Drawing Dead (17 page)

BEHIND RED 71,
Cross tugged lightly on Tiger's mane, pulling her close.

“When you get your own car, follow
tight,
” he whispered. “I don't know where Buddha's taking us.”

“Yes,
sir
!” the warrior-woman said, throwing a mock salute, before launching herself at the backseat of Tracker's cab.

Tracker climbed behind the wheel, turning Tiger into a passenger, in case anyone might question the “Off Duty” sign on the roof.

“Follow that car!” Tiger ordered, in her best gangster-moll voice.

“JUST KILLING
time,” Buddha said, answering an unasked question. “It's gonna take her a little while to get to where we're meeting, but we're only five minutes away,” he continued.

“From Old Greytooth's—?”

“Good guess, boss.”

“He's not Lao, so why…?”

“We're not visiting him. There's a side door. Just opens into another room. Three-sided, one door per wall.”

“And the door that'll be
behind
us when we step in?”

“Just you and me go inside, boss. Everyone else stays on the street. We're not going in hot. Not coming out that way, either. But there's no reason to—”

“Got it,” Cross said.

THE SHARK CAR
slid to the curb.

“She's inside,” Buddha said. “The dark-green Lexus we passed half a block past, that's her car.”

“Let's go,” Cross said.

Buddha killed the engine by pushing a keypad sequence. “You remember the—?”

“Yes,” Rhino assured him.

THE TWO
men walked to the only door visible on the windowless side of a large brick building.

As they stepped inside, they saw So Long, standing with her arms at her sides. Her long, straight black hair had a deep sheen no colorist could duplicate. Everything else was green, from her silk sheath to her reptile-skinned high heels. Even her long nails had a freshly applied coat of emerald gel.

That's her color, all right,
flashed in Cross's mind. But he kept his mouth closed and his face expressionless.

“Ace bought one of those houses,” Buddha said to his wife. No preamble was necessary: it had been So Long's scheme to buy up five houses on the same block, all in various states of disrepair after their owners had walked away from mortgages. Because the houses stood between two gangs whose claimed territories ended several blocks to either side, police presence was minimal, at best.

Stone takes a long time to decay, but neighborhoods don't. After the gang's urban renewal plan was put into action, the houses were rehabbed and sold, clearing a seven-figure score. So Long had handled all the transactions, washing the money through several LLCs, which disappeared before any capital gain would be declared.

“
Your
idea, your friend buys one of the houses,” was So Long's only response. “Your idea; less profit.”

“Sure. Whatever. That house wasn't bought in Ace's name—hell, I don't even
know
his name. But someone who wanted to smoke him out sent a hit man over to visit Sharyn.”

“To
kill
? And you think…?” So Long's voice hardened as she turned to Cross.

“The plan was to sell five houses,” Cross said. “We agreed on everything, who paid what, all that. But Ace wanting one of the houses, that came as a surprise. And, yeah, before you say anything, surprised us, too.”

“But when you told me, then
I
knew, yes? This killer, he did not succeed?”

“No,” Buddha said. “But we know who put the whole thing in motion. The guy who wanted Ace out in the open.”

“And no way to ask
that
one any questions now, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Impossible to
guess
information like that.”

“That's right.”

“So that leaves…that leaves
me,
you are saying?”

“Yes,” Cross said.

“Pekelo,” So Long spat. “The headman said he was…not sure of him, but Ace decided to buy that house after Pekelo was already in the paper chain.”

“Headman?” Cross said. “You mean Old Greytooth, the man who owns this building? He's not Lao.”

“He is Hmong,” So Long said. “As am I.”

“You were in Laos when I—”

“I was a girl when you found me, husband,” So Long said to Buddha. “Just a girl, but a clever girl. Our people—Hmong, I mean—our people are all fighters. There is no choice. The mountains shield us, but they do not always feed us. Sometimes we are forced to venture down to lower ground. When all of Cambodia was nothing but death, a bargain was made with the Americans to fight on their side during that stupid war.

“A bad bargain that turned out to be for us. But at the time, there was no choice. The Vietnamese—or their Russian masters—they would kill us once that war ended. The Americans could not win, but still they made us many promises. The only one they kept was to let us come here—America—to live. All this I was told. All this was over years before I was born. Born here. I returned to find my….It does not matter, not now.”

“Hmongs don't exactly blend in
here,
either,” Cross said, no emotion in his voice.

“No,” she said, coldly. “We are not welcomed, because our skills, our traditional skills, they are of no value here. Only the ginseng harvesting, and that brings death. I tell you this: that name, ‘Pekelo,' in Lao it means ‘stone.' ”

“That's all you know?” Cross asked.

“Oh, no,” So Long said. “Much, much more.” The room went quiet.

Clearly, So Long was not going to volunteer whatever she meant by “much, much more,” yet no one spoke.

Cross was replaying a piece of their past in his mind. “Headman” was the word So Long had used. Cambodian, not Lao. But maybe a Hmong. Maybe the same Hmong whose mortal enemy, a Chinese overlord named Chang, had been destroyed in a complex chain of events years ago.

A master strategist, Chang used his contacts to confirm there was a bounty on Viktor, a Russian boss who was trafficking in bear claws, routed from Kamchatka to Japan.

Chang had hired Cross to put a halt to Viktor's trade arrangements. The crafty old man envisioned a war by which he would profit regardless of its outcome.

And Chang had paid off, in gold, just after learning that Viktor's entire gang was literally ripped apart by…something not yet known. Within minutes of that transaction, Chang's own headquarters had been hit by several RPG rounds.

Cross got word to an ancient Cambodian headman that the destruction of his mortal enemy—Chang—was a gift. A gesture of respect, for which no payment was expected.

Later, a package had been delivered to Red 71. An elaborately carved ebony stick, whose characters Rhino laboriously translated: “We can redeem this for a body. Payable anytime. And it can be any body we want.”