Point of Impact

— and past a certain point, they didn’t seem to get much better — why bother? Might be a better one just ahead.

He looked at his watch, one of those Seiko Kinetics that you never had to wind or replace the batteries in; it ran off some kind of tiny generator that charged up a capacitor or something every time you moved your wrist. Watch would run as long as you could wiggle your arm a little, guaranteed for life. And if things got to the point where he couldn’t wiggle his arm a little, there wouldn’t be any reason to worry about what time it was.

At the moment, it was almost ten A.M.

He sighed. Too late to get in a workout or a jog on the beach. Better go take a shower and then get rolling. He had to drive out to the desert to restock his mobile lab, and it was a couple hours each way, even if the traffic was good. He could take his vitamins with him, get something to eat later. He needed to be back by six, he had a dinner with the Zee-ster, that was always good for some laughs. If Tad had been mobile, he’d have sent him, but he wasn’t and that was that, too.

Well, at least it looked as if the weather was okay. Once he got past the smog curtain, he could drop the top and enjoy the sunshine. Great thing about SoCal was that you could pretty much do that year round. Yeah, it rained in the winter and actually got chilly a couple times in season, but he’d spent many a January day lying on the beach cooking under a warm sun. Sure, the water got colder, but with a wet suit, you could surf any time. Not that he’d done much of that lately. Too busy working. Have to remedy that pretty soon.

He grinned. He wondered what his father would say if he knew how much money little Bobby had tucked away. Or how he had earned it. The old man would blow a gasket, that was certain, you’d be able to see the steam coming out his head for fucking miles. Thirty years with the Bureau, as straight an arrow as ever put on a suit, his old man, a guy who’d always paid his own parking tickets rather than flash his FBI badge at a meter maid.

And for what? What had all that nose-to-the-grindstone, johnny-be-good crap gotten his old man?

It had gotten him retired to a condo in Tucson, Arizona, just him and that little terrier of his, Franklin, living on a pension and bitching about how the world had gone to hell in a handbasket. Actually, Drayne kinda liked the dog. Best thing his old man had done since Mom died was get a dog, not saying much. First week he’d had the beast, it had come back inside carrying a big ole dead rat it had caught. Rat almost as big as the dog, and you’d have never thought by looking at the little barker that he had it in him. Drayne liked that.

It had been more than a year since he had gone to visit his father. Franklin must be pushing nine or ten by now, probably middle-aged in dog years.

Drayne often wondered, if his old man found out what he was doing, would he turn him in? Some days he was sure that former Special Agent in Charge Rickover Drayne, RD to his friends, most of whom were feds, would do it, no question. Other days, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe the old bastard had a soft spot for his only son. Not that Drayne had ever been able to see it.

As far as the old man knew, Bobby worked for a small chemical company that produced plastic polymer for use in industrial waste containers, earning a decent salary, just a hair more than his father had made in his last year before retirement. This was done so the old man would think all that tuition money for the chemistry degree hadn’t been wasted. He might have his differences with his son, but at least he could say the boy had a legitimate job making decent money.

Of course, that was as much for Drayne’s protection as for making his father proud. He had gone to some lengths to create the PolyChem Products company, duly incorporated in Delaware, to set up a modest history in a few selected computer banks, and to make sure he was listed as an employee. Just in case his father checked it out. He wouldn’t put it past the old man to do that. Paid taxes on the paper job salary he showed, too, and FICA and all that shit. IRS didn’t care what you did as long as you paid taxes. He could have declared his income from dope sales and paid the feds their cut, and the IRS would never say anything to the DEA about it. People had done it before.

The government, in whatever form it manifested, was plainly stupid. He could dick around with them all he wanted, and they’d never catch him.

Drayne wandered into the bathroom and cranked up the shower. It was a big sucker, room enough for four or five people, all pale green tile and glass bricks, with a dozen shower heads set all over: high, low, in-between. With the jets turned on full blast, it was like being stabbed by wet needles. Used a shitload of water — he had a pair of eighty-gallon water heaters in the garage — but when you came out of it, you felt clean and rejuvenated, that was for sure.

He stepped into the shower and gasped at the force of the spray.

Tad would be out for probably eighteen or twenty hours, maybe longer. He’d still be on the couch when Drayne got back. Maybe even still breathing. And he’d spend most of the next week or so on the couch, lying on the floor, or, if he made it that far, a bed. Recovering from the Hammer was a chore. It got harder each time.

Drayne stopped thinking and let the hot water take him.

The Bronx, New York

Toni sat in the chair next to Guru’s bed, watching the old woman sleep. Mrs. DeBeers had been lucky, the doctor told her. The stroke was mild, and she was in otherwise remarkable health for an eighty-three-year-old woman. There was only a slight effect on her grip and speech, no real paralysis, and they expected she’d make a full recovery. There were still tests they had to run and medications they had to administer and monitor for a couple of days, but pretty much they thought she was out of the woods.

The doctors only told her that because Guru had listed her as next of kin, even though that wasn’t true.

Toni was more than a little relieved. Guru DeBeers had been a part of her life since Toni had seen her, at sixty-five, clean the clocks of four neighborhood toughs who tried to give her a hard time. Toni had been amazed at the sight and had known immediately she wanted to learn how to protect herself against physical attacks that way. Men tended to take women for granted physically, and even at thirteen Toni had known she did not want to be at the mercy of some man who decided he wanted something from her she didn’t want to give. The training in pentjak silat, starting with the simple bukti negara style and progressing to the more complex serak, had been a part of Toni’s world ever since. She still went over to see her teacher whenever she went home to visit her parents, and the trip across the street had never gotten dull.

Old as Guru was, it was impossible to imagine her gone.

“Ah, how is my tunangannya today?”

Toni smiled. Best girl. There was the smallest slur to Guru’s voice, hardly noticeable. “I’m fine, Guru. How are you feeling?”

“I’ve felt worse. Better, too. It would be nice to have some coffee.”

“The doctors won’t let you do that, not after a stroke.”

“I have outlived three sets of doctors so far. I will outlive this set if they wait for coffee to kill me. And if does kill me, at least I die happy.”

Toni smiled again, and reached into her purse. She brought out a small stainless steel thermos.

The old woman’s smile was radiant, if a trifle saggy on the left side of her face. “Ah. You are a dutiful student.”

“It’s not fresh,” Toni said. “I didn’t have time to go by your place and grind your grand-nephew’s beans and make it. I got it at Starbucks more than an hour ago. I’m sorry.”

Guru shrugged. “It will do. Raise the bed.”

Toni operated the controls, and the motor hummed and raised Guru into a more-or-less sitting position. Toni poured the coffee into the thermos’s cup and passed it over.

Guru inhaled deeply through her nose. “Espresso?”

“Of course. The darkest they had.”

“Well, stale or not, it is welcome. Thank you, my best girl.” Guru brought the cup to her lips and took a small sip. “Not bad, not bad,” she pronounced. “Another hundred years or so, and Americans might learn how to make a decent brew. And certainly it is better than nothing.” She took another sip, then smiled again. “And how is our baby doing?”

“Fine, as far as I can tell. Mostly he elbows me in the bladder or rolls around and tries to boot my stomach inside out.”

“Yes, they do that. And he is tiny yet. Wait until you are eight or nine months along, and he kicks you so hard your pants fall down.” She chuckled.