We All Fall Down (15 page)

CHAPTER 37

A splatter of red trailed across the empty seat. My eyes followed it right off the edge. Molly lay on her side, one hand clutching her shoulder. She tried to raise herself up.

“Stay there.” I slid to the floor, keeping my head below the blown-out window. The train was still stopped, and I could hear voices from somewhere up ahead. “Where are you hit?”

Molly swore softly under her breath. “My arm, I think. Hurts.”

“I’m gonna take off your mask.”

Molly nodded. I undid the seals and slid it off. “Your suit was breached anyway.”

“Damn.” Molly rolled over and lay flat on her back. “There’s a first aid kit in my pack.”

I found the kit and opened it up. “Let me take a look.”

Molly eased her hand off the gunshot wound. I unzipped the suit and peeled it back.

“Why are you wearing a vest?” I said.

“Protocol. I was going to offer you one but didn’t think you’d wear it.”

“You figured right.”

I loosened the protective vest and slipped it off. The bullet had grazed the back of her arm, halfway between the elbow and shoulder.

“Lucky girl.”

“You could have fooled me.”

”Didn’t hit any bone. Looks like it might have passed straight through.” I cleaned the wound as best I could, opened up a couple of gauze pads, and pressed them gently against the rip in her skin. My eyes traveled across the car, to a hole drilled into a seam of metal.

“Get that for me, will you?” Molly pointed to a radio, lying a few feet away. She hit a button and talked briefly with someone. I listened to the voices in the car ahead of us. They were getting closer, but still hadn’t breached the connecting door.

“Will they come through?” I said.

“No. I told them we’re not wearing our suits, so they’re gonna send a team to get us out of here.”

“Are they sending someone out to look for the shooter?”

“They didn’t say.”

“Hang on to this for a minute.” I put her hand over the bandage and made sure she was keeping pressure on the wound. Then I crept across the aisle to the bullet hole. A minute later, I had dug out the slug. Molly had the bandage to her shoulder and was using her pack as a pillow.

“You all right?” I said. She nodded.

“How long did they say they’d be?”

“Minutes.”

I put the slug into a Baggie and shoved it into a pack I’d brought with me.

“Go ahead,” Molly said.

“What?”

“You want to take a look, right?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“If you wait, they’ll never let you go.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. They’ll be here in a minute.”

I checked her bandage and taped it tight to her shoulder. Molly gripped my upper arm as I finished and pulled herself up to one elbow. I was surprised by her strength.

“Why did he shoot me?” she said.

“You talk like you know who did it.”

“I think you know.”

“I don’t.”

“But it’s related to the release.”

“Could be just a random gangbanger.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Not really, no.”

Molly eased back to the floor and pointed to the radio beside her. “Take that with you.”

“You keep it.”

“Your cell phone won’t work down here.”

“I’ll be all right.”

Molly didn’t fight me. She looked a little pale and I thought there might be a touch of shock setting in.

“Maybe I should hang around until they get here,” I said.

“Go. I’ll tell Ellen what happened.”

I could hear sirens now and crept to a door on the opposite side of the train. Molly waved me on. I sealed up my mask, pried the door open, and stepped out onto the track bed.

CHAPTER 38

Marcus had killed two in as many minutes. The first was lying in a hallway filled with haze, crawling toward a door filled with light. Marcus came through the door and put a shell in his chest. The second was wearing a New York Yankees hat, lying against a wall in a bedroom. He had a gun in his hand but couldn’t gather the strength to lift it. Marcus kicked the gun away. The banger’s eyes fluttered open. Marcus closed them for good.

Ray Ray had told them to hit the Six Aces where they lived. Burn ’em out. Bust ’em out. Then he told them how. Young ones came through with red paint first, marking an X on doors where leaders from the Aces slept. They were followed by teams of two, carrying cans of gasoline and nail guns. One would soak the stairwells and rugs. The other nailed the doors and windows shut. The first would toss a match. Then they’d sit on the curb and watch the building burn until it put itself out. They’d listen for screams, try to guess who was who. Marcus’s job was to shoot anyone who made it to the street. When the rubble had cooled, he’d do a final walk-through. Finish off the ones inside.

Marcus slipped the mask they’d given him up on his head and wiped his face. His hand ached. He kept it cradled close to his chest and scooted through a lot full of wind and weeds. Ray Ray should have killed him when he had the chance. Instead, he broke Marcus’s fingers and gave him a shotgun. The boy racked another shell, one handed, into the chamber and wondered about that.

Up ahead, a crease of daylight opened up a street of cracked cobblestones. Silhouetted at the other end was an old church with washed walls. Standing on the church’s steps, a tall figure with a gun. Marcus ducked into a shadow. He knew who it was, just by the way he shifted in his boots.

Marcus crept between two buildings, gun up, damp finger on the trigger. Ray Ray turned a fraction, face lit by a fresh stream of light from the east. The boy’s heart slowed; blood ran cool to cold. Marcus was a natural hunter, patient for his age, but young. Callow. It never occurred to him that he might be hunted himself. Until it was too late.

CHAPTER 39

I hiked across the Eisenhower and up an exit ramp. A single building squatted over the highway. It was an old Schlitz beer plant, four stories high, with an S stamped in white stone on the redbrick façade. They weren’t making Schlitz anymore, and the plant looked empty. Perfect for my shooter.

On one side of the building I found a service entrance swung open on its hinges. I checked the first three floors. Empty. A set of steel stairs took me to the top. A single window was open, a thick black pad on the cement floor beneath it. I looked out at the Ike and the L train. An emergency vehicle, lights flashing, was just pulling up. I watched as men in NBC suits climbed out. It was a tough shot but doable. I stepped back from the window and examined the shooting pad. Then I walked the bare, empty space. He’d been here. And didn’t leave anything behind. At least nothing I could see.

I checked my watch. Eleven minutes since the shot was fired. I took some pictures from the window and some inside the plant. Then I went back down the stairs. My best chance would be to walk the neighborhood. Maybe my shooter was hanging around. Waiting to see if he needed to finish the job.

In an alley behind the plant, I stripped off the NBC gear and stuffed it into my pack. I was still in an infected zone but didn’t give a damn. Besides, it was hard to get at my gun, and that could be a health hazard with more immediate consequences.

I started down an adjacent street that ran parallel to the highway. The houses here were built cheek to jowl. Four thin walls covered over by a tar-paper roof. Cracked stoops and crabgrass. Everything drenched in the grimy haze of Eisenhower exhale.

I counted four homes burning. Three others in various states of smolder. The street was filled with broken glass and garbage. Sheets of paper blew in sudden drafts of wind and random pieces of furniture lay in pieces everywhere.

I turned a corner and stopped. A woman sat in a recliner in the middle of an intersection. I pulled close and took a look. The woman looked back, a puckered hole in the middle of her forehead. A handful of small dark birds appeared overhead, wheeling suddenly and flicking away. The trees were naked and black in the wind.

At the very end of the block, two kids slipped past. One carried a paint can and a brush. He splashed his friend with a smear of red and ran. The second followed the first, their laughter tumbling through canyons of quiet. Somewhere behind me, a support beam popped from the heat and buckled.

I ducked off the street and leaned up against a two-story bungalow that was still intact. A blind flickered and a set of eyes appeared. I waved, asking whoever was inside to open the window. The eyes disappeared and were replaced by the barrel of a large-caliber handgun.

I took that as a hint and walked back down the street. One of the burned-out shacks had a large red X painted on what was left of the door. I kicked my way through some loose timber and stepped inside. The smell of gasoline was heavy in the cramped hallway, and there were two bodies lying underneath a set of windows. One looked like he might have died of smoke inhalation. The other had taken the better part of a shotgun in the face. I tried the windows. They were nailed shut.

I took pictures of the door, windows, and bodies. Then I walked to the back of the building, into what had once been a kitchen. The windows here were also nailed shut. As was the back door. I had just forced it open when I heard the scrape of a boot outside.

The first thing I saw was the church, the cross on its pitched roof set ablaze by the morning sun. On the church’s front steps stood Ray Sampson, maybe thirty feet away. He had what looked like an NBC mask sticking out of his jacket pocket. On his knees, in front of Ray Ray, was Marcus Robinson. Behind him, bald head gleaming, Jace. Marcus had his hands clasped over his head. Jace had a pistol idling near the back of the kid’s skull. I looked around for any sort of sniper rifle between the three of them, but only saw a cut-down pump lying on the ground. The gang leader squatted on his heels and touched Marcus’s shoulder. I couldn’t hear what was said. The kid’s face never registered a tick of emotion. Ray Ray stood and stepped back. Jace braced his feet and gripped his gun with both hands. Marcus Robinson didn’t know it yet, but he had maybe five seconds to live.

CHAPTER 40

“Why you do it, Little Man?”

“Do what?”

Ray Ray’s eyes wandered to the shotgun that lay between them. “You gonna hit me with that?”

“That’s your gun, Ray Ray. You gave ’em to us.”

“And you were doing my business?”

Marcus should have said,
Yes, of course I was
. Maybe even begged for his life. Instead, he kept his eyes on the tops of his boss’s boots.

“I couldn’t trust you after the Korean,” Ray Ray said. “You know that?”

Marcus let his mind chill. Ray Ray’s mouth moved, and more words came out.

“That’s why I had Jace follow you.” Ray Ray touched Marcus at the shoulder and pointed. The boy didn’t bother to turn.

“My Little Man.” There was a ghetto smile in Ray’s voice now. Like the thing was done, and there was never any avoiding it anyway. “Could have made some cake with you.”

The boots creaked as Ray Ray stepped back. Marcus could feel each moment, one linking up with the next. Teeth catching, locking, and levering forward.

There was Jace, standing just behind. Tall, dark. Never a whisper in his walk. Forearms extending. One hand on the gun grip. The second coming across and covering it.

The gun itself. A single smooth pan up. Steady pressure on the trigger. Black hammer pulling back.

The boy, head bent, waiting.

He focused on a crooked line of dirt running through the cracked cobbles. Saw every particle. Each its own mountain, with contoured peaks and crumbling valleys. Worlds within worlds.

His head would be there. In a matter of moments. Seconds. Lifetimes. A great meteor from the heavens. Destroying the line of dirt. Destroying the world of dirt. Changing everything.

He saw his temple, fragile bone splintered. A mass of tissue and blood, mixing with the earth until it all ran dark.

He saw it all in the slipstream of his consciousness. His body somewhere else. Him looking down. Still alone in the street.

His breath grew calm. He counted off the last three exhales. Then the shot came. The boy felt it blow a hole in his ear and waited for the bang of stone against the side of his head. Instead, he heard a groan and thump in the dust. Marcus turned to see Jace, facedown in the spot the boy had reserved for himself. Fair enough. The boy turned back, just in time to see Ray Ray, hands up, gun dangling from his fingers. Beyond him was the white dude. Fucking white dude Cecil was supposed to kill. He was a step or two into the street, fat-barreled piece in his hand, features watery in the smoke and the heat. He fired twice more without saying a word. The first shot finished off Jace, who was still alive and reaching for his gat. The second caught a banger named Breeze, who had been invisible in a doorway to Marcus’s left. The white dude walked toward them, eyes fixed on Ray Ray, who laid his piece on the ground.

The white dude was saying something, but Marcus wasn’t hearing. He had the pump back in his hands. Ray Ray turned just as Marcus raised up. The white dude was moving faster, but not fast enough. Now it was Ray Ray counting exhales. But he wouldn’t get to three. Marcus unloaded into his boss’s chest. Left the face alone. It was just business.

CHAPTER 41

I held the gun steady on the boy. When he looked at me, I felt my life turn to ash. Marcus had another shell chambered, and I wasn’t going to shoot him. And he knew it.

“Drop it,” he said.

“Maybe you’re gonna have to shoot me.”

Marcus shrugged. Instead of firing he picked up the gun they were going to kill him with and put it in his belt. Then he turned the shotgun around and offered it to me.

“Take it,” Marcus said.

“Why?”

“ ’Cuz if you don’t, I’m gonna pop you in the knee and call the brothers over here to show ’em how you killed Ray Ray.”

“And if I do?”

“You take the gun and split.”

“It looks like I killed the three of them. And you’re the hero who fought me off.”

“You getting it. And this time it’ll work. Now take the pump.”

“Why don’t I just shoot you?”

“Ain’t got the grit, old man.” Marcus paused. Then pulled a purple notebook from his back pocket. “Take this, too. Now get your ass moving. They gonna be here soon.”

He was right. I was out of conversation and time. I took a last look at Ray Sampson, sprawled and crooked in the church’s sainted shadow, life leaked out of his eyes. Marcus had picked up the gang leader’s NBC mask. He’d also taken one off Jace. Now he stood over them both, counting bullets. The King was dead. Long live the King.

I left the street of cobbles and didn’t look back.