“Yeah, he did,” Marcton said, slowing the Hummer down, pulling it over to the side of the road, popping it into Park. “It doesn’t add up. Palermo obviously knows who he assigned to the apartment, but he still sent that text.”
Cleve handed the phone to Marcton, who read the message himself. He texted back: Got it. “We gotta get those Runners off the apartment. Then we have to get there ourselves, but quietly, unseen.”
“Quietly. Unseen. In a Hummer,” said Cleve.
“Yeah,” said Marcton, smirking. “In a Hummer.”
“You got those guys’ number to call ’em off?”
“Call the warehouse, they’ll have it.”
“Why don’t you have it?”
“I don’t know, ’cause I fucking don’t, Cleve! Now call the warehouse!”
“Alright, Jesus,” Cleve said, dialing. “Just thought you were Palermo’s right-hand man and all that.” He held the phone to his ear.
“I am, Cleve, but he doesn’t always–”
Cleve held up a finger in a shushing motion, “It’s ringing,” he whispered, knowing he was bugging the shit out of Marcton.
But Marcton was in no mood for playing games. Cleve was obviously too stupid to realize how serious the situation was, but Marcton had been a high-ranking member for years longer than Cleve. Cleve was really only in the inner circle because of a good word Marcton had put in for him. Times like this, he regretted doing Cleve the favor.
He reached over, yanking the phone out of Cleve’s hand – which Cleve had fully expected. He laughed, and Marcton saw red – visions of smashing his fist into Cleve’s big dumb face over and again raced through his mind.
He asked for the apartment’s address, then told warehouse dispatch to call off the two guys Palermo’d put there. “On Palermo’s direct goddamn say-so,” Marcton said, when the dispatcher gave him grief. “Just fucking do it, or it’s your head when Palermo gets back.” He pressed the End Call button on the phone, handed it back to Cleve, said, “Put the warehouse on my Blocked Call list for now. I don’t want them able to call back and argue with me. With no other input – and no other recourse for input – they’ll do what I asked.”
Marcton put the Hummer back into gear, pulled out onto the road, headed again for the nurse’s apartment. He glanced in the rearview mirror. “You two redshirts ready for action back there?”
The Runners in the backseat – Bill Tremblay and Melvin Rowe – exchanged confused looks.
“Not big Star Trek fans? Well, hopefully it doesn’t come to that.”
F I F T E E N
One of the Runners assigned to watching Faye’s building sat in a beat-up old Omni, binoculars pressed to his face. He was going back and forth between the apartment he was supposed to be watching – second from the top – and a woman undressing on the floor directly above.
“This shit is fucking up our Run, ladygirl. We could be out there tonight with everyone else instead of sitting here with our dicks in our hands. Figuratively speaking.”
The other Runner pressed her walkie’s talk button from her position around back of the building, where she sat in a similarly beat-up Corolla. “You think there’s a Run tonight with all the shit that’s been going down? Ridiculous. We’re on lockdown, remember? Would be nice if there was, though, so that no one would fucking disappear, but I just can’t see this shit being resolved tonight. Also, what part of ‘radio silence’ don’t you get, fuckweed? Stop talking.”
The radio went dead for a moment, then crackled back to life.
“And quit calling me ‘ladygirl.’ Last time I tell you.”
Fuckweed and ladygirl – old friends who’d grown up together, real names Jim Lamb and Lindsay Kinzett, respectively – had gladly taken the fairly shitty assignment, trying to get into Palermo’s good books again after a monumental cockup a few weeks ago. They’d been sent in to clean up after a Run in the southern section of the city, and had left a ton of shell casings – and one severely injured Runner – on the street for any random passerby to find the next morning. It was one thing to rightfully expect that whoever found the guy would just call 911, then immediately begin to forget the experience; it was another entirely to be careless and start taking the effect for granted, essentially inviting enquiry where none was welcome.
They’d both been reamed out, and this was their penance. What neither of them knew was that after this assignment Palermo planned to kill them anyway, so they were the perfect pair to use, since it didn’t matter if they saw Kyllo or not. Palermo figured he might as well get one more use out of them.