Mad Dogs (30 page)

Eric used white tape and a black pen to label the phones Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.

“Got car 'n' wall socket chargers,” he said as he programmed each phone with the instantaneous dial/connect numbers of the other two.

“How long until we're there?” asked Hailey.

“Twenty minutes,” said Zane.

Wrong
: 16 minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of a mattress store on Georgia Avenue, a decades-old, low slung suburban commercial strip.

“We can't quite see it from here,” I said. “They can't quite see us from there.”

Russell sighed. “Still wish we could drive right up and rock 'n' roll.”

“Sure,” said Hailey, “but this is where Nurse Death got her mail and we're spies, not commandos.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I said: “If we don't make it back…”

“We'll come after you,” answered Russell.

Cell phone Alpha filled my hand. I punched the number programmed for Bravo, and 11
ticks
later, the phone in Russell's hand rang. I slipped my transmitting phone in the right chest pocket of my leather jacket. One of the flash/bang grenades and ammo magazines rode in the jacket pocket above my heart, while barely covered by its unzipped leather, the holstered Glock .45 coiled on my right hip.

Zane and I slid out of the white car to walk up that road.

Russell took our place in the front seat. Rode shotgun like he was born there.

My voice said: “Let's go.”

43

“Damn it!” I said as Zane and I stood between a parked van and a family SUV facing the address Hailey'd tricked from the cell phone billing department.

Russell's muffled voice crackled from the chest pocket of my jacket:
“What?”

“Op silence!” I told the voice from a man who wasn't there. Not that such spy protocol seemed necessary. Not now.

Traffic whizzed past behind us on busy commercial/commuter Georgia Avenue.

Four flat storefronts faced us from across their parking lot. Second store from the left had the address Hailey'd scored painted on its glass front wall, plus the words:

Mail 4 U!

Zane said: “It's a postal drop. ‘Berlow Industries, Suite 413' is really box 413. We got nothing.”

“Maybe nothing is more than it seems,” I said. “Cover me.”

Bells tinkled as I pushed open the glass door and stepped inside Mail 4 U!

In front of me was the ‘business center' counter. Back from the counter stretched a room that held two desks where the store's staff sat. Past those desks was a long table with spooled brown wrapping paper, tape dispensers, a vase of scissors and styluses and marker pens. A second table held two FAX machines, a computer. Five sizes of cardboard shipping boxes hung on a wall beside samples of gift-wrapping paper. Other displays sold labels, mailing tubes in three sizes, padded envelopes.

To my left rose a wall of mailboxes, all with combination locks, all facing the glass wall to the street, and all centered by their own square glass window. My casual stroll & scan found box 413: its peephole showed me empty.

Back at the business counter, I stared at the two employees.

A balding Black man sat behind the desk deepest into the business center. A photo of men on a factory floor hung on the wall behind his squeaky chair, photos of a wife and three kids stood on his desk. He looked tired. Wore a maroon sweater.

The woman with her red shoes propped on the desk near the counter blabbered into her cell phone. She could have been in college except she wasn't. Low cut white jeans were painted on her thick thighs. Her green blouse strained to contain the flesh roll hanging over her waistband. She wore vivid mascara and lip-slick. Absolutely every hint of other color had died in her wispy jaw-cut peroxided hair.

I coughed. Coughed again, louder.

She told the cell phone: “So I was
like
, n'un-unh, and then he was all
like,
—”

“Excuse me!” I said.

The man in the maroon sweater glanced up from an open file to see cell phone girl hold a forefinger up to me as she said: “That is so not,
like
, the thing, 'cause I'm
like
…”

Maroon Sweater closed his eyes, then the file on his desk, brought it with him as he walked to where I stood at the counter. As he passed Cell Phone Girl, he put the file on her desk: “Trish, go ahead and re-file the active applications.”

“
Like
, what?” said Trish, her eyes on Mister Maroon Sweater—then into the cell phone, she said: “No, not you. Don't worry, it's
like
, just some work thing…
Do so!”

Maroon Sweater pointed to a short green file cabinet. “Please put them in there.”

“Sure!” Trish's quick smile vanished into the phone: “
Like,
no way!”

He shook thoughts of homicide from his head as he joined me at the counter. “Sorry. The boss's daughter. But she's coming along.”

“So I see.”

“How can we help you?”

“I've been thinking about getting a mail box.”

“We can do that.” He quoted me rates by the month, by the quarter, by the year.

None of the corners held surveillance lenses, nor did I see any “innocent” objects along the wall that might hide a video camera.

“I'm concerned about image,” I told him. “What kind of people rent here?”

“We get all kinds.”

He handed me an application form.

“Thanks.” I put the application in my jacket pocket beside the flash/bang grenade and the spare ammo mags. “When are you open?”

“We unlock at 6, lock up at 11. Somebody's always working the counter. We used to provide unmonitored access to the boxes for 24-7 service, but we got vandalism.”

“Too bad. You been doing this long?”

“Some days it feels like I'm not even here. Some days the two years I've been parking out back feel like forever.” He nodded to the photo on the wall behind his desk. “I was production manager for a jacket manufacturer. Had 57 people under me, most of them good. First, computers programmed either
yes
or
no
to half the questions I used to create answers for, then, the owners moved the factory to the free trade zone in Mexico.”

Trish told her cell phone: “
Like
, that is just so
forget-about-it
.”

He said: “At least I'm still a manager.”

“There is that.”

“Funny thing is, now it's happening to the folks in Mexico who got those jobs. The jacket plant is moving to China.” The quiet smile that stretched his black skin came from more than
funny
. “At least I didn't waste my time trying to learn Spanish.”

I gave him a laugh. Nodded to leave, then
like
I'd had an afterthought, said: “If I was looking to rent couple rooms or so for an office…”

My gesture swept across his ceiling. “Your boss got any extra space here?”

He shook his head. “There is no upstairs in this place.”

“Afraid of that,” I said. “See you.”

And walked out through the door in the glass wall.

44

“We're crashed,” said Zane as we leaned against the back of a van in the parking lot outside Mail 4 U! That van blocked Maroon Sweater from seeing us through his wall of window. Trish wouldn't have seen us if we were pressed naked against that glass.

The voice in my jacket pocket said: “What's happening?”

What's happening?

Sunshine warms our faces in the cool spring air. Steel presses our backs as we lean on a plumber's van. Smells of asphalt and car exhaust and nerves swirl around us. With every beat of my heart, another Georgia Avenue car
wooshes
past our blank faces staring out at that great American artery.

Across that road's three lanes going north, across the one-step-wide concrete divider, across the three lanes going south waits a flat two-story mall, a rigid ‘C' shaped gray concrete sprawl of wall-sharing shops. The All Things Jewish store. Ye Olde Magic Shoppe. The Used & New Uniforms store where red lipped mannequins posed as nurses. The Viet Mine restaurant with dirty red curtains pulled shut over the windows behind a displayed square of newspaper. Red dragons emblazon the next shop's window, along with the name of a
kung fu
style I've never heard of. A Chinese grocery store so crammed with merchandise the window wanted to burst. A store with opaque swirled windows crossed by a banner that reads ADULT VIDEOS DVDS MAGS; above that fogged glass door hung a blue neon sign reading COYOTES.

What's happening?

Woosh.

What if our Op is over. What if we got nothing to do, nowhere to go.

Woosh.

We get caught. We get five coffins. And Cari…

Woosh.

I slumped on the side of the road.

Woosh
.

“Victor?
Vic!
Don't zone out on—”

Woosh
sunshine swirling
bright light
… cool.

“Zane, what if it wasn't just Nurse Death's box?” I nodded to the uniforms store. “That's probably how she found this place, but here is perfect as a drop for an Op. The subway is a 15 minute walk south, the Beltway's a 5 minute drive. This mail drop isn't convenient to her house or to her cover job at Walter Reed hospital. This is a Cool Zone: out of casually passing-by eyes of watchers, with easy and quick access to anywhere. Combination lock, nobody needs a key. There could be other outlaw spooks like her who use that box, come here. If we catch one of them, he'll lead us to Kyle Russo.”

“You're really reaching here, man.”

“That's the only way to get anything.” I shrugged. “Besides, what have we got to lose?”

“There is that.”

“So we go for it,” I said, angling my head back towards Mail 4 U as I pulled the cell phone from my jacket pocket. “They haven't seen you in there. Not that that matters if you get Trish.”

45

“I'm all brown!” said Russell 30 minutes later as the six of us stood beside the white Caddy hulking in the back row of the nearby subway stop's huge parking lot.

“That's how you're supposed to look.” Hailey suppressed a grin. “Brown shirt, brown pants, and that trendy brown baseball cap.”

“It's not a baseball cap!” said Russell. “If I were wearing a ball cap, at least I'd look like I was a college goofus instead of just a brown dork.”

Russell gave a handful of coins, crumpled dollar bills, and the receipt from the New & Used uniform store to Zane. Zane added change from his own purchase at Mail 4 U! to Russell's cash, passed it to Eric, who was one of the Outside Crew. If shit hit the fan, cash might help an Outsider run.

Zane sorted the dozen copper pennies out of Eric's cupped hand…

Threw the pennies helter-skelter across the subway's deserted cement parking lot.

Cari said: “What are you doing?”

“You know how it works,” Zane told her. “If you find a penny, it's good luck. Minority fundamentalists believe that if the penny is face down, you shouldn't take it because that's bad luck. I'm not sure I believe that.”

“But you believe the other?” said Cari.

“I believe in luck. And call it confidence or heightened awareness of possibilities or whatever, if you
think
you're lucky, you've got a better chance of
being
lucky.”

Cari blinked. “But why throw away pennies?”

“I've been lucky.” Zane shrugged. “Seems right to pass it on.”

“You've been locked in a loony bin,” said Cari, “your family is dead, your only friends are stone whackos, you've never been able to be in love, and you call that lucky?”

“Just because I'm a virgin doesn't mean I've never been in love.”

“Oh shit, Zane, I'm sorry! They gave us your files, so—That was a cheap shot.”

“Hey,” he told her, “I'm lucky just to be here for you to hurt.”

Traffic whizzed by on Georgia Avenue.

Cari shook her blonde head. “No wonder they locked you up.”

Zane smiled: “And now I'm a penny you've picked up.”

I said: “We're ready. If it doesn't work…” I trailed off.

“We'll come running.” Hailey jingled the keys to the white Caddy.

Five minutes later, Zane, Cari and I came striding, not running, towards the ‘adult' video/magazine store with the blue neon COYOTES sign in the two-story concrete strip mall on Georgia Avenue's river. I jerked open COYOTES clouded glass door and freed an angry electronic buzzer.

Off to our left, tall shelves crammed with colored video boxes ran in ranks towards the wall covered by other boxes with lurid photos of human beings in circus poses. At the rear of the store, a moldy green curtain covered a doorway between shelves of DVD boxes. Cassettes filled the wall to our right behind the cash register counter. A color TV hung from the ceiling. In the TV, a shellacked blonde naked woman with breasts swollen like concrete balloons ripped off the white shirt of a muscle punk who had a snake tattoo ‘
s'
-ing its way up his spine. The door clunked shut. The buzzer stopped screaming. We sank into TV blare and sensations of hard carpet, pine disinfectant, carcinogenic smog.

The pale creep perched behind the elevated cash register clinked a zippo to light a cigarette. His head and his face both showed a three-day stubble.

Cari spotted one customer, a man in a suit and tie transfixed by the wall under the BONDAGE section sign. She stepped behind him and puckered her lips: blew a soft wind that mussed his hair.

Suit-and-tie whirled, saw
real woman
, his eyes going wide…

As she waved her credentials: “I've got handcuffs.”

The customer cupped his hand over his face, stumbled past us to the front door, blasted the buzzer, vanished into where he dared to be seen.

“It's time for your dues and don'ts,” I told the cashier. Smoke from the cigarette in his hand curled towards the ceiling. I waved the credential folder from Cari's youngest gunman and the cashier wand-muted the TV. “We're with your united way.”

“Federal division.” Zane flashed credentials from the man he'd garbage canned.

The credentials' insignias said FBI, and they were true, even if the men who'd carried them plus their credentials from two other federal agencies had been liars.

Liars like us, but the cashier bought us with a blink of his hollow eyes, a purchase helped along by the glimpse I gave him of the cop gun holstered on my belt.

“Already gave,” said the cashier. “Mostly locals, but we got points.”

“Not with our team,” said Zane. “We're a whole new league. You get to play.”

The cashier sucked fire all the way down the white tube in his fingers. “Or?”

“Or we call in our other teams,” I said. “IRS. Kiddie porn task force. Money laundry masters. Missing Persons hounds with computers that age and match photos. The Racket Boys who lost most of their budget to us and are hungry for an easy lunch.”

“Mostly, though,” said Cari, her eyes nailing him, “we'll make it personal.”

“Right now,” I said. “We don't know you. And you don't want to know us.”

“I just work the place.”

“We don't care,” said Zane. “You're who we got.”

The cashier stubbed out his cigarette on the counter. “What are we talking about?”

“What's upstairs?” I said.

“Storeroom. Old desk, couple chairs. Boxes of shit. The bathroom.”

“Sounds swell,” I said.

Zane said: “Now it's ours. For as long as we want it.”

“And,” said Cari. “Nobody knows we're up there. Not your loser customers. Not your boss or the owner on paper or the real owners or the mall manager. We got a big crew. You forget us all forever. Nobody knows we're here, not even you.”

“What if I gotta go the can?”

Zane said: “Raise your hand.”

“Fuckin' cops,” he said. “You're all alike.”

“What are your store hours?” I said.

“They're me. I get here long 'bout 11 for the lunch crowd. Close little after the late night snack crew. If I get the hungers, I trade tit-for-tat with the pizza delivery place or with the noodle shop slopes from couple doors up. I ain't feeding you, too.”

“We bring in breakfast,” I said, “so we need a set of keys and the alarm codes.”

“Keys cost.”

I dropped two $20 bills on the counter.

The bills went in his pocket, a ring of keys went in mine. Cari wrote the cashier's recitation of alarm code punch numbers on the back of a rental receipt.

“One more thing,” I said.

“It's always one more thing with guys like you.”

“Blue neon makes a nice sign,” I said, “but why COYOTES?”

“
C
ut
O
ff
Y
our
O
ld
T
ightass
E
xistence
S
tore.”

I said: “You spelled tight-ass wrong.”

His zippo clicked fire to a white coffin nail. “It figures you know that.”

We let the toxic cloud he exhaled blow our sails towards the back curtain.

“Refreshing to meet an honest man,” I said when we stood in the upstairs office of the porno store. “It's exactly as shitty up here as he said it was.”

“But you were right,” said Zane as we pushed aside piles of cardboard boxes, spun two metal folding chairs away from the scarred metal desk and put them next to the windows. “Even dirty as it is, this glass gives us a clear view.”

Zane stood in the window and trained the compact binoculars from the weapons vest across Georgia Avenue, over whooshing past cars and down at Mail 4 U!

“I can almost read Trish's lips while she's talking on her cell phone,” he said.

“Me, too,” I said, my eyes hanging around Cari. “Right now, she's saying ‘
like'
.”

Zane shook his head. “So many people out here in the real world talk about themselves as if they were
‘like'
characters in a some movie.”

“Everybody needs some handle on life,” I said.

“What's ours?” asked Zane.

Suddenly an electronically amplified woman's voice vibrated the floor beneath our feet:
“Wow! Like, I never dreamed that two hunky guys would be my new neighbors! Come in.”

Our upstairs trio blinked.

Zane said: “He will turn off the TV.”

Cari sighed. “Cover is cover. That loud, the downstairs creeps can't hear us.”

“I was just going to take a shower. Want to join me?”

I held the cell phone close to my mouth as I punched the number programmed for Beta. Russell answered, and I said: “In position. Go.”

“Oh yeah.”

Five minutes later, a brown uniformed deliveryman walked down Georgia Avenue. The deliveryman carried a five-foot-long cardboard tube over his right shoulder. White tape randomly circled the brown cardboard tube—logically and rationally for more purposes than just to give the tube distinctive stripes.

“An oversized cardboard tube is the perfect spy tool,” I said as we watched Russell walk towards Mail 4 U! “Carry it on your shoulder and you've got a reason for being anywhere, for going anywhere. Hell, bend your knees when you walk to show that the tube is heavy, and guards will even open the doors for you.”

“Don't count on Trish getting off her ass,” said Zane, binoculars trained across the store. “Do you think she'll recognize that I just bought the tube and label there?”

“Not a chance,” I said.

“Mmm. Now it's my turn.”

“In and out,” said Zane, narrating the scenes he watched through binoculars. “Come on, Russell! What are you doing? Trish stashed the tube perfectly, tagged and propped against the wall right where we can see it, put a pink slip in the mail box… What are you—No! Don't talk with the manager!”

“Un-hun.”

Four minutes later, Russell walked out of Mail 4 U! Stood in front of the glass windows, his face towards Georgia Avenue and our second-story post across the street as he made a big deal about checking his watch. Walking away.

Two minutes after that, from the white Caddy with Hailey and Eric, he called my cell phone. I punched it on.

“Oh baby un-huh do that to me.”

“Vic?” said Russell in the cell phone. “Who do I hear?”

“Never mind! What were you doing? You were supposed to go in and out!”

“Yeah baby.”

“Ah… OK, but I killed two birds with one brown. I told the manager I had a pick up at some motel near a subway stop on Georgia Ave', but I forgot to write down which one. He told me where motels are two miles down the road back in D.C. And it's not like the manager will ever see me again. If he does… Nobody remembers deliverymen.”

“That's so good.”

“OK,” I told Russell. “Recon them, find the one that will hide the Caddy the best. Get a couple—no, get three rooms, register us as the Harry Martin family reunion. Have Eric figure out shift rotations so…
um
…”

“So Blondie is never only with only one of us,” said Russell.

“Oh yeah! Un-hun! I've never done it like this!”

Russell cell phoned: “Hey, Vic, whatever you're doing, I can't wait for my turn.”