Nick was after the gun and he found it—a .22-caliber target pistol with a long barrel. Giving no thought whatsoever to fingerprints, he picked it up, jammed the narrow muzzle deep into the soft skin under Delroy Nigger Brown’s sagging jaw, and pulled the little man with him back down the steps. Nick didn’t look back once at Ajax’s sprawled and spavined corpse.
Men were still fleeing on both sides, toward the outfield walls or the third-base-side dugout or the first-base-side dugout, as Nick pulled Delroy along with him across the open field. Tents were being knocked down and hovels were flying apart in the frenzied exodus. Nick now held the pistol high enough that everyone could see it. Any movement even partially toward him and the gun moved to cover it. There wasn’t much movement.
It reminded Nick of that scene that he and Val and Dara had always enjoyed where Charlton Heston as Moses parted the Red Sea. Pre-CGI special effects, but cool nonetheless.
You’re too cool nonetheless, Nick’s cop brain warned him. Odds are good that there are still people out here waiting to kill you.
It couldn’t be helped. Nick didn’t have permission to take Delroy Nigger Brown out of Coors Field—that would require a court order and two hearings with Delroy’s public defender present, probably three months’ time, only to have the request denied—and he needed information now.
About where the grass of centerfield would have begun, Nick kicked the drug dealer’s legs out from under him. Delroy fell to his knees. Nick set the muzzle against the little man’s forehead. He could see lice moving in what was left of Delroy’s thinning hair.
“I won’t ask any question twice,” barked Nick.
“Nossir. Yessir. Oh shit and fuck. But nossir,” quavered Delroy.
“What did Keigo Nakamura ask you about when he interviewed you six years ago and what did you tell him?”
“What?” shouted the kneeling man. “Who? When?”
“You heard me,” said Nick, digging the small muzzle deep enough into Delroy’s temple that it broke the skin.
“Oh, the Jap? That Jap with the camera and the, you know what I’m sayin’, sexy snatch assistant? That motherfuckin’ Jap?”
“That motherfuckin’ Jap.”
“Whattya want? I mean, you know what I mean…”
“What did he ask you?” repeated Nick, pressing the muzzle tighter. Blood began to flow. “What did you tell him?”
“The motherfuckin’ Jap wanted to know where I got the, you know, the motherfuckin’ flashback that I, you know what I’m tellin’ you, sold,” whined Delroy.
“What’d you tell him?”
“You know, man—told him the motherfuckin’ truth. No reason not to, know what I’m sayin’?”
Nick dug the muzzle deeper. “Tell me the truth or there’ll be two men named Nigger in this yard minus their brains. I swear to God, Delroy.”
“I’m tellin’, I’m tellin’, I’m motherfuckin’ tellin’,” screamed Delroy, raising his shaking hands but keeping them away from the pistol. “What was, like, you know, the question?”
“Where’d you get the flashback?”
“Where I got all my good drugs then, man. This be six motherfuckin’ years ago. Got all my good shit, ’cludin’ the flashback, from Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev at his big motherfuckin’ hacienda down in Santa Fe. He’s the, you know what I’m sayin’, head of the Bratva fucking Russian motherfuckin’ mafia down there.”
Damn, thought Nick. All roads always lead to Santa Fe. He’d have to go through with the trip Sato had planned for tomorrow.
“What else did you tell Keigo Nakamura during that interview?”
“Just about the motherfuckin’ flashback, man. He wasn’t even interested in the heroin or coke or nothin’, you know what I’m sayin’? Just wanted to know all about the flash—how I get it from fuckin’ Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev, how we drive it back with the motherfuckin’ pass to get past the motherfuckin’ reconquistas, that sort of shit.”
“What else?” demanded Nick, moving the pistol’s muzzle to Delroy’s soft eye socket.
The dealer squealed. “Nothing else. Jap didn’t wanna talk about anything else. Look at the motherfuckin’ videos if you don’t believe me.”
“Why’d you leave the party with Danny Oz the night Keigo was killed?”
“What? With who?”
“You heard me.”
“You mean that Jew-boy over to Six Flags?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you think I left with him, man? Somebody just got his ass murdered at that party, you know what I’m tellin’ you? Time to go, Joe. We had to get out of there and whatshisname, the Jew, the wizard of Oz or what the fuck, wanted some product. We went to my house up on the motherfuckin’ hill. I didn’t bring no vials to the party.”
“Which product, Delroy?”
“Flashback. That Jew never bought nothing else.”
Nick held out his phone with Dara’s photo filling the screen. “Look at this picture…”
“Nice white snatch…,” began Delroy.
Nick dug the muzzle of the .22 target pistol deep enough behind the dealer’s left eye that he could have popped the eyeball out with a twist of his wrist. Delroy screamed. Nick let up some of the pressure. The barrel and muzzle were wet with blood trickling down from Delroy’s forehead.
“What the fuck, man? You want me to look without no motherfuckin’ eye?”
“Where have you seen her before? And when? Be specific or you’ll lose more than an eye, I swear to God.”
Delroy waved his right hand in a placating way and leaned closer to the screen, squinting. “I ain’t never seen her, man. Nowhere. No time.”
“Look again.”
“I don’t have to fuckin’ look again. I don’t know her, never sold to her, never paid her for nothin’, never fuckin’ seen her, you hear what I’m tellin’ you?”
Nick slipped the phone away. “I hear what you’re telling me.” He hit the little man just hard enough with the barrel to drop him to the dirt.
Nick walked quickly toward the centerfield wall. He refused to run, to keep the last of his dignity, although the back of his head waited for a bullet to strike it and his shoulders scrunched up despite his best efforts to keep them from doing so. The K-Plus might deflect the body shot, but the blow to the back of his head would kill him even if it didn’t penetrate the Kevlar balaclava.
“Warden Polansky will not be happy with us,” whispered Sato’s voice in his ear. “But by great good coincidence, Bottom-san, your video and audio pickups seem to have failed the last two minutes or so.”
“Okay,” said Nick, not caring. “Tell Polansky and Campos that they have to get Soul Dad out of the yard… right away. Everyone saw him talking to me before you took out Ajax.”
The centerfield fence and door were less than fifty feet away now. How many outfielders had rushed at that flaking green wall while chasing a fly ball? How many relief pitchers had come through that door and walked toward the mound with their hearts pounding and body jagging with adrenaline the way Nick’s was now?
Only the top of the centerfield wall then hadn’t been covered with rolls of razor wire as it was now.
Chief sniper Campos’s voice buzzed in his ear. “We don’t need to get Soul Dad out, Mr. Bottom. He’s almost worshipped here at Coors Field. A lot of the blacks think he’s hundreds of years old and some kind of wizard. Even the whites and spanics leave him alone. No one will harm him.”
“But…,” began Nick.
“Trust me,” continued Campos. “Soul Dad is in no danger. I don’t know why he warned you, but he must have had his reasons. And he was right about Bad Nigger Ajax having no friends here. Lots of toadies and butt-boys, but they hated Ajax even more than the others who were terrified of him. Soul Dad’s all right.”
Nick shrugged. He would have jogged the last fifteen feet or so to the high wall and door, but his legs were weak with the retreat of adrenaline.
He could hear someone on the other side loo
sening the heavy latch. Someone opening it with the rusty hinges screeching like a dying man’s scream. Except Bad Nigger Ajax hadn’t had time to scream.
Then Nick was through. Then he was out.
1.10
Raton Pass and New Mexico—Wednesday, Sept. 15
WHEN SATO CALLED him sometime after 6 a.m. and told him to be on the roof of the Cherry Creek Mall Condos by 7 a.m. to wait for a pickup by the Sasayaki-tonbo dragonfly ’copter, Nick felt a shameful rush of relief so profound that it almost affected his bowels. He’d not known before this that he was such a coward.
He didn’t care. Flying to Santa Fe—despite the Nakamura Corporation’s worries about shoulder-launched or other kinds of missiles—had to be a hell of a lot safer than trying to drive.
There were no clouds visible from the roof of the former mall. Sixty-some miles to the south, Pikes Peak caught the low, sharp morning sunlight. The dragonfly ’copter came in from the west, circled, and set down lightly. Nick tossed his duffel in the open back door and ignored Sato’s offered hand as he clambered up and in by himself.
The oversized bag was heavy. Besides the Glock 9 he had holstered on his belt, the duffel held full police body dragon armor that he’d bought on the black market after losing his job (much more serious stuff than yesterday’s K-Plus undies), a sheathed KA-BAR fighting knife, an M4A1 assault rifle that had belonged to the Old Man, an M209 grenade launcher that Nick had bought to attach to the old M4A1, a box of M406 HE grenades in their egg crates, a Negev-Galil flechette sweeper, and a compact Springfield Armory EMP 1911-A1 9mm semiautomatic pistol. Nick had also brought an S&W Model 625 .45-caliber revolver that he’d used to good effect in DPD shooting competitions—firing six shots, reloading with a moon clip or other speedloader, and firing six more in just over three seconds—and, finally, boxes of appropriate ammunition for everything that required ammunition.
“Be careful with the duffel,” he said to Sato as he took his fold-down webbed seat against the aft bulkhead and dragged the heavy bag under it.
“Ah, you brought your toys along, Bottom-san?” said Sato. There was almost no engine or rotor noise, but as the dragonfly ’copter rose, leveled off, and headed south, the roar of air through the open doors was loud enough that Sato handed Nick a set of earphones and shouted the number of the private channel they should use.
They were flying steadily at about three thousand feet of altitude. Nick looked out the open door as the southern suburbs of Denver melded into the northern suburbs of Castle Rock.
It was cooler this morning, the first really cool morning of this September, and the sunlight fell on buildings and cars that seemed clean and normal, a product of a sane world. Even the abandoned, rusting windmills running along the Continental Divide to their right looked pretty and clean in this rich morning light. The high peaks themselves, save for the looming Pikes Peak, seemed to be receding westward as the dragonfly continued to fly due south above I-25.
Nick almost grinned. He knew he should be ashamed of the relief that he’d felt since Sato’s call about the dragonfly, but there was far more relief in him than guilt. He just really hadn’t wanted to make that all-day drive to Santa Fe in the treacherous daylight.
“What made you change your mind?” he asked Sato over their private intercom.
“Change mind about what, Bottom-san?” The security chief looked sleepy this morning. Either that or he’d been meditating in the square of sunlight falling on their seats and the rear bulkhead.
“About flying to Santa Fe rather than driving.”
Sato shook his head in that awkward, Oddjobby way. “Ah, no. We take the Sasayaki-tonbo only as far as Raton Pass and the state line. From there we take two trucks into New Mexico the rest of the way to Santa Fe. Getting to the vehicles was faster this way.”
Nick managed to limit his reaction to a nod. He turned his face away from Sato and concentrated on watching the abandoned ranches and subdivisions between cities and the little-used highway passing beneath them. They’d passed over Colorado Springs, and the Pikes Peak massif, already with some snow on its broad summit eleven thousand feet higher than the helicopter, was falling behind to their right.
“NICK, WHY DON’T WE try that new drug, F-two?” asks Dara.
They’re lying together in their bedroom on a sunny Saturday in January just ten days before Dara is to die. They’ve just made love in that slow, undramatic, but wonderful way that sometimes happens to married couples who’ve found the next level of intimacy.
For nearly six years, Nick has avoided flashing on these last months before Dara’s death, even the nicest memories, since the sense of impending doom overwhelms the pleasure of being with his beloved. But he’s made an exception this time because the half-remembered conversation from that January Saturday from five and a half years ago may be relevant to his new investigation.
Val is ten years old and away at a birthday party under Laura McGilvrey’s supervision all this long, slow afternoon.
“Seriously,” says Dara, stretching out naked against him. “You won’t try regular flashback with me, but why don’t we try this Flash-two everyone’s talking about? I hear it only allows happy thoughts.”
Nick grunts. He’s given up smoking but at this particular postcoital-glow moment he’s very aware of a hidden pack on the shelf in the closet just a few paces away. “Flash-two isn’t real,” he says. “It’s an urban myth. Sorry to break it to you, kid.”
“Well, heck and spit,” says Dara. “I assumed that this was just the official line but that you’d really busted F-two users and had vials and vials of the stuff in your evidence room.”
“Nope,” says Nick and draws his finger up the curve of her bare side. He enjoys watching the goose bumps break out. “Pure nonsense. No such drug. But why the hell would you want to use it if it were real? We’ve never even tried regular flashback.”
“Because you wouldn’t let us if I wanted to,” fake-pouted his young wife. This was an old joke, her wanting to use various illicit substances, this oh-so-daring child bride of his who thinks that an extra glass of wine with dinner is a sin.
He takes her head in his large hands and shakes it gently. “What’s bothering you? Something is.”
She rolls over and props herself on her elbows so she can look at him. “I so wish we could talk, Nick. We can’t talk.”
Knowing that it’s the worst possible thing to do in this sort of marital conversation, Nick still has to laugh.
Dara moves a few inches farther away from him and pulls up a pillow to hide her lovely breasts.
“Sorry,” says Nick. And he is. He knows he’s hurt her feelings. And he’s sad that she’s covering herself in front of him. “It’s just that we talk all the time, kiddo.”
“When you’re home.”
“And when you’re home,” he retorts. “You’ve been coming home late and traveling weekends as much or more than I have.” And again he’s sorry he said anything.
“Our jobs…,” she whispers.
Hovering above the conversation, listening in on his own thoughts from then as well as to his and Dara’s dialogue from that day more than five years ago, Nick is close to deciding that his hunch was wrong… she hadn’t said anything pertinent that day.
“I thought we liked our jobs,” Nick-then says. Idiot. Dolt, thinks Nick-now.
“We do. I did. But they keep us from talking about… well, work things.”
The then-Nick thinks he understands. There’s a lot about the Keigo Nakamura investigation that he hasn’t been free to talk to Dara about since she works for District Attorney Mannie Ortega. The then-Nick thinks that she resents his silence.
“I’m sorry, Dara. There are just things that I haven’t been able to talk about and…”
Amazingly, she balls her hand into a fist and hits him on his chest. It isn’t a joke-punch; she strikes hard enough to make a red mark.
“You idiot,” she says and he’s even more startled to see tears in her eyes.
“Does it ever occur to you that there are things about my job that I can’t talk to you about but would like to? Need to?”
He’s smart enough—for a change—not to admit this, but in truth this possibility hasn’t really occurred to Nick. Since Dara is head researcher for one of the assistant district attorneys, old Harvey Cohen, with whom Nick has never been that impressed, he can’t imagine much in her work life that she couldn’t talk to Nick about if she wanted to. As far as he knows, the DA’s office, much less Harvey, doesn’t have any cases pending that Nick has been involved in or would have to go to court to testify about.
“It’s not right,” says Dara, putting her flushed face into the pillow. “But I guess it doesn’t matter… it’s almost over… just a few more days, maybe a week, Mannie says…”
“Mannie Ortega?” says Nick. He’s never liked the ambitious, shrewd, but not very bright DA. “What the hell has he got to do with anything?”
“Nothing, nothing, nothing,” says Dara and rolls over on her side, facing away from him now and still hugging the pillow to her chest.
But her lovely back and lovely backside are bare, and Nick presses himself against them, putting his left arm around her, his forearm encountering only pillow. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy…”
She reaches back over her head and touches the top of his head with her fingers. “It’s stupid. Forget everything I said, Nick. I’ll explain… when I can. Soon.”
He kisses her neck.
And, he realizes floating above the conversation at the end of this fifteen-minute flash, he almost had forgotten the entire conversation. He still didn’t understand what she’d been talking and crying about. Something at work—her work—obviously had been bothering her for some time.
“Shall we take that nap we came in for an hour ago?” whispers Dara, turning back toward him. Her breath is sweet from tears.
“Sure, let’s take a short snooze,” says Nick. “I’ll lock the door in case Val gets home from the birthday party before we wake up.”