"I'm still getting used to it."
"You don't have to get used to it." Billy crunched the ice cubes from his drink between his strong white teeth. "Retirement is overrated. Even with perfect weather and congenial companions, I couldn't wait to get back into action. We've been spoiled, Frank. Playing God, it's the best game in the world." He winked at Thorpe. "You can talk about the nobility of the cause, but if all we cared about was the red, white, and blue we could have just bought a war bond."
Thorpe was going to disagree, but Billy would have known he was lying.
"I've started a… consulting firm, Frank. I'm in the process of assembling a team, the best of the best. Strictly corporate accounts. My clients are as eager for information as our former employer, just as ready to secure an advantage over their competitors, but without any presidential findings or pesky oversight boards to finesse. For us, there's just the paycheck and the pleasure of making the chickens tap-dance."
"What do we need him for?" asked Warren. "Just another soldier boy grown up and no place to go."
"Not just a soldier boy," said Billy. "Frank was Delta Force, the warrior elite, and freelancers by nature and training. No snappy salutes in Delta, no parades or public ceremonies; they actually call their officers by their first names."
"That's enough, Billy," said Thorpe.
"You should be proud of yourself," said Billy. "Frank here actually started a war by himself, set a leftist guerrilla army up against a Colombian drug cartel, and they never even knew who lit the match. Sadly, though, our government doesn't take kindly to such initiative. If I hadn't stepped in, Frank here might have ended up in Leavenworth."
"Are you done, Billy?"
"I just wanted to explain to Warren why I value you so highly," said Billy. "You're a rare individual, Frank, creative and highly adaptive, willing to spill blood, but not enamored of violence. Kimberly was the same way." He showed his teeth. "She was tougher, though. You're a little too tenderhearted."
"You want to bet?" said Thorpe.
Billy folded his hands in his lap. "Actually… no."
"What about Gavin Ellsworth?" Thorpe said lightly. "Is he on your team?"
"One of my first hires," said Billy. "A very cautious fellow, but a brilliant forger." He bent forward, started unlacing his bowling shoes. "We're going to have such a grand time working together again. I've got a new client, a software-development firm under considerable pressure in the marketplace. They have their sights on a rival firm's chief designer. I need one of your signature three-cushion shots, Frank. I need to get the man fired, to make his work product suspect to his former employer, and then have our client pluck him from the depths of despair. Nothing more grateful than a rescued man, right?" He slipped off his shoes, grinned at Thorpe. "When can you start?"
Thorpe didn't answer.
"The shop isn't going to take you back, if that's what you're counting on. The shop isn't even going to exist much longer, not as an off-the-books entity. None of them are." Billy wiggled his toes. His burnt-orange socks had a pattern of tiny black clocks. "Control and accountability are the watchwords of the day. Your imbroglio with the Engineer is already being cited as a rationale for the shops' being subsumed into traditional agencies. No fun in that, I can assure you. I can just see you sitting at an FBI meeting when the agent in charge starts droning on about work sheets and…" Billy narrowed his eyes, wagged a finger at Thorpe. "You rascal. I must be getting rusty."
"Just a little."
"You asked me about Gavin Ellsworth, and I let it slip right by," said Billy, annoyed with himself. "What do you want with him?"
"I can fool you, Billy, but I can't fool you for long."
6
Pinto was on his knees, tightening the chain linkage on Danny Duck, when the staff-only door opened behind him. "I told you, it's going to take me at least another hour," he called, concentrating on the lag bolt. The torque wrench slipped and he scraped his knuckles on the housing. "Fuck." He licked his hand, tasting blood and grease, as he turned. "See what you done…" Vlad and Arturo stood in the open doorway, the two of them outlined by the morning sun, and Pinto's Cocoa Puffs did a backflip in his guts. He smiled. "Hey… you surprised me."
"Imagine that," said Arturo. "It's not even your birthday, either."
Vlad quietly shut the door, and the interior of the Down the Bunny Hole ride was darker after the flash of sunshine, illuminated only by the overhead lights.
Pinto gripped the torque wrench.
Arturo walked over to Gloria Goose and sat down, propping one foot on her plastic beak as he leaned back against the red upholstery. He folded his hands in his lap, a powerfully built middle-aged man in a black suit. His face was broad and deeply pocked, his hair brushed straight back. "You're late, Pinto."
Pinto stood up, wiped his hands on a rag, his forearms so heavily tattooed that it looked like he was wearing blue lace gauntlets. "Not so late… just a few eight balls behind."
"A few?" Arturo admired the shine in his loafers. His oldest son, Preston, shined all the shoes in his father's closet every evening after finishing his homework. As a boy, Arturo had helped support his family by shining shoes in the business district of Los Angeles. His sons would never need to shine another man's shoes, but it was good training. "I think it is more than a few. What do you think, Vlad?"
Vlad didn't answer.
Pinto slouched against Danny Duck, a gristly, hollow-eyed speed freak in jeans and a T-shirt, his face a skull, his hair in clumps. An irregular reddish purple scar ran from his left ear, across his cheek, and down his neck-a souvenir of a meth explosion years earlier. Pinto had been cooking up a batch in his uncle's storage shed, but he was in a hurry, as usual, and added the anhydrous ammonia too quickly. Rookie mistake. He was twenty-seven now, and a pretty good cooker when he wanted to be, but he preferred sales. He had the knack, and he got all the samples he wanted. His foot wouldn't stop tapping. No idea what the tune was, either. He saw Arturo watching him. "You know me, man. I'm good for it."
"Sure… we know you, Pinto. You are the man who is late."
Pinto laughed too loudly.
Vlad stared at the brightly colored cartoon characters on the walls: mama rabbits feeding lettuce sandwiches to their bunnies, Mr. and Mrs. Quack-Quack at the swimming hole with their ducklings. He did a slow turn; a tall, pale man wearing thrift-store pants and a striped short-sleeved shirt. His face was sharp and angular, his wispy hair the color of wet straw. His eyes reminded Pinto of the Canadian glaciers in the bottled-water ads on TV, clean and blue and frozen.
The three of them were inside the Down the Bunny Hole ride at the Kids Unlimited Karnival, located for the next two weeks in the north parking lot of the Yorba Linda Mall. The carnival wasn't open for another two hours. Pinto was doing regular maintenance on the rides. He had already finished adjusting Mrs. Piggly Wiggly's Tunnel of Fun, and rewired Dr. Frog's Lily Pond Party, which still gave off sparks, lights flickering. The rides were falling apart, reeking of spilled cola and orange drinks, and dangerously loud, the insulation worn away-to compensate, the management turned up the happy-music sound track to the maximum. Pinto heard "I Am a Friendly Fuzzy Bunny" in his nightmares, woke up wanting to kill the asshole who wrote that song.
"How did you know I was here?" asked Pinto. "I only got this job a couple days ago."
"Your girlfriend told us," said Arturo, his full lips barely moving.
"You talked to Lily?"
Arturo shrugged. "It was unavoidable."
Pinto let that one slide. "She's not supposed to answer the door when I'm not home."
"I think we forgot to knock," said Arturo.
"This is a pretty picture…" It was the first thing Vlad had said since they slipped inside, his voice soft and lightly inflected. He pointed at Harvey Hare spray-painted on the ceiling, a bright blue Harvey with a cowboy hat and chaps, a carrot in his holster. "Pinto, do you know the artist who painted it?"
"Ah… no, man."
&nbs
p; Arturo patted the pockets of his jacket, found a carob power-protein bar. He sat there listening to Vlad sing along to the piped-in music. Vlad liked to sing with the commercials and kids' songs on Radio Disney. They sometimes sat in their car for hours, Vlad singing while Arturo squeezed the hand-grip exerciser he kept under the front seat, right next to the Red Devil-brand lye. It had to be Red Devil. Not just because it was the best-lye was lye, after all-but because Arturo had started out with Red Devil a long time ago, and it had never let him down.
Vlad finished the last verse of "I Am a Friendly Fuzzy Bunny." He had a good voice, too, high and clear. "How wonderful to work in such a beautiful place," he said to Pinto.
"Yeah? Then you must think having brain cancer is wonderful." Pinto spit on the floor. "Like the bumper sticker says, 'I'd rather be tweaking.' " Think it, do it-he pulled a power hitter out of his jeans, gave it a twist, grinding the flaked methedrine inside, then slipped the plastic torpedo into his right nostril. First the right, then the left. He felt the top of his head lift, the chill running down his brain stem. He glared at Arturo. "You and Vlad didn't have to bother coming around this morning. It's fucking insulting."
"Is it?"
Pinto hated when Arturo used that tone. A Yuppie beaner and the man from Transylvania giving him shit, hassling Lily… He pushed back his hair, hit both nostrils again, heart racing. "Look… Arturo, I fronted some weight to this guy runs a landscaping business. Guy's got all kinds of clients on his route who like a taste, and don't mind paying top dollar for curb delivery. Mr. Greenthumb is supposed to come by my place tonight and pay me. I was going to call you this afternoon, tell you not to worry about your money."
"We're not worried." Arturo finished the protein bar, then swallowed three B12 capsules and a fat blocker, washed them all down with a couple swallows of bottled water. He took his pulse, then pulled a PDA from his jacket, entered in the data.
Arturo took thirty-eight vitamin and mineral supplements daily, monitored his bowel movements, and worked out every morning. Only five-eight, he weighed a brick-solid 201 pounds, about the same weight as Vlad, who was at least six-three and never exercised. Sometimes Vlad accompanied him to the gym, watching as Arturo went through his bench-press routine, not saying a word; then, when Arturo would max out around 410 pounds, Vlad would lie down and, without even a warm-up, crank out fifteen or twenty reps. It was unreal. Vlad wasn't on the juice, either; Arturo had never seen him take drugs of any kind.
Arturo's PDA beeped, alerted him to a new e-mail. He tapped the password, checked his mail, his face getting red. "Quentin's having trouble with the batch," he told Vlad, then glared at Pinto. "We cut too much slack; everyone tries to play us."
"Don't put me in that category, man," said Pinto. "You'll get your ten thousand-"
"You don't owe us any money," said Arturo. "It's been taken care of."
Pinto looked from one to the other. His sinuses dripped the bitter chemical into his mouth. He loved that taste.
"We hauled away your Mustang, so now we're even," explained Arturo. "Left another quarter pound of frost with the little woman just to show your credit's A-one again."
"You can't have my-"
"It's not yours anymore. We just came by to have you sign over the pink slip."
Pinto felt the scar tissue on his neck get warm. "That's a 1967 convertible. The four-barrel. Took me over three years to restore it. It's cherry." His scars were even warmer now. "Got to be worth at least twenty thousand… maybe twenty-five, and I wouldn't sell it for thirty. I love that fucking car."
Arturo unfolded the pink slip.
"I ain't signing that," said Pinto. "Fuck the both of you."
Lounging on Gloria Goose, Arturo sucked the last bits of protein bar from his eyeteeth.
Vlad reached under his shirt, pulled a black pistol out from the waistband of his pants.
"Hey… no, no." Pinto backed up, tripped over Danny Duck, and fell onto the floor.
Vlad squirted the right leg of Pinto's jeans, twirled the pistol around his index finger, and slipped it back into his waistband.
Pinto sat up, laughing. "A water pistol? Shit, Vlad, who knew you had a sense of humor?" He looked at Arturo. "So you were just fucking with me about the Mustang?"
Arturo ignited a wooden match with a flick of his thumbnail, tossed it at Pinto. His leg flared with a bright blue flame.
Pinto squealed, beat out the flame with his hands. "That ain't cool."
Vlad quick-drew the squirt gun, pumped a couple of blasts of gasoline into Pinto's chest.
Arturo tossed another match but missed. His next two matches were batted aside by Pinto, but the fourth match set his chest on fire, singed his chin before he put it out.
Pinto backed up, eyes wide. He tried to dodge, but Vlad was good with the squirt gun, hitting him in the leg, the crotch, and even his scalp with the cold gasoline.
Arturo kept up a steady rain of burning matches, he and Vlad working in tandem, herding Pinto from one end of the room to the other. Pinto twisted and ducked around the bright plastic animal cars, but no matter what he did, he kept blazing up. The back of one hand caught fire, and when he tried to wave it out, he just made it worse. The stink of burning hair followed every move he made, and it was like the meth explosion that had scarred him happening all over again-the burn, the smell, the fear.
Arturo held up the pink slip.
Pinto flipped him the finger.
Vlad pretended to fan the water pistol like a six-shooter, splashed gasoline on Pinto's shoes an instant before one of Arturo's matches landed on his foot.
Pinto stomped like that Lord of the Dance faggot trying to put out the fire, screaming, while Arturo laughed and Vlad doused him. He stood there, out of breath, his clothes smoldering, soaked with gasoline, waiting for Arturo to torch him.
Arturo struck a match, held out the pink slip in the other hand.
Vlad blasted away with the squirt gun, splashing gasoline across Pinto's face, drenching him.
Arturo waved the pink slip.
Tears rolling down his gaunt cheeks, Pinto slowly held out his hand.
Arturo blew out the match.
Arturo and Vlad stepped outside a few minutes later, blinking in the sunlight. Some of the carnies were clustered around the snack bar, scraggly men and women gobbling hot dogs before the crowds came. Others leaned against their rides, drinking beer out of paper bags.
Vlad stared at the biggest ride in the parking lot. "I want to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl."
"The carnival isn't open yet, amigo," said Arturo.
Vlad was already on his way.
For the next half hour, Arturo watched Vlad going round and round on the Tilt-A-Whirl all by himself, smiling broadly, whooping it up.
The first time Arturo had invited Vlad over for dinner, his wife had been furious. Fortuna had said that Vlad was too white, that he was in league with el diablo. Vlad had been on his best behavior that night, bringing presents for the children-coloring books and remote-control race cars, Barbies and G.I. Joe walkie-talkies-but the toys did not soothe Fortuna. Cradling the crucifix that he had bought for her in Mexico City, the one blessed by the Holy Father himself, she had collected the gifts after Vlad left, and thrown them all away.
Arturo thought Fortuna spent too much time at Mass, but she was his wife, and the children were her responsibility. If she wanted to throw out perfectly good toys, that was her decision. But when she told him that she didn't want Vlad in the house anymore, Arturo told her that such things were for him to decide, and when she insisted, clutching at his arm, Arturo threw her down with a flick of his wrist, told her if she asked him again, he would break her jaw, and then his mother would have to stay with them while she recovered. They never spoke of it again, and Vlad came over for dinner at least once a week.
"Arturo!" Vlad waved from the top of the Tilt-A-Whirl. "Arturo!"
Arturo waved back. If Fortuna could see Vlad now, she would be ashamed of herself. How could someone
who took such delight in small things be in league with the devil?
7
"This good deed of yours, Frank, what a colossal waste of talent." Billy hadn't said a word during Thorpe's story, just sat there, impassive, but he couldn't hold back now. "A wake-up… just because some businessman smacked a child in the face? You think the boy has never been smacked before?"
"Not in front of me."
"What do you expect the art dealer to do, apologize?"
"I already gave him a chance to do that, but he declined."
Billy stared at Thorpe, the tumble of bowling pins crashing around them. "You're serious." The three of them sat on the bench of lane number 24, secure in their privacy. "Look, if you want to sharpen your claws, that's a good sign, a healthy sign, but why bother with this art dealer? I have more challenging targets for you."
"Software engineers? No thanks."
"You'll use your talents for Uncle Sam but not for me? Not for yourself? What are you, a patriot?" Billy's laugh boomed. "You were bounced out of the military, bounced out of the shop; you don't owe your country anything. It's time to grab what's on the table."
"I'm going to pass."
Billy shook his head, amused. "Have it your way. The offer still stands." He took a deep breath, spread his hands in an attitude of forgiveness. "I'm simply suggesting that this wake-up of yours is a thoughtless indulgence, as narcissistic as your vendetta against the Engineer."
Thorpe leaned closer, right in Billy's face now. "I don't need your approval."
"Temper, temper, but do you honestly think Kimberly would be targeting the Engineer if you had been the one murdered in the safe house?"
"You didn't know her, Billy."
"I hired her, Frank. Just like I hired you."
"You didn't know her."
Billy eased back. "I'm simply suggesting that getting emotionally involved is risky, risky for you, risky for everyone around you. You're a professional, so is the Engineer. You squeezed him, and he turned it back on you. If you could get some distance-"
The wake-up Page 5