Strip

by Thomas Perry

  It was 4:15. As he thought back on what they had done, he was pleased. To the extent that he could interpret her sounds and movements, he believed that she had fallen asleep happy and satisfied. But it had left him in a state of pleasant agitation, not capable of real sleep. She was a daylight creature, somebody who got up early in the morning and went to work. He had worked nights since the day after he had liberated himself from tenth grade fifteen years ago.

  He could feel that the night was reaching its most silent, the bluish half-light that would allow him to sleep. He drifted off.

  Ding-dong DONG dong. Dong-dong DING dong. There was a pause in the chime sequence, but it made the mind alert and disturbed, because it was waiting for the rest of the tune to complete itself.

  Sandy sat up suddenly in the bed, her eyes wide. She leaned over him, her right breast brushing his shoulder as she squinted to see the clock on his side. She saw it, jumped off the bed, and had her feet on the floor. Jerry was startled by her athleticism. She’d had no more than an hour of sleep, and she must still be feeling the drinks, but she was moving fast.

  She was at the window looking down at the doorstep just as the ring began again. She turned to Gaffney and spoke as though she were resuming an ongoing conversation. “It’s Paul. He’s here.”

  “Paul, your boyfriend?”

  “Yes. Paul Herrenberg. I knew I should have told him I was helping you.”

  “Give me a second.” Jerry Gaffney sat up, snatched the pile of his clothes beside the bed, and pulled them on at high speed. He was dressed just as the next dreadful ring began and the man outside started to pound on the door. Gaffney stepped into his shoes, pinned the badge to his belt beside the buckle, and slipped the gun holster onto his belt where it would show. “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “You’ve got choices to make. If you want me to hide, I’ll hide, and you can say you were too drunk to drive to his apartment. If you want me to tell him about the case, I’ll do that. If you want me to throw him out, I’ll do that.”

  “Get in the closet.” She went to the dresser, plucked a folded flannel nightgown out of a drawer, and pulled it over her head while she walked toward the apartment door. She opened it and then went down two more steps across the tiny foyer to open the outer door.

  Jerry Gaffney wasn’t happy about being trapped in a closet, but there was little choice in the one-bedroom apartment. He slipped inside and closed the sliding door most of the way, leaving only a small space open at the end.

  He could hear her in a stage whisper. “Paul! What in the world are you doing here at this hour? It’s four-thirty.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” the man’s voice said, much louder.

  “Be quiet,” she whispered. “People are asleep.”

  “You didn’t answer me. Where were you tonight?”

  “Here, mostly. I was exhausted. It was so hot yesterday.”

  “Bullshit!” he bellowed. “I called you over and over, like a dozen times. I left messages on your cell and on your regular phone. You obviously weren’t around to hear them.”

  “When I go to sleep, I turn off my phones. That means I don’t want to be bothered.”

  “That’s great, Sandy. That’s just fucking great. I wait most of the night for you to show up, and you don’t even have the decency to call me.”

  “I never said I was going to your apartment last night. There was no reason to call to tell you I wasn’t coming, because there was no reason to think I was.”

  “Look, Sandy.” He spoke with a quiet fury, slowly and plainly. “I was worried, so I started calling your friends.”

  “You called my friends in the middle of the night?”

  “People said they saw you in clubs at midnight, quarter to one, one-thirty. It sounded like everybody in town saw you at one club or another, so stop lying about it. You were out with a guy.”

  She laughed, but it was a difficult thing to do well. “If you only knew.”

  “I do. You told half the city his name. Joe Carver.”

  “That is just so completely wrong. I can’t believe you called everybody and embarrassed me like that. I can’t believe anybody told you anything, and that you got it all wrong and put the most sickening interpretation on it. I’m so shocked. Just go home.”

  From his closet, Jerry Gaffney heard her begin to close the door, but then there was a thump like the heel of a hand striking the door and the wood vibrating. “Don’t you shut the door in my face. Too much has happened for that.” As Paul talked, Jerry could hear that the voice was coming nearer, up the steps and into the apartment. When he spoke again, Paul was in the small living room just ten feet from the bedroom door. “Why didn’t you invite me in, Sandy? What’s different that you’d stand in the doorway to try to keep me out?”

  “Nothing is different. I never would have wanted anybody to come banging on my door at this hour. I asked you to go, so do it.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m asking you to leave.” Jerry Gaffney could tell from the way her voice sounded that she had stepped in his way, blocking his entry into the bedroom. Jerry could have told her that it was the wrong way to keep him out.

  Paul Herrenberg’s voice became a tortured bellow. “He’s here, isn’t he? You’ve got the guy in the bedroom with you. Carver! Come on out! Joe Carver!” His footsteps were heavy as he brushed past Sandy.

  “What do you think you’re doing? You have no right to barge into my bedroom.”

  “I want to meet Joe Carver, the guy who’s so much better than I am.” Herrenberg was pacing around in the bedroom now. Jerry could hear him walk to the bathroom and look in.

  Jerry Gaffney was not a man who was reluctant to deliver a cheap, surprise punch, which was one reason he was listening intently to Paul Herrenberg’s location at every moment. But he had been in enough fights to know that he would be foolish to throw away any opportunity to avoid fighting, so he was listening even more intently for reassurance that Herrenberg wasn’t about to open the closet. So what he heard next was both unwelcome and welcome at once. Paul Herrenberg had been staring at Sandy Belknap’s sheets like a detective, and then he dropped to his hands and knees to look under the bed. If he was doing that, he would certainly get to Sandy’s closet next, but meanwhile, he could hardly be more vulnerable.

  Jerry Gaffney slid the closet door open, delivered a top-of-the-foot kick to Paul Herrenberg’s face, belly-flopped onto his limp body, and dragged his arms behind him to close the handcuffs on his wrists.

  “What the—”

  “Don’t talk,” said Gaffney gruffly. Herrenberg was much bigger than Gaffney had anticipated, and he was already thinking that if the cuffs didn’t close in time, he was going to have to go for the gun. “I’m a police officer, and I’m going to—”

  “You son of a—”

  Jerry dazed him with a punch to the side of his head. “I asked you not to interrupt. You’re going to have two choices. You can cooperate completely, or you can act like an angry asshole. If you do that, you’re going to jail, and the trip will not be easy or pleasant. There are enough charges already to hold you.”

  “You can’t just hit me like that. I’ve got a witness.”

  “Yes, I can.” Gaffney punched the other side of his head, then grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head up as though he might slam Herrenberg’s face on the floor. He held it there for a long, tense moment, then released it. “Now. Do you want to get through this without anything turning ugly?”

  Herrenberg seemed to think for a minute, then went limp. “Yes.”

  “You just pushed your way into a lady’s apartment after she told you that you weren’t going to be allowed inside. That’s forcible entry. You pushed her aside to get in. That’s battery at least, and maybe even assault. Given the hour and the fact that you saw she isn’t wearing much, you might draw some class-one felony charges.”

  “So what are you doing in her apartment?”

  He gra
sped Herrenberg’s hair again and hissed into his ear, “I don’t have to tell you anything.” He released him. “But I will. I’m attempting to apprehend an armed robbery suspect named Joe Carver, who seems to be interested in Miss Belknap. That means that any single stupid thing you do or say is interfering with a felony investigation. It’s also harassing and threatening a brave citizen who has agreed to place herself in danger to act as bait.”

  “Oh, shit,” Paul mumbled. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Now I want you to listen carefully, because what you say and do next is going to pretty much determine what the rest of your life will be like. If you’re going to be a hard guy, you might get off with ten years, which is only five served if you’re lucky. But you don’t strike me as lucky.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “First, apologize to the lady.”

  “I’m sorry, Sandy. I apologize.”

  “Now apologize to me for obstructing justice and making me compromise an ongoing investigation.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry who?”

  “I’m sorry, officer. Sir.”

  His voice sounded so obsequious, so fearful and weak, that Gaffney looked up and saw that Sandy’s face held a look of distaste.

  “Now I want you to get up. I will walk you to the door. Then I’ll take the handcuffs off. If you go silently and voluntarily, get in your car, and go away, we’ll forget about filing charges. If I, or some other officer, have to put the cuffs on you again, the charges come back, and we’ll do things the hard way.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll go.”

  Gaffney took his arm, helped him up, and guided him to the door. He half-turned. “Sandy, I’ll call you later. Okay? Just to talk.”

  She frowned. “Uh, I don’t think so, Paul. I don’t want to talk. If I ever do, I’ll call you.”

  “But—”

  Gaffney tightened his grip on Herrenberg’s arm to stop the circulation. “She’s being pretty clear. Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes.” He half-turned again. “You won’t even talk to me?” There were tears forming in his eyes.

  “No. I want you to go away.”

  The tension went out of Herrenberg’s muscles. Gaffney unlocked the handcuffs and removed them, then put his hand on his gun, but Herrenberg didn’t even look back to see the gesture. He stepped out the door, down the steps to the outer door, and kept going.

  Gaffney closed and locked the door, and turned.

  Sandy was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, looking at him with her arms folded. “Are you sleepy?”

  “Not now.”

  “Me either.” As she stepped backward into the bedroom, she pulled the nightgown up and off, then threw it aside.

  20

  SPENCE SAT on the roof of the Bank of America building on Ventura Boulevard and watched the sun lighten the sky beyond the gradual curve where Du-Par’s and Trader Joe’s were just visible. He could hear one of the local flocks of escaped parrots screeching in first flight, and the cars that went by on the street weren’t late-night partygoers and insomniacs now. These were regular people on their way to work.

  He knelt and reached down for the .308 Remington rifle he had lying on the blanket. He ejected the box magazine, opened the bolt to be sure there was no round in the chamber, and took the weapon apart, removing the barrel and trigger assembly from the stock. He wrapped the parts in the blanket and put it into his backpack. It was clear by now that Joe Carver wasn’t planning to show up to ambush whoever came with the night’s take from the clubs. He wasn’t too surprised. It had seemed unlikely that Carver would strike two nights in a row, and that unlikeliness had been Spence’s main reason for coming.

  He slipped the straps over his shoulders and crossed the roof to the back of the building, then climbed down the steel rungs set into the wall. He stayed behind the bank building, then walked along the side of the parking structure to get to the sloping lawn above the Los Angeles River, followed the high metal fence that marked the concrete bank above the concrete channel, and turned where the bridge crossed over the river at Whitsett.

  While he was still on Ventura, he passed two other men walking toward bus stops and wearing backpacks. Since the cost of gasoline had gotten ridiculous, more and more people in the eastern part of the Valley had stopped taking cars to work and begun riding the bus wearing backpacks. He passed the bus stop at Whitsett and crossed the bridge.

  The night had not been completely wasted. It had given Spence time to think.

  Kapak was not wrong about Joe Carver. He really did seem to want to blow Kapak’s life apart. It seemed to Spence that Carver had taken up the work with enthusiasm, and he was actually making progress in ruining Kapak. But it didn’t make Spence relish the idea of killing Carver.

  Spence approached his car watchfully, then put the backpack in the trunk, got on the freeway at Laurel Canyon, and drove to Kapak’s house. He left his car a hundred feet from the front gate and went through the pedestrian gate with his key. As he passed the garage, he looked in the window and noticed that Kapak’s car was gone. He looked at the house. The windows were all still dark. He went inside, then walked through the building quickly, looking for signs that Kapak had been here.

  When he reached the hallway to Kapak’s master suite, he removed his shoes and walked slowly along the hardwood floor in his socks, opened the door, and saw that the bed had not been slept in. On the way back he stepped into his shoes and thumbed through the directory of his telephone. Voinovich’s phone said, “The customer you dialed is out of the calling area,” which probably meant the phone was off. He got the same recording for Jimmy Gaffney and for Jerry Gaffney. He almost called Guzman, but remembered he was in the hospital recovering. He called Corona.

  “Yeah?” The voice was sleepy.

  “It’s me. Spence. I just got to Kapak’s house, and nobody’s here. He hasn’t been in his bed. Is something up?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “How’s Guzman?”

  “Not bad for a guy that was shot. They’re giving him a lot of pills for pain.”

  “Tell him I’m sorry I haven’t been to see him yet. There are probably a few people watching to see who shows up.”

  “I know the cops are, for sure. They’re making a list. I’m on it, but you don’t need to be. Guzman’s sleeping half the time anyway.”

  “Just so he knows the rest of us haven’t dumped him there.”

  “No problem. And I’ll call you if I find out what’s up with Kapak.”

  Spence went to the other end of the house to the room off the pantry where he liked to sleep when he was in Kapak’s house. He sat at the table in the small room and looked closely at each of the sections on the security monitor screen until he was satisfied that no human activity was taking place.

  He lay down on the narrow bed in the small room and placed his cell phone near his head so if it rang he would wake and get it quickly. He took his pistol out of his belt and put it under the pillow, then slept.

  Joe Carver stepped out of his room at the motel and studied the morning for portents and omens. Yesterday it had been clear and hot, and today would be an exact repetition of the day. The weatherwoman on television—a person who had been so surgically altered that her body was like a child’s drawing of a woman and her face had the wide unchanging stare and protruding mouth of a bass—had stood in front of a chart that displayed a row of seven calendar days that each held a perfect yellow ball of a sun and the number 102. Carver knew that the best time for moving around the city was now, before it was fully light out.

  He found his car undisturbed in the motel’s parking lot, held his breath while he started it, and then chuckled at himself for being nervous. There was no reason to imagine any of Kapak’s men knew he had a car, and even if they had found it here, that any of them was capable of rigging it to explode. He drove toward the plaza in Encino where there was a restaurant that served customers breakfast in
a shady, enclosed alcove down a flight of stairs below street level.

  Now that his anger was fading, he was ready to decide exactly what he wanted to do next. He knew he wanted Kapak’s men to leave him alone so he could restart his new life in Los Angeles. He wasn’t sure how to accomplish that without destroying them, and he wasn’t a murderer. At least, he had managed to keep from being one so far. The fact that he was here in Los Angeles at all had been because of a problem in Chicago that made the Kapak situation seem irritatingly familiar. He remembered the night it started.

  It was late. His name was still Pete Rollins and he still smoked. He stepped outside the bar he owned and stood in the shadows under the awning, smoking a cigarette and watching a gentle snowfall building a feathery white layer over the sidewalk.

  He saw a man drive up in a black Cadillac Escalade and stop in front of the building. Two men wearing long overcoats got out and headed into his bar. He snuffed out his cigarette in the sand-filled urn beside the door and went inside to make drinks for the newcomers.

  He stepped into the warm, quiet room with the dark antique wood paneling and thick woodwork, and the glowing lights behind the bar that made the liquor bottles look like amber and emerald and diamond. He was proud of his establishment. As he walked in, he actually relished the sensation of surprise and pleasure his new customers must be feeling.

  He came through the inner doorway just as the guns came out from under the long coats. They looked to Rollins like AK-47s with the wooden stocks cut off. The shorter man started firing into one of the customers at the bar while the other turned his body in a semicircle, sweeping the barrel of his rifle like the gun in a tank turret, ready to open up, but searching for a target. Rollins was astonished. The man who had been standing at the bar remained upright for a moment, and then collapsed into what looked like a pile of blood-soaked clothes on the floor.