Drawing Dead (35 page)

“THIS IS
it,” Condor said, pulling to the curb of a two-story cottage with a good-sized yard and two-car garage, letting that action substitute for the words the girl in the seat next to him couldn't hear.

She followed him to the back door of the house, where they waited patiently. A handsome young man opened the door. He looked calmly competent—not crazy-fearless, like some of the boys in Condor's crew. But Q.T. could tell that getting past him could take some doing.

Condor slid back the hoodie just enough for the young man to recognize him. The response was immediate: “You know where to sit. I'll get Maria,” the young man said, leaving the two of them alone.

“What
now
?” said a strong-boned blonde woman with a still-beautiful face despite soft blue eyes that had seen too much, too many times. She wasn't as annoyed as her words should have sounded.

“I've got—”

“Condor,” she said, playfully pushing his Mohawk against the grain, “no sales pitch today. Just give me what I need.”

“This girl,” Condor said, making certain that she was included in the conversation, his gestures making it clear that she wasn't some package he was dropping off, “she's with us. You already know how that happens. Only, she—we call her Q.T., because one of the newbies called her ‘Cutie,' and grabbed her…you know. We had to pull her off before she blinded him, but the name kind of stuck. She can't hear. And she can't speak. Wasn't
born
that way. You know the rest. You know what those tears mean. She's wanted. Not for the usual runaway stuff—looking at serious time downstate. Only she had no choice.”

“You want me to take her in?”

“I know it's a lot to ask—”

“Don't work me, young man. But you tell that ‘friend' of yours I can't risk giving up nine other kids just for her. So I need prints to disappear. And—”

“I'll get it all for you,” Condor said, chastened. “Give me a few days. Just keep her inside. If I can't get it done, I'll take her back with us.”

“All right, you
do
that. She'll be here when you come back, either way.”

She bent down and kissed Condor on the cheek, ignoring his flaming face. Then she held out her hand to the girl—half invitation, half command. The two of them walked out of the room, together.

“YOU KNOW
what you're asking?” the cheap-suited man with thick wrists and a prizefighter's face said.

“I know what I've
been
asked,” Cross said quietly, leaning into the front window of McNamara's white Crown Vic. “And I don't recall ever passing.”

“All I can get is the codes,” said the ex-cop, whom the department had allowed to keep the white unmarked as a retirement present. “After that…”

“Ghost in, ghost out,” Cross said, and walked off into the darkness.

“WHERE WE
dropped you. Ten minutes.”

Cross popped the SIM card, then used two pairs of pliers to crack it into tiny pieces, all dropped into a handkerchief spread across his lap. He tossed various bits and pieces out the passenger-side window of the Shark Car as it motored toward that private back room of the No-Chance.

Buddha rolled into the space recently vacated by the white unmarked as Rhino stepped out the door, a canvas bag in each hand. The back door hissed open. The mammoth climbed in.

“Wait till we all get back,” Cross said.

The Shark Car passed a solid-front building, marked only by a narrow strip of inset neon spelling out…

O

R

C

H

I

D

B

L

U

E

…and continued on to the first alley opening. Cross was already tapping a numbered keypad.

Tiger and Princess strolled out the back door, the black-masked Akita now unleashed and walking between them. Tiger got in front, Princess and his dog in the back.

“Well? What did you—?”

“When we get back,” Cross interrupted the Amazon. “There's something we've got to do first.”

AS THEY
entered the back of Red 71, Cross saw a tiny blue light, blinking on one of the sawhorse struts that held his desk.

“Message out front,” he said, parting the ball-bearing curtain and stepping into the poolroom.

The tables were about three-quarters occupied, but nobody glanced at the unremarkable-looking man walking to the front desk.

“Cop left this for you,” the old man in the ancient green eyeshade said, handing over a baseball-sized wad of paper, tightly wrapped in black duct tape.

“Cop?”

“Not a blue boy.”

“Say anything?”

“Not even that he
was
a cop. Just rolled it across to me and walked back out the way he came in.”

Cross completed the round trip as invisibly as he had the first half.

Entering the back, he tossed the wrapped ball to Tracker, saying, “Rhino will need whatever's inside. Probably alphanumerics.”

Rhino, hearing this, began assembling his cyber-B&E materials.

Tracker was already at work with a piece of flexible razor steel, carefully working it under the outermost roll of duct tape.

Cross went back behind his desk, lit a cigarette.

A few minutes passed in silence.

“Ready?” Tracker finally asked.

“Go,” Rhino said.

As Tracker read each line, Rhino touched his immense laptop's keyboard, checked the black-and-white screen, and repeated, “Go.”

Within a minute of Tracker's saying, “Thirty,” Rhino announced, “I'm in.”

Cross recited from memory all the information Condor had taken from Q.T.

Another minute passed.

“No record,” Rhino said. “No wants, no warrants. No prints.”

“None
now
?”

“Yes. Erasing footprints, just a…There!”

“She was never arrested?”

“Erased,” Rhino answered again. “And nobody ever glanced at whatever record
used
to be there.”