Strip

by Thomas Perry

  Jerry’s eyes widened. “Wow. Scratch that, then. Anything else you want me to do now?”

  “Tell him we’re here too,” said Voinovich. “It’s not just you.”

  “I’m with my brother and the Russian,” he said. “I felt sorry for the poor bastards, getting humiliated like that last night, so I’m taking them to lunch. You want to come?” The expression on Jerry Gaffney’s face was vulpine. He was staring intently, his green eyes open and a toothy smile occupying his lips and baring his teeth. “Oh. Okay, I’ll see you at the clubs tonight. Siren first? Okay.”

  He put the telephone away. “He doesn’t know. He wasn’t home. Can you believe it? He wasn’t even at home when it happened. He knows nothing. Zip.”

  Jimmy said, “I can’t believe you tried to get him to come with us even now.”

  “Why not? He doesn’t know. We could have scooped him up and it would be like the regular plan we already had.”

  “But he didn’t go for it, right?” said Voinovich.

  “No. He’s busy, running some errands today,” Jerry said. “But we’re okay. We’re safe. He doesn’t suspect anything.”

  “Thank God,” Jimmy said.

  Voinovich’s head gave a sudden twitch. He looked in his left mirror, then the right. “Cops.”

  “Oh my God,” Jimmy said. He whirled in his seat and stared out the back window. “I think he wants you to pull over.”

  “How can I? We have loaded guns and ski masks and body armor.”

  “You have to,” Jimmy said. “You can’t outrun a police car in this fat-assed mammoth-mobile.”

  Voinovich hit the gas pedal and the SUV’s hood rose as though the vehicle were about to angle off into the sky. The back of Jimmy’s head slapped the headrest and stayed there.

  Jerry took out his gun, released the magazine, and seemed to count the rounds he had left.

  Jimmy said, “No. You are not going to get in a gunfight with the police. This is still something we can live through, maybe even with nothing but fines and probation.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Jerry. “If they search this car, we don’t want anything to be loaded or strapped to us. Unload yours and then Vassily’s.” He leaned forward with difficulty as Voinovich took a quick turn. “See if you can get us to a curve where we’ll be out of their sight for a few seconds. We can toss the guns.”

  “Right.” He handed his gun over the seat to Jerry, then turned his body to face ahead again. He drove faster. The police car’s siren began to blip, and its lights flashed.

  Jerry gathered the guns on his lap, stuffed two of them into his ski mask, the others into Jimmy’s. He opened the window beside him. “I just figured out where to go,” he said. “We can’t make it up to Mulholland. Go along Ventura Boulevard to Carpenter and head for Laurel Canyon.”

  “By the elementary school?”

  “Yes.”

  Voinovich sped along Ventura Place to the Boulevard, zigzagging in and out of the cars. He moved into the left-turn lane, then cut into the right and onto Carpenter. It was a narrow, quiet road where cars had to pull to the side to let each other pass, but he was going over fifty past the elementary school and through the stop sign at the intersection. Just past the school, the road turned and narrowed, and there was a high wooden fence to the right.

  Just as the road curved to the right, Jerry hurled the first bundled pair of guns, then the second over the fence. He could see them fall, and then bounce down the hill twenty feet into a tree-lined chasm at the edge of a big estate, where a small, rocky stream bed meandered. He remembered the gun on his ankle, tore the Velcro fasteners of the holster, and threw them both and looked back.

  Two seconds later, the police car appeared again, and it was coming close to the back of the SUV.

  “Better stop now,” said Jerry. “He’s getting ready to hit us to spin us around.”

  They made it around the last arc of the curve and saw there were already two police cars ahead, the officers sheltering at their sides, ready to shoot.

  Voinovich stopped.

  There was a swarm of angry policemen, dragging them out of three doors and onto their faces on the pavement. Cops knee-dropped onto their backs, twisted their arms behind them, and clicked handcuffs on their wrists.

  “Lie still. You’re under arrest.”

  “What for?”

  “Stealing that SUV, for starters.”

  Voinovich, a few feet off, yelled, “I didn’t steal it. It’s mine.”

  “It was reported stolen early this morning, and the thieves are armed robbers. That got anything to do with you?”

  “I reported it, and the Pasadena police found it and gave it back. I’m Vassily Voinovich.”

  Jimmy Gaffney lay on his belly in silent rage. The cop who had handcuffed him said, “You want to tell me why you’re all wearing bulletproof vests?”

  “Vassily and I were robbed last night. My brother was robbed two nights ago. It’s not safe around here.”

  An older police officer who had not taken part in wrestling them to the pavement called, “All right. Get these guys ready for transport. Feldman, Gaithers, start back along the road on foot and see what they threw over the fence back there near the school.”

  Kapak drove to Siren, went into the manager’s office, and asked if he could borrow his car.

  He drove the manager’s car, parked it across the street from Sherri Wynn’s duplex, and climbed the exterior wooden steps to her apartment. He knocked, rang the bell, and waited. He looked at his watch. It was nearly 2:00 in the afternoon. He had been pretty sure that Sherri would have caught up on her sleep by now, and be up.

  He took out his wallet to look for a business card, then any piece of paper. He wrote his cell phone number on a credit card receipt. His name was already on it. Then he hurried to the car to drive to the Bank of America. He pulled into the covered parking lot in the back of the building, so the car was difficult to see. He walked to the side door and went inside.

  He withdrew twenty thousand dollars in cash. He got four electronic transfers made out to the four entities he owed money to—the Alcohol Control Board to keep his liquor licenses current, his credit card company, the liquor supply company, and the accounting firm that handled his business accounts.

  The next banks were all along Ventura Boulevard. He went to Wells Fargo, City National, Citibank, and United California Bank. At each he withdrew thousands of dollars in cash, then ordered wire transfers to a company called Claudius Enterprises. At the last bank he sat in a quiet private office to prepare instructions for his attorney, Gerald Ospinsky, then called him and told him to get to work on certain arrangements.

  Finally, he called Spence. “It’s me. I want you to get a clean rental car. Then I want you to drive it along Moorpark Street, past the public library. Park as close to the library as possible. Then walk to Ventura Boulevard, pick up Skelley’s blue car in the municipal lot behind the Bank of America, and drive it to Siren. Do not carry a gun or anything that’s illegal on you, because you might get stopped by the cops. My car is at Siren. When you go home, leave Skelley’s car and take mine. Do you have all that?”

  Spence said, “Sure. Is something wrong that I don’t know about?”

  That answered Kapak’s question. The man with the shotgun in Kapak’s backyard could not have been Spence. It must have been one of the gardeners. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think I needed to. Don’t go to my house today.”

  “Okay.”

  “If they do pull you in, just be careful and polite and don’t get involved.”

  “All right. I’ll try to have the car at the library in an hour.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  He hung up and took his briefcase full of money, left Skelley’s car on Ventura, and walked to the public library. He was glad to be in an air-conditioned building after the walk. He used a computer at the library to make some reservations for flights and hotels, e-mailed more instructions to his accountant and his l
awyer, and then took a short afternoon catnap, resting his head on the briefcase full of money. When he awoke, it was 3:00, about an hour since he had talked to Spence.

  He went into the men’s room, combed his hair and splashed water on his face, and went outside. He walked the block to the corner and found the car. It was a new Acura with the rental company’s perfect wax job on it. Kapak got in, reached behind the visor, and found the keys. He drove off down Moorpark, staring occasionally in the mirrors to see if he could spot a follower.

  He made a series of quick turns in the maze of small residential blocks north of the library, then stopped in the middle of a row of cars in the lot beside the baseball field at Beeman Park, but nobody arrived to join him.

  He turned the car north and drove up Fulton, feeling secure and anonymous behind the car’s tinted glass. When he reached Sherri’s duplex, he parked around the corner and came back on foot. He climbed the stairs, but before he got to the top, the door opened and Sherri stood waiting for him. She was wearing a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and some sneakers. It occurred to him that before last night he had never seen her when she wasn’t wearing her work clothes: high heels, stockings, the short black pants, and the white top. “Where have you been?” she asked. “I’ve been calling and calling.”

  He took out his phone. “Oh. I guess I turned my phone off while I was at the bank and forgot to turn it back on.”

  “How old are you again?”

  “Not that old” Suddenly he felt as though that weren’t true. What was he doing? How could he imagine this was the sensible thing to do?

  She took his arm and tugged it so he would come inside. She closed the door and kissed his lips. “So what’s going on?”

  “I don’t have much time to tell you that. I guess you would say I’ve been having a bad month, and now this week seems to be turning out worse. The only good thing that happened lately is you.”

  “What bullshit.” He could tell she was pleased. He could also tell that no matter how smart she was, she couldn’t be anticipating anything like what he was thinking.

  He said, “I have to leave for good. Forever. I would like you to come with me. I’ll understand if you won’t. Here.” He searched the inside of his briefcase. “It’s an e-ticket.”

  She looked at it. “Paris?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go now. If you want, meet me at the airport at the Delta terminal at around five-thirty. Don’t call anybody before you leave, and don’t leave anything here that you care about.” He opened the door. “Do you even have a passport?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’m sorry, Sherri. I’ll be there. If you aren’t, I’ll understand.” And he was gone. He hurried to his car, already dialing Spence’s cell phone.

  “Yes?” Spence’s voice sounded guarded.

  “It’s me. I have a lot to tell you fast, so you’ll need to listen closely. I’m making some big changes in my life, and because of that your life will change, and so will everybody else’s. First, you’ve got to call a meeting of all the people who work for me. Call Temptress and Wash, and have them call their people together just before the shift changes at four. Here’s what you’ve got to tell them…”

  35

  SPENCE STOOD on the central stage at Siren. It was a wooden disk-shaped dais two steps up from floor level, with a brass pole in the middle of it. The white spotlights shone down on him. The nearby tables each had five or six chairs occupied by waiters, busboys, dishwashers, and young women with long hair. Most of the crowd was dressed in blue jeans, T-shirts, or sweatshirts. Two bouncers leaned against the door, listening for latecomers.

  “First of all,” said Spence, “I’d like to thank everybody for coming here today, especially the people who work at Temptress and Wash. We’ll make this short, because I know you’ve all got to get to work soon. As of an hour ago, Mr. Kapak has retired from business. He asked me to thank all of you for your loyalty and apologize because he couldn’t be here to say it in person. He said he’s sending every employee of his companies a bonus check in the mail. Some of you may get yours as early as tomorrow.”

  There was a wave of applause, punctuated with a few whoops and whistles.

  Spence waited until the noise died down. “I strongly advise you to deposit your check as soon as possible. Sometimes when businesses change hands there are legal problems and accounts get temporarily frozen.” He paused. “The next thing is that everybody still has a job. For now we’ll run everything pretty much as it has been” There was more applause. “And the last thing I want to do is introduce my business partner.”

  He beckoned to the back of the crowd and a man stood up. “His name is Peter Rollins. He’s the partner who will be overseeing the day-to-day management of the three clubs. Come up here, Pete. He’s got a lot of experience owning and operating bars in the East, so if you have problems or questions, ask him.”

  The man who came forward and stepped up onto the stage was not someone who seemed familiar, although a few in the audience had seen him before, in dim light from a distance. At that time his name had been Joe Carver. But the man they thought of when someone mentioned the name Joe Carver had always worn a ski mask, and this morning he was very far from Los Angeles.

  Since he left Los Angeles, Jefferson Davis Falkins had been driving the black Trans Am with the window open and his left arm resting on the top of the door, so it was already acquiring a red-brown tan. The silky brown hair of Melisande Carr was blowing around her perfect ivory forehead, but that didn’t seem to bother her at all. Her expression was beatific as she reloaded the magazine with .45 ACP rounds, inserted the magazine, and pushed it home with the heel of her hand.

  The three-thousand-dollar sound system mounted under the dash, in the doors, and behind them cried high and hummed harmonically in the foreground, and thudded in the background so deeply that it vibrated their teeth.

  Carrie pressed the button on her armrest to lower her window all the way. The wind inside the car grew stronger, so her hair lashed about violently. She took a look behind the car at the long, empty road, then held her right arm out, gripping the pistol. As the little white metal sign with the number sixty-five approached, it seemed to be moving faster and faster, but as it came, she steadied her arm until she could hold the sight on it. She pulled the trigger, the big gun jumped and roared, and in the last second she could see the blue sky shining through the hole she had punched in the sign as it flashed by the car into the past.

  “Did you get it?” Jeff shouted over the music.

  “What?”

  He lowered the volume. “Did you hit it?”

  “Drilled it. That’s some dead signage.”

  “That’s what—six in a row? You’re really improving.”

  She put the safety on and slid the gun into her purse on the floor. “While you’ve got the radio off, we should talk about what we’re going to do before we get there.”

  “Get where?”

  “To the next place.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I thought we’d check into a nice hotel for a few days, to get over the stress and strain of being on the road all this time without stopping. We’ll eat some good food, drink some champagne, and hang around the pool. And we can catch up on all the sex we’ve missed.”

  “What a surprise. Then what?”

  “While we’re doing all that, we take a close look at the town and see what seems good to us.”

  “How long does this go on?”

  “Until we see something we like or see that there isn’t anything good and move on.”

  “If there is, then I suppose you want to plunder it and then move on?”

  “That’s the general outline of the idea. So what do you want to do?”

  “That. Exactly that.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder as he guided the car down the long, straight highway. Far ahead he saw a car moving along in the right lane, a bright red dot on the gray ribbon. He was going f
ast, so after a minute or two he was gaining on it visibly. He could see now that it was a Corvette, and there were two heads in it. He could see for miles ahead, and no car was coming toward them, so he pulled to the left to pass the Corvette. The driver of the Corvette kept his speed constant instead of trying to race with him, and that was a relief. As he accelerated past, Carrie leaned away from him and straightened. He glanced at her in time to see her raise her right arm to the window. He drew in a breath to shout, but there was the loud report of the pistol, her hand jerked upward, and something terrible happened inside the Corvette.

  On the Corvette’s windshield a hole had appeared in the center of a blossom of milky, pulverized glass. The driver’s head jerked against the headrest but didn’t come back. He slumped in his seat, and the Corvette wavered, then swerved, then bounced off into a field of alfalfa, grounded itself on some unseen obstacle, and stopped.

  Jeff stood on the brakes of his Trans Am, guided it to a stop along the shoulder of the road, threw it into reverse, and backed up quickly. He swung open his door, pivoted out of the driver’s seat, and ran. He sprinted across the field to the car, and as he came, he could see the disaster through the windshield. The driver had been a man about fifty years old with a balding head and a pair of aviator sunglasses, but there was a perfect round hole in the left side of his forehead. The passenger beside him was a blond woman, a bit younger than the driver. Her face, hair, and blouse were spattered with tiny droplets of blood, and she was rocking back and forth, crying. It was a special cry, her red-lip-sticked mouth in a wide-open, unchanging “Aaaaah! Aaaaaah!”

  Jeff went to her side of the car, opened the door, and tried to pull her out. “It’s all right. You’ll be okay,” he said gently. His words made as little sense as her cry. It wasn’t all right, and she wouldn’t be okay. The man beside her, who seemed to be her husband, had just had his brains blown out onto the headrest. Jeff wasn’t even sure why he wanted her to get out of the car. He looked past her and saw, through the driver’s side window, Carrie walking up. She still had her .45 pistol in her hand. She leaned in and looked at the dead driver. Then she walked around the car to stand by Jeff.