Blackjack

by Andrew Vachss

  “Bobby was … gone right away, honey,” his wife said, patting her husband’s hand. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “Matters to me,” her husband managed to say before the tears came.

  A cheek muscle jumped in Cross’s otherwise flat face. Something was clicking inside his criminal mind, but he wasn’t sure what it was … yet.

  He patiently waited for the husband to regain his composure.

  “That maggot’s safe,” the husband finally said to Cross. “I’m sorry we wasted your time. I don’t even know why McNamara gave me a number for you. But everyone on the force knows Mike Mac’s the best cop there is. And that he knows those … kind of people. But even he doesn’t know what name the feds gave Bobby’s killer. Or where they’ve got him stashed.

  “Besides, how could you get to him in a prison like that? Stateville, sure—you can get a man done for a couple of cell phones. But in a luxury palace where they’ll kick you all the way down to Supermax if you screw up …”

  The man got to his feet and offered his hand for Cross to shake. “I don’t expect you to pull it off. I get that. Mike Mac told me the deal: no promises. But if you ever do find out who he is now, just tell me. Get me a mug shot. I’ll wait. After all, it’s only ten years.”

  His laugh was bitter enough to make acid taste like honey.

  “You won’t have to,” Cross told him.

  “Won’t have to … what?”

  “Wait,” Cross said, turning to leave.

  “YOU ARE certain of this?” The speaker was Corsican, an old man immaculately dressed but without a trace of flash to his perfectly tailored dark suit, worn over a white silk shirt with a black tie. A funeral outfit.

  He was seated at a table for two inside Red 71, facing Cross. A lifetime of survival had taught the old man a great deal. He looked into the eyes of the man so physically close to him, but all he could see reflected in the irises of those eyes was the message that, whoever you might be, life—your life—meant nothing to him.

  Whoever pays him first, the old man thought to himself. Aloud, he said: “There was little time, unfortunately. How such filth could have learned … Ah, it is not important, n’est-ce pas? But know this: he is hated by many. I will not lie. Some hated him for what he was, but others, they actually did business with him. And now they rot in prison. In most cases, this hatred would be an advantage. But it was because this creature is so hated that he is now so protected.”

  “I know.”

  “And yet you—? Ah, that, too, it is of no importance. I am an old man. My mind rambles. Pardonnez-moi.”

  Cross’s only response was to light a cigarette.

  “How much will you require as an advance?”

  “Not how I work. The total gets deposited. You know with who. When the job is done, the money gets released to me. I don’t get it done, it gets returned to you. Every dime.”

  “We have a contract,” the old man said. He did not offer to shake hands.

  AT THE top of the stairs, the old man gave his two bodyguards a meaningful look. He had expected they might be searched. Instead, some kind of human beast had simply pointed a banana-clipped rifle at them. He held the rifle in one gigantic hand, as another might hold a pistol.

  The monster gestured toward a pair of what might have once been sofas. His message was clear: Only the old man could go downstairs. His bodyguards could stand; they could sit; they could reach for whatever weapons they might be carrying—it was all the same to him.

  The old man had long ago learned to mask fear with anger or disgust. “On s’casse! C’est une baraque de dingues!” he barked, deliberately moving out of that den of horrors before his bodyguards could bracket him properly. Sending the message that, once inside that place, you were unprotected, no matter who or what you brought with you.

  As the three men walked through the mini junkyard surrounding Red 71, a piece of concertina wire twisted. Only the dogs reacted to the call-and-response mimic of Delta blues, which had morphed into “Chicago style” with the journey north and the switch from acoustic to electric. In that below-human harmonic, it sang:

  “Baraque de dingues.”

  There was a pause. Then:

  “Reste.”

  THE NEXT morning found Cross at the same table, sipping from a glass of vile-looking liquid as he read a newspaper headline:

  SERIAL KILLER IN MYSTERY SUICIDE!

  The name “Mark Robert Towers” appeared in the typescript beneath, cluttered with vague phrases such as “Perhaps the most prolific serial killer of all time.” There was more, all generic versions of the same theme: authorities investigating, isolation-cell safety, speculation about “final remorse.”

  None even so much as hinted at any possibility that the suicide had been of the involuntary variety.

  Perhaps the TV coverage …

  Cross stood up and walked over to the wooden counter which was always standing sentinel at the bottom of the stairs leading down to the poolroom. The elderly man behind the plank counter did not look up as Cross joined him and changed the channel on the TV set.

  The announcer was saying:

  “Mark Robert Towers, who had recently confessed to a string of murders throughout the country, was found hanging in his special isolation cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Although rumors persist that Towers was himself a homicide victim, the authorities will only say that the matter is still under investigation. What is clear, however, is that Towers had no contact with other inmates, as numerous threats on his life had been received.…”

  Cross moved his thin lips in a gesture some might mistake for a smile.

  CROSS ENTERED the basement of a tenement. With the aid of a pencil flash held in his teeth, he quickly located the telephone junction box. He lightly touched each pair of connectors with a wandlike device held in one gloved hand. When the wand rewarded his efforts with a greenish glow, he attached a pair of alligator clips, both wired to a handheld phone.

  When he heard a dial tone, Cross held a small tape recorder to the mouthpiece and pushed a button. The recorder played a series of tones.

  The number he just “dialed” rang.

  “Allô,” a man answered.

  “C’est fini,” the recorder’s voice said. Unhurriedly, Cross disconnected the clips, pocketed everything, and left, as ghostlike as he had entered.

  As he exited the building through the basement door, the passenger-side window of the Shark Car sitting across the alleyway zipped its side window down and up again: All Clear.

  IT WAS the same newsreader, on the same channel Cross had watched in Red 71. The broadcast was coming into the War Room. The blond man yelled over to Wanda, “Get me …”

  “Already on it,” she replied.

  AS THE members of Unit 3 evaluated the information that was pouring over their terminals about the serial killer’s suicide—“Or was it murder?”—the Shark Car slipped through the city.

  “He’s here,” Wanda said.

  “Still wearing his special little coat?” Percy said, his voice heavy with suppressed anger.

  “No searches,” the blond man warned. “We’re fully operational now.”

  “Fully rogue operational,” Percy reminded him.

  “We can do it,” the blond man answered. “And once we bring … whatever the hell it is … once we bring it in, we’ll be properly acknowledged, don’t worry about that.”

  “Maybe by the people you work for,” Tiger replied. “Me, I’m not on your payroll—I’ve got my own scores to settle, remember?”

  Tracker was silent. Why repeat that which has already been said?

  INSIDE THE War Room, the blond man tried to project an air of assurance. “We can make it happen.”

  “And you want me to take your word for it?” Cross responded, his face a blackboard immune to the blond man’s chalk.

  In the silence that followed, Cross reached into the depths of his coat. Before Percy could level the MAC-10 he instinctivel
y pulled, Cross held up a pack of cigarettes.

  “No smoking in here,” Wanda told him, wishing she had made the statement the last time this cold man had paid them a visit—she knew it was much more difficult to reclaim territory once ceded.

  “I didn’t light it,” Cross pointed out. “I just wanted to share tobacco.” With that, he offered the pack to Tracker, who was seated behind him. Tracker carefully extracted a single cigarette before he tossed the pack over Cross’s shoulder, confident that it would be caught.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Percy demanded.

  “You would not understand,” Tracker told him.

  “Try me.”

  “You don’t want that,” Tracker said.

  “You sure?” Percy fired back.

  “Stop it!” Wanda snapped. “When this is all over, you—all of you—can do whatever you want, okay?”

  “Yes, mistress,” Tiger giggled.

  CROSS, TRACKER, and Tiger were deep in conversation, with Percy occasionally contributing. The blond man was off somewhere with Wanda. If their absence was a source of concern to those remaining, it didn’t show.

  “You’ve got a complete record of their hits?” Cross asked.

  “No way we could,” Percy said, blunt-voiced. “It’s not like they’re subtle about who did the ones we know about, but we gotta figure there’s bodies that haven’t turned up yet. They’re probably out making a bunch more while we’re sitting here.”

  “What about that thing … with the dogs. There’s something there; I just can’t pull it out,” Tracker said.

  Cross felt the current just released. “They ever kill cats?”

  “Not house cats,” Tiger told him. “Maybe a jungle cat, we couldn’t say for sure. But we found plenty of bodies with regular cats around them … and the cats were still alive.”

  “That’s the hook,” Cross said. “They don’t care about—”

  “Who?” Percy leaned forward.

  “Cats. Cats don’t bond to humans the way dogs do. Whoever they are, they only hunt humans. In at least some of all those other kills you told me about, dogs were hacked too. The killers came for the humans and the dogs tried to protect them. Nothing personal to the killers—the dogs just got in the way.”

  “Silent whistle,” Tiger said, almost to herself.

  “Hearing range, yeah,” Cross picked up her thread. “I don’t know about cats, but dogs, no question they can hear harmonics humans can’t.”

  “Dogs can hear them coming?” Percy asked, as if the whole picture was finally snapping into focus.

  Cross shrugged. “It’d fit, right? The dogs hear … whatever this thing is. Or maybe they smell it. Either way, they go right into protection mode. But the humans they’re trying to protect wouldn’t get that message—they’d think the dogs were snarling at shadows.”

  “That is why our people always had dogs,” Tracker confirmed. “But the … Simbas, if that’s who they are … there’s still something almost … clean about what they do. It is as if they only hunt hunters.”

  “Or they only kill killers,” Cross narrowed it down.

  “What about this one, then?” Percy challenged, pulling out an eight-by-ten photo of a signature-kill corpse hanging from a jungle gym in a kid’s playground. “This guy wasn’t even armed.”

  Cross picked up the photo and studied the scene. Flipped it over, read the ID information on the back. “There’s info here,” he said. “Can any of you except Blondie’s girlfriend work that computer?”

  Tiger shook her head. Tracker’s answer was silence.

  “I can’t make it sing and dance the way that slope bitch does,” Percy said, “but I can get some basic stuff out of it. What do you want?”

  “A BCI?”

  “Can do,” Percy responded, planting his heavyweight body on Wanda’s stool. He started banging away immediately, jeopardizing the keyboard with vicious two-finger blasts.

  Cross lit a cigarette. So did Tracker.

  Tiger said nothing. And missed nothing.

  They waited.

  “Son of a bitch!” Percy said, staring at the screen. “He was a goddamned pedophile.”

  “A what?” from Tiger.

  “Baby-raper,” Cross told her. “That’s what he was doing in that playground. Hunting. Stalking the ground, picking out a target. You understand?”

  She nodded, a warrior’s stony mask dropping over her gorgeous features.

  “And now all of us do,” Tracker added grimly.

  THE BLOND man and Wanda entered the War Room together. Wanda sniffed at the smell of smoke. But her annoyance instantly vanished at the far worse violation she detected: in her absence, someone had dared to touch her computer. Her dark eyes whipped around the van. Only Tiger reacted … with a fake-seductive wink.

  “Learn anything?” the blond man asked.

  Nobody answered.

  “You know what we want,” the blond said to Cross. “And you want to see a grant of immunity all typed out and signed, with a blank space where the crime should be. With the same exact computer, printer, and paper that was originally used, so you end up with a perfect match. Okay, you’ve got it.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “What kind of proof could we possibly give you?”

  Cross put two fingers against his jawline, as if he was thinking it through. The blond man kept a barely veiled smug look on his fox-face.

  Cross snapped his fingers with an “I’ve got it!” expression on his face. “If you’re really all that connected, you should be able to tell me where this guy is,” Cross said, pulling an old mug shot out of his coat.

  “Who’s this?” Blondie asked.

  “A baby-killer,” Cross told him. “A baby-killer with real immunity. New face, new name. He’s doing lightweight time … somewhere.”

  The blond man handed the mug shot behind him, without looking. “Wanda …”

  Wanda snatched the mug shot and placed it on a photoimage enhancer. She pixilated it carefully, then used a digital scanner to break the face into tiny components, each with its own number/letter series. She was playing her keyboard like a first-chair cellist, her face glowing with the joy of the chase.

  As she worked, her movements told Cross that this genre of hunting was Wanda’s raison d’être. As each new piece of information came up on her screen, she reacted in a distinct but subtle parallel to a woman being worked up to orgasm.

  NAME/NATAL/GIVEN: SLOCUM, LINDSAY, NMI.

  NAME/CODE: INSIDER-KP.

  NAME/CURRENT: FELTON, REGINALD D. (ANIEL)

  The same process occurred, much more dramatically, with the face itself. Cross watched as it progressed from the original through the various stages of plastic surgery to its current configuration, which bore no resemblance to the original mug shot.

  At Wanda’s touch, information continued to play across the screen:

  LOCATION/U.S. INSTILLED. #11-C

  SECURITY LEVEL - 1

  Wanda hit a final button and a printout flowed into her hands. She handed it over to the blond man, who, in turn, passed it to Cross.

  “Satisfied now?”

  “You got yourself a deal,” Cross replied.

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “It means that I’m gonna do what you want done,” Cross promised. “But I got other business first. Now, what else have you got on this freak?”

  “The priority—”

  “Two things,” Cross said, his voice as deceptively transparent as an ice cube. “One, your priority doesn’t mean a thing to me. Two, as it turns out, I have to do this other business to get something I need to do the work you want done.”

  “Perhaps we could—”

  “Shut up and let the man do his job,” Percy cut the blond man off.

  Tracker and Tiger were silent. That frightened the blond man a lot more than Percy’s growling. And he was truly terrified of Percy.

  “NO WAY I can interview him?”

  “No
t a chance,” the blond told the man at the other end of a phone conversation. “We came to him, not the other way around. But we do have video of him interacting with us, if that would be any help.”

  “All right, partner,” the consultant said. “Send what you’ve got over that special little modem of yours—I’ve got the one you gave me all hooked in. Not just the video, now—everything you put together before you decided he was the man for the job.”

  “How fast can you—?”

  “I’ll call you when I’ve got something to say,” the consultant answered, a split second before he pushed the “end” button on his cell phone.

  CROSS STEPPED off a commuter flight, picked up the rental car waiting for him, and drove straight to a pawnshop that was on the permanent Watch List for local law enforcement.

  His hair was a tangle of blond curls, and he sported a prominent beauty mark on his cheek. An earring dangled from his right ear on a long chain. Anyone who looked closely enough would see the “ball and chain” symbol for a submissive in a “collared” relationship.

  Cross exchanged only a few words with the proprietor. They entered a back room. When Cross left the pawnshop, he was carrying a small suitcase.

  A no-tell motel took his cash. Cross changed his clothes, then re-entered the rental car. First, he plugged a memory stick into the car’s data-port, disabling its GPS. Then he drove for a little less than two hours, totally fixed on his objective, never noticing the urban grit give way to a scenic countryside.

  He arrived at what looked like a college campus. A closer look would reveal it to be a minimum-security prison. Cross, now dressed in a conservative suit, with the fool-the-eye disguise removed, entered the prison, carrying an attaché case. He was processed through, enduring only a scanner—no pat-down searches were required at this security level.

  Next stop, the Visiting Room. It was an open plan, no barriers between visitors and convicts. Lots of people were visiting, children playing with their sort-of-incarcerated parents; unarmed guards in neat uniforms circled quietly, observant but lacking the hyper-alertness of security staff in real prisons.