Perfect killer

CHAPTER 45

Cedric Valentine eased his bronze Monte Carlo to an industrial-park turnout along southbound Highway 49 north of the Rising Sun crossroads and cranked up the volume on Dr. Dre's "Some L.A. Niggas" and sang along with lyrics he knew by heart. L.A. niggaz rule the world nigga!..

He'd been to Compton once, a visit with his uncle two summers before, and hung with some Bloods. They'd sold him a Glock 9 one of them said he'd taken right out of the dying hand of a pig he'd shot while the sucker sat in his black-and-white on Slauson.

He remembered driving through South Central and using the Glock packed with hollow-points to peel the cap off a Rolling 60s rickey. The rush still stirred him when he remembered how the Crip's brains came out the holes in a reddish gray splatter all over the concrete wall behind him. "Yeah!" he yelled to the world. "We L.A. niggaz rule! Fuck all the fuckin' muth'fuckers!"

They called him Dr. Glock after that. He made damn sho' the pissant niggas in Snowden-Jones called him Dr. Glock and not some small-town country-nigga name like Cedric.

He felt a passing flash of guilt when he remembered how it hurt his mama to dump the name she'd given him and how she was always on the rag about him being a player. Always after him to go to bed at nine, get one of those minimum-wage jobs working for some cracker go to church, listen to her damned gospel music. She wanted him to rot out from the inside like a fucking Tom, like his uncle-her brother-who lived in Long Beach and spent his life sweating all week for less than an average day's worth of dealing crystal.

"Yassuh! Nosuh! I be fetchin' fo' Mr. Charlie-fuck that!" he said loudly. "Not this nigga!" Cedric shook off the guilt and thumbed the electric controls on his seat. He manipulated himself upright, readjusted the rearview minor, rolled up the windows, and hit the toggles that adjusted the suspension lifters, raising the chassis now into what he called "country nigrah" mode. It was better for the rougher roads and made him less of a target for the country Jakes and Penelopes. Tonight, he needed to be invisible. First the TEC-9. Then the money. Then the bitch. He'd bought the TEC-9 off the street in Memphis for the occasion, right after he'd sealed the deal with the bitch with the bucks.

I seal da deal, wid the bitch wid the bucks, you respect this niggah or you shit outta luck

Cedric tapped on the steering wheel as he rapped.

This playah gonna take what rightfully mine, When I start kissin' you wid my Glock and da Nine

He had to remember that because bitches liked gangstas who could rap. He ejected the Dr. Dre CD and slipped in Snoop Dogg. While the CD player searched for the first track, Cedric put the Monte Carlo into drive and pulled carefully into traffic. He didn't need no Jakes pulling him over for some traffic violation. Not far south of Rising Sun, he turned west toward Quito, across the Yazoo River bridge, and left on a gravel road. He didn't like the dust and the stones chipping his paint, but work was work, and when your work was killin', you needed to do things right and that meant no witnesses.

The "Down 4 My Niggas" cut on the Snoop Dogg CD started. This was the one with C-Murder rappin' wid the Dogg. Fuck them other niggas, I ride for my niggas, what I die for my niggas, fuck them other niggas, what

Cedric rapped with the lyrics as he drove roughly southwest toward a tall fucking bridge in the middle of nofuckingwhere where he could ditch the Nine.

"Tha's me, motherfuckuhs," he said. "I'm a nigga with the big balls. I'ma put my fucking name on the wall wid my Dogg! I'ma pound those bitches till they can't even crawl!"

When he crested the top of the bridge northwest of Tchula, he knew he had the right spot. Snoop Dogg was singing about niggas who run but they couldn't hide.

When Cedric slowed to a stop at the top of the bridge, he pulled on a latex glove, reached under the seat for the TEC-9, Not a headlight in sight. He opened the window and let in a stiff, cool wind smelling of approaching rain, maybe hail and a tornado. He tossed the gun over the railing, then drove on into Tchula and back up 49, where he stopped short of the 82 overpass to adjust his seat and lower the suspension. He got out, squinting against the wind as he walked around the Monte Carlo with a flashlight. Satisfied no damage had been done by the gravel, he opened the trunk and grabbed the shoe box his Clarks had come in. He opened the lid and smiled at the stack of hundred-dollar bills rubber-banded together in the trunk. Half a stack, actually. The bitch had cut ten g's worth of C-notes, an even hundred of them, right in half. Federal-fucking-Expressed them to him in a box that arrived at his crib a week to the day after he'd made bail over the drive-by on West Gibbs Street. Wrapped around the money had been a printout of the article about his arrest printed off the Greenwood Commonwealth's Web site.

Cedric smiled now and enjoyed the glow in his belly. He was a true gangsta, famous enough that some woman he had never seen had sent him money to kill for her. She'd called his cell exactly one time to make sure he had the money and understood what to do and when. She told him he'd get the other half of the stack of bills when the two Oreo bitch shysters were in the ground. He'd peeled the cap off one of the bitches so he figured he'd get half the bills tonight and the other half when he took care of the unfinished business. He nodded as he reached under the spare tire and pulled out the Glock.

Back behind the wheel, he looked at the Rolex on his wrist.

"Time to get yo swerve on, Dr. Glock," he said to himself as he went down his checklist: Roly-O, Clarks, bling-bling, and the iced Crissy in back for the bitch. He'd never seen her, but her voice on the phone call gave him some serious bone and he wanted skully from the bitch.

"My dick be stuck up in yo' windpipe," he said. "I be stickin' it up in yo' pie too, bitch."

He merged onto east 82. Just outside of town, he spotted the turnoff they'd agreed on. Cedric pulled to a stop on the road shoulder, waited until there were no headlights from either direction, then made the turn. A hundred yards down, he stopped the Monte Carlo, killed the ignition and stereo, grabbed the Glock, and waited.

Lightning snapped around him and reminded him of the Jakes' helicopter lights. He hoped the bitch would show up before the fucking rain turned the road into fucking gumbo. Cedric thought about pumping the bitch. She was a white bitch, no doubt from her voice, and she sounded snotty and highfalutin. She needed to be fucked within an inch of her life, and he'd be the man to do it. He rubbed at the growing stiffness in his crotch.

Cedric went limp a second later when the cold steel of a gun muzzle pressed behind his left ear.

"Don't move." The woman's voice carried an edge that made him want to wet his pants. Bitch. Cedric struggled to control his bladder.

"You disappointed me. Jasmine Thompson doesn't have a scratch on her and the other one could live."

Lightning flashed again; thunder came almost immediately.

Warm urine spread across his lap. He'd get the bitch for this.

"You had promise," the woman said. "I could have used you for a long time, paid you big money" She paused. "But no."

He opened his mouth to plead for another chance, then an intense, bright pain filled his head like the flash-bang grenades the cops used. In an instant he knew it was more than mere lightning and thunder.

The thug known as Dr. Glock managed a single last thought and a single last word: "Mama."

Giant balls of rain the size of marbles filled the night as the man-boy who called himself Dr. Glock slumped across the seat. Jael St. Clair emptied the magazine into his head, then made her way to the Monte Carlo's trunk, grabbed Cedric's half of the hundreddollar bills, and got back in her SUV.

Her cell phone trilled as she turned on the ignition, flicked the wipers on high, and put the SUV in gear. She grabbed the phone and saw it was General Braxton.

"Sir."

"We have a change of plans," Braxton said without preamble. "Stone's beyond redemption. It would be best if you eliminated him and the lawyer immediately."

"Sir!" A long pause crackled softly in the earpiece.

"Sergeant?"

Jael felt her heart catch. The General rarely used her rank.

"This is a mission of vital importance. Until now, your rules of engagement required you to operate via stealth, through other people, and in a manner that minimized the danger to yourself or the chances of being detected."

"Sir," she acknowledged, knowing what was coming.

"Those rules have changed. Use whatever means are necessary to make sure Brad Stone and Jasmine Thompson do not live to enjoy another sunset. Regardless of the risk, regardless of costs."

"Sir."

"Thank you. Go with God." The General ended the connection.

Jael hit the "end" button on her phone. It wasn't the first time the General had given her a suicide mission she had lived to talk about.