by John Whitman
“Okay,” he said. “But I’ve got a problem. I’m on a lead that might be important. Jemaah Islamiyah is in our neck of the woods.”
Jamey was quick. “That Southeast Asia thing is tomorrow,” she said.
“It’s tomorrow. I’m sure they’re going to hit the meeting, but I don’t know how and I’m only just learning who. I need to stay on it. You should dig into it, though.”
“Any suggestions on where to start?”
“At the beginning,” Tony said.
1:29 A.M. PST The Metro, Los Angeles
It was a hot afternoon in Los Angeles. Jorge ran down the alley, over the fence into the Gonzalezes’ yard, zigzagged around the piles of rusted car parts and stolen bicycles, then through the chain-link gate and down the street to the Olivera house. He ran through the door and up to his room as Juan Olivera leaped from the couch and followed him.
“Jorge!” He heard Juan’s overweight steps on the creaking stair. Fourteen steps to the top. Seven steps to Jorge’s door (including the three little shuffling steps to square himself up). Approximately four pounds per square inch of pressure applied rapidly and repeatedly with fist.
“Jorge!” The door opened and he watched Juan, his belly rolling out over the top of his belt, barely contained by the white wife-beater shirt. “What are
you doing!”
“Sitting on my bed,” he said, which was true.
“In that gang!” Juan thundered. “I don’t want you
in that gang! I don’t care if you are Sofia’s cousin. I don’t care if you’re her brother! No gang members in my house!”
Jorge’s eyes flashed. He hated Juan’s pathetic, imperious tone, the regal pontification of a petty emperor. He despised all authority as dictatorship. He resisted the urge to snatch up a pen from his little bleach-wood desk and poke it into Juan’s stomach. But he was only fifteen and in no mood to pay for his own room and board. Besides, he was reacting to the concept because of the presentation. He could not abide a dictator. But to argue would not address the point. “Okay.”
Juan raised his finger to scold, then stopped. He
grunted and hitched up his pants. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
It was hardly a concession. Jorge had just run
home from quitting the gang—run, because one did not quit those gangs and survive. Either the gang killed you, or rival gangs learned you were weak and killed you. Jorge, though, did not think his compadres would try to put him down. He’d already shown them how to take their pathetic, bloodthirsty little crew and transform it into a viable and growing criminal empire. They would leave him alone.
But as much as he could foresee their growth, he could also foresee their limitations. The gang was another Rubik’s Cube: nearly infinite combinations, one result clearly to be seen, and no way out except to put it down.
Jorge already knew which puzzle he wanted to pick up next. He had been reading a great deal about the growing popularity of connected personal computers. The next morning, he would wake up early, throw his few possessions into a blue Adidas bag, and run away again.
Zapata leaned back into the faux leather seat of the Metro, heading away from the Staples Center. They could have walked to the hotel from the Staples Center, of course, but he was as intrigued by the Metro as he had been by Amtrak. He was mildly disappointed that he couldn’t bomb it, but after his Amtrak prank, another minor disaster would attract too much unwanted attention.
Besides, the hour was late, and a bombing now would affect so few people.
To take his mind off the various ways he could disrupt the workings of the Metro, Zapata was about to speak to Aguillar, who was nodding sleepily across the way, but a one-sided conversation at the far side of the car caught his attention.
A man sat there, a man in his forties with a cherub face and short, straight brown hair with a perfectly straight part. He was round and harmless-looking, and he was chatting with a young lady of about seventeen whom, Zapata deduced, was traveling home from her job working at one of the concession stands at Staples. He further deduced, with equal certainty, that the middle-aged cherub had also come from Staples.
“. . . I thought it wasn’t their best concert,” he was saying confidentially, as though whoever they were, they might be listening. “Did you see the one last year?”
The young lady, dark-haired and dark-eyed and uncomfortable, shrugged. “I didn’t work there then.”
“Oh, take my word for it, you would have liked it better,” he said with a wink. “More people, too. Can you believe we’re about the only two people on this train. A couple of night travelers, us.”
The young lady smiled politely. The cherub seemed to perceive her discomfort and sympathize. He didn’t change his seat, but he shifted away in his own, giving the impression of more space between them. “Sorry if I’m so chatty, I just end up riding the train a lot at night, and it’s usually all lonely.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Zapata tapped Aguillar with the toe of his shoe. “Are you listening?” he said.
Aguillar’s eyes had been drooping, but they popped open. “Hmm? To them? Sort of. Why?”
Zapata leaned close. “Watch. In a moment he will make a suggestion that they walk together. He intends to rape her.”
Aguillar pivoted his shoulders as though to stretch his back, and in doing so was able to look at the cherub. When he turned back, he looked skeptical. “Him? I doubt it.”
Zapata spoke, as he often did, in the voice of mentor, though he kept it low and quiet, as though he and Aguillar were hidden behind some blind in the forest, observing wildlife. “The technique is classic. He has already established a connection, created an ‘us’ where it did not exist. He is imposing himself on her.”
Aguillar continued to disagree. “He’s sitting back, away from her.”
Zapata shook his head reproachfully, playing the disappointed tutor. “Would you sit next to a woman at this hour and speak to her?”
Aguillar considered. “I guess not. It would make her uncomfortable.”
Zapata nodded. “A harmless man not only does not make her uncomfortable, he goes out of his way not to. That was her warning sign.”
Aguillar had long ago accepted his role as the student and had never ceased to be amazed by his instructor’s insights. “So why didn’t she—”
“She is not allowed,” Zapata interrupted. “I mean, society doesn’t allow it. It’s rude. So instead of doing the smart thing and getting away from a man who is imposing on her, she sits there to avoid being rude. This is why the society must be destroyed.”
Aguillar inclined his head skeptically toward the cherub and his prey. “This?”
“An analogy. A microcosm,” Zapata said, intercepting his doubt. “The machine is broken and needs to be dismantled.”
The Metro train squealed and then slowed to a stop. “Come on,” Zapata whispered. “We’ll get off
here.”
“Our stop is next.”
“Here,” Zapata said again.
The two men stood as the train doors slid open and
walked out. Zapata indicated that they should hang back for a minute as the young lady and the cherub exited the doors nearer to them. The cherub smiled and said good night, then laughed as he discovered, to his mild embarrassment, that he was walking up the same set of stairs.
“You still have your stun gun?” Zapata asked.
“Of course.”
The stunner was small, a black device about the size of an electric razor. It looked like a laser weapon from a science fiction movie. When Zapata pressed the trigger, an electric current crackled between the two prongs at its end. Zapata held him back for a moment, then nodded, and the two men walked up the same set of stairs the other two had taken. The stairs went up a flight to a landing, then turned and continued to the street above. The cherub had stopped the girl on the landing, and though he had not touched her yet, he was now clearly standing
between her and her exit.
“. . . had a connection,” he was saying, “and I could tell you felt it, too.”
The girl folded her arms across her chest. “I really have to get home.”
“I can just walk you. I bet it’s on my way.” The man smiled.
“I’m sure it’s not.” Zapata spoke firmly. He was not a large man, nor very muscular, but he had force of will, and the shaved head helped him to look tough.
The man turned, his pudgy face caught halfway between expressions of predation and fear. “’Scuse me?”
“No.” Zapata shot him with the stun gun.
The cherub squealed and his knees gave out. Zapata looked at the young woman, who seemed suddenly far more afraid of Zapata than of the brown-haired man. “You’re afraid of the wrong thing,” he said. “Get out of here. Next time, listen to that voice telling you something is wrong.”
The young lady nodded wordlessly, inched her way past Zapata and Aguillar, then hurried up the stairs.
The cherub climbed back to his knees. “What the fu—?”
Zapata shocked him again. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I interrupt?” To Aguillar, he ordered, “Grab his arms. Cover his mouth.” When Aguillar had secured the man, Zapata pressed the stun gun to the inside of the man’s thigh and pressed the trigger, holding it there. The cherub screamed, the sound partially muffled by Aguillar. They held him down as he bucked under the shocks. Zapata shocked him three more times on the genitals, the neck, and the stomach. The chubby man whimpered.
“That’s for the ones you’ve already hurt,” Zapata said. “If you hurt more, I’ll find you.” He stood and walked up the stairs without looking back.
Francis Aguillar released the man, who remained curled on the landing in a fetal position. Aguillar looked from the cherub to Zapata as his employer walked away, confident that he had done right. Aguillar could not be so confident.
He rested his foot gently on the man’s hand. “Were you going to rape her?”
The man sobbed. “No.”
Aguillar pressed his foot down.
“Yes, okay, yes!” the cherub squealed. “Yes!”
Aguillar caught up to Zapata where the stairs fed out onto Flower Avenue. He was almost positive that his employer had already put the sexual predator out of his mind. He had been like this for all the time Aguillar had worked for him. He observed people and claimed to know them almost instantaneously. Zapata paid as well as any other criminal activity that he might have chosen, but it wasn’t the money that influenced Aguillar. Aguillar had simply never met anyone as smart as that man before. Not graced with great intellect himself, Francis still possessed enough in himself to appreciate it in others. He knew almost nothing about Zapata except that he was brilliant, an anarchist, and incredibly wealthy. Aguillar believed he’d made his money in another life, working in computers. Now he devoted his life to anarchy.
Aguillar caught up with him. They walked together in silence until Francis said, “You’re always right.” Zapata nodded and said objectively, “Yes, I’m always right.”
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2 A.M. AND 3 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
2:00 A.M. PST UCLA Medical Center
Chris Henderson followed Dr. Czikowlis into Ryan Chappelle’s hospital room.
“I don’t understand how you can’t know anything,” he was saying.
“Me neither,” the doctor replied frankly. “He’s stabilized, but he’s still in a coma. At first I suspected some kind of barbiturate overdose or poisoning.”
“Poisoning?” Henderson said, surprised. “Chappelle doesn’t do drugs. But poisoning? Did you test for it?”
She nodded, picking up his chart and reading it for the fourth time. “His blood work came back negative. Nothing in his system.”
Henderson stared at Chappelle, inert on the hospital bed, air tubes running up into his nostrils. Cruel as it seemed to think it, Henderson had to admit that Chappelle looked better in a coma than he did in real life. There was an aura of peace around him that was the opposite of his effect on people when conscious.
“Please keep at it,” he said firmly. “In the meantime, I don’t want to alarm you too much, but there is a fugitive on the loose. I’m going to station a uniformed security guard on this door.”
“A fugi— security guard? Here? Are you saying this fugitive might come get my patient?”
Henderson held up a hand to calm her. “It’s not very likely. But the fugitive made a call and asked about Chappelle. I can’t imagine he’d get anything out of coming here, but better safe than sorry. The armed guard starts immediately.”
2:07 A.M. PST West Los Angeles
Jack and Teri had once argued at La Strada, a nice Italian place on the north side of San Vicente Boulevard in West Los Angeles. The argument had been over nothing, or everything, depending on how you looked at it: Jack’s work schedule, Teri’s feeling that she was competing against the needs of a country at risk. He couldn’t remember how it had started—it
103
might have just been the continuation of a previous argument that had never been settled—but he did remember her saying, “Whatever you’re doing at work, it can’t be more important than our marriage.”
And he remembered himself saying, “Yes, it is.”
That hadn’t gone over well.
Now, just after two A.M. this Saturday morning, he was returning to the scene of that crime. San Vicente was deserted, and La Strada, which took up half the street level of an office high-rise, was pitch black. Even the neon sign in cursive writing had been turned off. The entrance to the restaurant was an apse carved out of the corner of the high-rise, with several large potted trees and a stone bench with carved lions for legs.
Jack parked the Maxima a half block away, on a side street perpendicular to San Vicente with a clear view of the corner. He waited there for a while, holding up a hand to keep Ramirez quiet. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular—there were too many places to hide—but he wanted a general sense of the area. A car drove by once, at fairly high speed, but there was no other activity. Jack got out of the car and motioned Ramirez to follow. He walked up to the corner, again keeping close to the walls and away from the streetlights. Trees lined the parkway between the sidewalk and the curb, so it was easy to stay relatively hidden until he reached the corner. He stopped short under the shadow of a blossoming pear tree. La Strada was right across the street.
“What are we waiting for?” Ramirez whispered.
Jack ignored him and studied the restaurant’s facade, wondering where Teri had hidden his package. He needed to move quickly to get the package, without fumbling around the storefront, so he wanted to guess correctly. She had three obvious choices for the stash: each of two potted trees, and the space under the stone bench, between the two lions. One tree stood thick with glossy leaves, though he didn’t recognize the tree itself. The other, though the same species, was frail, with fewer leaves and several branches no more than sticks. The lions stood there impassively, their jaws opened to roar.
Jack thought he knew where to look.
He walked quickly across the street, feeling immediately naked and exposed on the bare asphalt with streetlights and traffic lights laying bare his every move. He half expected to hear screeching tires or gunshots, but all he heard was the faint echo of his sneakered feet on the ground. He reached the far side and hurried into the apse, straight for the withered tree.
It was there, nearly invisible in the dark: a navy blue zipped pouch. Jack opened it and pulled out a thick wad of bubble wrap, then tore at the bubble wrap until its contents were visible: a spare SigSauer, three full high-capacity magazines, and a box of ammunition, along with new identification for Jack. The minute he slammed a magazine into place and racked the slide, he felt better.
His stomach dropped away a second later when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
2:20 A.M. PST Los Angeles
Dan Pascal squeezed his girth into his government-issue Crown Victoria with the unhappy growl he reserved for this daily and inconvenient event. Once upon a time they’d issued him a Bronco, which was paradise for the big man, but Homeland Security had commandeered all those, so now he was back to packing his frame into the Vic.
To make matters worse, his cell phone was ringing. With an additional grunt, he shifted and stuffed a hand into his pocket, pulling out the phone with some difficulty.
“Pascal,” he announced.
“Marshal, Sergeant Mike Santomiere, LAPD.”
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“Not sure this is much, but we don’t have a lot. Thought you’d want to know that someone just reported a car stolen. Parked on DeLeone Avenue. It’s a pretty long sprint from the Fed Facility, but it’s doable.”
Pascal took down the make, model, and license plate number.
2:21 A.M. PST West Los Angeles
Jack whirled and swept away the hand that held him, trapped it, and clamped his hand across his attacker’s throat. Only then did he recognize Teri Bauer’s face.
Her eyes were now bulging and her face had contorted into a mask of sudden terror.
Jack released her immediately and pulled her into the shadows of the apse. “Jesus!” he hissed.
“Jesus yourself!” she shot back. “Your face, I didn’t recognize you for a minute.” She was shaking. His expression had shocked her far more than his physical movements. His blue eyes had gleamed ferociously, and his lip had curled into a snarl. She had known for years that her husband was capable of killing people; that he had, indeed, killed people when necessary. But not until that moment did her thoughts reshape themselves into something more definitive. My husband is a killer.
“What are you still doing here?” he asked, immediately sorry that his tone was so accusatory.
“I waited to see if I could help,” she replied. “I was just about to go.”