Stigma

by Philip Hawley Jr

  “Your escort.”

  “Escort?” Elmer glanced at Ben. “Where are we going?”

  Sammy Wilkes pulled back his jacket and showed them a nickel-plated revolver tucked into a holster under his armpit. “Wherever I tell you.”

  58

  The antibiotics had brought down Luke’s fever, but the throb in his left shoulder was pounding like an air hammer when they arrived in Mexicali at 7:00 A.M. on Friday. He had slept only six hours in the past three days and his body was deadlocked in its battle with the infection.

  Mexicali was a tourist town on the U.S.-Mexican border, and Los Angeles was less than a four-hour drive, but he was on the wrong side of the border and had no car, no passport, no weapon, and no idea what sort of protective phalanx he would encounter when he finally tracked down Caleb.

  Luke, Megan, and Frankie checked into a motel room and took turns showering under a fixture that gave up its water reluctantly. After a shave that left Luke with the beginnings of a goatee, he and Megan left the boy and walked along a boardwalk in one of the more modern, tourist sections of town. They purchased a new set of clothes and then prowled for tourists who matched their target profile: gregarious college-age American males whose brains were marinating in hormones and alcohol.

  Fifteen minutes later they were seated at a sidewalk café eating chorizo and drinking beer with a trio of male students from the University of Arizona. The thinnest of the three, a blond kid, was so busy ogling Megan that he hardly noticed Luke’s presence. The other two just seemed pleased to have met someone who wanted to pay for their breakfast.

  The students pasted sympathetic expressions on their faces and nodded as Luke spun a story about how thieves had stolen his car and belongings. The skinny one loaned Megan his cell phone, which Luke used to dial two numbers.

  He tried calling Sammy twice, and both times got a recorded message stating that the number was no longer in service. The phone’s battery died as he was dialing information for Big Bear Lake.

  By 11:00 A.M., Luke and Megan were sitting in the backseat of the students’ blue Ford Explorer with Megan’s admirer between them. The other two were in the front arguing about the way college football rankings are determined.

  Their SUV inched its way toward the front of the line at the border checkpoint. Luke would have preferred a small sedan, figuring that smaller vehicles garnered less interest among agents who were looking for stowaways and contraband.

  “Damn, that’s a shame.” The skinny one sitting between Megan and Luke shook his head. “You’re never gonna see your car again. You know that, don’t you?”

  Luke nodded as if he were acknowledging a sad truth. “I never thought our vacation would end this way.”

  The student seemed to study Luke’s profile. “It looks like those thugs worked you over pretty good.”

  Luke fingered the large knot on the side of his head. “I figure we’re lucky to be alive.”

  “You got that right, pal. You’re lucky those thieves just took your car.”

  Megan said, “They took our wallets too.”

  “Oh, man, I hope the border agents don’t ask for your ID.”

  Luke pointed over the driver’s shoulder at the third of six lanes. “Hey, this middle lane is moving faster.”

  The young driver nodded and moved over, right behind a large motor home that Luke was hoping would be picked for a search. As they were drawing closer to the front of the line of vehicles, Luke had been watching out his window. The agents were waving most of the larger vans and motor homes to an inspection area on the side of the road. When that happened, the agent’s attention was divided for a brief moment, watching to make sure the vehicle did as instructed while he processed the next vehicle. The agents had usually waved the next few cars through with only a passing glance.

  Luke looked back into the SUV’s cargo area. On top of the students’ luggage sat a lumpy green duffel bag. After watching it for several seconds, one of the lumps moved—just barely, but Luke’s eye caught it. He hoped the lump didn’t cough.

  Five minutes later they reached the front of the line. As if on cue, the agent waved the RV in front of them over to the side of the road. After looking at their car and glancing at the license plate, the agent started to wave them through, then suddenly held his hand out. He walked to the open driver’s window and asked for the driver’s ID.

  While the student was pulling out his wallet, the agent glimpsed into the driver-side footwell, then looked past Luke into the rear cargo area. “You folks have anything to declare?”

  The driver shook his head while handing his driver’s license to the agent. “Nope.”

  The agent said something about driving safely as he handed back the license and waved them through the checkpoint, but Luke was too distracted to listen.

  He was searching his mind for an innocent reason why Sammy’s number would be out of service. He couldn’t summon one.

  • • •

  Luke tightened his grip on the steering wheel until his fingers blanched. “I’m going to hunt down whoever did this.”

  His chest heaved and he slammed a fist against the dashboard.

  Megan flinched.

  They were driving west on Interstate 8 in an old Ford Bronco they’d stolen minutes after the students dropped them at a Greyhound station in El Centro, California. Luke had found the SUV on a tree-lined side street and chosen it for its heavily tinted glass and a wing window that he easily pried open with the screwdriver he’d bought a few minutes earlier at a hardware store. After switching license plates with a Toyota Camry parked behind it, he had broken open the Bronco’s steering column, located the linkage rod, and played with it until the engine finally turned over.

  “Maybe your father and Dr. Wilson decided to hide out someplace else,” she said with no conviction. “Maybe they’re okay.”

  Ten minutes earlier they had stopped at a convenience store and Luke called the lodge in Big Bear Lake. The person at the front desk explained that Drs. McKenna and Wilson had each made four-day reservations beginning yesterday, but neither had arrived. Megan’s call to Ben’s home found his wife in a panic, wondering why her husband hadn’t come home the previous night.

  Luke’s mind was afire.

  “They’re not hiding out,” he said. “Ben wouldn’t have left his family. Someone grabbed them. If Calderon got hold of them…” He didn’t finish his thought. He wouldn’t say aloud that his father and Ben might be dead.

  “What do you think happened?” Megan asked.

  “I don’t know. My father’s not exactly subtle. Maybe Caleb talked to him, picked up on something.”

  “It’s crazy. How does Caleb think he can get away with this?”

  Luke had the same question. Abducting his father and Ben was a risky move, one that would draw in the police. Everything that Caleb and his cabal had done before now—framing Luke, drawing him to Guatemala—was a carefully scripted strategy to divert attention away from their activities.

  If CHEGAN was acting out of desperation, if this had been done recklessly, he knew that his father and Ben were already dead.

  There was another possibility, though. Caleb might be using Elmer and Ben as bait—drawing Luke in, taunting him, reminding him that he was tethered like a puppet. If that was Caleb’s strategy, the implied message was also clear. Come alone.

  That Luke had no allies in this battle was a given. He couldn’t go to the police. The detectives would lock him up, at least until they had vetted his story. His father would be dead long before he could ever turn the investigation toward Caleb.

  Even Sammy had abandoned him.

  Or worse.

  • • •

  Downtown L.A. was coming into view when Luke transitioned onto the 10 Freeway at 2:47 on Friday afternoon.

  Megan broke into his reverie. “What’ve you been thinking about for the past hour?”

  In the rearview mirror, Frankie’s head was bobbing in sleep.

  �
�A guy I trusted—Sammy Wilkes. I think he set me up.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I’m not sure.” Luke described the many faces of Sammy: the cocky young soldier who, during missions, wore a countenance as dark as his skin; the man who hid his Ivy-league intellect behind an urban ghetto persona; the man who seemed to talk only about himself without ever letting you know who he was.

  Then he explained: “Wilkes showed up right after that private investigator—the one hired by Erickson—started tailing me. Sammy was probably already watching me when he spotted the P.I., then approached me with a phony story about the football player’s attorney contacting him. Sammy played me perfectly, like he was looking out for me. I fell for it.”

  “You think Wilkes is working for Calderon?”

  “Probably the other way around. Wilkes is right here in L.A. and has a good-sized operation. Caleb probably hired him to run CHEGAN’s security.”

  Megan pointed at a California Highway Patrol cruiser several car lengths in front of them.

  Luke had already seen it and slowed. The Bronco had probably already been reported stolen, and he had to hope the Camry owner whose license plates he was using didn’t notice that someone had switched plates. Even then, the switch provided only the shallowest ruse, protecting them from nothing more than a cursory check against a list of stolen plates. Any cop who took the time to run their plates would immediately discover that they didn’t match the make and model of the vehicle Luke was driving.

  “Calderon used to work for Sammy and probably still does jobs for him. Sammy’s probably using him as his hammer, and I walked right into it.”

  Luke waited for an eighteen-wheeler to pass on their right.

  “When I didn’t let go of the autopsies, it was probably Sammy’s idea to set me up for the Erickson murder. He’s clever enough to think up something like that. The bastard was two moves ahead of me. He even told me what he was doing. Just before I left the U.S., he said, ‘They’re reeling you in.’ Those were his words. He knew because he was the one doing it.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “There’re other things that point to him. The fact that he wanted me to contact Calderon, and did it himself before I told him to. He probably thought I wasn’t going to take the bait.” Luke shot a glance at Megan. “And the men who followed me to the Zenavax lab—Sammy could have had me fixed with a GPS transponder and given them my coordinates.”

  Luke thought about the satellite phone that Sammy had given him, and how easily a transponder could have been inserted into it.

  “We can’t fight these people alone,” Megan said. “There are too many of them.”

  “Not ‘we’—me. This is my war.”

  Luke stared at the traffic ahead, but he could feel Megan’s gaze.

  “These people want you dead,” she said. “If you keep giving them chances, eventually they’re going to succeed.”

  Her words clung to him like a spiderweb as he cut across two lanes and took the Western Avenue exit.

  59

  It was 3:14 P.M. when Luke pulled over and parked along a tree-lined residential street that dead-ended into the roadway running along the rear of University Children’s. Fifty yards beyond the end of the Bronco’s hood was the hospital’s loading dock.

  Luke and Megan crawled into the backseat with Frankie. The charcoal-tinted side windows would shield them from casual glances by passersby, but they were still visible through the windshield.

  “What now?” Megan asked.

  “We watch,” Luke said. “Caleb knows that we could’ve made it back to L.A. by now. His people are probably already in position, guarding the hospital.”

  She pointed at the loading dock. “You think they’re going to just walk out the back of the hospital with your father’s mosquitoes?”

  “Nobody in Security will bat an eye if a couple of lab techs acting on Caleb’s authority load a metal container onto a truck.”

  There were three trucks facing out from the concrete platform. One was a large eighteen-wheeler, a food-service truck with a logo familiar to Luke. The second was a nondescript white van without markings. The third was a medium-sized transport with loud orange and blue lettering splashed on the sides—a rental.

  “Trucks come in and out of there all day long,” she said. “How’re we going to know if we see theirs?”

  “It’s not their truck that I’m looking for.”

  “What, then?”

  “Caleb’s operatives.” He watched a heavyset man climb into the cab of the food service truck. “A driver who’s more watchful than he should be, someone whose hands are never in his pockets, someone wearing a jacket in seventy-degree weather to conceal a weapon.”

  “What if they don’t use the loading dock?” Megan asked. “There’re doors on every side of the building. You can’t cover every exit.”

  “I don’t have to. I’m not waiting until they leave.”

  If Caleb’s plan hadn’t changed, his people would enter the mosquito lab at six o’clock. Luke knew that his best chance was to destroy the mosquitoes now, before Caleb’s team descended on the laboratory. If he waited and attempted to stop them as they left the hospital, he’d face the dual challenge of a concentrated force and having to guess which of several exits they might use.

  And by then, CHEGAN would have no reason to keep his father alive. If his dad was still alive, it was only because they were holding his father to use as leverage against him.

  To save his father, he had to strike quickly and cut off the serpent’s head. He had to get to Fagan.

  Of course, all of those concerns were moot if Caleb had moved up his timetable and already snatched a colony of mosquito larvae. Luke hoped that his father’s calculations were right and CHEGAN couldn’t risk cutting short the harvesting period.

  “I just need Caleb’s sentries to show themselves. I’ll find a weakness in their defense.”

  “And what if they don’t show themselves?”

  Megan’s question pushed him in a direction he was already drifting. Time was on his enemy’s side, Luke reminded himself. He couldn’t wait for his adversaries to reveal themselves. He had to disturb the nest, draw out the wasps that were protecting their queen.

  It was a risk, but one he had to take. He reasoned that Caleb’s need for stealth limited him to using a relatively small force. Luke had to pull them out of hiding, spread them out in a protective formation around the hospital’s perimeter, where he could spot them.

  “I need a phone,” he said.

  Frankie bolted for the door. “I be back.”

  Luke grabbed the boy’s collar. “Where’re you going?”

  “I get you phone.”

  Luke considered his options, then released his hold. “Don’t get caught.”

  Five minutes later Luke was starting to regret sending Frankie when the boy flew around the corner as if being chased but then quickly slowed and waddled over to their vehicle.

  “Here,” the boy said as he climbed into the Bronco and handed Luke a scuffed cell phone. “I help lady with—”

  “I don’t need to know.” Luke studied the buttons for a moment, then said to Megan, “Let’s hope this works.”

  • • •

  The intern, Chewy Nelson, walked into Room 402 to check on a young boy recovering from a bout of asthma.

  “Hey, bud. What’s with all the presents?” he asked the toddler.

  “It’s my burfday.”

  Chewy picked up a black plastic telescope from the bed. “You know what this thing is called?” he asked.

  The boy shook his head.

  Chewy held the scope up to one eye and pointed it out the window. “A babe spotter.” He peered through the front window of Kolter’s, hoping to see that nurse from 3-West. As he was doing this, a small boy collided with a pair of women in front of the deli and then scrambled to help one of them retrieve the contents of her spilled purse.

  “That little twerp took her cell
phone,” Chewy whispered to himself. He watched the urchin cross the street, then followed the boy until he disappeared around a corner of the hospital.

  Chewy bolted out the door, ran down the hall, and charged into an empty patient room along the hospital’s rear. When he found the pint-sized kleptomaniac in his scope, the kid was turning onto a side street where he eventually got into the backseat of an SUV. There were others in the vehicle. All of them were crammed into the backseat.

  He adjusted the lens and the image came into focus.

  “Holy shit,” he said.

  • • •

  The first hospital operator whom Luke spoke with didn’t flinch when he asked her to overhead page Dr. Petri Kaczynski. He left his cell phone number and asked the woman to give it to whoever responded to the page.

  Twenty minutes later no one had called, so Luke dialed the hospital again. A different operator answered this time and explained that his page had not been put through because the man he was trying to reach had died several years ago. Luke explained that Kaczynski’s physician-son of the same name was very much alive and visiting the hospital. The operator agreed to put through the page.

  Luke worked his left shoulder while studying the area behind them through the rearview mirror. An elderly woman led by a white poodle walked out the front door of a one-story bungalow halfway up the block. He followed her with his eyes until she disappeared around a corner at the far end of the block.

  In his peripheral vision, he suddenly detected movement on the loading dock. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a man jumping from the back end of the rental truck and trotting into the hospital. Luke recognized the man’s blue hospital security uniform.

  He also recognized the man’s thickly muscled physique and partially severed left ear.

  60

  Lieutenant Groff had mobilized the Rapid Response Unit within minutes of receiving the call from University Children’s. They had arrived ten minutes earlier and set up a command unit two blocks north of the hospital. It had taken less than seven minutes for the team to take their positions.