Choice of Evil (16 page)

“I could do that. But if the message itself said it was encrypted, and I used one of the regular programs—to
make
it encrypted, see?—anyone could open the message if they had the same program.”

“And he’d know that?”

“Yes,” she said, in one of those elongated “Isn’t it obvious?” tones all young girls can do.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, maybe trying to convince myself. “I’ll be able to figure out who’s who.”

“Okay. So exactly what do you want to say? And is it context-sensitive?”

“What’s that mean?”

“Oh. Well, it just means, does it have to be exactly in a certain form. Like, if you wrote it like a regular sentence, you know, with capital letters and periods and all, and I just sent it in all lower-case, would that matter?”

“No. I don’t care. Here’s all I want to say, all right?”

She nodded, pencil poised.

“You just address it to him, right? To ‘Homo Erectus,’ yes?”

“Sure. And I’ll multi-post it. If he’s lurking on any of the newsgroups or on BBS stuff, he’ll see it.”

“Okay, say this: ‘I am the real thing, same as you. Here’s proof: “velociraptor.”’ Put that in quotes, okay? ‘I am not a cop. I have something you need.’ ”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. If he sends you a message. . .”

“Oh, I’ll get
lots
of messages,” she assured me. “Problem’ll be telling if any of them are him.”

“I think I can do that. . . if he bites. Just get word to me. I’m counting on you, all right, Xyla?”

“I’m straight-edge,” she said, finger flicking at one of her razor earrings.

I
sat there for a long time after Xyla left, thinking it through. Even if the killer got in touch, I wouldn’t be any closer to him, not really. Sure, he had to be in the city—or, at least, he had to have
been
in the city—to do his work. But he could have already vanished. All we really had was his footprints. And, like the Prof had said about Wesley, that trail only ran backward.

Still, I couldn’t see this guy living some double life. Couldn’t see him as a stockbroker or running a bodega. He wasn’t making his own porno flicks, the way a lot of serial killers do. And he didn’t roam the way most of them do either. He had no definable piece of work he had to finish—the way a mass murderer who comes into the workplace shooting and then eats his own gun does, or a wife-beater under an order of protection who’s going to take himself out as soon as he blows her away.

No, this one was a different breed. And he was. . . close. Had to be. As if he wasn’t so much compelled to do his work as to see its results.

Maybe he was just nuts. Or I was. I couldn’t track him in my mind the way I could other kinds of predators. Those, I knew about. Spent my life with them. They raised me. I did time with them. And I studied them close—because I knew someday I’d be hunting them. That was the prayer I put myself to sleep with every night, from when I was a little child. That I wouldn’t be prey. Inside, where I ended up, there was only one alternative to that.

That’s why he said he was doing it too—revenge. But I couldn’t connect with him. Couldn’t see him. . . feel him. Nothing.

“
B
urke, you take this one, okay? Say important.”

“Huh?” I felt Mama’s hand on my shoulder. Figured out she must mean the phone. Glanced at my watch. I’d been there. . . Jesus, almost three hours. That kind of thing happened to me every once in a while, but ever since I’d lost my. . . home, I guess. . . it was happening a lot.

I got up, walked to the back, picked up the dangling receiver.

“What?” is all I said.

“It’s me.” Wolfe’s voice. “I have your stuff.”

“Great. When can I—?”

“Now, if you want. Remember where we were the last time you saw Bruiser do his stuff?”

“Sure.”

“An hour?”

“I’ll be there,” I promised.

T
here’s places along the Hudson River where you can pull over. Sort of big parking lots. Maybe the city planners thought the rich folks on Riverside Drive would promenade over for picnics, who knows? Today, the spots are used for everything from romance to rape. Daytime, they’re pretty full, especially when the weather gets nice. At night, it’s a little different, but there’s enough room to give everybody space to operate, and the assortment of cars parked there didn’t set off any of my alarms.

I backed the Plymouth into an empty space—too near the middle for my taste, but the corners were already occupied. I was twenty minutes ahead of the meet, so I kicked back and watched.

It wasn’t long before that rolling oil refinery Wolfe calls a car rumbled in. I shuddered as she reversed, slowly and deliberately, then backed in so she was close to me. . . but this time she missed by a couple of feet. I opened my door and waited, not surprised to see that malevolent Rottweiler of hers jump right out the passenger-side window and pin me balefully, waiting for the word.

“Bruiser, behave yourself,” Wolfe told him. Not a command I’d ever heard for a dog before, but the brute seemed to understand, visibly relaxing. At least as far as I was concerned—his heavy head swiveled as he swept the surrounding area, maybe remembering the last time Wolfe had met me here. Some clowns in a four-by didn’t see me—just Wolfe standing alone—and thought they’d try their luck. Then they saw Bruiser coming for them—a skell-seeking missile already locked on to his target—just in time and peeled out before he could do his job.

“I got it,” Wolfe said by way of greeting.

I hadn’t expected a hug and a kiss, but this was a bit cold-edged, even for her.

“You also got a problem?” I asked her, getting right to it, ignoring the cheap white plastic briefcase she held in one hand.

“I might have,” she said evenly. “The word’s out that your. . . friend may be back.”

“You believing rumors now?”

“Not any more than usual. But I know a trademark when I see one.”

“Spell it out,” I said quietly, understanding now why she wanted the meet outdoors.

“I’m still. . . in touch,” Wolfe said. Not news to me. The cops Wolfe had worked with for so many years hadn’t broken off contact when she’d gone outlaw. They knew what she trafficked in, and they’d made more than one beautiful bust off info she’d provided. The only way she could walk into a courtroom and
own
it the way she had for so long as a prosecutor would be as a defense attorney, and she just wouldn’t go the side-switching route like so many ex-DAs. So, even though her license was gathering dust, she was still law enforcement in the eyes of a lot of working cops.

“What is it you want to say?” I asked her, watching her gray eyes.

She took out a cigarette, waited for the wooden match she knew was coming from my end, hauled in a deep drag, leaning back against her Audi’s crumpled hood, and blew a jet of smoke into the darkness.

“You trust me?” she finally asked.

“Yes,” I told her. No hesitation. I could maybe never tell her how I really felt about her, but I could tell her that. And even as that one simple word left my mouth, I knew it was a commitment. . . that I’d have to prove it.

“The drive-by—the one that started this all?”

“Yeah?”

“Two shooters. Plus one driver, okay?”

“Far as I know. Although the driver could have been shooting too. . . so maybe one less man.”

“Seven victims, two fatal.”

“I thought it was less, but. . . okay.”

“One of them, your girlfriend. This Crystal Beth?”

“Yes.”

“Only her ID didn’t say that. It said she was someone else.”

I shrugged. The woman asking me the questions was holding a briefcase full of documents as phony as a talk show host’s tears for the pathetic parade of damaged creatures she used and abused every day.

“You know one of the guns was a Tec-9, right?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“You hear a lot. But not enough, I don’t think. You know what the other piece was?”

“No,” I said, focusing now.

“It was a Magnum Research Lone Eagle.”

“Oh Jesus. . .”

“Chambered for.22 Hornet.”

“So it had to be a—”

“Hit. That’s right. An assassination.”

I lit a smoke of my own, more to have something to do with my hands than anything else. She was right—what else
could
it be? Magnum Research is a subsidiary of Israeli Arms. And the piece she was talking about was a Mossad special: single-shot, with a rotary breech like an artillery cannon. You rotate the breech cap to expose the chamber and slide in the cartridge, then you lock it up again. No way to reload it in the time a car would pass by. . . impossible. But a sharpshooter, even using open metal sights, could hit a half-dollar at a hundred feet from a moving car with a piece like that. And nobody could be sure the car even
was
moving before the spray from the Tec-9 started.

“They found the slug?” I asked her.

“A piece of it, anyway. He was hit right in the base of the skull, dead before he dropped.”

He?
“So it wasn’t Crystal Beth who—?”

“No. The way they have it doped, she was hit by cover fire. The target was the guy who got the special delivery.”

“If all they have is a piece of the slug, how could they know it was a—?”

“They have the weapon,” Wolfe said softly. “It was in the car.”

“The. . . what?”

“The car. The drive-by car. It was a Lincoln Town Car. You know, the kind most of the limo services use. . . not a stretch, a regular sedan. Black. Tinted windows. About as noticeable as a taxicab in that part of town. . . real good choice.”

“Where’d they find—?”

“In a long-term parking garage on Roosevelt Island. A couple of days later. The way they figure it, the driver must have caught the Triborough and hooked back through Queens, come into the garage from the other side of the river. That’s probably where they had the switch car waiting.”

“So the murder weapon was in the car. Don’t tell me they left a bullet in it?”

“Oh, they found a slug, all right. In the back of the head of the guy in the passenger seat. The driver got the same dose. . . only from a different piece. A regular.22 short. The techs found that one too.”

“And when they vacuumed. . .?”

“Nothing. Both of the dead men in the front seat had sheets, but no trace of whoever was in the back. And the weapons were all purchased legally. One in Florida, the other two in Georgia. About three years apart. Straw-man buys. Local drunks or crackheads. All you need is proof of residence there. Then a quick run up Handgun Highway. No way to figure out how many times they changed hands since.”

“The dead guys. Their sheets said. . . what?”

“They were both made men,” she said. “Family guys.”

“So somebody wanted the guy in the park and. . .”

“Contracted it out, sure. That’s the way they’re playing it. That’s why not a word of this has leaked. It’s bad enough that this Homo Erectus maniac is slaughtering people. Now it looks like it all started over. . . something else. It wasn’t a fag-bashing after all.”

“Christ.”

“Yes. But that’s not all. What’s got everyone spooked isn’t the hit. It’s the word about the hit man.”

“I don’t get—”

“Yeah, you do,” she said flatly. “Who else does that but Wesley? Who else can shoot like that? Who else kills a bunch of people just to get one? Who else leaves the weapon right there when he’s finished? And maybe the boss wanted those other guys gone anyway. It’s just like Wesley to get paid for three jobs and hit the trifecta.”

“Wesley’s dead,” I said.

“Is he?”

“You going for that handjob too?” I asked her.

“They never found a body.”

“Hey! He was inside a school, all right? Surrounded by half the cops in the world. Locals, mounties, feds. A couple of
hundred
people died in the blast. Remember? Not just the dynamite he had in his own hand; the truck he had parked right outside—the one with the poison gas. It was like a bomb hit the place.”

“He could have gotten out. . . .”

“Where? They had helicopters in the air. They checked for tunnels under the place and they had them all blocked. They kept a cordon around the site for
weeks
picking through the corpses. So they didn’t find his. . . whatever would have been left of him anyway. . . . So what?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I know about the note. . . the one you turned over. But I also know you’re holding something back. You have to know something more about it than that note he left.”

“Even if I did,” I said, hedging, “what difference would it make? It might get me out of a beef sometime, if I could add something to what they already know. But alive? Forget it. There’s no way.”

“Listen to me,” Wolfe said, stepping so close her face went out of focus, voice dropping below a whisper. “The feds have a man inside. They turned him a long time ago. It’s a RICO thing. They’re looking for the whole Family. Probably got more than five years invested already. And this guy, he heard the boss set it up. On the phone. A pay phone—there was no tap in place. But. . . Burke, he was talking to Wesley. That’s who he made the deal with. Wesley’s not dead. Or he’s back, if you want to believe that. But one thing’s for sure—he’s
making
people dead. And that’s what Wesley does. That’s all he does.”

“There’s got to be some other—”

“That’s what they say too,” Wolfe told me. “After all, they ‘solved’ that mass murder up in Riverdale, right? Laid it on Wesley. That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it. But now. . .”

“And you think I—?”

“I don’t know what to think. I know you go back with him. I know he. . . did things with you, I’m not sure what. But I’ll tell you what they know down at One Police Plaza, Burke. When you turned in that suicide note of his, it may have gotten you off the hook for some stuff. They know where
you
got it. . . just not how. Or when. They don’t want you for any of these fag-basher killings. They don’t believe it was you, not for a minute.”

“They think it’s. . . Wesley? That’s nuts.”

“Because he’s dead?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll go you one better. Because how would he get paid? Where’s the money? Wesley never killed anyone for fun in his life.”