Part 4 (1/2)
”We do know his wife is Korean. What she was doing somewhere around the Laos-Cambodian border is anybody's guess. All we have for her is what we a.s.sume was a street name: 'So Long Li.' She is, however, reputed to be utterly absorbed in acquiring money, and quite skillful at doing so. Of the entire Cross gang, Buddha is the only one for whom we have an actual address-a freestanding house in the Uptown area. In his wife's name, of course.”
”What's wrong with that?”
”Nothing is 'wrong' with that, Tiger. The point was simply to emphasize his wife's obsession with materiality.”
”And what's this 'post-Vietnam' designation ...?”
”It's the same for all of them, Wanda. Apparently, some sort of bargain was struck between the man we know as 'Cross' and one of the ... agencies operating in the field at that time. All the records concerning Cross and Buddha have been death-wipe overwritten. How that came to include Ace-who never served in the military-is not information we have.”
”Not the first time that trick was pulled,” Percy said. ”Who cares about names, anyway? What I want to know is what that ... whatever we just saw ... what was that all about?”
”The Cross gang was hired by person or persons unknown to shut down a dogfighting operation,” the blond man said, in the bored voice of a Mafia don taking the Fifth for the hundredth time.
”And for that they slaughtered a couple dozen people?” Percy responded, a faint note of admiration seeping into his deep voice.
”That's how he came by his name.”
”Huh?”
” 'Cross.' That's not just the name he 'enlisted' under, it's his reputation. He specializes in twofers, understand?”
”Kills the guy who hires him to kill another guy?”
”Nothing that simple, but that's the idea. If he got paid to take out a couple of individuals inside that building by one person and put the dogfighting operation out of business by another, that would be more consistent with his reputation.”
”The cops,” Percy asked, ”didn't they lean on the others? The ones who walked out, I mean.”
”There were no survivors,” the blond man said, no trace of surprise in his voice. ”The crowd that walked out walked into ... something. They ended up exactly like the Canyon Killings, every one of them.”
”Good,” Tiger snarled.
”What are you, PETA on steroids?” Percy cracked.
”Anytime you want to find out-”
”Enough!” the blond man said, using his broken-record voice.
”All this ... stuff,” Wanda complained. ”We have names like 'Cross' and 'Buddha' and 'Rhino' and 'Ace' and 'Princess.' That's it? Speaking of which, do we at least have a real name for this 'Princess'?”
”Not even close,” the blond man told her. ”All we know is that a crew Cross put together did some kind of 'work' in Central America. We don't know who he did it for, but we do know two things: one, he lost a couple of men in that operation, and two, he brought Princess back with him.”
”Lost a couple of men?” Tiger mused aloud.
”Yeah, that's another thing about this guy. He's obsessed with revenge. You want to see the effects of real terrorism, just say his name around any of the local gang leaders. But if we don't know the ident.i.ties of the men he lost, we can't know if he ever took care of whoever he held responsible.”
”That's a good rep to have,” Tiger said. ”Makes anyone thinking of pulling a fast one think again.”
”That's not just his rep,” the blond man corrected her, ”it's part of a profile we commissioned. Outside his own crew, people are nothing but chess pieces to him. Like I said before, a sociopath.”
”Right. And he's still with the same men he partnered up with a million years ago?”
”I'm not disagreeing. Any idiot would make that connection. I agree-that single fact contradicts the diagnosis. And we'll confirm that with the doctor when the chance comes. We do know one thing which binds his crew completely. A question anyone who wants to join them has to answer. But it's just a phrase, and we can't translate it.”
”Well?” Wanda said, tapping the side of her keyboard with her fingernails to indicate her impatience.
”Here it is: 'Do you hate them? Do you hate them all?' ”
”Who's 'them'?”
”There are hundreds of pages of guesses. But that's all they are-guesses.”
”Bunch of psychos,” Percy dismissed the ”info” with his usual gift for a.n.a.lysis.
”Could be,” the blond agreed. ”But our Mr. Cross has got one thing going for him that has always worked as a convincer.”
”Which is ...?”
”He doesn't care if he lives or dies. And it seems as though everybody in this city's underground knows it.”
THE MAN called Cross got up and walked through a beaded curtain made up of ball bearings. He entered a back room, three other men behind him. His handprint unlocked a thick door. A blinking orange light alerted him that calls had been made from the pay phones in the poolroom since the system had last been checked.
Buddha tapped the ”playback” key. He closed his eyes to concentrate on the tape.
Less than a minute later, he said: ”It's what we thought, boss. Reporting to Chang. Only surprise was the guy speaking Mandarin. You'd think Cantonese, coming from those boys. Must be Hong Kong, not mainland.”
”You know what to do,” Cross said.
Buddha pulled a throw-away cell phone from his field jacket, punched in a number, and had a brief conversation in a language none of the others understood.
”I just told the gray-tooth headman that Chang was working for the federales, boss. He said to tell you his 'grat.i.tude' was on its way.”
”Chang was going, anyway. Bringing in those MS-13 boys was a mistake. Thinking he could control them, that made it a fatal one.”
”You got that right,” Buddha agreed. ”That MS-13 crew's crazy enough to do any d.a.m.n thing, but crazy don't beat crafty, and those Cambos are some seriously evil plotters.”
”They had to be.”
”To stay alive when Pol Pot was running that slaughterhouse? Amen to that.”
”Yeah,” Cross said, without much interest. ”Time for me to move out, get this rolling.”
AS THE others were re-entering the poolroom, Cross climbed a flight of stairs taking him out of the bas.e.m.e.nt, opened a back door, and exited into the street.
Twenty steps later, he slid into an alley, walking behind an overflowing Dumpster which concealed a metal door. Then he began to climb a long flight of pebble-pocked steel steps.
At the first landing, he pulled out a pocket flash, illuminating a shelf. He took a small bottle off the shelf and sprayed a mist over his right hand. He then took a clean handkerchief and wiped the back of that hand, using only moderate force. The lightning-bolt scar disappeared.
Cross then removed a pre-moistened sheet of fibrous cloth from a slotted box and carefully draped it over his right hand. With his left, he ran a small hair dryer over the sheet for a few seconds. When the sheet was pulled away, the familiar bull's-eye tattoo was back in place.
He then exchanged his leather jacket and T-s.h.i.+rt for an expensively cut charcoal alpaca suit, complete with a stylishly retro fedora. The same alligator boots he had worn when speaking with the woman in the poolroom remained in place. Almost as an afterthought, he spit out the wads of spirit gum that had deformed his facial features while he had been inside the poolroom.