Kiss of the Blue Dragon (4 page)

Wicked Witch of the East

L
et me tell you something about the Russian Mafiya Organizatsia. The foot soldiers in the R.M.O. are some bad, bad asses. While they call themselves Sgarristas, an Italian word for foot soldier borrowed from the Cosa Nostra, they make other Chicago mobs look like wimps.

Capone had his tommy guns, John Gotti had cement shoes, but these guys had unrivaled ruthlessness born of relentless suffering in a failed communist economy.

Efforts by U.S. politicians to rein in the R.M.O. largely failed because no campaign finance reform laws were strong enough to keep mob money out of the democratic system. Not that the police are eager
to go after the R.M.O. Not only are such encounters usually fatal for Chicago’s finest, but the arrests made rarely end in convictions, at least not for the mob kingpins, because the Mafiya maintains a careful balance of legitimate businesses and criminal activities.

I’ll never forget seeing the R.M.O. slaughter four Chicago police officers who’d thought they were invincible with their SMART uniforms. Sgarristas torched the officers. The flames danced right through the cops’ invisible bulletproof shields. They had all died of burns. And that was old technology. The Sgarristas were said to have new weapons not even the military had yet.

I was thinking about the Sgarristas when Marco and I left Lola’s building. In fact, I was doing more than thinking. I knew someone was out there.

“Hold it,” I told Marco just before he opened the foyer door to the sidewalk. A weird feeling made my shoulders quiver with a chill.

He looked at me. “What?”

I swallowed hard before I said what I couldn’t possibly know but knew nevertheless. “Someone’s out there waiting to nail us.”

Marco’s eyes glittered unkindly. “Is that what Angel the Soothsayer says?”

I was too spooked by the hair standing on my nape to be irritated by his sarcasm. My heart banged like a drum pulled too tight. I could almost feel death waiting for us beyond the door. What was going on here? I’d always been the intuitive type, but this is ridiculous.
Someone is out there
.

Where could we go? The inside door that opened to the tenants’ mailboxes had already closed and locked behind us. Marco didn’t have a key. The only place for us to go was outside this ten-by-ten-foot outer foyer.

“What’s the matter?” he said impatiently. “You have nothing to worry about. There’s a patrolman waiting for us outside.”

“He’s gone. He left.” I propped an arm on the door and leaned heavily against it. I had to think.

“You’re not a suspect in this murder case. You don’t have to create a scene here to impress me, or throw me off the scent.”

“Pardon me for saying so, but I don’t think you have a scent. And this isn’t about you or me. Someone is out there. If you’re so sure I’m wrong, then go ahead. When they run out of bullets, I’ll follow. Gentlemen first.”

He narrowed his eyelids as he studied me with a curious mix of amazement and amusement. “I can’t believe you’re serious. Fine, I’ll call ahead.” He pulled his cell radio clip off his belt and called to the car. Silence. “Crappy equipment,” he muttered, staring at the black device in his hand.

I nodded and gave him a gloating smile. “Your line has been jammed. Typical R.M.O. tactic.”

He glared at me, for a moment considering my case. Then he shook his head. “No, this thing has been on the fritz all day. Department budget cuts.”

Nevertheless, he reached into his suit coat, tucked away the radio and pulled out a Mortal Taser, setting it to Kill.

“Now we’re talking the same language,” I said, glad that he was armed. I’d left my Glock at home.

“That’s a first,” he muttered.

In spite of the danger I was sure awaited us, I couldn’t help but notice how gracefully his hands cradled the weapon.

“Hey, Baker.”

I looked up and almost gave a start when I saw how penetratingly he was staring at me. “Yes?”

“When we get outside and you see you were wrong, you’ll have to buy me a beer.”

I grinned. “And if I’m right,
you’re
buying.”

He moved toward the door, then halted, letting out a breath of relief. “Look. I told you.”

I followed his gaze, which focused on a pulsing red light that throbbed through the cloudy etched glass embedded in the upper half of the old-style oak door.

“So what?”

“Those are called lights,” he replied, sarcasm fully restored. “They put them on squad cars. My backup is there. You’re good, Baker. Very good. You almost had me convinced.”

He walked out of the door like Gary Cooper in
High Noon
. What a jerk, I thought. Then irritation turned to absolute panic. The vague danger I’d sensed turned into a sharp, sizzling sound in my head that made me nauseous. I saw bricks just inches from my face. They looked like they were burning. I didn’t know what it all meant but I just knew something very bad was about to happen.

“Don’t!” I shouted, but he was already outside.
Like a tornado, I flew out the door and smashed into his legs, tackling him. He crashed into the cracked concrete sidewalk. His taser flew from his hand, skittered into a street drain and vanished down through the iron slats.

“Damn it, Baker,” Marco cursed.

At the same time a company of bullets sprayed the glass and brick wall where Marco had been a second before. By the sizzling that followed in the eerie silence, I knew the bullets were acid eaters—a favorite of the Mafiya. It wasn’t enough to roto rooter your insides with SMART bullets. The R.M.O. wanted to burn away your internal organs with chemicals, just to make sure you were
really
dead. With a chill, I realized I’d heard the same sound a moment before in my mind. I looked up from the ground and saw acid fumes curling up from the bullet holes in the redbrick wall. That must have been the smoke I’d envisioned.

“What the—?” Marco growled as he yanked his legs from my embrace and twisted up from the trash-littered sidewalk. He stopped as soon as he saw the bullet holes. In unison we glanced hopefully to the flashing red light.

Unfortunately it topped a street cleaner parked across the street, not a squad car. I had been right. The patrolman was long gone. The street looked like a ghost town.

“Let’s go!” He reached for my hand and together we scrabbled to safety around the side of the building. Panting, we both stood and flattened ourselves against the wall. “My taser—”

“Forget it,” I rasped, still clutching his hand. “It’s gone. Useless anyway.” From my experience, the hard-core mobs would outgun you every time. Hand-to-hand combat was the only useful weapon against mobsters, if you were lucky enough to get close. Sgarristas didn’t usually train in martial arts. They didn’t need to. So it was the only weapon that worked against them when your back was up against a wall, so to speak.

“Guess I’m not buying that drink,” I said. I pulled my hand from his tight grip and clutched the rough wall. “Don’t worry, Marco, I’ll handle this.”

“Like hell you will. I’m not going to let you get killed.”

I gave him an incredulous look. “For your information, Marco, you’re not letting me do squat. I’m going to save my butt and yours in the process.”

“Do you always have to be in control, Baker?”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Marco. You should have stuck to head-shrinking back at headquarters. You’d be dead by now if I hadn’t—”

I heard a rustling noise and the squeak of a rusty wheel, and fell silent. We both looked at ourselves mirrored in the plate-glass windows of the storefront across the alley. In a distorted reflection created by a bright rainbow-colored billboard on the brick wall over our heads, we saw a stooped figure pushing a rickety grocery cart.

“A free-ranger,” he whispered, his face visibly relaxing. “An old lady.”

Free-ranger. I hated that term. It was a euphemism for any homeless person who hadn’t gone
underground to live in Emerald City, which was a euphemism for the abandoned subway tunnels that had become a city for the poor.

A number of homeless Chicagoans who preferred to brave the elements in order to enjoy the light of day remained above ground. Calling them “free-rangers” sounded like something happy, like free-range chickens.

The reflection of the homeless lady approaching with her rusty grocery cart full of bags, empty cans and trash became clearer. Her dirty gray hair looked like a Brillo pad, her nose looked borrowed from the Wicked Witch of the East from the classic
The Wizard of Oz,
and her teeth were MIA. Maybe a methop junkie whose brain had turned to mush. They were usually harmless.

She pushed her cart past the edge of the building and smiled at us as she passed. I was just about to relax when I saw something round and hard poking out of the many tattered layers of her clothing.

No time to curse. I shot my leg out at a ninety-degree arc, ramming the toe of my boot into the soft part of her temple with a sickening thud. The free ranger-who-was-not flew backward and landed in an awkward, still heap. Knocked out cold. Mike would be proud.

“Damn I’m good.” I straightened my collar and glanced at Marco, who looked down at the unconscious body in horror.

“I ought to book you for that.” He ground the words through clenched teeth and bent to help the prone figure, until I grabbed his upper arm.

“Don’t be such a patsy,” I whispered. “This is a setup.”

He glanced around and saw what I had—an ominously deserted street. It was as if someone had shut down traffic for a parade. The Sgarristas probably had. But for just one assassination? They must have really wanted us dead.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I don’t know why the R.M.O. sent this guy to kill us, but this isn’t the place to debate the issue.”

I quickly squatted and pulled out the weapon I’d seen, which was still hidden in the assassin’s clothes, and held it up for him to see.

His face sobered. “You were right. I didn’t see the gun.”

“Hell, yes, I was right. Don’t worry about it. You have to spend some time on the streets before you notice these things.” I handed him the Uzi-size weapon and felt for a pulse in the assassin’s neck, which was partially covered with his latex mask. “This guy will be coming to soon.”

“How do you know it’s a guy?”

I grinned at him over my shoulder. “There’s only one sure way to find out.”

I tucked my fingers under the edge of the latex and pulled the mask off, revealing the sweating, unconscious face of a dark-haired, twenty-something guy whose ancestors definitely once vacationed on the Baltic Sea.

“You were right again,” Marco acknowledged.

“I usually am. Don’t ask me why.”

“How did you know this guy was waiting for us?”

“I really don’t know. I’ve always had great intuition but this was…this was too weird.”

He nodded, but hardly looked convinced. He turned his professional scrutiny to the contraption in his hands. “What do you think this is?”

“I don’t know, but I feel a lot safer knowing it’s in our hands and not his.”

I stood and he handed it over for my examination. It was surprisingly light. There was a trigger, but that was the only conventional technology on the foot-and-a-half-long contraption. The nose ballooned like a flamethrower, but I was sure it shot out something far more subtle and dangerous. Something inside of it glowed unnaturally. All ruminations came to a screeching halt when Marco stiffened and pointed down the empty street.

“Baker.”

“I see her.” A figure stood staring at us five hundred yards down the road. This time it really was a woman. I could tell by the natural flow of her long black hair, the knockout body in black tights, the cocky, somehow sexy stance. “If this is Tweedle Dee, there’s Tweedle
Dumb
. Though I have a feeling she’s anything but.”

My supposition proved all too true. While she distracted us, the Sgarrista on the ground grabbed a knife and lunged toward me. Damn. I had been so entranced with the first weapon I hadn’t searched for another. Marco turned and socked the guy hard in the jaw. I was impressed. But the Sgarrista barely moved. Oh, great! Jaws of steel.

The assassin kicked his leg out and rammed me
against the brick wall. I groaned, half expecting to hear the crack of bones. He grabbed Marco by the collar and had the knife to his throat so fast I couldn’t react in any other way. I aimed the mysterious weapon and pulled the trigger. I didn’t even hesitate.

What happened next was amazing. I’ve never killed anyone, but in this case, I had no choice but to use the assassin’s own weapon against him.

Some sort of glowing laser beam soundlessly emitted from the snout. The Sgarrista watched with intense horror as it apparently penetrated his bulletproof vest. He scrambled backward as if it were a giant, creepy spider crawling up his chest. Then he dropped his knife and his shoulders slumped in complete defeat. I turned the weapon to the James Bond chick who watched the whole thing from down the street. She took one look at it, turned and ran.

The assassin then got up from the sidewalk. He wasn’t hurt. But somehow his face already looked dead. Despair welled in his black eyes. Even though there was no visible penetration of his flesh, he looked as if I’d just dealt him a mortal blow. He held out his hands. “Arrest me.”

Marco and I exchanged looks. What did he know about this weapon that we didn’t? As Marco pulled a pair of cuffs out of his back pocket, he said, “Why are you making this so easy?”

The sweating, bruised young man replied, “Because I’m dead already. You have a gun? Shoot me, please. It will be faster.”

“I’d shoot if I had my weapon,” Marco muttered
out of the side of his mouth. Then he marched forward, spun the assassin around and cuffed him. “Killing you would be too compassionate. You’re going to have to endure overnight lodging courtesy of the county of Cook.”

“
Govno
,” the gunman cursed in Russian.

“Just think of the jail as a bed-and-breakfast on a budget.”

I chuckled in spite of the circumstances. Marco shot me a smile, which I returned, then I frowned. It was time to start figuring out why the R.M.O. had tried to kill us. More important, I needed to know when the next attempt on our lives would be since they weren’t easily discouraged.