Black Water Transit (31 page)

He closed his mind on the picture with a hard-locking snap and dipped a brush into the thick shiny green paint. The first stroke across the van left a streaky band of white showing under the dark-green paint. The second pass covered it completely. He kept at it and tried not to think about what he was going to do next because, frankly, he had no damned idea. None at all.

The next flight out of LaGuardia turned out to be an Appalachian Air shuttle that got Nicky and Casey to Harrisburg at one o’clock in the afternoon. Dexter Zarnas had met them at Capital City Airport in Jay Rats unit number 552, a black Lincoln Town Car with heavily tinted windows and a dashboard full of computer gear and electronics. It was Vince Zaragosa’s best police unit and letting Dexter take it all the way to Pennsylvania was a hard thing for the boss to do. Casey spotted Dexter in the middle of the airport concourse as they came up the arrivals ramp, a slab-sided hulk sitting at the bar drinking a bottle of Heineken, wearing black jeans and boots, a black T-shirt under a gray sports coat, his shaved skull shining under the airport fluorescent lights, his black goatee carefully trimmed. He looked like a corporate biker.

Dexter drained the Heineken as they walked up, nodded once, and they were doing a steady eighty miles an hour on Interstate 81 a few minutes later. Casey waited until they were out of the main traffic press and then asked Dexter where they were going.

“I been trying to meet with the ATF ever since I got here. They were already at Slipstream when I got there. This bitch—sorry, Casey—but this bitch running the show, name of Greco, total stonewall.”

“I saw her on CNN before we left,” said Casey. “She was up there where Vermillion got away. At Beach Haven. She likes the camera, I think. They were talking about a press conference.”

“Anyway, I’m leaving—I’m pissed—and this ATF guy takes me aside, Derry Flynn. He was there at Red Hook. He’s not happy with this Greco broad. Gave me his cell phone number. When they heard about the shooting up in Beach Haven, he called me, told me what was happening. He doesn’t think Vermillion did that all on his own either. From what he saw of Vermillion, he figures the guy’s pretty tame, just a business geek. He thinks Pike was the shooter. But he can’t get this Greco woman to pull her teeth out of Vermillion long enough to consider a different scenario.”

“We’re going to Beach Haven, then?”

“Yeah. If Pike was in on that, somebody would have seen him around. Anybody confirms it, we know we’re on the right track. I never met the guy, but from what I hear, he’d stand out.”

“I’ve met him,” said Casey. “He’d stand out.”

Jack was about halfway through with the passenger side of the van, sweat running down his face and his eyes stinging, when he heard footsteps, shoes grating on the sandy concrete behind him. He set the brush down on the can lid, stood up, and turned to watch as three teenage boys reached the top of the parking ramp and came out onto the deserted level. He recognized the kid with the Penn State jacket right away, and then he saw what was in his hands, a section of rusted rebar about three feet long.

His two associates were also in the usual gangbanger
togs, Hilfiger jeans hanging low showing plaid boxer tops, big sweatshirts, one kid wearing a shiny Knicks jacket, the other a black sweatshirt with a picture of a bullet-skulled wrestler and the words
Austin 3:16
. Both kids were also holding sections of steel rod.

The one on Jack’s left, in the Knicks jacket, was pale white, a dark-haired kid with huge brown eyes—almost feminine—and the mandatory variation on the goatee theme that seems to have caught on with the young and the pointless all across America. The other kid was large, over six-four, and had to weigh in at three hundred pounds. This kid had a big bovine face unmarked by any kind of internal life, dull brown eyes, and a slack hanging mouth. He was nodding his head to nothing at all, a robot movement, mindless as a twitch. Penn State hefted the rebar, stepped forward into the parking area, and the other two—Jack was already thinking of them as Knicks Jacket and Tank Boy—shuffled forward behind him.

Jack shifted his footing and remembered that he had taken the Glock out of his boottop. It was now sitting in the glove compartment of the van. It would take some doing to get at it, and he doubted he’d have that much time. Thinking about it almost lightened his mood; he’d never been a guy who liked weapons or who took comfort from having one around. The Glock banging up his shin bone was just six pounds of useless steel, so he’d set it aside while he went to work on the van. Big mistake, it seems.

Penn State got to within ten feet of Jack and stopped. Knicks Jacket and Tank Boy spread out to the left and right, both of them breathing short sharp gasps through their mouths, Tank Boy still nodding in time to something only he could hear.

“Hello, faggot,” said Penn State.

“Hello yourself,” said Jack, smiling. The sun was shining at an oblique angle through the grid-work bars of the parking garage, painting the floor with hard black shadows and hot white bars. The dusty air looked like it was filled with fire. The place smelled of concrete and wet wood and rusted metal. Every footfall echoed, every word slammed off the walls. Jack knew there was no one else around. Hell, what was he going to do? Call 911?

“We seen your picture there, faggot. On the TV.”

Jack shook his head sadly.

“You know, I really hate that word.”

“What? Faggot?”

“Yeah. That word. I really, really hate that word. Okay, you want to call me something so I can understand how mean you assholes are. But why
faggot?
I mean, it’s so damn boring. Why not … 
fuck-head?
Or
puke?
Or
scum-sack?
I don’t get this whole
faggot
thing with you kids. Unless, you know, you’re overcompensating.”

Jack’s tone of sweet reason had them off balance, and they took a few seconds to try to figure out what Jack was up to. Since that called for actual working brain cells, they had to give up on it.

“Hey. Fuck you, faggot. There’s cops all over the place want to know where you are. And you right here.”

“I have a quarter. Why don’t you go call one?”

Penn State shook his head slowly, grinning hugely.

“Oh no. Not yet. We gonna fuck you up good. Then we gonna turn in what’s left, collect large. Then we par-tay, dude.”

“Stop talking, man. Let’s just do it!” said Knicks Jacket.

Tank Boy just nodded more energetically and made a kind of low rumbling noise that might have been a laugh or simply an inadequate breakfast. Jack sighed for the
nation, for the quality of criminal assholes we now have to settle for in this great country. He thought of Frank Torinetti, of Carmine DaJulia, old Fabrizio Senza the killer barber, all the boys of Astoria. Thugs in his day wore Burberry trench coats, custom-made silk suits, Mara ties, Mauri slippers, had gold rings and loved Verdi, cried like girls at
Carmen
, drank Barolo, loved hugely, hated brightly, forgave easily, forgot nothing. And look at these sorry mutts we have here. Heartbreaking.

Jack stepped away, got his back up against the wall of the transport van. Having fun yet, you miserable son of a bitch? Down in his belly, he felt a spurt of acid, cold and yet burning. The skin across his shoulders went numb and his chest was tight and hot. Penn State looked like he was trying to find the right moment for a rush. Jack’s vision was going a little rosy around the edges and his heart was hammering inside his rib cage. He was going to die right here. It was insane. Come through three years in Vietnam and get beaten to death by three mall rats in a suburban parking lot. And all of it because he was trying to help his kid get out of Lompoc. It was just too much.

Penn State yipped out a sort of yowling cry and rushed at Jack, who kicked the five-gallon can of paint over into his path, the oily green flood catching Penn State’s floppy rubber runners—Penn State slipped—slammed hard to the floor on his back—the iron bar tumbled loose—Jack stepped in and snatched it up—Knicks Jacket was on him now—Jack ducked one wild swing, felt a thrumming rush as the rebar went past his left temple—Knicks Jacket put way too much in the swing and he stumbled off to Jack’s right—now Tank Boy was coming in—Jack caught Tank Boy’s downward blow on the bar—it drove Jack down to a knee—Tank Boy raised his bar again and Jack managed a sideways blow at Tank Boy’s braced knee—he connected and saw
the joint snapping—Tank Boy’s howl was pure animal pain—Penn State was slithering backward in the spreading pool of paint—trying to get to his feet—Knicks Jacket had recovered his balance—swung the rebar again—Jack parried it on his bar—damn, this was just like the pugil-stick exercise they taught you at Lejeune—dropped the end—rammed the butt hard into the boy’s face—Knicks Jacket went backward into the green paint pool and when he hit hard in the center of it his head bounced once with a cracking sound—Tank Boy was holding his ruined knee and hopping to his left—his bloated cheeks dull as candle wax and his forehead bright red with agony—Jack stepped in—braced both feet—set himself—swung the rebar at Tank Boy’s head—felt the brute snap-shock of the blow all the way to his shoulders—Jack was turning away before Tank Boy was all the way down—Penn State had reached the edge of the paint pool and he was scrabbling for a grip, his sneakers making feathery green skid marks on the gray concrete, his hands wet and shiny green—Jack tossed the rebar—heard it bounce and go clanging away—popped the van door and picked up the Glock—his boots slipping as he crossed the enamel—Penn State turned around—saw Jack’s face—the pistol in his right hand—Jack with his war face on—Penn State got to his knees—got to his feet—tried to run—fell facedown on the concrete floor. Jack reached him in three long strides, put the muzzle hard up against the back of the kid’s head.

“Please, mister …”

Jack’s fear and his anger were twinned wires, one blue and one red, burning through the inside of his skull. He could smell Buster’s Kools and had a fleeting image of the fat man in his undershirt Jack had seen on his way to prison, watching TV in a shabby small-town room,
and then Claire Torinetti standing in the doorway of her husband’s house with the light shining through her robe. Penn State was crawling forward, leaving a green trail—
please mister please
.

Hell, thought Jack, watching him, he was only a child. The kid has his whole life in front of him. Think what he would do with it.

“Hey kid.”

“Yes sir?” His voice was thin and high.

“Suddenly things went terribly wrong, didn’t they? How are you handling this? Is it a disappointment? Are you finding it necessary to rethink your position?”

“Please … what are you gonna do?”

“Well … what would
you
do? Say we trade places, I’m down there, you up here with the gun. What would you do then?”

“Man … I’d let you go. I swear it. I never meant for anybody to get bad hurt. I just wanted the money. Please.”

“You know, kid, I have to say, I don’t find your answer persuasive. I think you’re not being candid with me. You promise never to call anybody a faggot again?”

“I do, sir. I swear, sir. Please, sir—just let—”

“On your honor? Blood of the Holy Virgin?”

Jack figured Penn State had no idea who the Virgin Mary was or what her blood had to do with his life. At that point, the kid began to babble and the squeaky rasp of his voice, high, whining, pleading, was painful to hear. Jack shifted his position, thought about it, then he squeezed the trigger, the pistol boomed in his hand, Penn State’s skull bounced once. A neat round black hole had appeared in the back of his head, the skin peeling back from the muzzle blast, bits of pink bone showing, and a sudden pool of bright blue blood—reddening as the air touched it—came oiling out from under the boy’s face
and spread across the stony floor. All Jack could hear was his own breathing—short sharp gasps. He watched his hand moving downward—the skin on the back of it stained with green paint—watched from deep inside his own skull as he moved the weapon—and put two more carefully considered rounds in the center of the kid’s spine, right between the shoulder blades, precisely between
Penn
and
State
. Each time the pistol went off, the parking garage rang like a big iron bell. Each time a round punched into the kid, the band of fear clamped around Jack’s chest seemed to ease up a little more. After the third shot Jack’s ears were buzzing and his hearing had gone. He was inside a cone of silence. He was calm. The fear was gone. It was like he had sailed out of a tropical storm and into a sunlit lagoon lined with palm trees and white sand.

He stood up, stepped away from the body, and pulled in a long ragged breath. The air was rich, layered with strong smells: gunpowder, spilled paint, blood, dust. His breath in his lungs was like a strong wind in tall grass, hissing and rolling. His mouth was parched. He looked down again. My goodness, Penn State was a mess. Just look at you. Jack shook his head, sighed deeply again, rolled the tension out of his neck and shoulders, walked back over to where Knicks Jacket was lying spread-eagled in the paint pool, a thin sheet of blood running from his broken nose, staining his teeth red.

The kid must have heard—or felt—him walk over, because he opened his eyes, blinked twice, as Jack leaned down over him. What do I do with you? he wondered, pressed the pistol into the kid’s forehead, and shot him twice just above the place where his thick eyebrows knitted together. The holes were tiny and black but the force of the muzzle blast ripped the pink skin open all around them in a ragged shape that reminded Jack of a starfish. He found Tank Boy lying on his side in the center of a
small lake of green paint and his own blood, his eyes wide open, staring at a point on the floor about ten feet away. Blood was running down his face from a terrible crushed-in wound over his left temple. The blood had not mixed with the green paint—oil and water, Jack realized—but had threaded a complex channel through it so it looked like a bright red river against a flat green forest. Jack thought of the Amazon at a fiery red sunset and liked the image very much. He found it … painterly. He had always liked watercolors. Maybe he should try his hand someday. After things settled down. He could use a hobby. Jack squatted beside the kid, looked into his eyes, saw the pupils narrowing.