Everybody Pays (20 page)

Two days later, the crew was gathered in a loose circle in what looked like a living room—an old living room that hadn’t seen a vacuum cleaner in years. Stashed on the third floor of the Red 71 building, the windowless room was invisible from the street.

“Here’s what we have so far,” Cross said. “This Rangel guy is a salesman. Phone guy. Something in bonds, or penny stocks; I’m not sure. But he’s got a real gift of gab, talks smooth. Two arrests as a juvenile, nothing since. Married. No kids. TRW says he’s pretty much AA. House is valued around one fifty, mortgage for eighty-something. Lives within his means. Doesn’t gamble. Doesn’t drink either. Straight-arrow on paper.”

“On those juvenile busts—he go the same route we did?” Rhino asked.

“No, he never went inside. One Intake Adjustment, one Probation,” Cross replied, an edge to his voice that only his crew would recognize.

“You get what he was beefed for, boss?” Buddha asked.

“Yeah. The first one, he shot a cat with a bow and arrow. The other one, he poured gasoline on a dog. Set it on fire.”

“Fucking weasel,” Princess muttered. “This guy, he started it, right? And we’re getting paid, too. So how about I just go over to his house tonight and snap his neck?”

“No go, brother. We’re getting paid to find something out, not dust him.”

“So how do we—”

“Relax, I’m coming to that. The kid said this guy actually swerved. Went out of his way to hit the puppy. Now, maybe that’s what it looked like to him, but maybe the car just got pulled to the outside of the sweeper. You know, when you’re driving too fast . . .”

“Centrifugal force,” Buddha supplied.

“Yeah,” Cross continued. “Too tough to tell. What we do first, we put a man around there. Undercover.”

“Me! Me!” Princess yelped. “I never get to work undercover. Come on, Cross. You said the next time . . .”

“You got it, partner,” Cross told him, looking over the bodybuilder’s shoulder at Rhino, who shrugged elaborately. “Now, listen close. . . .”

The big pink Harley rolled through the suburbs like a pit bull at an AKC dog show. The rider looked carved out of stone, his massive arms bare under a black leather vest, his face unreadable behind a black face-shield. Princess gave the throttle an extra blip as he downshifted, then tore off down a side road onto the highway. As he approached the left-hand sweeper, he leaned the bike over until his inside boot scraped the ground.

“You were right, chief,” Buddha said. He was behind the wheel of the anonymous sedan the outlaw teenagers who lived in the Badlands called the “shark car.” Cross next to him on the front seat. “It’s like the cops don’t patrol this sector at all. That idiot Princess was making enough racket to wake the dead.”

“You think that curve pulls?” Cross asked.

“Sure. See how mild it’s banked . . . just that little bit? No way that’s enough. Wasn’t for that guardrail, you make a mistake, you could go right over the side.”

“Let’s take a look.”

Buddha drove expertly, making the car move quickly without appearing to do so. He slid to a stop just off the road at the apex of the curve. The two men got out. The guardrail was metal, two thick bands set up parallel to the ground between posts to absorb impact. They looked past the guardrail. Looked down. It was a sheer drop, at least a couple of hundred feet. Below, the jagged rocks of a long-abandoned quarry.

“Rhino report in?” Cross asked.

“Yeah, chief. This guy drives the same route very day. Same time, same way. Clocked him for nine days now. He’s never been more than a few minutes off.”

“Traffic patterns?”

“Nothing, boss. Look how long we been sitting here—
you
see a car go by? Only reason to use this road is if you live in that subdivision over there, see?” Buddha pointed. “And this guy, he works seven to three, all right? Rest of the commuters, they come along much later.”

“So where’d the kid come from?”

“Over there.” Buddha pointed again. “See that clump of trees? On the left? Just at the bottom of the hill? The kid lives on the other side. I guess he was just going down the hill when the pup got away from him.”

“You took a look? From where the kid stood?”

“Perfect cover,” Buddha replied. “Sniper’s roost. You thinking . . . ?”

“No. We need answers, remember? This guy can’t tell us anything dead.”

“What do you see?” Cross asked his crew, pointing with one finger to a white object sitting on top of one of the pool tables, maybe thirty feet away.

“It’s a puppy,” Princess said. “Can I . . . ?”

“Hold up a minute,” Cross said. “Rhino, you see the same thing?”

The huge man nodded, waiting. Cross strolled over to the puppy, the others followed.

Princess stuck out a hand to pat the puppy, then drew it back like he’d touched a stove. “It’s a fake,” he snarled. “A stuffed dog.”

“Try and pick it up,” Cross told him.

The bodybuilder reached out one hand, grabbed the puppy by the back of its neck. “Ugh!” he said. “What the hell is this?”

“It’s a concrete puppy,” Cross told him. “With a lead core. Painted to look like a dalmatian. Weighs almost seventy pounds. Fong did it. Nice job, huh?”

“What’s it for?” Princess asked.

“It’s a lie detector,” Cross said.

“You understand how this is going to work?” Cross asked the boy standing next to him. They were in the copse of trees at the base of the left-hand sweeper. The redhead stood just off to one side.

“I . . . think so.”

“Okay, kid; listen good. We’re gonna put the puppy—just a model, not a real puppy, okay?—we’re gonna put the puppy in the road. But way off to the side, see? When this guy comes by, he’ll have plenty of room to miss it. So, if he
does
miss it, you’ll know it was an accident when he hit your dog.”

“What if he tries to hit it?” the boy asked.

“Then we’ll know that, too,” Cross told him, checking his watch. He pulled a cellular phone from inside his coat. Punched in a number, waited. Then he said, “T minus three. Set it up.”

The motorcycle’s exhausts bubbled as the pink Harley pulled around the bend, then veered off to the side. Princess dismounted, unstrapped a white object from the back of the bike, set it in place.

“It sure looks real,” the boy whispered.

“Just watch,” Cross told him.

Princess positioned the puppy on the shoulder of the road, about a yard off the paved portion. It looked as though the dog was injured, one foot held slightly off the ground at an odd angle. Princess checked once more, then leaped onto the bike and vanished.

A red station wagon came around the curve, its wheels over the double yellow dividing line, giving the shoulder a wide berth. The driver didn’t come near the puppy. Didn’t stop, either.

The phone in Cross’ jacket buzzed. Once. Twice.

“Next up,” Cross said to the boy.

The black Ford came around the corner at a moderate speed, hugging the double yellow line, as the station wagon had. Suddenly, the Ford’s engine roared and the big car charged forward, its outside front wheel aimed directly at the puppy. The Ford impacted as if it had gone up a ramp; the front end launched as the rear wheels lost traction. The Ford slammed sideways into the guardrail—which immediately parted as if it had been pre-cut with an acetylene torch.

Cross and the boy ran across the road, the redhead close behind. Only the Ford’s tire marks were visible. The section of guardrail still standing was smeared with black paint. The concrete puppy was cracked, lying on its side, but still intact.

Cross, the boy, and the redhead all looked down. The black Ford was a dot at the bottom of the quarry. A dot in flames.

The boy was crying. The redhead knelt next to him, a comforting arm around the child’s shoulders.

“What’s wrong, baby?” she asked.

“He hit my Brutus on purpose,” the boy said. “He killed my puppy.”

The redhead caught Cross’ eye over the boy’s shoulder. Cross nodded. She clasped the child to her, holding him fiercely.

When she looked up again, Cross was gone. So was the concrete puppy.

The redhead and the boy walked back up the hill together.

In a few minutes, the road was deserted again.

for Shannon Jones

HARVEST TIME

“
T
he walking man was medium height, with sandy hair still lightened from a summer spent outdoors. His eyes were shielded by dark glasses; a gym bag was swinging gently in one hand. He crossed the gigantic parking lot surrounding the mall, looking straight ahead, a slight prizefighter’s roll to his walk.

“I still say he don’t look like much.” The speaker was wearing a violet silk tank top, covering a torso so massively built, so outrageously ripped, that he looked cartoonish. His head was shaved. An emerald earring dangled from his right ear.

“Count the cars, Princess,” his companion replied, pointing with the stub of his forefinger—the last digit, where a fingernail would have been, was missing.

“Huh?” Princess said. “I don’t get it, Rhino.”

Rhino shrugged—it looked like a boulder experiencing a ground tremor. Although he was actually much larger than the bodybuilder, there was no hint of definition to the muscles that stretched his skin to the limit. “Watch the other guy . . . See? The guy in the pretty running suit. He’s jogging, right? McNamara, he’s walking, okay? Count the damn
cars,
Princess. Get a fix, where they start, count to thirty, like thirty seconds, see? Then go back and count the cars.”

Princess made a face, his lips moving.

Time passed.

“Damn!” Princess said. “You was right, Rhino. The jogging guy, he covered fifty-four cars. McNamara, he did sixty-eight. And he’s
walking,
right? I see what you mean—it don’t look like he’s moving, but he is. That karate stuff, that’s what does it?”

“Cross says it’s kinetic control.”

The man they called McNamara unlocked the door of a ten-year old Ford that had once been burgundy. He tossed his gym bag carelessly into the back seat, stuck his key into the ignition, looking straight ahead through the streaked windshield.

The rasping sound of a heavy zipper came from the back seat. “You looked real good in there, Mac,” a matching voice said. “You stay at light-heavy, there’s no one out there who could take you. What are you now, sixth degree?”

“Seventh,” the man in the front seat said, not turning around.

Sounds of paper being shuffled. “This the whole list?”

“That’s everything,” McNamara said. “Every OC name in the city. Everything’s there: DOB, NCJIC and FBI numbers; last known address; AKAs for each one. What the hell did you want the blood types for?”

“You don’t want to know. Okay, you sure there’s nothing I can do for . . . ?”

McNamara’s voice dropped an octave, edged with ice. “Don’t insult me, Cross.”

“Sorry. No disrespect intended.”

“None taken. A man like you, that’s what I’d expect.” He turned the key. The engine reluctantly coughed into life. “Can I drop you anywhere?”

“Don’t worry about it, Mac. You just stop for the lights—I won’t be here by the time you pull into your driveway.”

The CTA bus rumbled to a shuddering stop at the fringe of the Projects. The front doors hissed open and a tall black woman stepped to the sidewalk. She was dressed in a dark raincoat over a nurse’s uniform, the white stockings and shoes a dead giveaway in the October night. Adjusting her shoulder bag for maximum protection against a snatch attempt, the woman turned toward a cluster of high-rises a quarter of a mile away. She walked past the bus-stop bench, carriage proud and erect despite her exhaustion. She didn’t even glance at the slumped-over figure of a man, sensing rather than seeing the empty bottle of cheap wine clutched in the bum’s slack hand.

“Tough working two jobs, isn’t it, Clara?”

The woman whirled sharply, her eyes pinning the seated bum, one leg shifting behind the other as if to brace herself to run.

“Cross?”

“Sit down,” the bum said quietly. “Have a talk with an old friend.”

The woman took a tentative step forward, eyes wary. “What happened to your face?” she asked, peering into the darkness.

“Just a little help from the makeup department, Clara. It’s me.”

“How would I know that?”

“Come on, Clara. You recognized my voice on the phone. You knew I’d be somewhere around here tonight.”

The woman’s hand slid into her pocketbook. Stayed there.

“Lots of people can do voices,” she said.

“Big Luke always said you were a hard woman.”

The woman blinked rapidly, tears very near the surface. But her hand stayed deep in her pocketbook.

“Even when you were a little girl, he told me. One night, we were talking. Just before we went into the caves. Talking to kill the fear, you know what I mean? He told me about your pink party dress—about how you wore it to church one day and people were whispering behind their hands about it. How you just stared them down, backed them away, all their little-town gossip. He said he knew he wanted to marry you right then.”

The woman took her hand from her pocketbook, walked over, and sat down next to the bum. Her nose told her the truth—whatever the man was, he was no wino.

“I still miss that fool,” she whispered.

“He knows. He knows what you’re doing, how good a mother you are to the girls. What sacrifices you make for them.”

“You believe that? You truly do?”

“I do. He’s watching.”

“I feel that too, sometimes. That’s why I never even thought about . . .”

“I know.”

“I know things, too, Cross. I know about you. Things I hear. Who’s watching
you,
then?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I have all his letters. From over there. I read them, all the time. Read some of them to the girls. He wrote to them too, you know. They were just babies. Separate letters he wrote, even though they’re twins. Like he knew they would be different. I was pregnant when he went over. He never saw them.”

“He sees them now, Clara. Sees you, too. Days at the Motor Vehicle Bureau, nights at the hospital. No vacations. No fancy clothes. Everything for the girls.”

“I keep them safe, Cross. It’s hard lines here. The gangbangers own the Projects now. I been tempted. Many, many times. Not a man for
me
—I’m waiting on Big Luke, and we’ll be together again soon enough. But a man for . . . protection, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“But I go it alone.”

“You want to move out, yes, Clara? Out of here. To a quieter place.”

“That’s what I’ve been saving for. But the girls go to school, that comes first. That’s our way. I tell them, you finish college, make something of yourselves, then you go out and earn some money, buy Momma a little house someplace.”

“It’s time now, Clara. You sow, and so you reap. Like the Bible says.”

“The Bible? The Word of the Lord? Cross, that’s blasphemy in your mouth. I told you, I know what you do. Some of it, anyway.”

“Same thing I did over there. With Big Luke.”

“My man died serving his country,” she said, head back, eyes flashing.

“It’s just another war,” the man called Cross said, lighting a cigarette. “And I don’t
have
a country.”

The woman made a face. “I don’t allow cigarettes in my house. Not liquor, either.”

The man snapped the cigarette away without taking a drag. “It’s time
for
that house, Clara.” He reached into his voluminous coat, took out an envelope, handed it to her. “There’s a piece of paper in there with the money,” he said. “Names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, copies of signatures. All you have to do is make sure each one gets registered as an organ donor when he renews his driver’s license.”

“Why do you . . . ?”

“You don’t want to know, Clara. You worked your whole life, now harvest time is coming. The crops are ready to come in. Take the money, buy your house. There’s enough there. More than enough. I’m planting my own seeds, that’s all.”

“One of Luke’s letters, he talked about you too. He said you didn’t care if you lived or you died.”

“He told you the truth.”

“And he cared so much. He had so much to come back to. You didn’t care. But you came back and he didn’t. Why is that?”

“I don’t know.”

She reached over, took the envelope, put it in her pocketbook.

“Goodbye, Clara.”

“Goodbye, Cross.”

There were five of them watching. Black teenagers with old eyes. Each already proven impervious to every “rehabilitative” service the State of Illinois had to offer, from counseling to incarceration. They were a feral crew—wolves without the loyalty of the pack.

“Bitch packs a piece, man,” one said. “Heard she shot one of the Disciples last year. Shot him cold. She ain’t going for no elevator jam.”

“She got money,” another replied. “Money in the house, too. I gotta get paid. She want to be stupid, too bad.”

“You see her girls? Them twins. That’s what I want. Ain’t nobody had any a that stuff.”

“Shut up,” the shortest one said. “Everybody get what they want outa this, we do it right. A vise, that’s what we need here; come at her from both sides. Her apartment’s on seventeen, right? We go up there, split into two sides, wait on the stairs. Soon’s we hear that elevator open, we jump her. Take her down. Her keys won’t help us—the girls keep the chains on from inside. We make the bitch tell ’em to open the door. Then it’s game time!”

“Bet!” one of the watchers said. “I’m gonna make them twins
dance,
man!”

“Let’s move it. She making tracks now.”

The pack split into two groups, cutting through the Projects to reach the building before the woman did.

The leader and two of the others waited on the stairwell, their harsh breathing loud against the concrete. The leader leaned forward, opening the door a crack.

“She be comin’ soon,” he said.

“Freeze!” a voice whispered. “Not a sound.”

They turned slowly. The leader blinked at the source of the whisper. A white man the size of a small gorilla, his back against the far wall. A dull-black Uzi riveted their attention. In the monster’s hand, it looked like a derringer.

“Hands up,” the monster said. He walked over to the leader, grabbed the back of his neck with his empty hand, and lifted the terrified youth off the ground. Pain-bolts shot along the leader’s spine.

“We’re going upstairs,” the monster said. “To the roof. We’re going to walk. Slow. One man’s hands come down, you all die. Understand me?
Die.
Then I just pick you up and carry you up there, see? I’m getting paid, bring you to the roof. Dead or alive, it don’t matter.” He released the leader, who slumped to the floor, hands still rigidly held over his head.

“Walk,” the monster said.

It was only three flights, but the pack was breathless as they stepped out onto the roof. The monster herded them over to a far corner. As they approached, they saw their two partners, standing with their hands high. Next to them, a blade-thin black man in a long black leather coat and a Zorro hat.

“Oh shit!” the leader said. A visible shudder ran through his stocky frame.

The five pack members were herded into a row, their backs to the roof’s edge.

The man in the Zorro hat stood before them, so finely balanced as to appear weightless in the roof’s darkness. A leather thong was looped around his neck. At its end was a double-barreled shotgun, sawed off so far down that the red tips of the shells were showing.