Predator

44

Marino waits to activate a series of human-shaped targets that will flip up from behind bushes, a fence and a tree on the base curve, or Dead Man’s Curve, as Lucy calls it.

He checks the blaze-orange wind sock center field, verifying that the wind is still out of the east and gusting at maybe five knots. He watches Lucy’s right arm holster the Glock and reach back to an oversized leather saddlebag as she glides at a steady speed of sixty miles an hour around the crosswind curve, entering the downwind straightaway.

She smoothly pulls out a nine-millimeter Baretta Cx4 Storm carbine.

“Going hot on five,” he says.

Sculpted of a nonreflective black polymer, with the same telescoping bolt used in an Uzi submachine gun, the Storm is a passion of Lucy’s. It weighs less than six pounds, has a pistol-grip stock that makes it easy to handle, and ejection can be altered from left to right. So it is nimble and no-nonsense, and when Marino goes active on Zone Three, Lucy rolls in and brass cartridge cases flash in the sun, flying behind her. She kills everything on Dead Man’s Curve, kills everything more than once. Marino counts fifteen rounds fired. All targets are down, and she has one round left.

He thinks about the woman named Stevie. He thinks about Lucy meeting her tonight at Deuce. The 617 phone number Stevie gave Lucy belongs to a guy inConcord,Massachusetts, a guy named Doug. He says several days ago he was in a bar in Ptown and lost his cell phone. He says he hasn’t cancelled the number yet because some lady apparently found his phone, called one of the numbers in it, ended up talking to one of Doug’s friends, who then gave her Doug’s home number. She called, said she’d found his cell phone, promised to mail it to him.

So far she hasn’t.

It’s a slick trick, Marino thinks. If you find or steal a cell phone and promise to send it to the owner, maybe he doesn’t get his electronic security identification number deactivated right away and you can use his phone for a while, until the person gets wise. What Marino doesn’t quite understand is why Stevie, whoever she is, would go to all the trouble. If her reasoning was to avoid having an account with a cellular company such as Verizon or Sprint, why not just get a pay-as-you-go phone?

Whoever Stevie is, she’s trouble. Lucy is living far too close to the edge these days, has been for the better part of a year. She’s changed. She’s gotten inattentive and indifferent, and at times Marino wonders if she’s trying to hurt herself, hurt herself badly.

“Another car has just sped up from behind,” he radios her. “You’re history.”

“I’m reloaded.”

“No way.” He can’t believe it.

Somehow, she has managed to drop out the empty magazine and slide in a new one without him noticing.

She slows the bike to a stop below the control tower. He sets his headphones on the console, and by the time he gets down the wooden stairs, she has her helmet and gloves off and is unzipping her jacket.

“How’d you do that?” he asks.

“I cheated.”

“I knew it.”

He squints in the sun and wonders where he left his sunglasses. He seems to be misplacing things a lot these days.

“I had an extra magazine here.” She pats a pocket.

“Huh. You probably wouldn’t in real life. So yeah, you cheated.”

“He who survives writes the rules.”

“What’s your thinking about the Z-Rod, about turning all of them into Z-Rods?” he asks, and he knows what she thinks about it, but he asks anyway, hoping she’s changed her mind.

It doesn’t make sense to increase the engine some thirteen percent, from an already enhanced 1150cc’s to 1318cc’s, and an already beefed-up breaking horsepower of 120 to 170, so the bike can rocket from 0 to 140 miles per hour in 9.4 seconds. The more weight the bike loses, the better it will perform, but it would mean replacing the leather seat and rear fender with molded fiberglass and losing the saddlebags, and they can’t lose those. He hopes Lucy isn’t interested in butchering their new fleet of Special Op bikes. He hopes that for once, what she has is enough.

“Impractical and unnecessary,” she surprises him by saying. “A Z-Rod engine only lasts ten thousand miles, so imagine the maintenance headaches, and we strip these things down, it’s going to call attention to them. Not to mention how much louder they’ll be because of the increased air intake.”

“Now what,” he says with a huff as his cell phone rings. “Yeah,” he answers it gruffly.

He listens for a moment, then ends the call and says “shit” before he tells Lucy, “They’re going to start processing the station wagon. Can you get started without me at the Simister house?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll have Lex meet me.”

Lucy unclips a two-way radio from her waistband and gets on the air, “Zero-zero-one to the stable.”

“What can I do for you, zero-zero-one?”

“Gas up my horse. I’m taking her on the street.”

“She need a bigger burr under her saddle?”

“She’ll do just fine the way she is.”

“Good to hear. Be right there.”

“We’ll head out toSouthBeacharound nine,” Lucy says to Marino. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Maybe it’s better we go together,” he says, looking at her, trying to figure out what’s in her mind.

He never can, not that mind. If she were any more complicated, he’d need an interpreter.

“We can’t run the risk she might see us in the same car,” Lucy says, pulling off her ballistic jacket, complaining that the sleeves are like Chinese handcuffs.

“Maybe it’s some kind of cult thing,” Marino says. “Some cult like a bunch of witches that paint red hands all over themselves.Salem’s up there in the same part of the world. All kinds of witches up there.”

“Witches are by the coven, not the bunch.” Lucy pokes him in the shoulder.

“Maybe she’s one of them,” he says. “Maybe your new friend is a witch who steals cell phones.”

“Maybe I’ll just come right out and ask her,” Lucy says.

“You should be careful about people. That’s the only thing with you, your judgment about who you hook up with. I wish you’d be more careful.”

“I guess we share the same dysfunction. Your judgment in that department seems to be almost as good as mine. Aunt Kay says Reba’s really nice and you were a dick to her at the Simister scene, by the way.”

“The Doc better not have said that. She better not have said nothing.”

“She didn’t say just that. She also said Reba’s smart, new on the job, but smart. Not as dumb as a bag of hammers and all those other cliches you like so much.”

“Bullshit.”

“She must be the one you were dating for a while,” Lucy says.

“Who told you?” Marino blurts out.

“You just did.”