by K. W. Jeter
“Not that much. And it was a while ago.”
“Even so. The more I hear about guys, the less problem I’m having with keeping it on ice.”
“Fine,” said Monica. “When you’re done killing people, don’t think about the clubs. You can go be a nun, instead. All this stuff with Cole’s given you the training for it. Especially one of the teaching orders – you’ll fit right in. If the kids are scared of you, they’ll have good reason.”
I let all that slide. One of my foster families had actually sent me to a parochial school for a couple of months. I’d gotten along fine with everybody there – especially the Jesuit priests. Maybe that had been the first sign I’d be good in my new line of work.
“So that’s it?” I peered closer at Monica. “All we have to do is tell this Braemer guy that we know he’s been talking to Michael?” I shook my head. “I’m not following this. You could’ve done that much on your own. Why bring me into it?”
“It’s not that easy. He talks a lot – to everybody. Especially to other dealers in illicit equipment. They all hang out together and swap stories. We need to make sure that those other smart bastards don’t start thinking they could get in good with McIntyre by telling him what they know about Cole and what he’s been doing.”
“It’s starting to sound like everybody in the world knows by now.”
“Not yet.” Monica leaned over the table toward me. “But we’ve got to blow Braemer’s cool in public. In front of the other equipment dealers. So they all get the message at once, that it’s not a good idea to roll over on Cole and think that they can get away with it. Like nobody would know that they’re blabbing their heads off. We want them all to clam up. Braemer’s just the guy we’re going to use to get that message across . . .”
I listened to the rest of her plan, the step-by-step details.
“That’s it?” It seemed awfully simple. “That’s all we have to do?”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” said Monica. “You can’t just kill people to get everything you want. Sometimes you have to use other methods. Jeez, even Cole knows that much.”
“No, I mean –” I scratched the side of my head, feeling the little scar that had been left from the motorcycle accident I’d had. “This will work?”
“Trust me. I know what kind of balls the guy has. This will be enough. And it’s something we can take care of ourselves. Cole doesn’t have to know anything about this. And it’s better if he doesn’t.”
“Okay. If you say so.” I pushed my chair back and stood up from the table. “Do we have anything else to sort out? Because I’ve got to fix dinner.”
“We’re good.” Monica pulled the front door open. “See you tomorrow.”
* * *
Later – much later – I was glad that Monica had come by.
I sat at the kitchenette table, long after my brother Donnie had gone to sleep – and long after I should have as well. This whole business about some guy named Braemer rolling over on Cole, telling somebody like Michael stuff that it would’ve been better if he’d kept his lip zipped about – that might not have been the biggest can of worms that’d been opened up in front of me lately, but it was still something else to think about. At least Monica had a plan for taking care of it, which hadn’t sounded like it would take too much to pull off.
Which was a relief, actually. I closed my eyes and took one deep breath after another, trying to relax. With all the other stuff that’d been going on, between me and Cole, I’d been getting worried. About whether I had the resources inside me to keep up with him, and our plans for taking care of McIntyre. Not that I exactly knew yet what those were going to be, except that they apparently would involve impressively large armaments. Something else to worry about, given that I wasn’t exactly a Cole-level ace with those yet.
But Monica coming by, and the little plan that the two of us had cooking – that made me feel better. It made me feel like I was in charge of at least something. That maybe my whole world wasn’t spinning out of control. That maybe I still had a chance to pull it all together.
Here’s how I knew that I was in a little better shape than I had been before.
Just by looking out the window, at the night streets outside the apartment building, I could tell.
When I had taken that spill on the motorcycle, right after I got it, and I had been riding around with my mind all bent out of shape from getting fired by McIntyre – and the way it’d been done, with Michael tossing me out into the alley like a bag of trash – I’d had some weird after-effects. Maybe whacking my head on the asphalt caused them; I didn’t know. But I kept having the perception that everything around me, the streets, the buildings, people walking by – none of it was real. That everything was two-dimensional and fake, just pictures of stuff painted on transparent plastic sheets, laid on top of each other. If I didn’t hold on somehow, they might all just . . . blow away. And even if they did stay in place, still all flat and unreal, there was the additional creepy feeling I would get. That the edges of the transparent sheets were curling up, and things I could barely make out were peering at me from their hiding places underneath. Regarding me with a cold, uncaring curiosity . . .
Not the sort of thing that helps you get a good night’s sleep.
Which is why I’d be all kinds of relieved whenever the spooky perception would fade – and the world around me would fill out and become three-dimensional again – real and not just painted on transparent plastic sheets. That would be a good thing, whenever that happened.
Like right now, this late at night, when I turned and looked out the apartment window. Everything seemed fine, nice and solid. There weren’t any people to check out, but the buildings were there, just the way they were supposed to be. Real. That was a relief. I turned away from the window, breathing a little easier.
I was thinking that maybe Monica had done that for me. Made the world real again, at least for a little while. Her plan for the two of us to take care of this Braemer jerk – that was something I could do. Instead of feeling that there was nothing I could, that everything was just spinning away, beyond my control.
Rubbing the stiffness at the small of my back, I stood up from the table and switched the light off. I didn’t pull down the window shade. I liked knowing that the real world was right outside there. Doing its thing, just existing, not fake painted-on transparencies.
I only hoped it would still be there in the morning. When I woke up . . .
And I went to work.
SEVEN
“That your bike outside? It is? That’s a pussy bike.”
So this was the Braemer guy we’d been talking about. I hadn’t liked him before I met him, when Monica had been telling me all about him. Now I really loathed him. Just that kind of a guy.
“Yeah, it’s mine.” We were standing inside the warehouse. He had already been there when I’d arrived. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Like I said.” Braemer exuded the twitchy nervousness that comes with having the kind of breakfast you put up your nose. Skinny, flyweight dude – even I could’ve probably taken him out in a straight punch-up. “It’s a pussy bike.”
This is the kind of talk you get from guys who over-compensate for stuff with the size of their motorcycle engine.
“Yeah, well, since I’m a girl, maybe that’s appropriate. Okay?”
“Should save your money up. For something like a Ducati.” He couldn’t even stand still, but paced around in a little jittering circle, hands digging into the pockets of his garish red-and-black leather jacket. “Like I got.”
I could’ve shot something back at him – like how a Ducati Monster had been the bike that Halle Berry had ridden in Catwoman; so much for pussy bikes – but I bit my lip instead. Riding over to Cole’s place, I had actually spotted somebody on a Ducati 848, the Evo model, and I had thought it looked pretty sweet. Big, though – those fancy Testastretta engines are serious firepower. Slam into a wall with one of those puppies gunned to
the max, the mortuary would have to use tweezers to get you ready for a closed-casket funeral. For the time being, I was going to stick with the Ninja. It got me where I needed to go, plus I didn’t need to be suicidal to ride it.
“Will you people shut up?” That came from Cole. He was in his own ride, his fancy motorized wheelchair, pulled up to his workbench over at the side of the warehouse. “I’m trying to check this gear out.”
When things didn’t work right, Cole got cranky. I already knew that about him. It was a reasonable enough reaction, I figured, given that he was depending upon some of those high-tech devices, not just to kill people, but to keep himself alive in the process of doing one of those jobs.
The device in question at this time being a Camero Xaver 400, that he already had partly disassembled on the workbench, as he poked around inside it with a voltmeter. It looked like an industrial-styled portable TV in a bright yellow steel casing, with two cylindrical handles mounted beside the screen, plus a bunch of knobs and switches around the front. What it did, when it was working, was enable SWAT teams and Navy Seal types – and people up to no good, like Cole – to see what was going on, who was moving around and so forth, on the other side of a building’s wall. Something to do with Ultra-Wideband radar. I’d already heard one war story from Cole about how he’d used it to knock off one of his targets – actually the last job he’d done for McIntyre before Michael set him up to take that shotgun blast to the spine.
Over at the other side of the warehouse, Monica was cleaning up the scruffy remains of whatever breakfast she’d fixed for herself and Cole that morning. There seemed to be more cigarette butts involved than crumbs or dried-up scrambled eggs. When I glanced over at her, I could see that she wasn’t paying any attention to the discussion between me and the skinny, nervous equipment dealer and Cole – but I knew she was.
“Okay – I can’t get this thing to lock on.” Cole leaned back from the workbench, gazing at the Xaver 400 device in disgust. He switched off his handheld multimeter probe and tossed it aside. “This piece of junk is officially not functioning.”
This was one of the few times in my relationship with Cole that I knew more than he did. I knew why the Xaver wasn’t working.
Monica was the reason. During the night, while Cole had been passed out asleep under the weight of the pain meds he took, she had opened up the machine’s case. Living with somebody like Cole, she had picked up a few soldering gun skills along the way, mainly by helping him out with some of the gear he built himself. She at least knew enough to break one of the signal traces on the Xaver’s main circuit board. Which was part of the plan that the two of us had cooking. As was Cole not knowing about what she had done.
“Hey. Shit happens,” said Braemer, twitching away. He seemed to take it as a personal affront, that Cole was knocking the gear he’d sold him. “You know how it is.”
“You oughta give a warranty with something like this.” Cole turned the wheelchair away from the workbench. “I paid you a lot of money for it.”
“Yeah, and you banged the crap out of it. Look at that dent on the side.” Getting more agitated, Braemer pointed to the device. “You’re not exactly easy on your gear.”
That was something Cole couldn’t argue about. Which was why he ran regular checks on his gear, long before he actually took any of it out on a job. He was methodical about that sort of thing. Which went a considerable way to explain how he’d lasted so long in this line of work. In the middle of some operation with big, ugly guns on either side – that wasn’t the time to find out that you should’ve replaced the AA batteries in some necessary device. He’d always sweated the details – and he was still alive. I’d made a mental note to try and emulate that aspect of him.
So when that morning’s check on Cole’s Xaver 400 had turned up something funky – namely, that it wasn’t working – he had been right on the phone to the guy he’d originally bought it from. And of course, Braemer had been only too happy to swing on by. Well, maybe not happy – the chemicals in his bloodstream had probably scrubbed any normal emotion out of his brain. But eager for a chance to make some more money.
“Come on,” said Cole. “I hardly used this thing more than a half-dozen times. That’s a little early for it to blow out, if you ask me.”
“I don’t make ’em, I just sell ’em.” Braemer’s shoulders lifted in a shrug inside his motorcycle jacket. “You want to talk to the Complaint Department, call the company up in Tel Aviv, or wherever they’re at. I’m sure they’d love to talk to you.”
“No refunds, huh?”
“You know better.” Braemer smiled. “When you’re buying on the down-low, it’s strictly on an as-is basis.”
“Why’d I even ask. All right, get this piece of junk outta here.” He pointed to the opened-up device on the workbench. “You got another one?”
“That’s the reason I’m here. I’m all about customer service.” Braemer squatted down and opened up the backpack he’d carried in, bigger and heavier than my own. He pulled out another Xaver, swaddled in clear Bubble Wrap. He stepped back after he set it on the workbench. “Give it a run-through. I got a feeling you’ll be happy with it.”
Cole peeled off the packing material and fired up the device. While we were waiting for his verdict, Braemer turned his blinking gaze back to me.
“I’m serious about you getting a real ride,” he said. “It’d be good for you. Then we could head out someplace together, and you’d be able to keep up with me.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.” I slowly shook my head. “Keeping up with you, that is. You’re way too fast for me.”
“For you, sweetheart –” His smile was a jagged, thin-lipped slit. “I’d slow down.”
The only way that was likely to happen would be if he had the chemicals drained out of his system, like doing a radiator flush at the auto garage.
“Okay, this looks good.” Cole peered at the new Xaver’s screen. “Signal strength’s at optimum. And . . .” He tweaked a couple of the dials. “Penetration looks good. Real good.”
“See? I told ya.” Braemer had already stuffed the other one inside his backpack. “Time to settle up.”
Cole dug a wad of cash from inside his shirt. I knew it was part of the money that I’d wound up killing that old man Pomeroy for. I didn’t mind – taking care of operational expenditures like this was why I’d done it. I watched as Cole peeled off a thick stack and laid them in Braemer’s outstretched hand.
“Pleasure doing business with you.” Braemer didn’t bother counting the money, but just stuffed it in the backpack and zipped it up. “Anything else you need, just give me a call.”
On his way out, he looked back at me. “You, too,” he said. Skinny shoulders hunched under his pack’s weight, he scooted on out.
What the guy didn’t know was that I already had his number programmed into my cell phone. Monica had put it in there, last night. After she had finished going over the plan she’d put together.
“You mind if I take off?” I turned toward Cole, over at his workbench. “I got some other things I need to take care of.”
“Yeah, sure.” He didn’t even glance over his shoulder at me. He was busy making some adjustments on the new Xaver. “We’ll catch up later.”
I caught a glance from Monica. She didn’t say anything to me. She knew I had to get on my way, if our little plan was going to work.
As I was pulling on my helmet and climbing onto the Ninja, I could hear the snarl of Braemer’s hopped-up Ducati, heading out of the warehouse district. I fired up my ride and headed after the other motorcycle.
Getting into the city proper, I was able to keep the Ducati in sight, without Braemer realizing that I was following him. The advantage to something like a Ninja 250R is that there are a lot of them on the road. So you don’t stand out, which is good when you’re doing something like this.
I weaved through the traffic lanes, keeping as much distance between me and Braemer a
s possible, while still not losing him. When Braemer eventually did find out that I’d trailed him, it would come as a surprise. That was the whole point of the plan.
Monica had explained it to me last night. She knew that Braemer and the other dealers in illicit equipment – the kind of stuff that Cole bought – they all hung out together. At some bar close to the edge of the city’s financial district. All she knew about it was that it had some outside tables, right on the street. Braemer and his buddies liked that because it enabled them to sit out there and talk business, while keeping an eye out for two things: their customers and the police. When dealing in stuff like that, you’re always keeping watch. It comes with the territory. Cole, back in the days when he’d been up and running, had met there with Braemer and the other dealers a couple times, then told Monica about the layout. Everything except the street address – but that worked for us now.
Up ahead, past a Transit Authority bus and a couple of taxi cabs, I could see Braemer slowing the Ducati down. Up until now, he’d been riding it hot, doing all those cutting-in-and-out maneuvers that piss car drivers off so much. I backed my own machine off a bit and watched as he swung his toward the curb.
That must be the place. There were some other guys, mostly older than him, but with the same visibly twitchy quality to them, sitting out at some tables behind a low barrier stuffed with plastic foliage. A couple of them even lifted their hands from their drinks and gave little waves of acknowledgment as Braemer slid the Ducati into the row of parked cars, then pulled off his helmet.
I stayed a couple of blocks away, pulled over by a newsstand. For him not to see me was all part of Monica’s plan. A psychological thing, to bend the little bastard’s head.
As he sat down with the other dealers, I took my cell phone out of my jacket pocket and scrolled down the list of numbers on its tiny screen – I had to lift the silvery visor of my helmet to make them out. When Braemer got a call from me and realized that somebody was on to him, that I knew exactly where he was and what he was doing, then he’d know that he wasn’t so cool after all. And that he wasn’t getting away with anything, like talking to Michael, without anybody knowing about it.