‘What I think it is, he’s checking up on Tony Birthmark,’ McTell said. ‘Like a performance evaluation, something. How Dansk is handling the job. Maybe Loeb’s got some doubts, which wouldn’t blow me outta my chair with astonishment.’
‘I don’t like going behind anybody’s back, Eddie.’
‘If this Loeb’s the big chief, you forget any doubts you might have.’
Pasquale said, ‘He gave me his phone number, and we’re supposed to call and keep him informed.’
‘I don’t have a problem with that,’ McTell said. ‘Dansk’s head is wired all the wrong way.’ He tapped the side of his skull with a fingertip. ‘You ask me, the Birthmark Boy’s got a fixation type thing about this broad. The way he talks about her, he gets this buzzing in his voice. Sometimes I think he’s a death junkie and he wants to take a walk on the dark side, see how guys like you and me live. Only he hasn’t admitted it to himself and now this woman comes along and stirs his juices and suddenly he’s out of the closet and trigger-happy. It’s like he’s got a hard-on for her, swear to God.’
Pasquale played with a paper napkin, folding it, tearing it here and there, then spreading it open so it looked like a line of chorus girls. ‘I didn’t like the hit and run shtick,’ he said.
‘A cop into the bargain,’ McTell said.
Pasquale said, ‘A target’s just a target. I don’t have any hang-ups who I work on. It was that dumb-fuck little German car in broad daylight.’
‘You mentioned this hit to Loeb?’
‘No. You think I oughta?’
‘Loeb wants the skinny, you give it to him, man.’
‘So I tell Loeb, you’re saying.’
McTell sipped his lager and nodded. Pasquale placed a beer coaster on the edge of the table, smacked it with his hand and watched it rise in the air. He snatched it on the way down like a frisbee. ‘I don’t feel good about going behind Dansk’s back.’
McTell shrugged. ‘Me, I wouldn’t think twice about talking to Loeb. Fact, you want to give me his number, I’ll call him myself, because I got more than a few comments to make about Dansk.’
Pasquale plucked a slip of paper from his wallet and put it down on the table. ‘Here.’
‘You wanna go first?’ McTell asked.
‘After you, Eddie.’
‘That’s me,’ said McTell. ‘Always the guy that breaks the ice at parties.’
63
In the back of Kelloway’s car Amanda thought about Willie Drumm and Bernadette Vialli. She pictured those little war monuments you saw sometimes in the leafy squares of backwater towns, the names of men and women who’d died in far-away wars for what was commonly referred to as democracy and liberty. No such rhetoric attached to the deaths of Willie and Bernadette Vialli. They’d been killed for reasons that had nothing to do with patriotism or honour or whatever pumped-up nonsense words were carved into granite to cover the fact of human sacrifice and blood-letting.
They’d been killed because of Dansk, because of Dansk’s business, which clearly wasn’t limited to Sanchez alone. Because if that were the case, Bernadette Vialli would still be alive in her split-level suburban home.
Something else, she thought.
Willie had speculated about a personal motive, but she wasn’t buying this. It was more than that, but it was just beyond her reach, whatever it was, something she couldn’t focus on. She wished she had Willie to talk it through with her. She wished for a resurrection.
She turned her face and looked from the window. Outside the car the city was a blend of glass and brick. Between the buildings were forlorn blue shadows. Wom was driving, Kelloway sat in the passenger seat, his body turned towards Amanda.
Kelloway said, ‘You mentioned Mrs Vialli had a birthday card from her son, also a tape. We couldn’t find either.’
Amanda said nothing. She looked at the windows of tall buildings. She imagined the sniper again, a telescopic lens attached to his high-powered rifle, a bullet slamming into her skull. Welcome back to happy hour for paranoids, when uneasy feelings were two for the price of one and the bartender had Dansk’s face. She stared at the unusually deep cleft in the back of Kelloway’s neck.
‘Willie talked with Lew Bascombe about Dansk,’ she said. ‘That’s an avenue you should be exploring.’
‘You don’t mind if we do this my way, do you?’ Kelloway said.
‘Bascombe was supposed to do some checking and get back to Willie –’
‘My way,’ Kelloway said. ‘I mean that.’
Amanda lapsed into silence. Why not go direct to Bascombe now? Why not squeeze him hard? She wondered if there was any future in talking to Kelloway. He seemed to hear only what he wanted.
She looked at the digital dashboard clock. Four thirty-two. Somebody was coming from Justice at five, somebody who’d answer questions and allay the fears and suspicions. Yes indeed.
Wom parked the car in the lot of the Police building. Amanda stepped out into the volcanic afternoon. She didn’t want to enter the monolithic beige-coloured building. She didn’t want to see this somebody from Justice who’d have a plausible multi-layered story and a nice white shirt and the speech patterns of a real-estate salesman.
She followed Kelloway and Sonny Wom into the cool interior. ‘I’ll check on John,’ she said.
‘Sure.’ Kelloway led her along a corridor to a tiny room. He opened the door. Rhees lay on a narrow cot. She entered the room alone and approached the bed. Rhees was drowsy from painkillers.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘I was having this dream we were in Fiji drinking coconut milk, only it wasn’t milk, it was ink. You see any symbolism in that?’
‘No, not really. How’s the pain?’
‘Numbed,’ he said.
‘I’ve got a meeting with some person from Justice shortly.’
‘And then?’
She didn’t know how to answer. She said, ‘We’ll see.’ She ran a hand lightly across his face.
‘Get brochures,’ he said. ‘Glossy ones from a travel agent …’
He closed his eyes, slipping into sleep. Ink and coconut milk, cave-writing on the walls of the unconscious. Rhees had hopes of blue distances and vacations, getting away from nightmares. She kissed his lips, then left the room.
Kelloway and Wom were waiting in the corridor.
‘We’ll go up to my office,’ Kelloway said.
They rode an elevator in silence. When the doors opened Kelloway ushered her out. The corridor was quiet. A sense of bereavement hung in the air. A few cops sat at their desks and shuffled paperwork without interest. Here and there, in doorways and around a water fountain, they stood in small sombre groups. The fact of Drumm’s death had permeated the building and alerted officers to the notion of their own mortality.
Amanda felt the heaviness in the atmosphere. The only thing missing was Willie’s body inside a coffin on a plinth surrounded by floral tributes.
Kelloway entered his office with Sonny Wom. He went behind his desk and vigorously rubbed his arm with the palm of his hand. Amanda sat, struggling against her tension. Relax. Somebody from Justice is coming, the world is going to be set right, explanations will be forthcoming.
There was a knock on the door.
Kelloway said, ‘Come.’
The door opened. Amanda didn’t turn to look.
She heard a man say, ‘I’m on time, I trust.’
Kelloway moved out from behind his desk to welcome the visitor and Amanda changed the angle of her head and saw a man dressed in a black suit and white shirt with a black tie. Over one arm he’d slung a coat. His hair was white and sparse and he moved across the floor in a shuffling way, no elasticity in his muscles.
I’m on time, I trust. Amanda had a sense of backtracking, rolling in reverse on some kind of memory monorail through a tunnel filled with echoes.
‘Chief of Police Kelloway?’ the man asked.
‘Right.’
‘This heat,’ the man said and smi
led. ‘How do you cope with it?’
‘You get used to it,’ Kelloway said. ‘After twenty years, give or take.’
The man sat. He set a briefcase on the floor beside his chair. Amanda stared at him. His eyes were watery. She was still travelling backwards, still trying to compartmentalize something that had strayed out of place. But what?
The man opened a wallet and held out his ID. Kelloway looked at it, nodding his head.
The man turned to Amanda and asked, ‘And you are?’
She spoke her name quietly. It had come back to her. It had come rolling all the way back to her.
She thought, This is wrong. This is out of tune.
64
Amanda asked, ‘You just flew in from Los Angeles? Weather nice out there?’
The man said, ‘Sunny like here, but less hot.’
Kelloway said, ‘What’s the weather got to do with anything?’
‘Just curious.’ Amanda noticed the darkness under the man’s eyes, the lack of colour in his lips. ‘What airline did you fly?’
‘America West.’ His voice was like grit inside a cat-litter box, cinders rolling back and forth, and he breathed with difficulty.
Kelloway said, ‘Mr Loeb hasn’t flown in to discuss weather or airlines.’
‘Ralph,’ Loeb said. ‘Call me Ralph.’
‘Last time I was in LA, I stayed at the Marmont,’ Amanda continued. ‘Were you staying in a hotel?’
‘No, with a friend in Westwood,’ Loeb said.
Sonny Wom slipped out of the room quietly as if he’d received one of Kelloway’s imperceptible signals. Kelloway was rising from behind his desk. His irritation was palpable. From the corner of her eye Amanda was aware of his bronze skin and white shirt.
‘This chit-chat’s entertaining, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see us get to the point, Scholes.’
Plain old Scholes now. Amanda ignored the cop and asked, ‘How did you receive the message that brought you here?’
‘Carrier pigeon,’ Loeb said. He smiled thinly. ‘By phone, of course.’
‘In LA. At your friend’s house in Westwood.’
Loeb faced Kelloway and asked, ‘Am I under oath?’
‘What’s the point of these questions, Scholes?’ Kelloway asked.
Amanda stepped a little nearer to Loeb. ‘Who was it that telephoned you in Westwood?’
‘A colleague in Washington,’ Loeb said with a certain patience. ‘Let me take you through the steps, Miss Scholes. Chief Kelloway contacted the Justice Department with an urgent request to meet somebody connected to the Witness Protection Program, and his enquiry was passed along to me because, A, I’m associated with the Program, and B, I was less than an hour away by plane. That answer your questions?’
‘Does this colleague have a name?’
Kelloway looked at Loeb and said, ‘I’m sorry about this, Ralph. Scholes was a prosecuting attorney until recently, which she thinks gives her a licence to come off like the Grand Inquisitor.’ He turned to Amanda, and his stare was unpleasant, and just for a moment Amanda had the tiny flash of a feeling that Kelloway and Loeb weren’t entirely strangers to one another. But the sensation was smoke, and it dissipated as quickly as it had arisen, blown out of her head by the sharpness of Kelloway’s angry voice. ‘Ralph isn’t here to play Trivial Pursuit, Scholes, and this isn’t a court of law, in case that had slipped your mind.’
‘I asked a simple question –’
‘An irrelevant question,’ Kelloway said.
Loeb smiled and said, ‘You ought to have Miss Scholes fitted with an emergency brake, Chief.’
Kelloway said, ‘I think it’s a muzzle she needs more.’
Amanda said to Loeb, ‘I can understand you might not want to tell us the name of your colleague at Justice. Confidentiality and so forth. What about your friend in LA? What’s his name?’
Kelloway had his hand firmly on her elbow now. ‘Outside,’ he said. ‘I want a word.’
She allowed herself to be led into the corridor, where she yanked her arm free of Kelloway’s flinty grip.
‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ he asked.
‘He’s not on the level, Kelloway.’
‘How do you figure that?’
‘Because I recognize his voice.’
‘You’re losing me.’
‘Dansk gave me his private number to call in Washington. When I called it, I got an answering-machine, and the voice on the machine was Loeb’s.’
‘You phone Dansk and you get Loeb’s voice on a machine. What’s the big deal?’
‘The big deal is they’re in this together. Dansk and Loeb. They’re partners, for Christ’s sake. He’s here to feed you bullshit. He’ll tell you exactly what Dansk told me. He’s going to talk about an in-house investigation of security leaks in the Program. He’s going to tell you how they’re in the process of being sealed. I’ve heard it before and it all sounds very plausible, but I’m not sitting through it again, thanks.’
Kelloway clenched a hand and tapped it like a mallet against the side of his leg. ‘So you don’t trust Loeb. Maybe you don’t trust me either, huh?’
Amanda gazed along the corridor. A bubble rose inside a water-cooler and popped on the surface. She turned her face to Kelloway, whose sarcasm made her feel isolated. Maybe you don’t trust me either, huh? Trust was fragile scaffolding and it swayed when you climbed it.
She said, ‘All I’m telling you is that Loeb and Dansk are involved in this thing together, and Loeb’s going to try and pass you off with pap. Christ, they’ve got it sewn-up, Kelloway. It’s neat. They’ve got it nicely self-contained. Call Dansk and you get Loeb’s voice. Messages for Dansk never go any further, they’re always intercepted by Loeb.’
‘So what have we got here? Guys that have entered into some sinister compact to bury a couple of witnesses on behalf of Victor Sanchez?’
‘Exactly. Check Loeb’s story. You can find out what flight he claims he caught from LA and the name of the friend he says he stayed with in California. My bet is he’s covered his ass and you’ll get nowhere. He can arrange well-rehearsed associates to back up anything he says. A flight attendant who seems to remember him, an old pal in LA who’s going to tell you Loeb was his house guest.’
‘Check Loeb’s story. This is your best advice?’
‘It’s my only advice. This is a labyrinth. One wrong turn and you’re lost.’
‘Did you ever drop tainted acid back in the old days and every now and again you have weird flashbacks?’
‘Acid scared me, so I left it alone.’
Kelloway rolled up a sleeve that had begun to slide down his arm. ‘You should have stuck to that principle, Scholes: leaving things alone.’
Sonny Wom came along the corridor and said, ‘He checks out. He’s with Justice all right.’
‘Fine. Go back and keep him occupied, Sonny. I’ll be with you in a minute.’
Amanda remembered Willie Drumm’s speculation about Dansk. He’s got nothing to do with the Program. He’s a freelance operator. And somebody on the inside is feeding him information, somebody bought and paid for by Sanchez. Loeb.
It had to be. A sinister compact.
Kelloway said, ‘So Loeb’s the genuine article.’
‘He works for Justice, which doesn’t mean he’s on the –’
‘He’s on the level until I find out otherwise, Scholes.’
‘OK, OK, OK. Play it by your rules.’
‘You still don’t want to hear what he has to say? You’re walking away?’
‘First I have to think of someplace to walk,’ she said. ‘I don’t like the idea of the streets. I don’t know what’s out there in all that sunlight.’
Kelloway said, ‘Maybe that’s all there is, sunlight and nothing else.’
‘I seriously doubt it.’
He was quiet a moment. ‘Why don’t you ask me?’
‘Ask you what?’
‘Don’t go coy. You need a favour.’
>
He reminded her increasingly of a hawk hovering in the still air above hot canyons, scanning for soft prey. ‘I don’t expect favours from you,’ she said. ‘You don’t like me. The chemistry between us is like frozen tundra.’
Kelloway shrugged. ‘I have powers. You want to get out of here safely, don’t you? And there’s Rhees to think about.’
‘There’s Rhees, sure,’ she said.
‘But you don’t like the idea of just walking away. Feisty lady prosecutor suddenly backed into corner, doesn’t know who to trust. Injured man on her hands, serious limits to her freedom of movement.’
‘You want me at your mercy,’ she said.
‘It’s an appealing notion. The cops step in where the former angel of justice fears to tread.’
‘You’re an asshole, Kelloway.’
‘Assholes can be powerful.’
‘Power comes and goes.’
‘Yeah, but right now I happen to have it, which is why you need me.’
‘What are you offering?’
‘You believe you’re in danger. OK, you need protection. I’m thinking of offering you Thomas Gannon.’
Protection. Kelloway was right about one thing: Rhees restricted her activities. But if she walked away, it meant leaving everything to Kelloway. He inherited it all.
‘Why the helping hand?’ she asked.
‘Willie Drumm thought the world of you. He talked about you like you were his favourite niece or something, and that counts where I’m concerned, because I liked Willie. Surprised?’
She tried to find a tiny kindness in his face at that moment, an underlying gentleness, but the face gave away nothing. It was all suntanned surfaces and hard angles. Whatever feelings he had were encased behind barbed wire, deep inside, where you couldn’t get a glimpse of them.
‘I’m wondering if you’ll follow through,’ she said. ‘Or if you’ll just buy Loeb’s version and let everything slide away into obscurity.’
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