“Duff, you know she’s gunning for you. Said something about you not being able to save yourself this time.”
“Yeah, she may be right too.”
I signed off and tried not to think about getting fired. For one thing, I had enough on my mind at the moment and, for another thing, I was always just about to get fired. After a while you get used to it.
I took a ride to the Y and didn’t see Gunner’s car, so I headed out to their compound on Route 44. I kicked around the idea of why Abadon would need to abruptly take some time off. With the kind of jobs he had, clinic and high-school consultant, it would cause a lot of chaos for the staffs there to do without him on such short notice.
Something had to be up.
I left the Eldorado up the road and walked into the training camp. The sweet odor that I picked up the first time I came was more pronounced today and it wasn’t pleasant. I moved carefully down the side of the long dirt driveway because my latest revelations about Gunner/Abadon suggested he wasn’t a kind person. The fact that he constantly spewed a bunch of born-again crap just made it worse.
The pit bull was guarding the stone garden, pacing back and forth, his paws rustling the stones with each stride. Just to the left of the steel building there were three SUVs all exactly like Gunner’s. There was no sign of Mitchell or Harter, and I had no idea how they figured into this. For that matter, I didn’t really have any idea what “this” was.
I stayed about fifty feet away, fairly certain I was undetectable in the circle of brush I chose. For the longest time I just watched and waited. Then the doors opened.
Two Asian men wheeled hand trucks to the separate SUVs with Gunner, walking a few strides behind them. The Asian men were the same height and dressed almost identically, the one on the left wore pressed black slacks and a red silk T-shirt and the one on the right had the same getup except for a purple T-shirt. They both had on wraparound sunglasses with orange lenses. They shook hands with Gunner and headed out the driveway. I ducked down to ensure I was out of their view.
Ten minutes later, Gunner came back out of the building and this time he had a skinny redheaded man whose hands were hand cuffed behind his back with him. Gunner shoved him into the back seat without a word and started the vehicle.
The man was Howard.
Gunner was in a hurry, and he blew past me on his way out. There was no way I was going to be able to get back to my car and follow him, so I decided to take a look around the compound. The pit bull first snarled, then showed his teeth, and then barked. I looked it in the eye and he ran toward me and jumped, seeming not to care that there was a fence between the two of us. It was hard to believe this animal was of the same species as Al. He continued to snarl and bark, but I think because I showed no interest in entering his area he soon lost much of his aggression. He continued to pace and keep an eye on me, but he stopped hurling himself against the fence.
The area he was guarding was a strange sort of stone garden. The Buddha statue was more than life size and had to weigh a ton. The stone benches with their ornate legs were also substantial, and the various stone dragons and tigers and whatnot were all heavy pieces of stone. These guys went to a lot of trouble to create this and it didn’t fit. I just couldn’t picture a serial killer, drug pusher, and a pair of narcissistic karate wackos spending time in deep meditation.
The only doors into the steel building were through the fenced-in area and I didn’t really want to get up close and personal with my four-legged friend, so I walked around the other side of the building. There was one window, but it had smoked glass and I couldn’t see anything through it. I began to realize that my nostrils were picking up an irritation, and I imagined that whatever it was that they were concocting in this place wasn’t good for you.
37
It was time to visit my new best friend, the Caretaker. It wasn’t like I was warming up to the guy, but so far he had dealt directly with me and hadn’t done anything underhanded. Clearly, he was motivated by self-interest and greed, but if we stripped away a lot of life’s bullshit double talk we’d probably find that there were quite a few people who fit into that group.
I headed straight for the Hill and, now that I was a semi-regular, I got my audience with the man almost as a matter of routine. The young brother with the obnoxious baggies was in, and he barely looked up from his Martin Lawrence DVD when he gave me the nod to head toward the back.
“My pugilistic acquaintance, what can I provide you with today?” the Caretaker said. Today, his sartorial ensemble included gray flannels, a pinpoint button-down white shirt, and a rep tie in blue and white, which I believe are Yale colors, no less. His black loafers had the cutest little kilt on them.
“I took a trip and found your ‘Sky Pilot,’” I said.
“Fellow of interest, no?”
“Yeah, especially now. Between me and you, he’s got Howard Rheinhart with him and I think Abadon is the man doing all the killing.”
“His evil spreading of malicious rumors is of more concern to me.” The Caretaker’s use of the passive tense made me crazy.
“I thought we could help each other out.”
“Ha. I avoid reciprocal sharing. It tends to cloud the balance sheet.”
“I’m looking to ruin Abadon and get him put away. I want the killing to stop and I want the innocent to be exonerated.”
“Noble of you.”
“Yeah, I’m swell. If I can get Abadon, you don’t have to worry about the heat from the OD’s that they’re trying to pin on you.”
He sat back and crossed his legs talk-show style, putting his fingertips together as he thought. I wondered if this asshole ever did anything that wasn’t contrived.
“And you want exactly what from me?” he said.
“Right now, information.”
“Listening…”
“Abadon was loading packages for two Asian guys today. Identical SUVs-”
“The Lees, Hun and Sun, they are brothers. They traffic in New York. ‘Distribute’ is probably a better term.”
“New York guys coming up here? Isn’t that backwards? Isn’t all the drug business in the city?”
“The Sky Pilot does wondrous things. His concoctions will make crack look like potato chips.”
“It’s that big?”
“It will be. Word is that my man of God has worked the kinks out and his new product won’t kill the user. New York is where things happen first. If he turns on the city that doesn’t sleep, the word will be out and right now he is the only man that can cook this special Sunday dinner.”
“How do you know the shit isn’t fatal anymore?”
“The Sky Pilot is a man of science, my friend. You might say his clinical trials have been completed.”
“Dead kids?”
The Caretaker half shrugged and half nodded.
“What are Mitchell and Harter in all of this?”
“Security; they are not players. The word is they enjoy the muscle formulas that the doctor fashions for them. They are quite protective of that.”
“Is Abadon a threat to you?”
“Is Toyota a threat to GM? Better yet, if Toyota could put out a better product and then restrict the raw materials from GM, that would cause GM’s stock to plummet, would it not?”
“Sure.”
“I no longer put my faith in the Sky Pilot.”
“In effect, then, if I can take him out, I would be doing you a favor.”
“It would save me the trouble.”
“Caretaker, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“I’ve always loved Casablanca,” he said.
We spent the next hour working out the details of what we were going to do. It was a mess, mostly illegal, and, if I screwed up, deadly. Kelley wouldn’t be proud of me and what I was about to do, at least not until it was over. If everyone lived through it, he might shake his head, tell me I’m nuts, and then crack a smile.