Absolute rage

18

"Tell me again why this isn't an entrapment," said Stan Hawes.

"Because we're not entrapping him into the commission of a crime," said Karp. "We have no legal interest in any crimes he may be contemplating or conspiring to commit. We're only using the contemplated crime as a predicate to get him to admit to our agent the details of a crime that he actually did arrange, to wit, the murders of the Heeney family."

"I don't know. It sounds kind of complicated. I especially don't like using my office to engage in a… I guess it's a fraud, isn't it?"

"It's no different from what we did to bring the Cades into town."

"Yes," snapped Hawes, "and look at how great that turned out!"

Then Hawes recalled what had happened to Karp's son and his face colored. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean… okay, let's start over here. You say we have a much better case against Floyd now, with the gun and the Jonson testimony, and I agree. Seward and Floyd will want to deal, but you don't want me to make a formal offer."

"No, no deal with Floyd. I want him to take the full hit. We won't need his testimony against Weames if this works. That's the whole point, Stan. But Lester has to believe that a deal is imminent, which is why you have to leak it to him and spread it widely around the courthouse."

"And then Lester calls George, and George says, 'What deal? Ain't no deal, Lester.' "

"And will Lester believe him? Why should he? Do you really think that there's so much love and loyalty between these two crook bastards that Lester Weames will credit that Floyd would be willing to spend his whole life in prison to keep his dear friend Lester safe from harm?"

"Okay, okay, let's say you're right. Lester now believes he's going to get the shaft from his good buddy. Why should he go to New York City and hire a killer, like you say? Why should he go and try to hire your killer?"

"He's not my killer, Stan," said Karp, trying for patience. "But I have it on reliable information that there are very few people at the top of this profession. A number of these people based in New York have been questioned by people you don't want to know who they are: Did a guy answering Lester's description come by last June, July, and ask about doing a hit and backed out when he heard the price?"

"Why would a professional hit man give out that kind of information?"

"He might if the people who asked him were good and regular customers." Karp's statement hung in the air for several long seconds.

"Oh," said Hawes, his face wrinkling with distaste. "And you think that explains why Lester went to New York then and pulled ten grand out of the union account and put it back in again?"

"It's the only explanation that makes sense. He went to hire a pro. It was too expensive, so he figured he'd save some dough and get it done locally. So he brings George into it. George, get someone to whack Heeney. George says, okay, boss, but we got to be careful with the payoff. We'll use the giveback money. Lester didn't think of that himself when he pulled out the ten grand. George is the moneyman, after all. Now Lester needs to get rid of George."

"And you assume he's going to go back to the same guy?"

"Yeah. It's not like there're four columns of these guys in the yellow pages. Besides, I plan on having him sent a flyer in the mail."

"A flyer?"

"Yeah," said Karp. "A bunch of clips about the Heeney murders and the arrests with a friendly note: 'Hey, next time, hire the best, regards, Mr. Ballantine.' "

"This is the hit man?"

"More like a hit-man broker, according to my sources," said Karp. "There'll be a number for Lester to call."

Karp went from Hawes's office to the hospital. They had moved Giancarlo to a sunny room on the second floor. As Karp passed the nurse's desk, he saw that the piles of toys and cards and flowers had grown. The townspeople had adopted the boy as a symbol of their current travail and, perhaps, their guilt. People had tied yellow ribbons around their trees. Deputies were wearing little yellow ribbons on their badges. Marlene wouldn't let any of the material into the child's room.

She was there, sitting side by side on straight chairs with Zak. She rose when she saw Karp enter.

"Are you going to stay? I have to go out." She had a frantic look on her face. Zak didn't stir; Karp saw that his lips were moving.

She moved past him into the hall. He turned and followed her, putting his arm across her shoulders. It was like grabbing a phone pole.

"Marlene, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong? What's wrong? Excuse me…?"

"I mean what's going on? We haven't talked in days, it seems like."

"Okay, let's talk. Nice weather but we could sure use some more rain. How about those Mets!"

"Marlene, don't be like this." She had her hands clutched together. He felt her trembling.

"No, I'm sorry. I don't know how I should be. I keep replaying it in my mind. If only I… if only you… if only Lucy. I started this. I am the cause of this."

"That's stupid, Marlene."

"Right, stupid Marlene." She looked into his eyes. Her realie was teary and red-rimmed, but the other seemed full of pain, too, a familiar hallucination.

"I stare at him all these hours," she said, "and I think what if this goes on for ten, twenty years? It happens. I can't deal with it, Butch. And he talks, Zak, he talks to Giancarlo, and it's like he's listening, too. He's going crazy like his mother. Lucy walks around like a zombie… I don't know. Do you remember, whenever we'd have a fight, you and me or me and Lucy, Gianni would make us stop, he'd jolly us out of it, or throw a phony tantrum? How he always wanted us to be 'regular'? We're flying apart." Her voice choked. "I need some air."

She broke away and ran down the hall. Karp went in and sat down next to his son.

"How're you doing, kid?"

"Okay. He's still here, Dad." Zak's face was pinched and his tan had gone yellow, like old newspapers. "He's still here. He wants to come back but there are these nets, like in fishing. I'm helping him."

The fear sweat popped out on Karp's face. He patted the boy's shoulder. "I'm sure you are."

Lucy drove. She drove most hours that she wasn't sleeping or at the hospital, with Magog beside her in the shotgun seat, the dog's head lolling out the window, tongue flapping in the breeze. Driving passed the unbearable hours, presenting a pathetic illusion of freedom. Once she took the road up to Aaron's Throne, but shied at climbing to the vista itself. She thought she might throw herself off, and was afraid. Mostly she frequented the bleaker parts of Robbens County, parts with which it was unusually well supplied: yards full of rusting machinery, deserted coal patches, dreary villages of fallen-down miners' shacks, the great pit of Majestic Number Two itself. She would stroll along the lip of the workings, dodging from time to time immense coal trucks roaring by that showered her with grit. She watched the dragline scoop away the mountain, and the monstrous D11 Cats shove the spoil over the lip into the defenseless hollows, obliterating streams and deserted settlements, sterilizing the country under a pall of rubble. During these hours she thought often of a famous New Yorker cartoon, the one showing a featureless waste studded with trash and old tires, under the caption "Life without Mozart." She had a copy pinned to a corkboard in her room in the City. It did not seem as amusing as it once had.

Gradually over a week or so, the first sharp pangs of utter despair scabbed over. She began to consider how she would spend her life, deprived as it now was of something greater than Mozart. She had no experience of living without God. The question of what else to worship arose, for she understood that everyone worshiped something, the usual gods in her society being power, money, sex, fame, and the sacred Me. She had good models: her father worshiped the law and the family; her mother the same, plus justice, minus the law. They seemed to have done all right in life. Not for her, though. The usual secular gods had little appeal, except sex, and she cringed with shame at the memory of how she had tormented that poor boy. She certainly did not believe in justice. Or mercy. A line from Weil flickered through her mind, the one about there being four proofs of the mercy of God here below: the consolations of the saints; the radiance of these and their compassion; the beauty of the world; and the complete absence of mercy.

How to live, then, on the endless, trashy plain. Usefulness still appealed to her. She could use her gifts. Be a humble lab rat for a while, she owed Shadkin that much. After that, what? Some distant place helping the hopelessly miserable, a Graham Greene sort of burnt-out life. Thinking of what was owed, she found her wheels turning back toward the town, and once there, toward a house she knew on Walnut Street, where Emmett Heeney lived with his girlfriend, and recently, with his brother, Dan.

The house was small, wooden, red-painted, shaded by maples. Dan had been put up in a room above the garage. She climbed the creaky outside stairway and knocked.

"I'm surprised to see you." Dan was wearing a grubby T-shirt and cutoff jeans. He hadn't shaved in a while, and his face was wary.

"Can I come in?"

"Sure." He stepped aside. "I wasn't expecting company."

Obviously. The room was littered with take-out cartons, cups, and wrappers and smelled of unwashed clothes, man, and fast-food greases. She sat down in a rocking chair, on matted clothing. It was the same rocker that had stood on the Heeney porch.

Besides the rocker, the room contained an iron bed, unmade, with flowered sheets bunched in the center, a straight chair, an overflowing trash basket, and a deal table on which stood Dan's computer. The computer had a paused game showing on its screen-a gunsight pointed down a dark corridor.

"I called you at the lodge a bunch of times," he said. "Then I gave up."

"What've you been doing?"

"Oh, having a ball. Reading astro for next year. Playing Doom. Hanging around on the Net. You know, the usual nerd stuff. How's your brother?"

"The same. It's driving all of us crazy. I'm sorry. I mean about not calling. That was mean."

He shrugged. "Hey, no biggie. It's not like we were engaged or anything." She was silent. He examined her more closely.

"What's wrong? You're not sick, are you?"

"No, I'm not sick." Her voice was dull. Why had she come here? To share the torment? Why don't I just fuck him and get it over with? At least I would be doing someone some good. As soon as this thought appeared, she felt something shrivel in her and thought of her mother.

"Your mother was by a day or so ago," Dan said conversationally, as if reading her mind.

Her head snapped up, as if she had been stung. "My mother? What did she want?"

"Just some maps. When she first got here, I showed her some hi-res topo and side-scan sonar maps of the county. Mine shafts, coal seams, and all that. She wanted me to cut her a CD of a couple of sections-Burnt Peak, surface and sub. She paid me, too." He paused and looked closely at Lucy again. She had stiffened, was chewing nervously at her lip.

"Did she say what they were for?"

"Yeah, she said the cops needed them for their operation against the Cades. It's proprietary stuff from the company. The cops won't have anything that good. That's what she told me anyway. What's wrong now?"

Lucy had jumped up, leaving the rocker swaying. "Quick, where's the nearest phone?"

"In the house. Who do you want to…?

But she was gone, running down the outside stairway. He followed. She ran through the back door. She was on the phone when he came in, twiddling a credit card in her hand, tapping her foot, mumbling impatiently.

"Chao ong, Ba Diem?" said Lucy, and then began speaking rapidly in a twittering, tuneful language.

When she hung up, her face was tight-jawed and grim. "They're all gone. And she doesn't expect them back. Oh, Christ, that stupid woman!"

"What? Who's all gone? Who were you talking to?"

"I called Bridgeport. Tran's house."

"That Vietnam guy?"

"Yes. He's gone and his whole army's with him. I talked to his housekeeper. She said Tran told her I might call. He said to tell me not to worry and he'd be in contact later."

"I don't get it. What army?"

She took a deep breath. "The maps. I think my mom has arranged for Tran to attack the Cades on Burnt Peak. God, how come I didn't see it! All that sneaking away, the helicopter jumping up and down…"

"You think he's really going to do it?"

"Yeah, I do. Look, Dan, can you print out those maps you gave my mother?"

"Sure, but why-"

"Please, just do it! There might still be time to stop them."

Dan pushed some buttons. A DeskJet hummed and clicked into action and sheets of brightly colored paper slid out onto a tray.

"Show me how to read them."

They spread them on the bed, and he pointed out what the false colors meant and how the subterranean views related to the standard topographic ones, and the various structures, old mine workings, and the place where the Cades had their stronghold.

"What are you going to do," he asked as she pored over the maps, "tell the cops?"

"Why would I want to do that?" She put her finger on a sheet. "What does it mean when a red line is broken like that?"

"A cave-in, usually. The red lines are voids, shafts or adits, the ones that go transversely. Here, see, where the red line intersects with green, it means the shaft hits the surface. Where it intersects with brown or black or gray, it means the shaft hits rock or coal."

She kept studying the maps, flipping from one sheet to another. Fifteen minutes passed this way, with only an occasional question.

"Lucy, if you're not going to call the cops, what're you planning on doing?"

"I'm going to go up there. Here! Look at this!"

Her finger traced a red line. "There's an opening on the west side of the mountain. And it goes through to a shaft that opens right in the middle of these structures. Is that right?"

"Yeah, that'd be the old Canker Run mine. What do you mean you're going to go up there?"

"This has to be it. It's the only place where a road comes close to an abandoned mine tunnel, and they'd want that. They'll be hauling heavy stuff. It's a way to penetrate the perimeter the cops must have around the mountain. You say people around here don't know about all these shafts and things?"

"Oh, they know about them, but not how they interconnect. Most of these tunnels were dug by wildcat miners, back before Majestic consolidated the county. This here's the first and only-"

"Right, and so no one will be watching this hole. When they come out, they'd be west and above where the Cades are, good observation and a strong position in case of counterattack. They could assault through this dead ground to the south or down this creekbed from the northwest." She sprang to her feet and gathered up the map sheets, folding them neatly and sticking them in the back pocket of her shorts.

"I have to go," she said.

Lester Weames dialed the number he had been given, the one from that package. He rubbed his chest. He'd had heartburn on and off ever since the thing had arrived and he'd realized that Mr. Ballantine knew who he was and what he had done. Somehow this was even more disturbing than George Floyd's defection. George he could deal with, but Ballantine was a complete monkey wrench, a shocking surprise.

The phone rang twice. A gravelly voice said, "Weames."

"How… how did you know…?"

"It was you? Weames, you're dealing with a professional organization here. Naturally, we have a phone line for each client. It's not like we do a volume business. When the job is done, we cancel the line. Speaking of jobs, how did you like the low bidder you used?"

"Okay, I was wrong. I made a mistake. I need to clean some things up. Your message…"

"Yeah, we can help there. Listen, so you don't feel bad, it's not that unusual. A lot of our business is cleaning up after do-it-yourselfers. You remember the bar where you made the appointment the first time?"

"Yeah, it was-"

"No names on the phone. You be there tomorrow, the bartender will give you an envelope so you'll know where to meet my associate. You will be carrying fifty large, in hundreds."

"Fifty? But…?"

"Price has gone up, Weames. Inflation. Or do I hang up now?"

"No, don't! Okay, fifty. And I'll be dealing with just you, right?"

"No. But Mr. Schaeffer has my full confidence. And Weames? This is it. We don't give you no third strike. Fifty large or don't show."

Ray Guma broke the connection, then called a number on his other telephone.

When it was answered, he said, "Bingo."

"He bought it?" asked Karp.

"Seems like it. I got Vinnie Cicciola from the Five going to do the interview. He looks more like a goddamn ginzo mobster than the ginzo mobsters."

"You did good, Goom."

"Hey, it keeps me interested. The docs say that's a good thing. How's the boy?"

"No change."

"Are you nuts? You can't go up there by yourself," cried Dan Heeney. "And that's all she wrote. You need to go to the cops with that stuff."

She seemed about to object, and for a moment he saw a flash of the former Lucy, but then she shrugged, her shoulders slumped, and she said, "Yeah, I guess. I'll go do that. My dad'll know what to do. Thanks for the help. I'll see you."

"Yeah, see you round," said Dan to her back as she walked out.

Lucy drove the Toyota west on 119, but instead of going right on 130 toward the center of town, she continued past the junction with its little forest of signs and arrows. She drove west, past the hamlet of Till, past Mt. Bethel, almost to the Kentucky line, before she turned north at Marblevale. She was now several miles to the west of Burnt Peak, outside the zone of police activity, which centered on Route 712, the road that ran along the mountain's western edge.

She stopped often to check her bearings against the map and against the big floating compass on the dash. Southwest of Ponowon she left the blacktop and took the dirt roads that wound through the hollers, climbing through a landform called Jubal Ridge, a lower corrugation running parallel to Burnt Peak and five miles to its west. It was surprisingly easy to find, for the little road bore the marks of heavier traffic than it was used to. Some vehicle, a large truck or trucks, had snapped off overhanging branches, scarred the bark of roadside trees, and marked the way with deep, fat ruts in the softer places. These signs led her to a hole in the side of the hill. Brambles and some small bushes that had grown up before it had been hacked down and cleared away. She took a six-cell flashlight from under the seat, and a plastic bottle of water from the side pocket of the door. She filled a large tin basin with water and ripped the top off a ten-pound bag of Purina chow.

"You have to stay here," she told the dog. "We don't want you to get shot. I'll be back soon. Stay, Magog!" The animal whined in protest, but Lucy calmed her with hands and voice. Then she switched on the flashlight and descended into the pit.

It was a crude shaft, most likely dug nearly a century ago by a little group of men with picks and shovels, earning a little extra money to supplement their incomes from the land. The floor sloped slightly downward; the ceiling dripped in places and was supported by props made of chestnut logs. She followed it until it was intersected by another adit, at a slightly lower level, this one much larger and clearly made by more modern machinery, an accidental intersection with a newer and hungrier mine, sucking at the same rich seam. She did not need to consult the map. On the soft dust and mud of the floor were the marks of many feet, and also of narrow wheels. They were using bicycles, which made sense. No one on earth had been more successful hauling heavy military supplies by bicycle than the Vietcong.

She followed this trail for many hours, climbing up or down where tunnels intersected, pausing occasionally to rest and drink from the bottle. Now she noticed other signs, too, cigarette butts and crumpled food wrappers. Not very military after all; she recalled that Tran always shredded his butts.

She became aware of a strong chemical smell and of noises ahead. She began to sing, in Vietnamese, a song from the war that Tran had taught her:

When he was a child, his father died

His mother left him all alone,

Yet he grew well, like a healthy plant,

In wartime now he lives for himself

The boy makes himself into a man, by himself

Never mourning the orphan he is.

A flashlight beam shot out of the blackness ahead, blinding her. She stood still, turned off her own light, and held her hands high. She heard footsteps approach. Squinting around the glare, she made out the face of Phuong, one of the Lost Boys. He was staring at her in amazement. Held tightly under his flashlight was a submachine gun pointing at her.

"Hello, Phuong," she said cheerily. "I've come to visit Uncle Tran. Would you kindly take me to him?"

"Anything new?" asked Marlene when she came in to relieve Karp at the hospital.

"No, he's always the same. Zak says he's dreaming. How're you holding up?"

"Marvelous. The press is out in force. There's no news from the siege, so they've discovered Giancarlo. I had twenty cameras shoved in my face coming in here. How do you feel?"

"I'll get some more security."

"Oh, the security's fine. Deputy Petrie is in charge. He likes pushing people. He's got a yellow ribbon tied to his badge. We're a national spectacle."

"Marlene, cripes! I feel like I've a lance piercing through my chest. I can give a shit about a so-called spectacle."

Momentary stone silence filled the room. Then Karp said matter-of-factly: "I have to go back to the City tomorrow."

"What is this now, Saturday? I've lost track of the days."

"Yes, Saturday. Mac and cheese at Rosie's, that's how I can tell."

"This is for the scam on Weames."

"Right. Guma came through."

"Good old Goom. Well, I wish you luck. If it works, can you get a conviction?"

"Oh, yeah. I got both of them if it works, without any deals. They'll both go for the max."

"What is that? Being eaten alive by army ants?"

"No, just life."

"Fuck life." She looked at the still boy on the bed.

Phuong led Lucy through the mine tunnel, which became gradually lighter, until they came to a section illuminated by large fluorescent fixtures and stinking of phenol and acid. Here there were fifty-five-gallon drums of chemicals, and rows of plastic garbage cans rigged with hoses and duct tape. Racks of steel shelves held cartons and brown bottles and laboratory glassware. Lucy had never been in an illegal meth lab before, but Billy Ireland had described them to her, and she figured she was in one now. A former meth lab. A good deal of destruction was apparent, bullet holes, smashed and punctured equipment, the marks of fire, dark stains on the duckboards they walked on, spatters of red-black. She could reconstruct the events these suggested. The Cades, or their employees, had been peacefully making poison when Tran and his people had burst in among them.

They arrived at an elevator cage. Phuong used a phone attached to the wall, and immediately Lucy heard the sound of a large motor. The boy motioned her into the cage. It was large enough for twenty men and moved fast enough to blur the black walls outside.

Tran was waiting for her at the head of the shaft along with Freddy Phat and several other Vietnamese. They were wearing black cotton pajamas and military web gear. Tran had his Stechkin in its big wooden holster on his hip; his face was wooden, too, and unsmiling. In French he said, "You know, this is the first time that I have not been happy to see you. I am quite displeased. Why have you come?"

"To try and stop you. I'm sorry you're angry."

Tran took her arm. "Come with me."

He led her past the staring, glowering men, through a door to a large room, wooden, painted flaking green and gray. Tangles of rusting pipes and smashed enamelware lay in heaps-some kind of bathhouse for the miners. Out into the air again, across gritty, black soil, to another building, also wooden, unpainted gray, with most of the windows smashed out. A loud noise of flies. Lucy saw that the flayed and gutted carcasses of a dozen large dogs hung from the eaves of an adjoining building. He took her to a room, formerly an office. On the wall, the same map Lucy had carried, with a plastic sheet over it, marked with grease pencil, and a calendar showing a train and the month of October 1977. There was a bench, a table, some chairs. They sat.

Tran said, "You see we are quite comfortable here. It was lucky for us that the Cades maintained the lift for their drug laboratory. I had visions of having to climb up five hundred meters in the dark, with all our equipment. They maintained as well the water and the electrical generator. And the dogs were a benefit, as well. We brought very little food, you see."

A volley of shot sounded from a distance, answered by several short bursts of automatic fire.

"Yes, the war has already started. They know we're here, of course. They're rather dismayed, I think. They thought their rear was secured by the strip mine. I think they had no idea that the network of tunnels debouched ultimately in an area outside their control. Your mother was clever to discover it. As were you, to be sure."

"Is that why you're doing this? For her?"

"To an extent. My own reasons are, as usual, complex, but my people are doing it for the gold. And now the drugs as well."

"I don't understand. You said you were sick of killing."

"Well, yes, but you understand, much of that sentimentality was the drug talking. In the light of day, I am just another bloodthirsty bandit chief. It is not a constitutional regime, I am afraid. The old guard is loyal to me, naturally, my old comrades, but the young guard… I am afraid Freddy has them in his grip. He is more stylish and modern than I am. This brings us to the problem of you."

"What do you mean?"

"We will go into action soon, perhaps tonight. From this action, either Freddy or I will not return. If it is Freddy, he will certainly kill you, or worse. But I can't let you go either."

"You can't?"

"No, because you will inform either the Cades or the police of our plans, which I dare say you know as well as I do." He paused and gave her an amused inspection. "Don't you?"

"The dead ground to the south, the creekbed to the north. A diversion at one or the other, and strike at their flank."

"Excellent. What a coup de l'oeil you have, my dear! It's a pity you are not coming with us."

"You're enjoying this?"

"To an extent. It makes a change from breaking the arms of defaulting gamblers. Besides, my old comrades always enjoy killing Americans."

"There are women and kids down there," said Lucy. "Families. It's a village, not a camp."

"Oh, well, we could not possibly attack a village with women and children in it. That would be wrong. Tut tut tut." For a moment he showed her his shark look, his dead-souled eyes.

"This… this can't be about the war."

"Everything is about the war." Then Tran grinned. "Let me show you my treasures." He led her to another room, where equipment was standing in neat piles.

"We have a mortar, one of yours in fact. And fifty rounds. Here you will recognize the M60 machine gun. We have three. These are RPG-7 rocket launchers-"

"Stop it!" she cried. "I'm not interested. I think it's all hideous. You're planning on murdering maybe eighty, a hundred people, and you're treating it like some kind of jolly game? And you're not like that. You're not like Freddy Phat. You're kind, and you love poetry…" She started to cry and bit her lip and turned away so that she would stop and not shame herself.

"Yes, well, Mao liked poetry, too. It's quite irrelevant. Seeing the good in everyone is a virtue, to be sure, but it may be misleading. I am horrid, au fond, as you must know, and your country helped make me so. It thus has a certain pleasing symmetry, this thing."

A dull boom echoed among the hills. Another. A sustained burst of machine-gun fire.

"They are attacking again, I suppose. I must go. While I decide what is to be done, I must secure you. You can keep our prisoner company."

"What prisoner?"

"Some young fool who tried to penetrate our lines last night with some dynamite bombs. You might ask him where the gold is kept. Otherwise he will tell us later under circumstances far less pleasant."

"You intend to torture him."

"Indeed."

"That's contemptible."

"Yes. But necessary just now. And I am good at it. Freddy is not so good at it because he likes it. That is the unfortunate choice. Come along."

He led her down a corridor to a rusty steel-bound door. "They must have kept their payroll here. It makes a fairly good dungeon. Go through. I will see that you are fed later."

He closed the door behind her, and she heard it lock. Shafts of dusty sunlight came through glassless, barred windows. In the center of the room was a man hanging from his bound wrists tied behind his back, his toes just touching the floor. He was naked except for a pair of camouflage-patterned briefs. She approached him, her Swiss army knife already pulled from her pocket. She sliced through the supporting rope. He collapsed at her feet, groaning. She cut the cords that bound his wrists. She looked around the room. On a long table was a length of thick, rubberized electrical cable, below the table a plastic bucket full of water. She carried the bucket over to the man, knelt, dipped her bandanna in it, and washed his bruised and swollen face.

He opened his eyes. Recognition dawned and he shied. "You!"

"Yes. Lucy Karp. You're Bo Cade."

"Jesus H. Christ! Every damn time I get my ass handed to me, you're somewheres around. Why in hell is that, huh?"

"Because you hang around in bad company probably. You remember I tried to warn you. How are you feeling?"

"Like I been kicked by a horse. Are you in with them all? Those chinks?"

"They're not chinks. They're Viet Kieu."

"What?"

"Vietnamese living here."

"What the hell do they want with us?"

"Your gold, for one thing. Another thing is that one of you shot my little brother. There's a revenge angle. My mother is Sicilian."

"What does that mean?"

"The Mafia is Sicilian."

"Your ma's in the Mafia?"

"No, but she has a sort of private mafia, and these are them. Look, we probably don't have much time. I need you to tell me where the gold is."

"Hell, no, I won't!"

"Yes, you have to, because here are your choices. You can tell me, and then I'll help you escape. Or you can refuse to tell me, and in a little while they'll come back and torture the truth out of you and then they'll kill you."

"They ain't gonna make me tell, I don't care what they do."

She sighed. "Oh, for Christ's sake! They'll break you in twenty minutes, you poor sap. You think your cousin Wayne is mean? Wayne is a church lady compared to these people."

"Oh, yeah? Well, let me tell you something, girlie. When my kin get finished with them, they're gonna be sorry they ever messed with the Cades."

"There won't be any Cades after tonight. Oh, God give me strength! You've heard of the war in Vietnam?"

"Yeah, my uncle Ralph got kilt there. What about it?"

"Those men out there, they're Commie Vietcong sappers, you dolt! They will go through the Cades like a blowtorch through a newspaper."

He was staring at her, his mouth slightly open. "I could get out anyway. You couldn't stop me. I could take them bars off with that fancy knife you got."

"Yes, you could. But I'd yell and they'd come in here and stop you."

"I could fix it so you didn't do no yellin'."

"Could you? Well, go ahead, then." She lay the open blade down on the floor. "See what happens."

Warily, he reached for the knife. She said, "Let me give you a hint. The man who's running this operation is a good friend of mine. If you manage to hurt me, he will stop everything he's doing and track you down. Then you'll die in the kind of pain you can't even imagine. Plus, you'll tell them everything they want to know in the first five minutes."

He stared at her, looking for fear or some trick in her eyes. But he didn't find anything like that. He grappled with that knowledge. Everyone was afraid; specifically, everyone was afraid of the Cades, and within the Cades there was a defined hierarchy of fear, with Ben Cade at the top. He himself was fairly low down in the order, liable to be beaten on by his brothers and his uncles. In turn he got to beat on his smaller cousins and any women, although he found he didn't like doing it all that much. In his mind there grew the desire to know the secret she had.

"You want to know why I'm not frightened, don't you?"

He felt a chill run through his body. He replaced the knife. She said, "It's a long story, but you'll never get to learn it if you're tortured to death or get killed along with the rest of your kin. Your old life is finished, but you could have a different life."

"Yeah, in jail."

"Yes, you'll have to go to prison, maybe for years. But you're young. You'll get out of prison. The world is a lot larger than Robbens County."

He felt a long sigh escape from his throat. "It's in the big house. In his bedroom. There's a trapdoor in the floor that leads to a shaft…" It was complex, involving a descent into the underlying mines, turns and backtracks, and a number of booby traps that had to be disarmed. He told her all this in a low, dead voice. When he was through, and she had asked a few clarifying questions, she rose, checked out the barred windows, and chose one where rank growth pressed against the building. She thought of what Tran had said: "a fairly good dungeon." But a strong room was meant to keep people out, not in. The bars were screwed in on the inside, of course, and she used the screwdriver on her knife to remove them.

"Get into some thick laurel and stay there," she said. "I think it'll all be over by tonight, or tomorrow at the latest. Good luck." Without a word, he boosted himself over the sill and was gone in a rustle of weeds.

Lester Weames got into La Guardia at around two on Sunday, rented a Taurus, and drove into Manhattan. He drove through the City slowly and carefully, to a bar on Greenwich Street. He told the bartender he was looking for a Mr. Schaeffer. Last time he had been looking for a Mr. Ballantine. The bartender gave him a plain envelope and turned away. Weames noticed that the man did not look him in the eye, just like last time. In the envelope were driving directions to Rector and West Streets, near the Battery Parking Garage. He drove there and parked. An August Sunday afternoon in the financial district; you could fire a machine gun down the street and not hit anyone. The only other car on the street was a white Cadillac Seville. He picked up his briefcase, walked over, slid into the backseat of the Cadillac. As before, Frank was singing low on the stereo and the AC was maxed out. Weames felt the sweat prickle as it dried on his face.

The man in the front seat checked Weames in his rearview. As before, he didn't turn around.

"First things first. You got the fifty large?"

"Yes. Right here." Weames opened his briefcase and lifted up a fat manila envelope. The man in front raised a restraining hand. "Not so fast. We haven't decided to take your business."

"What the hell! What're you talking about?"

"Because the problem's not so simple anymore. You screwed up so bad that half the FBI's down there. If we're going to take the extra risk, we need to know what happened, the planning, who did what, and what went wrong. Otherwise, no deal."

"Hell, it's no big story. I told George Floyd to get rid of him, Heeney, and George hired a gang of goddamn slows to do it, and they left evidence all over the place, and the cops caught 'em. That's it."

"You told Floyd to do it. You told him to get rid of Heeney and his family, or just him?"

"I told him to get everyone in the house."

"Why?"

"Because it makes more of an effect. Man might take a risk himself, but not if he knows his family's going to get dead, too. It's better for business."

"And this Floyd supplied the money."

"Yeah, from the union. Untraceable, except the damn fool goes and licks it all before he gave it out. Now he's going state's evidence on me."

"Which is why you want to take him out. He's not in jail?"

"No, out on bail. He's living in his house. Got a couple of union security people with him, but they ain't much. You can take them out, too." Weames hesitated. "Or would that be extra?"

"No, that's covered. Bodyguards are always covered in the sticker price. Okay, Mr. Weames, I think we can do business. You're going to hand me fifty thousand dollars now, in exchange for which you want me to arrange the murder of George Floyd. Have I got that right?"

"Yeah, as soon as you can."

The man held his hand up.

Weames placed the envelope in it. "When do you think you can get it done?"

Mr. Schaeffer did not answer, but took the bills out of the envelope, riffled them, rolled down his window, and waved the wad out at the empty offices, as if trying to attract a wandering stockbroker.

"What're you doing?"

"It's an old Italian custom. It takes the curse off blood money."

"I asked you when you're gonna do it. I'm thinking I need to fix me up with an alibi for the time."

Squeal of tires. A car pulled up alongside on the left, the right-hand door flew open, a big dark man in a suit slid into the seat beside Weames. He felt queasy fear. A face appeared in the window next to him. Mr. Schaeffer swiveled around in his seat and pressed the button that rolled down the rear window.

Karp said, "Hello, Lester. How about moving over and letting me sit down?"

The big dark man put an arm around Weames's shoulders and jerked him across the seat. Karp got in. Mr. Schaeffer was grinning and showing a gold NYPD detective's badge.

Karp said, "Lester, this is Detective Cicciola of the New York police. He's going to arrest you for conspiracy to commit murder, which is a major league felony in the state of New York."

"This is entrapment."

"Oh my, Lester, you've been watchin' too many crummy TV crime shows. When a scumbag like you is 'ready,' 'poised,' 'wanting,' and 'predisposed' to engage in the criminal activity, entrapment goes out the window. Lester, we got you on tape. You're goin' down as big time as it gets for the Heeney slaughter and the Floyd attempt. While you're in custody, I wouldn't be surprised if the state of West Virginia attempted to extradite you for ordering the murder of the Heeney family. What I can assure you of is that the New York district attorney's office will make no objection to that extradition."

"I want a lawyer."

"And you shall have one, my murderous little hick," said Karp, "but it will not do you much good."