T
he Mole’s special phone rang. Digital readout showed a pictograph of a sweeping searchlight.
“Go,” I said.
“You said not over the phone.” Reedy. His security people must have told him that a trace would be easier at a time when cellular traffic would be light. Or maybe he just figured I was a man who worked nights.
“Just you and me.”
“Of course,” he counter-punched with a lie of his own.
“I pick the place. It’ll be in downtown Manhattan. This Wednesday.”
“Just—”
“
You
just be downtown, anywhere below Canal, by noon Wednesday. I’ll call then, give you forty-five minutes to get to the spot. I don’t want surprises.”
“And I’m not walking into some—”
“It’ll be outdoors, public place. We’ll be two businessmen, doing business. When you see what I’ve got, we’ll only need one more meeting and then we’re done.”
“You can
prove
—?”
“If you walk away from the meeting anything but one hundred percent satisfied, you’ll never hear from me again.”
“I only have your word for that.”
“And I’m betting, betting a
lot,
that once you see the property I want to interest you in, you’ll buy. You don’t want to even
look
at it, that’s your choice.”
“So if I don’t come to this meeting…?”
“Then we’re done,” I repeated. And hit “end.”
“I
don’t see why we have to keep doing this.”
“I’m going to explain that to you,” I told Thornton. “I’m going to explain it to you with respect. This is a complex operation, and I need you
with
us on it.”
“I already said—”
“Just listen, please,” I said.
“I’ll be right outside,” the AB man assured him. And stepped away, closing the door behind him.
“I thought you worked for Claw,” Thornton confronted me, his eyes honed sharp by fear. “How do you get to give him orders?”
“It’s not orders,” I said, gently, “it’s professionalism. Claw’s the boss, the shot-caller, Inside or in the World. But let’s say he told one of the crew to crack a safe, okay? He wouldn’t tell the man
how
to do it. And if the man needed some special tools to do the job, well, the boss would get them for him. This is no different.”
“You’re no safecracker.”
“That’s right,” I agreed, amicably. “I’m an extortionist. A blackmailer. Whatever you want to call it. All Claw knows about that line of work is ‘Pay up or get stuck,’ am I right?”
Thornton nodded. When you’ve been Inside, you know “stuck” means one of two things, and it had been the AB that stood between them both for him. After he paid.
“I told the boss that I can’t do my job without another private talk with you first. This is all about finesse, and that’s my specialty.”
“How much finesse could this take? Either they pay up or I—”
“You want half a million, cash.”
“So? That’s pocket change to—”
“You think we’re all working for
you
?” I asked, almost in a whisper. “Everybody’s got to get paid here. If you weren’t in so tight with the boss, we could make more just bringing those three guys your head.”
“What?!?”
“Think about it,” I said, very calmly. “You’ve got nothing but your word about what happened. You don’t have any tape, no photographs, nothing.”
It was just a little tic-movement at the right corner of his mouth. But I had been watching his face like it was a cardiogram.
“They’ll have left DNA,” he said. “If they exhumed the corpse, I’ll bet they’d find—”
“On a
skeleton
? After thirty-plus years? You’ve been watching too much TV. Truth is, we’re down to a bluff and a threat. If we had a tape to play for them, that’d make it another game. But with only your word, how much do you think they’d pay us to make sure you never opened your mouth?”
“Claw wouldn’t—”
“Now you’re getting it. Here’s the cold truth, Thorn. If we could vote on this, all of us would rather just offer them your head in a box than go through this fucking dancing around. But the boss said that was off the table. This isn’t a democracy. We’re Aryan warriors, and there’s a chain of command. So we can’t touch you. Ever.”
I let my eyes shine with the absolute obedience of a Nazi dog…a dog who wanted to rip out a throat, but obeyed his master’s command to “stay.” After all, isn’t that what “Master Race” means?
“But you’re not sending me in there without putting some more cards in my hand,” I went on, nice and well mannered. Always ready to be reasonable. As flexible as piano wire.
“I
still
don’t—”
“You remember what your lawyer told you when he first took your case?”
“He told me a lot of things, the miserable piece of—”
“He told you that you had to tell
him
the truth. You didn’t have to tell anyone else. Not your wife, not your mother, not the law, even though he was going to advise you to cooperate. Right?”
“He said that, yeah.”
“And he told you why?”
“Because, if he got surprised anywhere along the way, I’d be the one who fell through the trapdoor, not him.”
“That’s it. I don’t want to be surprised, Thorn,” I said, giving him my “I know. And I
understand
” look. “But, the way I see it, there’s no reason for the boss to know.”
“Know what?”
“What you’re going to tell me. And show me.”
“I already told you everything. And I don’t have anything to—”
“Let’s start with the pictures,” I said, my tone free from judgment, as impersonal as typhoid.
“W
hat’s this?”
“It’s an Internet Tablet, stupid.”
“Michelle…”
“Think of it as a cell phone with an Internet connection. Wi-fi. Just the thing a businessman like you would be scanning while waiting for a client to show up.”
“Why can’t I just read a newspaper?”
“Why can’t I be a blonde? Oh, wait! I
am
a blonde,” she said, tossing her golden mane.
“Jesus H. Christ.”
“Oh, just stop! This is a more challenging task for me than usual. No way you are going to out-dress
this
one. And we don’t want you to, either. What we’re looking for is a no-look look.”
“I love you, honey. But you just might be the world’s biggest pain in the—”
“
Will
you be quiet? I can overink that tattoo on your hand again”—meaning the hollow blue heart between the last two knuckles of my right hand; my tribute to Pansy, not the temps I sometimes use when I’m working—“but your face will have to go as is. That stage makeup will fool a camera, but it won’t stand up to an up-close-and-personal. We’re going to have to go jet-black with the hair. And I can extend those eyebrows, too.”
“Fine,” I said, surrendering, as we both knew I would.
“Charcoal,” she finally pronounced. “It’s making a comeback, anyway. White shirt, red suspenders—”
“What?”
“Red suspenders. It’s the kind of detail people remember. Kind of passé, but you aren’t trying to look Wall Street. And a plain blue tie—I’ll find the right shade.”
“The restaurant is locked?”
“Locked? It’s tighter than that, big brother. You didn’t know Mama held the paper on it?”
“No,” I said. Not surprised, though. Mama hated anything that wasn’t working, and money was no exception. She even owned a nice co-op in a building she’d never visit. Cash-purchased it from the girl I’d given the baby I’d taken from Beryl—the most righteous rescue of my life.
Loyal, the baby’s new mother, her
real
mother, got the purchase offer for her co-op through Davidson. I don’t know who owns it on paper, but I know the current renters are paying through the nose—they wouldn’t want the lease on the ID they’d bought from me to get canceled.
“And Max had those crazy boys visit, too.”
“Crazy boys” was Michelle-speak for the Blood Shadows, still the most feared of all the Chinatown gangs. Their allegiance to Max was something they could never explain, but so precious to them that their own boss never so much as questioned them about it.
“You know it could get stupid. This guy, I don’t even have a guess how he’ll play it…if he shows at all.”
“You think?”
“Enough,” I told her, holding up both hands.
T
he restaurant was one of those “fusion” joints, this one French-Asian. Light food, heavy presentation, short wine list, major attitude. The outdoor patio was small, exclusive, and sidewalk-blocking illegal.
Just four tables out there. I was at the far left corner, alone, consulting my Internet Tablet, waiting for whoever was going to join me. Michelle and Clarence were at the other end, their chairs pulled close enough so they could whisper to each other. Clarence was in subdued peacock mode: metallic threads from his burnt-orange silk jacket sparkling in random patterns whenever he shifted his weight. He looked drab next to Michelle, who was wrapped in a silver-foil sheath, with matching hat and veil.
A passing couple stared at them. The girl tugged the guy with her to a stop just as they came to where I was sitting. He was a man of the world—a veteran of the harsh reality of crime movies—so he broke it down for her. Just a high-class pimp trying to sweet-talk a racehorse whore into switching stables, he explained, swollen with his own coolness.
Maybe he could work the scene into whatever “noir” screenplay he was writing that week.
A gay couple took up the inside table closest to me. Looked like they were celebrating a wedding anniversary. Lots of hand-holding, an occasional kiss.
The table inside Michelle and Clarence was empty, a big
RESERVED
sign making it clear that there was no point even asking the red-jacketed young Chinese who stood in the open doorway without moving, hands behind his back.
A couple of guys with gym muscles under their nice suits tried anyway. It didn’t take long.
I picked up the Mole’s phone, hit “33.”
“I’m here.” Reedy’s voice.
I gave him the location—the restaurant’s and mine—and killed the call.
I stood up and rotated my head on my neck, two circles in each direction. Just working out the kinks.
The homeless man sprawled against the wall on the other side of the street, wrapped in several layers of blanket despite the weather, may have seen me.
M
y Internet Tablet was tuned to the wire services. Cambodia’s ruler—a former Khmer Rouge “soldier” who calls himself the Prime Minister now—announced he was banning certain cell phones, because they had the capacity to send video images. His beloved country had to be protected against pornography. After all, what if some innocent child saw such images?
Images. Liberia was once ruled by a dictator who called himself Samuel Doe. He was overthrown by another of his kind, Charles Taylor. Only Taylor’s ambitions overreached his borders, and he ended up financing the mass murders in Sierra Leone, an endless slaughter that gave “blood diamonds” the name they carry to this day. Taylor’s in The Hague now, awaiting trial for genocide. Nigeria gave him up. They’ve got oil over there, but they’ve got to keep up a nice front with the UN, because they might need to crush a rebel movement themselves at any time. Not like the Saudis, who don’t have to worry about such things—they let Idi Amin live in one of their castles until he died. Didn’t hurt their image a bit.
Images, yeah. Samuel Doe was tortured to death on orders of one of Taylor’s freakish followers, with every shriek of agony carefully captured on videotape by a Palestinian “journalist” they invited to watch the fun. Running a dictatorship and reinforcing it with the occasional pogrom is one thing, but Doe’s regime had recognized Israel, and supporting the Zionist Oppressor is a crime against all humanity. That tape is “still commercially available,” in the words of
The Economist.
A couple had just been arrested. For the kidnap, torture, rape, and murder of a young girl, all captured on video. By the killers. Another one of those snuff films the blasé bloggers will call an “urban legend,” I guess. After all, this was just a home movie, not “produced for commercial purposes,” so it doesn’t count. And the video, I guess if it shows up on the Internet for free it
still
doesn’t count, right?
Image. It’s everything.
A couple in Milwaukee—both wealthy physicians—were found guilty of forcing a woman they imported from the Philippines to work sixteen-hour days for less than prisoners are paid to make license plates. She was their slave for nineteen years, but it wasn’t prime-time material. After all, she hadn’t been a “sex slave.” Didn’t photograph well, either. Lousy images.
A “team” of humans who paid a fortune so they could add climbing Mount Everest to their “life accomplishment” list came across another climber on their way up. Looked like he was already too far gone, they said, so they trekked on past, leaving him for dead. They didn’t owe the guy anything. They might have saved him, but there wasn’t any law against looking the other way. Ask David Cash. But don’t try asking a little girl named Sherrice Iverson.
The murderers who run Burma decided Suu Kyi, the woman who won the election the generals had voided with bullets, needed to stay under “house arrest.” She won a Nobel Peace Prize more than fifteen years ago, so their decision was sure to spark some heavy discussions in the UN.
Yeah, what a scary thought. There’s already four million slaughtered in the Congo, and blue helmets on the ground are about as effective as Tom Cruise working a suicide hotline.
Joseph Kony was a witch doctor–turned–warlord who ran the Lord’s Resistance Army, a gang of rape-for-fun, kill-for-kicks zombies. Basic training was simple in that army. They kidnapped children, made them watch a few torture-mutilations, pointed at the bodies, and gave the children a choice: Join us, or join them. Kony started in Uganda, but was now based in the south of Sudan, where he was getting paid to make sure the region stayed destabilized. The World Court issued a warrant for his arrest. They didn’t say who was going to serve it on him.
It sure wasn’t going to be the UN—they probably figured their “condemnation” of the use of child soldiers would fix everything. Just like their “oil for food” program had in Iraq. That monument to impotence still thinks that you can hand out food to warlords, and count on them to distribute it…after the boss’s son gets his cut, of course. Or that a good, stern admonition will deter missile launches. What’s their next move: calling for a boycott of genocide?
Besides, Kony can always make a deal. Call off his army of psychotic children, hand over some weapons, go in front of some “Truth and Reconciliation” committee, admit every crime known to humanity, be told he did bad things…and be forgiven. Just like going on
Oprah.
Only, instead of some door prize, you get to keep the fortune you’ve stashed away in a nice “safe” country.
A “reverend” in Illinois was arrested for “disciplining” a twelve-year-old girl. Supposedly, he applied this discipline with a piece of wood, while her mother waited outside the punishment chamber. The mother told the police her daughter had accused a man of sexually abusing her, so she took her for “counseling.” This reverend told the mother he’d been a police officer, so he could always tell when a child was lying about sexual abuse, and the “rod” would bring out the truth. The mother thought this was a great idea. When the child wouldn’t recant after a month of ritual beatings, it just meant she was stubborn. But when the cops arrested the perpetrator, the mother suddenly got very upset. The holy man begged her not to tell anyone about the fun he’d been having, but her “concern” forced her to tell the cops about that, too. After all, nobody was going to beat
her
for “false allegations.” Poor woman—she actually had to change churches after that; the congregation was very upset with her betrayal.
A massacre of women and children by combat troops was reported in Iraq. An investigation is in progress. If someone actually did this, they better pray Big Christian is still in the White House by the time they’re found guilty, so he can do the patriotic thing before he leaves office, like Nixon did for Calley, back in the day.
The ACLU was suing some town that passed an ordinance saying registered sex offenders couldn’t come within a thousand feet of children’s playgrounds. Un-fucking-constitutional! I guess camouflage is a civil right now. Just like the right to videotape.
Harder to tell who’s stupider: wet-brains who don’t realize that laws like that don’t keep freaks away from
private
playgrounds—check out any McDonald’s lately?—or imbeciles who believe laws like that actually protect kids.
You know why we hate you? Not because you don’t know what we know, but because, even if you did, you wouldn’t give a damn.
So I’m sitting here, waiting to commit extortion, and planning a lot worse. I’m what you’d call a career criminal. That’s why I’ll never be you. And I’m proud of it.