State of War

6

In the kitchen of his apartment, Ames added a bit of Chardonnay — the 1990 Reserve — to the two-quart copper-clad stainless pot holding the lobster and shitake sauce. The pot was from France. You had to give the French that, they did know how to cook. The sauce was for poaching the Yukon salmon he’d had flown in that morning. The fish was a small one, a three-pounder, illegally caught out of season, he believed. When you figured it all up, that salmon probably cost about three hundred dollars a pound, but that wasn’t important. Most of these salmon went to the Japanese, but being rich had its perks. Yesterday, the fish had been swimming in the cold waters of Alaska; tonight, it would be dinner at Ames’s apartment in New York City.

Civilization was a wonderful thing.

The wine he was using for the stock was eighty-some-odd bucks a bottle, too, but there was no substitute for quality. If you were going to cook fine food with wine, what was the point in murdering the taste with cheap stuff?

Ames was not a wine snob. He didn’t bother to learn all the proper terms one used, nose and bouquet and finish and so forth. But he knew a good wine when he tasted it. The first time he had sipped anything from Blackwood Canyon, he knew he’d found a vintner who knew exactly what he was doing. He bought a cellarful of the wines by the case. He had also invested money in the business, as much as Michael Taylor Moore would let him.

He had others now, but Moore’s first winery was a hole-in-the-wall place at the end of a gravel road out in the middle of Nowhere, Washington. His first place was hard to find, and it wasn’t even listed on the local guides. If you didn’t know where the place was, you pretty much had to stumble across it by accident, or else put in a lot of hours doing detective work. It was worth it, though. Back then, the only spot you could buy any of his product was at the winery itself, or by the bottle in a few of the world’s finer restaurants.

Moore made his vintages in the old-style European manner, much of it involving a process called “sur lees.” Ames didn’t quite understand that, but he knew it involved leaving the fruit in the stuff longer than was considered by most to be proper. As a result, the whites had a fullness unmatched by any made in North America. Those whites could run with almost anybody else’s reds. And his reds? Well, they were just unbelievable.

Moore’s cheap stuff alone was better than most other wineries’ expensive vintages. And with the exception of maybe two other places in the world, one in Spain, one in France, nobody could touch his expensive ones. He called his vintages his children, and he didn’t let them out of the house until they were all grown up and ready to face the world.

He was something of a renaissance man, Moore was. He thought of himself as an alchemist, and considering that he turned water into a wine that eventually turned more or less into gold, it wasn’t a bad description. He was as good a cook as many world-class chefs. He also designed catamarans, some of which would fold up for storage and hauling, and assorted hydrogen-powered farm machines.

A lot of his neighbors hated him because they thought he was arrogant. That was to be expected, though. A man who stood up and said and did what he believed always got flak. Especially when he could actually back it up.

Ames knew all about that. He had been driven by his own demons to excel in everything he tried. First in his class in medicine, first in his class in law school, and a top track athlete. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

Still, being great was why he had hooked up with CyberNation. They appreciated talent and skill, they encouraged it, and they were willing to pay for it. They always went for the best.

Ames smiled. He had never been accused of hiding his light under a bushel.

He stirred the sauce, lowered the heat on the Thermador gas stove’s front burner, and added a few sprinkles of fresh thyme and sage. It would need to reduce for another hour before it was ready to poach the fish. He still had time.

For the dinner with Corinna Skye, he had decided on a Blackwood Canyon Dry Riesling, a 1988. For the appetizers, he had selected a 1989 Cabernet Sauvignon Estate Reserve that should be sufficiently aged by now. A Late Harvest Penumbra Vin Santo would go well with dessert.

When he had bought these, they had been relatively cheap — forty bucks for the dessert wine, a hundred and fifty or two hundred for the others. Now they cost twice that — if you could get them. Moore had sold futures in his wines for a long time, and they didn’t have firm delivery dates — it might be a year, it might be ten years before he thought the wine was ready to bottle and ship, and if you didn’t like it, you could go somewhere else.

Ames smiled again. A man who could make wines like that was to be admired. And humored. And Ames would be very glad to take Michael Moore’s wines on whatever terms they were offered.

He leaned down to check the fire under the pot. That was still the best way, looking at the flame, not the control knob. Satisfied that the sauce wouldn’t burn, he went to mix the salad. He would break the lettuce and endive and other greens now to chill, though of course he wouldn’t dress the salad until it was time to serve it. He had somehow run low on olive oil. He had only one bottle of the Raggia di San Vito left, the best extra-virgin oil available outside Italy — it cost more than a fair bottle of French champagne — and he made a note to have Bryce order more for him.

So much to do, and it all had to be finished at the same moment.

As he pulled the dandelion greens from the humidity-controlled storage bin, Ames glanced at his watch. Junior was taking care of some minor business with a certain Midwestern junior senator this evening, and should be calling to report on the matter shortly.

CyberNation had tried a frontal assault on the world, attacking the net and web to attract customers. It hadn’t worked. They had also tried bribery and legislation, of course, as well as advertising, but in Ames’s opinion they hadn’t gone far enough in those directions.

Which was where he came in. His job was to work the law. Part of that included buying the lawmakers, or scaring them, and if bribery wouldn’t do that, sometimes a fat lawsuit would. Whatever it took. He could get the laws they wanted passed. Get the official recognition they craved.

Personally, he thought the idea was silly. A virtual country? Nonsense. He liked the physical world, with its poached salmon and its dry Rieslings and its many other virtues just fine, thank you. But if that’s what they wanted, and if it was even remotely possible, Mitchell Ames would give it to them. He had taken it on. He would get it done.

He looked at the marble counter with the built-in cutting board. Where had he put the centrifuge? Ah, there it was, behind the food processor.

Junior had the number for one of the dozen throwaway phones Bryce had bought for cash at an electronics store in Baltimore yesterday. Once a week or so, Bryce would travel to a city out of state and pick up a case of cheap, disposable digital cellulars. Whichever ones weren’t used by the end of the week were crushed and trashed, and never anywhere near Ames’s residences.

Every clandestine call Ames made or received was on a two-hour throwaway. Since there was no way to trace them to him, there was no real need to worry about encryption. To be safe, though — and Ames was always very, very careful — they talked in a sort of code, even on these throwaways. Junior would call and say something like, “Your order is ready,” or “We’ve had to back order that item,” and that would be enough.

If they needed a longer conversation, or something that couldn’t be said in code, they would do it face-to-face. Ames had more than one safe location, each with enough antibugging electronics going so that if Junior had suddenly taken it upon himself to use a hidden wire, Ames would know it before the first word was spoken.

He’d met Junior at a shooting range and had carefully checked him out and cultivated him before… activating him. He was a rough tool, but he was greedy enough to be useful. If he stepped out of line, Ames would simply erase him and find another cat’s paw.

And even if Junior ever decided to try to blackmail Ames — or, more likely, if he got caught and tried to use Ames to cut a deal — he had nothing solid to give up. Like the leader of a good pickpocket team, Ames never held a stolen wallet any longer than it took to transfer it to a confederate. All his dealings with the man were in cash, and nobody save Bryce, who would spend ten years in jail before he said a word against Ames, knowing he’d retire rich when he got out, ever saw Junior and Ames together.

So Ames was as safe as he could make himself. Which was good, because Junior was important to his plan. Not irreplaceable, but very important.

Ames had never seen anybody as good with a handgun in a hurry, snub-nosed revolvers at that, and he’d been a shooter himself for most of his forty-six years. A man who could shoot, and who would shoot who you wanted him to, was an extremely valuable tool. You just had to be careful that you didn’t cut yourself using him.

He washed the greens, put them into the electric centrifuge, and hit the button to spin the water away. The machine’s whirr rose in volume, and the scent of the slightly bruised greens wafted to his nostrils. Ah.

Well. Enough about Junior. Corinna Skye was a much more pleasant subject upon which to dwell. After their drink to discuss her further lobbying efforts on behalf of CyberNation, he knew he had to spend some time and energy on her.

He smiled at the double entendre and went to collect the fresh baby carrots. No matter what season of the year it was in New York, it was always harvest somewhere in the world…

Junior was at a drugstore not far from the U of M Baltimore campus, just off I-95, and just a little bit nervous.

He smiled at that, laughing at himself. Big Bad Boudreaux.

He shook his head. A little nervous? The sweat was practically coming off him in buckets, and he kept wiping his hands on his jeans. It would be really stupid to die just because he was so scared he couldn’t get a grip on his piece.

The cop didn’t have to worry about that. He wouldn’t even know he was in trouble until it was too late to get sweaty.

There came the car now, a single police officer in it just like the last two nights. The drugstore’s parking lot was dark, a timer had shut the outside lights off at ten P.M. The inside lights were all dialed way down low, too. Thanks to conservation efforts, cities were a whole lot darker than they used to be. Tonight, though, Junior was glad for that.

The squad car went through the lot of the all-night restaurant across the street. The place looked just like a Denny’s, but its sign said Pablo’s instead, no doubt catering to the ex-Cubanos who had recently moved into the neighborhood. Junior didn’t have anything against those people. Back when he was a teenager, he’d bought his booze at a place called Cuban Liquors, down in Louisiana, and they’d always treated him okay.

The cop looped out of the parking lot and came across the street. There was a pay phone on the front of the drugstore, one of those little half-booths attached to the side of the building, but there was no light to speak of. Junior had busted that out earlier. Still, there was enough glow from the store to see somebody was standing there, even if you couldn’t tell much about who it was.

The cruiser came across the street like a prowling cat, and pulled into the drugstore lot. The building sat kind of down in a little hollow, lower than the roads to the south and east of it, and the pay phone was behind the corner of the building. The combination didn’t let the headlight shine on the phone when the cop pulled in. The only way to get a light directly on Junior would be if he looped wide from the driveway and turned in toward the front of the place. The cop hadn’t done that either of the two previous evenings until he was ready to leave.

Junior wiped his hands again. It wasn’t too late to bail out. He could still pick up the receiver and pretend to be talking, just a guy who had to use the phone late at night. Maybe his wasn’t working in his apartment, or maybe he was behind on the bill and they’d shut it off. No law against that, just being here to use the phone. The cop would mark him, but probably drive by.

But, no. If he didn’t do it now, he never would. He knew that. He had been arrested for simple assault a couple times, and he’d done a nickel for ADW. He had even been busted once for murder, but had gotten off — he should have, since he hadn’t done it — but he never told anybody that he hadn’t, even his lawyer, so people thought he had skated for a killing. They figured a smart lawyer had gotten off another guilty man, and more power to the mouthpiece. That gave Junior the rep, and it had paid a lot of freight. When serious folks wanted a bodyguard, they wanted a man who wouldn’t be afraid to drop the hammer when the guns came out, and they thought he had already done it. He’d talked the talk for so long, he had ’em all fooled. They thought he was a killer, but he couldn’t fool himself any longer.

Junior had never killed anybody. Never even shot at anyone. Not for real. Sure, he had beaten more than a few bloody, and had waved his guns a lot to intimidate people, but he’d never actually killed anybody.

And that ate at him. It made him feel… hollow, somehow. He knew he could squeeze the trigger, if it came down to it. He knew it. But he never had.

Time to walk the walk, Junior, or else shut the hell up.

He was scared, no question about that. But he was ready. He knew that, too.

The cop idled the cruiser into the parking lot. It was a big Crown Vic, the car version of Jaws.

He saw the cop spot him. He could see his face in the lights from the computer screen on the car’s dash.

Junior could have picked up the phone, now was the time, but he didn’t. He just stood and stared.

Cops were used to seeing people look at them, but there were citizen looks and then there were the “up-yours” looks. Junior was giving him one of those. No cop could let that pass, not in the middle of the night, not one on one, not unless he was a wimp.

The cop in the Crown Vic was no wimp.

He pulled over and stopped in the driveway twenty-five feet away. The door opened and the cop, maybe thirty or so, stepped out. He had his big aluminum head-basher flashlight in his left hand, but he didn’t shine it at Junior. Not yet.

“Good evening,” the cop said. “Something wrong with the phone?”

Junior took a deep breath. The little sleeveless nylon vest he wore had half a box of bullets in each of the side pockets, enough to give them some weight so he could clear them with a little buck and wiggle of his hips. The two Rugers were underneath the vest, secure in their holsters, as ready as they would ever be.

Shit or get off the pot, Junior.

“Nope, no trouble with it,” Junior said. His voice sounded pretty calm. He was worried it might break, but it was okay. “I wasn’t usin’ it anyway, no.”

Junior saw the cop shift into a higher state of alertness. He edged his right hand back toward the pistol in his holster. Junior knew it was a Glock, probably a 22C in a.40 S&W, ten rounds in the magazine, one in the pipe, three-and-a-half-pound pull and not the heavier New York trigger. More gun than Junior’s, way more. It would knock a man down ninety-five times out of a hundred with any solid hit.

But that didn’t matter, not if Junior was better.

“Hey, let me ask you somethin’.” Junior took a couple of steps toward the cop. Twenty feet. Eighteen.

“Hold it right there, bud,” the cop said, still not too worried, but with his hand now touching the Glock’s plastic butt.

So okay. Here it was. The cop was alert, had his hand on his piece, and was looking straight at him. Fair enough.

Junior stopped. He held his own hands low, by his hips, palms forward, to show they were empty. The ready position from which he had practiced drawing his guns a thousand times.

Junior said, “So, how’s your sister?”

The cop frowned, and while he was thinking about that, Junior cleared the vest and grabbed his revolvers.

Time slowed to a crawl.

The hard rubber grips felt alive under his hands as he pulled the short-barreled guns and swung them up.

The cop reacted. He jerked his Glock out at Junior’s sudden move, but Junior was faster, a half-second ahead. He brought both revolvers up and on target even as the cop cleared leather.

It was like he was in a trance: Everything but the cop vanished, sounds, lights, everything, and the cop was moving so… slow…

Junior cooked off two rounds, the right a hair faster than the left, and he would swear that he saw the bullets leave the barrels, even through the tongues of orange that washed out his night vision and the jets of greasy smoke; saw them fly at better than nine hundred feet a second across the six yards or so, which was impossible; saw the tiny lead rounds hit the cop, right one just above his left eye, left one on the bridge of his nose, whap! whap!

The cop fell, still in slowmo, his pistol pointing at the concrete parking lot, not a chance of tagging Junior even if he fired, which he didn’t.

He hit the ground like a chainsawed redwood tree, dead or most of the way there when he landed. The Glock fell, bounced, and clattered away. Junior heard that, the Glock against the concrete. He couldn’t remember hearing the shots, but he heard the Glock land. Weird.

His heart raced like it was on speed, like a shot of Angola meth right into a vein, and after what seemed like years, he finally remembered to breathe. He had a little trouble doing that, and his breaths came and went real fast.

Jesus Holy Christ! I shot the guy dead!

It seemed very quiet all of a sudden.

He looked around. Nobody in sight, but even the little.22s made noise this late at night. Somebody would have heard. They’d be looking around. Cop cars were like magnets, they pulled in the looks.

Time to leave, Junior.

He felt like he had just screwed his brains out. He was flushed all over, and limp, but in a good way. What a rush!

No need to look at the cop. The man was worm food, no question about it.

He reholstered the Rugers, turned, and walked to the north. A brisk walk, but not a run. His car was parked a block over, on a residential street, in front of some apartments. He had swiped a set of license plates from a little pickup truck that was parked outside a repair shop a couple miles away, and put those on his car. If anybody noticed it there — and they wouldn’t in that neighborhood — it wouldn’t come home to him even if they wrote down the plate number.

If the dead cop had had any smarts, he would have called Junior in before he got out of his car. When he didn’t report back, somebody would come looking. By then, though, Junior would be miles away in a car nobody had seen. And an hour after that, he’d be having a beer in his kitchen and replaying it all in his mind.

They probably wouldn’t get anything off the bullets. Those itty-bitty nonjacketed lead ones were bad for ballistics. But just in case, Junior would change barrels on both revolvers when he got home. He had three spare sets for each gun. Even if they somehow found him later and tested his guns, which wasn’t going to happen, but if they did, the grooves in the new barrels wouldn’t match. No way was he going to keep carrying guns that would ID him as a cop killer, no matter how much he loved ’em.

As he drove off, the body rushes just kept coming. He had never felt so alive before! He had faced off against an armed cop, a trained shooter, and he had beat the guy, cold. Killed him and walked away. Nothing had ever felt like this before! He was like a god.

Like a god!