Scar Tissue(9)

And just above Vincennes's balcony.

"One in the living room." The earpiece stripped the bass from his voice. We'd rented a penthouse with good sight lines two blocks away, and I pictured Sammy peering through the fifty-mag telescope, thin fingers rolling a silver dollar back and forth. "Strapped. A second piece on the table." He described the layout of the room, like I hadn't spent a dozen hours staring at it through the same scope. "Give me a second," he said, and I heard the tones of him dialing. "Okay. You're a go."

I loosened my thighs, tendons banging like steel cables, and eased down the rope, friction and aching leg muscles all that kept me from tumbling into darkness. My arms stretched, fingertips filling with blood. One foot. Two. Three.

At five, I touched the railing, identical to our own ten floors above. Through the patio door, I could hear the phone ringing, Sammy making the call.

I slid over the railing and onto the balcony. Rolled my neck, allowed myself a memory of Sherry drinking two-hundred-dollar wine out of a plastic cup and smiling, smiling at me, and then I eased the glass door open and slipped inside.





#





There were stories about Vincennes. None of them good. One popular fave was about a lieutenant the FBI had twisted. This was a guy who'd been with Vincennes for years, been at his wedding. Two of the lieutenant's own soldiers scooped him up, dumped the wire he wore, and ran a switch on the Marta trains to lose the feds.

Then they took the poor bastard to meet Vincennes in a warehouse on the west side. Rumor had it they kept him alive for almost three days, though I wouldn't call it much of a life.

"You know he'll come after us." Sammy put his arms behind his head, his feet up on the edge of the roof. He'd bought the building cheap, a former meat packing plant southwest of downtown, and had been trying to find a buyer to turn it into lofts for yuppies. Always playing angles. "The cash we're taking, it won't be enough to cripple him."

"I know." I started to speak, stopped, words caught in my throat like fishhooks. Tried again, choked them out. "I'll take care of him."

"You mean we're back in biz?" Sammy's voice quick and eager.

"No," I said. A million reflected city lights burned in the sweat on my beer bottle.

"Huh?"

I took a last swallow. "I'm done killing."

Behind the building, a train blew a lonely whistle, the rattling of wheels on tracks a pulse to the night.

"But you'll do him?"

"Just Vincennes." I threw the bottle overhand, the dark glass whirring away. A faint clank rose from the scrub near the tracks. "Not the guards, not anybody else. Then I'm done for good."

He pursed his lips. "Tell me something, partner." He looked over, eyes bland. "Why him?"

Because she'd asked. Laying in my arms, my skin still sticky with her. She'd asked me to kill him and then never kill again, and it had been like it was me speaking. "He doesn't deserve to live."

Sammy shrugged. "Who does?"

"Vincennes is the last," I said.





#





After the darkness outside, the living room was garish. Schoolroom bright. No shadows, no cover.

Ten feet away a bodyguard stood with his back to me and a nine-millimeter SIG-Sauer P226 strapped in a quick-release shoulder holster.

"Who called you?" he said into the phone, the cord stretched out from the wall.

I lifted my right foot, set it down slow. Then my left. Didn't concentrate on the motion, didn't concentrate on the man. Didn't concentrate at all, actually. Just let nerves and reflexes take over. Like playing pool.

"Yeah, well, you got the wrong place." The man paused. "Yes, I'm fucking sure. There's nothing wrong with our plumbing."

When I was two steps away, the floor creaked.

He whirled, reaching for his piece. The phone was still in his hand as I speared his neck, rigid fingers slamming into his carotid artery where it branched, and then he was falling.

The phone hit the carpet with a muffled thump. The bodyguard I caught. Pressure point knockouts don't last, but a chokehold will.

I ran the list in my head. Two guards in the lobby downstairs. Two in the exterior hallway, but if they'd've heard anything, I'd already be dead. And this one outside the bedroom, now flat on the carpet.

If they followed pattern, there was just Vincennes to go. One final murder, one last chunk of me disappearing.

And then I could watch her sleep for the rest of my life, and never dream again.





#





It took two weeks and most of our remaining capital to prepare.

Sammy gathered intel. He worked all his angles, from the kid at the planning office who ran photocopies for a C-note to hacking the apartment's wireless network from a coffeeshop across the street.