Dead and Gone

I nodded. The “Fourteen Words” of David Lane, a former leader in The Order. Right now he’s serving life-plus for murder and racketeering in pursuit of an Aryans-only America: “We must secure the existence of our people, and a future for White children.” Words so sacred to some White Night soldiers that they added “14” to their own signatures.

“Ruhr proved in with a prison homicide almost twenty years ago. It was a face-to-face shank job, one on one, so he only pulled time in the hole for it—that’s the way it was then.”

You think it’s different now? I thought to myself, but kept quiet as Brick continued:

“He’s a hit man. But not freelance. Only kills for the cause. We have it confirmed that he’s worked overseas. Trips to the U.K.—he’s a suspect in the assassination of an IRA official—and France, and Germany, for sure. Maybe others.”

“So no way they’re connected to the skinhead kids who tried to grab Gem?” I asked.

“We can’t say that,” he cautioned. “They’re not on the same level, no question. But every contract hitter has to make his bones sometime. Ruhr wasn’t any older than the kids you described when he started whacking people.”

“Sure,” I said. “Looks like he grew up Inside.” I pointed to the swastika tattooed on the side of his neck. “That’s a jailhouse job. And an old one—see how blobby the ink is?”

Brick just nodded agreement.

“And the connection to the Russians?” I asked him.

“Well, they’re not Russian Jews, so they wouldn’t be excluded, necessarily. You know, for years we’ve been hearing about a Stalinist organization, but nothing specific ever shows up.”

“You mean inside Russia?” Gem asked him.

“No. I mean, sure, there probably is something like that going on there; who knows? But I was talking about outside the country. Didn’t you ever wonder? Stalin was a bigger murderer than Hitler ever was. A greater fascist. Plus, he won. He survived it all, while Adolf snuffed himself in a bunker, sniveling to the end. How come Stalin never gets the kind of freak-worship Hitler does?”

“He wasn’t about race,” Byron said. “He was about power.”

“So?”

“So what appeals to lowlife, beady-eyed, chinless, inbred, failure-flunky trash is the idea that they’re genetically superior to the rest of us.”

“And the cream will rise to the top?”

“Sure. Once they scrape off that crust of mud.”

“This isn’t about politics,” Brick reminded us. “It’s about what a pair like Ruhr and Timmons are doing in the picture.”

“You’re going to ask around your—”

“Sure,” he told me. “But our agency’s not supposed to be working Stateside, remember? Our intel on home- grown Nazis isn’t as good as … Well, you understand what I’m saying.”

“I do,” I told him. “Thanks.”

“What’re you going to do now?” Byron asked me.

“I got places I can look, too,” I said. “But I have to go home to start.”

“How safe would that be?” Brick asked. Telling me that Byron hadn’t kept anything back from him.

“I’m dead,” I answered. Then I told them both about Morales’ message.

“That I can check,” Brick told me. “If you’re not listed as dead on the law-enforcement computers by the time I get back, I’ll get word to Byron, and …”

“I’ll reach out for you, brother,” Byron finished.

Our last night in the Governor, the window opened again. Gem was sweet and smooth about it, sliding off my limpness as if she’d finished herself, anyway.

“It happens to most people when they’re … under great stress,” she said, gently. “With you, it is the opposite, yes?”

“I … think so.”

“It’s not dissociation, is it? I mean, you know where you are and—”

“Yes. It’s just the way you described it. I can see everything I’m doing, but I can also see myself seeing it. Like I’m watching. Then a little box opens. And the more it gets filled, the bigger it gets. Until that’s all I can see.”

“That’s not like … not like the way I heard about it. From others.”

“What’s so different?”

“The trigger. As I said, some events cause so much fear that you—that people, I mean—cannot tolerate them. So they go somewhere else within themselves.”

“Sure. That’s dis—”

“Not … always. Some people can control it. So no matter what is happening to them, they are … outside it, do you understand?”

“Yeah. I do. But when I get afraid, it’s not like that.”