Urban Renewal Page 11

  It had been Cross’s plan that resulted in a mob of prisoners ranging from white supremacists to black nationalists attacking an unseen enemy in the darkened basement where condemned men had once been led to their death. That gas chamber had been abandoned years ago, but its triple layer of protection against the leakage of the cyanide fumes was still intact.

  The plan worked. A piece of whatever had been killing at will had been trapped inside the chamber. But even a capsule sealed so tightly that gas could not escape proved incapable of holding whatever had been locked inside it.

  You can’t kill “kill,” Cross thought then.

  And now.

  So he didn’t make any attempt to learn why that tiny blue brand burned at different times—he couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. And he had come to trust it.

  “Yes,” Tracker said. “They knew a lot of information about you that they didn’t share with me. But it wasn’t you they wanted. Just as it wasn’t me.”

  “Yeah,” Buddha sneered. “We’re just a pack of hired guns. Not like those holy government guys, serving their ‘higher cause.’ ”

  “It is not that simple,” Tracker said. “After those who hired us did not succeed, they were … banished. Tiger and I, we were never part of them, so we simply got paid … and dismissed. They won’t be using us again. But Percy, you remember him?”

  Cross just nodded. That human war machine would never leave the no-uniform army he’d enlisted in for the duration … a volunteer for a life sentence that guaranteed he would never die of old age. But Percy was not one of “them,” the core to the question Cross had asked Rhino back when they were still kids. Just kids, consigned to the hellhole where the system buried its own creations:

  Do you hate them? Do you hate them all?

  “I don’t know where Percy went,” Tracker went on. “But Tiger, she walked as I did.”

  “You think they know about … everything?” Buddha asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Tracker replied. “But whatever they learned, they still know. It’s in their system forever.” The Indian took a deep, stabilizing breath, then summed it up: “Evil always casts its own shadow. It never occurred to them that the shadow they were seeking was their own.”

  “So what do they want with us now?” Cross asked the Indian. “We wouldn’t take a job like that ever again. And if they wanted to erase us, how hard could that have been?”

  “They don’t want any of us to disappear,” Tiger said. “We live where they can’t even visit, so we’re their only source of information.”

  “They want to turn us? Make us into a crew of CIs?”

  “What else?” the Amazon answered.

  “Confidential informants,” Buddha mused out loud. “Only way you get on that payroll is if you can infiltrate. Or if you always were inside—like those CIA guys who handed stuff over to the highest bidder.”

  “There’s another way,” Cross said, very softly. “The cops—the detectives, anyway—they’ve all got CIs, too. But they don’t pay them, not with money. It’s more like a trade: they pass on a two-bit collar and just look the other way. So they might leave a dealer on the street, and the dealer feeds them whatever he picks up. Sometimes, it’s just penny-ante stuff, but it’s always got to be bigger than what the cop’s letting slide.

  “It’s just return on investment. And if the potential return is big enough, a cop might let damn near anything slide. You know, something that gets him a promotion if the case is major—like nabbing a serial killer, or busting a prostitution ring with big-name clients—anything that gets the cop’s name in the papers.”

  “Mac doesn’t want his name in the papers,” Buddha said. “And he’s probably got more info coming his way than he can handle. But there’s that one thing, that one card he always holds: you give Mac some info, you know he won’t give you up.”

  “So they want to place this ‘Taylor’ whore inside,” Tiger snarled. “And they use that dumb little cutie to vouch her in. Yeah, that is how they’d do it.”

  “She doesn’t know anything,” Cross said.

  “Taylor? Or the little blonde?”

  “Neither one. They come here, they dance, they get paid.”

  “Wrong,” Tiger said, coldly.

  When nobody responded, Tiger continued: “They weren’t after information. What they wanted was leverage.”

  “What leverage?”

  “I don’t know. But Taylor, she was a probe, no doubt about that.”

  Cross felt the near-invisible brand burn again.

  “What did you tell her? Arabella, I mean.”

  “Just what you said to tell her.”

  “So she’s expecting Taylor to end up inside the charred wreck of her precious little car? And for another crisped-out skeleton that would match her own to be found there, too?”

  “Yep.”

  “And Arabella, she’s not going to run? She’s ready to leave everything behind and end up in Alaska?”

  “Absolutely,” Tiger said, showing her brilliant white teeth in what didn’t resemble a smile. “I think she even expects me to come visit her every once in a while.”

  Cross looked at his cheap, generic watch—the one that kept better time than any Rolex. “We’ve still got an hour before they’re supposed to show.”

  “ARABELLA EXPECTS what, exactly?” Buddha asked Tiger.

  “The same thing I told you the last two times you asked me.”

  “She really thinks we’re gonna X-ray her, find a skeleton to match, put a driver in her car, and then blast it someplace far from here after she bails out?”

  “Yep.”

  “All before her shift’s over?”

  “Like I said.”

  “We don’t want to buy her play,” Cross said. “She’s a long way from stupid. The bug you planted isn’t giving us anything but their blah-blah before they go to work, that’s true. But if you know somebody’s listening, you can keep them from learning anything.”

  “That’s why Ace isn’t here,” Buddha said. “He’s over there. Just outside.”

  “SO WE’RE down to two plays, and we got about half an hour to pick one,” Cross said, holding up a cell phone to show the crew how the choice would be communicated.

  “Put me down for Ace doing a double,” Buddha said. “Couple of strippers dealing on the side. Didn’t pay off, so the suppliers hired a hit man. He blows them both away, plants a quarter-key and a few grand around—anyplace that looks good, crib or car. Happens every day.”

  “Where’s Princess?” Cross suddenly asked.

  “He’s out back. Playing with that psycho dog.”

  “Why do you have to be so nasty, Buddha?” Rhino suddenly squeaked. “They’re … connected. Princess was caged, so he could fight while people watched. And Sweetie was caged because some people did some bad things to him, too.”

  “I stand corrected,” the man with black-agate eyes said. “They’re both psychos, okay?”

  The gray jumpsuit that covered the mass that was Rhino twitched slightly. Unnoticeable, unless you were watching for it. Cross was. And Tiger was a step ahead of him.

  “At least neither of them’s on a leash,” she sneered.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Buddha demanded.

  “Ask your wife, sucker.”

  “Enough!” Cross said, without raising his voice. “I’m not exposing Ace like that unless there’s no choice. And it’s not the best way to cauterize this wound, anyway.”

  “So …?” Buddha asked.

  “So—we need somebody who can fit inside that little car, for openers.”

  “I am a very flexible girl,” Tiger said, raising her right leg back over her shoulder and tapping the wall behind her with the toe of one shoe.

  “And I’ll have you covered,” Buddha said, unable to take his eyes off Tiger’s pose, which she apparently planned on maintaining for a while.

  “Tell K-2 you’re switching places with him for tonight,” Cross said t
o Rhino.

  “I don’t want to—”

  “How else, brother? We can’t be sure what’ll be left, and the last thing we need is for some eager beaver to find bullet holes in the skulls.”

  “It must be done,” Tracker added. “And even my knife could leave a mark.…”

  Rhino nodded his assent, his normally placid face now overlaid with an ineffable remorse.

  “WHERE’S K-2?” Arabella asked, when she saw Rhino standing in the spot always occupied by the Maori. This is the last time I’m going to think K-2’s gigantic, she thought, trying an experimental little pout without a lot of hope that it would have any effect. Normally a lot more bouncy and confident, Arabella had been feeling just a bit off center for hours. Maybe it was Taylor copping an attitude when Arabella said they didn’t have time to play—being late for work wasn’t an option.

  Or maybe it was Taylor picking up on Tiger’s scent—it hadn’t come off, even in a half-hour steamy shower.

  Whatever! Arabella baby-talked inside her head. Deal with it: The “battered woman” you thought you were playing, “saving” her—sure, saving her for yourself—all the time, she was really playing you. Using you to get inside the Double-X, so she could spy on the Cross crew. You don’t owe this whore a damn thing.

  The two women approached, holding hands, but were forced to separate in order to walk around Rhino’s bulk. They had only taken a single step past him when they felt something like a giant crab’s claw on the back of their necks. A claw that vise-gripped right through the flesh to the spinal column.

  Before either could make a sound, their heads were slammed together hard enough to fracture both skulls into fragments.

  Rhino released his hold, the women slumped to the floor, and Cross, Buddha, Tracker, and Tiger entered the area.

  “Make sure Princess doesn’t come back here,” Cross told Rhino. It was a reminder, not an order—he didn’t have to tell the massive creature how an emotional reaction was the last thing they needed right then.

  Cross picked up Arabella’s lifeless body; Tracker did the same with Taylor’s. Tiger opened the passenger-side door of Arabella’s little Mercedes. Taylor was bigger, so she got the passenger seat. Then Arabella was carefully placed on her lap before the seat belt strapped them both in.

  Without another word, Tiger started the engine. Cross and Tracker went out the back door and into the waiting Shark Car. Cross took the passenger seat, Tracker the back.

  This seating pattern had nothing to do with status—the rule was always to distribute their shooters to cover both sides, and only Buddha and Tracker truly qualified.

  The Shark Car shadowed the Mercedes as it left the enclosed lot and headed toward the Badlands.

  “Three-to-one that dyke gets stopped,” Buddha complained.

  “She’s not driving fast,” Cross said mildly.

  “Man, any cop that sees her is gonna find some excuse to stop her—the way she’s built, she could stop a damn clock. And with that hair …”

  “Relax, brother. Tiger’s been on jobs with us before. You ever see her not hold up her end?”

  “Good one, boss.”

  “Cut it out, Buddha. Tiger knows this is business.”

  “Anyone behind the wheel can make a mistake.”

  “That would mean you could lose control of this car, then?” Tracker spoke from the back seat.

  “Very nice,” Buddha said. Whether he was addressing Tracker’s comment or admiring the short-barreled rifle Tracker had just unveiled wasn’t clear.

  Tracker touched a button, and his side window zipped down noiselessly.

  “Acquired,” he announced.

  Neither man in the front seat said anything, their eyes riveted to the little Mercedes, now buzzing toward the outer edge of the Badlands like a bluebottle fly in pursuit of food.

  The Shark Car kept pace, leaving enough room to maneuver should that become necessary.

  Tiger went past the semi-trailer, caught the winking red dot out of the corner of her left eye, and kept going until she spotted another light. She pulled to a smooth stop in the middle of what had once been a paved street. Then she unsnapped the seat belt and, in a single motion, pulled Arabella behind the wheel and backed herself out of the little car.

  Tiger moved into the passenger seat of the Shark Car as it emptied out; Buddha covered his side with his pistol; Tracker swung his scope in tightly controlled loops. Cross moved close enough to the “fence” to catch the whisper: “You move, you die,” Condor warned his crew. “When they get gone, then we do, too.”

  Cross carried a FedEx box in both gloved hands. He placed it very carefully on the dashboard of the Mercedes and walked back to the Shark Car.

  “Thirty seconds,” he said as he covered the ground.

  “Go!” Condor hissed at the nearest members of his gang, knowing the order would be passed along faster than anyone could run.

  Just before the sound of the blast traveled several blocks of wavelength and went audible, the azure Mercedes became a red-and-yellow fireball.

  Metal, glass, wood, plastic, flesh, and bone all were reduced to the same color, that white-gray ash every crematorium worker knows by sight.

  “Dust that for prints, chumps,” Buddha said, smiling in what any street-level denizen would recognize as the “Step off or die!” advertisement of a man who didn’t necessarily like killing … but didn’t mind it, either.

  ANOTHER WEEK passed before Buddha brought up what he knew would be a touchy subject. Looking around the table in the backroom office of the Double-X, he threw out a tentative probe.

  “Boss, So Long says, if we don’t get started on that rehab soon, we’re gonna miss out on some real scores.”

  “This pie’s gonna be sliced pretty thin as it is,” Cross said sourly.

  “Is that right?”

  “Leave it, Buddha. Me, Rhino, Princess, Ace, Tracker, Tiger … Even if we pry another four hundred extra-large out of So Long, that’s, what, two K for each of us?”

  “Those houses, they don’t need much work at all. Not to sell them, anyway.”

  “What does that mean?” Tracker asked.

  “It means whoever buys those houses is going to have to put in a lot of work on their own. Inside work, I mean.”

  “You’re an expert on contracting now?”

  “I’ve done enough contracts to be,” Tiger said, flashing her teeth in a sugary snarl.

  “It would be fair to sell the houses pretty much as they are, provided the life-support systems are all in good working order,” Rhino said, his high-pitched squeak not diminishing the seriousness of his manner.

  “So Long says she can get just about anyone a mortgage.”

  “Probably can,” Cross said. “But if we sell to people who can’t make the payments, we’re going to end up trashing the block.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s how this wonderful opportunity showed up in the first place. If we want to rob a bank, the time to do it is before they empty the vault.”

  “Speak English, brother,” Ace said.

  “Banks give mortgage money to people who they know damn well are right on the margin. Then they sell those loans the same day. Instead of risking, say, five hundred thou at seven percent, they take one point off the top and leave someone else holding the bag. It’s harder to do than it once was—you know, that ‘mortgage crisis’ thing that still has the government printing money? It’s not like Zimbabwe here, at least not yet. But I feel sorry for any chump who thinks he’s going to live off his Social Security check.”

  “Tie it together.”

  “If we do like Rhino says, we’re cutting the profit down so damn far we’d be better off with fire insurance.”

  “So Long could probably—”

  “Paper fraud’s not our game,” Cross said flatly. “That leaves a trail. Always does.”

  “Then what’s our move?”

  “Let’s get an inspector, let him check those life-support sy
stems Rhino was talking about. If they’re solid, then we can move them quick—lots of people are pretty handy with tools. But that still leaves us with those thin slices. And it doesn’t do a damn thing about the real work we have to put in.”

  “What, the gang thing? If any of them try and—”

  “We can’t leave bodies in the street, Buddha. And we can’t stay around and patrol the damn block, either.”

  “Then why did we take this deal in the first place?” Tiger said.

  “Where’s this ‘we’ stuff coming from?” Buddha snapped at her. “It wasn’t your decision, you just hired on.”

  “I hired on for a piece, right? So I guess that made it my decision, too.”

  “Ice it,” Cross said, knowing from experience how quickly Tiger could escalate. She had a temper, Buddha didn’t; but either was capable of taking out the other. Like a drag race between equally matched cars—whoever got off first was going to win.

  Tiger tried to cross her arms over her chest, but that was physically impossible. Buddha didn’t bother looking daggers at a woman who needed little excuse to throw hers.

  “Let me think this over for a little bit,” Cross said. “Rhino, I need you and Ace for this idea I’m starting to get. So hang back, okay?”

  “What am I supposed to do while you’re having your little meeting,” Tiger said, indignantly, “go work the pole?”

  “You would be a great dancer, Tiger,” Princess assured her. “You’re so beautiful.”

  “You’re not wrong about that, honey.”

  Princess beamed at the genuine affection he heard in her voice.

  “What about us?” Buddha said, nodding at Tracker.

  “You’re going to the block, both of you. We’re going to need to know who’s doing business, and how close. If there’s a buffer zone, we need to know that, too.”

  Without a word, Tracker stood up. Buddha followed his example, moving with a deliberate lack of speed.