Drawing Dead (27 page)

“The same guess covers how you can work here all the time and never get hassled?”

“Yep. I'm not a painter, I'm—”

“An architect.”

“You did some research, huh?”

“Not trying to get into your business,” Tiger assured her. “It's just that this whole thing you do, it's a mystery. Not the kind any of us would try to solve, except that we think whatever's looking out for you, it's looking out for us, too.”

“And…?”

“And we don't know why. It started with…a tiny little symbol. On the face of one of us.”

“Cross.”

“Yes,” Tiger answered, nothing in her neutral voice revealing surprise.

“They make their own decisions. I don't have a clue who…or what they are. It's not like I could talk to them, or anything. I was riding by this spot a few years ago, and I noticed this huge white wall. That's when I started. And I've been doing it ever since.”

“You didn't whitewash the wall yourself?”

“No. One day, it was just dirty brick. The next day, it was as white as a fresh canvas.”

“How did you get the ladder over here? And all the paint?”

“I've got a friend with a pickup. He didn't want me doing this, but he didn't try and stop me. If he'd said ‘no,' I'd have just asked someone else.”

“Which he already knew you'd do.”

“Yes,” Mural Girl answered, flashing a smile that could only be measured in kilowatts. “He helped me get everything set up, that first time. He didn't want to leave me here, but he has a job. When he came back to take me home, I was just about finished. With the first one, I mean. I don't know why, but I can paint
fast
here. It's like it goes from my mind to the brush, zip!”

“Nobody bothered you?”

“That first day? Oh yeah. Some boy standing at the bottom of the ladder. ‘Hey, girl, the view from here is something to see!'—that kind of play-pimp rap.”

“He was the only—?”

“No. Just the first one to show up. I ignored him and he went away. At least, he wasn't there when I turned around a few minutes later. But a whole car of gang boys came later. Told me I couldn't work on this wall without getting a ‘pass' from them.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know. And that's the truth. They just…disappeared. Right in the middle of them waving their guns around, like they were posing for one of those lame TV shows. I
think
I heard this sizzling kind of sound, but…I'm just not sure. That wasn't the last time. Other people came by. Some just watched—that was fine. But every time anyone got stupid, something happened. Different things. Nobody's even
tried
to stop me from working for a long time now.”

“You just see something in your mind and ride your bike over here, and it goes up on a white wall? And the
next
time you get an idea…a message you want people to see…when you come back, everything's all ready for you?”

“Sounds crazy, huh? I wouldn't have known what happened to the murals except that I saw one on a building we were gutting a half-mile west of here.”

“You must have gone back to that one. I mean, just to see—”

“It wasn't touched,” Mural Girl said. “None of them have been.”

“How did you know Cross was the one they branded?”

“I didn't. Not until I saw you.”

“Me?”

“Don't come at me sideways, lady. You think I'd have to be connected with…whatever they are…to know
you
?”

“But you never—”

“What? Visited Orchid Blue? That's right. And so what? Here's what
everybody
knows, okay? Cross doesn't look like much of anything, but you can't miss that big bull's-eye tattoo on the back of his right hand. Buddha, he can look like
less
than nothing, but word is, he's a magician with a pistol. Or a car…”

Mural Girl turned and deliberately looked into the shadow where the Shark Car lurked.

“Yeah. Never far away, are they? I don't know any of them, except by street talk, and that's never worth more than
who's
talking. There's one I don't know by name, but word is he's twice the size of an NFL offensive lineman. And Princess, now,
that
one's a pale gorilla with so much muscle he looks like he's armor-plated. He gets his hands on you, you're gone. Only he dresses up like some idiot's version of ‘campy.' Lays that makeup on
heavy
: rouge, eyeliner, lipstick…the works.

“And you think there's a lot of Amazons walking around in neon bodysuits? With daggers strapped to their thighs? And black and gold stripes in their hair? If that's supposed to be a disguise, it's a beaut.” Mural Girl chuckled. “All I'd have to do would be to drop word that you climbed this ladder in four-inch heels, street-talk would have them be six-inchers in a few hours.”

She doesn't know about Tracker,
Tiger thought.
Or Ace, either.

“A lot of people—”

“—talk. I know,” Mural Girl said. “The more they talk, the more outrageous they get, like some kind of multiplier effect. But they
do
talk, and it's not hard to hear what they say, if you're in places where they say it. That's how you can tell the natives from the tourists. Ask a cabdriver to take you to Red 71, you get a blank look, that's one thing. But if it's ‘Are you out of your mind?,' that's all you need to tell them apart.”

“That's why you're not worried?”

“About what?”

“About why I'm here? About why the car's over there?”

“You mean, because I think all that talk is so much BS? No. I know better. A lot of people know better, probably more than you think. But if you were here to try and do something to me, why even get out of that car?”

“That's not it,” Tiger said, eyeing Mural Girl's face as if trying to memorize it. “You got…
them
watching your back, right? Whoever they are, they wouldn't let anyone do anything to you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“We know that. You're supposed to be real good at some kind of martial art. And anyone who goes on one of those thousand-mile bike rides has got to have legs of steel.”

“You know stuff? Or you
heard
stuff?”

“If the source is reliable, those are the same.”

“Is that right? And
your
source…”

“An undercover. Infiltrated a major gang. Not some cop looking for a big drug bust; a fed. Working his way close enough to see if it's a true clue that one of the gangs actually took money from people who'd like to see Sears Tower fall down.”

“Why tell me?”

“Because you asked. This…source, he saw you kick a banger in the knee. The one who walks with a cane, now. Not some Snoop wannabe—it's the only way he can get around.”

“That's enough.”

“Sure. You told us stuff we wanted to know, I figured the least I could do was—”

“You get it? Good. Then get on your way—I've got a lot of work to do.”

Without a word, Tiger leaned her long-nailed hands against the whitewashed wall, pushed off, and butterfly-floated to the ground. Mural Girl never turned around as the Amazon stepped into the back of the Shark Car.

TIGER WAS
silent as they slid through the treacherous streets, heading for the Badlands.

Buddha killed the headlights and switched to the laser light-bar behind the mesh grille as they rolled past the rusted out hulk of a de-wheeled semi that marked one of the entrances. Very few would take that route; even fewer would make it a round trip. There were other entrances, one to the Gangland version of Chicago's famous Commodity Exchange—an outlaw menu of bartering transfers, black-marketing, drag racing…and, if you knew the way, a path to Red 71. Buddha had already hit the “come home” signal to a network of one-use cells.

Hearing Tiger take a deep breath, Cross said, “Wait till the others get here. No point telling the same story twice.”

“THERE'S NO
connection,” Cross told his audience. “None at all.”

Silence.

“What I'm saying, whatever that creature in the house was, he didn't connect to Old Greytooth's present for us. Pekelo, that one, looks like he was telling it true. It
had
to be AI, set to trigger if that creature didn't tell it to stand down. Whether he had to send the signal every hour or every month, it doesn't matter.

“It wasn't Hemp who was playing that ‘game,' that was the Lao. To win, he had to draw us out. And what better way? I won't miss him. Or Hemp. But this wasn't the same kind of…Hell, I don't know. The Simbas, maybe? What
ever
they are, what
ever
we call them, we know this isn't how they work.”

“Mural Girl told you all that, right?” Cross asked Tiger, no hint of skepticism in his words.

“Pretty much,” she answered. “Mural Girl knows something's been watching her back. Something that can give her a fresh canvas to paint on. And—here's the thing—those murals of hers, they don't get erased, they get
moved.
She's seen them all over the city. Places where you'd expect them to be X-ed out, over-tagged,
something.
But once they go up, they
stay
up.

“She's used to it, by now. And this is one tough girl, no question. But she knows she couldn't do what she does without cover. Why they picked her, I don't know. But she knows us. Knows
of
us, anyway. And—”

“All of us?” Tracker interrupted. This was so uncharacteristic of the man that the room went quiet, waiting for Tiger to answer.

“Cross, Buddha, Princess, Rhino, no doubt. Me, she knows, but from the way she was talking, I'm not sure if she knew I was always part of the crew. Until this morning, anyway.”