That was how she felt now. Only this time the frog was eating the snakes.
No… not eating.
Jack spit out the eyeball. Alicia felt her gorge rise as it splatted against the side window of the car. The bloody, gelatinous mass stuck there for a heartbeat or two, then began a slow slide down the glass, leaving a glistening red trail.
Joey's screams devolved to moans as his two buddies watched the misshapen eye come to rest at the bottom of the window.
"But brown eyes are tasty too," Jack said with a bloody grin as he took a step toward them.
Both men jumped back, the Hispanic almost knocking over the black in his haste to get out of Jack's reach.
"I'm outta here, meng!" he said as he backed away.
"Yo, Ric! What about Joey!"
"Fuck him!"
The black tried to grab him, but Ric slipped from reach and backpedaled down the sidewalk.
"That guy's fuckin' crazy!"
Jack took another step toward the black. "You have such big brown eyes."
That did it. The black guy turned and hurried to catch up with Ric.
"Yo, Joey," he said to his fallen buddy. "Catch you later."
But Joey didn't seem to hear. He was bent far over, his head almost on the pavement, wiping at his face.
Jack watched them go, then pumped his fist toward the car.
"Yes!"
As Jack spat red into the gutter and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, Alicia began backing away. Slowly. She didn't want to attract Jack's attention. What had she got herself into? She was glad she hadn't hired him to burn the house. She didn't care if he'd found the stolen toys, she wanted nothing more to do with this maniac.
But then Jack turned and spotted her.
"Did you see that?" he said with a bloody grin. "It worked! Worked like a charm!"
And then his grin faded. Maybe he'd seen her expression. Alicia was trying to hide the fear and revulsion roiling within, but she doubted she was doing very well.
"Hey, wait!" he said. "You don't really think—"
He started toward her. Alicia turned to run but felt a hand close about her upper arm after two steps.
"No, please," she said as he pulled her to a stop. "Let me go! Let me go or I'll scream!"
"Just give me a second," he said. "I just want you to look at something, then you can go. Okay?"
He sounded so reasonable, so… sane. The nerdy voice was gone. She glanced over her shoulder at him. That vacant look from a moment ago was gone too.
But his mouth was still smeared with red.
"Look," he said, and extended his free hand toward her.
Hesitantly, Alicia glanced down.
Eyes… two eyes… one brown, one blue… soft, glistening, sticky looking… rested in his palm.
She recoiled at first, ready to scream, then noticed the lack of blood. A closer look and she realized…
"They're fake."
"Of course they are," Jack said. "You can buy them in any of the funkier novelty shops in the Village."
Alicia glanced over Jack's shoulder at Joey who was sitting up now, but still hunched over, cupping a hand over his eye.
"But what did you do to him?"
Jack showed her a little plastic squeeze bottle filled with red liquid. "Just a little squirt with this. It's Hollywood blood mixed with ten percent capsicum—you know, that pepper extract they use in those defense sprays? I fill the eyeballs with non-spicy fake blood so when I bite down on them I get red in my mouth. Excuse me." He turned away and spat more red into the gutter. "Looks real and tastes awful."
"Looks real is right. I could have sworn—"
Jack's eyes were bright as he looked at her. "Really? You bought it too? A doctor and all? That's great! I can't tell you how long I've been waiting for a chance to try this out."
"For a minute I thought you were going to start a fight with them."
"One against three?" He shook his head. "That's movie stuff. You might get away with it if you take them by surprise and you've got a weapon of some sort. But most times, you try something like that in real life, you get your face rearranged. I'm not into pain. And this is so much neater."
He stepped over to the car and retrieved the faux-bloody faux eye from the window.
"It worked," he said, more to himself than to her. "It was perfect."
He's like a little boy, she thought. A little boy who made something—a wood block car, or a slingshot, maybe—and is delighted to find that it really works.
She watched him grab the ring in Joey's eyebrow and haul him to his feet.
"Come on, Joey," he said, turning him toward Alicia. "I don't think the lady really believes me. Show her your eye."
"I believe you," she said.
But Jack didn't seem to be listening. "Come on, Joey. Open up and show her both baby blues."
Joey's red-smeared left eyelids parted to reveal a teary, very irritated but intact eye.
"Good boy," Jack said, then turned Joey and pushed him off in the direction his friends had taken. "Go find your buddies."
Jack watched Joey for a moment as he stumbled away, then he turned to Alicia.
"I'll be in touch."
He waved, then turned and walked off.
Alicia stared after him. She hoped he decided to help her out. This was someone she wanted in her corner.
3
"There you are!"
Sam Baker spoke aloud in the otherwise empty car as he caught sight of the Clayton babe. For a few bad moments there he'd thought he'd lost her.
He settled back in the driver seat and loosened his grip on the wheel. His shoulders ached. He hadn't realized how tense he'd been since that cop had told him to move his car.
Relax, he told himself. We're back on track now.
He'd followed her to the Upper West Side from the AIDS center, and had watched her go into that dive called Julio's. He'd found a spot with a good view of the door and had settled in to watch.
Well, he'd been sitting there only a few minutes, just starting to memorize the license plates around him, when this cop came along. Seemed Baker's vantage point came with a fire hydrant attached to it. And though Baker had tried to explain that he was just waiting for someone and would keep the motor running, the cop didn't care.
"Drive it away or it gets towed away."
Not much of a choice.
So he'd pulled out and rolled down the street, looking for an empty legal spot. Fat chance. He would have loved to step into that bar and have a quick beer while he checked out who she was meeting, but he couldn't risk getting towed. So he'd kept moving, kept circling the block, waiting for her to come out.
But then when he finally did spot her coming through the door, he was already past the bar. And when he stopped and blocked the street, some bastard cab started honking like he was coming from a wedding. Baker had been driving this rented white Plymouth for two days now. After he'd seen the Clayton babe staring his way on Friday, he figured she might have made the gray Buick. He didn't want to draw any attention to this one, so he'd raced into another circle of the block, which turned into an agonizing crawl.
But now everything was cool. He didn't know what she'd been doing since he'd scooted out of sight, but who cared? She was just about where he'd left her.
The cell phone rang. Baker could guess who that was—the Arab had been on his case something fierce since the girl's lawyer exploded.
"Yeah?"
"You are with the woman?"
"Like stink on shit."
"Pardon?"
"She's uptown. Flagging down a cab as we speak."
"Where has she been? Meeting another lawyer?"
"She was in a bar."
"In a bar? Does she appear inebriated?"
"You mean drunk?" Really weird the way this guy talked. Arab to the bone but he spoke English like a Brit. "No. Tell you the truth, I don't think it has anything to do with what we're interested in. Probably meeting a boyfriend or something."
>
"She does not have a boyfriend."
Baker watched the Clayton babe's loose skirt tighten across her butt as she bent to get into the cab. Nice ass.
Hard to believe she was completely unattached. She wasn't bad-looking. At least what he'd been able to see of her. A little makeup, a tight skirt, she could be a real looker. Instead…
Maybe she was a lez. Nothing wrong with that. He could get off on a lez. He figured their only problem was they hadn't met the right man yet.
"If you say so," Baker said.
"And you have no idea who she was meeting."
"Didn't get a chance to find out. But I don't think she met a lawyer in that dump." Baker almost added, But you never know, but decided against it.
He hoped to hell she hadn't.
"You are not paid to think. I do not like what happens when you try to think."
Here we go, he thought. But the Arab didn't push it.
"Where is she headed?" Muhallal said.
"On her way back downtown. I'm right behind her."
"Good. Follow her and do nothing else."
Baker cut the connection and slammed his hand against the steering wheel. He thought about the wad of cash waiting in escrow for him, and he kept it in mind as he drove. A big fucking payoff, and he deserved every fucking penny of it for all the shit he was taking.
4
Yoshio Takita finished off the second burrito as he followed Sam Baker's car. He'd picked them up earlier from someplace called Burritoville. He'd never heard of the chain, but was glad he'd tried it. He smacked his lips. These had been called "Phoenix Rising" burritos. He loved them. In fact, he'd yet to meet an American fast food he didn't like. And it was all so cheap over here. Back home in Tokyo it cost a small fortune to eat at one of the American chains that dotted the city.
He worried about getting fat, but his metabolism seemed to chew up the calories as fast as he shoved them in. That was good. It wouldn't do to develop a potbelly in his line of work, not at age thirty.
He wiped his hands and his mouth with the napkin, then settled both hands on the wheel. Had to be watchful here. Not for Baker—the man was a soldier for-hire, not an operative; his tailing skills were crude at best, and he hadn't the slightest idea he himself was being followed. No, the problem was getting left behind at a light. If Yoshio were tailing only one of them, the task would be fairly easy. But tailing Baker as he tailed the woman, that tended to stretch the chain too far for comfort.
But what Baker lacked in grace and style, he more than made up for in ruthlessness. Yoshio had learned that last week when he followed him out to that attorney's house on Long Island. He'd seen Baker tampering with the man's car, but had assumed he was installing either a tracer or a bug. If he'd realized that Baker was planting a bomb, he'd have called the attorney to warn him.
Enough people had died already.
According to Yoshio's employer, Kaze Group in Tokyo, 247 people were already dead because of something Ronald Clayton knew or had discovered. Yoshio had witnessed the death of one other a few weeks ago. And last Friday, the death of Leo Weinstein raised the grand total to 249.
Apparently the board of Kaze Group knew no more than Yoshio. Or at least they pretended not to. They told him they did not know why Ronald Clayton and his house were so important to this Arab Kemel Muhallal; but if it was worth the lives of so many innocent people, then certainly it was worth their effort to look into it.
They knew more than that, he was sure. Although nominally just a simple holding company, Kaze Group was more powerful than the largest keiretsu. It had global reach. But obviously they didn't know all they wished to know.
And so the board had called upon Yoshio, as they tended to do when they had a problem that needed to be handled with discretion, and sent him to America to learn more for them. It helped that English was one of the four languages he spoke fluently. His assignment was to be their eyes and ears here. They had secured a set of diplomatic license plates to afford him more latitude with the city's traffic and parking regulations. He was to watch, to listen, and to report back to them.
They had sent him alone. He had no backup here now, but should the need arise, help could arrive within hours.
So far he had learned nothing new. But Kaze Group was patient. Always it took the long view. He would stay here as long as they wished him to.
Gladly. The food was wonderful. He glanced at his dashboard clock. Soon it would be lunchtime. He could hardly wait.
5
Jack sat in the front window on the second floor of Pinky's Drive-in and watched Seventh Avenue directly below. "Jingle Bell Rock" wafted from the speakers set among the hubcaps on the wall as he sipped a Snapple peach iced tea from the bottle and scanned the mob below.
And a mob it was. Christmas shoppers, school trips, parents with their bundled-up kids waddling behind them like chubby ducklings, all streaming onto the already congested streets from Penn Station, heading for Macy's, FAO Schwartz, the Warner and Disney stores, the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. And this was only a Monday. Wait till Wednesday—matinee day.
The crowds brought out the flyer guys in force, standing like starter jacket-wrapped stones in the flow, handing out party-colored sheets offering everything from a dollar off a fried chicken special, to a Special Overstock Sale, to Live Girls—Nude! Nude! Nude!
Catty-corner across the intersection Jack could see workmen inflating a huge snowman above the Madison Square Garden marquee.
Christmastime in the Big Apple…
And then he spotted a guy with a pink carnation sticking out of his jacket. He watched closely to see if anyone appeared to be with him.
Nope. Looked like Jorge had arrived alone, as instructed.
Jack went over to the stairs and scanned the first floor. The lunch crowd hadn't hit yet. Jack didn't see anyone who looked like he might be with Jorge—no rules against your backup preceding you to a meet—so he leaned over the stair rail and signaled to him.
"Jorge!" he called. "With the carnation. Buy something and then—" He jerked his thumb back up the stairs.
Jorge nodded.
A few minutes later he came up the stairs, spotted Jack, came over. He extended his hand.
"Mr. Jack?" he said in thickly accented English. He wore a heavy shirt that mixed black, yellow, and orange in an odd pattern; a chrome chain stretched fore and aft from a loop of his black denims to his wallet and heavy key ring. His nose and lips were thick, his cheeks deeply and extensively pocked. He looked like an overweight Noriega, but without the sinister smugness. "Thank you for meeting me."
"Welcome to my office," Jack said, shaking hands.
Used to be, Jack met all his potential customers at Julio's. It was still his favorite place for a first meet. Julio was an excellent screener—had a sixth sense about people, and he could pat someone down without their having an inkling they'd been searched. But then Jack began to worry that he was getting too closely connected with the place—and that could be bad for him and Julio.
So he'd started varying the location of his "office." Pinky's Drive-in was a new one. He kind of liked the idea of a place with no parking and no drive-through that had the guts to call itself a drive-in. He liked the tacky retro ambiance of the turquoise-and-white tile and pink neon in the service area below, and the hubcaps—not shiny new hubcaps, but old banged-up veterans of the road—nailed to the wall up here in the second-floor seating area. Liked this high perch over the street, liked the emergency exit door at his back that opened onto a stairway to the first floor.
Plus it was easy enough to find: Go to Seventh and Thirty-third and look for a place with a big neon Cadillac above the door.
Jorge deposited a quarter-pound Pinky Burger and a Budweiser on the table as he seated himself.
"So let's talk," Jack said. "I know the basics, but I want to get more details to see if this is workable."
According to Jorge, he was an Ecuadorean who ran a small office-maintenance bus
iness. Nothing big, just a couple of crews of three—he worked on one of the crews himself—who cleaned offices by night. Hard work, long hours, but it was a living. He was able to pay his bills and his workers. But he had a problem: a deadbeat client named Ramirez.
"And what really pisses me off," Jorge said, "is he's a brother."
"Your brother?"
"No way, man. I mean a brother of Ecuador. He tol' me he was giving me the work because we come from the same country. He say he is a peasant who come here and make good, and he want to help me, a brother peasant, become rich like him." He swigged his Bud and slammed it on the table. "All bullshit! The real reason he hire me and my guys is he know he can rip us off."
"You said he owes you six thousand."
"Right. And I never would have let the bastard get so far behind. But he keep telling me that business is slow, that his own customers are not paying him, but a big contract is due at the end of the year and he will settle up everything then with interest. And because he is a fellow Ecuadorian, a brother peasant"—he spat the word—"I believe him and keep coming back with my crew, night after night, week after week." Another sip, another slam on the table. "More bullshit! He never intend to pay me. Never!"
"Here's where I start to lose you," Jack said. "You must have some sort of contract with him."
Jorge nodded. "Of course. I always get one."
"But you tell me you've tried every legal means of getting the money back. Seems to me if you have a contract—"
"Can't," Jorge said, shaking his head.
"Why not?"
"My crew. Two of them are cousins of my wife." His gaze shifted away. "They are not, um, legal."
"And this Ramirez guy knows that?"
"He know it from the start."
"Ah-ha." Jack leaned back and took a sip from his Snapple. "The plot sickens."
"Eh?"
"Nothing. So how do things stand between you two now?"