Читать книгу Touch Of The White Tiger - Julie Beard - Страница 10

Mirandized

Six days, twenty-two hours and twenty-three minutes into my agreement with Marco, my lapel phone rang. Waking from a deep sleep, I slammed my hand on the bedside table, feeling for the noise. At the same time I managed to blink open one eye and saw 3:12 a.m. reflected on the ceiling.

“Who on earth…?” I muttered as I grabbed the tiny round phone. Plugging the receiver in my ear, I groused, “What?”

“Angel?” came a gruff and vaguely familiar voice.

“Who is this?”

“Roy.”

I went instantly alert. Roy Leibman was one of Chicago’s best retributionists. I couldn’t imagine why he was calling me at this hour. I propped myself up on one elbow.

“What is it, Roy?”

“I need help,” he whispered.

The hair on my neck sprang up. Roy had never asked for help from me before. He was fifty-five and I was twenty-eight. He’d been my mentor. He shouldn’t need help. That’s not how our relationship worked. “Where are you, Roy?”

“At the Cloisters. Can you come?”

I glanced up at the red numbers reflected on the ceiling. It was now 3:13 a.m. I was an hour and thirty-five minutes away from seven days of abstinence from my work. If I answered Roy’s call for help, I’d have to start all over again. Since I was self-employed, I could take off as much time as I needed. And I’d enjoyed hanging out with Lin. We’d done everything from making sand castles on the beach to moonwalking in the Virtual Dome. But I couldn’t afford to be unemployed forever. More importantly, how could I not help a colleague in need? Besides, what Marco didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him—or me—would it?

“I’m on my way, Roy.”

“How fast can you get here?”

“I’ll take a chopper cab. Ten minutes, tops.”

Chopper cabs were expensive as all get out, and I splurged on them maybe once a year. But Roy needed me and I was determined to be there for him. Fortunately, there was a cab stand on the roof of the Music Box theater, which was just a few blocks north on Southport.

I dressed fast, wishing I had more than a knife and a whip to attach to my utility belt, woke Lola and talked her into moving from her bed downstairs to mine in case Lin woke up. Then I ran the ten-block distance like athletes used to when humans still dominated the Olympics. When I climbed into the cab, whose blades whooshed overhead, the driver’s sidelong glance looked like one he reserved for a con artist who was going to shake him down after takeoff.

“Don’t even go there,” I said, pulling out my CRS identification card. Then I held out my cash chip. “And, yes, I can afford it. Chicago and State. Pronto.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a faint East Coast accent. “Buckle up, please.”

Like I had a choice. He pushed a button and two belts crossed over my chest and battened me down. While we zoomed up and over the sprawling north side of Chicago, I tried not to imagine the worst and found myself reading the cabdriver’s certificate.

Herbert Banning IV. He was a Harvard grad. So many of them flew chopper cabs these days. Ivy League degrees were quaint relics of a past when a well-educated human could still outthink a computer. While a Harvard pigskin looked impressive hanging on the wall, it was no guarantee of a job, as was, for example, a certificate from a Vastnet Nanotechnology program.

I was hoping to help Roy and get back to my place before the clock struck day seven. And Herb was fast, God love him. He’d put his philosophy degree to good use. We flew well above the old-time skyscrapers, like the Chicago Tribune building and the Sears Tower, but below the executive level of the newer 200-story buildings, like the AutoMates Starbelisk and the Morgan’s Organs Surgery Center. Fortunately, only taxis and emergency vehicles were allowed in the downtown skyways, so we didn’t face too much traffic. Before I knew it, Herb settled his small, yellow chopper on a taxi pad in the heart of the Loop. I zoomed down the building’s outer elevator and ran hard to Chicago Avenue and State Street.

The buildings were so tall in this quadrant that city officials kept the streetlights on around the clock. Like Victorian gaslights, they did little to quell the canyonlike darkness of the streets. And since this once fashionable part of town had fallen on hard times—with free rangers sleeping in well-appointed cardboard boxes, methop junkies shooting up as if they were in the privacy of their own bathrooms, and emaciated hookers lurking in the shadows—it had a vaguely Dickensian aura.

When I reached the entrance to the alley that led to the Cloisters, I called out, “Roy?” as I stepped through the trash-strewed passageway. Rotting food and urine assailed my nose, which I covered with the back of one hand as I tiptoed through a brackish liquid I didn’t want to identify. It had rained earlier, and a trickle—blessedly fresh and silvery—still flowed down a drainpipe, spilling over the broken asphalt.

I focused on the cleansing overflow as I made my way toward the end of the alley. I’d almost reached the open courtyard, where I suspected Roy awaited my help, when I was greeted by the one thing in this world that could make me want to turn and run.

“A rat,” I whispered. Not just any varmint, but a rad rat. Rad as in radiation, not trendy. Rats are never in style.

About twenty years ago some idiot Director of Public Health decided the city’s rat problem had reached apocalyptic proportions and solved it by feeding the nasty critters radiation pellets. A few—the toughest and smartest—survived, mutated, and spawned offspring so large they could have registered with the American Kennel Association.

One of their descendants stood ten feet away from me right now, the size of a pit bull, daring me to pass. That’s what I hated about rats. They had attitude, in addition to beady eyes, creepy tails and vicious teeth.

“Get out of my way!” Out of habit, I reached for the Glock that wasn’t there. I seldom used it and had never killed anyone, but it was a menacing weapon to wave around. Instead, I pulled out my whip and cracked it in the air. The rat flinched, but waddled closer.

“What do you think this is?” I shouted. “Showdown at the OK Corral? Go on! Get out of here!”

Just then another rad rat stepped out of the shadows. I’d read somewhere that they mated for life. How touching.

“Okay, which one of you freaks of nature wants to be widowed first?”

I snapped my whip at the one who’d been acting like John Wayne. “Bull’s-eye!” I shouted triumphantly as it squealed and ran.

The second rat, apparently outraged by the assault, ran toward me so fast I couldn’t use my whip again, so I met it halfway and punted it, literally. The squealing—I swear, screaming—creature flew through the air and landed hard against the brick wall, then limped away.

“Ha!” At least I was warmed up. I only hoped these disgusting creatures weren’t an omen.

I ran the rest of the way down the alley to the entrance to the Cloisters, so named because it was a square courtyard surrounded by arches, as in a medieval monastery. It used to be a loading dock where trucks would unload their wares. But it was abandoned about fifteen years ago, and soon after was the site of a terrible shoot-out between police and drug runners that claimed the lives of nine officers.

Since then the Cloisters had been virtually crime free. Word on the street was that the slain cops haunted the place. Retributionists, who weren’t as a rule superstitious, sometimes took advantage of the empty real estate because it was centrally located. It was a convenient place to meet with a client who wanted a contract to remain secret.

I found the square courtyard well-lit and littered with the remains of a giant forklift, whose metal parts were scattered like the bones of a small dinosaur.

“Roy?” I called out. “Roy, where are you?”

“Here!” came his croaking reply. “It’s safe. They’re gone.”

Spying his bloody, prone body amid the metal rubble, I raced to his side, scraping my knees as I dropped to the dirty concrete. I touched his damp and cold forehead. He was very weak and, I suspected, badly in need of blood. He eyed me with a glint of affection. “Hey, Blue Dragon.”

He often called me that because of the easy-stick dragon tattoo I sometimes wore on my forehead during retribution gigs. It had become my symbol. In Chinese mythology, blue dragons are powerful creatures that live in water. Since one of my great joys as a child was swimming in Lake Michigan, and since I’d learned my best combat techniques from a former Shaolin kung fu monk, the imagery seemed to fit and gave me confidence.

“What are you doing in this shitty neighborhood?”

“You called me, remember?” I squeezed his hand hard, willing my life into him. Blood had splattered his white shirt like a panel from a Rorschach test. His abdomen looked like meat ready for a sausage grinder.

“Shit!” I muttered, momentarily squeezing my eyes tight.

I jammed my earpiece in place and called for an ambulance and police, then snapped it back on my lapel and took Roy’s pulse. It was too slow. If the ambulance didn’t hurry, he wouldn’t make it.

“Angel…”

“Yes, Roy?” I stroked his cheek. “What is it?”

He looked at me with eyes I had once watched so carefully for approval. With a gray mustache and silver hair, Roy was elegant and smart. He was also wily. He’d been the first man to tell me it was okay to be a little bad for a good cause.

“Go help the boy,” he croaked.

“What boy?”

He raised his right hand and pointed, then dropped it and passed out.

I checked his pulse again to make sure he was still alive. Then I carefully headed in the direction in which he’d pointed. My stomach surged with vertigo when I spotted a second body, which was so utterly still I knew immediately that “the boy” was dead.

As I knelt, both fascinated and horrified beside the lifeless form, I thought of Marco’s question to me: do you really know what death is? Trying to take it in as much as I could, I carefully tugged on the shoulder of the young man’s Hawaiian shirt. The weight of his shoulders pulled his still-supple torso toward me, and I winced at the scarlet carnage. I reached down and pulled his head my way so I could look at his face, in case I recognized him.

Who it was nearly stopped my heart. “Oh, my God!”

It was Victor Alvarez, the seventeen-year-old son of the Chicago mayor. I’d met Victor briefly when I’d done a top secret retribution job for his father. This was a disaster of monstrous proportions. What the hell had happened here? Had Roy and Victor been in a shoot-out?

“Angel,” came Roy’s weak cry.

I ran the thirty feet back to his side and my eyes widened when I saw how white he was. He looked at me with terror shimmering in his eyes.

“Angel, I’m dying.” He started to convulse, gasping desperately for air.

I knelt and took him in my arms, but he shook so violently his hand socked me in the temple and I nearly blacked out. When I regained my composure, he was still, his eyes wide open.

“No!” I shouted and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I fought to keep the cold of death out of my lungs while I stubbornly forced the warmth of life into his, one breath at a time.

By the time emergency technicians arrived, I was sweating and frantic, pumping at Roy’s chest, willing him to live. Strong hands gripped my upper arms and lifted me away.

“Hold it, ma’am,” said a brawny EMT, pulling me around. His round, ebony face was serious and soothing. “We have it under control now. You can stop. We’ll take over from here.”

I took in a hitching breath and nodded, as an EMT took over working on Roy. I looked around and realized the once-empty courtyard was now teaming with detectives, special forces and beat cops. When I looked back at Roy, the technician was pulling a white sheet over him.

“That’s it?” I shouted. “Why did you stop? Can’t you take him to the hospital?”

The big guy who had pulled me aside said, “We did a brain scan. There’s no activity.”

I nodded, finally admitting what I’d known from the beginning. Roy was gone. As devastating as this fact was, I could not cry for him. Not here. I had to know first who killed him. As always, I trusted my own ability to find out more than the cops.

“Angel Baker?” a voice intoned over my shoulder.

“That’s me,” I muttered, still staring at the white sheet.

“My name is Lieutenant William Townsend, director of Q.E.D.”

I tore my gaze from Roy’s body and focused on a man who towered above me a good six inches. Gray-haired and quietly arrogant, he regarded me assessingly.

“How did you know who I am?” I asked, refusing to be cowed.

“Detective Marco briefed me when I arrived,” he answered in an upper-crust British accent. He was apparently a UK immigrant who’d tenaciously clung to his distinguished way of speaking.

“Marco?” The word was like a bad dream suddenly remembered in the light of day. I glanced over and saw Marco talking to a bevy of crime scene techs and investigators.

“What time is it?” I hissed.

Arching one brow in surprise, Lieutenant Townsend replied, “Four-fifty.”

The proverbial clock had struck midnight. In Marco’s eyes, I was now officially a pumpkin. I’d failed our agreement. I rubbed my eyes with both hands and sighed.

“I need to see your license,” Townsend said in a clipped manner.

Without enthusiasm, I handed over my certification card and studied him as he held it by the edges with his uncallused, manicured fingers, as if I had cooties. I’d always been curious about Q.E.D., which was short for the Latin term quad erat demonstrandum, “that which is to be demonstrated.” I’d never met a Q.E.D. officer before but I’d heard the group jokingly referred to as the Quad Squad.

An elite group, it consisted of about ten cops who had elected to undergo psychosurgery to limit their capacity to feel emotions. After surgery, the officers took the latest bio-meds to spur connections in the logical, left side of the brain, which would then take over functions that had been surgically freed up in the right, or emotional, side of the brain. The idea being that a more logical cop could better solve crimes and would be less inclined to abuse criminals in a fit of anger.

“Are you carrying a weapon, Ms. Baker?” Townsend inquired, handing me back my ID.

“A knife and a whip. No gun.”

He fixed me with cold, gray eyes that fronted a brain working apparently with computer-like precision. In fact, he stared down his aquiline nose at me for so long with so little emotion that I began to wonder if he considered me a suspect.

“I didn’t do it, Lieutenant. But perhaps I can help you find out who did.”

“That won’t be necessary.” He gave me a perfunctory smile, perhaps one remembered from presurgery days. He motioned above my head and soon another detective joined us. My skin began to tingle ominously in this new presence and I turned to see who it was.

Marco. His jaded eyes that so recently glittered at me with desire now shone with reproof.

“Detective Marco,” Townsend said, “I’m arresting Angel Baker in connection with this double homicide. Would you be so kind as to read her her Miranda rights?”

Townsend walked away without waiting for a reply. Marco put his hands on his hips and sighed heavily. Our gazes met again. “You just couldn’t wait, could you?” he said accusingly. “What? Another hour was it?”

“Marco, I—”

“You have the right to remain silent,” he said in a monotone voice, cutting me off. “You have the right to an attorney….”