Hazard (14 page)

In continuous motion with his left, Hazard brought his right hand around and even remembered to rotate it at the last possible moment for a snap of maximum power. Perfect strike. It caught Saad flush on the left temple, sending him against the steering wheel and instrument panel. He slumped down, his dead weight settling.

Hazard pulled Saad back to the seat, shoved him over, and propped him up and put the chauffeur's cap on him. He looked asleep but Hazard was fairly sure he was dead. Blood was coming out of Saad's left ear.

Hazard picked up Saad's knife, got out, and threw it into the river. A harbor police boat was coming downstream at that moment, a short way out, patroling. Hazard's plan for Saad had been the river but now with the boat and possible phone call, he decided to get away from there.

He drove out and turned north to Jay Street, went up the ramp and, when he was on the West Side elevated highway, felt very exposed. Cars coming. Cars passing. The city to his right looking as lighted and awake as always. The power of the limo felt unfamiliar and he had to restrain his foot not to use it, kept exactly on the fifty limit. He switched on the radio. Music. A piece of soul. He dialed away from it, got some bad news. The Mets had lost in the ninth on a wild pitch.

He glanced over at the body of Saad and thought of Carl. And again when the lights of the George Washington Bridge came into view. He turned off at the 125th Street exit and headed downtown on Riverside Drive, thinking about how to dispose of his passenger. Maybe just leave him in the car somewhere. But remembering Binzer and the
DPL
license-plate inquiry made Hazard cancel that idea. He couldn't rely on Binzer to keep that quiet. No, he had to put the body some place where it wouldn't be found for a long while, or never. Where?

The limo was stopped for a light at 102nd Street when Hazard heard it. He thought he'd merely imagined it but then he heard it again, definitely.

A short moan from Saad. He wasn't dead. Almost, but not dead.

Hazard's first thought was to hit Saad again. He pulled over. All it would take was a single blow in the same spot. He took off Saad's cap and made his own right hand into that lethal fist.

But then he couldn't do it.

Saad was just a lump of a man, too helpless.

Hazard tried to call up enough hate. He told himself he had to. He told himself it was an act of mercy. He reminded himself of the consequences, the danger, if, by some remarkable means, Saad recovered.

Three, four times, Hazard was about to deliver the final blow but he just couldn't do it.

By then it was ten to three.

Hazard drove around awhile, avoided the major avenues and was headed east on 98th Street near Amsterdam when he saw the lettering on the truck:

SANTIANO
&
SONS

Brooklyn, N. Y.

The dark green garbage truck was collecting along that street. Two men were feeding garbage into its wide rear opening. No neat tied-up plastic bags in this area. Plain old classical cans, overflowing.

Hazard took special notice of how the men worked, hoisted the heavy cans up and emptied them in. And when the rear of the truck was full enough one or the other of the men banged loudly on the side, a signal for the driver to activate the device that scooped the load into the huge body of the vehicle.

Hazard drove by. A tight squeeze. He had to go slow and he got a long, closer look. He circled the block and kept a discreet distance behind the truck, matching its stops and starts to the end of that crosstown block. He used the time to empty Saad's pockets. A half pack of Egyptian cigarettes, a ballpoint pen, ring of house keys, and, from Saad's back trousers pocket, a worn, much-sat-upon wallet containing, among other things, sixty-four dollars.

Half way down the next block the truck stopped at an alley that ran deep between two larger buildings. The alley was half below street level. The two garbage men disappeared down into it.

Hazard decided this was his chance. He pulled the limo up so it was in position with the rear of the truck but out of view of the driver. Quickly, Hazard got out, went around and opened the limo's other front door. He turned and squatted to get his shoulders under Saad. A fireman's carry. Hazard's legs nearly buckled when he straightened up with all that extra weight. Four steps to the rear of the truck. The edge was waist high. He dropped Saad in and saw now that this section of the truck was cylindrical, shaped like a huge horizontal drum partially cut away.

The sour smell of garbage.

Hazard banged twice on the side of the truck.

At once the compressing mechanism went into motion with a grinding sound as its line of thick steel teeth came curving over and down to the inside edge, like a monster closing its mouth, scraping its food back into its belly and with a hydraulic hiss digesting it with fifty thousand pounds of pressure per square inch.

No more Saad.

Garbage.

The dull clanging of pails warned Hazard that the two men were coming back from the alley. He got into the limo, drove by and away.

He left the limo right on Madison Avenue, where it was sure to be towed away. Immunity? No, the limo was anonymous, susceptible after Hazard stripped it of its
DPL
plates.

Hazard didn't tell Keven what he'd done.

When he arrived home he found her on his bedroom floor, using the door for a headboard. She had ocean breakers on the cartridge player.

“What are you doing down there?”

“I wanted to make sure you woke me when you came in.”

“Were you asleep?”

“Just half.”

She tried to kiss him hello and he wanted that very much, but he avoided her and went into the bathroom.

He took a long shower, lathered thick all over, and rinsed, lathered and rinsed again. While he was drying in front of the mirror he thought he didn't look the same.

He brushed his teeth extra hard and used the Water Pic.

He expected by then that Keven would be trying to sleep, but she was waiting for him on the bed. He detected the fragrance of tangerines in the air. Clean. Welcome. Her arms were extended as though to guide him to her and he went between them to be drawn against her.

The love they made included something they hadn't experienced together before—a desperation, a greed, like a verification of life.

No need to tell her what he'd done, thought Hazard.

She knew.

7

LATE IN
the afternoon of that same day Hazard and Keven went up to the installation. They weren't scheduled. Hazard wanted to see Kersh.

He got alone with Kersh and told him right out that he now was sure Carl had been murdered, and that one of the men who did it was dead.

Of all possible questions, Kersh chose to ask, “How do you feel?”

It made Hazard more certain than ever that his affection for Kersh was not misplaced. “I'm okay.”

“Try not to let it cut deeper than it already has.”

It's already to the bone, Hazard thought.

“Maybe you need some distraction. Go somewhere for a while, do whatever you like.”

“Can't.”

“Why not?”

“There are three more.” Meaning Badr, Hatum, and Mustafa.

Kersh wanted to dissuade him, but sensed it would be futile, probably even resented. “How can I help?” he asked.

“I need an advance.”

In the past Hazard had frequently asked for and received advances on his weekly five hundred. Sometimes he was as much as two or three weeks behind. At the moment it just happened he was even.

“And some time on my own.”

“How much?”

“Five thousand, and maybe two months.”

Kersh didn't agree immediately. Not that he had any thoughts of refusing. A better idea had occurred to him, one that would cover what Hazard wanted and possibly include some extra advantages. What he had in mind was a trans-Atlantic exercise, an ultimate test of telepathic communication. It was well within his power to authorize such an exercise and, if in so doing he was stepping on anyone's toes, hell, they could scream later. He suggested it to Hazard, pointing out that it would put Hazard over there in more of an official capacity. Also, Hazard would be on expenses and the exercise part of it wouldn't require much of his time.

“What about the five-thousand advance?”

Kersh smiled agreeably and that settled it.

Except for one final request by Hazard. He asked that Kersh arrange for him to attend an accelerated violence course, what the
DIA
called an “intensive.” Hazard had previously ridiculed the
DIA
mandate that all active personnel had to attend its special courses every year. A week a year was minimum. Some agents took more for their own good, but not Hazard. He'd gone for karate instruction twice, and then only after having tried every possible way to get out of it.

However, now he was asking to go. If there was one thing he'd learned from killing Saad it was that he didn't know how to kill. He'd really hacked it, been lucky, and knew it.

Kersh promised to arrange for the intensive immediately. He was especially glad to do it because it indicated Hazard wasn't being totally impulsive.

All that was left then was to let Keven know what was planned. She resented not being included in the first place and she said so. As for Hazard going abroad, she didn't like that at all. She was afraid for him, but rather than add to the anxiety of the moment, she kept that to herself. For everyone's sake, especially her own, she acted indifferent, almost blasé about it. “Senders get to go places and have all the fun,” she complained.

Hazard going alone to take intensive training was something else. Keven suggested, then insisted she go along. She demanded her equal rights, contending that an aptitude for violence was by no means exclusively male.

It was critical to Hazard that he get the most out of the
DIA
training in the shortest possible time. Keven might be a distraction, he thought. “It's no place for you,” he told her.

“I'm as much of a damn agent as you are.”

“So?”

“Maybe you're afraid I'll learn some dirty tricks …”

“It's not that.”

“… and use them on you.”

Hazard imagined lethal abilities added to her Irish temper. She had a point.

“Besides,” she went on, “there's always the big threat.”

“Of what?”

She narrowed her eyes dramatically and extended the initial sound of the word. “Rrrrape.”

Hazard held back a laugh.

“There were sixty thousand rapes last year and that's only counting this country. One every seven seconds. Don't you want me to be able to take care of myself?”

“That the only reason you want to go?”

“What else?”

She only wanted, of course, to be with Hazard as much as possible before he left. She would have preferred spending the time together some place away and peaceful, but, no matter, she'd take what she could get.

They sparred on the issue a while longer and then looked to Kersh. He already had his mind made up in case he was asked. He pretended to give it some deliberation, finally shrugged, and said, “If Keven wants to go I can hardly prevent it. After all, it
is
a requirement.”

So Hazard and Keven spent the next three weeks in Frederick, Maryland, at what the
DIA
people called “the farm.” It was a large old house and outbuildings set on extensive grounds walled high all around. Once it had been a horse farm and to keep that appearance, as well as the appropriate aroma to the place, there were still a number of horses around, lazy and fortunate.

Taking the “intensive” meant fourteen hours of instruction each day, and some days as many as sixteen. They received individual instruction with emphasis on judo and karate, which were prerequisites, but they could choose from a wide range of electives—knife throwing, for example, or the relatively benign techniques of poisoning.

Hazard's qualms about Keven, that she might consider the entire thing a lark and be a distraction were quickly erased. From the first day she went at it with a seriousness matching Hazard's own grim attitude. Sooner than anyone expected she was tossing her two-hundred-pound judo instructor around as though he were no more than a despicable loaf of white bread. She seemed to enjoy every hostile minute of it and got so she could execute all the various karate fist and elbow strikes. She became particularly adept at delivering the
kingeri,
also known as the groin kick.

Weapons.

Keven worked out with a nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson double-action automatic, which could put a man down with a hit just about anywhere. The comparatively thin grip of that gun suited her and its shorter trigger reach felt comfortable, allowed her more easily to master the correct squeeze, soft yet deliberate. The gun that was first issued and registered personally to her had been previously used. She politely requested a brand new one and got it. She cared for that S & W lovingly, disassembled and cleaned it even when it didn't need it. Her baby.

Hazard, for his primary weapon, first tried a Colt .357 Magnum, perhaps the most powerful handgun in the world. He didn't like it. Despite its reassuring deadliness, it was too heavy, bulky, and obvious. He settled instead on a 32-caliber Llama automatic, just six and a quarter inches overall length and only twenty ounces. Made in Spain by the Gabilondo firm, it looked like a junior version of the famous .45 Colt service automatic.

Having sacrificed power for convenience, Hazard had to go for accuracy. The Llama was built for rimfire, giving it a velocity of about two thousand feet per second. That helped, but beyond the range of sixty feet it wasn't reliable, especially with soft-nosed ammunition—the kind that was slower but would spread on impact and more likely kill than merely penetrate. To fire the Llama with consistent accuracy took a lot of practice and concentration. When Hazard managed seven hits out of a clip of nine on an inch-and-a-half circle at fifty feet, his weapons instructor congratulated him. But Hazard wasn't satisfied. Not until he was getting nine out of nine, regularly.