison jumpsuit, leg-cuffed to his chair.

The camera slowly pulled back to show viewers that the man was behind bars, but not in an individual cell. The blond man set the scene for the newly arrived consultant:

“This piece of fecal matter is one Mark Robert Towers. Thirty-seven. Habitual—no, make that
chronic
—offender. Priors include rape, abduction with intent, arson. Arrested four days ago by the locals.

“It wasn’t a difficult case to crack, but the crime scene was unusually repulsive. Mother and daughter raped and killed in broad daylight—looked like a push-in burglary that went bad. Fortunately, the scumbag not only left his prints all over everything he touched, they vacuumed enough DNA out of the victims to put him down for the count.

“Death Row’s a lock for this … whatever he is. Not here—Illinois is still in a mess after those mass no-execution orders issued by the Governor … before he went to prison himself. I believe that’s something of a tradition in this state.