Probably that’s where they’re keeping Eve. We go in through the office door,’ Bucks said. ‘Frank, too, if he wants to go, if he’s got his dick screwed on now.’
‘Your dick’s on now, right, Frank?’ Whit said.
‘Ha ha,’ Frank said.
‘Walk right in,’ Whit said.
‘No,’ Bucks said. ‘Probably have guards watching the lot. We’ll take care of them first.’
‘Take care of,’ Whit said.
‘Shoot if we have to,’ Bucks said. ‘You want your mommy back, right?’ He didn’t quite make it a sneer. ‘You know, you must create your own moral center, Whit. You can’t get that from your parents.’
‘Then what?’ Whit said. ‘Storm the door?’
‘No. Go in quiet if we can. Shoot anyone we see we don’t like. Grab Eve, grab Jose, grab the money if it’s there. If it’s not then Jose’s my worry, not yours. He’ll talk.’
Whit was silent. He wondered how close a coffin would feel. If you were really, truly dead it was a mercy if you couldn’t know the tight quarters of the casket, the bare inch of air between your lips and the coffin silk. Then wondering if he could stand by and watch people get shot. Not innocent people. But still. He couldn’t. Not in cold blood. So he would have to change Bucks’ plan. ‘What if we get caught?’ Whit asked.
‘Don’t be dense,’ Bucks said. ‘They kill us.’
Bucks turned onto the Clinton exit off 610, turned right onto Mississippi. The warehouse was one in a long chain of dreary industrial buildings, the lamps giving off faint light.
‘That’s it,’ Bucks said. He drove on by, four blocks, then turned into a small office building. Two cars were parked far back in the shadows, men inside them. Waiting.
‘Oh, shit,’ Frank said. Whit’s guts turned to slush.
‘This wasn’t part of the deal…’ Frank said.
‘I took precautions, too, boys,’ Bucks said, and in the moonlight his smile was ugly.
‘You don’t need to know names,’ Bucks told Whit and Frank as the men stood in the cold of the night behind the office building. But Whit could guess. One man looked like the guy who’d shot at him on the chase on the 610 Loop, owlish eyes watching Whit with the careful regard of an accountant. Frank had said he was called the Wart. Two other men, one heavy, the other lanky and wearing dreadlocks. Associates of the dead MacKay, Whit guessed, looking for a little payback. No one said hello.
‘Too many,’ Frank said to Bucks. ‘Too much. Not what we discussed.’
Whit thought: too much for what, we need all the strength we can get. ‘Jesus, Frank, quit worrying about how much money’s left at the end.’
‘Frank, hush and let the men work,’ Bucks said. ‘Guys. Here’s the drill.’ He explained they wanted Eve alive, they wanted the money, mostly they wanted Jose Peron, who was responsible for MacKay’s death and who had stolen five million from its rightful owners. ‘We’ve got a goal, men. A goal we can reach.’ His voice deepened and Whit realized he sounded like the low murmuring on the tape in his car, talking in the same empty cadence of blank reassurance. He described how they would approach the lot, fast and silent. If Jose and Eve weren’t inside, they’d take what was of value and leave. ‘Keep an eye open for any DVDs. Jose stored info on them I need. I’ll pay a bonus for any you find.’
In the dark, behind Bucks, Frank nudged Whit.
Bucks turned to Whit. ‘You want to go first? She’s your mama.’
‘That’s fine,’ Whit said.
‘Don’t worry, Whit,’ said Bucks. ‘I’ll be right behind you.’
They moved down a maze of alleys that reeked of dog piss and uncollected trash. Too many of the offices and warehouses had been empty for too long, dragged down in the latest economic stumble. A cloying mist hung in the night. Whit had the gun Gooch had given him, another gun tucked in the small of his back, and a small knife strapped above his ankle, all from Charlie’s weapons collection. But the heavyset Jamaican walking by him toted an assault rifle, and he felt unprepared.
‘This is it,’ Bucks said. The six men hung back in the alleyway, surveying the parking lot of the warehouse. A high fence, topped with barbed wire, separated the lot from the adjoining side road. An office light gleamed through the glass door. Three cars were parked nearby; Whit recognized one. A little red Honda. Tasha Strong’s car that she’d driven over to Frank and Eve’s. He started to speak, thought, and stayed quiet.
They waited ten minutes. No movement or sound in the lot.
‘No guard,’ Whit said.
‘We go over the fence, then through the side truck bay, the service door. Quietly. I got skeleton keys. Surprise them. Surprise is critical,’ Bucks said.
They waited another two minutes; no sign of movement.
‘Trevor, Wart, go,’ Bucks whispered and the thin Jamaican and the Wart hurried forward. Trevor lifted the Wart up high; Wart started cutting the stretch of barbed wire at the top of the fencing. Trevor balanced Wart on his palms, and the ribbon of wire curled away as Wart moved down the fence.
Then Trevor boosted Wart over the fence. He eased himself down on the other side, carefully, then dropped to the asphalt. Whit, Bucks, and Heavy Jamaican began to scale the fence, Trevor helping them. Frank hung back.
‘Frank, shake your ass up here,’ Bucks said.
Frank started to climb, tentatively.
Whit was over the fence, trying to be silent in making his jump down, when the shadow bulleted out from the other side of the lot, beelining toward Wart, who was crouched over, waiting for the rest of them.
Whit said, ‘Oh, no,’ loudly, as he dropped to the pavement next to Bucks and the bullet, a sleek Doberman the color of night, launched itself at Wart. The dog took him down in the shoulders, hammered him to the concrete. A horrible tearing noise rose from their struggle; a spray of blood shot across the asphalt. Teeth sunk into flesh and ripped with ingrained precision.
Wart screamed once as the dog yanked him around by the neck, as fangs found new hold. Bucks and Trevor fired. The dog yelped, twisted, then Bucks put a bullet right in the dog’s skull. Wart lay there, groaning, cupping his hands under his chin, the blood welling.
Whit turned and the second dog was arrowing right for him, eyes locked to his throat, snout down, ten paces away and Whit fired, the silencer Bucks had attached to his gun making a soft-bark sound, firing once, twice, catching the dog in its leap, the bullets tearing dogflesh from ribs and it fell, thudding into him, knocking him to the ground. But dying. Whit climbed out from under the dog; it made a last, feeble attempt to snap, to fend off the dark, then shivered into stillness.
‘They know we’re here now,’ Bucks said. ‘Rush it, full frontal.’ He and the Jamaicans charged the office door, Whit kneeling by Wart. He was fading, gone as Whit touched his wrist, the carotid and jugular torn, his throat nothing but wound, the neck broken. His eyes were still open in shock at the sudden, end-it-all turn.
Whit glanced back over at the fence.
Frank was gone, fled into the dark of the alley.
Whit turned and headed for the building; a couple of sharp pops from Bucks’ gun shattered the door glass, loud in the quiet of the industrial park. Bucks reached inside, flipped the locks.
They were in, Heavy taking the lead and Whit coming in last.
The entry office was dimly lit, an empty desk, a mountain of old newspapers scattered around the room. The smell of gasoline – rich, unexpected – filled the air. Two gas canisters stood on the side of the desk. Whit stopped. The canisters were full but capped. Waiting to be used or moved.
Bucks gestured down the hall, and Heavy Jamaican bolted down it, laying a spray of suppressing fire, tearing chunks out of the wall and ceiling. At the end of the hall a metal warehouse door stood shut.
‘Wait,’ Whit called, ‘they’re torching the warehouse?’ But Heavy and Trevor and Bucks were blasting the door, charging into the warehouse proper, and now there was an answering hail of shots, an intense staccato of bullets and screams.
He barreled down the hall, after Trevor and Bucks, and went through the door. A storm of gunfire met his ears, battle in full rage, shrieks, the horrible sound of metal impacting flesh.
They had been waiting for them. Two men, taking cover behind boxes twenty feet beyond the door, emptying rifles, Heavy stumbling as blood erupted from his chest. No sign of Trevor but then the men behind the boxes
