Blackjack (20 page)

“Besides, lawyers are way too easy to check out. The only other visits I can get regularly are from a spouse or parent, see? So I need a wife. Someone to come in and visit, carry messages, bring me some stuff I might need, like that.…”

“We can’t let anyone from outside our group in on this, Cross.”

“You won’t have to.”

“Forget it!” Tiger and Wanda spoke as one.

The blond man turned to Tiger. “If you really want these guys as bad as you say …”

“What’s wrong with her?” Tiger wanted to know, jerking her thumb at Wanda.

“I can’t spare Wanda” was the blond man’s immediate answer. “I need her with me … on the machines.”

“And I’m going in as White Power,” Cross added. “I can’t have a non-white wife.”

Tiger mock-sighed. “They don’t have conjugal visits in there, do they?” she asked Cross.

“Close enough.” He smiled thinly. “Wait’ll you check out the Visiting Room.”

CROSS WAS
shirtless, reclining in an old barber chair. An ancient Japanese man was working on his arm just below the shoulder, using a needle to which a trio of wires was attached.

“How long is this good for?” Cross asked.

“Ninety days. No more.”

“But I can wash it, and it won’t come off?”

“It will
never
come off. You will be buried with that tattoo still in place, Cross. It is the ink that I created that makes this possible. In three months, or perhaps a little less, all
color
will disappear. The tattoo will forever be transparent—all that will remain visible will be your own skin underneath.”

CROSS SAT
in a modern dentist’s chair. A black woman in a white coat leaned over his open mouth. She was wearing transparent latex gloves and an opaque face mask. “All finished,” she said.

“I can chew on this? Bite down and everything?”

“It’s a tooth. It will work like a tooth. When you want it out, you torque your jaw all the way to the side, just as I showed you. Then press your little finger right at the base of the back molar, and it will pop right out, still intact.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“Don’t thank me. What I just did was for my brother. Flowers on his grave. Our family’s debt is paid now, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t come back here, Mr. Cross. For anything.”

CROSS SAT
at a workbench, carefully threading a wire around a thin channel cut into the outside rim of the heel of a rubber-soled shoe. Finished, he began to slowly tamp the thin rubber strip he had razored out back into place. He reattached the heel, holding it up for inspection. Still not satisfied, he added a coat of what looked like black polish, and set the shoes aside to dry.

Hours later, he was in a coffee shop, standing in line. Ahead of him was a young woman who was wearing a dress-for-success outfit, carrying a soft leather briefcase. He handed her a sheaf of envelopes. The return address of the expensively engraved envelopes was that of a law firm. Stamped in red on each one, in block capital letters, was:
CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL MAIL
.

“You understand what to do?” he asked the woman.

“As soon as I get a cell, tier, and wing number, I send one of these every other day.”

“The letters are already written. All you have to do is …”

“Make sure they come from our office postage meter,” she finished for him, a bored look on her face. “You’ve already explained it a dozen times.”

“You get paid by the hour,” Cross reminded her. Then he courteously stepped out of the line, allowing the impatient teenager behind him to be the next one served.

LATE THAT
night found Cross talking to an older man with a vaguely Inca cast to his features. They were in a warehouse past the edge of the industrial district, and they were not alone. The place was full of armed men, all with clearly Central American faces.

A regular moviegoer would immediately conclude that this was some sort of guerrilla group. Cross held up a butane lighter, a cheap plastic job.

“They let you carry these things inside?” he asked.

“
Sí!
When you are a pre-trial detainee, you have certain rights. A prisoner in America has more rights than an honest
campesino
in my country.”

“Yeah, fine, Ramón. You sure this’ll work?”

“Ask
la policía, hombre
.”

THE NEXT
afternoon, Cross was seated in the back of a triple-black Jeep, its multi-coat paint gleaming as if polished with oil. A posse car
extreme
, it shrieked “Dope dealer!” from its blinged-out twenty-four-inch rims to its 18-karat neon trim.

The man next to Cross was older, more substantial-looking than the two young wolves who occupied the front seats. He was talking on a cellular phone, but limiting his responses to monosyllables. He put the phone down, turned to Cross:

“It’s just like you said—he’s working right out of the Community Center. And his partner’s a social worker. Damn it! They worked it perfect. We rolled right up on them, sat there, and
watched
. They never even noticed us, but
we
didn’t see anything, either. So they got to run their foul game on our children.”

The speaker leaned forward to speak to the driver: “Rozzy, swing back up through the edge of where Robert Taylor used to be. Target’s located, under surveillance. He’s street-side now. If he moves inside, I’ll get word. And motor
smooth
, little brother. We don’t want him to catch our scent.”

As the Jeep cruised through the community, back-mounted
woofers and tweeters blasting, the man leaned his face close to Cross and whispered, “We could do this part ourselves, you know.”

Cross came back with “It’s been a long time between wars, Butch.”

“
Between?
Ain’t no ‘between’ for
us
, brother. Don’t matter if the canopy’s green or concrete, it’s still a jungle. Leave one war, you just come home to another.”

Cross extended a fist. The other man touched it, lightly.

“We
trying
, man,” he said. “But it’s a slow go, trying to take back what you never had in the first place.”

“That’s why you can’t take a chance on hosing down the area, Butch. The guys you got now, they’re organizers, not shooters. All they know is spray-and-pray. Too much chance of wasting a civilian by accident. And way too many people around here know you by face. Where’s
that
leave your program? You know the rule: you always play it the way you planned it.”

Butch nodded a reluctant agreement.

“Stealth,” he barked. Immediately, the Jeep went silent. No music. Windows closed. Neon trim blinked off. Air-powered sacks over each wheel well puffed out a cloud of black dust, temporarily coating the rims to visually reduce their size.

A few minutes later, the Jeep slid to a stop. Cross got out, wearing an Old-School 8 Ball leather jacket. Bright yellow-orange with a black collar, with a red “8” on the back, it had an elaborate design constructed of separate pieces of leather. The varsity-jacket sleeves had a matching 8 Ball leather patch on each side. Decades ago, these jackets sold for over a thousand dollars, and wearing one out in public was reserved for those who never walked unarmed.

In an era when teens were routinely jacked for their Air Jordans, some of those 8 Ball jackets ended up being worn
by those who proudly sported the bullet-hole price-of-possession. Failure to “Give it up!” had cost a number of young men their lives.

Today, such jackets are “collectibles.” Which means they never leave their cedar closets.

As the Jeep pulled away, Cross walked purposefully up the street, in the opposite direction.

Ahead of him was a tall black man with spiky hair. He had his hand on the shoulder of a darker-skinned black child: a little girl, perhaps eight years old. Her even younger brother stood next to her, holding her hand. Their tiny figures were dwarfed by the tall man leading them.

Most of Cross’s face was obscured by the bill of a low-riding yellow leather baseball cap. And what
was
visible was wildly distorted—the jaw was exaggerated and widened, the tip of the nose extended almost three inches, and hooked to such an extreme that it covered his mouth.

Cross closed to within a half-block from the target, who was still leading the children he had been grooming for months.

The Jeep circled the block and returned to its original drop-off position.

Inside the Jeep, the man in the back reached into a compartment and pulled out a rectangular object. He tapped the driver on the shoulder and said “Go!” very softly, as he slid into position near the window.

The rectangular object turned out to be a video cam. The man holding it muttered, “You like to make movies, dog meat? Good. You about to star in your very own snuff film.”

By the time the target sensed his presence, Cross was only a few feet away. The target looked up just in time to see Cross slide a silenced semi-auto from inside his jacket.

The tall man froze. He never saw the Jeep lurking across the street.