Safe House

of his hair and pulled him backward so it looked like he was just sitting there. There was no blood, just a round little black dot on his temple—the opposite of a birthmark. Some of the powder had been removed from the cartridge to keep the sound down—the bullet was still somewhere in Lothar’s brain.

“You—”

Pryce cut himself off, out of words.

I wasn’t. “Now we’re gonna find out,” I told him, watching his hands in case we had to do him too. If it came to that, Hercules would have to snap his neck from behind—I didn’t have another bullet. Clarence’s connection made custom pieces—this one was a one-shot derringer with a thick core of silencing baffles. “Look,” I said, my voice as calm as a Zen rock garden, “Lothar was stalking his wife. That’s a fact, well documented. There’s an Order of Protection. You know that too. Well, what happened was that he got spotted breaking into his wife’s house. She isn’t there anymore, but he didn’t know that. He had implements with him—handcuffs, duct tape, like that. He was gonna kill his wife and kidnap the baby. Or both of them. Who knows? The cops came on the scene, and Lothar decided to shoot it out. Gunfire was exchanged. There’s the result, sitting right next to you. That’s the story that needs to getin the papers. So the others will see what happened. It won’t surprise them either—they knew Lothar was a torture-sex freak with a major hate for his wife. Okay, that leaves Herk. He’s your inside man now. And he needs that immunity. Or the faucet gets turned off.”

“You’re insane,” Pryce said, looking through the windshield. The street was quiet.

“People could argue about that,” I told him. “Nobody’s gonna argue about Lothar being dead.”

“You expect me to drive around with a dead body and—”

“I don’t care what you do. I know people can’t see through these windows from outside. You want cover, I’ll drive point until you get clear. To wherever you want—we can stay linked on the cellulars. But I don’t think you want me to see where you’re going.

“It’s time to prove,” I told him. “If you’re the real thing, if you’re down with ZOG, you can do this. If you’re not, it’s all over. You got no more cards to play. You thought you knew me. Now you do. You take down Crystal Beth’s network, you dime out Vyra to her husband, you turn Porkpie loose on Hercules, you’re done, pal. You’ll never find all of us. And one of us will find you.”

“Get out of the car,” he said in a tight, controlled voice. “Get out now. I’ll call you.”

We watched the white Taurus drive away. Smooth and steady.

I crossed the bridge into Manhattan. Pulled up to a deli on Delancey. A Latino in an old army field jacket was leaning against the wall, just out of the rain. He walked over to the Plymouth. Herk rolled down his window. The guy stuck his head inside, nodded at me. He went into the deli, came back with a paper bag full of sandwiches and a couple of bottles of apple juice. I glove-handed him the empty, wiped-down steel tube and five one-hundred-dollar bills. He pocketed both and walked off.

Herk dialed Vyra from a pay phone on the street. Told her he’d be there soon.

Back in the car, he turned to me. “Burke, I’m with you, okay? No matter what. I mean, I don’t gotta understand why—”

“You know what happens when a raccoon gets his leg caught in one of those steel traps, Herk? You know what he’s got to do, he wants to live?”

“Bite the leg off?” the big man said.

“Yeah. There’s two kinds of raccoons get caught in those traps. The ones with balls enough to do what they gotta do. And dead ones. A bitch raccoon gets in heat, she wants a stud that’s gonna give her the strongest babies, understand? You know what she looks for? Not the biggest raccoon. Not the prettiest one either. A smart bitch, she looks for one with three legs.”

“I get it, bro. Okay, we got three legs now. I’m in. But . . . we got a problem. I think, anyway.”

“What?”

“There’s a meeting. Tonight.”

“Damn. Why didn’t you—?”

“I forgot. Until just now.”

“Jesus, Herk. Even if Pryce goes for it, he can’t make it happen right now. He’s gonna need a day or so, minimum. The best we can hope for is the newspaper story. I thought we’d watch—he makes that happen, I believe he can do the immunity thing. And then I was going to have this lawyer I hired go in and tighten that up for you. But if you go to that meeting and Lothar isn’t there . . .”

“He wasn’t supposed to be there, right?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, he’s supposed to be stalking his wife, right? And he gets smoked doing it, okay? No way I know about that. Or any of them either. Unless it’s on the news. Why shouldn’t I just go on? It ain’t like me and him was supposed to be cut-buddies anyway.”

“Herk, that’s if Pryce goes along. That’s if he can do it even if he wants to. That’s if he hasn’t already decided to cut his losses and down the whole fucking crew. If you know about the meeting tonight, Lothar did too. And he probably told Pryce.”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“You could jet,” I told him.

“I was gonna do that, what’d you take Lothar off the count for? I ain’t that stupid. I know what you was talking about. Lothar was the ace, right? Now I’m the top card. The only one that cocksucker Pryce’s got. I thought we was gonna play this to win.”

“I should have asked you about the next meeting.”

“I’m going in there,” he said. “And if that little motherfucker Porkpie dimes us out, I’ll take the weight. For everything. I did that guy in the alley, I did Lothar, what’s the difference? Life is life.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going back.”

“If it was just me, I wouldn’t,” Hercules said. “But if it goes bad, the only way I can take the heat offa everyone is to stand up, right? So I’ll do it.”

“If that happens, I’ll get you out,” I promised him. “Not through the courts, over the wall. It’ll take some time but—”

“I’ll have the time, brother,” the big man said, down but determined. “Now I gotta go say goodbye to Vyra.”

“Did I do something to make you angry?” Crystal Beth asked meekly. Lying on her stomach, her body picking up bronze highlights from the candle’s flame.

“Why’d you ask me that?”

“Because you . . . hurt me. When we made love. You were so . . . rough. Storming in here. Holding me down. Pinned down. I felt like I was in a steel vise. I couldn’t move. And you didn’t . . . wait for me. You just—”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Not to me, anyway.”

“I said I was sorry, Crystal Beth. I . . . got something on my mind.”

“Pryce?”

“Pryce is a dead man,” I snapped at her.

She gasped.

“I mean, if he doesn’t come through, he’s dead,” I said quickly. “It’s really tense now, little girl. I shouldn’t have . . . done what I did. To you, I mean. I’m sorry. If there’s any way I can make it up to you, I’ll—”

“We could try it again,” she said softly, a little smile playing around her full lips. “From the top.”

“Where are you going?” she asked later.

“Out.”