In the wake of the morning’s terrorist attack in Long Beach, he and the other reservists were called in and pooled for random assignment. Too bad for Officer Tanner Cooley he’d been assigned to babysit a bunch of news jockeys in Granada Hills. Not that he was feeling sorry for himself. His full-time job as a regional manager for a national fast-food chain provided him with a recession-proof job. Profits were up along with waistlines. The numbers in Tanner’s life had been treating him well.
And Tanner loved numbers.
He was an accounts whiz at his job. He could recite by memory the box scores and stat curves for the current season of his beloved San Diego Padres. And before he’d let his boots touch the pavement on those nights he worked as a volunteer cop, he’d commit to memory the license tags of recently stolen cars.
What made the license plate on the silver Lexus so beguiling to Officer Cooley was that he hadn’t read it on a hot list. It had come over the computer system from Homeland Security as a vehicle possibly used to assist the suicide bomber in the Long Beach bombing. DHS had also noted it was not yet releasing the identity of the suspect.
7SKD872
Officer Cooley could have eased from his corner post on Rey Palomino’s front lawn over to his cruiser, called up the DHS alert on the MDT screen and double-checked the digits. But one thing Tanner Cooley trusted was his keen mind for sequencing. Words. Symbols. Numbers.
He keyed the shoulder-mic Velcroed near his collar bone and radio’d his partner for the night, a four-year LAPD veteran he’d only just met at the shift change. Ninety-five feet away, she was short and solid, severely featured with sandy-blonde hair pulled into a bun tighter than a Russian ballerina’s. And when Tanner had casually asked her for a first name, she had tersely answered, “Officer.”
“Officer Cerrano?” said Cooley. “Need to talk to you about that silver Lexus that pulled up.”
“One of the occupants is with me now,” she responded. “U.S. Attorney’s office cleared him. He’s expected.”
Cooley paused, quickly glancing back to the vehicle and its driver concealed behind a tinted windshield.
“The tags and the make,” said Cooley into his radio. “They’re a match for a DHS warrant.”
“Copy that. Wanna double-check the warrant?”
“Don’t need to.”
“In fact you do need to because I said so.”
“Tellin’ you it’s on the sheet.”
“Yo, hobby cop,” said Officer Cerrano. “Double-check the tags and then get back to me.”
Cooley tracked the veteran officer escorting an older man in a Dodgers jersey across the lawn to the front door of the Palomino home. His orders from the officer in charge were to revisit the DHS warrant. But Cooley had already done as much in his own mental memory banks. The numbers in his brain didn’t lie.
Cooley’s legs moved at an uncorrupted gait as he angled his approach on the Lexus from the driver’s blind side. His shoulders swiveled left as his right hand came to rest on the grip of his service pistol. He’d yet to unholster the weapon in his reservist career. Was this going to be the moment? The Lexus’ windows were rolled completely open. The driver appeared preoccupied with trolling the stations of his satellite radio. Cooley felt the pistol skin from its resting place, clear past his hip, and find its practiced position at the point of both his outstretched arms. He sighted down the top of the pistol’s slide, aiming at the driver’s collar bone.
“Both hands on the steering wheel! Now!” barked Cooley, making sure his hips and feet were locked underneath him. “C’mon, lemme see ’em!”
* * * *
Officer Eugenia Cerrano had barely rapped her knuckles on the front door when the Baldwin latch turned and the door swung inward to reveal a thick ATF agent with a pair of wire-rimmed readers pinching the end of his nose.
“Hi,” said the private eye. “I’m Garvin Van Der Berk. I believe I’m expected.”
“Yeah,” said the ATF agent. “Rey’s in the den watching TV.”
“So he’s good?” asked Officer Cerrano.
“Yeah. He’s expected—”
The ATF agent’s head unconsciously tilted twenty degrees upward. This is when the lady cop saw the bright flash of light in the reflection of his glasses. The last thing she heard was the roar of an accelerating engine.
Garvin, on the other hand, had twisted around far enough to see what was coming. Behind the headlights and the muscle of an engine was one of those television trucks, bucking down the bricked footpath as it picked up speed. Hard-wired walkway lamps, each with its own pool of decorative light, were mowed over one by one by the truck’s bumpers in splashes of sparks and firecracker pops. Sod was spit into the air as the yawning bumper bore down on the front door like a charging water buffalo.
Meanwhile, the trio on the stoop barely moved as escape was futile.
36
As a matter of convenience, Beemer hated seatbelts. When under a hail of insurgent gunfire, having to get out from behind a seatbelt was a secondary concern. He would, however, concede their necessity and, in his present circumstance, could actually appreciate that he was securely lashed in by a three-point harness to the news van’s driver’s seat.
Operating the vehicle was easy enough. Once the microwave mast had been lowered, the engine started up on the first turn of the key. Then without much notice, he had slipped the van away from the curb and down the residential street where, at the nearest intersection, he was able to make a slow U-turn before the start of his accelerated run. The automatic transmission shifted seamlessly and, for a microsecond, he lamented all the clutching and shifting he’d endured over the past few days behind the wheel of those two rigs.
Ahead and to the left was the pool man’s suburban haven, still under the glare of all those television lights. With all the other news vans and police vehicles taking up curb space, Beemer’s only angle of attack would be to cut across the short ramp into the driveway. He worried that, when airborne, the news van would lose its trajectory toward the welcoming double doors that fronted the residence.
Hands on the wheel, Beems. Don’t turn away until impact.
He’d done this before. Only it was in a heavy Humvee and the target address was built from little more than unreinforced block and mortar. American construction codes were far more rigorous than those found in Fallujah. Especially so in California where earthquakes were a constant threat. Bearing walls. Rebar in every foundation. Even steel I-beam reinforcements were now part of some Los Angeles County residential construction formulas.
The news van bottomed out on the soft sod of Rey’s lawn. The shock absorbers responded by bouncing the chassis back upward. For the briefest nanosecond, Beemer imagined those adorable walkway lamps as runway lights, guiding him to a bulls-eye of a landing.
The entry to the home was framed by a pair of heavy wooden posts bracing a large, shingled gable. On the cross beam were three words in crude, tile mosaic. The obvious work of the child who’d once lived there.
Home. Sweet. Home.
There were three figures at the doorway. An unknown male just inside the threshold. A uniformed woman cop. And some older joker in a gray, visitors baseball jersey. All appeared to have been swallowed by the news van the moment it impacted the structure. The van itself appeared to slip perfectly between the posts, almost like a torpedo striking a battleship just below the waterline. All but for the lowered microwave mast which splintered the gable in two, retarding the van from completely disappearing into the home.
To protect himself from wooden beams penetrating the front windshield, Beemer had wisely ducked at the first contact, releasing the steering wheel and becoming a mere passenger on his own death ride. Equipment sparked and popped as the van spiraled a quarter turn clockwise before coming to rest fifteen feet inside the entry. His fingers found the button to release the seat belt and he struggled to find a footing in the twisted cab. The safety glass windshield had peeled away, making a convenient escape hatch.
Instantly, a figure appeared before him—diminutive, chiseled, and wearing an ATF bulletproof vest. Another fed, thought Beemer. And unprepared for attack. Beemer lifted his pistol and quickly double-tapped the ATF agent with two slugs in the face. The body fell forward, dead before it hit the floor.
How many more, Beems? Two? Three? And where the hell’s that pool prick?
To his right Beemer heard the voice of a man barking into a radio. A mayday call. ATF agent needs assistance. With adrenalin giving him an appreciated boost, Beemer trotted down the corridor to the open kitchen. The ATF agent with the radio had barely gotten off a barstool and was amidst losing his balance when Beemer fired three quick shots, each missing high and right. As if the ATF agent had his shoes tied together, he thumped to the floor behind a brown suede sofa. Beemer readjusted his aim, calculated his angle, then popped off three more rounds. The bullets cut right through the cushions and struck home. The ATF agent screamed in pain, cursing the floor:
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…”
Beemer flipped a chair to the left of the couch to potentially draw the downed agent’s fire. Then circled quickly to the right. He found the agent bleeding, prone, and working to wield his pistol left-handed. The fed never saw Beemer again, nor heard or felt the single and final slug he took to the back of his skull.
A figure flashed in front of Beemer, eyes as wide as silver dollars.
Rey!
The pool man had none of the pretend cool of a federal agent. No gun. No intent to stand and fight. Rey’s flight response was in full sail, practically peeling the screen door off as he bolted for the open space of his backyard.
Beemer leveled, panned, and unleashed the rest of his clip. The tempered glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows shattered in a hail of jagged pebbles, redirecting the bullets away from the target.
Reload.
Beemer trotted, cutting off the angle toward Rey as he tried to shuck a fresh clip into the pistol. He didn’t see the ring of brick coping that edged the barbeque patio. His right toe caught and before he could process the error, he found himself planted face first in a bed of flowering azaleas.
Aw, fuck.
When he scrambled to his feet, Beemer had lost the gun in the bush branches and fresh-tilled soil. He heard Rey breathing hard, gasping for air.
“HEEEEEELLLLLPPPP!” Rey screamed. At the top of his lung capacity there was an asthmatic squeak. He was squared up with Beemer, unsure whether to break right or left. Then when he saw his assailant’s distinct gimp, he swiveled his hips to the right and started what he thought was a swift move toward the side gate.
Beemer lunged, snagged the collar of Rey’s T-shirt and reversed the pool man’s momentum. Rey found himself yanked, spun around, and oddly airborne. He shut his eyes, expecting to feel his shoulder connecting with the stone hardscape. Instead he felt the slap of water, enveloping and smothering him in a shock of cold.
Instinct.
Were Rey’s body to have landed on concrete, his torso would have compressed and expanded with a sudden intake of air. But water is another matter. The instant Rey’s skin turned wet, his mouth closed along with his sinus passages, defending his lungs from sudden suffocation. He struggled to right himself back to the surface so he could breathe.
Beemer didn’t wait for Rey to catch a breath. He was on top of him before the pool man could figure up from down. Between the flailing arms and the wild kicks for life, Beemer kept his grip on the back of Rey’s neck plus a handful of his shirt. He briefly wondered how many seconds Danny’s old man would be able to struggle before letting go and sucking in a lungful of chlorinated H2O.
45, 46, 47, 48…
The water around Beemer eventually showed less churn as Rey began to succumb. His struggle for life on earth was about to be abandoned.
This is what happens, Rey Baby. This is what assholes like you get for fucking up my plans!
As the clock to Rey Palomino’s life counted down to zero, there was a second ticking timer at the back of Beemer’s skull that was screaming. It was an internal stopwatch that had been running from the second he’d jumped the curb in the news van to that very moment he was in the pool, drowning Rey Palomino.
Any second now cops’ll be pouring into the yard.
But Rey wasn’t dead yet. Not for certain. So what if the man was limp in his arms? It had barely been a minute. There was no guarantee he wouldn’t breathe again. After all, Rey was in the pool business. For all Beemer knew, the man had gills.
Now, Beems! Get the fuck out now!
As if taking orders from his drill sergeant self, Beemer found himself releasing Rey. He used his near-dead arms to extract himself from the pool and began his pre-planned exit.
But not before one last look back. Into the pool. If there was a body in there, Beemer couldn’t see it. That had to mean Rey had swallowed a lungful of pool water, lost buoyancy and sunk.
So Beemer ran.
Downhill, pal. Downhill.
What had appeared to be a suicide run had more in kind with a quick execution hit with a backdoor escape. Beemer had never expected to exit the way he’d entered. His preordained path was always through the house, over the back fence, then downhill to the waiting Freightliner. So at the moment more cops arrived and brave news crews began making their way inside Casa Palomino, Beemer was already vaulting over the rear fence and threading through the darkness of Rey’s backyard neighbor’s overgrown yard. Through an unlocked gate he was on a sidewalk fronting another street—a sixty second trot to his idling reefer truck.
* * * *
“You’re fuckin’ lost!”
“No shit, Sherlock!” spat back Gonzo, cranking the old Volvo into a squeaky, residential U-turn. She could’ve kicked herself for leaving her phone behind in Lucky’s car. And with it, the GPS app that had been guiding them to Rey Palomino’s home. Lucky’s cell was dead and they were driving blind up and down the sloping streets of Granada Hills with only prayer and hope for navigation.
“Saw a Circle K back near the freeway,” said Lucky. “I’ll use the pay phone to call Bleds.”
“Jasper or Casper Place,” said Gonzo. “I remember keying the address. All I gotta see—”
“So you’re gonna keep drivin’ up and down ’til you get lucky?”
“Already got Lucky—pun intended.” Gonzo hoped to lighten the mood, if even by the slightest margin.
“You wanna head back downhill?”
“Sure,” said Gonzo, beginning to execute a three-point turn. The brakes of the Volvo chattered as she turned into a gated access drive to a county water treatment plant. She shoved the balky gearshift into reverse and was pressing on the gas when—
“Wait!” cautioned Lucky, whose window suddenly turned white from the glare of headlights.
Gonzo touched the brakes, waiting for the vehicle to pass. The roadway underneath quaked as a tractor-trailer rumbled by.
Then Lucky became transfixed, as if watching a prehistoric beast.
“Freightliner fulla frozen peas…” recited Lucky in a ghostly monotone.
“What?”
“That was a reefer truck,” said Lucky.
“Yeah? So what?”
“Freightliner, right?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“I did.”
“So what about it?”
“Follow it.”
“Why?”
“Just do it!”
The Volvo reversed back onto the blacktop, then continued down the slope some two hundred yards behind the semi.
“You wanna tell—”
“Guy I met in the hospital,” interrupted Lucky. “Tattoo guy. Said he was haulin’ frozen peas with a Freightliner.”
“And that’s what’s in front of us?”
“Yup.”
“Could be just another refrigerated truck fulla who knows what.”
“We’ve been drivin’ around here for twenty minutes. You seen a supermarket? Any place you’d ex
pect to see a fridge truck makin’ deliveries?”
Gonzo didn’t need to answer. She already knew she was going to follow the rig because, once again, she was caught up in Lucky’s orbit. Though driving the car, she was still his willing passenger.
“How far we gonna take this?” she asked, simply wanting Lucky to measure the depth of his hunch.
“As far as it goes,” he answered cryptically.
37
Beemer’s senses were heightened thanks to the adrenaline. From his nearly frostbit fingertips to his displaced kneecap to the retinas in his eyeballs, his nerves were at full attention. And it felt absolutely awesome.
Possibly because his senses were so acute he paid more than a passing interest to the battered station wagon making a three-point-turn before falling into what appeared to be a locked-in tail position. As Beemer maneuvered the big rig across the freeway overpass and onto the eastbound onramp, the station wagon kept pace, never leaving his wake. In his side-view mirrors, he could easily make out the silhouette of the vehicle. An older model, he guessed. But for the moment, the make eluded him. A question mark that would keep him perplexed for miles.
For sleep’s sake, Beemer had plotted a two-piece trip east. The first leg was to travel the 118 to the 210 East until he reached Interstate 15. From there, he needed to hold off resting his lids for only another two and a half hours until he reached the state line at Primm, Nevada. Once there, he could park and abandon the old Freighty amongst all the other long haulers and steal twelve hours of sleep in a blacked-out casino hotel room before waking to a bargain breakfast and plotting his next move to either Phoenix or Albuquerque.
The moonless blanket of black sky appeared suspended above the freeway, separated by the atmospheric glow of a million tiny sources of light. From streetlamps and surging beams from cars, to the porch lights which adorned nearly every suburban tract home, the night in Los Angeles and its outlying sister cities was rarely and truly dark. It was closer to shades of gray, trapped by a faint and moist layer that penetrates from the ocean nearly fifty miles inland. With the marine layer came a coolness that teased a coming end to the suffocating heat wave.
Blood Money Page 27