Revenge is like any other religion: Theres always a lot more preaching than there is practicing. And most of that preaching is about what
not to practice.
“Vengeance is mine” translates to: “Its not yours.” The karma-peddlers will tell you how doing nothing is doing the right thing, reciting, “What goes around comes around,” in that heavy-gravity tone reserved for the kind of ancient wisdom you find in comic books.
Every TV “counselor,” every self-help expert, every latte-slurping guru . . . they all chant some version of the same mantra: “Revenge never solves anything.”
Their favorite psalm is Forgiveness. And their hymn books are always open to the same page.
Get it? When you crawl away, youre not being a punk; youre just letting the cosmos handle your business. Whoever hurt you, theyll get theirs, dont worry. Just have a little faith.
Down here, we see it different. We dont count on karma. And you can count on this: hurt one of us, were all coming for you.
A low-level maggot once got a little taste of power and overdosed on it. He murdered a thirteen-year-old girl after the three privileged little weasels who had started the fun ran to him for help.
The boys hadnt meant to kill her; they were good kids who just got a little carried away. All they wanted was to gang-rape the little cock-teaser, take some pictures, and teach her what it cost to humiliate people of their status. But their freakish plan tumbled out of control when the girl suddenly stopped moving.
Terrified, they offered the maggot anything he wanted if hed dump the body for them.
But when he arrived at the abandoned house where theyd left her, he discovered she wasnt dead—passed out from the pain, but still breathing, leaking blood. He touched her throat, found a good, strong pulse. If hed taken her to the ER, she would have survived.
Instead, he went to work on her. His kind of work.
The little girl lived a few more minutes. Alive in terror and praying for death.
More than thirty years later, the maggot and the three grown-up weasels were all killed. They went out within minutes of each other.
We got paid to do that.
Now were paying.
The sniper who had calmly pinned my father to the ground as we were making our getaway is gone, too. An on-target warhead from an RPG had turned the stone-shielded corner hed been firing from into an incinerator big enough for him and the rest of the hired guns up there with him.
So many died that day. Every time my heart pumps, regret pulses through my bloodstream.
Thats the bad thing about killing certain humans: you can only do it once.
“What more can we do, mahn? My father is somewhere between this world and the next. He must stay—his body must stay—with those people until he comes back to us. If he were only in a real hospital . . .”
“Weve been through this,” I told Clarence. “A thousand times, ever since it happened. You think we can, what, call a city ambulance? The Profs prints would fall like a cinderblock on an egg. Theyd handcuff him to the bed and turn the whole place into a goddamn PBA convention.”
“I could—”
“You cant do anything!” I snapped at him, as sharply as his father would have.
“When you were shot—”
“Your father—my father, too, remember?—he made the call then. And he made the right one. This one isnt the same; the minute we unhook the Prof from those machines, hes done. This call was on me to make, and I made it. Now we have to play it out.”
“If any of those doctors—”
Max pulled at the sleeve of Clarences jacket, the same dove-gray cashmere hed been wearing the night we dropped the Prof off—now it was almost black, darkened with fear. When Clarence looked up, the mute Mongolian made the universal gesture of pointing his finger like a pistol and dropping his thumb like a hammer. Then tapped his temple, and made a facial expression that spoke louder than words.
“You think those medical boys dont fucking know that?” I echoed. “Theyre not worried about some malpractice claim. Theyre running an outlaw operation, and they get paid a fortune to take care of people from our world. Thats what were paying so much for: not just the care, the risk—theyre putting a lot more than their licenses on the line, understand? Thats why you never threaten people like them—theyve heard it all before. It wont make them work harder. But it might scare them into doing something stupid.”
“But . . . for what they are charging, even with all the money we took from that last . . . thing, we will run out by—”
“I know,” I said soothingly. “But dont worry about it, Clarence. We found a new way for us to keep earning.”
“Nobody told me—”
“You had no role to play in this one, son,” I said, channeling the Prof. “Not up till now, anyway.”
“Listen to me, sweetheart.” Michelle spoke just above a whisper, her voice the same mystery-blend as her perfume. “Trust me, the words out: the Profs in the consultant business now. Any serious thief playing for a retirement score would want the Master to check over the plans, make sure theres no flaw. But they wouldnt expect a face-to-face. So the Profs got a front man for that. Get it?”
“Yes,” the Islander said, looking over at me and nodding. “But how is that going to bring in the kind of money we—?”
“It already is,” I cut him off. “Got more business than we can handle. Were even ready to have you start working backup, too. If you want.”
Clarence opened his mouth to say something, but Max just shook his head.
Mama crossed the distance from her register at the front to my booth in the back. Looked us all over. Held Clarence with her eyes. Said, “Movie business very good. Those kind of people, spend money like drunks.”
Clarence opened his mouth again, but this time it was Michelle who shut him up. “Weve got a doctor too, baby. A script doctor. Best in the business. The only one who gets his quote and a percentage of the gross. Lets you and me go over there and sit down, okay? Buy your baby sister a drink, and Ill explain it all to you.”
The apartment was spacious by New York standards. Three bedrooms, two baths. And on a decent West Side block, too.
But this was no luxury co-op. No awning over the front door. No doorman, never mind a concierge. No central air. The elevator only went down: all the way down from a uniformed operator, to push-your-own-damn-buttons, to permanent “Out of Service.”
Even the super was part-time. His one qualification was that hed done time, and his real job was handling complaints with a “you dont want to go too far with this” look.
Thirty-six units, but only five of them still occupied. The building owner was warehousing the rest, playing stare-down with the remaining owners. No real-estate broker had any of the empty units listed.
Some of the holdouts had been stupid enough to try bribing the super. He introduced them to a new dance: the Sucker Two-Step. Step one, he takes your money. Step two comes when you run into him again—a blank look, like hes never seen you before.
When it comes to bribery, citizens are out of their league. Even in this everything-for-sale pesthole of a city, you cant run to the cops when the guy you greased doesnt do what you paid him for—that would be like a loan shark suing you for missing a payment.
We paid the super for access to the apartment. Not a bribe: payment for a service. He didnt try his look on us—its our kind he learned it from. He wasnt a genius, but he was smart enough not to confuse us with citizens.
The cell phone in the right-hand pocket of my jacket vibrated. My clients were on their way up . . . up the stairs. I nodded to Max. He opened the door just as they were about to push the disconnected buzzer.
The doctor was in.
There were three of them. Nice business suits, nothing too flashy. I knew the headman by rep only. He may have looked like a pita pocket overstuffed with suet, but if crime was a dance, he had the moves of a tango star.
The other two could have been his partners. Or crew members, or undercover cops. The way we had it set up, it didnt make any difference. Any tape they walked away with would be about as useful as a Vietnam body count.
My worktable was a rough-hewn slab of wood with fold-up legs. I gestured for them to sit wherever they wanted. Canvas directors chairs were the only option.
Nobody offered to shake hands. As I leaned back, Michelle swiveled over. All they saw was a blonde in a red latex derma-sheath skirt and a padded bra threatening a stretchy top—if they even looked high enough up to see the blonde part. She held out a tray of plain glass ashtrays. The guy to the left of the headman took one, placed it carefully in front of him.
Michelle snake-hipped her way out of the room, making it clear that theyd already experienced the full extent of our hospitality. No minibar in this hotel, and the only room service you could order was already in the room.
The headman opened a document case, took out some paper and a chrome pen. He cleared his throat, said:
“Now, the way weve got this scripted, the wealthy guys seen all the movies, so he wouldnt rely on any motion-sensor system. He thinks you can blow talcum powder into the room, make all the laser beams show up.” His smile was room-temperature.
I consulted the graph-paper pad in front of me. It was cov-ered in tiny, autistic symbols. “So hes afraid some gymnast in a leotard—”
“You got it,” the raisin-eyed pile of dough seated across from me agreed. “Were looking for realism here. Remember, this is an indie production; we dont have a few extra million to waste on special effects. So—what the guy in our script does, he keeps the stuff in a bunker.”
“You mean like one of those old-time bomb shelters, or just a safe buried in the ground?”
“Totally fucking nuclear,” the blob said, catching a confirmatory nod from the non-smoker to his right—a solidly built guy in his forties who was either too image-conscious to be saying, “Yeah, boss,” in front of strangers, or an undercover still feeling his way. It had been that guys call to Mamas that set this ride in motion, but he wasnt the one with the gas money.
“You have him living in there?” I asked the boss. “Inside the bunker, I mean?”
“Nah. But he could, is the point.”
“Youre saying, in this script, the way its set up, all he has to do is make it inside the bunker before the take-away guys get to him, right? Then he could just kick back in the La-Z-Boy, toss some porno into his DVD player, and sip fine wine until the cops show up?”
“Not cops,” the blob said, with an absolute sureness that meant whatever they intended to snatch was something the victim couldnt report to his insurance company. Straight out of the pro thiefs bible: the best thing to steal is stolen property.
From the Hardcover edition.