‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay, let’s talk about this. We can still rein this in, get everyone what they need. Listen -’ He put a hand on my shoulder, leaving a sweat stain. ‘You’ll need us to mediate this situation with your wife. We’re the only ones who have an angle in to Ridgeline. We can hurt them.’
‘You already told me. You don’t know how to contact them.’
‘But when they emerge.’ His words were adamant, compacted into hard little syllables. ‘You need us in the mix. We can undo all this. You need me. Even if you could convince the cops to jump off your trail and onto theirs, you don’t want law enforcement crashing into a hostage house. Not with operators of this caliber dug in. There’ll be nothing left of your wife but a bloodstain.’
Through the clear walls, I could see the clock in the neighboring office — 8:44 A.M.
Three hours and sixteen minutes until—
‘No cops,’ I said. ‘No force.’
A puff of disbelief parted his lips. ‘Then how?’
‘I’ll worry about that. You’d better worry about what to tell your higher-ups in Alexandria. And you’d better pick your words carefully — I’ve found Festman Gruber’s corporate culture to be a bit unforgiving.’
I left him standing on the rug, a droop in that square posture. When I reached the door, his voice came over my shoulder. It sounded less vengeful than weary, resigned to the carnage to come. ‘You are way out of your depth,’ he said. ‘You can’t begin to imagine what kind of men these are. If you take them on alone, you might as well put the bullet in your wife’s head yourself. ’
My hand resting on the door lever, I closed my eyes, reliving that grainy feed that Ridgeline had sent to my cell phone at midnight. Ariana roughed up, screaming my name soundlessly. The thin line of blood at the edge of her mouth. What else had they done to her? What else were they doing to her right now? He was right, at least in part: I was way out of my depth. Was he also right about where this would all end?
I pushed out into the hall. The North Vector operators stood waiting. As we threaded through the glass labyrinth, workers rose from various workstations and watched us leave. At the elevators I looked back, but Reimer had turned the glass walls of his office opaque, a dark knot at the core, a symbol of my own quickening dread.
Chapter 57
I parked Don’s Range Rover in a driveway at the end of a perfectly normal residential street in North Hollywood. I called 911 from my cell, told Dispatch I was ready to give myself up and seek their help for Ariana’s recovery. I couldn’t see any other choice, I said. Not with my wife held captive, due to be executed in fifty-three minutes.
Sitting, sweating, I watched the SWAT van roll up, then the black-and-whites, then Gable’s sedan.
Leading with their submachine guns, the SWAT officers came fast and hard, closing on those tinted windows from all sides. A gloved hand yanked open the driver’s door, and then MP5 barrels crammed the interior. But I wasn’t there.
I was a mile and a half away, parked on a dirt overlook, watching through a military scope that seemed like something out of science fiction, with magnification suited to a NASA telescope. Can see the whites of birds’ eyes, Kazakov had bragged.
I could even make out the address on the Post-it I’d adhered to the steering wheel. The address of the single-story clapboard two blocks up the slope from me.
I hustled back toward the boosted Dodge Neon that an anonymous friend of North Vector had helped arrange for me — Kazakov’s final favor. North Vector wouldn’t accompany me from here on out. Providing tech support to help take down a rival company was one thing. Saving my wife was another. Bullets, exposure, and liability — the risk of coming out on the wrong side of this one was too high.
But I had no choice.
I dialed my cell phone again, and my favorite paparazzo, fresh out of hiding, picked up.
‘You in position?’ I asked.
‘Yup.’ Joe Vente was wired, smacking his gum.
I’d called him last night, and in return for an after-the-fact exclusive if I lived to give it, he’d agreed to put out the word to his grapevine of colleagues. They’d get to the block just before I did and remain hidden until I arrived. I’d made clear to Joe: the timing had to be just right. I’d go to the house first, before the photographers made themselves known and before the cops arrived. I’d lay out the situation to DeWitt and Verrone, point out that the house was surrounded with recording equipment of every type and law enforcement of every stripe, then pray that would be enough of a deterrent to negotiate Ariana’s and my way out of there.
‘But,’ Joe added, ‘we’ve got a problem.’
The words knocked the breath out of me. Everything had to go like clockwork. If the Ridgeline crew caught wind of anything before I knocked on that door, they’d likely kill Ari and bolt.
Reimer’s words floated back to me: If you take them on alone, you might as well put the bullet in your wife’s head yourself.
If they hadn’t put it there already.
‘Problem?’ Fear thinned my voice. ‘What problem?’
‘Big News caught the story. I don’t know how they got onto it, but they’re sending crews. And once crews show up, my ilk ain’t gonna hold back. You know how we are.’
I was running toward the car. ‘How the hell did that happen, Joe?’
‘How’s it always happen? Someone paid someone for a tip, probably. You’re a cop killer too, now, so this thing’s bigger than the white Bronco. Patrick Davis and the Big Showdown.’
I jumped into the car, turned over the engine, and peeled out. On the passenger seat was the fat laptop of Jerry’s signal analyzer, the pulse from Ariana’s raincoat represented in oddly pretty amplitude waves. A handheld GPS unit was plugged into the side, the blinking dot laid down on the street beyond the turn I could see just ahead through the dusty windshield.
‘Hold everyone back,’ I said. ‘You told them it’s dangerous? A hostage situation?’
‘Of course, but look, the block is crawling. The natives are getting restless, inching in for a peek. It’s only a matter of time before someone’s spotted.’
I floored it, fishtailing on gravel. ‘Any sign that you’ve been seen?’
‘No, man. All the curtains are drawn. Silence.’ A beat. ‘Shit. Here we go. This thing just went live.’
‘What hap—’
I screeched around the corner in time to see a news helicopter roar up over the ridge, blowing specks of dirt across my hood. Channel 2 News. Up ahead, paparazzi had gone on the move, shuffling from front yard to front yard, high-stepping hedges, and clutching cameras. A few news vans came gunning toward the house from the opposite direction. A second chopper joined the fray above the house. Way below I could hear the faint wail of sirens, the cavalry en route.
It was all going down too fast.
I could barely hear Joe above the commotion: ‘- movement at the windows. You’d better get here.’
‘Do you see Ariana?’
‘No . . . nothing . . .’
Guys were running beside my car, snapping pictures of me. TV cameras up ahead, well back from the curb. Joe coming in and out in my ear. ‘. . . directional mike . . . hear them inside . . . freaking out . . .’
Confused reporters blended with the freelancers, swarming the car. A few houses away, I threw open the car door and shoved out, yelling, ‘Stay away from the house! There are armed men inside.’
A ripple of panic. Shouting. Questions.
Their fear only compounded mine. What if they saw the cameras, killed Ariana, and shot their way out?
I sprinted forward, breaking from the throng, the numbers dwindling as I neared the house. Even paparazzi weren’t eager to get in the line of fire. But a few had pushed out into the danger zone. A scrappy woman with hippie hair aimed a camera from behind a telephone pole. A guy in fingerless gloves crouched by the mailbox. His lens had rolled out into the driveway, but he looked too scared to go for it.
I confron
ted the house. Peeling cornflower blue paint, a broad porch, the rental sign still hammered into the front lawn. It seemed a fiction that the clapboard walls contained such menace inside. Then again, what did I expect? A dungeon with dripping pipes? This is where quiet horrors happened — every day in perfectly nice neighborhoods like this one, behind closed doors and cheery suburban facades.
To my right, Joe was bellied down in a stand of lavender, sneezing and pointing a directional mike, earpiece in, to pull sound vibrations off the front windows. I’d barely noticed him in my dash to the walk.
‘What are you picking up from inside?’ I asked.
Keeping his face to the dirt, he repeated flatly, ‘“What the fuck what the fuck oh Jesus God we’re fucked”.’
Sirens came screaming up the hill.
A shadow at the curtain ahead. And then the dark oval of a face. It stared at me. Frozen, I stared back.
‘Hang on.’ Joe cleared his throat, listening. ‘“Let’s do her and get the fuck out of here”.’
I had the sensation not of running but floating up the walk.
You can’t begin to imagine what kind of men these are. There’ll be nothing left of your wife but a bloodstain.
I banged on the door. ‘Wait!’ I shouted. ‘It’s Patrick! I have information you need!’
Silence. Locked. I banged away, kicked. ‘Wait, wait! You need to talk to me!’
The door opened, and then a giant hand shot out, grabbed my shirt, and hurled me inside. I pinwheeled across the slick tile, DeWitt’s face leering down at me. Verrone was at his side, and two other men with military builds shouldered to the front windows with short-barrel shotguns at the ready. One was red-faced, his knee jittering back and forth. He swung the barrel, sighted on my head. ‘Let’s do him and hot-ass it out of here.’
I recoiled from the dead stare of the muzzle, shouting, ‘You need to know what I’ve got!’
The sirens, almost on top of us.
A closed door led back to a bedroom. Ariana. I had to tear my eyes away. ‘Is she back there?’
No answer from the Ridgeline crew.
‘Is she okay?’ My voice shook.
Sweat beaded DeWitt’s forehead. He said, ‘What the fuck did you do? What the fuck did you do?’
I pulled a manila file from inside my jacket and threw it at him. The pages scattered across the floor. ATM slips, surveillance photos, all those banking and phone records, the payments for the murders of Mikey Peralta, Deborah B. Vance, and Keith Conner.
‘No,’ Verrone said. He took a wobbly step back. ‘How?’
‘The hard drive on your copy machine.’
Verrone shot a furious glare at one of the men by the window, who said, ‘You didn’t tell me anything about a fucking hard drive.’
I spoke quickly. ‘Those documents blaze a trail back to Festman Gruber. But they also blaze a trail forward to you.’
‘Who cares?’ Verrone said. ‘We’ve got the leverage to make Festman throw their weight around on our behalf. They’ll have to. Or they’ll go down, too. And these aren’t the types of guys to go down.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Mutually assured destruction. But guess what? I’m not part of the “mutually”.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m holding the cards. I’ve got the disc, too — those illegal decibel levels. And I know what it all means to the parties involved.’
‘How?’
Very slowly, I retrieved the digital recorder from my pocket. When I punched the red button, Bob Reimer’s voice filled the room: ‘These documents make clear that Ridgeline isn’t interested in upholding their agreements. But that cuts both ways. We are no longer obligated to offer them the customary protections.’
DeWitt said, ‘Reimer knows? Festman fucking knows already?’
The man by the window said, ‘This piece of shit brought it to them?’
The other: ‘We’ve gotta clean up and split. Now.’
Verrone paced a tight circle, grabbing at his hair, his yellow face gone gray. He pulled out a sidearm, aimed at my face, the skin fluttering at his temple. I flinched, waiting for the crack.
‘You can’t manipulate Festman into doing what you want,’ I said. ‘Your leverage is gone. I gave it away. And they know it. You’re finished. There is no move. This is checkmate.’
Bob Reimer’s recorded voice continued, ‘Ridgeline thinks they’ve built an insurance file in this, but they’ve done nothing more than arrange for their funerals.’
The Ridgeline men exchanged a round of glances, eyes darting frantically from face to face, reading the angles, weighing options and loyalty. I could hear the click in DeWitt’s throat when he swallowed. Both men at the front windows stepped back from the curtains.
‘Cops are here,’ the jittery one said. ‘They’re gonna set up a perimeter. We can still run and gun. But it’s gotta be right now.’
From behind his gun, Verrone considered. He took a step forward, placed the cool metal against my forehead, pushed until I sank to my knees. I dropped the digital recorder, but it kept playing. My back-and-forth with Reimer in that air-conditioned office seemed like a game of badminton in comparison to this.
‘You think you’re in charge?’ Verrone said. ‘You think you’re writing the script? So you made some moves. Put us in a bind. But right now it’s just us and you in a room. Why are you calling the shots?’
‘Because I’m the guy with the cameras on him.’
‘A couple reporters—’
‘No, not a couple reporters,’ I said. ‘There are news helicopters in the air. Paparazzi for blocks. SWAT all over. Everyone’s watching, documenting. You can’t get away. You can’t do anything without them watching and knowing.’
Play the hand you’re dealt.
More sirens neared, then cut off. The rush of news helicopters overhead. The curtains blocked out the mayhem, but we could hear the cries and footsteps and vehicles, the photographers yelling, someone shouting orders to reposition the cars.
I said, ‘You don’t want to add another murder to what you’re facing.’
DeWitt looming over Verrone. ‘The hell we don’t.’
The barrel shoved harder into my face. I steeled myself, fighting off terror, praying that I’d be alive for the next breath and the one after that, praying that my wife’s heart was still beating behind that closed door.
My first word came out a yell — ‘Just . . . just stop. Think. What’s the only play? Talk to the cops. Cooperate. Turn state’s evidence against Festman Gruber. Think of the pull they have. It’s your only prayer against those guys. And it starts right now. This instant.’
Reimer’s voice from the recorder: ‘Everything will be hung on you. And the fallout will land on Ridgeline.’
The men had moved in to surround me. My knees ached. My head throbbed. My heart was moving blood so fast I felt dizzy. They towered over me, blank-faced executioners. Verrone’s arm was as steady as a statue’s. His finger, curled around the trigger, was white at the creases.
I closed my eyes, alone in the dark. There was nothing in the world except the ring of steel against my forehead.
The pressure lifted.
I opened my eyes. The pistol was lowered at Verrone’s side. The men parted unevenly. DeWitt’s lips bunched around his teeth. It looked like he was biting down hard. One of the others sat down hard on the floor, and the fourth went back to the window. It was as if a spell had been broken, leaving them dazed and dumb.
I came up, wobbly, to my feet. It hit me that I hadn’t heard a sound issue from that back room — not a single shout or cry. ‘Is my wife behind that door?’
But they all just stood there, guns lowered, stunned.
I blinked back tears. ‘Is she alive?’
Verrone nodded to the man by the window, who reached out and tore the curtain from the track. Light flooded in, hitting us. A bleached-out view of camera lenses and tactical goggles and windshields and gun muzzles — the whole world, perched ou
t there, trained on the sudden spectacle. And us, staring through the glass right back at them.
Squinting into the brightness, Verrone put his hands up. DeWitt, and then the two other men, followed suit.
When DeWitt raised his arms, I noticed a streak of crimson running along the underside of his forearm. A drop snaked down, dangled from his elbow.
All at once the shouting from outside was gone, and the thrumming of the helicopters. Through the window I saw a cop at the perimeter shouting into a bullhorn, his mouth partially in view, the cords of his neck straining but no sound at all issuing forth.
I could hear nothing but my heartbeat, the muffled echo of my shouted words. ‘What did you do? What did you do to her?’
And then I was barreling for that closed door, moving in hateful slow motion. SWAT blew in — I sensed the vibration, the shrapnel spray from the splintering front door peppering the back of my neck, the wood panel flying past my head. I was feet from the closed door, yelling my wife’s name. I heard the officers behind me, felt the heat of their bodies, the air moving from their limbs, their shouts. Each strand of the carpet stood out, a sea of fibers stretching between me and my wife. My arm was out ahead of me, reaching, veins splitting the back of my tensed hand. Someone struck me low at the calf, knocking me off balance, but I righted myself, still hurtling forward, almost there. The officers hit me at once, high and low, wrapping me up and hammering me down into the floor. My head collided with someone’s heel, sending me into a spin, darkness coming on to blot out my last glimpsed image — that door, still closed to whatever bloody sight lay beyond.
Chapter 58
I step out of the headmaster’s office at Loyola High, walk across the verdant front lawn, and tip my face to the sun. It’s July, my favorite month. The gloom has finally burned off. For such an impatient town, Los Angeles likes its summers to come late.
In my hand flutters an offer to teach tenth-grade American literature. I will certainly accept, but I didn’t want to do it in the room; I wanted to draw out the sweetness of anticipation, like putting off the bottom half of an Oreo to drink more milk.
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