Lost Art Assignment (15 page)

“Felicity. This is hard.” Davis swallowed some champagne. “You know, I've played this scene a hundred times but now, well, I know we haven't known each other long. And I know things haven't gone very well when we were together.”

“Events seem to have been against us,” she said. “The only real talking we've done was travelling. I know you've got your work…”

“Yes, and that's the entire problem.” Davis' brow wrinkled. “Felicity, there's something I want to, need to tell
you. That's bad enough. But before I can say it, I have to ask you something.” He turned his head, but she couldn't tell if it was from embarrassment, worry, sadness or something else entirely.

“Ross, I won't shoot you,” she said. “Whatever it is, just ask me.”

Davis leaned forward, collecting Felicity's hand in his own, drawing her fingers up almost to his lips. Felicity felt a slight tremble. Davis stared into her eyes like a kid at a knothole in the fence, trying to see the whole ball game, knowing his perspective was skewed. There was a new intensity here Felicity had not seen before.

“Felicity,” Davis said, “What were you doing in that fish fry place at noon today?”

Morgan parked the van around the corner from Slash's brownstone. When his feet reached the pavement he stretched hard, twisting his neck in all directions. UPS vans were built for neither speed nor comfort, as he now knew. Between the van's limitations, afternoon traffic and all those blasted toll booths, a long four and a half hours separated him from Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Seconds later he pulled the back doors open. If it was a long drive for him, it must have seemed eternal for his passengers. Morgan cleared a path to Ghost first. His eyes fluttered as Morgan lifted the shelf box.

“You okay, Ghost?”

“Indeed,” Ghost said. “It was a long ride. I chose to spend most of it in a light trance.”

Morgan soon discovered that Daddy Boom had simply slept inside his cardboard camouflage. He looked puzzled when he poked his head out the van's back door.

“Hey, man. Where are we?”

“I didn't think I ought to park this thing right in front of Slash's door,” Morgan said. “We're just around the corner.”

“Pull us around,” Daddy Boom said, never stepping down from the van. Morgan bristled just a bit, but Ghost slapped him on the back and joined him up front. Morgan started the vehicle and put it into gear. He figured seniority established the pecking order, so he should expect everybody to order him around. He still didn't like it.

Two men watched from the stoop as Morgan pulled up and applied the emergency brake. Gun sized lumps under their sweaters were all too obvious. Morgan's passengers climbed out of the truck right away. As Morgan hopped to the street another man jogged over and hopped up into the cab. The vehicle was moving before Morgan reached the first step.

“He'll put that thing away, until we need it again,” Ghost said, standing at Morgan's side. Daddy Boom stretched stiff limbs and lurched up the reddish sandstone steps behind the more athletic Morgan and Ghost. In front of the door, Morgan noticed an irregular stain beneath his feet. He suspected it was somehow connected with the two new grim faced button men on the landing. Ghost pressed him through the door, and the trio climbed the stairs to Slash's floor-sized apartment.

“All right now,” Crazy Ray 9 said as Ghost led the procession through the door. “The gang's all here.”

“Yeah,” Morgan said, standing in front of Ray on the sofa. “I'm starting to feel like a yo-yo, yanked back and forth.”

“This here's where the action is, bro,” Ray said. “J.J.'s about to go to war.”

“We already at war,” Slash said, stalking in from the front of the house. Ripper was bouncing with excitement at his side. “I'm a God damned prisoner in here, and that ain't gone last past tomorrow, you feel me?”

“Johnson, he don't know what went down.” Daddy Boom spoke as he settled into the sofa, forcing Ray to one end.

“Well, I'll tell you, Slick,” Slash said, pointing at Morgan, his face alight with rage. He began pacing frantically around and between the love seat, sofa and arm
chair. “Launched a double strike, them sons of bitches. Sent a guy around on a bike, just as I'm heading out. Tosses a thing of acid at me, right on my own stoop. It breaks, splashing the shit all over the place. Just lucky I seen him and thought something was shaky. Got behind the door just in time.”

“Who?” Morgan asked.

“Who?” Slash repeated. “Who? Them wop, guinea, dago, grease ball mother fuckers downtown, that's who. I finally got that pimp Minelli off my ass, and now his shithead son's taken over, doing the same old shit.”

“You mean trying to kill you?” Morgan asked.

“I mean with the bitches, homes.” Slash was almost ranting now. “Here I am trying to set these broads up as independent contractors, you know, doing business, making money. That asshole's still picking up kids barely old enough to bleed and shoving them out there on the street. Oh, yeah, they on the j-o-b all right, cause they too scared to say no. But grabbing that young stuff pisses the man off something fierce. Plus which, they grab anything with a dick, and get all diseased up and shit. And on top of that, he's got the balls to try to hit me in front of my own house.”

“You said a double strike?” Morgan prodded, trying to get Slash back on the subject.

“Ain't it obvious?” Slash shouted. “That bastard must have got to my fighter's trainer in Jersey. Knew he'd cost my organization a big chunk of change, right after offing me. That's why I had to move fast and hit hard, and public, to show them all J.J. Slash is still in business, and ain't taking no shit.”

Slash stopped in place for a moment, and Morgan glanced around the room. The other three men, the Convincers as he now knew them, were caught up in
Slash's excitement. Morgan thought he knew what came next. He had just heard a gang lord declare war. Slash had tried to rebuild his world in his own orderly image. Like Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler before him, he now realized it would not happen peacefully. So, he would force his model of sanity on his little world.

And here Morgan sat, in the war room, a trusted junior lieutenant. How could he prevent New York's streets from flowing with red, as they had in the past, as L.A.'s streets still did from gang violence? Some people felt it didn't matter if gang members killed each other off. Morgan saw it differently. Maybe because they were mostly black and Hispanic. Maybe just because they were so young. Maybe because he saw just about enough mass killing in Somalia and Rwanda as a soldier for hire.

“Home boys, we are going to end this in the next forty-eight hours.” Slash was starting low again, but his audience could see the energy behind his eyes. “My recruiters are out now getting lots of new brothers. We're going to cover this place solid, then we going to hit the Guineas hard. Pull their snatch off the street and put all their pimps in body-fucking-bags. Little Minelli junior can't mess with me no more, dig? He got to either get with the program or disappear, and if I have to stick my dick in his eye so he can see where I'm coming from, that's what I'll do. But to get the job done, we got to bring in some new blood.”

New blood to spill, Morgan thought. Slash spoke as if Minelli would just sit back and watch his operation taken apart with a quiet sigh. That intelligence estimate didn't match up with yesterday's acid attack. This would be a long, gruesome underground war. Morgan saw an alternative. He didn't like it, but he knew how often one evil must be chosen over another. He stepped behind the
sofa, so he faced Slash directly.

“Can I say something?” Morgan asked, in a firm yet quiet voice. Slash froze, and the others turned toward Morgan.

“Drop them shades, homie,” Slash said. Morgan pulled off the mirror lenses, and Slash stared hard into his clear light brown eyes. Morgan felt himself stripped to the bone and reconstructed by Slash's gaze. He had to keep reminding himself to guard against this boy's intuitive intelligence.

After a few long seconds Slash said, “Now, what you got to say, Slick?”

Morgan thought hard, phrasing with care. He needed to establish his expertise. “There might be another way, a less expensive way. Nobody wants a bunch of dead brothers laying around unless it's really necessary.”

“These guys ain't prone to no negotiating,” said Crazy Ray 9. Everyone smiled, and it eased the tension.

“I know this ain't the jungle, but that's the world I know so I'll put things in that perspective,” Morgan said. “When you're out in the jungle and you find the enemy stronghold, you got two choices. One, you can storm the place with an overwhelming force and just run him over. That's the expensive way. I mean it will cost you a lot of men and ammo, and your informers inside if you got any.”

“Yeah, I got people next to him,” Slash said, calmer now. “Hate to blow them off.”

“Other way's trickier,” Morgan said. “You take out the leader, just like last time.” Slash's face fell. Morgan pressed on. “Look I know, Minelli junior is probably better covered, but that don't mean he can't be hit. Look, all I'm asking is you let me see all your intel reports and let me come up with a plan. Maybe we can do it long distance.”

“You was a spook, wasn't you?” Slash asked.

“Yeah,” Daddy Boom put in. “A spook spook.” That drew another round of laughter.

“I did some undercover work, yeah,” Morgan admitted. “I worked with an Army team that, well, they officially didn't exist when I was there. They're called Delta Force now.”

“And you think you can nail this guy from outside his perimeter?” Slash asked again. The switch in vocabulary surprised Morgan. He considered how much he should tell this boy, and reminded himself that he had to stop underestimating him.

“I did a guy at over five hundred yards in Ireland a few months ago,” Morgan said.

“Five hundred feet, you mean,” Crazy Ray said.

“Yards,” Morgan repeated. “It was over sixteen hundred feet. Course, I had a special rifle.” While Morgan spoke Slash held his eyes. Morgan could see there was no doubt there.

“Tell you what, Slick,” Slash said. “Ghost can show you everything I know about Minelli and his gang. He can get in the computer and everything. Tomorrow we sit down, with my posse here, and you lay it out how you'd do it. If these three are down with it and I think it looks good, we run with it and you get a fat bonus. But, homes, this plan of yours, it just better be dope, hear?”

Once, while scuba diving in The Bahamas, Felicity's foot brushed against a Portuguese man-of-war. Its sting caused shock followed by nausea, and her chest constricted, making it difficult to breathe.

Her feelings at that moment in Davis' hotel room mirrored that time, but she dared not let Davis see how much his question affected her. How much did he know? Was this setup all an act? Did they already have Morgan? Perhaps Skorolos put it together correctly and muttered something while she retched in the bathroom.

Felicity had learned to maintain total facial control, even down to her micro-expressions, but even she couldn't deny biology. Davis would have felt her pulse speed up while holding her hand. Felicity quickly rifled through her mental file cards of emotional reaction, considered for less than a second, and selected righteous indignation.

“Here I was going to tell you all about this terrible day I had, but now I'm wondering how you know I was in that awful place,” Felicity said, sliding her hand out of Davis' grip. “Got one of your bully boys spying on me, have you?”

“Ghost saw you on his way out,” Davis said, pain showing on his face. “Naturally, he didn't expect to see a lady like yourself in such a greasy dive. Look, I'll back you up all the way. I just need to know.”

“A ghost? What the hell?”

“No no. That's one of my men. He was there for business and recognized you.”

“Well, fine,” Felicity said. She had already figured out that Ghost had to be the man who followed her on the plane. She pushed her chair back, her mind spinning in high gear. Her explanation brought out her strongest Irish brogue. “I was taking a little constitutional on the boardwalk, if you must know, taking a look at American bathing suits, to see what I could wear here. Well, on me way back up to the Taj Mahal I spots this Skorolos inside this place, and he's about to eat. I don't know about you, but when I sees somebody I know, I generally gives them a wave and smile.”

Davis was listening closely, but Felicity thought she had him. He looked more embarrassed than suspicious.

“Well, the man stands up and waves me inside,” Felicity said. “Now what was I supposed to do, me thinking he's a part of the team and all? You never told me he was in trouble or anything. He was all smiles and saying as how he hoped there was no hard feelings about last night's fight and he'd be talking to you about it later.”

Felicity let horror creep into her expression, which was easy as she allowed memories of the real events to reassert themselves. “Next thing I know here comes the one you called Daddy Boom and this other guy and Skorolos is screaming like I set him up. Oh, Lord, they broke both his arms like it was nothing. Then Daddy Boom, he takes the man's head and he shoves his face…his face…” Felicity dropped her chin to her chest as if overcome with emotion. She hoped she wasn't overplaying it. She knew for sure when Davis stood and put an arm around her.

“I knew there was nothing shady about it,” Davis said. “I just had to get the story. You know. Business.”

“Why's it so important, Ross?” Felicity asked with a sniffle. “Don't you trust me?” She was the embodiment of innocence when she turned those glowing green eyes on him.