Salvation Row (37 page)

He scanned, looking for Ziggy or Bachman. Faces blended together in the mêlée, difficult to make out as he moved through them, but none caught his attention.

Izzy stopped, tugging back at Milton’s arm.

“I’m not moving another step until you tell me what it is.”

“Ziggy is in trouble.”

“Milton!”

It was a loud, desperate cry.

He pushed and shoved his way through the crowd.

“
Milton!
”

He heard it above the clamour of the carnival, and turned in its direction. There was a patch of empty land between two derelict buildings, the ground rising up to a wire-mesh fence and, beyond that, a road. There was a gap in the fence and, behind that, he saw Ziggy. Bachman was next to him. It took a moment to realise that it was him. He was wearing a ball cap pulled down low over his eyes, and a leather jacket. His hand was inside his jacket, right where a shoulder holster would leave the butt of a pistol, and, as Milton watched, he grabbed Ziggy around the neck and threw him into the back of a waiting car.

Milton surged ahead, barging through the middle of another group of rowdy jocks.

One of them stepped in front of him. “No need to push, dude.”

The man reached out with his left hand. There was no time for negotiation. Milton hit him in the gut, doubling him over as he brought the point of his elbow down, hard, on the back of his head. It was a blindingly quick motion, knocking the man out and dropping him to the ground.

“Milton!” Izzy said, reaching for him.

Two of the man’s friends were in the way. They had watched Milton’s demonstration, and now they regarded him with unmasked fear. They braced themselves, nerves obvious, but they didn’t move. Drunken bravado. Very inconvenient.

“Get out of the way.”

Milton shuffled to the right, tried to edge around them, but they found the confidence to block him. The man Milton had knocked down was starting to come around, too, on his knees and reaching for his friend’s arm to help him to his feet.

Milton watched over their shoulders as Bachman went around to the front of the car and got inside.

There was a squeal of rubber on asphalt and then the car was gone, disappearing into the night.

MILTON EXPLAINED what had happened as he and Izzy took a taxi back to Salvation Row. She listened quietly and, when he was finished, she put a hand on his knee. She said it wasn’t his fault. He knew that was right, that it wasn’t—that it would have been impossible to ward against someone like Bachman if he had it in his mind to come after him—but it didn’t make him feel any better. Ziggy was in terrible danger, might already even be dead, and it had happened on his watch. It was the second time, too.

Once might have been an accident, although Milton didn’t believe in accidents.

Twice was starting to look a lot like negligence.

The taxi pulled up outside the house. The lights were burning, welcoming, and he thought about the meal that he had been promised. Elsie had prepared gumbo, Izzy had told him, a proper Louisianan meal to thank him for what he had done.

Ziggy had been invited, too.

They stepped out of the car into the sticky heat.

“What are you going to do?” Izzy asked.

“There isn’t much to do. We just wait. I—”

He stopped mid-sentence and reached for his phone.

Izzy’s eyes were wide. “Is it him?”

He took it out and looked at the ID.

It was displaying the number of the burner phone that Ziggy had been using.

He nodded at her, accepted the call, and put it to his ear.

“Hello, Milton.”

Milton felt his stomach drop.

Izzy looked at him enquiringly.

“You’re wasting your time.”

“I am?”

“The job’s over. You lost. Get over it. Move on.”

“I told you. This isn’t about the job.”

He put his hand over the phone. “Go inside,” he said to Izzy. “I don’t know where he is. It might not be safe out here.”

“No—” she began.

“Please,” Milton interrupted, raising his voice a little. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

She bit her lip, nodded, and crossed the lawn to the porch.

Milton turned away and walked ten paces down the street. “You there?”

“I’m here.”

“I said you’re wasting your time. It isn’t going to work. I’m leaving tonight.”

“Bit callous, Milton, even for you. What would your friend think about that?”

“I don’t care what he thinks. He’s just a technician. He’s not my friend. He doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“It won’t matter when I peel his skin off, then, will it?”

Milton gritted his teeth. “Do what you want.”

“But it won’t end with him, will it? I’ll kill your friend, and then I’ll kill the girl, her brother, her family. And then I’ll kill anyone I can find who you’ve ever cared about. And then, when I’ve done that, when you’re drowning in guilt and misery, then I’ll kill you.”

“You really want me for an enemy, Bachman?”

He laughed. “Save it for someone you can frighten. Do you remember anything about me at all?”

Too much, Milton thought. Much too much. “What do you want?”

“You killed someone very dear to me.”

“I just put her lights out. She was killed when you pumped bullets at us. A ricochet.”

Bachman screamed down the line, “You’re lying!” His voice was suddenly torn and ragged, with an undercurrent to it that made Milton think of madness.

He spoke calmly. “I’m sorry about what happened to her. But it wasn’t me.”

If Bachman heard him, he didn’t acknowledge it. “We have a score to settle.”

Milton left the phone at his ear and zoned out. He stared at the colourful houses, hearing the rustle of the wind through the trees on the lots that had still to be cleared, absently heard the call of a bird in the sky overhead. He had no doubt that Bachman meant every word he said. He felt as if he was being dragged back down into a world that he had only just been able to leave. It hadn’t been so long since Milton had found his freedom, putting an end to the threat from Control and the Group, and now he would exchange that for a pursuit by one of the most dangerous men in the world? A man who had been considered extreme, even by the extreme standards of the Mossad? A man good enough to fake his own death and elude Israeli intelligence? It would be just as bad as before. It would be
worse
.

And that was before he thought about Ziggy, Izzy, her mother and father, Alexander, and anyone else who got in his way.

“Fine,” Milton said. “How do we settle it?”

“You need to come and see me. You do that, alone, and I’ll let him walk. The others will never see me.”

“Where?”

“There’s a Six Flags.”

“Six Flags? What?”

“A fairground. Northeast of the city. They closed it after the flood. No one up here any more. There’s a central courtyard. A carousel. Meet me there.”

“When?”

“Midnight. And come alone. There’s nothing up here, Milton. Nothing and no one. I’ll see you as soon as you get within a mile of me. Anyone comes with you, I’ll put a bullet in your friend and I’ll leave. And then I’ll come after you and the others on my terms.”

“I’ll be alone.”

“Don’t be late.”

ELSIE BARTHOLOMEW had cooked them another Creole feast, but, this time, Milton had to struggle to finish his plate. It wasn’t that he wasn’t hungry—he was, very—it was that he had no appetite. Izzy had known better than to tell her parents what had happened and, when they asked where Ziggy was, she had lied that he had business to attend to in town. There was no sense in worrying them. She had shouldered the burden of conversation, filling the awkward spaces when Milton had missed the questions that were directed at him, giving him a moment to recover and respond with the kind of useless platitude he knew would have them think that he was vacant or distracted or, more likely, just rude.

He thanked Elsie and Solomon when he had finished and, excusing himself on the pretext of wanting a smoke, went outside. He sat on the edge of the porch and put a cigarette in his mouth and then forgot about it, leaving it to hang there, unlit.

He was angry with himself. No, he corrected, not himself, with his
helplessness
. One of the core principles of recovery was the self-awareness that, as a drunk, his disease would make him try to control everything. The inevitable failure from trying to do that would usher him closer to the one solution that every drunk knew was infallible.

He felt the bonds on his sobriety start to loosen, a notch at a time.

Milton thought back to what had happened in London, after he had told Control that he was going to retire. He thought of Elijah Warriner, a boy who had been teetering on the edge of a gang life, throwing away his future, and how he had tried to help him. How had that turned out? Milton had been arrogant, thinking that his intervention would be enough to solve Elijah’s problems, but his involvement had just made them worse. He had fled to South America, eventually did some good in Juarez, and then to San Francisco and the Upper Peninsula. He was trying to learn, to teach himself the limits of intervention, what he could and couldn’t do. Should and shouldn’t do.

He thought that he had been getting better at it.

He thought that he had done good work in New Orleans.

Really?

Perhaps he had been wrong.

Hubris.

Ziggy was going to pay for his conceit.

For the first time in weeks, his resolve was weak. The urge to take a drink was strong.

“What’s happening?”

It was Izzy. She sat down on the porch next to him.

“I have to go.”

“Where?”

“Doesn’t matter where.”

She was close enough to him that he could feel the heat of her body. Milton fixed his stare ahead, not trusting the strength of his determination should he give in and look at her.

“Where, Milton? What did he say?”

“No, Izzy.”

“Six Flags?”

He turned, quickly. “You were listening?”

“Don’t get sanctimonious. All the lies that you told me, you’re not in a position for it.”

He turned all the way around, put his hands on her shoulders and looked straight at her. “You’ve got to stay here. You have to let me deal with him myself.”

“
Deal
with him?” Her face said she knew exactly what that word meant.

“I don’t know. Hopefully not. But he might not give me a choice.”

“So, call the police.”

“You already told me that was pointless.”

“But this is—”

“Even if they’d come, they’d make things worse. He’ll see them coming.”

“Then let me come with you. I know Six Flags. I’ve been there dozens of times.”

“No, Izzy. No way. He’ll see you, too. I’m not putting you in harm’s way.”

“I could stay outside—”

He shook his head and replied with complete conviction. “I have to go alone. If he sees anyone else, if he even
sniffs
anyone else, he kills Ziggy, disappears, comes after someone else when I can’t predict it. He could come after your parents. Alexander. You. All of you, just to get to me. It’s me he wants. Just me.”

“But you go, and, what—he kills you? Right?”

Milton shrugged. “He’ll try.”

“You can’t just walk into that. I can’t let you just walk into that.”

Milton squeezed her shoulders. “Yes, you can. One way or another, it will end. If he gets what he wants, he’ll leave.”

“Gets what he wants—”

“And if I get to him first, there’s no more threat.” He held her shoulders between firm hands. “You have to promise me you’ll stay here. You can’t help me, not for this. If you go, I’ll have to worry about you, too. You’ll make it worse, not better. More dangerous for me and Ziggy. For you. Stay here with your parents.”

“I can’t—”

“Izzy, look at me. Look. I can take care of myself. You know that, right?”

She raised her head and looked into his eyes. He saw fire and passion and a film of wetness.

She didn’t answer him.

He didn’t think that he had reached her.

“Izzy.”

She stood, anger flashing.

“You have to promise me.”

She didn’t. Instead, she brushed his hands away and stood. “When is this going to be over?”

“Tonight.” Milton stood, too. “One way or another, it’ll be finished tonight.”

MILTON DROVE northeast to Michoud Boulevard. The entrance to the park was marked by a huge red and yellow sign. It had been jolly once, but the colour was faded now, and some of the letters had been prised off by the greedy fingers of the wind.

S X F LGS – CLOS D OR STO M

A ticket booth stood beyond that, the glass long since gone from the windows and yellow graffiti sprayed all across it. He saw the skeletal track of a big roller coaster in the middle distance and, behind that, a Ferris wheel. The road ahead was blocked by a chain-link fence, but, as Milton drove slowly through, it didn’t take long to find a weakness that he knew he would be able to broach without difficulty.

He parked the Corolla and got out. It was still hot, even as late as this. He put on the ballistics vest, slipping his shirt over the top of it. He had the Sig Sauer and two spare magazines. He kept the pistol in his hand and shoved the spares into his pockets. He doubted that he would get to use the gun, but he was damned if he was going to a meeting with Avi Bachman without one. He thought about the MP5 in the trunk, but decided against it. He doubted the night would proceed in such a way that spray-and-pray was going to be a legitimate, useful option. Avi Bachman was in control. Milton knew that he wouldn’t let that happen.

Milton approached a spot in the fence where it had been sliced open. The opening had been yanked back, folded back onto itself so that the ends of the jagged wires were hooked onto the stretches that remained intact. Milton bent down and slipped through the opening.

He scouted the park beyond. The whole area had only been sheltered by an eight-foot earthen berm, and Katrina had made short work of that. It had been one of the first places to be overwhelmed and, since the pumps had flooded within hours, it had stayed that way for weeks afterwards.