Nightlife (34 page)

Tony remembered growing up, the example set by his own parents. Remembered hearing them and their noisy bedroom sessions while he was trying to fall asleep. All the kids did. An apartment that small, you couldn’t help it. Their old man was as brutal as a Nazi guard with Mama. Doted like a fool on the kids, then turned around and beat Mama blue half the time. He could still hear his old man gasping how he loved her, bedsprings squeaking through the tissue-thin wall, and then there would be a grunt or two, and then the sound of open-handed slaps. Tony had learned at a very early age how to distinguish passion from pain, and how few the distinctions were for some people.

So he and Sasha kicked the notions around awhile, the death of love and its nonexistence to begin with. Just a case of mistaken identity. They spoke of the balance of cosmic equations: Women got multiple orgasms, if they were lucky; men got backrubs.

Then she asked when she could have more skullflush. After all, he had promised. Tony told her soon, soon. All-purpose answer. Although now, as never before, he understood her deep-rooted desire to immerse herself in that green world once again.

He was feeling the urge to do it himself.

Not tonight though. Tonight he felt like accomplishing something, and if it couldn’t be done, then at least he would know he hadn’t been sitting around all evening on his thumb.

“Feel like playing a little hide-and-seek tonight?” he asked.

Sasha’s eyes sparkled. “Anytime.”

He grabbed the wireless and began to phone in reinforcements.

Tony called in four guys whom he frequently used for dirty work that required a certain amount of discretion. The more legs, the less time it would take to do legwork. The hired help divided into two teams of two, while he and Lupo and Sasha made the third.

And they searched. Divided up the club scene and prowled anyplace Tony knew April had ever frequented. Not that he expected anyone to find them living footloose and fancy free, but maybe someone would get lucky. Run into someone who knew her or the both of them, same as he’d lucked into learning that Justin was staying with her to begin with. The clubs were all checked thoroughly, and her friends that he knew of were divided among the three teams, addresses looked up so their homes could be scouted.

Tony had Lupo make their own first stop April’s apartment. Looked buttoned up and secured, blinds drawn. No sign of her car, mail stuffing the box. Across the alley, they spotted the Weatherman’s rental car. A search of its interior turned up nothing more than the set of keys, tucked beneath the seat, along with the motel key. Tony pocketed them. Send one of the flunkies back later for the car, take it back to the agency.

So what did
this
mean, the Weatherman’s rental turning up sitting idle? Maybe he’d spooked them, and they ran while he had to give chase some other way.

They took in his motel, and Lupo found some blatantly out-of-town couple inside the room. He called the desk from a pay phone, asked about its weekend occupant, and they didn’t know diddly beyond some deadbeat running out on his bill. Shit. Bastard had absconded with $7,500 in front money, maybe. Either that, or some wetback maid had waltzed home with a hell of a tip.

As the evening wore on, Tony’s mood grew darker. Periodically his four flunkies would stop at a booth and call in on the Lincoln’s cellular. Always with no news he wanted to hear. He had them broaden the search parameters. Maybe they were lying low. He put them to work going down the Yellow Pages, calling motels to ask if anyone was registered under the name of Kingston or Gray.

Keep those eyes peeled. Lupo had his MAC-10, and Tony dearly hoped the big guy would get a chance to use it. Just one glimpse, that’s all he wanted of them, it would be enough to lock him onto them for good
. Just one glimpse,
he thought.

Not once considering the possibility that
he
might be the one who was being watched.

Thank God April had been to a housewarming soireé at Tony’s condo a few years ago and had a good memory. Otherwise, Justin reasoned, they might have forever lacked any way to bring the fight to his own doorstep.

Ever since leaving the motel Sunday evening, they had lived to keep an eye on his home, his car. The complex was designed in a healthy sprawl; parking lots, while small, were plentiful. They parked catty-corner across the courtyard and swimming pool and settled in for an uneventful night.

Early Monday they went shopping. Probably the safest time, assuming Tony slept late to compensate for his night-owl hours. April figured somebody should still stay behind to maintain the vigil, and Kerebawa was happy to leave the confines of the car for nearby brush and trees.

Justin and April drove to a large sporting-goods store. The MasterCards were really getting the workout lately. They bought two boxes of bullets, in both nine-millimeter and .32 caliber; no firearm ID required by Florida law, just be twenty-one or older. They also bought a pair of walkie-talkies, good for up to a mile of separation. A thermal jug to keep cool water handy. A small battery-operated fan to keep air circulating in the car once the day really started to heat up. A pair of binoculars. And a present for Kerebawa: a fistful of hunting arrows. He still had three bamboo shafts, but the supply of tips in his quiver was down to two. Those, and a few other odds and ends of convenience, and they drove back to the Westshore Boulevard condos.

When Kerebawa saw the arrows, he laughed. Genuinely amused. Justin couldn’t figure it. Heavy dark steel tips, four wicked barbs. Show them to any smart deer, and the thing would probably strap itself to the front of the car just to avoid the additional anguish.

“These tiny things, these are what your hunters use for arrows?” Kerebawa laughed. Held one of his six-foot bamboo shafts, more than twice the length of the new ones.
“Those
are like the toys the children of Mabori-teri use to shoot lizards!” He burst into another fit of healthy laughter.

“Lizards?
Lizards?"
Justin cried. “You could bring down a grizzly bear with one of those!”

The rest of the day passed as uneventfully as the previous night. Though people came and went from the building they were parked beside, no one seemed to pay them any attention. Live and let live; they were bothering nothing.

It was late afternoon before they saw Tony, wandering onto his balcony and sitting shirtless. Top balcony, directly above the three others below it. He looked like some petty dictator overseeing his domain. He had been out fifteen minutes before he was joined by a heretofore unseen blond girl. The two of them looked friendly enough.

“You know her?” Justin passed the binoculars to April. She stared for several moments, passed them back. “No, I don’t think so.”

Justin peered more intently, trying to get a sense of the girl. Sometimes he could pick up vibes. A process he had developed as an adman, trying to get into someone’s head to see what motivated them. Pick an individual, target them as a typical consumer of some good or service. A worthwhile exercise. Before he had slit the throat of his career, his creative director had been impressed by it.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” April tapped the water jug to wet a cloth and dab it across her face. Sweat gleamed.

“Don’t know,” he murmured. Wasn’t easy, trying to suck in vibes through binoculars with nearly a couple hundred yards in between.

He watched. She seemed wistfully sad, someone not very joyous over life as it was but still not clear on what she wanted it to be. He knew the type. Had been that type himself, once upon a time, before settling for the path of success, one more yuppie cranked into permanent acquisition mode. Something about her seemed hazily familiar.

And then it came to him.

“I’ll be damned,” he mouthed to himself.

He’d never know for sure, not this way, but he would have been willing to lay down cash bets that this was the girl whose eyes he had seen through last week, in a dream that was not a dream. Exactly
why
was slippery to pinpoint. The flash of recognition was like the glimpse of an aura, a nagging question finally answered by the subconscious. Her eyes had grown sensitized to things beyond the rational, as had his; they had, in a way, grown sensitized together. She exuded it, like her melancholy, in vibes in sympathetic resonance with his own. And here she was, like a serving maiden at Tony’s side. He shook his head, lowered the binoculars. Couldn’t she
see?
Open her eyes?

He’ll chew you up and spit you out someday,
Justin thought.

Afternoon became evening. Kerebawa was dozing, and April looked ready to do likewise when the most movement they had seen all day began to transpire.

“Heads up,” he said, and they all snapped to.

All three were leaving Tony’s condo.
Hi ho, hi ho,
Justin thought.
Off to work they go.
Once in the Lincoln, Lupo drove them away.

“We’d better stay put for a while, still,” said April.

Justin nodded. “Yeah. Watch them come back in ten minutes with pizzas.”

Nightfall came an hour later, without the Lincoln returning. Justin had Kerebawa trek up to knock on Tony’s door to make sure that some unseen fourth person wasn’t still inside. If someone answered, Kerebawa would simply jabber in his native tongue and kowtow an apologetic retreat. Luckily, he came back to report no answer.

This, however, wasn’t even half the headache remedy. When Justin checked the door himself, it looked and felt
very
solid. He was no lock-picker. Could try shooting the locks away, but he didn’t much care for that. Even with the silencer, he didn’t like leaving blatant signs of his presence visible from the outside. Another two condos were accessed along this open fourth-floor walkway. Hard to predict how long the search would take. One stray flashlight beam from a neighbor was all that would be needed to blow everything; if a shot-up door was noticed, Justin doubted it would be ignored.

So....

The balcony? It was the only other alternative. The balconies were aligned in a vertical row. Nothing so handy as a fire ladder clinging down the sides, but it didn’t look to be too difficult. They were spaced closely enough that, standing on the ground-floor patio’s railing, the climber could reach up to the second floor balcony and pull on up, and so on.

“So who goes?” April asked, once he was back at the car.

Justin looked at Kerebawa. “With some of the things you told us you’ve had to do, you’re definitely the best climber we have.”

Kerebawa nodded, then frowned. “But you both know much more of homes like his than do I.”

“He’s got a point.” April looked at them, one to another. “You could both go, while I keep an eye on things down here.”

“Okay by me,” Justin said. Then, to Kerebawa, “You’re probably a lot better fighter than I am, too, if it comes to that. And if something goes wrong, it’ll probably happen up there, not down here.”

“That’s another problem.” April, ever the realist. “What about security alarms, something like that? He might have the place wired.”

“With the police? He wouldn’t be that crazy.”

She shook her head. “No. But what about a private security firm? Especially one that’s not above looking the other way for some of its shadier customers.”

Justin sighed, leaned back against the seat back. Kerebawa regarded him with irritation, as if he were weakening. Maybe he was. The cons of this maneuver suddenly seemed far weightier than the pros. Take, for example—

“The lights,” he said. The final straw. “Look at all these damned lights, anyway.”

Sodium globe lamps lined various walks and the pool area. More light bled from the condos themselves, balcony doors and bedroom windows. Try to scale that wall up to Tony’s, and he and Kerebawa would be picked out by a spotlight like escaping convicts halfway to freedom.

“Is there a switch to turn them off?” Kerebawa asked. Completely serious.

“Get real,” Justin said.

“Maybe he’s got the right idea,” April said.

“How’s that?”

“It’s kind of drastic.”