"What things?"
"Just, you know, errands." Errands?
A sigh came over the phone, long and theatrical.
"What?"
"You can tell me the truth. I'm not a little kid, you know."
Jason started to laugh, caught himself just in time. "You know what?" He bit his lip. "You're right. I'm sorry."
His nephew sounded properly mollified. "That's okay."
A long pause, and then Jason realized that it was his turn to talk. Only, what was he supposed to say? Well, earlier I pretended to be a cop to bluff my way into a drug house, and now I'm on my way to ambush a meet between gangbangers and an arms dealer. And neither one scares me half so much as the idea of suddenly being responsible for someone else. "I'm downtown."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm… well, I'm trying to find out what's going on, buddy. I need to know why those guys came into your house."
"Oh." His voice sounded faint and far away.
"But," Jason spoke quickly, "it's going good. I think I'm starting to figure it out."
"Have you found the bad guys?"
"Some of them. Not all yet, but I will."
"What are you going to do then?"
He rubbed at the back of his neck. "I'm not sure."
"Are you going to kill them?" Billy's voice hard to read, a mix of sincerity and fear.
Jason had felt bullets chip cinderblock above his head, heard the ragged screams of wounded men, the raw prayers of desperate mothers. But he'd never heard anything quite so horrible as that question falling from eight-year-old lips. And all the worse because he didn't know the answer.
Did he want revenge? Oh, hell yes.
Would he murder for it?
He flashed on a class room in Basic, a lecture from a soft-spoken captain with sharp features. He had been talking about what defined a soldier, and a line had stuck in Jason's head even then. The difference between a thug and a soldier, the guy had said, was the moral courage of his cause.
"No," he said. "I'm not." He paused. "But I'll make sure that they can't hurt you ever again. I promised you that, and I meant it."
There was a long pause, and then Billy said, "I believe you."
Water spattered down the wide pipe, a constant chattering like autumn rain, like the dripping of ancient stalactites. A ragged man with dirt-pocked skin stooped, cupping his hands to catch the dark liquid. Splashed his face, moving calm as a suburbanite preparing to shave in the comfort of his own bathroom.
Jason slowed the Caddy, rolling down the ramp at a bare crawl. He'd never been down here before. What most people thought of as Lower Wacker was actually the second level, a throughway that wrapped along the river and provided a shortcut to dodge the traffic lights and gawking tourists of the surface streets. Everybody knew that Wacker, but he doubted many had taken the ramps down one more level, to the bowels of the city, a bleak lost place where service trucks moved between exhaust-stained roll doors under the timeless haze of yellow sodium light.
This world belonged to people the one above tended to forget. Garbagemen, repair crews, delivery drivers. Scores of homeless huddled under iron girders. They all had the same blanket, which baffled Jason until he realized where the blankets came from. They were hotel linens, grown too ratty for paying customers. Tossed in the Dumpster and repurposed by an army of the forgotten that slept shoulder to shoulder in the street beneath the Hyatt. The lowest tier of hotel guest.
It seemed like a beautiful, terrible symbol, though he couldn't have said of what, exactly.
Jason coasted to a stop where Stetson intersected Wacker. Felt that tingle in his fingers. He didn't know exactly when the meet would take place, but probably not till closer to midnight. It was eight now; he'd come early to see how it looked.
Lousy.
To the right, the street continued into darkness marked by signs indicating the city impound lot. The other direction dead-ended in a broad cul-de-sac of dingy concrete, wide enough for a mid-size rig to turn around. The roll doors were closed, but a faded sign marked the loading dock for the Hyatt. Crayola-orange shipping containers partly enclosed the area. A fence ran parallel; beyond it, a thin strip of grass led to the river, inky water sheened with reflections of convention hotels on the other side. Those glowing windows seemed a million miles distant from this misplaced netherworld, where the hum of cars and the fall of water swallowed sound, and the dingy light stole color. No security cameras, no traffic, and the only witnesses homeless men a block away, men who survived by not getting involved.
You could do just about anything down here.
Jason tapped a fingernail against his front teeth. There was no way to stay in his car without being spotted. The area was simply too vacant. Which meant he'd be on foot, outnumbered, and if what Dion had told him was true, dramatically outgunned.
He felt a pull for a drink, the desire to forget it, put on a nice shirt, hit a club. Find a girl who got wet at war stories, bury his troubles in booze and sex and the sweet forgetfulness of those moments before sleep, when everything washed away, and he didn't have to think about what came next, about owing anything to anybody.
Then he thought of the trust in Billy's voice. I believe you.
He parked the car in a delivery zone, hood up and hazards on. It took less than a minute to jog back, and he took the metal-slat fence like an obstacle at Basic, a sprint that culminated in a lunge, planting his toes against a post and shoving, letting momentum carry him up and over. Twenty feet of dry grass separated the river from the road. A bike path bisected it, but this late, in this dark place, he didn't anticipate any foot traffic, and the men coming shouldn't have any reason to look here. Jason checked the Beretta, then settled in to wait.
He'd lost friends in the dust of a foreign land. His Army didn't want him. His brother had been murdered for reasons he didn't understand. And now someone stalked the only family he had left.
If a cause was what separated a thug from a soldier, then he intended to be a soldier.
The time passed slowly, but he'd learned all about waiting in the Army. The trick was to find Zen, to not rush the moment, but simply to know that the moment would eventually come. He lay on his back, staring up at the skyline, listening to the buzz of cars, watching lights blink on in the high rises, normal people going about normal lives.
Across three hours, headlights flashed across the cul-de-sac only a couple of times. A few taxis and a low loader towing a BMW. The truck didn't hesitate, just made for the impound lot, and Jason flipped back over and tried to pick out stars through the city glow. Remembered the desert night, rolling from Baghdad to one of the settlements that dotted the landscape, how they'd stopped halfway and turned off the Humvee headlights, his team standing in the darkness with heads craned upwards, badass soldiers reduced to marveling boys by the majesty above. Stars like holes poked in the night, like the sky was a blanket and just beyond it was some great and glowing thing, a radiant world where everything was full of light.
He was wondering if Dion had lied to him when he saw a slim shape moving beside the river.
Adrenaline sang in his blood. Still forty yards away, nothing but a cutout against the gentle lapping of the water. But even from here he could see that the guy was dressed in black and staying low. This wasn't a citizen out for a walk. It was someone trying to be stealthy. And headed right for him.
He cursed silently, feeling the sweat in his palms, the muscles in his legs. If he moved now, he gave away his position. He could flatten himself to the ground, turn his face away. The guy might walk right by.
And if he doesn't?
The space was barely twenty feet wide, just dry grass and scrawny trees. Too big a risk. Jason eased the Beretta out, the grip warm from his skin, and clicked the safety off. He didn't intend to shoot anyone. But it wasn't murder if he was defending himself.