“They won’t let you take any weapons in,” Weasel said.
“Secondly,” I continued, ignoring his comment, “anybody takes me out in Cobra territory while I’m under Roberto’s guarantee of free passage is committing suicide. I don’t see any of the Messengers or their Cobra spies as dedicated enough to the cause to knowingly give up their own life to take me out.”
“The bounty is huge, Mac,” Stevie said.
“They can’t spend it in hell,” I answered. “And that’s where they’ll be if they try for me when I’m under Roberto’s guarantee of safety.”
Everything I was saying had a ring of authenticity to it, as if I really believed it. But the points that Sarah, Weasel and Stevie were making were legitimate concerns. My problem was making them believe the risks were minimal. It was a particularly cantankerous issue, because I didn’t believe it myself. It was Stevie who came up with the idea that made all of us feel more confident of my surviving a meeting with Roberto. What would happen to us after my discussion with the leader of the Cobras, was entirely dependent upon my persuasive abilities.
“Check this out,” Stevie said. “We’re all worried Mac’s gonna get smoked while he’s inside the Cobra borders. But we’re sort of in agreement that if Roberto gives his word, he’ll keep it.” Stevie shifted his focus directly on the man who would set up the conference. “Merlin, can you get Roberto to agree to meeting Mac at the border, escorting him to a safe place for the talk and then getting him back safely?”
“No matter how the discussion goes,” I said.
“So Mac’s in Roberto’s presence the whole time,” Merlin commented. “Hell of an idea, dude. Some wild card out there is gonna be very reluctant to take Mac out right under Roberto’s nose. Yeah, I think he’ll buy it. When we doing this?”
“How soon can you leave?” Weasel asked.
“I’ll pack some weed and I’m gone,” Merlin replied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“How can you read at a time like this?” she asked, her voice showing the strain.
“I always read before I go to bed.”
“I’m worried about tomorrow,” she said. Merlin came back in a single day with the news. It was set for me to go in the morning. Alone was the way I pictured it.
“There’s a possibility he could believe me, about my not having a choice in killing his men,” I told her. I thought that maybe if I acted like nothing big was happening, it would keep her from feeling the strain. Naturally, it didn’t work because I was showing the strain myself with a myriad of tells.
“I’m not concerned about whether or not Roberto will believe you, Mac. I’m deathly afraid that he’s going to kill you the minute he sets eyes on you. Or one of his men will. You should take me along.”
“He’s not going to kill me. At least not tomorrow anyway.”
“Because of the code.” She said it like it was a fantasy concept, a child’s belief in a fairy that gives gifts for baby teeth.
“Be thankful for it,” I said, tapping the bed beside me, inviting her over. “It means there’s still a few rules still operating out there. He will keep his word.”
She straightened the comforter that was folded over at the end of the bed, stopped to pet Duke, who acknowledged her with a sleep groan. Stripping off an oversize t-shirt, she climbed on the bed, got under the sheets, then turned to me, sitting cross legged, the sheet across her lap.
“Not all of the clans follow the code. Some of them make up the rules as they go,” she pointed out.
Her green eyes met mine. Her auburn hair was shiny, freshly combed, short now for the summer and beginning to lighten a little in sun streaks. She was so beautiful. I couldn’t remember a day I wasn’t thankful for her. I had trouble keeping eye contact.
“I can’t talk like this,” I said. “With you like that. It’s distracting.”
She rolled her eyes. The hint of a smile pushed up at the corners of her mouth, then disappeared. “You could die tomorrow, and you’re telling me you can’t talk because my breasts are showing?”
“It’s a distraction. Like a teensy little pebble in your shoe when you’re walking. Doesn’t hurt, doesn’t slow you down, but you know it’s there. Keeps making its presence known. Large breasts pretty much do the same thing to me.”
“What about small ones?”
“Never seen a pair.” Actually I had never seen any but hers, except on vids. “But I imagine it would be the same.”
She pulled the sheet up, across her breasts. “I should go with you,” she repeated.
“Let’s work on that a minute,” I said, able to focus on the matter at hand. “If you’re right, about Roberto not following the code, then he’s going to kill both of us.”
“Right,” she said. “But we’ll be together.”
“Kind of like a picnic with a bad ending,” I commented.
“I’m not worried about the ending,” she said. “I’m worried about you.” She paused and pierced me with her eyes. “We are each other, you know. I would be diminished without you.”
She was right. Each of our lives was defined by the presence of the other. She was also bringing in the heavy artillery.
“What about Stevie?” I asked. “Both of us killed would be devastating to him. He’s under more pressure than he’s showing with The Babe so close. And Weasel. He could be the strongest of all of us. But we both know how hard he took the death of his family.”
“They would have each other,” she replied. “That would help. You know Weasel would get him through it.”
The stakes were high. I brought out the big gun.
“And Duke,” I said. “How do you think he would fare with both of us gone?”
“You are a son of a bitch, Mac,” she responded.
I reached over to her and pulled her head next to mine so that we were ear to ear, heads on each others shoulders, hands on the back of each others head. I stroked her hair.
“I love you, Sarah,” I whispered. “The reason I don’t want you to go is the same reason you want to. Neither of us wants the other in danger. Would you consider a compromise?”
She shook her head. Her breath came softly on my shoulder. I told her my idea. She accepted, and then escorted Duke to Weasel’s room.
We made love softly and tenderly, more of a communique that an expression of passion. The closest we could get to each other was me on top, deep inside her, each of us looking into the other’s eyes. We stayed that way for a long time, rocking gently, totally connected.
In the morning we left together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Merlin’s presence at the breakfast table, coinciding with the new light of dawn, marked it as an important day. His first meal was usually a sleepy eyed lunch. It was traditionally a happy time, full of banter and big appetites. Another night we had survived, another day we could spend together.
“Jesus Christ,” I exclaimed to the forlorn faces across the table, “I’m not dead yet, and this isn’t a funeral.”
“I’m getting some serious waves of negativity,” Merlin said, pulling on a newly carved corn cob pipe. He was unaffected by the gravity of the impending meeting between me and Roberto. “Makes for bad karma, dudes. Trust me. This will go smoothly.”
“Thank you for setting this up,” Sarah said. She kept getting up and down, moving plates, refilling coffee cups, fussing in the sink. Her fear for me was front and center.
“Sarah, I know you’re freakin’,” Merlin said. “But Roberto agreed to all the terms. Mac is going in healthy and comin’ out the same way. Straight from Roberto’s mouth.”
They all smiled weakly and tried their best to make it seem like a normal day. Merlin’s words had helped—because he obviously believed them. So we all pretended it was day like hundreds of its predecessors, full of chores and ideas, construction and camaraderie. But when Sarah, Duke and I prepared to exit the compound from one of the tunnels, they were all there at the door, hugging me and patting my back
. Hardly the usual send off.
I looked at them all and smiled. I felt good. This was a positive move I kept telling myself. When I returned, we would certainly be no worse off, possibly in better shape. “I’ll be bock,” I said in my best Arnold voice from the vids.
It earned me some smiles.
• • • •
“You got cajones, McCall,” Roberto said, leaning back in a huge leather chair that ended up looking small when he settled his bulk into it. He was the second biggest man I had ever seen. A couple of inches shorter than me, he had me outweighed by nearly a hundred pounds. None of it appeared to be fat. He was wide…and solid.
Jet black hair framed a round copper hued face. His nose roamed a little to far left and right, the result of having been broken more than once. If it weren’t for his propensity to smile frequently, flashing square, brilliantly white teeth, he would have been considered ugly.
Between us was a executive desk. Definitely not the one that had been here in the 20th when the room had been the office of the manager of the Integrity Office Suites, a converted motel on Roosevelt Road in Lombard. This was where the Cobras now called home. Forty or fifty years ago the desk, a huge slab of polished irregularly shaped mahogany, had probably cost as much as some automobiles.
“I appreciate your talking to me,” I said. “Guaranteeing me safe passage.” These were the first words either of us had spoken since he had met me at the border. Accompanied by a contingent of five guards, we had walked thirty minutes in silence. Only when we had entered the sanctuary of four walls, did I speak.
I had left Sarah and Duke a quarter of a mile from the Cobra’s northern border. She had all my weapons. I had her words of encouragement and her love. We had taken five hours to make the journey that would have been a one hour jaunt in better days. Taking back roads, biking through woods and meadows, we detoured way south, beyond the expanded borders of the Messengers, before we turned east and ultimately back north again to meet Roberto at one of his headquarters at noon.
If it went badly and I didn’t come back, they would all be in worse shape than they were now. They would go after the Cobras, just as I would if they took someone from me, and at the same time still have the Messengers to contend with. They would all die.
But I had believed all along, ever since Merlin had suggested the parlay, that Roberto would honor his word of safe passage. Even if our talk accomplished nothing positive, he wouldn’t break his promise.
“Wasn’t easy,” Roberto told me. “This is a big territory. Got outposts all over the place. Took me a whole day to set it up so some young blood wouldn’t mistakenly take you out. I think maybe it just buys you a couple of days to smell the flowers, McCall. Nothing you say is gonna negate the fact you capped seven of my soldiers. You and that devil dog. My people got legends about that dog, McCall. We tell the little ones horror stories about the jaws from hell to keep them from wandering away.”
That was only one of the many traits that set Roberto apart from the other clan leaders. He cared about his children. Recognized that they represented his people’s future. For the past ten years he had been educating himself, devouring books from the libraries and bookstores on Cobra turf. He insisted the children do the same.
The living quarters of the Insane Cobra Nation were another representation of his unusual leadership abilities. The Cobras had been at this one location for nearly three years now, treating it as a home, improving on it, rather than trashing it and moving on.
Roberto’s Integrity Office Suites, a three story structure consisting of a hundred or so rooms, squatted right in the middle of his territory, an area of land of at least fifty square miles that contained within its borders one huge shopping mall, hundreds of strip malls and specialty stores, including several gun shops, and thousands of suburban homes.
It was prime real estate for scavenging. And a bitch to defend.
The outposts that Roberto had mentioned were the prime features of his defensive system. There were dozens of them on the borders, each manned by three or four soldiers. Runners, pedaling 18 or 27 speeds, flowed back and forth like little corpuscles between the main compound and the outposts twenty-four hours a day. If a runner didn’t show up every thirty minutes or so from each outpost, the main body of the Cobras went on red alert. Thus far none of the other clans had the ability or the desire to challenge The Insane Cobra Nation’s dominance in the hierarchy.
“It used to be,” I said, “that outside of my family, you were one of only four or five men in this miserable land that I respected. If what we have to say doesn’t change the bitterness that has tainted our relationship, it will be a great loss to me.”
“If things don’t change as a result of this meeting,” Roberto replied, “you will soon die with the fangs of a Cobra in your neck.”
“Even as the bodies of Cobras pile up at the feet of me and my family,” I replied.
We both smiled at our posturing. But we knew that if I did not satisfy the man in front of me, we would go to war. And I would eventually lose.
“The man who set up this meeting, Merlin, the trader who is always floats on a cloud of smoke,” Roberto said, “he is another of the men that has earned your respect?”
I nodded affirmatively.
“He does not appear to be much of a warrior,” Roberto replied.
“He has a strong heart,” I said. “And is very brave and resourceful. He’s the one that most forcefully urged me to speak to you.”
Roberto thought about my response. “When I look at my people,” he said, “I see that not all of the ones I respect are the soldiers. I never thought about it before. But when I think of the women, particularly the teachers of our young, I see much to admire. It takes the wisdom of the fox and the heart of the wolf to teach some of our children.”
I remained silent.
With a wave of his hand, Roberto dismissed the topic. Sighing his reluctance to begin, he got down to business. “I am saddened to think this may be our last conversation, McCall. It is the best we have ever had. Do you think anything you can tell me will be powerful enough for me to lift the sanctions on you without making me lose face? If I lose face, my power is diminished. What we are building is too important to take that risk. In my heart the Cobra Nation looms larger than the respect I have for you. I am sorry.”
“I’ve got nothing to lose here,” I said. “Things can’t get any worse than being put on your sanction list. Let me tell the story.”
His huge head nodded in agreement, and I began my account of the confrontation on Roosevelt Road, telling it completely, leaving nothing out, emphasizing that we were put in a no win situation by his soldiers.
Roberto listened attentively to my explanation of the encounter with his men. When I had finished, he replied. “Once we were friends. Now, I am saddened to say, your actions have made us enemies. Am I to believe the words of an enemy against the reports my soldiers have given me of the battle?”
“How does their story differ?” I asked.
“You were the aggressor,” he replied. “Without warning you had your dog attack Felipe and you swept the other men with your assault rifle. They had no chance to even return fire.”
“Tell me something about those men,” I asked. “Felipe in particular.”
“Until the last few months, before they had the misfortune of running into you, they were a good unit. They were promoted twice to positions of greater responsibility, higher visibility.”
“What about the last few months? What was happening with them?”
“Felipe became more, uh, high strung, aggressive. Some of his responses to authority were out of line. He wasn’t controlling his soldiers as tightly as he used to. It was why I sent him and his men back to the outpost. It was a demotion. It takes them away from friends and family. I thought that perhaps Felipe had risen too fast, had allowed his new status to go to his head. This was my way of bringing him back to reality.”
My interpretation of
their altered behavior patterns differed from Roberto’s. I pulled four small bags from my pocket and tossed them onto his desk top. “Recognize this shit?” I asked.
He picked up the bags, dipping his huge fingers in one of them, feeling the texture by sifting and rubbing the grey powder with his fingers.
“It’s Bad Boy,” he said, smiling. “Fairly new entry into the pharmacy. It’s Slammer with an extra slam. Slammer used to be one of my drugs of choice. In my youth, that is.”
At 30, Roberto was an old man. His gargantuan frame had surely contributed to his longevity, absorbing bullets and knife slices and body blows that would have killed men of normal size. But I knew he had stopped using, with the exception of booze and pot, nearly ten years ago, the same time he began his self education.
“Recognize the chem?” I asked. The grainy texture and the grey color identified its origin as surely as if it had been a signed painting.
“It’s Messenger stuff.” He spoke the words as if they left a rancid taste on his palate. “Very powerful. Unpredictable. Why you showing this garbage to me, McCall? You know I don’t use anymore.”
“What about your soldiers?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a hard world. We discourage the hard core chems. But they are tolerated when my people are not on duty. If a man or woman cannot handle it, they are outed. It happens sometimes. Addicts have a way of shaking themselves off of the tree. Why are you asking me this?”
“I found these four bags on your men. The smallest one is Felipe’s, Roberto. He was so fucking high when the dog killed him, he didn’t even know he was dead.”
Surprise registered on his face. He toyed with the concept awhile, the thought of his men using drugs while on duty, their possible disregard of Cobra law—accepting it, rejecting it, analyzing the implications. The easiest course was for him to toss the premise aside, treat it as the last ditch attempt of a liar to save his skin.
The more difficult path was to consider that I was being truthful. To do so meant that he had been betrayed, had lost the fealty of some of his soldiers.
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