“Well, that makes two of us. I’ll find the money anyway. Or the cops will. Not that it will matter much to you, because you’ll be in a fridge at the morgue.”
Court saw the wheels spinning in the man’s head. When he realized he would gain nothing from his obstinacy he said, “Windowsill. Pop the ledge up.”
Court tossed the bloody blanket back to the wounded drug dealer, then he went to the boarded-up window. He yanked up on the wooden sill. With some effort, it pulled away from the wall. Inside was a channel in the frame of the house. He could see two bags there, and he fished them out quickly with a metal coat hanger he found lying loose on the floor.
The first paper bag contained a meth ball, a plastic bag holding small plastic baggies, each one containing a sixteenth of an ounce of crystal meth. Court wasn’t sure what the street value of it all was, but there had to have been a hundred or more bags.
He turned and tossed the meth bag into the lap of the nearly decapitated corpse, just feet away. “Careful, this shit’ll kill you,” Court said, and then he looked in the second bag. This one was stuffed with cash. Tens and twenties, mostly, but there were a few fives and even some ones. He held it up to the wounded man on the floor. “How much?”
Even though he’d stanched the bulk of the blood flow, the man was weakening noticeably. Through gasps he said, “I don’t know. ’Bout thirteen grand. Little more, maybe.”
The soft wail of distant sirens caused Court to pick up his pace now. He shoved the money in his coat pocket and began looking for guns. He counted seven firearms in the house, but they were all wrong for his needs. The chrome-plated Desert Eagle pistol was as long as a shoebox and inefficiently heavy. He could get out of the area with the pistol if he hid it under his shirt, but he wouldn’t be able to operate in the District with such a huge and flashy weapon. There were four AK-47–style semiautomatic rifles, none of which he could hide in his blazer to exfiltrate the scene with, even while folded.
He loved AKs—he knew he couldn’t go wrong with the venerable Russian assault rifle. But it was hardly a low-profile weapon.
He also found two pistol grip shotguns. The shotguns were like the Desert Eagle, almost small enough to get away with, but way too big to use efficiently in the manner Court had planned.
He went back to the severely wounded man sitting up in front of the bed. He felt around his waistband, then frisked him down to his ankles, avoiding the blood on the man’s clothing.
Court breathed a sigh of relief when his fingers brushed against a Velcro ankle holster low on the man’s right leg. He yanked out a tiny Ruger LCP .380. It carried eight rounds of hollow-point ammo and fit nicely in the palm of Court’s hand.
The drug dealer hadn’t resisted at all. Court wondered if the man had even remembered the weapon strapped to his leg.
Court slipped the gun into the back pocket of his jeans, then walked over to a nightstand by the bed. It was covered with ashtrays, cigarette packs, crumpled beer cans, and candy wrappers, so Court used a forearm to knock every last item onto the floor.
He was back there in the corner for several seconds, long enough to arouse the curiosity of the wounded drug dealer, who was now lying on his side on the floor in front of the bed. “You got what you came for. There’s nothing else.”
When Court did not reply the man spoke in a slurred voice. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Court replied cryptically: “Sending a message.”
“What?”
Soon Court headed for the door, passing the wounded man on the floor without a glance as he did so.
As he started up the hall, the wounded man called out from behind.
“Who are you?”
Court did not reply. He wouldn’t give the man or his buddies, alive or dead, another moment’s thought. His plans ahead were infinitely more important than these inconsequential street criminals. They were just a means to an end, nothing more.
—
Less than a minute before the first police car stopped in front of the house, Court stepped back out into the backyard, holding a loaded AK-47 high in front of him. He realized quickly the two Aryan Brotherhood men who had been out there were gone from the scene—even their damn dog had hit the road with the sound of approaching sirens—so Court tossed the AK into the grass, climbed up onto the Monte Carlo by the fence, carefully pushed the barbed wire out of the way, and dropped into an adjoining backyard.
He was out of the neighborhood two minutes after that.
Tonight had been more trouble than he’d envisioned, but it had all been a necessary opening move in his operation. He needed a portable and concealable weapon, and he needed capital to put his plan into action.
He wanted more gun than what was now sitting in the back pocket of his jeans. To be sure, he wasn’t going to fight much of a battle here in the U.S. with the little Ruger, but it was a decent tool, and with it he had improved his defenses markedly.
But infinitely more important than the gun was the cash.