Run (20 page)

So Jinx walks my way and there’s that door that says
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
and that must mean us, so I push through the door and I walk down a short flight of stairs and I push through another door and now I’m the usual impatient business guy walking through Wilmington
Station, through the people inside and through the main doors and through the people outside and what the fuck I hail a cab.

Hey. I’m into the back seat of the cab and Jinx piles in next to me and Jinx slams the door and I say to the cabbie, I say: Hey.

I say: Hotel Du Pont.

Jinx knows enough to zip the lip but he stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have, but I know exactly what I’m doing. The hotel was going to be our next stop.

We’re late for a meeting, I tell the cabbie. Nothing dramatic. I’m the usual impatient business guy. I say nothing to distinguish me from the ordinary asshole in a suit.

So how about it, bud? I tell the cabbie. Hotel Du Pont.

And off we go.

At the Hotel Du Pont, there’s a doorman whose red jacket has fringe on the shoulders, yeah, it’s a swell place, and the doorman cracks the passenger door of the cab and gestures to me and I take my time getting out while Jinx passes the cabbie some bills and the doorman shows us the lobby and the first thing I want to do is find a pay phone and call Fiona but I can’t call Fiona because she isn’t home yet, it’s not time for
60 Minutes
, and I am not about to leave a message on a piece of tape. Not yet. So instead I call Trey Costa, I give his cell phone a jingle and click down on the robot voice that says: The number you have dialed is out of service. More good news. So I go to the bell stand and I tug out my wallet.

Inside my wallet are several luggage tags, and I find the right one, the one that says Hotel Du Pont, and I hand the tag and a fiver to the bellman and he goes away for a minute and he comes back with a deep blue suitcase and what the hell, I give him another fiver. I take the deep blue suitcase around the corner and into the men’s room and I set the deep blue suitcase on the floor and I start tossing cold water onto my face and after a while there’s Jinx looking over my shoulder in the mirror and I say to him, I say:

What?

He stares at my reflection for a while until he says:

Nice shot.

I check my face in the mirror while Jinx says:

So now we got ever cop in Wilmington—naw, let’s make that the whole state of Delaware—lookin for us, not to mention the Jersey cops, the New York cops, and then there’s the Feds, right, let’s not be forgettin them. Probly ever fuckin set of initials in the fuckin U S of A is out there beatin the street for you and me. And I ain’t doubtin we got more of your buddy boys out there too, am I right?

I nod down at the sink and say to him:

What do you think? Porcelain?

What? he says.

The sink, I tell him. Think it’s porcelain?

Fuck all, he says. But he raps the knuckle of his middle finger onto that shining white curve and there’s a ring, deep and dull, like a distant cathedral bell.

Yeah, he says.

Of course it’s porcelain. Like I said, the Hotel Du Pont, it’s a swell place.

I close the drain on the sink and I pull the Glock from the holster at my back, the barrel is still warm, and I yank the magazine and drop the pistol into the sink. I do the same with the Glock in my shoulder holster and then with Renny’s cell phone and, what the hell, in goes my cell phone too.

Then I get the juice out of my duffel bag.

I pour the whole bottle over the pistols and the phones and the juice goes to work, melting things into a messy stew. It’s acid, something like that, and it’s nasty. There go the fingerprints and the sweat, the polymer and the plastic.

I can tell that Jinx has never seen anything like this, and he’s never smelled anything like it, either. The FBI can trace the bullets back to the pistol by the barrel groove; the marks are as good as DNA. The fucking FBI can even trace the bullets back to the manufacturer by the acid residue. Which means, if they work hard enough, they’re going to learn that the nines in Lukas, Ernie Gonsalves, and Mackie the Lackey were all part of a shipment straight from the factory to the Memphis Police Department. Ha-ha. So without the guns, they got jack nothing.

Unless they’ve got the firing pins. Which the FBI can match to the shell casings. Which is why I open the drain and let the melted muck seep away, then turn on the tap, washing off what’s left. The pins are too large for the drain, so I fold a paper towel and use it to pluck them out and drop them into a commode and flush. Bye-bye. I wrap the barrels and slides in the paper towel, wad more paper towels around them, and bury the wad at the bottom of the trash receptacle.

End of that little game, and time to start another one. So I say to Jinx, I say:

The suitcase.

He’s lost, still looking at the sink. I pop the locks and unlatch the deep blue suitcase. First is a new white shirt. Folded and pressed, a bit wrinkled, but nowhere near the dirty and sweaty and bullet-holed one I’m wearing. I take off my suit coat, my shirt, and then I peel off the Kevlar vest.

I wash my chest and pits, check out the fist-sized bruise purpling the left side of my back. Talk about a nice shot: Just below the shoulder blade, just above the kidneys, just left of the spine. Anything higher or lower or to the right could have done some real damage. Guess a certain someone wanted me alive.

I put on the vest and I button up the new shirt. I take a tie out of the suitcase and knot it up. What the hell.

What the fuck you doin? Jinx is finally catching up. You tryin to look good for when they come and snap the cuffs on us?

Nope, I tell him. Look, there’s another shirt and tie in that suitcase. And two suits. You take the navy one, let me have the grey. The stuff ought to fit you.

I unfold the grey suit coat, and it’s identical to the one I was wearing, although it’s clean, pressed, and lacking the bullet hole.

Changed my mind, I tell him. I’ll take the navy blue.

I hand him the grey coat and I lose the old pants and pull on the clean blue pair, then check myself in the mirror. Not bad for a guy who’s gone through this kind of day. Lost his job. Got his ex-girlfriend killed. Got his best friend killed. Got a
Time
magazine Man of the Year killed. Got shot in the back. Murdered some guys.

Not bad at all.

I lamp my Timex and I tell Jinx:

Get dressed. I’m taking us home.

Jinx says: And how the hell you doin that?

My way, I tell him. We’re getting dressed. Then we’re going to the train station.

That’s crazy, he says.

They got a train leaving for Dirty City every hour. We got about thirty minutes.

That shit is crazy, he says.

That’s right, I tell him. Because it is crazy, and there’s a moment when I wonder about him and then his eyes whiten that little bit, just enough, so I know he knows it’s crazy and that’s exactly why we’re going to do it. Maybe the last place in town, the last place on the planet, that anybody will be looking for us right now is that train station.

Jinx reaches a stack of clothes out of the suitcase and heads for the stall. Funny guy. Guess he likes his privacy.

I fold back the other side of the suitcase and remove the taped bricks of foam that are packed there. I tear open the first one and there’s a new Glock 19 inside. Another Glock waits in the second brick. The third has four magazines and two boxes of Winchester 9×19 JHPs: nine-millimeter hollow points. I’ve about finished loading the magazines when Jinx wanders out of the stall, and it’s a miracle, the guy went in Hyde and came out Jekyll. The hoodlum is gone, and we’ve got ourselves a preacher man. I’m shaking my head and hoping not to show a smile and that’s when I see the boots. He’s still wearing those boots.

You got to lose the boots, man.

Yeah? Jinx tells me. You got another pair of shoes?

I don’t and something tells me that, even if I did, he wouldn’t be wearing them. So I guess we deal with it.

I nod a final time to the suitcase and I say:

There’s a folding-stock Mossberg in there, that long piece of foam. And a dozen boxes of buckshot and slug. All yours. We put the old clothes into the suitcase, and that can be your luggage.

Time to go. I armpit the first of the new Glocks, put the second into the Bianchi at my back. While Jinx wrestles with the suitcase, I slip the bearer bonds from my discarded shirt and into the pages of my mother’s
book. I fit the book into my hip pocket. But I’m forgetting something. I check my old pants, my old coat, and there it is, in the pocket of the coat, that nine-millimeter bullet, the one from Renny’s hand. I slip it into the right outside pocket of my blue suit coat. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s for luck. Or for not forgetting.

I take a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from inside the blue suit coat and put them on. Look in the mirror. And there he is, staring back at me. That guy. You know … him.

The old clothes and the foam packing go into the suitcase and we’re almost ready.

Two cabs, he says. I’ll be behind you all the way.

Right, I tell him. Next time I talk to you, next time I even look at you, it’s gonna be Washington, D.C.

No, he says. Not D.C. Maryland. He says it like it’s that wizard guy, the one with King Arthur: Merlin. Then he says:

New Carrollton.

That’s a suburb northeast of the District. Best I can remember, it’s got an Amtrak station and a Metro station and not much else. He’s got his reasons and they’d better be good ones. So:

Okay, I tell him. New Carrollton.

I grab my duffel bag. I’m out of that bathroom and through the lobby and I’m an impatient business guy again. I go to the bell stand and there’s the bellman and the bellman doesn’t remember me, doesn’t have a clue, and I check the duffel and then I’m outside, I push through the revolving doors, and there’s the doorman and the doorman doesn’t remember me, either, and I tip him a couple bucks and tell him:

Philadelphia Airport.

The cabs are lined up like vultures. The doorman waves the first one in and he tells the cabbie, Philadelphia Airport, and I settle into the back seat and I wait until we reach the end of the block to say to the cabbie:

Guess that guy misheard me. Take me to the train station.

We weave the few blocks to the train station, and there’s a detour around the front, there’s a red Mercury Capri parked there and the Mercury is surrounded by yellow tape and blue uniforms and I don’t want to see that Mercury, I don’t want to see any of it.

Five minutes after that I’m standing in line to buy a coach ticket, and ten minutes after that I’m standing in line to board the next Metroliner to Washington, D.C., trying to look interested but not too interested in whatever’s happening way south of the platform, more yellow tape and more blue uniforms, and farther along, on a siding, where there’s a train car with a broken window and some paramedics who don’t have any work to do.

Ten minutes after that I’m riding the rails, and Jinx is sitting a couple rows back like he doesn’t know me. I’m sitting with a newspaper folded open on my lap, and yes it’s the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, and yes it’s the fucking Sports section, and why not, because underneath the newspaper is my right hand and my right hand is holding a pistol and, let’s face it, I’ve only just started pulling the trigger.

I wonder if Jinx knows that.

I wonder if he knows I know he made another phone call. At the train station. While I was buying the newspaper and fading to grey.

I wonder if he knows how bad I have to make a call of my own. Fiona will be home soon. I check my watch for about the tenth time and I think about that Railfone thing, takes credit cards, but it’s a bad idea. If there’s a tap, then there’s probably a trace, and nobody needs to know I’m riding on a train.

When the conductor guy announces Baltimore in three minutes, Baltimore next, it’s like crossing a border, this irrational feeling of safety that I shrug off because Baltimore is the place where shit may happen, and the train slows and the train stops but shit doesn’t happen and when the train chugs on out I relax enough to read my book, and Wilmington and the flaring lights, the yellow tape and the blue uniforms and the red, red blood, poor Lauren, it’s all gone, it’s back there with the other memories and we’re getting on with the rest of this story.

Which is getting both easier and harder to figure.

Check this out. They were tapping her line. They were tapping Lauren’s line. Or they had a guy on the ground in Philly, watching her, watching her place, waiting for me. Either way, it’s shit on crackers. Because the Reverend Gideon Parks went down, what? Five hours before Wilmington. So the tap, the look-see, whatever, it was already in place. Which means—

What? They’ve been checking up on me, maybe. Or they were planning to take me out too. To let me do Jinx, and then take me out somewhere closer to home. Or—

It means what wiretaps usually mean: Feds. It means they got friends in high places.

The run that’s not a run. The buy that’s not a buy. The hitters that aren’t the hitters. On the television screen, the helicopter boarding an FBI SWAT team that’s not an FBI SWAT team.

So I think about this and I think about that and I watch the places and the spaces go by, and after a while I ease my hand off the pistol and I read my book some more and I find myself between afternoon and evening.

And this morning was six hours ago.

And this morning was seven hours ago and the sitting and the waiting start to get on my nerves until:

New Carrollton next, the conductor guy is saying. Next stop, New Carrollton. Three minutes, New Carrollton Station.

Which is where things get interesting again.

Jinx slaps my shoulder on the way up the aisle, and he’s leaving the suitcase behind, which is fine. It’ll go to Lost and Found, or maybe just get lost.

I tuck the Glock back beneath my suit coat and leave the Sports section on the floor.

Out on the platform, it’s New Carrollton, this vague concrete space, one big parking lot with trees in the distance. The sky is dark and cloudy but the air doesn’t smell like rain, it smells like autumn, something thick and grey and dying.