Moonlight & Vines (47 page)

It had to be that way. The people he worked for didn't exactly have a retirement plan for their employees. At least, not one that included your staying alive.

“You don't know what I am,” he tells her.

He slides down from the hood of the car and starts walking.

“Leon!” she calls after him.

The crows lift up around the junkyard, filling the air with their raucous cries. It's like they think he's going to follow them, that he's going to let them lead him back to where an eye for an eye makes sense again. But it isn't going to happen. Dying hasn't changed that. They want to take down the shooters who killed China and him, they can do it themselves.

“Leon!” China calls again.

He doesn't turn, and she doesn't follow.

* * *

He walks until he finds himself standing in front of a familiar building. Looks like any of the hundreds of other office buildings downtown, nothing special, except the people he'd worked for had a branch in it. There are lights up on the twelfth floor where they have their offices.

His gaze is drawn to the glass doors of the foyer, to the reflection he casts on their dark surfaces. He looks like he's got himself made up for Halloween, like he's wearing warpaint. Back when he was a grunt, there'd been an Indian in his platoon. Joey Keams, a Black Hills Lakota. Keams used to talk about his grandfather, how the same government they were fighting for had outlawed the Ghostdance and the Sun Dances, butchered his people by the thousands, but here he was anyway, fighting for them all the same.

Keams was a marvel. It was like he had a sixth sense, the way he could spot a sniper, a mine, an ambush. Handy guy to have around. Eight months into his tour, they were out on patrol and he stepped on a mine that his sixth sense hadn't bothered to warn him about. There wasn't enough left of him to ship home.

Coe glances around, but the birds are all gone. All that's left is one dark shape sitting on a lamppost, watching him.

Funny the things you forget, he thinks. Because now he remembers that Keams talked about crows, too. How some people believed they carried the souls of the dead on to wherever we go when we die. How sometimes they carried them back when they had unfinished business. He'd have got along real well with China.

“I don't have any unfinished business,” he tells the bird.

It cocks its head, stares right back at him like it's listening.

Coe hasn't had anything for a long time. Once he stopped killing, he went passive. Eating at soup kitchens, sleeping under overpasses, cadging spare change that he gave away to those who needed it more than he did. He didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't do drugs. Didn't need anything that you couldn't get as a handout.

He gives the building a last look, gaze locked on his reflection in the glass door. He looks like what he is: a bum, pushing fifty. Wearing raggedy clothes. No use to anyone. No danger to anyone. Not anymore.

The only thing that doesn't fit is the face-painting job that China did on him. Pulling out his shirttails, he tries to wipe off the war paint, but all
he does is smear the clay, make it worse. Screw it, he thinks. He turns away, heading up the street.

It's close to dawn and except for the odd cab that wouldn't stop for him anyway, he's pretty much got the streets to himself. Even the whores are finally asleep.

The crow leaves its perch, flies overhead, lands on the next lamppost.

“So what are you?” he asks it. “My personal guide?”

The bird caws once. Coe pauses under the lamppost, puts his head back to look at it.

“Okay,” he says. “Show me what you've got.”

The crow flies off again and this time he follows. He's still not bought into any of it, but he can't help being curious, now that he's heard China's story. And sure enough the bird leads him into Chinatown, up where it meets the no-man's-land of the Tombs. As far as Coe can see, there's nothing but abandoned tenements and broken-down factories and warehouses. He follows the crow across an empty lot, gravel and dirt crunching underfoot.

Used to be he could walk without a sound, like a ghost. Now that he is one, you can hear him a mile away.

He stops in the shadows of one of the factories. There are no streetlights down here. But dawn's pinking the horizon and in its vague light he can make out the graffiti chops on the walls of the building across the street that mark it as Blue Circle Boys' turf.

He hears footsteps coming up behind him, but he doesn't look. His crow is perched on the roof of an abandoned car. A moment later, it's joined by a second bird. Finally he turns around.

“You were in the trade, right?” he says to China.

She nods. “I guess you could say that. I was an exotic dancer.”

“China . . . ?”

“Was my stage name. China Doll. Cute, huh? My real name's Susie Wong, but I can't remember the last time I answered to it.”

“Why'd the cops listen to a stripper?”

“Dumb luck. Got a real family man, hungry for a righteous bust.”

“And now?” Coe asks.

“We have to take them out. The ones the cops didn't pick up.”

Coe doesn't say anything.

“The ones that killed us.”

“The crows tell you all that?” he asks. He lifted a hand to his cheek. “Like they told you about this warpaint?”

She nods.

He shakes his head. “They don't say anything to me. All I hear is their damned cawing.”

“But you'll help me?” China asks. “We died together, so we have to take them out together.”

More crow mumbo-jumbo, Coe supposes.

“I told you,” he says. “I won't buy into this Old Testament crap.”

“I don't want to argue with you.”

“No, you just want me to kill a few people so that we can have a happy ending and float off to our just reward.”

She cocks her head and looks at him, reminding him of one the crows.

“Is that what you're scared of?” she asks. “Of what might be waiting for you when we cross over to the other side?”

Coe hasn't even been thinking of himself, of other vengeful spirits that might be waiting for him somewhere. But now that China's brought it up, he has to wonder. Why haven't the crows brought back any of the people he's killed? And then there was the part he'd played in the death of at least one little girl who really hadn't deserved to die . . . .

“It's not fear,” he tells her. “It's principle.”

She gives him a blank look.

Coe sighs. “We play out this eye-for-an-eye business, then we're no better than them.”

“So what are you doing here?” she asks. She points at the Tong's building with her chin.

He doesn't have an answer for her.

“We'd be saving lives,” she says.

“By taking lives.”

It's an old argument. It's how he got started in the business he fell into after his two tours in 'Nam.

China nods. “If that's what it takes. If we stop them, they won't kill anybody else.”

Except it never stops. There's always one more that needs killing, just to keep things tidy. And the next thing you know, the body count keeps rising. One justification feeding the next like endless dominos knocking against each other. It never stops anything, and it never changes anything, because evil's like kudzu. It can grow anywhere, so thick and fast that
you're choking on it before you know it. The only way to eradicate it is to refuse to play its game. Play the game and you're letting it grow inside of you.

But there's no way to explain that so that she'll really understand. She'd have to see through his eyes. See how that dead little girl haunts him. How she reminds him, every day, of how she'd still be alive if he hadn't been playing the game.

The thing to aim for is to clear the playing board. If there's nothing left for evil to feed on, it'll feed on itself.

It makes sense. Believing it is what's kept him sane since that little girl died in the firefight.

“So why are you here?” China asks again.

“I'm just checking them out. That's all.”

He leaves her again, crosses the street. Along the side of the building he spots a fire escape. He follows its metal rungs with his gaze, sees they'll take him right to the roof, four stories up. The two crows are already on their way.

Just checking things out, he thinks as he starts up the fire escape.

He hears China climbing up after him, but he doesn't look down. When he gets to the end of the ladder he hauls himself up and swings onto the roof. Gravel crunches underfoot. He thinks he's alone until the crows give a warning caw. He sees the shadow of a man pull away from a brick, box-like structure with a door in it. The roof access, he figures. The man's dark-haired, wearing a long, black raincoat, motorcycle boots that come up to his knees. He's carrying a Uzi, the muzzle rising to center on Coe as he approaches.

He and Coe recognize each other at the same time.

Coe's had three days to get used to this, this business of coming back from the dead. The shooter's had no time at all, but he doesn't waste time asking questions. His eyes go wide. You can see he's shaken. So he does what men always do when they're scared of something—he takes the offense.

The first bullet hits Coe square in the chest. He feels the impact. He staggers. But he doesn't go down. Coe doesn't know which of them's more surprised—him or the shooter.

“You don't want to do this,” Coe tells him.

He starts to walk forward and the shooter starts backing away. His finger takes up the slack on the Uzi's trigger and he opens it up. Round after
round tears through Coe's shirt, into his chest. He feels each hit, but he's over his surprise, got his balance now, and just keeps walking forward.

And the shooter keeps backing up, keeps firing.

Coe wants to take the gun away. The sound of it, the fact that it even exists, offends him. He wants to talk to the shooter. He doesn't know what he's going to say, but he knows the man needs to get past this business of trying to kill what you don't understand.

The trouble is, the shooter sees Coe's approach through his own eyes, takes Coe's steady closing of the distance between them for a threat. He turns suddenly, misjudges where he is. Coe cries out a warning, but it's too late. The shooter hits his knees against the low wall at the edge of the roof and goes over.

Coe runs to the wall, but the shooter's already gone.

There's an awful, wet sound when the man hits the pavement four stories down. Coe's heard it before; it's not a sound you forget. The shooter's gun goes off, clatters across the asphalt. The crows are out there, riding air currents down toward the body, gliding, not even moving their wings.

“That's one down,” China says.

She steps up to the wall beside him to have a look. Coe hadn't even heard her footsteps on the gravel behind him. He frowns at her, but before he can speak, they hear the roof access door bang open behind them. They turn to see a half-dozen men coming out onto the gravel. They fan out into a half circle, weapons centered on the two of them. Shotguns with pistol grips, automatics. A couple more Uzis.

Coe makes the second shooter from the alleyway. The man's eyes go as wide as his partner's had, whites showing. He says something, but Coe doesn't understand the language. Chinese, maybe. Or Thai.

“Party time,” China says.

“Can it,” Coe tells her.

But all she does is laugh and give the men the finger.

“Hey, assholes,” she yells.
“Ni deh!”

Coe doesn't understand her either, but the meaning's clear. He figures the men are going to open fire, but then they give way to a new figure coming out from the doorway behind them. From the deference the men give him, he's obviously their leader. The newcomer's a tall, Chinese man. Coe's age, late forties. Handsome, black hair cut short, eyes dark.

Now it's Coe's turn to register shock. He doesn't see a ghost of the dead, like the shooters from the alleyway did, but it's a ghost all the same.

A ghost from Coe's past.

“Jimmy,” Coe says softly. “Jimmy Chen.”

Jimmy doesn't even seem surprised. “I knew I'd be seeing you again,” he says. “Sooner or later, I knew you'd surface.”

“This an agency op?” Coe asks.

“What do you think?”

“I think you're flying solo.”

“Wait a minute,” China breaks in. “You guys
know
each other?”

Coe nods. “We have history.”

Sometimes the office sent in a team, which was how Coe ended up on a rooftop with this psychopath Jimmy Chen. The target was part of a RICO investigation, star witness kept in a safehouse that was crawling with feds. In a week's time he'd be up on the witness stand, rolling over on a half-dozen crime bosses. Trouble was, he'd also be taking down a few congressmen and industry CEOs. The office wanted to keep the status quo so far as the politicos and moneymen were concerned
.

That was where he and Jimmy Chen came in. If the witness couldn't make it into court, the attorney general'd lose his one solid connection between the various defendants and his RICO case would fall apart. The office didn't want to take any chances on this hit, so they sent in a team to make sure the job got done
.

Coe wasn't one to argue, but he knew Jimmy by reputation and nothing he'd heard was good. He set up a meet with the woman who'd handed out the assignment
.

“Look,” he said. “I can do this on my own. Jimmy Chen's a psycho freak. You turn him loose in a downtown core like this and we're going to have a bloodbath on our hands.”

“We don't have a problem with messy,” the woman told him. “Not in this case. It'll make it look like a mob hit.”

He should have backed out then, but he was too used to taking orders. To doing what he was told. So he found himself staking out the safehouse with Jimmy. He forced himself to concentrate on the hit, and a safe route out once the target was down, to ignore the freak as best he could
.