She said softly, “Jimmy Radburn?”
In respect of her claim that every word was being recorded, he tapped his chest with a forefinger, pointing to himself.
In fact, he wasn’t Jimmy Radburn, looked nothing like the man. If he was stupid enough to assume she had only the name to go on, he was likely to do something else stupid.
He made a come-with-me gesture and led the way to the gate in the counter.
Once more wearing her expression of exquisite boredom, the girl on the stool set the needle down not on the lead-in groove of the record but instead at the start of a deeper cut. It was Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend,” and whether she had chosen the song with a snarky purpose or not was impossible to know.
Jane followed Malware into the shop’s back room. Unlabeled cardboard boxes and rectangular plastic tubs full of phonograph records stood on deep wall shelves, on tables, and under tables, with no apparent order to them. In one corner stood a cleaning station where the collectible platters could be lovingly swabbed with appropriate chemicals. Nobody was working there.
Yawning as though the salesgirl’s world-weariness might be contagious, Malware closed the door to the front room—and then abruptly pivoted, grabbed Jane by the crotch, by the throat, and rammed her backward into the wall beside the door.
He should have body-slammed her, pinning her tight against him, and in the same instant should have reached under her open biker’s jacket to feel whether she was carrying; but he didn’t take her seriously enough yet. And he wanted to do that crotch grab, he very much wanted that, because his fingers squeezed and probed through the denim as he lowered his face toward hers with one foolish intention or another.
When she raised her right leg, he thought she meant to knee him in his package, but it was too easy for him to block that move, so it wasn’t what she had in mind. The hard edge of the platform sole of her Ferragamo knockoffs struck down across his exposed left shin, shredding the skin and gouging the flesh and bruising the sharp edge of the tibia, from the hem of his too-short sweatpants to the tongue of his Nikes, which might make him think twice about not wearing socks in the future.
The shin, a nerve-rich portion of the lower leg, was webbed with venules returning deoxygenated blood to the small saphenous vein. The pain was immediate and intense, and he could surely feel warm blood running down his leg, a scary sensation if you weren’t trained to ignore it. For a man, Malware achieved a remarkable soprano shriek. He lost his grip on her. He staggered back a step as he bent forward to clutch his shin, whereupon she drove a knee hard into the underside of his chin and heard his teeth clack and stepped aside as he collapsed onto the floor.
The door flew open, and Ms. Ennui appeared vividly engaged with the world for the first time. She froze on the threshold, however, because Jane had already drawn her Heckler & Koch, giving the girl’s big dark eyes an intimate view of the muzzle.
“Go back to your stool,” Jane said. “Put on some happy music. Elton’s recorded a lot of it.”
14
* * *
BEHIND A DOOR, STAIRS led up to the second floor, where the real work at Vinyl got done, and Jane wanted Malware to ascend in front of her. These people weren’t dangerous in a gangland sense, and they certainly were not as bloodthirsty and twisted as the homicidal sociopaths whom she had spent the last six years tracking down. But if they were all as lacking in common sense as this one, blood could be spilled unnecessarily. She needed to use this humbled assailant for a shield, coming behind him with her pistol ready to perform the ultimate spinal tap, thereby giving the people on the second floor time to rein in their heebie-jeebies.
Malware found it painful to stand up straight, but he was no good to her if he humped up the stairs like a troll. The thought of the gun in his back put some starch in him. He needed the handrail, and he limped step by step, but he ascended at his full height. He cursed her at first, spitting blood because he’d bitten his tongue. Then he realized the point of her wanting a shield, and belatedly he took it upon himself to call out, “I’m in front, Jimmy, I’m in front of her, it’s me in front, Jimmy!”
There was one long steep flight of stairs, no door above. As they got close to the top, she pressed the muzzle of the pistol into his spine, just in case he got his macho back when he came eye-to-eye with his friends.
Past Malware, as they rose into the second floor, Jane saw a large room the length of the building, windows boarded over, mellow down-lighting, stained-concrete floor. Maybe ten workstations, each computer with its own printers, scanners, miscellaneous black boxes, support tech. An elevated, circular central desk provided a platform from which the entire room could be overwatched.
Seven guys were standing at various points, looking toward the stairs, all in their twenties and early thirties. Some were stick-thin, some fat, some bearded and some not. All were pale, not out of fear, but due to a lack of interest in activities conducted in sunlight. Each of the seven fit within the spectrum of computer-geek style.
Only one of the seven, Jimmy Radburn, was packing, though in spite of the gun he looked no more dangerous than a kitten. His stance was wrong, his left foot behind him and his weight too much on it instead of evenly distributed. His primary criterion when he’d bought the weapon must have been its intimidating appearance. Maybe a Colt Anaconda, .44 Magnum, with a ridiculous eight-inch barrel. Probably fifty-six ounces, heavier than a large brick. He held it in one hand, arm extended, because maybe Clint Eastwood had done that in a Dirty Harry movie. If he ever squeezed the trigger, the recoil would stagger him backward, he’d blow out some expensive overhead lights—and he’d probably be so startled, he’d drop the revolver.
When it came to firearms, Jane preferred facing experienced gunmen, because if you died in the confrontation, at least it wouldn’t be a cartoonish death.
In his free hand, Jimmy was holding the two index cards on which she had printed messages to him.
Jane pushed Malware away from her, but not toward Jimmy Radburn. “Get in a chair.”
Cursing her once more, Malware hobbled to an office chair.
Maybe Jimmy spooked easily, but he wasn’t a stupid man. He had read the index cards. She’d given him information that could keep him out of prison if he acted properly on it. Even if what she’d told him turned out to be bogus—which it wouldn’t—it couldn’t be construed as a hostile act.
Counting on him to have more common sense than the guy whose shin she had raked to the bone, she holstered her pistol. While he continued to point the cannon at her face, she fished another index card from a jacket pocket and held it out to him.
For a moment, he couldn’t decide what to do, and his crew of six stood tense and expectant, as if this was a spaghetti Western moment if ever there had been one. Then Jimmy lowered the revolver.
With his left hand, he motioned her toward him, and he took the third card that she offered.
On it, she had written this: SOME OF YOUR PHONE LINES HAVE BEEN SLEEVED WITH INFINITY TRANSMITTERS.
The infinity transmitter couldn’t be called cutting-edge technology. It was older than Jimmy, who was thirty, perhaps even older than his mother, but it worked as slick as anything. Maybe it wasn’t the first threat Mrs. Radburn’s baby boy considered when he thought about spending a large part of his life eating prison food, but Jane counted on him having heard of it.