Drawing Dead (19 page)

“And that's it? That would end this? Forever?”

“Tell her yourself,” Cross said, handing him a cell phone. “Her number's already on this.”

Toxic waste bubbled out of the man's mouth, hard, evil ugliness dripping into the phone. Telling her that her little scheme had backfired. How he had her once; how he'd always have her.

“You listening to me, you little piece of garbage? You understand the way things are now? I'm coming to see you, bitch. And when I'm done, you'll crawl back whenever I tell you. On your knees. I'll have my mark on you again, you…”

He hung up, bathed in sweat, licking his lips.

Cross nodded to Buddha. A hard hand clamped down on the back of the man's neck as the hypo slid home. He went out in seconds. Cross gently taped his right hand into a fist, watched as Buddha took the man's elbow in one hand, held his wrist in the other…and slammed the target's hand into the glass desktop until the knuckles were bruised and swollen.

Methodically, Cross removed a wax model of a woman's hand from the satchel. False red-lacquered nails gleamed. He held the wax hand carefully, then scratched some long, deep gouges in the man's cheek.

In the car, Cross used a packaged wipe to remove the tattoo from his forehead.

Buddha pulled off the stocking mask, popped the rubber wedges out of his cheeks, took off the padded jacket…and lost fifty pounds. The latex gloves they'd been wearing were shredded with serrated scissors, tossed out the window at intervals.

An hour later, the two men pulled behind the woman's house.

“You get it all?” Cross asked her.

She nodded, pointed to the tape recorder attached to her phone.

“Play it back, make sure,” Cross told her, handing her the cell phone he'd let the target use. “If anything went wrong, it's all on here, anyway.”

At a gesture, she held out her hands and stayed perfectly still while Cross attached the false red nails.

Without another word, he slapped her in the face, hard. Her eyes flared into life, focused and waiting.

“He came here about a half-hour ago,” Cross told her, his tone hypnotic. “You opened the door, didn't expect him. He punched you in the stomach. You went down. He punched you in the face, over and over again, twisted your arm so hard you thought it was going to snap. You scratched his face. You remember doing that, you felt your nails go in. Deep. Then he beat you some more until you passed out. When you come to, dial 911.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Then Cross went to work.

“THERE'S ONLY
one way we're gonna find out,” Cross told the crew.

“What if Old Greytooth doesn't deliver?” Buddha said.

Cross shrugged, unconcerned.

Rhino stepped in with his agreement: “He would lose face.”

Buddha felt himself go calm—the mammoth's logic was impeccable.

“WHY AM
I here?” an immaculately dressed Asian asked, his dark eyes playing across the man seated on the far side of a sawhorse-supported desk.

The Asian's voice was controlled, but his gaze was a weak flashlight in a coal mine cave-in, frantically seeking an exit before its batteries died.

“Because we're trying to solve a riddle,” Cross answered. “And you're going to help us do it.”

The Asian said nothing, as if waiting for the rest of the answer to his question. His regularly dermabrasioned face, manicured fingernails, and stylish haircut would have fitted a well-paid consultant of some kind. The heavy ring of white jade, the oversized, multi-dialed watch, the platinum bracelet…all attested to his success at whatever profession he practiced.

Cross lit a cigarette. The flame was sufficient to display the bull's-eye tattoo on the back of his hand.

“You know at least half of the answer,” he said. “You'll tell us that for free. If you know the whole thing,
that
you'd get paid for.”

“Do you think I don't know where I am?”

“What difference? All that matters is you solve this riddle for us.”

The Asian went silent.

Cross took the third hit of his cigarette, then stuck it into what looked like a dinner-plate-sized glass saucer filled with some sort of ash-gray material.

“The first part, the one you give us for nothing, is the name of whoever hired you to kill Hemp.”

The Asian didn't move, but Cross could feel he was calm and relaxed inside that stiff posture.

“You think silence is in your best interests? Or you're more afraid of whoever paid you than you are of us?”

“I have something you want,” Pekelo said, the tension leaving his voice as he recognized that the bargaining was about to begin. “Something of value. You offer to pay for
part
of what I have, but I cannot parcel it out in bits and pieces—you must buy the whole thing.”

“Something of value…What value do you place on it, then?”

“My life. Nothing more.”

“We don't sell insurance.”

“As you said, I know where I am. I know who you are. I know who ordered me brought to this place. If all you wanted was my life, I would already be dead.”

Cross shrugged, acknowledging the truth of the captive's words.

“You already know I was paid to do something. Is there anything I can tell you, anything at all, that would convince you that I do not know who commanded me?”

Commanded?
Cross thought. Aloud, he said, “I guess that depends on how you got your orders.”

“Do you think I fear pain?”

“I don't care what you fear. I only care about what you know.”

“I know So Long is Hmong.”

“That's just a fact,” Cross said, trying to cover Buddha with the blanket of gentle assurance his words projected. “Like you being Lao. Doesn't mean anything. And not what we need to know.”

“I will tell you
all
I know. It may not be enough to satisfy you, but it will be the truth. Torture would not—”

“Nobody said anything about torture,” Cross said, mildly. “If torture was what we thought would get us what we need, do you think we couldn't have gotten that done a lot easier by the people who brought you here?”

“I doubt you would believe me. I doubt you would even understand what I could tell you.
All
I could tell you. I cannot tell you more than I know.”

“Let's see.”

“I want some—”

“This isn't about what
you
want. Stalling for time would be stupid—no one's coming to rescue you.”

“I know.”

“So let's get it done. Tell us what you know that we
don't.
Then we'll decide what it's worth.”

The Asian closed his long-lashed eyes. Fifteen seconds passed.

He might have heard a distinct
click!
sound—perhaps Cross lighting another smoke? He would not have seen Cross shake his head “No!” nor Buddha soft-release the hammer on his pistol in response.

“I will tell you what I know. I realize it may sound…implausible to you, but it is all I have.”

The Asian opened his eyes. Took in a shallow breath. “We are all fatalists—our destiny is already written.” When there was no reaction, he said, “I was commanded from the Cloud. I followed the instructions. There is no more. Do you understand what I just told you?”

“You accessed a clouded site,” Rhino's voice rumbled softly—the sound did not encourage the Asian to turn in his chair to locate the speaker he had not known was present.

“No. The site appeared on my computer while I was—”

“You are lying,” Rhino said. Not angrily, stating an indisputable fact. “The only way a Cloud contact could have happened is that you were
already
visiting a Web site. How you found
that
one doesn't matter. But whatever accessed
you
was AI. So it was set up to find you. Not you, particularly. But people
like
you.”

“It isn't what you…”

“Just stop,” Cross told him. “This isn't some court. We don't care what you are, only what you do. What you can
still
do. When you said you were a fatalist, you also said something else. About yourself.”

“I only meant—”

“What you told us was that you're a gambler. That's what you'd call yourself, too. The dice bounce, but there is no skill involved in the toss—only fate controls what they finally show.”

“Yes. Our destiny is written before we—”

“No. Your destiny isn't written, not yet. And we're the ones holding that pen.”

The Asian nodded his acceptance of what he could not deny. “It was some kind of competition. The winner was to receive what you would call ‘something of value.' American dollars, precious stones—”

“You trusted that?” Rhino dropped a meat cleaver into whatever else the Asian was going to say. “That means the AI was set up a while ago. Set to deliver to winners of other…competitions, in the past. And it had. So you expected the same.”

“Yes.”

“Only this was no ‘competition,' right?” Buddha said, his voice almost reptilian. “You already held the winning hand. It was us—all of us—this…thing wanted. But the plan—how to get it done—that was yours. Because you had the information to solve the puzzle.
Just
you. Hemp could not have been hired without you proving to him you knew something nobody else did. Ace's house. And there's only one way you could have gotten that address.”

“What was the prize?” Cross said, his voice the same volume as Buddha's, but almost soothing by comparison.

“Three million euros,” the Asian said, the emptiness of his voice showing he was telling the truth.

“But not in cash, right?”

“By wire. To Macao.”

“Three mil to take down all of us?”

“Just for one. Any one of you, it didn't matter. The first one to…complete the task, that would be the winner.”