Dark Specter

11

The moment Russell Crosby saw the venue, he knew it was going to be OK. This was Russ’s third time. By now he had a feel for these things.

It was a one-story frame house with a deep veranda located on a backstreet a couple of miles south of the city center, in an area called Pittsburgh. The main drag was called McDaniel, which ran all the way up to Peachtree. The time he went to scope it out, Russ got off the bus at the next neighborhood up, Mechanicsville. That was what he had been dreading: a mix of late-stage urban decay and scorched-earth redevelopment, housing projects ranked like prison blocks on a bare hillside. There was no place to hide, no reason for whitey to be there, and you didn’t need to read the spray paint to know who ran the streets after dark.

Russell had grown up in rural Washington, and had never actually seen a black person except on TV until he was fifteen and went into Seattle with some buddies. Even now, twenty years later, he had hardly had any dealings with them, good or bad. Nevertheless, the idea of going into a black neighborhood terrified him. Blacks were tough and proud and mean and different. You could never be sure what they were thinking or what they were going to do. The only thing you knew was that a hell of a lot of them had learned the hard way how to look after themselves.

But above all what scared him was the question of visibility. Russell knew he shouldn’t be thinking this way, as though something other than God’s will might be done. That was heresy. But looking at it from a strictly practical point of view, the success of the operations they had undertaken so far depended to a large extent on a profile so low as to be invisible. They came and went virtually unseen by anyone other than their victims. No one else noticed them at the time, and there was no one left to remember them afterward. But Russell knew that no white person could be invisible in a place like Mechanicsville. It didn’t matter that people had never seen you before and would never see you again. They already knew you. You were the enemy. There was nowhere you could go without being watched, nothing you could do without it being an object of interest.

So Pittsburgh came as a big relief. It was predominantly black, but with a way different feel, an old-fashioned neighborhood with a certain battered charm and a lush, green look which was almost rural. On McDaniel there were a couple of jerry-built food stores with heavy wire mesh over the windows. There were no national franchises at this end of town, no big-name brands or fancy advertising. Handwritten posters spelled out the price of fatback and beer and beans. There were also two places of worship, the Freedom Holiness Church of God in Christ and the African Methodist Free Church of Full Gospel.

That was down in the valley, on the flat. On either side, the cross-streets ran steeply up, the blacktop pitted with cracks and potholes. The houses were all small, a few barely more than shacks. All were of wood, some of it unpainted. Most had big porches with beat-up chairs set out and screens to keep out the bugs. But the basic look was country: mature trees laden with an abundance of verdure, gauds of foliage spilling out and over every surface, explosions of crepe myrtle, nature gone nuclear. A pall of kudzu vine had transformed some of the lower trees and shrubs into fantastic shapes, castles and monsters.

Kids of all ages were running loose in the street. A skinny old black guy with braces and a cane stopped to chat with a white-trash mother who had three children in a stroller built for one. A real sharp dude in a powder-blue suit with a purple shirt and white slip-on shoes was having a loud argument with a spectacular woman with a peach-shaped ass sheathed in a tight white dress which showed the outline of her panties. Behind a picket fence, two toddlers played in the copper-red earth.

Russ moseyed around a little, just to get the general feel, then walked down Carson Street itself, just once, and caught the bus back into town. He’d seen enough to know that it was going to be OK as far as the location was concerned. But that was only one of his worries. The other was his partner.

It was a big honor, of course, being the one chosen to handle this difficult assignment. By rights, Andy should have come, but after what happened with Dale his nerves were understandably shot. In the end, Rick had proposed Russell. He’d accepted, but with a heavy heart, because he knew that the subject of the initiation was Pat. The problem wasn’t just that Pat’d been born in the South, which meant blacks. The problem was Pat himself.

Any doubts he might have had about that were erased when he went down to the Greyhound station on International Boulevard to meet Pat off the bus from St. Louis, and the jerk had walked down the steps practically arm-in-arm with some babe he’d picked up. Russell hadn’t made the mistake of saying anything then, of course. He’d just strolled across as though heading for another bus himself, barged into Pat and slipped a business card into his hand. The card was from a motel on Ponce de Leon, a short walk from the hotel where he himself was staying. On the back of the card, Russell had drawn a map showing how to get there from the bus station.

The idea was that Pat should go straight to the motel, check in and wait for Russell to call him. Instead, the stupid ditz hung around the Greyhound station for about ten minutes while the girl worked the pay phone, and then they both went inside and sat there for another half hour over a couple of shakes. Next thing, they started sucking face across the table with a fervor that got noticed by plenty of people besides Russ. “Hey, get a room!” someone murmured. The young lovers were still at it when the waitress came up and said something to them. Pat threw a bill on the table and they headed outside, climbed into a cab and drove off together.

Russell would have aborted the whole operation there and then, except that he was worried about the effect that two fuckups in a row might have on morale. If people got the idea that they were on a losing streak, it would get harder and harder to turn the thing around. His next thought was to bone Pat in the ear but good when he called the motel later, but he thought better of that too. Pat’s breach of discipline had been so serious that it had to be dealt with face to face. He didn’t say a word about it on the phone, just set up the meeting for that evening and then headed off to check out the target.

Russell had chosen the location for the meeting with care. It was right downtown, just east of Five Points, a big chain pizza house with seating for over a hundred on two levels. In the early evening, the place was pretty busy with a youngish crowd that they’d fit right into. Turnover was fast, service impersonal. He got to the place early, found a table in a corner and ordered a slice of pizza and a coffee. He’d finished both and accepted a refill before Pat showed, twenty minutes late.

“Kind of got lost,” he said by way of greeting. “Went the wrong way on the subway, ended up in some suburb way to hell up north.”

Pat looked like a male hooker in his battered leather jacket, tight jeans and a huge Western-style belt. When the waitress came around, he ordered a whole pizza with pepperoni, double cheese and extra anchovies, plus a side of rings, a large Coke and a Caesar. Maxed-out as she was, that got her attention.

“That supper just for you, honey, or should I fix a plate for your friend?”

“I’m OK,” said Russell quickly.

“He could use a little meat on his bones at that,” said the waitress, glancing at Pat’s skinny torso.

When she’d gone, Russell gave Pat a cold, hard look.

“You’re something else, you know that? We can’t even go to a fucking pizza house without you coming on like the most unforgettable person anyone’s ever met!”

Russ expected Pat to be crushed by this. Instead, he looked offended.

“Hey, what’s the problem? I’m hungry, OK?”

“I bet! You’ve been up all night slamming body with that ’ho you snared on the bus, right?”

Pat tried to speak, but Russell overrode him.

“You know the rules! No contact beyond what’s absolutely necessary. I took Andy to Kansas, we spoke maybe ten words to anyone the whole time we were out! But you? You meet some fresh nugs on the road, next thing you’re swapping spit in the middle of a crowded bus station! Then you take off in a cab together, and now she’s shacked up with you, right? Even the geeks at that dirtball motel are going to remember that!”

“Maintain, Russ,” Pat warned as the waitress approached with his Coke.

His patronizing tone was just about the last straw. The way he was talking, you’d think Russ was the one in danger of flipping out.

“I guess that scene at the bus station was maybe notso-hotso,” Pat resumed in a more conciliatory tone. “But you’re making way too big a deal of all this. Cindy doesn’t know a thing about me. My name, where I’m from, what I’m doing here-nothing.”

“Yeah, right! She only knows what you look like, when you arrived, where from, where you’ve been staying …”

Pat leaned across the table.

“Don’t be such a worrywart, Russ! We’re doing God’s will here. What can go wrong?”

Russell squirmed and looked away. The little shit had end-run him. Although he knew that the outcome was in God’s hands, Russell couldn’t help seeing the thing in human terms. They had a job to do, and his partner was acting like a flake. And one thing he’d learned from his previous two experiences was that you had to be able to depend absolutely on your partner. Because if he screwed up, it was your ass that was going to be in a sling. But he couldn’t admit that, and Pat knew he couldn’t, which is why he was sitting there giving him that slimy grin.

“I’ve been to the house,” Russell said shortly. “We go in tomorrow.”

That knocked some of the sass out of Pat.

“Tomorrow?”

He sounded shocked.

“No point in hanging around,” said Russell. “The sooner it’s done, the sooner we can get out of here.”

Pat nodded slowly two or three times.

“How many … How many are there?”

“No idea,” Russ replied brutally. “I didn’t see anyone home when I walked by. Maybe one, maybe a dozen. God will decide.”

He accompanied this final phrase with a telling glance.

“Sure,” said Pat. His voice was still unsteady. “Only I was expecting a little more time. I only just got here.”

The waitress came with Pat’s food. He sat there, picking at it idly. His appetite seemed to have deserted him.

“So where do we meet?” he asked.

Russell outlined times, routes and places. Then he went through it all again, and got Pat to repeat it back to him.

“There’s a discount clothing store one block north of the bus station,” he continued. “Go in there tomorrow morning and buy yourself a black suit, white shirt, dark necktie, pair of plain black shoes, nothing fancy. I’m handing you a hundred and fifty bucks under the table now.”

Pat reached down and took the roll of bills.

“What if it comes to more than that?” he asked.

“Then you bought the wrong outfit. We’re talking Dacron, Ohio, here. The cheap nerd look.”

“But what’s the deal?”

Russ gave him another of those looks. He was back in charge now.

“The deal is that you get to do what I say, when I say, and keep your mouth shut. OK?”

They went over the details once more, then Russell got up, leaving Pat to deal with his cooling pizza and soggy onion rings. He leaned back over the table.

“Oh, and this Cindy …”

“She’s history,” Pat said, a little too quickly. He had obviously been expecting the question for some time. But Russell knew better than to contest something he couldn’t control.

“Let’s hope she feels the same way about you,” he said.

Despite the implied threat, he had no serious doubts about this. The very fact that getting laid had acted like such a drug on Pat’s ego proved he was a wimp in the sack, Russ reckoned. Look at the way he dressed. The bigger the belt buckle, the smaller the dick.

Russell walked back up Peachtree, passing an old flatiron office block, the winos and addicts in the park, the chic strip with its convention hotels. The air was clammy and still. By this time tomorrow it would all be over. It’ll be all right, he told himself, just like the other two times. Neither of them had been a smooth ride either. The baby had been the worst. Russ thought he’d prepared himself for anything that might come up, but the idea he might have to do it to a baby had never entered his head.

Rick had seen him through that one. After what he’d seen and done in the war, to say nothing of his own uniquely challenging initiation, Rick had been able to talk him through the whole experience. The gooks were so different, he explained, you could learn to kill them easy. With specters it was a lot trickier, because they looked just like anyone else. You needed faith. That’s what the whole thing was about, a test of faith.

But it wasn’t until Dale Watson had failed that test that Russell realized just how lucky he’d been. In the end he’d done fine, put the gun to the kid’s head and pulled the trigger as sweet as if they were back in practice. Even that noise from the basement later, as they were leaving, hadn’t freaked him out. He’d been sure there was someone else in the house, but Rick kept real cool, told him to check downstairs, and sure enough it was just a piece of wood that had fallen off the furnace housing.

The next time out, he’d been in charge. That had been a whole lot tougher, but he’d still managed to justify Rick’s commendation after his initiation in Renton: “This guy is the real deal.” First of all they’d had to get there. Kansas City wasn’t as far as Atlanta, but it still meant days on buses. It wasn’t a question of the money. They could have taken a plane and stayed at the best hotel in town, but that would mean passing through the hands of endless service personnel, any of whom might remember them. It would mean presenting documents and credit cards, and ending up on a computer somewhere. It was safer to travel poor and anonymous, down in the uncharted, free-flowing depths where no one cared where you were coming from or what you were doing, or even whether the name you gave was your own.

The hotel Russell was staying at in Atlanta was far from being the best in town, and by midnight he began to wonder whether it might not have been better to take the slight risk involved, pay extra and get a good night’s sleep. Nothing too fancy, maybe a HoJo, something like that. He’d had a lot of trouble adjusting to the climate ever since he arrived, but so far he’d been able to dismiss this as a matter of no importance, a trivial local particularity like the way southerners spoke. Now it took its revenge.

The night was sticky, hot, damp and airless. In theory the hotel had air-conditioning, but all the unit in Russ’s room produced was a flimsy draft only slightly cooler than the air in the room itself. Being from the Northwest, Russ automatically opened the window. That was a big mistake. The whole room started throbbing with the noise of traffic on the interstate right below the hotel, while a syrupy influx of moisture-laden air instantly pushed the conditions from the uncomfortable to the unbearable. The electric fan did nothing but stir the miasma around.

Calling the desk didn’t help either. Russ hesitated before taking this step, not wanting to impress himself on the guy’s mind. Some chance. The clerk’s mind was tuned to a whole other wavelength.

“No outlet!” he told Russ when he phoned to ask if the AC could be turned up.

“A vent?” Russ replied, not getting it. “Sure there’s one. It’s just it doesn’t condition the air worth a damn, you know what I mean? I’m like suffocating up here is what I’m saying. And I’ve got a big day tomorrow, so I need my sleep.”

“Limited sight distance!” said the clerk, and hung up.

On top of everything else, Russ had a recurrence of the vicious migraine which had tormented him for so many years. When he was accepted into the Sons of Los, it had ceased, as though to prove the power of the Secret. Now it was back, and he was powerless to deal with it. He’d given up carrying painkillers since the migraines had left him, and even if he found a drugstore open this time of night, the stuff they sold without a prescription wasn’t worth shit.

He tried everything: a cold shower, push-ups, light on, light off, lying down, sitting up. He even tried reading some verses from the scriptures he’d brought with him. Nothing made any difference to the particle of agony lodged in his skull. It wasn’t just the pain that drove him wild but the prospect of the next day. He’d need to be at his very best, and the way things were going he’d be about his worst. Laid out on his bed, the raptor pecking at his brain, he thought about Andy’s initiation in Kansas, replaying it like the video he’d made at the time.

Jesus, that had been tough! They’d done everything right. The woman had come to the door, Andy’d shown the gun and forced her back inside. Far as they knew, there was just the old guy in the wheelchair and her to deal with. They’d gagged him with a patch of duct tape and tied his wrists to the arms of the chair the same way, then trussed the woman. How were they to know there was a guy painting the kitchen? He’d opened the door, taken one look and dodged back inside. Luckily there was no lock on the door and no phone in there. But when they went in after him, the guy had thrown the contents of his paint tray at them before Andy could take him down, and the very next moment the old bitch next door starts hammering at the front door!

Realizing they couldn’t kill her too had been the worst. It would have been so easy, a shot to the skull and another corpse to add to the pile on the floor. But she hadn’t been in the designated house, so they had to keep her alive, same as Lenny and his initiate in St. Louis had been forced to do with the security guard they had to con to get into the high-rise in the first place. There wasn’t a damn thing they could do except tie him up and gag him, even though he’d seen them both and could identify them later.

He and Andy had backed the woman into her own pad, then barricaded her in the bathroom by pushing a big fridge up against the door. They’d taken a coat and scarf to cover the stains on Andy, who’d caught most of the paint, then coolly walked out and waited for the bus while the cops swarmed around like wasps around a barbecue. It had taken a lot of nerve, knowing the woman might identify them at any moment. But everything had gone smoothly. The whole secret was not trying to hide. No one would believe that the men who’d just wiped out a household in cold blood would be standing at a bus stop just a few blocks away.

They would use the same scenario here. Where everyone thought cars, taking the buses was like putting on a cloak of invisibility. Sometimes, like Russ’s initiation, they couldn’t do that. That time they’d gone on bicycles, bought for cash from a shop with a high turnover and later abandoned to be stolen. But around Seattle was different. Anyone on a bike in this part of Atlanta would stick out a mile. They would take separate buses, so they wouldn’t be seen together until they reached the scene. And afterward they’d leave the same way, Pat direct northbound, Russ heading south to the terminus at Hapeville, where he could pick up MARTA back to his hotel.

He lay on his bed of pain, clutching his head in the dense, sultry atmosphere, trying to hold the whole thing together. It was all there, he just had to contain it, to stop it from slipping away. Plus he must remember to make that call home. After what happened with Dale, they were going to be real anxious if they didn’t hear. He’d do it right after he called Pat.

After a night of bloodless torture, the migraine suddenly abated just as the sky outside was starting to grow light. Utterly exhausted, Russell collapsed, hugging his pillow damp with sweat. When he awoke, it was full daylight and the room was vibrating with the noise of a demolition project in progress on a neighboring block. Russ looked at his watch. It was twenty past ten. He reached for the phone, dialed the number of the motel. It rang and rang, then someone picked up.

“Uh huh?”

A woman.

“This 118?”

“Uh huh.”

There was a silence.

“Who is this?” the woman demanded.

Russ hung up. So his instinct last night had been right. Pat had lied about Cindy. There was no telling what she might have found out about him, and how much more she might have guessed. She would have asked questions, the way women always do, and Pat was a lousy liar.

He dressed and walked seven blocks down Peachtree to Macy’s, where he bought an outfit identical to the one he had specified for Pat the night before. He also bought a plain black suitcase. Putting the other purchases in this, he returned to the hotel, picking up a Big Mac and fries to eat in his room.

That afternoon he slept some more, a fitful, oppressive drowse infested by dreams so real it was like watching clips from a movie. The last featured a ringing telephone, and the noise of the bell was so loud and peremptory that Russell woke up, convinced that someone was calling him. The phone by his bed was silent. He checked his watch and realized that it was time to go.

He showered and changed into the clothes he had bought, then checked his appearance in the mirror. The hair was maybe a little long, but he would pass. He took the Gideon Bible from the drawer by the bed and put it in the empty suitcase, along with a copy of The Watchtower and some leaflets with titles like “Can the Dead Harm the Living?” A guy had been handing them out some place he’d changed buses. Russell had been about to tell him to go piss up a rope when he’d had an idea.

Religion was big down in the South. Everyone was into it, whites and blacks alike. So he’d got chatting with the guy and come away with a wad of literature which they would put to good use that evening. No one would think twice about a couple of guys in suits pitching their particular brand of redemption door to door. All they had to do was visit a couple of houses on the street first, then hit the target. “Hi, how are you folks doing today? We’re calling on people in this neighborhood to tell them about God’s plans for you.” Which was true enough, except they weren’t planning to tell them.

At six forty-five, Russell checked his preparations for the last time, picked up the suitcase and rode the elevator down to the lobby. Russ gave the night clerk a curt nod. An extravagant smile split open the man’s shining face.

“Wrong way!” he breathed.

Russ walked out on to the street, pocketing his key. The bus stop was three blocks away. He walked at a steady pace, occasionally shifting the suitcase from one hand to the other. It was pretty heavy. As well as the Jehovah’s Witness material, there were the two revolvers, fully loaded, plus a box of spare ammunition, the handcuffs, a roll of duct tape pre-cut into four-inch lengths, and the camcorder to tape the ceremony.

The bus was almost empty. Once south of Alabama Street it drove fast, hardly stopping, through a wasteland of car lots and small industrial businesses. By the time they bumped over the railroad crossing on McDaniel, Russ was the only passenger. It was only then that he realized, too late, the meaning of the unconscious summons which had woken him. He had forgotten to call home. He had been so disturbed by missing Pat that morning, and still more by finding Cindy there in his place, that it had completely slipped his mind. Oh well, he’d call tomorrow with the news that the operation had been a success. They wouldn’t freak out if they didn’t hear from him for one day.

He got off at the stop he’d used that afternoon, crossed the road and walked up the street opposite. It was even hotter and stickier here than it had been downtown, and the air was laced with patches of exotic scent. Cicadas grated away in the undergrowth over a bass section of whinnying frogs. Russ felt as though he’d stumbled into one of those old jungle movies they had on TV about three in the morning.

He climbed the hill, gripping the suitcase in a palm already damp with sweat. Quite a few people seemed to be out on their porches. He hadn’t noticed them at first, mere shadowy presences in the pervading darkness. It was only the soft murmur of voices, punctuated by the occasional throaty laugh, which gave them away. But once he started looking, he realized they were everywhere. No one said anything as he passed, but he knew they were watching him.

This was something he hadn’t expected. Why the hell couldn’t they have drawn a place like that suburb where Pat got lost the night before, an all-white neighborhood where everyone homed in, clustering around the electronic hearth in their widely spaced, secluded properties? He’d much rather have gone in there, even if it had a security system and those little metal tags in the lawn marked Armed Response. But you didn’t get to choose. They’d performed the calculations the usual way, and this was the address that came up. It was meant to be, so it would be. He tried to comfort himself with this thought.

When he rounded the corner of the block, near the top of the hill, a figure detached itself from the still torrent of vines which had engulfed a retaining wall on the other side of the street. Russ found himself wishing that he’d taken his gun out of the case. Then something about those jerky, uncoordinated movements reassured him that this was one of his own kind. A moment later he recognized his partner.

“You got the piece?” Pat asked him.

“Piece?” Russell queried vaguely.

“The gun, man! C’mon, let’s go!”

Pat was transformed, taut and wired like one of life’s natural go-to guys. Despite his narbo outfit, the suit a size too small by the looks of it, you could sense the energy he was giving off. Just being around him made Russell feel woozy from lack of sleep, stale air and too much thinking. He opened the suitcase and handed Pat one of the revolvers, pocketing the other himself.

“We’ll cruise by a couple of the other houses first,” he said. “Set up our cover.”

Pat waved impatiently.

“Fuck that, man! Let’s just do it! Get in, get out, don’t screw around.”

His air of urgency was so strong that Russ hesitated, a moment too long to insist.

“OK,” he murmured.

It was all wrong, he knew, letting the initiate lead like this. On the other hand, Pat’s mood might change again at any moment, leaving him with a cowering wimp on his hands. Better to ride the moment.

They set off along the side street running parallel to McDaniel. Up here there didn’t seem to be so many people out on the porches. In fact many of the houses looked abandoned. Maybe they were going to clear the area and put up more projects. Pat strode along, humming some staccato melody under his breath. Russell could hardly keep up. He glanced curiously at his partner.

“You been drinking?”

“I had a shot with a greeny back,” Pat replied carelessly. “Man, that stuff sure works, you don’t use it all the time.”

“That’s way out of line!” Russell snapped. “You know we’re not supposed to do drink or drugs when we’re-”

“Hey, what is this? ‘The floggings will continue until morale improves?’ Don’t treat me like a little kid.”

“Hold it right there!”

Russell gripped his partner’s arm and pulled him around.

“You want me to call this whole thing off right now?”

Pat shook his head quickly.

“OK! Then remember I’m in charge here. I don’t want to go down because you’re too snockered to stick to the game plan.”

They rounded the corner into Carson Street-322 was the sixth house on the left. Russell opened the suitcase again. The copy of The Watchtower was lying right on top, but the pamphlets seemed to have wriggled down to the back somewhere.

“Hey!” said Pat.

The beam of light falling on the suitcase from the streetlamp behind was suddenly cut off.

“Hand it over, motherfucker!”

Russell straightened up, still holding the magazine. There were three of them, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old by the looks of it, all black. The one who had spoken had a body like a barrel. He was wearing a Star Trek T-shirt and a pair of jeans which looked two sizes too big even for him. He and one of the others had pistols, the third a knife.

“We’re just children of God,” Russell found himself saying, holding up The Watchtower like a sign. “We’re spreading the word of the Lord in this neighborhood.”

The squat guy waved his chunky snub-barreled automatic.

“I don’t give a fuck who you are, honky! Hand over your shit or your ass is history!”

That was all they’d needed to do, Russell realized a moment later, when it was too late to do anything. Just hand over their wallets and watches and the suitcase and let the three youths run off with them. Instead, Pat pulled his pistol and shot the guy in the chest and stomach.

“Christ Almighty!” cried the other gunman, a skinny kid in tight red pants and a basketball jersey.

Russell could have taken him there and then, but he hesitated a second too long, knowing he wasn’t empowered to kill them. There was a flash of steel, then a grinding sound as the knife hit one of his ribs. Another shot, much louder, sent Pat spinning away. Then something huge hit Russell harder than he had ever been hit before. He tasted blood, mixed in with the dirt of the street. There were other sounds, other sensations, but he had no names for them. It didn’t matter. Pretty soon they faded, like everything else.