Drawing Dead (33 page)

“They'll all have different stories to tell, but they
will
tell them, am I right?”

The man in the center risked leaning forward again. “There's someone back there now. Only one person at a time. If he—”

“When
I
leave a room, every man in that room follows me, believe that. When we've cleared out—just the way I told you we would—that room will be empty. I promise,” she said, licking her lips as if to make certain her lipstick was going to stay painted on.

WHEN THE
scarlet mist cleared, Tiger was gone.

As she silently entered the inky back room, she could make out an indistinct form hunched over a holographic keyboard projected onto the black surface of a small table in front of him. Another soundless step and she could see the images on the sixty-four-inch 3-D monitor that transfixed the viewer, pulling him virtually inside the screen.

The viewer pushed back his monk's cowl, lightly tapped a key, and an audio icon blinked. That's when Tiger noticed he was wearing an elaborate set of earphones. She quickly glanced at the screen.
He's scoped onto the kill-spot!
filled her mind.
Just like there is on an alligator. Only alligators don't have any choice about what they are….

The Amazon came back from wherever she'd gone. Looked through the red mist as it wisped away from her vision. The man was nice-looking; well dressed, nothing extreme except maybe that oversized wristwatch. One of Tiger's daggers protruded from his spine, a surgically bloodless strike between the C1 and C2 vertebrae.

Deliberately looking away from the screen images, she ran her forefinger down the dead man's back, found a belt—
alligator,
she thought grimly, her thumb against its grain. Hoisting him like a golf bag in one hand, she used a blue LED flash to guide her out the door of the private cave.

Kicking a heavy black rubber wedge under the door, she stepped into the night air, drawing a deep breath in through her nose. The Shark Car was where she'd expected it to be, trunk already slowly opening on its own. She tossed the dead man inside, knowing the trunk would be lined with a triple-thick black plastic wrap.

The Shark Car waited, as silent as its namesake.

As Rhino entered the now empty back room, Tiger walked around the corner and entered the gaming parlor.

Heads swiveled. Tiger waited until the owners were looking directly at her, pointed at the back of the room, shook her head with a clear message: “No.” Turning to Princess, she whispered, “Let's go, sweetheart.”

They were inside the car in seconds. It was gone in less.

“
ROLL
NOW,
Buddha,” Cross said. “I've got to pick up a car in the Badlands, and then come back for Rhino.”

“I could—”

“Take her back to our spot,” Cross said, cutting him off. Turning to include Princess, the gang leader said, “Getting rid of that outfit isn't going to make you invisible, Tiger. And, Princess, you go with her, make sure nobody—”

“Nobody's going to be a problem.” Tiger stopped Cross's instructions with the pad of a talon pressed against his lips. “I've been over at
my
place for hours. Princess has always been after me to take him along, so…tonight was the night.”

“Me and—”

“Oh, honey,
please
! Didn't I promise you? All the girls are going to love Sweetie, I guarantee it. Fair enough?”

“Sure! You hear that?” Princess crooned to the beast. “The ladies won't be as beautiful as Tiger; that's 'cause they
couldn't
be. But they'll all be nice to you.”

THE SHARK CAR
ripped past the abandoned semi that marked the entrance to the Badlands and spun into a J-turn.

It blasted away while Cross was still rolling on the pavement.

A pale-yellow Scion xB, its flanks generically flamed in blue peel-offs, was waiting less than twenty yards away. The car was running, its undersized engine virtually silent. A young man, with the bowed spine that had given him his name and a bright-blue Mohawk that could be gelled down flat, stood next to the opened doors.

Condor was watched by the pack of runaways who had made a home on top of what the city called a toxic waste dump. As their leader, he had the honor of personally handling the instructions Cross had barked into a cell phone on the way over.

Secretly basking in his reaffirmed status, he listened intently for the gang leader's next words:

“Get behind the wheel. I'll be in the back. We want Uptown and we want it
quick.
I'll give you the street-by-street once we get over the border.”

“Me?”

“You got a number two already named?”

“Sure. Just like you said—”

“Then whoever it is will know what to do until you get back. We get stopped, the cops are gonna
expect
someone who looks like you to be behind the wheel.”

“I don't have—”

“If you mean ‘time,' we don't, either,” Cross snapped, tossing a rubber-band-wrapped wad of paper into the front seat. “License, registration, insurance. Your name is Johnny Lee James, got it?”

The Scion was already in motion.

“You live on Wilson,” Cross continued. “The address is good. You were born here. Chicago, I mean. But that hillbilly name, that was from your parents. Kentucky. They're deceased. You work at the Tomahawk Chop Car Wash. And you're just out for a ride tonight, got it?”

“Got it,” the young man said, an Appalachian twang already at the edges of his voice.

“We got one pickup to make. You probably won't get stopped. If you are, just be polite, you got that?”

“Yes,
sir,
officer.”

“Cop wants to look in the back, fine with you, understand? We'll bail before anyone checks.”

“You and—?”

“—sure. If things get stupid, you're not going to outrun anyone in this crate. That happens, just cooperate, okay? Car's not stolen, papers're good. Worse they can do is toss you into County on some flake charge. Don't say anything. To anybody. A lawyer will be there to spring you in the morning, when they call the new line down to court.”

“I'll handle it.”