Courier (22 page)

"Hell yes, can you leave it outside?"

"Yep, here's the key."

Rick caught the small fob.

"It'll be right here." He threw Rick two more keys. "Double-chained to that Dumpster, just in case."

They went back inside the shop, a considerable amount of cash changed hands, and Rick headed out.

"Hey."

Rick stopped and looked back.

Hector held up a thumb. "Fuck 'em up, Zip. Stay alive."

Rick walked into the sunlight. "No sweat."

CHAPTER 24

 

Rick parked the BMW outside the group house. He pulled the camera and the black changing bag out of his jacket and went inside. As he came in the front door and through the living room, he could see the dining room and the stairs in the full glare of morning daylight. There wasn't a speck of blood anywhere. He bent down to look at the floor and saw where it had recently been polished.

"What the fuck are you looking at? Get downstairs!"

The cowboy was crouched at the top of the basement stairs, his pistol lined up on Rick's face. He backed down the stairs and waited cautiously as Rick followed.

Corey was still in the recliner. The blood had dried on his face, but there didn't appear to be any new injuries.

The Vietnamese grabbed for the Bolex, but Rick pulled it out of his reach. "Hey, do you want to ruin the film? If I don't get it in a can, you won't have shit, and your boss will kill you."

"How did you know I got a boss?"

"Lucky guess. Now can I get the film out of the camera for you or not?"

The cowboy thought a moment, then turned and fired at Corey. A hole appeared in the arm of the chair only inches from Corey's arm. Rick couldn't tell if it was terrific aim or he'd really just tried to kill Corey and missed.

"OK, give me the fucking film."

"No sweat."

Rick sat on the third step up from the basement and unfolded the film-changing bag. This was a lightproof fabric sack with a zipper opening running the length of one side and two sleeves with elastic ends attached to the other. Cameramen used them to load or unload a camera in broad daylight without ruining the film.

He unzipped the bag and put the camera in, re-zipped it, and slipped both hands up to his elbows into the sleeves. His eyes lost focus as his attention went to the items inside the bag.

The cowboy walked closer and looked at the bag. "What are you doing, motherfucker?"

"I said this once, but I'll repeat myself. I'm getting the film out of the camera and putting it in a can inside this bag so the light won't get to it," Rick said calmly, raising the bag on his arms to demonstrate. "If I don't, the film won't be any good, and your boss will kill you."

"We don't need to look at the fucking film. No good is OK." The gun came up and centered on Rick's forehead. "Joke's on you, motherfucker."

The bag puffed up as Rick fired the pistol hidden inside. He hit the cowboy in the right shoulder and spun him around. The man's gun clattered off into a corner of the basement.

Corey came up out of the recliner in a swift, smooth movement. He didn't exactly attack the other man; it was more like he flowed into him. The cowboy gave a cry of pain, seemed to throw himself headfirst into the stone wall of the basement, and crumpled to the floor.

Rick stood and pointed the bag at the gunman. He had a random thought that it might look a bit strange, but he sure wasn't going to bother taking the gun out. The cowboy didn't move.

Rick looked at Corey. "Very smooth – whatever that was."

"Aikido," Corey said. "Japanese monks invented it. You use the attacker's own violence against him."

"Seems to work."

"Well, I got tired of being beaten up as a kid because everyone thought I was gay, which I was, as it turned out, but back then, I just thought it was massively unfair. So, I played football, but that didn't fool anyone since I was the placekicker. After two guys held me down while another took out three of my teeth with a baseball bat, my dad even offered to go out and buy me a gun." He shrugged. "Yeah, like a pissed-off teenager with a grudge and a gun would have been a good idea. Anyway, I met this cool guy, and I started taking classes with him in the afternoons."

Corey squatted down and moved the cowboy's head back and forth gently, then checked the shoulder where Rick's bullet had hit. "This asshole looks OK. He hasn't any neck damage, and you appear to have drilled him through the meat and not the bone." He cleaned his hands on the unconscious gunman's pants and stood up.

"The truth was that this
sensei
– the teacher – was just incredibly cool and I had a mad crush on him. Sadly, he was married, and to a woman, worse luck, but the training paid off. Now I keep practicing because it calms me down and…"

Rick finished the sentence. "Keeps you looking good."

"Damn right." Corey looked over at the immobile cowboy. "Should we do something with this guy? Like maybe kill him?"

Rick pulled his hands out of the bag, leaving the pistol inside. "I've killed enough people. That's why I only bought a wimpy PK loaded with .22s. Let's just wrap him in duct tape and leave him here."

"Will he bleed to death?"

"Not unless he's a secret hemophiliac, and by the look of the scars on his face, I doubt that. Duct tape makes a good field dressing. It holds tight, and it's sterile. Anyway, the people he's working with are clearly professionals." He motioned to the stairs. "You should see the floors up there. They were covered in blood just a few hours ago, and now, I'm telling you, they haven't looked that good since I moved in. Not only are there no bloodstains, but the walls and that window have been totally cleaned, repaired, and repainted. These guys are covering their tracks; they won't leave him here."

He looked at the cowboy. "Of course, they may kill him just to tidy things up, but I can't take care of everyone."

"I'll gift wrap Saigon Sid, here." Rick pointed to the stairs. "You start getting all your stuff out. Let's make it look like we never lived here."

"Easy for you to say. You don't own anything."

"That's true enough." Rick walked into the other side of the basement and returned with a roll of duct tape from the workbench. "I'm trying to live like one of your Japanese monks."

"They don't approve of motorcycles."

"Damn. There goes another great idea."

 

Rick helped Corey haul the last box out of the house and carry it around to the alley. Corey was going to walk over to a friend's house and come back with a van. At first, he had started to use the house phone to call, but Rick jammed his finger on the button.

"This phone has got to be tapped."

"You've gone completely paranoid!" Corey said, and then paused. "What am I talking about? Three people are missing or dead – or missing
and
dead – and there's an unconscious Vietnamese hit man in the basement. Of course, the damned phones are tapped. I'll walk."

Rick smiled. "I'm not that sure about the three dead."

Corey shot him a look. "What?"

"I've got the feeling that the death of the Bionic Triplets may have been exaggerated. I can't prove it yet."

"Let me know, OK?" Corey headed off to get the van. "They weren't bad guys when they weren't driving me crazy."

Except for the weights, which were dumped on the sidewalk several houses away in the certain knowledge that someone would steal them, everything Rick owned fitted into a small duffel bag. He walked down to E Street and bungee-corded the bag onto the back of the BMW. After a moment's thought, he kicked the bike to life, drove up D Street, and parked next to the fence surrounding the Metro dig. Today, it was swarming with workers. Rick wondered what they thought had happened down there over the weekend.

He lit a cigarette and walked down the plywood boardwalk to Eve's town house. She opened the door before he even got there. She must have been watching, he thought.

Probably a good idea.

"Hey, Trooper. You look beat-up."

"Simple explanation for that." A smile turned into a grimace as the battered injuries in Rick's side gave him a quick pulse of pain. "Uh, I got beat up."

"You really have to stop doing that. It's a bad habit." Eve pointed to the Winston in his fingers. "Even worse than smoking."

Rick looked at the cigarette. "I might be able to stop smoking, but getting beat up seems to be out of my control."

"Well, so long as you aren't planning to quit either habit, how about giving me a cigarette?"

Rick flipped his cigarette onto the walkway and stubbed it out with his boot. He took two more from his pack, did the up-down trick on his jeans with the Zippo, and lit both cigarettes at once. Then he turned around, sat at the top of the town house's front steps, and offered one of the cigarettes over his shoulder.

Eve took it and sat down next to him. "What happened?"

"An idiot with a gun." He took a deep, almost bottomless drag on the cigarette. "He wanted the film."

"Where is he now?"

"Wrapped in duct tape in our basement. It turns out that Corey is a goddamn ninja assassin. I've never seen anyone move like that." He looked at her and shrugged. "Who knew?"

"I guess he just never had a good enough reason to beat you up, as hard as that might be to imagine."

"True, but if we'd ever argued over doing the dishes, it could have gotten real ugly."

"Stop being heroic. How did you get hurt?"

"The idiot with a gun used a pair of those damn pointy cowboy boots to persuade me to give him a camera." Rick thought for a second. "He knew just where to kick, too. Right where it says I got wounded in my military file."

"So, he was working for the government?"

"That or working for people with some pretty damn good government connections. I think the phone was tapped, too."

Eve looked up and down the empty boardwalks. "That's it; you're taking me with you from now on. If these guys are as good as you say, they've already spotted me."

She turned and ran a gentle finger down the marks on his face. "Plus, you need someone to take care of you. It doesn't look like you're all that good at it."

"That the only reason?"

She looked into his eyes, then looked straight ahead and concentrated on her cigarette. "No."

There was a pause. Rick stared at the side of her face, looking at the gentle curve of her cheeks and the strong and determined set of her mouth. She looked like the kind of person you could depend on, someone you wanted next to you on the firing line when the shit got serious.

The kiss started soft and restrained, but got more passionate as it went on.

It went on for a long time.

Finally, he gave a small gasp as she tightened her grip around his upper arm. She pulled back sharply and looked into his face. "Damn, I'm sorry."

"I'm not." He rubbed the arm. "I decided in that hospital in Japan that I wasn't going to let the crap that happened to me ruin the rest of my life. Or at least not when I was awake and in control." He rotated his shoulder. "Don't worry about it. I'm just going to have to get some new weights – couldn't fit them on the bike."

"Won't be room anymore, anyway. I'll be on there."

"I could try lifting you. Beats a set of weights every time."

The sun was washing the pastel colors of the town houses with a red-gold light flashing brightly off the windows. Eve stood up and headed inside the house, brushing off the seat of her jeans. "Time to saddle up, Trooper."

She shrugged into a denim jacket with a blanket lining, wound a scarf around her neck, and picked up a backpack from just inside the front door. "We need to find a place to stay tonight, and since it's Christmas Eve, I'll bet the inns are packed."

"And I need to make a phone call."

"A phone call?" Eve's eyebrows came together in question. "Didn't you just say that your phones were tapped?"

"That is a true fact. I've got to find somewhere else to call from." Rick laughed. "There's a technical problem at ABN I need to clear up."

"Are you going to explain what you're talking about?"

"Not until I'm sure, but I think it's all good."

They headed back to the BMW and slung her backpack on top of his duffel bag. He pulled a second helmet out of the courier bag and handed it to her.

She looked at it with a slight smile and then glanced up at his face. "Already had a helmet for me? You were certainly making some pretty big assumptions."

Rick snorted as he fastened his own helmet. "You were all packed and ready to go."

"Good point."

Rick pulled the bike upright and Eve slid into the rear seat. "Have you ever ridden a bike before?" he said.

"No. I've always been in vehicles that keep the rain off."

"Well, the first and only rule for the passenger is to hold tight to the driver. If you throw your weight around, we could get into serious trouble."

Her arms slid around his waist. "No problem."

"A little lower – right there is where the M79 grenade hit me."

She peered around his side. "Didn't our side use the M79?"

"Well, it got really confused during the fight." He kicked the bike to life. "I can't really blame the guys who hit me. At that point, the Cong were firing from behind a bulwark of dead GIs. I just happened to be a little less dead than the others."

"Well, please keep it that way."

The big bike pulled out and headed south down 3rd Street. "Working on it."

CHAPTER 25

 

The black Impala was driving south on Third Street just as Rick and Eve pulled away from the curb. There were two cars between them, and the driver thought that with any luck, the courier wouldn't notice him following them.