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fiction: serial fiction
the crown, book one: chapter 12
Damian Dare stood on the balcony, looking down on the city, as he did most days since he came to Los Angeles. Eliot, his operational right-hand-man, kept reminding him that technically they were in Beverly Hills, but it was all the same to Dare. According to the information broadcast to the world, the city stopped promptly at Interstate 10, and the dark brown faces that lived further south may as well not exist.
Somehow, Dare suspected that his prey awaited him there.
Two weeks had passed since he'd made his offer to Ka-yet. Since then, she'd been notoriously absent from the spiritual plane. The three houses and two storefronts she owned had gone untended. There were signs she'd left the house near Palm Springs in something of a hurry, but no indications of where she'd gone.
Dare gripped the white marble banister firmly and gazed over the strip malls and car dealerships. He watched the Miatas and Camries and Mercedes-Benzes and strained to peer through their tinted windshields, trying to identify the features of one single dark face ...
"We got a delivery, boss," Eliot's voice caromed through the sheer curtains as they dangled limply in a weak breeze. Dare stood upright and turned away from the ornately carved balcony and the delicate thoroughfares and returned to the cloying luxury of the suite.
Eliot, wearing his typical close fitting black sweater and similarly sable jeans, stood in front of an end-table and a cube-shaped FedEx box.
"Checked it?" Dare asked warily, stepping in a careful arc around it, looking for visual clues.
"No explosives, no CBR dangers, no listening devices," Eliot said calmly, arms crossed. "If there's some of that hocus pocus on it, there's nothing I can do about it."
Dare walked calmly up to the box and stood, feet shoulder width apart, and set his arms into a ring, like he was hugging a huge tree. He stood there for a moment, over the package, breathing slowly. After a few moments he stepped away.
"If it's bad, it's more than we'll be able to handle," Dare said uneasily. "Get Ata up here, have him take it down to the street, and open it there. Get the binoculars, we'll watch from up here."
Moments later, Dare and Eliot were standing back on the balcony, peering intently down towards the street. Ata, being a somewhat wary sort himself, made his way on to the verdant median strip between opposing lanes of traffic and plopped down next to a tree.
"He's opening the box ..." Eliot noted, listening to Ata's voice on a headset. Dare said nothing, grimly watching.
"There's another box inside it," Eliot reported, "a little smaller, wrapped in packing foam ..."
"Mmm," Dare grunted. "There'll be either one box inside that one or two. Either way, I don't like it. Tell 'im to keep opening until he finds no more boxes."
Tense seconds slowly plodded past until Eliot spoke again. "Two more boxes," he said, uncomprehending. "He says there's a letter inside the last one."
"Have him read it," Dare said darkly. "Meticulously."
"Reading ..." Eliot said absently. "Two days, just inside the front door of Hollywood Park Casino. Nine PM. Come alone, although I don't expect you to. Public place with police presence, don't be surprised. He says that's it."
"Get me floor plans on Hollywood Park," Dare muttered. "I'll also need at least twelve ops there. If it's a casino, we should be able to have 'em at tables. Promise bonuses for attentiveness, we don't want them taking the gambling too seriously. I'll want you in the truck, on coms, and I'll be going in with kevlar and an MP5 under my jacket. I have some special bullets I brought, they're in the room safe in my room, so make sure I have two banana clips spare and one in the gun."
Eliot furiously scribbled away at his handheld, recording his instructions. "You wanna put any pressure on the management?"
Dare shook his head slowly. "Too little time involved, it would make them nervous and tip off our prey."
Eliot nodded, taking another note. "Can Ata come back?"
"Run the letter through the basic forensic routine, and scrub him down too." Dare intently watched the cityscape, pondering. "Find out if we can see this Hollywood Park from here. Get a floor of hotel rooms nearby in case we need to drag anybody back."
Eliot moved his lips as he read along, double checking his memory and his directives. "Anything else?"
"If we get the Crown after that, it's double hookers for everybody, and triple for you. Go."
Eliot quickly ran back inside, and Dare watched Ata gently replace the boxes the way he found them and then tuck the letter in his jacket pocket. Dare wondered aloud, "What little surprise do you have for me, Ka-yet? Let's ... okay, let's ... okay."
Dare leaned back and crossed his arms, unable to believe he was so close to getting the one thing he'd never had. He kept silent, for fear of speaking some impossible fault into an already fragile situation
* * *
Dare stood, feet shoulder width apart, hands in his jacket and a freshly bought brown bowler hanging low over his eyes. He looked around, seeing drunken housewives cackling over buffalo wings and Long Island ice teas, the concentration of fat men in jackets that clashed with their slacks. Gambling on what Dare considered a laughably quaint scale. He wondered if he would recognize Ka-yet in the flesh after all this time.
Dare took note of his ops. Two sat at a bar, poking noncommittally at a video poker game. Another ignored the advances of one of those drunken housewives at a blackjack table. More mingled, holding four dollar glasses of Coke and darting their eyes here and there. Remembering the men posted in doorways and patrolling the grounds, Dare felt he'd covered all the bases.
"Yo, dawg, is you Damian Dare?"
Dare turned slowly to face the speaker, a cornrowed man in his young twenties, a black Kobe Bryant jersey hanging low on his lanky frame, a glittering gold chain dangling a crown-shaped charm almost to his waist.
"Why do you care?" Dare asked slowly, keeping his eyes moving around the room.
The young man reached into the pockets of his low-hung jeans, causing two of Damian's men behind him to reach inside their jackets. He shook his head, confident he could outgun anybody of this caliber. After a moment of digging, he produced a crumpled sheet of paper.
"I'm supposed to read this," the young man said with a smirk. "'Uh-nook Neb-hoo.' That's supposed to mean something to you?"
Dare allowed a slow grin to mark his face. "It does. What's your name?"
"Dante," the boy said, stuffing the paper back into his pocket. "Now they said you're supposed to buy me some food, so let's do the damn thing."
Without waiting for a reply, Dante stepped towards the glass-enclosed bar Dare's memory recalled from the floor plan. Dare noticed an earpiece stuck in the boy's right ear, surely connected to Ka-yet ... somewhere. Perhaps nearby. Following the boy, he signaled his men with his hand, ordering them to maintain their zones.
Within moments, Dante was seated across from Dare, two glasses of water between them, a waitress dispatched to bring the herculean order Dante demanded.
"Give me the phone," Dare said.
"She said you'd say that," Dante countered, reaching for his water calmly. "She says that if you touch me, or the phone, this is ... this is over. Yeah."
"You can hear her?"
Dante nodded, taking a drink of the water like it was the slow drag of really expensive weed.
"Can she hear me?"
Setting down the glass, Dante managed, "Yup."
"All right then," Dare smiled, leaning back, feeling the butt of the MP5 dig into his ribcage, knowing Eliot would be trying to triangulate the signal already.
A moment passed with nothing being said, Dare content to let the game come to him. Dante jerked his head in a "what up" to another man he clearly knew, sitting with a woman across the room.
"Aight, so she's tellin' me some sh*t to tell you," Dante noted, glancing towards the doorway that swallowed the waitress, anxious for his food. "She says that they got conditions."
"Conditions," Dare said, the word sliding off his tongue with deliberate consideration.
"Condition one -- she gotta put ... uh, she wants to put something on you." Dante struggled to understand what he was hearing. "She says it's like insurance ... a word, or something."
Dare nodded thoughtfully. "A ward. If that's what she needs, okay."
Dante squinted his eyes concentrating on what he was hearing. "Condition two, they need some collateral, like on a loan. She says you have a belt, and that's what she wants, plus some rocks she gave you. Y'all rockin' some diamonds and shit?"
Incredulously, Dare wondered, "They met you today, didn't they?"
Dante nodded. "She wants to know if you understand."
Again the slow grin came. "Tell her I understand, I have what she's asking for, and that's fine."
"She heard ya," Dante said, a little indignantly. The waitress suddenly reappeared with his sampler plate appetizer, and Dante grabbed her arm. "We wanna pay in advance, in case we gotta eat and run, cool?"
The waitress, maybe in her late thirties, heavy lidded and wide hipped, indifferently clad in a simple white blouse and wrinkled black slacks. "Whatever," she said, her voice hanging in the air like a garnet balloon.
Dare pulled a thick wad of fifties out of his jacket, handed one to the waitress, and set the bundle carefully in the center of the table. "Feel free," Dare commented towards Dante.
Dante chuckled. "I'm cool. They got me, dawg, trust. You just in for food."
Dare raised an eyebrow and nodded appreciatively.
"Anyways, she say last condition is that you gotta ... hold on ..." Dante reached for his pocket again, and Dare noted that Ata had found a table across from him. Ata kept his hand in his jacket, eyes focused on the young man, but remained as calm as moonlight on the ocean.
Dante pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket, and inside was an unadorned glass cylinder with a plain gray cap. "She says you gotta bleed into this. Must be some voodoo sh*t or somethin' I dunno."
Dare raised an eyebrow. "I don't think so."
Dante frowned. "Girl, naw, I ain't even got my food yet! I'm not ... aw man! She says this is not nego ... not negotiable. You gotta do this, dawg. She's pretty serious."
"Tell her she can have a lock of my hair and I'll spit in it," Dare shrugged.
"She can hear you, man!" Dante said disgustedly. "Okay ... she says hair, spit and ... dayum! She says hair, spit and fingernails. Y'all are on some sh*t."
Dare considered it. "Hair and fingernails."
"She says all three or she hangs up, which would be a beyotch for me, since she ain't told me where to get the rest of my money."
Dare sighed. He opened the baggie and then unsealed the cylinder. Calmly, he reached into his shirt and made a quick yank, pulling out a few curly hairs, and dropped them into the cylinder. A pocket knife came out next, and he slowly shaved a sliver of fingernail in. Finally he spit into the glass and resealed it, sticking the whole thing back in the bag.
Dante shuddered a bit. "Hey," he said aloud. "He just did it, I saw it. Aight. Okay. She says as soon as she gets this next week, it's a deal."
"I assume you'll be dropping it in the mail somewhere ..."
"Somethin' like that, yeah."
"Then let her know I'll need her to come to the ..."
"Hold up ..." Dante interrupted. "She says that seven days from now, lobby of your hotel. 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Close the deal then."
The waitress walked up with two plates and set them in front of Dante. He ate voraciously, practically ignored Dare.
"Is that all?" Dare asked after a moment.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, she's been off the phone for a minute. I gotta deal with this thing tomorrow and I'm all good."
Dare stood slowly and looked down on Dante. Dante paused eating for a moment and caught Dare's eye, and recoiled into his seat. Dare gazed at the young man with such intensity, such anger, that Dante believed he could actually feel his testes drawing close and looking for a place to hide. Without another word, Dare walked away calmly.
Once he was a few paces from the bar, he spoke into his collar. "Anything?"
Eliot's efficient voice spoke up through an earpiece in Dare's ear. "Dante Lucious Jefferson, age twenty, prior arrests for disturbing the peace and petty larceny, one conviction on shoplifting ..."
"Anything useful?" Dare growled.
"Audio signal is being bounced to a cellular retransmitter in Torrance, but it's a really obvious hack, so no telling where the original is," Eliot returned. "The video surveillance here is porous, so they could be hacked in as well. There's enough wireless signals around here to jam up NORAD."
Storming towards the door, Dare said, "leave the teams in place, heavy surveillance for two more hours, then withdraw to the first hotel. Standard surveillance on this ... Dante."
Dare made his way out, shoving past patrons on their way in. As the door closed, a hooded man stood up from a booth behind the video poker machine in the bar and walked towards the small cafe on the opposite side of the entrance. Once there, he pulled a cell phone from his black sweatshirt and dialed. Pulling back the hood, James said into the phone, "We're good."
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