Sabotage (21 page)

I
t took most of the rest of Becky’s money to buy the cell battery, but it started the phone right up. There it was, waiting for her. She pulled the phone in close to her chest, and then put it on silent.

She had managed to get a shot of Joey without him knowing it.

She left them 45 minutes ago. That was long enough, right? This was seriously good shit. This was bangin. She was gonna blow up on Twitter.

She wrote the message:

@RachelXOXO—U wont believe dis shit. @PalJoey alive! I wuz wit him in his limo.

She added hashtags about Pal Joey to make sure it would reach its intended audience, and she posted a link to the picture she took. Joey looked a mess, dealing with the issue, and panicked, almost white. It wasn’t a flattering picture, and it certainly would lead anyone to guess exactly when it had been taken. If they doubted, the timestamp would clearly show that.

It didn’t take long. Within five minutes, she had direct messages from CNN, TMZ, and BET. Shit was blowing up. Rachel, known as Becky to Pal Joey, was about to become famous.

R
aylon had been to the house twice, but he knew he would have to feel his way up to it, especially in the dark. He gave the driver general directions, taking surface streets through Bel Air and Beverly Hills, and then heading north on Coldwater Canyon Drive. With the windy, narrow roads, he knew this was not fun driving for a limo, but, at this point, all involved were still pretty content with simply not being dead.

The canyons were not places you went if you didn’t know where you were going. They twisted back upon themselves, and you could easily wind up going into a blind alley with no way to turn around. Neither Raylon nor Joey claimed to be an expert on this ritzy part of Los Angeles that seemed a million miles away from their neighborhoods in Dago. But Raylon always paid attention, and Joey knew his boy could find it.

Raylon had the driver cut back west onto Mulholland Drive, and then he started counting the streets. He told him to go slowly. He finally found the cul-de-sac he wanted. No one expected the owners of the house to be home, and Joey figured they were armed to the teeth if they were. But they were in no hurry; they could wait.

He told Marvin to park up the hill in a darkened driveway across the street. The canyon streets were so narrow, and a white limo didn’t provide much cover, but what could they do? There was a fifty-fifty chance the man would come back from the other direction, but this was LA, and limos blended in better than they did anywhere else in the world.

“You sure dis it?” Joey asked.

Raylon nodded. “I’m sure. What’s the play?”

Joey sat silent for a minute. “You think dis the head man?”

Raylon shook his head vigorously. “Naw, man. He takin’ orders.”

“What make you say dat?”

“First off, I don’t think I woulda seen his face if it’s him. Just make sense, ya know? Second, it’s just too big. He ain’t runnin dis out of Laurel Canyon.”

Joey tended to agree.

“So what’s the play?” Raylon was enjoying seeing Joey squirm. He knew his days as a drug dealer were nearly worry-free because of the protection Raylon’s group offered. Had they stayed on the streets, they would be partners by now. As it was, the rap game turned him into a permanent flunky.

Joey knew Raylon saw him as weak. This burned him.

“I’ma make him talk,” he said forcefully.

Raylon gave him a knowing grin that only he could get away with.

“I know what ya thinkin’,” Joey said, staring straight at the only man who knew him this well. “I got dis.”

Raylon remained unconvinced. He pulled out a fat blunt and offered it to Joey.

Joey hit it hard. He needed that. He then got the courage to turn on his phone just for a minute to see what the world was saying. His phone was blowing up off the hook. They were saying he was alive! Where was he? It took him a second, and then he saw. That damn Becky. She had gotten out over Twitter after all.

O
nce the reports of the bombings came, Red knew the call would come, eventually. Not everything could go right on a day like today, and she knew she was still into Britt enough to have to clean up the mess.

Red was at The Spearmint Rhino, not working as a dancer but ready to roll the next white-collar Joe she saw. It was the nicest of the Vegas strip clubs and looked more like a well-appointed law office than the joint it really was. She tipped the doormen well to overlook her occasional appearances, and there were so many girls on the floor at any one time she was almost overlooked in the midst of it all.

Frankly, she didn’t exactly look like Mother Teresa. Her hair was so red it was crimson. She helped it from a bottle now and then, but, other than that, it was her. The ultimate redhead. She played it up, too, wore the color, lived the lifestyle. She had to be careful in her line of work, because she stood out, but she liked that. It made it more challenging, certainly.

Time passed, and Red thought she was almost out of the woods.

Steve from Philadelphia thought she was a dancer. He sat down by her and made the rookie mistake of showing her his roll. Insecure men always make that mistake.

She cooed at him, told him she loved to watch the ladies, and watch the men watch the ladies.

He liked this. They always did. His eyes went up and to the right, the way people’s eyes always do when they’re conjuring up a pleasant image.

Red let him buy one drink, and then another. She was sure he was a lightweight. She was well into her beguiling act, a dance of talk, not of motion and always profitable.

Then Britt called.

She didn’t answer.

He called again, and she still didn’t answer. Then he came with texts and started blowing up her phone in earnest.

She kept two cell phones with her. They were identical except for the scratches and the rings. He was the one of the few people who had the number to her real phone. She didn’t always bring it, but she was almost sure that by the end of the night she would have to do something extravagant and stupid.

“Excuse me,” she told Steve, cursing Britt’s timing to herself. “Girl talk.” She winked and put her hand on his inner thigh. She grabbed Steve’s phone, put her other number in, and sent a winky face. Her phone chirped as she received it.

He liked all of this. They always did.

“What a surprise,” Red said when she got into the bathroom. There were two girls doing lines on the bathroom sink. She rolled her eyes and pretended like she didn’t notice. “Your plan didn’t turn out perfect.”

He simmered. “One loose end.”

“I’m guessing the girl. They’re the only thing that gets a man like you killed.”

Britt didn’t want to admit this, but he had to. “I can’t find her. She figured out that the phone she was given was bugged. Or she’s visited every Oriental sex parlor and jack shack in the last two hours.”

“She’s a smart girl, too smart to stay with you.” Red was beholden to Britt, but she still wasn’t going to kiss his ass. “Where do you think she is?”

He paused. “I think she’s at the casinos. The bigger, the better.”

“Tony can’t find her?”

“Last I saw, Tony was heading for Los Angeles. He apparently thinks I’m stupid.”

“So you’re two for two. The one you knew was smart is smart, and the one you knew was dumb is dumb.”

“He doesn’t know he’s being followed.”

“That sounds easy. Why don’t I take Tony?” She didn’t think Britt knew about her relationship with Tony. She was sure Tony wasn’t going to shit in his own nest.

Britt laughed. It sounded forced as if he were trying to hide his fear from his formidable friend. “Tony’s under control.”

This made her heart sink. She didn’t want to see Tony hurt.

The girls walked out of the bathroom, sniffing up the party favors and preening. She had the place to herself.

She dug the knife in. “And you want me to find the one who’s in the wind in a casino. That really narrows it down.”

Britt said nothing. He knew she would understand. They hung up.

Red checked the iPhone clock. There was still time to have a little fun before heading out.

She texted Steve.
Meet me. Ladies room. Second stall.

The smiley face was only seconds behind.

N
aseem, now by himself, had time to ponder the day. He woke this morning thinking this was his last; that had been a freeing experience most of the world would never know. Now, he was once again caught in an earthly narrative, no matter how short, and it weighed him down in a way he couldn’t have expected.

He wanted to find Yankee. He wanted to kill him. Grant and Mandy did not want to know the lengths he was willing to go. Whether the rest of the plan was carried out or not, his motive was strictly revenge—making Yankee pay for perverting his mission, or that’s what he tried to keep telling himself. There was part of him that wondered if he wasn’t really okay with what happened, this endorphin rush, or his life somehow restored. He wasn’t sure.

Naseem saw that Grant and Mandy were slightly wary of him. Grant tried that weak bluff of kicking his ass, but, overall, the Americans treated him with more kindness and respect than he ever could have hoped or deserved given the horrible things he meant to carry out. They would have both been killed by his hand if he hadn’t reached out. That was a trait that his people didn’t share. They would never have saved their potential killer. Even if it were to their great detriment, Naseem, had he done the same thing in his organization, would have been killed by the rules of his own people.

This weakness was Americans’ greatest strength
, he thought. They sometimes did a horrible and misguided job, but they thought they cared about right and wrong, and they wanted to see right done. Moreover, they wanted to
believe
they had done right. At least, this was true of the people themselves; their organizations sometimes lacked their people’s vision.

He doubted that Yankee was still in Las Vegas, but he knew where to look, and he hoped something there would give him some insight. Yankee fooled him; only his last interaction prior to going to Missouri and his sanguine nature gave him any more than a slight pause. He believed this was the only time as an adult this happened. He always judged people well. He knew it would not happen again.

He had spent his last several years waiting for this, for the day he would no longer exist on this planet, only in the welcoming arms of Allah. He knew the scriptures, chapter and verse. He thought he could end this ringing pain of existence that everyone suffered and fall away. He would be a part of something bigger than himself. That feeling of loneliness that enveloped him every morning would no longer touch him.