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Collateral damage	By : suz Category: S through Z > Wiseguy Views: 1398 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Wiseguy, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Wiseguy:

- The Harder They Fall -

Collateral Damage

1991

He looks like hell. The suit is another Sid’s Shack special, and it looks like he’s slept in it for a week. His eyes are bloodshot, his face is gray, and I’d swear he’s lost more hair than when I saw him last in Lynchboro four months ago. By the looks of it, he may have been pulling it out himself - in handfuls. Whatever it is he’s come all this way to tell me looks like it may kill him to say it. Which means wver ver it is, it’s bad. He’d only look this way if Vince was in some kind of jam again. "Hello, Buckwheat," I greet him. Keep it cool. Let him tell it at his own speed. If I can just keep from ripping the words out of his throat while he figures out how to say it.
"I need your help. I’ve tried everything else I can think of, and it’s gotten me nowhere," McPike tells me.
Okay, that wasn’t it. What I was expecting, I mean. Help? From me? McPike would sooner die the death of a thousand cuts than admit he needed anything from me. "Help," I repeat, trying it out and deciding I still don’t believe it. "Not another visit to ‘American Gothic’-vile?" I inquire with the trademark sarcasm.
"Vince is gone. Kidnapped," Frank snarls. "A week ago."
I go cold. I was right. He has slept in that suit for days… "Kidnapped." Again with the repetition. Mostly to cover the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as a mental list of the myriad of thugs who’d have a reason to snatch one Vincent Michael Terranova, undercover operative for the OCB, unreels in my head like the roll-call in a maximum security prison.
"What the fuck are you, a parrot?!" McPike hisses at me.
"Frank, you’re not exactly giving me a basis for intelligent comment, here. You call me at midnight, tell me you can’t talk about it on the phone, that something’s up, something only I cossiossibly help you with, now you show up in my neck of the woods and tell me you let someone snatch Vinnie? You’re his field supervisor. You’re supposed to supervise, dammit! Who took him and why?" I ask, doing my best not to kill him where he stands. Just about the only thing holding me back right now is the fact that nothing I could possibly do to him could be worse than what’s already happened. Vince is the center of his freaking universe. Best friend. Partner. I wonder if ‘lover’ has made it onto the list yet. Vinnie has that effect on people. The man is like a dog. Loyal to an absolute fault. And capable of making anyone he turns those blue eyes of his on into a fucking conquest. I should know. He’s done it to me. Mr. ‘I-am-a-coiled-snake’ Lococco. Who’s spent my life not needing anyone. Until he showed up. Goddammit-to-hell!
"Vince got involved in some Salvadoran refugee thing through his brother’s old parish. A priest had stumbled into a gun-running ring, and went to Vince for help because of his reputation as a connected guy in the neighborhood. He got too close to whatever it was, and one of the Salvadoran Death Squads snatched him out of his kitchen. Everything I’ve been able to turn up says the CIA may be involved. It’s looking like a drugs-for-arms scam along the lines of Iran-Contra." He’s looking at me with those blood-shot, Basset-hound eyes, like he’s expecting me to be able to pull a name out of my hat, a connection. Anything. Fuck him.
"That’s all you’ve got?" I ask after a second, trying to keep the expletives out of my voice.
"Essentially," he admits, staring at me with those worried, desperate eyes.
"And you expect me to do what with this?" I ask, the steel showing now.
"Find him. Bring him back. Bring back his body. Or find someone who can. You owe him, Lococco," he says, the desperation in his voice, now, too.
Like hell. "Lynchboro evened the score, Frank. In both our books."
"So you’re telling me you’re just going to leave him to rot in some jungle prison somewhere? If I had the energy, I’d shoot you right here," McPike tells me,gingging like an old sofa as he turns away to walk back out my front door.
"You look like you could use a drink, Buckwheat," I open my mouth and could shoot myself for doing it. He pauses in the doorway, looking back at me over his shoulder, waiting, not sure if it was an invitation. Neither am I. I look at the little Iman man for a second while I work that one out. "As I recall, you like your beer light," I say cynically and move out of the way. It’s another split second before McPike turns around and stalks into my Nob Hill flat, standing in the middle of the livingroom and staring out at the panorama of the East Bay hills and the San Francisco financial district. He looks lost. Like the basic laws of physics were just repealed or something. I understand that. I’m feeling it too. Goddamn you, Vince. When will you learn to listen to me? I cover that sissy moment of empathy by banging around in the refrigerator and getting out a couple of local long-necked microbrews then popping the tops on them. What I want is a stiff scotch, but something tells me there’ll be plenty of time for that later as I try and figure out how I got involved in this whole disaster in the first place. "How’d you find me?" I ask as I hand McPike his beer.
"Vinnie’s will," he says. It stops me cold.
"His will?" I repeat yet again. Polly want a cracker. "The OCB has already written him off?" McPike can hear the fury in my voice. I don’t bother to hide it.
"At the CIA’s insistence. His memorial service is the day after tomorrow."
I put my beer down carefully, because if I don’’m going to hurl it straight through the plate glass window. I start pacing, working through all the ramifications of that single fact and what it tells me. Fifteen years with the Company makes me something of an expert, at least in the field of covert ops. And Vincent Terranova appears to have walked into the middle of yet another one. Only this time, no one fell for those big blue eyes of his. Not unless they hauled him off to be a love slave in a mansion in San Salvador. I can only wish.
"I promised him…" McPike’s voice chokes, then he swallows another mouthful of beer and starts again. "I made him a promise… that if he was killed in the line of duty, I’d scatter his ashes in Dodger Stadium. Unless I have a body, I can’t keep that promise."

I stare at him for a long minute, waiting to see what maudlin tripe will come spilling out of the man next. I can see the pain radiating off of him like the heat haze off a desert highway, feel it beat against my own. I grit my teeth on it. No. I don’t have time for this. When I babysat Vinnie after his little AWOL episode last winter in Lynchboro, I tried to get him to see his days with the OCB were numbered. He didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear about the burnout I could see eating away at him. Didn’t want to quit the life. The adrenaline rush. Not even for me. I offered him everything I had to get him to stay. To quit the work. He laughed when he told me he didn’t want my fucking money. Mel’s money. And he went home to Brooklyn. And McPike. Vinnie was the one who burned the bridge, not me. And here I stand, looking across the chasm he left in my chest when he walked away, at the man on the other side of it. And goddammit, I never told Vince why I wanted him to stay. "You’re so sure it’d be a body?" I ask.
Something in my voice makes Frank glance at me, and I look away, out the window, knowing what he’ll see in my face.
"Everyone else who was involved is dead, Roger. Why spare him?" is the irrefutable logic of the answer.
I start pacing again, praying I can burn off the rage that feels like it’s going to erupt through the pores of my skin. "I told him to quit," I say, to no one in particular.
"So did I," McPike says, voice breaking. "No one can keep up a run of luck like his," he adds flatly, getting a grip on himself. It’s more than I can do.
"Why didn’t the OCB force him to take a desk job after Lynchboro? Huh? Answer me that, Frank. Oh, let me guess. The bureaucrats wanted one more taste — just one — of the glory days. Am I right?" My voice drops to the sibilant hiss of an angry snake as I glare at him. He’s staring at me like I’ve grown a second head. "Am. I. Right." It’s no longer a question, every word a separate statement.
"We tried. He refused. What were we supposed to do, Lococco, chain him to a desk until he gave in?" McPike doesn’t break eye contact. He knows, now, how much this hurts. The sympathy in his face just stokes the anger.
I pick up my beer and down the whole t wit without stopping, feeling the carbonation burn my esophagus on the way down. Then I take the bottle and hurl it at the window. The bottle shatters. The window remains unbroken. Another personal trademark, that bullet proof glass. I had half wondered if my rage would be strong enough to break it. But the pain is stronger. Strong enough to break me. And McPike, too, by the looks of it. He takes a single step towards me and I back up, snarling like a rabid wolf. He walks away and sits down on my distressed leather sofa, ignoring me. I thank him silently as I head for my wet bar and snatch up an unopened bottle of forty year old single malt scotch. "If we’re going to have another wake for the sonovabitch," I say, dropping into the other end of the couch like a dead weight, "then this time, let’s do it right." I hand him the bottle and he cracks the seal without looking my way, swigging a healthy mouthful, then a second, before handing it back.

It’s nearly midnight, twenty four hours after my first intimation that the polar north of my life has somehow ceased to be. I am directionless, here in the darkness of my livingroom, my only companion an equally lost soul whose head is starting to droop against the backrest of the couch. I wish I could get that drunk. The fire of the alcohol has no effect on the ice that flows out from my soul like the glaciers of Greenland. I ask the question that has whirled through my thoughts like summer fireflies all night. "Why was I in Vinnie’s will?" I know why he’s in mine. In the likelihood that the CIA succeeds in killing me, I wanted him to have… everything he wouldn’t accept from me in life. To make up for the things I couldn’t give him in life. God help me.
"He had some things he wanted to make sure you got," McPike slurs, reaching into the breast pocket of his rumpled suit coat and removing a heavy cream-colored mailing envelope. He hands it to me, then lays it on the sofa when he realizes I have no intention of taking it from him. I sit in the dark and stare at that envelope where it gleams dimly in the glow of the city nightscape outside my windows. What have you left me, Vince? When all I ever wanted was to know you’re around? I am nothing without you efleeflect me. To redefine me. To show me who I really am. To make me human again. Eventually, I take the envelope and tear it open, dumping the contents onto my lap. The three condoms make me laugh, and McPike steals a look at me but doesn’t say anything. The ring is a surprise, though, a heavy gold one, old-fashioned, a signet of some sort indistinguishable in the gloom. There’s also a cigarette case. Or that’s what it looks like till I open it to see my reflection flash in the mirror that lines one side. Cigarettes do indeed fill the other. I’d been bugging him to quit when I talked to him last. Under the smokes is a folded piece of paper, and I take it out, reaching beside me to turn on the table lamp at my elbow. It’s a note, his handwriting surprisingly neat for a lefty, and I read it over, trying to focus on the words as they blur before me. The ring was his father’s, a gift from that harridan mother of his when he hit sixteen. A reminder, his note says. That he swore he’d avenge me on the lives of his family. That he’d still keep that promise, if he could. Only now he’s the one who needs avenging. The condoms are a personal joke between us, another reminder, this time of the day we met, and my invitation to him to join me in ‘entertaining’ the three Finnish stewardesses-slash-whores Susan sent my way that day in Stockton. The mirrored cigarette case has an inscription on the back, the note says, and I turn it over. In Old English script, a quote from a Grimm’s fairy tale taunts me. I can almost hear him smirking at me as I read it: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all? I clench my fist around the gold case, gritting my teeth. Oh without a doubt, you were, Buckwheat. Look in the mirror, Roger, I read the last line of his note, see yourself. You’re my friend, and nothing can change that.

Goddamn you, Vince. I love you and you’ve left me. I will not let you do this to me. My eyes burn as I stare into that mirror, searching for whatever it was he saw when he looked at me. The face I’ve lived with all my life is unremarkable, though one or two women have told me it was attractive. Irish nose, wavy reddish hair, gray eyes that sometimes go green. It’s hard to believe a monster lurks inside that façade. A monster Vince tried to help me slay. Self-loathing makes me snap the case shut on that hated reflection and I drop it on the lamp table, slipping the ring onto my hand as I curl my fingers over it. Family, Vinnie. You were all I had. And now there’s nothing.
We stare out the window again for another hour, silent. I’m going to do this, whatever ‘this’ is, as much for McPike as for myself. And for the same reason.
Not knowing is unacceptable.
Frank has finally fallen asleep, sagging limply into the corner of the couch, and I get up, going for a spare blanket which I shake over him before I head for my own room to lie staring at the ceiling until dawn lightens the sky outside. I think it will be a very long time before I sleep again. I hear the sound of someone in the bathroom and I get up, not bothering to dress. It’s my house, and McPike is hardly a threat. I start the coffee brewing, the big restaurant grade espresso machine hissing and gurgling like a science experiment about to explode. Frank wanders in, settling at a bar stool on the other side of the counter, ignoring my nudity, resting his head in his hands miserably. He now has a hangover to add to his other griefs. He takes the mug I hand him gratefully and sips at the coffee as though hoping it will cure more than the hangover. I take my turn in the bathroom.
"Tell me exactly what happened," I request, when I emerge, showered, shaved and clothed.
He does, or as much of it as he knows. Even the NYPD and FBI forensics teams found little in the way of evidence. No fingerprints, beyond the white palm print that acted as a signature for the crime, no hair or fibers, nothing that shouldn’t have been there, except that Vince was inarguably missing. He told me about the frantic visit to DC to try to breach the veils of silence shrouding the CIA in Langley, his failure to enlist the Attorney General in the effort, Beckstead’s attempts to get somewhere, and finally his solo efforts, falling back on the one skill Frank McPike has in spades. He is nothing if not an exceptional cop. He tracked the Salvadorans as far as Florida. Which means that’s where I’ll pick up the trail.
While McPike is constrained by a lifetime of law enforcement work, I have no such handicap. I don’t care even slightly how many laws get broken as long as the pieces lead me to Vince. Frank knows it. He’s asking me to do the dirty work for him. Because he knows I can. And will. One last time. Whatever the cost to my sanity. Hell, that’s been questionable for years, anyway. Which puts me in mind of a contact I have in South Florida, a ‘retired’ ATF agent by the name of Evan Freed. He makes me look like the poster child for rational behavior. His suicidal streak is even wider than mine, and he has contacts in the Central and South American underworlds that dovetail with my own, an inheritance from my days with the Profitts. It pays to know where the bodies are buried — and who buried them.
By the time I get McPike to promise to send along a complete copy of the file, he’s looking a little less deathly. It’s a strange feeling to know I’m responsible for bringing a little peace to someone’s soul, without having to kill them first, I mean. He actually looks like he can let it rest as long as he knows I’mdlindling it. Whether I can is beside the point. Faith is a wonderful thing, don’t you think? I just pray it’s not misplaced. I send him on his way, ignoring him when he asks if I’m coming to the memorial. That sort of thing has never been my cup of tea, so to speak. And some stubborn little voice in the back of my head says it’s too soon to write off Vinnie and his incredible luck. Because I know there’s more to it than luck. He’s canny, willful, with a frightening intelligence masked by that pretty Jersey thug exterior. He’s a player. If there’s any way to find an angle, some way to save his own life, he’ll have found it. Now all I have to do is find him, before time and luck run out.
When I shut the door on Frank, I start making calls. It takes most of that day before I have things set up so I can go running off to places unknown for some indeterminate length of time in search of a dark-haired needle in the green haystack of the jungles of Central America.

Evan meets me at the Broward County airfield, which is fortunately large enough to handle my Lear. My pilot is on notice that his services will be required at a moment’s notice for an indefinite period of time. He’s a vet, flew a gunship in the Gulf War, and went private when I offered him the opportunity to travel intermittently while pulling down a hefty retainer. He can fly damned near anything, and may very well have too, where we’re going. He knows the routine, and has the run of the area, as long as he stays within an hour of the airfield. His pager number is etched behind my eyelids.
I climb into Freed’s piece-of-shit ’91 TransAm, trying to keep my mouth shut. There’s no knowing what’ll set him off, and disparaging comments about his taste in automobiles could very well be a trigger. He drives like a teenaged drag racer, his cigarettes trailing nicotine and carcinogens down the highway after us as we head for his townhouse. His choice of words, not mine. It looks like a mansion, to me, a pastel salmon stucco monstrosity with arches and colonnades and all the South Florida trappings of wealth. Mel always hated Florida, and I never understood why, since it was developed by builders who all had the same extravagant tastes he did. I hate it with a passion. When I’m in this part of the world, I usually hang out on a little island off St. Croix that I bought with some of Mel’s millions. There’s not much there except sand and solitude. Not a stucco mansion in sight. Just a rambling turn of the century stone and palm wood house that’s stood up to ninety years of hurricanethouthout a scratch.
I try to ignore the reek of tobacco that permeates the house, taking the beer Evan hands me as we settle into white leather chairs on opposite sides of a three inch thick slab of marble set on a clear glass cube eighteen inches square. "You’re doing okay for yourself," I comment. There was a time when that would have surprised me. Freed is about three years younger than I am, and actually bears me a passing resemblance when his eyes aren’t so bloodshot you can actually tell what color they are. It doesn’t look like his drinking habits have changed much. He worked undercover for the ATF on a number of high profile cases until he caught a bullet meant for a friend and was forced into retiring. He runs some businesses just this side of legal, with a sideline in small arms smuggling. Fitting, somehow.
"Yeah, well, don’t sound so disappointed, Lococco," Freed quips with the same sort of sarcasm I’m prone to myself.
"Just surprised," I tell him. "Your old buddies at the ATF haven’t shut you down yet?"
Freed laughs and lights yet another in an endless succession of cigarettes. "They keep trying," he says with a self-satisfied grin. "That’s what they get for forcing me to retire. I know the game better’n any of the rest of them. Hell, if I was still on board, I could catch me in a second." He shrugs, the grin flashing again. "So what’s your deal this time? I haven’t heard much from you since you went legit, you sonovabitch. Guess running some mega-million dollar company or whatever it is you spend your time at is less hazardous than the gun-running you used to do for Profitt, huh?"
It’s my turn to shrug. "It fills the days," I answer. And it does, after a fashion. It’s also boring as hell, once you get over the rush that comes with making a billion out of a hundred million. At a certain point, wealth becomes pretty much self-maintaining, as long as the employees don’t get greedy. I keep an eye out for that, since it’s what got me started, myself. So far, it hasn’t been a problem. "I’m looking for someone," I begin, and tell him a somewhat modified version of the facts. He knows I’m not giving him everything, but he knows me well enough to know the parts I leave out don’t matter, at least not to him. He listens to the whole sad story, that smirk of his never leaving his face. I finish, and wait for the inevitable smartass comment.
"I never knew you had it in you, Lococco. I didn’t think ‘friend’ was in your vocabulary. So what makess Tes Terranova guy so special?" Evan prods.
A lot of things I won’t go into, you bastard, but I answer with a piece of the truth. "He saved my life. He saved more than that. I owe him. And now I need to return the favor. Whatever it was he walked into is probably CIA-linked. It’s gonna be buried under dead ends and bogus leads and every trick the company has to get us off the trail. And I need someone who knows the refugee communities down here to get me in. Sell me as a drug buyer, an arms dealer, whatever it takes. I have the resources to back any play you come up with, but get me connected."
Freed smells desperation like a shark smells blood in the water. Only the sharpness in his eyes gives away his interest, but I can sense him taking this more seriously, all of a sudden. "What’s in it for me?" he asks, taking another drag.
"Theenalenaline rush isn’t enough these days, huh?" I snap. "The usual fee, plus a hazardous duty bonus, and another bonus at the en I f I find what I’m looking for," I finish.
"Dead or alive?" he asks coldly.
"Either. If I find him, you earn yourself a cool million. That enough of an inducement?" I ask with the same chill.
Evan grins again, that profoundly irritating expression making me want to clock him. "It’ll do," he says and finishes his beer.

That night we’re off to a shanty town on the outskirts of north Miami, a rundown suburb that’s taken on a new life as a refugee enclave. It’s like walking through any open air market in Central America, street-side stalls loaded with brightly colored miscellany, food vendors selling grilled delicacies of dubious origin, too many people, kids, everything I hate about crowded third-world poverty. Crowded anything, for that matter. Agoraphobia has been a little penance of mine since childhood, and this kind of population density makes me very, very unhappy. And Freed knows it, the bastard.
He takes his time, chatting up the señoritas, stealing samples from the food vendors and green grocers, and generally proving himself to be totally at home here. Eventually we make our way to the farther end of the main concentration of people and duck into a shop that purports to be selling luggage. My Spanish is passable, but Freed’s is fluent. He gets us past the heavy-set muscle at the counter and into the back room where we are obviously expected.
"Julio, Ramon, this is Roger Lococco," Evan makes the introductions.
I wonder if ‘Julio’ came by the name because of a slight similarity to the singer as I stand there doing my impersonation of a stone wall. We weren’t frisked coming in, and I’m not sure whether that’s a sign of stupidity, or one of overconfidence. Either way, I’m gladH&amH&K is still in the waist holster at the small of my back under the linen jacket.
"Mr. Lococco," ‘Julio’ greets me with the gracious inclination of his head that one uses to ensure the supplicant is clear on the privilege of appearing before one. He’s starting to piss me off. "It’s been a while since your name has come up," he adds.
"I’ve been busy," I say. True enough, though not the way he thinks. Staying out of the CIA’s way for the past few years doesn’t really take that much effort, especially not now that General Masters is in a nice cozy lockup. But I’m going to be hitting their radar pretty damned soon, now. He eyes me, and I eye him right back.
"So what can we help the former enforcer of the former Mel Profitt with?" he asks.
I grin at him, that mostly insane look that generally makes people think twice before they push me any further. There is nothing ‘former’ about my reputation for lethality when provoked. "I need to find someone who does business with a splinter group of Salvadorans," I begin. The cover story I spin is that I’m looking to capitalize on Mel’s old connections, but I want protection. I’ve heard these goons are good, as defined by the term ‘vicious’, and I’m interested in seeing if I can hire them to police my hypothetical drug empire. A lot of Profitt’s contacts were in Central America, including El Salvador, so it’s not as dicey as it sounds at first blush. ‘Julio’ goes for it, promising to see what he can come up with after receiving the promise of a fat finder’s fee. We take our leave, and I make Freed drop me at a decent hotel not far from his house. Another night spent drinking isn’t going to get me anywhere I want to be, and Evan, who sleeps even less than I do, makes up for it by trying to achieve a coma by chugging Jack Daniels. He promises to pick me up in the morning, and heads home.
I check into a suite and wander around restlessly, looking over the security arrangements out of habit. At this rate, I’m never going to unwind enough to get some sleep. Finally I troop downstairs to the bar and order a drink, nursing it as I check out the clientele. A lot of suntanned flesh and artificially white teeth, big hair and all of it trim and toned and tempting as hell, I conclude, as I watch the beauty pageant unfold. Getting laid has a certain appeal at the moment, and fortunately that’s seldom a problem for me. A lot of these jaded beauties crave the excitement of the unknown, and I offer that in abundance. I’ve never made apologies for the fact that my temperament and profession have left an… aura, or whatever, around me. I’ve always attracted the women who want the dangerous liaisons, not the mundane ones. Fine by me, since they almost never expect me to hang around long. In fact, most of them are usually married, which is even better. No strings attached, by either party.
I make my selection from the female smorgasbord and do the polite conversation thing for long enough to make my intentions plain. She’s amenable, so I escort her upstairs to my suite and ply her with the champagne I bought from the bartender on the way out.
She’s a brunette, sleek as any feline, and every bit as hedonistic, soliciting my touch, my caress, my tongue as shamelessly as a cat in heat. I’m happy to oblige, since it gets me what I want, which is to be fucked within an inch of my life. And she is good. I’d suggest she consider a career change, only in this day and age, I don’t think it’ll go over well. She takes me down her throat, all the way to the balls, and I swear, I’ve died and gone to heaven. She’s mastered the art of the tease, and takes me to the edge — but not over it — repeatedly while I return the favor. Only I finish the job. Repeatedly. When she’s had her fill, she slides the condom over nd Ind I have her on her back between one heartbeat and the next, moving into her hard and fast, her knees over my shoulders, her hands on my chest, pulling me closer. Deeper. I swear, any deeper, and I’ll puncture her lung, or maybe rupture her spleen. And right now, neither of us could care less. I feel her come, clenching around me like a vice, and I explode, locking eyes with her. Eyes the same shade of evening sky as Vinnie’s. Goddammit. Fathomless blue, guiss, ss, emotionally transparent. Vinnie, dammit, where are you?
I roll away from her, spent, more than just physically, eyes closed. It doesn’t help. He wavers in my mind’s eye like reflections in a pond, laughter not disguising the pain I recognize in those amazing eyes. It’s been there all along, all the time I’ve known him. Oh, it’s not like it’s obvious, most of the time, but I recognize it. I mean, I’ve been living with the same kinds of demons for a long time myself. Is that what it is? Empathy? How the hell did he sucker me in? I fell for his act, then I fell for him, even when I knew better. Me. the rough, tough, hard-to-bluff pick-of-the-litter. One of the Company’s top assassins. Master spy. Right. More like some sort of mindless cyborg, a government killing machine who’s conveniently exempt from Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. It’s only the real robots who’re programmed with the directive not to harm a human being. People — creatures — like me, who blind themselves, who disregard the morality we claim to uphold, destroy everything around us, including what we fight to protect. And that’s your real legacy to me, isn’t it, Vince? You made me eat Eve’s apple, and now I find I was the snake in the Garden. They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And the more you know, the more dangerous knowledge becomes. Is that what happened to you, Buckwheat? A little knowledge become too much?
Her touch on me again distracts me from my brooding, a sei seize her wrist, preventing her from peeling me out of the condom. I know it hurts her, but she doesn’t make und und as I glare into those dammed blue eyes, wide open, now, and dark with both fear and arousal. And suddenly I want her again, want to fuck her while I look into those eyes and dream of someone else. I’ve never willingly fucked a man in my adult life, Vinnie, but you’d be the one. I let her go the instant I’m sure she knows she’s stirred my interest again.
Now she unsheathes me, and takes me back into her hot, wet mouth, sucking me like a Popsicle, savoring the taste of my semen as she teases me hard again. I wrap my hands in the darkness of her hair, holding her head lightly, imagining it’s Vince who’s going down on me with this enthusiastic hunger. What the hell is wrong with me? I don’t do men.
I keep telling myself that as my current partner runs that sweet tongue over me, under me, through me, then kisses her way up the center line of my belly to my chest to suck on a nipple. It’s never done much for me before, but now it primes me for a second orgasm in record time, that in combination with her fingertips just inside the edge of my foreskin. Like any professional, she knows when she’s got her customer where she wants him, and she slides another condom over me then straddles my hips, taking me into her hot and dripping body. I can feel how wet she is even through the latex, as though I’d come directly into that blazing heat the first time.
This time, she fucks me. I play with the generous breasts that bob before me with all the perkiness silicon can provide while she rides me. When she comes again, I grab her ass and roll her under me, pumping hard, then pull out of her, rolling her onto her belly and yanking her up onto all fours as I penetrate her ass. I move ly, ly, but I don’t let her squirm away, her own struggles driving my thrust the way her own juices lubricate the way. God, she’s tight, so tight. Is this what it feels like, Vinnie? I begin to move in her slowly, reaching forward past her waist to her cunt, stroking her slippery clit with twenty-plus years of expertise, and she stops fighting me, her soft cries deepening as pleasure takes the place of pain. I make sure she comes again before I catch hold of her hips with both hands and drive myself into her as deeply as I can, plunging into her over and over, mindlessly, Vinnie’s blue, blue eyes laughing in my head, grinning at me, that I-told-you-so look in them. Is this why you told me what happened between you and Steelgrave? So I’d spend the rest of my life wondering just how far friendship goes?
When I come this time, it’s even more explosive than the first time, and I pull her down beside me, still deep within her as we lie panting and sweating on my bed.
"I don’t even know your name," she says after a minute.
"Does it matter?" I ask without really caring.
"Not even a little," she answers as she eases away from me.
I’m softening now, and slide free of her, my cock lying limp over my thigh as I stroke her tanned ass. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve done that. This was how I lost my virginity in boarding school when I was about thirteen, only not with a woman. She rolls over to face me and I’m surprised at the compassion in her face. I’d expected to be slapped, not kissed, but that’s what she does, to my never ending surprise, giving it just enough tongue to make me wonder if I can manage another orgasm. And then she gets up, slipping her dress over her head and collecting her underwear and shoes before ducking out into the hall without another word.

When Evan picks me up the next morning, he has to wait while I finish dressing. I’ve overslept, which astonishes me. He lounges on my bed with that knowing smirk of his, smoking, while I buckle on my shoulder harness and put on the gray silk jacket.
"Now I know why you ditched me, Lococco," he bugs me, and I spare him a glare as I head for the door. "It smells like a brothel in here."
I don’t bother to answer, since he’s right, the scent of sex perfuming the room like musk. He follows me out like an obedient dog and we head for his crapola car and another joy ride to Miami.
This time, we meet ‘Julio’ and Ramon at a restaurant for a late breakfast. Freed has his usual scotch on the rocks and the rest of us actually order off the menu. Much as I hate Florida, the food is usually pretty good. I guess that’s what comes of being a tourist mecca.
While we wait for the food, Ramon hands over a manila folder with an assortment of paper in it. I open it and take them out, looking over the collection quickly. There’s a newspaper article, two grainy photos and three variously sized scraps of paper with names and addresses on them. I look up to eye Ramon.
"It’s only been twelve hours, Mr. Lococco," he shrugs with a grin. "We may have more for you by tonight, but this should get you started."
"Wrong, Buckwheat," I tell him and hand the papers back politely as I let that ice field freeze up in my eyes. "The deal is, you get your finder’s fee when you’ve actually found these guys. Arrange a meeting. I walk into their territory without an appropriate introduction, and I’ll be the main target on their private shooting range."
‘Julio’ grins at me then glances Ramon’s way. "I told you he wasn’t as stupid as all that. After all, he’s still alive. And Mel isn’t," he tells his associate.
Ramon glares at me, then picks up the envelope and puts it back wherever it came from. "You were right when you said they are vicious," he complains. "It may take several days before we can get them to agree to a place. They will insist on checking you out before they meet with you."
"Let them check. The only thing they’ll find is that I’ll happily go elsewhere if they take too long to make up their minds about whether or not they care to arrive at a business arrangement." I lean forward over the table slightly as I let the killer show in my eyes. I’m getting tired of this. "If they want to behave like amateurs, that’s their prerogative. But I have things to do and places to go, and a shitload of money to make. If they want a taste, have them contact me." I give him the name of the hotel and get up. Freed tosses back the last of his scotch and follows me out.
"Well that took some brass ones," he says conversationally.
I wonder if he’s ever completely sober anymore. "I’m not waiting around for their convenience. A friend of mine’s life may be in jeopardy, Evan. The longer it takes for me to track him down the less likely it is that it’s going to be alive." I get into his car and slam the door as he turns it on, roaring out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell.

Vinnie grins at me with that shit-eating look that never fails to piss me off as he drops onto my couch with a grunt, putting his feet on my coffee table.
"What are you doing here?" I ask him irritably. "You’re supposed to be dead in Central America, Buckwheat. I’m just about to come riding in at the head of the calvary to save your ass."
"What’s the point in saving it if it’s dead anyway?" he asks me, that grin never fading.
"Because it’s a nice ass," I say sarcastically. "Besides, I’d know it if you were really dead. You wouldn’t be cluttering up my dreams like this if you were in a ditch somewhere. And Frank’s half-crazy, worrying about you." It’s a low blow, but he sobers, that sadness that’s never far away back in his eyes as he looks up at me.
"I know. It should never have gone down the way it did, Rog. I didn’t know exactly what I was dealing with, so I was sloppy. Frank taught me better."
"FRANK taught you better? So did I, you jerk. You think I told you to call me if you ever needed me just to hear myself talk?" k hik him, angry down deep, furious with him for disregarding everything he was ever taught about undercover work, simply because he hadn’t considered himself on the job. "You should have called me the second you got even the tiniest hint that you were screwed! I could have had you out of Brooklyn in minutes, you stupid, stubborn son of a bitch! Why the hell didn’t you call me?" I demand.
"Because there wasn’t time, Roger," he says. "And I wouldn’t have risked your life, anyway. It was my mess, it was my job to clean it up."
I stare at him, that tendency to martyrdom only fueling my anger with him. "You self-righteous prick," I say, my teeth gritted on the rage. "You’re so much better than the rest of us that you never need help?" He stares up at me with those magnificent eyes, eyes that change through a spectrum of blues like the iridescence in a peacock’s tail. His eyes are like his own personal mood ring. Goddammit Vinnie, I haven’t even finished figuring out how to read you, yet, and you knew me inside out the day we first met. Okay, so the OCB briefing helped, but it went a lot deeper than that, didn’t it? He just waits for me to say something, as though he can hear everything running through my head. Who knows? Maybe he can, somehow, this specter. "I’m only doing this for McPike," I tell him, wondering why.
He stares up at me, then climbs to his feet to stand looking at me for a long second. Then he slips a hand up the back of my neck and kisses me, his mouth just barely brushing mine.
"I know why you’re doing this, Rog," he says as the dream fractures and fades like a changing kaleidoscope.

I wake with a start, feeling the sun beating down on me where I lie on one of the lounges alongside Evan’s pool. I’m glad as hell Freed is elsewhere, doing whatever it is he does, because I’m lying here naked as the day I was born with the biggest hard-on I’ve had in years, yesterday’s little exercise included. So now I’m having wet dreams about you, huh, Vinnie? If you aren’t dead, I may wish you were, before this is over. I don’t need this. I don’t need this in a big way. I can’t afford to need you like this. And I don’t have the first fucking clue what to do about it.
I lie there in the sun, letting it go, sublimating the desperate urge to do something. Anything. The hardest part of any operation is always the waiting. It’s never changed. But lying here telling myself twaitwaiting may see you dead is the hardest any wait has ever been, Buckwheat. Where are you?

That question takes me another week to start narrowing down. Evan, my psychotic shadow, and I, finally get our tickets to ride. We have a meeting scheduled with someone ‘Julio’ and Ramon say is connected to my Salvadoran splinter group. Finally. I get the impression his job is to give us the once over, make sure I am who I say I am, before we get passed along to the next level.
Evan and I are getting thoroughly tired of each other. I consider him self indulgent and in dire need of psychotherapy. Which I suppose is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but he’s going to be dead in a few more years, whether of cirrhosis, lung cancer or a stray bullet, if he doesn’t make a dent in whatever it is that’s eating him. I have a hard time getting rid of him in the evenings, persuading him to leave me at my hotel, and more than once in the last seven days’s lingered in the bar with me, riding on my coattails, so to speak, collecting one of the beach babes that have started hanging around me. I’ve had the opportunity to take a different piece of eye-candy to bed most nights, but I settle for the sleek little cat of the first night, when she’s there. She’s beginning to grow on me, and she’s a hellova lay. So Evan’s been helping himself. Hell if I know how he can perform, considering the amount of alcohol he drinks, but that’s hardly my problem.
He breaks into my thoughts with a sarcastic comment, making it clear that I’ve missed whatever it was he was trying to tell me. "Yeah, so what?" I ask, electing to piss him off. I want that whacko edge of his showing when we get wherever it is we’re going. When Freed starts getting wound up, people tend to give him wide berth. It may be all the safety margin we get.
"Man, Lococco, you are a world-class asshole," he snarls. "What’s with the cold shoulder the last forty five minutes? I say something to offend your delicate sensibilities? Or are you just staring out at the scenery, daydreaming about your buddy? What is it? I didn’t shave close enough for you? You don’t like my cologne? My taste in Armani suits?"
I glance at him again. "You haven’t shaved in three days, you smell like a distillery and that suit probably hasn’t seen the inside of a cleaners in a year," I answer flatly. "What you wear and how you wear it doesn’t even begin to register as an interest of mine," I tell him. "What I’m wondering, is, how the hell you can talk your way into a woman’s bed, looking like you do."
Now he’s really pissed off.s sns snarl is silent as he guns the big V-8 and weaves through slower traffic like a stunt driver in the French Connection. I grin, starting to laugh, and the look he throws at me smokes like acid on my skin. I laugh harder, and slowly, he realizes he’s being had. By the time we get where we’re headed, he’s laughing, too, those dead gray eyes of his even crazier than usual.
We’re driving into a gravel quarry about ten miles from the North Miami suburb our contacts call home. It’s a Sunday afternoon, so the place is deserted, surreal, with craters and heaps of rubble scattered randomly around, like an extraterrestrial lanpe. pe. We follow directions, pulling to a stop in the shade of the rusted and derelict-looking loading silo the quarrymen use to fill the big dump trucks that haul the rock away. It looks like it’s held up only by the inertia of the rickety sheets of corrugated tin as they lean drunkenly against each other. It’s hard to believe the equipment actually works. As if to prove me wrong, the dilapidated conveyer belt next to the car grinds into gear as we get out. Evan has his gun drawn before he even knows where the danger is, feral and dangerous as a barracuda. I clap a hand over the top of the pistol, forcing his arm down. I’m not interested in a shootout, and the last thing I need is for him to go off half-cocked. Literally. Freed’s car phone chooses that moment to begin ringing insistently, and I reach into the car to answer it. "Yeah," I say without inflection.
"Ride the belt up," comes the instruction in heavily accented English. I can barely hear him over the rumble and creaking of the conveyor. I do what I’ve been told, jumping up onto the separate horizontal belt that feeds onto the sloped portion. The sharply angled section that climbs jerkily up to a fourth story height before dumping its cargo into the vast gravel hopper used to fill the dump trucks is deeply ridged, making it easy to keep my footing as I ride it up, crouching to keep from being pitched off the side by it’s uneven progress. Freed watches me warily until I’m about twenty feet off the ground, then scrambles up himself, not bothering to crouch, instead, crossing his arms over his chest, looking like Washington crossing the Delaware as his rumpled linen jacket flaps in the breeze. He grins up at me with a waggle of his eyebrows, silent commentary on my more cautious stance.
As the belt reaches the top of the incline, I can see the trio of Hispanic men, all of them in their early thirties, watching our progress. I catch hold of some piping and swing myself off the belt and onto a catwalk that seems to be held aloft by prayer alone. I can feel it sway and vibrate with the movement of the belt behind me. "Dónde estas?" I greet them, the sarcasm in my tone unmistakable.
The center man smiles without humor. "Lococco, I assume?" he asks in Harvard English. I can hear the New England twang even over the noise of the machinery, and the incongruity makes me grin. All he’s missing is the school tie. Maybe he’ll treat us all to a performance of the school song…
"Roger Lococco," I confirm. "That bozo is my associate, Evan Freed," I add as Evan steps lightly off the belt to stand at my back.
Our host nods to himself, and the machine pistols his bodyguards are carrying go back to being concealed weapons. "You’ll have to excuse the delay. We have a number of things going on at the moment, and I wasn’t sure we had the resources to accommodate your needs," he says as he steps back into the shadows of the interior. Evan and I follow him in, the pair of thugs remaining outside.
There’s an echoing walkway, one side of which opens into the silo, wide enough to be considered a room of sorts. A rickety card table stands in the center of the floor space with three folding chairs placed around it. Our host takes the one that puts his back to the door. Both Freed and I are impressed at this display of trust, taking our respective seats as our pistols go onto the table in front of us. Outside, the belt is shut down, coming to a squealing, grinding halt. Silence descends as we eye each other.
"Your reputation precedes you, Lococco," our host says, settling back in his chair.
"And does it say anything about mind-reading?" I ask with deliberate irony.
He grins, and reaches forward across the table, hand extended. "Excuse my lack of manners. We don’t generally stand on formality," he says. "Allow me to introduce myself. Renaldo deVega," he names himself, smiling again. It’s an expression that makes me nervous, setting the hair on the back of my neck to prickling. In the manner of predators, all three of us are fully aware of the danger each of us represents. It’s a mini balance of power. It’s also nerve wracking. Naturally, none of that shows on my face, or in my posture, though. I’ve been at this a good bit longer than junior, here. He’s doing well, for a relative beginner, though.
I hesitate long enough to generate a little uncertainty in him, then shake his hand. "Pleasure to meet you," I say with the same careful irony. "Your reputation is reasonably noteworthy, yourself. Or at least, your organization’s reputation," I tell him after a moment.
He smiles again at this. "It’s becoming so," he agrees. "So what is it we can do for you?" he asks.
All of this is filler, while we size each other up, like wolves evaluating a stranger amongst them. He’s good-looking, as far as that goes, maybe thirty four or so, with the attitude that comes with silver service for a multitude. He’s the child of wealth and privilege, and seems bent on remaining both wealthy and privileged no matter how many bodies he has to walk over to do it. I won’t regret it if I have to kill him. Especially if he had anything to do with snatching Vince. "I have hopes of resuming control of several ‘businesses’ in El Salvador. Since I’m reasonably sure there’s going to be some… resistance to that plan on the part of the middle management, I’m looking for enough muscle to make my point, and to make sure I get my way. What I’ve heard about your operation is that it’s the same sort of ruthless as Jim Brown’s Jamaican posses were a few years back. I may not need that level of deterrence, but I’d rather have it and not need it then need it and wind up dead."
DeVega purses his lips as he thinks about this, obviously considering how to maximize his potential for personal gain. "And what makes you so sure that my organization has any interest in acting as your personal bodyguard?" he asks.
"I doubt they do," I answer, settling back in my wobbly chair. "That’s why I’m here. To pique that interest."
He waits for me to continue, and when I don’t, raises an eyebrow curiously. "Pique away," he invites.
I flash the razor-slash smile that lets him know I’m dealing with what I consider to be the hired help, and finally respond. "I don’t particularly enjoy repeating myself, deVega. If you’re in posiposition to make a decision, fine. If not, take me to whoever is."
He shakes hea head, negating the suggestion. "Not until I know what sort of arrangement you have in mind," he tells me.
I stare him down, not speaking until I see the subtle shift of position that tells me I’ve made my point. "I imagine you’re familiar with my former employer’s business empire, and his… unfortunate end?" I ask rhetorically. People like deVega knew Mel and his business all too well.
He nods, but says nothing.
I continue. "Well, I’m the one who inherited his overseas operations. Now that the heat on me has cooled, I’m ready to step into the ring again. Only I’m not stupid enough to think the people who’ve been running things the last three years are just going to stand aside and let me. So this is the deal. Any business I resume control over, your organization becomes the de facto distributorship for. We split the profits sixty forty, my favor, and any operation, in any country south of Mexico, I walk back into, becomes part of your power base. Not to mention that you’ll have a source of armament even the CIA can’t beat. All I’m looking for is to rebuild what went to seed while I was occupied… elsewhere." The thing is, this is all too plausible. If I wanted too, I could out-Mel Mel himself. I may never have made it to college, but my Master’s degree is from the school of hard knocks, and Mel’s knocks were harder than most. I knew his business better than he did, at least the parts that required actually getting your hands dirty. Remember what I said about knowing where the bodies were buried? Well, that’s because I did a lot of the burying.
I watch him while he thinks it over. He’s obviously buying it, and this is when I know my reputation hasn’t exactly quieted down much. Finally he nods, having made a decision. "It sounds promising," he says, standing. "I’ll talk to the people who need to make the final call. Where can I find you if they agree to hear more?"
I tell him, and give him Evan’s private number for good measure, getting up myself. We shake hands again, and he steps into the white light outside, leaving Freed and me in the dusty gloom of the silo. "So you think they’ll bite?" I ask him, curious about his impressions of the lasfteefteen minutes.
Evan shoves his gun back into its holster and gets up. "Well, if I didn’t know better, I would," he says. "Com’mon, boss-man, let’s blow this place."

I swim laps in the hotel pool for the next three hours until the kiddies start clogging the water beyond my ability to avoid and I climb out to lie in the sun. I just hope I don’t nod off and drop into some erotic dream again. Something about lying in the sun seems to send me into a torpor, and I feel almost drugged as I lie there like a lizard, basking in the Florida heat. It’s like I’m storing energy against some future need, a human solar collector. When deVega settles onto the chaise beside my own, I hardly move a muscle, ignoring him.
He plays along, maintaining the silence for several minutes before getting impatient. "We’re interested in hearing the specifics of your plans," he tells me at last, voice soft enough that it won’t be heard over the din of shrieking children.
"When and where?" I ask.
We set a time, and he departs, leaving me to sunbathe in relative peace. This time, I do fall asleep. Vinnie is never far away when I shut my eyes, and he materializes again with something approaching predictability.

"Rog, what’re you doing?" he asks, pacing back and forth along the edge of the pool in his jeans and cowboy boots. His jeans are comfortably worn over all the portions of his anatomy that generally see the most wear, and that I sure as hell shouldn’t be noticing like this. He does have a beautiful ass. The rest of the package is damned nice, too. He’s tall, around six three, and built like one of those Spanish bulls they use in the ring. He has the same animal grace and power, and is totally oblivious to his aesthetic appeal. Most of the time, anyway.
"I’m trying to track you down," I answer eventually as he pauses in his pacing to eye me where I’m lying on the chaise lounge in my birthday suit again.
"Roger, these people are crazier than Profitt, and meaner, too!" he says, agitated.
Tell me something I hadn’t already worked out on my own.
"In case it slipped your mind, Buckwheat, so am I," I remind him. I know there’ve been times in our acquaintance when he was seconds from shooting me like a rabid dog. He takes the point.
"Rog, be careful. Please? My life isn’t worth yours." He crouches down beside the chaise to bring those eyes of his to bear. I can see the worry in them, and I try to ignore the ache it puts in my chest. Worry. For me. I’ve spent all my life knowing there wasn’t another human being on the planet who gave a damn what happened to me. Until Vince. Which makes that worry both incomprehensible to me, and also intensely alluring. Vince, your life is worth everything I’ve got. It’s all that matters to me.
"According to who? What gives you the right to tell me how to behave? This is my choice, Vinnie, not yours. If I want to stand on top of the Space Needle in downtown Seattle and jump naked into a fountain, who the hell are you to stop me?" I demand, angry with him again.
He just looks at me with those heartbreaker eyes. "Your friend," he answers at last.
I look right back, sitting up and swinging my feet to the concrete as I lean forward, locking eyes with him. We’re knee to knee, damned near nose to nose, as I stare at him. "And I’m yours," I tell him. I love you. You the the only thing in my life I can say that about. He doesn’t break eye contact, and I wait to see if he’s going to respond before I continue.
"So if you think I’m going to sit on my ass while you take your last breath,ne, ne, on foreign soil, when there’s any chance at all I can stop it, you must not think much of me." That hurts him. I can see the denial bubbling up in his expression as I watch him.
"Geezus, Rog," he says. I recognize that wounded puppy look, the knowledge that he has unintentionally cast aspersions on everything from my intelligence to my competence, to my feelings for him. Seeing him speechless, pushing those big old catholic guilt but of of his, is dirty pool, but I’ve made my point.
"You think you’ve got the market cornered on friendly concern, Buckwheat?" I ask him at last. "Or on a willingness to do whatever it takes — for a friend?"
He shakes his head in the negative as he drops his gaze. I don’t know what possesses me as I take hold of his chin with one hand and force his head back up. I go one-on-one with those bottomless eyes, making sure he’s looking back at me, and this time, I kiss him. Hard.
I force my way past his lips, my tongue searching for his. I find it, feel him groan softly as I stroke him, tease the inside of his lower lip with my teeth. It’s different than kissing a woman, I realize. How exactly, I’m not sure. Hungrier, maybe. More aggressive. There’s nothing submissive about either of us, right then. He’s kissing me back with everything he’s got, his hands in my hair as he catches my head and immobilizes me, refusing to end the contact.

And I panic, wrenching away as I jerk awake to find myself back beside a noisy hotel pool, panting as though I’d just run a marathon. Evan is sprawled in a chair next to me watching me as I try to get the effects of the dream under control, sipping his scotch on the rocks with a speculative look on his face. I ignore him while I try to get a grip on myself. I’m painfully aware of the hard-on bulging against my swim trunks, knowing there’s nothing I can do about it except let time take its toll. Trying to a haa handle on the dream itself is pointless, here, now, too, which leaves me in the unsatisfactory position of being unable to do anything about anything that second. I glare at Evan instead, settling for venting my multitude of frustrations on him. "What do you want?" I demand.
His gray eyes sweep over me, that speculation far from fading, taking in everything. In that instant I’m reminded he was not only a player, but a cop, for a very long time. His instincts are far from dull, regardless of how much he drinks. "Some of whatever it was you were dreaming about," he replies sarcastically. Except he’s completely serious. It surprises me that he’s letting me see that.
"I doubt it," I tell him coldly, trying to refuse knowledge of that oddly vulnerable expression in his eyes. It’s the first time since I’ve known hiat sometomething besides anger and pain and cynicism have appeared on those blank slates. Shit. What the hell is with me? This penchant for other men’s eyes is beginning to freak me out.
He’s quiet for a time, staring out at the pool. Only I get the feeling whatever he’s looking at has nothing to do with the view in front of him. "You ever been in love?" he asks me out of the blue. I just stare at him, wondering where the hell that came from.
"Well, have you?&quhe rhe repeats, glancing at me this time.
"Supposing it was any of your business, no. I don’t think so. At least not the way most people mean," I answer eventually. At least not until recently, I add to myself.
Freed nods. "Me either. At least not the way most people mean."
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