Blackjack Read online

  The long march would give them plenty of time to agree upon a story. A logical, possible story, not the impossibility of what they had actually observed.

  Among their tribe, to be perceived as insane was a death sentence. Neither man spoke of the two playing cards protruding from the chest pocket of the hunter’s safari jacket: the ace of clubs and the jack of spades.

  Neither ever would.

  IN A part of town closed to all but those who would be regarded as outsiders anywhere else, a tall, slender Latino lounged against a freshly whitewashed wall. His pose was highly stylized, practiced in private years prior to any display in public. Years in which he had no access to the public.

  The Latino spread his duster-length black coat like raven’s wings. Behind him was gang-turf graffiti, elaborately spray-painted, transforming the wall into a billboard. One with a very clear message.

  The graffiti was pristine. That it had not been over-tagged was a bold proclamation that the wall stood within undisputed territory.

  The Latino slouched to enable his arm to more comfortably encircle the bulging waist of an obviously pregnant chola … a lovely young girl, only a year past the elaborate quinceañera for which her parents had saved since her birth. If they had been unhappy at her choice of a date for such a special event, they never gave the slightest sign. There were many reasons for this.

  The girl’s long dark hair set off a Madonna’s face, aglow with impending motherhood. The man’s cowboy hat had been custom-made from skins of the Gila monster. It both shielded his eyes and veiled their message. His long duster was casually draped over a candy-orange silk shirt buttoned only at the throat, the better to display a single heavy-linked gold chain.

  Soon a diamond would be added to that chain—the baby his woman was expecting would be his first.

  A candy-orange ’64 Impala stood arrogantly at the curb. A two-door hardtop with rectangular black panels inset on the hood, roof and trunk, each intricately over-painted in a delicate white floral pattern, the quintessential low-rider was fully dropped to the limit of its air-bag suspension.

  The Latino’s pose was a perfect, albeit unconscious, imitation of the Great White Hunter’s. Whatever he surveyed, he owned.

  Under the hat’s brim, his eyes swept the street, relentless as a prison searchlight. He registered the approach of three young men, but kept his face expressionless.

  One of the trio had covered his head with a candy-orange do-rag. Another sported long black hair tied behind him in a ponytail and held in place by a headband, also displaying the gang’s color. The third was a heavily muscled individual in a candy-orange wife-beater T-shirt. His head was freshly shaven, glistening in the sun.

  Let other gangs fly multi-colors, Los Peligrosos needed only one to distinguish itself. Various tattoos marked them as well, obedient to the decades-old tradition of “ink to link.”

  To wear the gang’s color without its name permanently etched in one’s body would have been unthinkable. Flying gang colors might be prohibited inside the prisons which awaited them all and disgorged some, but they would carry their skin-branding to the grave. Although they never spoke it aloud, all knew that their life offered only one final alternative to incarceration—a ceremonious burial.

  The tall man took a long, ostentatious toke from the cigarillo-blunt in his left hand. He did not offer a hit to his woman—she was pregnant, how would that look? As he patted the chola’s bulging belly, his left hand brushed the outline of a semi-automatic pistol in his coat pocket. Touching his future with each hand, not knowing which would come first: birth or death.

  The crew formed a rough circle, standing so that they could listen to their leader and watch the street at the same time.

  Time passed, as it does in such places.

  “You want to roll, you got to pay the toll,” the tall man schooled the youth with the shaved head. “These streets test a man. You know this when you coming up, just making your first little baby-move. Me, now, I passed that test. I can make a life”—he bends, quickly and gracefully at the waist, to plant a showy kiss on his girl’s belly—“and I can take a life. You hear me, ese?”

  “Always hear you, jefe.”

  “I don’t mind dying. That’s what it takes, you want to be out here every day, walking with your head high, sí?”

  “Dying comes quick out here,” the youth wearing the headband solemnly intoned.

  “So?” the tall man immediately challenged. “To die quickly, that is nothing. A sheep can be slaughtered, but a sheep cannot kill. So, when it dies, it is always a quick death.

  “Only when you go Inside do you face that final test of a man. Inside, that is dying slow. Every day, dying. The days pass; nothing changes. The only thing that happens fast is when it comes time to stick a pig.

  “But Inside, even a blade will not always mean death. I have seen men survive thirty stab wounds—in prison, that’s the one thing the infirmary is good for. If you don’t get wheeled in DOA, you probably live.

  “Not out here. On the boulevard, you point your pistol, you pull the trigger, and death follows the bullets. Inside, to kill, you must be close to el enemigo. To shoot, yes, that takes heart. But to stab, that is what takes the heart, verdado?”

  “Sí, ese.” The three acolytes spoke as one.

  “Inside, just being there, you get old,” their leader continued. “If you lucky. Out here, bang-bang! You live or you die. But in there, it is twenty-four/seven pain.”

  “I been Inside—” the youth with the headband started to speak.

  “I know you have, hermano,” the leader said. Although still young, he had learned that a vital part of his role was to provide support and encouragement. “I ain’t downing you. But the Walls, it ain’t like the kiddie camps. Only one game gets played in the Man’s House. War. Race war. And there ain’t no neutral ground. No place to get out the way.

  “Out here, we fight among ourselves. Like fools, perhaps. But that is how it has always been. But in there, it does not matter—even united, we would never be strong enough. This ain’t the West Coast, you feel me? It ain’t even Chicago. So we outnumbered, very bad. Downstate, you look around, you see nothing but wrong colors. Blancos y negros. Nazis and Zulus. How you gonna ever be safe between those psicópatas? They try and wolf-pack you on the way back from Commissary, you expect that, no? So you never go to that window alone. But how can you protect yourself when you get jammed right in your own cell? Some of them, they so loco they even take you out standing on the mess line.

  “And the yard … pantano de la muerte! They do their drive-bys walking! When that black-white thing gets hopping, even if we ever could outnumber them, there ain’t no place for us but the middle—we still too busy fighting each other to see the truth. And you know what happens if you get caught in the middle: crunch!

  “Body counts, that’s like status for some of them maniacs, specially those Nazis. They already under a load of Life Withouts, so there’s nothing to hold them in check. Even Ad Seg—fancy name they use for Solitary—that’s always all full up, so what those psychos got to lose, a little yard time?

  “No place to stash them all, so the COs just let them cruise around and do their thing. Which is making other people dead. They got, like, contests, man. One Nazi dude I heard about when I was in there, he had, like, thirteen kills. Confirmed kills.”

  A micron-thin shadow rippled faintly inside the elaborately painted panel on the hood of the low-rider. As in another jungle, on another continent, its presence was undetected.

  If any of the group had been able to tune in to that throbbing shadow, they would have heard a faint whisper:

  “Asesinatos confirmados.”

  From a rooftop several blocks away, a shape similar to that which had emerged from the acacia tree formed itself from a pile of debris.

  Suddenly, the girl twitched as if from a cold chill, her mother-to-be senses picking up … something. The leader patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, mi amor.
I am here. With me, you always be safe.”

  The girl nodded as if reassured, but her hands remained clasped defensively across her stomach.

  From the shadow, another one-word sentence, now in an Aztec language no longer spoken anywhere on earth. Translated, it would have been:

  “Stay.”

  Unaware of his reprieve, the leader continued his lecture.

  “Out here, a man don’t be talking about who he took out, but it gets known. We not Los Peligrosos for nothing. You want to carry the brand, you got to take that stand, hear me?”

  Unnoticed by all, the infamous “dead man’s hand”—aces and eights—depicted on the white wall behind them incorrectly as a full house—had morphed: all the cards were now arranged correctly, but as duplicates, not pairs: the aces and eights, all in hearts.

  THE INTERIOR was a scaled-down version of a Pentagon war room: maps, charts, and graphs, blinking computer terminals, two long conference tables, angled so they formed a V, at the apex of which was a giant-screen LED monitor. On one side of the monitor was a series of Insta-Graph meters; on the other, a larger row of instruments with read-out dials. Next to the graphs and meters on each side stood a stack of CDs, all neatly labeled by the same process that slid them out every few minutes.

  The room itself was underground and windowless. The only sound was the whisper of the machines used to keep the computers at a constant temperature.

  On the monitor: projected views of crime scenes, all slaughter-homicides.

  Five people were present, their eyes fixed on the screen.

  “What makes those Pentagon pussies so sure this guy knows any more than they do?” The speaker was a double-wide male—not especially tall, but almost frighteningly massive. His body lacked sharply defined muscle; it looked more like extruded power, stretching the man’s skin to its limits. Even his black-and-gray hair appeared to be a tightly plastered cap.

  The man was wearing a T-shirt, with a hard-plastic shoulder holster hanging under his left arm. The MAC-10 it carried looked like a toy against its bulky human backdrop.

  “It won’t hurt to hear him out. Just let him take a look at what we’ve got, Percy.” The speaker was a slim, blond man, neatly dressed in agency-issue standard. Every aspect of his appearance was bland.

  “He’ll go along with our conditions?” a thickly built but very shapely woman with a mane of tiger-striped hair asked. She was wearing a one-piece spandex outfit, a pair of long, thin knives strapped to the outside of one thigh. That same thigh’s muscle-flex was clearly visible as she swung one booted foot up onto the table.

  “He’s already on his way, Tiger,” said a doll-faced Asian woman in a white lab coat. She held a clipboard in one hand, studying it closely through oversized round glasses. “That’s confirmed, Tracker?”

  The man she addressed simply nodded. He was an American Indian, with high, prominent cheekbones, red-bronze skin, jet-black hair, and dark, hooded eyes.

  “Excellent, Wanda,” the blond man said. “He’s supposed to be the leading authority on serial killers. Not only solved a number of significant cases, but predicted their moves as well. The FBI wants nothing to do with him. Probably because he’s publicly mocked their alleged ‘profiles.’ ”

  “This has got nothing, nothing to do with serial killers, damn it!” Percy barked out. “What the hell’s wrong with these wimps? They want to study this thing? That ain’t the answer to the problem.”

  “What is the answer?” Wanda asked, a wisp of a smile playing across her lips.

  “The answer?” Percy grunted his disgust. “Same as it always is. We find it; we kill it. No different from what it’s been doing all over the world. Am I right?” he demanded, opening his arms in a gesture meant to involve the whole room.

  Only Tiger nodded in agreement.

  A light glowed on a console in front of Wanda. “He’s here,” she said. “Everybody ready?”

  Only the blond man responded. To Wanda, only the blond man mattered. She leaned forward, her mouth close to a tiny microphone, and whispered, “Bring him down.”

  THE FOUR-INCH-THICK, bunker-style door opened slowly and silently. A short, husky man entered. He was in his fifties, with close-cropped hair, wearing slightly tinted glasses. His stride was that of a man heavily endowed with “no need to prove it” self-assurance.

  Everybody in the room had been told what to expect: a top-tier professional, the best at what he did.

  Tracker scanned for egotism; Tiger for her version of the same weakness. Percy performed a lightning-quick threat assessment, all three warriors operating on autopilot.

  The blond man and Wanda simply waited.

  The man did not enter alone—he was air-sandwiched between two others. One stepped ahead of him, the other close behind. Both were dressed in simple gray jumpsuits and matching watch caps. One carried a submachine gun in a sling, the other held a short-barreled semi-auto, blued against glare. Their faces were so alike they could be twins—human robots who would respond to only one source of orders, acting as a single unit.

  At a nod from Wanda, they walked the man between them over to a waiting chair. He took the intentionally unsubtle hint and sat down, still not having said a word.

  As if on cue, the two men backed out of the room, their weapons trained on the now seated man up to the moment the door closed.

  “Thanks for coming, Doctor,” the blond man said, not offering his hand.

  “Glad to be of help.”

  “We’ll see,” Percy muttered, obviously unconvinced, and not disguising his skepticism.

  Tiger gazed at the new arrival with measured intensity; Wanda consulted her clipboard. Tracker remained motionless.

  Finally, the new arrival spoke. “You said you had something you wanted me to see.…”

  “That is correct,” the blond man responded. “Wanda?”

  Wanda walked briskly to the giant monitor, prepared to hit a switch, and asked, “You’ve been briefed …?”

  “I believe I have,” the consultant replied. “This is about the Canyon Killings, right?”

  “Yes. You’ve seen the crime-scene photos?”

  “Uh-huh. Same as these blowups over on that wall,” he said, nodding at the poster-sized photos of demolished human remains.

  Nobody made a sound.

  “Roll it already,” Percy snapped.

  Wanda’s long, lacquered nails floated over the console. On the ring finger of her left hand was the rarest of star sapphires: white, with a black star, set in platinum.

  THE MONITOR’S screen snapped into life. A white male—thin, with a receding hairline and matching chin, was smoking expansively, gesturing as if addressing a legion of adoring fans at a press conference. As the camera dollied in, it became clear that the man was clad in a prison jumpsuit, leg-cuffed to his chair.

  The camera slowly pulled back to show viewers that the man was behind bars, but not in an individual cell. The blond man set the scene for the newly arrived consultant:

  “This piece of fecal matter is one Mark Robert Towers. Thirty-seven. Habitual—no, make that chronic—offender. Priors include rape, abduction with intent, arson. Arrested four days ago by the locals.

  “It wasn’t a difficult case to crack, but the crime scene was unusually repulsive. Mother and daughter raped and killed in broad daylight—looked like a push-in burglary that went bad. Fortunately, the scumbag not only left his prints all over everything he touched, they vacuumed enough DNA out of the victims to put him down for the count.

  “Death Row’s a lock for this … whatever he is. Not here—Illinois is still in a mess after those mass no-execution orders issued by the Governor … before he went to prison himself. I believe that’s something of a tradition in this state.

  “That, however, is of no consequence. He’s already DNA-tied to at least three more kills: two in Florida, one in Texas. All women. He’s a dead man, and the clock is winding down.”

  “Clock?” Percy snorted. “You mean cal
endar, don’t you? It takes longer to kill one of those maggots in this country than it would to rebuild the Pyramids with Lego blocks.”

  “That’s not our assignment,” the blond man said, his measured voice holding just a trace of condescension. “But this is. Last night, out of the blue, Towers said he wanted to make a statement about the Canyon Killings in California. They Miranda-ed him up and down, got it on video as well, but he insisted on confessing to the murders. All of them.

  “That’s what we have. His statement, nothing more. In a few more seconds, the volume will come up, you’ll hear it for yourself.”

  The consultant assumed an attentive posture but remained silent. He apparently did not intend to take notes.

  The sound came up on the monitor as the camera moved in tight on the speaker’s face.

  “First of all, you people need to understand that this business about me only killing women is absolute bullshit. I mean, there’s no point in me not telling the truth now, is there?

  “I’m a natural-born killer. Hell, I couldn’t even begin to count how many people I’ve sent over to the other side. But that’s got nothing to do with sex. I kill for the fun of it.

  “See, it’s like movies. No matter how much you like any one movie, it gets old after a while. So you watch a new one. What makes me special is that I don’t watch movies; I make them. I’m not just the star; I’m the director.

  “Don’t matter to me where I am. When the mood hits me, I just go all red inside … and somebody dies. Walking Death, that’s me. You people think you can understand that?”

  An off-camera questioner asked: “You said you wanted to talk to us about the Canyon Killings?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. I got a lot more than those to talk about, too … if I feel like it.”

  Off-camera: “What does that mean, Mark?”

  The speaker’s posture tightened. His face narrowed in the anger he had carried throughout his adult life. “It means respect, that too complicated for you? Respect, that’s all I’m asking for. I’m tired of being treated like crap. No cigarettes unless I ask one of the cops to come and light it for me. No TV, no mail. I can clear a lot of cases for you guys. All I expected was to be treated like a man, you know what I mean?”