Chapter Twelve:
. . . Everything Can Change
Perez scanned the length of the block from his spot behind the broken down van. Something wasn't right. The building across the street, 134 Clemson, was completely silent, too silent, his instincts screamed. No one had gone in or out of the front door all afternoon. There seemed to be no movement within the rickety old building, and no one was visible at its dark windows, no one, that is, except for the badly hidden lookout on the second floor. They knew that something was going on. Perez swore as he stomped out his cigarette on the cracked sidewalk.
To be honest, he was in a bad mood anyway. The address that MacIntyre and Fly had obtained at Jam Pony had turned out to be useless. Though the apartment showed some signs of recent inhabitance, it had been empty when they got there, but no matter what the signs pointed to, Perez just didn't trust that the blonde bitch and her friend were really gone.
He glanced down at his watch. Skull was late, and he didn't like it. Returning his gaze to the building across the street, he again wondered what was going on. Could Tacoma Bleed somehow know that he was waiting outside? He doubted it. Only he and Skull knew the details of their bargain, and he was sure that Skull would not have warned Bleed. The thought was ridiculous, and Skull would not double cross him, of that he was certain. He had nothing to gain from such a move, and everything to gain from their deal, but if Skull didn't show soon, he was going to leave. He wasn't going to complete his end of the bargain until he had the information he'd been looking for.
By the time Skull arrived ten minutes later, Perez was furious. "What the hell took you so long?" he asked angrily.
"I had some things to take care of." Skull shrugged as if he expected the world to wait on him. Perez gritted his teeth.
"Well I don't fire until I have my information." Slowly, deliberately, Skull pulled an envelope out of his pocket. Perez fisted his left hand, trying to keep from reaching out and grabbing it.
"The information we agreed upon, right here in black and white." Skull lifted the corner of his mouth, tapped the envelope against his open palm, and handed it over to Perez, who ripped it open with the eagerness of a child opening a package on Christmas morning. He stared at the words on the page.
"Are you sure this is correct?" he finally asked, folding the paper and throwing the shredded envelope onto the ground.
"Every word."
Perez nodded in approval. He slipped the note inside his jacket and placed his hands in his pockets. "Well, Skull, I'd like to say that it's been nice doing business with you . . ." Perez stopped mid-sentence, an evil grin spreading over his features. Skull's confusion registered on his face, but by the time he realized what was happening, it was already too late. A shot rang out, and when Skull's lifeless body hit the pavement, confusion had already been etched into his features forever. Blood seeped out of the wound in his chest, staining his yellow jacket.
Lamenting the hole he'd caused by firing his gun through his favorite shirt, Perez leaned over to check for a pulse. None. He kicked Skull's dead body and shook his head. "But it hasn't been a pleasure. You're more trouble than you're worth, and far too trusting." Chuckling, he patted the note in his pocket, then turned and walked away without giving the body another glance.
Bleed watched the man as he walked away, then waited ten minutes before he sent men out to investigate. He wondered why Perez hadn't tried to take a shot at him. Was it a trap of some sort? He looked out the window as several of his men reappeared from behind the van and waived him out. Patting the gun in his pocket, he walked out the door and across the street.
As he stepped behind the van, the sight that greeted him knocked the breath from his lungs. Skull's dead body lay on the pavement, a neat, though rather bloody hole in the upper left breast piece of his jacket. Right through the heart, he thought. His lookouts had seen Perez sneak behind the van earlier, only to be joined some time later by Skull, which meant that the girl had been telling the truth, and now Skull's dead body was lying here. Suddenly the anger came, swift and irrepressible.
With a shout of rage, Bleed pulled out his gun and fired into Skull's dead body until the clip was empty. Then he turned and walked away, vowing that Perez would be next.
Several old wooden crates were stacked against the far wall of the room, their rotted boards and knotholes rendering them useless. They were covered in spider webs. Frowning, Jondy stared into the inky darkness of the abandoned building. To her eyes, the room was as easily visible as if it were in broad daylight, but that didn't change anything. The warehouse was still empty. She and Max had covered every inch of it twice.
She watched as several rats climbed out from under the bottom crate and scurried through the shadows across the old wooden floor, their tiny feet making a soft 'pit-pat' as they hurried away. She couldn't imagine what rats would see in a place as dirty and dingy as this. Glancing upward towards the rafters, she could see where numerous sparrows and pigeons had made their homes. Piles of bird droppings lay on the floor beneath the main rafter. Not my idea of a vacation home, she thought to herself.
"Well," Max said, her voice breaking the silence of the night, "it doesn't look like anything has been moved in or out of this place since the last time I was here." She ran her gloved finger along a windowsill, then glanced distastefully at the grime she pulled away. She dusted it off with her other hand.
"Well, there goes that theory." Jondy sighed as she and Max began to walk across the room to the ventilation shaft through which they had made their entrance. "We'd just as well go tell Logan that this was a wild goose chase." She frowned, giving the building one last glance. Except for the random trails of rat paw prints, their footprints were the only marks on the dusty floor. No one could possibly have been here.
After climbing up the chute and shimmying down the outside of the building, they began the three block walk to the dumpster behind which Max had hidden her motorcycle. Jondy elbowed her sister. "So, you gonna finish that story anytime soon, baby sister? You kinda left me hangin', you know." Max smiled.
"Where was I? Oh. Well, there was Bronck with Logan and Sung, yelling his head off about Eyes Only. When Bronck threatened to kill Sung, Logan finally gave in and told him the truth. He was just about convinced that Logan really was Eyes Only when Logan's phone rang. Eyes Only was calling Bronck to tell him that he wanted his operatives back." She laughed. "The ass never knew it was me." She flicked a stray piece of hair back over her shoulder. "When I realized that he was trying to trace the call, I played around a little on Logan's computer and sent him to 134 Clemson instead."
Jondy grinned. "So instead of Eyes Only, they found . . . "
"Rydin' Forties." They both laughed.
"Pretty slick, baby sister, pretty slick," Jondy beamed. "Weren't they a little surprised by that though?"
"Well, I called and gave them an anonymous 'head's up.' I figured they should know."
Jondy shook her head. "I'm impressed."
"Well, I didn't have time to deal with them. I had more important things to do." Max smiled lightly. "I taped the call to Bronck and played it through a few times. I could hear airplanes in the background and a foghorn off in the distance, so I figured out they were out at Warton Airfield." They turned down the alley towards Max's motorcycle. "I went out and kicked some ass and got Logan back. I even managed to keep a planeload of girls he'd kidnapped from getting sent overseas."
Jondy sighed, remembering once again that Max had done what she and Brian had failed to do. She was about to respond with that thought when footsteps sounded in the distance. Though they were still far off, the two sisters heard them easily and ducked into the shadows with Max's motorcycle. Not knowing who might be coming, it was wise to remain as invisible as possible.
Peaking out from behind the dumpster, they saw two men walking towards their hiding place. They were still about fifty feet down the alley, and they tread lightly, as if they, too, were hiding from something or someone. As Jondy peered out through the darkness, she could clearly see the various scars and tattoos which covered their bare arms. Blunt Ryddim Kidz, she thought. It is their territory. Silently the men snuck down the alley and ducked into the shadows around the corner.
When they were out of sight, Max and Jondy emerged from their hiding place. Max shook her head. "What are Rydin' Forties doing over here?" she asked.
"Rydin' Forties?" Jondy wrinkled her brow. "How do you know they were Rydin' Forties?"
Max shrugged. "Simple. Did you see that swirly tattoo they both had?" Jondy thought back for a moment, her photographic memory pulling every detail of the tattoo up before her eyes as clearly as if she were looking at it now. Something clicked. She frowned.
"That's a Rydin' Forties thing?"
"Yeah, I don't think they all have that particular tattoo, but a lot of them do. It's the gang's insignia or something like that." She shrugged, clearly not worried about it either way, and walked behind the dumpster to retrieve her motorcycle.
Jondy gave her sister a bewildered look. "I've seen it before." Back in the shadows, her sister cocked her head to the side. "It was on the arm of the gang member that was dealing with Perez."
Max, who had been wheeling her bike out, stopped in her tracks. "He had that tattoo?"
"Yup. So I guess this whole thing's been a wild goose chase." Jondy shook her head. "Rydin' Forties bumping each other off, who'd have guessed?"
Max shook her head. "It's always about power. And money. Get rid of the guy ahead of you and move up the food chain." She began to push her bike out from behind the dumpster again.
Jondy wrinkled her brow. "Well that only leaves one question. What kind of information would Perez want from the Rydin' Forties?" As Max shook her head, she saw a light dawn in her sister's eyes. Jondy took a deep breath. "Max, do you think Bronck's men might have said they were looking for Eyes Only when they showed up at Bleed's?"
Max shrugged again. "Probably, but I doubt they lived to share that news with too many people." She watched as Jondy's brow wrinkled tighter. "What is it?"
"Do you think Bleed could have traced the call you made to warn him?" Again Max shook her head.
"I wasn't on the phone long enough. There's no way they could have gotten an address, even if they were tracing it when I called."
"What about pulling the number out of the phone's memory and then using it to track down the address later . . . " Jondy trailed off as she watched the blood drain out of Max's face.
"Oh shit," Max said as she practically flew into the seat of her motorcycle. Jondy barely had time to jump on the bike behind her sister before Max went tearing off through the streets of Seattle, weaving through traffic at an insane speed.
Neither of them were worried about the speed or the possibility of being stopped by the Sector Police. Suddenly the truth had become sickeningly clear. They both knew exactly what information Perez had been after.
The identity of Eyes Only.