Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels (24 page)

“Obtaining wealth is a talent. If you work at it, you can turn it into a skill. I can raise a quarter billion dollars’ credit in twenty-four hours on my reputation alone; not in the legitimate commodities market, of course, but the dollar goes just as far. Farther, some places. What’s become of America’s image in the world community is a scandal.”

“Our dollar’s not doing so well, either. I thought you might have given up on destroying our culture with undocumented immigrants. We slurp them up like Pepsi, even built a statue to advertise it.”

“I disagree, but I never till the same field twice. Insanity is defined as the expectation of achieving a different result from a tactic that failed the first time.”

“This one failed big. You or one of your people let the heroin out of the bag in a part of America that destroyed itself without your help a long time ago.”

She showed something then; smugness, or surprise—disappointment? Had I stumbled too easily into a hole she’d dug? She liked me a little despite herself or I wouldn’t have survived our last meeting. Maybe she expected better of me. Oh, she was insane. But then I decided I’d tried to get too much out of a change of expression in bad light.

“I don’t reward mistakes,” she said, “but my policy is to let everyone have at least one. Failure is education.” She slid a slender hand into a side pocket in her coat and drew out a clasp knife with a red lacquer handle. “Will you do the honors? Taking her with you will spare you an extra trip after you lead Chang to those boxes.”

I hesitated, then took the knife from her cool palm, pried loose the blade, and went behind Ouida’s chair to saw through the ties on her wrists. I couldn’t believe it was as easy as all that. One of these days I’m going to have to learn to trust my instincts.

When I freed her ankles, Chang snatched the knife from my hand, nicking my palm, and gave it to his boss, who folded and returned it to her pocket. I rose and helped Ouida to her feet. She swayed; I caught and held her while the circulation returned to her hands and feet. She was warm and soft, but steel-reinforced at the center. She’d survive—depending on what else was in store. Her breath caught in tearless sobs.

“I have something else to show you before you go.”

I looked at Sing. “I didn’t come for the tour.”

“No extra charge.” Her speech was a crazy mix of Oxford English and carnival barker. She spoke rapidly to Chang, who bent and lifted the hissing lantern from the floor. That shift from warrior to redcap must have been a severe test of his discipline. I wondered if I could profit from that.

We followed him through the door and deeper into the building, Ouida leaning on me, Sing behind us. I squeezed her hand. It was cold, but no limp fish. At that point I was grasping at anything.

Greasy orange light slung shadows into shapes that crawled along walls of block and poured concrete. The air was clammy cold, with the stale smell of an unventilated bunker.

In the curve of the wall someone, a player or other club employee, had sprayed an exuberant “1968” in numerals three feet high, faded now like its spirit. That was the year after the great riot, the Tigers’ first championship in twenty-three years. The victory had been interpreted as a sign of hope in a season of despair; in those days, any bright omen at all was solid currency. No one could have predicted that forty years later the despair would still be in place. It wasn’t the building’s fault. They’re only as good as the people who stream through them.

Another doorless opening led into the equipment room, where Chang waited with the lantern hanging down at his side. It meant nothing to him, that room of golden fleeces and enchanted swords. He’d known places more ancient and far more fabled and been conditioned to disregard them as dead fossils. To him the ceramic army was so much superstition to be pulverized for standing room for those of flesh and blood. I hated him then nonobjectively, like a stubborn nail that wouldn’t drive. There may have been a normal upbringing there, on the other side of the face job and desensitizing, but to me he was just an arrangement of pulleys and gears that made my hands thirsty for a monkey wrench to throw into the middle of it. A gasp from Ouida told me I’d gripped her arm to the point of bruising. I relaxed my grip.

The space we were in was three times the size of the manager’s office. Although the bats and gloves and helmets and shinguards and catchers’ gear were gone, the racks and steel utility shelves remained, the shelves standing in parallel rows like library stacks. They were nothing without the postgame chatter, the sports clichés and split infinitives and smell of ferment from spilled champagne when a pennant went down. A building is just mortar and reinforcing rods without human input. It was long past time to put it out of its pain. I’d push the plunger myself if they’d let me.

Charlotte Sing said something to Chang, who led the way along the ends of the stacks. Coming to the last one he stopped and stepped aside, still holding the lantern low so that only a circle of floor was visible in its light. A puddle of seepage lay there, incubating mosquito larvae. At the opposite end of the stack, shadows formed a heap in the alcove formed by the wall and the steel structure. It might have been a pile of equipment that had been left behind.

“I’m understaffed,” Charlotte Sing said. “Security at the borders has limited me to Chang and a few dozen day laborers recruited locally, with as little explanation as possible about the reason for their employment. In the absence of physical force I considered it necessary to take other steps to secure your cooperation.”

She spoke again in Chinese. Chang raised the lantern to shoulder height. The light penetrated the blackness.

A folding cot had been erected in the narrow space at the end. I left Ouida to support herself against the wall while I went in to identify the small figure stretched out on the cot.

It was Luis Quincy Adams, Johnny Toledo’s errand boy, eyes closed, face sheathed in cold sweat. Something crunched underfoot when I moved in to see if he was breathing. I withdrew my foot and looked down at the broken pieces of a disposable syringe.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. When I placed the back of my hand near his lips, nothing stirred the hairs. I lifted his bare arm from atop the thin wool blanket that covered him and pressed my thumb to the artery on the underside of his wrist. I felt nothing at first, then a shallow throb. I lowered the arm.

“The mildest of injections,” Charlotte Sing said. “Just enough to keep him unconscious. I shouldn’t need to add that the solution will be increased substantially if despite Chang’s supervision you fail to return with the converter boxes, but certain things are safer not left unsaid.”

I asked how long he’d been there.

“Chang found him at the bus station yesterday, on his own initiative. He couldn’t fly without photo ID, and you can no longer board a train without passing through security. It was possible the authorities had been notified, with his description. He had a ticket to El Paso.”

“He was on his way to Mexico.”

“Your advice. No, we didn’t torture him. He told us about you and the camera phone he gave you, but that was under the influence of the drug. I assume by now you’ve turned the phone over to the police.”

“He’s just a kid.”

“At his age I’d been a slave for two years. Children sometimes endure under circumstances that would destroy their elders.”

Ouida made a noise. I’d almost forgotten about her. “You don’t need the boy,” I said. “He doesn’t know anything the cops don’t.”

“He can give evidence in support of it; but I’m not interested in holding him. When I have those boxes, Chang and I will leave. By the time you bring back help, we’ll be out of U.S. jurisdiction.”

That meant Canada; and I knew then Detroit had been no accident. It was only three minutes across the border by bridge and tunnel, only they wouldn’t be using either. The guards on either side couldn’t be expected to catch every small watercraft, every private plane or helicopter. She could slip out as easily as she’d slipped in.

I stood facing her in the crawling light. “Neat but sloppy. Those temps you hired spilled a lot of powder on the street.”

“Oh, we always meant to measure the impact in a real-world situation. The boxes containing the heroin were intended to stray into the hands of local dealers. I overestimated their ability to recognize its purity and adulterate it properly; I’ve been away, and I’m still a novice in this area of commerce. Product development claimed most of my attention. The inferior quality of the Mexican import came as a shock.

“When the deaths began to attract the attention of the media, I issued instructions to reclaim as much of the shipment as possible. Your Mr. Crossgrain was a clerical mistake, made by an employee in a computer boiler room. He provided a tax identification number with his order that was similar to one on our list of customers in the related field of smuggled electronics. I came here to correct that error and make sure that no others took place.”

“With Chang.”

“We traveled separately; but yes. The local pool of qualified professionals is polluted with undercover officers.”

“Was Johnny Toledo on your customer list?”

“He was a parasite. I’m sure it wasn’t your intention, when you made contact with him, to set him off after those boxes, but that was the result. By the time my people learned they’d been recalled, they were already on the street.”

I’d guessed part of that. The rest was news. “So it wasn’t your people who burgled Crossgrain’s place the first time?”

She laughed unexpectedly, a tinkle of bells that walked up my spine like a centipede. “I’m not the only criminal in town. The fools who stole that shipment never looked inside. They marketed them at the going rate for hot merchandise.” Her face smoothed. “We’ve managed to recover only fourteen boxes. The ten we tracked to Eugenia Pappas’ warehouse leave one unaccounted for. I assume that found its way into official hands or you wouldn’t have known heroin was involved.”

I didn’t see any reason to tell her how Rudy the street person had swiped one from Johnny. “I’m back to what’s in it for you, if not the cash.”

“That isn’t part of our transaction. The boxes, please.” When I glanced at Luis she said, “He’ll be here when you return.”

I looked at Chang waiting, standing as motionless as the fixtures with the lantern raised, the light reflecting off the skin grafts on his face and the dark glossy marbles of his eyes.

Just then the boy on the cot made a low whimpering noise and stirred. Charlotte Sing came forward, drawing a slim leather case from the pocket opposite the one where she kept the knife.

“Don’t be alarmed,” she said, spreading it open on the boy’s chest. “This is methadone. Too sudden an awakening from the other can trigger cardiac arrest.” She filled one of a row of disposable syringes from one of a pair of small prescription bottles with different colored labels and squirted a short arc of liquid to clear the barrel of air. “The second bottle contains morphine, distilled from the opium from my gardens. You know the sound quality in this building. Any disturbance you’ve planned will lead to tragedy.”

She lifted his arm from the blanket. Ouida turned her face to the wall.

*   *   *

Chang accepted a loose key from his mistress and directed me with grunts and gestures to a different gate from the one I’d climbed before. I stood supporting Ouida while he bent over the padlock and undid the chain. We preceded him through the opening.

It was a hike from there to the Cutlass, supporting most of the young woman’s weight on my shoulders, but as we came under the street lamp nearest the car I managed to turn her between us and made a cutting gesture on the offside with my hand at waist level. Gale Kreski’s panel truck was dark, parked in the gloom between lamps; I hoped he was paying attention. If he called Alderdyce and Thaler as we’d discussed, the Chinese would react at the first sound of a rapidly approaching vehicle. I’d experienced him in action, and there had been Madam Sing’s warning about what would happen to Luis.

I fumbled open the door on the passenger’s side of the Cutlass and lowered Ouida onto the seat. I had to pry my arm free of her fingers. She was shaking violently with post-trauma, her teeth rattling. I guided her legs in their ruined stockings into the car, patted her thigh, and closed the door on her.

Chang stood within lunging room as I unlocked and swung open the trunk. When I bent to lift a stack of boxes, he grunted and waved toward the street. He must have had instructions. I backed into the traffic lane, arms spread, while he scooped up a box in both hands.

I had an instant before he realized it was too light to contain a kilo of heroin. He was making a noise of surprise when I slammed the trunk down on his head.

That was the plan; but he had the reflexes of a scalded cat. He blocked the lid with his arm and it bounced back up off his biceps. At the same time he braced himself on the bumper with his other hand and his leg swung around on ball bearings, catching me on the bone at the side of my knee with the edge of his foot. Shards of blue-white pain shot out in all directions. The street slammed into me before I knew I was folding.

All this happened fast. What happened next was faster.

I’d landed hard on my shoulder. I rolled over onto my back to defend myself from the next attack. The empty revolver dug into my tailbone. I needed cartridges. I needed thunderbolts from heaven. Chang bent his knees to leap.