Drawing Dead (4 page)

“WHO'S GONNA
tell Ace?”

“Depends on what Sharyn actually registered,” Cross answered Buddha. “If all she saw was Princess and that beast of his scaring off a stranger, that wouldn't be any big deal.”

“Sweetie was just—”

“Poor choice of words,” the gang boss said quickly. “He was just doing his job, Princess. We all understand that.”

“And the kids
love
him!” Princess half-shouted, still not fully mollified.

“We know,” Rhino agreed, his squeaky voice somehow making soothing sounds.

“So if Ace doesn't know…?”

“He
doesn't.
” Cross finished Buddha's thought. “If he knew, we'd already have heard.”

“Even a sawed-off blasting both barrels don't make noise enough to carry this far, boss.”

“We wouldn't need noise,” Cross said, pointing at a thin strip of LEDs flickering against the wall to his left. “Police scanner. Rhino's got it wired direct, all color-coded. If Ace had started taking out what's left of Hemp's crew, the whole strip would be flashing red. ‘All Units.' Ace knows we have to work calm, but anyone going after Sharyn? No way he'd wait to start canceling tickets.”

“Nobody would hurt Sharyn,” Princess said. “That's crazy.”

“That
would
be crazy,” Buddha agreed.

“And suicide is crazy,” Tiger added.

“Hemp was dead as soon as we got that first phone call,” Cross said, acknowledging the Amazon's deductive powers. “We couldn't be sure he'd be using one of his little sample cases anytime soon, but we know he keeps them on the top floor. That was part of the deal. By now, anything under fifty yards of Tracker's scope is as good as gone.”

“I NEED
to talk to Tiger alone, okay?”

“Just in time,” the Amazon said, as the others crossed through the hanging strands of black ball bearings that made up the “door” between the back office and the poolroom. “How come I'm the only one who didn't know about this thing with Hemp?”

“You know what a rolling bounty is?”

“No, I don't. And I don't see what that has to do with—”

“A rolling bounty is like a river, only it runs below ground. Everybody in Gangland knows, you got something that's worth something—something to
us,
I mean—we'll give you a fair price for whatever it is. And we'll make sure nobody will ever find you, too.”

“You got a call Hemp was going to have Sharyn
killed
?”

“Yeah.”

“So you—”

“Took care of it,” Cross interrupted, deliberately avoiding any details. Tracker had reported to him, and it wasn't a report he wanted to share with the others.

“It was a head shot. Only way to make sure. At that distance, it's easier to stop a high-speed round from being a kill-shot. Only time for one try—I wasn't going to use a suppressor, not from that far away. If I couldn't be sure, it would have to rain .50-cals, and that would be like calling 911 ourselves.

“Only thing is, I put the one shot on the ‘X' spot—he was dead before he dropped. But then his chest kind of…exploded. I couldn't see that well through the scope, but the whole cavity opened, like it burst open from the inside.”

“What's with this secret-society stuff all of a sudden? If I'd known about it, I would've—”

“You just answered your own question. The last thing we need is for one of us to step on a land mine.”

“Killing Sharyn, that was just a play? To lure Ace out into the open?”

“Ace? Sure. Him, and anyone else who couldn't…control themselves. The hit didn't even have to be successful. If Princess thought anyone had so much as
tried
to hurt Sharyn, he'd just stroll over to Hemp's building, climb the stairs to the top floor where that punk has that famous ‘terrace' of his, and start throwing pieces of him over the rail. And Rhino'd have to go with him.”

“Hera!”
Tiger chuckled, picturing a cartoon-muscled man in full war paint casually walking across town with a giant black-headed Akita on a chain that would take two strong men to lift, followed by a formless shape that dwarfed them both. A formless shape carrying an Uzi in each hand, with four more on straps around his telephone pole of a neck. “The only thing you'd shoot at
any
of them would be a cell-phone camera.”

“Don't leave out Ace. And he wouldn't be walking.”

“So it was just you and Buddha who could get cold enough to TCB?”

“And Tracker.”

“But not me?”

“No, not you. Even if you could control your temper—which is
always
a guess—you'd draw a crowd.”

“And Rhino and Princess, never mind Sweetie,
they
wouldn't?”

“Even a canned-heat-drinking schizophrenic off his meds would know enough to give them a wide berth. But every man you passed would just
have
to get a closer look.”

“Huh!” Tiger half-growled, but her heart wasn't in it.

“THAT PLAY
didn't work. But it won't be the last one.”

“Who?”

“Hit the light switch.”

“I thought you'd never ask.”

“Tiger…”

The room plunged into darkness.

“I see it!” the Amazon whispered. “That's their way of…warning you?”

“I don't know. All I know is, whatever they are, they're not from here. And I don't mean Chicago.”

“You still think it's this…tribal thing?”

“Only way I could reason it out, girl. I'm not saying I
did
reason it out, just that I couldn't come up with anything that made more sense. Ever since I got out of that basement in the MCC, it's been there. Like a brand, only it's…alive, somehow. I can feel it when it burns. And when I look, I can see it, too. But I'm the only one who can.”

“Except for me.”

“Except for you,” the urban mercenary agreed. “And I have a guess about that, too.” He touched one of a series of buttons on the underside of his desk. “Just wait a minute….”

TRACKER ENTERED
the squid-inked back room as sure-footed as if it was a patch of sunny daylight.

“Yes,” he said, answering an unspoken question.

“But you can't…I don't know…read it?” Tiger asked.

“A tribal symbol, maybe,” the Indian answered. “But no tribe known to me.”

“Tracker saw it first. That's how I know it has to mean
something.
Remember Buddha's speech about OGs? He wasn't wrong. There's a five-man core—you and Tracker have your own work, and that comes first for each of you. So you don't get a vote on what we do, but you're not bound by any vote we take, either. You sign on or you don't, job by job, always your choice.”

“Just because you're late to a party, that doesn't mean—”

“It is not the timing,” Tracker interrupted, managing to do so with an ingrained courtesy that stopped Tiger from being offended. Stepping closer, the Indian said, “You and I, we each have our own tribe. Our loyalty is first to our tribe, always. Is that not so?”

Tiger flipped her striped mane in silent agreement.

“Perhaps this is why only the two of us can see that strange blue brand. It
must
be tribal, but not from this earth.”

Cross surprised them both by slowly nodding his agreement. “I don't know exactly when it was…put on me, but I know it had to be when we were down in that prison basement, trying to trap that…thing, whatever it was.”

“Goon squad,” Banner side-spoke to Cross, while looking in the direction the guards were running. “Must be some weird stuff going on over there again.”

“What's ‘over there' mean?”

“That whole block,” Banner answered, nodding his head in that direction.

“Upstairs, it's PC. Middle is for the psychos. Down is the Death House. Two rows of twenty cells each…with the Green Room in the middle.”

“Green Room?”

“Used to be the gas chamber, long time ago. Now it's just an empty room. No executions here. For that, they have to move you to a Level Seven.”

At the words “Death House,” a concrete-colored blotch semi-materialized high up on the wall behind the two men. As the goon squad moved in, “Death House” was repeated at below-human-threshold. Then…

“Hit!”

The guards began to club a prisoner repeatedly on his unprotected head, continuing even after the man slumped to the ground, blood running out of both ears.

A mural flashed on the overlooking wall. The ace and jack of clubs appeared, then immediately vanished, leaving some convicts blinking. And the TV monitors blank.