Storm prey

11

TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE Barakat's shift was due to end, a kid was brought in from a back-street traffic accident. He had a couple of cuts on his forehead, probably from airbag shrapnel, and his stomach "felt really bad."

Barakat ran him through the hospital's blunt trauma protocol and learned that he'd been using a laptop in the passenger seat, and when the car hit the truck, the laptop had been jammed into the kid's gut. Barakat thought, Liver, and talked to the shell-shocked mother for a minute, then got the scans going, woke up the radiologist and cranked up a surgeon, just in case.

By the time everything was in place, he was running almost two hours overtime, for which he would not be paid. He went back to the locker room, changed clothes, and did a twist of coke to pick himself up. Hated overtime.

He did another twist, washed his face, got his shoes on, and headed out. On the way, a senior medical guy slapped him on the back and said, "Nice call. The boy's going into the OR right now."

"That's great," Barakat said. "I had a feeling that something was going on in there." A little self-aggrandizement, combined with discreet, comradely sucking up, just might get him to Paris.

Or LA, anyway. BY THE TIME he got to the parking ramp, it was fully dark and colder than it had been in the morning. The wind was coming from the northeast, which, he'd learned from watching local weather programs, meant it might snow. He shivered against it, pulled his coat collar closer, and hurried to his car.

"Hey, bro."

Cappy was there, getting out of a white van a few spaces down from Barakat's car. Barakat stiffened: Had Cappy told Lyle Mack about their discussion that morning, and Lyle sent Cappy to resolve the problem? There was nobody else in the ramp; they were alone in the dark.

Barakat said, "You know, you're parked in a physician's space. That's a good way to get noticed."

Cappy came slouching up. "Don't worry, I'm not here to hit ya." And he grinned: "That's what you were thinking about, weren't you?"

Barakat bit back a direct answer. "What's that weak cigarette you're smoking? It smells like a sewage-plant fire."

Cappy looked at his cigarette: "Just a Camel."

"Give me that," Barakat said. He took the cigarette, dropped it on the ramp, ground it out with his foot. "Try one of these." He shook out a Gauloise. "Smuggled in from Canada," he said. The relief was surging through him like a flood tide.

He held his lighter and Cappy took a drag: "Holy shit."

"So did you see her?" Barakat asked.

"Yes, I did. I even followed her home," Cappy said. He let the harsh smoke drift out through his nostrils: better than a hit of NyQuil. "She's got three bodyguards, at least, and they've got shotguns and I suppose their pistols and all. If I'm going to do her, I'll have to figure something out."

"Listen to me, Caprice. You must be maximum careful," Barakat said. "I agree, it may be necessary, for your own satisfaction. This is what men sometimes have to do."

"She sorta punked me," Cappy said.

"This is what I am saying." Barakat paused, then said, "I need something to eat. There's a diner in St. Paul, we could talk."

Cappy said, "Sure." He took a drag on the Gauloise. "Give me another one of those, hey?"

Barakat took one for himself and gave the pack to Cappy. THEY GOT a booth at the Snelling Diner, and after the waitress had taken their orders, Barakat held up a twist and said, "I gotta use the men's room. I'll be right back." He went in the men's room, into the toilet stall, sucked up the twist, wiped his nose, checked himself in the mirror before he went back out. Back in the booth, Cappy asked, "You got another one of those?"

Barakat said, "One more," and pushed the twist across the table. Cappy took it and went back to the men's room, and two minutes later, was back. "That's better'n Wheaties," he said.

"I don't know…"

"Never mind. Anyway, I've been thinking about Joe and Lyle. Those rascals hired me to get rid of this doctor chick and this kidnap chick and Shooter and Mikey, who was supposed to be their friends, and you know what? I was thinking about what you said, and you're right. They'll try to do me in, when I finish with the doctor chick. If I do her, then I'd be the last link, huh? Or you would be."

Barakat ticked a finger at him: "Now you are thinking correctly. But…"

"But?"

"You, my friend, may have to kill the woman anyway. I don't know; maybe you don't think so. Women are nothing. Nothing. I don't care if she's a surgeon. That's just some… bullshit. But still: it would not do your dignity any good to let this woman pass."

"I gotta think about it some more," Cappy said. "I kind of got a plan."

He explained, and Barakat thought the same thing that Cappy thought when he looked into the mirror: this boy is not long for the world. He didn't say that. It would be useful, though, if he took Karkinnen with him, when he went. He asked, "Have you heard any more about the Macks?"

Cappy scratched his chin, his eyes wandering away for a moment. "I talked to Lyle," he said. "I might know where Joe is. Lyle sent Shooter and Mikey out to his bartender's house. The bartender's like his girl, but I think Joe might be fuckin' her, too. Anyway, I think that's probably where he is. It's way out in the country. Nobody would ever find him out there, unless they were told about it. That's where we took Mikey and Shooter."

The waitress came with their shakes, burgers, and fries, and when she was gone again, Cappy asked, "So what do you think?"

"I think we go after Joe," Barakat said.

"If we take Joe, we might have to take Lyle. They're pretty tight."

Barakat said, "So?"

The coke was on top of both of them now, and they were stuffing the fries into their mouths, eyes bright, faces animated. "Do that, we gotta figure out where they put that dope," Cappy mumbled through the potatoes.

They snarled through the rest of the meal, and when wiping their hands and faces with paper napkins, Barakat asked, "Why didn't you take Joe when you could have? At the airport?"

Cappy raised his eyebrows, shook his head. "Hell, you know, I wasn't thinking about it. I was there to do the chick. I had a contract, you know, with the brothers: so I went and did it. I only got to thinking about it later, when you brought it up. If it wasn't for the doctor chick, and then the kidnapping, I'd let it go. Trust that they'd keep their mouths shut, and that we could ride it out. That's not going to happen, now. If they catch Joe without killing him…"

"We better get him," Barakat said.

Cappy suggested that they would have to wait until the next day: "Honey Bee usually goes home about seven o'clock. If she's there, she adds to the problem."

"All right, but tomorrow…" He stopped, and looked around. "We should talk about this somewhere else. My place is two minutes from here." THEY WENT to Barakat's and Barakat brought out the cocaine again, still far enough from a shortage that he didn't worry about it. The coke helped with that attitude, steadied him with its cold clearheadedness, its chemical confidence, the sense of potency.

They started to argue.

"You go in there with a gun, you can't pussy out," Cappy told him. "The second that Joe figures out what you're doing, he'll be all over you. He's a tough guy, you know. A little stupid, but he can fight. Strong as an ox. You gotta put the gun on him and keep it there."

"No worry," Barakat said. "I'm no pussy."

"You know what does it? It's that accent, you know?" Cappy said, his eyes glowing. "It's kind of a pussy accent. What kind of accent is that, anyway?"

"There's nothing pussy about my accent," Barakat said. "I'm Lebanese, I speak French, you know, I have a French accent in English."

"You an Arab?"

"No. I am a descendant of the Phoenicians. The Arabs come from Arabia. My family, we were in Lebanon since Adam."

"Whatever the fuck all that means," Cappy said. He lit one of the Gauloises and added, "I just hope you don't pussy out."

Barakat stared at him for a second, then jumped out of his chair and stormed into the bedroom. Poured coke into his hand, pulled it through his nose in a burst that was as cold as an icicle. Snatched open the closet door, and found the gun. A minute later, he was back with the.45. "You think I'm a pussy?" he demanded.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Cappy said. He pulled his feet up on the couch. He'd always thought that he wasn't long for this life, but he didn't want to cut it any shorter than necessary.

"I'm not a pussy," Barakat said. He wiped his face and nose with his free hand. "You fuckin' American gangsters, you think you're the only people who can do this. You know nothing at all." He yanked the magazine out of the.45, tested the spring with his thumb, and slapped it back in the butt and jacked a shell into the chamber, pointed the barrel at the ceiling.

"You think-"

"Dude-"

Barakat pulled the trigger, and the gun went off with a deafening explosion, and a trickle of plaster fell from the ceiling. Stunned, they both stared at the small hole above their heads.

"Dude," Cappy said, and then he started laughing. Barakat didn't join in; he got angrier.

"Let's go," he said. He pushed the gun into the front of his pants.

"Gonna shoot your nuts off," Cappy said. But he stood up.

Barakat frowned-an "Oh, yeah" frown. He took the gun back out, checked the safety. "This is, they say, cocked and locked. Let's go."

"Where are we going?" Cappy asked.

"You a pussy?"

"I'm smoking this fuckin' cigarette, ain't I?"

They took Cappy's van, with Barakat behind the wheel. He'd taken a small baggie of coke, and he snorted another pile off the back of his hand and passed the baggie to Cappy. "Pussy," he said, and he laughed, and turned north, and reached out, clicked the radio on, pushed the first tuning button and got a rock station. Cappy sat almost silently, except for the sniffing, and watched the streetlights go by. Two blocks before they would have gotten to the 1-94 entrance ramp, Barakat turned east, down the dark streets, toward St. Paul's downtown.

Snow was filtering through the trees, and the streets were empty. Four blocks, five, around a couple of blocks, past a closed market and a couple of open bars, town houses, apartments, back through the residential area. They crossed Lexington, still going west, when they saw the man walking alone down the sidewalk. He was wearing a parka, and carrying some kind of bag.

"Pussy," Barakat said. He stopped the van, pulled the pistol from his pants, undid the safety, got out of the van, shouted, "Hey, mister. Hey, mister."

The man stopped, looked at him, slipping and sliding across the street; tall thin white man on ice.

"What's up?" Black man with a briefcase. For some reason, the briefcase irritated Barakat. An unwarranted assumption of status.

He pointed the gun at the man's chest and said, "This," and pulled the trigger. There was a bang, and a lightning flash, and the gun jumped in his hand, and the man went down. Barakat ran back to the van and they were off.

Cappy was laughing hysterically. "You crazy fuck, you crazy fuck, you shot that motherfucker…"

"Am I a pussy? Am I a pussy? Tell me…"

They jogged out onto Snelling Avenue and idled back toward Barakat's place. A block or so away, Cappy said, "That was cool, but you know what? I could use another bite to eat. I don't know. Let's go someplace else, get another sandwich."

"I would like a doughnut," Barakat said.

"You're right. Let's get a doughnut. We could go to Cub. They got good doughnuts."

"Maybe two doughnuts," Barakat said. VIRGIL FLOWERS had the sense that things were out of control, that they didn't know what was going on. He could see the same worry reflected in Lucas. Virgil had taken three pillows off the living room couch so he could sleep in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, where he could intercept any traffic coming into the house, from any direction. Weather thought that was ridiculous, and made Lucas help Virgil carry the couch to the same place, so he'd have an easier night.

Easier, but still not easy. He woke with the unfamiliar sounds in the house, and he woke when he heard a car turn into the driveway at four in the morning. He looked at his watch, in the dark-paper delivery. He rolled off the couch and peeked out the window, recognized the car, and then the paper hit the porch with a solid thunk, and the car was backing away. He sat for another two minutes, watching. Nothing moved, and he went back to sleep.

At six, he woke again when he heard movement: Weather was up and about. Virgil went quietly back to the guest bathroom, washed his face and brushed his teeth, then out to the front porch to get the papers.

Lucas and Weather came down together, quietly, not to wake the kids, and found him reading at the kitchen table. At the same moment, another car pulled into the driveway, and Virgil checked: "Shrake," he said. He could see light snow coming down, in Shrake's headlights. Still dark as pitch. "It's snowing."

"That's great," Lucas said. "I love getting up in the middle of the night when it's snowing."

Shrake came in: "Good morning, everybody."

"Shut up," Davenport said.

Virgil: "I'm gonna shave and take a shower."

"Anything in the papers?" Lucas asked.

"Some poor bastard got shot off Snelling. He was walking home from his job. Somebody shot him in the chest. Paper says there was no robbery… says he was an interior decorator guy, working late on some remodeling plans. St. Paul says it looks like a random shooting."

"Poor guy," Weather said. "Why would anybody do that?"

"Gangs," Lucas said. He yawned, stretched, and said, "Doesn't have anything to do with us, anyway."

"And that's a good thing," Shrake said. "Are we talking coffee?"