Nightlife

by Brian Hodge

  “We always think these guys can’t get any sicker, and then they find a way.” Harris threw down a bottle of white-out in disgust. “So where are these bodies now, anyway?”

  “This is the sweet part. After he shot them, Mendoza picked a cleanup crew to get them out of Agualar’s place and lose them. He picked Diaz. Low man on Agualar’s totem pole and all, he got garbage detail. Diaz says they loaded up these eight guys and some other stiffs, and Mendoza had them drive a panel truck down into the Glades and dump the entire load. Diaz is heading back down there right now with a couple of meat wagons so they can pull the bodies back out of the swamp.”

  Rene held up crossed fingers. “Let’s hope the gators left enough for us.”

  “Amen,” Chadwick said. “We got two teams going after Mendoza. One at Agualar’s place, in case he’s still there, and one at Mendoza’s condo. I want you with that team.”

  “If we pull him in, I want you to push for two things,” Rene said.

  “What are they?”

  “No bond. I don’t want this guy out in time for lunch.”

  Chadwick nodded. “Way ahead of you on that one. What else?”

  “I’d like a lot of loud press releases.”

  “What for? What’s it to you?”

  “Are you forgetting two weeks ago? How we stonewalled that Justin Gray character, after the Webber killing? Gray’s holed up just trying to stay alive. I don’t know where to find him offhand, so I want to make sure he knows it’s safe for him and his girlfriend to crawl out again. We owe him that much.”

  Chadwick flipped a dismissive wave, cigarette clamped between two fingers. “Not my call, but I’ll try.” He checked his watch. “Five minutes.”

  And then he was gone.

  Rene reached into her purse, checked her service revolver. Pre-bust ritual, obsession-compulsion masquerading as better-safe-than-sorry precaution.

  She looked at the telephone and bit her lip in frustration.

  He didn’t even trust me enough to give me a phone number.

  Satisfied with her revolver, she thrust it back into her purse.

  So keep sitting tight, Justin. And I hope like hell you’re not planning on trying anything else on your own.

  Tony’s day began to develop serious kinks by late morning. He’d begun to feel some concern over how the mass grave down in the Everglades had gone. No word yet. Of course, it was his inner staff who usually followed up on piddly little details, then reported back to him. His inner staff had, overnight, been decimated.

  He briefly considered tapping a couple new up-and-comers who’d performed well at Agualar’s. Get them to back him up in secret at the late-afternoon meeting with Justin and company. New faces — the anonymity would serve well. But. It would be downright embarrassing to have to admit he’d been unable to handle witless amateurs, that they’d gotten lucky. Letting new guys in on this, it might be a tough call keeping the truth secret about what had happened to Lupo and BB and Ivan. Which translated into a serious loss of respect, negating yesterday’s show of strength.

  So nip this one last problem in the bud today solo, then bulldoze on ahead afterward with new business. No looking back.

  Tony couldn’t say precisely what prompted him to wander to the balcony doors and peer out at the virgin day. Some guardian looking down upon him, perhaps. The hekura watching out for its vessel. Whatever. Tony knew only that he should take a peek.

  And didn’t like what he saw.

  Saturday mornings were always prime pool time. Sun and water worshippers by the dozen. But a couple guys in suits were down there evicting the whole crowd. Swimmers, sunbathers, towels, tanning oil, air mattresses — everything was going inside.

  His breath hitched in his throat. He looked at the condos directly across the parking lots. A starburst of sunlight glimmered off polarized sunglasses, just above the edge of the roof. Some guy wearing a dark cap. No, two guys, different locations. Snipers. No doubt a couple of these raiders were perched on his own roof, ready to rappel down onto his balcony and blast right through the doors.

  A low growl rumbled in his throat, unintentional and ferocious. He felt his mortal self dropping low, lower, countered by the rise of the primal, whose sole instinct was survival at all costs.

  Tony went sprinting down the main hallway, slammed open a closet door, and tore through the detritus until he could reach a hidden panel. He ripped it out of its brackets and plucked up a pair of objects just behind it. Serious firepower. A Browning Automatic Rifle, World War II ordnance. And an Israeli-made Uzi. The best of yesterday and today.

  His heightened senses were almost excruciating in their sensitivity. He felt, heard, sensed the multiple footsteps clicking up the outside stairs. The scent of his guns’ oil was as potent as an aphrodisiac.

  He slung the Uzi around his neck and held the massive BAR in both hands, then went charging back to the living room. Careful to avoid direct lineup with the balcony doors.

  His breath panted, a husky grunt. It wasn’t the change, but he was nevertheless packing a lot more beneath his scarred hide than before. Some hybrid state, the seesaw balanced with equal weights at both ends.

  Motherfuckers. They tried to take him, wouldn’t they be in for a big wet surprise? Absorbing a few shots from them wouldn’t mean dick. He’d take a licking and keep on ticking. Firing the whole time. Their safety-in-numbers machismo would wilt soon enough, once they understood that he wasn’t going to roll over and play dead. Ever. He wondered who held the world record for copkill.

  Tony bared his teeth, jacked shells into the chambers of both weapons. It sounded very loud, metallic adrenaline. He could smell the advancing fearsweat, at least six or seven sources coming close, closer. Could even distinguish one female in the group.

  He took aim at the door…

  And reconsidered.

  Why be hasty? There were other ways.

  Like giving them the totally unexpected.

  He remembered childhood, Mama dragging him to Mass and Sunday school. Remembered the lessons. Jesus — now there was a guy Tony could respect. Because He knew how to take people by surprise. Tony couldn’t see much use for that turn-the-other-cheek shit, but hey, go please the world, right? He remembered a snippet from some prayer all the little tykes said: Gentle Jesus, meek and mild…

  Yes. Yes! He loved it. Besides, he had a meeting in a few hours. It wouldn’t do to show up full of holes, even if they were halfway healed.

  Tony was guessing the cops were on the third floor by now. Barely enough time. He sprinted for the closet and stashed the guns again. Ran for the door and unlocked it. Swung it wide open and lifted his smiling face to the warm winds lapping in. In the entry hall behind him, a hanging fern swayed, fronds rustling.

  He took a seat in the hall floor, and the hekura submerged. For it respected treachery, above all things.

  Gentle Tony, meek and mild.

  And when the attack squad showed up on the landing and at his door, Tony gave them the biggest bright-eyed smile he could muster. Plainclothes detectives, uniformed guys, shocktroops in the lead with AR-15s and bulky tactical vests. All staring down their gun barrels at a smiling childlike man in the lotus position.

  “Hi, guys!” he said eagerly, then noted the sole puzzled woman. “And ma’am.”

  They would have none of his good cheer. The tide surged in, surrounded him, and he offered no fuss. Next thing he knew, he’d been rolled facedown and somebody had a heavy knee at the base of his skull, and the floor didn’t taste all that great. His arms became pretzels, his wrists home to a pair of handcuffs. The really inconvenient kind, the bracelets linked by a rigid steel bar instead of a chain.

  Once they were secured, one of the tactical guys, built like an NFL linebacker, hauled him to his feet.

  “Thank you,” Tony told him.

  “Shut up,” the guy said.

  And then the policewoman was in his face. Nice-looking, but too serious. A few more years, and worry lines would
carve into the smoothness of her dusky skin. He smelled too many cigarettes, too.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” she said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Tony nodded sheepishly. “So what else is new?”

  He watched the world go by from the northbound lanes of Westshore Boulevard. To his left, the silver-gray plains of the bay helped lull him into the proper frame of mind. The language of water.

  They’d thrown him into the back of a patrol cruiser, one of the bland white sedans with a blue stripe down each side and a municipal shield on each front door. Altogether uncharming. No handles on the inner back doors and a wire mesh, like chain link fence, separating him from the pair of uniforms up front.

  “Hey,” Tony piped up. Practically forced to sit on his hands. Undignified. “You guys get very good gas mileage in these things?”

  The cop in the passenger seat swiveled around, looking irritated to no end. His trim little moustache twitched indignantly and looked ridiculous on a face much too broad for it. Earlier, Tony had heard the driver call him Alvie.

  “What do you care?” Alvie said. “You’ll be lucky to worry about mileage when all you can do is push the gas pedal with a cane.”

  The driver chuckled and drummed big hands on the wheel like a snare rimshot.

  “Just curious,” Tony said. He was leaning forward, pressing his forehead to the wire mesh. Testing its tensile strength. “I was just sitting here wondering if they were very fuel efficient. How much gas a big caravan of these things burns on the way to a funeral. For, like, cops who die in the line of duty.”

  Alvie had been smirking, but smoldering anger wiped it away. He cracked his knuckles. “Better watch your step when we let you out. Be a shame if you slipped and banged your face on the roof — broke your fucking nose.”

  Tony leaned back. The wire mesh hadn’t flexed much, but enough to leave him reasonably optimistic. He charted their route to the police station in his mind. They could hang on Westshore all the way up to I-275, then cut east. A straight shot from there all the way to the station, which was cradled in the crescent formed where the elevated 275 curved to the north.

  Soon, however, it appeared that they were taking a less distant route. The convoy of police vehicles veered northeast onto Henderson, which slashed diagonally across the north-south/east-west street grid. Tony began to smile. Henderson linked with Kennedy, which they would probably take until after they’d crossed the Hillsborough River. Then turn north and run him up to the station through downtown.

  So they thought, anyway.

  He kept his mouth shut until they hit Kennedy, then: “You guys mind if I lie down? I had a long night.”

  “Go ahead,” the driver said.

  “Yeah, I don’t think too many people’s pissed on that seat.”

  Two miles to the river. Tony lowered himself on his side, folded his legs onto the seat. It wasn’t likely they’d be rubbernecking around to check on him. So far as they knew, what was to see?

  And so, turning his face down toward the seat, which exuded the pungent whiff of a public urinal, Tony willed the change. It was already champing at the bit like a winning racehorse. He trembled with the exertion of keeping it a silent process. Head elongating, flesh thickening, scaling over. New teeth bursting from hiding.

  He exploited the increased elasticity of bones and joints by stretching his handcuffed arms, nearly wrenching his shoulders loose at their sockets. Stretch. He bucked his arms down once, twice, a third time — shoulders flaming and molten — and managed to slip his wrists beneath his rump. Slowly wriggled them forward beneath his thighs. And finally, one by one, working each lower leg and foot back through the loop of his arms.

  Cuffed in front now. Which opened up worlds of possibilities.

  He lifted his wrists to his mouth, fit the manacle bar into his protruding jaw. Chomped down. It parted like soft lead. He drew his wrists apart, free at last. The bracelets he could worry about later. For now, time was growing short. The Hillsborough was less than a mile distant.

  And the zero hour had drawn nigh.

  Tony popped up in the seat, all savagery and instinct now, and hurled himself at the tiny chain link fence. Jaws open wide, he hit like a torpedo. Even the burliest of felons could shake the fence all they wanted to no avail, but piranha jaws were among the most powerful in all of nature, and Tony’s were considerably larger than what nature allowed her own. The partition was no match for several tons per square inch of rending pressure. He sheared through it as easily as he might a lace curtain.

  At the moment of impact, both cops swiveled their heads around to check the commotion. The driver was secondary in Tony’s mind. Take out the unoccupied man first. Alvie’s irritable expression melted into unglued fear, and by the time his hand unsnapped his service .38 free of its holster, Tony was halfway through the fence.

  Exceedingly upset.

  And the screams were exceedingly loud.

  Tony took out Alvie’s throat with a single lunge of bear-trap jaws. Black slacks and blue uniform went red. The driver bellowed and pressed against the door, too little too late. Draped over the seat back, Tony squirmed through another foot, rocking as the cruiser weaved beyond control. Another lunge, and Tony clipped off half the driver’s right ear and gulped it down whole. Through the windshield, Kennedy Boulevard tilted like a crazed mural. Tony seized the wheel with one webbed hand and hauled himself further, more room to maneuver. Room to kill. Blood sprayed the dome light.

  With his left hand, Tony shoved the driver’s leg forward. Push the gas pedal with a cane, like hell. He jockeyed the foot into place and powered it down. The driver gurgled, tried to fight. Tony wrested the wheel away from him.

  The radio had erupted with a barrage of static, distress calls from the other cars, shouts and panic and entropy. Music to his ears.

  Tony had the cruiser up to sixty as he neared the University of Tampa on the left, the main building that was once a luxury hotel topped with onion-shaped minarets. Saturday drivers went into panicked skids, or looped out of the way as he barreled through like a runaway train that had jumped its tracks. Sirens from the escort cars wailed all around, while in their midst, he raged. An unmarked car drew along the right side, trying to box him in and bring him to a grinding halt. Tony jammed the twitching leg all the way down, his nails piercing the regulation black slacks until they drew blood; the V-8 engine roared. He yanked the wheel and broadsided into the unmarked, sent it ricocheting away.

  Sixty-five and climbing. While sweet chaos reigned.

  Past the university. Past the park and its sculpture, bent steeples erupting from the earth. The cruiser began to crest the rise leading to the bridge spanning the Hillsborough. A drawbridge design, built to split in the middle for boats passing underneath. The center section was forged into a vast steel grate, with railings along either side. No concrete retaining walls, no curbs, just an unobstructed path into the rails.

  Tony twisted the wheel and aimed. Tires screamed, and so did the driver. The radio caterwauled into fever pitch.

  Tony released the wheel, snatched up the fallen .38 in Alvie’s lap. He aimed at the windshield and jerked the trigger as quickly as he could, unleashing a deafening volley within the tight interior and etching a pattern of starbursts across the glass, side to side.

  Let the bullets pave the way.

  An oncoming car in the westbound lane locked into a skid as the cruiser rocketed past its nose. And Tony braced.

  Impact.

  The grillwork mashed into steel like aluminum against a sieve, the back end wrenching a yard off the bridge. The driver screeched his last and took out the steering wheel with his chest.

  Poised over the seat, Tony was catapulted straight at the windshield. He roared triumph, crossed his forearms before his head, and exploded through the weakened glass. Bursting free, free, sailing out over the hood and beyond in a blizzard of crystalline glass, a
hailstorm of flying metal.

  He straightened his body, curving into a graceful arc against blue, blue sky. Arms thrust before him, fingers straining for distance.

  The glitter of glass, the heat of the sun, wind in his face. Life was grand.

  Freefall.

  Twenty-five feet down, the glimmering surface of the Hillsborough River beckoned. He dropped, as pure a missile as a falling arrow, and splashed down. Water enveloped him, cocooned him, nourished him, protected him.

  With no need whatsoever to return topside.

  He skimmed the silt of the bottom, dazed and shocky but his head clearing by the moment. Exchanging one world for a completely new one was always disorienting. Water rippled past gills, and he was ecstatic. He swam north, upstream, and the current was no great foe. The sunlight through water was comfortingly murky.

  Flitting images, plans for the next hour, two, three. With any luck, back on the bridge they’d think him dead. Never surfaced once, drowned for certain if not killed by the impact. For the next few hours, the absence of his corpse wouldn’t be unusual. The river’s current could have sucked it down into the channels, then out to Hillsborough Bay.

  Swim, then. The river would eventually put him less than a mile from the safe house near the airport, where they’d suckered Justin into thinking the mule was picking up a load of coke.

  Perfect. There he could rest up, dry off. Exchange the tattered shirt he wore for a new one. Lie low for a while. Make a phone call or two to put together the twenty grand in show money he’d need. Then commandeer a car, or grab the Lincoln. It was still in the downtown parking garage where Lupo had switched it for the dirty-work Olds last night. He could switch the plates on it, just to be safe. He always carried a spare set of tags, registered in the name of a time-tested lady friend, in its trunk for emergencies.

  Then he could be his usual punctual self.

  And by tomorrow, the world would truly be his.

  Chapter 31

  THE DARK CONTINENT, REVISITED

  Justin and Kerebawa and April arrived earlier than needed, at Justin’s insistence. Busch Gardens, three hundred acres of theme-park Africa, simmered in heat sufficiently wicked for the real thing. He didn’t know which was worse: walking in the open beneath the sun and its negligible mercy, or keeping to shaded walkways where the vegetation blanketed in the humidity.