Left was uphill. Right was downhill. I turned right. Two miles later I saw a sign telling me I was on Route 2, the Angeles Crest Highway. Half a mile later another sign told me I was sixty-eight miles from L.A. It was almost ten-thirty. Shit, getting to the Hollywood Sign by midnight was going to be tough. I barely had time to make it. I pushed the speedometer past eighty and prayed for no cops.
I heard the first siren as I transitioned from the 210 to the 5. The blue and red flashing lights reflected in my rear-view mirror. If I stopped for the ticket I’d have to explain the blown out window, the bullet hole in my arm, the recently fired gun in my pocket and the millions of dollars of bloodstained money in the trunk. I’d be thrown in jail and Hillary would be thrown to the wolves. So I did the only thing I could, I floored it.
A second Highway Patrol car joined the pursuit a couple miles later. Then a third. I realized I was about to become L.A.’s latest high-speed chase, televised live to the Southland’s salivating millions. Soon the TV helicopters would be overhead and the parade would follow me all the way to the Hollywood Sign.
I had to do something. I dug the cell phone out of my pocket, dialed quickly and hit SEND.
BRRRING.
Please be there, I prayed.
BRRRING.
I know it’s late, but the shit’s flying and a good cop would still be at her desk.
BRRRING. “Captain Rocket.”
“Mary, thank God, it’s Gideon.”
“I’m not talking to you.”
“You’ve got to talk to me.”
“I’ve been trying to talk to you. All day. I must’ve called ten times but kept getting your goddamn machine.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what … Is that a siren I’m hearing?”
“Three, actually. I’m the subject of a high-speed chase, but if I stop Hillary will die.”
“Is she with you?”
“No. The Gravesnatcher’s got her.”
“How’d Jason Tucker get her?”
“Not Jason Tucker. Roy Cooper. Jason Tucker is dead.”
“Who the fuck is Roy Cooper?”
“Look, I’ll be happy to explain as I drive, but can you make a call to the Highway Patrol and tell them to call off the chase?”
“I can’t do that.”
“You’ve got to do that. If I pull up to Roy Cooper with a police escort he’ll kill Hillary. Her kid is going to cure cancer. We’ve got to save her.”
“Want to run that one by me again?”
“Forget about the curing cancer part. I’ve been shot and I’m not really thinking clearly.”
“Shot? Who shot you, Jason Tucker?”
“No. Piccolo. But—”
“Piccolo? Is he with you now?”
“No, he’s dead, too.”
“What?”
“And a guy named Rhino that Piccolo called Bluto is dead, too.”
“Gideon, are you all right?”
“No! Mary, please, I’ll tell you everything, but call the Highway Patrol!”
“I hope I don’t regret this. Andrea,” she called. “Get me the Highway Patrol Tactical Ops line. Now, Gideon, start at the beginning.”
“Would that be when my Mom and Dad were murdered or when I realized the Gravesnatcher was too tall?”
“How would your Mom and Dad’s murder have anything to do with any of this?”
“That depends. Do you believe in Fate ...?”
Hurray For Hollywood
“Stars above and below us. Where do you think there are more? The sky or Hollywood below?
Roy and Hillary were at the base of the Hollywood Sign. They were above the city lights and had a spectacular view of a star-studded sky. There was only a sliver of a moon, but it cast ample light on this crystal clear night.
“I know, I know, there are billions and billions of stars in the sky, far more than Hollywood’s churned out. And both kinds have a lot in common. They’re fun to watch. They’re hot. They’ll eventually burn out. Hey, that’s almost profound. What do you think?”
He didn’t expect an answer. After all, the blonde was unconscious. Had been since he’d almost choked her to death.
He had to admit he’d gotten a little carried away. There was an unexpected thrill from having his hands around a woman’s throat, especially when she passed out and he knew that he had her life literally in his hands. He’d continued choking her until she’d started to turn blue. Then he’d released enough pressure for her to breathe. He watched as her color came back, and then choked her again. Amazing. Blue, pink. Blue, pink.
Finally he began to worry he might be doing permanent damage and stopped. He didn’t feel any pity, though. She deserved it. She’d broken her word. Tried to escape. Tried tokill him, for Christ’s sake.
But he figured he better get to the Hollywood Sign before she tried any more mischief. Once again he pretended to walk a “drunk” Hillary to the car and put her in the front seat with him, her head on his shoulder. In case she woke, he re-soaked the handkerchief in chloroform.
She did, once, as they were driving up Mount Lee on the way to the parking area above the Sign. He pressed her face into the handkerchief and seconds later she was back in dreamland.
As Roy stood on the dirt trail in front of the Hollywood Sign he remembered the first time he’d come here. He’d just moved to town and was so excited. He was taking what he was sure were his first steps to fame and fortune. Standing at the foot of the sign, he said a little prayer. Please, God, make all my dreams come true.
Over the years the sign became a touchstone for him. He came to celebrate when he got his first guest shot, when he was cast in Ramrod and Jailbait.
He also came to mourn. When Ramrod wasn’t picked up. When Tiffany was killed.
The years had turned his excitement to cynicism. The view that had once exhilarated him now mocked him. The dream had become a nightmare. His prayer had remained unanswered.
Soon he’d have a new view. Hong Kong, Sidney, London, Paris.
A new beginning.
Roy heard the sound of an approaching car, the engine straining to come up the final steep grade on top of Mount Lee. Roy looked at his watch: 11:58. Kincaid was right on time.
The Beginning
Of The End
Mary Rocket had driven a hard bargain. In exchange for pulling the Highway Patrol off my ass, I had to tell her where I was meeting Roy Cooper. I told her he’d kill Hillary if the cops showed up, and she understood that. So she promised not to have the police helicopters arrive until twelve-fifteen. By then, either the Gravesnatcher or I would be dead.
“So, where are you meeting him?”
“The Hollywood Bowl,” I said. “Center stage at midnight.” Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Dummy. Why lie to her? You might need the help by twelve-fifteen. True. But I might still be talking to Roy Cooper and the sight of the choppers could be all he needed to freak out and kill Hillary.
“The Hollywood Bowl,” she repeated, skeptically. “Gideon, we’ve danced that dance before.”
“Exactly why you should know I’m telling you the truth. Only an imbecile would lie to you twice.” Guilty, as charged.
“All right. We’ll be there at twelve-fifteen. And Gideon, good luck.”
“Thanks.” Even if I survived Roy Cooper I was going to have an irate LAPD Captain to deal with. I couldn’t worry about that right now. Right now the task at hand was to rescue Hillary.
The Hollywood sign stretches 450 feet across the side of Mount Lee. The letters are made of corrugated steel and are fifty feet tall. Originally built in 1923, the sign used to read: HOLLYWOODLAND. It was a promotional gimmick for a housing development. But the sign fell into disrepair until the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce came to the rescue and had it rebuilt in 1978.
The sign is not easy to get to. You have to take Beachwood Canyon to Ledgewood and then snake around the winding streets to Deronda. More twisting and turning until Deronda dead ends at a g
ate. The gate is chained and locked by the Griffith Park Rangers. Nothing a pair of good bolt cutters couldn’t handle. That’s apparently what Roy Cooper had used, because when I got there the gate was wide open.
I followed the cracked, pothole-ridden asphalt road through a series of switchbacks until I got to the top of Mount Lee. The city has an array of communications equipment on the peak, and the view from there is a breathtaking, unobstructed view of both the city and the valley.
I’d only been here once before, when I was in Homicide. A gay couple who’d discovered they had AIDS had made a suicide pact, hanging themselves from the letter Y and W. The Chamber of Commerce did a remarkable job of keeping it out of the papers.
I pulled into the parking area on top of Mount Lee and parked next to an SL550. Roy Cooper’s, I presumed.
Taking the plastic bag out of the trunk, I carried it along the cyclone fence to the path leading the hundred or so feet down to the Hollywood sign. “Hello,” I called.
“Right on time,” Roy Cooper’s disembodied voice called back from the sign. “Come on down.”
There wasn’t much light and the path down was steep. I took a few careful steps, then slipped on some loose gravel and started to slide. For a panicked second I was afraid I was going to slip right off the mountain, but I managed to grab onto the letter H and come to a stop. I turned to find Roy Cooper standing in the middle of the path in front of the sign.
He held two guns, a Colt .9mm pointed at me and a Sig Sauer .38 pointed at Hillary. She was next to him, eyes closed, curled up at the base of the letter W. She looked asleep, or dead. I was enraged to see her looking so vulnerable. “If she’s hurt I’ll kill you.”
“You do realize how pitiful that sounds under the circumstances.”
“Is she all right?”
“A little groggy, a little worse for the wear, but she’ll be all right—unless I have to shoot her.” His eyes went to the plastic bag. “Is that my money?”
“Yeah. All of it.”
“Good.” He noticed my bloodstained jacket. “What happened to your shoulder?”
“I ran into a little trouble getting here. Nothing I couldn’t handle.” I know, that sounds like a lame line from a Bruce Willis action movie, but it’s the kind of things tough guys say in life and death situations. “So, are you going to keep your word? The money for Hillary?”
“Absolutely. I’ve had all the fun I want with her. But not with you.” He cocked the. 9mm. “Throw me your gun.”
“I didn’t bring one.”
He pressed the barrel of the Sig into Hillary’s forehead.
With the pressure of the muzzle, her eyes blinked open, and she looked around, disoriented. “One more lie and I blow her brains out. Now throw me your gun.”
I knew he was serious. I dug the Baretta out of my jacket pocket and tossed it to his feet.
“Now the other gun. And don’t even try lying. You wouldn’t have come here without a second gun.”
I sighed. So much for surprises. I lifted my pants leg, unholstered the .38 I had hidden there, and tossed it next to the Baretta.
Hillary was starting to regain her senses. Seeing me, she visibly brightened. “Gideon ...” As she took in the situation her expression clouded. “Oh, God ...”
“Good,” Roy said. “You’re back from the dead. I wanted you to see this.” He turned back to me. “Now kneel down.”
This was not good. I saw his expression: stone-cold-killer-eyes. He was going to execute me. Just like I’d been planning to execute him. What would Hillary call it, karma?
He cocked the gun and pressed it into Hillary’s forehead. “I said, kneel!”
“Gideon, no,” she whimpered.
I knelt.
Roy yanked the Sig away from Hillary’s head and in five long strides was standing in front of me. He placed both guns against my forehead.
“You know who got the role opposite Lisa in Heaven Sent? Jack Stone. You know who became a star instead of me? Jack Stone. Every time Jack Stone stars in another movie, I think of you. Every time the gossip columns talk about Jack Stone’s latest girlfriend, I think of you. You humiliated me in front of Lisa. In front of all those other actors. No wonder she didn’t cast me in the movie. I should have starred in Heaven Sent, not Jack Stone. I should be a big star. I should be in the gossip columns. But I’m not, because of you.”
Behind Roy, unseen by Roy, Hillary had pulled herself up on her hands and knees. During his tirade she had inched slowly toward my discarded guns. But she was still too far away; I had to keep Roy talking.
“I had nothing to do with Lisa’s torpedoing you,” I said. “She was getting even with you for college. For the way you dumped her.”
“I didn’t dump her. You have to be going out to get dumped. Be in a relationship. We only went out once.”
“You seduced her, Roy. Popped her cherry. Broke her heart.”
“Hey, it was just a fling, a one night stand.”
Hillary’s fingers were only inches from the Baretta. I said, “Isn’t it amazing how two people can share the same event? For one, it’s momentous, for the other, inconsequential.”
“It’s not my fault she got obsessed.”
“Maybe not, but it cost you Heaven Sent, and that may have been the final straw on this descent into hell of yours. Think of it, your pathetic career may have its roots in that one selfish act of seduction.” Christ, now I was even dealing him into my Celestial conspiracy theory.
“Kind of a strange time to get philosophical, isn’t it, Kincaid?”
Tell me about it. Must be the stress or blood loss. Maybe both. But it had bought Hillary enough time. She wrapped her fingers around the Baretta’s pistol grip. Just one final bit of distraction ...
“Don’t you believe that some Master Plan’s at work? That everything’s predestined? That we are at the mercy of Fate?”
Hillary lifted the gun, swung the barrel toward Roy. Having caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, he wheeled and kicked the gun out of Hillary’s hand. It flew over the ledge and into the night. Next he picked up Hillary by the blouse and hurled her into the letter W. Her head smacked into the corrugated steel and she crumpled to the ground like a rag doll.
I went for the second gun. Just as my hand made contact, Roy kicked it away. I looked up into his craggy face, the demented green eyes. Putting both gun barrels against my forehead, he said, “Say goodbye, asswipe.” I closed my eyes.
BANG. BANG.
I felt nothing. No searing pain. No heavenly choir. That’s weird, I thought. I opened my eyes.
Roy had this funny expression on his face, and two holes in his chest. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed, dead.
Someone had shot him, someone behind me. I turned around to find his killer standing there, holding a smoking gun.
Stacy!
The Middle Of The End
“You’re alive?”
“You always were perceptive, Gideon. That’s what made you such a good cop.” Stacy kept the pistol pointed at me as she picked up Roy’s two guns and tossed them over the ledge.
“But I saw you blown up in the car.”
“No, you heard me blown up. I sent you back to get my purse, remember?” She grabbed hold of the plastic bag full of money and pulled it towards her, possessively.
“Then who ...?”
“A five foot nine homeless woman who haunted the 101 exit ramp at Van Nuys with a sign that said: Won’t You Help a Starving Christian?”
“Both you and Piccolo were working with Roy?”
“Just me.”
“That’s impossible. I found a tape in Roy’s apartment. Piccolo called him.”
“Piccolo called me. At home. Left the message on my machine. I brought the tape to Roy’s. We planted it in the bathroom, knowing the cops would eventually find it. Roy also called Piccolo from the Zoo parking lot and left a message on Piccolo’s home answering machine, just in case we needed more evidence
to frame him.”
“Piccolo was just a patsy …”
“That’s right. We knew you or the cops would eventually realize Roy, not Tucker, was the Gravesnatcher. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out Roy had to be working with someone, so we needed a fall guy.”
Son of a bitch. I’d thought Piccolo was in on it. I assumed he admitted it at the cabin. But as I thought back I realized that all he’d said was, ‘I’ve caught the Gravesnatcher and his two cohorts.’ I just assumed he was going to frame and kill us. When I told him it’d never work, that I had proof, I never got to explain, because that’s when the shit had hit the fan.
That’s when the pieces starting coming together, the little inconsistencies that had been bothering me.
Why had half the money been missing from Roy Cooper’s apartment? Stacy had the other half.
How had Roy Cooper, an actor without any military training, fashioned the dog collar bomb and the car bomb?
He hadn’t. Stacy, with three years in Army demolitions, had done the job.
How had Roy Cooper known Jason Tucker’s IQ?
Stacy had pulled his file and Roy Cooper had read it.
How had Roy Cooper known to cut the back out of the backpack and avoid the letter bomb?
Stacy had warned him.
Why had Stacy left her purse by the bench?
To lure me away from the car so they could blow up the double.
Just then Hillary moaned. Groggy, she sat up and looked around. Her eyes saucered open when she saw Stacy standing over Roy Cooper’s dead body. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
I was so relieved to see Hillary conscious that I started to crawl toward her. Stacy shoved the gun in my face. “Don’t move,” she scolded.
Hillary frowned. “I have this horrible feeling you’re not here to rescue us.”
“No,” I said. “She came to kill her partner. Why scrape by on three million when you can have all six, eh, Stace?”
“How about a little gratitude? He was about to aerate your skull. I saved your life.”
“It wasn’t exactly a humanitarian gesture, now, was it? You weren’t saving my life; you were only delaying my execution. You wanted to make sure I knew you’d made a fool of me first. You wanted to make sure I knew you were Roy’s partner.”
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