Read Online Urban Renewal by Andrew Vachss - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Andrew Vachss
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what looked like ascrap yard at first; but the carelessly scattered old appliances, chunks of unidentifiable machinery, and things that might have once been furniture combined to give it the look of an above-ground landfill. An astounding variety of animal life ran, jumped, crawled, and flitted in the shadows formed by the rusting metal: cats chasing mice while fleeing from dogs who lived on the plentiful supply of rats, snakes waiting for either prey to run past their ground-level hiding places. Crows and other carrion eaters perched, watched, and pounced when an opportunity opened up. Such movements always diverted the cats, and the high-speed evolution of new breeds of each species continued.
The vicious Chicago winters changed nothing but the hunting-and-hiding patterns. Snakes who would sun themselves on hot metal in the summer found hibernation spots without difficulty; the warm-blooded mammals still found live food, working very close to the ground. And the birds that frequented this bizarre collection of predators-and-prey were not the kind who went south for the winter.
The pay phone rang again. And it was answered the same way.
“What?”
“This is Howard Motley, okay? I want to speak to Cross.”
“Then you know where to come,” Buddha said, cutting the connection again.
THE PERFECTLY restored black 1973 Firebird Trans Am—“the last of the
real
ones, right down to the 455 cubes”—rolled slowly toward the scrap yard.
“I’m not so happy about this,” the tall, rawboned man in the passenger seat said. He had a darkly shaded mark on his throat that looked more like a tumor than an Adam’s apple.
“You ain’t exactly a barrel of laughs most of the time,” the driver replied. He was a mirror image of the first speaker, lacking only the purplish birthmark on his throat.
They were dressed alike, in long brown leather coats, heavy jeans, red corduroy shirts buttoned to the neck, and steel-toed ironworker’s boots.
As if the pair of over-under .40-caliber derringers each man carried in the side pockets of his coat might prove insufficient, the console opened on a 12-gauge pump holding three-inch magnum shells, its barrel slightly cut down to sixteen inches. And the trunk held a pair of scoped M14s chambered for NATO rounds. Although those were not far removed from the .30-caliber slugs favored by deer hunters, no deer hunter needed a full-auto.
And no hunting license would keep ATF from seizing everything the twins carried, anyway. But the “going quietly” synapses had never connected inside their skulls. They could trace their lineage back to ancestors who’d mounted skulls of “strangers” on the walls of their cabins with great pride.
As the Firebird braked gently to a stop, the passenger said, “Don’t we have to leave our pieces in the car?”
“Harold, I told you about fifty damn times. They don’t care if you walk in carrying a damn bazooka. Nobody’s gonna search us.”
“That’s weak.”
“
You’re
the one who’s weak. Why they need to search us when we’re walking into a place where we’re in somebody’s sights as soon as we start down the steps?”
“I still say this is weird.”
“Lots of things are like that. So what? You and me, we’re businessmen. We do business. We get paid. We got some info that’s worth money, but the only way we turn it
into
money is face-to-face. Got to tell the man himself.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause that’s the way they want it. And they the ones with the money.”
“ LOOKING FOR Cross,” Harold said to a man who looked as if he’d missed his last appointment with the embalmer. The top half of his face was invisible behind a green eyeshade.
“Nobody here with that name.”
“Look, old man, I was told—”
The light tap on his right shoulder cut Harold off. He turned, and found himself looking at a short, pudgy man with reflective black eyes slanted slightly at their corners, as if he had passed through more than
The vicious Chicago winters changed nothing but the hunting-and-hiding patterns. Snakes who would sun themselves on hot metal in the summer found hibernation spots without difficulty; the warm-blooded mammals still found live food, working very close to the ground. And the birds that frequented this bizarre collection of predators-and-prey were not the kind who went south for the winter.
The pay phone rang again. And it was answered the same way.
“What?”
“This is Howard Motley, okay? I want to speak to Cross.”
“Then you know where to come,” Buddha said, cutting the connection again.
THE PERFECTLY restored black 1973 Firebird Trans Am—“the last of the
real
ones, right down to the 455 cubes”—rolled slowly toward the scrap yard.
“I’m not so happy about this,” the tall, rawboned man in the passenger seat said. He had a darkly shaded mark on his throat that looked more like a tumor than an Adam’s apple.
“You ain’t exactly a barrel of laughs most of the time,” the driver replied. He was a mirror image of the first speaker, lacking only the purplish birthmark on his throat.
They were dressed alike, in long brown leather coats, heavy jeans, red corduroy shirts buttoned to the neck, and steel-toed ironworker’s boots.
As if the pair of over-under .40-caliber derringers each man carried in the side pockets of his coat might prove insufficient, the console opened on a 12-gauge pump holding three-inch magnum shells, its barrel slightly cut down to sixteen inches. And the trunk held a pair of scoped M14s chambered for NATO rounds. Although those were not far removed from the .30-caliber slugs favored by deer hunters, no deer hunter needed a full-auto.
And no hunting license would keep ATF from seizing everything the twins carried, anyway. But the “going quietly” synapses had never connected inside their skulls. They could trace their lineage back to ancestors who’d mounted skulls of “strangers” on the walls of their cabins with great pride.
As the Firebird braked gently to a stop, the passenger said, “Don’t we have to leave our pieces in the car?”
“Harold, I told you about fifty damn times. They don’t care if you walk in carrying a damn bazooka. Nobody’s gonna search us.”
“That’s weak.”
“
You’re
the one who’s weak. Why they need to search us when we’re walking into a place where we’re in somebody’s sights as soon as we start down the steps?”
“I still say this is weird.”
“Lots of things are like that. So what? You and me, we’re businessmen. We do business. We get paid. We got some info that’s worth money, but the only way we turn it
into
money is face-to-face. Got to tell the man himself.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause that’s the way they want it. And they the ones with the money.”
“ LOOKING FOR Cross,” Harold said to a man who looked as if he’d missed his last appointment with the embalmer. The top half of his face was invisible behind a green eyeshade.
“Nobody here with that name.”
“Look, old man, I was told—”
The light tap on his right shoulder cut Harold off. He turned, and found himself looking at a short, pudgy man with reflective black eyes slanted slightly at their corners, as if he had passed through more than
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