Resurrection Express (20 page)

“What’s the password?”

He looks and sounds a little like the Notorious B.I.G. I don’t like rap music, but I sure as hell remember Biggie.

I remember him because he’s dead.

“Betty Crocker sent me,” I tell him.

He kind of laughs, kind of doesn’t. Opens the door and steps back, letting us in. Looks like we’re invited. The place has low-level track lighting, smells like fresh linen and Lysol. It’s a suite with lots of elbow room, a few couches and chairs, flat-screen TV—and a hospital bed inside the main living area, racks of drugs and IV drips and other equipment for patching holes, pill bottles
and saline bags locked up in tackle boxes. Kim’s private ER. I’m impressed. Most gangbangers have their field hospitals set up in a flophouse or a dirty back room off a strip club somewhere.

The mountain with the gold tooth doesn’t say a word. Puffs on his joint. Keeps an eye on us as we enter. I can see the outline of another Glock in his waistband, jutting out between his pants and the gravid flab of his gut. Dangerous guy. A keg waiting to blow. His eyes linger a lot longer on Bennett.

An older white man wearing a black dinner jacket over a flannel shirt sits up from one of the couches and stubs out a cigarette. He’s wearing a fishing hat. “You’re Elroy Coffin?”

“Yep. I think my friend here needs to speak with you.”

“Come over to the table, we’ll have a look at her.”

Bennett moves over to the doc, sits on the hospital bed, as the guy starts asking all the usual questions. Where does it hurt? How long ago were you shot? Starts cutting off the field dressing on her shoulder with a pair of scissors from one of the racks. Cracks a joke I can’t hear and laughs loudly at it. Nervous. I have one ear on him as I turn to the big black dude.

“Did Kim send the rest of my money?”

“Talk to Randall.”

“Who’s Randall?”

I hear a toilet flush when I say that. Oh.

A door to the main bedroom suite opens and here comes the brains of the operation. He’s a smaller white guy. Looks like Eminem, only tougher. Has the weird sleepy eyes, but there’s more danger in his face, and a couple of nasty scars, too.

I remember Eminem because everybody does.

He’s wearing a windbreaker buttoned only at the top, like a cholo drug dealer. He sees the
ThunderCats
logo on my chest and makes a jagged grin happen. Typical. Glares at the black guy and tries to look important. “You check Lion-O here out?”

“Shit, I ain’t feelin’ up no white boy on what I’m gettin’ paid.”

“I don’t mean
that,
dumbshit! I mean, is he cool?”

“He’s standin’ right there, you tell me.”

Eminem looks right in my eyes. “Are you
cool,
Lion-O?”

I wonder what the hell that even means. So I tell him I’m cool. He says that’s cool. So everything’s cool. I guess. Or something. These guys sure as hell won’t win any astrophysics awards this year, but they look really hard. Kim likes them hard.

The doc cracks open one of the tackle boxes and finds some antibiotics, some pain killers. He goes to work on Bennett, making bad jokes I don’t hear all the way, cutting off the rest of her bloody Hawaiian shirt, cleaning the wound up, chewing Vicodin like they’re Flintstones. That’s another thing people like Kim hold over their doctors. Habits.

Eminem goes under a couch and pulls out a fat metal briefcase, tells me to sit down and we’ll count the cash together. This could take a while.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “Just let me look it over quick, I’m in a hurry. I trust Kim.”

“Gotta count it. Those are the rules.”

Whatever.

I look over at the doc, hunched over his work with sweat beading on his face. Bennett almost smiles at me, half naked, her olive sports bra spackled red. I almost smile back. “How you doing, kiddo?”

“Never better.”

Eminem latches open the case, starts counting out stacks of hundred-dollar bills in bundles of twenty thousand each, then handing them to me. I set them on the floor in neat rows at my feet. I don’t count any of it. Eminem gives me a dirty look but doesn’t say anything.

“Man, that’s a lotta squeezin’ green,” says the fat guy. “What’s a motherfucker gotta do to get in on a score like that around here?”

“Shut your big black ass up,” says Eminem casually. He probably shot five dirty white boys for breakfast yesterday. That’s how
it works. They send the white guys to deal with the white guys, especially Kim. She once told me honky gangbangers were like pastry ninjas in action movies. The kind you eat, one after another, with a machine gun.

She sent the right guys to handle this much money.

One false move and I’m really dead, and right now that makes me really comfortable in this room. Security is covered.

I almost fall asleep, watching him count the money.

Hypnotized by the repetition.

So goddamn tired . . .

Ten minutes later, which seems like ten lifetimes later, he hands me the last wad. Two hundred large, with the fifteen I already had in the bag. Then there’s the getaway insurance. Almost twenty on my leg, my walking-around money. I tell him I’ll buy the briefcase for a hundred bucks and he throws it in for free. I put half the cash back in the case.

“You guys have Internet in this dungeon?”

He jerks a thumb towards a computer set up in the corner on a table, next to some piled-up stuff that looks like swag: new clothes, a display case of jewelry, a stack of Blu-ray players still sealed in the boxes.

“Be my guest,” he says.

I get up and walk over to the hospital bed. The doc whistles while he works. And I was right the first time—Bennett’s wound is awful. The bullet took a nasty chunk off her shoulder, the skin all gouged and blue. “You gonna be okay, kiddo?”

“I ain’t a kid.”

“You’re right. What you are is a very rich girl right now.” I pat the briefcase and set it next to her on the carpet.

“I like that song,” she says, her voice wavering in the fog.

I narrow my eyes at her. “What?”

“
Rich Girl
. By Hall and Oates. I used to really love them.”

“More eighties, huh?”

“Actually . . . that’s going back to the seventies. A lot of people don’t know that about Hall and Oates. I raided my dad’s record collection a lot.”

“I never knew he liked those guys. He only listened to hair metal when I was working under him.”

“People change, I guess.”

“Yes they do.”

Her dad.

My teacher.

Goddamn.

I squeeze her hand a little, looking at the doc.

“How long will it take to get her fixed up?”

“She’s in pretty rough shape,” he says, not looking up from his work. “Her wound should have been treated sooner. But she’ll stabilize in a few hours. I have to keep her under observation for at least twenty-four. Did Kim tell you how the money works?”

“No, not really. What do I owe you?”

“Five yards for the house call. Five large for the treatment. Drugs are on the house.”

I pull out a stack and peel off five bills, then another five grand. He stops working long enough to fan through the green, smiling. Rolls it up and stuffs it in his coat pockets. Slips on a new set of rubber gloves and goes back to work. His face is filled with shame and secrets, all pushed down hard. Guess she could be in worse hands.

“Looks like you’re holing up here for a while,” I say to her. Then I turn to Eminem. “How secure is this place? You guys got people in the lobby?”

He laughs. “What the fuck do you think?”

“Don’t worry,” says the fat one. “This motherfucker is locked up tight.”

That sounds like grim death coming out of his mouth.

Good.

Bennett starts breathing a few bars of a tune I don’t recognize.
Something about going too far and it doesn’t matter anyway. The words drown in the lull of her own voice, drugged and floating between worlds. I’m reminded of all the lives I could have lived. All the records I could have memorized, like any other kid. Hall and Oates. Madonna and Metallica. I could have had all of that.

But we both chose to be here, she and I.

We both chose to be our fathers.

I pull out the second of my ten Walmart phones and dial Kim’s number. Goes right to voice mail. I try a text instead. She pings back immediately. Women.

ARE WE HAPPY, BABY?

I click it quick:

WE’RE HAPPY. AREA SECURE? NEED A PLACE TO WORK.

A few seconds, and:

ME CASA, U CASA. B OUT 2MORROW @ CHECK OUT TIME.

Okay.

•  •  •

F
our hours of sleep has officially caught up with me.

I’m going on adrenaline and diet soda.

I ask Doc for a shot of something. Need to be focused, even if I’m ghost tired. He asks if I’ve ever done speed before, and I tell him not much. A little back in the old days, when I was prepping big projects. My dad was worse. The Doc taps five white pills into the palm of his hand and tells me to be careful with this stuff. I dry-swallow three of them and chase it with a Coke from the wet bar. This place is probably good until morning, but I can’t take that chance. Two hours and I run.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t.

Maybe I should just let them come get me. I have what they want, in a safe location. I could make a deal with them.

No. Not yet. Play from strength.

Find Hartman first.

•  •  •

I
visit the bathroom, try to get my key back, but nothing happens. While I’m in there, I stash the girl’s Colt Python under the sink.

I take the bag of weapons into the next bedroom and shove them under the bed. I throw a few things into the Gold’s Gym bag. Things I need to keep safe.

And some insurance.

I walk out of the suite with a Ruger SR9 in my waistband, tell the Zebra Force I’ll be back in ten minutes.

I walk down the hallway, every shadow an enemy.

•  •  •

I
go back to the parking garage and get in the car, drive it out of there. I smell the city and take it in for the first time since I got here.

Houston is different from other metroplexes in America. No zoning. New York is a grid, Chicago is clusters. Houston is chaos. Gotham City, only smaller. Buildings from the forties squat shoulder-to-shoulder with brand-new high-rises. Aboveground railcars run near the bus station, a block away. They used to call it Space City in the seventies. They don’t call it that anymore. It smells like hard concrete and oil floating on top of seawater. Can’t keep myself in it for long.

I find a five-story long-term ramp two blocks away. Get a ticket from an automated meter and pick a cherry spot on a floor where all the cars are really expensive. Some inspection tags expired by a few months. Guys on extended business trips. My ride will blend in okay here.

I park the car next to a green Honda. It’s a late model with an
inspection sticker that went south just a few weeks ago—maybe belongs to a rich kid on a backpacking trip through Europe or something.

I shut off the engine and pop my trunk, unscrew the recession in the floor where the spare tire goes, stash the Gold’s Gym bag in there. Set the spare on top. Slam. Lock it up tight. I drop the keys into a little magnet box I bought at Walmart, stick it under the chassis, near the main transmission shaft.

Now, my insurance policy.

•  •  •

T
he last thing I do is drop one of my cell phones on the passenger’s seat.

Just in case.

Okay.

I walk back to the hotel, looking at everything.

Everything’s looking at me.

I really need some sleep.

Up the service elevator again, I run into an old black maid who gets snippy with me. I tell her I’m visiting a friend and want to surprise him. She says that’s no excuse and that they have a health code in this place. I don’t argue with her. Put up my hands. She gets off on the ninth floor.

“Remember the health code,” she says again, and she sounds irritated with old on top now, like a schoolmarm getting her period early. “Next time
use the stairs
.”

“No problem,” I say.

“Don’t ‘no problem’ me, mister! It’s never a
problem
to do what’s
right
!”

The elevator door closes on her while she’s shouting and I’m still putting up my hands, trying to look innocent.

Damn, that was dumb. Should have kept my mouth shut.

If anyone comes asking, she’ll remember every detail of our
conversation—ladies like that always do. They have nothing better to fill their lives with.

Real smooth, Elroy.

•  •  •

T
he Notorious fat guy blows pot smoke in my face again when he opens the door for me. He’s still got his Glock in the other fist. Looks at me funny, like I’m an imposter. Backs away slowly and lets me in.

The Internet connection is down. I try wireless, using my rig.

Five networks in range, I piggyback on one of them, using my invisible shield to move fast and silently inside someone else’s system. I don’t use the cell relay. Only a ghost could catch me. I sneak into ten people’s houses across Texas in five minutes. Ask about some things that will get me noticed.

Remo’s gone for sure. Murdered. They found his body in a parking lot two nights ago, heart carved out of his chest. It’s been on the news.

The Fixer is still maintaining radio silence.

But he hasn’t washed up anywhere.

Yet.

No word on the street about the helicopter sale—not from anyone aboveground. I’m not fool enough to contact my lawyer directly. Hell, I don’t even know the guy’s name. Dad set up everything with these people. It was all double blind, while I was in the joint. I can get to my safe deposit box tomorrow, if the money’s still there, if Hartman hasn’t gotten to the Fixer yet. But that’ll take time and I need tonight for more important moves. The seventy-five grand in the trunk of my car will have to do me, plus my walking-around money. It’ll be enough.

Jayne Jenison now.

The lady in black.

There’s a lot on her, but I have to look real hard. I find an old e-mail account drifting in the breeze, but she did a Sarah Palin
on it a long time ago. Everything important erased. Some clues, though. The names of a few companies, a few senators. Nothing unusual for a private citizen who lobbies against gun control.