“I can take care of myself.”
“We know that. You’re supposed to be real good at some kind of martial art. And anyone who goes on one of those thousand-mile bike rides has got to have legs of steel.”
“You know stuff? Or you heard stuff?”
“If the source is reliable, those are the same.”
“Is that right? And your source…”
“An undercover. Infiltrated a major gang. Not some cop looking for a big drug bust; a fed. Working his way close enough to see if it’s a true clue that one of the gangs actually took money from people who’d like to see Sears Tower fall down.”
“Why tell me?”
“Because you asked. This…source, he saw you kick a banger in the knee. The one who walks with a cane, now. Not some Snoop wannabe—it’s the only way he can get around.”
“That’s enough.”
“Sure. You told us stuff we wanted to know, I figured the least I could do was—”
“You get it? Good. Then get on your way—I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Without a word, Tiger leaned her long-nailed hands against the whitewashed wall, pushed off, and butterfly-floated to the ground. Mural Girl never turned around as the Amazon stepped into the back of the Shark Car.
TIGER WAS silent as they slid through the treacherous streets, heading for the Badlands.
Buddha killed the headlights and switched to the laser light-bar behind the mesh grille as they rolled past the rusted out hulk of a de-wheeled semi that marked one of the entrances. Very few would take that route; even fewer would make it a round trip. There were other entrances, one to the Gangland version of Chicago’s famous Commodity Exchange—an outlaw menu of bartering transfers, black-marketing, drag racing…and, if you knew the way, a path to Red 71. Buddha had already hit the “come home” signal to a network of one-use cells.
Hearing Tiger take a deep breath, Cross said, “Wait till the others get here. No point telling the same story twice.”
“THERE’S NO connection,” Cross told his audience. “None at all.”
Silence.
“What I’m saying, whatever that creature in the house was, he didn’t connect to Old Greytooth’s present for us. Pekelo, that one, looks like he was telling it true. It had to be AI, set to trigger if that creature didn’t tell it to stand down. Whether he had to send the signal every hour or every month, it doesn’t matter.
“It wasn’t Hemp who was playing that ‘game,’ that was the Lao. To win, he had to draw us out. And what better way? I won’t miss him. Or Hemp. But this wasn’t the same kind of…Hell, I don’t know. The Simbas, maybe? Whatever they are, whatever we call them, we know this isn’t how they work.”
“Mural Girl told you all that, right?” Cross asked Tiger, no hint of skepticism in his words.
“Pretty much,” she answered. “Mural Girl knows something’s been watching her back. Something that can give her a fresh canvas to paint on. And—here’s the thing—those murals of hers, they don’t get erased, they get moved. She’s seen them all over the city. Places where you’d expect them to be X-ed out, over-tagged, something. But once they go up, they stay up.
“She’s used to it, by now. And this is one tough girl, no question. But she knows she couldn’t do what she does without cover. Why they picked her, I don’t know. But she knows us. Knows of us, anyway. And—”
“All of us?” Tracker interrupted. This was so uncharacteristic of the man that the room went quiet, waiting for Tiger to answer.
“Cross, Buddha, Princess, Rhino, no doubt. Me, she knows, but from the way she was talking, I’m not sure if she knew I was always part of the crew. Until this morning, anyway.”
“So not Ace…”
“And not you, either,” Tiger told Tracker.
“What about—?”
“Oh, she knows all about Sweetie,” Tiger smoothly assured Princess.
“What they could brand, they could kill,” Rhino cut in, hard. “So something else must be in play.”
Tracker cleared his throat. “When we got that message about what Hemp had sent a man to do, we deployed. I found a roost and waited. But…this is difficult to explain. I had a clear sight line, working off a bipod. I was going to make it rain .50-cals, but I opted for a head shot first because I needed time for the armor piercers to find the Semtex, and Hemp was Job One. A man taking a body hit could get lucky—he might have been wrapped.
“I didn’t miss. I know I didn’t. But…this sounds insane, but I swear Hemp’s head just exploded at the same time I squeezed off the round. I saw it in the scope. This is all inside little tiny pieces of a second, but I’m sure it wasn’t my round that took him out.”
“They could do that,” Cross said. “Stuff like that, they’ve been doing for centuries. At least, I think so. Nothing else explains what Blondie and his girlfriend were putting together a capture-team for. Those two didn’t know Tracker and Tiger were really with us. And they never found out.
“So whatever put this brand on me, it had its own reasons. But, whatever those are—whatever it is—just like Rhino said; if they wanted us, they could take us. I think Tracker saw exactly what he described. Maybe Hemp wasn’t looking for us to move so fast, but he had to know what was going to jump off if that hit on Sharyn—”
“And my children,” Ace said, his deep voice throbbing.
“So they took care of the problem to keep us from acting,” Cross went on. “And what Mural Girl told Tiger, that’s enough to confirm. There’s no connect.”
“Swell. Now we don’t have an enemy in the world. Not in this world, anyway,” Buddha sneered.
“If Blondie’s alive, we do,” Cross said. “I doubt the feds would answer our letter. Hell, the way things turned out, they could be looking for him themselves. And that Wanda girl, too, maybe…”
“What about that other—?”
“Percy? He’s stone-to-the-bone loyal,” Tiger answered Tracker. “You watched him, right? He didn’t like those two any more than we did. Percy, he’s no analyst. A pure hunter-killer team in one man’s skin. He couldn’t find them on his own, but, if the G does, he’s the man they’d send to clean up the loose ends. If they’ve got any more like him on their payroll, they’re already in some desert, laying waste.
“No, it’s just Blondie and Wanda. A lethal cocktail, true enough. But do-it-yourself wouldn’t be their style. Those kind, they push buttons to launch missiles. Percy is a damn missile, but he’s not theirs to use, not anymore. Whatever they do, it would have to be on their own.”
“All that is what I saw as well,” Tracker added. “Percy is no danger to us. So we must either find those two, or confirm they’re dead.”
“We find them, we make them dead,” the gang’s leader said, passing the final judgment.
A THIN STRIP of neon tubing that ran across the ceiling seam in the back room suddenly lit up, a throbbing blue pulse of warning.
“Strangers,” Cross said. Meaning that the ancient man who sat at the front desk of Red 71’s basement poolroom hadn’t recognized whoever had just entered.
“Didn’t come here to shoot a game of pool,” Buddha said, unnecessarily.
Cross toggled a switch that sent a visual feed to a flat-screen monitor. “Russians” was all he said.
“I thought we sent all of Viktor’s mob to—”
“That’s the problem with blowing things up,” Tracker said to Buddha. “You can’t get an accurate body count.”
“And we could never be sure they were all there when you RPG’ed their joint, anyway,” Cross added.
“How many?” Rhino asked.
“Looks like four,” Cross answered. “All at the same table.”
“I’ll bring them over to your table,” the behemoth said.
“No,” Cross said. “Too messy if they get stupid.”
“You boys all forgot the most important ingredient in any successful club,” Tiger said, standing up as she spoke. “That would be the hostess.�
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“No,” Rhino said to Princess, who was already on his feet, the Akita at his side. “You and Sweetie have to wait now. Tiger will be fine.”
“Already is,” Ace said, as he reached for the sawed-off 12-gauge he always carried on a rawhide thong around his neck.
“HI, BOYS,” Tiger purred at the four men. “Welcome to our little club.”
The men froze. Maybe it was the sight of Tiger’s outrageous torso threatening the camo spandex. Or her striped mane. Or the fact that she was taller than any of them.
“My name’s Tiger. Can I help you with something? Anything you want?” she innocently asked, her voice going throatier with her last three words.
“We play pool,” one of the Russians finally said. “Eight-ball. Two teams.” He was medium-height, stocky, in a black leather jacket and dark jeans. Heavy cheekbones, thin lips, short haircut. Nothing to distinguish him from the others, except that he had spoken first. And the crude tattoos on his hands. Cross will know what they mean, Tiger thought, taking a mental snapshot.
“Playing for money?” she asked, a slight smile dancing over her lips.
“Sure,” he said, tossing a rubber-banded roll of bills on the green felt of the tabletop.
“That’s against the rules here,” Tiger said, pointing a long, black-gelled nail at the sign against the far wall.
NO GAMBLING
She put her hands on her hips, as if the matter was settled.
“There are many more of us,” the Russian said. “We lost some people. Viktor is gone. But we are here. The money I show you, that is to explain ourselves. Viktor did not understand there is always a tax to pay. We understand. We pay the tax. Every week. Right here, we send a man with the tax money. And your…people, they leave our business in peace.”
“How much do you think this tax would be?”
“That is for you to say. But we do not haggle like some fishwives. We—”
“Do I look like a fishwife to you?”
“No, no. My English is maybe not so good. You tell us the tax. Flat only. No…percentage, nothing like that.”
“Come back in a week,” Tiger said, turning on one heel and walking away.
The Russians watched her until she disappeared from view. Then their leader nodded his head sharply, a clear signal.
They left their pool cues on the table. And the rubber-banded roll of bills.
WHEN THE neon tube went blank, Buddha and Tracker entered the poolroom, pistols held loosely at their sides.
Upon returning, Buddha tossed the roll of bills at Cross, who caught it in his right hand, opened his left to start a flame, and lit the cigarette that was already in his mouth.
“No Kansas City bankroll,” he said. “It’s all hundreds. Five large.”
“Not bad for once a week, right, boss?”
“Very bad,” Cross answered. “We take that, we’re letting one of them in here once a week, too. Probably a different one each time. Enough time passes, we get used to that. These guys, they already know Putin’s got his own problems now. Never mind the Ukraine, it’s the Chechnyan rebels he’s always got on his mind. The Ukrainians aren’t going to invade Russia, but they could learn from the Chechnyans–suicide bombings are convincing propaganda.
“Putin can’t have that. He’s got to be in control. Somebody whispers in his ear that we—our whole crew—that we’re negotiating with the Chechnyans. Hard contract, huge money. Not a contract for some movie theater or train station. For him. He doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know they’d empty their pockets for his head.”
“Come on, boss. We don’t take any out-of-country work anymore. And even if we did—”
“How would Putin know any of that, Buddha? And I can think of one way he could believe we’ve already taken the contract.”
“So these new Russians, they go back into the bear-claw business? And, one week, the guy they send with the taxes, you’re saying he’s gonna be wrapped?”
“Yeah. Some true believer Putin sends over. Might not even be Russian. There’s a whole horde of ISIS-style dummies running around. Chump kids, recruited on Twitter. The G keeps saying it’s the Arabs who’re supplying them with weapons. Maybe that’s so. But cash is easier to smuggle than ordnance. And the Russians, they’ve been arms dealers for a long time now. Where do you think Saddam got those SCUDs?”
“One had tattoos on his hands,” Tiger said. “Would that tell us whose side they’re on?”
“One of those tattoos, it had some kind of crown showing? Or a playing card, a king of clubs, maybe?”
“The crown—that one I saw.”
“Whoever had that one, he did the talking?”
“Yes.”
“Some kind of ‘authority’ when he was in prison. But once he said ‘Viktor,’ we knew that much, anyway. He’s the new boss. However he got to be that, it doesn’t matter.”
Buddha stirred. “Even if they’ve taken over Viktor’s racket, I can’t see Putin buying that Chechnyan story, boss. Not from them. They’re nothing but animal-parts traffickers. Putin, he’s ex-KGB, right? He might be a maniac—hell, he might be crazier than a psycho on angel dust—but he’d want actual intel, not some rumors. There’s no way—”
“The blond man,” Tracker interrupted. “He would do such a thing in a heartbeat. And that woman with him, she would know how to make contact with a foreign power.”
SILENCE REPLACED SOUND.
Cross went through three more cigarettes before he finally spoke.
“The only way it adds up is if Buddha’s right. This new mob, all they did was take over Viktor’s business. Different gangs come to this country, they pick up on how we do business here. And that’s easy enough, right? Because all over the world, it plays the same. No matter where you are, politics and crime, they need each other to survive, like air and water.
“You see that book?” Cross said, pointing at the single wood shelf against the wall behind the desk. “Casino. Nicholas Pileggi. You want to understand, you don’t need to take some course. Just read that man’s books. He knows. Now let’s just get back to— Damn!”
“What was that?”
“Just that little brand on my face, Princess. It hit me with a real burn in the middle of what I was saying, that’s all.”
“Sweetie didn’t even growl.”
“Why would he? It was a message, not a threat. Whoever’s doing it, they wouldn’t need to threaten anyone. Sweetie’s smart, right?”
“Sure!”
“Well, there’s your proof. He knew there was nothing to worry about. From that burn, I mean.”
“If they wanted to kill Cross, they could have done it when he was down in that prison basement,” Rhino explained. “But they let him live. We don’t know why. Maybe we never will. But they’re not our enemies. A different tribe, maybe. But not one we’re ever going to war against. You understand that, yes?”
“Sure! Sweetie, he knew all this—that’s what you’re saying?”
“Yes, honey,” Tiger said, assuring the armor-plated child. “And Buddha has to be right. Forget those Russians who came in here. Putin wouldn’t trust intel from anyone who works on our—I mean, the Americans’—side. But if Blondie and Wanda are still out there, they’ve gone rogue to the max. Who knows what they’re trying to peddle. Percy’s not with them, but he’s still every movie-merc’s fantasy. Macho and merciless. A one-man spike team.”
“He’s also loyal,” Cross reminded her. “And he’s not what you’d call subtle.”
“He would never go off on his own,” Tracker agreed. “He may be a human missile, but he’s a guided missile.”
“Then that’s what we’ve got to do,” Cross said. “Find him.”
“Boss? I mean, what’s the point?”
“Buddha,” Rhino said, on the fringe of impatience with the pudgy killer’s failure to understand—or admit—the obvious, “if the blond man and that woman went off together, people would be looking for them. You know which people.
And who would know them better than Percy?”
“He had no use for either of them all along,” Cross agreed. “If it was us the G wanted, they’d have tried way before now. Percy’s a machine. If you don’t give him work, he could rust. He may not like us much—I don’t think he likes anyone much—but he’s got no real problem with us, either. We—that’s just me, as far as Percy knows; Tiger and Tracker, they were supposed to be hired hands before they got me involved. And me, I came through, right? I got the job done. It was Blondie’s plan that was hosed from the start.”
“So now we—?”
“We wait, Buddha. But there’s no reason why we can’t wait and work at the same time. Rhino?”
“So the one in that house we blew up—?”
“Buddha, that psycho didn’t have to be interested in those rape tapes himself. But he’d know the kind of people who wouldn’t hesitate to do…damn near anything. Not when so much money was on the table.
“And I’m thinking, me and Rhino, we have it right. So the Lao sees my picture. I don’t look like much of anything, but this, this would show up nice and clear,” Cross continued, holding his hand up to display the tattoo known throughout Gangland.
“From there, he could follow the trail. He knew So Long was putting together a big score. She wouldn’t have said my name, but if she described the tattoo, that would be enough. So: me to Ace, Ace to Sharyn. After that, no more complicated than paying Hemp to call a blackout on everyone in that house.”
“But So Long was on their hit list before any of that happened, boss.”
“Yeah, she was. And there’s the link between the Lao and whoever set up the whole rape-tape online game. She wasn’t picked because of any connection to us—it was just her skin color.”
“So…?”
“So remember what the Lao told us? Remember what Rhino figured out? Pekelo was a miserable pervert when it came to his idea of ‘entertainment,’ but he wasn’t stupid. He must have been good at whatever he did—he didn’t get all that jewelry playing real-estate games. And that offshore account, not so easy to set up securely, not today.”
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