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Didn't know then that they were backed from downtown. My clutch didn't fall off the map, so got erased."
Nohar could live with that. "You on flush—or anything else?"
"Do I look stupid?"
He told himself not to answer that.
He might as well play the Samaritan while he could.
"You get the couch."
CHAPTER 10
Nohar didn't see any rats when he parked the Jerboa across from his office. He hoped that meant Fearless Leader and his cronies were laying low. Even so, he was nervous, and Angel was more so. He gave her his shirt—it dragged on the ground when she wore it—and had her hold her ears down.
With ears down and her body covered, she could pass for a deformed rat.
It was the longest three blocks Nohar had ever walked.
They got to his apartment, and no ambush was waiting for them. Nohar breathed easier once he managed to unwedge the warped door and close it behind them.
Cat ran up, as usual, and seemed puzzled to find one of Nohar's shirts moving under its own power. When Angel lowered a hand, Cat shied away and hissed, but the moment she stopped paying attention to him, Cat attacked the end of her foot that stuck out from under the edge of the shirt.
"Ouch! Shit, Kit, put a leash on it."
"His name is Cat. If you have an argument with his behavior, you have to take it up with him. He doesn't listen to me."
Cat backed up, crouched, shook his ass back and forth, and pounced on Angel's exposed toes.
Angel jerked her foot up and Cat tumbled back into the living room. She twitched her nose and snorted. "You think that name up by yourself?"
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tossed it so it landed on Cat. Cat found the shirt more absorbing than Angel's toes, and he started rolling across the living room floor buried inside it. Occasionally a paw would come out and swipe at the air. Angel made for the
couch. Nohar went into the kitchen and filled a bottle of water. When he returned with it, she took the bottle and started drinking greedily.
By the time she'd finished her first bottle, Nohar had already made the trip for the second one. She drank this one more leisurely, and her story came out. Angel had seen the sniper on the twenty-fourth, the stormy Thursday. "Ancient history now," she said. Stigmata still had a few loyal holdouts at the time.
By then, though, the Zips had confined Stigmata's turf to the tower. War was about to break out all over. Everyone knew that. The Zips were going to vanish the remaining gangs. Only three were left—Babylon, Vixen, and Stigmata. According to Angel, Vixen's last shred of territory was the strip of Mayfield Road between Kenelworth and the concrete barrier, and Babylon was hunkered down in an enclave somewhere on Morey Hill.
Everyone was edgy. There was always someone watching, hidden behind a wall of rubble in the lobby. Angel, and the rest of them, wanted the chance to take some ratboys down with them. The twenty-fourth was her watch and Thursday was the night all hell broke loose. Angel thought Stigmata must've been the first of the mopup because the Zips must've realized there were only six members left.
The Zips weren't subtle about it. They announced their presence by having a burning station wagon rocket into the building. She told him car wrecks were a territorial symbol for the Zips. The wagon was loaded with explosives and went off in the lobby. Not enough to do any major damage, but enough to spook the whole building and knock Angel out before she could get warning upstairs.
She was only out a few minutes, just long enough
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for her and the ratboys to miss each other. The rats had made their way upstairs and she could hear gunfire and fighting above her. The Zips had left three as rearguard to catch stragglers. Two brown males and a white female hung around the open stairwell. Angel said she wanted to be sure of taking down one particular rodent. They didn't know she was there, the fighting covered her noise and the garbage covered her smell. She aimed her Nicaraguan ten-millimeter at the white one's head. Their leader, Angel said.
She was about to lay a slug right between the white rat's eyes when the canine showed.
"This guy was a chiller, Kit. Should've seen that righteous weapon."
From Angel's description, that "righteous weapon" had to be a Levitt. It was two meters long, with a scope the length and twice the diameter of Angel's forearm. The canine was carrying the weapon in one hand, a tripod in the other.
The newcomer was out of place at the scene of a gang war. The way Angel described him, the gene-techs that designed him were at least as advanced as the ones who produced Nohar's stock. That made the canine Pakistani or Afghan. Nohar had a bad feeling that he had met this canine before.
Angel described a dog with the domestic veneer removed. The canine was lean and had a shaggy gray coat, prominent snout, green eyes. He stood about two meters and massed about 100 kilos. Angel said he looked mean enough to take a bite out of a manhole cover.
"He had a raghead accent. Walked right to Terin— the white one—and asked, 'Is the roof cleared?' Ain't going to forget him. You could smell my people getting whacked up topside, and I smell him when he passes me. He was getting off. The blood was turning him on something fierce.
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"She calls him Hassan, Hazed, Hazy—something like that."
Damn it, it was Hassan. The same morey who oiFed Nugoya. Nohar shook his head. What the hell did a small-time pimp and a gang war have to do with Daryl Johnson and the franks running MLI?
"There's this mother of arguments between Terin and the pooch. The raghead is blowing my shot, standing right in front of me—" "What were they arguing about?"
"Fuck if I know, Kit. Term's pissed for some reason, like the dog is treading on her territory. She also rants about her best people being dragged otf to the four corners of the country—hell and gone, she said. Dog's frosty, though—think he's got the handle on the Zip's supplier, guns and drugs. Terin can mouth off, but not do much. Pissed her good.
"After blowing off steam, she leads him up. There goes my shot. I might've written myself off to get Terin, but I wasn't about to give it up for two goons. I laid it low. Not that I wasn't tempted when they tossed Hernandez out a window, but not much I could do. I waited them out, hoping for another shot at Terin. Didn't happen."
Nohar was sitting on the floor across from Angel. Cat, half wrapped in the shirt, had tired of his game and had come to rest by Nohar. Angel was chugging her third liter of water.
"They caught up with you."
"Inevitable. They knew all of us. Snatched me by surprise—five to one, they like that kind of odds—up the Midtown Corridor. Wasn't in Moreytown so my guard was off. Was last Thursday—end of the month— the day after Vixen bought it."
Nohar remembered the burning Subaru and the dead foxes, both Wednesday.
Angel was still talking. "Surprised they didn't vanish me then and there.
Upset I'd survived, more upset I had been at the tower when the raghead dog showed—
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someone saw me book outta there an' told the Zips. Terin wanted to know if I had told people, told her to fuck off. Pissed her good. Took me back to the tower an' pumped me with flush. Someone calling the shots said look like an O.D. That really pissed Terin. I could tell she wanted to off me painful. MustVe been Friday when they left me. What day is it?"
"Sunday."
Angel yawned and stretched out on the couch. She barely filled a third of it. "Well, I'm getting some real sleep."
She fell asleep instantly.
They should have pumped another into her—but that would have looked like murder—and they were trying to make it look like an O.D.