Close to the Ground

by Jeff Mariotte

He’d try to cut it to ten.

  Every minute counted.

  “The one with the goatee,” Kate whispered, “works, or worked, for a janitorial service that hired out to banks all over town. At one time or another he must have been inside half the banks in the city.”

  “The service is bonded, right?” Newberry asked.

  “Sure. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t hire a loser once in a while. Maybe he didn’t have a record before. Maybe he didn’t get this idea until he’d spent a lot of time in banks. Maybe —”

  “Shhh,” Newberry silenced her. Goatee was on the phone again.

  “That’s right,” he barked. “Another hostage. An FBI agent named Newberry. He’s wounded, but he’s okay.” He turned to face Newberry, holding the phone out. “Tell Hopgood you’re okay.”

  “I’m hit!” Newberry called. “I’m alive, but bleeding.”

  “He’s okay,” Goatee claimed. “For now. But we’re getting tired of waiting, I can tell you that.” He listened for a moment. “No, that’s not all right. This has gone on too long. We have two hostages now, and one of them’s a Fed. Tell you what, Hoppy Hopgood. We get those cars in front of the bank, and all the cops cleared away, in ten minutes, or we’ll give you one of the hostages. In a bag.”

  He hung up the phone with a malicious chuckle.

  “You guys want to draw straws, or what?” he asked.

  He’d been in sewers the world over, now that he thought about it. Famous ones, like those in Paris, and New York — although he had never seen any of the legendary alligators there — and less famous, and downright disgusting ones, like those in Rome and Prague and New Orleans. L.A.’s were pretty middle of the road — not much to recommend them except the degree of access they afforded, but not as noxious as many others.

  Once he was sure the agents couldn’t hear him anymore, he broke into a run. It was dangerous, moving so fast in the dark. Even with vision like his, a broken pipe or a loose two-by-four hanging into the passageway would be a major obstacle if he slammed into it headfirst. And he definitely wasn’t at his best right now — the events of the past couple of days had left him nearly exhausted. Every muscle ached, including some he didn’t know he had.

  But he didn’t think he had time to move any slower. There had been too many delays already.

  This time, when he came out into the main pipeline, he was about a hundred feet beyond where the two FBI agents had been. If they shined their lights down the shaft, they’d probably be able to see him. He had to hope they were too involved in their war stories to bother.

  He stayed as close to the pipeline’s wall as he could and hoped for the best.

  Another fifty feet ahead there was another intersection, this one a four-way. Angel knew he wanted to go right. This would lead into the section that the bank robbers had tunneled into. If they’d had charts of the sewer system they could have saved themselves about twenty-five feet of tunneling — a good week’s work, he figured, with picks and shovels. He was surprised they’d never had a cave-in, at least, one that did enough damage to make the news.

  But then, he figured, if they’d been geniuses, they’d probably have had jobs instead of going into the bank business through the back door. That was the thing about criminals — comic books and pulp novels notwithstanding, they were very rarely the smartest guys in the class.

  He approached the intersection cautiously. They’d have guards posted in the tunnel somewhere, he guessed. They would have to assume that the police would send a team up the tunnel to block them in from that side. And the police would have to assume that the bad guys would have figured this out, so they wouldn’t send the team after all.

  Instead, they’d do as the FBI had done, and post some agents inside the sewer system, blocking each of the possible egresses.

  Except the roundabout route Angel had taken.

  At the intersection Angel stopped, listened closely. He heard the steady drip of water, the gentle splosh of drops falling into the flow. He heard a faint rumble from the streets above.

  He heard something that might have been a person breathing.

  He hazarded a peek to his right.

  They were at the end of this stretch of sewer. Two men, standing in the sewer, automatic rifles in their hands. Not Feds. They were clever — they’d taken a position in the sewer itself, outside the tunnel they’d carved. If anyone followed their tunnel from the gas station to here, these guys would have the drop on them because they’d come from an unexpected direction.

  Except now there was someone coming up on them from behind. And Angel was even more unexpected.

  Unless they heard him coming.

  He had to cover fifty feet without making a sound. It was quiet down here, quiet enough for him to hear one of them drawing breath. If they heard him, they’d turn, see him, fire. He’d survive.

  Kate might not.

  Angel was out of alternatives. Sitting around hoping that Kate survived this was not an option. So action was called for, and action meant taking out these two gunmen as quickly and quietly as possible. One shot fired, one voice raised in alarm, and this whole plan would backfire, big time.

  And these were men who would kill — who had killed — for money. There was nothing lower than that. Angel felt no compunction about taking them down hard.

  He moved.

  Swiftly, silently, keeping his feet from the flow and against the dry concrete of the pipe’s curve, he dashed the fifty feet. The men heard nothing. They kept watching their tunnel, even when Angel drew up behind them. They held semiautomatic rifles, pointed into the tunnel, and they squatted about two-and-a-half feet apart, at the opening.

  Feeling a bit like a character from a Three Stooges routine, Angel spread his hands wide.

  When he brought them together the right side of one’s face was in his right hand, the other guy’s left side in his left. He drove them together like a man trying to crack two coconuts.

  The thud seemed loud to him, but the two men slumped, unconscious. Angel snagged their weapons before they clattered to the floor — that would have echoed up and down the tunnel — and placed them gingerly in the couple of inches of sewage flow. Even if they worked after that, and even if these guys came to, they’d have a hard time finding their guns and a harder time working up the courage to try them.

  He wiped his hands on one guy’s jacket and kept going.

  The tunnel led from the gas station into this neck of the sewer. Forty feet or so up the sewer, they’d started digging again, just a short jog this time, into the bank. Angel made his way to this secondary tunnel, shaking his head once again at crooks who’d rather dig for days than check out a sewage system plan. He glanced inside the tunnel, and saw, after a ten-foot stretch, where they’d breached the bank’s wall.

  There was a light on inside.

  He stepped into the tunnel. It was empty, and he couldn’t hear anything from inside. Probably the two men he’d already encountered were the only guards for this side. Probably there was nobody else between him and wherever Kate was being held.

  Probably, probably, probably.

  He listened for a long moment, and then headed for the bank wall.

  When he reached it, he stopped, listened again. They’d broken through high on the wall in a hallway of the bank’s basement. Old, dusty filing cabinets lined one side of the hall. There was no sign of anyone here, though. No sound. He let himself through the hole in the wall, lowered himself to the floor.

  He was inside.

  Listening again, he heard the faint mumble of voices. He followed the sound, and the voices grew more distinct as he went. The noise led him to a staircase. There were lights up there, as well.

  That’s where Kate was.

  And more armed men. No telling how many, from here.

  He ascended silently.

  At the top he found himself in another short hallway. Right led to the bank’s main lobby, where tellers served the public.

  Le
ft led to bank offices.

  The voices came from the left. They were quiet; he still couldn’t make out what was being said. He didn’t really care. He wasn’t here to eavesdrop.

  He remembered something announcers said on those sports programs Doyle watched. “He came to play,” they said. “This team came to play.” To which Angel’s response was, yeah, why else would they have come?

  When he voiced this, Doyle told him he was too literal.

  Today, Angel didn’t come to play.

  He came to work.

  There was an open door down the hall. The soft voices came from in there. Light spilled from the doorway.

  Another voice sounded over the first, and Angel recognized Kate’s. She was still alive, then. And he knew where she was.

  Now he just needed to be able to get to her without anyone shooting her.

  He was about to make for the doorway when a phone rang.

  Goatee snatched it up.

  “Yeah?” he demanded. He listened. “Okay, then. That’s better. We’ll have a look. You better not be messing with me.”

  He gestured toward Kate and Glenn Newberry.

  “Bring them,” he said to the surfer guy. “Hoppy says the cars are outside, and the cops have pulled back.”

  The surfer helped Newberry to his feet. The agent was unsteady, and Kate rose, helped him maintain his balance. Goatee led the way, and they left the office.

  * * *

  Angel pressed himself against wall, just inside the staircase doorway. When the phone rang, the front of the bank went dark. His first thought was that the robbers had turned off the lights, but then he realized that it wasn’t bright enough out there for regular bank lights to be on. That was when he knew that all the lights the police had been shining on the bank’s façade had been turned off, probably in answer to the robbers’ demands.

  He could barely see into the hallway from where he stood, just a tiny sliver of space through the doorway. But it was enough to let him see Kate pass by, with the barrel of a MAC-10 jammed against the base of her skull. One move, one whisper from him, and she’d be dead.

  He couldn’t take that chance. He let them pass by. Two armed men, two hostages. The second one, in a suit, looked to Angel like an FBI man.

  They went into the bank lobby.

  “What’s going on out here?” he heard one of the men ask.

  “All the cops are out of sight,” someone answered. “They took all those lights away. They’re still out there somewhere, but they’ve moved back to where we can’t see ’em from here. They left those two cars there, doors open, motors running.”

  “Cool. That’s what we wanted.”

  “What about the hostages?”

  “When we know we’re clear, then we’ll worry about them.”

  Angel knew what that meant. No way could they let law-enforcement officers survive to provide clues, and ultimately to testify against them at trial. Once they knew they weren’t being pursued, Kate and the other guy were dead.

  Angel slipped around the corner and moved to where he could get a view of the darkened bank lobby.

  There were four robbers, all armed. All peering through the big windows at the street outside. Looking for the police, who had done a good job of pulling back, it seemed.

  Right outside the door were two nondescript cars. If they took Kate and the agent into those, Angel would never see her alive again.

  Goatee touched the surfer guy on the arm. “Get those guys outta the tunnel,” he said. “We gotta move fast when we go out.”

  The surfer nodded once and started back toward the hallway.

  Angel felt himself change, felt his vampire self take over. Fully transformed, Angel charged.

  He took two steps into the room and then leapt into the air. Somersaulting twice in midair, he landed between Kate and the nearest crook.

  “Surprise,” he said. He drove a hard right jab into the crook’s jaw. There was a loud crack, and the guy’s eyes crossed. Angel followed with a snap-kick to the guy’s stomach. Wind blew out of him and he folded.

  Angel spun to the next closest robber, who was already raising his weapon toward Angel. He swatted the gun barrel to one side, grabbed the crook’s collar with his other hand, and yanked the guy forward. Angel’s upraised knee collided with the man’s face. Two down.

  Kate had turned on a third bank robber and kicked the gun from his hands. Now they both circled each other, looking for an opening. The FBI agent and the fourth criminal struggled for possession of the fourth guy’s MAC-10, teeth clenched, breathing hard.

  Angel turned his attention back to Kate’s guy, who made his play, lunging for her throat. She parried the attack and slammed the flat of her hand against his nose. He staggered, dropped to the floor.

  The fourth guy, still wrestling with the Fed, must have realized that he was greatly outnumbered. He didn’t stop, didn’t let up, but the look on his face was turning to one of panic.

  But as Angel watched him, a movement reflected in the big, dark windows caught his attention.

  Behind Kate, where Angel wouldn’t have been able to see him except in the glass, the first guy he’d dropped had rolled onto his stomach and was raising his gun, taking aim at Kate.

  His hand tightened on the trigger.

  Angel plowed into Kate, driving her back six feet. A blast of gunfire sprayed the air where she’d been standing, tearing up the wall. Angel covered the space in less than a second, kicked the gun from the guy’s hands, dragged him to his feet.

  He head-butted the guy with his bony forehead. When he felt the man go limp in his hands, he let go.

  As he turned to face the room, he reverted to his human state, hoping Kate hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.

  The FBI man had his guy in handcuffs. Kate moved quickly through the room, putting flexible cuffs on the unconscious ones. Then she came to Angel, a smile on her pretty face.

  “Guess I owe you a big thank-you,” she said. She looked at him with an odd expression on her face.

  “You’re welcome.” He waited. “Something wrong?”

  She touched his forehead. “Guess not,” she said. “At first, I thought . . . must have been a trick of the light. You okay?”

  “Fine, I’m fine,” he said. And then, anxious to change the subject, he added, “Glad I saw that guy’s reflection in the glass. He —”

  Reflections, he thought suddenly. A trick of the light.

  “I have to go,” he said. “Glad you’re okay. Please get outside and call off the troops so I can get out of here.”

  Kate went outside, hands held high, badge in one of them.

  As soon as it was safe, Angel vanished into the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Finding a cab in L.A. was difficult under any circumstances. It was even more so in a not-particularly wealthy neighborhood, in the middle of the night.

  Angel walked four long blocks to Figueroa, finally spotting one cruising slowly down that boulevard. He hailed it, climbed into the back, gave his address to the driver.

  Reflections, he thought as the cab roared into the night. At the club, Hi-Gloss, with Karinna, when she’d disappeared on him. He’d circled the whole club, looking into the high mirrors to see out onto the dance floor. He’d still been looking into them when she came up behind him, touched his arm. He should have realized then that something was wrong, but he’d been relieved to find her, and it didn’t sink in at the time.

  Thinking back on that night, it wasn’t that he didn’t see anyone — if she had had no reflection at all, that would have tipped him off, he knew. So he had seen someone, or something. It just hadn’t looked like Karinna.

  Standing in the bank with Kate, things had suddenly fallen into place. Karinna never did her own makeup or hair. She wore heavy perfume — much more than most girls her age did.

  She wasn’t a vampire, Angel knew. He would have been able to sense that. What she was, he didn’t know.

  But what s
he wasn’t, was human.

  Add to that the sudden turnaround in the fortunes of Monument Pictures, and there was definitely something off in the Willits household.

  When the cab pulled up in front of his building, Angel paid the driver and leaped up the front steps. He banged into the office, startling Cordelia and Doyle, both glued to Doyle’s little TV.

  “I need some help,” Angel said.

  “You — you’re back,” Cordelia said. “And we’re glad.”

  “Me, too.”

  “We saw Kate on the tube,” Doyle said. “She looked okay. Good. She looked good. The reports were kinda sketchy, though,” Doyle continued. “Lackin’ in detail, you might say. You . . .?”

  “Me,” Angel replied. “I don’t have a lot of time here. Listen . . .”

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later Doyle dropped Angel in front of the Willits house and drove away. In Angel’s coat pocket there was a book Doyle had scrounged up for him. In Angel’s heart there was a deep anger. He let it carry him over their fence, up the drive, and to the front door.

  He pounded on it three times. When there was no immediate answer, he reared back and kicked it, just below the knob. Wood splintered, metal screamed.

  The door swung open.

  Angel had been invited inside before, so that wasn’t a problem. He went in.

  “Jack Willits!” he called.

  There was a moment of silence, and then a shuffling from deep in the house. After a couple of minutes Jack Willits emerged from the door he’d come through the first time Angel had been here.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” Angel asked.

  “Angel!” Jack ignored the question, a broad smile on his face. “My boy. Am I glad to see you. Wait till Karinna hears — we were worried about you, I don’t mind saying —”

  “Save it,” Angel cut him off.

  “Come on,” Jack said. “I’m in the study, having a brandy. Join me.”

  “I don’t want your brandy.”

  “Surely there’s something you want.” Willits glanced at the shattered door. “Quite the entrance.”

  “We need to talk,” Angel said.

  “Then let’s talk.” Willits led the way to his study, and Angel followed.