Internecine Read online

  We were ushered past a few more homicidal-looking dudes with a lot of piercings and tattoos—half of them looked mildly high—into an office where most of the furnishings were stacks of paper and boxes. The dust layer was nearly an inch thick. This was the room with the window shutters. The centerpiece was a banged-up, metal office desk the size of a big refrigerator laid on its side. There were seven separate multiline phones on the desk, and what I took to be some “drug paraphernalia,” based on what I’d seen in movies.

  Seated behind a fly-vision bank of security monitors was Varga, who resembled a generational dime-a-dance mix among Asian and Mexican partners, with some of our darker brethren stirred in to cool his gaze. The sclerae of his eyes were completely yellow. He was shaved bald (you could see the pattern lines on his pate) and had a gold stud in his upper lip, as though to plug a small-caliber bullet hole.

  “You the last motherfucker I expected to see,” said Varga, not standing. His hands were knobby, callused, and prearthritic; he kept both in plain view on the desk blotter. “Who’s the luggage?”

  “This is my associate, Mr. Lamb.”

  I realized he was talking about me. I stood back, partially in shadow from the feeble throw of the desk lamp, folded my hands, and tried to hang tough.

  “What’d you do to his head?”

  “Bizarre flossing accident.” Dandine indicated the monitors. “You expecting celebrities?”

  Varga was keeping his gaze on the multitude of tiny TV screens, speaking to us without looking at us a whole lot, his eyes scanning left to right, giving each screen about three seconds in succession, then back to one.

  “Things have been weird for a couple hours now,” he said.

  Dandine got right to it. “Alicia Brandenberg—I need to know everything you know about her.”

  “Who?” Varga grinned, finally looking at Dandine for the first time that counted. It was part of the jockeying.

  “Shit,” said Dandine, looking to the side, disappointed. “I didn’t want to waste any of your time, and here you are, wasting it anyway.” He blew out a long sigh and sank both hands into his pockets.

  “Careful,” said Varga. Two goons appeared to bracket the door, like djinn, gently summoned from a bottle.

  Dandine withdrew his hands and showed them in the light, front and back. “Anyway. Alicia Brandenberg, spelled the same as the town. A political pain in the ass that needed tweezing. Except she found out, and she called some guys, who called you. And you sent home delivery right before midnight. Extra sauce. Sorry, but the service was lousy, so no tip. It all smells like NORCO to me, and you know what we say about whatever NORCO says.”

  “Yeah.” Varga grinned. “Do the opposite.”

  “Now, you can catch me up on the details, all of which I don’t know. But I’m a good guesser. Or, you can be an asshole. Please don’t be an asshole; if it’s NORCO, you’re so far down the pecking order that it won’t hurt you.”

  “Cost me a good little worker, looks like.”

  “Yeah. Otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here with Mr. Lamb. I’m here to make good on that. All I need is a contact.”

  “Fuck you. Why should I help you now? You owe me from before; you got too big for your pantalones, dick-suck. Get the fuck outta here before I shoot you in the ass and make Thule eye-fuck your faggot lover, there.”

  Dandine refused to rise to the bait. “C’mon, Vargs, you’re just pissed about your little honey. I understand that.”

  “Man, she was the bomb, and you just fuckin broke her in two before I could really run her.”

  “Not true. The delivery itself was spoiled and inedible. I didn’t unplug her. Neither did Mr. Lamb. The delivery was suckered. You were lied to. They used firebacks, Vargs. Not pretty. Mostly what we did was clean up the mess. NORCO got there before there was time to say good, Catholic last rites. Check out what I say. Or just wait for NORCO to show up here.”

  That was what Dandine had whiffed back in the car; why Varga was on paranoid watch right now. They were waiting for the intrusion of NORCO to throw a spooky shadow. Like the moment in a slasher movie where you finally catch a glimpse of the mystery killer, who might or might not be supernatural.

  “Fuck,” said Varga. “I don’t need that political-governmental bullshit up in my backyard. I hate fucking politics. Religion, too.”

  “That’s why I think they used an intermediary to contact you. You’re out of the loop. You didn’t know. For now. I could mention your name, if you want.”

  “No fuckin way. So I give up the middleman to you, and you go on some fuckin rampage, and what do I get? Shit-fire, dude, I’m out one of my little worker bees, and the contract was blown, and I wind up holding dick.”

  “That’s why I thought about it.”

  “Poor Marisole. She was a sweet little piece. Lotta potential.”

  Conrad, come on, it’s me, Celeste, from down the hall? 307? Conrad? Open up, please . . .

  “No, Vargs, she was a beginner you let free-range too goddamned early.”

  I was still puzzling “deliveries” and “spoiled food.” Dandine and Varga had just had an entire conversation about contract killing without once mentioning it.

  “Doesn’t your amigo there say anything?” Varga was looking at me.

  “Ask me a question,” I said, making my own heart punch me in the chest. I wanted to break another window. Then I thought: Dandine brought me in order to unbalance them. Why not really throw a wrench?

  Varga was now staring directly at me, like one of those lizards with no eyelids. “It go down like our man here said?”

  My mouth was functioning independently of my brain. “Yeah—I’m the guy she tried to kill.”

  Without a sound, the room filled up with drawn guns.

  Thule had appeared in the doorway behind an enormous double-barreled shotgun, flanked by two of the giants outside, who drew pistols so large they looked science-fictional. Varga was leaning across the desk pointing some kind of revolver at me. The cylinder was the size of a soup can. All my eyes could see were the guns, and all the guns looked gigantic.

  I missed Dandine’s move. The space he had occupied was vacant.

  Somehow, Dandine had folded behind one of the big enforcers by the door, coming at him head-on but rolling around him en passant, like a dance move. He now held the roughneck by the larynx in midbreath, and had the guy’s pistol leveled at Varga.

  And still, amid all this, Varga kept watching his screens. The guy was good at multitasking, if nothing else. Or he was really afraid of something bigger than a mere crowd of tough dudes with guns.

  Thule was too large to get completely out of the way, jostling the other watchdog off target as he tried to point the shotgun at Dandine. No good; too much gun. He’d have to back up two paces and blast through his partner’s skull to hit Dandine, and he looked like he might do it anyway.

  “We don’t have to do this,” said Dandine, as calmly as ordering extra fries.

  “Tell me a little bit more,” said Varga, his eyes turning red.

  I could have been naked or wearing a clown suit. No matter what the humiliation level, it was showtime.

  I imagined the desk as a conference table. Varga’s thugs as attorneys. The guns as deal points.

  “You’re the victim of an information gap,” I began shakily. “Your contact told you as little as we knew, and when that happens you get collateral damage. It’s nobody’s fault—you were just doing your job. That’s clear from what happened to your . . .” What the hell was a good word for Celeste? Worker? Employee? Independent contractor? “. . . your girl.”

  Varga’s gun dipped a quarter of an inch.

  “And it was me or her, believe that. You already suspect it’s true because you’re not stupid. And we came here to put things right, not kill each other in a blaze of glory. If you were truly in the loop, you would have known my face. You didn’t. I saw it when I walked in. That means you’ve been lied to. So have we.” I spread my hand
s wide, the only guy in the room without a firearm. “That’s it, man.”

  Varga lowered his weapon. “See, that’s what I’m talking about—respect,” he said to Dandine. He waved a hand and Thule backed off. Dandine handed the pistol back to his gasping cohort with a wry little smile.

  “See, this guy,” said Varga to me, meaning Dandine, “I never know what to think because he’s always trying to play me. If he’d’a told the story, it would have been all prettified with made-up shit designed to fool me. The way you tell it, it was so simple it had to be a fuckup.”

  “If he’d made a mistake, I would have said something.” I couldn’t believe I was saying this, as though I had rank.

  “All we want is the contact,” said Dandine. “You’re out, you’re clear, you’re away from it.”

  Varga’s yellow-red gaze narrowed. “So what do I get?”

  Dandine stepped forward. “Ten thousand, cash, now.”

  Varga sniffed. “Twenty.”

  “Deal.” Dandine didn’t even blink.

  “You got it on you?”

  Dandine permitted himself a small, deadly smile. “Amigo, I might let Thule take my gun and play with it awhile, maybe shoot off a couple of his own toes, but I’m not going to let him take my wallet, you hear what I’m saying?”

  “So . . . what the fuck?”

  Dandine opened his hands toward Varga in a broad gesture, raising his eyebrows. Just like I had. You be fair, I will, too, and we both walk away conscious.

  Varga expelled a hiss of disgust. “Dude’s name is Butcher. I’m not kidding; that’s his fuckin name.”

  “And you met Mr. Butcher . . . where?”

  Varga was rubbing his head, confessional, resigned almost. “Union fuckin Station.”

  “Okay, we’re almost done. Now you hook me up. Can I ask you a question?”

  Varga shrugged. “Nine and a half inches, soft.” His primary focus of attention was back on the little screens. I noticed Dandine noticing this.

  Dandine ignored Varga’s interpretation of levity. “How much did Mr. Butcher arrange to pay for little Marisole’s contract?”

  “Aww, you suck, man!” He moved things around on the desktop, uselessly, caving in. “Ten K.”

  “Well, then, you just made yourself an additional ten, for answering a single question. Come with us and I’ll put it in your hand.”

  Eyes still dancing across his monitors, Varga said, “Don’t insult me by assuming I’m that stupid. Thule can go. I can watch from right here.”

  He pointed at the fifth or sixth screen, presumably a shot of where Dandine had parked the car. I couldn’t see it from where I was standing.

  Dandine turned while grunting a small assent. “Sure you can.” His eyes found mine, and suddenly I believed in that mule-shit about telepathy, because I swear we had the same thought at the same time: Look at how much Varga is sweating right now.

  Mystery movement in the loading yard, the “parking lot.” Something fishy about the sentries. Varga’s refusal to lift his ass from a chair for an easy twenty thou. Conclusion: Varga was no longer in charge here.

  Somebody else was, and the whole exchange had been hijacked by something less noble than Hoyle’s rules for games.

  “Hey, Thule! You go with these dudes. You come back here with twenty large, damn quick, or I shoot your ass multiple times.”

  Thule filled up the doorway and nodded, like an Easter Island statue being subtly repositioned.

  “Call our dear Mr. Butcher. Tell him you’re aware of the screwup and you’ll send a man to make it right. I’ll meet him at Union Station on the Metro Rail Red Line platform in one hour. The place where the train changes to Hollywood. Good?”

  “What if Butcher’s like, a NORCO dude, and they wanna wax your ass?”

  “Oh, I guarantee they won’t recognize me. My problem. Your profit.”

  “I’m still out Marisole.”

  “Life sucks, what can I say?”

  “Use my phone,” said Dandine, handing Varga the secure mobile from the Halliburton just as he was reaching for his landline. “Then throw it away.”

  Varga made the call and it sounded level, but he eyeballed his monitors even more. Sweated more. Then he popped the battery and cracked the phone in two against the desk edge. “Happy now?”

  “Overjoyed,” said Dandine.

  “Goddamn-goddammit, I knew this wasn’t gonna be easy. Get the fuck outta my sight.”

  Somehow it was Varga’s last-minute fake bluster that convinced me we were in deep danger, despite the drug-deal atmosphere of cautious partnership. This part wasn’t over—it was just starting.

  We strolled out as we had strolled in, with Thule hulking at rear-guard. I still remember Varga, sitting in the middle of his dark spiderweb of a room, behind slug-proof shutters, posing himself as a kingpin, trapped in there by his own machinations. It was no caprice that he refused to accompany us and back, even with a bodyguard, to the parked car in the dark. He probably never saw daylight.

  More honestly, he would probably never see daylight again.

  Back in the industrial parking lot, my adrenaline soured into a flood of nervous perspiration. I had expected uncomprehending savagery and likely violence, a firefight or perhaps an exploding car . . . and Dandine and Varga had just talked in obscure code like two old homies.

  False alarm, maybe. Maybe.

  It was then, when my guard had been relaxed, that the violence I had fantasized paid a call. It had been there all along, waiting to be invoked. And it wasn’t done with me yet.

  Thule handed Dandine’s gun back to him as though passing a bag of chips. Dandine gave him the fatter of two envelopes from the trunk. Before he closed it, he grabbed a rucksack (his gear) out of the back.

  Calm and loose, Dandine touched my shoulder to make sure he had my undivided attention, and said, “Hit the ground now.”

  He said this simultaneously with the first gunshot as he shoved me down.

  Thule spun like a big fat carousel as several holes the size of my fist blossomed in the trunk lid. Dandine had already disappeared from the space he had occupied, taking me down with a forearm smash-dive that piled us both between the Sebring and a tarped trailer (the small kind you rent at U-Haul and hitch to your car, only this one was olive green). He landed on top of me.

  Gun out, Thule fired several useless, unaimed shots into the sky as he died, one big arm hanging him up on the trunk so it looked like he was sitting down for a break. I struggled to rise but Dandine pressed me back down to the gritty pavement.

  “Stay flat,” he said, lunging past me and hugging the car.

  More shots, from across the lot, I couldn’t tell where. Hard, fast slugs zinged off the car and the tarmac near my feet, and I curled up into a ball with my nose smelling the Sebring’s radials. The ricochets sounded like someone trying to tune a stringed instrument; low rubber-band hums. Hits disintegrated the taillights and holed the fenders with metal-work punch-through sounds that stung to hear. The tire next to my head hissed and the whole car sank toward my face.

  The playlist of my life’s ups and downs did not unreel behind my squeezed-shut eyes, but I did hastily redefine my concept of violence, as opposed to “action.” This was the real thing. All I could see was Celeste—Marisole—with half her head blown off. Exciting gunplay? No thanks. I thought I craved it, or needed it. I wasn’t thinking that now.

  Dandine’s grasp on my collar dragged me into a stumbling run.

  “They can’t see us—come on!”

  I expected Dandine would pop up near the hood, having produced some hidden weapon of awesome firepower, to eliminate the threat in a hot barrage of special killing projectiles. Nope. He stayed low and hustled us both out of there. He didn’t fire a single shot.

  About the time I was going to note some of this, or protest, or tender a comment about our situation, his hand clamped over my mouth. His voice in my ear was barely a whisper, but audible. “Shut up—not a word—this way.�
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  I wish I could say I participated. I wish I could say I was brave or manful. I had hit the deck hard enough to dislodge my fillings and had stayed curled up on the ground with my hands over my ears. This isn’t happening, no-no-no-la-la-la I can’t hear you.

  Like kids sneaking through a graveyard, we bought ourselves some distance. Then Dandine halted us in the shadow of a tractor-trailer. “Give ‘em a minute,” he said. I saw a vague glint of his tongue, working his teeth. We were subvisible.

  He had the key fob for the Sebring in his hand. When he pressed it, the car alarm chirped twice and then the car blew all to hell in a mushroom of eye-searing orange-yellow light. It illuminated several hostiles who became midair silhouettes as they were flash-fried. Doors, trunk, and hood exploded from their moorings, cartwheeled afire, and clattered. I imagined Thule’s abundant lipid tissue, beginning to sizzle to medium-rare. Flames curled up to lick the night sky, halating ground zero, and huffing a fogbank of laterally rolling smoke. The sound thunder-clapped my skull, like a batter swinging his lumber into my ear for a homer. I recoiled and came down on my left knee, hard enough to make standing back up even harder.

  Dandine marched me farther away like a corpsman dragging a casualty. “Now that’s a car alarm!”

  “Who are those guys?” I said, forgetting my admonition to myself about my budget of stupid questions.

  “You mean who were they. NORCO shooters. Dumb sonsabitches must’ve forgotten their night-vision.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Pattern of the first hit. They were shooting at shadows.”

  “How do you know it’s NORCO?”

  I could sense him smiling in the darkness. “Size of the first hit. C’mon, Sancho, they’ve got other worries right now.”

  “How do we get out of here?”

  He sniffed. “We walk out. Follow the tracks.”

  “What about the car?”

  He held up the rucksack. “I’ve got my gear. It was time for new wheels, anyway.”

  “You jumped before the first shot. Did you see them?”