Blackjack: A Cross Novel Part 3

Another developer had razed the other buildings, cleared the land for new construction ... and promptly gone bankrupt. Now the sole remaining building was worthless, surrounded by a huge lot choked with refuse and debris, with only the occasional weed poking its way toward the sun. It had been enclosed with a chain-link fence during its construction, but now that fence guarded nothing but garbage, and kept nothing from leaving-the dangerous dogs who ranged free inside its walls were clearly there by their own choice.

The poolroom in the bas.e.m.e.nt was the building's only declared source of income, and that barely netted enough to pay the taxes ... which it did, religiously.

"We have to own our base," Cross had told the crew years ago. "Own it legit. That's the only way we can protect every square inch." The entire crew had chipped in to make the buy, but, on paper, Buddha owned the whole thing via a closely-held corporation.

Buddha was the only one with an above-ground ident.i.ty, complete with an address in the suburbs and employment as a limo driver. He filed a tax return every year. Even collected a 20-percent disability pension from the VA, although it was paid to an individual who used another name. As per the corporate governance doc.u.ments, half the building would go to his wife when he died. The other half would go to the children of a man known only as "Ace"-those two were the only crew members with "heirs" of any kind.

The poolroom was actually a subbas.e.m.e.nt. It stood at the foot of a winding stone staircase, and contained manicured green felt tables, s.p.a.ced around the floor at a good distance from each other. Two corners of the room also featured small, round tables and empty chairs.

Although some of the inhabitants were shooting pool, others used the felt surface as a dice table, or played cards standing up. Red 71 guaranteed the safety and privacy of all who entered for the transaction of outlaw business, from dealing contraband to putting out contracts. That guarantee no longer had to be demonstrably enforced. Word had long since conveyed the message that those who entered with a wrong idea of what awaited were never going to leave.

The crowd was multi-ethnic, but there was no sense of rigid barriers, and the atmosphere was as non-violent as a Martin Luther King vision. No one entering the poolroom was searched for weapons-that would be equivalent to searching a street wh.o.r.e for condoms.

Nor were there signs saying ACT STUPID AT YOUR OWN RISK-they would be superfluous.

Red 71 was always kept well maintained, and usually stayed quiet. The similarity to a graveyard was too obvious to ignore.

There was a fee for this atmosphere, payable to the elderly man who sat behind a flip-up steel counter, with a green eyeshade covering most of his face.

The elderly man might be anyone at any given time. Looking too closely would be as absurd as asking him to make change. Or conversation.

Cross was seated at one of the side tables, talking to a young woman whose back was to the room. He was positioned so that the two men seated to his right and left were between him and anyone who might approach. Even though completely unnecessary inside Red 71, the positioning was a habitual characteristic of this ultra-pragmatic man-for-hire.

Cross, to quote a man who once did business with him, "don't look like much," but his economy of movement and hyper-vigilance marked him as a survival expert. There was a thick yellow lightning-bolt scar on his right hand, impossible to ignore. That hand held a smoldering cigarette. The woman was hunched forward, whispering urgently, studiously ignored by everyone present.

Two young Chinese were playing a game of nine-ball in one corner. They dressed in traditional Hong Kong gangster style: black leather jackets over neon shirts, the top b.u.t.tons opened to better display their gold-chain collections. Their hair was long and slicked straight back. As one chalked his cue, the other stepped close and whispered, "You sure that's him?"

"It's him, all right. Just like Chang said. That scar on his hand, it's like a brand-can't miss it."

"Yeah? Well, I still don't like this much. All of a sudden, we got some weird-a.s.s white man in a cheap suit for a boss?"

"That man ain't our boss, man. It was Chang who told us what to do, not him. That's our job, do what Chang tells us."

"I still don't like that bleached-out dude. I don't like nothing about him."

"Why tell me? You don't want to do what some albino says, you know who you got to tell that to. Now go make a call, okay? Don't matter to me who you dial. But if it's not that blond guy, you on your own from then on out, brother."

Thus chastised, the young Chinese moved away, walking toward a bank of pay phones against one wall.

INSIDE THE War Room, the blond man picked up a telephone and listened intently, his face a mask of concentration. When the speaker was finished, the blond man said, "Tell Chang, if this information was good, we're all square. He'll understand."

The blond hung up and immediately barked, "We got a locate! Bas.e.m.e.nt poolroom-the one they call 'Red 71.' Get a team out there. Go!"

"I don't see why we can't just bring him in," Percy said. "I'll bet I could make him a better listener."

"We don't have that much data on him," the blond replied, "but what we have indicates we'll need a different approach if we want him to sign on."

"You spooks are all the same. 'Data,' my a.s.s. He's nothing but another mercenary, this Cross guy, right? If leaning on him don't do the job, money will. One or the other always does."

He didn't notice Wanda sadly shaking her head as she caught the blond man's eye. "Show him," she said.

"Show me what?" Percy demanded.

"The 'data,' " Wanda answered, smiling evilly.

WANDA THREW a toggle switch and the larger monitor came to life. An apparently abandoned building appeared, its status confirmed by a large sign proclaiming it an URBAN RENEWAL PROJECT.

The camera's eye moved closer. It showed descending steps, then a close-up of a man's hand, rapping a pattern on a steel door.

The door opened. A heavily muscled man with a circled black swastika on one biceps said, "Play or Watch?"

"Play," a man's voice responded.

"No charge, then. Players' section is on the whole far side of the pit. See it?"

"Yeah."

The camera panned to show several rows of unmatched chairs. Some looked more comfortable than others; most were already filled.

The camera turned and looked directly at the door through which it was entering.

"How'd we get all this?" Percy asked.

"Undercover. Packing a fiber-optic multi-cam," Wanda answered, speaking to Percy as one would a child. A slow child.

"That's a dogfighting setup."

"Uh ... we see that," Tiger said, disgust clear in her voice.

"Oh, yeah; I forgot. You're not just a psycho-killer d.y.k.e, you're an animal lover, too."

"Not all animals," Tiger hissed at Percy, the disgust in her voice now replaced with unmistakable threat.

"Stop!" the blond man demanded. "You all signed on under the same conditions. What you're looking at is the only footage we have of our subject, and-"

"I don't see no 'subject' there."

"Try some patience," the blond man advised, wearily. His tone of voice clearly indicated this was not the first time he'd said that. To the same man. With the same results.

Several minutes rolled by as the cameras swept the room. Shown: a betting board with records and odds posted, men negotiating private cash wagers, dog handlers setting out their instruments.

And caged dogs. Some snarling, some in a near-frenzy, some eerily calm. All awaiting their turn in the just-constructed "pit" ... which was nothing more than a square of piled railroad ties, with a white line spray-painted down its middle.

"What's that?" Tiger asked, pointing to what looked like a thin thread of black slithering across the top of the monitor's screen.

"Probably some little software glitch," Wanda answered. "Not worth tracking down now. Besides, the show is about to start."

The crowd was mostly male, with a few overdressed women, all visible through a faint haze of cigarette and cigar smoke.

A harsh white baby spot hit the center of the pit, illuminating a man wearing a short-sleeved red shirt over dark slacks. He brought a cordless microphone to his mouth and announced ...

"Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we-"

Suddenly, two men climbed into the pit area. One was white, thoroughly unremarkable in appearance except for a prominent lightning-bolt scar on his right hand; the other was black, with a triangular face defined by high cheekbones. He was immaculately and expensively dressed, his all-black outfit topped with a matching Zorro hat.

A moviegoer might mistake the black man for a pimp, except that, instead of gold around his neck, he wore a very sawed-off shotgun on a leather thong.

Before anyone could react to the intrusion, the black man swung the scattergun up and fired both barrels. The headless announcer's body slumped to the floor as the black man calmly broke his shotgun, flicked his wrist to eject both spent sh.e.l.ls, and reloaded both barrels using the same hand.

The stunned silence was broken when several men in the audience reached for weapons.

A high-pitched squeak-"No!"-momentarily froze those movements as a bunched group of spectators was torn apart by machine-gun fire.

The momentary freeze turned permanent. Some in the audience held their hands away from their bodies in a clear signal of surrender. Others just stared, stunned and immobile.

A large object sailed through the air and landed inside the pit. The camera moved in closer, showing that the object was a human body. Or, more accurately, was once a human body.

The unremarkable man picked up the handheld microphone in his right hand and said, "May I have your attention, please?"

If this was his idea of a joke, no trace of it appeared on his face, or in his voice.

"Thank you. Now, please listen carefully. These are your choices: You may get up and leave this place peacefully, or you may stay. Those who choose to stay will not be given a second opportunity to leave. Anyone not moving when I stop speaking will never move again."

One of the dog handlers cupped his hands and called out: "Okay, man. Whatever you say. We're out of here. Just give us a minute to grab up our dogs, okay?"

A red blotch suddenly blooming on the handler's forehead was the answer. Unlike the other gunfire, this kill-shot had been silent.

"n.o.body takes anything," the unremarkable man said, in the same dry, flat voice.

The black squiggle Tiger had pointed out moved along with the crowd. The multi-cam unit's sound system was not delicate enough to pick up the single word, this time in English: "Hit."

Everyone still alive stood up. Players and spectators filed out, moving slowly, every hand held open and away from the body it was attached to.

As the camera focused on the exit door, the voice of something close to human roared: "You started it!"

The camera caught only a brief view of what looked like a human leviathan, moving inexorably as it tore through the dog handlers as the dogs would have torn into each other, ripping off body parts as easily as if dismantling cardboard.

The multi-cam only had time to record that the monster's head was shaved, and that he was wearing a banana-colored tank top. Then it went black.

"WHAT THE h.e.l.l was-?"

"The man with the microphone, that's the man we want," the blond man said. "His name's Cross. The man next to him is known only as 'Ace.' They've been partners since they came into hardball juvie on the same bus."

" 'Hardball juvie' ...?"

"Illinois was the first state to differentiate between juvenile and adult offenders," the blond man addressed his small audience somewhat pedantically. "It was still maintaining that facade at the time those two first met. That was an end-of-the-line stop for both of them-their crimes should have put them directly into adult corrections, and it was guaranteed their next ones would. And that there would be a next one."

"The shaved-head guy?"

"Believe it or not, his name is 'Princess.' Off-the-charts insane. He dresses and speaks like a very gay man. Wears all kinds of makeup, minces his words ... even flounces around waving his wrists. His delusion is that this will encourage others to attack him. In his deranged mind, he is not permitted to attack unless he can claim the other party 'started it.' "

As he spoke, the blond man pushed a b.u.t.ton. A full-body photo of Princess appeared on the screen.

"That's him? d.a.m.n! Whatever he's carrying in that monster shoulder holster-"

"That's a .600 Nitro Express," Percy snapped out, his voice a mix of anger and awe. "A .600 Nitro Express pistol. Only one I've ever heard about, never mind seen. That maniac actually carries a sawed-off, over-under elephant gun? A load like that, it'd snap a man's wrist like a toothpick."

"I'm no firearms expert," Tracker said, deliberately ironic, "but do you have any idea why he would carry such a weapon?"

"It goes with his outfit," Tiger half-giggled. "Tres chic, non?"

Seeing Percy about to respond, the blond man cut him off with the universal "Halt!" signal, then said, "Three hundred and thirty pounds is our best guesstimate of his weight. All of it muscle."

"Why guesstimate?" Wanda asked.

"He's never been in custody," the blond man answered. "We have various records on the others, but even those are spotty, if not outright fallacious.

"The machine-gunner-he was not shown on camera-is called 'Rhino.' Originally sentenced to an inst.i.tution for the severely r.e.t.a.r.ded, he was repeatedly tortured until he became-literally-anaesthetic to pain. That's when they went to the Thorazine handcuffs. By the time Cross and Ace were sentenced, he had already been in that same inst.i.tution for a couple of years."

"But you said he was r.e.t.a.r.ded."

"That's what it said on the first admission papers, Wanda. But he wasn't too r.e.t.a.r.ded to a.s.sault staff every time the drugs wore off, so ..."

"So they locked him in that prison even though he never committed a crime?"

"That is what happened, Tiger. It's not our job to judge."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes! Besides, that was years ago. What we do know is that this Cross individual-remember, he was just a kid himself at the time-figured out a way to detox the monster. But n.o.body knew this until Cross-again, I am speaking literally-actually sawed through cell window bars with nothing but dental floss which had been braided, coated with glue, and then rolled in drain-cleaner crystals. It must have taken months of backbreaking work.

"Then this 'Rhino' bent the bars, enabling Cross and Ace to escape. It was the belief of staff that Cross, a diagnosed sociopath, had simply used Rhino to achieve his own ends. However, somebody later broke him out of custody. No agency has gotten their hands on that monster since."

"Monster?" Tiger persisted.

"See for yourself," the blond man responded, flashing another photo on the monitor. "He's almost seven feet tall and weighs nearly five hundred pounds. Again, those are only estimates-we don't know his actual age, so we can't know if he continued to grow after he escaped.

"By 'monster,' I was referring only to his size, not his disposition. In fact, we don't even know his actual name. The records of his prior inst.i.tutional 'care' seem to have disappeared."

"I'll just bet," Tiger said. "Okay, that's four men. Four men without one real name among them-is that what you're telling us?"

"Yes."

"Yeah? Well, someone took that shot with the silencer."

"Our best guess was that was a man called Buddha. All we know about him is that he and Cross apparently met while serving in what is euphemistically called the 'post-Vietnam' era. His service records don't indicate combat. Or anything else, for that matter. However, Military Intelligence informs us that the man is an expert shot, especially with handguns, a truly gifted driver, and a criminal to his core."

As the blond man spoke, the photo on the monitor showed a slumped-shouldered man with a vaguely Oriental cast to his dark, cold eyes.