Takedown (10 page)

H
aaahhh… Dieu le veut… Dieu le veut!
” Krogan yelled from his horse in his host’s native tongue as he and three other knights toyed with a dozen Turkish peasants
running for their lives across a parched grassy field. “God wills it!” he repeated again and again, elated over the battle
cry of the “Armed Pilgrimage,” as they called themselves. Krogan was enjoying a most satisfying life, maybe the best since
the son of God had been crucified just over a thousand years prior.

“
Shadahd!
” another knight shouted, his bloody sword pointing at a fleeing man trying to escape in Krogan’s direction. The word, foreign
to the human ears of most of his present comrades, was infinitely more familiar to Krogan than the cry of what some were beginning
to call a crusade. Since a time when earth was no more than another one of God’s projects gone bad, the word
Shadahd
had been the battle cry of the angels… at least the angels Krogan was a part of—the stronger ones, with a mind of their
own. The word simply meant to go out to “ruin.” Ruin what? Specifically, everything. Creation… an inferior design, worthy
only of abuse.

Crusade.
Krogan wished he had thought of it, the word finding its root in the word
cross
and its energy from some scriptural scribble exhorting one to “pick up the cross and follow.” Truly, he was never so willing
to wear a cross himself, a red one he bore proudly on his right arm.

Krogan wheeled, turned on his horse, and sent his huge razor-edged sword, larger than all the others, slicing backward through
the hot August air. His immediate aim was to maim. The longer the suffering before death, the more enduring the impression.
And so far the impression was going quite well. His two commanders, a silver-tongued monk known as Peter the Hermit and a
zealous knight, William the Penniless, whom he had separated from early on to carve out a reputation of his own, had just
been massacred by the Turks in a little city called Civitote, just above Nicaea. Both had been commissioned by Pope Urban
the Second. A Christian, even a pope, finding reason to promote what was sure to be a bloodbath, was really too good to be
true. They would all leave their mark in history, and he was delighted to help, all in the name of their precious Lord, of
course.

“
Dieu le veut,
” he roared as his recently sharpened edge sliced off the man’s right arm below the shoulder.

A bell rang, not the kind of bell he had heard from towers, but more like many small bells, rapid, jingling. They stopped
for a moment, then rang again. Krogan closed his eyes and heard a voice. The voice sounded like his own, or at least the one
he had now gained possession of.

“Yeah, you’ve reached the, uh, office of Jackhammer Hoban. Leave a message… or don’t.”

He opened his eyes. The wounded peasant was gone, as was the horse he’d just been riding.

Beep.
“Uh, Jack? Hello? You there? This is Michael Grossman. Look, uh, we need to talk. I was a little hot yesterday. Well… heh,
heh, who wouldn’t be after you.… Listen, I said some things that at the heat of the moment…”

Krogan lifted the receiver. “Talk,” he said in a raspy whisper.

“Oh… you
are
there… good. Like I was saying, we… Mr. Bodder and I… Mark… you remember Mark… Bodder…
my attorney. Well, we were just going over some of the numbers… I mean, response…”

“Stay there,” Krogan said, his voice hushed, his thoughts wanting to be elsewhere.

Krogan hung up and tried to settle his mind back to where it had been before the phone rang. He remembered the time well,
perfectly, as if he were still there. The first crusade had been good, as were the others. Nothing was quite as confusing
and foolish as a “Holy War,” and nothing was quite as satisfying as confusion. So many questions with so few tangible answers.
Religion doing what it did best—driving the individuals, then the groups, and finally the masses into the places they were
most vulnerable, while making belief in God appear absurd to the rest of the world. And then, where possible, absurd to the
believers themselves.

The phone rang. He listened to his outgoing message. Knowing what it was going to say bored him. Grossman again. He wanted
to know how long they were supposed to wait for him. Krogan reached over and tore the line from the wall. No more talk. They
would stay until he was ready to see them,
if
he decided to see them.

Again Krogan gathered his thoughts, but another memory, more recent, more humbling, annoying, kept scattering what he was
trying to gather. The tortoise. He remembered the clouded vision, the strange sounds, the cage, the other tortoises thinking
he was a tortoise, the taste of leaves… insects.

He threw off a thin blanket and saw his naked body. He studied it, moved his fingers, stretched his limbs, flexed his muscles.
A sound at his window jerked his chin upward. He walked over and separated the curtain. The window was tall, and the bright
light of midday assaulted him as an electric train roared by less than fifty feet away at eye level. After a long moment he
knew where he was. The man Hoban lived in an apartment in Jamaica, Queens.

Below the elevated train were the street, stores, and people. He looked back at the train. Faces. Some staring at him. How
easy it would be to end any one of their lives… all of their lives. He thought of his ancient comrades, their anticipation
of seeing him again. The thrill of the prowl.
Shadahd
. The thought was as satisfying as ever. Enticing. But first there was a little business he had to attend to. Payback for
the humiliation suffered in that thing’s body.

He thought back two years, to the time of his imprisonment. He saw the faces of his captors. How could he, Krogan, the warrior
of warriors, enjoy his natural call before his revenge was satisfied? He would strike. He would retaliate skillfully. Their
general would fall, but not before he could see his fall coming. He would suffer long before his death and be strongly impressed.
The Reverend Buchanan would first see his disciples suffer and die. Only then, after the Asian and the cop were dealt with,
would the old man’s time come. And even then his own demise would begin with his granddaughter.
The name of Krogan will once again be spoken with reverence and awe in the heavens.

Krogan took a final look at the streets below, calling on Hoban’s feeble memory for the nearest fish store. He smiled mischievously,
having a sudden craving for lobster.

B
y the time Gavin had dressed and found his way into the kitchen, a ferocious appetite had seized him. Picking at the cold
cuts as he worked the grill, he cooked up a more-than-healthy portion of ham, three over-easy eggs with cheddar cheese melted
over a small mountain of home-fried potatoes, and rye toast.

“Smells delicious… but does he always eat like this?” Larry Larson asked Amy as they talked over what Gavin hoped were the
final details of “freshening up” the kitchen.

Amy nodded. “He could do that all day and never gain a pound,” she said, then placed the morning’s newspaper next to Gavin
while he stabbed at the potatoes.

“I would kill for a metabolism like that,” Larry said.

Gavin stopped chewing when he saw the front page. An aerial shot of the train wreck. He wondered if the Camel pack had prints.

“Not literally, of course,” Larry said.

“Of course,” Amy said, giving Gavin a frown. “So what were you saying?” she said, trying to keep her decorator’s attention.

Gavin went back to attacking his meal, stabbing a combination of potato, ham, and wet egg with every forkful.

“I think okra green would be gorgeous in here if we can steal a little more light. Maybe a skylight over here would help?”

“Like the vegetable,” Gavin said, his mouth full.

“Excuse me?” Larry said.

“Okra. You want to paint the walls the color of a vegetable and the trim butter yellow. Is that cause it’s a kitchen?”

Larry laughed. “I never thought about that. But I wouldn’t do it without the skylight… the light’s a bit mean in here for
okra, but, oh my, it’s very pretty with the Hawaiian green granite.”

“The light is mean?” Gavin said.

“Dark… mean. You know. It’s all about matching mediums, color and—”

“Granite? Did you say granite counters?”

Amy put her hands together as if she were praying, giving him those light-green eyes he could never refuse. “Pleeeease?”

Larry gave him the same kind of look a judge might give a felon at sentencing. “You have to use granite. There’s no question.
The only decision is what kind of granite.”

“There are no other choices?”

“No.”

“I thought there were.”

“None.”

Gavin looked around him and figured there really wasn’t that much counter. How expensive could it be? He shrugged his shoulders
and said, “I suppose if we don’t have a choice…”

Amy clapped her steepled fingers and squeaked out a high-pitched “Yes!”

Gavin’s cell phone rang.

“Yeah?”

“We’ve got a print off the Camel box,” Chris said.

“You get a match?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Was that a joke?”

“Poor, huh?”

“As usual.”

“Well, no match yet. You coming in soon?”

“Yeah.”

Gavin sopped up the remaining yolk with his toast, drained the last of his coffee, and took the dishes to the sink. After
a token rinse, he placed everything in the dishwasher, then reflexively sponged the Formica counter. Done. Gone.

“You’ve certainly trained him well,” Larry said to Amy. “Any more where he came from?”

“Him?” Amy tried to hold back her grin. “I don’t know. Gavin, Larry wants to know if you have any clean-freak friends who
might be available.”

“I don’t have any friends. And I don’t know too many… decorators.”

Larry furrowed his expansive brow.

“Oh, he does so have friends,” Amy said, giving Gavin a peck on the cheek, and then with mock concern continued, “They’re
just not always comfortable admitting it.”

Gavin almost smiled. The one good thing he liked about Larry was that he was keeping Amy occupied. If she was going over colors
with Larry, she wasn’t running around town or gardening or heaven knew what else. Besides that, Gavin found Larry educational.
In the last hour he’d learned that not enough light was “mean,” khaki tan in the hallways was “gutsy,” butter yellow was “safe
and friendly,” blue could work in a girl’s room if it was mixed with a “fun” yellow… at least in Larry’s book. Amy seemed
to be going with the “pretty” and shying away from the daring.

Gavin bent down and kissed Amy’s belly on the way out the door, then said to Larry, “Now, you take care of Mommy. Make sure
she gets off her feet soon. She’s always trying to do too much.”

“I do not.”

“And she lies.”

Larry nodded reassuringly to Gavin’s orders.

“
Watashi wa shiawase,
” Amy whispered sweetly before pecking him on the cheek.

Gavin paused, then smiled. “Me, too,” he said, then left the room, Cedar happily following him to the door.

“Stay,” Gavin ordered without turning, knowing the dog had stopped where he was. He was halfway to his car when he stopped
and turned. “Okay, c’mon, Cee.” He heard the slipping of paws on the oak floor, then the door was pushed open with the nudge
of a long nose. Unless his dog was told otherwise, Gavin knew he would find him on the stoop waiting for him when he returned
home.

Gavin went through the usual routine of pumping and cranking his car. As he worked the key and pedal he thought of Chris.
His partner never got enough of ribbing Gavin about his car’s constant reluctance to work. He could hear a sarcastic Chris
in his mind: “Starting to start your car, Gav?” He turned the radio on before his mind conjured up anything else he didn’t
want to hear.

With the Tiger warmed and purring, he pulled up to the sidewalk, having backed into the driveway the night before. He didn’t
know what the weather was going to be and thought he might need to put the hardtop on. As it turned out, another hot, sunny
day. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to spend too much time in the office with what Chris referred to as the world’s first experimental
air-conditioning system—a jerry-rigged mess of long cords and old, noisy fans. He waited for a car to go by and was reminded
by Amy’s license-plateless minivan next to him that he needed to stop at the DMV.
Not today,
he thought, and then took off straight ahead, up the block opposite his driveway. A glance in the rearview, his property
framed in the small mirror. His
soon
-to-be decorated property. All his hard work in the hands of a stranger. He shook his head, not wanting to think about it.
She’s happy,
he thought.
That’s what’s important. “Watashi wa shiawase,
” he said aloud, his pronunciation much
better than when he had first repeated the words slowly to Amy on their wedding night.

His eyes back on the road, he frowned. “What the—” he said, then flashed his lights at an oncoming cement truck; its rear
concrete chute, extended long and perpendicular, barely missed a parked car on the other side of the street. No, it had hit
the car’s side mirror and antenna… and would hit him if he didn’t veer right to the shoulder… or into a driveway.

“Doesn’t that idiot know?” Gavin said angrily to himself, flashing, flashing, flashing his lights.
And what cement truck drives at that speed in a residential neighborhood? And with the barrel turning the wrong way.
Gavin remembered when his own foundation was being poured, the barrel had first spun clockwise to mix and then counterclockwise
to pour.

Instead of veering to the right, Gavin went left, head on. This moron had to be stopped before someone got hurt. Flashing,
flashing. Nothing.
Can’t he see?
At the last second Gavin steered right, jumping a curb and spinning out on wet sod, underground sprinklers dousing him and
his car inside and out. The truck sped by, barrel spinning backward, chute extended and swinging like a dragon’s tail knocked
from one side of the street to the other by parked cars. He had seen a glimpse of the driver’s face. Not much detail through
the glass except for two horrifying facts: The driver was definitely laughing… and there was a passenger.
When does a cement truck have a passenger?
And at the speed it was going, it might not be able to slow down when it got to—

“Oh, God! No!” Gavin screamed.