The Puppet Master

by John Dalmas

  It seemed to me I was up against something worse than just a commercial murder operation. Something more evil had reared its head this morning. Now, as Myers and I crossed the grassy park past one of the slender, HardSteel pylons of the Wilshire Monorail, we were escorted by one medium-sized and one very tall black man, both seeming dedicated to Myers' survival.

  I decided that when I got to the car, I'd transmit a copy of Myers' video statement to Joe, with a recommendation that he transmit copies to whoever—the feebs and Lane County, I suppose. Promptly, before Masters tried blowing up our office building. These new semi high-rises, built to current earthquake specs and with key structural elements made of HardSteel, could stand a lot. But a delivery van loaded with high explosives rammed into the entryway? Or a well-trained hit team with assault rifles and grenades, preceded by a couple of pleasant-looking guys with Uzis in their attaché cases and pistols inside their jackets? Guys who could take out the lobby guards before the man at the desk could hit the switch that locked the elevators and stairwell doors?

  Sure I was paranoid. I'd earned it.

  As far as that was concerned, my escorts, my Choi Li Fut, the Walther under my arm, and Myers' undoubted close-combat skills wouldn't mean a thing against an armed hit team with orders simply to kill. My real security lay in staying on the move, location unknown.

  Shortly we were walking along Sixth Street, striding out, unconsciously hurrying. A block ahead, just across from the handsome, vine-grown privacy wall of the Frederic Knepper Village greenbelt, stood the First Congregational Church. Its parking lot was surrounded by a waist-high, ornamental stone wall overgrown by ivy.

  I stopped. "Just a minute, guys," I said. The lot would be a perfect ambush site. But hell! That was silly! Who'd know I left the car there? All I'd told Fidela was, I was going to Lafayette-MacArthur Park, and I was reasonably sure no one had followed me.

  Unless . . . Had Steinhorn been carrying a key to one of the vehicles? Each company vehicle was fitted with a 360-degree, narrow-band pulse beacon, so they could be located in emergencies from our office and from our other vehicles. Joe had a policy that you left them on except under certain conditions, unusual and specified. Some of our vehicles were kept in the outside lot, and when Steinhorn left the building, he could have . . . But hell, he hadn't even known I'd be going out that morning! And given Steinhorn's appearance, the gate guard would have called the office. Policy was to report anything unusual. And the office would have let me know.

  But if someone cut me down with an assault rifle as I entered the parking lot, all that logic wouldn't mean squat. Paranoid was the word all right, but just the same . . . I looked at Jones. "Arnette," I said, "there's something I need you to do."

  He looked at me suspiciously. I opened my gadget pouch, took out the minicam, then popped out the backup cube I'd made and handed it to him. "I want you to take this to the nearest police station. Tell them Martti Seppanen from Prudential gave it to you. In case anything happens to Robert and me." I repeated my name so he got it. "And tell them what it's about. So they take the time to listen to it."

  He put the cube in his pocket, but stood as if unwilling to leave Myers. He still didn't trust me. A thought came to me then, and I looked at the other guy. The thought was of the biggest eager beavers in L.A. television news. Taking out my minicam again, I popped in another microcube for copying, then stood there watching the red light blink. When it quit, I took the cube out and held it up, looking at the other dancer. "I need someone to get this to KCBS-TV for me. To the news director."

  He was a slim muscular black with sharp, pretty much Caucasian features. Just now he was grinning. He knew exactly what I had in mind. "I'm your man, shark," he said.

  "You know where it is?"

  "On Sunset, where it crosses the one-oh-one." His accent struck me as Jamaican.

  "Good. When this gets aired, the danger of Robert and me getting hit goes way down, quick." I put it in his outstretched hand.

  "It's done," he said, and started to turn away. I put my hand on his arm.

  "What's your name?" I asked.

  "Duncan."

  "Thanks, Duncan." I put out a hand and he shook it.

  "That's all right," he said. "You have good luck, eh?" Then he took off at an easy lope, presumably for a monorail station a couple of blocks west.

  Arnette hadn't been happy; now he looked resigned. "All right," he said, "I'll take this one to the Rampart Station. It ain't far." He too left us then, jogging northward up Hoover to bypass the privacy-walled Alvarado Village. By that time Duncan had reached the corner of Occidental, where the parking lot began, and was crossing Sixth against the light, through a gap in the traffic.

  "Okay, Robert," I said, "let's go." If there was an ambusher behind the stone wall . . . Hell, I thought, it's just your nerves. And I was right. When we walked through the entrance, we were the only ones there. I looked the vehicle over. It had been locked, and still was. Had someone rigged it to blow up? I looked it over, through the windows and underneath. Nothing. Still, I was pretty uncomfortable, inserting the Ferroplast key into the slot, and even more so pressing the latch release and opening the door. Then Myers and I got in. I shut off the beacon, activated the motor, drove out of the lot, and started west on Sixth, feeling a lot better.

  Until, in an approaching car, I saw two faces I knew. One was Steinhorn; he was driving despite a swollen nose and two swollen eyes. The other was Kelly Masters; I knew his face from Carlos' video footage. I saw Steinhorn's mouth open as if shouting, and Masters turned. His eyes latched onto me like something—evil, as if he were memorizing my face. All this in about two seconds; then they were past me.

  In my rearview mirror I saw Steinhorn try a U-turn to come after me. The move depended on other cars swerving or braking quickly enough to avoid hitting him. Two of them didn't. He sideswiped one of them, and at almost the same moment the other one broadsided him. I was just coming to the intersection with Vermont Avenue. I turned north, my heart rate about a hundred and sixty.

  31

  THE WORLD TURNED

  UPSIDE DOWN

  I'd planned to drive to the office and deliver Myers. I'd also figured to call Joe and tell him what I'd learned. But that morning's bombing, and the encounter with Steinhorn and Masters, had shaken me. I didn't trust my assumptions anymore. It might be dangerous to go to the office. It was hard to imagine that SVI would start an actual shooting war with us, but they'd already blown up a building and killed a lot of people.

  Tooling north up Vermont, I decided to leave Robert off somewhere first. If there was an ambush waiting for us near the office, I wanted him safe. Molly Cadigan's wasn't too far; I'd see if she'd keep him for a few hours. When the police got the cube, SVI would soon be out of business.

  I turned the short wave on to the police band. It was way too soon for Arnette to have arrived at the LAPD's Rampart Station, but when they broadcast a bulletin to watch for SVI's people, I wanted to be sure to catch it. Maybe, I thought, I should call LAPD headquarters and tell them about Masters. Maybe they could pick him up at the wreck. I'd do that, I decided, at the next stop light, when I had a break from dealing with traffic.

  As luck had it, the next several signals were green. I was on the Hollywood Freeway overpass when a police broadcast grabbed my attention. It wasn't what I'd expected. Three cars were ordered to watch for, and arrest for questioning, a black Hispanic male named Hector Duncan, height about five-eleven, weight about 170, believed to be on foot in the vicinity of the CBS studios on Sunset Boulevard. And to bring him downtown to detective headquarters!

  "Hector Duncan?" I said aloud. The description and locale were right. "Are they talking about our Duncan?"

  Myers nodded, forehead furrowed. I thought: What the hell?! Had they picked up Arnette on his way to the station? Maybe he'd seen a patrol car and flagged it down. But why arrest Duncan? The same call would alert the beat officers in the vicinity. KCBS building security would get a call,
too.

  Seconds later they broadcast an all-cars bulletin to arrest for questioning Martti Seppanen, white male, age 33, height about 6 feet, weight about 230, hair brown, eyes blue, build stocky and muscular, last seen driving an aquamarine four-door Ford sedan traveling west on Sixth near Vermont, license plates unknown.

  They hadn't learned that from Arnette. The only ones who could have told them that were Steinhorn and Masters! I had gooseflesh crawling over me in waves, and I expected to hear sirens and see flashers coming behind me any minute. I got myself together and had the car's computer copy the microcube into memory.

  Luckily for me, the LAPD is chronically undermanned. We reached the Hollywood Hills with no sign of having been spotted. I'd just started up Hollycliffe when we heard a patrol car report that they had Hector Duncan in custody and would be heading downtown on the one-oh-one.

  If they had Arnette and Duncan both, then they also had both of the microcube copies I'd sent. Most importantly, they had the one I'd sent to KCBS.

  When I got to Molly's place, I drove a couple hundred feet past it and turned up a little dead-end lane, parking by a "For Sale" sign on a picket fence. Then we backtracked to Molly's on foot. When I rang her doorbell, I half expected a uniformed policeman to answer. That's the shape my mind was in. Instead I heard Molly's voice trumpet, "NEVER MIND, KATEY! I'VE GOT IT!" Seconds later she opened the door. "Martti!" she said, as if I was an old and dear friend. Then Myers registered on her. "Both of you! Come in!" She bustled us through the door and closed it behind us, then we sat down in a sunroom with a view across the L.A. Basin. "So," she said to me, "who's your friend? And what brings you here today?"

  There was something about that brass voice, red hair, and complete integrity that settled me down. I introduced Myers, then I told her about his statement, and Arnette, and Duncan, and seeing Masters—all of it, wondering if I was giving her too much too fast. She grew a crease between her eyes, and clenched her jaw, jutting her chin out.

  "You know what the hell's happened, don't you?" she said when I'd finished.

  "Masters and the LAPD have something going together."

  She nodded. "Damn straight they do! That's the only explanation. D'you have the foggiest idea what?"

  "I think so," I answered. And told her, the picture developing for me as I talked. The biggest crime organization in L.A. is the so-called Spanish mafia. It's bigger than the Sicilian or Korean, even bigger than the black. None of them is actually an organization. Each is a group of so-called "families," with loose agreements on what are sometimes called franchises. Anyway, in the Spanish mafia, the three biggest, most troublesome dons had disappeared during the past three years, which had thrown the families into serious disarray. With discipline impaired, factions distrusting each other, fighting each other, it wasn't surprising that their morale, security policies, and agreements had gone down the tubes. The LAPD had arrested dozens of family members, and the prosecutor's office had sent most of them to prison.

  In major crime syndicates, the leaders, the dons, are protected by layers of underlings—protected from violence, protected from informers, protected from getting their own hands dirty in ways the police could use to put them away. And if the heat did get bad, they'd bop across the border into Mexico. Take a vacation for a few weeks or months till things cooled off.

  But starting two years ago, Luis "El Grande" Lopez, Eddie "Yaqui" Macias, and Johnny "Numero Uno" Guzman had dropped from sight, one after another, as if on one of those vacations. Only they hadn't reappeared. After this long, it was doubtful they'd be back, doubtful they were alive. Matter of fact, I'd pretty much forgotten about them.

  How it looked to me was, the LAPD had gotten used to hiring Prudential, for example, to handle a lot of their more demanding investigation load. It was more economical: didn't require as much staff, as much organization, as much facilities—as much pressure. Now, it seemed to me, they'd gone a step, a long step, further. They'd hired an Ensenada-based criminal organization, SVI, to assassinate selected underworld leaders who seemed legally untouchable.

  I asked Myers if I was on the right trail. He smiled a small, wry smile. "I'm your witness on that, too," he said.

  "What're you going to do about it?" Molly asked.

  "First of all, I was hoping you'd hide Robert here till I can pick him up again. He's our principal witness. Beyond that, I've got some resources I have to check with before I can make any explicit plans."

  It was about a minute till noon then. Molly turned her TV on to the KCBS noon news, to see if, just possibly, Hector Duncan's microcube had somehow gotten through to their news people. Instead of hearing about SVI though, and the murder of Ray Christman, we watched footage of an apartment building—my home—the front half of it a pile of broken concrete. Police with dogs poked around for possible survivors while equipment and workmen moved rubble. The anchorman, Bart Weisner, said nothing at all about Kelly Masters, but he did say that the police were seeking an unnamed resident of the building for questioning.

  I was willing to bet that I was the unnamed resident. They'd have a hard time making that stick. I had witnesses to my arrival at the office at a time that wouldn't allow my being the bomber. So they weren't thinking clearly. There were people at the top, in the LAPD, who were sweating, making poor decisions they'd play hell backing out of. And this had to be something that only a few were involved with. Now things were getting out of their control—Masters was going psychotic—and every time they did something to cover it—gave some weird order—the people around them would wonder. It wouldn't hold together long. Their only chance, not very good, was to get rid of me as soon as possible, and hope everything would settle out again.

  Now, with Molly using my minicam, I recorded briefly what had been learned in Ensenada, and what I'd heard on the police band afterward, including the pickup of Hector Duncan. Concluding with what I suspected about unidentified LAPD officials and the SVI. Robert verified it. Then I used my last spare microcube to copy Myers' earlier statement, with my own as an addendum.

  * * *

  As long as my car was parked where it was, our hiding place was compromised. So leaving the cubes with Molly, I drove the car to Ralphs' Market at the corner of Western and Franklin, and left it in the parking lot. According to Molly, the store was open around the clock. A car parked there could go unnoticed for days.

  Then I hiked back up the hill. She'd offered me the use of her second car, an old Dodge Town Van. I also borrowed a Dodger cap her son had left at home, and a denim work jacket she wore in cool weather, for walking, or for working around the yard. Plus I got a microcube mailer from her.

  I drove the old Dodge down the hill. I wanted to mail the cube to Bart Weisner at his home, rather than the studio, but I didn't know his address. It wasn't listed in the public directory. So I stopped at Ralphs' lot, got in the company car, and used its computer to access the State Data Center—via the office mainframe, of course—then used the Lane County contract to access Weisner's mailing address. I was in luck: it was a 90027 post office box.

  I didn't know whether the LAPD was monitoring the firm's computer or not, or even if they could. But if they were, they could use the call to locate the car; the boys in blue might arrive soon. So I got back in the Dodge and left. At the nearby Los Feliz Post Office—90027—I addressed the mailer, and dropped the microcube in the chute. Weisner's postal box was in the same building. If he picked up his mail that evening, he'd get it then. Otherwise, surely the next day.

  Unless, of course, the police read the call, realized which "Weisner" I was interested in, and got a federal court order requiring the branch supervisor to turn it over to them. Which might—should—require convincing answers to some awkward questions.

  I drove back to Molly's. I still didn't know what I was going to do next. I'd had ideas, but none of them felt good.

  * * *

  Molly and Myers and Katey and I sat around playing cards for a while, with the radio tuned to
KFWB News. All we heard of any relevance was that the body count at the apartment was up to thirty-three, and so far no one had been found alive in the rubble. At about two-thirty, Myers started yawning. I lay down on one sofa and he on the other, and went to sleep.

  The clock read 1640 when I woke up from busy dreams. I couldn't remember what they were about, but I'd awakened with the germ of an idea. After buckling my shoulder holster back on, I found the hyysikkään, then went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Molly heard me and came out of her office.

  "So," she said, "what's happening?"

  "I think it's time for me to move."

  She started rustling around the kitchen, got out a plate of the great temptation, brownies, put them on the kitchen table, and was in the middle of pouring coffee when she stopped abruptly, scowling.

  "Get your goddamn ass out of my space!" She didn't yell it, just said it loudly and firmly, with a distinct tone of annoyance. It embarrassed me, even though she wasn't looking at me when she said it. Then she finished pouring, and sat down as if nothing had happened.

  "Reel your eyes back in, sweetbuns," she told me. "I wasn't talking to you." She tested her coffee with her upper lip, and sipped. "Now and then," she went on, "someone, some entity, some being, will show up in my space. If I don't like the way they feel, I send 'em packing. And if they don't git when I tell 'em to, I blast 'em. That gets rid of 'em every time."

  "You mean—ghosts?"

  "Not usually. Not in the usual sense. But someone without a body, or out of the body."

  I got a rush of chills. "Do you know who it was?"

  She snorted. "Don't know, don't care." She dunked a brownie and bit it in two. "D'you feel like telling me what you're going to do? Or would you rather keep it to yourself?"