Blackjack (21 page)

The children ran away, still holding hands. They could not have known the danger the tall man was to them, but they were raised on how to react whenever they caught sight of a gun.

Without changing expression, Cross pumped four rounds into the tall man’s chest.

A few random bystanders dove for cover, quite purposefully
not
looking. Whatever was happening, it had nothing to do with them. If the cops asked them, the shooter was wearing a green overcoat. Or maybe it was a red flannel shirt. And he was either Puerto Rican or Chinese, they couldn’t be exactly sure.

Cross reached down, pulled the tall man’s head up by his collar, held the pistol to his temple, and blew away the opposite side of his face.

Butch had been filming throughout. He made sure to close in on that last bit, as if a director was whispering “Zoom!” into a cameraman’s earpiece.

Cross opened one gloved hand and dropped the silenced pistol on the body. The camera shut off as Cross sprinted for the Jeep.

The street was as quiet as the grave it had become.

LESS THAN
an hour later, Cross was inside an office, seated across from the man who had been in the back seat of the Jeep. “You’ll get word to them, Butch? Let them know I can be trusted?”

The man gave Cross a level look, pointing at a video monitor in one corner. The snuff film was running on a continuous loop.

“On my life,” he said, tapping his chest twice with a closed fist.

CROSS AND
Tiger were seated across from each other in a suite at the Four Seasons on Delaware Street, the remnants of their dinner on a white linen tablecloth in one corner. The curtains had been opened to a panoramic view of Lake Michigan.

Tiger was wearing a stylish black dress, low-cut, but not dramatically so. A string of black pearls followed the neckline. Her nail polish was high-gloss black, matching her eyeliner.

Cross was smoking a cigarette, pacing, his tie loosened.

“You got it?” he asked Tiger.

“Yep.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

Cross took a deep drag of his cigarette, eyeing Tiger over his shoulder. “I’m going in tomorrow,” he told her.

“So?” Tiger replied.

“So how do you feel about last requests?”

“Well … I
do
have a position on the topic. But it’s hard to explain. Better let me just show you.”

VIEWED FROM
the back door of a large courtroom, the judge’s bench was centered, set significantly higher than the proceedings below. To his right, sitting behind a “security cage,” were several rows of recently arrested individuals, all awaiting arraignment, male and female prisoners separated from one another by a thick steel plate.

Armed guards strutted everywhere, a prominent presence. Their union held the presiding judge in high regard—his ceaseless media demands for better judicial protection
had played a major role in their per-courtroom allotment, allowing many the joys of an overtime-bloated retirement.

Two long tables stood in front of the judge’s bench stacked with case files running parallel. The left one accommodated a cadre of Assistant U.S. Attorneys—or “AUSAs,” as they preferred to be called. They were generally more conservatively dressed than their counterparts on the right-side bench. The Federal Defender lawyers considered the more liberal sartorial standards of their office to be a job benefit. One of the few.

Behind the attorneys’ tables were row upon row of spectator seats, mostly occupied by friends and relatives of those about to be arraigned. However, the front-most benches were guarded on each side by stanchion-mounted signs: FOR ATTORNEYS ONLY. There, privately retained counsel patiently awaited the appearance of their individual clients.

The interior decorator’s assignment for the courtroom seemed to have been “grim and depressing.” The huge room was designed for the mass processing of humans through a recycling system unknown to environmental activists. One far more toxic than anything in a landfill.

An ostentatiously dressed pimp stood in a far corner of the room, rapping urgently to a bored-looking lawyer. “Don’t even
go
there, Weissberg—that routine went out with Jack Johnson. I wasn’t even in the
car
they drove, and it’s not registered to me, anyway. I’d let them stupid bitches stay inside a couple a days, teach ’em how good they got it out here, but how am I gonna pay the fine if they don’t keep bringing me my money?”

Clearly, the question was rhetorical. Cash flashed in the pimp’s hand, and quickly disappeared into the lawyer’s briefcase.

An old-before-her-time Latino woman was talking to a long-haired Federal Defense lawyer, her young daughter at her side. “Javier is a good boy, mister. Those other boys, they …” The lawyer nodded, mumbled something about “the system,” and turned away.

A well-dressed, portly gray-haired lawyer was massaging a male-and-female couple into a near-hypnotic state, patting the woman’s arm reassuringly. “I am quite confident that the court will release Harvey on reasonable bail. However, you must understand, if you don’t get him into some sort of a program …”

One of the lawyers in the front row was reading a newspaper. A bold-type headline screamed:

“We never stopped looking,” Detective Jonas Pinkette of the Federal Bias Homicide Squad was quoted as saying. “We knew he was still out there, somewhere.”

As a bailiff led three accused illegal aliens away from the bench, the court officer called the next case: “Timothy Arden!”

Cross was led from the pen toward the area between the two parallel benches. A young black man with a sharply etched haircut detached himself from the pool and walked up to meet him, as the court officer recited his hundreds-of-times-a-night, rote-memorized announcement: “No appearance of counsel having been filed on behalf of the defendant, counsel from the Criminal Justice Administration Panel is hereby assigned.”

The judge looked down from the bench. Way down.

“Mr. Arden, do you understand what the court officer said? Are you expecting your own attorney?”

“No.”

“Mr. Rogers will be representing you for these proceedings, then.”

“Him?” Cross said, jerking his head sideways at the black man.

“That’s correct,” the judge replied.

“No nigger’s gonna represent
me
,” Cross snarled.

The judge’s face flushed, but Rogers didn’t seem overly surprised—it wasn’t the first time he’d heard such statements.

“Are you saying you waive counsel for arraignment, sir?” the judge snapped at Cross.

“I’m saying I’m not having no nigger for a lawyer. Why can’t I at least have a Jew?”

“Very well,” the judge interrupted, smugly. “Defendant waives counsel, and will proceed
pro se
. You may step down, Mr. Rogers.”

Turning to face Cross, the judge said, “Now, Mr. Arden, you are charged with a number of crimes, including Murder in the First Degree, on a warrant issued out of Washington, D.C., dated … 1983. I see this warrant has been outstanding for some time. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, the District of Columbia has requested your extradition. If you consent, you will be transported back there to stand trial.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You will be held here, pending a hearing on your return.”

“Good. What about bail?”

“What about it, Mr. Arden?” the judge sneered, doing his best
Law and Order
impersonation as he held up his hand to tell the AUSA that no words from him were necessary. “Defendant is remanded. Take him away.”

THE BUS
chronic recidivists call “Number 13½”—twelve jurors, one judge, half a chance—was intentionally distinctive: dark blue, with broad white stripes running from end to end and across the roof as well. Printed within those stripes, to remind the public what cargo the bus carried: FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS.

Most of the passengers needed no reminder of their status. Earlier that morning, they had shuffled their way to the bus under the wary eyes of shotgun-toting guards. Once inside, they could look out through windows barred with thick steel mesh. A cage stood between them and the driver. Each man was individually handcuffed and leg-chained to his seat.

As the bus pulled away, Tracker lay prone on a nearby rooftop, adjusting his body to adapt to the urban environment as naturally as he would in the mountains. Having attained maximum invisibility, he put a small monocular to his eye. As Cross passed through that lens, he whispered “Loaded” into the mouthpiece of the soot-colored headset he wore.

A shadow shape-shifted at the word, repeating it in Chickasaw, the language of that small tribe of Cherokees who neither farmed nor hunted. Translated it would be …

“Stay.”

As the bus slogged its way through the city, a pair of playing cards drifted down in its wake: the ace of diamonds and the jack of spades.

THE BUS’S
destination was an institution far outside of town, a city-within-walls, housing both “jail” (awaiting trial) and “prison” (awaiting transfer) populations. The bus also carried a few sentenced to that never-specified “felony
term” reserved for the constant stream of soft-core Medic-aid defrauders who were filling federal prisons around the country.