Drawing Dead (22 page)

“She's not going to, brother,” Cross said, cutting Buddha off before permanent damage could be done. “She knows how that would play out.”

“Huh!” So Long snorted. “You would kill me?”

“It wouldn't get that far,” Cross said, in the same dead tone he'd been using since So Long stepped into her living room and realized her husband had brought company. Unwanted company. “Buddha could never let us do anything to you. But he couldn't let anyone do anything to
us,
either. Only one way for him, then.”

“Husband…?”

“He's right, So Long. I couldn't kill my own people. I couldn't let anyone kill you. Or kill me, either. So, you and me, we'd both have to…go home.”

A long second passed. “I get you the list,” the hard-faced Hmong woman told Cross.

“BOSS…”

“It's nothing, Buddha. So Long was always going to give up that list. It's not like they were her own people or anything. But your wife, she is what she is. She had to test. If she saw any way she could get paid…”

“But you took it so far.”

“Someone always blinks first.”

“Sure. Unless they don't. Then what—?”

“I would have come up with something.”

“Yeah,” the pudgy man behind the wheel said, resigned to a truth he already knew.

IF BUDDHA
thought the next hour of silence would give way to the thread of the original conversation, he was disappointed.

Expertly sliding the Shark Car between pools of shadows made the trip back to Red 71 longer than usual, but Cross was apparently comfortable with it.
Safety first,
Buddha thought.
Safety for us, no matter what it costs anyone else.

As he slid the gang's car into a U-turned tunnel behind the building, Buddha tried once more. “Boss, you know
what
you would've come up with?”

“No.”

“But…”

“Brother, I don't have a crystal ball. I can't answer ‘What if?' questions. Let it go, okay?”

AS THE
two men walked through the unlit tunnel, Buddha held back slightly, then moved to Cross's left side.

He can't shoot worth a damn with his left hand,
Buddha thought to himself. And then stopped in his tracks.

Cross stopped, too. He didn't know what Buddha had seen ahead of them, but he wasn't going to break silence to ask.

“What the hell is that thing doing
now
?”

“Where? I don't see—”

“Not ahead, boss. On your face. Just below your eye. That…blue thing. It's blinking on and off.”

“Wait till we get back inside,” Cross told him, puzzled.
How come it didn't just burn steady? And how come I didn't feel it this time?

“GO LOOK
inside the poolroom,” the gang's leader told Buddha. “If any of us are out there, ask them to come back.”

Before Buddha could return, Princess burst through the curtain face-first, as if the black steel ball bearings were cobwebs.

“We won!” he burst out.

“You got people to play nine-ball with Rhino?” Cross said, surprised in spite of himself—getting people to even
approach
the Goliath was never an easy task.

“No! It was Sweetie! He did it! I've been teaching him. Like you said, Cross. When he does something good, I give him a command…and a chunk of meat. Like that was what I wanted him to do all along. That's all. It just took a lot of…patience. Like you said. Nobody believed he could do it. But…”

Rhino came through the curtain, his bulk parting it sufficiently to let Buddha pass through untouched.

“Where's that damn—?” Cross began, but caught Rhino's gesture and clipped off whatever he had been going to ask.

The subject of the uncompleted question followed Rhino inside. As calm as a man who chewed Valium to alleviate boredom, the big Akita walked over to Princess, scanned the room quickly, and flopped down at his armor-plated friend's feet.

“Boss, I swear, I never saw anything like—”

“Rhino, can
you
tell me what in hell everyone's going on about?”

“Physically, it was impossible,” the behemoth said. “The dog—Sweetie,” he added quickly. “Sweetie stood on one side of table twelve. Princess bet everyone in the place that his dog could jump across, from one side to the other, long rail to long rail. We've got more room between the tables than in most poolrooms, sure. But not enough to get a running start.”

“You saying…?”

“Yes. Sweetie went into this crouch, as if he was transferring all his muscle mass to his back legs. Then he just
launched
right over. If I'd seen that in a movie, I'd know it was faked. But he actually did it.”

“Who collected the money?”

“Princess. You could see they all thought he was out of his mind, but here—in Red 71, I mean—they knew they were safe. If we had lost, they knew they'd have collected, too.”

“You guys cleared—what?—ten G's minimum, am I right?”

“I don't know, Buddha,” Rhino said, without interest. “Here, you want to count it for yourself?”

“Duh-
am
!” the pudgy man exclaimed. “Closer to fifteen. What a score. Hell, I would have taken that bet myself.”

Cross held his head in both hands.

“I will ask what Buddha really wants to know,” Tracker spoke from one of the pools of darkness that made it impossible to gauge the size of Red 71's back room. “How did you cheat?”

Buddha shot a look in Tracker's direction but didn't pretend to be insulted.

“There was no cheating,” Rhino said, almost pedantically. “We use professional-standard tables. The playing surface is nine by four and a half feet, but there is some additional room for the wood surrounds…where the diamonds are inset.”

“Diamonds? You mean those are real?”

“No, Buddha,” Rhino said patiently. “The inlays are diamond-
shaped,
always in a contrasting color, usually a pearly white. Players use them to calculate angles. They must be precisely set, just as the slate bed is. Variations in a particular table would give an advantage to anyone who knew them.”