Marked cd-3 Read online

  But he doesn’t stop walking. Something is dragging him home. Not fear. He ain’t afraid.

  He knows Mojo wants to down him. Mojo has been putting the word out on this for weeks, and for no good reason. Not unless getting it on with Mojo’s huge-titted girlfriend counts as a reason.

  Wheaton chuckles to himself. She was a fine piece of ass, all right. He’d loved to have seen Mojo’s face when he found out.

  He hears the deep-throated roar of a car as it accelerates behind him. He turns, and is dazzled by the headlights. He halts and puts his hand behind him. The car goes straight past, the passenger, a blond white woman, giving him a cursory glance.

  Wheaton blows air. Ain’t nothin’. Not Mojo’s boys and not Five-O. Besides, he can handle either one of them. If it’s Mojo’s crew, he pulls his nine and starts downing those bitches. If it’s the police, he books. He’s got it all figured out. Soon as a cop shows interest, he takes off like Road Runner, meep-meep. Maybe they catch him, maybe they don’t. What matters is that it gives him time to toss the strap. And if they find it, he can deny all knowledge. He always wears gloves when he takes the Beretta out with him. He’s not taking chances. If he’s caught carrying a concealed weapon it would mean serious jail time.

  It’s but a short walk to his mom’s place. She won’t be there. She’s hardly ever there. She’ll be out with that new boyfriend of hers. She’ll turn up some time tomorrow. Lunchtime probably. Looking like shit. Then she’ll go straight to bed.

  Wheaton doesn’t care. He likes having the crib to himself. When he gets in he’ll be able to play his music as loud as he wants while he has another beer and smokes some more weed.

  Another car approaches. Wheaton tells himself to ignore it. He’s already at his apartment building. Seconds from safety. Not that he’s scared or nothing.

  He doesn’t even bother to look as the car flashes past and he hears the spray of rainwater churned up from the wheels. No gunfire, no yelling at him to freeze. Nothing to get worked up about. He smiles as he permits himself a moment of feeling bulletproof before he abandons the street.

  He looks up at his building. One light shines out from the top floor. The rest is in blackness. On the other side of the tall stoop he can make out bags of garbage stacked high on the trash cans. He kicks open the iron gate and starts down the steps to the basement apartment. The front door is set into the side of the stoop. He pats his pockets as he tries to get his fogged brain to remember where he put his damned keys. He hears a small metallic sound somewhere in his jacket. He reaches into one of his inside pockets, finds the key. He inserts it into the keyhole and turns. Pushes the door open.

  The shape is on him in an instant.

  It floats down from the street level. Barely seems to touch the steps. The slightest of sounds is all it makes. Wheaton has time to turn only a fraction before the dark shape is level with him. And although it seems to Wheaton that this must be some terrible ethereal demon to be able to travel so quickly and silently, when it strikes he discovers just how solid it actually is. Something — a fist, a weapon, he doesn’t know — connects with the side of his head with force enough to make everything go temporarily black, and when he next can see again, it’s the tiles of his floor he’s staring at.

  He feels hands sliding over his back. At least he presumes they are hands. Right now he’s not even sure his attacker is human. What if these are some kind of feelers or claws running over him?

  He hears a whimper, and realizes it’s himself.

  He feels his jacket being yanked up and the Beretta snatched from under his belt. Now he’s utterly defenseless. Something grabs him at shoulder level. It lifts him from the ground slightly. Starts to drag him along the floor and into the interior of the apartment. There are no lights on in here. He cannot see anything. He feels like he’s being dragged into the lair of a giant insect of some kind, to be trussed up and eaten at its leisure.

  Another whimper. Then he remembers he has a voice. ‘Hey! HEY! What is this? Who are-’

  He gets hit again. Another blow to the right side of his head. He grunts, then starts to feel the burning pain in his ear.

  His arms are grabbed and pulled behind his back. Something is tied tightly around his wrists, binding them together.

  He raises his head from the floor. ‘Please, man. . Whoever you are. . Please. .’

  He knows he’s making no sense, but he has no idea what is going on here. He doesn’t know what he should say, what he can do to stop this.

  Something presses to his face. It forces his head back onto the cold floor. It’s a hand — a human hand. He’s sure of this now. ’Course it’s a human hand, Lorenze, you dumb fuck. What the fuck else would it be?

  The hand is gloved. He can smell the leather as he struggles to draw air into his lungs.

  And then his ear burns some more, but this time because hot breath is being blown onto it. Breath that carries three simple words that explain all this.

  ‘Mojo says hello.’

  So this is it. The moment he has been preparing for but which, deep in his heart, he never really thought would come. He thought it was all bluster on Mojo’s part. Trying to sound big. Trying to maintain control through fear. All part of the game. The game that Wheaton has been playing too. Carrying that piece to show that he is also a warrior, ready to do battle at any time, even though he believed he would never have to pull the trigger.

  And now that time has actually come, and he has already lost. He is about to die. Here in his mother’s place, where he ought to be safe. And tomorrow she will come home and find her only son with a bullet-hole in his skull, and his blood and brain matter spilled across her cold tiled floor.

  ‘I got money,’ he says. ‘I can get it for you. Just don’t-’

  But his words are lost when the sack comes over his head and is fastened tight around his neck. He hears only his own breath now, coming fast and shallow, and his pulse, booming in his head. He closes his eyes. Even though he can see nothing anyway, he screws his eyes up tight and clenches his teeth and waits for the gunshot.

  But it’s not going to be so quick and easy. His mental torture is not yet over.

  ‘Sing,’ the voice hisses against the cloth. At least that’s what it sounds like to Wheaton.

  ‘Wh-What?’

  ‘I want you to sing.’

  ‘Sing? You want me to fuckin’ sing? S-sing what?’

  ‘Whatever. You choose.’

  Wheaton’s mind races. He can’t focus on songs right now.

  For his hesitation he receives a slap through the hood.

  ‘I said, “Sing!”’

  ‘I–I can’t think. The words won’t come. I can’t-’

  ‘All right, then. I’ll choose. Sing “White Christmas”.’

  ‘What? You fucking with me, right? You want this nigger to sing ’bout a white Christmas?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  ‘I. . I can’t. I only know the first line. Bill Cosby ain’t exactly my thing, yo.’

  ‘All right, then. “Jingle Bells”. The chorus, okay? Everybody knows the chorus to “Jingle Bells”.’

  ‘But. . but it ain’t even Christmas. Why the fuck do you-’

  Another slap. ‘Do it! Now!’

  ‘Aiight! I’m doing it, I’m doing it. . Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. .”’

  ‘Louder!’

  ‘. . Oh what fun, di-dah-di-dah, on a sumthin’ sumthin’ sleigh, hey!’

  ‘Again, Lorenze. Even louder. Keep repeating it. Stop and you’re dead, hear?’

  Wheaton knows he’s dead anyway. He doesn’t know why he’s singing, but he does it. In truth, he’s glad of it. It takes his mind away from what’s about to happen. He doesn’t want to hear a round being chambered or a safety being flicked off or a hammer being cocked. So he sings. Louder and louder. Sings like he’s trying to fill Carnegie Hall with his tuneless voice. Sings like he really does want this to be Christmas, and he’s standing in the cold air of Was
hington Square Park, belting out his festive chorus for all to hear, for all to know just how wonderful he feels at this happy, happy time of peace and generosity and good will to all men. Sings like he knows it will-

  Where the fuck is that bullet?

  He stops singing. Strains to listen through the thick cloth. Hears nothing.

  ‘Yo,’ he says quietly. He tenses, still expecting the gunshot. When it doesn’t come, he risks raising his voice. ‘Yo, you still there?’

  Still nothing.

  He dares to move. Lifts his head from the floor first of all. Rotates it in all directions while he tries to detect the slightest sound. Any indication that he is not alone.

  Silence.

  He rolls onto his side, brings his knees up and manages to push himself up into a sitting position.

  ‘Hey!’ he calls. ‘Whatchoo doin’? Where you at?’

  It takes Wheaton a while to convince himself that his attacker is not still here, playing some kind of cruel joke for which the punchline is a bullet to Wheaton’s brain. And when he eventually does manage to believe it, he still can’t understand what this was all about. Why is he still alive? Was this simply some kind of warning? A message to let him know that he’s not untouchable and can be taken out at any time?

  He sits cross-legged in the darkness of his mother’s apartment. The hood still on his head. His hands still bound behind his back.

  ‘Fuck!’ he says. ‘Fuck you, motherfucker!’

  His outburst is fueled by anger, but also by self-loathing. He wishes he had fought back more. He wishes he had been more of a man in the face of death. Above all, he wishes it had been the truth when he told himself he was not afraid.

  He was very afraid. He knows it now, and it stings.

  He could try denying it again. Try acting the hard man he wants everyone else to see.

  But his lie would be betrayed by the tears on his cheeks.

  Those, and the large wet patch on his pants.

  Doyle pulls the car over. He strips off the leather gloves and drops them onto the black ski mask he has already tossed onto the passenger seat.

  It doesn’t rattle him that he’s just terrorized another human being. Lorenze Wheaton hardly enters into that category anyhow. Lorenze Wheaton is a punk. A lowlife. He sells drugs to schoolkids. Rumor has it that he also raped a girl of fifteen, but the cops never managed to make that one stick. So what if he’s just had a taste of the misery he doles out to others?

  But of course that’s not the real reason Doyle paid him that little visit. He’s not in the business of setting up as a vigilante. No, something else drew him to Wheaton’s place tonight.

  He’d heard on the streets about Wheaton’s feud with Mojo. Heard too that Wheaton had taken to carrying a semi-automatic pistol around with him for protection.

  Doyle reaches into his pocket and pulls out the Beretta 92. Wheaton’s gun.

  He doesn’t know how dangerous this mission he’s on for Bartok is likely to get. What he does know is that if he needs to shoot someone, this time he’s going to make damn sure he doesn’t use a weapon that can be traced back to him.

  Not that it will come to that. Doyle doesn’t plan to shoot anyone.

  And don’t his plans always work out?

  FIFTEEN

  It’s after two o’clock in the morning when he kicks in the door.

  He hopes this will be straightforward. He hopes that Cubo and his girl will be tucked up in bed. Fast asleep. Not expecting any interruptions to their sweet dreams. Doyle will present his most fearsome aspect, wave his gun around, offer up a few simple questions and then get out of there. That’s how it will go.

  Sure.

  The first thing he sees is Tasha Wilmot. Which is a surprise in itself because he wasn’t expecting to be able to see a damned thing. But he can see Tasha because there is a lamp on in the room. Not only that, but there is some R amp;B playing quietly in the background. And Tasha is stark naked on the sofa. Welcome home, sugar.

  And yet Tasha does not scream. Despite the fact that she is unclothed and is looking at a burly man in a ski mask who has just barged uninvited into her apartment and is now pointing a cannon at her face, she does not yell. Doesn’t even attempt to conceal her assets behind a cushion or two. And the reason for this apparent devil-may-care attitude of hers is not bravery or indignation; it is that she is stoned out of her skull. Doyle sees immediately that she can hardly focus on him, and that the only response he’s likely to get from her is some random eye-rolling accompanied by a little drooling.

  He wastes no time in racing across to the bedroom, his heart now thumping warnings against his ribcage. If Tasha is awake, then there is every possibility that Cubo is also awake. And if he’s only a little more compos mentis than his girlfriend, he could well be reaching for a weapon of some kind right now.

  Doyle shoulders the door open. Flies into the room. Scans the area with gun outstretched in a two-handed combat stance that would be a dead giveaway to any observer that this intruder is probably a cop, ski mask notwithstanding.

  But there are no observers here. Except for perhaps those of the six-legged variety. There is a lamp on in this fleapit of a room, but no Cubo. Which leaves only. .

  He hears the noise before he gets there. The bathroom. He launches himself at the door with his leg raised. Drives his foot into the area just over the handle. The door practically comes off its hinges as it crashes open. Doyle’s momentum carries him into the room, and for a terrifying moment he wonders whether an entrance like this is the wisest of moves.

  He’s found Cubo.

  Luckily his quarry doesn’t pose a threat. In fact, he’s probably the least threatening quarry imaginable. For one thing, he’s naked. He also makes size-zero models look obese: every bone in his body is visible through his thin pallid flesh. And his response to Doyle’s invasion is not to come at him with a knife or a gun, but to contemplate jumping out of the window he has just opened. He sits straddling the windowsill, one leg outside, one in, his gaze oscillating between Doyle and the blackness on the other side of that wall.

  ‘You don’t wanna do that,’ yells Doyle. ‘You’re five floors up and you’re not over the fire escape. You jump and you’re dead. And if you don’t die, where you gonna go with no clothes on?’

  Cubo turns his head to the night air again. A gust of wind blows rain into his face. He turns back to Doyle.

  ‘I just wanna talk,’ says Doyle. ‘Don’t risk it, man.’ He pushes his Beretta into his waistband, then steps closer to Cubo. He sees that Cubo seems to relax a little, as though he is resolving his dilemma. As though he is on the verge of accepting that an encounter with a masked gunman, however undesirable that might be, beats a fall to certain death.

  Doyle makes the most of the opportunity. He covers the remaining distance between himself and Cubo in one sudden bound. He reaches out his hand. .

  . . and pushes Cubo out of the window.

  Sometimes Doyle thinks he can be a little too impulsive for his own good. Can be a little too reckless.

  Take now, for example. Dangling a naked guy out of a window by his ankles has to be one of the more outrageous acts he has perpetrated in his career. He would slap his own wrist if it didn’t mean letting go of this lowlife.

  ‘Quit the yelling!’ he calls down to Cubo. ‘You want the neighbors to hear? You want them to step into the backyard and see you like this?’

  ‘Bring me up!’ yells Cubo. ‘Get me the fuck inside, will ya!’

  ‘The sooner you quit yapping, the sooner I haul you back up. I ain’t exactly enjoying the view I got from up here, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Okay,’ Cubo says, his voice unnaturally high-pitched. ‘Okay. I’m shutting up. Now bring me in. I ain’t good with heights.’

  ‘Then what the hell were you doing opening the window, dumbass? Don’t answer that. I got a more interesting question.’

  ‘What? What question?’

  ‘Anton Ruger. Where can I f
ind him?’

  ‘Who? Who?’

  ‘Don’t prolong this, Cubo. My hands are getting pretty slippery in this rain. Anton Ruger. Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. I ain’t never heard of no Anton Ruger.’

  Doyle allows Cubo’s ankles to slip through his grasp by about an inch. It’s enough to cause Cubo to let out another ultrasonic yelp.

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, Cubo. I know you been mouthing off about how you’ve been running with Ruger. Now where can I find him?’

  ‘All right, man. It’s true. I did say that. But it was just talk. I ain’t never met the guy.’

  Doyle jerks his arms enough to shake the coins from Cubo’s pants, if he were wearing any. He gets another girlish scream.

  ‘Then why say it? Of all the scumbags you could claim to fraternize with, why pick Ruger? How come you know so much about him?’

  ‘All right, listen. There’s this other dude I know. He’s copped from me once or twice. When he was high, he told me about Ruger. About how he works for him. That’s all I know, man. It’s all hearsay. Now, please, let me up.’

  Doyle doesn’t relent. Not yet.

  ‘Who is this guy?’

  ‘Calls hisself Ramone. I ain’t got no last name.’

  ‘What’s he look like?’

  ‘He’s a spic. Smart dresser. Likes the ladies. Has a gold earring.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Please. I ain’t got his address.’

  Another shake. Another cry.

  ‘Then where’d you meet him?’

  ‘A strip joint in Brooklyn. The Arabesque. You know it? Close to the river.’

  ‘He go there every night?’

  ‘No. Saturdays. He goes there Saturdays.’

  ‘Every Saturday?’

  ‘Yeah. Every fucking Saturday. Now will you bring me up, please?’

  Shit, thinks Doyle. This is turning into a wild-fucking-goose chase. How many more of these assholes do I have to lean on before I get to Ruger himself?