Red rain 2.0 (14 page)

Nick waves his arm, and another guy, Russian for sure, steps into the light and triple-wraps duct tape around the kid's mouth and head. Then he produces another steel chair, puts the kid's legs up on the seat so his knees are just at the edge, and duct-tapes his ankles real tight. The kid starts to squirm and buck, so the guy sits down on the chair, pinning him. His thighs are like a bridge between the two chairs.

Fuck me. I know what's coming.

Vassily suddenly swings down as hard as he can on the kid's thighs with a baseball bat. Dull meaty thud mainly, but a definite chilling snap as both thigh bones facture. The kid's head snaps back, the scream's silent.

"You know, Shooter, this game of baseball, it's really boring. I go to a game once in Yankee Stadium, I fucking fall asleep it's so boring." Vassily laughs. "But this," he says as he hefts the Louisville Slugger, "this is nice little tool."

"You drag me over here just to see this shit?" I say. It's taking all I got to keep my voice steady, normal.

"Sure, why not? Like old times, right? This doesn't amuse you?"

"Fuck no, Vassily. Told you I was past that shit."

He moves in close, scanning my eyes. "This is maybe troubling you, Shooter?"

"Fuck off, you Soviet slob." I laugh. I'm pretty sure I make it sound genuine. 'Think I really give a shit if you put

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the hurt on some thief? It's just boring. Like baseball. I'm out of here. Before I fall asleep."

Vassily laughs in his old way, slings an arm around my shoulder, walks me back upstairs. "Hey, sorry if I wasted your time. A little ego maybe. Maybe I just wanted to show I still know my work. Pretty stupid. You and me, we don't have to show each other anything. We already did that, didn't we?"

It was war then, man, I'm thinking. There was a reason. Certain things had to be done. This is just sick.

"'Sure. Listen, we'll go have dinner again or something," I say, leaving.

I get pulled over doing ninety-five on the Jones Falls Expressway by a City cop who only sneers at my badge and writes me a $150 ticket.

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"So I misspoke myself," Ice Box says, shrugging, Monday night in the squadroom. "So it's not a buy-and-bust, it's a door-popper. Same old same old. Ecstasy. Maybe a Bonus Pack. Hell, Dugal isn't even coming along."

"Just you and me and a warrant to toss some condo again?" I ask.

"Yeah, except it isn't a condo. That's the only hinky thing here. I checked it out this morning. Big mock-Tudor on a bunch of acres between Pots Spring and Dulaney Valley. Owners are Dr. Stuart Reigel, heart surgeon, and Dr. Mum-taz Singh Reigel, psychopharmacology specialist. They happen to be spending a week at their vacation house on St. Bart's. Their little girl Hannah, she's home alone. Hell, not so little. She's eighteen, graduated from Mercy High last June. Taking a break before starting college, I guess."

"Boring, IB. Very boring. This the best you could come up with while I was away?"

"First, you were only gone two days. Second, I'm not making it happen, it's just happening. A couple of her ex-schoolmates got stopped on a traffic violation a week ago. Arresting patrolman found maybe ten Ecstasy tabs in the car. The girl driving ratted Hannah in an eyeblink. Said all her friends got stuff from Hannah. Dugal got the warrant, gave it to me just after you left for your long weekend, said

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wait for you to get back, we could handle it ourselves. Like I said, no biggie."

"Oh, the LT does love us, Ice Box," I laugh.

"Yeah, and it's mostly your fault,* being so sweet to the asshole, Luther. On the other hand, thank you for being such a great suck-up with Dugal. I like jobs like this. Hell, we can probably just carry water pistols. Knock on the door, little Hannah answers, we say, 'Hello, young lady, we're your friendly neighborhood police officers and we'd love to talk to you,' and she wets her pants."

"And the ace crime fighters IB and Five-O nail another menace to society. I get so proud of myself, helping keep suburbia free of dangerous criminals."

"Hey, be grateful. Two City narcs got killed Sunday. I like to keep myself in one piece."

"Shit!" I say. "Anybody I know?"

"Doubt it," IB says. "It was in South Baltimore, not up in your pal Dog's territory."

We head out in the Crown Vic, Ice Box driving, and I get on my cell, trying to reach Dog. He's out, but one of the guys in his squad I know confirms IB's story.

"Shit, sorry 'bout that," 1 say. "Gangbangers?"

"Here's the weird," the City narc tells me.
"Supposed
to be a buy-and-bust from some Crips. It goes down. Our dudes got two Crips on the ground, cuffing them, and then some whitey in a suit slips out of a doorway and clips our guys. Kills 'em in the head. Silenced weapon. He runs with the drugs, and the money."

"This confirmed?"

"We got five citizens tellin' the same story. The two Crips got sidewalk skidmarks on their faces and are lying there cuffed when back-up arrives. The Crips claim the same as the citizens, only they say they don't know dick about no drugs, they was just hangin' and two cops shook 'em down for no reason. The Crips' pieces hadn't been fired. We're waitin' for forensics to figure out what hit our guys. Three shots in the face. Some strange shit."

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I do not like what I'm hearing. "Hey, ask Dog to give me a call when he gets back, okay?"

"No problem. Oh, 'nother weird thing. The bangers claim the shooter took one of their homeboys away with him. Crazy shit, man."

Ice Box looks over at me and almost smashes a row of mailboxes when the Crown Vic swerves. He rights it. "You spooked, Luther? You know the cops that went down?"

"Nah," I say, telling the truth. But I don't say what's shook me.

Our bust goes just as Ice Box called it—except Hannah is way cool about it. She answers the door wearing a cropped top and a spandex mini, little silver navel ring shining against light coffee skin. Tall, slim, drop-dead gorgeous with huge eyes, full lips, a straight little nose with a ruby stud in one fine nostril. She smiles as if she's glad to see us—Academy Award talent, this half-Sikh, half-American girl. Just laughs when IB asks her where she keeps her stash. Flirts with me: "Do you really think I'd sell drugs, Detective?" The girl's been around the block a few times, even if she's only eighteen. Stays calm when Ice Box opens up a shoe box—Manolo Blahnik—from her bedroom closet and finds it full of Ecstasy tabs. I snap out of my little crush and realize she's so cool and so warm because she's floating on her own dope. Still, when we put her in the car and head back to HQ, I can't stop delicious little thoughts of what she'd be like in Helen's place, what she'd taste like and what she'd do. You're a sick old dog, Luther, I tell myself. No good. I never can believe myself.

IB reaches her parents in St. Bart's, there's a good lawyer at the station in an hour, he and the judge agree that because she's only eighteen she should spend the night in the juvenile detention facility, with a bail hearing tomorrow if her parents get back from the Caribbean in time.

"She'll make bail, go home with her folks," Ice Box says as we wrap the paperwork. I'm still thinking of that flat smooth stomach and her dark eyes. Ice Box had pumped her

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for her source on the way to the station and got nothing. My guess is that when we formally interrogate her, attorney present, the best we'll get is the same sketchy description we'd always gotten from these kids. And no way is slut-in-training Hannah going to be one to help us set up any buy-and-bust. Not that it matters. We got James Halliday on deck.

Late next day, Hannah walks as IB predicted. She isn't high now, leaving the courtroom, but she gives me this smile. No future for you, I think, and it's kind of a sad idea, a pretty thing like her well on the way to fucking up her own life. But I smile back. "Catch you later, Hannah," I say. Her well-tanned, beautifully dressed parents glare, her lawyer starts to move on me, courtroom-macho ass who wouldn't last a minute in anything physical, but I just turn and walk away.

Two nights later, me and Ice Box take a twenty-one-year-old plainclothes out to do a buy-and-bust on a whitebread we know's been peddling Ecstasy. We can't do this ourselves, we're too old and too scary. It's got to be kid to kid, not like the city, where even the fourteen-year-olds haven't been kids since they were so small they could still ride the buses for free. The plainclothes is a smart one. We've got him acting like a highschool jock with a wild streak, he handles the buy slick but looks jittered when IB and I move in and make the bust. Maybe it's because we cuff and mock-arrest him too, so we can use him again. He isn't enjoying it, getting tossed into a holding cell with the dealer.

The dealer surprisingly chooses to shut up until his lawyer gets here, unlike every other Ecstasy kid we've popped. The plainclothes out of his cell and with us, we find out why he got that look. His purchase is on my desk, I'm about to open the brown paper bag and tag what's inside.

"He wanted five times the usual money, said I'd be able to double it easy. Don't think that's Ecstasy, sir," he says.

Right. The usual Ziplocs but no pills, just glassine envelopes, the kind postage stamps used to come in.

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"So you already sample the shit or what, kid? Naughty, naughty," IB laughs, sticking a big finger into one of the little envelopes. He takes a delicate taste of the powder that's stuck to his fingertip. "Fuck me," he shrills, then mutes it. "Pure horse, Five-O. Oh man, I can't stand it when shit like this happens."

I take a taste too. IB's on the money. Good heroin. Goddamn good heroin. I just know the lab's gonna come up with a purity percentage that's off the fucking charts.

"Dugal's gonna have our asses on every kind of overtime, he finds out about this," Ice Box complains.

"Good to go. Sir!" I grin at him.

"Aw, cut that shit out. Makes my balls ache, just thinking about what's heading our way. I need it easy for a while, MJ about to pop and all."

"Yeah, and that van you gotta wash every day." I'm staying light as I can about this, but I do not like the signs I see flashing up ahead. Unless this buy is a freak, which I can't believe for a minute, we got a major problem developing.

It isn't a freak. Taggert You Fuck next Tuesday night and Tommy Weinberg on Wednesday night come in from planned Ecstasy busts with exactly what me and Ice Box scored. I call Dog again, finally reach him. We agree to meet. Dugal calls a war council next morning.

"So what is this all about, gentlemen?" he starts off, the whole narc squad crammed into his office. "What is happening here?"

"Well sir, our Ecstasy kids are selling heroin...."

'Taggert You Fuck, I
know
that. What I wanna know is why now, why the change, how come these punks aren't spilling their guts but calling lawyers, who is it that scares them more than we do, where's the smack coming from, how is it coming, how big is it?"

"Started with the Bonus Packs," IB says.

"Yeah, and I said bullshit, they're no problem. I take it back, IB," Dugal says. "First thing, every one of you that made a Bonus Pack bust, print out your interrogation files

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and give 'em to Ice Box and Luther. All information centers to them. IB, you and Luther are going to find me a trail here, some sort of pattern. We backtrack 'til we get something, anything, and then we follow it forward. Anybody got vacation planned, cancel."

There's a couple of groans in the room.

"Anything from the city?" Dugal asks.

"I'm seeing my man tomorrow," I say.

"Why not tonight? These tough city guys afraid to go out after dark?"

"The meet's tomorrow, LT. You want it around that it's panic time out here?"

"You're right, Luther. I don't want anything around. Biz as usual. Nobody talks to the press. Nobody talks to anybody outside this room until we get some better information. Understood?"

Guys nod, guys grunt.

"Anybody got any busts planned, just make 'em as usual. Talk to your snitches, we're still looking for Ecstasy. Anybody mentions smack, act surprised. Then get curious. Anything you see or hear or find, pass it to IB and Luther. IB, Luther, make your move with the Halliday kid as soon as you can set it up."

"Already on it, LT. He's calling his man. Meet could be in a couple of days, maybe a week," I say.

"Daily updates, please. The rest of you, get going now."

"Aw shit, what'd I tell you. What'd I say," IB moans when we're back in my cubicle. "Why's he pick us to do the grunt work?"

" 'Cause you know and I know Dugal doesn't have anybody else near good enough to do it," I say.

I see Dog sitting on a bench in Mt. Vernon Park, legs ' stretched out across the walkway, eating a cannoli, drawing uneasy looks from the suits, male and female, who're passing by. I know what they're thinking: trouble, danger. This is safe Baltimore, a safe white island, with the

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Peabody Conservatory on one side, the Walters Art Gallery on the other, a monument to George Washington rising up in the middle of the little park. Small law firms, architects' offices, some doctors' offices in expensively renovated row houses round about. Dog takes a big bite out of his cannoli and smiles hugely to himself, staring out at nothing.