Ghostman (29 page)

“You’ve negotiated as far as you’re going to get today, Ghostman,” the Wolf said. “Let’s not continue this game, shall we? You’ll do the deal on my terms or you won’t do the deal at all. If you think I’m intimidated, you’re gravely mistaken. You will bring the federal payload to my club, alone, or the next time you see me will be through a cloud of spray paint and a plastic bag. Now, are you in or are you out?”

I was quiet, just to make him wait.

“You’ve got yourself a bargain,” I said.

45

Ribbons’s house was a one-story on North Virginia Avenue fifteen blocks from the Boardwalk. It didn’t take me long at all to find it. The place couldn’t have been more than twenty blocks from the Regency and I knew where to look. The neighborhood was strangely nice. If I’d just been driving down the street, I never would’ve imagined Ribbons ending up here. The pavement was wide and smooth, and the shrub pines lining the sidewalk rustled in the sea breeze. People with real jobs lived in this neighborhood. People in neighborhoods like this had health insurance and retirement accounts and children playing in their yards. Ribbons had been hiding out in plain sight. He picked a spot where no one would think to look for a strung-out junkie with one or more bullets in him.

After driving up and down the street for a while, I spotted the blue Victorian. I parked across from it and winced at the glare when I got out. The house itself was hideous. It looked like it had once been a grand summer home, but hardly any of its former beauty remained. The front door had plywood nailed over it, as did most of the windows. A large wooden For Sale sign was stuck in the lawn behind the mailbox, but it was slowly rotting from salt erosion and covered in graffiti tags, so I
couldn’t see the name of the realtor. The house paint had peeled away to almost nothing, and the windows on the second floor were smashed out and were open to the elements. I looked up at it and whistled.

I’m a connoisseur of hiding places and this one was great. First off, domestic residences are wonderful, and not just because they’re protected from searches by constitutional law. Ribbons could stay in there for days without much discomfort, and nobody would wonder much if he came and went. Second, it didn’t have a paper trail. The only person who could link him to this house definitively was the real-estate agent he’d bribed to get the address. Third, it didn’t fit the profile. It was in a neighborhood just a little too nice to attract the kind of police scrutiny that could ruin the whole arrangement, but not so nice that people would notice him living there. The place was
perfect
.

And Ribbons’s stolen hunter-green 2009 Mazda Miata was sitting beside it.

The car had been through hell. The front lights were smashed out and there was a dent over the left-side door as long as a small desk. The vehicle was parked halfway behind the bushes in such a way that the license plate was facing away from the street. I could make out little specks of blood and dirt on the driver’s-side window. The car was there, but Ribbons wasn’t in it, of course. At least he’d made it inside. I’d hate to die in a Japanese car.

I walked up and kicked the front door hard enough to knock the bolt through the frame. The door practically fell off its hinges. Then I gave the plywood a couple kicks and the whole mess caved in on itself.

As I said, the place had once been beautiful. The wallpaper was an expensive floral pattern full of lush leaves and ripe fruits. Along the ceilings ran ornate crown molding, depicting plum vines twisting off in all directions. It was beautifully done, but the walls were dark and stained brown with watermarks and the lights were all broken. In one corner someone had spray-painted
Nothing is stronger than habit
.

The inside of the house was dark and hot and wet and rotten. Thick particles of dust hung in the air, and it took a moment for my eyes to
adjust to the darkness. I flipped the nearest light switch, but nothing happened.

There was a trail of black blood dried into the carpet.

Right after I saw the blood, the smell hit me all at once—something like rotting fish, feces and gunpowder. The drops of blood got more frequent toward the center of the house, down a short hallway and past a closet and bathroom. It looked like someone had painted a long black brushstroke on the carpet.

Ribbons
.

His Kalashnikov was leaning against the doorframe. The action was blocked with blood and covered with gunpowder residue. There were other things strewn along the blood trail. A latex glove. A Colt 1911 magazine. A 7.62 × 39mm bullet. A black ski mask.

He was here, all right.

And he was still alive.

46

When I found him, Ribbons looked more like a corpse than a human being. His eyes were glazed over and his breath was shallow. The rise and fall of his chest was the only sign that he was still alive at all. His voice was a hoarse, parched whisper.

“Water,” he said.

He was slumped against a wall in the living room in a pool of blood. His Kevlar vest and sweatshirt were soaked. His face was pallid and his feet were swollen. He looked peaceful, except for his eyes. They were leaking a green pus from the sides. The bullet had hit him three or four inches or so above the belly button and punched a hole through his vest. Two other bullets that hadn’t gone through were safely lodged in the vest. I could see the dots of crumpled lead sticking out from the ceramic trauma plates. A long streak of blood ran along the wall where he’d fallen against it and slid into his current position. The blood was now so old that it was beginning to turn black.

Most people shot in the chest don’t last fifteen minutes. The hydrochloric acid in the stomach usually leaks out into the blood, you see. This causes some sort of shock, which kills fast. The victim goes into a coma and dies minutes later. This bullet, however, hadn’t reached the
stomach. The vest had slowed it down too much. It had come to a slow stop in Ribbons’s fat without ever reaching his intestines. It was still lodged inside his abdomen and slowly cutting farther into him every time he breathed.

Maybe twenty hours ago a surgeon, a very good surgeon, could’ve saved him. Not now. The color was already gone from his face. The gunk forming in his eyes was a sign of infection. So was the sound in his lungs. Now he was just waiting to die.

“Cop?” he whispered.

“No,” I said. “Father sent me.”

“Water,” he said. “Please.”

I didn’t respond. Just stood there.

“Water.”

I looked back down the hall. I told myself I was looking for the money, but that wasn’t it. If the money were in the hallway, I would’ve noticed it already.

“Please,” he said. “Water.”

Ribbons’s face was marked with dried blood and his hands were caked with it. His lips were as dry as sand. He made eye contact with me and his gaze didn’t waver. “Please, man,” he said.

“Where did you put the money, Ribbons?”

“Please.”

“I need the money first,” I said.

Ribbons didn’t say anything. His fingers twitched and he pointed farther down the hallway. I turned my head and followed the line of his gesture out of the room, down the hallway, then stood up and went that way, deeper into the silent house. The bedroom still had an old bed frame and dresser, but it felt empty, and all the shadows gave me a sense of unease. Ribbons had never gotten a chance to live here. The place never had a soul.

I waded through the darkness by sense of touch. The light from outside came through the cracks in the plywood like red laser beams. In the distance I could hear cars rushing along the highway.

The money was in the closet.

I knew what it was without having to open the bloodstained blue Kevlar bag. I picked it up and started toward the front door, but stopped before I got there. Ribbons could barely lift his head to look at me standing there in the doorframe. It was like he was weighed down by a thousand bricks and every little movement took a monumental effort to complete. His lips moved, but no words came out. Praying, maybe.

“Water,” he said.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I’ll get you water.”

I left him alone in that room, but just for a minute. The kitchen was two doors down, next to the dining room, and it had a breakfast nook. I waded through the darkness and turned on the tap and it sputtered for a bit, but then water came out. I opened drawers, but they were all empty. I made a makeshift cup with my hands and let them fill with water. I waded back through the shadows to the living room. Ribbons’s fingers twitched when he saw what I was doing.

“Please,” he said.

I swore and knelt next to him in the pool of blood and vomit. I held my hands to his lips until the water ran into his mouth and down his chin. He drank like he couldn’t get enough. He asked for more. I made another trip and gave it to him. I didn’t say anything. Just watched him drink. When he was finished, we were silent for a while. The old house creaked and whispered. I knelt next to him and he tried to keep his eyes on me. It was quiet.

Then Ribbons said, “Shot.”

“Yeah,” I said. “One got through. You’re dying.”

He shook his head a little and twitched his fingers again. I followed his gaze over to a black nylon bag in the corner of the room, just out of his reach.

“Shot,” he whispered.

I pulled the bag over to us. Inside was a box of nitrate gloves, a lighter and a syringe. He slowly and painfully gestured at the side pocket.
Inside was a sandwich-sized plastic bag with a twist-tie filled with a few crumbles of a brown substance the texture of pancake batter.

“Shot,” Ribbons gasped.

I was looking at half a gram of heroin.

“Please,” he said. “Shot.”

There are few things in the world I hate more than heroin. I hate it more than people who sell children for sex. I hate it more than killing a woman. I hate it more than the feeling I get when I’ve been alone for so long that I have to stare in the mirror and practice speaking until my words sound human again. There are very few things in this world that trigger that part of me, but there it was. In my hand.

Ribbons was asking me to kill him.

A shot of heroin would be fatal. Ribbons had lost enough blood that his system wouldn’t be able to handle it. A normal dose would hit him twice as hard, like drinking a whole bottle of tequila after giving blood. Even the smallest amount of junk could cause an overdose or, if it didn’t, at least slow his breathing. In his condition, he might suffocate under his own weight. If I left him alone to bleed out on the floor, he might make it another six or seven hours. If I gave him the shot, he’d be dead in a matter of minutes. Seconds, if I didn’t get the dose just right. And I wouldn’t get the dose just right. I’d never measured out heroin before in my life.

Ribbons didn’t take his dull, bloodshot eyes off me the whole time. He breathed in and out. I could hear the sickening sound of the fluid settling at the bottom of his lungs.

“If I give you this,” I said, “it won’t kill the pain. You’ve lost too much blood for that. You’ll be dead before I can pull the needle out.”

His voice was barely a whisper. “Please, man.”

I took out the silenced Beretta and put it to his head.

At this range, a single bullet would put him out of his misery before he would know what was happening. He’d be dead instantly. I pressed the barrel into the soft spot between his eyes until I was sure he understood what I was offering him.

Ribbons shook his head.

“Please,” he whispered. “Shot.”

I hesitated. I could handle putting a bullet in his head, but not this. I’d shot people before. I knew how it would happen. The trigger would resist, then lock back, the hammer would fall, the muzzle would bark and Ribbons’s brains would splatter across the wall. It would be like flipping a switch. He wouldn’t even feel it. A fatal overdose was something else entirely, though. I didn’t know how long it would take. I didn’t know how much to give. I wasn’t ready for that. I told myself that I didn’t want to fuck it up, but that wasn’t the real reason I didn’t want to do it. That wasn’t the real reason at all.

My mother died of a heroin overdose.

Ribbons whispered something, but it was too faint to hear. The sound pulled me out of my thoughts. The pool of blood around him was spreading. It wasn’t noticeable before, but I could see it now. Every few minutes it grew a few fractions of a centimeter wider like water from a pinpoint leak in a drainage pipe. His lips were moving but he didn’t make a sound. Maybe he was talking to someone who wasn’t there. Maybe he was saying good-bye, if only to himself.

His breath wheezed in and out, in and out.

I picked up the heroin off the floor.

There was a soup spoon in the nylon bag next to the ammunition, and a travel pack of cotton swabs. I put the syringe, the heroin and the swabs on the floor next to Ribbons. I took a small amount of the brown substance and placed it in the bowl of the spoon, then carried it into the kitchen and dribbled a little bit of water over it from the tap. I used the lighter and placed the spoon over the flame. It didn’t take long for the water to come to a frothing boil and for the heroin to dissolve. I took the spoon off the heat, tore a little bit of cotton off one of the swabs and put it in the spoon. I sunk the needle into the cotton and carefully pulled the heroin solution into the syringe, using the cotton as a filter. I knocked the air bubbles out of the needle and looked up at Ribbons. His mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air.

I took off my belt and crawled forward until I was beside him.

He put his right arm between my legs. The blood on his hands smeared onto my pants and soaked my knees. I rolled up his sleeve and slowly wrapped my belt around his upper arm as a tourniquet. I tapped the inside of his elbow until the veins appeared under his skin. He had tracks up through to his shoulder from where he’d shot up again and again. It took me the better part of a minute to find a usable vein. If I missed I might accidentally shoot into his muscles, and his death would be even slower and more painful because the injection itself would burn until the moment the overdose killed him.