Those, and the large wet patch on his pants.
Doyle pulls the car over. He strips off the leather gloves and drops them onto the black ski mask he has already tossed onto the passenger seat.
It doesn’t rattle him that he’s just terrorized another human being. Lorenze Wheaton hardly enters into that category anyhow. Lorenze Wheaton is a punk. A lowlife. He sells drugs to schoolkids. Rumor has it that he also raped a girl of fifteen, but the cops never managed to make that one stick. So what if he’s just had a taste of the misery he doles out to others?
But of course that’s not the real reason Doyle paid him that little visit. He’s not in the business of setting up as a vigilante. No, something else drew him to Wheaton’s place tonight.
He’d heard on the streets about Wheaton’s feud with Mojo. Heard too that Wheaton had taken to carrying a semi-automatic pistol around with him for protection.
Doyle reaches into his pocket and pulls out the Beretta 92. Wheaton’s gun.
He doesn’t know how dangerous this mission he’s on for Bartok is likely to get. What he does know is that if he needs to shoot someone, this time he’s going to make damn sure he doesn’t use a weapon that can be traced back to him.
Not that it will come to that. Doyle doesn’t plan to shoot anyone.
And don’t his plans always work out?
FIFTEEN
It’s after two o’clock in the morning when he kicks in the door.
He hopes this will be straightforward. He hopes that Cubo and his girl will be tucked up in bed. Fast asleep. Not expecting any interruptions to their sweet dreams. Doyle will present his most fearsome aspect, wave his gun around, offer up a few simple questions and then get out of there. That’s how it will go.
Sure.
The first thing he sees is Tasha Wilmot. Which is a surprise in itself because he wasn’t expecting to be able to see a damned thing. But he can see Tasha because there is a lamp on in the room. Not only that, but there is some R amp;B playing quietly in the background. And Tasha is stark naked on the sofa. Welcome home, sugar.
And yet Tasha does not scream. Despite the fact that she is unclothed and is looking at a burly man in a ski mask who has just barged uninvited into her apartment and is now pointing a cannon at her face, she does not yell. Doesn’t even attempt to conceal her assets behind a cushion or two. And the reason for this apparent devil- may-care attitude of hers is not bravery or indignation; it is that she is stoned out of her skull. Doyle sees immediately that she can hardly focus on him, and that the only response he’s likely to get from her is some random eye-rolling accompanied by a little drooling.
He wastes no time in racing across to the bedroom, his heart now thumping warnings against his ribcage. If Tasha is awake, then there is every possibility that Cubo is also awake. And if he’s only a little more compos mentis than his girlfriend, he could well be reaching for a weapon of some kind right now.
Doyle shoulders the door open. Flies into the room. Scans the area with gun outstretched in a two-handed combat stance that would be a dead giveaway to any observer that this intruder is probably a cop, ski mask notwithstanding.
But there are no observers here. Except for perhaps those of the six-legged variety. There is a lamp on in this fleapit of a room, but no Cubo. Which leaves only. .
He hears the noise before he gets there. The bathroom. He launches himself at the door with his leg raised. Drives his foot into the area just over the handle. The door practically comes off its hinges as it crashes open. Doyle’s momentum carries him into the room, and for a terrifying moment he wonders whether an entrance like this is the wisest of moves.
He’s found Cubo.
Luckily his quarry doesn’t pose a threat. In fact, he’s probably the least threatening quarry imaginable. For one thing, he’s naked. He also makes size-zero models look obese: every bone in his body is visible through his thin pallid flesh. And his response to Doyle’s invasion is not to come at him with a knife or a gun, but to contemplate jumping out of the window he has just opened. He sits straddling the windowsill, one leg outside, one in, his gaze oscillating between Doyle and the blackness on the other side of that wall.
‘You don’t wanna do that,’ yells Doyle. ‘You’re five floors up and you’re not over the fire escape. You jump and you’re dead. And if you don’t die, where you gonna go with no clothes on?’
Cubo turns his head to the night air again. A gust of wind blows rain into his face. He turns back to Doyle.
‘I just wanna talk,’ says Doyle. ‘Don’t risk it, man.’ He pushes his Beretta into his waistband, then steps closer to Cubo. He sees that Cubo seems to relax a little, as though he is resolving his dilemma. As though he is on the verge of accepting that an encounter with a masked gunman, however undesirable that might be, beats a fall to certain death.
Doyle makes the most of the opportunity. He covers the remaining distance between himself and Cubo in one sudden bound. He reaches out his hand. .
. . and pushes Cubo out of the window.
Sometimes Doyle thinks he can be a little too impulsive for his own good. Can be a little too
Take now, for example. Dangling a naked guy out of a window by his ankles has to be one of the more outrageous acts he has perpetrated in his career. He would slap his own wrist if it didn’t mean letting go of this lowlife.
‘Quit the yelling!’ he calls down to Cubo. ‘You want the neighbors to hear? You want them to step into the backyard and see you like this?’
‘Bring me up!’ yells Cubo. ‘Get me the fuck inside, will ya!’
‘The sooner you quit yapping, the sooner I haul you back up. I ain’t exactly enjoying the view I got from up here, if you know what I mean.’
‘Okay,’ Cubo says, his voice unnaturally high-pitched. ‘Okay. I’m shutting up. Now bring me in. I ain’t good with heights.’
‘Then what the hell were you doing opening the window, dumbass? Don’t answer that. I got a more interesting question.’
‘What? What question?’
‘Anton Ruger. Where can I find him?’
‘Who? Who?’
‘Don’t prolong this, Cubo. My hands are getting pretty slippery in this rain. Anton Ruger. Where is he?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. I ain’t never heard of no Anton Ruger.’
Doyle allows Cubo’s ankles to slip through his grasp by about an inch. It’s enough to cause Cubo to let out another ultrasonic yelp.
‘Don’t fuck with me, Cubo. I know you been mouthing off about how you’ve been running with Ruger. Now where can I find him?’
‘All right, man. It’s true. I did say that. But it was just talk. I ain’t never met the guy.’
Doyle jerks his arms enough to shake the coins from Cubo’s pants, if he were wearing any. He gets another girlish scream.
‘Then why say it? Of all the scumbags you could claim to fraternize with, why pick Ruger? How come you know so much about him?’
‘All right, listen. There’s this other dude I know. He’s copped from me once or twice. When he was high, he told me about Ruger. About how he works for him. That’s all I know, man. It’s all hearsay. Now, please, let me up.’
Doyle doesn’t relent. Not yet.
‘Who is this guy?’
