The wrong bus in the wrong town on the wrong street flew down University Place in Brookline going the wrong way. It parked illegally but neatly right in front of Dapper O’ Neil. Twenty-three screaming kids, all amped-up despite being drugged and ready to party jumped off the bus, collecting on the sidewalk of an empty quiet street in front of a bland, gray building locked up for the night. Null and the remaining Gangsta Boyz struggled to keep the kids from running off, waiting by the parked bus in the cold. The entrance to Dapper O’Neil was tar black behind the locked glass door. It never occurred to Null at all to break into it.
Mrs. Coelacanth pulled up in her magenta Nissan Sentra, honking the horn frantically. She also parked illegally, got out of the car and headed straight for Null, indignant and enraged.
“Do you have any idea at all about what you’re doing, Mr. Null?”
“Yes, Mrs. Coelacanth. I’m honoring our agreement. I hereby present you with twenty-three children rescued from a kiddie porn factory off Cambridge Street.”
“In Allston?”
“That’s the one.”
“What am I supposed to do with twenty-three abused and damaged kids at nine-thirty at night? Couldn’t this have waited until at least business hours?”
“No, I’m afraid this was the best time for extracting twenty-three kids, murdering twenty-five guilty adults, blowing the place up and hijacking a city bus to get them here just for you. No other time seemed likely.”
“Murdering?”
“After all this time, Mrs. Coelacanth, do we really have to play that game?”
“I’d like to keep a semblance of sanity here, if you please.”
“Whatever it takes.”
“Who are these young gentlemen, Mr. Null?”
“This is my crew, Mrs. Coelacanth. They’re Gangsta Boyz—anyway they were when I took over. I found no good reason to change the name.”
“They don’t care that you’re white?”
Null faced the crew, still awkwardly wrangling tots.
“Gentlemen, does it bother you that I’m white?”
All cowed, knowing full well that Null was insane, but also insanely profitable, all volunteered several kinds of negatives. With the meth lab set up in Methuen pumping hard run by BU dropout Riley and Gangsta Boyz associates slinging meth wildly in the streets where even the cops didn’t care or venture to go, money was rolling in. One good thing about Null that every Gangsta Boy knew: he wasn’t greedy. He only took an equal share out of any score, like everyone else. He wasn’t stingy with the cheddar. They didn’t like him. They thought he could blow at a moment’s notice and knew for a fact he had no compunctions about killing. They knew that long before Alphonse left them only an hour or so ago. They had witnessed it. They didn’t understand him. They knew he didn’t care about money—it seemed he didn’t care about anything. This made him dangerous. Yet, he was fair. So, they accepted him as lead until something happened.
They knew that sometime something would happen and Null would be out and probably dead.
“Race relations aside, Mrs. Coelacanth, where do we go from here?”
“You mean you hadn’t thought that out?
“That’s where you fit into the picture. Past the point of extraction is a little out of my league.”
“You have an illegal bus parked illegally in front of my place. It has to go.”
“I thought you might need it as further transport for the kids.”
“That’s a thought, but no, not this time. I don’t know what we’ll do any other time.” She paused and eyed Null warily. “And I suppose there will be other times.”
“I plan on that, yes.”
“Well, I’m not planning on it, Mr. Null, but I don’t think I can scare up the facilities to handle this kind of volume of children.”
“You’re going to have to try, Mrs. Coelacanth. It’s what you agreed to. I always keep to my agreements. I’m holding up my end.” He paused and narrowed his eyes. “This is yours.”
Mrs. Coelacanth let it process through her mind that what she was dealing with here was very possibly a psychopath—an admitted killer. She was picking an argument with a murderer. Not the best idea from any angle. No, not at all. She removed a jangle of keys from her coat pocket, hands shaking imperceptibly.
“They can’t just stand out in the cold. Let’s bring everybody inside.”
Mrs. Coelacanth unlocked the security and entry doors, pressed in codes on a keypad to disarm the alarm system and turned on all the lights on the first floor. She went over to an ancient thermostat and turned up the heat.
“Just watch the kids out here in the big front room,” Mrs. Coelacanth directed to nobody in particular. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.” She led Null into her office.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I thought we settled that issue.”
“We haven’t settled anything.”
“We’re settling these kids, I think. And we’d better do it now.”
“Twenty-three of them?”
“That’s right. And you’re on point again. You’re the only thing between them and disaster. I told you this is what would happen. I was straightforward.”
“I didn’t believe you.”
“I wasn’t asking for faith. I simply wanted the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you believe me now.”
“I do. And now I don’t know what to do.”
“You’re going to start by making some phone calls. You’re going to start by bedding down the kids in this place until morning. Then you can start working on placing them. Either way you’re going to start. And start now.”
“How do I avoid dealing with local police about all this?”
“You don’t. Go through all the channels you need to. There’s too much work here for even a task force to wade through. A thoroughly coordinated police effort still wouldn’t be able to get through it all. Red tape notwithstanding, the devil’s in the details and the details will swallow them up.”
“Meanwhile, more kids are coming?”
“Exactly. I think we’ve got two hundred more to go, give or take, or so the laptop that once belonged to the CEO of kiddie porn told me.”
“Give or take? You mean you don’t know?”
“Well, there’s been a casualty tonight, unfortunately. It’s not out of the question that there’ll be more.”
“I have to know about this?!”
“I don’t see any way around it, Mrs. Coelacanth.”
“I’m complicit.”
“Yes, Mrs. Coelacanth. Complicit in doing something right.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“For you it does. But it’s too late to back out. You’re in it now.”
“Yes. I am.” She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes for a moment, then squeezed the temples of her head to massage away pain before giving up completely. “Get rid of your Gangsta Boys or whatever they are. Have them make themselves scarce. Ditch the bus. It’s illegal six ways to Sunday. The cops no doubt are hunting it up already and it won’t be hard to find, parked where it is.”
“I’ll have Jo-jo take care of it. What about your illegally parked car?”
“I’ll move it now. We don’t want your friends in the police to get here any sooner than they have to.”
“Yes, I’ll make myself scarce as well. Would money help?”
“When doesn’t it?”
“I’ll have someone make an anonymous donation. Help grease the wheels.”
“Drug money.”
“Do you really care at this point?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Mrs. Coelacanth got up from her desk wearily holding a different jangle of keys. She went into the big front room with Null and sighed. “So, you mentioned the CEO of kiddie porn a few minutes ago.”
“I did, in fact.”
“You have his laptop.”
“I do.”
“You killed him, didn’t you?”
“I did. With a pencil.”
“A pencil?” she asked with dull-eyed confusion and disbelief, stopping dead in her tracks before facing the children and their reluctant attendant Gangsta Boyz.
“Yes, Mrs. Coelacanth. I killed him with a pencil.” He looked at her coldly. “As you well know,” he added with near reverence, “sometimes in this life, you have to improvise.”