Down Here

I slapped a couple of turns of duct tape around his mouth, then dropped the black hood over his head, with another quick turn of the tape to hold the earphones in place.

I heard the downstairs door open.

A flashlight blazed downstairs for a half-second. Then it went out.

The SUV was a moving brick, black against the gray night. It came to a shadowed stop about fifty yards from the building. The front doors opened, and a man climbed out of each side. No light went on inside the truck.

“Can you see anyone still inside?” I asked Clarence.

“It looks empty, mahn. But someone could be on the floor.”

“All right. She should be out of the way by now. Go on downstairs. Remember, if there has to be any—”

“I know,” he said, threading the tube silencer into his nine-millimeter.

I lost sight of the two men just as they entered the building. I moved over to the top of the stairs. Looked down. Shadows inside shadows.

The front door opened. Closed.

A blast! of sudden light.

“Freeze, motherfuckers!” the Prof barked.

I heard a harsh grunt. Then the puffft! of a silenced handgun.

^“The broad strolls in. Max takes her from behind, same as he did the freak. She goes right out, never saw a thing. We wait for the two guys following her. As soon as they come in, I light them up, give them the word. One raises his hands, the other goes for his steel. Clarence cut loose, and—”

“Where’s the sister now?”

“Sleeping,” the Prof said. “I gave her the hypo the Mole put together. One shot, he said she’ll be out for a few hours. Wake up with a bad headache. Be all fuzzy, too, like coming out of a bad dream. That’s why he needed you to tell him how much she weighs, get the dose perfect.”

“We’ve got two men,” I said. “One in the room next door, one upstairs. No way to know if the guys in the SUV had backup—”

“Not in their truck, they didn’t,” Mick said, telling us he had gone out to make sure.

“—but they both had cells. Don’t know if they’re supposed to call in, how much time we’ve got. . . .”

“Got to pick one and run, son.”

“Yeah, Prof. I know.”

“Which one?”

“Wychek knows where. But the guys who came in after Laura, they know why, I think.”

“We came for the green,” the Prof said, settling it.

The man was in his late forties, tall and rangy, with leathery skin. In the soft light from the candle, his eyes were colorless.

“I’m not with them,” he said, in that calm, deliberate voice people use when they’re trying to keep an unstable person calm. “I’m a professional. Freelance, just like you, am I right? No reason for anyone to get wild, now. Just tell me what I have to do to walk out of here, and it’s done.”

“We want the money,” I told him.

“Sure. Give me the book, and you can name your price.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. It would have been just like that if that fucking Yusef didn’t have to play with his toys.”

“That’s what took Wychek out the first time?”

“Yeah. Could I have a cigarette?”

The Prof fired one up, held it to the man’s lips. He inhaled gratefully. “Thanks. I’m the same as you, okay? A professional. I get hired, do a job, get paid. Only they don’t trust outsiders, so they sent that degenerate psycho along with me.”

“Yusef?”

“Right.”

“He came with you tonight? He’s the one—?”

“Yeah. Like I said, he’s one of them. You had the drop on us, cold. Stupid asshole must have figured he was going straight to Mecca,” the tall man said, deliberately distancing himself from the dead body at the foot of the stairs. “After what he pulled the first time, I couldn’t believe they’d ever send him again.”

“The first time? You mean with the girl in that apartment on the Lower East Side?”

“Right. Fucking sicko. They told me he hooked her up to a car battery. He kept jolting her, but she kept telling the same story.”

“And later they found out it was the truth.”

“Not from her. Or from the other one, either. Fucking scumbag morons don’t know from interrogation. All they know is torture. It wasn’t until Wychek contacted them that they knew for sure.”

“He took the book from her apartment? After he raped her?”

“Right. When she found it was gone, she panicked. I don’t blame her, seeing what happened.”

“She couldn’t tell them anything but the truth.”

“Right. But they didn’t know it was the truth until Wychek started holding them up for money. That was when he was in the joint. By then, it was way too late for her. Fucking half-wits outsmarted themselves. They figured, even if they got busted themselves, nobody’d ever think to look for the book in some white girl’s apartment.”

“She was the girlfriend of one of the—?”

“If you mean, was she fucking one of them, yeah, I guess. But that wasn’t why they let her hold the book. She was one of them. One of those rich little ‘revolutionaries,’ you know what I mean? Like shopping isn’t enough of a thrill for them anymore, so they need to go liberate the downtrodden masses.”

The contempt in his voice invited me to join him, but I didn’t say anything, waiting for him to fill the silence. Maybe me holding Wychek’s straight razor helped.

“At first, the little weasel didn’t want that much,” the mercenary said. “I handled everything for them. I was the bridge man to get him that protection contract.”

“From the Brotherhood.”

“Right. You know what happened next. Fucking Wychek steps it up. He wants a lawyer. Okay. Still within budget. And by then they knew he hadn’t turned the book over to anyone. So they figured, Wychek gets out, they can deal with him.

“He gets out, all right. Only what he wants is a lot of money. Now, these sand nig—” He pulled himself up short, segued into—“assholes, they got the money,” without missing a beat. “They got all kinds of money. But instead of just paying him, they decide to get cute.

“Yusef’s got this little pistol. A twenty-five. Custom job. Between the suppressor and the reduced-powder hand-loads, it looked bad enough, but it wouldn’t kill a fucking cockroach. Yusef promises them, no electricity this time. He’ll use fear. Figures, he puts a couple of rounds into Wychek, it won’t kill him, but it’ll scare the shit out of him, make him give up the book.

“And that’s what Yusef does. He pops Wychek a couple of times. Then he puts the piece right between Wychek’s eyes, tells him ‘Last chance,’ and . . .”

“Wychek goes out.”

“Yeah. Fucking Arab assholes. Yusef swore Wychek didn’t have the book on him. Stupid amateur. He was too busy searching the body to check and see if Wychek was even still breathing.”

The tall man took another hit off the cigarette the Prof was holding for him. “After that, they’re in a panic,” he said. “In case Wychek’s got backup—you know, someone he left it with. But the book never surfaces, so they start to breathe easy.

“All of a sudden, there’s that story in the papers. That Wychek didn’t die. And they got this woman charged with shooting him. But Wychek’s supposed to be in a coma, and they’re not worried about him talking. Then, a couple of weeks later—bang!—they get another call. Wychek himself. He’s out of the coma. And he still wants to sell them the book. But now, behind what happened, he wants the money in front.”