I KILL RICH PEOPLE 2 (28 page)

“Yet no results. Mr. Bishop, we apply an evolved, multi-faceted approach to every issue, every goal. Whether we find results in an instant, contexts we term an ‘avalanche,’ or through longer-term methods—‘glaciers’—we don’t succeed in every skirmish but we invariably win the wars. We are diversified, across industries—fossil fuels, defense, pharma, agriculture, communications, incarceration, even academics, and across geographies. Despite breadth, all is synthesized toward a purpose,” Jeffers said.

“Assuming your conclusion that Jonathan Spencer is a mutation, a random radical cell, the moment that he held no intelligence value he should have been eliminated. I can appreciate that it draws inquiry when a soldier is in full leg casts about which there is nothing in the VA medical record, but a soldier in full leg casts can certainly commit suicide. Upon arrival, Miller will complement your ground assets and direct your field consultants. The man is a closer, a seasoned expert in swift results. Conclusive results.”

Jeffers continued: “We are looking additionally at bringing in a police lieutenant, NYPD Intel Division; he ran the one investigative team that got past the noise and got to Spencer when federal, state, and local law enforcement failed. I’m sending you the file on him as we speak. He is on personal leave; our sources within NYPD indicate he is receiving mandatory anger-management counseling for disciplinary reasons subsequent to the death of his partner during Spencer’s capture. He doesn’t buy our Dimitri Vosilych; he has knowledge and he has motivation, both. Mr. Nussbaum can continue surveillance methods without your input. I want you on your way to that NYPD lieutenant, Cullen. Now.”

“Hey, I am not at fault for his escape,” Bishop complained.

“They didn’t get him!” Jeffers shouted. “He stole a motorcycle from right next door and you never knew it! He’s had enough time to get clear across the country because you failed. I don’t pay for failure!”

Bishop strained to hold it together. “The whole street was evacuated at the time. We couldn’t know he stole the motorcycle! This isn’t algebra; not everything has a finite answer.”

Bishop was sick of the whole command structure. Jeffers, who had probably never captured a frog much less an escaped prisoner—what the hell was he doing micromanaging tactics!

“Here is how this adds up to me,” Jeffers pressed. “I’m giving you every resource and you keep failing.”

“It wasn’t my prison,” Bishop countered right back. “Don’t play the blame game. I’m not telling those men that they’re not getting paid.”
Not without telling them who is holding the purse strings and where you hang your hat.

Jeffers calmed down hearing the phrase “the blame game.” He had originated that one himself. One of his favorites. But the moment passed quickly.

“He has a forty-eight-hour lead,” Jeffers insisted. “He could be in Russian hands right now, off to be another ‘guest of Putin.’”

“I’m aware of that,” Bishop conceded, not believing it for a second. “If he worked inside a network, he might be in Yemen or Waziristan or in a Moscow hotel right now. But Spencer is a loner. I’ve tracked loners. He needs cash, forged identification, probably a disguise. He’ll want weapons. That’s why I’ll get him. I always do.

“Not even Spencer would be crazy enough to rob a gun shop. D.C. and 30 National Instant Criminal Background Check states require ID and background checks. That narrows the field. I’ll lay down a blanket on every gun store licensed for over-the-counter sales. Nussbaum tells me eighty-five percent of them use web-based video security. He can matrix facial recognition into every one of them. Spencer bought in the past at Eagle Arms, a gun show vendor. My guys went ahead and mapped out every show across the country. We’ll get eyes into all of them.”

“Whoa!” Jeffers resisted. “No! Drop that. No no no! No gun show surveillance. APA isn’t alienating the NRA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation. No!”

“We’re not talking about Second Amendment stuff,” Bishop argued. “Spencer is the most dangerous terrorist in the country.” What the hell did the gun lobby have to do with anything?

“I said no! We’re taking another tack.” Jeffers pulled up his contacts at NSA, scrolling for the precise fit. “Nobody is fragmenting twenty-year alliances,” he told Bishop. “You remember who writes the checks. Tell Nussbaum to expect an email from Sunshine Industries,” he told Bishop.

“Sunshine Industries?”

“Yes,” Jeffers answered. Then Bishop heard the line disconnect.

Stephen and his techs were already building a keyword and geographical search framework when Bishop joined them. Phone, email, web searches; any time someone spoke, wrote, or searched, their algorithms could catch it.

“How are you doing that?” Bishop wanted to know.

“Sunshine Industries,” Stephen replied. “We just got the equivalent to a two-thousand page tutorial on two more sections of NSA’s framework. Jesus! This stuff is unreal. So cool. We can trace back to the source of any browser traffic in under a second. This is fucking crazy!” He pressed his fingertips against his temples and read through the table of contents line by line.

“We’re already combing through every FBI and NYPD report on the attacks, following connections between victims, companies, investment patterns,” Stephen explained. “Now we have every resource Homeland Security has got, plus Kip and Dale and Dilip are a fuck of a lot smarter than anybody at NSA. I guarantee you.”

Bishop’s jaw hung open. Every time Carlton Jeffers had upped the stakes again. Stephen had access now to four hundred billion dollars’ worth of top-secret classified systems along with the guidebook to leverage them. Jeffers did that in ten minutes.

“How?” was all he could manage to ask.

“Who do you think sells the systems to NSA?” Stephen answered casually. “They’re all Vision Partners and APA.”

*****

XMercy followed Spencer outside into the night air, leaving Mouse sprawled on the sofa. “It’s a fucking D,” Mouse yelled after them, bringing the cool Mason jar against her tattooed neck. “D. For Dimitri.”

The meadow glistened silver from a fading three-quarters moon teasing through thin clouds. XMercy felt the change in the warm night air; an early summer coming on. Still too early to abandon sweaters, but the trees would soon be leafing out with the first spring greenery, assuring the soul that all is new and good again.

She let out a long sigh and smiled to herself.

XMercy wrapped her arms around his arm and squeezed. “Johnny, thank you for bringing in all that wood. Wait a couple days to let those hands heal before you go out for more. Not that we don’t need it, but I have a little surprise for you. You’re going to like it.”

Spencer had been considering. The hills were peppered with mine shafts, abandoned metal buildings. The legs were far from perfect, but if he could borrow the .22, a knife, a pot, matches, and a few other staples, he could make do.

“Mercy, I do appreciate spending time with you, this place, but maybe I’d better move on down the road.”

“XMercy,” she corrected, but gently. He didn’t resist when she hooked her arm around him and leaned into his shoulder. “Mouse is Mouse. Don’t take it personally, Johnny. She hates your balls, not you. Take the flashlight and go on to your place. Get yourself a good night’s sleep. That’s an order!”

“Yes sir.”

XMercy spun Spencer back around as he turned to go, hugging and tightening her arms around him.
Hug her back,
he told himself, but when her arms relaxed his still remained at his sides.

“You get first shower in the morning,” XMercy let him know. Her voice revealed no sign of any missed expectation. “You know Mouse isn’t getting up!”

XMercy kept watching the silhouette of his shoulders against the moonlight with the flashlight moving through the tall grass ahead of his steps all the way out to the camper. One of her owls sounded through the trees, followed by the hollow
umph
from the camper door opening. Spencer placed the flashlight inside on the floor then stepped around the side. XMercy listened momentarily to the sound of his peeing hitting the grass then went inside the trailer, shutting the door behind her.

After he went in, Spencer set the flashlight on the small countertop and reached for matches. He saw the surprise when he lit the lamp and wished again that he had hugged her back. Mercy had left a guitar on top of the blankets and sleeping bags. He lifted it, felt its heft, ran his fingertips around the body, set it on his lap and moved his left palm slowly up the neck, stopping at every fret until he reached the head and tuning pegs, touching his fingers to three then counting three with his left thumb. He hesitated, and then permitted himself the pleasure of bringing his right palm down on the saddle, the balls of his hand resting against the bridge. His knees trembled as the soft flesh between thumb and forefinger slid up the strings. He had not felt the weight and curve of a guitar since before the last mission, but didn’t want to think of that now.

He felt his right fingers along the rim of the sound hole, pressed against the soft tension.
E-A-D-G-B-E.
His left fingers moved along chord to chord, in the air, never touching, imagining their way down the frets. He tried to draw from memory the sound from each position, closed his eyes and imagined feeling the vibrations as he worked the guitar’s voice from the notes, then abruptly he set it aside, carefully, to be sure it made no sound.

Mercy had taught him to play. The next-door kid with a dead mom and a half-dead dad. She showed what she knew and told him to practice and he did that, hours and hours and hours. Even as a kid, he was trying so hard to be perfect. Maybe if he were perfect, Jack would wake up. But Jack didn’t have it in him.

His mom used to set up Jack’s schedule, do the billings, maintain the inventory, call customers when bills were overdue, send out Christmas cards, pay the taxes. She was the officer, Spencer realized. Dad was a grunt.
Like me.

Spencer stretched out on the foam mattress, running his prone frame through the same micro-exercises he had done in sets of fifty, hours and hours of sets inside concrete walls.
Just days ago.
Sun and moon, blue jays, chipmunks, and woodpeckers didn’t change any of that.

You can’t stay here. They’ll come.
Nobody does what they did and then lets you just walk away! He needed to get online, try to find out what was going on.

*****

“Pretty good shower, huh?” XMercy said to him. “I almost fucked up bad when I first got it. Tried putting the tank up on the roof. Dumb. Nearly caved the roof in before it was a quarter filled. That was before Mouse. Some guys from the hardware helped me build the frame and pipe to it. You wouldn’t think a black plastic tank would get so hot, would you? You can’t see it from below, but we painted a reflective mirror surface onto the platform it sits on and that kicks it up quite a bit more. Not much use in the winter, but I’m fixing to get an outside bathtub to use all summer long.”

Her enthusiasm could sometimes be a lot to take in. “Good shower,” Spencer agreed when he was sure that he could get a word in edgewise. The array of shampoos and body washes, conditioners and moisturizers surprised him; there had to be at least one for every day of the week. The towel, on the other hand, left a lot to be desired.

XMercy came up behind him again. This time she gently touched the angry red scar along his back. She inhaled quickly, as if she felt his pain.

“Jesus, Johnny.” The scars along his legs were even worse: massive thick lines running down his right thigh and covering both legs below the knees. It boggled the mind that he could walk at all.

XMercy chanted for him while Spencer got dressed. She had a card table and chairs set outside with yogurt and bananas, homemade granola, French press with Starbucks coffee, and locally made ceramic cups.

“I’ve seen those scars. Talk to me, Johnny. How’d they happen?”

“I got wounded. Twice. It happens.”

“Yes, and?”

“So I’m never going to be a great skier.” Spencer chuckled. He once had a major who wanted him to give Biathlon a try; thought he had the stuff to represent the Army and the USA. He hadn’t thought about that in years.
Funny.

“Yes, and?”

“Now I can’t serve in the Armed Forces.”

“Yes and… how does that make you feel?”

“That it’s a waste. The army took a million dollars to train me and threw that out the door. Nothing more American than waste.”

“I’m so sorry, Johnny.” XMercy reached over the table to take his hand. When he withdrew she shifted to the French press, plunging it down.

“How long were you in, something like twenty years?”

“Nineteen years, six months, and twenty-two days. Six more months and I’d have got retirement. Not that I wanted to retire. I know what Mouse thinks, but I was good with the army. Good at it. But money guys with business degrees figure every soldier is disposable. So they cut me a check and sent me packing. I bought a motorbike and I went.”

“I saw the motorcycle. Do you have plans?”

“Don’t worry. I know about guests and fish both stinking after a few days. I’ll be heading along.”

“I don’t want you to go. I mean that, Johnny. And not just for old time’s sake, either. There’s that, but that’s not why. If you’re willing to stay, we can use the help. I can trust you to keep a secret, right? I know I can. You can’t tell anybody and you can’t tell Mouse I told you, ok?”

Spencer nodded his assent. XMercy shook granola into a wooden bowl and dolloped yogurt over the top, excitedly trying to frame her confession. Her hands shook when she picked up the French press.

“We’re growers. Mouse and me. New Millennium Moonshine.”

“Weed?”

Ten minutes later, XMercy was walking him down a foot-wide dirt path packed down by hundreds of trips. She stopped midway, turned to him and asked, “The guitar? I’ve been dying to ask! Do you still remember how to play?”

“It’s been a while.”

She nodded, disappointed, and went back to walking ahead of him until she opened her arms to a long arched structure in front of them, assembled from PVC and plastic covering. Spencer recoiled involuntarily when she ripped away Velcro fasteners to open the flaps. A rush of warm, moist air hit him in the face. But it was the shocking white glare that made him turn his eyes away.

“That’s the Mylar,” XMercy explained. “Pumps up the heat units and makes them dance like happy little chlorophyll engines. We’re getting near to indoor grow conditions without using a kilowatt of energy generation.”

Once inside, they ducked below lateral PVC water lines and walked in between rows of abutting plywood tables set onto rough sawhorses, each table covered with three- to six-inch tall young sprouts seeded in rich dark earth-scented humus inside black plastic trays. XMercy looked down at the oversized imprint Spencer’s shoes made in the Mylar, watching one print until the shining fabric returned to its original shape, leaving behind just the muddy outline of the sole.

“A whole damned greenhouse of the best bud in West Virginia!” she burst out. Double-6 mil plastic covers, roll-up sides, a continuous PVC drip system, spring-fed. Off the grid and state-of-the-art!”

Before that, he had been wondering how they could afford a new diesel Polaris and the Honda generator, but it was none of his business. He had accepted that and let it go.

“Will you help?” XMercy urged him. “With your help, we’ll get in a second greenhouse right away. Johnny, we can’t pay you yet, but we can stake you through harvest and pay you then. I need to talk with Mouse, but she’ll get it. She gets business.

Before a breath, she continued: “Johnny, ninety days, we’ll be harvested and dried. Finished until next year. We have a hundred-twenty starts each of a hybrid, Jack the Ripper, a killer sativa called Girl Scout Cookies, and a 100-percent Indica Pot of Gold strain. It’s real low-key. Strictly wholesale. We make the delivery, very cool medical marijuana dudes, all cash.

“After we dump the runts, let’s say we get down to two-forty, two-fifty plants. Weather means a ton in outdoor grows, but even in our first year we got eight-ounce averages, over five ounces dried, all bud. I’m ordering solar-driven fans to keep the air moving to stop the mold issues we had, but we need to get up the second greenhouse.

“It’s not easy, but it sure beats the hell out of goddamned goats!” she said. “At $85 an ounce, we could gross a hundred thousand dollars, not even counting the extra shake. And it’s not like we’re robbing or hurting anybody.