Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [9]
He was back in combat again.
This strange, strange passion was alive again inside David Hudson.
He finally released the hand microphone from the PRC transmitter built into the Vets cab’s dash.
“Contact. Come in Vets Five.” Colonel David Hudson spoke in the firm, charismatic tones which had characterized his commands through the latter war years in Southeast Asia. It was a voice that had always elicited loyalty and obedience in the men whose lives he controlled.
‘This is Vets One…. Come in Vets Five. Over.”
A reply immediately crackled back through heavy static over the PRC transmitter-receiver. ‘This is Vets Five. Over.”
“Vets Five. Green Band is affirmative. I repeat—Green Band is affirmative…. Blow it all up …”
Chapter 7
“YOUGOTAQUARTER, SIR? PLEASE! It’s real cold out here, sir. You got two bits? … Awhh, thank you. Thanks a lot, sir. You just about saved my life.”
Around 7:30 that evening, on Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue, a familiar bag man called Crusader Rabbit was expertly soliciting loose change and cigarettes.
The bag man begged while he sat huddled like trash against the crumbling red brick facade of the Atlantic House Yemen and Middle East Restaurant. The money came to him as if he were a magnet made of soiled rags.
After a successful hit, forty-eight cents from a trendy-looking Brooklyn Heights teacher-type and his date, the street bum allowed himself a short pull on a dwindling half pint of Four Roses.
Drinking while begging change was counterproductive, he knew, but sometimes necessary against the raw cold wintertime. Besides, it was his image …
The deep, slack cough that followed the sip of whiskey sounded convincingly tubercular. The man’s lips were bloated. They were corpse white and cracked, and they looked as if they’d bled recently.
For this year’s winter wardrobe, he’d selected a sleeveless navy parka over several layers of assorted, colored lumberman’s shirts. He’d picked out open-toed high top black sneakers, basketball player snow bird socks, and painter’s pants that were now thickly caked with mud, vomit and spit.
The tourists, at least, seemed to love him.
Sometimes, they snapped his picture to bring home as an example of New York City’s famed squalor and heart-lessness.
He enjoyed posing: asking them for a buck or whatever the traffic would bear. He’d hold his two puffy shopping bags, and smile extra pathetically for the camera. Pay the cashier, sport
Now, through gummy, half-closed eyes, Crusader Rabbit stealthily watched the usual early evening promenade along Atlantic Avenue’s Middle Eastern restaurant row.
It was a constant, day-in day-out noisy bazaar here: transplanted Arabs, college assholes, Brooklyn professionals who came to eat ethnic.
In the distance, there was always the clickety-clack of the El.
A troupe of McDonalds counter kids was passing by Crusader Rabbit, walking home from work. Two chunky black girls; a skinny mulatto boy around eighteen, nineteen.
“Hey, McDonalds. Whopper beat the Big Mac. Real tough break. Gotta quarter? Something for some Mccof-fee?” Crusader coughed and wheezed at the passing trio of teens.
The McDonalds kids looked offended; then they all laughed together in a high-pitched chorus. “Who asked you, Aqualung? You old geek sheet-head. Kick your ass.”
The kids continued merrily on. Rude little bastards when Ronald McDonald wasn’t watching over their act.
If any of the various passersby had looked closer, they might have noticed certain visual inconsistencies about the bag man called Crusader Rabbit.
For one thing, he had impressive muscle tone for a sedentary street bum. His shoulders were unusually broad.
Even more unusual were his eyes, which were almost always intently focused. They scanned the avenue over and over again, watching all the street action.
There was also the small matter of the quality of the dirt and dust thickly caked on his ankles, on his exposed toes. It was a little too perfect Almost as if it might be black Kiwi shoe polish—shoe