Red rain 2.0 (18 page)

"I suppose if that changes, I'll know it's over."

Later, drowsy in a rumpled bed, Helen in the shower, the phone jerks me wide awake.

"My little friend! You okay?" Vassily's drunk. He's also either clairvoyant or Buzz Cut's his man. I rule out the first immediately.

"Never better. Just got laid really, really well."

"Hah! So you got woman after all. I'm a little worried when I see you. You don't look so happy. I'm thinking,

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something missing in Shooter's life. So you getting taken care of?"

"Sure, Vassily. And you?"

"You need to ask, little brother? Knowing me like you do?" He laughs. "You take little vacation, come up here for a few days. We have some party."

"Not interested, if it's going to be anything like Charles Street."

"No, no, no. I'm thinking about sweet, sweet pussy. Lots of caviar, champagne. Nothing boring about that, is there?"

"Sounds much better. Yeah, I'll come up. Pretty busy right now, but soon."

"Promise me?"

"Sure."

"Because also maybe something is coming along we can do together. Some business."

"I'm listening."

"When you come, we talk. Guy I got down there where you are, I begin to think he's the wrong guy. Little stupid. He's giving me some damn headache."

"Think it's the vodka did that."

Vassily's laugh booms over the line. "Not since I stopped sucking my mother's tit! Vodka! No such thing as too much. Same with women. So I let you get back to yours. She got a sweet ass? I let you go then. Until we meet, little brother. World is nothing without friends."

"Until we meet." I hang up. My mind runs replays even after Helen slides in next to me, smelling sweet and good enough to eat. Why's it got to be Vassily? Why couldn't it be someone else?

Next morning, warrant all official, IB and Tommy and I go toss Buzz Cut's crib. Nice place. Saporiti sofa and chairs, Nakamichi sound system, lots of Italian style. Clean as an old bone too, which I expected. No dope anywhere, naturally. No papers, no ledgers, no cash stash, no address book.

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Got his numbers in his head, I figure, or in a Palm Pilot he carried out of jail when Eckhaus sprung him.

IB's rummaging through kitchen cabinets, Tommy's prodding and poking and lifting cushions on all that nice oxblood Saporiti leather. I'm in the bedroom, just scanning. Confident boy, Buzz Cut, I'm thinking. Smart. Knows there's no way to hide anything that any competent pro burglar won't find. So why bother? There's a night table, steel and blond wood with a Berenice lamp on top. I slide open the drawer. Like I figured: a driver's license in the name of Peter Raskolnik. Platinum Visa, MasterCard and Amex Blue with the same name and expiration dates a few years down the road. I don't reach for an evidence baggy. It's illegal as hell, but I just pocket the license and the cards. They might be useful sometime. I toss the stuff in his closet and his ar-moire for appearance's sake, then just stretch out on the bed. A lot more comfortable than my Ikea number. Lot of thoughts shuffling around while I listen to IB and Tommy chattering and banging around in the other room. I only notice I've started thinking in Russian when IB appears in the doorway and says, "What the fuck? You figure it's nap time already?"

"The room's clean," I say. "Not a single thing worth bagging."

"Shit!" IB says. "We got the big zero too."

"What'd you expect, Ice? The guy's a pro. He's gonna have scales and heat sealers and a couple of kilos of smack lying around? You don't shit where you eat, right? He don't work where he lives. Bet you five large he's got a little very anonymous and very secure crib someplace. A business address."

"Which we'll never get unless he gives it up."

"IB, you're a genius."

"Kiss my guinea ass."

Most everybody calls out some greeting when we get back to the squadroom. Except Taggert. Taggert has his nose deep

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into some paperwork, keeps his head down, doesn't look up or look at me.

Ice Box comes over and sits on the extra chair in my cubicle. The chair squeals and creaks. "Great morning. I hate zeros," he says. "So, man, you going to tell me what that little exchange between you and Buzz Cut when he walked was all about? Start simply—like with what language you two were talking."

"Russian. But never mind about that, IB."

"Russian? You thinking Russian mafia? You considering asking me for that cell number Dee Dee gave me?"

"Don't have to. Got it a long time ago."

"What?"

"Well, I broke into your computer and took it. It was easy. You had it filed under 'Contacts' as 'Vaseline.'"

"You lowlife fuck! I resent that, man. That's really going too far."

"Oh, chill, IB. You so tense about the birth you losing your sense of humor or what?"

IB leans toward me, lowers his voice. "Luther, I'm scared shitless. From no kids to twins? Aw Jesus, it's shaking me up. Suppose something happens to MJ? I get bad thoughts like that sometimes."

"Nothing's going to happen," I say. "Except that when she and the kids get home from the hospital, the Ice Box is going to learn what sleep deprivation means, and experience many times day and night the great aroma of dirty Pampers."

"You know what, Luther," IB says, getting up to leave, "'every time I get woke in the middle of the night for a feeding, every time MJ forces me to change a diaper, I'm gonna phone you and give you the play-by-play. Call it payback, thief. You won't like it, but you'll be grateful to me later, when your turn comes."

I can hear IB laughing to himself even when he's back in his cubicle.

I call Annie. Voice mail. I leave a dinner invitation for

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tonight. Then I start thinking about Buzz Cut. We've got nothing at all on his girl counterpart, and I don't believe he's going to give her up. I'm thinking she must be scarier than Buzz Cut too, because none of the kids we've busted who dealt with her are willing to do what Jimmy Halliday did. I'm wondering how tight she is with Vassily. Could be very tight.

"So what's got you down, Luther? Helen cutting out on you or something?" Annie asks. "For a man who just pulled off a major bust very cleanly and neatly, you don't seem to be exhibiting appropriate responses."

"Which would be?"

"Well, a little excitement, maybe. Even exhilaration. Some self-satisfaction would be in order. Some boasting and bragging would even be understandable. You look like your brother died or something."

Oh, that's too close, I think. It's my own fault. I've been staring at rather than eating the plate of linguine with pesto before me at Bocca, where Annie and I met for dinner.

"Anomie, maybe?" I mumble. "Or maybe letdown. Sort of like the post-Christmas depression I always had as a kid."

Annie just laughs, shakes her head.

"So I'm too fucked up to live, right?" I say.

"I hate to be the one to say it, but yeah." She smiles. "Do you want me to shoot you, or would you prefer to do it yourself? I've tried, but I can't think of any other solution. You're a terminal case."

"Will you do it for me, Annie? Will you? But please, not in the face. Make it a heart shot, okay?"

"Sure, but I'd like to finish this veal, it's delicious," Annie says. "And then I'd like a tiramisu for dessert and a double espresso. Can you wait?"

"Oh yeah. No rush at all. I can handle my miserable existence for another half hour at least."

Annie goes back to enjoying her meal. I start in on the linguine, but I don't have much appetite. Annie's the one

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person in the world who'd understand exactly how complicated my situation's getting. She'd see that no matter how I go after Vassily—strictly by the book, which doesn't seem to me to be either sure or safe, or freelance, which'd give me a better chance of surviving—I'm going to
look
dirty, even if I'm spotless as an angel. It's going to come out we know each other, that I've been seeing him, probably too that I was a mere in Bosnia.

I can't tell her a thing about Vassily. And I definitely can't mention the only clean solution I've come up with—a totally covert mission. Shit. The only thing worse than letting yourself get fucked is fucking yourself.

"You know what it is, Annie? Buzz Cut's nobody. I shouldn't have moved on him. I should have used my head, got close to him, let him lead me up the ladder toward the guys who really count, then popped them all. If Buzz Cut's put away, he'll just be replaced by his boss. And I don't have one single clue who that boss is. That arrest was a goatfuck," I lie. "So I'm having a self-esteem problem here."

"That's a first!" Annie says. "Welcome to the club. Maybe now you've got a hint of how I've been feeling lately."

14

Dog's on the phone next morning before I even get the lid off my cardboard cup of bitter, burned coffee.

"What is it, home?" I say.

"Got something real pretty to show you, Luther. You'll dig it. Just go down Greenmount Avenue to Thirty-fourth Street, make a right. Can't miss the house. Lots of yellow tape, lots of cruisers with lights flashing. You got maybe twenty minutes before the good stuff gets taken away."

Dog's right. Crime scene tape has an old two-story house with crappy aluminum siding that once was white and now's a dingy neutral wrapped like a Christmas present. There's at least three meat wagons in addition to four patrol cars and two unmarked. Lots of uniforms standing in the tiny front yard that's mostly beaten earth with a few clumps of weed, or peering at the immaculate red Dodge Viper, a V-10 exotic worth $80,000 and change, in the cracked concrete driveway. Beyond that's a new silver Lincoln Navigator. A uniform trys to growl me away, straight Police Academy style, but one of Dog's men comes out on the porch, sees this action and calls me through.

This place hasn't seen much in the way of maintenance in a long time. The wood steps up to the porch are warped and dry-rotted. Forensics team is hanging out there, waiting their turn inside. Paint's peeling off the wood front door, but there's a fairly new and heavy-duty steel grill backing it.

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The first-floor windows are well barred too. The door's open. I'm expecting to smell what happened here before I step in, expecting that heavy, oddly sweetish odor of blood pools not yet congealed. Instead there's just the stale breath of a house long lived in, never kept too clean. Musty. Mousey. Then I see a little kid lying in the foyer face down in a little puddle that's part blood and part some other fluids. Can't tell if it was a boy or a girl, in those superbaggy nylon cargoes, the Polo top, the Nikes. But I guess about five or six years old by the body size.

Two suits—homicide, they're wearing surgical gloves, there's evidence baggies hanging out of their jacket pockets—come into the corridor from a side room, muttering to each other. One, an older guy with dark bags under his eyes and not much hair left, glances at me and stiffens. "Who the fuck are you? Some DEA freak?" he shouts.

"It's okay, dude. One of mine," Dog says, moving out of the room opposite.

"Don't touch a thing. Don't neither of you touch one goddamn thing, or I'll have your ass," the homicide detective says, way too loud. Either he's got a hearing problem he doesn't know about or he's just a real dick.

"What you know?" Dog says, beckoning me down the hall.

"No good," I say. "You indicated I was going to enjoy this."

Dog laughs, mean edge to it. "You will. This definitely your kind of thing, man. Check it out, check it out."

In Dog's room, the kitchen, there's a body sitting on the floor, back propped against the cabinets under the sink. Three small holes you couldn't fit a pencil into, crusting around the edges but still oozing, in her swollen face. Young woman, judging by her shape and the skin and muscles of her legs, which I see almost all the way up to her crotch because her skirt's so short and tight.

Across the corridor, where the Homicide suits had been, I count three men—one draped over a big dining table, one

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sprawled on the floor near a china cabinet, one still remarkably on his knees, with a hand gripping a window bar. Heads all turned toward the door, three small holes in each face.

Dog leads me up the stairs to the second floor. Just at the top there's another young woman, and three steps away a fat old lady in a quilted robe. No blood pools. Faces intact. But their clothes are soaked around the abdomens. Zoom in. Three little holes in each. The rear bedroom has a steel door. Inside there's a big gun safe, a steel table with scales, a box of heavy plastic bags and one of those machines for heat-sealing them when they've been filled. White powder lightly dusts one pan of the scales.

"Smack or coke?" I ask.

"Her-O-in," Dog says.

The safe's open. No drugs, no money. Two Tech-9s, two Mossberg assault shotguns, one AR15 carbine still racked. A body with one arm reaching for them, another male body under the table. Three in the face for both.