Payoff

by Douglas Corleone

  “The first transaction’s completed,” Edgar said five minutes later. “We’re beginning the second.”

  Sunset went on forever. Traffic moved at about thirty miles per hour. The kidnappers had vowed to drop Olivia off on the boulevard wherever they were when they received confirmation of the final transaction.

  “How do I know you’ll let her go?” Edgar had demanded.

  “What would I want her for?” the synthesized voice said. “I know you cannot pay any more.”

  Those words were enough to convince Edgar but not me. Something about the entire situation felt wrong. Why choose Edgar Trenton as your mark in the first place? There were plenty of Hollywood heavyweights up in those hills with much younger daughters, little girls who would be much easier to control.

  “The second transaction is complete. We’re beginning the third now.”

  “Copy.”

  There were other things about the Trentons’ story that troubled me. Whatever had happened later, Emma should know whether she’d fired the gun. And why did the intruders bother with Olivia’s computer, iPad, and iPhone, when the pot they were after was so much larger? The jewelry and the thirty grand in cash, too—these were things that could potentially be traced. A job of this magnitude, it was typically all or nothing. Why fret over the small stuff? Why take on any unnecessary risk?

  “The third transaction is complete. We’re beginning the fourth and final transfer, Simon.”

  “Copy.”

  And why the elaborate show for Emma Trenton? They didn’t get anything from her, nor did they attempt to. All they really did was provide her with information.

  Or misinformation.

  We’d passed through Beverly Hills and Bel Air and were about to enter Brentwood when suddenly the black Dodge Charger made a razor-sharp right off Sunset and headed for the 405.

  “Edgar,” I shouted. “They’re taking off. Stop the final transaction.”

  Last thing I heard was Edgar crying out, saying something about it being too late, and please, Simon, don’t lose them.

  Then reception cut out, and I accelerated, taking the Ducati upwards of ninety as I hit the San Diego Freeway heading north.

  Chapter 12

  The headlight on the Ducati cut through the darkness as I kept my eyes fixed on the Charger’s taillights. The Charger weaved through the light traffic, making full use of the broad freeway, momentarily riding a Volvo’s back fender before slicing onto the right shoulder and passing. The driver crossed three lanes in a shot, then accelerated to speeds well over one hundred. The Ducati had enough power to keep me on his tail, but only in a James Bond film can a chase like this end well. I needed to involve the LAPD as soon as possible, but there was no way to reach for my phone and remain vertical. I stole glances into the autos I passed, hoping to spot someone punching in 911, but there was no way to tell. Drivers who held up their smartphones had probably just tapped the record button so that they could upload the video to YouTube when they arrived home.

  I’d memorized the Charger’s Arizona license plate, but a hell of a lot of good it would do if I lost the Charger itself. No doubt the car was stolen, certainly the plates. With the eight and a half million safely in these kidnappers’ Cayman accounts, Edgar and Emma Trenton would have no hope of ever seeing their daughter, Olivia, again.

  From the far left lane, the Charger shot across the freeway toward the Skirball Center Drive exit. A beige SUV banked to the right to avoid the Charger and ran up against the right guardrail, throwing up a shower of sparks. I zigzagged through a half dozen vehicles, but I’d been far enough behind the Charger to catch the off-ramp without causing any major collisions.

  With no cars in front of it, the Charger picked up speed. We had a length of open road to light it up, but it wouldn’t last. Any moment now, we’d hit a fork, with either path leading straight to the treacherous Mulholland Drive.

  The Charger bore left at the fork and busted a wide U onto Mulholland, causing a minivan to screech to a stop at a green while its pissed-off soccer mom leaned on her horn. As I passed her, I made the gesture for her to get on the phone, but she mistook it for the finger and flipped me the bird right back.

  Here Mulholland was a two-way, two-lane road with a forty-mile-per-hour speed limit, meaning, unlike on the wide 405, there was literally no room for error. Once we crossed over the freeway, old-fashioned telephone poles stood sentinel on either side and the speed limit dropped to twenty-five. We were doing well over ninety.

  The road bent hard to the right, and a sign warned of an upcoming traffic light. The light was red but we both blew through it. Mulholland then curved to the left and we stormed past a private high school.

  I ached to attempt a pass, but visibility around these curves was zero, and there were too many spots where the Charger could hop off Mulholland. The son of a bitch had picked a hell of a road for a chase.

  In the backseat, the girl turned 180 degrees and chanced a look back at me. I thought I could see her scream, but that was probably my imagination.

  As we flew past a Presbyterian church, I strained to listen for the sounds of police sirens over the roar of the Ducati’s engine.

  Despite Mulholland’s terrifying twists and turns, the driver of the Charger continued to accelerate. After a short while I decided I had no choice but to try to pass him, slow him down, force him into a decision of fight or flight before he killed himself and Olivia.

  He was probably armed. If I could get him to take a shot at me, he’d have to divide his attention between the Ducati and the road.

  On the right, a surreal view of Los Angeles blew by us. We were now high above the city, careening past deadly drop-offs. I needed to wait until the road was covered on the right by trees. If I made my move too soon, the Charger would inevitably soar off a cliff.

  Although a sign indicated a sharp left turn ahead, the Charger didn’t slow.

  Something the size of a fist formed in my throat as I glimpsed the glow of a pair of oncoming headlights rounding the curve just ahead of us.

  I pulled back on the bike and braced myself as the Ducati fell into a slide. My eyes remained glued to the Charger as its tires tried to lock but spun helplessly along the gravel.

  The oncoming vehicle was a monster, a yellow Hummer that had no place on Mulholland at night. I yanked my head aside just in time to miss the rear wheel as it threw gravel up against my faceplate.

  I released the bike and hit the blacktop hard and rolled, cutting up every part of my body, hoping only to spare myself broken bones.

  The Charger glided through the green-brown brush toward the cliff.

  I heard a young woman’s scream.

  I may have screamed myself.

  Then my body came to a jarring halt at the side of the road, and the Charger took flight, turning end over end as it plunged down the side of the mountain.

  Chapter 13

  The sound of the crash hit my ears almost instantaneously and I knew the Charger had come into contact with something—a thick tree, maybe a boulder—that prevented its free fall down the mountain.

  I ripped off my helmet. Ignoring the pain coursing through the lower half of my body, I leapt to my feet and hobbled on a badly strained ankle through the brush toward the edge.

  I could finally hear sirens but they were far off. I looked down the mountain. The Charger hadn’t fallen all that far, its momentum stopped by a large brown rock, but the engine was on fire, the flames clawing their way toward the gas tank. The tank would probably explode before the first responders reached us. There was nothing to do but to try to pull Olivia from the wreckage before the blast.

  If the blast took me with it, so be it. At least I’d have tried.

  I took a step back, leapt over the side of the cliff, throwing my feet out in front of me to slow my fall. I skidded a bit faster than I would have liked, my left leg burning as it slid down the rock, but before I could bitch about it, I found myself at the rear bumper of the fiery Charg
er.

  The fierce heat did its damndest to keep me away.

  With my right arm shielding my face, I pushed myself to my feet and went around the rear toward the driver’s side, trying to catch a glimpse of Olivia, but I couldn’t see her.

  I did see blood. Lots of it. And when I reached the side of the vehicle, I found the driver crawling out the open door. I grabbed him by the back of his jacket as he wailed, and tossed his body aside like a luggage-thrower on the tarmac at Reagan National. I dropped painfully to my knees and dug to find the lever to push the front seat forward. My fingers brushed against a broken bottle, then slid through a warm liquid.

  Got it.

  The front seat flew forward. As I kicked my heels into the dirt to stand, a female form fell out of the backseat and into my arms.

  I lifted the body so I could look at her.

  There was nothing left of her face but a scarlet mask of muscle and skull. The body itself was broken, the bones in her arms, in her neck, in every spot I touched, were pulverized, utterly shattered.

  As the sirens neared, my chest flooded with a deep hatred for those with such a naked disregard for human life.

  I pressed my fingers against Olivia’s limp neck to seek a pulse but it was futile. Inundated with grief, I felt for Olivia as though she were my own daughter.

  When the flames began to lick at my face, I stepped back, wanting to roar, the rage in me hot enough to melt the polar icecaps.

  But I still had a clock to beat. The LAPD were closing in, and if this driver was still alive, I needed to talk to him. How else would I be able to find and kill every last bastard involved in this?

  Choking on the thick black smoke, I set Olivia’s body down and turned to look for the spot where I’d tossed the driver. He was alive and conscious but he hadn’t gone far. I stepped toward him.

  The driver lay on his stomach, inching his way up the mountain like a slug.

  I dropped to one knee, rolled him over, and shouted over the noise, “What’s your name?”

  Blood dripped from his forehead down his face, but I could see enough to know that he was a good-looking kid. Or at least he had been ten minutes ago.

  “Help me,” he pleaded.

  Perfect English. Well, as perfect as it can be with windshield glass lodged in your jaw.

  I repeated, “What’s your name?”

  “P-please,” he managed.

  Roughly, I went into his back pocket and found a wallet. I opened it, pulled out a California driver’s license. With my eyes tearing and stinging from the intense heat, I could just make out the information: Jason Gutiérrez of Ellenwood Drive, Los Angeles.

  Twenty-four years old. From the looks of him, he wasn’t going to see twenty-five.

  “Who do you work for?” I said as I replaced the license.

  “P-please,” he muttered. “Pray with me.”

  I pulled another card from his wallet: Member, Screen Actors Guild. Hadn’t even expired yet.

  The sirens were coming up Mulholland.

  “Who kidnapped the girl?” I shouted.

  “Wha—? What girl?”

  I replaced the SAG card, found a California registration for the Dodge Charger. The car was registered under his name.

  “The young lady in the backseat of your car,” I said, barely hanging on to my last shred of patience. “Who kidnapped her?”

  “She was—” He choked on the blood in his throat. “She wasn’t kidnapped, she’s my girlfriend.”

  My eyes widened as I pulled a picture from the kid’s wallet. “Olivia was your girlfriend?”

  Through the smoke, I stared at the picture hard, tried to reconcile the face in the photo with the face I’d seen in countless pictures hanging in the Trentons’ home.

  “No Olivia,” he mumbled. “Jennifer.”

  He was telling the truth. The picture was of Jason and some other Caucasian girl. A beautiful brunette like Olivia, same perfect cheekbones, same thin body frame, but several years older.

  “Christ,” I said.

  “They … hired us.”

  “They?” I searched his eyes. “Who’s they?”

  “I don’t … Someone on the Internet … He hired us.…”

  “Us? Who’s us?”

  “Me and … Jennifer.”

  “Hired you and Jennifer to do what?”

  Blood spilled over his lip, down his chin, and he looked away.

  “Hired you to do what?” I repeated.

  “Dri…”

  I lifted his head in my hands, placed my ear as close to his mouth as I dared.

  “Drive,” he whispered.

  I looked in his eyes again. “Are you saying that’s Jennifer back there by the car?”

  Tears streamed down his face, cutting through the dirt and the blood. “Yes … My girl … Jennifer…” He was hyperventilating. “Is she—?”

  “She’s dead,” I said. “Whose plates are those?”

  Trembling, he said, “They gave me … Left them … My mailbox…”

  “What were your instructions?”

  Jason started to fade. I lifted the lids of his eyes with my fingers, repeated the question.

  The sirens were closing in.

  “Drive … Slowly past Wells Fargo on Sunset … There will be … Be a man in the window. Make sure he sees you.…”

  The red and blue lights of the patrol cars lit the sky above our heads as a helicopter approached fast from the south.

  His voice became a low growl. “They said, if anyone follows you … Drive … Do whatever it takes, don’t let them catch you or you won’t get the second half of your money.…”

  A spotlight hit me full in the face. I threw up my arm to shield my eyes.

  “Please,” he said, crimson bubbles forming atop his lips, popping, spilling scarlet down his neck. “Pray with me to God for—” He swallowed, coughed, spit up more blood. “—for forgiveness.”

  I took his hand in mine. “God’s not here,” I said softly. “Only me.” With my other hand, I lifted his head so that he could look me in the eyes. “And no matter whose daughter that girl was, I can’t forgive you for this.”

  His body jerked.

  He was going into shock.

  His mouth was moving but no words were making it through his lips, only blood.

  A pair of cops started down the cliff.

  “I just want…”

  I waited.

  “Wanted to act,” he managed. “Just wanted … a role.”

  “Well, now you’ve got one,” I said as the helicopter shone its searchlight on us, and the last glimmer of life left Jason’s eyes for good. “Now you get to play dead, kid.”

  I lowered the lids of his eyes and stood just as the first of the uniformed officers reached our position.

  Chapter 14

  Evidently the soccer mom who flipped me the bird hadn’t dialed 911 after all, because the LAPD bought my story that I’d been enjoying a leisurely ride along Mulholland when I saw the Charger ahead of me driving erratically then go off the cliff. It didn’t hurt that Jason had a half-full bottle of Wild Turkey stashed under the front seat.

  The yellow Hummer hadn’t stuck around.

  The Ducati was totaled.

  Sorry, Freddy. Life, it’s full of unfairness.

  I checked my BlackBerry for reception and was surprised to find it was strong up here. I wanted to call Edgar before he saw this bloodbath on the news. So I excused myself and began limping away from the cops. As I did, I overheard one of them say that they hadn’t yet been able to reach Jason Gutiérrez’s next of kin, because there was no one at his home. His neighbor told police he lived alone; his mother lived somewhere just outside San Diego.

  “Simon,” Edgar answered his cell, “tell me you have Olivia.”

  “It wasn’t her in the Dodge Charger, Edgar.”

  “But I saw her, Simon.”

  “It was a ruse.”

  “A ruse? Why? What would they have to gain by that? They know I
have no more money.”

  Edgar was right. It wasn’t clear what they had to gain, unless they thought Edgar wouldn’t actually go through with the wire transfers. But then, if Edgar didn’t make the transactions now, he never would, so to what end were they keeping Olivia?

  Of course, it could be that a mistake was made. That Olivia had struggled or tried to escape. Or that one of the kidnappers had gotten too rough with her, and now she was dead.

  Or it could have been that obtaining the money wasn’t their primary objective, and that the entire ransom demand was nothing but strategy, a way of buying time to get Olivia out of the country.

  But why?

  I thought of the Lindsay Sorkin case in Europe last year and I shivered. I couldn’t become involved in another nightmare like that.

  But then, what choice did I have now? I was already in, neck deep.

  On the other end of the line, Edgar was crying. “Does this mean she’s gone, Simon? Tell me the truth. Does this mean my daughter’s dead?”

  “Not by a long shot, Edgar.” I inhaled deeply, struggled to maintain my voice. “I’m at the scene of an accident right now. The kidnappers hired the driver of the Charger and his girlfriend to drive past Wells Fargo while you were in the window. Then they were supposed to hop on the 405 and lose anyone who might be following. They made the mistake of jumping onto Mulholland and accidentally went off a cliff. Both the driver and his girlfriend, Jennifer, are dead. But before Jason died, I was able to extract some information from him. His computer may hold the key to discovering who it was who hired him. I need to get to his house, and fast.”

  “Of course, Simon. Where does he live?”

  “Eagle Rock. It’s a town next to Glendale.”

  “I’ll have Nicholas pick you up. Where are you on Mulholland?”

  “Just have him follow the flashing lights.” I looked back at the cops, standing around, cracking jokes about drunk drivers. “Oh, and don’t send the limousine, Edgar. I want to remain inconspicuous.”

  “Understood.”

  Soon as I hung up with Edgar, I saw that I had a missed call from Kati. She never left messages, so I called her back.