Red rain 2.0 (17 page)

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when I scan the car and scan him side by side, my heart sinks. The man's going to crush my beautiful machine.

"Slow and easy, IB. Watch how heavy you come down. Just sort of slide right in, the way you do with MJ," I say, but I'm anxious.

"Shut up, small boy. Aw fuck!" Ice Box cracks his head on the outside edge of the roof. He's sort of stuck, his legs and half his ass inside, the rest outside.

"You gotta bend more, IB, and slip sideways. Watch the leather, though."

"I can't bend anymore. You think I'm some kind of circus contortionist?" IB complains. Backing and filling like an eighteen-wheeler in a crowded truck stop, he manages to get in and even close the door. Of course his head's near the dashboard instead of back against the seat, and his shoulders and torso are so far over toward me I have to punch him every time I shift gears. He bitches all the way to Towson, a running stream of abuse that would excite admiration among the most inventive drill instructors in the Corps.

"You're paying the chiropractor bills," he says when he pops out like a jack-in-the-box once we park at HQ.

"Yeah, yeah," I say. My mind's in the near future, I can't muster the usual comeback.

"Good, clean arrest, men," Dugal says when we come in. "Outstanding. You're going to love this, Luther. Our man's agreed to have a little casual conversation with you while he waits for his lawyer to get here. Says he'd enjoy a nice chat. That's a quote, his exact words. Your man's self-possession under the circumstances is extraordinary."

Good, clean bust only because I convinced you, asshole, not to fuck it up.

"I'm glad you want to see me, Peter," I say. "Did you see James in the holding cell? He's very angry with me. Won't say a word. Feels betrayed, I think."

"Oh, no hard feelings, Bob. None at all."

"Generous of you."

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"I know you're just doing your job, Bob. I know you have to do your little thing for your little paycheck."

"What's your job, Peter? Do you like it? Like your employer?"

"Actually, I don't have either, Bob. I have investments."

"Oh? Trust fund from a rich uncle or something?"

"A bit more complex than that, Bob."

"Interesting. You must have some very interesting friends, Peter," I say. We're in the sweatroom, nothing sinister about it, just a very plain room with a table and three chairs, a large one-way mirror on a side wall, and the name on Buzz Cut's Maryland driver's license is Peter Raskin. That's being checked out. So are his fingerprints.

"No, Bob. I wouldn't call them interesting. I wouldn't call them friends." Buzz Cut smiles.

"Well, they impress me. I've seen a lot of horse, but never seen any as pure as yours. Our lab people are jumping up and down with excitement. Your friends gave you something very special. Don't you find that interesting?"

"Actually, Bob, I'm not quite following you here. Horse?" he laughs. No shades on now, I'm seeing his eyes for the first time; they're a pale arctic blue. "Jargon, Bob."

"Cut the crap, scumbag," Ice Box says. "Horse. Smack. Heroin. You handed it right over. Dumb move."

"Is that right? I find your big friend here interesting, Bob. Italian-American, I'd guess. Lasagna or baked ziti are his favorites, but he likes his mother's more than he likes what his wife makes. A little tension in the household? The wife hates going to his mother's for Sunday dinner sort of thing? I love the little details of little lives."

"Fuck you," Ice Box says. A minute into it and he's already on the edge of losing his cool. Not the usual IB.

"Oh, I like his mother's better too," I say, smiling. "IB's got good taste. The fact is his wife's a lousy cook."

"Now Bob, you can do better than that. So far the good cop-bad cop act is lame. I'd expected better."

"You want bad?" IB says. "I can give you real bad. You

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like a little pain, huh Pete? I'm thinking I've got this nice, heavy sap just waiting to meet your kidneys. You could be pissing blood for a week, not even a bruise to show how it happened."

"Please officer, not that." Buzz Cut laughs. "Bob, restrain your big friend, I beg you. You wouldn't want to blow your case by letting him do anything illegal, would you?"

"I'll do just that. Peter," I say. "I'm a very legal-type

guy-"

"Bob, that's not what I've heard. I've heard some shocking things."

The fuck's playing with me, he's having fun here.

"It's the other way around, Peter, isn't it?"

He laughs again. He laughs in this totally controlled way that is sending all sorts of signals to me now. "Did you see that great movie where Gary Oldman's a crooked DEA agent, he and his team bust into the apartment of some guy who's been short-weighting them and shoot him and his wife and kids? And when he hears the police sirens, he calmly starts to leave, except he orders one agent, who looks like some kind of hippy, to stay. And this hippy DEA says to Oldman, 'What do I tell the cops?' And Oldman says, very coolly, 'Tell them we were
doing ourjobV
"

"Short-weighting? Jargon, Peter," I say. "Now you've gotten me all confused. This short-weighting sounds very bad, whatever it is. Now what if your friends found out, some way or other, that
you
have been short-weighting them? I mean, I know it's only Hollywood hyperbole you were talking about. But even if it was only half that bad. Oh Peter, I wouldn't want to be you."

"I'm not clear on what you mean, but is that some sort of threat? Are you threatening me in a veiled way, Snake?" Buzz Cut says, a little less cool now. "Now what is your boss, who's looking and listening on the other side of that mirror over there, going to say to you later? Is he going to say 'Snake, you asshole! I thought you knew how to interrogate suspects'?"

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Then he's laughing again. "Oh Bob, you're not living up to my expectations at all. I was looking forward to a really interesting chat."

"I'm sorry if this is boring you, Peter. Let's start over. Where'd you get the heroin you tried to sell to me tonight? Name some names."

"Sell? I never tried to sell anything, you know that. I was simply carrying a bag someone I never saw before handed me, and you snatched it from me outside the mall. Good thing there were police around. An attempted robbery, in front of hundreds of witnesses. And you're so distinctive-looking, Bob. Anyone could identify you."

Now I laugh.

"Bob, let me ask you a serious question. Are you a crooked cop, the sort you sometimes read about in the newspapers, robbing and stealing and things?"

"Aw fuck this," IB snorts, getting up from his chair and moving behind Buzz Cut. "Stand up, shithead. I'm going to work on your kidneys."

"Your big friend watch a lot of television, Bob? Lot of movies, like Harvey Keitel in
The Bad Lieutenant!"
Buzz Cut says, standing. He turns his head back toward IB, gives him a big smile. "Well? You going to start this hitting shit or what?"

Ice Box puts his hands on Buzz Cut's shoulders and pushes him down into the chair, gently. "Not just now, faggot. Maybe later, after you've been gang-raped in your cell tonight."

IB gives me a hand signal, and we both start to leave the sweatroom. "I think I'll be going home before anything like that could happen," Buzz Cut says. "In fact, I guarantee it."

"Oh, very fruitful. Very useful. Really going to help a lot," Dugal says to me and IB.

The LT decides to let Buzz Cut stew a while. The LT goes off to have some coffee, maybe a snack. When he enters the interrogation room maybe an hour later, Peter Raskin is

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flanked by Harvey Eckhaus, the best criminal attorney in the county. Eckhaus is smart and fast as a weasel, he's beaten us more times than we can count. No questioning Raskin at all. Eckhaus says charge my client or release him. Dugal charges him with major felonies, Eckhaus gets hold of a judge and sets up a bail hearing that same night, and Buzz Cut walks on a $250,000 bond. It's so smooth I'm stunned.

Raskin checks clean. Born in Brooklyn, moved to Maryland three years ago, no outstanding warrants anywhere, no prior arrest record.

I'm standing by the door when Raskin's leaving with Eckhaus. Some flash out of nowhere hits me. I blurt, "Son of a horse-fucking whore!" in Russian. Raskin whirls and snarls, "Lick my balls!" In Russian. Eckhaus hustles him away.

Last doubts vanish. Definitely time to get next to Vassily. Time to sic the Dog.

13

I see Helen's Bug in the parking lot. I see her sitting on the corridor floor, leaning back against my door, legs sprawled. Her head's nodding in an odd way. Panic second. Then I see the tiny earphones, the thin wire snaking down to the slim silver CD player not much bigger than a CD itself resting on her lap. Her eyes are closed. I put my mouth close to her ear and call out, "Jammin'!"

She starts, grins up at me, pulls out the 'phones. I can hear the tinny sound of music from them. "You're going to go deaf, listening at that volume," I say.

"New Moby. Have to play it loud to get it all," she says, standing up.

"Get what, besides electronic drone? Don't know where you got your taste in music." I shake my head.

"Must have been the same place I got my taste in men." She kisses me. "About time you showed up." "I don't recall we'd made a date for tonight." "We didn't, but I was feeling needy so I came over." "How long were you going to sit there waiting?" "Oh, just 'til that song was finished. Then I was going to write you a heart-breaking note that'd make you feel guilty for hours, leave it leaning against your door so your neighbors would see it, and leave." "Oh?"

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"Well, I think nearly an hour was long enough sitting here waiting."

"You're a very whacked young lady, Helen," I say, keying the door and pushing it open, watching her slip in.

"No, just horny." She laughs.

She means it. We don't even make it to the sofa, we don't get any of our clothes off, just her skirt lifted and my fly unzipped and then it's happening on the living room rug. Quick but sweet. She rolls out from under me almost as soon as its over.

"Much better now," she says brightly. "See you later."

She gets up, but makes no move to go. Instead, she fetches a couple of beers from the fridge, hands me one, then curls herself up on the sofa, graceful as a cat. She watches me like a cat, too, for a while. An unblinking, concentrated gaze, impossible to read. Then she starts laughing.

"I'm trying to decide who you are, Luther," she says. "It's a bitch."

Normally I'd click off any conversation that weighted at its start, but I'm cool about it now. Seeing her so lovely and looking like she so belongs exactly there, content on my sofa, is better than a tab. It smoothes and soothes me. I can bear some girl talk in this state.

"Just what you see," I said.

"Can't see character, that's got to be revealed in words and actions," Helen says. "I thought I had a fix on you by last spring, but then three months apart, and I've lost it. Actually it's as much fun as it is a bitch, like I'm getting to learn you all over again. You know how you read a good book once, and then when you read it the second time after an interval, you find all kinds of new things and think, 'How'd I miss
that
the first time?' It's like that."

"So put me on the curriculum, let some of your classmates see if they have the same reaction."

"No way! No sharing. One or two of those sluts would make a try for that. Even though you're so old. And
you 'd

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probably go right along—even if they're kind of overweight and not great looking—'cause that's your character."

"Thought you hadn't figured out my character yet?"

"That part, for sure. It's the more complex bits. Can't decide if you're more like Faulconbridge the Bastard, Hotspur or Prince Hal, with weird bits of Mercutio, Hamlet and Iago all mixed in."

"What is it with you and Shakespeare?"

"Aside from writing the most beautiful English ever written by anyone? It's that all his characters
change
their characters. They don't stay the same all through the play. They shift and change like real people."

"Okay. Like real people, if you say so. But if you're right, you'll never figure out me or anyone else, because plays end and lives don't. Well, they do, but you don't usually get to see anyone's go all the way through to the end."

"I knew I was right about you, Luther! You want people—your audience—to think you're just a tough guy with street smarts and that's it. Like you said, what you see. But you can talk about ideas, relate to Shakespeare even if you've never read his work."

"Have read it. Well, we had to read
Julius Caesar
in high school. I liked the big stabbing scene best. Great knife work for a bunch of pansies dressed in sheets."

"Oh, kiss my ass, you cynic." Helen laughs, draining her beer and going for another.

"Now that wouldn't be any change, would it? Kiss that and a lot else in the vicinity every chance I get, don't I?"