by Robert Crais
“This is Joe Pike. Remember?”
“Hell, yeah. How ya been?”
“I'm trying to find a professional named Michael Fallon.”
The man hesitated, and the easy familiarity was gone.
“I thought you left the game.”
“That's right. I'm out.”
Pike sensed that the man was suspicious. They had not spoken for almost ten years, and now the man was wondering if Pike was working with the Feds. The government took a dim view of its citizens hiring themselves to foreign governments or paramilitary groups, and had laws against it.
The man spoke carefully.
“I don't know what you got in mind, Pike, but I'm a security consultant. I run background checks and offer references in a variety of military specialties, but I don't do business with terrorists, drug dealers, or dictators, or associate with anyone who does. That shit's illegal.”
He was saying all that for the Feds, but Pike happened to know that it was also true.
“I understand. That's not why I'm calling.”
“Okay. So what you want is a consultation, right?”
“That's right. His name is Fallon. He was with Delta, but then he went freelance. Two years ago, he lived in Amsterdam. Today, he's in Los Angeles.”
“Delta, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Those boys bring top dollar.”
“I want to see him face-to-face. That's the important part, seeing him face-to-face.”
“Uh-huh. Tell me something that might ring a bell.”
Pike read from the NLETS report, citing the countries where Fallon was known to have worked; Sierra Leone, Colombia, El Salvador, the others.
The man said, “Shit, he's been around. I know some people who worked in those places. You really out of the game?”
“Yes.”
“That's a shame, man. What's in this for me?”
Pike had known that the man would want something, and Pike was prepared to pay. People like this never did anything for free. Pike had not mentioned that part to Elvis, and wouldn't.
“A thousand dollars.”
The man laughed.
“I'd rather book you into a job. I still get offers, you know. Your thing, you'd get top dollar, too. They need people like you in the Middle East.”
“Two thousand.”
“I can probably find someone who knows this guy, but I might have to call all over the goddamned world. I'm not wasting my time for a few bucks. I'm going to have costs.”
“Five thousand.”
It was an outrageous amount, but Pike already knew that the man wanted more than money. Pike hoped that the figure would be persuasive.
“Pike, I wouldn't be Fallon on a bet, you and your face-to-face. I don't care if he's Delta or not. But you have to see it from my side—if something happens to this guy, your Fed buddies will use this little transaction between us to hammer me as an accessory before the fact or maybe even a co-conspirator. I got no friends over there.”
“No one is listening.”
“Yeah, right.”
Pike didn't respond. Pike had learned that if he didn't say anything, people often told themselves what they wanted to hear.
“Tell you what, I'll ask around, but you gotta let me book a job for you. I don't know what or when, but one day I'll call. That's it. That's my price. If I find someone who can help you with the face-to-face, you gotta go. Yes, no, I don't give a shit. That's what it costs.”
Pike regretted calling this number. He wished that it had been disconnected like the others. He considered trying to find someone else, but the first seven numbers had given him nothing. Ben was waiting. Elvis was waiting. The weight of their need kept him on the phone.
“C'mon, Pike, it isn't just the calls. I haven't heard from you in ten years. If I find somebody who's dealt with him, I'll have to vouch for you.”
A Zen fountain sat on a polished black table in the corner of Pike's living room. It was a small bowl filled with water and stones. The water burbled between the stones with the gentle sounds of a forest stream. Pike listened to the burble. It sounded like peace.
“You knew it was coming, Pike. That's why you called. I'm jamming you up with this, but that's what you wanted. You're looking for something, and it isn't just Fallon. We both know what you want.”
Pike watched the water move in the little fountain. He wondered if the man was right.
“All right.”
“Give me your number. I'll call back when I have something.”
Pike gave the man his cell phone number, then stripped off his clothes. He brought the phone into his bathroom so he could hear it from the shower. He let hot water beat into his back and shoulder, and tried his best to think about nothing.
Forty-six minutes later, the phone rang. The man gave him a name and an address, and told him that it had been arranged.
18
time missing: 48 hours, 09 minutes
Two messages were waiting on my answering machine when I got home. I hoped that Joe or Starkey or maybe even Ben had called, but one was Grace Gonzalez from next door, asking if she could do anything to help, and the other was Crom Johnson's mother, returning my call. I didn't feel strong enough to talk to either.
From my deck I could see that Chen's van was back on the ridge across from my house, along with a second SID van and a Hollywood Division radio car. Several of the construction workers stood by the vans, watching downhill as Chen and the others worked.
Normal people bring in their mail after they get home from work, so that's what I did. Normal people have a glass of milk, take a shower, then change into fresh clothes. I did that, too. It felt like pretending.
I was eating a turkey sandwich in front of the television when my phone rang. I grabbed it, thinking that it was Joe, but it wasn't.
“This is Bill Stivic from the Army's Department of Personnel in St. Louis. I'm calling for Elvis Cole, please.”
Master Sergeant Bill Stivic, USMC, retired. It felt like weeks since I had spoken with him. It had only been that morning.
I glanced at the time. It was past business hours for a government office in St. Louis. He was calling on his own dime.
“Hi, Master Sergeant. Thanks for getting back to me.”
“No problem. It seemed pretty important to you.”
“It is.”
“Okay, well, here's what we have—first, like I told you this morning, anyone can have the 214, but we never send the 201 to anyone except you unless it's by court order or we get a request from a law enforcement agency, you remember?”
“I remember.”
“The records here show that we telefaxed your file to a police detective named Carol Starkey out where you live in Los Angeles. That was yesterday.”
“That's right. I spoke with Starkey today.”
“Okay, the only other request we've had for your files was eleven weeks ago. We were served with a State court order by a judge named Rulon Lester in New Orleans.”
“A judge in New Orleans.”
“That would be it. Both your 201 and 214 were sent to his office at the State Superior Court Building in New Orleans.”
Another dead end. I thought of Richard waving the manila folder. The bastard had gone all out to check up on me.
“Those are the only two times my files have been sent? You're sure they couldn't have been sent to anyone else?”
“That's it, just the two. The records section keeps track for eight years.”
“You have a phone number for the judge, Master Sergeant?”
“They don't keep a copy of the order, just that your files were sent and why, along with the court's filing number. You want that?”
“Yes, sir. Let me get a pen.”
He read it off along with the date of the order and the date that my file had been sent. I thanked him for the help, then put down the phone. New Orleans was in the central time zone like St. Louis, so the courts would be closed, but their offices mig
ht still be open. I called the Information operator in New Orleans and got numbers for the State Superior Court and Judge Lester's office. The coincidence between Richard living in New Orleans and a judge there ordering my files was obvious, but I wanted to be sure.
A woman with a clipped Southern accent answered on the first ring.
“Judge Lester's office.”
I hung up. Lester would have had no legitimate reason for writing a court order to force the Army to release my files. He would have done so only as a favor to Richard or because Richard had paid him, either of which was an abuse of his office. He almost certainly wouldn't talk to me about it.
I thought it through, then dialed the number again.
“Judge Lester's office.”
I tried to sound older and Southern.
“This is Bill Stivic with the Army's Department of Personnel in St. Louis. I'm trying to track down a file we sent to the judge in response to an order he issued.”
“The judge has left for the day.”
“Then I'm in a world of hurt, sugar. I pulled a whammy of a mistake when I sent the file down to y'all. I sent the original, and that was our only copy.”
Sounding desperate was easy.
“I'm not sure I can help you, Mr. Stivic. If the file is admitted evidence or case documentation, it can't be returned.”
“I don't want it returned. I should've made a copy before I sent it, I know, but, well, I don't know what I was thinking. So if you could find it, maybe I could get you to overnight a copy to me up here. I'd pay for it out of my own pocket.”
Sounding pathetic was easy, too.
She said, “Well, let me take a look.”
“You're a lifesaver, you truly are.”
I gave her the date and the file number from Lester's court order, then held on while she went to look. She came back on the line a few minutes later.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Stivic, but we don't have those records any longer. The judge sent them on to a Mr. Leland Myers as part of the requested action. Perhaps you could get a copy from his office?”
I let her give me Myers's number, and then I hung up. I thought about the folder that Richard slapped on the table when we were listening to the tape. Myers had probably handled the investigation. It felt like a dead end, and left me deflated. Fallon could have gotten most of what he knew by breaking into my house, and could have learned the rest a thousand other ways. All I had learned from Stivic was what I already knew—Richard hated my guts.
I went back to the turkey sandwich that I had left in front of the television, but threw it away. I no longer wanted it. My body ached and my eyes burned from the lack of sleep. The past two days were catching up with me like a freight train bearing down on a man caught on the tracks. I wanted to stretch out on the floor, but I thought that I might not be able to get up. The phone rang again when I was standing in the kitchen, but I wanted to let it ring. I wanted to stand there in the kitchen and never move again. I answered. It was Starkey.
“Cole! We got the van! An Adam car found the van downtown! They just called it in!”
She shouted out the location, but her voice was strained with something ugly as if the news she shared wasn't good. The aches were suddenly gone, as if they had never been.
“Did they find Ben?”
“I don't know. I'm on my way now. The others are on the way, too. Get down there, Cole. You won't be that far behind me, where you are. Get down there right away.”
The tone in her voice was awful.
“Goddamnit, Starkey, what is it?”
“They found a body.”
The phone fell out of my hands. It floated end over end, taking forever to fall. By the time it hit the floor I was gone.
time missing: 48 hours, 25 minutes
The Los Angeles River is small, but mean. People who don't know the truth of it make fun of our river; all they see is a tortured trickle that snakes along a concrete gutter like some junkie's vein. They don't know that we put that river in concrete to save ourselves; they don't know the river is small because it's sleeping, and that every year and sometimes more it wakes. Before we put the river in that silly trough centered on a concrete plain at the bottom of those tall concrete walls, it flashed to life with the rain to wash away trees and houses and bridges, and cut its banks to breed new channels almost as if it was looking for people to kill. It found what it looked for too many times. Now, when it wakes, the river climbs those concrete walls so high that wet claws rake the freeways and bridges as it tries to pull down a passing car or someone caught out in the storm. Chain-link fences and barbed wire spine along the top of the walls to keep out people, but the walls keep in the river. The concrete is a prison. The prison works, most of the time.
The van had been left under an overpass in the river's channel between the train yards and the L.A. County Jail. Starkey was waiting in her car at a chain-link gate, and rolled when she saw me coming. We squealed down a ramp into the channel and parked behind three radio cars and two D-rides from Parker Center. The patrol officers were in the shade at the base of the overpass with two kids. The detectives had just arrived; two were with the kids and a third was peering into the van.
Starkey said, “Cole, you wait until I see what's what.”
“Don't be stupid.”
The van had been painted to change its appearance, but it was a four-door '67 Econoline with a cracked windshield and rust around the headlights. The new paint was thin, letting the Em from Emilio's show through like a shadow. The driver's door and the left rear door were open. A bald detective with a shiny head was staring into the back end. Starkey trotted ahead of me, and badged him.
“Carol Starkey. I put out the BOLO. We heard you got a vic.”
The detective said, “Oh, man, this one's nasty.”
I moved past him to see inside, and Starkey grabbed my arm, trying to stop me. I was holding my breath.
“Cole, please let me look. Stop.”
I shook her off, and there it was: a thick-bodied Caucasian man in a sport coat and slacks spread on his stomach with both arms down along his sides and one leg crossed over the other as if he had been dumped or rolled into the back of the van. His clothes and the floor around him were heavy with blood. His head had been cut from his body at the top of his neck. It was tipped against a spare tire just behind the front seat. Like that, his face was hidden. Fat desert flies covered the body like bees in a blood garden. Ben was not in the van.
Starkey said, “Jesus Christ, they cut off his fucking head.”
The detective nodded.
“Yeah. The things some people will do.”
“You get an ID?”
“Uh-uh, not yet. I'm Tims, out of Robbery-Homicide. We just got here, so we haven't been cleared. The CI's on the way.”
They wouldn't disturb the victim until the Coroner Investigator examined the scene. The CI was responsible for determining the cause and time of death, so the police weren't supposed to do anything but preserve the evidence until the CI cleared the scene.
I said, “We're looking for a boy.”
“What you see is what we got—one corpse and no blood trails. Why'd you ask about a boy?”
“Two men driving this van kidnapped a ten-year-old boy two days ago. He's missing.”
“No shit. Well, if you have suspects here, I want their names.”
Starkey gave him Fallon's name and description, along with a description of the black guy. While he was writing it down, I asked him who opened the van. He nodded toward the kids with the uniforms.
“Them. They came down here to ride on the ramps—you know, go up and down? They saw the blood dripping and opened it up. Way the blood's still leaking out the side panel over there, I'd say this couldn't have happened more than three or four hours ago.”
Starkey said, “Did you check them for his wallet?”
“Didn't have to. See on his butt where the sport coat's pushed up? You can see the bulge. Wallet's still in his pocket.”
>
I said, “Starkey.”
“I know. Tims, listen, if we can put this van to a location or get a line on Fallon, we'll be closer to finding the boy. The vic might have had a hand in it. We need an ID.”
Tims shook his head. He knew what she was asking.
“You know better than that. The CI's on his way. It won't be long.”
I glanced at Starkey, then went to the driver's door.
Tims said, “Don't touch anything.”
Blood had pooled around the driver's seat. I could see part of the body, but I couldn't see his face. I looked under and around the seats as best I could without touching the van, but all I saw was blood and the grime that builds up in old vehicles.
Tims and Starkey were still at the rear. The other two detectives and the uniforms were with the kids. I climbed up into the front seat and squeezed between the seats into the van's bay. It smelled like a butcher shop on a warm summer day.
When Tims saw me, he lurched toward the rear doors as if he was going to jump in with me. He didn't.
“Hey! Get outta there! Starkey, get your partner outta there!”
Starkey stepped in front of Tims and braced her arms across the door as if she was peering inside at me. She was also blocking the door to keep him from pulling me out. One of the detectives and two of the uniforms ran over to see why Tims was shouting.
“Cole. Would you please do this fast?”
Flies swarmed around me in an angry cloud, pissed off that I had disturbed them. The blood on the floorboards was as slick as hot grease. I took the dead man's wallet, then went through his pockets. I found a set of keys, a handkerchief, two quarters, and a card key from the Baitland Swift Hotel in Santa Monica. An empty shoulder holster was strapped under his arm. I tossed the wallet and other things onto the front seat, then turned back to the head. The skin was purple and streaked with grime. The cervical vertebra showed openly in the flesh like a white marble knob and the hair was jellied with blood clots; it was obscene and awful, and I didn't want to touch it. I didn't want to be here with the flies and the blood. Tims was shouting, but his voice receded until it was just another fly buzzing in the heat. I balled the handkerchief and used it to upright the head. When I tipped the head, I saw that it had been placed on a black K-Swiss cross-training shoe. A boy's shoe.