Red rain 2.0 (27 page)

I drive home, edgy. No Helen tonight—she's got some school thing. Time's moving too slow. About eight, Annie shows up at my door, lopsided grin as broad as I've ever seen it, a nearly empty bottle of tequila in her hand. She stumbles as she comes in, starts giggling.

"Kind of festive, kind of early," I say.

"Yeah, goddammit, I am," she says, taking a swig from the bottle, offering it to me, then remembering and clutching it between her breasts. "Festive, yeah. I'm just gonna flop here on your sofa and get a little more that way."

"Wanna tell me the occasion? Or do I have to guess?"

"Guess. Go ahead, Five-O. Guess." She's giggling still between sips of tequila, her long legs sprawling.

"You finished plastering your ceiling."

"Wrong! Wrong! If it was that, I'd be on my sofa looking at my beautiful work."

"So what then? I give up."

"My beautiful work, what else? My excellent, really excellent work."

"That's no answer."

Annie knocks back the last of the Anejo Patron. "Luther, you're very thick sometimes. That fuck who raped and beat the old lady in Madonna? I busted his ass today. Nailed him to the wall. A for-sure conviction, I know it. Just waiting for DNA confirmation. I got him so good I don't even need that. The prosecutor's wetting his pants to try this shit, just on what I already got."

"Excellent work, LT. You share that bottle with the prosecutor, or kill it all by yourself?"

"It's mine. Deserve to celebrate. Nailed that fuck to the

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wall." Annie's head is wobbling on her long neck. I give her three minutes to pass-out time. I cany her into the bedroom, take off her shoes, sit her down on the bed.

"Gotta get home," she slurs, tries to get up, collapses back. "What'd you do to me now, dammit?"

"Nothing, and you know it. You were hyped on your bust and you got drunk."

"Guess I was. Guess I did," she admits.

I help her up. She stumbles stepping out of her skirt, sits on the bed and fumbles with the buttons of her blouse. She gets it off, and shrugs off her bra before she seems to realize I'm still standing there.

"Get away you." She smiles. "Not sleeping with you."

"I never sleep with drunks," I say with a laugh, laying her down and covering her up. "See you in the morning."

Flick off the light and close the door almost in one motion. I hear her mutter something. I lie down on the sofa. I watch
La Double Vie de Veronique.
I'm awake for a long time after, thinking about Veronique and her double, and if the world ever really works that way. Then I'm hoping Annie will call to me from the bedroom, how sweet that'd be. It doesn't happen.

Next morning Annie's shy and awkward as a girl. She can hardly meet my eyes over coffee, can't stop apologizing for getting so drunk. She's gone before nine.

Boring fucking day. I can't stand waiting for action to start. I phone Helen. She comes around early that evening equipped with Ecstasy for two. I'm beginning to like this a little too much, I'm thinking, just before it kicks in. Then things go sour. I remember her fucking sketch. What shakes me is that's exactly how I think of it now:
Helen's
sketch.

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It starts.

Dugal huddles with the head of uniformed patrolmen, gives him my specifications—young, smart, cool-headed, tough but in a way only a pro would recognize, not pumped and mean-looking, not obvious muscle like barroom bouncers. Military background a plus. The guys approached are only to be asked if they're interested in being detached from patrol duties for a while to do some undercover work. In a few days Dugal begins sending me the pick of the litter. I meet them at Teddy's Gyro, an Arby's on York Road, the seats around the fountain in the atrium of Dulaney Mall. One at a time. Different times and different places. They don't know who I am or what the mission is, they're made to swear our meeting never happened.

Not bad, overall. Better than your average company of baby marines, which has always got its share of gung-ho assholes and angry, resentful skulkers. I dismiss a few of the first type—overeager, wrapped too tight. Likely to go postal if it gets real tense. I don't get any of the second type, but some don't make the cut because they aren't cool enough under my questions. They can't disguise their nervousness. If I can spot their edge so easily, so will Vassily.

Three days, seventeen guys, I get my four. One's a Mexican, actually born here of Mexican parents, did his bit for the Corps. A hitch in the 1st Battalion, 2nd Division. Recon.

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Well trained. Stays chilled, smooth when I try to provoke him, insult him. We look like compadres. Other three are white boys, college boys who have ambitions—detective, or maybe DEA or FBI—but ready to take it step by step. Calm, cool. I judge they're all nice with their hands, cool with their tools, comes down to it. It won't. Not the way I want this to go off.

All from different units. Word in their units is, they're on two-week vacations. We put them in a safe house, keep 'em off the streets and out of sight. We all gather at the outdoor range, in the building there, when there's no regular police activity scheduled. We get to know each other. I drill 'em on a number of possible scenarios. I make sure they know what to do if the deal goes bad, but mostly I train them how to act like experienced drug dealers, how to handle a deal so it goes down clean and simple. I make them all take a taste of smack, just a little snort, so they'll know what it's like. They have to seem authentic, they gotta know the shit.

Pretty soon, they're good to go. I'm only sweating that Vassily won't move fast enough, that my guys'll get restless and stale, waiting. I check in with Dog. His team's ready, too.

Little hitch, finding time to see Helen at least as often as our usual routine, maybe even slightly more often. Can't let her know anything special's going on at work. Wouldn't be wise under any circumstances. Lots of conflict in my head, lots of creeping paranoia. Shit.

Vassily does move, faster than I'd hoped. I love that insane Russia, I'm not going to take any pleasure at all in this. That's what I think after I get his call.

"The stuff's down there, my friend," he says. It's early evening, less than ten days after the Brighton Beach talk, I'm alone at home, Helen due to come by later on. "Okay? You ready?"

"Hell yes, man. Just like we said, our guys meet your guys, everybody loves each other, friends for life?"

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He laughs. "For sure. You are going to love us more, you see what we have for you. You want to bring a chemist, feel free. I invite you to bring your chemist."

"Do I need to?"

"No, I think not. I think you have a little taste, you know. But I got no objections."

'Trust, my friend. No chemist. Just me and Dog, and our guys. We'll be ten, all of us together, okay?"

"Only me and five, that's it for our side. That's my team."

"You want to bring a few more, make it even, that's cool."

"What for? Trust, like you say." Vassily laughs again. "Not tomorrow night, but two nights after. You bring 750 large."

Christ, he means $750,000. Step once on that many keys at the going wholesale rate, that's $1.5 million worth maybe $6 to $8 million on the street. Large enough.

Vassily laughs once more, like he's just pulled off a great joke on me. "I'm not hearing anything, my friend. Too big surprise? Any problem?"

"Wonderful surprise," I say. "Good as it gets. The best."

"No hundreds, though."

"Naturally. Gave up on those long time ago."

"We do this early, have some dinner someplace after, just you and me, okay? Make it seven o'clock. Listen, there is phone booth on corner of Gay Street and Edmonton Avenue. Fucking phone don't work. Never mind, address will be scratched on the glass by three in afternoon that day."

"Okay."

"But, my friend, better go yourself. Don't send your blackies. This address, they can't read it. I am very sure of this."

Yeah, I think, it'll be in Cyrillic.

"Genius, you are, my friend. See you soon."

"Da. After, you take me for some of these crabcakes, oysters, good stuff, okay? Good, good."

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First thing next morning, Dugal and I drive into the city, take a walk around Lake Montebello with Dog and his boss. We talk backup, how to coordinate, when they'll break in on the meet and make the bust. Dog's boss reluctantly agrees we'll use County tacticals only if the meet's outside the city, to avoid fuck-ups since County and City teams have never trained together. But he'll be there with City narcs alongside Dugal's County narcs. More likely the meet's in the city, so it'll be the reverse. Copacetic. There's some dispute, though, about how many should go into the meet wired.

"Nobody but me," I say. "They probably won't be checking for wires. If I'm wrong and they do, I'm the only one they won't pat down. Vassily won't let that happen. So it's gotta be me, and me only, wearing a transmitter."

Lots of jive from the other three over that, only one transmitter, suppose it breaks down, whatever. But they're finally convinced, accept it under one caveat—they stop hearing from me inside for even two seconds, the SWAT boys storm the place.

"Dumb motherfucker," Dog says to me when we've fallen far enough behind our bosses as we head back toward our cars. "Thought you was finished with this hero shit."

"You got anything under your dome but air, man? Ain't gonna be pat-downs, no problems, no shooting. When it goes down, Vassily's just gonna raise his hands high, like you and me, and we all let ourselves get busted. He's a longtime close-quarters combat man. Why do you think he's still alive?"

"Fuck if I know dick about this military shit."

"Because he ain't suicidal. He'll see instantly there's no way to shoot his way out. So he'll let his lawyer take care of springing him later."

"I believe that shit when I see it."

"You ain't got long to wait."

We're all dumb motherfuckers. I know that as soon as I copy the address scratched on that phone booth. We all been watching too many movies, it's warped all of us even though

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we're on the streets and see it for real every day. We've been thinking, mainly, some old warehouse down in that rat's nest of them at harborside, the working harbor east of the Inner Harbor showplace. Dark alleys, wind rustling the rubbish, half the lights busted or burned out.

It isn't going to happen that way. The address is maybe two miles down the road from Dee Dee's horse farm. A fucking horse farm—house and stables at least a hundred meters in from the road, security cameras, infrared beams, could even be tripwires and claymoor mines. Nah, that's paranoid, the mines anyway. Get clear, get cold, Luther. Only got a couple hours to get it together. I'm on the cell soon as I get in the TT and heading back to the county. Alert Dog, alert Dugal.

Thinking, thinking. Hit it. When I see the product and Vassily sees the cash, I say "Comrade!" like I'm real happy. Dugal has some guys from the electric company kill all power for exactly sixty seconds. My job is to chill everybody inside when the lights go, the backup team's job is to use those sixty seconds to get past the disabled security and right up against the house or stables, I'll clue them which one we're in soon as I'm in. They wait another two minutes after the lights go back on, give anybody who's drawn a weapon time to calm down, untense, lower it.

Dugal isn't happy. "The risk ratio is going up very fast here, Luther. I do not like it. I do not want a firelight. Killing the lights, goddammit, sounds about as intelligent as striking a match when you're standing in a pool of gasoline."

"You have a better idea?" I ask.

"Yeah, we just wait until your team leaves with the drugs, and then we roll in and roll up the Russians."

"Negative, LT. That's how you'll get your firefight. At first they'll think it's a rip-off by us, not cops coming in. They'll go full-auto, 'til Vassily realizes it isn't us, but cops. He'll quit then. But it may be too late for a lot of cops."

"Maybe," Dugal says, sounding very dubious.

"Second, and this is crucial, I gotta be in there with my

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guys, we gotta be
seen
by the Russians getting busted right along with them. Otherwise we're blown, we're known as cops, we're walking targets ever after."

"I'm feeling a slow turn from win-win to lose-lose here, Luther," Dugal says. "Just a feeling. Analyze it rationally, any operation this size has sizable risks. It would have been easier in close quarters, downtown. Now it's harder."

"It is. But doable. Definitely. If we stick exactly to plan."

"I'll see to that. You have the harder task."

"What?"

"Keeping yourself and your men alive in those sixty seconds of darkness."