Arriving at the Château, he bounded up the back steps. Three minutes later he was knocking on the door of suite 313.
Athena Powers was smiling when she opened the door.
Esmeralda sparkled in her pretty hands.
The light in the suite was dim, but Cravitz could see that Athena had her suitcases out.
“Going somewhere?”
“Afraid so, boo. Sorry I can’t take you.”
“So you’re the bitch assassin? Don’t they pay you enough at Ebony?” Cravitz said.
“Everything I’ve told you was a lie. All except the pillow talk. When you were fucking me. I told you the truth about that, sweetboy. Anyway, bitch is a little harsh, don’t you think? I prefer… Belle.”
“Belle Starr, the outlaw queen. Nice touch,” Cravitz said, handing her his Berretta and walking into the suite.
“I try,” Athena Powers replied.
Luggage and bricks of yellow opium were strewn across the bed. Bennita Bangs was tied up at a desk with duct tape over her mouth. Her pretty topaz eyes flashed terror. She’d been beaten and there were nylon cords around her wrists.
“Nice knots,” Cravitz said.
“I was a Camp Fire Girl, didn’t Jordan tell you?”
4.
Cravitz got comfortable on the bed and pulled out a fresh cigar. “You kill Bingbong?”
“Had to,” Athena Powers said.
“So you work for that Vegas pig-Paco Santiago?”
“Yeah, Paco bought a little piece of my time. My Bloomingdale’s bill is a bitch.”
“So, you and Paco…?”
“That’s right. He’s like you-a pussy freak. It didn’t take long for him to realize I was irresistible. But this butter deal is big. And when Ernie stole his shit, Paco sent me down here to kill him.”
“So now you stiffin’ him?”
“I’m afraid this cowgirl has outgrown little Paco.”
“Paco is not a forgiving guy,” Cravitz said.
“Believe me, I didn’t plan this. I just came down here to do my job: kill Bennita and that dickhead Ernie, grab the smack, and haul back to Vegas for my payday. I didn’t figure on falling in love with you,” Athena Powers said.
Those deep brown eyes that once seemed so warm, so welcoming, now seemed aflame, cruel.
“Where did the Flo Boyz come in?”
“Just stupid kids,” Athena Powers said. “I laid out a couple of lines of butter, promised them a cut of the profits, and voilà, instant killers. Anyway, they were already pissed off with your boy Calzone. When Paco called and told me that he had word from his L.A.P.D. snitches that a broke-down cop named Calzone might be on to me, I realized he had to be stopped. I didn’t have a clue how to find him. That’s where you came in. The Boyz followed you right to his hideaway.” She looked at her watch. “Oh where does the time go? I’ve got to catch my jet.”
“I’m gonna let the girl go,” Cravitz said, and got up. He untied Bennita Bangs and tore off the duct tape.
“Such a gentleman. I wish I didn’t have to kill you both.”
“Bennita too?”
“I could have used her. She’s the prettiest mule on the West Coast. I tried to talk her into double-crossing Ernest, told her we could split the spoils-it was a lie, of course-but she betrayed me… and what did she get for her troubles? Tell him, baby.”
“After she killed Ernie, she beat me with that ugly gun,” Bennita Bangs said, shuddering at the memory.
“And all for this junk?” Cravitz asked, lifting one of the yellow bricks.
“Dope is power. Love will only take you so far,” Athena Powers smiled. Esmeralda sparkled in her steady hand. As she stepped forward, Cravitz burst the brick of butter in his bony hands and dashed its contents into her eyes. She cried out and pulled the trigger.
Esmeralda did not fire.
Cravitz cracked her stiffly across the jaw. Athena Powers dropped like a stone, through the clouds of golden dust.
“Baby, can’t you save me?” Athena said to Cravitz thirty minutes later as two uniforms led her out to the police van.
“Fresh outta love, boo,” Cravitz answered.
Athena kissed him tenderly on the lips. “You’ll never get me outta your mind.”
“Simone,” Cravitz said.
“How can you do this to me?”
“It’s a gift,” Cravitz said.
That night Cravitz’s dreams were restless reenactments of the murder scene. He imagined his old friend sleeping peacefully on the bed, Esmeralda nearby, Athena working the murdering minds of the Flo Boyz like marionettes, easing them fretfully through the night. His vow of a good deed had failed.
The following morning, before Yippie’s funeral, Cravitz drove to St. Benedict’s. There was one penitent there, an old woman bending over her rosary before the altar in a frayed frock and shawl. A tattered handbag sat on the pew beside her. The pair prayed in silence. Cravitz ruefully promised St.
Benedict that on his next birthday he’d do better with his good deed.
When he was finished, Cravitz stole quietly near where the old woman kneeled and dropped a $100 bill atop her ragged purse. On his way out, he scribbled the name Ramon Calzone onto a Central Detection envelope. In it he placed a tithe of five $1,000 bills and slid it into the collection box.
MIDNIGHT IN SILICON ALLEYBY DENISE HAMILTON
San Marino
They caught up with Russell Chen as he drove home from work, running his Lexus off the frontage road by the gravel pits of Irwindale. There were four of them, wearing reflective sunglasses and trucker caps pulled low, and for one terrified moment Chen though they meant to jack the car, kill him, and throw his body on the gray mountains of slag.
When they shoved him into a Lincoln with tinted windows, his sphincter almost let go with relief. Then fear throbbed anew as he considered the endgame. The bleakness of his situation mirrored the landscape: industrial parks rising like toadstools from the desecrated earth. In the rearview mirror, Chen watched his computer chip factory shrink to a snowball panorama, then disappear.
“The captured pigeon trembles with fright,” the man in the front passenger seat said in Chinese. He craned his head and laughed uproariously to see Chen squashed between two thugs wearing cheap ties and wool-blend jackets. One of the thugs held a gun to his ribs.
The laughing man was the boss. For weeks his people had shadowed Chen, watching him kiss his wife and children goodbye each morning, clocking his drive to work. Children were good, they liked that and took note. In the evening they watched it all in reverse as Chen’s car left the parking slot that read, Reserved for CEO. The gang had their mole inside too, a low-level employee who kept to himself, ate Hunan takeout each day from the same strip-mall restaurant on Garvey, and gave his fortune cookie away because he already knew the score. The mole had sketched out the factory layout, marking the doors and the alarm system and explaining how many seconds they’d have to disable it. They had the map with them now, singed brown where ash from the mole’s cigarette had fallen as he drew.
Yes, the boss had been patient. And thorough. He knew all about the garden apartment in Arcadia where Chen stashed his mistress and their newborn son. But he’d been surprised to discover the brothel that Chen visited each Friday noon, tucked inside a tract home in South San Gabriel where the scorched lawn fought a losing battle against the sun and polyester lace curtains stayed permanently drawn. He’d dispatched a man to pay the fee and climb the stairs to the rooms where a sad-eyed Mainland teen sat behind every door, brushing her hair and gargling with an industrial bottle of mouthwash she kept next to her Hong Kong magazines, baby wipes, K-Y jelly, and condoms.