by Zoe Sharp
‘Go on, get outta here,’ he said, jerking his head. ‘We’ll slow him down for ya.’
‘Thank you!’ I sobbed, and fled.
I reached the far side of the roadworks without looking back. The traffic moving in the opposite direction was travelling more freely, faster. I couldn’t afford to stop, just launched into it and hoped for the best. I just about dodged through one lane unscathed, until a car door mirror clipped my hip and sent me tumbling.
Unable to tell if rolling sideways would save or kill me, I hunched into a defensive ball, arms wrapped around my head, heard monstrous tyre squeal approaching.
Then nothing.
I opened my eyes, looked up and found the fly-splattered grille of a Honda Civic staring down at me. The car had slewed sideways a little, although not enough to block traffic, which edged round us on both sides. I caught shocked faces through the glass as they drove by. Something to tell their families about when they got home, but God forbid they should think about stopping.
A car door slammed and a young woman’s head appeared over the corner of the bonnet, staring down at me. She had dark hair done in braids along her head, pale skin and a thin, sinewy build. Unusually for someone dressed in workout gear, she looked like she might actually just have come from the gym.
‘Holy crap! I thought I’d killed you. Are you all right?’
‘Please,’ I said, squinting up at her, ‘help me!’
She glanced across to where four or five of the construction workers now surrounded Sean, brandishing a variety of tools. He crouched, dirty and dangerous at the centre. I hoped none of the men were foolish enough to actually take a swing at him. If he’d been in a suit like Parker, I realised, I would likely have been the one they’d run to earth.
‘Can you walk?’ the woman said. She reached down to grab my arm and I lurched to my feet, wincing. ‘Get in!’
She scrambled back behind the wheel and, as soon as I had the door shut behind me, she set off, smoking the tyres as she cut sharply across onto a service road and roared through a parking lot before hitting the main road again.
‘First cop car we see, I’ll pull him over!’ the woman said, a clenched excitement in her face as she checked the rear-view mirror for signs of pursuit. She would, I sensed, be dining out on this story for months. ‘You want my cellphone, call nine-one-one?’
I realised I still had Parker’s phone in a death grip in my right hand and shook my head.
I dialled the emergency number. When they answered, I said, ‘I need to speak to Detective Gardner, LAPD Homicide. It’s urgent.’
Alongside me, the woman’s eyes widened. She jammed her right foot down a little harder, reasoning, no doubt, that this was one day she was not going to get booked for speeding.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Detective Gardner picked me up forty minutes later on a quiet street in West Hollywood. My good Samaritan, whose name was Bridget, insisted on waiting with me in her car, swivelling constantly in her seat to check for black Suburbans. Her manner was guaranteed to draw their attention had they happened to cruise past, but they did not. It felt somewhat ironic, having my own bodyguard of sorts.
Bridget was the survivor of an abusive marriage, she told me. She’d been her husband’s Friday-night punchbag for seven years before seeing the light, and she advised me to do the same. She’d taken a couple of classes in judo, and was ready for the bastard, yes ma’am, if he ever tried breaking the restraining order – or her wrist – again. Plus she now spent five nights a week at the gym, soon as she got off work. Which, she said, curling her skinny bicep, was where she’d been headed when I had almost dived under her wheels.
I nodded and said it was obviously working for her, which was greeted with a beaming smile. All the time, I was trying desperately to work out what the hell I would say to Sean, the next time we met.
The street was lined with pavement cafés and bookstores. The last place I expected Sean or Parker to come looking. After my initial call to Gardner, I’d switched off the cellphone to avoid a trace, considered dumping it altogether, but rejected that idea. I was still hopeful things hadn’t gone past the point where I might actually be able to return it to Parker, with employment and friendship in some way intact. I knew Epps probably had the equipment to pinpoint the phone’s location, regardless of activity, but I hoped fervently that my boss would not want to involve him.
Across the street, a dull-green Buick swung into an empty parking space and Gardner got out, looking alert and together. She was in another linen jacket over a dazzling white T-shirt and you didn’t need to see a badge to read her as a cop.
‘That’s my ride,’ I said to Bridget.
Bridget rolled down the Honda’s window and gave her idea of a covert wave. Gardner headed over, put her arm on the roof and leant in. The action made her jacket gape. Bridget saw the gun, as I’m sure she was supposed to, and her eyes went suddenly big and round.
‘Charlie,’ Gardner greeted me, without expression. ‘You look like shit.’
‘Thanks,’ I murmured.
‘She was being kidnapped!’ Bridget said. ‘She had to practically throw herself under my car to get away.’
‘That a fact?’ Gardner’s gaze stalked over me, slow and measured. ‘We need to talk.’
I climbed out of the passenger seat, aware I’d started to stiffen alarmingly. Still, it was not as painful as the last time I’d been hit by a car. I paused by the driver’s door, smiled down at Bridget.
‘Thank you,’ I said, meaning it. ‘Truly. You were fantastic. I wouldn’t be here without you.’
She beamed again, flustered by the praise. ‘Well, if there’s ever anything I can do…’
‘There is just one thing,’ I said, saw her expectant eyes. This whole episode was the biggest thrill she’d had in years. ‘If your ex ever comes back, please, don’t try to take him on. Run like hell and call the cops.’ Ignoring her open mouth, I added, ‘A couple of judo lessons is only enough knowledge to get you seriously hurt. Trust me.’
Gardner nodded to her. ‘Drive safe now,’ she said. Crossing the road towards the Buick, she asked, ‘What was that all about?’
I turned, gave a last wave as Bridget pulled away still frowning. ‘One good turn deserving another.’
Ten minutes later, Gardner and I sat in a booth at the back of a small Italian restaurant a couple of blocks from where she’d parked. I’d tried to persuade her that time was a factor here, that Epps’s men were massing for attack on Fourth Day, and something had to be done, but she faced me down with a bland implacability.
‘You wanna go? Knock yourself out,’ she said easily, knowing I had no money, no credit cards, and was probably already listed as a fugitive.
She gave that one a good ten or fifteen seconds to fully sink in, then said, ‘You hungry? I’m starved. I know this great place just down the street. C’mon, let’s go eat while we talk. I’m buying.’
I had little choice but to follow.
Once we were seated, she ignored the drinks menu to order a glass of half white Zinfandel and half cranberry juice with a slice of lime and no ice. If the way the waiter took this in his stride was anything to go by, she was a regular here.
‘How’s this for weird?’ she said then. ‘If you hadn’t come looking for me, I woulda come looking for you.’
‘Oh?’
‘Nu didn’t make it.’
‘Oh,’ I said again. ‘Shit.’
‘Yeah,’ she murmured. ‘That about sums it up. Blood clot, the doctors reckoned. He never regained consciousness.’
I sat for a moment, elbows resting on the tabletop, trying to work out how guilty I felt. I remembered the way Nu had strolled into the camp and calmly taken aim at a sleeping woman. Not very guilty, I realised.
On the way into the restaurant I’d noted out of habit there were three exits, including the one at the front, one leading to the kitchens, and another marked ‘restrooms’ with a propped-open door through which I c
ould see a service alleyway at the back. I’d already logged it as my best emergency escape route, but I’d been hoping to eat before that became necessary.
The waiter brought our drinks and I sipped from my bottle of San Pellegrino. ‘Are you intending to hold me on this?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have been thrilled if you’d made that flight,’ she said, lifting her own glass and eyeing me over the rim, ‘although I think jumping from a moving vehicle to avoid it is a little drastic. Probably constitutes some kinda traffic violation, too.’
‘Jaywalking, you mean?’
While we’d walked to the restaurant, I’d given her a brief rundown on events since our last meeting. Gardner had absorbed the news largely in silence until we’d sat down and had been through the ritual of ordering. Then she picked up the thread again, as if she’d never stopped mentally teasing at it.
‘So, why didn’t you come clean with us? Might have saved you a lot of grief in the long run.’
‘I’ve been trying to work that one out since you and Sean left. The only reason I can come up with is…it just didn’t feel right.’
‘Hmm. Neither does a cult stockpiling weapons.’
‘What makes you so sure Fourth Day is actually a cult?’ I asked wearily. ‘I mean, it might have been, once, but now?’ I shrugged. ‘Do they steal people away from their families? Do they trick money out of the gullible? Do they actively recruit followers to their twisted version of a “faith”, whatever that might be?’
Gardner considered that for a while, then frowned. ‘Thomas Witney’s beef with them was the first official complaint since Bane took over,’ she admitted. ‘But you did see those guns – and that circled newspaper story, and the list of dead ex-members.’
‘The thing that bothers me is the way I saw it all. Nu practically took that M4 out and waved it under my nose. He couldn’t have been more obvious. As for everything else, well, leaving it all so carelessly on display in a children’s classroom was just foolish, and Bane is no fool.’
‘Ah,’ she said, shrewd. ‘So, is this you not wanting to believe the worst of Fourth Day…or Bane?’
I suppressed a sigh. ‘Come on, Gardner, doesn’t it stink of a set-up to you?’
Absently, she wiped the condensation off the sides of her glass, her face distant with concentration.
‘Yeah,’ she said at last. ‘It smacks of overkill. If it had been presented to me as a crime scene, I woulda suspected it had been staged.’
‘Exactly. Someone’s been trying to ram Randall Bane down my throat as the villain of the piece from the start and, quite frankly, it’s starting to make me gag.’
That provoked a twitch at the corner of her mouth that was quickly controlled.
‘And you think that “someone” is this guy Sagar?’ she asked. ‘Why did he want Witney dead? If what you say is right, all that did was ruin Epps’s case, make him back off, which would seem to be the last thing Sagar wanted.’
‘I don’t know,’ I murmured. ‘Sagar’s been trying to convince Epps that Fourth Day is al-Qaeda by another name, but if Epps had actually got to question Witney, what would he have found out? That Witney occasionally helped fugitives across the border? Illegal, yes, but hardly enough to interest Homeland Security. The way this was set up, it looked like Bane had a lot at stake. A lot to hide. Worth killing for.’
Gardner’s face was quiet for a while, then she said. ‘But all that did was make Epps pull out.’
‘Maybe Sagar misjudged him,’ I said. ‘Epps is a cold-blooded bastard and I don’t think he responded the way Sagar hoped he would.’
‘And you think that’s when Sagar hired in local muscle to go for you.’ She flicked her eyes in my direction. ‘No offence, but if losing two of his own guys didn’t blow Epps’s skirt up, that wasn’t gonna do it for him, either.’
‘Killing me would have been one thing, quickly over and done, but they meant to grab me and make Parker sweat. He wouldn’t have let it rest. He takes losing people very personally. He would have razed Fourth Day to the ground to get to the bottom of it.’
And as for Sean…no, better not to think about what Sean might or might not have done.
The waiter arrived at that point with our food. Gardner had ordered penne a la vodka with a side salad and, uncaring, I’d asked for the same. The waiter flourished a giant pepper mill over our plates and departed.
‘Remember the guys who ambushed us, in the van?’ I pressed, dogged. The ones I didn’t kill. ‘The only way they could possibly have known where we’d be was if one of us tipped them off.’
‘If you say so,’ Gardner said, her voice cool, and I remembered, too late, that Epps had whisked her three suspects away before she’d had a chance to question them herself.
‘If it was a snatch not a kill, why weren’t they told to hide their faces?’ I went on quickly. ‘No, the plan was to grab me then and kill me later, I’m sure of it. Sagar didn’t care if I’d talked to Witney – he just wanted something to goad Parker into action.’
Gardner shrugged and took a forkful of pasta. ‘So, was Nu really trying to take a potshot at Bane’s daughter, or was he just taking another run at you?’ she asked, circling back.
‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘I’m not sure he was after either of us, to be honest. It could well be that the objective was simply to draw the Debacle crew out of hiding and really get Epps’s attention. And, if that was the case, it went exactly as planned.’
‘Except for the part where Sagar’s inside man ended up dead.’
I swallowed a mouthful of food. I knew I had to refuel, and part of my brain was aware it was good, but I couldn’t identify a single flavour.
‘Yeah,’ I said gravely. ‘Except for that, of course.’
Strange the way the mind works. I’d been troubled over my actions in dealing with the three men in the van, who had survived, more by luck than judgement. But Nu? There I had no doubt, no hesitations. I hadn’t intended him to die, and there was no guarantee of his intent, but the way it went down…?
No, he’d taken his chances.
We ate on in silence. Gardner cleared her plate with the determination of someone who has a busy schedule and a fast metabolism, picked over her salad, then put her fork down and said casually, ‘So, what you gonna do now?’
I shrugged. ‘Contact Epps, I suppose,’ I said, reluctance in my mouth. ‘Try and persuade him to stop this lunacy before it’s too late.’
She shook her head, immediate if regretful. ‘Not a good idea, Charlie,’ she said. ‘Epps contacted me before I picked you up. He told me you’d gone rogue and were running out of options, and thought you might try for my help. Looks like he made the right call on that one.’
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
For a moment, everything stopped. I tensed, rechecked my exits, the faces of the other diners, but the restaurant contained only civilians as far as I could tell.
The waiter came over, clutching the bill on a little plastic tray, his professional smile fading at our stony faces. He left the bill on the corner of the table and scarpered. Gardner picked it up, glanced at the total, and tucked a couple of twenty-dollar bills under her empty glass.
‘Relax,’ she said dryly. ‘D’you think, if I was gonna turn you in, I woulda bought you dinner first?’
‘So…why did you?’ I asked, confused. ‘Or, more to the point, why didn’t you?’
She smiled. ‘Partly because I didn’t have you pegged as the easy-to-brainwash type and I kinda wanted to make up my own mind,’ she said, sliding out of the booth and straightening her jacket over the gun. ‘But mainly because I think Epps is an asshole.’
‘We’re in agreement there,’ I murmured. ‘But won’t this get you into a shitload of trouble?’
She shook her head. ‘“Be on the lookout,” is all he said. Fortunately, he didn’t feel the need to spell out what he wanted me to do in that event.’
‘This is not your fight, Gardner,’ I said, still unconvinced.
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‘I stand for the dead,’ she said quietly. ‘And it’s not your fight, either.’
As we stepped out of the restaurant, the sky above the street lighting was a cool blue-black, tinged with an orange glow like a distant battlefield. The heat of the day had settled back into sullen clamminess, and the breeze idly kicking litter along the street did little to refresh it. I wondered if the feeling of impending storm was simply a state of mind.
I thought of the last fleeting look of anger and disbelief on Parker’s face just before I’d ejected from the Suburban, and the sad regret in Sean’s eyes when he’d spoken to Sagar behind the mirror. ‘You were right…’ And I tried to work out how it had come to this.
I hardened my voice, my face, my heart, said, ‘What else is there?’ and tasted the bitter tone. We reached Gardner’s Buick. She unlocked the doors and we climbed in and, as we threaded our way through the evening traffic towards the freeway, I wondered briefly if Parker and Sean and McGregor had cancelled their air tickets for this evening. I wondered if I still had a job. I supposed that stealing your boss’s cellphone and throwing yourself out of his car was pretty much considered a resignation in any language.
But most of all, I wondered if I still had a home, and someone willing to share it. This job would have been tough enough on any relationship, but coming on top of everything else, well, could we hope to salvage it?
Would Sean even want to try?
I took a deep shaky breath, saw in the instrument lights that Gardner’s head turned towards me in brief but silent enquiry. I had no intention of satisfying her curiosity.
The drive out to Fourth Day took an hour and a half, leaving behind the harsh glitter of the City of Angels and sliding into classic dark desert highway. We talked sporadically, giving away little of each other in the process.
At one point, I asked, ‘So, that business card you gave me – are you going to tell me what the “B” stands for?’