Signwave (28 page)

“True enough,” Martin said.
Two down
.

“But for the house, yeah, it makes sense. To protect your
selves
, not any…not any
thing
, like a TV or whatever. And if
you had a dog, you wouldn't need a gun to protect the house, anyway.”

Before Martin could start off complaining that Johnny didn't like dogs, Johnny sliced in with: “
You've
got a dog. And I'll bet you're carrying a gun right this minute.”

“The dog's not with me,” I said, staying very calm. I don't like being baited, but I know how to spin when someone tries it. “That mutt's
never
with me unless Dolly is, too. Rascal's a great dog. He'd protect Dolly with his life, wouldn't even think about it. Rascal's not the problem; Dolly is.”

“I don't under—”

“Come on!” I appealed to both of them. “You know Dolly. If someone broke into the house when I wasn't home, and Rascal went after them, Dolly'd jump right in to protect
him
.”

They both laughed—they'd known Dolly a long time.

“We don't know anything about guns,” Johnny finally said. “Could you show us…?”

“I can show you how to use a self-defense weapon; that won't take more than a couple of hours. But stuff like making sure you have a clear field of fire, that you'd have to practice. Over and over. A shotgun is the best for what you need, but whichever one of you is holding it has to know that the other one is
behind
him before he pulls the trigger.”

“A shotgun?” Martin said, clearly disappointed.

“Yes. You're both strong enough to handle a twelve-gauge. And with the right load, not only is it guaranteed to discourage anything that's on the wrong side of the weapon, it's the simplest and safest choice.”

“You'll pick it out and…?”

“I can't do that. You have to sign paper and go through some little background check—for a shotgun, they'll do it while you wait. You'd be the registered owner, so you'd have to make the buy.”

“But we wouldn't know which one
to
buy,” Martin said.

“You want a twelve-gauge, single-trigger side-by-side, one barrel full-choke, the other modified. There's a gun store not five miles from here. You've got the specs. Almost any brand will do. Ithaca, Remington…there's no real difference.”

—

“J
ust like you said,” Martin told me, a week later. He was holding a beautiful Parker 12-gauge out for inspection.

“That's not a new one.”

“Oh, we understand,” Johnny said. “It's really beautiful, isn't it?”

I had to admit it was, but: “You haven't fired it?”

“Noooo,” Johnny answered. “We thought we'd wait for you to show us, and everything.”

—

“W
hy are you doing all that?” Johnny asked, bending a little to the waspish side again.

Apparently, he wasn't crazy about my setting up the shotgun in a brace, then wiring the trigger with about a fifty-foot lead line, all before I broke the piece and loaded it.

“That isn't a new gun. Probably a hundred years old. And it's been updated quite a bit.”

“Of course. We know it's an antique—a work of art, too. But that's no reason why it wouldn't work.”

All I did was tell them to stand back. Then I pulled on the wire. Twice.

It didn't blow up, so I walked over, extracted the spent shells, and checked it over. Closely. Whoever had modified this thing meant to use it. I didn't want to ask how much they'd
paid for this “collectible,” or spoil their mood by explaining that every modification—and I could see a few of them—made it worth less to a collector, not more.

By the time the sun was setting, both of them were confident they could handle the kick—the extended buttplate of crosshatched rubber helped—and understood basic safety, like keeping the thing loaded but broke open, so all they'd have to do was snap it shut and be ready to go.

They'd be a little sore the next morning—went through a hundred rounds apiece—but nothing serious.

What
was
serious was the safety instructions I drilled into them until they were ready to chuck the whole thing. Well, almost ready.

And then I made them show me they could snap it closed, lift it to shoulder height, and fire twice before I was ready to leave the shotgun with them. The last ten times, I made them do it blindfolded.

“Really?” Johnny snapped at me.

“Someone breaks into your home in the middle of the night, you're gonna turn on the lights for them?”

“He's right,” Martin said.

“I know. But I just don't…”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Johnny sulked. But he let me put the black sleep mask over his eyes without any more bitching.

—

“S
tay home this morning,” Dolly said while we were eating breakfast.

Just me and Dolly.

And Rascal, who always scored his percentage.

I didn't ask any questions.

It was another hour or so later when we saw two cars pull up behind the house. Martin's hopped-up Mini Cooper, and some other one I didn't recognize.

“Could you come outside for a minute?” Martin asked me.

I got up, Dolly and Rascal right behind me.

The second car was a Peugeot 403. Had to be at least sixty years old. I knew that car; its engine was probably twice the size of my motorcycle's, but had to pull four times the weight. I'd driven a couple of them, years ago. A study in contradictions: it was small, but a real four-door sedan, and the back seat wasn't any less comfortable than the front. It had a four-speed manual, but the shift lever was on the column. And it had a sunroof that you cranked open by hand.

“You know what this is?” Martin asked me.

I told him I did. He didn't seem surprised—after all, I'd recognized the Facel Vega he was still “rebuilding” when I'd first seen the stripped body up on blocks years ago, and this
was
a French car….

“Ever drive one?” he asked.

“A few times.”

“Want to try it out?”

“Sure,” I told him. Not to be polite—I really did want to see if it was anything like I'd remembered.

“The keys are in it,” he said, opening the passenger door and climbing in. Dolly and Johnny went back to the house.

It fired right up. I slipped the lever into first, let out the soft, smooth clutch, and we were off.

Johnny didn't say a word as I reacquainted myself with that sharply accurate steering, tapped the brakes a few times to see how they held, even cranked open the sunroof. He didn't start to act nervous until we were going fifty or so, but when he saw me move the shift lever back up to neutral, then push forward and up to get into fourth, he let out a breath.

“It's perfect,” I told him, as we were returning to the house.

“Well, it's kind of drab,” he said, apologetically. “That's the original color, but you'd think a French vehicle would have more choices than gray or black. And it's got rust spots in a number of little places. But, mechanically, it's good as new.”

“Sure feels like it.”

“This one's a survivor,” Martin told me. Meaning, not a restoration, just a well-maintained car that probably had outlived its owner. “We bought it from a lady whose husband kept it going all these years. For next to nothing. She seemed more concerned that it go to a good home than about getting a price—not that it would be worth much, anyway. This isn't exactly a collectible.”

“I never got that collecting thing,” I told him. “But keeping a good piece of machinery running, that makes sense.”

By then we were back inside.

Johnny looked up from a cup of whatever Dolly had brewed for him. “You like it?” he asked me.

“It's a swell car.”

“It's yours,” Johnny said.

“What?”

“A little thank-you gift,” he said, winking at me.

Smart move. “Thank-you gift for
what
?” was out of Dolly's mouth before his eyelid went back up. So she hadn't known what her two friends had been arguing over before she decided I'd be a good arbitrator.

“Dell helped us pick up some tools we needed.” Johnny tried his best, but it wasn't going to fly. I could have told him that.

By the time the whole story was told, and retold, working backward, Dolly wasn't exactly overjoyed, but she was sort of okay with it.

Sort of. “I wouldn't expect
him
to say anything,” she said,
jerking her thumb in my direction, as if anyone didn't know who she meant. “But, Johnny, Martin…
you
didn't think I'd be interested?”

“They probably thought you'd be
too
interested,” I said.

“We're all grown men,” Johnny said. “We can make our own decisions.” Another mistake. Well, he brought that one on himself.

Martin stepped in to protect his partner. “Do you really like the car, Dell?”

“It's a thing of beauty.”

“Then it's settled,” he said, getting up to make a run for it. “The papers are all in the glove box.”

Naturally, they made out the bill of sale to Dolly. For five hundred dollars.

—

“I
t's like having a better version of my motorcycle,” I told my wife, half forcefully holding her on my lap.

“But…”

“Really, Dolly. It's no light catcher. No eye catcher, either—nothing to make it stand out. Anyone who sees it, they'd think it was one of those little sedans every company makes now—they pretty much all look alike.

“Plus, it's quiet, and I could probably go an easy couple of hundred miles without needing more gas. Your Subaru, everyone around here knows it. And I don't much like driving it, either. Ever since you had that special seat put in—”

“What?”

“Honey, I practically had to force it on you, didn't I?”

“You did. I would have been perfectly happy with—”

“The doctor said you were getting mid-back pain from that old fall you took, little girl. This one, it's set up for you…
just you. I have to make fifty different adjustments whenever I use it.”

That wasn't much of an overstatement. The Corbeau was a beautiful piece of work, with exactly the right kind of support—it had both back and side bolstering, and the headrest was positioned perfectly. It held Dolly in the right position even when she got a little enthusiastic behind the wheel, and it was as comfortable as an easy chair.

“That was awfully sweet of them, wasn't it?”

“I guess it was. But I don't think they expect us to start exchanging gifts.”

“I'll make them something,” my wife said, cutting her eyes at me in case I wanted to be stupid enough to argue with her.

I didn't.

—

“S
he's not…whatever she was.” The severe woman's voice, burner cell to burner cell.

“We're together now. You understand?” she went on, in case I missed what she was really telling me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Be
very
sure,” she said. “Those shares, they've all been sold. Back to the fund, which still hasn't shown a profit.”

“I
am
very sure,” I told her.

—

I
felt nothing.

Not in my mind, not in my body. My heartbeat was measured and slow, my eyes were clear, and my hands without tremor.

Back to what I was trained to be. The zen of violence is to be
calm, but never relaxed—to reach that state of being where you sense everything and feel nothing.

When this man of unknown motivations had warned my Dolly against “going around half cocked,” he was already dying. He didn't know that. How could he? A man doesn't know he has prostate cancer until some test warns his doctor, and the biopsy comes back bad.

Not all biopsies come back bad. But all autopsies do.

I couldn't allow anyone to even so much as speculate that Dolly was connected to Benton's death. It had been months before he left town on one of those “business trips” he'd dutifully report to the IRS.

“No assassin allows the client to set a time limit.” Olaf's voice. “Listen!” he whispered. “Logic must rule. If a client knows when and where the target will be killed, that client can have another man waiting…to clean up any loose ends.

“But even if the client is not planning to destroy
any
evidence that might surface later, even if the client is simply hiring a contractor, ‘assassin' and ‘impatient' are an inherent contradiction.”

—

I
wasn't going to risk my Peugeot being spotted.

Even if nobody paid it much attention, Los Angeles is a car culture, and every fool walks around with a cell-phone camera. The license plate alone could give away too much.

So I drove down to Sacramento and borrowed a generic Toyota from whoever left it on the street, then I switched its plates with another Toyota's a few miles south.

Why anyone would order a prostitute from a Web site was almost beyond my imagination. But I had learned there were people who trusted “The Internet” with unrestricted idolatry.

And centuries before there was an Internet, there were always those so certain they could turn any situation to their advantage that they never concerned themselves with risk.

For them, everything was a
sure
thing.

The other side of that coin had always been there, too: those who were only truly themselves when they took risks.

All idols—even reflections in a mirror—share one characteristic: they demand sacrifice.

No elaborate ruse was required. My cyber-ghost accessed the target's computer with the ease of an apex predator—at one with the environment that held both him and his food supply in eternal suspension.