LA Requiem ec-8

by Robert Crais

  386

  ROBERT CRAIS

  The SWAT cops said, "Hey, Watts, get this bastard's gun."

  Stan Watts took Pike's gun, then took mine, and he stared at Krantz, standing there with his gun at his side. "What in hell's going on, Krantz? Didn't you tell them?"

  Krantz's jaw rippled as if he were chewing hard candy, and still his eyes didn't leave Pike. "I wanted Pike to spook. I was hoping he'd give us the excuse."

  I said, "Take his gun, Stan. Please take his gun."

  Watts stared at Krantz, then the gun Krantz held. Krantz's fingers worked at the gun like they had a life of their own. They kneaded and gripped the gun, and maybe wanted to raise it. Stan Watts went over and pried the gun away, and then pushed Krantz back hard.

  "Go wait in the car."

  "I 'm your superior officer!"

  Watts told the SWAT cops they were done, then told us to put our hands down. He wet his lips like his mouth was dry. "You're not under arrest. Branford s dropping the charges. You hear that, Pike? Branford's with your attorney right now. SID put Sobek's vehicle at Dersh's house. That's enough to get you off the hook."

  I gripped Pike's arm, and held it. John Chen had come through.

  Krantz pushed past Watts and jabbed his finger at Pike. It was exactly the same move he'd made at Lake Hollywood the first time I saw him. "I don't give a rat's ass what SID says, Pike; you're a murderer."

  Watts said, "Stop it, Harvey."

  Krantz jabbed again.

  "You killed Wozniak, and I still believe you killed Dersh."

  Krantz jabbed again, and this time Pike grabbed his finger so quickly that Harvey Krantz did not see him move. Krantz shrieked as he dropped to the ground, screaming, "You're under arrest, goddamnit! That's assaulting an officer! You're under arrest."

  Pike and Watts and I stared at him there on the ground, red-faced and screaming, and then Watts helped him up, saying,

  L.A. REQUIEM 387

  "We're not going to arrest anyone, Harvey. Go back to the car and wait for me."

  Krantz shook him off, and walked away without another word.

  I said, "Get him off the street, Watts. He came up here to murder Pike. He meant what he said."

  Watts pursed his lips, watching until Krantz was gone, then considered Pike. "You could make a complaint, I guess. There's grounds."

  Pike shook his head.

  I said, "That's it? We're just going to forget what happened here?"

  Watts put the frying pan face on me. "What happened, Cole? We came up to give you the word, we did."

  "How'd you know we were here?"

  "We've been running taps twenty-four/seven on phones Pike's employees are known to use. The wire guys heard Pike's boy tell you about this place, and figured it out."

  Watts glanced back to the road where Harvey Krantz was waiting in their car, alone.

  Watts handed back our guns, holding on to Pike's as Pike reached for it. "What Krantz said about hoping you'd give us an excuse, that's bullshit. He's just upset. I don't play it that way, and he wouldn't either. Bauman said you hadn't been in touch, so we figured if there was a shot at reaching you up here, we should take it."

  I said, "Sure, Watts."

  "Screw you, Cole. That's the way it is."

  "Sure."

  Watts followed after Krantz, and pretty soon the police mounted their cars, and left great brown clouds of dust as they drove away. I guess Harvey Krantz hated Pike so much he had to believe Pike was guilty no matter what. I guess that kind of hate can make you do things you ordinarily wouldn't do.

  "Watts can say whatever he wants, but Krantz wanted it. You don't bring tactical officers to tell some guy he's off the hook. You don't even roll out. If Krantz didn't want it, he

  388 ROBERT CRAIS

  could've put the word through me and Charlie and the guys at your shop. You would've heard."

  Pike nodded without comment, and I wondered if he even gave a damn. Maybe it was better not to.

  I said, "What are you going to do?"

  "CallPaulette."

  "Does it bother you, what Krantz said about Wozniak? That you're still carrying the blame?"

  Pike shrugged, and this time I knew he didn't give a damn.

  "Let Krantz and everyone think what they want. What I think, and do, is more important."

  Pike took a deep breath then, and cocked the dark glasses my way.

  "I missed you, Elvis."

  That made me smile.

  "Yeah, Joseph, I missed you, too. It's good to have you back."

  We shook hands then, and I watched him walk down to the Garcia bakery truck and drive away. I stood in the hot wind for a time, telling myself that it was over, that Pike was home, and safe, but even as I told myself these things, it was without a sense that any of it was finished, or resolved.

  We were different now. The world had changed.

  I wondered if our lives would ever be the same, or as good, and if we were less than we had been.

  The devils take their toll, even in this angel town.

  Maybe here most of all.

  I have lived in my house for many years, but it wasn't my house anymore. It wasn't the cozy A-frame that wrapped me in warm woods and copper sunset light, hanging there off the side of a mountain. It had become a great cavern that left me listening to echoes as I walked from room to room searching for something I could not find. Climbing to the loft took days. Going into the kitchen weeks. Funny, how the absence of a friend can do that. Funny, how it takes a woman three beats of a heart to walk out a door, but the man she's walking away from can't make that same trip in a lifetime.

  L.A. REQUIEM 389

  Guess that's why you're smiling, Cole. It's so damned funny.

  That night, I locked my door, and worked my way down the crooked mountain streets into Hollywood. It gets dark in the canyons first, shadows pooling in the deep cuts as the high ridges hide the sun. Here's a tip: If you leave the canyons you can find the light again, and get a second chance at the day. It doesn't last long, but nobody said second chances will wait for you.

  The Sunset Strip was a carnival of middle-aged hipsters rat-racing Porsches, and goateed Val-dudes smoking twenty-dollar Cubano Robustos, and a couple of million young women with flat bellies flashing Rodeo Drive navel rings. I didn't see any of it. Shriners from Des Moines were lined up outside House of Blues like catalog models for JCPenney. Yellow-haired kids clumped outside Johnny Depp's Viper Room, laughing with LAPD motorcycle cops about the latest acid casualty. Didn't see it; didn't hear it. Twilight faded to full-on night, and the night grew later. I drove all the way to the water, then north through the steep mountain passes of Malibu, then back along the Ventura Freeway, just another mass of speeding metal. I felt edgy and unsettled, and thought that maybe if I drove long enough I might find a solution.

  I love L.A.

  It's a great, sprawling, spread-to-hell city that protects us by its sheer size. Four hundred sixty-five square miles. Eleven million beating hearts in Los Angeles County, documented and not. Eleven million. What are the odds? The girl raped beneath the Hollywood sign isn't your sister, the boy back-stroking in a red pool isn't your son, the splatter patterns on the ATM machine are sourceless urban art. We're safe that way. When it happens it's going to happen to someone else. Only thing is, when she walks out of your door, it isn't someone else. It's you.

  I let myself off the freeway at the top of the Santa Monica Mountains and turned east along Mulholland. It's quiet up there, and dark; a million miles from the city even though it lies in the city's heart. The dry air breezed over me like sheer

  390

  ROBERT CRAIS

  silk, and the desert smells of eucalyptus and sage were strong. A black-tailed deer flashed through my headlights. Coyotes with ruby eyes watched me from the grass. I was tired, and thought I should go home because this was silly, all this aimless driving. Just go home and go to sleep and get on with my life. You can save the world tomorrow. Find al
l the answers you want tomorrow.

  After a time I pulled off the road, cut the engine, and stared at the lights that rilled the valley floor. Two million people down there. Put them end to end and they would wrap around the moon. Red taillights lit the freeways like blood pumping through sluggish arteries. An LAPD helicopter orbited over Sherman Oaks, spotlighting something on the ground. Another opera I didn't want to be part of.

  I got out of my car and sat cross-legged on the hood. The barrel shape of an owl sat atop a power pole, watching me.

  The owl said, "Who?"

  You get that from owls.

  A month ago, I had almost been killed. My best friend and partner had almost died, too, and I'd spent every day since then thinking that he was gone. Today, he came very close to dying again. Samantha Dolan was dead, my girlfriend had walked out on me, and here I was sitting in the dark with an owl. The world had changed, all right. Some great large place inside me was empty, and I didn't know if I could fill it again. I was scared.

  The air was sultry, and felt good. When I first came here, I fell in love with this place. During the day, Los Angeles is a great playful puppy of a town, anxious to please and quick with a smile. At night, it becomes a treasure chest filled with magic and dreams. All you have to do is chase your dreams. All you need is the magic. All you have to do is survive, but it's that way anywhere. That's what I found here when I first came; that's what more and more people find here every day, always had and always would. It's why they come; that treasure chest of hope.

  I could make it right with Lucy. I could pull my life together again and fill that empty place.

  L.A. REQUIEM 391

  The owl said, "Who?"

  I said, "Me."

  I climbed back in the car, but I didn't go home. I turned on the radio and made myself comfortable. I didn't need to go home anymore. I was already there.

  L.A. isn't the end; it's the beginning.

  So was I.

  If you enjoyed Robert Crais's L.A. Requiem, you won't want to miss his next novel,

  DEMOLITION ANGEL

  coming from Doubleday in hardcover in June 2000. Look for it at your favorite bookseller's.

  And, in the interim, turn the page for an exciting preview.

  1

  Code Three Roll Out

  Bomb Squad

  Silver Lake, California

  Charlie Riggio stared at the cardboard box sitting beside the Dumpster. It was a Jolly Green Giant box, with what appeared to be a crumpled brown paper bag sticking up through the top. The box was stamped green beans. Neither Riggio nor the two uniformed officers with him approached closer than the corner of the strip mall there on Sunset Boulevard; they could see the box fine from where they were.

  "How long has it been there?"

  One of the Adam car officers, a Filipino named Ruiz, checked his watch.

  "We got our dispatch about two hours ago. We been here since."

  "Find anyone who saw how it got there?"

  "Oh, no, dude. Nobody."

  The other officer, a black guy named Mason, nodded.

  "Ruiz is the one saw it. He went over and looked in the bag, the crazy Flip."

  "So tell me what you saw."

  "I told your sergeant."

  "Tell me. I'm the sonofabitch who's gonna approach the damned thing."

  Ruiz described seeing the capped ends of two galvanized pipes taped together with black electrical tape. The pipes

  were loosely wrapped in newspaper, Ruiz said, so he had only seen the ends.

  Riggio considered that. They were standing in a strip mall on Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake, an area that had seen increasing gang activity in recent months. Gangbangers would steal galvanized pipe from construction sites or dig up plastic PVC from some poor bastard's garden, then stuff it with bottle rocket powder or match heads. Riggio didn't know if the Green Giant box held an actual bomb or not, but he had to approach it as if it did. That's the way it was with bomb calls. Better than ninety-five percent turned out to be hairspray cans, some teenager's book bag, or, like his most recent call-out, two pounds of marijuana wrapped in Pampers. Only one out of a hundred was what the bomb techs called an "improvised munition."

  A homemade bomb.

  "You hear ticking or anything like that?"

  "No."

  "Smell anything burning?"

  "Uh-uh."

  "Did you open the bag to get a better look?"

  "Hell, no."

  "Did you move the box or anything?"

  Ruiz smiled like Riggio was nuts.

  "Dude, I saw those pipes and shit my pants. The only thing I moved was myfeetl"

  Mason laughed.

  Riggio walked back to his vehicle. The Bomb Squad drove dark blue Suburbans rigged with a light bar and crammed with all the tools of the bomb technician's trade except for the robots. You wanted the robots, you had to call them out special, and he wasn't going to do that. The goddamned robot would just get bogged down in all the potholes around the box.

  Riggio found his supervisor, Buck Daggert, instructing a uniformed sergeant to evacuate the area for a hundred yards in all directions. The fire department had already been called, and paramedics were on the way. Sunset Boulevard had been

  closed, and traffic rerouted. All for something that might turn out to be some do-it-yourself plumber's castoff drain trap.

  "Hey, Buck, I'm ready to take a look at that thing."

  "I want you in the suit."

  "It's too hot. I'll use the chest protector for the first pass, then the suit if I have to bring out the de-armer."

  All Riggio would be doing on the first pass was lugging out a portable X ray to see inside the bag. If the contents appeared to be a bomb, he and Daggett would formulate a game plan, and either de-arm the device, or explode it in place.

  "I want you in the suit, Charles. I got a feeling about this one."

  "You've always got a feeling."

  "I've also got the sergeant stripes. You're in the suit."

  The armored suit weighed almost ninety pounds. Made of kevlar plates and heavy Nomex batting, it covered every part of Riggio's body except his hands, which remained bare. A bomb tech needed the dexterity of unencumbered fingers.

  When the suit was in place, Riggio took the Real Time RTR3 X ray unit and lumbered toward the package. Walking in the suit was like walking with his body wrapped in wet quilts, only hotter. Three minutes in the armor, and sweat was already running into his eyes. To make it worse, a safety cable and hardwire dragged behind him, the hardwire connecting him to Daggett via a Telex communicator. A separate wire linked the Real Time to a computer in the Suburban's cargo bay. He felt like he was pulling a plow.

  Daggett's voice came into Riggio's ear. "How you doing out there?"

  "Sweating my ass off, thanks to you."

  Riggio hated this part the most, approaching an object before he knew what it was. Every time was the same: Riggio thought of that unknown object as a living beast with a life and a mind. Like a sleeping pit bull. If he approached it carefully, and made the right moves, everything would be fine. If he startled the dog, the darned thing would rip him apart.

  Eighty-two slow-motion paces brought him to the box.

  It was unremarkable except for a wet stain on one corner

  that looked like dog piss. The brown paper bag, crumpled and uneven, was open. Riggio peered into the bag without touching it. Leaning over was hard, and when he did, sweat dripped onto the Lexan faceplate like rain.

  He saw the two pipes that Ruiz had described. The pipe caps appeared to be about two-and-a-half inches in diameter and taped together, but nothing else about them was visible. They were loosely wrapped with newspaper, leaving only the ends exposed. Daggett said, "How's it look?"

  "Like a couple of pipes. Stand by. I'll get us a picture."

  Riggio placed the Real Time RTR3 on the ground at the base of the box, aimed for a side view, then turned on the unit. It provided the same type of translu
cent shadow image that security personnel see on airline baggage units, reproducing the image on two screens, one for Riggio on top of the RTR3, and another on the computer back at the Suburban.

  Charlie Riggio smiled.

  "Sonofabitch. We got one, Buck. We got us a bomb."

  "I'm seeing it."