Buzz Cut (2 page)

"Your I.D.," she said. "It's not right."

"What?"

"I got to call somebody, verify you. Just take a second."

"What's wrong with it?"

Butler unclipped the plastic card and studied it for flaws.

"They're not issuing those anymore. Five months out of date. I'm sorry, but we got orders. Some special deal going on."

She had her phone pressed to her ear, tapping numbers.

"I told you," Butler said. "I'm from engineering. I'm just filling in till Emilio gets back. A last-minute thing."

"Just the same I got to report. Sorry. They're tightening security. Something's been happening, got everybody spooked."

She gave him an apologetic shrug and he watched her as her face changed, focusing now on the voice in her ear.

Butler glanced around. No one in line behind him, a small crowd gathered around one of the nearby blackjack tables groaning in unison as the last card was flipped.

"Mr. Sugarman? It's Annette in the casino."

Butler stared at her. Annette turned her back to him and cupped a hand around the mouthpiece.

Butler took one more quick look around, then swung back to Annette and snaked his right hand through the bars of her cage and touched the voltage to the nape of her neck. A puff of dark smoke. Her legs sagged, the phone spilled from her hand, and the young woman sank to the floor.

Carrying his tray, Butler turned away and walked through the crowd. Moving with special care, slow, strolling toward the stage where the Baby Boomers were belting out another sixties' favorite. "Three cats in the yard. Life used to be so hard."

For a moment as he passed behind their set, he was invisible to the eyes in the sky, the three hundred video cameras that dotted the ceiling of the casino, each one concealed in a small dark globe. Then, directly behind the bass player, shielded from the casino floor, Butler swung open the back of one of their Panasonic speakers he'd customized earlier in the day. He slid the rack inside. One tray crammed in already. Grand total of eighty thousand dollars' worth of chips. Legal tender in any of Morton Sampson's two dozen cruise ship casinos. He drew out the second rack of counterfeit chips and headed back to the blackjack table.

After he'd given the dealer his rack of phonies, Butler glided across the casino, heading casually toward the Atrium exit. He was only ten feet from the door when a woman howled from across the room. Annette's replacement standing inside the cashier's cage, one hand at her throat.

At the same moment, a man about Butler's size, a light-skinned black man, came sprinting down the hall, headed directly toward him. Butler held his ground and the man veered through the doorway and collided headlong with two white-haired ladies, spilling their buckets of quarters. The man stopped short, apologized, helped them scoop up a couple of handfuls of coins. Then Annette's replacement screamed again and the black man apologized once more and hustled off.

***

Next morning, Sunday, when the M.S.
Eclipse
docked in Key West for a seven-hour shopping tour, Butler was among the first wave of passengers down the gangplank. In gray jeans, long-sleeve blue work shirt, tennis shoes. Black sunglasses. Blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. Hands empty.

Positioned at the bottom of the ramp, the caramel-tinted man was studying the crew and passengers as they disembarked. Beside him was another man in tourist clothes and close-cropped hair. David Cruz, head of security. Butler saw a piece of poster board tacked to the bottom of the railing, the two men consulting it as waves of passengers made their way down the long gangplank.

No doubt a hasty sketch based on Annette's description, a rendering of the man who called himself Jack. Evidently she wasn't up to sitting out in the sun all morning, checking the three thousand faces of crew and passengers. Dizzy and weak, her eyes were probably still blurred. Four hundred thousand volts would do that.

Butler didn't try to strike up a conversation with anyone, didn't try to blend in. Just came striding down the ramp alone, even took off his sunglasses as he approached Mr. Sugarman. The man staring at him, taking a quick look at the sketch, then back at Butler, staring into his eyes. Cruz shifted his position, seemed to pick up his scent. But he kept coming down.

Both men stared at Butler. He was a tall, thin man. Annette probably gave them that much for certain. But the rest of it, his nose, eyes, the shape of his cheekbones, those things were always tricky to describe. Even if she was looking directly at him, trying to put precise words to what she saw, most of it would get lost in translation. The words were the weak point. Most people just didn't have the words.

Butler walked on by. The man called Sugarman giving Butler one last look then turning his attention back up the ramp. Searching for the next tall thin suspect.

Butler crossed the parking lot, went around to the driver's side of his Winnebago, unlocked the door and climbed inside. Four days ago he'd parked it across from Mallory Square in a place where he could easily observe the cruise ship's ramp.

Butler went back to the driver's seat and settled down, windows open, sunny Key West morning pouring in, the drowsy coconut breeze, that sweet stench of vomit that always seemed to bloom two blocks either side of Duval Street. He watched the shadows straggle along the sidewalk. His mind clear, only a mild ruffle in his pulse.

While he had a minute free, he opened the leather pack on his belt and unplugged the nine-volt batteries. Five of them. Simple store-bought coppertops, impossible to trace.

He tore open the wrappers on five new ones and snapped them into place. He rolled up the right sleeve of his shirt, checked the connections, blew a spray of dust off the voltage amplifier strapped to his wrist. Unbuttoned his shirt, followed the wires where they were taped to his flesh, running to his armpit, down his ribs, out a small incision through the shirt to the battery pack on his belt. He searched meticulously for any nicks in the coating of the two wires, one red, one black. But everything was fine. Everything tight and clean and fully charged. He rebuttoned his shirt, tucked it in, rolled down his sleeve, and settled back to wait. Feeling a flood of well-being. A radiance centered in his gut. He was moving down the master list. One through five were finished. The groundwork laid. Ready for number six, the big moment. Halfway there. The slow half done, the arduous half. Years in the making.

It was two hours later when the Baby Boomers finally appeared, towering over the Filipino crew that was spilling out the gangway. The band members rolled their equipment down the ramp. Sugarman and Cruz were there. A little slumped over now. Losing their enthusiasm.

The Boomers loaded the equipment into their Ford van. Butler watched them heave the speakers into the back with the other equipment.

Out Truman Avenue Butler stayed a car or two behind, fell a little farther back as they headed up U.S. 1. The boys were careful drivers, so it was easy to keep a car or two between them up the narrow stretch of overseas highway through the endless ticky tack of Sugarloaf, Cudjoe and Big Pine, Marathon and Grassy Key, Layton and Long Key, Matecumbe and Tavernier.

Two hours later, a hundred miles up the road from Key West, at the south end of the nineteen-mile stretch of asphalt that shot straight north through the southern Everglades back to mainland Florida, Butler took a position one car length off the bumper of the van. Bearing down. Saw the driver glance back in the outside mirror. Saw his eyes hold for a second, then let go.

Butler leaned over, snapped open the glove compartment, and drew out the black plastic transmitter. He thumbed the switch, felt the unit hum in his hand. The sweet fizz of electrons. He raised the unit to the windshield, cocked the aerial toward the white van, leaned to his left, head out the window to check the oncoming lane. He waited till the road was clear for several miles, then drew his head back inside and pushed the red button.

But the van continued to drive smoothly.

Butler rattled the transmitter and pressed the button again. Still nothing. He tamped the plastic case against the dash, then aimed the aerial toward the van once more and mashed the button several times.

And it worked. The circuit breaker he'd duct-taped to the Boomers' steering gear last week was activated by the radio impulse, the circuit switch flipped, released the small bolt holding the idler arm to the relay rod, the bolt fell free onto the highway, skittered away.

A second later the van jerked hard to the right, then swerved left. Sixty miles an hour, a rudderless ship.

The van veered into the oncoming lane, stayed there for a hundred yards, then swung back to the right shoulder. Two more erratic zigzags.

"Shit!" His smile melting away. The thing taking longer than it should. The van slowing, fifty, forty-five.

Butler leaned to his left, saw in the opposing lane a distant line of traffic caught behind two transfer trucks. Heard the wail of the truck's air horn as once again the van swung across the oncoming lane, bumping along the opposite shoulder.

This time the front wheel slid over the lip of the drainage canal, caught. The van leaned, teetered on two wheels, then went over on its side, skidding along the embankment, hit the water and bounced across the surface like a skipping rock until it came to rest, heavy and dead, settling, the driver's side sinking four feet under water. No doors coming open.

Messier than Butler had pictured, but still workable.

The transfer trucks roared past. Cars screeched and slewed around him as Butler eased the Winnebago off the highway. A hundred yards behind him two cars collided, another plowed into the wreckage, spun twice around, and careened into the canal.

Butler got out, jogged across the highway to the Boomers' van. Somebody was there already, a black man in bright pink shorts and an aqua tennis shirt, nice new deck shoes. The man hesitated a moment on the bank of the canal, then lunged forward, splashed up to his chest, and went for the driver's door.

Butler waded slowly into the warm water, inched through the thick custard at the bottom. Water rose to his waist, then a few inches higher. He closed in on the van, peered inside the back doors, saw the jumble of equipment and the bodies lying akimbo. No one stirring.

While rubberneckers moved slowly past on the roadway, Butler hauled open the van's rear door. The lead singer's body was draped around the Panasonic speaker, his ear pressed against its cloth mesh as though some echo of music were whispering to him, consoling him in his pain. The man drooled blood, a flap of skin dangled near his chin. Everybody groaning, starting to come alive. Butler shoved the lead singer aside and scraped the speaker back across the floor to the rear doors.

He pried open the backing and took a good breath. The plastic wrap hadn't torn. The chips were still locked neatly in their slots. He drew the two trays out and stacked them, tucked them under his arm.

When he turned, a young man was standing in his way, waist deep in the water. Hawaiian shirt, no tan. Kinky blond hair, Nordic features. A few hours off the plane, taking his Minnesota flesh down to Key West to blister it. Giving Butler a cold glare.

"What the hell you doing, man?"

Butler sloshed forward through the canal but the man dodged to the right and blocked his way. He reached a hand out as if halting traffic.

"You're staying right there, buddy, till we get this sorted out. You look like a looter to me."

Butler smiled.

"Loot," Butler said. "Good choice."

The young man kept his arm stiff, hand out.

"Loot's from the Hindu
lut
, and the Sanskrit
loptram, lotram,
which means plunder. I'm sure you didn't realize it, but it's a very aptly chosen word in this context. An ancient military term. Originally it referred to spoils of war stolen from a captured city. Back in the sweet long ago. It's important to know the words, to know what you're saying."

The young man eyed Butler uneasily but stood his ground.

Butler shifted the trays of chips and lifted his right hand into view. Showed the helpful young man with the pale Yankee flesh the two steel prongs protruding from thick rubber tips on his pointing finger and the middle one. He spread the fingers into a V and made a careful fist to activate the charge.

Between the two prongs a blue spark sputtered.

One of Butler Jack's most useful creations. Parts recycled from three stun guns, the DC thyrister capacitor set at 25 pulses a second, the whole thing rewired, voltage doubled. Could put a three-hundred-pound mountain gorilla on its ass for half an hour. Take it anywhere. Zap them and they drop. Sometimes they dropped just looking at him, a hiss of current between his fingers. Like he'd risen from the underworld.

The blond hero stared at the crackling spark and sucked in a breath. As Butler stepped forward, the young man stumbled to his side, went down on one knee. Water to his chin.

Butler released the button, then pressed it again, gunning his engine for effect. One more time showing the good Samaritan the snap and sizzle of voltage writhing between his fingertips.

The man stayed knee-deep in the canal watching Butler as he approached. Butler stretched out his hand, brought the sputtering current to within a foot of the man's face.

"Come on, man." The young man's voice broke into a nervous yodel. "I didn't mean anything. Really. I had it all wrong."

Butler jabbed his fingers against the man's forehead and the current hammered him backward into the dark canal. With his mouth still open, the young man slid below the surface, a few listless bubbles rising from his lips. Eyes wide, their shine dulling quickly.

Butler felt the death. Felt the flutter of it in the air as if a hummingbird had whisked past his face. Standing there above the miracle of death, Butler invoked the image of the girl. The girl in the white dress. Pink and blue embroidery on her lacy collar. The girl in the white dress, on her swing on the wide porch. The angel girl. His uranium, his glowing core. The girl who powered him through all the desperate moments. Butler pictured her and once again she rescued him as she had rescued him for years. Her cool smile, the sprinkle of golden hairs on her arms, the delicate bones in her wrist. Her perfect blue eyes. Urging him forward. Urging him away from the dead canal water, back to the Winnebago. Back to his seat behind the wheel. The girl he would see soon. Number six on the list. When everything was in place. Almost there. His angel. His glowing core.