Adrenaline (14 page)

“So you think you’re a bad boy.”

“You wouldn’t believe,” he said, grinning.

“Are you willing to do bad things to get it?”

“Absolutely. Are you?”

She nodded. “Oh, yeah. I wouldn’t kidnap babies or murder innocent people. But I know where there’s some cash, and I wouldn’t mind taking it from the guy and hurting him along the way.”

“We’re talking about Jammer, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you just wanted to get clean.”

“I do. But I can’t be clean with him still walking around. I’d always be worrying that he would be showing up to cut me or burn me. Besides, I made most of the money, the way I figure it.”

“How much are we talking about?”

“Fifty thousand.” She said it with a curious mixture of pride and shame. “Money he’s been setting aside toward a drug deal with a guy named Raul.”

“That would be a start,” he said.

“A start!” Her eyes widened. “That’s a lot of money.”

She truly looked her age at that moment. He said, “Until a few days ago, I was worth just over six million. And I was on my way back to that and more when a couple of people screwed me up.”

“Six million!” She looked at him warily. “What kind of job in a big company pays that kind of money?”

“Not many,” he said, agreeably. “Especially if you stick exactly with the job description.”

“And with the law?”

He hesitated, then figured, what the hell. They had already been discussing murder. “That’s right.”

“So you were stealing from them?”

He grimaced. He didn’t think of it in those terms. “What’s your point?”

“Well, I just don’t get it. Why would a business guy like you take the kind of chances I’m talking about? Why don’t you go back to that big company of yours and start working the angles?”

“Good question.” Geoff got out of bed and padded over to the window, naked. He looked out onto the street, seeing a hooker already plying her trade at eight in the morning. A dozen yards away from her, a big black man stood in a doorway, watching her. Geoff opened the window—noticing that the hotel was old enough that he could actually open them himself—and took in the smell of the street, the faint whiff of garbage, of morning coffee and automobile exhaust. He said, “Taking chances is who I am. Even as a kid, I’d do things that would terrify everyone else. And it just didn’t bother me. Jump off a bridge, race a car—hell, walk up and punch the biggest bastard in the school right in the face—it was fun, I’d get a rush.” He turned to look her in the eyes. “I just don’t get scared like other people do. I don’t know why, it’s just not in my makeup. The way I figure it, if embezzlement was kind of a sneaky thrill, armed robbery should be a blast.”

“And you’re willing to kill Jammer to get it? Because that’s my price for telling you where to find him and the money. We split it, fifty-fifty. Deal?”

He grinned, ruefully. Still feeling good in spite of the fact that his share for killing a man would have amounted to pocket change a week ago.

“Deal,” he said. “And if my car hasn’t been repossessed yet, I’ll even throw in a swim in the mountain stream of your choice this afternoon.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. Then she was off the bed and when she pulled him against herself, her kisses were artless, enthusiastic, and very genuine. He laughed in spite of himself as she pulled him back to the bed. He said, “A lady friend of mine told me not too long ago that I’d end up on the street. I thought I’d like it.”

“I can see you do,” Carly said, touching him. “I’m liking it a lot more now that you’re here.” She took him in her mouth, teasing him, bringing him close to climax within minutes. Just before he lost it, she pulled back, squeezing him so he would hold off. She said, “You better tell your lady friend I carry a straight razor.”

He rolled Carly onto her back. “She’s already history.”

“Good,” Carly whispered. “I’m going to show you how good the street can be.”

Chapter 14

It had been one of the best days of Carly’s life. It was like that angry little ball that had been burning inside since she had first arrived at the Greyhound station two years ago had been stuck with a pin and some of the acid had drained.

They were standing outside a doughnut shop on the edge of the Combat Zone. Just down the street from all the theaters. She had felt so far away from the Zone all day and was now seeing it with different eyes. Sure, it still had the same signs,
ALL NUDE COLLEGE GIRL REVUE, up in lights, XXXXXs across the marquees. Pale and hopeless hookers working the street, occasionally chattering among themselves.

But instead of seeing the Zone as an inescapable trap, Carly saw it for what it was—a seedy little block of sleaze that would probably be history in a few years, what with the zoning ordinances that were slowly shutting the place down. The prostitutes would move to some other street, but Carly knew she didn’t have to move with them.

She knew in that moment that it was truly possible to get away. Geoff had power to spare and being with him made her feel her own. Even though he was slumming being with her. She knew that. But lots of guys said things in bed and didn’t mean them—but Geoff did what he said, drove her up to Mount Chocoura. She knew he didn’t think the cold swim in the mountain stream made her all new. Hell, she could see he had been laughing at her some when he waded into the water with the bar of soap, his dingle all shrunk up in the cold.

But the shocking water had been everything she had hoped.

It made her feel different about herself just to get something she wanted. To be treated as if what she wanted mattered.

And then he took her shopping on Newbury Street. He went through the aisles pulling out clothes, saying, “Try this, this, try this …” She had to figure the sizes, but the styles he picked out for her were just right. She couldn’t believe herself now. She looked at the mirrored reflection in the doughnut shop window and shivered with pleasure. She was wearing a simple pinstriped shirt. Nice jeans that fit right instead of the ridiculous skintight pants that Jammer made her wear. The new wig Geoff had bought her, the black one, made her look different enough with her sunglasses and clothes so that she wouldn’t have recognized herself … except she
did,
in the sense that the woman in the mirror was the woman Carly had always known she could be.

What a day.

After that, it had been her turn. They had gone to see Louis, and he had taken their pictures and promised them each a new driver’s license and passport by the end of the day. Louis had grinned at her. “You’re beautiful, just like I knew you could be. Don’t worry about me, keeping secrets is my business.” But Jammer had once beat Louis, so Geoff gave him a couple hundred dollars and they decided they could believe him.

It all seemed so easy, during the afternoon. But now the tension was beginning to creep in about what she and Geoff still had in front of them.

She peeked around the corner.

“Not yet?” Geoff asked.

“No.” She looked at the gold watch he had bought her. Eight-twenty-five. “Five minutes. He’s very regular when it comes to food.”

Jammer.

Waiting for him now made her stomach twist and roll. She still felt the euphoria, still felt she and Geoff could do anything. But if she looked at it square, she had to admit she was worried about actually killing the pimp. She wouldn’t mind seeing him dead, but she wasn’t so sure she and Geoff had to be the ones to do it.

They might get caught, for one thing.

And while Boston might not be safe, now that she was with Geoff she knew the power to move away from Raul and Jammer was her own. She could move someplace else, and they would never find her. Geoff was talking as if he would take her with him. She hadn’t told him about Raul, she figured she would mention that as if she had just thought about it once they hit, say, the Connecticut border. She would just look over casually and say, “Did I tell you about this guy who wanted to put me in movies?”

She knew that for some reason he admired her life on the street, instead of just seeing it as stupid and scummy. Who was she to set him straight? If she’d learned anything as a hooker, it was to let the guy live whatever fantasy he wanted.

“There he is,” Geoff said, backing around the corner beside her. “Which booth again?”

Carly snapped out of her reverie. “The one by the window to the left. The owner knows to keep it open for him, eight-thirty, and to have his food ready.”

“We’ll give him a second to get seated.” Geoff slung the strap of the athletic bag over his shoulder and put his hand inside the open bag. He grinned at her, leaning back against the glass. “This is going to be fun.”

She could see the reflection of the pretty, classy woman in the mirror turn to that of a scared hooker. “We don’t have to do this,” she said, knowing he wasn’t going to like her saying it. “Let’s just get in your car and go.”

“Don’t be stupid.” His face darkened.

She bit her lip and let her stomach do its leaps while the minutes ticked by. Her hands were shaking.

Abruptly, he swung around the corner, walked up half a block, and walked into the restaurant. By the time she had followed him into the dark, hot gloom, Geoff was already seated across from Jammer, the gun under the table, trained at her former pimp’s balls. “Have a seat, sweetheart,” Geoff said. “Jammer’s invited us to dinner.”

The pimp handled it pretty well, Geoff had to give him that. He finished chewing his mushu pancake and then said to Carly, “I’m going to twist your head off, bitch, and feed it to Darlene’s turtles.”

“Don’t you think you’ll be a little preoccupied, what with having your balls blown off?” Geoff kept his voice quiet and pleasant.

Jammer started to say something, and Geoff gave him a glimpse of the gun. “Think about it.”

Jammer’s face went white. “There are cops all over the Zone. All I have to do is raise my voice. You’ll be identified. Get you for what you did to Ball, too.”

Geoff nodded, smiling agreeably. “Absolutely. They’d roll you up to testify in a wheelchair, wearing diapers.”

“What about Ball?” Carly said.

“Later,” Geoff said.

Jammer’s eyes flickered between the two of them. “You don’t know?” he said. “This guy stuck Ball, killed him. The cops came by to tell me.”

She drew breath sharply, then regained herself.

Jammer said to Geoff, “What do you want?”

“I hear you’ve got a little cash stockpiled. About fifty thousand in a floor safe.”

The pimp gave Carly a disdainful glare. “You cunt.” He grinned at Geoff. “You believe that? I keep some cash there, a few thousand. But fifty thousand with sluts like her bringing johns in? You must be crazy. The rest is in my safety deposit box. You gonna hold a gun on me all the way there? What happens when we get to the cage, I gotta sign in, show my ID? They don’t let you bring your friends back for a party, you know.”

Geoff looked over at Carly. Her lower lip was trembling. She looked at him, scared. “He’s lying!”

“We’ll see,” he said, nudging her with his knee, telling her to calm down. He didn’t want her calling attention to them, especially now that he was thinking that maybe he should go back to his original plan, shoot them both up in the pimp’s apartment, make it look like a murder/suicide. Not that he particularly felt like shooting the girl, but it sure seemed like she was beginning to be trouble. And if the police had already found their way to Jammer, maybe it was in Geoff’s best interest to simply clear the thing out, pop Lisa and Steve in their sleep, and then hit the road. “Let’s go take a look,” he said.

Across the street, Lazar said to Bannerman, “That guy had his hand in the bag when he walked into the restaurant, too.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

“Kind of funny, whacking a guy with a chick along for dinner, isn’t it?”

Lazar shrugged. “Big city, you see lots of things.”

“You want to save his ass?”

Lazar looked at Bannerman.

Bannerman grinned. “We don’t
know
a crime’s being committed.”

“Damn straight. Let’s give them a few minutes, go upstairs, and say hello.”

Jammer was quaking deep inside, but he tried to keep his face blank as they stepped into his apartment. Darlene was out. There was something so cold about this guy. He looked like a goddamn yuppie, the clothes he was wearing, the white smile. But the gun was rock steady in his hand, and Jammer believed the guy had it in him to pull the trigger.

Jammer swallowed deep, looked over at Carly, and wished he could smack her across the head.

Dumb, dumb cunt. She had always been a dreamer, and now she was going to get them both killed. She couldn’t see that this guy was playing her.

What Jammer had said about the cash was true. He had five thousand in the floor safe, the rest in the bank. He also had a gun in the bag with the cash, for a situation just like this. Now he didn’t know if it was such a bright idea. He wasn’t sure if he could draw it in time, or if he should just try to reach in and shoot through the bag.…