Resurrection Express (7 page)

At the head of the table, the concerned citizen.

Just some rich lady who spent a million bucks to get me out of jail.

•  •  •

S
he doesn’t look happy, doesn’t look upset, doesn’t look like anything. She’s dressed in black, with a dark jacket and matching blouse. I notice for the first time that she’s very thin, her face suspended in mystery by those deep green eyes. She’s got a laptop open next to a stack of papers and photos, a pen in her hand. The army guys stand and salute our guide when we walk in.

“As you were,” he tells them, and they sit down again. Getting a better look at them, they seem like mercenaries. I’ve seen their type before, seen a few get killed.

One of them is a young woman, probably twenty.

She’s pretty but not gorgeous, has freckles and long red hair in a ponytail. Not muscular, like the others. Her uniform is dark olive, no camouflage patterns, eyes full of smarts, decorations on her shoulder. Gotta be an air force hacker.

She sizes me up, and I see her eyes shift from mode to mode.

Our guide plants his feet on the ground right next to me, and I notice for the first time that he has a mean serrated army knife clipped to his waist—it’s long enough to be a sword, the kind you see in movies starring Sylvester Stallone. Wasn’t sure those things really existed.

The lady in the dark suit motions to the empty chairs across from her. “Have a seat, gentlemen. We have a lot to discuss in a very short time.”

“No shit,” our guide tells her, sounding pissed. He doesn’t sit when we do. Stands almost at attention near the table, his hands clasped professionally behind his back.

The lady clicks her pen shut. “Mister Coffin, I’d like to introduce Sergeant Maxwell Rainone, U.S. Army, retired.”

I raise my hand, like I’m in school asking for my turn to talk. “Excuse me, which one of us were you talking to?”

“What?”

“You said ‘Mister Coffin.’ That’s both of us.”

I point at Dad and then at myself.

The Sarge lets out a huff. “Can you believe this little fuck? Doesn’t even have any
idea
what kind of fuckin’ deep shit he’s in.”

“Please don’t be crude,” says the lady. “We’re here to sort things out, not make more problems.” She looks right at me. “It was a valid enough question, Mister Coffin, and so I suggest in the interest of cutting through the confusion that we refer to the two of you by your
first names
from now on, yes?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m not trying to make trouble. It was a little joke.”

“The men in this room are trained specialists and weapons experts,” she says. “I would expect a man like you to know the difference between trigger-happy morons and real professionals. So let’s act professional. Elroy.”

So much for stalling these guys with my quick wit.

She takes a breath, and:

“Your actions have caused a major breach in the security of our operation. This meeting was scheduled to take place tomorrow.”

“I don’t know what happened. They came out of nowhere while I was walking out of the store.”

“Who?”

“David Hartman’s people.”

“That’s not good. Does he know about your involvement with myself or this operation?”

“Man, I don’t even know your
name
. And
what
operation? You guys just cut me loose without a word and told me to go work in a toy store. Next thing I know, people are shooting the place up.”

“I told you what you were being hired for,” she says sharply. “My daughter has been kidnapped. This is
serious business,
Mister Coffin.”

“None of that business has anything to do with stocking action figures.”

The Sarge growls at me. “Don’t try to put this off on us. We involved you double-blind because we knew how hot you were gonna be. But there’s no way Hartman’s people could have moved on you so fast without inside information. No fuckin’ way.”

“Then you guys don’t know David Hartman very well.”

The lady shifts her weight, doing that thing where you settle back in your chair with a long dramatic pause to own the room during a meeting. I already called her on the trick of using your name a lot on a business deal—executives in big companies are trained to do that. Makes you feel important while they’re calling the shots. Yes, Mister Coffin, we understand your problems. No, Mister Coffin, you don’t get to choose the color of the big rubber dick we’ll be bending you over with.

I see it in her eyes when she speaks again:

“Actually, we know Hartman quite well. We have our
own
inside information, and we’re using it to correct the problem. It may be expensive, but we can deal with it. What we really need to know is what
Hartman
knows. If he’s figured out why you were released from prison.”

“It didn’t seem that way.”

“Are you saying you
talked to him
?”

“He had my cell phone tagged.”

“You’re not supposed to own a cell phone.”

“Call me cautious.”

“I’d call you a fuckin’
dumbass
.” The Sarge’s voice is like crazy dragon breath on the back of my neck. I don’t pay attention to it.

The air force redhead keeps her eyes focused on mine.

Still sizing me up.

“I apologize for the cloak-and-dagger routine,” says the lady in black, ignoring the girl. “You were released into the care of the state because that was part of the deal I made. There had to be a real body answering questions in front of the parole people for a week before we pulled you out of the halfway house. I got it down to three days after serious negotiations. Everything was arranged. You should have trusted us to take care of you. When did you contact Hartman?”

“I didn’t. He contacted me. I made a call from the toy store yesterday. Had to get some personal business worked out, get my gear. That’s probably how they knew where I was working. The guy who squealed was an old hacker buddy.”

The lady rubs her eyes. “They could know anything by now.”

“I didn’t talk about
anything
. I don’t
know
anything.”

“It could have been enough for Hartman to start digging. We should abort the operation.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” the Sarge says. “We
accelerate
the operation. Hit him two weeks sooner. Within three days, max. He won’t have enough time to figure out exactly what we’re after, and by then it’ll be too late. My boys are ready to go.” He throws a mean glance at my father. “Ringo, you think you can get this dumbass little man of yours up to speed in a few days?”

“Right after you stop calling my son a dumbass.”

“I’ll think it over.” The crazy guy actually backs off a little. He must know my dad’s reputation. Wonder if he knows about mine?

The air force redhead’s expression never changes through all this.

“I’m not convinced acceleration is the right answer,” says the lady in black. “I need to contact my people in the police department again, see how this whole business at the toy store shakes out. Need to put some feelers on the street. This compound is secure. What I need to know now, Elroy, is exactly what you said to this hacker friend of yours,
when
it was said, and what Hartman said to
you
.”

Gotta tell her everything.

Don’t have anything to lose now.

My life is in the hands of these people, one way or another.

•  •  •

W
hen I finish my story, the Sarge looks impressed, but he doesn’t say anything. Must’ve been the part about dancing over a moving car doing fifty down a narrow alley.

The redhead in olive drab takes a deep breath, folds her arms. Keeps quiet.

“Hartman told you that
people would die,
” says the lady in black. “That means we may have even less time than I thought. If he killed all those people just to send a message . . . then we’re dealing with a psychopath.”

Wow. So you figured that out all by yourself, huh?

“He was always a psychopath,” I say. “I told you that before. He’s an ape who thinks he’s a gangster.”

“That much is obvious now.”

“It should have been obvious to you from the very start.”

“So this is
our fault
somehow?”

“I didn’t say that. But Hartman is a redneck. Not some master scoundrel with a grand design. He’s got one philosophy that sits on top of everything and that’s do unto others and make it permanent.”

The lady sighs, leaning back. “Hartman is also a
businessman
. He stands to lose too much if he starts shooting random people on a crowded corner in broad daylight. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“He’s insulated himself,” I tell her. “That kind of power makes a crude man less than humble.”

“We both know that’s true.”

“If you wanna know about gangsters, I can tell you plenty. Me and my dad, we’ve worked for all shapes and sizes, and most of them have the same problem. They all eventually go crazy listening to their own voices.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “And what does that mean exactly?”

“It means I’ve never been in the living room of a gangbanger that didn’t have the poster for
Scarface
hanging on the wall.”

“I see.”

“You know what poster David Hartman had tacked up in his office?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Anna Nicole Smith.”

She almost laughs. Catches herself, putting a hand casually over her mouth.

“This is turning into a clusterfuck,” the Sarge says suddenly, starting to pace around. “I still say acceleration is the only way to go. The guy’s a mad dog. We’ve gotta hit him before he snaps his leash. Even if he doesn’t get to us first, he could make a lot of noise, draw a lot of attention if he fucks up too bad. Another massacre like the one today might totally compromise our objective.”

“Duly noted,” says the concerned citizen. “I have a question for you, Elroy.”

“Yes?”

“Why did you
really
make that call to your fixer? We were taking care of everything.”

“I have no idea who you are or what you really want.”

“Your father has vouched for us—you’re saying you don’t trust him?”

“Let’s just say it’s hard to trust the ground under your feet
sometimes, especially when you’re sitting in a room full of retired army guys with guns.”

“So you don’t trust
me
.”

“I don’t think I have any choice right now
but
to trust you.”

Dad leans close to me, almost whispering. “Son, you have to believe me. These guys are on the level. They can help us get our lives back.”

“It’ll be more complicated now that this has happened,” says the lady in black. “I’ll have to do a deal with someone to pull you both off the grid in a more permanent way. Once you’re officially dead on the books, we can set you up somewhere. Of course, that’s after you fulfill our original agreement.”

I look her right in the eye. “Of course.”

She looks me right back. “I’m dead serious.”

And, finally, I see it.

The thing she never gave me time to notice before, back in the joint.

The killer behind her eyes.

She speaks at a low, hypnotizing lull:

“Elroy, I understand your need for revenge. Your need to take matters into your own hands. You had a window of opportunity and you took it. Under the circumstances, I might have done the same thing. But you must understand that’s the kind of rash thinking that put you in prison to begin with. You might never have seen your wife again.”

“I was never completely convinced she was still alive. I’m still not.”

“I showed you the picture. I thought it was clear to you.”

“Pictures can be faked.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And if she was alive, I was going to find her myself. My way. I wasn’t going to wait around to find out why I was working in a goddamn toy store.”

“That’s dangerous thinking,” says the Sarge. “Kinda makes me feel like you’re not much of a team player there, son.”

“Think what you want. I did some sniffing around. Nobody I was able to talk to online has seen or heard from Toni Coffin inside of three years. Not since she went with Hartman, and that was
before
I went inside.”

“And I say she’s still alive,” says the lady in black. “That’s why you’re here. To help me find her, and my daughter. This is our primary objective, Elroy. But as you can no doubt surmise, full disclosure of everything
we
know about Hartman’s operation is something I have had to seriously reevaluate in the past several hours.”

She’s still doing it. Using my name to make it seem like the universe revolves around me. But can I really trust them?

More importantly . . . can they trust me?

“Okay,” I finally say. “So I messed up.”

She looks me right in the eye again. “We’ll put it down to a few simple questions.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“Elroy, if you’d had the opportunity, if Hartman had threatened you personally and not been just a voice on the phone . . . would you have killed him?”

“Yes.”

“You realize that killing Hartman would have jeopardized our operation, maybe destroyed it?”

“Yes.”

“You realize that you would have been a liability at that point and no longer of any use to me?”

“Yes.”

“And I might have killed you, just to watch you die?”

My father looks at the lady real seriously when she says that.

I give her a little grin and say: “Hey, you can’t win ’em all.”

The lady doesn’t grin back.

I stop smiling. Then say, very evenly, with as much respect as I can come up with: “Yes. I understand.”

Sometimes you just have to play it cool.

Even when they’re calling you by name.

Another long silence in the room. The air force redhead across from me downshifts her gaze again, not saying a word, but I can see something that might be vague contempt and puzzlement flash in her eyes. She turns her look inward. Keeping it to herself. For now.

The boss lady stands from her chair. Offers me her hand.