City of War (11 page)

“So what happened to Amarante and the record producer?”

“Their relationship was shorter than the flight over. So were most of the dozen that followed. Then she seemed to get her bearings and married a mining magnate named Charlie Fear. But once again, she’d bet wrong. The only thing I can say about him is that they got the name right. He was an abusive prick, but Amarante never got the chance to divorce him. And I never got the chance to take him out in an alley.

“On New Year’s Eve, the year I turned eighteen, they were gunned down coming out of a party in Miami Beach. Lots of witnesses, but no arrests, so you had your pick between one of Charlie’s legion of enemies or just a bad night on Collins Avenue. Six months later, my father was skiing the Himalayas when he got caught in an avalanche. And all of a sudden, a Black and Black was down to one Black.”

“My God, how dreadful.”

“In some ways, yes. But in another, I wasn’t going to witness my mother drinking herself to death. And my father, well, one could argue he had fifty-six terrific years and five bad minutes.”

Kim looked away. “I like that way of looking at it.
Relief
is
the only word I could come up with when Mom passed away. She was so sad all the time. I promised myself that no matter how much I hurt, I’d never wear it on my sleeve.”

I nodded. “The bonus was that I fell in love with America—and everything it stood for. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Legally, I’m a dual citizen, but there is no other country in my heart.”

Kim took the last sip of her wine. “So you went to college, and now you run your father’s empire.”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for college. After what I’d seen and done, a frat party seemed inconsequential. So I went into the army. As for Part Two, I run the ‘empire’ only in the sense that I make the decisions who does.”

“So you’re a man of leisure who helps people. I like that.”

“It keeps me off the streets,” I said.

“Only I think there’s more to it.”

“Why?”

“I’ve felt your arms around me. You don’t hold a woman like a dilettante. You’re lean and hard, but not just because you work out. You know exactly what you’re doing every time you move. And there’s that little bit of tension in your body, even when you’re asleep, that tells me you’re never completely relaxed, always on alert. Listening. Anticipating. You’re a very mysterious man, Rail Black, and I aim to find out everything about you.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for truth serum and cattle prods.”

She laughed. “Did you inherit Clarissima too?”

I wasn’t prepared for the question.

And suddenly, there it was again. The flash of sun-glinted hair…her face. Sanrevelle Adriana Marcelino Carvalho. Then the explosion…and the fire. And her scream.

When I managed to speak, my voice rasped. “Yes, but I don’t go there anymore.”

Kim opened her mouth, then seemed to realize something
had entered our space. “Whatever happened to your mother’s songs?”

I looked away until she had to ask me again. “I had them recorded once, but just for me.”

“You know what I want, Mr. Strathmoor Hall, Proud American? I want to go home, get into that big bed of yours, and listen to ‘Christmas Always Breaks My Heart’ with you inside me.”

“In that case, you’ll have to be a fast listener.”

She reached across the table and put her hand over mine. “Rail, I want you to know that wherever we end up, or if we don’t end up at all, I’ll always remember tonight.” She paused, then said, “And if I ever have a daughter, I’m going to name her Amarante.”

I put my other hand over hers. “It has been a terrific night. So I want you to promise me that, a little while from now, when we get into your favorite position, you’ll drop the evasion and tell me what you’ve been holding back.”

She looked down, bit her lip and nodded. Her voice was almost a whisper. “Okay. I promise.”

“So I know you’re serious, how about a preview.”

Kim looked off into the trees around the patio. After several moments, she lit a cigarette. “Sooner or later, I’ve got to start trusting someone.” Still looking away, she said softly, “City of War.”

“Should I know what that is?”

She started to answer, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone coming toward us. I turned. It was the kid with the flower basket. I looked around for Tacitus, but the place was almost empty, so he must have been inside.

Kim smiled as the kid approached. “Hey, birthday boy,” she said, “how about springing for a rose for the lady?”

As I reached for my money clip, the kid was about ten feet away. He smiled and put his hand in the basket. He came out with a 9mm Beretta.

And everything went into slow motion.

He shot Kim in the face. I watched the hole appear, then
fill with blood. I started to get up, and the kid casually pivoted and shot me in the chest. Then again…and again. And I was falling, and dishes were breaking. Somewhere, somebody screamed.

Kim just sat there, her head lolled back, her open eyes staring, but seeing nothing.

Just as I lost consciousness, something slipped through the fog, forcing me to remember. Like Tino, the kid had a spider tattoo on his forearm, but this one only had one leg.

9

Pain and Memories

Cedars-Sinai is a very good hospital. And it was close. It had to be. I was mostly dead when they got me there.

I regained consciousness long enough to see the Code Blue team scissoring off my clothes and jamming needles into my arms and legs. Then a pretty, young Asian lady wearing a tiny jade Buddha around her neck loomed over me with a long hypodermic. There were drops of sweat running down her forehead, and one of them started to fall. Suddenly, the sound of my heart pounding in my ears slowed and began to fade. I closed my eyes. From someplace far away, I think I heard a Marlboro-tuned voice growl, “Hit him! Now!” Then the darkness came, and I rushed into it.

In the movies, the hero gets shot, pulls himself off the operating table and goes after the bad guys. It doesn’t work that way. The pain is beyond excruciating, and there aren’t any he-men. Everyone asks for drugs—lots of them. Especially after they hack off a rib that looks like a pack of wolves have been fighting over it, reassemble a lung and dig half a dozen furrows through your upper body, chasing fragments.

One of the shots had gone through my left hand, chipping off pieces of bone along the way. The doctor said it
was probably the bullet that had been meant for my head, but I’d instinctively raised my hand, and the slight trajectory change had been enough. You don’t usually say thanks for more pain, but this time I did.

Mallory moved into the Sofitel Hotel down the street and was with me every minute. Ordering a special bed to accommodate my size, feeding me when I could eat and listening to me babble in delirium. I know I said some things to him that were cruel. But that’s why he’s the valet. He’s the better man.

Men who’ve been on the cover of
Forbes
and pretty young women don’t get gunned down in Beverly Hills without a media firestorm. Because they deal with so many celebrities, Cedars is used to stiff-arming the paparazzi, but this was beyond even their capabilities.

Mallory asked my friends not to visit so they wouldn’t get caught in the frenzy. He also hired round-the-clock security. Even then, some parasites still squeezed through. And I even had to admire the guy who bribed his way onto the window washing detail and took my picture from the rig.

I was half-in, half-out for a week, and all I really remember is that I kept getting Kim’s and Sanrevelle’s faces mixed up. Sometimes, I would be trying to save Sanrevelle again, only she looked like Kim. And once, I was on fire, and Kim and Sanrevelle were just watching me burn. Watching like I had when both of them died.

Two special women. Two dead women. Both only an arm’s length away. And I had done nothing for either of them. Nothing. Hospitals give you time to remember things you don’t want to.

But sometimes, they also spring the lock on the place you store memories that should be visited more often. The ones you can’t talk about but that help define you.

“Hey, Mister, wake up. Hey, Mister…Mister…”

The small voice penetrated the fog in my head, but I couldn’t seem to turn to see who it was. Strange. I’d never
had that trouble before. Okay, let’s try something easier. Just open your eyes.

I sent the command, but nothing happened. It stayed dark, even though I was sure there was light out there. Then I felt something running down the side of my face, pooling under my cheek. Something wet…warm.

I heard heavy surf. Very close. I listened for seagulls, but the waves were too loud. Then from very far away, a deep-throated engine. A motorcycle maybe? As it came closer, it wasn’t a motorcycle. It didn’t rumble, it pounded like a giant pair of wings. Whumph! Whumph! Whumph!

The ground began to shake, and suddenly, all other sound and sensation were lost. Then there was a terrible wind, blasting sand into my nostrils, and I couldn’t breathe.

I came awake in the chopper. A medic was holding a chunk of white nylon the size of a pencil stub under my nose. He pulled it away, rolled it between his fingers, then pushed it under my nostrils again. Something stung all the way to my brain, and I started to cough, violently.

Over the thundering rotors, I heard the small voice again. “Is Mister gonna be A-okay?”

I recognized the accent, and the voice. It was the same one I’d heard when I’d grabbed the kid and started running. Then the fire had rained down, and I’d dropped and pulled him close, curling myself around him. I remember thinking I was a lousy shield, but I was all there was.

Then nothing.

The hospital was old but clean. Sunlight splashed across the ceiling, and through the open windows I could hear exotic birds calling to one another and an occasional monkey chattering at some unseen irritant. The lone nurse attending to the ten of us in the ward was stiffly starched and dressed in a long white dress. Her winged hat made her seem larger than she was. A nun. She was young and darkly attractive. When I tried to speak, she put her finger on my lips and shook her head.

My bed had been made for much smaller patients, and my feet hung over the end past my ankles. I wiggled them, and they worked. A relief. The only pain I felt was a dull headache and a slight burning under the bandage on my left arm. Otherwise, nothing.

I took my time and worked my legs around to the side of the bed. I rolled onto my right shoulder, pushed up with my elbow and, with leverage from the steel headboard, struggled to a sitting position. I breathed heavily, gathered my strength and stood.

The room spun wildly, and I found myself draped over the nun’s shoulder. I wondered how she could hold me. Then I was lying down again.

I slept.

Later, the rest of J-Team came to see me. Six of them. Snake Gonzales hadn’t made it. They sat around my bed, and we talked. Made some bad jokes. Got wet eyes. When they were gone, I slept again.

The name patch over the left pocket of the 3-star’s jungle camos said Starkweather. We were sitting in a tin-roofed shack, where, during the day, it would have been too hot to draw a breath. But in the dark, with the door propped open and a sea breeze, it was comfortable enough.

There wasn’t much furniture. A couple of folding chairs in front of a field desk, but in keeping with the scrounging ability of enlisted men when it comes to commanding officers, somebody had rustled up an executive chair for the lieutenant general. A couple of flies the size of bumblebees lazed languidly under the battery-powered desk lamp that threw a jaundice-colored light over everything.

The general reclined in his chair and put a well-shined canvas boot on the desk. “How you coming along, Sergeant?”

“Fine, sir,” I answered. “I’d like to rejoin my team.”

“Mind telling me what you were doing running after that goddamn kid when you knew the F-16s were coming in to pound the beach?”

“Protecting an asset, sir. And my team. He was our translator, and he knew where we were headed.” I hesitated.

“Something else, Sergeant?”

“Sir, I don’t believe he was trying to run away. I think he just got disoriented.”

“Scared, you mean.”

“Almost as much as I was.”

The general smiled, and it was an easy one, creasing his face pleasantly. “Well, I hope he lives a long happy life and names his firstborn after you.”

“That should be interesting. All he ever called me was Mister.”

Starkweather reached for a pack of cigarettes, offered me one. I took it, then his lighter. We smoked in silence. Finally, he said, “What the hell is a guy your size doing in Delta Force, anyway? They like them tough, but they don’t like them over 6-3.”

“They were desperate to beat Airborne at basketball.”

He laughed again. “How’d it work out?”

“Another well-planned, well-executed Delta mission.”

“Congratulations, the only thing they usually win is the fight after the game.”

“We did okay there too.” I ground out my cigarette on the dirt floor. “Sir, I’m J-Team’s Number 2, and I do the underwater work. I’d really like to get back.”

Starkweather leaned forward in his chair. “Why didn’t you tell somebody who the fuck you were when you joined the army?”

“At the risk of sounding out of line, General, who am I?”

“From what I’m told, some kind of British royalty.”

“That was my father, sir. He was titled, but not royal. I’m just a sergeant.”

“But you’re also a Brit—even though you don’t talk like one. And heir to some kind of goddamned business empire.”