Aftershock (13 page)

“You come in as a blank slate. So whatever they write on that
slate, it will be your truth for five years. After that, then you have a choice: stay or go.

“La Légion exists to fight—if they bring peace to one area, they will be sent to another. The officers will all be French, but those who train with you will not. You will learn all kinds of war, from mountains to deserts to jungles. That may be valuable to you later in your life. Or it may not. But what is beyond value is that any legionnaire may construct his own past.

“I know what is in your mind, my son. You are thinking, after five years you will come back. To this place. To me. But only this place will be here—I will not. It is time for us both to go, you understand? To different destinations. And never again to meet.”

I picked up the ragged knapsack that contained all my possessions and climbed up the stone stairs to the street.

I didn’t look back. I wanted the last sight the old man had of me to be my complete respect and trust.

I continued to reach for my life before that time with the old man for many more years. I finally just gave up. I accepted that I would never know. Maybe I was never going back to a place where I would be welcomed, but by then I knew I hadn’t come from any such place, either.

I
got out of the Lexus and walked over to the Evo. I crossed the windshield to let them get a good look, then I stood by the passenger-side front window, hands open at my sides.

The window zipped down. “Do we know you?” a voice said. Young man’s voice, trying too hard to sound hard.

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I’m a collector. I thought I might be able to add to my collection.”

“Who told you to come here to do that?”

“That’s a joke, right?”

The voice waited a solid minute. Then it said, “Get in the back.”

The back seat held a man sitting behind the driver. Nothing else.

I got in, sat down.

“A collector?” A man’s voice. A full-grown man, in his forties.

“That’s me.”

“You mind a little light pat-down, Mr. Collector?”

“Yeah, I do. I carry. No surprise, right? Anyway, you’ve got a transmitter-detector running.”

“You saw that?”

“No. But if I’ve come to the right place, you’d have one around somewhere.”

“Huh! You collect what?”

“Actually, I collect collections.”

“Personal collections.”

“Yeah.”

“We’re talking what?”

“Minimum of fifty full-autos, one-man carry pieces. No MAC-10 conversions, no TEC-9 garbage. And no wire-stock Uzis, either. AK-style, no plastic.”

“Hard to find a collection that big.”

“That’s what I was told. So I came here.”

“You’re talking about a hundred large.”

“No, I’m not. Seventy-five, that’s realistic. And a nice markup.”

“Not nice enough for the risk.”

“I can go eighty. Or I can just go.”

“I think you should just go. But tomorrow night—say, two a.m.—you bring the money to an address I’m going to tell you. You wait there while the money gets tested. Checks out okay, you get your stuff.”

“Or I get stuck.”

“So how do you want to make it work?”

“I come where you say. I bring what you say. I wait like you say. Only you wait with me.”

I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel him nod. Not saying yes, thinking it over.

“No reason for the money to leave, right? You’re testing it right there.”

“So?”

“So you’re just renting for the night, so you don’t have to worry about me coming back. And I don’t have to worry about someone going south with my cash.”

“You’ve done this before. And the only people who have experience like that are—”

“That’s what you think, call it off. Now, before I waste any more time. You haven’t said one word that could get you in trouble.”

“Just one question. Why come to a little place like this for such a big buy?”

“I only picked up on you from the word going around. But I was told this is real safe.”

“By who?”

“And what you’re calling a big buy is nothing but a test run,” I said, ignoring his question.

“What’s a ‘big’ buy?”

“Twenty times this. More, if you can get it. And heavier, if you can do that. M4 fifties, armor piercers, surface-to-air, heat-seekers. That kind of load, the farther north you can meet, the better. We’d have to move it all at once. That means one truck, one load. And we don’t want it on the road more than a few hours, max.”

“So you’re based up north? And maybe a bit to the east?”

“Did I say that?”

“No. But I think I’m getting the idea now.”

“I think you might be.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“Like I said.”

I climbed out of the back seat and walked over to the Lexus, feeling the eyes on my back. If anyone followed me, I’d know. There was a spot I’d already scouted, less than five miles away. That’s where I’d stop to put the license plates back on the Lexus.

After I waited awhile.

I
didn’t have to wait long. Where I was dug in, there was no way to follow me without going off-road. They would have known that, so I expected a jacked-up four-wheel-drive truck. But nothing showed up.

There was another way to leave, and that’s what I did. No way to be sure I was the only one who knew that route—I moved very slow. But it was empty all the way through.

That left three possibilities: they were just big talkers, they’d gotten an ATF whiff off me and passed on the deal … or they’d been telling the truth.

Since I wasn’t ever coming back, that spot wouldn’t be worth much to them for months, at minimum; it was
already
worthless to me.

T
he next spot was almost vibrating with danger. Not the kind of danger most teenage girls would pick up on. But for the kind that would, it wouldn’t scare them off; it’d pull them closer. I wasn’t sure how any of this could help MaryLou, but I trusted that those red dots of Dolly’s would lead to something I could use, if I could just put my hands on it.

I had most of the license plates and car descriptions down when I saw three guys in matching jackets walking over to where I was
parked. The jackets were waist-length, black, with dark-red sleeves. As they got closer, I could see some kind of dark-red emblem covering the heart side of each one.

They walked with the kind of swagger only certain people use. I don’t know what they think it makes them look like. After I left the Legion, I knew what they looked like to me: if I wasn’t being paid, nothing. If I was, targets.

I let the window on my side slide down.

“You one of those old guys who like to watch?” their leader said.

“I’m looking for my daughter,” I said. I knew that the stubborn-stupid voice I was using didn’t match the Lexus, but it was dark and I didn’t think they were looking so much as they were listening. “I need to find out if she’s here. I warned her—”

“What’s her name?”

“Linda Sue Dickson,” I said.

“We know everyone here,” the leader said. He turned to his left, asked one of his boys, “You ever hear of a girl named Linda Sue?”

“Nah.”

“She’s not here, Pop. Maybe you better look somewhere else.”

“This is where her friends said she’d be.”

All three of them laughed. “That’s a guarantee she’s not,” the leader told me. “Now, why don’t you just move on?”

“Not until I know for sure.”

“Look, old man, we’ve been—”

I don’t know if any of them had ever seen a sawed-off shotgun before. I was pretty sure they hadn’t. Not from the wrong end, anyway. It cut off the leader’s words like a butcher knife through a thin slice of cheese.

They all wanted to back away. But they didn’t want to move, either. Who knows what a crazy old man might do?

“My name is Larry Tom Dickson. From Brontville. If you know a better place for me to look, tell me. Tell me right now. Or
I’m coming back with some of my kin and going down there to look for myself.”

“Rocky’s,” the leader said, instantly.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a bar. Just outside the city limits. Right off the highway. You can’t miss it—there’s always a lot of motorcycles parked outside.”

“Uh …” I muttered, like I was thinking about what he said. Then, “I’m going over there.”

“Sure. Sure, whatever you want.”

I stomped the gas, and the Lexus squirted away.

T
urned out there
was
a bar named Rocky’s. Right where that punk had told me it would be. Even had the motorcycles parked out front.

I took my time getting there, and drove right on past without touching the brakes. I kept going until I found a bridge, then I crossed over and doubled back. As good a way as any to see if I had company.

No.

I didn’t expect they’d go driving around Brontville looking for a Larry Tom Dickson, either.

I had the Lexus inside our garage while it was still dark, but only a few minutes before the sky would start to change.

“D
ell, are you okay?”

I should have figured that they’d still be up. The two of them, Dolly and Rascal, waiting on me.

Dolly wanted to be sure I was all right. Rascal wanted his rawhide.
You can train a dog with food and patience; you can have a dog’s love if you give yours. But what makes dogs more reliable than people is that there’s no way to make a dog turn traitor.

“I only got three, four hours to sleep, baby. Then I get to go play dress-up again.”

“Go,” Dolly said, sending me on my way with a kiss.

I
went to see the lawyer. He didn’t look happy.

“What?” I asked his expression.

“When your own client won’t speak to you, how can you be expected to mount a—”

“You went to visit MaryLou? On your own?”

“Yes. Of course I did. After all, I’m her—”

I held up my hand to stop him talking. I had to be sure he could recite his lines when the time came.

“You wanted to tell her about you going on TV,” I said.

“Well, I didn’t think it would be … I mean, like I told you, we have an Ethics Code. Lawyers.”

“Let’s get all that straight, right now. I don’t care about ethics. What we need is a strategy. You don’t want to step over certain lines, that’s your business. That’s what you hired me for, right?”

“A lawyer is responsible for the conduct of all those working under him,” he said, pompously. I didn’t miss the “under.”

“Only if he knows about it,” I told him, acting like I knew what I was saying was true. It didn’t matter—if he said the wrong thing, he was off the case.

He nodded, as if there was a tape recorder in the room. Okay; that was enough.

“When were you planning to do your interviews?”

“Well … they called today. It was on my service.”

I guess he didn’t want to say “answering machine.” If I was dumb
enough to believe the cow in the reception area was actually
his
secretary, I’d probably swallow some line about his “service,” too.

“You were going to speak to them today. So you went to see MaryLou, get her permission, yes?”

“Well, it would be the—”

“You’re not ready.”

“What do you mean by that? We already agreed on what I’d say.”

“You didn’t get a haircut. Or a real suit.”

“Look, Mr. Whoever You Are, you think paying the bills turns me into some kind of marionette. Well, you’re wrong. I am the lawyer for—”

“No, you’re not. The court appointed you, for peanuts. I hired you, for real money. All I have to do is nod my head and MaryLou will change to another lawyer. If you haven’t figured that out yet, you’re too stupid to be in a courtroom.”

He didn’t like that. A lot of people don’t like the truth, especially when it comes out blunt. But this was battlefield surgery—do it or die. Either this guy got the message or he didn’t. And if he was the kind to let his ego get in the way, now was the time to find out.

He let a few seconds pass. Then he said, “Well, it’s clear that MaryLou—the client—has placed her trust in you, so, if I want to do the best possible job for her, I have to … work with you.”

“Done,” I told him. “I’m going over to see MaryLou now.”

“I’ll—”

“—go get a haircut,” I finished his sentence for him. Then I got up, turned around, and walked out.

“Y
ou okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I had one little … incident, the guards called it. And that was it.”

I didn’t need details. Somebody finally forced MaryLou to send out a message that she wasn’t going to be pushed. My guess was that the rest of the women she was locked up with wouldn’t need another one.

“You’re not going to tell me why you shot those boys. But here’s what I already know: you went there to kill that guy, and you just picked up whatever tool was at hand.”

She cocked her head. “How do you know any of that?”

“I know you’re not going to tell me because you haven’t said a word. Maybe you’ll tell Dolly, I don’t know. But you’re not going to plead insanity—you already made that clear. As for the decision you made and the tool you used, those are both the same.”

She made a “come on with it” gesture.

“You knew who you wanted, but you hadn’t planned it out—he would have been easy enough to ambush. And that pistol had to be something that was close at hand. A .22 revolver cut your chances of a kill way down. Only six shots, with small bullets. You’re old enough to buy a firearm. With a nine-mil, especially a long-magazine one, you could have hosed down the whole corridor.”

She didn’t say anything, but she never dropped her eyes. So I went for it:

“You don’t know anything about guns. You didn’t go shopping, or ask for advice. And there’s nobody you’d ask to lend you a pistol—you wouldn’t drag anyone into this. So it had to have been in your house already. It’s not what you’d call a precision piece, but it’s not a Saturday-night special, either. Somebody in your house—I’m guessing your father—got it from somewhere. He might never have shown it to you, but you knew where he kept it.”

I could see MaryLou trying to make up her mind. She finally decided on the same “I’m not telling you anything” face. But her eyes stayed on mine.