Terminal (18 page)

“C
ocksucker!” Gigi cursed. Again. “You didn’t tell me this was gonna be no fucking cross-country trip, man.”

“There’s no dogs, inside or out,” I said, softly, into the soft night. “The old man’s afraid of them. No fence, either. What do you want to do, drive up to the front door?”

Claw never said a word. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

T
he house was mostly dark. A few lights on, all on the first story. The key I’d been given opened the back door. The security codes I punched in clicked.

Then we started working.

The bodyguards were in one of those “great rooms,” their eyes magneted to the gangbang porn playing on a wall-sized plasma screen. Claw had his spike deep in the shooter’s neck before the glazed-over slug could even touch leather, but the karate guy caught the peripheral flash and was out of his chair like a rocket, launching a kidney-killing side kick at Claw’s back. Gigi plucked him out of the air like a gorilla snatching a butterfly on the wing.

I went up the carpeted stairs, rubber-soled and plastic-gloved. A faint glow spilled from the room I wanted. I slipped inside. The old man saw me. I wasn’t wearing a mask. He had to know what that meant, but he didn’t move.

I knew what he was, right in that moment. The kind of human that would make lice jump off his skin and vultures refuse to eat his flesh.

I crossed to him. The room’s shadow shifted, darkness inside gloom. Before I could whirl, a heavy forearm wrapped around my neck like constrictor cable. Something slammed into the back of my thigh. I slid down, not resisting, trying to get my chin tucked while I still had time.

The choke artist came down with me, still locked on. Darkness was closing.

I thumbed my sleeve knife open and stabbed his cabled forearm deep, raking the serrated edge through muscle tissue. He made an ugly noise as his grip loosened. I slipped out, stepped back, sucked in a deep, ragged breath. The choke artist, a powerfully built black man, staggered to his feet, left arm limp at his side. I circled, buying time, hoping the knife would make him hold off long enough for me to get more air into my lungs.

But he knew, and he stepped right to me, firing a Shotokan right hand off his front foot. His balance was off enough for me to slip the punch, toss the knife to my left hand, and hook him to the liver with it. He made a sound I recognized as he went down.

Quick!
rang in my head as I spun toward the old man. He still hadn’t moved. Hadn’t reached for a phone or a panic button. Just kept staring at a portfolio-sized display case, standing open on a shelf. Inside were dozens of tiny compartments, mirror-backed.

“I warned that filthy little cunt,” he said, rheumy eyes blazing with righteous conviction.

His last words.

I heard a crack-snap noise behind me. Spun again, weaponless. But it was just Gigi, making sure the bodyguard the Mole’s friends hadn’t known about wasn’t going to bleed out.

W
e ransacked the place like amateurs on angel dust. Grabbed all the loose cash, cleaned out the medicine cabinet, chopped off the shooter’s ring finger, and left it there—some TV-trained cop would spend a lot of time checking pawnshops for a ring that had never existed.

But the prize was the display case: constructed of what looked like Hawaiian koa wood, it folded into the size of an artist’s portfolio. The intricate fastening clamps were gold. I saw the OCR-font printout from one of the pages the Mole had given me as clearly as if it was projected on the wall:

Among certain individuals, it is well known that Target possesses these items. They were created a minimum of two hundred years ago, each of handcrafted ivory. One of a kind, every one. Unduplicatable. Literally priceless, but could never be sold openly. The security Target employs is to protect his treasure, not his person.

I couldn’t stop myself from looking before I closed the case. Each tiny figurine was really two: an adult male and a girl child. I wished the craftsman whose magic hands had created such intricate, complex scenes on such a small scale was still alive. So I could take my own trophy.

While I was doing the hophead-burglar thing—opening the chest of drawers starting at the top, then turning each one upside down—Claw was razor-slitting a bunch of cushions, the way you do when you’re looking for a hidden stash and don’t have much time. He made sure to take the shooter’s piece—looked like a Sig P210, way too expensive for junkies to pass up, even with the serial number showing—and empty everyone’s wallets. He even snatched the karate guy’s G-Shock watch and platinum neck chain.

Gigi just wrecked everything, including a Sub-Zero that it should have taken two men even to move, much less turn over.

We went out the way we came in. Standing outside, Gigi kicked in the back door, then smashed the wall next to the security box with a brass-knuckled fist. Claw immediately reached in and cut the wires.

Then we split for real, leaving enough clues to keep crime-scene techs busy for months. Every meth-head within fifty miles was in deep trouble.

Back at the car, we all stripped, tossing everything we’d been wearing into a thick canvas bag. I tied it at the top, wrapping the wire around one of the Mole’s little boxes and put it in the trunk. Anyone who tried to open that bag before it got to the crematorium would destroy a lot more than evidence.

We’d gone in double-sheathed; all our prints were in the system. But we’d also splattered some random DNA—carried in baggies, emptied by hands covered in surgeon’s gloves—in a few spots.

For cops, the only thing worse than no clues is too many.

G
igi dropped Claw at a subway on the West Side. Dropped me on a corner in Chinatown.

“It’s mine from here,” he said. “This”—meaning the car—“is a big fucking paperweight in a couple of hours.”

We’d already divided up the cash—equal shares. Everything else went into another bag for the Disposal Three-Step: cremation; sledgehammer; then the river. The “collection” was going to stay inside the paperweight. I trusted Gigi to handle that part. He was a stand-up con, and he wouldn’t back-deal a partner. Plus, even if he looked, he’d know he’d have to reach
way
out to sell something like that. But trust only goes so far—I’d spent the return trip sitting in the backseat, carefully using a pair of needle-nose pliers to crush each of the figurines into ivory dust.

I
didn’t need to get word to the Mole; it was all over the papers. TV, radio, Internet. Every media outlet had a different version of what happened. Every “expert” had a different guess as to why: cults, criminals, or crazos. The cops were “still evaluating the evidence.” Too bad the maniacs—“probably flying on speed,” one genius solemnly intoned—had busted up all the computers. I mean, that’s the first thing you check, right?

“C
all for you,” Mama said.

I got up from my booth, picked up the phone, said, “What?”

“It’s Bishop, man.”

“Sorry. You must have the wrong number.”

“Hey! You haven’t even heard my—”

I hung up on him. Bishop was a menace. Not to society, to any thief who went near one of his ideas. He was a lifelong failure—the kind of guy you usually have to pass through a metal-detector to visit. The hapless fool never falls hard—small-time all the way; no violence, ever—but with Bishop, falling is such a guarantee that the Prof calls him “Gravity.”

I’d met him on Rikers a long time ago. I was being held for trial—a trial that never happened, when a pimp who’d taken a bullet developed a medical complication: loss of memory. Bishop, he was doing ninety days because…well, because of what he was. A softhearted judge had let him off with “probation and restitution” on his last job. He paid the restitution immediately…with a rubber check. Bishop was the kind of master planner who could always figure out how to come out on the bottom.

“He’s supposed to be so smart,” I said to the Prof once. “I mean, he’s got, like, a Ph.D. or something, right?”

“Why you think they call a diploma a ‘sheepskin,’ son?”

“I don’t get it.”

“A
real
teacher, he wants the ones he teaches to be better than he is. Smarter, sharper, slicker. Wants them to
rise,
okay? But all they teach those poor kids in college is rinse-and-repeat, see? That’s ’cause those teachers, they’re the kind of punks who stay up by keeping folks down. And they’ve got lifetime gigs doing it.”

“So college, it’s a waste of time?”

“It don’t
have
to be. It’s like the Good Book,” he said, switching from Professor to Prophet. “You got to read the book itself, not the book
reviews,
see? A teacher’s like a fighter—got to bring some to get some. When they can’t bring it, they just sing it. And most of those kids going to school, all they ever learn is to just sing along. Memorize the words, so they can spit them back out. How’s that gonna make you smarter?”

“So a guy like Bishop…?”

“Oh, he’s smart for real. But the motherfucker’s radioactive, son. Dealing with him, it’s like swimming in the swamp. You might pull it off once, but you try it too many times, something in there’s going to pull you down. You see that man coming, you cross the street, hear?”

I never went to college, but I never forget what I’ve been taught. Any of it.

I don’t forget the people who taught me, either. Any of them.

I
walked through the shadows, sadness-shrouded by how at home I felt there. And how I could heat this whole city in the middle of winter with the flames from all the bridges I’ve burned.

My car was where it was supposed to be. So were the pits. This time, I was carrying top-quality tribute: a massive T-bone. The male and one of the females each took a bite and played tug until a slab came loose for each. My orca girl took a fat cube of filet mignon from behind my back.

I drove my purple Plymouth to the badlands, stripped off its condom inside the chain-link as Simba came over to keep me company. I couldn’t just slog though the pack the way the Mole or Terry did—I needed the old warrior to walk point.

The Mole had us on visual all the way. He was waiting outside. We both followed him down—me to his Father’s Day chair, Simba to the gorgeous sable coat Michelle had abandoned after deciding that wearing fur was a badge of low character. It was Simba’s curl-up spot now.

“Nu?”

“You know it’s done,” I said.

“Not that. Was I right?” Meaning, was killing that piece of filth something I would have wanted to do, even if I didn’t have to?

“Or?”

“Or what?”

“Or are you checking to see if your own people lied to you?”

“I already know.”

“How?”

“I can feel it coming off you. So can Simba.”

The beast made a throaty sound. I took it for recognition of his name; the Mole took it for agreement.

“He was—”

“I know,” he cut me off.

“So his daughter—”

“Yes,” the Mole said. “There is what you wanted.”

I followed his stubby finger to the corner where it was pointed. Six more metal file cases, with carrying handles. Duplicates of the one he had given me originally.

“The deal was for just this one—”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Those boxes are not another…job. They are what you wanted.”

I met his eyes. Saw the truth.

“You had the stuff all the time,” I said. Not an accusation, saying aloud what I just realized.

“I was trusted,” he said. Three words—a thousand meanings.

I
f the pits noticed that my Plymouth had been restored to its night-blending color scheme, I couldn’t see it on their faces. I had stopped by the flophouse first. No way I was going to tie up both hands trying to carry all those file boxes through the route I had to take. Or make six trips, either.

By the time I got back, Max was sitting with Gateman. He took two boxes in each hand. I followed him up the stairs.

We sat down at the poker table. Max spread his arms in an “Is that all of it?” gesture.

“That’s what they say,” I told him.

I
t took the Prof and Clarence almost two hours to show up. By then, Max and I had figured out that every single piece of paper in the file boxes was a copy, even the color photos. I was guessing Xerox didn’t make whatever the Mole’s people had used for the job.

“Motherfucker!” the Prof burst out, when he saw the mountain. “What’d those fools do, rob a paper factory?”

“It’s all on the case,” I said. “I don’t know how much work they really put in, don’t know how much of this is just cops playing CYA, but it’s all on Melissa Turnbridge, Prof.”

“So you’re saying, if we’re not gonna cheat, we gotta check every fucking sheet?”

I didn’t even answer him. The reason so few crimes actually get solved—if you don’t count informants, or fools who don’t clean up after themselves—is because of prejudice. Not black-white kind of prejudice—that’s what pins crimes on the wrong man, sure, but that’s not what muddies the water if you’re really looking for answers. I mean the kind of prejudice that makes the investigator start with a bent mind.

Psychologists call that “cognitive distortion.” You view the world through a prism, refracting the images to fit your needs. That’s how freaks resolve their “internal dissonance.” They know sodomizing a baby is nothing but pain and terror for the victim. But not having a conscience doesn’t mean you don’t know right from wrong; it just means you don’t let stuff like that get in the way of your fun. Or, more likely, the pain
is
the fun.

The “treatment community” believes this means the thought process of child-molesters is distorted. Baby-rapers don’t see a victim being used; they see a child being “loved.” And all children want love, don’t they? Isn’t love
good
for them?

For decades, they’ve been building sex-offender treatment on the foundation of this quicksand:
If we can just alter the poor man’s cognitive distortions, we can change his behavior.
The treatment twits aren’t wrong about cognitive distortion—they just don’t understand that
they’re
the ones who have it.

The whole concept was probably a deliberate plant, suggested to a therapist who believed some freak had achieved “insight.” The therapist repeats it, like a trained parrot, only he calls it a “discovery.” Eventually, “repeat-and-believe” becomes the formula, and, before long, there’s a whole new industry springing up.

The pipeline opens, and the money flows. Politicians pass the “right” laws, judges do the “right” thing, and the right people get “treatment.”

It’s the perfect scam, because people
want
it to be true.

I just read this test some researchers conducted. Ah, it was a beaut. The researchers didn’t care about sex-offender treatment; their field was statistical measurement, and they wanted to know what sort of factors might affect results. So they asked this whole group of imprisoned baby-rapers who had been placed in a “treatment unit” a series of questions. The first job was to measure the percentage who reported “cognitive distortions” concerning sex with children. Amazingly, virtually all of them did.

Then
what the researchers did was to tell the “subjects” that they were all going to be given the same set of questionnaires again, only this time they would be polygraphed to see how many had been truthful. And the
only
thing that would be disclosed to the Parole Board was whether they lied or told the truth.

Get it? Maybe you don’t, but the freaks sure did.

They passed the polygraph at an astounding rate. Nearly every one of them was absolutely truthful. That time, only a couple of them—probably the ones with the lowest IQs—still reported cognitive distortions. Baby-rapers only lie when there’s something in it for them.

Actually, the whole “polygraph” thing had been a fraud. The researchers were interested in validity-reliability methods, not sex offenders. The real test was to see if people changed their answers when they had something to gain by telling the truth.

And it sure told the truth about the whole “cognitive distortion” game.

Sex-offender treatment is like performing an exorcism on an atheist.

Making assumptions is the same as volunteering to be stupid. When I investigate, I’m never invested. I’m looking for whatever the truth is, because that’s the only combination that will open the safe I need to crack.

“Put in the time you can,” I told them. “We won’t ever finish this in one shot. Everybody just come and go when you need to, okay?”

Max stood up. Sat down again. Made gestures of a man rowing the arms of his chair.

“You’re right,” I said. “No reason Gateman can’t help with this. Even Terry, if we can slip around—”

“You bring her boy into this mess, his momma’ll set fire to your chest, Schoolboy. And put it out with an ice pick.”

“He’s just at the research end, Prof. No way he goes past that, okay?”

“I could send him documents,” Clarence said. “Over the—”

“No,” I cut that off. “Nothing leaves this building except by way of the smokestack.”

The way the Mole’s ancestors had.
The thought ripped into my mind like a supercharged chainsaw, shredding the resentment I’d been nursing. His shadowy friends had made me take some life-or-death risks, sure. But they played for the same stakes, every day. Where would I draw the line if I thought someone was trying to exterminate my whole family? When it comes to fighting off genocide, there’s no rules.