Red rain 2.0 (26 page)

Fast. It has got to happen fast.

My mind won't move fast as I need it to, that night in my apartment. So I give up trying. Can't do anything tonight anyway. I put on a Dvorak string quartet CD, lie on my sofa and do the muscle-relax drill. Then I do the mind-clear exercise. Cold and clear pretty soon.

Doorbell. Check my watch, seven-thirty. Helen's on time. I get up from the sofa, smooth the fabric where I've been sitting, go and let her in.

"Cool," she says, looking me up and down. "Hair's sort of radical, but cool. Tell me about the other night."

"No." I wouldn't tell her details in any circumstances, but I'm extra alert now. That sketch. Then a fresh jolt. Helen seems to have turned up just before and after every single move, from the Vassily dinner, most of my busts, the Buzz Cut murder, now Brighton Beach.

"Why not?" She grins. "Tell me, babe."

"Nothing to tell," I say easily, trying to read her eyes. Nothing the least sinister there. I'm getting fucking paranoid, I decide. "Thai okay? Tod man pla, some of that spicy chicken, lemon grass soup?"

"Sure, if you've got some beer in the fridge."

"Got some. Have one while I call the restaurant."

I overtip the delivery boy when he shows up with the food. As we eat, Helen starts telling me about a girl in her

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class she's sure is fucking an English Lit professor who's married and has four kids. And he, she says, isn't doing a decent job of disguising it.

"He practically drools when he looks at her in class," she says. "It's really disgusting. I mean, she does have award-winning tits and a tight butt, but is that any reason to be so uncool?"

"I'd have to see them to judge that."

"Them?"

'The award-winning tits and butt, of course."

"You are so predictable, you dog," Helen laughs. "Sometimes I think your brain's not in your skull, but your balls."

"Well that's okay with you, isn't it? Seems to be, so far."

"Wow, I'm just noticing something here. You have a big dent in the side of your head, Luther. How'd that happen?"

Right. Like I'm going to tell her about getting shot.

"Backyard football. I was maybe ten or twelve. Went out for a pass, all my attention on the ball, hit the house corner full speed."

"Ouch! I didn't think you could actually
dent
a skull. Wouldn't it just fracture?"

"Did fracture. They had to operate, take some bone out. Put in a little metal plate in its place. Bother you?"

"Gross. Not the dent, not that. It's hard to see, only at a certain angle. It's not ugly or anything. The idea of it, though___"

So how would the idea of a high-velocity bullet slamming into a head strike you, girl? Or maybe you have some idea if you're the sketch. Got some lines out, to check that out. Time to slip away from this.

"Got two DVDs, one for you, one for me.
Much Ado About Nothing,
the Branagh-Emma Thompson version, and
Pulp Fiction.
You choose."

"Pulp Fiction!"
Helen laughs. "I love that scene where John Travolta and the other guy ram that huge hypodermic between Uma Thurman's tits after she's overdosed. And she
jum
ps up and scares the shit out of them."

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"So let's play it," I say, getting up from the table and going over to the TV. Helen's already on the sofa by the time I've got the disk going. Her palm's out, two Ecstasy pills lying there.

"So let's get off too, okay?"

"Hey, Helen. How often do you do this stuff? Can't be good for your brain, you know. Weird chemicals."

"Only on special occasions. Not even once a week. I just loved the way we were together that one time we did it. C'mon. Don't be such a cop, babe. We'll have fun."

We do. We watch the disk, we play so sweetly in bed after. Helen's drifting off to sleep. I'm not. Adrenaline's cutting right through the Ecstasy cloud.

Take one step. Take the next, and the next.

The bulk has to come soon, Vassily's guys have to meet me and Dog soon. Because it won't be long, in the city, before a gang crew leader goes to his personal Russian and asks where the fuck's the shit he needs? We're blown then.

Vassily has to be personally present with the bulk. We scoop it and his men up without nailing Vassily, Dog and me are stone blown. For good.

And, maybe toughest, tomorrow I've got to explain this whole business, leaving out lots of details that have to stay secret, well enough to convince Dugal to lend me four guys. Can't be narc squaders. I'll need four tough young guys, the smartest the BCPD's got, to go undercover with me. All on trust, because I won't have time to personally train them.

I wonder if all this has hit Dog's cerebrum yet. It must have. He was so high on the way home he wasn't hearing shit, wasn't registering what I was saying about all this. Now, probably, he's home, thinking just what I am.

I slip silently out of bed, close myself in the bathroom, cell Dog. "Yeah, I know," he says before I say anything but hi. "We got trouble, this don't go down quick. I'm talking days, man, not weeks. I'm working on it."

"Later, man."

"Not much later, man." Dog hangs up.

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Hits me then, how stupid I am. Simple fix—one part of it, anyway. I call the Brooklyn number. "One thing, my friend," I say in Russian when I get Vassily on the line. "Don't tell the guys you already got working down here a thing until me and Dog and you and the product all get together. Business as usual, right? Don't want to upset the gangbangers unnecessarily, do we? Gotta be biz as usual until me and Dog step in."

"You drunk or something? Too much celebration?" Vassily laughs. "How else you think I do this thing? Put an ad in newspaper? Say all blackie gangsters, you have new source now. And put in your phone number? And then let my team down there get shot by blackies? Never mind. Stay drunk. Celebrate. Me, that's what I'm doing. You should see what I got sitting in my lap right now. Young, fresh from Ukraine. I call you when I got arrangements made. Be a little patient, you're too excited. Meanwhile, business as usual. So celebrate!"

What?

Three hours and thirty-eight minutes. That's how long I'm in Dugal's office next morning. I follow the prime rule of successful lying. Stick as close to the truth as you possibly can, give up as much information as you possibly can without compromising what you need to keep hidden. He goes from being pissed off I've done a deal with that City narc Dog without telling him to very skeptical about the magnitude of the possible bust to very excited about making the biggest catch ever. He's relentless in pursuit of details, implacable in demanding he personally be involved in every planning session I have with Dog. in every single step I take. In the end he's good to go but can't promise he'll be able to get me the guys I need. Says he understands why I don't want to use narc squad members, why I need young patrolmen, but he's going to have to come up with a pretty good line of bullshit to convince the chief to let him have men
who
aren't under his command. Says he'll do his best. I

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know he will. If this comes off, he will definitely score big—a captaincy, maybe even a jump two or three rungs up the ladder, not just one.

I'm wasted when I leave his office. I figure it's gone as well as it could have. I call Dog. He's good to go. He's already got some smart young guys on his team who aren't overexposed, and he's going to use them. He's got no problems. Business as usual until he hears from me.

Then a real bad thought. Was Buzz Cut's memory sharp enough for him to have given up the one detail that could link me to his bust—the quick blast of Russian curses when he walked out after the bail hearing? Would it have come up in the torture session? Would he have suddenly remembered the one strange thing about "Bob"? Would he have dribbled it out between screams, in some desperate hope that'd make the pain stop?

No way, I decide. He'd describe a big cop built like a refrigerator, a skinny cop with a long ponytail, Jimmy Halli-day. His mind would be too fucked up by what they were doing to his body for him to reach down and pull out that flash, instinctive reaction to my totally unexpected Russian insult.

If he had, I wouldn't have walked out of the Palace in Little Odessa. Vassily would've had me hit, taken Dog out too. Vassily would've known everything Buzz Cut gave up. I must be clear.

But damn if I feel sure of that.

I roll into the office Friday feeling just right, balanced and calm. I love these Maryland Octobers—nights just this side of frosty, brilliant sunny days, hardly ever any rain, not until November anyway. And there's Ice Box, hulking in his cubicle. The man's back on the case. All right!

"Hey, IB. Looks like you been sparring with a cat. That cat cleaned your clock for you," I say. There's lots of little scars on his face, bright pink still but they'll fade.

"Just two words for you, Five-O," he grins.

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"Everything okay? You fit? MJ and the kids? You dig get-tin' up in the middle of the night, smelling diapers, all that good stuff?"

"Matter of fact, I do. It's beautiful, man.
They're
beautiful. What can I say? I musta been made for this."

"Now that's real hard to believe."

"No shit. Surprises me too, but it's the truth." He can't stop grinning. "So, I miss anything cool?"

"Nothing cool goes down without the Ice Box. Tommy's still out, gonna take a long time for that hole in his calf to heal up. Things've been slow. Kinda boring."

"Oh yeah."

"Lunch?" I say.

We go to IB's favorite, Marco Polo Ristorante. I'm hesitant on this, watching him shovel down something heaped with tomato sauce. Fuck it, I decide. He's my best. I spill everything all in a rush, every little detail from my early jolt when Dee Dee ID'd one of the Russians as Vaseline, my history with Vassily, my contacts with him these past few weeks, the deal with Dog, Brighton Beach, the deal with Dugal.

IB keeps shoveling down the pasta, apparently as unconcerned as if I'm telling him some woeful tale about trouble with Helen or something. After he's mopped the plate with the last piece of bread, chewed and swallowed, he pulls off the napkin he's had tucked into his shirt collar and throws it at me.

"You fucking asshole." he says, but mildly, like it's all some kind of joke. "What'd I say to Dugal when he made us partners? Something about seeing
Lethal Weapon
movies on my
eyelids with you as the Mel Gibson psycho? I was wrong.
You’re fuckin' crazier than that."

"I'm just doing my job, IB."

"Bull fucking shit. You're on some kind of vendetta or something. You've gone way beyond our job description
here
. You ain't being professional. Wake up, Five-O. This is not a movie. You are not Mel fucking Gibson."

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"Hey, man! I know what I'm doing. It's a legitimate operation. It's all clear with Dugal."

"That asshole. You always could make him believe any lies you dreamed up. You must have really turned it on to get him to go for this. I know, I fuckin' know you never told him what you just told me. You made up a bunch of shit so he wouldn't see how far over the line you went to get to where you are. Otherwise he'd have never bought it."

"Well, let's say I got a little creative with certain facts."

"Jesus Christ, Luther. How the hell do you expect me to keep you alive, let alone out of jail, you go doing shit like this?" Then IB grins hugely. "So what're we doing, exactly, next?"

"You're not doing anything, Ice," I say. He frowns. "You never heard one word of what I told you. You even give a hint you know any of this shit to Dugal or anybody else, you will get me tossed in jail or killed."

"Fuck that," IB laughs. "I'm gonna kill you myself, just to save a lot of time and bother."

"MJ would not be pleased with you. MJ likes me a lot, IB."

"Shit. That is a problem. I gotta think about this."

"Think all you want. Just remember it's going to go down, and when Dugal explains the bust to the squad, it's hot fucking news to you, right?"

"I'm not promising nothing, Luther. I'm feeling a little hurt here, you keeping all these secrets and shit from me."

"IB?"

"Yeah, yeah. You had reasons. I'm pissed. But I'll get over it."

Next afternoon I drive to the station, park the TT, go up to my cubicle. Can't concentrate. On impulse I call McKibbin. Sure, he's up for wringing out that Kalashnikov. "Meet you at the range," he says.

We probably go through five hundred rounds each, slow singles, three-round bursts, full-auto. Ranges from ten feet

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to a hundred meters. The little monster shoots buckets, it gets fouled and dirty and hot, but it's still willing to go without a hitch or hang when McKibbin shreds a silhouette full-auto, thirty-round clip.

"Mean little weapon," I say.

"Very, very mean, indeed," he says, looking admiringly at it.