'Zodiac, Renny speaking—'
'It's Davy, Lionel there?'
'Wait a mo, man—' In the background Davy could hear seventies disco music blaring, and people shouting. He heard Renny shouting Lionel's name.
After a few minutes, he heard Lionel's voice. 'Where the fuck you been?'
'Me? What's gotten into you, my man? You living at The Zodiac now?'
'Damn close. I need to hit you up for some cash—'
Davy shook his head and stumbled back toward the couch. He half sat, half fell, back into his seat. 'Shit. You think I'm made of money? I ain't your momma, I'm not here to bail you out of every tight spot you get into.'
'Look, the cops are looking for me, I haven't been able to get to my apartment since I saw you last. I've been crashing at—'
Davy rubbed his head, the blood was sloshing around again. 'Don't give me your goddamn life story. Fuck, you know that job fell through on me. I'm strapped myself. If I don't pull a job out of my ass soon, I'm going to be living at The Zodiac myself.'
'I need to get out of town, Davy.'
'Yeah, so's everyone. D.C. sucks.'
'I'm serious. They want me because of the fucking computer.'
Davy sat up. 'What you talking about?'
'The cops are looking for me 'cause of that goddamn shoot-out where you were going to pick up that thing.'
Davy's vertigo was getting worse. 'What do you mean they're looking for you? How the fuck do they know you have anything to do with it—fuck you don’t have anything to do with it—'
'I don't know, man, but I need, like, three hundred dollars to get out of town.'
'Why they looking for you?' Davy had an evil thought. 'You didn't tell anyone about my little job, did you?'
'Fuck no! What kind of scum you think I am? I didn't tell the cops anything.'
Davy's half-drunken mind had already figured out that Lionel was lying.
At first Davy'd thought maybe Lionel had let what he'd known about the job slip to someone else who was feeding cops information. Davy would like to believe that. After all, Lionel was supposed to be his friend from the joint. Lionel was supposed to be solid, if not very bright.
But now his asshole friend had pretty much accused himself of selling Davy over to the cops. Lionel had probably tipped off the cops that had gotten themselves shot up. No wonder the police were looking for him, and no wonder the shithead was panicking.
Davy did his best to sound calm and reassuring. 'Yeah, I know. Guess we better get together and talk.' Davy felt a burning anger, but he managed to smile as he said. 'I think I might be able to spare a couple hundred. Neither of us want you being leaned on by the cops— You come down here, okay?'
'Sure.' There was the sound of relief in Lionel's voice. 'I knew you'd come through.'
Davy nodded and shut off the phone. 'Yeah, I'm going to come though all over your ass, motherfucker.'
Davy fantasized about how he was going to stomp Lionel, until the paranoia kicked in. What if Lionel was completely in bed with the cops? What if Lionel was coming here with a wire? Or worse?
Davy stood up, starting to wonder if he should get his gun, or split town himself, when he heard someone knocking on the door.
Shit. No way he could have gotten here that fast. No fucking way.
Davy stood up and headed toward the entertainment center. He tripped and fell on his face. He lay there a moment, stunned, head throbbing. In front of him the tape had stopped and the television cast a blank blue glow across the room.
As he pushed himself upright, he heard his front door rattling.
The bastards were jimmying his lock. He crawled forward on his hands and knees and pulled a shelf of pornographic videos down so he could reach the Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum that he kept hidden behind them. His hands had just reached the gun, grabbing the barrel instead of the butt, when an unfamiliar voice said, 'I suggest you put that down.'
Davy turned and looked up into the barrel of a silenced automatic that looked much bigger than his chrome- plated Smith and Wesson—probably because it was pointed at him. He knew instantly that this guy wasn't a cop.
His fingers slipped from around the barrel of his gun, and he backed off slightly, still on his hands and knees. 'What do you want?'
Two other men came into the living room, and stationed themselves to either side of him. They grabbed his arms, hoisted him up, and dragged him back to the couch. 'You were contracted to do a job,' said the man with the gun. 'Move a computer from one place to another.'
While the gunman spoke, the man on his left pulled out a small zippered case and opened it, setting the contents out on the coffee table in front of them. The items included a spoon, a hypodermic needle, a rubber hose, a Zippo lighter, and several bags of crystalline white powder.
The man on his right pulled his arm out straight and rolled up his sleeve. Davy tried to pull away, but the man with the gun stepped up and pressed the silencer to Davy's forehead.
'Who else knows about your mission?'
Davy stared at the kit the man to his left was prepping. He had already spilled some powder into the spoon and was melting it with the lighter. A sharp, slightly tinny odor started to fill the air.
The man holding his arm took the hose and pulled it taut around Davy's upper arm. Then, when it was painfully tight, he grabbed Davy's hand in both of his and forced him to make a fist. Davy noticed that all three men wore latex gloves.
'Who else knows?'
Davy spilled his guts. He had no problem giving up Lionel after the bastard had given him up. The only thing he didn't mention was that Lionel was on his way there.
Davy had some hope of the bastard showing up—now he was hoping Lionel wore a wire, or was leading a SWAT team. That might surprise these guys enough to get them off of him. . .
But as far as Davy ever knew, Lionel never came.
Lyaksandro Volynskji waited outside of Franklin Alexander 'Davy' Jones' apartment in his Dodge Ram quad- cab. It took twenty minutes for his men to enter, do their business, and withdraw. When the last of them got in the truck and closed the door, Volynskji asked, 'Are we safe now?'
The man stripped off a pair of latex gloves and said, 'There's another man he called 'Lionel,' real name Kareem Rashad Williams. The police are looking for him.'
'Who is he to us?'
'Drug dealer, apparently a friend of Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones confided in him about the Daedalus, and Mr. Jones believed that it was Lionel who informed the police.'
Volynskji sighed. 'Then we must find him, before the police do.'
The Dodge Ram pulled away from the apartment building. On the side of the building facing the street, the window to Davy's apartment was lit only by the blue phosphor glow of a television watching a dead channel.
1.04 Wed. Feb. 25
Gideon was sitting on the couch, watching the third episode of General Hospital he'd ever seen, when the doorbell rang.
He made no move to answer it, he had no desire to see any reporters, and he fully intended to remain sequestered in his house as long as his food held out. By then he hoped that the press would've backed off a little.
He turned the volume up on the remote, but too late to miss hearing a familiar voice call out, 'Detective
