American Blood (19 page)

Vance held the gun steady, looking down it through one eye. “Those going to be your last words? You don’t want to grab some Shakespeare or something?”

Leon drew the Ruger and leveled it. Not a bad little feat: complete in a blink, somehow unrushed.

Leon said, “Didn’t think we’d get this far.”

Vance didn’t answer.

Leon said, “You’ve gotta squeeze twice to beat me. Pretty hard to do it fast, gun like that. This thing’s got a nice light trigger. Shit, I’m almost there. We’d better be careful.”

Vance didn’t answer.

Leon said, “Don’t kid yourself you want me dead. When you dream of all the murdered kids in ’Stan Land, no one else is going to say there, there, because no one else knows what it’s actually like. Other than you and me. And if you get rid of me it’s just going to be you left. Not much fun.”

Vance kept it up for another few seconds, and then he put the gun down and slid it aside, scrape of steel on timber. Nothing in his face, the cigarette seesawing as he worked his jaw slowly back and forth. Leon kept the Ruger on him a bit longer, make sure they’d drawn a line under it, and then he reached behind him and stuck it in his waistband.

He said, “Bring him downstairs. Cyrus, too. We’ll have to use the Skilsaw.”

He bent and wiped a finger through the coke dust, rubbed it round his gums as he left the room.

*   *   *

They went and fetched Bolt from the Chrysler. The corpse facedown as they lugged it, sparing them that awful stare.

Down to the cells, the body awkward, locked with rigor.

It was more garage than basement: the artificial rise the house was built on abutted it on three sides. From outdoors it looked innocuous, but the main door was backed by an eight-inch layer of concrete block. They’d drilled and epoxied rebar into the floor slab as a footprint for the new internal walls and formed them from masonry. Guest accommodation, plus Leon’s cutting suite, plumbed to a cesspit outside.

No noise from the guests. Leon was in an apron, wiping down the band saw. Tools of the trade on a pegboard on the wall behind, stenciled outlines denoting absent items.

They laid Bolt out on the floor beside Dante, just inside the door.

Leon threw the rag on the table and clapped his hands once. “All right. Who’s going to help?”

Quiet for a moment, and then Vance said, “I’ll do it.”

“Great.”

Rojas stepped out of the room. He’d known Cyrus Bolt a long time, and this was the parting moment. He knew that if life’s purpose was to witness the twisted, then right now he could die.

Leon closed the door.

*   *   *

He sat in the living room. The coke on the coffee table suddenly very tempting. He waited there in the clutter. The Xbox, one of Dante’s guns, the coffee table, Vance’s Anaconda, just two pulls from more bloodshed.

Very faintly, the sound of the Skilsaw. A high-pitched rotary whistle, muted intermittently as it cut. He ran his hands through his hair, blocked his ears, listened to the ringing. Who was first: Cyrus or Dante?

He rested his face in his hands. Emerging from the dark the memory of the cop tied up on the floor, arching to look at him.

How you doing, Troy?

He needed to get out of here.

So just take a gun and a car and go.

But you need money.

The daunting road ahead: help his mother, help Troy Junior, keep himself out of prison. All three would need some funding.

He glanced around. Dante’s Visa on the floor. It wouldn’t be good for much, maybe a few hundred. Bad taste using it when the true owner was dead. He shook his head to lose the image, noticed Vance’s set of bump keys, lying in the tangle of cable ties.

Bump keys.

A plan cohered in flashes. Tempting glimpses of a brazen departure.

Imagine what you could do.

He got slowly to his feet and walked over and picked them up by the ring. Like regular keys, except the teeth were even and equidistant, with a single larger tooth at the end.

He held the crouch and jiggled them on a flat palm and they fanned in a gentle curve, perfect size order.

The dizzy screech of the saw, dropping out as it cut.

Through limbs.

Through bone and cold, dead flesh.

He pocketed the set and picked up the Colt and flipped out the cylinder and fed in another five .44 shells. Then he stuck it in his belt at the small of his back and walked quietly along the hall to Leon’s office.

The whistle of the saw. He pictured big arcs of blood. Spray patterns on the heavy aprons.

He tried the handle. Locked.

He took the keys from his pocket and spread them on his hand again and crouched so he could match one to the lock. It was a nine-key set. He tried eight, the second largest. It slotted cleanly home, the gentlest grating as the pins met the notches.

Easy.

He let his breath out. It clouded on the handle, fingerprint whorls in the mist. He waited with empty lungs trying to bring his heartbeat to one a second. Sound of the saw again.

He moved the key in and out a couple of times, feeling for the last pin. That subtle, subtle nudge.

He’d only bumped a lock a few times. Simple in theory: insert the key so it sat just before the final pin, twist gently, and then shunt it all the way home. In principle the sudden impact made the lock pins leap upward, and the applied rotation to the barrel let them settle on the shear line in the freed position.

He tried it. Twist and bump.

Nothing.

He listened for the saw. There it is.

Fingers slick on the metal. It’s hard when you’re shaking. He tried a second time. No luck. Vance had the knack: he’d picked that side door, one pop.

Three’s the charm. Twist and bump.

Nothing. He withdrew the key, inspected it. Precision steel, defect-free. His sweat standing up on the finish. He tried key nine.

All the way to the last pin, twist, and bump.

The lock turned.

A little leap in his chest and he pocketed the keys and pushed the handle and stepped into the office, the long wedge of light from the door revealing the setup:

Leon’s chair pulled back at an angle, almost welcoming him in, do sit down. Books open on the desk. Computers and modem humming. The smell of warm plastic. He stepped to the desk. On the keyboard lay a color print of a naked torso, limbless and headless. He turned it over, rolled open a drawer, found a fat bunch of keys and a white swipe card.

He picked them up and shut the drawer. The saw up and running again, in the midst of something big. He set the lock again before he closed the door.

Down the corridor to one of Leon’s off-limits rooms. He guessed it was a bedroom turned storage locker. He picked through the bunch of keys until he found the one that fit the lock, and then he opened the door.

Light from the corridor filtered in, and he saw metal wall racks loaded with M16s, submachine guns he couldn’t name, shotguns, pistols, helmets and body armor in different shades of camouflage. Boxes of stacked ammunition, any caliber you like. Scent of oil and cardboard. Nothing that looked like money.

He closed the door quietly. He was about to lock it, and then he realized he couldn’t hear the saw.

He slipped the keys in his pocket, kept his hand there to stop them ringing. He moved closer to the stairs, back against the wall, like walking a narrow ledge.

Quiet.

He reached the stairwell door and glanced down, and shit, there was Vance right in his face, standing at the top tread.

Rojas said, “Holy shit, you walk quiet.”

Vance glanced at him. “What are you doing?”

“Heard the saw stop. Thought you must have finished already.”

“I can see the pulse in your neck.” Chilled Vance back in action, the brush with Leon behind him.

Rojas put two fingers below his jaw, suddenly conscious of Vance’s Anaconda jammed in the back of his belt. He said, “Yeah, shit. I keep thinking about that cop.”

Vance studied him a while, just eyes moving in a blank face. He said, “You know if there’s any of that nitric acid left?”

“No. I’m pretty sure it’s gone.”

Vance stepped into the hall. “What about the sulfuric stuff?”

Rojas turned a little, not wanting to put his back to him and reveal the gun. He leaned on the wall. “I think we’re almost out of everything. Might be enough to do one of them, but not both. Just use a gallon and water it down.”

“Tried that before, Leon said it makes the pH go too high or something.”

“So just hose off all the sections and wrap them in the plastic and I’ll bury them.”

Vance looked at the ground, rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, yeah. Could do that, I guess.” He gripped the doorframe and leaned down the stairs to yell. “Leon. Troy says just hose off all the sections and put them in the plastic and we can dump them.”

They waited as he thought about it. Vance still hanging from one arm, Rojas could just shoot him in the back. Colt .44 at this range, wouldn’t be any maybe about it.

But then you’d have to face Leon, in the dark, by yourself.

Name a greater danger and you’d be wrong.

God.

He felt his heart thud dully, a wave of cool dispersing.

Only way to do it was get them both in the same room, give them no time. But Leon was so fast. He just seemed to know what you were lining up, some sixth sense forewarning.

Quiet still. A long, thin gurgle of a drain in the quiet. Blood or water. Leon called, “Yeah. Okay.”

Vance turned on the stair. “Come give us some help.”

Rojas shook his head. “You wrap, I’ll bury.”

“You got a thing about blood or something?”

He backed away, careful not to turn. “No. I got a thing about chopping up guys I’ve known. Just yell when it’s done.”

“Whatever.” Not thrilled about it, but he was heading back down the stairs.

Rojas let his breath out and took his pulse again. Still going like it was trying to top some kind of record. He walked quietly back along the hallway, relocked that door he’d just opened.

Trembling like his first holdup, must be twenty-five years back now: sticking the barrel in the guy’s face, screaming for him to get out of the car, gun wobbling like Parkinson’s. Should be used to it by now.

He moved to the next door and tried some keys and got lucky at number four. He turned the handle gently, and then stepped into the room. The same wall-rack setup, guns galore, body armor, foil packs of ready-to-eat meals.

In the corner the timber flooring had been cut back to expose the foundation slab, and a safe maybe five feet by three square was bolted into the concrete. It had a keypad combination lock and a swipe card slot with a glowing red light. He threaded his way over between the boxes. The light like some demon’s eye, watching the whole way. He paused a moment, card hovering, and he knew that behind this door lay a one-way trip, no turning back now.

He ran the card through the slot.

The light went green. He heard a soft click.

He pulled the door open, dug in his pocket for his cell phone and used the screen glow as a flashlight.

Shelves of bundled bills, dozens of them. He thumbed a stack, all hundreds, snug inside a paper ribbon stamped
$10,000
.

Leon’s CIA cash.

A few seconds lost to quiet awe. His phone light timed out. He woke it up and scanned the shelves again. Had to be two or three million dollars here. Enough money to get him anywhere he wanted, keep him out of sight a long time.

He left the safe open and walked back to the top of the stairs and leaned on the frame and listened. A noise like water jetting against plastic sheeting, followed by murmurs he couldn’t catch. It sounded one-sided, probably Vance getting a firm word, reassured of the nature of things.

The water again. He padded down the hallway to the bunkroom he’d shared with Bolt and knelt beside his camp stretcher and pulled out his canvas duffel and took it with him back down the corridor.

As he reached the room he could hear an alarm trilling sharply. Shit—he slipped quickly inside and the light on the safe was flashing orange, text he couldn’t read scrolling on a narrow display above the keypad.

How loud is that hose—

He rushed over, fumbled the keys, ran the card through the slot again. The alarm quit, the light held a steady green. He left the bag on the floor and took the gun from his belt and darted back to the door and waited a second and then stepped to the stairs. Nothing. Sound of plastic being folded, water falling on concrete. That eerie cleanup noise.

Back to the room, back to work. He laid the Anaconda on the floor and opened the bag very gently, stop-start on the stiff zipper, drew the flaps wide. Then he reached inside the safe with both arms like hugging someone large and drew the contents of the top shelf slowly toward him and off the edge. Bundles tumbling, filling the duffel. That rich smell of currency, oil and grime, scent of all those beckoning dreams.

He cleared the next shelf. Fast, keep the alarm quiet.

Bottom shelf. He could smell it on his hands. Maybe bona fide Baghdad dust in those creases. He closed the safe door. The light switched from green to red. The lock clicked. He glanced around and gathered the errant bills that had fallen shy of the mark and tugged the zipper closed.

He slung the bag on his shoulder and with the gun in his other hand walked out and through the kitchen into the living room, followed the bloodstains to the garage. He still had Leon’s keys, but it was too late to bump the office door again and return them to the drawer. It didn’t matter. He felt better now, lugging three million. It instilled a devil-may-care mind-set: get out of my way, or I’ll fucking shoot you.

He hit the switch and the lights draped the cars in sequence, front to back: the Chrysler, the shot Audi, the Jeep down the end. They kept the keys in the ignitions. He walked down to the Jeep and opened the passenger door and dumped the bag and Leon’s keys in the footwell. Then he stuck the Colt in his belt and tugged his shirt out to cover it and walked back to the living room.

Vance was just coming through, a big black-wrapped parcel in his arms. He said, “We did Dante in the acid.”