The wake-up

22

Thorpe heard Hathaway coming a block away, the full-size Ford 4?4 pulling into the parking lot, bouncing over the speed bumps, glass packs trumpeting as Hathaway pumped the accelerator. The metallic blue truck was tricked out with oversize blackwalls, gold-flecked chrome wheels, and matching chrome bed rails, bumpers, and mirrors. A decal beside the gas tank showed a cartoon bad boy pissing onto a Chevy insignia. He revved the engine again as Thorpe opened the door.

"Subtle ride, Danny," said Thorpe, stepping up into the cab. It smelled of weed.

Hathaway peeled out of the parking lot before Thorpe was completely inside. Thorpe banged his head, hanging on with one hand as Hathaway cackled, gave it more gas.

"I missed you, too, asshole," said Thorpe, buckling himself in. At the small of his back, he felt the 9-mm semiauto clipped to his belt. He had been carrying since he talked to Ray Bishop and found out who Clark and Missy really were.

"You really missed me, you would have got in touch sooner." Hathaway downshifted, the fingers of his right hand caging the devil's-head floor shift knob. Lean and hard as a roofing nail, he wore a WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? tank top, shorts, and huaraches. Hathaway had been in Thorpe's four-man Delta Force squad. He was much younger than Thorpe, moody and high-strung, the only member other than Thorpe to survive. After their courts-martial, Thorpe had gotten Billy to take him into the shop, but the pace of operations was too slow for Hathaway, and his drug habit had flared up. When Billy cut him loose, Hathaway had hired on with the DEA, which always needed deep-cover field agents, and a minor drug problem was part of the job description. Hathaway had flourished at DEA; he could have moved inside to a desk, could have run his own string of informants, but he preferred the street, and the excuse it gave him to play the part.

They cruised the outskirts of Little Saigon, a community of recent Southeast Asian immigrants who had transformed the former white-bread inland slum into a bustling high-density community of minimalls and backyard vegetable gardens. The street signs were all bilingual now, and most of the high school valedictorians had last names that were unpronounceable to the older residents.

"You talked to Billy lately?" asked Hathaway, watching a couple of pretty Vietnamese girls in shorts and crop tops. "Fucker won't even return my calls."

"What's the matter, you tired of your job?"

"Too much paperwork." Hathaway sniffed. "I hear Billy's gone into business for himself. Maybe you could put in a good word for me."

"It would be a waste of a word."

Hathaway smiled, his teeth white and shiny as fresh dice. Hathaway might let everything else go, but he was fastidious about his oral hygiene. Thorpe remembered the two of them dug into the tree line of a Colombian mountainside, hunkered down for almost a week, waiting to spring an ambush, wet and cold the whole time. Thorpe had shivered and kept quiet, while Hathaway had chewed sugarless Dentyne and jabbered about dental caries and gingivitis and the need to floss after every meal, until Thorpe had threatened to knock his incisors out.

Thorpe checked the side-view mirror. "You said you could fill me in about the local meth scene."

"You have to admire Vietnamese people." Hathaway nodded at an old man sweeping the sidewalk in front of a noodle shop. "They have discipline, a sense of order. You drive down the street in Santa Ana, there's trash all over the sidewalk. Huntington Beach is even worse. Surfers, Frank, they want the ocean pristine, but you walk into one of their cribs, you better wear your hip waders. The Vietnamese, they're not afraid of soap and water."

Thorpe checked the side-view mirror again. It was the day after Gina and Douglas Meachum had left for Hawaii. Thorpe wondered how the second honeymoon was going, wondered if Meachum had called the blonde yet, waiting until Gina was in the shower. Maybe he had learned his lesson. Learned it without Thorpe's help. Thorpe had twelve days to make sure that they were safe when they came back home. Time enough. If Thorpe got lucky again, the Engineer would be at the screening of Shock Waves tonight. He was out there in cyberspace, circling in the darkness; the smell of blood and money kept him close, but it might be the Engineer's love of oddball movies that forced him into a mistake. A man's passions were always his weakness.

"Asian women, they are the absolute best." Hathaway slowed, checked out a slim, well-dressed woman stepping out of a black Lexus. "No tits, though. If the Vietnamese had tits, I'd marry the whole country."

"Let's talk meth, Danny."

"What's your interest in the wonderful world of speed?"

"There's a married couple distributing chemicals out of Newport-"

"Clark the shark? He and Missy are the only ones who fit that description." Hathaway waited for confirmation, shrugged. "Clark moves high-quality meth, and designer pharmaceuticals he comes up with himself. Himself. Only does about fifteen, twenty million dollars a year, but the man's a regular Thomas Alva Edison… if Edison'd been a dope fiend." He looked at Thorpe. "You don't want to mess with him."

"That's what everybody tells me." Thorpe checked the mirror again. "There's a white Pathfinder that's been trailing us for the last mile and not doing a good job of it. Young white guy with a goatee behind the wheel. Couple of others with him."

Hathaway glanced at the rearview, then popped open the dash, revealed a.357 Magnum lying among the fast-food wrappers and catsup packs. "Why don't you snap off a few rounds, see how committed they are?"

Thorpe closed the dash. "You burned these yokels?"

"Sold them a thousand hits of Midol last week." Hathaway ran a red light. "They seemed to be under the impression it was ecstasy."

The Pathfinder pulled into oncoming traffic, raced through the intersection after them, almost hit a Cadillac.

Thorpe tightened his seat belt as Hathaway made a hard right onto a side street, then veered through an alley, tires screeching. He cut through a car wash on the next block, took a one-way street the wrong way, raced through another alley, and headed in the opposite direction. Thorpe's fingers hurt from hanging on.

"We're clear," said Hathaway. "You could have backed them off with a couple shots from the Magnum, saved my tires, but hey, no hard feelings."

"What do you mess around with this petty shit for?"

"It's not the money, Frank; it's the principle of the thing."

Hathaway thought he was being clever, but Thorpe knew it was the truth. Danny saw the world as two circles. One very tiny circle contained his friends, with barely room inside for Thorpe and one or two others. The other circle contained everyone else on the planet. His friends could count on Hathaway to keep his word, and to keep his silence. The rest of the world had reason to worry. Casual rip-offs, short-weighting his busts for the DEA, strong-arming crack dealers for their bankroll and their stash, it was all the same agenda to him: whatever, whenever, whoever.

"One of these days, some kid you burned for a few hundred dollars is going to kill you."

"Like you're Mr. Safe and Sane. You're the guy asking about Clark and Missy, so tell me about your PTA meetings and your 401(k) and your high-fiber diet. Edge City, Frank. You're as fucked-up as me. You just hide it better."

They touched fists.

"Clark's muscle… they as bad as I've heard?" asked Thorpe.

"Worse. A couple of very sick dudes." A wizened old woman in a velour jogging suit and a Dodgers cap leaned against a walker. Hathaway threw her a kiss as they drove by, but she ignored him.

"She looks like the old lady with the Hustler cap," said Thorpe.

Hathaway half-turned in his seat, getting another look at the woman. "You're right."

The village had been high on the Colombian plateau, guerrilla country, with stifling days and sharp, cold nights, the stars so close, he'd almost ducked. "That woman must have been a thousand years old," said Thorpe. "Probably spit in the face of Pizarro. Sat there the whole time we dug out that well, a wad of coca leaves filling one cheek, the Hustler cap perched on her head. Never would say where she got it."

Hathaway looked straight ahead. "I think about going back there sometimes. See how those people are making out. Then I figure, Let well enough alone."

Thorpe nodded. Never go back. Better to think they had made a difference.

"I'm sorry about Kimberly," blurted Hathaway. "I should have said so sooner. She tried to cover for me when Billy found my stash at work. He bounced me anyway, but I appreciated the attempt. Small kindnesses, Frank, they stick in the memory. That old woman with the Hustler cap… she gave me corn cakes one morning. Never said a word, just gave them to me like I was one of her grandkids."

Thorpe remembered the first time he and Kimberly had made love. She had gone into the kitchen afterward, come back a few minutes later with a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, stood there, slim and naked, saying, "Don't count on this kind of treatment every time, Thorpe." But he had, and he was never disappointed. Maybe that's why he forgave her for her other lovers.

"Frank? You ever find Lazurus?"

"He's dead. It was the Engineer who killed her. He was running an op on Lazurus the whole time."

"No shit?" Hathaway chewed his thumbnail. "I can believe it. I heard most of the equipment Lazurus's crew shipped turned out to be defective. Games within games. I can't keep it all straight."

"The Engineer and I have been keeping in touch. We might be going to the movies together tonight. I hope so anyway."

Hathaway stared at him. "You need help, just tell me."

"I know."

"Why fool around with Clark and Missy? Haven't you got enough on your plate?"

"I've still got a little room."

Hathaway chuckled. "There's a dude named Guillermo-he's the closest thing to competition that Clark's got. Guillermo moves five or six times the weight, but they've got an arrangement."

"Peace treaty?"

"More like a free-trade agreement," said Hathaway. "Clark's always coming up with new drug combos, and simpler ways to cook meth, so when he moved in a few years ago, his dealers started taking business away from Guillermo right off. They went back and forth for a long time, tit for tat, but Guillermo was preoccupied with keeping out the Mexican Mafia, and then the Aryan Brotherhood started undercutting him with that rotgut crank of theirs. So while Guillermo was scrambling, Clark made his move." He sniffed. "Nuclear fucking winter. Clark had just two men handling the rough work."

"Vlad and Arturo."

"That's right." Hathaway eyed him. "Vlad and Arturo took down five of Guillermo's dealers in one weekend, and that was that."

"Five dealers by themselves?"

"By themselves. It wasn't just the dealers who got dead, either." Hathaway looked like he had bitten into some rotten meat. "Vlad and Arturo cleaned house: men, women, babies crying in their cribs, everybody. " He set his jaw. "After that, Guillermo decided it was better to give Clark a slice of territory, and buy his overflow, than fight him. Things have been quiet between them ever since."

"Guillermo let just two guys make him back off? I don't believe it."

"If you know these two, you know they ain't normal guys, Frank. They went through those dealers' security like shit through a goose. That's why Clark and Missy can drive around town in a convertible, and Guillermo uses a bulletproof Lincoln Town Car. Nobody blamed Guillermo for calling things off."

"Still… letting two guys make him back down… If I were Clark, I'd worry that Guillermo might hold a grudge. I might be able to drive around town with the top down, but I'd still be paying attention."

Hathaway shook his head. "I know what you're thinking. Last time I saw that look on your face, we almost ended up in federal prison, pounding rocks for twenty years."

"Shining Path was murdering our villagers. We did the right thing."

"You started a fucking war, Frank."

"War between monsters. Shining Path guerrillas and the coca lords- it was like Godzilla versus Ghidra: You don't care who wins, you just want them to just keep tearing at each other so they don't wipe out Tokyo."

"That wasn't our mission," said Hathaway. "It was fun, though." He scratched at the inside of his arm, the flesh scabbed. "You get involved with Clark and Missy… it might not be so much fun. I just hope you know what you're doing now." He sniffed. "Must be quite a payday."

"There is no payday."

"Payday or payback, got to be one or the other."

"You get a regular retainer from Guillermo, or does he just pay you for advance notice of a bust?"

Hathaway hesitated. "Is it that obvious?"

"I know you, Danny. It's the move you'd make."

Hathaway shrugged. "Man has to take care of his needs."

"There're all kinds of needs. I need you to tell me about Guillermo. I need you to tell me about Missy and Clark, and Arturo and Vlad. I need to know all the players."

Hathaway drove for a few more blocks. "I got something you might be interested in," he said finally. "One of Clark's cookers in Riverside was taken down a couple of days ago. Made a real mess of the tweaker's trailer, too. Clark must have lost another cooker, too, because some truly righteous crank hit the market yesterday. Shit had a real sweet, smooth burn… might as well have Clark's autograph on it."

"Guillermo?"

"Not a chance. Guillermo's trying to find out who's moving this shit, probably worried that Clark will think he's behind it. Nobody knows who the guilty party is, not yet, but it's bound to come out. Somebody always wants to tell the tale." Hathaway grinned at Thorpe. "Stand-up guys are in short supply, Frank-I think you and me are the last two specimens."