Mad Dogs (10 page)

Dawn lit the sky as she told Christophe: “We've got to follow our plan.”

“I've got to stay alive.” He dressed, drove away.

Morning heat baked the house.

Noon came.

Noon went.

The thick golden light of afternoon filled the second floor living room. Hailey wore sneakers and carried her passport and cash. She sat on the couch with her cell phone, her laptop, and a kitchen knife hidden in the waistband of her slacks.

Outside, a car door slammed. Hailey jumped to her feet. Shoes pounded up stairs.

Christophe stormed into the room, his shirt soaked with sweat. He staggered to a locked cabinet. His hands shook as he unlocked the door, reached inside—

Whirled around waving a bottle of Scotch and two tall glasses.

“I'm saved!” He thrust a glass into her hands and filled it with Scotch. Winked. “Death played a joke on your plan. So I made another deal. With the British. I now serve their Queen as a valued spy.”

“The British? You're… I'm…”

“You Americans always think you're the only game in town,” he said. “I almost went to the Americans, but Abacha's people practically own them ever since his associate give $400,000 to President Clinton's Miami group called Vote Now '96. So now, if anyone blames me for Abacha's death or tries to squeeze me out of power, the Brits will stop them. I got there in time, thanks to people in an oil company who called a man from the British embassy who is letting me make him a hero to his home office.”

“You—”

“I gave him the Russians—though the Brits won't get
all
the plutonium, something I arranged but didn't bother to tell them about. Midnight tonight, the Brits' SAS will kick in Prague doors. All thanks to me. I'll have proven myself invaluable to people who can tell even the Americans to fuck off.”

A ceiling fan whirled in Hailey's head.

“Don't worry,” said Christophe. “Since you and I are not going to Prague, your people will never be in the Brits' gunsights.”

Hailey whispered: “The heroin?”

“Gone. I brokered it to New York. Your people will still profit.” Christophe refilled their glasses as they stood face to face. “This should be British gin. Imagine, me partnering with the old rulers of my country! Ah well. You colonialists are like cancer, but nobody who's truly clever gets killed.”

He raised his glass: “To success. It all comes out in the end.”

Clinked
his glass against hers.

And she shattered.

Hailey threw Scotch in Christophe's face. He bellowed, pawed his eyes and blindly grabbed for her. She felt the kitchen knife fill her hand. Thrust into his groin. Blood spurted from Christophe's crotch. Sprayed all over her. He thrashed to the floor. She straddled him while the kitchen knife hacked and stabbed his face, into his body, his groin. She felt herself washed by a crimson fountain.

Janna found them two hours later as sunset filled that room.

Christophe lay on his living room floor, a red slab under the spinning ceiling fan.

Blood-smeared Hailey slumped against the far wall. Eyes wide open.

Ken responded to Janna's phone call. They stood in that room with the two human wrecks as darkness poured in through the open window.

Janna told Ken: “He's dead, so his family will come take everything for themselves. Just themselves.”

She smiled at the man who clearly knew her smile. “As soon as he's dead.”

“Close the window,” he told her—gently. “We don't want to attract flies.”

“What about her?” he asked when the room was sealed.

“Her partners know she's here. If we dump her at an American oil company, her friends will find her. She can't say anything without cutting her own throat. Besides, look at her. She's a broken doll. What could she say that anyone would believe?”

Hailey mumbled: “Gotta be worth it. Gotta be worth it.”

The Agency believed most of what Hailey said when they got her back home.

But she couldn't believe what they told her at Langley or in RAVENS Castle. What she heard through all the doctors' protests was the whirring of ceiling fans that spun her to logical clarity.
Gotta be worth it
, was what she knew. What she'd done/what had been done to her couldn't be worth it if everyone walked away clean and free. Even her. Especially her. Failure her. Whore her. Murderer her. What she'd done/what had been done to her must be worth the ultimate price, so she knew that unlike Fela Kuti, she'd justly earned the historic death sentence meted out to failed spies and had AIDS.

22

Our Recon Stage One unfolded in Manhattan as the maturing dawn gave us enough light to see and enough waking-up traffic to not be noticed.

Then we triggered Hailey's on-the-street plan.

The Starbucks Hailey chose for us was a deathtrap. Set in the middle of a block, the coffee shop had one front door, no back exit, and a street wall of glass.

Zane had our lone gun. He slipped $10 to a flower vendor across the street to let him hunker inside his booth. Teenagers swarmed outside the private Marat School near the Starbucks, so Zane told the flower vendor that he needed to keep an eye on his crazy daughter.

Eric roamed the corners at the other end of the block. We ordered Eric to defy strangers. Worried: if a piano fell from the sky, he'd refuse to obey a civilian's “Look out!” We put Eric on a four-count surveillance:
One
, check the Starbucks.
Two
, confirm our Toyota was still safely parked.
Three
, scan for hunters—Uncle Sam's Guns, NYPD, Keepers, or Random Trouble Boyz.
Four
, watch out for our team—especially Hailey.

Russell and I timed our arrival at the Starbucks door to look like coincidence. Stranger-to-stranger, I held the door open for him.

He nodded
thank you
, and as he passed me, whispered: “Can she pull this off?”

“Got a better idea?” I replied.

Inside the Starbucks, steam hissed, milk bubbled. The air smelled of coffee.

Russell got in line to order while I strolled to the backroom and made sure no ambushers hid behind cardboard boxes of coffee beans. Found no one hiding in either bathroom. Mirrors above the bathroom sinks caught my reflection: I looked like a ghost.

Russell was waiting at the beverage pick-up bar when I walked out front. I saw a green-aproned college grad barista hand him a steaming
café mocha
with one hand while with the other, she gave him a thumbs-up.

Russell! What have you done?
I wanted to scream as he claimed a window seat where he could watch the street, the door, and all of us inside the café.

Suddenly the café's speakers switched from playing a mellow CD for sale at the counter to the operatic sound of Springsteen's
‘Jungleland'
and I knew Russell had charmed the barista into playing one of his Castle-burned CDs. As Bruce sang about
the magic rat
, I got a
café au lait
, claimed a perfect table, sat with my back to the rear wall of bathrooms and
no exit
for retreat.

My watch read 7:37.

Outside in the street, Hailey made her move.

She studied the teenagers jostling on the steps of the Marat School from the corner near the flower stall. The traffic light turned green. She strode across the street.

Sixty-some kids crowded the Marat steps, hanging out before morning classes. The lean, white boy Hailey locked on had beaten pimples, wore his brown hair shaggy but natural, didn't push at her with his blue eyes but didn't look away. What cinched him for Hailey was the paperback he carried: Dashiell Hammett's
The Glass Key
.

Hailey stopped in front of the school. She shot her gaze at the Hammett lover… and angled her head for him to join her.

Took him ten seconds to meet her on the sidewalk. Before the catcalls of his gawking schoolmates broke her hold, she said: “Buy an alumnus a
cappuccino
.”

Then she walked towards the Starbucks where he'd feel safe, giving him the choice of being left standing on the concrete like a doofus or stepping into the wake of an exotic
older woman
. When he was by her side, she said: “You got a cell phone?”

“Yeah, but—”

“And so do your buddies whispering and watching us walk away. Call the one you trust.” Hailey's diamond eyes wouldn't accept no for an answer. “Now.”

He fumbled in his jacket for the phone as they marched past the wall of closed stores between the school steps and the Starbucks. Hailey hammered words at the boy.

“That plaque on the wall as you go up the main stairs? The Literature Award? Run your buddy inside to check out the winner for 1993.”

They reached the Starbucks while he was cell phoning her instructions. Hailey stopped at the entrance. Waited. The teenager grabbed the door.

Her thank you smile was dazzling as she walked through the portal he opened.

Two men in business suits ogled the classy Black woman gliding past them into the Starbucks. They were no threat so Russell didn't blast out of his chair. Their attention shifted to her escort—registered
white teenage geek
. The boy felt a primal surge as those adult males could only glare at him and walk away.

Then she was inside, he was beside her, his buddy chirping in the phone. Hailey watched his face register the report. Beat him to its delivery by saying: “Clare Marcus.”

The boy nodded as Hailey spoke the name of her best friend in high school.

“Tell him to hang tight, you'll call him soon.” She ordered two
cappuccinos
, turned back to him. “So what's your name?”

“Nate—Nathan.”

“Well, Nate Nathan, you've got lunch money. Pay the cashier.”

She left him fumbling in his pockets, already in the habit of
going-along
, of
obeying,
of
believing
. She sat at the table I just then
coincidentally
vacated.

“Bring the coffees, Nathan,” she said as I drifted off. As the boy sat, Hailey told him: “We don't have much time. Who's your buddy?”

“Ah, Brandon.”

“Of course his name is Brandon. Can we trust him?”

Nathan nodded.

“Here's the deal, Nathan, and if you're cool enough to not fuck up, the least that will happen is you'll get your lunch money back. Is your coffee good?”

“You haven't given me a chance to—”

“I'm your chance, Nathan. This is your chance. And you worry about coffee?”

“No, I—”

“Get your balance. Get your head in the game. Are you cool? Can you be cool?”

“Yes!”

Hailey said: “So aren't you going to ask me?”

“Wha-what—”

“Use my name. We're not strangers, we're friends having coffee.”

He blinked.

“
Clare
,” she said. “Ask:
‘What do you want, Clare?'”

She waited. Her eyes never left his as he whispered that question.

“Good job, Nathan. Maybe you are the right man. Let's see if you can get me what I need.”

“I'll do—”

“Don't promise. Sincerity without action is bullshit. Don't be a bullshit person.”

“No way!”

“We need to score, Nathan. You and me.”

He blinked.

“Drugs.”

“Why—You came back to our school looking for—”

“You, Nathan, I came looking for you.”

“But you don't know me! And… I mean sure, of course, yeah, I've been high and I know guys who got pot and some guys say they have Ex or acid, or even—”

She leaned away from him. Made him flow forward to follow her. “I thought you knew that stuff was shit. Thought you knew that messing with your mind before you've built one is as dumb as smoking corporate shit where the only high you get is cancer.”

“But drugs… If you don't want—”

“I need what's in your pocket.”

Nathan blinked.

“If it's not in your pocket, it's in Brandon's. Plus the two of you know a hundred kids in our school who are carrying. Hell, at our high school, it's not who's high, it's who isn't. Zoloft, Valium, Ritalin, Risperdal, Zanax—street cools call it
ben-zo
—Prozac, Lithium—you guys pack a whole rainbow of helpers to school every day.”

“But that's medicine!”

“High is high. The good news is you got no law to dodge. You and Brandon get $2 a pill, and we've only got 30 minutes to first bell.”

“Why—”

“Because I don't have time to do this any other way. Because you want to do it. Or do you want to stay a book-smart, street-sucker poseur forever? Are you cool? Somebody who hungers for real adventure, not just a geeky kid video game? Use your balls and live now. Don't just suck on the bullshit promise of some
maybe later
.”

He stared past her to a whole new constellation of mirrors.

She reached out and let their fingers touch. “So, who you going to be, Nathan? A boy who sits around drinking coffee, or the man who's cool?”

“How—”

“Everybody wants to be cool, Nathan. That's what it's all about. Not drugs. Not money. Make them want to be as cool as you are. Promise them two bucks a pill, you'll keep a buck. We've only got 25 minutes, so make that your advantage, not your problem. Go so fast they ride your wave. Now hit the road and bring it on home to me.”

He watched her for so many heartbeats she thought she'd failed.

Then he hit REDIAL and dashed towards the door.

Nathan didn't notice me following him. On the way out, I glanced to the window table where Russell sat as his CD now played Nirvana's live
‘Come As You Are'
. Russell nodded his head with the savage guitar beat, kept his spy eyes working.

Outside on the sidewalk, I walked to Marat behind a fat man who cooed to his leashed poodle. Nathan never looked back. He and a buddy scurried from teenager to teenager on the school steps. Kids dropped things into the clean paper cup Nathan had brought from Starbucks. My watch said 8:17. Hailey told us that first bell rang at 8:30. Kids drifted into the school. Nathan dashed past me.

I walked into the Starbucks just as Nathan plunked down at the table across from Hailey, handed her the rattling paper cup. Drifted past them as he said:

“Seventy-nine, got 79 pills. Anti-depressants, sedatives, speed, stuff I don't know! Miranda dumped in her whole prescription bottle, said she could use her mother's. Jenny never takes hers anyway. Alex had two different kinds plus some antibiotics that I made him keep, wanted to know if tomorrow…
I did it!”

“Did it great!” Hailey told him. She peeled bills off our wad. “But you've only got a few minutes to get to class. I owe you—”

“I don't want your money.”

“It's not mine or all yours. You've got to pay what you owe. A deal's a deal.”

She made him take enough cash. Stood. “Thanks. You really helped me.”

“No I didn't.”

That stopped her walk-away.

Come on!
I telepathed to her.
We gotta get out of this deathtrap!

“This isn't helping you,” said Nathan. “But I will. Help you. Anything. Anything but… bullshit like this.”

Hailey's gaze collapsed to the floor. Her lips moved in silent mumbles.

Rescue her!
I was five steps from them. Two steps…

The Black woman willed her eyes up from the floor to capture Nathan.

“Just tell me what you need,” he whispered, not noticing me abort my rescue charge to feign sudden interest in a sales display of mugs on the wall.

“What I need,” she said, “is for you to get back to school but never forget it's not about making it to the bell. It's how you do it.
Do good, be happy, stay true
.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

She smiled. “All the time.”

Then she led him outside and cut him loose.

As we walked to the Toyota, Hailey and Eric linking up ahead of us, Zane stalking our rear guard, Russell gave me a grin, said: “Everybody must get stoned.”