Terminal (10 page)

W
e all went silent. Except for Max.

He stood up, pointed at Clarence’s computer, at the Mole’s recording rig, at the paper spread out on the table, the walls covered with our writing. Then he walked to the wall himself, and drew a hollow rectangle on a blank spot. Max swept his arms, indicating he was including everything he had pointed to originally.

Using rapid broad strokes, he blacked in the rectangle. When he stopped, more than half of it was still white. Empty. He filled the space with a huge question mark.

We all watched, as attentive as yuppies getting an insider tip on a stock.

Max tapped his own chest. He flowed into a kata so perfect that it was like watching vapor crush bone.

He pointed at the Mole. Tapped his temple. Bowed.

Pointed at the Prof. Spread his arms wide. Bowed again.

He went through all of us. Everyone got their recognition. Their respect for what they did best.

Except me.

Max stepped to the chart with
THORNTON
at the top. Made the gestures of a man, talking, as if in conversation with another. Then he pointed to the question mark inside the rectangle again. And then at me. He covered his right fist with his left hand, bowed. Couldn’t be clearer.

“Max has it straight,” the Prof said. “Ain’t but one of us that can throw
that
hard eight.”

“I do not—” Clarence started to say.

But the Prof cut him off: “This ain’t about the gun, son. Burke, he’s got the touch to open them up. You want a freak to speak, Burke’s the best there is.”

“Because you taught—”

“Listen to me, boy,” the Prof said. “You can only train a man so much. Like with fighters. You can teach a man to
deliver
a punch, but real power, that’s something you born with. And that’s never enough. See, being a puncher don’t make you a
fighter,
son. You got to have this”—touching his heart—“or you got nothing. If you can’t take it, sooner or later, you stop giving it. And you start giving it
up
—am I telling the truth?”

“Yes, Father,” Clarence said. Getting it. Getting it now. The man he worshiped wanted only the respect he earned; he wasn’t some half-ass guru who snatched credit he didn’t deserve.

The Prof turned and gave me a hard, deliberate look, meaning: “I know what you’re thinking, but stay out of this.”

And he
did
know what I was thinking, as if he was inside my head. The second the Prof put “heart” and “fighter” together, my mind flashed on boxers who’d rather die in the ring than quit. Mike Quarry didn’t have his brother Jerry’s punch, but he had his heart. They’re both gone now, way before their time. Dementia from subdural hematomas. Too many punches to the head. “Boxer’s brain,” they call it, without a trace of sarcasm. Michael Watson, Gerald McClellan, Greg Page…a long list.

But there’s another kind of heart some fighters have—the one you don’t see inside the ring. Wife-beaters, rapists, child-molesters. If they can make some promoter money inside the ring, who cares what they do outside it?

Davey Hilton had been one of the three Hilton brothers, Canadians who followed their father into the pro ranks. They were all top-ten guys, real bangers, willing to take two to land one. Matthew was the best, but it was Alex who stopped Shawn O’Sullivan, a fast
and
tough Irishman I was sure would win a welterweight belt when I watched him get jobbed at the Olympics. Davey was holding one of the minor belts as a fifty-four-pounder when he was convicted of holding his two daughters in sexual bondage over a period of several years.

They
were the ones with heart—it took a lot to get on that witness stand and tell the truth. Rape was the least of it, and the jury dropped him for enough crimes to bury him. But the judge didn’t count him out. Not even a standing eight. The “champ” was out in less than five.

Maybe his prison psychologist will quit and become his manager, like Tony Ayala’s had. Rehabilitation, it’s a wonderful thing.

The Prof took my slight nod for what it was, turned back to Clarence: “Now, Burke here, you should have seen
him
in the ring. Slippery? My man made an eel look like sandpaper. And fast? He could put four on you before you could blink. But that one-punch knockout power? Not there. Just not there. Understand?”

“But what does that have to do with—?”

“Burke’s got the magic,” Michelle confirmed. “He can…I don’t know how to say it…. He can
be
them. They’ll say things to him….”

“I have seen this for myself,” the Mole agreed.

Max swept the room with his eyes—he’d seen it, too. Satisfied, he sat down.

“T
his AB guy—the one who made that tape—he was just there to listen,” the Prof said, thoughtfully.

“And you think the guy who told the story was lying?”

“Is Clarence Thomas black?” the Prof countered.

“If you mean his color—”

“
Now
you driving the nail, son!”

“It
sounds
right,” Michelle explained. “But that doesn’t
make
it right.”

“So this…all of this;
none
of this…is enough?” Clarence said.

“Scamming—
pro
scamming—is a special art,” the Prof explained. “Once you figure out the stupidity level of the mark, you adjust your game, see? You think this AB guy, he’d answer an ad in the papers about earning five grand a week for stuffing envelopes? This is a hard man. Been around. Even if he
wants
to believe—and Lord knows he does; he
has
to—he’s not going for any quick-fix trick. But, against
this
boy”—pointing at the
THORNTON
chart—“he’s so overmatched they shouldn’t let him in the ring.”

“He’s lying,” Michelle said, as certain as the Prof. “We just don’t know about what…and how much.”

“And if this AB boy wants us to get down, he’s got to come around,” the Prof said.

“I’ll put it to him,” I said.

W
hen you talk about a fighter’s class, you’re not talking about his weight. There’s bantams with hearts strong enough to pump out a flooded basement, and heavyweights who can
beat
a man okay, but turn to jelly if the other guy takes it…and hits back.

Life is a fight, but not everyone’s a fighter. Otherwise, bullies would be an endangered species.

I sat alone that night and worked on a plan. On a whole bunch of plans. Wolfe’s crew could get me a complete breakdown on all three targets in a finger-snap. No way Clarence is as good as they are for that. Wolfe’s people use special tools to unearth ancient bones, an artist’s brush to clean them off, and, when they finally put the pieces together, they always fit.

But computers have their uses, and none of the three rich boys—grown men now—were underground. Sure, maybe they had
assets
hidden. Probably did, considering the kind of money they got to play with. But we didn’t care where they got their money, we just wanted some of it. According to Thornton, what we were after was such a small chunk the marks wouldn’t even miss it.

I’d asked Clarence what he found out for me. And got this:

“I am…I am still a student, mahn. Terry, now,
he
knows how to do things I could never—”

“So bring him in. What’s the problem?”

“Well, even Terry, he is not the
very
best. He would be the first to say so himself.”

“You’re saying we
need
the very best? Just to do a simple scan on these three guys?”

“When you are fighting a mind war, the more you know—”

“The harder you throw,” I finished one of the Prof’s adages for him. “So?”

“Well, we could ask—”

Stepped in that one, didn’t you, sucker?
I mentally kicked myself. Clarence’s unrequited love for the cyber-slinger we all called the Dragon Lady was no secret. “Yeah, fine. Ask your girl to show you some more tricks,” I said, surrendering. “But whatever it costs, that’s coming out of your share.”

The Islander tried to keep from grinning, but he couldn’t pull it off.

I
told myself I didn’t want to go to Wolfe’s crew because the fewer people who knew, the better—the urban survivalist’s version of the Golden Rule. But once you start lying to yourself, the danger is that you’ll get too good at it.

So I just faced it. Faced it and took it: The last time I’d asked Wolfe’s cell to do a job, I’d ended up seeing Wolfe in person. That’s when I told her I was back to being myself. To being the man she first knew. The one she…I never finished that part: she’d drained my tank before I could get out of first gear.

But this thing, it was all about money. And no matter what story I might try to tell Wolfe about bringing a little girl’s killers to justice, no matter how many layers of lead I wrapped around it, she’d see through it.

That last time, I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Wolfe I was doing the right thing, for the right reasons. But, like always, I’d left things out.

I’d done a lot of thinking ever since that last job. A lot of thinking about myself. About how I saw things. Why I did them. Who I was.

Now I knew. And I wasn’t going anywhere near Wolfe. Not because I had crossed some borders that she wouldn’t; because I lived on the other side of hers.

“I
did
learn some things,” Clarence reported, happily. “The only reason those newspaper clippings were in the database was because they were
added.
The database itself was not even in existence when—”

“And we care about this because…?” Michelle said, just short of sarcastic.

“It is a small town,” Clarence said. “With its own newspapers. It would be quite an undertaking—”

“All it takes is coin to join,” the Prof cut him off. “Look, son, we already knew this was a rich ville. That computer thing of yours, it’s real nice and all, but Burke used to get that same stuff out of libraries all the time. They got it on…what, Schoolboy?”

“Microfiche,” I said. “Sometimes, if the town is small enough, they actually keep a copy of every issue they ever printed. Old-time newspaper guys called it the morgue. The Internet may get it quicker sometimes, but it’s not any better than—”

“With all respect,” Clarence said, “the Internet is a tool. Like you are always saying, what good is something you don’t know how to use? What I
learned
was that there is a way to locate old Web sites, ones that used to be available but have been taken down. You will not find such things in any library.”

“I
still
don’t see—”

“Little sister, please,” the young man said, the Island sweetness sugaring his voice. “Just take a look.”

T
he now-dead Web site had been
WhoKilledMelissa.com
. The screen of Clarence’s laptop filled with a photo that looked as if it had been scanned from a yearbook, with
HELP US FIND HER KILLER!
scrolling across the bottom of the screen in a blood-red font. At the top were icons of various weapons: pistol, knife, strangler’s rope…. Clarence demonstrated how playing the cursor over each icon showed what they would open into, stuff like:

Contact Us • The Crime • Help! • Suspects?

There were a lot of those links. We patiently watched as Clarence opened “Suspects?” but it held nothing except mug shots of convicted sex killers. All they had in common was that they weren’t in custody at the time of the girl’s murder, and that the killing “fit their known pattern.”

Total crap. TV “profiler” bullshit.

I spent an hour clicking links before I realized what I was really looking at. So I asked Clarence to run a certain name, just to be sure my nose was working. Sure enough, the site had been set up by one of those “true crime” quickie-paperback specialists. Apparently, this “journalist” couldn’t crank out her usual couple of hundred pages of cribbed newspaper accounts—plus the obligatory photos and autopsy reports—as fast as the market demanded anymore. So she had decided to ride the “Unsolved Mysteries” train, panning for gold.

Since she was nothing resembling an investigator—excuse me, “criminal investigative reporter”—she had thrown up the Web site. Probably hoping someone from the girl’s past would give her enough to cobble together another piece of porn that would have Jack Olsen spinning in his grave.

That old site was now as dead as Melissa Turnbridge. I even looked at its message board, but it was just the usual collection: from ghouls salivating over “More details, please!” to conspiracy theorists—the Monarch Program just barely edging out the Illuminati—to suggestions for casting when this all got turned into a movie. Not a hint of contact by anyone we were interested in. Still, I had to ask:

“Was the site hacked down, or just—?”

“The domain name lapsed,” Clarence said. “And there were no new buyers. That means the person who put it up just let it die a natural death.”

“That’s worth something right there,” I said, aiming it at Michelle’s caustic comments about Clarence consulting the Dragon Lady, but feeling it inside my heart, where the beast-killer always lurks.

“I
s this going to mean another milkshake?”

“No,” I said into the cancer-man’s prepaid, onetime cell. “Just you and me. No more Q and A. There’s something you need to do. Get done, anyway.”

“Just say—”

“No.”

The neighborhood wasn’t a place where a man like him could ask for help if he got lost. So I gave him real specific directions. And a time.

I
f being in a place full of nonwhites bothered him, you’d never know it.

If eating a meal that could be his last upset him, it didn’t show on his face.

We were in my booth. In the back, against the wall that separates the main body of the joint from the kitchen. The bank of payphones was right behind where I sat, invisible but not always silent.

Max materialized next to me.

“This is—”

“Max the Silent,” the AB man finished for me, his tone that of a man who was actually getting to
see
something he’d heard about for years but had never been sure existed. Like Bigfoot or Nessie.

“Yeah. And, behind you, coming this way, is the Prof.”

He never turned around. His only reaction was to move to his left, making room.

“I need to speak with your boy,” I told him.

He didn’t bristle at the characterization, a man who didn’t have the time for that kind of thing.

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“You willing to ink up a little?”

“So I can pass for one of your guys?”

“Yeah.”

“Not for real. And I don’t want to risk a temp.”

“But I can tell him—?”

“Anything you want. So long as he understands that he has to talk to me. It’s not an option.”

“You going to hurt him?”

I gave him a quizzical look.

“To make him talk,” he explained.

“I thought you said he already
did
that.”

“Yeah. And you’re not buying?”

“Because I want to talk to him myself?”

“That’s right.”

“This isn’t about the truth of what he said. It’s about the truth of who he is.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Burke’s got powers,” the Prof assured him. “He can get inside a man’s mind as easy as me picking a lock.”

Max tapped the man’s forearm. Got his attention. Nodded. Nothing elaborate, but enough.

“So if he’s lying—?”

“It won’t matter,” I assured him. “Not to us doing the job, I mean. It’ll just change
how
we do it.”

“You believe those three—?”

“Did it? Yeah.”

“So what more do you need?”

“Why’d you come to me?”

“Silver said I could…Ah, all right, I get it.”

“Can you make it happen?”

“I think so. It
is
okay, I tell him you’re one of ours, right?”

“Right.”

“And I can go along? Not come inside, wherever you do what…whatever you’re going to do, but just come along with him?”

“He’s scared bad, huh?”

“Those are three
big
dogs.”

I gave him one of Wesley’s smiles.