Byron set the big plane down softly. Before he could shut off the engine, people charged out of the jungle, desperate the way only starvation can make you. One man ran right into one of the still-whirling propellers. At least his terror died, too.
In a short while, the plane took off. I stayed on the ground.
It was maybe ten days later—I think I already had malaria by then, and things were fuzzy—when it happened. Byron was standing off to the side of the plane, watching the unloading, anxious to get back into the sky. But there were enemy planes in that sky. Huge chunks of ground blew up all around us from whatever they were sending down. No point in running—the blasts were completely random. And nobody ever used that foul tunnel they called a bomb shelter twice.
Suddenly, Byron went down, a piece of shrapnel in his thigh, blood flowing, not spurting. The rest of the crew ran for the plane. “We’ll pick you up on the return!” one of them shouted.
Byron knew what that meant. He started crawling to the plane, pulling himself forward with his arms, the useless leg dragging behind him, holding him back. I ran ahead of him to the cargo door of the plane, pulling the .45 out of my field jacket.
“Hold it!” I yelled at the two men in the bay.
“We got to go!” one of them shouted back over the roar of the engine. “The sky’s filling up!”
“Go get him!” I yelled, pointing with my empty hand at where Byron was still crawling.
“No way, man. He’ll leave us!”
I knew who they meant. The copilot. The pilot now. I gestured them to step back, boarded the plane. “No, he won’t,” I told them. “The faster you get back, the faster you can leave.”
They jumped out to get Byron while I went forward to explain things to the guy at the helm. I stood there explaining things until I heard them come back into the plane. Then I put up the pistol, ran right past Byron and his “rescuers,” jumped down, and headed for the deeper jungle. The plane took off.
I wasn’t sure Byron had made it until a few years later. A group of hijackers I knew were trying to put together a team for a job at a private airport, and his name came up as a candidate. The guy who recommended him said he’d worked with Byron a couple of times and he was solid.
We never did that job, but Byron had come to one of the meetings. It was … awkward. He didn’t know what to say, and neither did I.
And now we had another chance.
“You know,” he said, “I never asked you …”
“What?”
“Why you did it.”
“I don’t know,” I told him, truthfully. I was nineteen years old when it happened. I couldn’t have told you why I was in that jungle, in that war, much less why I …
“I think that’s a problem with people,” he said softly. “Who cares about the ‘why’? I don’t. Sorry I asked.”
“Sure.”
“Okay, what’s on the agenda?”
“I need to check something out. In Vancouver, that’s just—”
“—over the border from Portland,” he finished for me.
“Yeah. Look, I won’t bore you with all the details, but I’m supposed to be dead. So I need a way to go in under the radar.”
“Who better than me?” He smiled. “I live there.”
Byron’s ride was a restored-to-new oxblood Jaguar XKE coupe. He drove it like it was a real car, though.
“You’re doing well for yourself,” I said.
“Wait till you see the plane.”
It turned out to be one of those baby jets, with a custom cabin designed for luxury, not space utilization.
“Yours?” I asked, as I settled in next to him.
“Right!” He laughed. “It belongs to the studio. That’s my job, flying very important people around to very important places.”
“And you can just …?”
“Borrow it? Sure. They bought this sucker in the glory days, back in the late eighties, when money was gushing. Today, the smart boys rent—like time-shares: use it when they need it, pay by the hour. But this one’s all theirs. Nobody pays attention. They wouldn’t know what a flight log was. And they never check on fuel and maintenance. Only risk is if one of the big shots gets a sudden whim, decides he needs to go to Vegas or something.”
“That’d cost you your job.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, unconcerned.
“Recognize it?” Byron asked, banking low over a string-of-jewels city.
“No.”
“Seattle.”
“Not Portland?”
“You come up from L.A., you come down from Seattle, see?”
“But how far is …?”
“Couple of hours. Don’t worry, I got you covered.”
“These things hard to drive?” I asked Byron.
“Not really, so long as you know the limitations. A stretch limo’s just a regular sedan with a reinforced section let into the chassis. You’re adding a ton—no exaggeration—to the unsprung weight, so you’ve got a major inertia problem. A car like this, it won’t pull a lot of g’s on a skidpad, and the stopping distances are much longer than normal. But you stay within its envelope, it’s no problem.”
“This belong to the studio, too?”
“Yep. Seattle was the closest place to Portland where the studio has a presence.”
“You’re fobbing it off, but I know you’ve got to be risking your job, Byron.”
“For borrowing their toys? I’ve been with the studio a long time. Piloted the planes, drove the cars. I’ve seen a lot, and never said a word. No, I wouldn’t guess they’d try to move me out.”
“You ever borrow their stuff before?”
“All the time. I was deeply involved with a man in Denver for a long while. Flew up to see him a lot.”
“It still has to be a risk. I appreciate it.”
“Burke, listen to me, okay? I’ve got a good memory. I’m a man. I pay my debts.”
“Fair enough.”
“You think they hired a black queer just because he could fly a plane?”
“Yeah, I did. The way I figured, it’s just like it was over there: anyone who didn’t want to fly with a certain pilot, they didn’t like his color or his … anything, they could stay on the fucking ground.”
“They were going to leave me on that fucking ground, Burke.”
“Not because of anything about you. They were in a panic, trying to be hard guys, cut their losses.”
“Maybe you’re right. But it doesn’t matter. Dead is dead. If I hadn’t gotten on that plane, it would have been a slow death on the ground.”
“Yeah, well …”
“Anyway,” he said, expertly sliding the huge limo around a slow-moving pickup truck, “you never answered my question, so I’ll answer it for you. They hired me for what is euphemistically called ‘executive protection.’ You understand what I’m telling you?”
“You’re a bodyguard, too?”
“Licensed to carry,” he said, pulling the lapel away from his jacket with his left hand to show me the shoulder holster. “And to clean up the messes they make.”
“So they’re not going to fire you.”
“They’re not going to fire me,” he confirmed, voice soft. “I know where the bodies are buried.” Meaning: he’d buried some of them himself.
“I got it,” I told him.
“And I figure,” he went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “whatever it is you’re doing, you can tell me as much about it as you want. Or nothing, if that’s what you want. But if what you want is cover, I can’t think of a better one than this. Anyone runs these plates, they come right back to the studio. You look … I don’t have the words for it, exactly. Not exactly cool or hip or anything like that, but edgy enough so it’d work, no problem. Truth is, all you have to say is that you’re in the business, with a studio connect, and doors will open. Legs, too. Anything you want. This whole country is psycho for the movies. What do you say?”
“I was going to low-profile it
.”
“Look, Burke, just stop me if I’m over the line here, okay? Michelle didn’t tell me much. If you’re here to do some work on someone, I’m your man.”
“It’s not that. The people I’m looking for, they have information I need.”
“Information about whoever tried to make you dead?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Let’s see how it plays.”
“Didn’t we just pass the exit for Vancouver?” I asked.
“We did. But unless you’re planning to make your move at three in the morning, our move is to keep going, take the bridge to Portland, hole up for a few hours.”
“You have a place there?”
“Not me. But—”
“—the studio?”
“Right. The Governor. Best hotel in town. And they got suites built on the roof now; every one’s got a patio.”
“With an awning?”
“Don’t believe that stuff about it raining all the time up here. I mean, it does rain, but it’s not a steady downpour or anything.”
“What about the check-in?”
“This is the studio, partner. They don’t even have to see you, you don’t want. And I can sign you in as Mr. X, they won’t even blink. I assume you’ve got a change of clothes in that bag.”
“Yep.”
“Carrying anything else?”
“In my bag,” I said.
“Works for me,” he said, guiding the limo over the bridge to Portland.
An hour past sunup, we went back the way we’d come. It only took us a few minutes to get across the bridge and back into Vancouver. Byron had a street map. It was easy to locate the address. But as soon as I saw the block, I knew I’d used up my luck for the day. The address was for one of those commercial mailbox joints. The “suite” number I’d taken from the labels was just a rental box.
“Fuck!” I said, softly.
“Let me scope out the place,” Byron said. He didn’t wait for my response.
I watched him cross the street and open the door to the mailbox place. Then I shifted position so I could scan the area, and settled down to wait.
It wasn’t long. “It’s a real small operation,” he said, getting back behind the wheel. “Maybe four hundred boxes, all against the left-hand wall as you walk in. No windows in the boxes. Everyone has their own key. I figure the way they make their money is taking FedEx, UPS, stuff like that. Tack a couple of bucks onto the regular price, save the customer a lot of running around.”
“No way to lurk, right?”
“No way at all. I asked the woman behind the counter about prices and stuff, like I wanted to rent a box. There was only one guy in there, getting his mail. It’s empty—no chairs, just a flat table like they have in the post office. You don’t have business in there, they’d spot you in a second.”
“Damn.”
Byron didn’t need a translator. “You want to try some cash?” he asked.
“No. It’d be like putting all your money on a real long shot. If whoever we try to juice dimes us, the targets might spook and run.”
“You got pictures?”
“No. Just names.”
“Hmmm … We need something like the bang-dye the banks put in money bags when they’re being robbed.”
I didn’t say anything, accepting that Byron had dealt himself in, letting my mind drift over the problem. A dozen different people went in and out in the next fifteen minutes. A lot of traffic, but no surprise. The Post Office will rent you a box, but they won’t sign for FedEx, and you can’t give them a call and ask if a certain letter came in for you. A lot of small businesses use these places as their regular address.
“Let’s go,” I finally told him. “This limo might be just the thing at a nightclub, but it sticks out here big-time.”
“Okay. What’s our next move?”
“I think I’ve got a way to put that bang-dye in their bag.”
“You know someone who speaks Russian, Mama?”
“Sure. Plenty people speak.”
“You know somebody out here?”
“West Coast?”
“Yeah. Portland area would be best.”
“Find out, okay? I call tomorrow, same time, okay?”
“Okay.”
I stayed in the hotel all day, curtains drawn over the windows,
“Privacy Please” sign on the door. Trying to think it through. Byron said he had someone he wanted to hook up with, gave me his pager number, and told me to beep him if anything jumped off.
Options. The Post Office used to have a form for tracing people who left a forwarding order with them. A stalker used this public service to find a woman once. And killed her. The Post Office doesn’t use that form anymore, except for businesses. Besides, those forwarding orders expire after a year or so. No good.
I could send them an oversized envelope and tag it in some way—a giant red sticker would do the job—and then try and spot it in the hand of someone leaving the drop. But it was February. People wore coats. And carried bags. No good.
I could probably get a photo of the Russians—INS would have them on file. Or maybe Clancy could sweet-talk a snapshot out of Marushka. But that could dead-end easily enough. They could be paying someone to fetch the mail for them. Or even be using the mail drop as a way station, forwarding it from there to somewhere else. Anywhere else. No good, squared.
I had to go with the bang-dye idea. And play it for a delayed explosion.
The phone rang at ten that night.
“What?” I answered.
“You have car?” Mama asked. I could tell she was talking on a cellular, guessing the outgoing lines on the bank of pay phones in the back of the restaurant were tapped. Everyone in my family is a player in different things, but one thing we all play is safe.
“I can get one.”
“Okay. You go tomorrow. Wear ring.”
The directions she gave me weren’t that specific, but all I really needed was the town. And the name of the boat.
“We looking at a hot LZ?” Byron asked later that night.
“No. It’s just a meet.”
“With a stranger, right?”
“Right.”
He gave me a look. I nodded agreement. Then I asked him, “Can you fix me up with a car? I don’t want to rent—”
“Sure. I got a special one I’ve been dying to try out, anyway.”
“Byron …”
“Like you said, it’s not hot, right? I heard the Oregon coast’s beautiful. And it’s two-lane blacktop all the way down. Can’t wait.”
“What the hell is this?” I asked him the next morning as I climbed into an electric-blue coupe bristling with scoops, spoilers, and fender flares, riding on tires that bulged like steroided biceps.
“This, partner, is a Subaru.”
“Not like one I ever saw.”
“Not like one anyone in America’s ever seen. Vancouver is the Subaru port—it’s where they ship their cars from Japan. This one’s an Impreza 22B-STi, a homologated rally car. They only sell them over there—they don’t meet emissions requirements, and, anyway, they only build a few hundred every year, and those are snapped up immediately. This one’s destined for a gray-market conversion.”
He slid the car through the light downtown traffic. It snarled like a pit bull on a too-short leash.
“What you’ve got here is a two-point-two-liter boxed four, with a mega-boost turbo and aluminum intercooler. Makes well over three hundred horses. See this?” he asked, touching a heavy knurled knob on the center console. “It controls a locking-center differential. This is full-time four, but you can dial the split yourself. It locks at fifty-fifty.”
“It’s not exactly subtle,” I said.
“Where’ve you been, man? This is the West Coast. They don’t drag-race Mustangs and Camaros out here—it’s all rice-burners.”
“Front-wheel drive?” I asked, skeptically.
“Yep. With micro-motors, boosted to the max.”
“And on the bottle.”
“Now you’re getting the picture. This beast, trust me, we’re hiding in plain sight.”
“Fair enough.”
A light, misty rain started to fall. Byron grinned, and gunned it out of a long left-hand sweeper, kicking the tail out just a notch, his hands delicate on the small padded steering wheel. “It’s an easy spot to find, don’t worry. Besides, it’s daylight.”
I thought of the landing lights on that dirt track in Biafra a million years ago. Byron nodded silently, as if he was right in sync with me.
“See any whales yet?” he asked, tilting his head toward the ocean on my right.
“Whales?”
“Whales for sure, partner. This coast is like the whale-watching capital of the world. That’s why the tourists come.”
“Can’t imagine a whole lot of tourists this time of year. Won’t be summer for a while yet.”
“Maybe not, brother. But the whales don’t come for the tourists, right? The tourists come for the whales.”
“Sure.”
“You’re not even curious, huh? You ever see a whale?”
“No.”
“If you ever did—up close, I mean—you’d never understand why anyone could kill one.”
“All you mean is you couldn’t kill one. The people who do it, they probably get as close as any whale-watching tourist. Closer, even. And they still pull the trigger.”
“Evil motherfuckers.”
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “If they did it for fun, maybe. Or if they made the things suffer before they killed them. Tortured them, I mean. But it’s just food to some people, right?”
“Food? Those things, I swear to God, they’re practically human.”
“And those kids in Biafra—what were they?”
He was silent for a few miles, concentrating on his driving. Then he said, “And what was I, Burke? A nigger queer. In a jungle a million miles away from civilization, in a place where there’s no laws. No affirmative action. No hate-crimes legislation. A free-fire zone. You remember some of the mercs … not the guys who thought they were fighting Communism or liberating a country. You know the ones I mean—the ones who thought being a mercenary meant having a license to kill niggers, and getting paid for it. You don’t want to say why you saved me over there; you want to say you got no idea, you were just a kid yourself; that’s okay. But you had to have asked yourself why you went in the first place.”
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