Jeffery Deaver - Hard News

That's why Washington had been uncomfortable when, one day in the yard, Boggs began talking to him, just bullshitting in that soft, shy voice he had. At first, Washington later told him, he thought Boggs wanted to be his maytag, his loverboy, then Washington had decided Boggs was just another white-ass crazy, maybe method or angel-dusted out. But when Boggs kept it up, talking away, funny, making more sense than most people Inside, Washington and Boggs became friends.

Boggs told him that he'd been through Raleigh and Durham a bunch of times and learned that Washington 's family had come from North Carolina, though he'd never been there. Washington wanted to hear all about the state and Boggs was glad to tell him. From there, they talked about Sylvia's, Harlem, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Eddie Murphy, Denzel Washington (no relation), Class D felonies, beer, traveling around, hitchhiking…

But there was another foundation for the friendship between the two.

One day Washington had sought Boggs out in the yard and said, "Know why you come up and talked to me?"

"Nope, Severn, I sure don't. Why was that?"

"Allah."

"What's that again?" Boggs asked.

The huge man explained that Allah had come to Washington in a dream and told him it was his job to befriend Boggs and eventually convert him.

He told all this to Boggs, who felt himself blushing and said, "Damn, if that's not the craziest thing I ever heard."

"No, man, that's the way it is. Your ass's safe. Me and Allah gonna watch out for you." Which Boggs thought was even crazier, the Allah part at least, but perfectly fine with him.

From the start, though Washington 's job wasn't easy. Boggs was animal feed in Harrison prison. Scrawny, shy, quiet, a loner. He didn't deal, he didn't fuck, he didn't side. Instantly unpopular. The sort that ends up "accidentally" dead – like not paying attention and driving a 3/4-inch drill press bit through his neck then bleeding to death before somebody notices the blood.

Or the sort that does it himself. They may take your belt away from you but if you want to get dead in prison you can get yourself dead, no problem.

But Severn Washington did his job. And when it became clear that Boggs was under the wing of one of the most devout Muslims in all of Harrison (who also happened to be one of the largest, when that news made the rounds of the cell blocks, Randy Boggs was left pretty much alone.

"Pretty much," however, didn't mean "completely."

Washington, disposing of the fast Muslim greeting, "Marhaba, sardeek," now frowned as he whispered, "Yo, man, you got trouble."

"What?" Boggs asked, feeling his heart sink.

"Word up they gonna move on you again. Serious, this time. I axed a moneygrip o' mine from the home block and he say he heard it for fucking certain."

Randy Boggs frowned. "Why, man? That's what I don't get. You hear anything?"

Washington shrugged. "Make no sense to me."

"Okay." Boggs's face twisted a little. "Shit."

"I'm putting out some inquiries," Washington said, emphasizing the second syllable of the word. "We'll find ourselves out what the fuck's going on."

Boggs considered this. He didn't go out of his way to look for trouble. He didn't give steely killer eyes to blacks, he didn't eye anybody's dick in the shower, he didn't get cartons of Marlboros from the guards, didn't look sideways at the Aryan Brotherhood. There was no reason he could think of that somebody'd want to move on him.

"I don't know what I did. I don't think-"

"Hey, be cool, man." Washington grinned. "Hey, you walk in what? Twenty-four months. Shouldn't be too hard to keep yo ass intact that long."

"This place, man, I hate it so much…"

Severn Washington laughed the way he always did when somebody expressed the obvious. "Got the antidote. Less play us some ball."

And Randy Boggs said, "Sure." Thinking, as he saw his reflection in a chicken-wire-laced window, that what he was looking at with the red-socketed eyes wasn't his living body at all, but something else – something horrible, lying cold and dead, as his blood fled from the flesh.

Thinking that, despite this huge man's reassurance, the only hope he now had was that slip of girl with the ponytail and the big camera.

This city was a playground you never got tired of.

Once you took the element of fear out of it (and there wasn't anything Jack Nestor feared) New York was the biggest playground in the world.

He felt the excitement the instant he stepped out of the Port Authority bus terminal. The feeling of electricity. And for a moment he thought: What was he doing wasting his time in pissant Florida?

He smelled: fishy river, charcoal smoke from pretzel vendors, shit, exhaust. Then he got a whiff of some gross incense three black guys dressed up like Arabs were selling from a folding table. He'd never seen this before. He walked up to them. There were pictures of men from ancient times it looked like, dressed the same. The twelve true tribes of Israel. Only they were all black. Black rabbis…

What a crazy town this was!

Neslor walked along Forty-second Street, stopped in a couple peep shows. He left and wandered some more, looking at the old movie theaters, the play theaters, the angry drivers, the suicidal pedestrians. Horns blared like mad, as if everybody driving a car had a wife in labor in the backseat. Already the energy was exhausting him but he knew he'd be up to speed in a day or two.

He stopped and bought a hot dog and ate it in three bites. At the next street corner he bought another one. This time he asked for onions too. On the third counter he bought two more hot dogs, without onions, and stood eating them and drinking a Sprite, which wasn't a Sprite at all, which he'd asked for, but some brand of lemon-lime soda he'd never heard of. It tasted like medicine. As the vendor split a sausage to fill with sauerkraut, Nestor asked him where there was a hotel in the area.

The man shrugged. "Donoe."

"Huh?"

"Donoe."

"That's a hotel?"

"I donoe."

"Why don't you try learning fucking English?" Nestor walked off. Two blocks later he saw a sign, King's Court Hotel. Which was the same name as a motel he'd been to in Miami Beach once and which wasn't a bad place. He remembered it being clean and cheap. It must have been a chain, Nestor walked up to the door, which opened suddenly. He hadn't noticed a tall young man, dressed in black, standing inside. The man said, "Hello, sir, take your bag?"

The Miami branch didn't, Nestor recalled, have a doorman.

"Just wanted to ask the desk guy a question." She wasn't a guy but a young blonde woman with

a French accent and teeth that were absolutely perfect.

She smiled at him. "Yessir?"

"Uh…" He looked around him. Bizarre. It looked like a warehouse with a low ceiling. Stone and metal furniture everywhere. And a lot of the furniture was wrapped up in white cloth.

"Uh, I was wondering, you have a room?" "Certainly, sir. How long will you be staying?" "Uh,'how much would that be? For a single?" A computer was consulted. "Four hundred forty." For aweek? Are these people fucking insane? The question now was how to get out of here without

the blonde with the ruler-straight teeth thinking he was a complete asshole. "I mean by the night." A moment's pause. "Actually, thatis the daily rate, sir."

"Sure. I was joking." Nestor grinned, saw no way to salvage the situation and simply walked out.

Only one block away he found the Royalton Arms, which he knew was okay because there were a couple of dirty-looking tourists standing out in front, looking at a Michelin guide to New York City. The desk clerk here didn't even have straight teeth, let alone white ones, and he was behind a Plexiglas bulletproof divider. Nestor checked into a $39.95 room and took the elevator up to the seventh floor. The room was okay. He felt good as soon as he walked inside. It didn't overlook any oceans or expressways or anything else except an air shaft but that didn't bother Nestor. He lowered the window blinds then lay down on the bed and listened to the argument his stomach was having with the hot dogs.