The Reckoning (33 page)

“Water,” said Kate. “The Sequoyah Aquifer. The Tulip River. Crater Sink. The storm drains under Niceville. Water is the single common element in all of this.”

Helga looked at her with approval. “Yes. That is correct. Water is a great conductor of sound, of electricity, of waves. I believe that
nothing
lives in water. That it uses water as a conduit to project itself.”

“There's no water in Candleford House, Helga,” said Reed. “And it was sure as hell
there.
”

“Look, Helga,” said Nick, who had heard enough. “I get it about the radiation. I get it about
waves
and water. I think you're about as right as we're going to manage. I'm still not hearing what the hell we can
do
. How do we fight this thing?”

“
You
don't,” said Doris. “I will fight it.”

“Fight it
how
?”

“With a sing. I will go up to Crater Sink and I will drive her back down into the earth. Lemon will come with me, if he can.”

“I can move. I can't drive, but I'm going.”

“You're not going anywhere,” said Nick. “You just got out of surgery.”

“So did you,” said Kate.

Nick looked at her, and then at everyone. “This is nuts. No disrespect, Doris, but we go
sing
at this creature? This is the
best
we can do?”

“It's nuts, okay,” said Reed, “but I'm damned if I can think of anything else to try. Can you?”

Nick didn't have a good answer for that. He looked at Helga. “Anything, Helga?”

“I was thinking that energy waves can be canceled out by other energy sound waves. This may be why Chopin's music had an effect on the
voices.
But I cannot think how we would do such a thing.”

“Such a thing,” said Doris, “is called a sing.”

Helga worked that through. “I think you may be right. And I can think of no better course right now. When do you go?”

“Now,” said Doris, standing up, looking at Lemon. “There are things we need to gather.”

“May I go with you?” said Helga.

Doris gave her a long hard look. “For a sing to work, everyone has to have a strong belief. If you're weak, if you waver, if you think like a scientist, if you try to reason through it, she will get inside you. You'll end up like those things in the forest. You must have a very strong mind to keep her out, a
quiet
mind.”

“I won't waver,” she said.

“I'll go too,” said Reed.

“There is no point in
all
of you going,” said Kate, an edge of impatience in her voice. “If Doris and Helga can do this—God help you, but I think you're crazy to try—and Lemon will back them up, then there are other things that need doing too.”

“Like what?” asked Nick.

“Like finding Rainey.”

Nick managed not to say what first came to his lips on the Finding Rainey question. He was looking for a phrase that was slightly less inflammatory when Reed cut in.

“Kate's right,” he said. “We need to find him right now.”

“Why right now?”

“Here's why,” said Kate. “Rainey is gone because somebody has plans for him. Remember what Reed saw in Candleford House? What Clara Mercer told him?”

“Man,” said Nick. “A ghost story.”

“You're drawing the line at
that
,” said Reed, a big grin, “but you're
fine
with the rest of it?”

Nick had to smile at that. Reed was right. The whole thing was absurd, a fever dream.

“Okay,” he said, “I'm in. Where do we start?”

“Find Barb Fillion,” said Kate.

“Why her?”

“Because she's got Rainey. Find that ambulance and you've got Rainey.”

“How do you know this?”

“You know it too,” said Kate.

And then Nick remembered, the blue girl behind the window, and the thoughts in her head that came drilling through the glass…
go wake them

That wasn't the girl in the EMT uniform. That was the thing inside her head.

It was the voice of Nothing.

“God…you're right.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Reed, can you go down to the ER and ask them if Barb Fillion's EMT truck had a GPS transponder?”

“They all do,” Reed said on his way out the door.

Nick looked at Kate. “I'm going with him.”

“No you're not. You can't. What help could you be? You're practically a cripple. You're in no shape to go anywhere but back to your room.”

“Kate…”

“What?” she said, with steel.

“Do you
really
think I'm going to go lie down right now? Watch some football? Maybe have a nap?”

“Nick—”

“Kate?”

They locked on for a while.

“Fine,” said Kate. “But I'm going too.”

“Kate—”

“Not one more word, Nick. Not. One. More. Word.”

“Man,” said Lemon, “if I were you, Nick, I'd shut up right now.”

Nick shut up.

They held a summit in Julie Spahn's bathroom because it was at the back of the suite and farthest away from the window wall overlooking Fountain Square, and because Julie Spahn, who had his very own electronic bug detector, had swept the rest of the suite and, other than a contact bug they found underneath the number plate on the front door, declared the place clean.

They had not swept Delores's master bedroom, because she was still in it, with Frankie Twice, watching a movie, and the door was closed and probably locked, which she had taken to doing lately, after Desi had tried a couple of times to stop by for a grope and a tumble.

Spahn, now sicker than two dogs, got the spindly gold-wire and white-fur decorator chair that stood next to the Jacuzzi—the same Jacuzzi, by the way, that had been stuccoed with a variety of Harvill Endicott bits a couple of months back.

Desi Munoz, still in his workout gear and smelling of A535 rub and greasy sweat, was sitting on the can, breathing heavily through his open mouth, since his adenoids were a burden to him and to anybody else within hearing. He and Spahn were sitting quietly and watching Mario La Motta's temper boil over and run down the side of the pot.

“That fucking spic skank—”

“You already used that one,” said Spahn, whose head was pounding. “Get to the point, will ya. I feel like shit here.”

“We ought to bring her in here—”

“Keep your voice down,” said Munoz. “She hears us, she'll call 911 in a New York minute.”

“Where is she?” asked Spahn. “Right now?”

“She's in her bedroom,” said Desi Munoz, “watching
Pride and Prejudice
. Again. Every Sunday, that's what she does. Mr. Fucking Darcy, in her red silk pajamas. Let me go get her, we can all have some fun taking her apart.”

“No. Leave her alone. We gotta
finesse
this, Mario,” said Spahn. “You can't just chop her up inna Jacuzzi. They got surveillance on us, they got a laser mike on the windows. And we're not supposed to be associating, remember?”

“Fuck finesse,” said Munoz. “Finesse is for little Jew-boy
maricones
!”

Spahn studied Munoz for a while, marking him with a Best Before date, and went back to La Motta.

“Mario,” he said in a low but carrying voice, “here's what we gotta do.”

“Get that bitch in here and—”

Spahn stopped him with a raised palm. “No. She's for later. Maybe for Tito. Right now the most vulnerable thing we got is all of us sitting here in the same place.”

“They've already got us for that,” said Munoz. “Probably got us on film, so we're fucked.”

“Maybe they do,” said Spahn, “and maybe they don't. Right now, all we gotta do is split up. Mario, how long you figure they had a laser on us?”

“Jeez,” said Mario, “how long's the dog been whining and snapping? Maybe twenty-four hours?”

“Okay. And the bug inna phone—”

“Wasn't attached,” said La Motta, “I shook the handset and out it drops.”

“So that Raylon guy, he didn't have time to attach it. And the fact that they had to send him in like that tells me they didn't have any choice. Why? Because the bug in the number plate wasn't working good enough. The rest of the place is clean. So far, my bet is, they got a few pictures and some voice. The fact they haven't made a move on us tells you what?”

The other two thought about it.

“We're not the targets?” said Munoz.

“That's right. I mean, we haven't made any moves, we're just visiting the widow of a business colleague. Haven't left the building other than to get some meatball sandwiches and a beer. Even the associating beef is little-league bullshit. This is all about Tony Tee and his Miami crowd. They rolled up three of his operators last spring. Now they're here sniffing around, looking for more.”

They liked the sound of that.

“So…what do we do?” asked La Motta. Spahn liked being asked. The power balance was shifting his way. All he had to do was put his thumb on the scales a bit. “We're out of here, right now. All of us.”

“Where'm I supposed to go?” said Munoz. “I got all my stuff here.”

“You got money?” asked Spahn.

“Yeah…money I got. A few Gs and my Mondex card. Maybe fifty large.”

“Then you go throw some shit in a bag and find a hotel.”

“What if they got people watching me? They'll see me coming out of here.”

“So leave your Caddy down in the parking level. They'll be looking for it. Take the fire stairs, leave by the loading-dock gates. I already scoped it out. Dark back there, nothing but Dumpsters and a Porta-Potty and stuff. You walk a few blocks, make sure there's nobody on you—you can do that in your sleep—catch a cab, find a nice hotel somewhere close. There's a Westin a couple blocks over. You still got your Hermenegildo Garcia ID, all that shit?”

“Yeah. It's still good. Came down here on it, haven't used it since.”

Spahn looked at him.

La Motta looked at him.

“So?”

“So what?” asked Munoz.

“So go.”

“What, right now?”

“Yeah,” said La Motta. “Go check into the Westin. Right fucking now.”

“We'll be right behind you,” said Spahn.

Munoz looked at them, trying to figure out why he was getting a slithery feeling up and down his back. Was he being handled?

Either way, time to get some distance here.

“Okay,” he said, getting up. “I'll go shower, get the fuck out. But I'm with Mario. We gotta do that bitch.”

“We will. Just not tonight,” said Spahn.

“We're gonna put Tito on her,” said La Motta.

“Man,” said Munoz, “I'd hate to miss that.”

“We'll see how it goes,” said Spahn. “If you can't be here, we'll film it, send you a clip.”

“How'll we know Desi got clear?”

Spahn thought about that. “Got a throwaway phone?”

“Yeah. A couple.”

“Just phone here. Soon as you're clear. Ring three times, hang up.”

“They'll pick up the number.”

“That's why they call it a throwaway.”

They went back and forth for a while, but in the end Munoz showered and changed into some dark clothing and jammed some stuff in a valise and took the fire stairs all the way down to the freight floor. He hopped down off the Dumpster dock, checked for people in cars or vans or hanging around. There was nobody. He jogged up the alley, reached the corner—still nobody—did some jigs and jags trying to bring out any watchers.

Still nobody.

He hailed a cab on Nathan Bedford Forrest Avenue, threw his valise in ahead of him, hopped in, told the cabbie to take him to the Westin, and was gone in sixty seconds.

He turned around and looked out the rear window a couple of times, saw nothing. Just typical traffic, cars and trucks and vans and cabs, people strolling around, cops on the corners, sirens in the distance, downtown Sunday night in Cap City.

Did not pick up on the black Lincoln Town Car that eased out into the block and fell in six cars back, like a big black shark, just gliding along, smooth and silent.

An hour later Munoz was safely in his rooms, a corner unit at the Westin with city views north up Garrison and east along Cannon Palisades, sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed with a miniature bottle of Johnnie Walker Red clutched in his paw and having a crisis of belief.

He had made it to the hotel and that puzzled him, since it had been his experience that once the feebs had their teeth in your ass they were as hard to dislodge as herpes, and Munoz knew better than anyone what a sore trial that affliction could be to a man of his delicate sensibilities. But nobody got in his way or even showed a tail, and he was wondering if maybe he wasn't being
handled
just a bit by Mario and Desi.

Well, he made the call anyway, three rings and a hang-up, but as he redialed to order up a steak-frites and a cheese plate and a bottle of Barolo, he resolved to address these issues in a more forceful way, perhaps by bringing in some of his own people to add weight and muscle to his—

Three knocks at the door, done with a key, which usually means room service or a maid.

A maid.

He had ordered turndown service because he liked the little foil-wrapped chocolates and he also liked having a young maid in his room so he could fantasize about grabbing her by the—

The door to the suite opened and a tall silver-haired hardcase in a long blue coat walked straight across the carpet and had the muzzle of a large stainless-steel pistol—maybe a SIG—zeroed on the spot between his eyes where his eyebrows would have separated if his eyebrows separated, which they did not. Munoz frowned into the muzzle, which made his unibrow bunch up like a caterpillar.

“Who the fuck—”

Behind the stranger the door slid quietly shut on its spring-loaded hinges.

“In the bathroom” said the guy, a sort of cowboy edge in his voice. The guy looked vaguely familiar, and it occurred to him, while he was regretting the fact that his little black Sigma pistol was in his bag across the room, that he had been right, that he had been set up by La Motta and that little Jew bastard.

Apparently, in the view of the tall guy with the face like a canyon wall and weird yellow eyes, Munoz was taking too long to comply, because the guy, quick as a snake, raked Munoz across the left cheek and the bridge of his nose with the barrel of the SIG. Munoz, blind from pain, reeled back and rolled away and got to his feet, thinking
Okay, this is a shakedown or a hit, but either way a guy as smart as me could always—

“Into the bathroom,” the guy said.

Munoz steadied himself on the wall, shook his head. His nose hurt like hell and he could feel blood all over his shirt.

“Look, whoever the fuck—”

Got himself raked with the barrel again, across the right eye and right cheek, and now he was almost fucking blind and a little worry-worm crawled into his lizard brain as he reeled down the hall toward the bathroom.

Got to think got to think of something got to make a move right now—

“Stop right there,” said the guy.

They were at the door into the bathroom, a big lush space all chrome and slate and a Jacuzzi the size of a Vegas hot tub.

“Turn around.”

Munoz turned around, blinked one eye half open—he
knew
this guy from somewhere—and what he saw in the guy's face let him know that if he was going to make a move, it had better be—

“Charlie Danziger,” said the guy, and he pulled the trigger. Munoz, who had no fucking idea who Charlie Danziger was, never heard the shot, just a flash of blue light as the round went through his forehead, tumbled a bit, plowing a trench into the middle of his brain, chugged straight on through and blew out the back of his skull and it took all of Desi Munoz with it and he went straight down to his knees, tottered—Coker gave him a little shove with his wing tip—and fell onto his back with a meaty thud.

Didn't bounce, not even once.

Coker looked down at the guy, put a safety shot through the bridge of his nose and another into his chest. Looked down and noticed he had some blood spatter on one of his Allen Edmonds wing tips.

Got a towel and wiped that off, checked himself in the mirror, straightened his collar and cuffs, and took the fire stairs eight flights down, his long blue trench coat flying out behind him like the wings of a messenger angel.

Spahn and La Motta were packing when the phone rang. Spahn looked at the clock on his bedside table—fifty-eight minutes. He watched the phone while it beeped at him—
what if Delores picks up?…
but she didn't. Too busy with Mister Darcy and Pemberley and all that Brit shit.

One ring, two rings. Three rings.

And it stops.

Okay
, he thought.
Desi got through, which means there's no serious surveillance. Good to go.

Now get La Motta gone.

“Why do I have to go next?” said La Motta. He didn't like being pushed out the door. He'd been resisting it ever since Munoz had called in. It was in the back of his mind to leave last and spend some quality time with Delores before he closed the door.

“Because you're gonna kill Delores and fuck us all in the ear,” said Spahn. “I know how your mind works. You stay back, there's no way you're not gonna go in there and shred the bitch.”

He could see the truth of this on La Motta's face. And La Motta knew it.

“So why don't we? She's a fucking snitch.”

Spahn was losing his patience. He felt the knife on his belly skin, it was
talking
to him.

“Which is exactly why we can't do her. Right now the feds are just poking around us, trying to get info on Tony Tee. You heard the phone. Desi got clear, he's sitting in the Westin right now, ordering up dinner service, a couple of hookers. So they may be on us but not a lot. But we kill a CI who's snitching for the feds? Then we are fucked, my friend, well and truly fucked.”

“So she fucking skates?”

“For now,” said Spahn, thinking
Get the fuck gone before I can't help myself
. He stayed on point. “For now, Mario. For now. We lay back, bring Tito in, take her off the street in a couple of days—we'll have a nice quiet place all set up—we do the bitch right. We don't cowboy it by ourselves with the fucking feds sitting on the other side of Fountain Square, listening? She gets one screech out, they'll come running. Seriously.”

La Motta didn't like it. But he went.

Finally
, thought Spahn, closing the front door after La Motta was gone.

Just you and me, bitch. Just you and me and my little black blade.

Thirty minutes later Spahn was standing outside her door. He was naked—not for sex; women weren't his thing—but so whatever he got sprayed or splattered on him he could just shower off, and he had his knife and he had snorted the last of the coke so he'd be all bright and focused for this long-awaited party.