‘My kids’ dressing up, mostly. The covert-carry mini-Uzi was an afterthought.’
‘I suppose looking like a Fed won’t get you far.’
‘Only killed. It’s messy out on the road. Doesn’t pay to look like a pro, even a black one. Got any beer?’ He plainly wasn’t preparing a toast, taking five to sit and chat.
‘There’s a crate.’
‘It’ll do. I want it on the backseat with the electric goods, music and video discs. If you’re feeling generous, throw in some decent bottles of liquor. More effective than hand-grenades in pacifying the streets.’
‘Fletch, you planning to go in and get her?’ The Briton peered at the American, shards of defensiveness, of marginalization, the proprietorial prickle that Krista was his responsibility, almost piercing through to the exterior. Delegation was awkward when family – ex-family – were at stake.
‘She’s my work partner.’ Simple statement, simply put.
And we were married for over a decade, had a daughter together. That mean anything? It translated into a blank question. ‘You want me along as shotgun?’
‘You’d more likely be bait. Skin-colour thing.’ Wood was slipping an orange bandanna around his forehead. ‘I want you as anchor, I want you to arrange extraction, I want you back at the office. Azania’s shown himself as the Black King, but we still don’t know all the moves, the players, who’s hiding behind all those little white pawns.’
‘Right now, it’s Krista who’s the little white pawn.’
‘Maybe. But she’s breathing, managed to get herself the few yards from the Parker Center to the federal block on Los Angeles before the place blew. She’s holed up and head down.’
‘How long before they target it?’
‘Depends on their priorities, whether it’s listed above or below the DA’s office. The IRS has got a suite there, and it’s no friend of the Reverend’s.’
‘The beer it is.’
They loaded the vehicle quickly, Mary emerging from the house to gauge and contribute and to carry a selection of wines. She did not like what she saw, was troubled by the urgency. This was no preparation for an impromptu cook-out. Krista was trapped, the sanctuary she represented, offered, under siege by elements in her community. Hell, by the whole community. Mary had witnessed the gleeful preliminaries, the electricity of expectation, greed and madness, spark and catch in the low-rise, no-hope flatlands, drawing in and directing on. People were revving cars, powering up, moving off; people were locking their steel shutters, testing the firing mechanisms of their guns. Zeroing. Zero sum game. It was unfinished business, they said, the culmination – natural conclusion – to the Civil War and civil rights of two previous centuries. Man, they talked shit; man, she was scared. She had come to work this morning to lose herself, bury her head, drown the noise, but the fractured clamour followed her, events catching up and confronting her. It had been a stupid decision to leave the Delta, compounded by the crazy misjudgement of becoming maid to an FBI agent. Sweet mother, to a Special Agent. Things were bad, things were bad. Out of a fat-fryer into an inferno, and the carbon particles were already thickening the air. Nowhere to go for her and Jesus, her baby. She would do what she could, was used to being left without a choice.
Wood snapped the magazine into his sidearm and holstered it. ‘Santa’s come early and outfitted.’
‘What’s your infil-exfil profile?’
‘Improvised.’ A switch-blade was being tested. ‘I’ll go with the flow, head along Manchester and weave into Downtown. The gangs are too busy with the common enemy to mind a different kind of nigger passing through.’
‘You so sure?’
‘I’m working with it. Reason, attitude, bribery and firepower are the fallbacks.’
‘And what about the RV?’
‘Rendezvous? Half a dozen possibilities. You’ve got comms, so we’ll warn you if we need pick-up or talking in.’
‘It’ll happen. There’ll be blue-on-blue with you driving like that. You look a mean sonofabitch.’
The Fed applied his Ray-Bans. ‘Thank God for racial stereotypes.’
Mary had changed, was in jeans and T-shirt, appearing with an armful of Krista’s casuals. ‘She’ll be wanin’ these,’ she mumbled, her soft Mississippi vowels chewed up with nervousness. ‘And she’ll be wanin’ me to give ’em to ’er.’ Without asking, she climbed into the passenger seat.
Wood’s temper accelerated from equilibrium. ‘Hey, Mary, we all care. This is no game.’
‘No, it ain’t,’ she snapped, surprising the two men, astonishing herself. ‘It’s personal. She needs us, you needs a woman to getcha there. Couple’s better’n one.’
‘Damn it, you been reading on self-assertiveness? I can’t carry you. You’re not trained, you’re not insured …’
‘Ah seen what’s happenin’.’ We’re runnin’ out ah time.’ Stubbornness interleaved with low centre-of-gravity resistance, impossible to dislodge.
The Special Agent searched for support, received only a weak grin from Kemp. He shrugged. ‘Thanks, Limey.’
‘You’ll go with the flow,’ the Englishman threw back at him.
‘Okay, let’s mission it.’ He swung himself into the driving position and turned to Mary. ‘You willing to take and follow orders?’ She nodded. ‘You appreciate the risk?’ Another affirmation. Fuck. He gunned the engine.
Kemp watched. ‘Play safe.’ Stay alive. Get Krista out.
Brief eye-contact, a glance that communicated will do, can do; a tight reverse, wheel-spin, and the Jeep bounced away around the corner. It replicated images of a thousand guerrilla conflicts, part-normal, part-exceptional, of volunteers responding to the call, going head to head with uncertainty. Left behind, their stomachs tightening, their dwellings emptier, homesteaders read the pinking sky and waited. Mary had been right. It was personal, so very personal. Kemp went inside.
No wonder the Pacific division officers were jumpy, staying behind their sandbagged checkpoints and armour barricades. They could listen to the radio calls, see the road ahead. Wood had waved ID – they had waved him through – their faces resigned to disaster, prepared to duck. A sensible precaution, a fortified position. Initiative got you hurt, exposure got you killed. If the black FBI agent wanted to behave like a crazy fuck, that was his business, his vehicle, his female assistant. He was welcome to join his own kind, to enter the Inglewood cauldron. So he did, driving by, heading straight up Manchester Boulevard, Mary at his side. Two more heads made no difference.
There was the drifting, shiftless air of uproar and intended carnage, the clumps of participants and onlookers forming and reforming, hollering support or abuse, running in and dodging out, smoking weed, chatting, chanting, firing. Bloody prospects at the Police Training Center. Three scorch holes gaped like outsize entry wounds in its buckled walls, the blast contents ejected haphazardly by LAW rockets onto the landscaped frontage. A corpse was visible, a cadet for whom death preceded passing out. His parents would have been proud. Around him, the tattered remnants of flags, shrapnel-ripped from their masts, blew and snagged lifelessly on a ground strewn with fragments. The Jeep power-surged confidently; eyes skewed towards it. Passing time, passing interest.
‘Welcome to the township,’ Wood muttered to himself or no one, adjusting his headband with a thumb. To Krista. ‘Smile, be sassy, make as though you own the district.’
‘Ah own the district,’ she repeated, less convinced, her hand gripping his forearm for reassurance. The voice dropped to a tremor-whisper. ‘What you’s gonna do, Misser Wood?’
‘Talk. That’s all.’ And blow the fucker’s testicles away, if necessary.
Face to face, the excitable jive-talking visage, easy-walking swagger of a youth doped with violence and group bravado coming in close, leading his gaggle. ‘Hey. Where you goin,’ man?’
