“Hey, kid,” said Harry.
The teenager turned. His T-shirt read, “Blow it up and start over.”
“Yeah?” he said.
“You want to make twenty bucks?”
The kid’s middle finger sprang up. “Fuck off, perv.” He flicked his cigarette at Harry and kept walking.
“Hey, wait, it’s not like that! Thirty bucks!”
The stoner stopped and looked back. “To do what?”
“See that cab parked up there? I need you to cross the street, get a look at the driver, keep going to the corner, come back, and tell me what he looks like.”
“Who’re you? James Bond?”
“That’s right. I’m James fucking Bond. Deal?”
“Fuck yeah.”
As the guy started across the street, Harry gave him a loud whisper. “And don’t be too obvious.”
The stoner nodded and walked toward the taxi. Harry watched as the kid took out a cigarette and then leaned right down into the window of the cab. The driver’s darkened profile turned to the stoner; a moment later, Harry saw a flash of amber light.
“Jesus,” Harry said. He leaned back behind the wall and waited for the kid to return. When he didn’t show, Harry peeked out again and came nose to nose with him. He flinched and felt a hot zap of pain slice through the side of his face.
“Hey, Double-oh-seven,” the stoner said. “How ya doin’?”
“What’d he look like?”
“Cash first.”
Harry pulled his wad out, peeled off three tens, and put them in the kid’s outstretched palm.
“So?”
“Red hair. Nice thick ’stache. Baseball cap.”
Harry felt an odd satisfaction-his hypothesis was right-and it amused him to think of the button-sized tracer stuck to the cab’s backseat. But he also felt a nasty tingling in his hands. He wanted them around the cabbie’s neck.
“Is he the guy you’re looking for?” the stoner asked.
“Thanks for the help, kid.”
“Sure, man. Rock on.” He flashed a peace sign and went on his way.
Finding the answer to one question only triggered an avalanche of others. He still had no idea who he was dealing with; he didn’t even know how many people were after him. But all that could wait. For now, only one thing mattered. He put his arm around Lily and started her down the alley.
“C’mon, sis. We got to find Geiger.”
Mitch had parked a quarter of the way down the block so he could see the front of the diner but couldn’t be seen from inside the place. As he waited for Boddicker and his sister to emerge, he occasionally glanced down at the blinking blue light in the center grid of a black, PDA-sized instrument on the seat beside him.
His cell phone rang and he picked up. “Yeah.”
“Still got him, Mitch?” It was Hall.
“Yeah, still in the diner.” His molasses drawl was gone. “Where are you?”
“Upper West Side. We’re cruising. They got a hit on the kid’s cell.”
“How’s Ray doing?”
“He’s stitched up. Overall, I’d say he looks much better. He’s got that harelip thing going on-ladies’re gonna love it.”
Mitch took note. Mean, dead-on sarcasm meant that Hall was worried. Not just stressed out but wired in a big-picture way. It was bad to hear but good to know.
After Hall hung up, Mitch continued watching the entrance to the diner. His mind, meanwhile, was building a bracket of strategic configurations in case the job went south. A week ago it had tasted like a piece of cake, but not anymore. Although Mitch thought the odds were still in their favor, at this point he had to work up plans for worst- case scenarios. He called it his “fuck or be fucked” mode, and the key to it was staying a couple of steps ahead of the enemy, whoever that might be. Ideally, Hall would continue to run the show-the man was smart, resourceful, and ruthless. And Mitch had always worked well with Ray, who would walk through a wall before he’d go around it. But if this operation completely blew up and it came down to a body count, then so be it. He’d be the one doing the counting.
13
The place was otherworldly, more hell than heaven. Blaring, combative colors fought against a grab bag of aromas and a shifting melange of sounds. Shiny oranges and reds and browns, voices and music and mechanical buzzes, scents of oil and cinnamon and fish and meat all collided and intertwined.
Geiger stood just inside the doorway, stunned by the onslaught. He’d never been in a Burger King or any other fast-food establishment. He’d been in Carmine’s restaurant and the diner, but this, in every way, was a different experience. He moved a few steps closer to the counter and its three lines of customers. Looking at the wall-mounted array of menus dense with words and numbers and pictures was like trying to decipher a map of the galaxy.
“Hey, man. Are you on line or what?” A head poked into Geiger’s view from behind him; it was a white kid in a do-rag wearing half a dozen cheap chains heavy with gewgaws.
Geiger looked blankly at him. He felt suspended and seized up, as if he’d forgotten how to breathe. His hearing seemed affected as well-he was having trouble locating the sources of sounds.
“Visit this planet much, man?” said the kid as he moved past Geiger toward the counter.
Geiger took his place in one of the lines and repeated Ezra’s order to himself while he waited.
Finally it was his turn. “What do you want?” said the woman behind the counter. The brim of her BK- emblazoned baseball cap had a thumb-sized stain at the left edge where she had tugged on it with greasy fingers a thousand times.
“Just get me a burger, and fries, and a Coke.”
“Then you want a meal?”
“Yes. I want a meal.” Geiger studied the woman’s frown. Why else would he, or anyone else, be in here?
“Which one?”
“A burger. Fries. Coke.”
“Which meal, mister?” Her thumb pointed at the backlit menus above and behind her. “One? Two? Three? Which?”
“I don’t care,” Geiger said.
“Then just pick one,” she said.
“Meal number one.”
“Okay. Mustard-ketchup-pickles-onions?”
“What?”
“On the burger. Mustard-ketchup-pickles-onions?”
It was spoken as a mindless recitation, a litany as automatic as a blink or a breath. But to Geiger it made the surface of things ripple absurdly. Mustard-ketchup-pickles-onions. He couldn’t put it out of his mind. It became an audio loop, a Mobius word strip, a child’s nonsense rhyme. Geiger became aware that his jaw was as tight as a bear trap.
“What’ll it be, mister?”
“Everything,” Geiger said. “I want everything.”
