WILLIS DODGE YAWNED, BUNCHED his shoulders, rotated his head, gripped the steering wheel with both hands, using the wheel to push and pull against, doing aerobics, keeping the muscles loose. He’d been working the neighborhood for almost five hours, sometimes parking, sometimes driving, trying to disappear into the scenery, just another citizen, minding his own business. Because, like he’d told “Carter,” protective coloration was what it was all about: like animals, in the jungle. You didn’t stick out, you had an edge. You could get closer, without the mark suspicioning anything. Or you could just wait, until the mark came to you. If you looked like you belonged, wherever you were, played the part, looked like the part you were playing, then you could just wait, take it slow and easy, do the job, get the money, go home, get laid, go to sleep, forget.
Kill or be killed. Jungle law. Ghetto law, too.
They always waited upwind, the jungle killers, lying in the tall grass, watching, waiting. For hours, they waited. Protective coloration: the right clothes, the right car—the right time, the right place—and you were home free.
In eight years, he’d played a lot of characters. He’d played a messenger once, and once he’d played a rock musician. That had been a good one, that part. He’d really gotten into it, bought leathers, a two-hundred-dollar cowboy hat, with a snakeskin band. Mostly, though, he played the simplest part of all: an ordinary hoodlum who’d kill for whatever he found in the mark’s pockets. Because if the cops thought it was a mugging that misfired, they forgot about it. But a hit, a professional job, they never forgot, because they could sniff the headlines, the ink. So, whenever he could, he pretended to be a hood, robbing on the street. Meaning that he had to go through their pockets, turn them out, pull off the rings, the gold chains. Sometimes he found something, sometimes he didn’t. Once he’d found nothing. Absolutely nothing. The mark had been rich, too: a union official, with a Coupe de Ville. A fancy car, a fancy house, a fancy wife—but nothing in his pockets. Zero.
And then once, in New York, on a skinny mark who’d looked like a bum, he’d found thirteen thousand dollars, in an envelope, stuck down the front of the mark’s pants. And he got to keep it all, part of the deal.
So it averaged out. Whatever he could take, that was his commission, plus his fee.
Fifty thousand dollars, Nick Ames was worth.
Fifty thousand—his biggest fee ever.
The first time, that bookie who was holding out, he’d done it for five hundred dollars. And he’d almost died. On bad nights, he could still see it: that gun barrel, pointing at him, with the hole so big, so black, filling the whole world. And the click, when the gun misfired. He could still hear the click, the difference between living and dying, a defective firing pin, or a cartridge that wouldn’t fire.
That first time—those first years—protective coloration hadn’t been a problem. He’d operated where he’d spent his whole life, in Detroit, the whole city a slum, all of them killing or getting killed, all of them black, animals feeding on animals, living off garbage, pissing in doorways, breeding like maggots, fucking like dogs, everywhere.
Then he’d gotten the assignment in Kansas City. Venezzio had put him in line for the job, coached him, given him the plan, told him the moves, then given him the money: a thousand up front, another five, when the job was done. Later, he’d discovered that Venezzio had taken half, his fucking commission, he’d said.
In Kansas City, he’d learned about protective coloration, learned how it felt, a black face in a lily-white suburb, sticking out like a snake on a rock.
It had taken him a week, to get the job done—a week until he’d finally figured it out, finally bought some jeans and a workshirt and a floppy hat, and posed as a gardener, while he staked out the mark, memorized the mark’s schedule, like Venezzio had told him.
A snake on a rock—Kansas City, so many years ago—Beverly Hills, only two years ago. They’d been the same, those two. The same problem.
And now Santa Rosa, the smallest town he’d ever worked. He’d arrived five hours ago. He’d slept last night at a hotel near the San Francisco airport. He’d left a call for seven o’clock. He’d had breakfast, rented a car, made the drive to Santa Rosa in exactly an hour and forty minutes.
And so far he hadn’t seen one black face. Mexicans, yes. Lots of Mexicans. But not a single black face. Meaning that, wherever he went, whatever he did, they’d remember him. He’d seen it in the motel manager’s eyes, seen that look, the look you always lived with, the look you never could quite forget.
He’d picked the Holiday Inn, always a good choice, probably with the most rooms in town. He’d washed up, changed into a sweater, took the heavy suitcase, went out the back way, to his car. He’d put the case in the trunk and driven to the Starlight Motel, on the other side of the city. His first drive by, his first trip around the block, had told him a lot—told him that it would be very simple, to keep track of the Toyota.
And very difficult, very goddam difficult, to get to them, get to the mark and the woman, get the job done. Because the motel was in a residential neighborhood: one-story houses built lot line to lot line, white picket fence to white picket fence, with no gaps, no vacant lots between, no alleys, even, that he could use. Meaning that, to get to unit twelve, he’d have to hop a fence, risk barking dogs, risk lights coming on, even husbands in pajamas, with guns.
He glanced in the mirror, checked his watch: 3:15 P.M. In Detroit it was 5:15, less than twenty-four hours since “Carter” had called. No question, jet airplanes had changed the world. The telephone, the jet engine, communication satellites, they were changing everything. And computers, too. In a few more years, everyone would be hooked into a computer: big brother watching them all.
In Sacramento, they had a fingerprint computer that. could make a matchup in minutes, a matchup that would take months, by hand. Meaning that, if he left fingerprints, they could make him before he got back to San Francisco, if they were hooked into the FBI’s computer, in Washington.
The police had the computers—and he had the twenty-five thousand dollars, safe in the suitcase with the guns, and the silencer, and the ice picks, and the ammo—and the two pairs of surgical gloves, to take care of the computer.
Three-thirty, now. Three-thirty on September thirteenth. In four hours it would be dark, or almost dark: seven-thirty, time to go to work.
But in those four hours, they could leave, the woman and the man in unit twelve. They could check out, get in their Toyota, take off.
Possible, but not likely. Checkout time had come and gone. If they hadn’t left by now, checked out, they probably would stay the night. Probably. But not for certain. Meaning that, if he didn’t want to lose them, he had to keep watching the entrance to the motel.
Meaning that, to a dead certainty, he’d be noticed: a black man in a maroon Oldsmobile, hanging around. He could—would—keep moving. He could park a block away, and still see the entrance. Or else he could move forward a block, and see the entrance in the mirror. But that was as far as he could go: a hit man on a string, tied to his own stakeout.
Was “Carter’s” private detective on the scene now? Right now, watching? He should’ve asked more about the detective. It had been a mistake, not to ask more. But in “Carter’s” place, he wouldn’t have answered. Or, if he’d answered, he would have lied.
So, to be safe, he had to figure that someone was watching. A white man, probably. A white detective staying at the motel, probably. Watching.
And some of them, some private detectives, they carried guns.
Everything you get, his mother used to say, you pay for. Meaning that everything was a tradeoff. It was another law of nature, another jungle law. Or, more like it, the same jungle law, the only jungle law: pay or get paid, kill or get killed.
His mother had paid. God, how she’d paid. The polite name was B-girl. But the bedroom walls had been thin, and the men had been loud.
He’d been seventeen, when he moved out. He’d been working up on Twelfth Street, spotting for Clarence Brown. Right from the start, Clarence had liked him, let him ride with him sometimes, making the rounds, keeping the pushers on the ball, off the shit. “You’re a smart kid,” Clarence told him. “You watch. You remember. You got a future.” And when the wars started, for territory, Clarence had given him a gun, a Colt .45 automatic, army issue. He’d been in the car behind Clarence when the Beachum brothers had come up beside them, a van and two cars, with machine guns, fucking Mark 16s, the papers said. Clarence’s car had skidded to a stop against some parked cars and Clarence had rolled out, rolled behind some trash cans, told him to get out, too. He’d been riding beside the driver, with the .45 stuck in his belt. He could still remember the weight of it, the feel of it, pressed against his young belly. Nothing had ever felt so solid, so important.
He’d rolled out of the car, like Clarence did, dodged low, got behind the trunk of Clarence’s car, started shooting. He’d seen Alvin Beachum, right over his sights, lined up. He’d pulled the trigger, kept pulling it, felt the gun buck in his hands, saw Beachum fall.
They’d left him in the street, Beachum’s soldiers. They’d left him, and they’d left Alex Saugis, too, dead, both of them dead.
That night, Clarence had called him in, given him two thousand dollars, told him how good he’d done, told him that he was in now. Only seventeen, and in. “You’re a killer,” Clarence had said, smiling at him, saying it so they could all hear, some of them who’d rolled under the cars, not shooting, just protecting themselves. “You’re a natural killer, swear to God.”
Two thousand dollars…
He’d never have money like that again, money that meant so much, made so much difference. Never before, never again.
Almost four o’clock—almost an hour, parked in one place. Already, a police car had passed, cruising: a new-looking car, neat-looking cops, looking him over. On their next round, maybe, they’d stop, get out of their car, ask questions.