Red rain 2.0 (9 page)

Absolute silence.

"Vassily," I say.

"A mistake, I think. Who is speaking, please?" I don't recognize the voice.

"Tell Vassily it's Shooter."

"Yes, wrong number you have. Goodbye."

"Tell Vassily it's Shooter," I say, harder and in Russian. "Tell Vassily Cafe de la Paix on Suleiman Boulevard. Shooter and Mikla."

"Give your number."

I recite my apartment phone. The connection's broken almost as soon as the last digit's spoken.

When I pull up in front of my apartment, there's a lime-green Bug already parked there, front door open and a pair of long legs stretched out. Those gangbanger shorts.

"They were such a hit last time, thought I'd wear them again," Helen says as we go inside. "Your table ready?"

It isn't. I never bothered to move the cardboard and plastic containers coated with the remnants of our Thai dinner.

"Ewing, you're a pig," Helen says when she sees the mess.

But I just flick off the lights, pop an old tape—
Nirvana Unplugged
—into the Sony, lead her into the bedroom, and duplicate the table trick on the bed. She doesn't seem to mind at all.

Afterward, she just wants to lie on her side with me pressed up against her from behind. Fitting like two spoons in a drawer. It's pleasant, peaceful. Soon I drift off.

I see she's awake when I come jumping out of sleep on the first ring of my phone about three
a.m.

"What?"

"Maybe you go to pay phone, lots of quarters, you call 718-555-8912, Shooter."

"Fucking now? You're crazy."

"The number's 718-555-8912."

The phone goes dead.

Helen doesn't say a thing. She stirs, pretends to go back to sleep. I pretend too. I repeat that number over and over until I'm sure it's engraved nice and deep in my head. Then
lots of other thoughts start sprinting around, and a few bad images too, only they run in slow motion. Like sitting with Mikla at the Cafe de la Paix in Sarajevo and seeing Vassily come walking by with his men, smelling the powder and blood about him when he sits down to join us and orders a brandy, even though it's just past dawn. It's a long couple of hours before Helen feels she can decently slip out of bed, brew up some coffee and come back with two cups of it. She kisses me hard.

" Tis the lark, love," she says. "I must away. Got an eight o'clock today."

I'm jittery. I take my morning tab plus a couple of Ativans to make it easier not to start moving on the day too fast. I take a long, long shower. I force myself to dress slowly, slowly strap on my guns, slowly check around the house to make sure I haven't left a stove burner on or the coffee machine either. I don't leave. Can't use a pay phone; the only ones around are in plazas and malls that aren't open yet. Fuck, I gave out my home phone in the first place anyway. So, I decide, I'll call from home. That area code, 718. Brooklyn?

"Very smooth, my friend, your call," I say in English when there's a pickup and silence. "Fucking middle of the night. I don't keep those kinds of hours anymore. Scared the hell out of my girlfriend and almost put me in cardiac arrest."

"Ah, Shooter." A voice laughs. It is Vassily, it's the laugh I recognize, not the voice. "Only way your heart stop is if someone puts bullet in your head. Me, mine almost stopped when this guy calls himself Shooter phones me sometime. I'm thinking you never made it out of that hospital they fly you to."

"Made it out, made it home. Now I'm making some things happen."

"What things? Things like some man with a farm I meet?"

"You been giving out your number to lots of slobs and lowlifes. I got some racehorses now. I hear you like horses."

"For sure. And some other things too. We got to see each other, I think. Telephones I hate."

"Me to you, or you to me?"

"Maybe you like to visit New York? Think about it. I call you back, a few days maybe."

"Great, but listen, you fuck," I say. "My office hours end at eleven P.M."

"Okay, okay," Vassily laughs. "Soft life you are living. I don't call middle of the night."

"Good," I say.

"Better idea I have. Thursday I am in Baltimore. You buy me dinner, da?"

"Sure. You know Hausner's?"

"Very famous old seafood place, correct?"

"Say eight o'clock."

"Da. Da.
I find the place, I find you there, Shooter," Vassily says and hangs up.

I check my tape. It's fine. I make a copy on my sound system deck, put the original in my lockbox, pocket the copy. Then I check my apartment again, pat my wallet pocket and my guns like an obsessive-compulsive, and leave for work. Calmer now. It's always first contact that jukes me. Once the action starts I'm the iceman.

The action's started. But nobody knows that yet except me. I make the right moves, nobody's ever going to know anything. Even when I finish it.

5

The Camaro takes a mortal hit and goes down hard on York Road about halfway to HQ Monday morning. There's a sharp whang, a dull whump like a mortar going off, and I just manage to get the car into a mall parking lot, crawling on six of its eight cylinders, before the remaining six lock up too. KIA.

I take a bus the rest of the way to work. I'm not pissed or irritated or depressed at all, which sort of surprises me. In fact, I feel a little excited.

It's a nothing morning. I start typing up my conversation with Mr. Halliday for the file. The room fills, the usual bitchin' and moanin' that passes for greetings on Monday. It's a while before I notice the absence of Ice Box. Have about ten seconds of bad thoughts and reach for the phone when I remember he and MJ are down the Ocean—that's how "Bawlmer" people say it—taking the week before the Labor Day holiday for beach-time at Rehobeth. Means I'm solo 'til Friday night, then off for the long weekend in Virginia. Maybe. With Annie. Maybe.

Takes me two cups of coffee and a tab before I can start dialing the Virginia number. Haven't seen Gunny or Momma since I went overseas again in '94. Gunny'd reamed me out about what I was doing then, said if I did it don't ever think about coming home after. Went anyway, naturally, did a good job for maybe ten months, and then my little bonus pack turned out to be ten months in a Swiss hos-

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pital. I left with that dent in my skull and a need for those tabs. Since then, a few calls and letters from Momma. Not a word from Gunny. The man always had truly meant whatever he said, I guess.

I feel cliickenshit when I notice my pulse speed up with every ring. I'm in luck. Momma answers, starts crying when she hears my voice, manages to tell me Gunny's out fishing.

I say, "Momma, I'd like to come on home Labor Day. Bring a friend. We can stay at a motel and meet somewhere, if Gunny won't have me in the house."

No more tears. "That Gunny, you not worry, compren-dez?" Still got the Viet accent, still loving her French. "My house, too. You will stay here."

"Am I gonna have to get physical with Gunny?"

"Hah! I take care of this man. He be
un petit chien,
tail between his legs. He won't say, too much pride, but he is missing you almost so much as me, Luther. I catch him some nights, drinking whiskey, looking at my box of photos of you. You come. No damn motel. My house. You don't worry for your papa, n'est-ce pas?"

"Okay, Mom. See you maybe nine or ten Friday night?"

She's crying a little when she says goodbye.

I lean way back in my chair, feeling lighter than I have in a long, long time. No illusions. I know Gunny and I are gonna go at it. Maybe, when we've exhausted each other, he'll bear-hug me and lift me right off the ground, the way he used to. Maybe he'll listen, actually hear me when I tell him why I did it, actually understand.

It could happen. It could.

Car. Fuck. Annie'd drive, but I don't want that and I need wheels anyway. I unlock one of my file cabinets, take a small gray steel lockbox out of the bottom space, put it on my desk.

Not a lot in it. My honorable discharge, my medals, my old Virginia state trooper badge and ID, receipts for my guns with serial numbers, title to the Camaro, a little slip of paper with a thirteen-digit number on it but no hint it's for an account at a Lichtenstein bank where my blood money sits.

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And my local checking and savings account statements. I take out those.

I see I've got $55,289 and change in my Equitable Trust money market fund, and $11,015 in my Equitable checking account. Most of it's pretty old money. I never spent much when I was in the army, saved all my combat pay and a good portion of my regular salary. Saved a bit as a trooper, too, and operate now always at a surplus. Pay off credit card bills in full each month. Don't owe anybody anything.

I take a neat titanium calculator, parting gift from Cate, out of its leather case. Multiply my weekly take-home pay by four, add up my fixed monthly expenses. Shit, I could afford $400 to $500 a month payments on a car and still have more walking-around money than I'm likely to spend. Good to fuckin' go, Luther.

Lunchtime, I go over to an Equitable branch and get a bank check for ten grand.

After lunch, I get a call from Mr. Halliday. They want to come in, talk it over. I tell him what I've got to do now is give his number to my chief and the DA. They'll call him, arrange a meeting, work the deal. I remind him to bring his lawyer to any meeting. The man actually thanks me. Solid citizen. I had the feeling.

I call Dugal, fill him in.

"This surprises me very much," he says. "You sure you didn't promise anything we can't deliver. Or use a little pressure?"

"Yup. I even reminded him to check everything I said with his lawyer. And to make sure the lawyer's part of the talks with you and the DA. All you got to do is call the man, LT, have the meeting. This is going to fly. Then I'm gonna take that kid and nail the fuck. And when I nail him, he's gonna give up his boss. We're gonna go all the way up on this one, LT."

"You're sounding overexcited, Luther. You're using the personal pronoun too emphatically. Don't leave me thinking I have to remind you we're going to work this—if we get something to work—as a team."

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"Sony, LT. I'm just revved. You know I'm a team player."

"So far, Luther, that's true," Dugal says mildly. "I do get alarmed, though, when I hear a lot of Ts."

"Hey, LT, I'm thinking the usual way. You and the DA cut the deal, then you and me and Ice Box make the plan, the Halliday kid arranges the meet, we all converge and nail this fuck."

"Right. We
all
converge and pop him. Clean, solid, hard evidence, airtight bust."

"We'll make it happen, LT."

"Great. But Luther, do me a big favor? Stop using those Gulf War cliches, won't you? They date you. And they get on my balls."

"I'll make it happen. Sir!" I say. Dugal laughs and hangs up.

I E-mail the Halliday file and notes on the deal and my conversation with Dugal to Ice Box, so he'll be up to date soon as he gets back from vacation. Then I figure I've done a day's work and slip out, even though it's only three. I catch a bus toward Cockeysville.

Out past the old Timonium Fair Grounds, with its hog sheds and cattle barns for the annual state fair, and its racetrack for thoroughbreds, there's all kinds of auto dealerships tucked in among the malls. Subaru, Ford-Lincoln-Mercury, Chevy, Volkswagen, Saab and Volvo, Acura and Lexus. I'm thinking go inexpensive. I'm no kid, I'm not going to get more dates 'cause I'm driving overpriced wheels. Maybe something low mileage, just in off a two-year lease and still under warranty. Then I'm thinking, would I buy a Ruger instead of an HK to save some bucks? Never mind that in that analogy there are serious professional reasons to prefer the HK. I get off the bus where there's an Audi dealership on one side of York and a BMW facing it on the other side.

I wander into the BMW showroom, clownish in baggy shirt and khakis again, hair in a ponytail. Salesmen look up

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briefly from their desks and then get real busy with bogus paperwork. Fuck 'em.

I walk into the Audi dealership, pretty much the same reaction from the salesmen. But then I see it: a two-seat TT, hardtop, Audi silver with slick black leather interior. A real unique shape, businesslike, no doo-dahs, super-clean lines. This thing's gotta be way out of my league, I think. I look at the sticker, expecting $60 or $70K. Surprise: $33,980. Comfortable number of thousands below my annual salary. With the ten grand in my pocket as a downpayment, how much could monthly payments be?

A salesman comes over. "Like it?" he asks. "It's a rocket."

"I'm gonna buy this one right here, the silver one, today," I say. I see greed in his eyes.

"That's the price, there on the window?" I ask. I've never bought a new car before. Thirty years old and never bought a car from a dealer. But I'm not as dumb as I'm acting.

"Sticker only," he says, getting into gear. "We can work with you on it, naturally."

I pull out my bank check, show it to him. "This down, you finance."