Blood Of Angels (6 page)

Brad admired his cool. Admired it a lot. And really, really hoped it would be enough.

'We told you to come alone.'

Brad's heart nearly leapt out of his chest. The voice had come from behind them. Of course.

'Turn around,' it said. 'Slowly.'

Hudek and Brad turned together to see three men standing ten feet away. All were lean, dark-haired, dark-eyed. Must have waited until they saw them come around the back, then followed up the passage. Oh Christ.

The only one Brad recognized was Hernandez, their regular contact. He was around thirty and had a face like a second-hand axe. He shook his head at Hudek.

'We told you to come alone,' he said, again. The inflection was exactly the same the second time.

'And I heard you,' Hudek said. 'You told me to suck your dick, I wouldn't be doing that either.'

Hernandez pursed his lips and nodded soberly, as if in appreciation of the response, its genre appropriateness, as if the older man was a digitized bad guy in Grand Theft Auto VII and this was Available Riposte number 3.

He turned to the guy on his right, and nodded some more. This guy nodded back. They both looked at Hudek and nodded.

The moment went on a beat too long and the whole thing was beginning to seriously freak Brad the fuck out.

'You said to meet you inside,' Hudek said. 'What's this crap out here in the lot? What's the creeping up on us about?'

'To check you'd followed instructions,' Hernandez said.

'You seriously think I was going to?'

'We hoped.'

'Life is full of disappointments, dude. Deal with it. Can we get this done? I've got half the West Valley waiting on a high.'

'Maybe we find some other rich kid to run our shit. Someone who does what he's told like a good boy.'

'See, you're getting mixed up about something,' Hudek said, theatrically shaking his head. 'Really just, completely turned around. You seem to think we're going to stand here and take this kind of crap from you guys. That's sort of not going to happen.'

'Is that right?' Hernandez was smiling again now. Brad didn't like it when he smiled. It was not convincing. He needed lessons. Brad realized one of the other guys was holding a gun, casually, down by his side. Probably always had been, but he'd been too wired to notice.
Take their crap, Lee,
he thought, urgently.
Please, Lee, let's just take their crap and get out of here.

'Pete,' Hudek said, suddenly, his voice loud. 'Why don't you come join us?'

There was silence for a long moment. Sleepy Pete did not appear from around the side of the big metal block.

Brad glanced dismally at Hudek, and saw that for the first time the other boy's eyes looked a little confused.

Nonetheless Hudek spoke again. 'Steve?'

More silence, broken only by the sound of a car honking over on the intersection, a world away.

Hernandez cocked his head. 'Pete? Steve? Who would these people be? More uninvited boys? More Valley rats?'

Hudek said nothing. Kept looking at the dumpster.

Hernandez looked at the guy on his right again. 'You guys know any Pete or Steve? You come across anybody like that?'

'Yeah,' the guy said. 'Think we did.'

He walked over to where the big square of tarp was lying bunched against the side wall. Lifted one corner.

Brad stared. Lying under the tarp were Pete and Steve. Their mouths had been secured with silver duct tape. Probably their arms and legs too, because they weren't moving. At least, that might be why they weren't moving.

The guy let the tarp fall again.

'Shouldn't have done that,' Hudek said. His voice was low and flat. He slipped his right hand into his jacket and around the back. 'You should not have done that.'

'You should have come alone.'

'Untie them.'

'Fuck you.'

Hudek pulled his hand out. He was holding the automatic pistol. 'Fucking untie them, man.'

They went to and fro on it for a while, but Brad barely heard. There was a constant voice in his head now, blotting out almost everything else.
I'm twenty years old,
it was jabbering.
This is too soon. This has not been enough. I thought I was grown, but I was wrong. I do not want to have sex or take drugs or drink beer any more. I do not want to be here. I want to be home, watching
X-Files
reruns and eating ice cream. I want to be ten years old.

'You piece of shit,' Hudek said, evidently resting his case.

Brad tuned back in. The other guys' guns were no longer by their sides. They were pointing at him and Lee. It was all going very wrong but Brad knew what was expected of him, and he pulled his own gun out. Nothing good could happen now. Five guys with guns. You do the math.

Hudek raised his pistol, pointing it squarely at Hernandez's chest. The guy appeared utterly unmoved, and for the first time Hudek was sure, completely sure, that this man had killed people, and more than once. Hudek's mind possessed a low clarity which Brad's could never hope for, but just at that moment their thoughts were pretty much the same. This was it. This was the point where it all unravelled.

'Okay,' he said, 'If that's the way it's got to be…'

There was a loud clicking sound, from behind. Then a soft bang, like wood hitting cinder block.

Hudek saw Hernandez's eyes swivel. He and Brad turned.

The door to the back of the building was now hanging open. A man in a business suit was standing there.

'Just get in here,' he said. 'For Christ's sake. We're waiting.'

Brad was at least as surprised as Hudek, but he couldn't have spoken. Couldn't have said a single word. It was left to Hudek to find voice, therefore, and he barely made it either. He didn't even notice Hernandez taking the opportunity to thunk Brad on the back of the head, or hear his friend dropping bonelessly to the lot.

He just stared open-mouthed at the man in the doorway for a full five seconds, and then finally said:

'Mr
Reynolds
?'

The interior of the building was hot and dark, lit only by a few bulbs hanging bare from the ceiling at apparently random intervals. Every now and then one of these illuminated some debris from one of the structure's previous commercial incarnations: a pile of mouldering carpet rolls, unidentifiable pieces of motor vehicle, bits of oblong machinery Lee Hudek dimly recognized as belonging in the kitchens of restaurants. It smelled of dust and heat. He followed Mr Reynolds through a large room, along a corridor, and then through a door into an even bigger, darker space, which stretched the remaining length of the building. Mr Reynolds stepped aside there, leaving Lee suddenly in front. It was clear he was supposed to keep walking. There was a light down the far end. Presumably that was where he was supposed to go. He considered, just for a moment, the idea of not doing so, of turning and trying to force his way back out. The notion didn't seem to make much sense. Brad was out in the lot still, Pete and Steve too, having Christ knows what done to them by Hernandez and his pals. It wasn't clear what the future held for Hudek, either.

He guessed he might as well just find out.

He walked forward into the gloom. He felt his footsteps ought to echo in a space this size, but they did not. Maybe there were more heaps of trash out of sight, deadening the sound. Maybe it was because it was so fucking hot. The air felt as if it had been trapped here a long, long time, as if it was palpable, and swallowed sounds. People too, perhaps.

The light was coming from a single lamp, positioned in the middle of an empty patch of floor. It looked like something out of a cheap motel, or a movie, a straight wooden upright capped by a large shade, once white, now aged and dusted a sickly cream. Next to it was an armchair: big, threadbare, a colour that would be nameless even in good light. Sitting in this was a man.

'Hey, Lee,' the man said. 'Remember me?'

Hudek stopped about twenty feet short. This wasn't because he thought it was the protocol. It was more because, for reasons he'd have found hard to explain, he didn't want to get too close.

The guy wore a dark suit over a dark shirt. He looked to be in his late thirties and was well-built but underweight. His hair was short and his skin was pale. His face was so harshly down-lit that it was hard to make the features out properly, but as far as Hudek knew, he'd never seen this dude before in his life. He looked like a large dog of uncertain temperament, sitting upright in a chair, very awake. Ready for a walk. Or dinner.

'No,' he said.

'Good.' The man regarded him in silence for a while. His gaze was impersonal, as if Hudek were a landscape painting of indifferent quality for which he might be able to find some hanging space. In a back room, most likely, or the corridor where old coats and broken tennis rackets were stowed. 'So how have you been, Lee?'

Hudek shrugged. 'You know, okay.'

'Good. That's good. Take a seat.'

Hudek was confused. Then he realized the man was indicating something, pointing with a raised left hand. Lee turned to see that a wooden chair had appeared just behind him. All he had to do was bend his knees to sit down. So he did.

He still had the bag of money for the deal which was evidently so
not
going to happen, clenched in his hand. He put it down. His heart felt as if someone was tapping his chest with a hammer, not yet quite as hard as they could, but enough to bend the ribs a little.

'You were asked to come alone,' the man said, as if he'd just remembered something of minor importance. 'You didn't. Why?'

Hudek struggled again to work out the best thing to say. 'It just didn't sound like a good idea.'

'I get you. The guys you've been buying from ask you to bring the money, without any backup, and they dick you around over the time, that's got to make you nervous, right? So you think, hell, I'll bring some pals, I'm not going to just do what I'm told. I'm the man. I'm Lee John Hudek.'

'Exactly.' Hudek nodded enthusiastically, glad to finally be on solid ground. Whoever this guy was, he clearly understood.

'If you do that again,' the man said, 'if you disobey an instruction, however complex or simple, then the police will never find your head. I will kill you, and everyone you've ever cared about, and then your troubles will have only just begun. Understand?'

Hudek just blinked at him.

'Do you understand?'

'Shit, yes. Of course. I get you, man, I really do. I'm sorry.'

'Excellent.' The man nodded, suddenly affable again. 'See, that's really important, Lee, because I need to feel that I can trust you. We need to feel that, okay?'

'Sure, sure,' Hudek said, head bobbing in rampant agreement. He was now convinced he was going to die. 'But… when you say "we", who is that, exactly? I mean, I thought Hernandez was…'

The man said nothing, but instead lifted both hands off the arms of his chair, and raised them, palms up.

From out of the darkness, four men appeared. Two were in middle age, the other two a good deal younger. One of each group was expensively attired. The others had dressed to go without notice in a crowd.

'We're the people you buy your drugs from,' the man said. 'We distribute them through Hernandez, amongst others. Welcome to the next level, Lee.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

It took about a minute for Hudek's heartbeat to return to something like its normal rate, by which time the other men had faded back out of sight. He was effectively alone with the seated man once more.

'Tell me something,' the man said. 'Do you have any ideas?'

Hudek paused. What did
this
mean? 'Like…'

'Well, you're good at what you do. We're happy. Solid turnover, and you've kept it low key. Is that all you want? Are those the limits of your skies?'

Hudek hesitated again. He thought now he understood what was being asked, but he didn't want to get it wrong. 'Well, yeah, I mean, I have thought about something.'

'Why don't you tell me what that is?'

'Spring Break,' Hudek said.

'What about it?'

'I got a plan.' Hudek took a deep breath. 'Every year, you got millions of kids on Spring Break, right? Florida in particular, I'm thinking about. It gets bigger every year, more like a theme park, with your sponsored this and MTV that and your big business muscling in and all that shit. This year I was down in Panama City, checking it. And I'm thinking. Bottom line. There's four hundred, five hundred thousand kids coming to that one town over the season, March to April. They want beer, they want wet T-shirts, they want to get laid. They want
drugs.
Even if they don't know it yet, they do. It's around, of course, you can get drugs no problem, but it's not organized. It could be better. A
lot
better.'

'I see,' the man said. 'And you're figuring… why should it just be the IBMs and AT&Ts of the world who are getting their hooks into these young tigers? If corporate America is invading the Break, why shouldn't Lee John Hudek get in there too, tap into that customer base?'

'Exactly. You had a tight crew there, worked hard, you could shift a truly awesome amount of drugs. I want be that guy.'

There, it was done.

The Plan was out in the open. Hudek had never actually said it out loud before. Doing so had made him feel even more confident.

'It's an idea,' the man said. 'But it's not original, and there are three problems with it. I'm going to explain them to you, okay?'

Hudek nodded, his heart falling immediately.

'First and biggest is the cops. There are plenty of dealers working the Break already, of course. They're small-time or kicking back to the local law. Spring Break is huge business for these places, Lee. Towns can make a quarter billion dollars a season, can stand or fall on how many of these beer-swilling fuckheads they can pull into their nightclubs and bars, burning up their licence to go wild before they go get their dull jobs and disappear into the long grass. The towns know there's drugs around. It's part of the deal. It's contained, it's understood. But if the place gets awash and it splashes all over the front pages, it's all over for that town. The law's job is to ensure that doesn't happen, that a balance is struck — and the cops skim a little for their boat upgrades and retirement funds too, of course. You know a lot of Florida cops, Lee? You got those connections? You got experience in dealing with Panhandle law at ranking officer level?'