If I end up dead again, this time permanently, and if by then another like me somehow arises to follow in my footsteps, that other will be you who is reading this. You might understand, as I do, that evil is real and that the viciousness of your enemy has no limits, but if you have any doubt, dwell for a while on Durand Calaphas and the people who sent him after Gifford, and then absorb their other case files. You must never be like them, but you must always try to think like them to avoid underestimating the depths of wickedness to which they’re capable of descending.
VOICES AS MEANINGLESS AS WIND IN DRY GRASS
Above the storm, the sun is sliding away from this half of the planet. Here in the tempest, all the paycheck pussies are on their way to happy hour for a few glasses of whatever might smooth the wrinkles out of their minds. The freeway pilgrims who can’t afford several cocktails are crawling home to their nothing houses to say a prayer before they eat the beans and rice their god provides, their workday done, and nothing for them now but to stream a movie and get ready to kiss the boss’s ass again tomorrow.
For Aleem Sutter, his average workday is three hours long, at most four, thirty minutes here and fifteen there, ragging the swing men to stay true to their promises to supply the goods, making sure the mules don’t forget how bad they’ll be jacked up if the weight of a shipment goes down even an ounce during transport, jamming dealers to meet their quotas, keeping the homeboys motivated with snaps, lots of Benjamins. Aleem doesn’t need to work a full forty because he has so many worker bees laboring for him. Right now, two blocks from his current position, four once-hot quiffs, now too old and skanked out to sell their booty even to cougar lovers, are spending eight hours capping up bulk barbiturates and parceling them into fifty-cent bags, tax-free cash work to augment the government checks they’ve been receiving illegally since they turned fifty.
When he isn’t working, like now, Aleem is usually chilling out with his homeys or doing some tail, or what he calls “adventuring,” which is looking to get into some kind of trouble just to see if he still has the brains and balls to get out of it. Right now, riding shotgun in Kuba’s Lexus SUV, he’s tending to some domestic business, making sure his rights as a father are respected, following Nina’s Explorer, trying to decide if the treacherous bitch is just going out for a quart of milk or making a run for it.
Kuba says, “I hate this shit.”
“What shit?”
“This weather.”
“We got a drought.”
“Not tonight we don’t.”
“Gotta have rain, brother.”
“We already got us an ocean.”
“Can’t drink ocean water.”
“Damn surfers pissin’ in it.”
“It’s the salt,” says Aleem.
“I put salt on everythin’。”
“Drink salt water, your gut blows up.”
“Blows up, huh?”
“Blows up.”
“You the man, Aleem.”
“Got that right.”
“You the man, I respect you, but shit.”
“Say what?”
“Salt don’t explode.”
“Eat a box of Morton’s, see what happens.”
“Salt ain’t a brick of C-4.”
“So see what happens.”
“Aleem, where you get these ideas?”
“You ever gone to school, Kuba?”
“I gone seven years ’fore I offed that teacher.”
“I forgot about that.”
“Had to drop out, change my name, join the gang.”
“Best thing you ever done.”
“I’m up on it,” Kuba agrees.
“You was what—thirteen?”
“Twelve. Teacher always talkin’ his big ideas.”
“Some of ’em they got more ideas than brains.”
“He kept jammin’ me about my future, had this big idea who I could be.”
“Who you could be?”
“If I wasn’t the me I was.”
“Who’d he have in mind?”
“In mind for what?”
“Who’d he think you could be?”
“Some bow-tied pressed-pants university jerk-off never does nothin’ but books.”
“What kinda future is that?”
“No kind. Hey, man, your lady is makin’ moves.”
Aleem leans forward, squinting through the rain-smeared windshield, between the whisking wipers. “She’s juicin’ it.”
“And she keeps changin’ lanes, tuckin’ herself out of sight. Maybe she’s made us.”
“Give her space. Let the bitch think she’s done a ghost.”
He looks down at his smartphone, where the tracking-app display reduces Nina, John, and the Explorer to a blinking signifier. Four days earlier, when the kid was at school and Nina was getting her hair done at a parlor two blocks from home, Aleem went to her place and used his key and planted a GPS device of his own in her Ford.
“It’s killer four-five tech, not some double-deuce junk brand. Nowhere she goes we can’t find her. She’s pickin’ up speed now.”
Kuba says, “I can’t see her no more.”
Frowning at the display, Aleem says, “She won’t be goin’ to Cheesecake Factory to grab dinner. Bitch is breakin’ for somewhere.”
“Takin’ your boy like she never needed you to make him. What’s wrong with a woman like her?”
“She was a child, her folks spoiled her. She’s too big on herself,” Aleem diagnoses. “No gratitude.”
“What happens the GPS app goes down?”
“It won’t go down.”
“What happens she ditches the Explorer?”
“You’re supposed to be all positive thinkin’。”
“I can be positive and stay real.”
“She don’t got enough snaps to throw around on new wheels.”
“She’s an accountant, man. She been makin’ bank. Accountants they got suitcases full of Benjamins.”
Aleem doesn’t think that’s true, though maybe it could be. The possibility that Nina has the money to switch vehicles is troubling. Fortunately, Aleem is forward thinking, always preparing measures that will help him cope with unexpected developments. Three of his ace kools, the best backup boys with whom he’s tightest, have his tracking app on their smartphones and are able to shadow the add-on GPS in Nina’s SUV. Each also has a disposable phone, as does Aleem, and now he uses his burner to call them one by one and get them on the case. Each of the three is partnered with his main man. Maybe Nina can shake off one tail, but she can’t shake off four vehicles and eight homeys. However, they have to move fast, before she gets too far ahead, parks the Explorer, sets out on foot, and finds a new set of wheels.
Putting aside his burner, staring at the screen of his iPhone, Aleem says, “I shoulda known better what I was gettin’ into with her. The bitch was always trouble.”
Kuba nods, sucks air through his teeth, and says, “All of ’em are, sooner or later. Least she’s hot.”
“Even hotter back when. That’s how they get you.”
“Iffen they’re hot,” Kuba says, “it’s fly fishin’。 She’s the hook hidden in pretty feathers, we’re the fish got no chance.”