“Such a gentleman. I wish I didn’t have to kill you both.”
“Bennita too?”
“I could have used her. She’s the prettiest mule on the West Coast. I tried to talk her into double-crossing Ernest, told her we could split the spoils-it was a lie, of course-but she betrayed me… and what did she get for her troubles? Tell him, baby.”
“After she killed Ernie, she beat me with that ugly gun,” Bennita Bangs said, shuddering at the memory.
“And all for this junk?” Cravitz asked, lifting one of the yellow bricks.
“Dope is power. Love will only take you so far,” Athena Powers smiled. Esmeralda sparkled in her steady hand. As she stepped forward, Cravitz burst the brick of butter in his bony hands and dashed its contents into her eyes. She cried out and pulled the trigger.
Esmeralda did not fire.
Cravitz cracked her stiffly across the jaw. Athena Powers dropped like a stone, through the clouds of golden dust.
“Baby, can’t you save me?” Athena said to Cravitz thirty minutes later as two uniforms led her out to the police van.
“Fresh outta love, boo,” Cravitz answered.
Athena kissed him tenderly on the lips. “You’ll never get me outta your mind.”
“
“How can you do this to me?”
“It’s a gift,” Cravitz said.
That night Cravitz’s dreams were restless reenactments of the murder scene. He imagined his old friend sleeping peacefully on the bed, Esmeralda nearby, Athena working the murdering minds of the Flo Boyz like marionettes, easing them fretfully through the night. His vow of a good deed had failed.
The following morning, before Yippie’s funeral, Cravitz drove to St. Benedict’s. There was one penitent there, an old woman bending over her rosary before the altar in a frayed frock and shawl. A tattered handbag sat on the pew beside her. The pair prayed in silence. Cravitz ruefully promised St.
Benedict that on his next birthday he’d do better with his good deed.
When he was finished, Cravitz stole quietly near where the old woman kneeled and dropped a $100 bill atop her ragged purse. On his way out, he scribbled the name
MIDNIGHT IN SILICON ALLEYBY DENISE HAMILTON
They caught up with Russell Chen as he drove home from work, running his Lexus off the frontage road by the gravel pits of Irwindale. There were four of them, wearing reflective sunglasses and trucker caps pulled low, and for one terrified moment Chen though they meant to jack the car, kill him, and throw his body on the gray mountains of slag.
When they shoved him into a Lincoln with tinted windows, his sphincter almost let go with relief. Then fear throbbed anew as he considered the endgame. The bleakness of his situation mirrored the landscape: industrial parks rising like toadstools from the desecrated earth. In the rearview mirror, Chen watched his computer chip factory shrink to a snowball panorama, then disappear.
“The captured pigeon trembles with fright,” the man in the front passenger seat said in Chinese. He craned his head and laughed uproariously to see Chen squashed between two thugs wearing cheap ties and wool-blend jackets. One of the thugs held a gun to his ribs.
The laughing man was the boss. For weeks his people had shadowed Chen, watching him kiss his wife and children goodbye each morning, clocking his drive to work. Children were good, they liked that and took note. In the evening they watched it all in reverse as Chen’s car left the parking slot that read,
Yes, the boss had been patient. And thorough. He knew all about the garden apartment in Arcadia where Chen stashed his mistress and their newborn son. But he’d been surprised to discover the brothel that Chen visited each Friday noon, tucked inside a tract home in South San Gabriel where the scorched lawn fought a losing battle against the sun and polyester lace curtains stayed permanently drawn. He’d dispatched a man to pay the fee and climb the stairs to the rooms where a sad-eyed Mainland teen sat behind every door, brushing her hair and gargling with an industrial bottle of mouthwash she kept next to her Hong Kong magazines, baby wipes, K-Y jelly, and condoms.
An hour later, Mr. Chen would emerge, looking pensive and smoking a cigarette.
Greedy, greedy, the boss said, shaking his head.
On Friday afternoon, he handed out ties, jackets, and machine guns, and the gang, now camouflaged in business attire, set off with military precision. There were fourteen men and four cars in all-one to retrieve Chen, two for the factory, and one for the special errand.
Pulling up to the discreet sign that said only
They ignored the offers of purses and wallets. They were after the silicon chips, a negotiable tender akin to diamonds, gold bullion, heroin, C4, and enriched uranium. Lacking serial numbers, chips were untraceable and no law prohibited their flow across borders. Best of all, twenty million dollars’ worth fit neatly into a slim briefcase, with room left over for a passport, airline tickets, and a paperback novel. You could stroll right through security and onto a plane. Within sixteen hours, they’d disappear into the gray market that flourished in the backstreets of Hong Kong’s hi-tech district. Silicon Alley, they called it. Eighteen more hours and the chips would circle the globe, coming to rest in Zurich and Johannesburg and even boomeranging back to California’s Silicon Valley.
Except in this case, the chips weren’t in the locked metal cage where the mole had sworn they’d be. They relayed the news to the boss, who cursed but didn’t despair. This, too, was a contingency he’d planned for. In the black town car inching through rush-hour traffic along Interstate 10, the boss applied the screws to Chen.
“In your office, there is a safe built into the wall,” he said, watching Chen the way a butcher assesses a slab of meat. “We need the combination.”
For emphasis, cold metal nudged further into his ribs.
Chen pressed against his other captor, who shifted and gave off a garlicky body odor. How was it that garlic could savor food so divinely, yet be such an abomination when released through human pores, Chen wondered, as he considered their demands. He was amazed he could hold both thoughts at the same time. What a supple organ the brain was. He hoped he would not lose control of his bowels.
The prodding grew more insistent. Oxygen ebbed out of the car, making his chest tighten. Was this what a heart attack felt like? If he died, they’d never get the combination. It would be a fitting trick from a god he’d stopped believing in five minutes ago. No. He wouldn’t tell them. He’d be ruined, his family turned out. This was his biggest order yet, twenty million dollars’ worth of chips with a bonus for early delivery, and he was days away from completion. He’d gambled everything, even borrowed money from loan sharks to hire more workers. How could success be snatched from him now? Chen would rather die. If he sacrificed himself, his wife could take over. At least his children’s future would be assured-all of them. He had amended his will last month to reflect the birth of a male heir. His mistress Yashi hadn’t believed it until he’d shown her the papers. Chen had even left a generous gift for Mieux Mieux at the brothel.
The butt of a gun came down against his temple so hard he felt his brains slosh inside his skull. His head
