Dead and Gone (9 page)

“A
public place is the safest,” Wolfe said over the phone, unaware she was echoing me from … before it happened.

“Safer for who?” I asked her, trying to reach across the barrier I’d built between us.

“Me,” she said, flat.

“You think that …? You think
I’d
ever …?”

“What’re you saying to me?” she challenged. “That I
know
better, right? That I know
you?”

“I thought you did.”

“So did I,” she told me.

A
fter so many years of wanting to be with her, I’d finally … had a chance, is the best way I could put it.

When you come to a fork in the road, you’re supposed to stop and consider your choices. Me, I never even checked for oncoming traffic.

I’d had a chance. A real one, not some convict’s fantasy. Whenever there’s a choice, there’s a chance. You know how men are always fearing they’re getting past it, that they won’t be able to do the things they once did? Not me. I wish I
had
been past it. Wish I’d changed.

But I’d gone right back to my old ways with that Albanian arms deal. Then blood came up. Pansy’s blood. And it filled my eyes until I went blind.

I might have gotten Wolfe to listen about the guns. Maybe. Plenty of citizens here thought we should have been arming the Kosovars. But it was just a matter of time before her wires dipped deep enough into the whisper-stream to pick up on who did Dmitri right in his own joint.

When I’d killed Dmitri, I’d done the same thing to my chance with Wolfe.

I
t’s harder to spot tags in bad weather. You see a guy behind you wearing a ski mask in July, you don’t have to be a CIA agent to know something’s off. But with the sleet coming down New York–style—cold, dirty, and crooked—everybody was bundled up.

I docked the yellow cab, watchfully. The cab stand was empty—weather like this, every hackster in the city was out there scoring. I rent a cab whenever I need to move around invisibly. For years, I had a deal with a dispatcher for a fleet. He’d pull a cab out of service, let me use it for a shift. I’d pay him for the use of the cab, and give him whatever I put on the meter, too. It would go on the books like he was driving himself that day, and we were both happy.

But the fleets are just about gone now. What you have is individual owners or mini-fleets—two cabs and up. TLC medallions are limited, and they go for a fortune when they’re auctioned off. The only way to buy one is to finance it through a broker, and the new owners have to keep their cabs in motion around the clock to make the payments. So what they usually do is drive one shift themselves, then rent their cab out for the others. It’s called a horse-hire. The renter pays a flat fee, keeps whatever he pulls in.

It’s a gamble, especially since the renter pays for his own gas, too. Some of them cut the odds with removable meter chips—reprogrammed to click off extra mileage—but most of them work seven days, never stopping, urinating into plastic soda-bottles, eating while driving, saving every dime … so they can buy one of those precious medallions for themselves. Midtown Manhattan is cab-clogged all the time. But try to find one in Brooklyn, or get one to take you to Queens. Even if you’re white.

But I never have a problem getting one of the horse-hire guys to take two fifty cash for a shift. He wouldn’t book that much profit on his own, and he can have a day off with pay. I’ve got a valid hack license—the only thing fake about the plastic dash-placard is the name. And Clarence had picked up cabs for me before, so the guy I was renting from wouldn’t have to get all nervous at my new face.

It was four blocks to where I had to meet Wolfe. I had a half-hour to cover the ground. If anyone was following me, they were better than I was.

W
esley taught me there’s no such thing as a dead man. Only bodies go into the ground. If you leave footprints deep enough, you’re still around.

Long after Wesley died, a kidnapper-killer came on the scene. A creature so rational from emotion-stripping that he went lunar from it. He knew the secret. He had Wesley’s ice in him. So deep he thought he could take over.
Be
Wesley.

I was in the middle of that. And, at the end, the only one left standing.

That was when Wolfe told me I had the choice. I could … maybe … be with her. All I had to do was find out. Was it me I had to change, or just my ways?

It turned out to be me. And I couldn’t do it.

S
he was sitting in the back corner, at a table by herself. It was one of those places where you order your meal at a counter, then carry it over to any empty spot. I saw she had a mug of something in front of her, so I stopped and got myself a hot chocolate. Then I walked over to her. Slow. Making sure she picked up on my approach.

“It’s me,” I said. Same way I’d introduced myself during our last phone call, relying on her knowing my voice.

“I know,” she replied, motioning with her head for me to sit down.

She looked the same. Long lustrous hair flowing like a mane, red-tinged brunette except for two white wings flaring back from the temples. Pale gunfighter’s eyes. A soft sweet mouth, now drawn flat.

“I know I must look—”

“You look the same to me,” she said. I knew it was the truth. Real women, they don’t see with their eyes, the way men do. Good damn thing, or I’d still be a virgin.

“It didn’t happen the way you heard,” I told her, keeping my voice soft, watching her eyes.

She didn’t look away. “How do you know what I heard?”

“I don’t … exactly. But I know you think I …”

“And you didn’t?”

“That part is true. But it wasn’t like you think.”

“You keep telling me what I heard, what I think.… Why don’t you just say whatever you have to say?”

“I had a job. A kid had been snatched, and the people who had him wanted to return him. For cash. I was supposed to be the transfer-man.”

“What does that have to do with—?”

“Let me finish, all right? You wanted me to say it, I will. This isn’t bullshit; it’s background.”

She nodded slowly. Didn’t say anything more.

“The guy who set the whole thing up was … the guy who got himself killed.”

“And you didn’t—?”

I cut her off with a stare. She held it just long enough to show me she wasn’t intimidated, then nodded again. That’s when I saw Pepper out of the corner of my eye, reading
Variety
at a table off to the side. Pepper works with Wolfe. Her citizen job is being an actress, but she’s part of the network, has been for a long time. And if Pepper was around, her man, Mick, wouldn’t be far away. Wolfe met me without backup plenty of times. I could see those days were over.

“This … guy, he was the only one I dealt with. I went to the meet wrapped so heavy I could barely walk. It was out in Hunts Point. I had cover, but they had to hang back. The kid—well,
a
kid, anyway—he stepped out of the car and blasted me. No warning, no conversation. He came out shooting. It wasn’t a swap; it was a hit. And I was the target.”

“How could they know it would be you?” Wolfe asked, her years as a prosecutor overriding anything she was feeling. Or not feeling.

“Not what you’re thinking,” I said. “The … dead guy … he didn’t pick me. The people whose kid got kidnapped,
they
picked me. That was one of their conditions, I found out later: it had to be me to deliver the money.”

“You checked the—?”

“There
was
a kidnapping. It was in the papers. And the transfer-money was all there. Every dime.”

“How many were on the set?”

“At least four, counting the kid. If he was a kid. I
think
he was. But it was dark, and I wasn’t that close.”

“Just you. And four of them. And still you …?”

“When the kid popped me, I took the rounds in the Kevlar … and whatever that stuff was that the Mole wove over it. I dropped. Pansy charged out of the car. She went for the kid. The guy behind me, the one picking up the money, he shot at her, but he missed. Pansy got the kid. Brought him down. Two others came out of their truck. My people opened up. The leader—the guy with the money in his hand—he told them to clear out. But to finish me first. That’s when I got … this,” I said, touching the right side of my face.

“So they John Doe’ed you at the hospital?”

“Yeah. Only this happened in Hunts Point, right? But I was transferred. When I came to, I was in Manhattan.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did your people drop any of them?”

“Pansy got one,” I said, my voice strangling on pride and pain. “She got the kid. They … killed her. Right there. Right in front of me. They killed her and there was nothing I could …”

My face was leaking. Just on the right side. I wiped it away with my palm, hard.

“Another one of them got it, too. But they took their dead with them. And my people took Pansy. There’s nothing left there but blood in the ground.”

“So you went back to … the person … to find out … what?”

“A lot of stuff. But once I found out that the people whose kid was taken made it part of the deal that I be the transfer-man, all I wanted was how to find them.”

“And he wouldn’t—?”

“He killed my dog,” I cut her off. “He killed Pansy.”

Wolfe took a sip of her coffee, her pale eyes steady on me. “People say things like that all the time. ‘If anyone ever hurt my dog, I’d kill them.’ But they don’t mean it. It’s just their way of saying how much they love their pet.”

“Pansy wasn’t my—”

“I know,” she said, gently. “But what do you have now?”

“You mean, without that … person, right? Here’s what I have: The names and last known address of the people who hired him. And the knowledge that somebody wants me dead bad enough to pay a whole ton of money to get it done.”

“You’re well away,” she said. “It’s been months. Whoever wanted you, they don’t know how to find you. If they could, they would have made their move already.”

“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life as a target.”

“What’s the difference, if you’re a target they can’t hit?”

“Because there’s other things I’d rather be.”

“For instance?”

“At the other end of the sniper-scope,” I said.

She looked into me. I wanted to reach across the table and just … touch her hand, maybe. But I froze. It was her call.

“I need a few days,” she said. “And your passport.”

I handed it over. Wolfe got up and walked away. Pepper flashed me her trademark grin, telling me to stay where I was. I could feel someone standing just behind me. I sipped my cold hot chocolate, alone.

W
hen I was a kid, I thought there was a way not to hurt. I wanted to be like Wesley. Ice. So cold inside that I wouldn’t feel a thing. Wesley was the only one I ever knew who actually got past it all. He had no hate in him. Nothing made him angry. All he wanted was to get paid.

But he got tired. So tired that he checked out.

Wesley taught me the difference between sad and depressed. People never get that one. I was born sad. I probably knew my mother didn’t want me even before she climbed out of that bed in the charity ward and strolled back to wherever I’d been spermdonored. I’m what happens when the trick tricks the hooker.

My birth certificate may not have had a full name on it, but it did have a number—and I’ve had one or another of those ever since. I’ve been a file, a case, a subject, a foster kid, a mental case, a JD, a convict. None of the endless agencies ever knew me. They always got it wrong. But that didn’t matter to them—they always had my number.

When you’re depressed, it all slips away. You stop caring, about anything. A depressed person, he can’t feel anything for anyone else. Empathy dies first.

That’s the way they labeled Wesley. Killer sociopath. He wasn’t a man; he was a machine. You gave Wesley a name, you got a body. And Wesley got paid. A never-miss, platinum-proof perfect assassin. No friends, no family, no lover, no pets. No apartment, no house, no home.

And what it finally came down to was … no reason to be here anymore.

He went out with a bang. A
big
bang, taking a couple hundred along for the ride. Those kids at Columbine? They weren’t the first. Wesley was. He walked into an exclusive high school in the suburbs, carrying enough munitions to smoke every living human in the joint. And the truck he drove up in was full of some kind of poison gas, too. He went in there to die. And, like every other murder he planned, it worked.

Crazy. Maybe that’s what you’d think. Depressed, suicidal. It wasn’t any of that. He was tired, that’s all.

He left me something. A note. A suicide note, the way the cops saw it. For me, it was an escape hatch. In that note, Wesley took the weight for a lot of stuff I did. Signed it with his own fingerprint … the only part of him that the world ever recognized.

If he’d been depressed, instead of just DNA-deep sad, he wouldn’t have looked out for me that one last time. We were brothers. Came up together.

Wesley was ice, even then. I wanted to be just like him, once.

It was Wesley himself who told me the truth. He had no fear in him. And it wasn’t worth it.

So I knew. I wasn’t depressed; I was sad. I don’t know what other people who are sad do to fight back. I know
some
of what they do. Drugs, booze, sex—risks. I don’t know if it works for them, or for how long. But, for me, I could BASE-jump on cocaine and it wouldn’t change a fucking thing.

The only thing I ever can do is let both the monsters in. Fear and Rage. One keeps me alive and the other makes people dead. If you took them from me, I’d just be sad. Nothing else. Empty and sad. That’s when the Zero calls. That’s when I want to go and be with Wesley.

Maybe it would be like when we were kids. Leaning up against an alley wall, sharing a cigarette, eyes scanning, on full alert. Waiting.

Depending on who showed, we’d run, fight, or rob them.

But I don’t really believe that. I know where Wesley is. I know why they call it the Zero.

But it pulls me, still.