Internecine (33 page)

“Think first,” said Dandine to the man at the door. He rose in a slow sit-up, keeping his guns trained. “Say, it’s . . . it’s Cody Conejo, isn’t it?”

“Aww, fuck me running,” said the intruder, lowering his own shotgun. “You’re supposed to be fuckin
dead,
man.”

“Stand down, gentlemen,” Dandine said to our unwilling audience at large. “I know this guy.”

“You’re lifting a little out of your weight class, aren’t you, Cody?” said Dandine as he wolfed most of a slice in three bites.

Dandine was a good negotiator. Nothing in the restaurant had been destroyed. He paid everyone’s tab and salted enough cash around to ensure the police would not be called, for all the good that would have done. En passant, I wondered if the cash was legit or tainted. But by the time five minutes had passed, and a rock ’n’ roll couple (a band rat and his front-row wife) had come in with their little girl for dinner, you would have never known that anything bad had happened. Jessica got a huge tip, the laptop man evaporated into the night without waiting for dessert, and the cook collected several new, unpapered firearms and two bodies in his industrial fridge, which he assured us were no problem. The bikers mostly wanted to compare notes with Dandine about pistols, and rode away happy, with extra road beers. It occurred to me that everybody in the place, except me, had a yellow sheet or criminal record. Zetts ate pizza one-handed, holding down on the groin of our new guest with one of Dandine’s guns as a cut from Judas Priest’s
British Steel
hammered out of the juke, near which the little girl happily played pinball, twisting some English into her flipper moves.

That jukebox was an eighties time machine, apparently. Nobody minded.

“Dumb luck,” said Cody Conejo, a big man—big as the bikers—whose mad casserole of genetics presented us with critical Asian eyes, a Mexican complexion, and rich black Navajo hair casually tied back with rawhide. His eyes kept seeking our pizza.

“Go ahead,” said Dandine. “We’re all just having a social chat. Catching up on who has betrayed who, today. And don’t give me that
tripe about luck. Even over the music, I could hear your coat rubbing against your body armor, louder than corduroy. Why do you still wear that stuff?”

“That’s, like
sooo
twentieth century,” said Zetts.

“If the maggots aren’t spraying their slugs with Teflon to zip right through the vests, “Dandine advised, “they’re coating them in mercury so you’ll die slow and painful. Cheapskates just dip them in feces.”

“Shit,” I said. “How do you know this guy?”

“We worked some ops before we were franchised. Shakedown, test-drive stuff.” He made it sound as though
NORCO
sent recruiters to our nation’s better campuses. “You really think you could take me, Cody my boy?”

Cody shook his head while noshing a too-full mouth of pizza. “Not you. Him.” He gulped without chewing enough and indicated me with a tilt of his chin. “They’re calling him the Ad Man, now.” He seemed resigned to whatever retribution Dandine might mete out, yet light about the whole thing, like someone who has lost a game fair and square and hopes not to be killed for coming second.

“Who sent you?” said Dandine.

“Jenks. For payback. For the woman.”

“
That
was certainly quick—a bit too quick even for good planning. How?”

Cody Conejo indicated me. “He’s broadcasting, man. How else?”

Dandine sprang from the booth, dragging me up in a bowlegged wobble. His eyes told Zetts to keep Cody on hold. With practiced premeditation, he searched my collar and cuffs, and discovered a silver disc, dime-sized, inside my left lapel. He tossed it to Zetts, who examined it by candlelight.

“From
NORCO
, with love,” said Zetts. “They might as well start stamping a brand name on these things; they’re like so obvious. They must buy ’em by the case.” He dropped it in his untouched water glass, where it sank past the crushed ice. “We now
terminate
our broadcast day, dude.”

“You file a prelim report back on the op? A green-light sheet?” Dandine asked Cody. It sounded like
NORCO
was big on paperwork.

“Naw. Was supposed to, after.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

I needed to contribute. “How did that thing get on me? Not in jail. I didn’t even have my jacket on at Zetts’s place . . .”

They all stared at me, pityingly, until I figured it out.

“At Alicia’s,” I said. “When Marion patted me down.” Specifically, in the elevator, as he scanned me for nonexistent bugs. “But why bug me there? I wasn’t supposed to walk out of there.”

“See?” said Cody. “Dumb luck.”

“They tin-canned you in case something outside the purview of their plan happened,” said Dandine. “It did, too. God, I’m losing it. I should have searched you, first thing. I thought the costume change would be enough. I never should have let you keep your coat.”

Leave it.
He’d told me to leave it, because his senses were that good, and he’d turned out to be right.

“What did they tell you the op was?” said Dandine to Cody, who was working on his second slice of
our
pizza.

“Do him. Walk away. No peripherals. Straight eye-for-an-eye deal, as a favor from
NORCO
, to Jenks.”

“Do you know who Jenks is?”

Cody shook his head. “Couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. No idea.”

“Then who’s supposed to pay you? For Jenks to call in a favor from
NORCO
that fast, the rubber stamp man had to be Gerardis.”

“Yeah, who else?” said Cody.

“Okay . . .
NORCO
purges Ripkin’s staff, but—brilliantly—
misses
Ripkin. Probably the same team travels directly to Alicia’s, to purge her. They budget like that; two-for-one. Except Alicia is already neutralized, and Connie and I get out of the parking lot just as the
NORCO
squad rolls in. Ripkin panics and calls the cops—real cops—who show up right after we do. But Connie is bugged, so when
NORCO
bags the SOS, they let it ride, figuring we’ll take the fall for the shootout. Which means . . . dammit, that really
was
a police helicopter.”

“How do you figure?”

“I figure Captain Ramses is a cautious enough man to radio the chopper and say, follow those guys for a bit.”

It certainly queered our chances of saying, later,
Hiya, Captain Ramses, old pal, mind if we talk to the guy you have in max-lock custody?

“And Ripkin didn’t call
NORCO
, he called the real police. Somebody in
NORCO
’s pocket wouldn’t bother. Either way, I’d say
NORCO
has decided which candidate they really like.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why all the . . . commotion, agitation? Why now?”

“Because their delicate balance of Jenks-versus-Alicia-versus-Ripkin has been disrupted by our, um, accidental incursion.
NORCO
likes to jettison liabilities instantaneously; that’s one of the things that keeps them subradar. They’re called bathwater jobs, as in baby-with-the-bathwater.”

“Man, that shit is like them time-travel movies,” said Zetts.

“Paradoxical,” said Dandine. “Look it up.”

“Whatever it is, it’s givin’ me a headache.”

“Sounds to me like I don’t even wanna know what kinda panty-twist you guys are into,” said Cody. He took a sip of the only available unused water glass, the one with the dead bug in it.

“How do you know it was Jenks that requisitioned your op?” Dandine asked Cody.

“Like I’m trying to tell ya, man, I
don’t.
It was an à la carte gig. Gerardis says for me to do the Ad Man, for somebody named Jenks, is all I heard. He prorated for two backups, so I figured, cool—fast cash, not cheap, therefore Jenks has gotta be some rich asshole. I had no idea
you’d
be here—if I had, don’t you think I woulda brought a fuckin tank, and twenty guys? Jesus!”

“Holy shit,” said Dandine. “You know what that means?” He was talking to Zetts. “It means we can skate. It’s not about us, not anymore. It’s about Connie, here. It’s exactly as he said—everyone has gone to Plan B.”

That sounded to me like something really . . . bad. I almost felt as though Dandine and Zetts would finish their meal, leave me at the table with my soon-to-be murderer, and be home in their beds, all snug, while I began the process of decomposition in some Dumpster.

Dandine just looked at me and said, “Don’t worry. I know what you’re thinking. You’re ignoring the significant karmic bill that
NORCO
has amassed, through its own mismanagement and thuggishness. They have to pick up their own check, and we have to be the instrumentation for that balance, because if we don’t—”

“They’ll be up your ass, like a sigmoidoscope,” chimed Zetts (carefully pronouncing each syllable), “for the rest of your life, until you like drop into your assigned hole, dude.”

“Where the hell did you get that word?” asked Dandine. Then he thought about it. “Never mind.”

“What about me?” asked Cody, having stealthed a third slice. He looked like he ate a lot.

“You get to live,” said Dandine, “because I’m feeling unusually forgiving today. But not if you don’t tell us when and where on your pay drop from
NORCO
.”

That caused Cody to woof a chunk of pizza down the wrong tube, and he grabbed for the water glass.

“Don’t drink the bug,” said Zetts.

Which is how I got to be bait, just after midnight.

Ever since the vaguely religious hiccup that hysterical media have shortformed as “9/11,” you can see guys in military fatigues, toting M-16s, inside the Bradley Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. Go there right now and check, if you don’t believe me.

The cameras have been doubled; the guards, tripled. Bored employees wipe your baggage down for trace explosives and make you remove your shoes. There are cops with K9 dogs, and everybody is watching everybody else, to make sure some hausfrau from Thousand Oaks doesn’t compromise national security by trying to sneak a nail file onto a passenger jet. Or a roll of tape. Or a deadly can of deodorant. Posted signs enumerate lists of words it is forbidden to mention, even jokingly. Joking is illegal there, which means if someone greets a friend by saying, “Hi, Jack!” they’ll most likely be detained and beaten with rubber hoses. No one sees the irony of a terrorist government, terrorizing its citizens, to protect them from terrorists.

And this was
before
the passenger-profiling and color-coding fiasco.

It’s a great place to hang out if you don’t want strangers pulling mysterious shit, which is why Dandine picked it. T-4, christened in honor of ex–LA mayor Ed Bradley (a former police officer), was LAX’s showcase for paranoid security measures, and a terrific, live-action exemplar of the difference between liberty and freedom, for those who had never bothered to ponder the distinction.

“Flyover surveillance and tracking devices won’t work here,” Dandine said, “because their micro wave grid over protected airspace is too precious. No bugs, no leashes, no choppers. The terminal is a huge, open area under twenty forms of watchdogging, so no surprise firefights, or, at least, the possibility is minimized.
NORCO
may be able to selectively
hammerlock the police, but there are too many forms of good guy here for them all to be compromised. It’s too public.”

Even at 1:00
A.M.
, the international terminal was fairly bustling. Completely different from Terminal One, where we’d rented another getaway car less than forty-eight hours ago. Flights to Sydney and Shanghai take a
long
time, and cannot countenance farmer’s hours, the agrarian nine-to-five hellhole inside which most people, the walking dead, persist in living, even a century after the invention of conveniences like electricity. There was a fellow who ran for mayor here in the last election, who proposed putting the city on a twenty-four-hour clock, since telecommuting had become a practical option for over a third of the workforce. This would have destroyed the notion of “rush hour” traffic, freeway gridlock, and a pretty fair amount of road rage (for which our state is particularly infamous). Needless to say, the guy didn’t win, because his opponent had looked at the chad-mincing, double-dealing big lie of a recent presidential election and thought,
hey, I can get away with that, too!