Drawing Dead (23 page)

“What's that got to do with—?”

“Most poolrooms have the tables too close together, in order to squeeze an extra table or so on the available floor space. But in, say, a tournament, this would not be the case. You wouldn't want players getting in each other's way.”

“So you had it fixed?”

“There was no ‘fix.' Our tables are about thirty inches high. Even with the extra space we added, it's not enough for Sweetie to get a running start. He had to—”

“He was like a goddamn helicopter,” Buddha interrupted. “Just took off and kind of…floated over the whole thing.”

Rhino's patience was never tested by interruptions. He continued at the measured pace of an engineering professor explaining a concept to a vaguely attentive class. “Roughly, a parabolic arc of less than three feet at its peak is required. It's simple physics.”

“We started him on two feet,” Princess said proudly. “Once Sweetie got the idea, we added an inch every few weeks. His back legs, they're like steel springs.”

“Yeah, well, it's a good hustle, but you can only use it once. It's not like you and Princess could pick up a pool table and carry it around with you.”

“We could, too!” Princess insisted. “Me and Rhino, we carried all the new tables in through the back. If we wanted…”

“Ah” was all the Amazon said.

“Boss…”

“We're not going into business with this, Buddha,” Cross said, his tone clearly communicating that the subject was closed.

“Sure. I wasn't gonna say anything about that. I just wanted to know why that little blue mark is back again.”

“I see it, too,” Rhino said. “Princess and I both.”

“Ace?”

“Same for me, brother.”

Cross drew in a deep breath through his nose, held it for a count of sixty, then slowly exhaled. “Only this time,
I
can't feel it. So something's happening,” he finally said. “Changing. But nothing is adding up.

“I thought it was some kind of warning. I could
feel
it—that's what made me look in the first place. But now you see it when it flashes, but I don't feel a damn thing.”

“THAT'S WHERE
it all started,” Cross said, recapping. “No reason I should have gotten out of that basement alive—whatever it was had to know I'd put the whole capture-trap in place.

“And ever since, I've had this little…brand thing under my eye. When I can feel it, it's always some kind of warning. So, whatever put it there, it's still got some use for me.

“Remember when Blondie was running down all the info they had collected? First, those government morons thought some serial killer was responsible. You know, all those ‘profiles' they had worked up? But the load of slime who confessed to the Canyon Killings out in California blew the covers off that—he was just playing the Henry Lee Lucas game.”

“A professional case-clearer,” Tiger said. “That's what this clinical psychologist told them. And he was right.”

“Lucas was the model,” Rhino added. “And the same tune's been on the fake hit parade ever since. Turns a lot of ‘Unsolved' into ‘Closed.' ”

“It's a damn TV show,” Buddha spat out. “You know, where the cops get to stand over some grave and tell the camera how they made a promise to the dead kid's parents. It's a good deal for everyone,” he sneered. “The maggot's already been sentenced for a killing that was actually his—so he's either on Death Row or doing Life Without—it don't cost him nothing to confess to a few dozen more. Even that Ottis Toole—now,
there's
a guy with a name that fits; his mother couldn't spell ‘Otis' and he was a tool from that day on—picked up the trick, right from Lucas himself. Toole for sure: the IQ of an imbecile for openers, with his brain fried from Sterno on top of that.”

“What makes you so sure of that, Buddha?”

“Rhino, come on! Man dies of cirrhosis of the liver before he's fifty? As long as he kept confessing, they kept him oiled.”

“Okay, that's enough,” the gang's leader said. “What difference does some damn guess make? There's things we
know.
What I told Blondie about the Simbas, that was all words carried on the wind. The whisper was that they were supposed to be a tribal mix. And in Africa, that just doesn't happen. At least, no one had ever heard of it. When whites invaded Africa, maybe that intensified the tribal separations, but it was
always
that way.”

“Here? You mean, in America?” Tiger asked.

“How many black gangs on the South Side?” Ace half-snapped at her. “Or the West? Too many to count, growing all the time. When they get
too
big, they split into sets. Next, they turn on each other. Who wins
those
wars? Same with the Latinos. How many Mexican gangs on the East Coast? How many Puerto Rican crews on the West? Sure. But it don't make no difference—they all go the same way, no matter where they are.”

“Chinese, too,” Buddha cosigned. “They been having all-outs between themselves in New York for—what?—damn near fifty years.”

“Sure,” Cross said, quietly. “Africa, you could almost understand it. That continent, it's always been fertile territory—first it was slaves, now it's gold, diamonds, oil. The only time an African country is ‘politically stable' is when the dictator is such a degenerate that he kills people for entertainment.

“But it wasn't until the same signature kills all got connected that they started talking about this ‘entity' thing—the G may not be good for much, but they're great at making charts. What we heard called ‘Simbas' in the Congo, they were called ‘Natt Krigere' in Scandinavia.”

“What does that mean?” Tiger asked, frankly curious.

“In Norwegian, it means ‘Night Warriors.' You go far enough north and half the year you don't see the sun at all. But they still found the same kill-signature in places where every single native was as white as people get. And the
language,
that's the big clue.”

“Why?” Tiger asked, not so gently. Standing with both hands free, as if she wanted to close the distance between this unknown entity and the twin throwing daggers strapped to her muscular right thigh.

“I'm no historian,” Cross said tonelessly, “but I always read a lot—I had the time to do it. We know there were a lot of Finnish collaborators in World War II. You want Norwegian, just look up ‘Quisling'—the Nazis put him in charge, and he was convicted of being a war criminal. You know where he was executed? Oslo.

“Why there? Well, the Norwegian
people
never made any deals. They just gathered their forces and rolled up north. For them, ‘north' means above the Arctic Circle. Then they told the Germans to come and get some. Which didn't happen.

“Now, that was strange, right? Where's the access to oil? Right off
their
coast, yeah? And they don't come much whiter than Norwegian. But even the German generals weren't dumb enough to swallow that Master Race crap—Hitler looked about as Nordic as Malcolm X.

“The Norwegians, they didn't trust the Holy Church any more than they did the Swiss government. They didn't need to join some Crusade to reach the Pearly Gates—dying in battle, that was their guaranteed ticket to Valhalla.

“Now even the AB is under fire from the Odinists inside the walls—Vikings are as feared warriors as the Mau Mau ever were. And they've been around a lot longer.”

“Maybe I can't follow that. Not
all
of it, anyway,” Tiger spoke softly. “But I think I know where we can find out some more of it.”

“Where?” Tracker asked.

“Mural Girl,” the Amazon answered. “But we'd have to actually make contact this time. That camera we set up, it never holds an image for long. And all it ever shows is some kind of…explanation, maybe? I don't know. But maybe she does.”

“TWO RIDES,”
Cross ordered. “Buddha, me, Tiger, and Tracker in the Shark Car. Rhino, Princess, and Ace in the backup.”

“Why can't—?”

“There isn't room, Princess.”

“There is, too! Plenty of times we all—”

“Don't you want Sweetie to come along?” Cross said, ending any discussion. Explaining the tactical reasoning intuitively understood by Ace and Rhino to the muscle-massed child would have taken hours. “Mural Girl works in daylight. It's already getting dark, so tomorrow we move. First light.”

“Let
me
ask her,” Tiger said.

“Ask who?”

“Mural Girl,” she told Cross. “First light, like you just said. But let me do the talking, okay?”