“Shit.” Kelly braked and pulled left on the steering wheel in time to swerve around a white van. She tore a Kleenex out of the box and blotted her eyes. She flicked off the radio and willed herself to stop crying. Years of practice had made her able to turn off the tears just as she would a faucet. She calmed herself by focusing on her driving, turning onto the 101 West and merging with the cars on the other freeway. Then she took a deep breath and concentrated on becoming her character.
One of the things she had always noticed when she wore the disguise of an older woman was the anonymity. Drivers did not glance over; pedestrians barely made way on the sidewalk for her. Each of her identities had its own difficulties, and each had its particular charms. The charm of Joan Davis was being able to work almost entirely unnoticed. The difficulty was not being cut the special slack that went along with the twin powers of beauty and youth.
Kelly parked in a space in the far corner of the lot of a branch of American Capital Investment Bank, the bank she had researched at the library in Arizona. Watching the entrance, she waited. When the bank opened at eight, she held back until another customer entered, then slipped out of her car.
As Kelly entered the bank, she noted where the security cameras and guards were positioned. A plainclothes guard stood near the door, scribbling on a deposit slip. Kelly stood in line and waited her turn.
“Next?”
Kelly moved toward the teller’s window. She plunked her big bag down on the counter.
“I’d like to cash this check. You see, it’s my grandson’s birthday tomorrow. I’m going to put some money in his cake.”
If there was one way to repulse a bank officer’s attention, it was to talk about grandchildren—a habit older people tended to be addicted to.
The teller responded in an ultra-bored voice. “Your identification and account number, please, madam.”
“Here it is.” Under the bulletproof glass, Kelly slid the Bensenhill Rolls-Royce check, Joan Davis’s driver’s license, and a strip of paper with a string of numbers on it. Her nerves were steel. The teller was probably in his early twenties, but he looked about seventeen, with pebbly skin, freshly shaved, on his jaw and cheeks. Comb marks raked through his gelled hair. His black-and-red tie reflected the overhead lighting. A nameplate identified him as Eduardo Munoz. He glanced at the driver’s license and then up at Kelly, barely lifting his eyelids. He typed some numbers into his terminal, then stamped a receipt.
Eduardo looked up slowly and stared at Kelly for the first time.
“You shouldn’t be carrying so much cash, Mrs. Davis. A cashier’s check is safer.”
Kelly started coughing, a hack that sounded deep and dangerously chronic. She watched Eduardo’s reaction. She could practically see his mind weighing the options: the amount of cash this lady wanted versus the hassle he’d have to go through if she got sick, or worse, needed his help during the transaction. Quickly, Eduardo opened his cash drawer and started counting out the $9,989.72. To Kelly, his movements were in slow motion, his fingers meticulously double-checking each bill. Finally, he clinked the pennies on the stack and shuffled the money into an envelope. He was about to slide it under the window when he stopped and peered at her again.
“A cashier’s check really would be safer.”
Kelly coughed again, pulling another couple of tissues out of her purse.
“That’s kind of you, dear. I prefer cash. Checks are just pieces of paper, after all.” She smiled thinly and cleared her throat. Eduardo pushed the envelope through. “Have a lovely day,” croaked Kelly, and she walked stiffly out of the bank.
She jumped into her car and fired the engine, reviewing the route in her mind. As she pushed along the wide boulevard south through the San Fernando Valley, a smile—her first genuine one in several days—spread across her face. Funny how technology works: All you need is one account in one branch, and you can cash as many checks as you wish in any other branch, and no one will ever know.
Kelly repeated the routine at the Encino branch with no trouble. At the Burbank branch, she approached the teller with another Bensenhill payroll check in her hand.
“I’m moving from Santa Monica to Burbank. Everyone wants to be paid in cash nowadays …”
Kelly started the coughing routine again. The teller checked the computer, glanced at the official corporate stamp on the payroll check, and stamped and initialed it. Then she looked up at Kelly, as if wondering what this lady did at a Rolls-Royce showroom.
Kelly picked up on the unspoken curiosity and responded, talking a mile a minute.
“This week was a killer. I had to organize fifteen cars to be shipped all over the country—can you imagine? To top it all off, I’m moving to Burbank, of all places … Excuse me, it’s cold in here. Could you turn down the air-conditioning?” She coughed some more.
The perfect touch. Now the teller looked as if she just wanted to get rid of Kelly as fast as possible.
“Just one minute, madam.” The teller’s long fingers swiftly counted out the money. The envelope slid under the window and Kelly took it, silently voicing her relief.
I’m outta here.
Steeling her nerves, Kelly walked out to her car and drove away from the bank. Double-checking the map in her memory, she headed for the 101 freeway again. The next bank was in Santa Monica, then two on the west side, two in Beverly Hills, one downtown, and one in Manhattan Beach.
It took her the rest of the afternoon, but Kelly posing as Mrs. Joan Davis repeated the routine until she had more than $120,000 in cash. She had known the plan would work, but even so, she was relieved that it had gone so well. The banks wouldn’t cross-reference the withdrawals until Monday. And she also happened to know that the Joan Davis accounts got special treatment.
* * *
Gathered in the small, glass-enclosed manager’s office was the entire sales staff of Bensenhill Rolls-Royce. Ali was sweating, and everyone had the downcast eyes and slumped shoulders of salesmen everywhere who are being ripped a new one.
“Which of you motherfuckers sold a car to someone named Joan Davis?”
The men fell over each other denying it. They looked suspiciously at one another, ready to pounce on one of their own.
“Well, she’s cashing our checks at the bank. None of you losers will admit to knowing someone named Joan Davis?”
The men shook their heads.
“Well, somehow she got in here and got the checks. Did anyone let a customer in this office in the last day or two?”
Ali felt the blood drain out of his face.
* * *
Just a few blocks away, at the headquarters of American Capital Investment Bank, the president, Todd Gillis, received a phone call. His usually impassive face turned molten with anger.
“The Joan Davis account? Hit? How much?”
He heard the answer and hurled the phone down. In a corner of the room, slumped back in an armchair, his bodyguard, Brigante, sparked to life.
Todd Gillis kept his voice measured. “The Joan Davis accounts have been hit. Go get her.”
* * *
Finished with her last bank, Kelly drove slowly through the quiet residential neighborhoods of the small seaside community of Manhattan Beach. She parked on a narrow street called Maple Drive and studied the maps she had saved in her smartphone. There was another bank, in Long Beach, that she hadn’t planned on hitting. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was earlier than she had expected. If she hurried, she could just make it. But immediately she decided against it. She had done enough for one day.
Through her window Kelly saw two towheaded children running in their front yard. The scene was like a television commercial: the late-afternoon light glazing everything gold, the boy teasing the girl, the girl chasing the boy. The door of the house opened, and a young mom called the kids inside. Kelly knew it was time to head back, call Holly, and reunite with her own kids. But as she glanced in her rearview mirror, she froze.
Behind h
er loomed a hulking black SUV with darkened windows. It hadn’t been there when she’d parked. She held her breath. No one got in or out.
As she pulled away from the curb, the SUV moved forward. Kelly accelerated, ready to duck down a parallel street and, hopefully, lose it in an alley. But the black behemoth kept up.
With a sickening realization, Kelly knew what she had to do, where her safest place would be. Gripping the steering wheel, she pushed the car onto the 405 South, toward Long Beach and its branch of American Capital Investment Bank.
* * *
When she finally arrived at the bank, there was a long line. Agitated, Kelly examined the face of everyone in the bank from behind her sunglasses. She had lost the black SUV on the freeway, but she knew that she could trust no one. At last the teller called her to the window.
“I’d like to cash this, please.”
The teller glanced at her. Kelly could see her impatience, could tell she was counting the minutes until the bank would be closing.
Kelly passed over one of the payroll checks and the Joan Davis driver’s license. “It’s my grandson’s birthday tomorrow,” she explained, struggling through her fatigue to get Joan Davis’s voice right.
The clerk smiled noncommittally and examined the check. She turned and typed something on the computer. “That’s strange,” she muttered.
“What? What is it?” asked Kelly, allowing Joan Davis to sound a little irritated.
“This will only take a moment, ma’am. I just need to check something with my manager.”
“I’ve got to have that money for tomorrow!” cried Kelly. “I’m going to put it in my grandson’s cake!” She broke into her hacking cough.
“I’ll be right back,” said the teller politely. Unseen by Kelly, she pressed the security button under the counter with her knee, then stepped away from her window, taking the check and the driver’s license with her.
CHAPTER 15
BUCKLEY’S TAVERN COULD NOT HAVE BEEN A MORE perfect choice. On a dire stretch of Pico Boulevard in West LA, under the shadow of the 405 overpass, the bar was windowless, airless, and brainless. The steak sandwich was gristly and fatty; the bread all but evaporated when Jake dunked it in the dishwater-brownjus. A half-empty beer bottle stood next to a glass. Jake stared into his food.
“Jesus, Jake.”
Jake glanced up at Joyce, irritated.
“What?”
“Where the fuck are you?” Joyce leaned across the table and rapped Jake on the forehead with her knuckles.
“In Buckley’s Tavern,” Jake grunted, even more irritated.
There was a moment of silence. Jake swigged his beer and watched the bartender serve a man who had gray hair that grew down to his shoulders. Joyce finished off her bourbon on the rocks.
“Goddamnit, Jake,” Joyce said finally. “You snap out of this or I’m quitting. I mean it.”
Jake had been hitting a wall the likes of which he had never known before. He needed to find Kelly Jensen but had no idea how. Porter’s grave was still fresh, but already Suzanne had launched herself into a full-fledged campaign for the Senate seat. She had retained Alana Sutter but hadn’t asked for Jake’s help. Jake’s emotions were so fried that he hadn’t even been able to get enraged over not being asked to do a job he didn’t want to do in the first place.
Joyce had never seen Jake this detached. She was the only person in his life who could have suggested he was edging toward depression, but even she hesitated to call his attention to it.
“You can’t quit.”
“Try me.”
“You’d miss my winning personality too much.” Jake tried to smile charmingly, but it came out flat.
“You want my honest opinion?” asked Joyce.
“When haven’t I?”
Joyce hesitated. “I know you’re grieving—”
Jake exhaled, exasperated. “Cut the crap. That’s not like you.”
“I am cutting the crap,” Joyce said defensively. “I think you need to give this a rest for a few days. Get your bearings back.” She hesitated again. “Maybe back off on the freelancing.”
Jake’s glare cut through the dank tavern air.
Joyce pressed ahead. “Porter would have wanted you to do what you do best. Not play detective, going off on your own like this.”
Jake did not like to admit it, but he knew she was right. He sighed.
“Who is she, Jake? Who’s this girl you’re looking for?”
Jake opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again. Just then, his BlackBerry jittered sideways across the table. Raising an eyebrow at Joyce, he flipped it open.
“Brooks.”
Joyce watched Jake’s face change. Whatever he had started to open up about was closing over again.
“You’re sure? Surrounded?”
Jake listened for another second. “I’m coming. I can get a chopper.”
He flicked his phone shut and stood up. “They’ve got her surrounded,” said Jake over his shoulder. “I’ve got to get there for the arrest.”
* * *
Kelly watched the teller go into a back room and shut the door. She tried to act nonchalant, but her eyes ticked nervously around the lobby. She heard a helicopter fly overhead. After about three minutes, Kelly’s heart started to pound. What was taking so long? She remembered another one of Todd’s phrases from her past: “Timing is everything. An unusual delay means you walk!” Kelly snapped Joan Davis’s purse shut and took a step backward. Suddenly she felt a hand on her arm.
“Ma’am,” said a man’s voice, “could you come with me, please?”
“What is this about?” demanded Kelly, staying in character to keep the liquid fear out of her stomach. The man gripped her arm and led her into the back room. The bank teller was gone. “Please, sit.” Kelly obeyed, and the man sat opposite her. He looked directly into her eyes.
Then Kelly bolted for the open door, reaching her hand into her purse.
* * *
Jake leaped out of the helicopter and ran, crouching, toward the police car. An officer knelt behind each of the four open car doors. The SWAT team had surrounded Steingart’s desert compound, which consisted of a main house and some crumbling outbuildings. As directed, the FBI agents and other uniformed men held their fire. Two more helicopters thudded overhead, hovering.
Suddenly a voice came out of nowhere—a woman’s voice, amplified.
“I … AM … THE PROTECTOR!”
The captain lifted a megaphone. “Stacy Steingart, you are surrounded. Come out with your hands on your head. There’s no other way out of this. Come out here and talk with us. You have nowhere to go.”
“You don’t scare me with your institutional protocol. I’m an American-made killer. You made me.”
Jake’s heart thumped. What was she talking about?
“You force us out of our homes, lock up our parents in prisons, institutionalize us from birth until death. You call it ‘protective custody.’ But instead of protecting, you abuse and neglect us. You turn us into criminals. When we turn eighteen, you throw us out to the streets with no education or choices and nothing in front of us but drugs, prostitution, and crime. We’re jailed for the smallest offenses and institutionalized permanently. Our only alternative is to join your military and be trained as killers. Guess which one I chose?”
A blaze of bullets ripped out through a window. Jake dropped behind the left rear bumper of the squad car. The SWAT team shrank against the walls of the building.
“Steingart! Put down your weapon and come out with your hands on your head,” barked the captain again through his megaphone. “That’s an order.”
Steingart’s sound system crackled. She was laughing. The sound carried well, as though she had outfitted her home with a public address system, complete with microphone and speakers. As though Steingart had planned this standoff.
“YOU were my parents!” she shouted. “I was a ‘ward of the state.’ YOU are the state. Every one of you. Senators and
congressmen most of all. You are my parents. If there was really a justice system, instead of the multimillion-dollar child welfare system you benefit from, you would all be liable for abuse and neglect.”
Jake held his breath. Kelly/Stacy was strangely eloquent. But the weirdest thing of all was that she could have been reading from a speech made by Porter Garrett. Why had she killed him, when he had supported her, believed the same things?
Jake saw the lead cop nod at the men behind him and duck through the front door.
“Steingart, you’re leaving us no choice,” warned the captain on the megaphone. “Come out now.”
Steingart ignored him. “Porter Garrett was no different from any other politician. He was worse. Using us to try to win the election.”
Jake tasted bile, hearing her name his friend with such hatred in her voice.
More bullets rained out. One of the cops clasped his arm and fell. The SWAT team rushed into the house.
“Call me a suicide bomber!” yelled Steingart one more time. The words fell into the dust. Silence. Then a massive explosion of firepower. Jake hunkered down flat against the desert sand as the bullets sprayed.
When he thought about it all later, it seemed remarkable that more people hadn’t gotten hurt. Especially after he walked in with the captain, once the SWAT team gave the all-clear, and saw that Steingart had been blasted back against a wall, spread-eagled, blood pouring from several bullet holes in her torso. An arm had been partially ripped off and hung uselessly at her side. Her black hair was wild and greasy and clotted with blood and tissue. Dead eyes stared, unseeing, from her face. What was left of her body showed her to be compact and wiry, small and strong.
Jake stared and stared and then turned away, shaking his head in an effort not to react publicly in some grotesque way—vomiting, crying, laughing. In the horror of the scene, the explosive mixture of adrenaline and testosterone, he felt a profound relief.
It wasn’t Kelly. Stacy Steingart was someone else.
He acknowledged to himself that he was also feeling something new just as viscerally. Jake had seen his share of death over the course of his career, but he had never felt such an electrifying satisfaction about it. Bloodlust was the only word for it—this woman’s blood in exchange for Porter’s. Jake picked his way around blood and tissue on the floor and went outside. Somewhere nearby a dog barked incessantly. Jake lit a cigarette to calm his shaking hands and watched police officers swarming around the scene. He was sure that after a few days of conducting fingerprint, DNA, and tissue analyses, the investigation would incontrovertibly identify Stacy Steingart as Congressman Garrett’s killer.
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