"I know. Weird, right? And you know what else she digs? Chicken wings."
He eyed me hesitantly. "But she a vegetarian."
"Except for chicken wings. The ones at Hooters, especially."
Finally he got it. He pointed at my face. "Aha! You fucking with me."
"No, I'm serious." I wasn't, of course, but I figured someone who didn't know Induma at least that well didn't deserve to date her.
He slipped around the counter and gave her a soft-lipped kiss. I looked away uncomfortably but still managed to watch. She kissed him back, then hip-checked him to the side and glanced in the oven. A sandalwood Buddha laughed at me from a wall alcove.
"Baby, I take the Jag in tomorrow for the service." Alejandro jogged over and plopped down on the gargantuan sofa in the living room, clicking the remote until Telemundo soccer highlights appeared on the wall-mounted plasma.
Induma set two square Pottery Barn plates on the counter between us, and we started to eat. She had a beautiful dining room, but we always ate over the counter, me parked on a stool, her leaning so as to keep the oven in reach.
Behind us Alejandro leapt up on the couch in excitement, then groaned, his shoulders slumping. In his distress he'd yanked off his T-shirt. "How hard is the penalty kick? Twelve yard! How hard can this be?"
Induma said to me, "Rhetorical."
A curved bank of windows past the TV overlooked a strip of lawn and the imitation canal beyond, but right now the glass just reflected back the house's interior, so we saw two Alejandros leaping up and down, shouting Spanish curses at the screen and holding his head in woeful disbelief.
"That address you asked me to look into?" Induma said quietly. "It's a rental property, owned by an old Jewish broad in Encino. The last lease ended two months ago, Korean family. If someone new was renting it, they did it with cash."
So Charlie had spent less than two months there. He'd moved in to do whatever it was that had gotten him the money. Or to lie low with the bundles of hundreds.
"Given the single-digit vacancy rate in Culver City and the fact that the owner was busted for not reporting income in '05, I'd say it's likely she took cash under the table," Induma added. At my expression she blushed-a rarity-and shrugged. "It's not hard to check certain things if you know where to look. Or who to ask."
"Still. You're pretty good."
"No. Just Indian. We cultivate relationships all over the place and can scare a computer into behaving itself most of the time." She eyed shirtless Alejandro, now pleading with the TV. "Two of my three most useful skills." She smeared some mango pickle on a wedge of papadum, popped it into her mouth, rolled her eyes with ecstasy. "Now, the late Mike Milligan was part of a few separatist groups, real bad news. Ruby Ridge survivalist stuff, mountain men who hoard guns and thump The Turner Diaries. They got him on DNA for a murder in the eighties-left a hair on the body-but he sold out some other guys in his organization and got early parole. The unofficial word is that he was the terrorist killed at San Onofre, but the government is neither confirming nor denying publicly."
Certainly didn't sound like Charlie, but I had to ask. "Was he in the army? Vietnam?"
"He was."
"Which infantry?"
"I couldn't find that. Some Vietnam-era service records are still classified, and the rest are a mess. I'm way stronger on law-enforcement databases than military stuff."
I set down my fork on the Easter-blue plate. "You're sure this Mike Milligan was the guy, not just another bullshit part of the cover story?"
"Anything's possible, but this is pretty good intel. And there are enough documents and trails for him that I doubt it's someone they just invented. I guess a lot of these separatist types are former military. At least according to the assistant police chief."
"You went to the assistant police chief? LAPD?"
She shrugged. "When we installed my encrypted backup software at the crime lab, I was there every day for two months. I don't get speeding tickets either."
"You didn't mention me, right?"
"Oh-that's what you meant. Only by name and Social. Come on, laugh. All right, don't laugh. No, of course not. And don't worry. He has strong incentive to keep my confidence. Unless he can find someone better to call the next time his fingerprinting database decides to hang from hitting a thread-unsafe code section." Her not-so-poker face showed what she predicted the likelihood of that to be.
The doorbell rang, and I came up off the stool. "Are you expecting anyone?"
Her forehead textured. "No, but relax."
Alejandro flew by, slipping in his socks. "It's for me. It's for me." Some murmuring at the door, and then he returned with a Domino's pizza box.
I said, "You're not eating with us?"
"He doesn't like Indian food," Induma said.
Alejandro seemed upset at the prospect of having hurt her feelings, though I knew from her expression that he hadn't. "No, baby, I just in the mood for Italian, thassall."
"He thinks Domino's is Italian food," Induma said.
I hopped up and got the bottle of dessert wine from the accent table in the foyer. She snatched the bottle from my hand, glancing at the label, her face lighting up. "Olallieberry. Brilliant." She rose to her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek.
Smiling, she poured two glasses. Took a sip. Closed her smooth, beautiful eyelids as she savored the taste. We drank and looked at each other a bit. She opened her mouth to say something. Closed it. Then she said, "Why did you think you couldn't tell me about all this when we were together?"
I swirled the wine around, peering down into the glass as if it held great interest. Induma didn't say anything, but I could feel her gaze on me. I cleared my throat and said, softly, "Can you get him out of here?"
"Alejandro?" she called, not moving her stare from me.
"Yeah?"
"Give us a minute?"
"Okay, baby. I go to the gym." He came into the edge of my vision, kissed Induma, and then his footsteps padded away. The front door closed, cutting off his whistling.
She said, "Were you worried I'd think you were a murderer?"
I shook my head.
"Couldn't you trust me?"
The bareness of the question, the vulnerability in it, knifed right through whatever protective shell I thought I'd built up. "God, yes, I trusted you." A touch of hoarseness edged my voice. "But I was scared what might happen to you."
She returned my stare evenly. "So it was all for me, huh?" she said pointedly.
"Not all." I studied the counter. "I guess I wasn't used to what it was like to be… you know, close to someone. I never really learned that as an adult."
Induma's lips pursed. She said, "Will you tell me the rest?"
It wasn't quite a test, but there was a lot riding on my answer. A pot boiled over on the stove and hissed, then stopped hissing. I said, "Yes."
Induma's mouth tensed; she was pleased. I filled her in. When I was done, she drew back from the counter-her first movement through it all. Her back cracked. She moved the scorched pot from the burner and turned off the stove.
She asked for the torn sheet of numbers and perused it, as mystified as I was. Finally, with a shrug, she handed it back.
"I wish we had more information on the guys who arrested you when you were seventeen," she said. "Last names, anything."
I pictured Slim and the big guy. How the big guy twisted the dial with those wide fingers. Radio sucks out here, huh?
I said, "I always figured they were flown in from another office just to shake me up and get me out of the picture. Only told what they needed to do and not much more."
"Yeah. I guess there's always someone willing to follow orders without asking questions."
"You think I could still be nailed for Frank's murder?"
"I doubt it. It would be hard to convince a grand jury or a judge that the same evidence they'd had for seventeen years suddenly makes a different case."
"But it's always there. The threat of busti
ng me. No statute of limitations for murder."
"Yeah, but if the authorities were going that route, they wouldn't have tried to make you the hero of San Onofre. I'd guess that charging you for Frank's murder would open up a lot, call attention to the wrong things for the wrong people."
"If I become a problem, it would probably be easier just to kill me the way they did Charlie."
Her jaw firmed. She didn't like considering that, but she also didn't argue with me. "Well, for the moment no one's trying to kill you. And whoever directed you to that P.O. box doesn't have official clout, or they would've just charged into the post office and searched number two-two-nine."
"Unless they needed me to find what's in it."
"Either way, it seems like whoever's watching wants to give you some leash and see if you'll lead them to whatever they're looking for."
"Which is exactly what I don't want to do."
"If you let this whole thing drop, you're probably safe. You've spent years avoiding all this. Why pursue it now?"
"The way this reared its head? It's not just going to vanish."
"Yeah, but you could."
I thought about those 2:18 wake-ups, how they'd returned with the vengeance of a shunned relative. "I've been running for seventeen years. I know now I'm not gonna get away."
"But are you ready to face it?" Her expression registered her skepticism.
I had no easy answer. The question gnawed at me. I redirected: "Can you look into the backgrounds of the Secret Service agents for me? Sever and Wydell?"
"What do you mean 'backgrounds'?"
"They're both in the L.A. office now, in Protective Intelligence. Is there some way to find out if they ever worked a protection detail out of D.C.? Then we'd have a pretty good idea if they had strong loyalty to a particular political figure. Like Bilton."
"Or Caruthers," she added.
"Sure. Him, too. Though it seems less likely."
"But worth looking into, no?" She noted my discomfort. "Why does that bother you? Would it really upset you if Caruthers was behind this?"
"I could care less if Caruthers is behind this," I said. "I care if Frank is."
There it was.
The anger in my voice underlined how deeply the notion cut me. I looked away, fearing how much showed in my face. I said, "We don't know if either candidate is or isn't involved. All we know right now is that the Secret Service is hooked into this thing differently than they're letting on."
"Meaning?"
"Wydell claimed that the Service wasn't called in until Charlie asked for me at San Onofre. The more I turn this over in my head, the more it seems like the time frame's too tight between then and when they stormed my apartment. I think Wydell's lying. My guess is the Service was there with LAPD for the shoot-out in Culver City."
She said, "You're still calling him Charlie."
"Whatever his name, I don't believe the profile."
Induma said, "Let's pull it up, then, see if there's anything more specific you can use."
I followed her to the living room. She set her laptop across my knees but leaned over me to navigate through the folders. I turned to look at her as she typed. Our faces were close.
The document chimed into existence, pulling my focus back to the screen. A rap sheet, complete with booking photo. Mike Milligan had pockmarked cheeks and sullen eyes.
He looked like a terrorist all right, but he looked nothing like Charlie.
Chapter 20
Back in my apartment, I stood well away from the sliding glass door and scanned the neighborhood with night-vision binoculars. I'd picked them up from the overpriced spy store on Sunset that catered to weekend warriors and paranoid music executives. The store's gear wasn't as top-shelf as what Frank used to bring home, but it was better than the mail-order junk Liffman used to play around with.
No one was watching me. No one I could pick out, at least.
Now that I had a functional front door double-locked behind me, I moved the sheet of numerals and the cash from the dishwasher into Charlie's rucksack. Then I stored the whole thing beneath the counter in the giant pasta pot Evelyn had given me for Christmas last year, wrapped in Star of David paper.
Collapsing onto my ripped mattress, I felt wrecked from the day and the menace I'd churned to the surface. Charlie's head-and certainly his dentistry-had been blown to pieces, but there'd been plenty of his DNA to scrape off the power-plant walls. They'd managed to switch or lose a lot of evidence and slot Milligan, a loner with the right rap sheet, into fall-guy position. Had they murdered Milligan, too? Or had he been the best candidate who'd died at the right time? Either way, I had to get back into Callie's attic and go through the rest of Frank's things to see if any other photos or documents could tell me anything about Charlie; I needed the real name of the man who'd pulled me into all this.
I turned on the TV to shut off my head and channel-surfed. My thumb stopped when I saw Jasper Caruthers on The Daily Show, palling around with Jon Stewart. After a NAMBLA joke that Caruthers wisely skirted, Stewart settled down into a straight-man role.
"Why do you believe you're less susceptible to special-interest groups?"
Caruthers shifted forward in his chair, his mouth firmed in a bit of a grin. "You may not have heard, but I'm obscenely wealthy."
Even Stewart cracked up. When the applause finally died down, Stewart said, "In your ex-wife's expose-"
"Which one?"
"Which ex-wife or which expose?"
"I've only got one ex-wife, unless June's been busy this afternoon."
"This one." Stewart held up a book whose title screamed from the jacket. "She makes a number of new claims, including that you drove under the influence of prescription drugs once when the two of you were first dating. Is that true?"
"Absolutely. I've also watched pornography, smoked pot twice in college-and inhaled- cheated at checkers, gave up on a marriage, and shoplifted a candy bar from a newsstand. If anyone thinks that makes me unfit to contend with a nuclear-armed North Korea, please don't vote for me."
I smiled in the darkness and couldn't help wondering what the staffer with the horn-rimmed glasses would have to say about the pornography crack.
Wearing his bankable smirk, Stewart signaled to quiet the audience. He feigned incredulity. "How old were you when you shoplifted the candy bar?"
Caruthers settled back, laced his hands over a knee. "Fifty-five." He waited through the laughter, then said, "I was seven, I think. Or eight. My father was driving me to school on his way to work, stopped off for a morning paper. We were two blocks from my school when he caught me with the candy bar, and he turned around, drove back, and made me return it."
"That was before three-strikes legislation."
Caruthers chuckled. "Well, it still scared the hell out of me. My father had an appointment with-I think it was with the president of Sears Roebuck that morning. And he made himself late over a ten-cent candy bar. Personal accountability. It was ground into me from an early age." Caruthers shook his head. "To this day, I see a Mr. Goodbar, I break into a cold sweat."
I found myself liking Caruthers more than I wanted to. Frank had certainly thought a lot of him. Could he have admired him so much that he'd gotten pulled into something shady on his behalf? Whatever Frank and Charlie had gotten into, it didn't appear to have been proper, to hang a prissy word on it, and it didn't seem like Frank. At least the Frank I knew.
The swirl of unease left me feeling achy and heavy-lidded, a stress hangover. I couldn't keep my eyes open, and I finally gave in, hoping to grab a few hours' sleep.
I jerked awake with more unease than usual. Not the familiar heart-thrumming anxiety of that small-hours ritual, but a sense of imminent danger. The air sat cool and heavy across my sweat-clammy face.
Rolling to my side, I glanced at the clock-1:37 A.M.
I stopped my hand, which was instinctively reaching for the lamp. A slight chill blew across my face. Moving air.
As quietly a
s I could, I slid from the bed onto the floor. Once again in my pajama bottoms, shirtless, I moved through my dark apartment silently. Six steps and a shuffle to the bedroom window. The lock was fine. Nine strides across, three and a half diagonally into the bathroom-window closed, security hook secure. I picked my way into the living room. Both new front-door locks were as I'd left them, the chain notched safely in its catch. I sidestepped the couch, arriving at the sliding glass door, muscle memory guiding my fingers to the handle's security lever. Unlocked.
My entire body tensed. I stared down at that raised metal lever as if I could make the fact of it go away. I sensed something-some vitality-in the darkness over my shoulder. With deep foreboding, I turned. A man's outline, barely discernible in the darkness, stood backed to the kitchen counter. The form tensed, registering my focus, then sprang at me.
His shove hurtled me into the wall. I collided hard, bouncing off and swinging. He'd already thrown the sliding door open and was halfway out, but I clipped his chin. He reeled back, the door screeching along the tracks. Though the overhang shadowed the balcony, the lower half of his face passed through a band of yellow light from the opposing streetlight, and what I saw froze me with shock. I was still for just an instant, but it was time enough for him to get off a kick to my chest.
My view tilted, and then the carpet was there like a horizon. Through the swirl of dust raised by my cheek, I saw the dark form leap recklessly from the balcony and strike the telephone pole. A grunt at impact, limbs scrabbled for purchase, and then he lurched down out of view.
I got up, clutching my ribs, each inhale aching.
Staggering to the balcony, still short of breath, I peered down in time to see him sprinting away, flashing into view at intervals beneath the streetlights. His footfalls-rubber soles shushing across asphalt-rasped back from the unlit carports in half echoes.
I'd caught my breath but still felt winded. Not from the pain, not anymore, but because the wide, wild mouth I'd seen illuminated in that band of light belonged to Charlie.
Chapter 21
It was impossible. And yet there was no mistaking that mouth. Before the concussion wave had knocked me unconscious in the power plant, I'd seen the explosive flash at Charlie's head. There was no way that he'd emerged unscathed. But I never actually saw him dead. Maybe his head hadn't blown up at all. Maybe the memory had been implanted by government drones. Maybe the trauma had tipped me into a delusion sleep, and I'd awakened with bits and pieces of a story forged from my reinforced paranoia.
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