Neon Prey

by John Sandford

  “He’s never done anything physical?” Bob asked. “Nothing we could go over and talk to him about?”

  “Not other than the thumb sucking. I don’t know how that would look on a search warrant,” Barnett said.

  Rae smiled. “Not all that convincing.”

  Jimenez said a couple of other men either lived at the house or were frequent visitors. “There are at least two people in there, maybe three. One of them told a neighbor lady that they were traveling sales guys and weren’t here most nights, so they decided to share a place so they could have a nice house with a pool and only have to pay part of the rent.”

  They talked for a bit longer, and then Lucas asked, “What do you think? Can we have a key?”

  The two men looked at each other, then Jimenez nodded and said, “We’re going over to the house right now. We brought our truck, we’re gonna take some things out. You could come over, put your cars in the garage, help us move some furniture . . . Nobody will think anything of it. Besides, most people on the street are working during the day, there’s almost nobody to see you.”

  That’s what they did. As requested, all three marshals wore T-shirts and jeans. And one very clear reason for all the cooperation emerged as Lucas and Bob, along with Barnett and Jimenez, struggled to get two huge custom-made couches out the door and into the truck. “We got some guys at the other end to help get them into the new place, but we didn’t have anybody to help up here,” Jimenez said.

  For the next hour, the marshals helped carry coffee tables, lamps, rugs, paintings, boxes of books, and an electric piano out to the box truck. The only neighbor they saw was an elderly man walking a blue heeler, who both ignored them.

  Before the two men left, Rae went out to a Super King Market and bought three days’ worth of food and drink and then dropped down to Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena and bought a supply of books and magazines. The power in the house was still on, so they had a refrigerator, stove, microwave, and air-conditioning. The WiFi had been turned off, but Rae had a hotspot they could hook their laptops into.

  “Please don’t shoot anyone and get blood all over. It’s impossible to get it out of the drywall,” Barnett joked as they were closing up the truck.

  “We’ll try not to,” Lucas said. “And thank you,”

  * * *

  —

  BARNETT AND JIMENEZ left behind two small couches and an oversized easy chair in the living room and two single beds in a guest room. They were hoping to sell the beds with the house. The windows were still covered with curtains.

  The best view of the target house was from a corner of the living room. They put an easy chair and ottoman next to the window, opening the drapes just enough that they could use binoculars and Bob’s night vision goggles without moving the fabric. Lucas and Bob carried the couches to a family room in the back, where they could turn on lights that wouldn’t be visible from across the street.

  After Barnett and Jimenez left, Bob, Rae, and Lucas did an odd-man coin flip. Bob lost and took the first two-hour watch at the bedroom window. Lucas took the second watch and Rae the third. Bob came back on at eight o’clock, and, at ten after, he shouted, “Right now!”

  Lucas was lying on one of the couches, reading a Mick Herron thriller, and Rae was sitting at the breakfast bar, looking through a book about architecture left behind by the owners and eating baby carrots. They both ran for the living room, and Bob, who was looking between the curtains with the binoculars, said, “Car pulled in, a Lincoln SUV, on this side of the street, so I couldn’t see the driver at all. Used a garage door opener, went straight in, dropped the door.”

  “So we know it’s live anyway,” Lucas said, peering out the window. There was nothing to see.

  “It’s live,” Bob agreed.

  He shouted “Right now!” again forty-five minutes later, and Lucas and Rae bolted for the living room. This time, they saw the SUV, a steel-gray Lincoln Navigator, backing out of the driveway. This time, it drove past the house and there was enough light that they could see the driver was a black man.

  “Bob, stay here,” Lucas snapped. “Rae, let’s go. Run, goddamnit.”

  They ran out through the kitchen to the garage. Rae had left her Glock in its holster sitting on the kitchen counter and grabbed it as they went by. Lucas punched the button in the garage and the door rolled up. He backed out and nearly hit a passing car, but jammed on the brakes at the last second, then continued into the street.

  The Prius ahead of them was dawdling, as Priuses will, and as Lucas burned past it Rae said, “She gave us the finger.”

  “We deserve it,” Lucas said.

  Altadena Drive was a through street, and the Lincoln was well ahead of them as they went after it, but it was moving as slowly as the Prius.

  “He doesn’t want to be stopped for speeding,” Rae said. The limit was twenty-five, and Lucas kept the Malibu at forty until they’d closed within a hundred yards, with another car between them.

  They followed the Lincoln along a couple of freeways and off at an exit, now with a half dozen cars between them, and watched as the driver threaded down a few more streets and then parked in the lot at, and walked into, a grubby-looking club called Eagle Rocks. Lucas parked on the opposite side of the lot, from where he could still see the front door.

  “I’ll take it from here,” Rae said. “I’m looking for my boyfriend. Watch my gun.”

  “Call me on your phone right now and leave it open,” Lucas said. “Carry it in your hand. If you need help inside, yell and I’ll be there.”

  * * *

  —

  RAE LEFT HER GLOCK on the passenger seat, got out, tucked her shirt into her skinny jeans, and disappeared through the doors of the club. She was back out a minute later, slid into the passenger seat.

  “He was right inside the door, talking to a waitress,” Rae said. “I went by and asked the bartender if he’d seen Bobby and he said he didn’t know any Bobby, so I came back out. I looked right at Nast from a foot away. I think he kinda liked my looks, but I’m holding out for Tremanty.”

  “It’s Nast for sure?”

  “One hundred percent,” Rae said. “I’ll tell you what: Jimenez was right. The guy is a hulk. He lifts serious weight, he’s got a neck like a pyramid, way bigger than Bob’s. He’s got prison ink on his arms and a nasty keloid down one cheek.”

  “So we’re careful with him. And we’ve got him—we know where he lives. Let’s get back there in case somebody else shows up,” Lucas said.

  On the way, Bob called. “We’ve got another guy at the house, couldn’t see this one, either. Driving a BMW sedan. I’ll tell you what: when I saw him slowing down to pull in, I ran out back and pushed through the hedge far enough that I could see into the garage. Still didn’t see the guy’s face, he was already going inside. But what looks like a two-car garage over there isn’t. It’s two cars deep, making it a four-car, and I saw a white panel van in there, pulled all the way up against the back wall. So . . . it’s them.”

  “We know the guy we’re following is definitely Nast,” Rae said. “Maybe they’re all in there.”

  “I doubt it,” Lucas said. “Four guys, probably bringing women home from time to time . . . That’d be too much like a college dorm. I could buy two of them living there, but not all four.”

  “What do you want to do?” Bob asked.

  “We need to trim a couple of hedges. In the middle of the night,” Lucas said. “You got a hedge trimmer in your kit?”

  “Got a big, sharp knife,” Bob said.

  “That’ll work.”

  * * *

  —

  BARNETT AND JIMENEZ had left lamps near the windows in the living room, kitchen, and one upstairs bedroom with timers that turned them on and off randomly, to discourage burglars. They all went off by midnight, except the bedroom, which came back on hourly, for f
ive minutes at a time, between one and six in the morning, as though somebody were getting up to pee.

  When the lights went off at midnight, Lucas and Bob slipped out to the back door and then down the side hedge to the front of the yard and in the dim ambient light cropped a few branches out of the hedge to create holes that would allow them to better see the target house.

  The house showed lights until after one o’clock, when all but one of them went off.

  Lucas took the four-hour watch from one o’clock until five while the others slept. The Lincoln Navigator returned at two-fifteen, and when it pulled into the right-hand slot in the garage he could see a black BMW sedan in the left. Then the remote-controlled door rolled down, the light at the front of the house went out.

  Rae, who had gone to sleep at ten o’clock, took over from Lucas at five. When Lucas woke at eleven, she said, “The Lincoln is still there, but the Beemer left at nine. Bob’s gone after him, they’re over in the Hollywood area right now. He says there were two white guys in the car, so it’s not Nast. That makes at least three different guys in there.”

  Lucas got cleaned up and went back downstairs to eat some Cheerios. Bob called ten minutes later and said, “I tracked these guys into a café on Sunset Boulevard. My phone map says I’m either in Hollywood or the Hollywood Hills, I don’t know which, but one of the guy is Beauchamps. He’s got a beard now. And he’s going bald, tries to hide it with a tennis hat. But he’s our guy. Another guy came in and met our guys, sat with them for a minute. I’m no narc, but if Beauchamps didn’t pick up some dope you can butter my buns and call me a biscuit.”

  “Beauchamps and Nast are living together,” Lucas said. “It might be time to call Rocha.”

  “Give it a few more hours,” Rae suggested. “See if anyone else turns up. Like Deese.”

  Lucas agreed to wait. He called Bob off tracking Beauchamps. “There’s a chance he’ll spot you. We know he lives here, so let’s not take that chance.”

  * * *

  —

  BOB WAS BACK, and at the window, when another car pulled into the target house’s garage, this one a red Jaguar convertible. The top was down, and the driver was a white man, neither Deese nor Beauchamps.

  “Rocha told us there were four of them and that guy makes four,” Lucas said.

  “They are living in a dormitory,” Rae said. “I wonder why? That seems wrong to me.”

  “Gift horse?” Bob said.

  “I worry about shit I don’t understand,” Rae, kneeling at the window with the binoculars, watching, said.

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS CALLED ROCHA. “We’d like to get together to strategize,” Lucas said. “We’re up in Altadena.”

  “Why are you in Altadena? You got something?”

  “We found Nast, Beauchamps, and at least two other guys we haven’t yet identified,” Lucas said.

  “What! You’ve been here two days?”

  “We got lucky,” Lucas said. “And we are the Marshals Service.”

  “Bullshit. You don’t get lucky in a city this size. And the Marshals Service can kiss my ass,” Rocha said. “You didn’t tell me something.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, you want to hook up?”

  She suggested they meet at the Pasadena Police Department, but Lucas wanted both Bob and Rae to be at the meeting and didn’t want to leave the target house unwatched, so Rocha agreed to come to the house.

  “Don’t come in one of those goddamn beaters you guys use. Come in a personal car, or something, pull right into the garage. We’ll have the door open. We’re right across the street from Nast and Beauchamps,” Lucas said, as he gave her the address.

  “I’ll be in my own vehicle. I’m bringing a couple of guys,” Rocha said.

  * * *

  —

  NAST LEFT shortly after Lucas made the call to Rocha, driving the Lincoln. The Jaguar and its driver were still at the target house. When Nast was out of sight, Bob backed one of their Malibus into the driveway to make room in the garage for Rocha.

  LuAnne Rocha and two male detectives, Lewis Lake and Darrell MacIntosh, arrived an hour later in Rocha’s Dodge minivan, the most un-cop-like of vehicles. Rocha called when they were two blocks away and Lucas went out to the garage and pushed the button that lifted the door and dropped it when they were inside.

  They trooped into the kitchen, made introductions and shook hands, and Rocha said, “Tell me how you did this.”

  “We had a phone number for a bar,” Lucas began. He told them the story, didn’t mention Oliver Haar but did tell them about Suzie-Q and pointed out the house across the street.

  “You’re sure it’s Nast and Beauchamps?” Rocha asked. “That seems almost too good to be true.” She was an athletic-looking woman, with short brown hair and brown eyes. She wore a dark green cotton jacket over a light green blouse, black slacks, and low heels. The jacket proved not very subtle camouflage for her handgun.

  “I brushed past Nast, a foot away, in a nightclub last night. Looked him right in the face,” Rae said. “Bob sat a couple of tables away from Beauchamps and his friend while they were eating breakfast this morning.”

  MacIntosh asked, “You guys basically are a tracking and SWAT squad, right?” MacIntosh looked like an LA weatherman, too-white teeth, a touch of coloring in his hair, the Beverly Hills sport coat. Lake tried to dress sort of like Steve Jobs—black pants, black T-shirt, black cotton jacket.

  Lucas said, “I’m not so much SWAT. I was homicide back in Minneapolis and with the Minnesota state cops. Bob and Rae are more tactical. If there are four guys over there and they’re hard-core fighters like LuAnne says, then we’re probably going to need one of your SWAT teams to back up Bob and Rae.”

  “For sure,” Rocha said. “I’ll get that organized, but it’ll take a while. I’m thinking we’ll do it tomorrow at dawn. That gives us plenty of time to pull things together. And if they stay out late, like you say, they ought to be pretty out of it if we hit the door at six o’clock.”

  “The option would be to watch them come and go, track them individually, and take them when they get out of their cars,” Lucas said.

  “Could do that,” Rocha said. “But that’d be asking for a shoot-out in a parking lot with people around. I think I’d be happier with a SWAT team doing their thing at dawn.”

  They talked about that for a bit, but it was LA territory. Rocha said, “For now, we basically want to sit here with you, do some watching of our own.”

  Bob had noted the license plate on the BMW and Rocha ran it. “Goes to a Douglas Moyers, at that address,” she said, nodding at the house across the street. “We have nothing on him at all. Not so much as a traffic ticket.”

  “Fake name,” Rae said.

  Rocha nodded. “Yup.”

  They were watching for half an hour when the garage door went up at the target house and the Jaguar backed into the street. MacIntosh got the tag number, Rocha ran it. “Goes out to a Jacob Barber, again at that address, again not a single violation of any kind.”

  MacIntosh: “Fake. That pretty much clinches it.”

  Rocha looked up from her tablet screen and said to Lake and MacIntosh, “Let’s get it going. We need to talk to the sheriff’s office. If they’re still at home, we’ll hit them tomorrow at first light.”

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Genesis Cox was sleeping as deeply, and as naked, as a newborn baby, so accustomed was she to the stentorian snoring of her partner that even the rapid-fire wheezes, snorts, and grunts of his dream episodes failed to disturb her.

  Cox was a standard big-boobed, bottle-blond, bar menu Long Beach babe, with curly hair like Meg Ryan’s in that movie When Harry Met Sally, which was, like, her way favorite forever. Several other Ryan vehicles were in her top ten, mostly because of the star’s way-amazing hair. Even when Meg was, like, flyin
g a fuckin’ Black Hawk helicopter in some kind of fuckin’ war, or something, her hair was way fuckin’ epic.

  Cox knew the guys she was living with were criminals, but really it was more like the redistribution of wealth from Beverly Hills to Long Beach, almost like being a Democrat, so it was hard to see too much wrong with it. And nobody ever died.

  She was currently working her way through a self-help book called You Are a Badass—How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. It was wedged between the pillow and the top of her head, where she’d left it when she turned off the lamp. Cox’s life had not yet reached the awesome peak she was sure was on its way, but it was nothing less than what she deserved. She hadn’t yet made out its substance. Probably something in Hollywood, she hoped. Like fuckin’ a producer. That would be awesome, all right. Though she’d have to be careful: sometimes you thought you were fuckin’ a producer and he turned out to be a writer or something.

  Cox slept well, especially after a round of athletic sex, and was proud of her ability to take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.

  * * *

  —

  MARION BEAUCHAMPS, who Cox called Marty, even though when she snuck a look at his real driver’s license one time, which he kept in a chest of drawers, it said Marion. Beauchamps slept in a T-shirt and also workout pants, because his legs got cold when he threw the covers off, which he did every night.

  Beauchamps was a criminal, but of the relatively intelligent and thoughtful sort, who believed he could do home invasions in Beverly Hills, Hollywood Hills, Holmby Hills, Cheviot Hills, and any other hills you might have, for as long as he wished, with minimal chance of getting caught as long as nobody got hurt and it didn’t make the front page of the Times.

  His ideal target was the early-retirement Silicon Valley exec who’d gotten his monster stock payout and thought that Hollywood was way more glamorous than Nerdville because you get to hang out with movie stars and maybe get a piece of movie star ass from time to time. What was a billion dollars for anyway, if you couldn’t do that?