Drawing Dead (30 page)

“Pekelo?” Tiger guessed.

“Yeah,” Cross answered. Then he quickly ran through everything he had gone over with Buddha.

“You're saying, if he hadn't…?” Tiger said, pointing a finger of her own, the talon's nail now a dulled matte black.

“I'm saying, if it was an AI program, there's only two of us it could target—it couldn't go beyond whatever those cameras in his attic captured. The AI program had to be set up in front: once activated, it could only run on autopilot.

“A ‘spider' is what Rhino called it. The program would reach out to everyone who'd been paying for online access to the rape tapes. Make it a competition, with a monster payoff. Pekelo was a fatalist. Dao equals destiny. So, when the program found him, he already ‘won,' see?”

“No” was Buddha's flat reply.

“It wasn't personal,” Cross said. “It
couldn't
be. How could that psychotic know
who
was gonna show on one of those cameras he had set up?”

“It's glowing,” Tiger said, pointing again, in a different direction.

“You see it; I
feel
it. The G has all kinds of surveillance equipment, but the Simbas, they're a few thousand years ahead of anything on this planet.
That's
the message.”

“Boss…”

“I got this brand in that basement slaughterhouse,” Cross said, as calmly as he would recite any indisputable fact. “That was
their
choice. But who sent me there in the first place? Who hired Tracker? And Tiger? Who wanted that ‘specimen' they sent me after?”

“Blondie and that little bitch,” Tiger summed it up.

“There's also—”

“Percy? He didn't like Blondie and Wanda any more than you did. They each had their own smell.”

“What?”

“Smell, Buddha. Percy's was like a testosterone overdose. I dropped a pen once. Bent over to pick it up. Little test. Percy's perfume snapped out so heavy it clogged the air.

“Wanda, I got
real
close to her anytime I could make it look natural,” the Amazon continued. “She wanted me so bad it hurt her. Really caused her pain…because she couldn't
show
it.”

“Blondie?” Cross asked.

“Neutral. Dead empty. Asexual, or whatever you want to call it.”

“But him and Wanda, they were partners?”

“Why not? Everything doesn't have to be about sex. There was nothing like that between them, and so what? They'd been together a long time. I don't know how long, but that job, that ‘specimen capture' thing, it wasn't their first. You could see. Little gestures, stuff that only they understood, no outsiders allowed.”

Cross picked up a cell phone.

THE BACK ROOM
of Red 71 slowly filled; Ace was the last to show.

Cross looked around the room. In the darkness, the tiny blue hieroglyph blazed as coldly as the neon promises of a strip club.

“It's not over,” he said. “The G expects to get what it pays for. But I don't see them blaming us. It had to be Blondie and Wanda—probably just Blondie—who sold them on the ‘specimen' thing in the first place. It's like chronic liars—they're sure
everybody
lies, just not as good at it as they are. Same thing goes for people who're for sale—they think
everybody
is, only a question of the price.

“Understand? Blondie for sure was on the G's payroll at one time, so he could have run across Percy. Who'd
you
rather have handling rough stuff? And the G would want Percy in there, too. Someone
they
could trust.

“But Blondie wouldn't have thought of that. He's about as superior a weasel as you'll ever meet. To him, Percy would be some kind of robot. Ten kinds of killer, but not too bright. Blondie, he'd sell the Simbas as a ‘terrorist' story. More than enough to convince Percy to go along for the ride. They'd all be heroes.”

“They
could
all be dead,” Tracker said.

Buddha nodded, taking the Indian's words as prophecy.

“Sure,” Cross agreed with Tracker as if in past-tense speculation. “But if they're not, there's two hunting parties out there.”

“Two?” Tiger said.

“No matter how it's spun, the blond man and the Asian woman would be failures,” Rhino squeaked. “The government doesn't trust failures. Especially those who don't share all their information.”

“They did not share how to find that apartment Cross had,” Tracker said. “They were
very
secretive. Perhaps a bargaining chip in case…”

“Not enough of one,” Rhino cut in. “That apartment where Cross used to live, that's gone. And Red 71's no secret. Or the Double-X. If the G had
us
targeted, they wouldn't have been so elaborate about it. What they wanted, maybe what they
still
want, is that ‘specimen.' ”

Cross nodded. “If those two are alive, they know it can't be for long. Without the G, they got nothing. Never had a network of their own. It was just the two of them. Otherwise, they would have known Tracker and Tiger were connected to us before they reached out and hired them. They couldn't have gone rogue for real—not then—they needed the G's backup. Which is why they couldn't stop Percy from being in on their plan.”

“Those two, they're out of moves now,” Tiger agreed. “But I can't see them going on the run. Especially Blondie—he'd be positive he could still pull it off. He couldn't sell the G on some ‘possibility,' but if he actually made it happen…”

“They would not take their own lives, either,” Tracker said. “They are not some form of yakuza—the concept of atoning for failure would be alien to them. They are just jagged edges who somehow fit together to make a single unit. They have some…bond between them. But without the government's resources…”

“So
we're
the target, then,” Buddha said, clearly relieved that the gang had finally reached a point where homicide could solve a problem.

“Are you even listening?” Tiger snapped at him. “If Blondie and Wanda are hunting us, Percy's not with them. But if the G wants them gone, Percy would be just the man for
that
job.”

“I would, too,” Ace said, so softly that Cross couldn't be certain he had spoken at all. Or maybe he was just feeling his first partner's thoughts inside himself.

“WHO THE
hell are
you
supposed to be?”

“What do I look like?” Tiger said to the immense block of tribal-tattooed Maori standing between the “Valet Parking Lot” and the road leading to the back of the Double-X.

“Don't matter what you look like—nobody gets back there without word from the boss.”

“This is where Cross said to come,” Tiger answered, as if that should settle any argument.

“Anyone can say a name, miss.”

“Then use your phone, you blockhead. I have to go on in an hour, and—”

“Who the hell is
that
?” the Maori stepped back, startled.

“This is my manager. His name is Princess.”

“Hi!” said the muscleman, extending his hand.

The Maori didn't accept the offer. He was just about to reach for his phone when an almost prehistoric growl came out of the darkness. “What the—?”

“Sweetie! You stop that!” Princess chided the beast. “We're here to make friends!”

The Maori's eyes shot to the black-masked, white-bodied—
Is that a dog?
—creature. His hand slid from the pocket where he kept his phone to a shoulder holster.

“No!” Tiger yelled, reaching toward her thigh just as the Shark Car rolled up behind her.

Rhino leaped out, a meat-locker-sized blob of gray. “Freeze!” he squeaked. “Princess, come on back here. Now!”

“I'm not leaving Tiger,” the armor-muscled man said, his voice that of a petulant child.

By then Cross was closing in. “You must be another one of K-2's cousins,” he said, calmly. “That guy's family has got to be the size of some small towns.”

“You're—?”

“Yeah,” Cross answered, holding up his right hand, palm toward his face. “Just step back, and make your call.”

As the Maori retreated deeper into the darkness, Cross spoke to Tiger out of the side of his mouth. “You couldn't wait, huh?”

“I thought you'd be here first. With Buddha driving—”

“But when you saw we
weren't,
you had to go all Bogart on that poor guy, right?”

“I was
sweet,
you moron.”

“Yeah. I can tell. Never mind, here he comes.”

“Mr. Cross? I apologize, sir. K-2 says he apologizes, too.”

“He's got nothing to apologize for. He knows he can bring on anyone he wants without asking me. As long as it's family.”

“Then I should—?”

“You should get out of the way,” Tiger said, flashing a dazzling smile.