Internecine (9 page)

“What you meant when you said you were going to use me?” I said. “Does that mean you’re using me now instead of Celeste, back there?”

“No. It means I want you to pay attention, and alert me if something smells funny. Something I wouldn’t notice. I’m serious.”

“How?” How was I supposed to become sensitized to a world I barely understood?

“I can’t explain it, Conrad—it’s the sort of thing you’ll know when you see it. Why you? Because you’re here. Besides, you have yet to tell me what I want to know about those politician fellows, remember them?”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“That’s right,” he said knowingly. “Celeste is academic.”

Fair enough. “What about the window?” I said. “There’s glass all over your car.” I still felt sheepish about it.

He said exactly what I thought he would say. “Don’t worry—it’s a rental.”

We took the freeway downtown and wound up near the top edge of Compton, a confusion of railroad switch-tracks and warehouses lit by harsh, sodium vapor lamps, in the middle of Ramparts Division, locally notorious with the LAPD as gang central.

On the way I explained what I knew or could cobble together about the cryptic G. Johnson Jenks, as referenced in the hit-kit folder on Alicia Brandenberg—the same bullet points I had uselessly amassed while tied up. I slammed into the brick wall of how little I actually knew about Kroeger’s political client, and Dandine glanced at me with an arched eyebrow, as though I had just made it all up. My big hole card of presumed information was useless.

“This is why you never get involved with a contract client beyond their dossier,” he said. “The water just gets muddier. Kind of the opposite of your line, come to think of it.”

He had a point. One of my job skills, borne of necessity, was the cultivation of bogus intimacy, the ability to read between the lines of a dry printout and extract the one personality quirk that would make your target believe you were on the same frequency, that you were simpatico.

It hit me like a bolt of heat lightning in the desert: I needed something I could
sell
Dandine. And he was allowing me a bit of latitude to find out just what that might be. In a way, I had reinforced his latent need to
give
me that latitude . . . or so I deluded myself.

I used to think I was a lot smarter than I was proving to be now. And Dandine was a world-class expert at teasing a fish, this capacity exacerbated by what I was coming to see as a weird disposition toward the oblique. He was definitely one of those adverse to authority or stated rank, a condition common to thinkers. He enjoyed bumping the rule-book out of true. He was doing it now, by allowing my ride-along, and leaking more of his psychology to my inner salesman. I could not go passive; he’d smell it.

“So you missed the case,” I said, “and found me. How does
that
work?”

“I had to access the car rental records,” he said. “Which delayed me. Almost too long.”

“Kroeger rented the car, not me.”

“Kroeger’s records led to yours. You know that dossier on Alicia Brandenberg? You should see the piles of data that was condensed from. In fact, you should take a look at
your
life-file, one of these days, if you ever get the chance.”

The secret records that sum up your whole life, that big imaginary
file folder with the stamps and seals? You’ve always suspected its existence while shrugging it off—
naahh, there’s nothing interesting about
me
anybody would want to know
. But that’s two different things: the facts, in excruciating detail, versus someone’s desire to know them, justified or not. The facts, the file, remains . . . and Dandine had just said that one of those mystery folders, in some secret place, had my name on it.

Privacy is another illusion, like national security.

Dandine took a few labyrinthine turns inside a huge lot populated with equal numbers of big-box trucks, vacant slots containing parts trailers or other on-hold junk, and automobiles that appeared to be bombed-out, forsaken, or at least had been sitting there long enough to get dusty.

“Do I sit in the car again?”

“Negative,” he said. “They already know there’s two of us.”

“How do you figure?”

“We’ve been dogged since six blocks back. Varga uses spotters.” I saw his eyes check the periphery and mirrors with metronome relentlessness. “But something’s cooking. I’m sensing a lot more spotters than he needs for simple security.”

“What?” I said. “You’re telepathic, now?”

He snorted. “No, just observant. You learn to see how controlled spaces are monitored. Shadow profiles. Negative movement. Maybe the watchers are being watched, and maybe they don’t know it, but I know it. Rather, I sense it. Unconfirmed. You ever hear that expression about growing eyes in the back of your head? Now would be a good time to start.”

Every time Dandine answered a question I felt more in the dark than ever.

He made sure to park with adequate cover from multiple angles; I did notice that.

“Now,” he said. “Do you want to continue to play?”

Flashbacks of game shows crowded my head. Door Number One, Two, or Three? Dandine would know that, then wait for me to ask what he was talking about, then tell me that I couldn’t afford the luxury of dissipate fantasy. I could impress him by skipping the obvious. I nodded, feeling my own reluctance.

He sketched it out for me, “You’re my associate. You don’t have to say anything unless somebody addresses you directly. Just stand behind me about two paces, with your hands folded in front of you, and try to avoid direct eye contact, like it’s all beneath you. Think you can manage that?”

“Hell,” I said. “It’s exactly the same as a bid conference.”

“A what?” Dandine paused in midexit.

“Your company’s got a bid on an account, but so does another company. They’re the enemy, and you have to out-macho them by pretending it don’t mean nothin’.”

He rolled that around in his brain for a moment. “I think you’ll do fine.” What he did not say was
I want to toss you onto the firing line and see who flinches,
because that might have made me bolt outright.

He led the way up a roll-off ramp to a metal staircase. There were lights on in the office, about three stories from ground level. The shutters were cocked halfway, and they looked very sturdy; probably bulletproof. He rapped exactly three times on an all-metal door, and we were quickly sized up through a view slot even though there was a surveillance camera mounted behind us, up high, painted black. Dandine’s knock was businesslike. I hate it when people try to knock “cute,” or do shave-and-a-haircut. I hate it when people try to compose creatively adorable and individual outgoing messages on their answering machines. Grow the fuck up. Most people are un-special and untalented, and always will be. Otherwise, I’d never be able to sell them anything at all.

The door unbolted and we were admitted by a gigantic guy who looked: (1) Samoan, and (2) born without a sense of humor. Oh, and (3) He was holding an automatic pistol that dwarfed his big hand. He nodded with recognition at Dandine.

“How’s the music biz, Thule?”

“Sucks, man. Who’s the bread sandwich?”

“My associate.” I tried to duplicate Dandine’s deferential nod, and look anywhere but into Thule’s deep-set, unblinking, judgmental eyes.

“We gotta do the thing,” said Thule.

“Absolutely,” said Dandine, raising his arms for a poke-and-pat. It was no different than going to the airport, these days. When Thule
was done with me I was sure he could name the brand on my underwear.

(American Male, full briefs, gray. As good as Calvins but less expensive. I’m glad I don’t usually have to go into this much detail. Now, I thought, I could get wiped out by a speeding bus, and the only way paramedics could identify me was by checking my underwear, and they’d write
American Male
in the box for my name. In the last few hours, I had thought about death more than I ever had before. Personality Modification Checklist Item #1: I really needed to shunt more effort into not being ridiculous.)

Dandine had made a point of wearing a single gun for the benefit of Thule’s search, leaving the rest of his personal hardware in the trunk after shuffling some of the payoff currency into separate envelopes. I had neglected to ask why. I was learning to save my tyro-sounding questions for, you know, the good stuff.

We were ushered past a few more homicidal-looking dudes with a lot of piercings and tattoos—half of them looked mildly high—into an office where most of the furnishings were stacks of paper and boxes. The dust layer was nearly an inch thick. This was the room with the window shutters. The centerpiece was a banged-up, metal office desk the size of a big refrigerator laid on its side. There were seven separate multiline phones on the desk, and what I took to be some “drug paraphernalia,” based on what I’d seen in movies.

Seated behind a fly-vision bank of security monitors was Varga, who resembled a generational dime-a-dance mix among Asian and Mexican partners, with some of our darker brethren stirred in to cool his gaze. The sclerae of his eyes were completely yellow. He was shaved bald (you could see the pattern lines on his pate) and had a gold stud in his upper lip, as though to plug a small-caliber bullet hole.

“You the last motherfucker I expected to see,” said Varga, not standing. His hands were knobby, callused, and prearthritic; he kept both in plain view on the desk blotter. “Who’s the luggage?”

“This is my associate, Mr. Lamb.”

I realized he was talking about me. I stood back, partially in shadow from the feeble throw of the desk lamp, folded my hands, and tried to hang tough.

“What’d you do to his head?”

“Bizarre flossing accident.” Dandine indicated the monitors. “You expecting celebrities?”

Varga was keeping his gaze on the multitude of tiny TV screens, speaking to us without looking at us a whole lot, his eyes scanning left to right, giving each screen about three seconds in succession, then back to one.

“Things have been weird for a couple hours now,” he said.

Dandine got right to it. “Alicia Brandenberg—I need to know everything you know about her.”

“Who?” Varga grinned, finally looking at Dandine for the first time that counted. It was part of the jockeying.

“Shit,” said Dandine, looking to the side, disappointed. “I didn’t want to waste any of your time, and here
you
are, wasting it anyway.” He blew out a long sigh and sank both hands into his pockets.

“Careful,” said Varga. Two goons appeared to bracket the door, like djinn, gently summoned from a bottle.

Dandine withdrew his hands and showed them in the light, front and back. “Anyway. Alicia Brandenberg, spelled the same as the town. A political pain in the ass that needed tweezing. Except she found out, and she called some guys, who called you. And you sent home delivery right before midnight. Extra sauce. Sorry, but the service was lousy, so no tip. It all smells like
NORCO
to me, and you know what we say about whatever
NORCO
says.”

“Yeah.” Varga grinned. “Do the opposite.”

“Now, you can catch me up on the details, all of which I don’t know. But I’m a good guesser. Or, you can be an asshole. Please don’t be an asshole; if it’s
NORCO
, you’re so far down the pecking order that it won’t hurt you.”

“Cost me a good little worker, looks like.”

“Yeah. Otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here with Mr. Lamb. I’m here to make good on that. All I need is a contact.”

“Fuck you. Why should I help you now? You owe me from before; you got too big for your
pantalones,
dick-suck. Get the fuck outta here before I shoot you in the ass and make Thule eye-fuck your faggot lover, there.”

Dandine refused to rise to the bait. “C’mon, Vargs, you’re just pissed about your little honey. I understand that.”

“Man, she was the bomb, and you just fuckin broke her in two before I could really run her.”

“Not true. The delivery itself was spoiled and inedible. I didn’t unplug her. Neither did Mr. Lamb. The delivery was suckered. You were lied to. They used firebacks, Vargs. Not pretty. Mostly what we did was clean up the mess.
NORCO
got there before there was time to say good, Catholic last rites. Check out what I say. Or just wait for
NORCO
to show up here.”

That was what Dandine had whiffed back in the car; why Varga was on paranoid watch right now. They were waiting for the intrusion of
NORCO
to throw a spooky shadow. Like the moment in a slasher movie where you finally catch a glimpse of the mystery killer, who might or might not be supernatural.

“Fuck,” said Varga. “I don’t need that political-governmental bullshit up in my backyard. I hate fucking politics. Religion, too.”

“That’s why I think they used an intermediary to contact you. You’re out of the loop. You didn’t know. For now. I could mention your name, if you want.”

“No fuckin way. So I give up the middleman to you, and you go on some fuckin rampage, and what do I get? Shit-fire, dude, I’m out one of my little worker bees, and the contract was blown, and I wind up holding dick.”