“What can I say? I’m an information broker.”
“Information I cannot give. Even if you tortured me, you would get nothing. I cannot tell you where Ashley is.” He picked his words carefully, as if negotiating a path through a minefield. “I cannot tell you who she is. And I cannot tell you who I work for, or what it is that I do.”
“I sort of had the idea that you kill people.”
He smiled.
“Sorry to waste your time,” I said. “I can’t give you anything if you have nothing to offer me.”
“That is not true,” he replied, tossing his paper aside. “I will leave here with the painting, or you will die. Your decision.”
“You’re going to kill me right here?” I looked around. It was rush hour; there were people everywhere.
“Look up, Mr. Crane. The tall buildings? Men with rifles. I walk away with nothing in my hand, they shoot you dead.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Are you certain?”
I didn’t think Kevlar would stop a bullet from a long-range rifle, and I didn’t want to find out. “But you don’t want me dead.”
“Would you bet your life on that?”
“You’ve had plenty of opportunity to kill me already.”
He showed me his palms. “I hoped we could keep you alive for one more mission, but I think now this is impossible. I should have killed you last night. But . . . give me the painting, maybe you can live a little while longer.”
I had nothing. The only chance was to give him the painting and try to follow him—and try to stay in one piece. I gave the signal for Al to get lost. “Just around this corner,” I told Sharkskin, “you’ll see an artist selling paintings. He’s expecting you.”
“Very well.” He stood up and gave a preposterous wave as if to call off the snipers. I was sure he was bluffing. I started walking away but he stopped me. “No, no, Mr. Crane.” He was grinning maniacally. “You come with me.”
I had no choice, and Al was nowhere in sight. I led Sharkskin to where my street artist was guarding the portrait. The artist smiled when he saw me.
“This your friend?”
“Sure,” I said, “why not.”
Sharkskin took the painting and held it up. “She is talented, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. Too good,” I said. “Someone should probably kill her.”
The artist laughed. Sharkskin was busy holding the painting up to the light, letting the orange sun shine across the canvas, searching for something that I knew he wouldn’t find. Suddenly he snapped, held the painting at waist level, and ran his fingers over the uneven area of paint—the tiny depression left by the removed flash drive. He was bursting with rage and spit at me through a clenched mouth: “You stupid, stupid man. You think you can fool me? You think I care if you live or die?”
He lashed out, swinging wildly and knocking over the artist’s easel. “Hey, man—” he protested, but Sharkskin revealed a shoulder holster under his jacket, and the artist shut up and legged it. Sharkskin pulled out his gun—sure enough, it was the 9mm Baby Glock—keeping it low and partly concealed by his jacket. He leveled his gaze at me. “Tell me where it is or you die here.”
“If you kill me, you’ll never find it.”
“If you’re dead, it can’t help you.”
And with that, Al appeared out of nowhere and tackled him, just a fraction of a second after Sharkskin squeezed off a shot.
A sledgehammer hit me in the rib cage and I went down, hard. The searing, blinding pain gave way to more searing, blinding pain, and when I was finally able to sit up I saw Al standing over Sharkskin, his nose bloodied and his gun kicked out of reach. Al was pointing my .45 at Sharkskin’s head—in broad daylight, in the middle of Market Street. Not good.
“Hey!” A cop appeared half a block away and started toward us, talking into his walkie. Then I heard the sirens.
“Itchy! Get up!” Al yelled.
I got up off the ground and yelled back at him: “Get out of here!”
Al dove into a passing cab with more grace and agility than I would have thought possible for a man his size.
I ran out into traffic to put a little bit of distance between me and the Shark, who, I was certain, was right on my ass. I dodged a couple of vehicles and a streetcar, jumped back onto the sidewalk, and dashed to the end of the block at full tilt, sidestepping pedestrians. I saw a 14-Mission just closing its doors, with a cop standing next to it, staring right at me. I stopped in my tracks. The cop turned away from me, looked into the bus, and smiled. The doors reopened, and the cop got on. I couldn’t believe it, but I hustled and climbed in behind him.
“Hi, Tasha,” the cop said to the driver, almost sing-song. He was obviously sweet on her. He stood next to her and chatted her up as we rolled down Market.
The bus was crowded, but I managed to get a seat toward the front and tried to catch my breath and loosened the vest. I was sore, and my rib was badly bruised, but I didn’t think it was cracked.
The bus stopped, and right on cue, Sharkskin got on. He took a seat right in front of me and turned around, feverish with anger. His nose hadn’t stopped bleeding and he was dabbing at it with a handkerchief. “When I first saw you at the gallery,” he spoke through clenched teeth, “how I wanted to kill you.”
“You keep saying that.”
“But I knew you would lead me to her.”
I knew it, then. He would kill us both as soon as he had the chance.
“La próxima vez”—he made a gun with his fingers and pulled the trigger—“in the head.”
“Try it now. Headless man, bus full of screaming passengers—maybe the cop won’t notice.” I gave up my seat to an older woman and moved a few feet away, hoping he wouldn’t start firing at random. The bus was getting more crowded at every stop.
As we approached Powell, I stretched my arms a little, telegraphing that I was ready to get off. Sharkskin stood up and positioned himself right in front of me, fingering the gun in his holster. He wasn’t letting me go anywhere.
I smiled at him and watched carefully as we approached the bus stop. I looked at the driver, and I watched the curb, trying to calculate exactly when she would tap the brake. I reached back, all the way back to my ancestors, and when the driver hit the brakes I drove my fist into the back of Sharkskin’s neck as hard as I could. The braking of the bus helped destabilize his footing, and my punch put him down.
A woman near us shrieked, “Oh my god!”
I yelled over her, drowning her out, “Somebody help!” The cop looked back, bewildered. “I think he’s having a seizure!” I bent down over him, blocking the spectators’ view with my body, pasted him in the face, and tried to get his gun out of his holster. He fended me off, one arm tight across the gun. He swiped at me, but his face was a mess of blood and he could barely see. The cop was already pushing his way toward us. “Here!” I called out. “Please help him!”
I pushed my way to the back door, bolted off the bus, and ran down into the Powell BART station.
25
I rode down to the Mission and retrieved Delores from the garage. I cut through the Castro and took Divisadero all the way north, went through the Presidio and across the Golden Gate Bridge. The view was stunning and I didn’t care. I called the precinct and asked for Inspector Willits.
“Yeah.”
“It’s David Crane.”
“Oh, it’s David Crane. So nice to hear from you.”
“Listen, someone just tried to kill me at the Embarcadero. I think he’s on his way to my house.”
“Someone’s trying to kill him.” He wasn’t talking to me. “That’s too bad, Dave, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I want to come in.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna be possible.” He was enjoying this. “See, we had a little visit this morning from a couple of agents.”
“Agents?”
“Agents. That’s what they call operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency.
”
My heart was in my throat. “You’re fucking with me.”
“Nope. Two spooks came in and took all the evidence, kicked our dicks off the case, said they’d take it from here.” He laughed.
“What’s funny about that?”
“It pissed Berrera off something awful. He hates working on a case and having it taken away from him.”
“Is that Crane?” Berrera, muffled, in the background. “Tell him we’ll see him at the inquest—maybe.” They both laughed. I hung up.
I pulled into a gas station in Mill Valley and spied a Volvo station wagon parked with the windows rolled down. I pulled alongside it and tossed my car’s tracker into the back. Let Sharkskin chase geese.
I was back on the bridge when my cell phone rang.
“Itchy, you make it?” It was Al, from a pay phone.
“I’m fine, Al. The coppers get you?”
“I rolled out of a moving cab and made it to the BART. They didn’t catch me.”
“Good for you. Lay low, Al. Stay out of it and watch your ass.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to find out who’s pulling the strings in this puppet show.”
* * *
I went back to the deer blind. If Sharkskin couldn’t be bribed, perhaps one of his underlings could be threatened. My surveillance, Ashley’s paintings, Conrad’s operation, Sharkskin’s string of murders—everything led to the deer blind. And to one skinny, pizza-loving sentry.
I parked at the Shell station and made straight for the back house, holding a pizza box and wearing a crappy baseball cap. I knocked loudly. Through the French doors I saw my friend’s shadow bobbing to the door. He opened it slightly and poked his head out.
“Pepperoni, extra cheese?”
He blinked. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t call . . .”
“Whattaya mean, you didn’t call? I got a pepperoni, extra cheese here.”
He looked from side to side, unsure how to manage the situation, wondering how I had found him and weighing it against his favorite pizza. It was all I needed.
I flipped the pizza box into the door and shoved it, knocking him back as I stepped in and came at him with the tire iron I’d hidden under the box. I caught him haphazardly under the chin. He fell against the wall and I hit him in the head to be sure, then quickly shut the door and locked it behind me. I turned off the lights and went to work on the kid with a roll of duct tape—wrists, ankles, mouth.
The blinking green light of the tracer from my car was just off the 101, near Novato. The monitors showed my empty house. The audio recorders were still, only occasionally rendering the waveform of a passing car on my block. No one knew where I was.
I sat down at what looked like the main computer and sniffed around, finding the e-mail program. Most of the incoming and outgoing e-mails were in Spanish, and more detailed than my language skills could decipher. They seemed to concern the movements of someone named “Balam,” and were largely just notes—like the minutes from a meeting or an ongoing journal. The incoming messages were short, direct, and full of words I didn’t recognize—code, perhaps, or just slang.
Then I saw a name I recognized: McCaffrey. I clicked the top of the page to organize incoming mail by sender and this revealed a long list of correspondence from McCaffrey—going back months. He was involved, he knew these people, he was part of the conspiracy to bury me.
So why would he hire me to find Ashley?
I heard something and turned around quickly, just in time to see a blur coming toward me. There was a dull thud and a ringing, and I spun backward into blackness and knew nothing but the sinking, inky dark of the void.
26
“Balam viene aqui?”
“Sí, veinte minutos, más o menos. Se fue de la casa de Eechy.”
“Entonces?”
“No sé. Qué quiere.”
“Pues.”
“Mira—sus ojos son abiertos.”
They both looked at me and I realized I was looking at them. I felt like I had been run over by a garbage truck. The skinny one was holding ice to his head, and I was jealous. The big one, the older one, the one who had obviously knocked me out, was grinning. He came over.
“Do you want to see my favorite movie?” He turned to his friend. “Carlos, la película de Balam y el gordo.”
Carlos put his hands on a computer and clicked away. The big one rolled me over in front of the monitors. The bastards had me taped to a rolling office chair—with my own duct tape. It was covering my mouth as well.
Carlos pressed play and stepped out of the way so I could see. The big one loomed over me. It was a tape from my house, time-coded and date-stamped. It was today, maybe a half hour after I had arrived at the deer blind—recent, though I had no idea what time it was now. My house was still, empty.
There was the sound of the front door opening violently and Al fell into the living room, followed by Sharkskin. He moved Al to the couch by waving a gun—a .45 automatic. My gun.
Sharkskin looked away from Al and started to yell. Carlos adjusted the volume so we could hear him. “David Crane! Está aquí o no?”
Al looked scared. “I tole you he wasn’t here.”
“But you don’t want to tell me where he is.”
“I tole you—I don’t know where he is. I called him—all he said is he wanted to find out who was in charge.”
“And where is the girl?”
“I don’t know anything about—”
Sharkskin yelled into the house again: “Dónde está la cucharita!” Then he snarled at Al: “Where is the little slut?”
“I don’t know nothing about the girl. David didn’t even know where she was.”
“Not good enough, fat one. Not good enough.” He steadied the gun on him and Al visibly squirmed.
“I tole you what I know—I can’t tell you where he is if I don’t know.”
Sharkskin seemed to think it over. Then a phone rang. Sharkskin reached into his piscine jacket and pulled out a cell phone. “Hola.” He listened. “Verdad? Muy bien. Perfecto.” He hung up, put the phone away, and looked at Al. “Qué suerte . . . you are very lucky, fat one. You have no problem. I know where Itchy is now. You have no problems, no problems anymore.”
Then he shot Al three times in the face. I tried to look away but the big one held my face toward the screen, laughing. Sharkskin put my gun on the coffee table and peeled off his latex gloves. Al would be discovered, dead in my house, killed with my gun. Poor bastard. Sharkskin looked up to the camera and spoke in a steady voice: “That was almost more fun than killing your girlfriend.” There was a sound of sirens in the distance and he made his exit.
Carlos was clapping his hands. “Qué incredible, Balam!” They both fell into laughter again as I shut my eyes tight. I almost didn’t hear it in the background—“South San Francisco Police, freeze!”—and another muffled pop. My eyes flew open and I saw my empty house, Al dead on the floor, the sound of a car screeching away from the curb. Michael. It was Michael’s voice—the cop, my friend from across the street. He must have heard the shots and caught the killer coming out. I shut my eyes, tight as I could. Al’s dead, and so is Michael.
“Voy a fumar,” the big one said, and I felt him brush by me and I opened my eyes to see Carlos busying himself at the machines. I realized they had neglected to tape up my ankles. I could feel a flash of cold on the inside of my right ankle, just above my sock—my little Derringer, still strapped where I’d put it before meeting Sharkskin—Balam—at the Embarcadero. This was doable. If it weren’t for the tribal drum circle in my head.
Something about the feeling was almost familiar. I felt slow and sluggish, as if every nerve ending in my body were clogged with peanut butter. I was a little nauseous, worsened by the thought of two decent men dead for nothing, and had a screaming headache. I knew this feeling, I just couldn’t quite put a name to it.
I felt hungover. La goma. That was it. The aftereffects of a fallin
g-down, shit-faced drunk. I know how to function hungover: move slowly and watch out for gravity.
I raised my leg gingerly and Carlos didn’t turn around. I brought my right foot up and over to my right hand, gripping the cuff of my trousers and pulling the pants leg up. I lifted my leg higher and brought it over to my left hand, brought my ankle in a little closer. My left thumb found the butt and braced it; my index finger found the trigger. I tried to line up. I couldn’t get a high shot, but I might be able to tag him in the leg. I slumped, drunkenly, farther into the chair, twisted the gun as high as I could in the belt, guessed, and squeezed.
Carlos and I both started howling at once. The heat from the shot burned my ankle with scalding pain. I hit him. I didn’t know where, but I hit him. He grabbed at himself and fell onto the floor, curled up and screaming bloody murder.
I stood up, taking the chair with me. The big one was back inside and coming at me, yelling, “Maldito relamido de verga!” I spun the chair around and caught him in the gut with the chair’s wheels as he lunged toward me. His breath rushed out of his lungs. I tried to swing the chair again with my ass and took a quick punch to the face—I heard my nose break, felt the blood gushing down my lips and chin—then ducked just enough to miss the full force of the fast-following second hit, which glanced across my eyebrow.
I crouched down and forward, pushing into a jump, and drove my head into his chest. He fell back. Carlos, still howling, tried to come at me and I kicked him in the face. He went back down, moaning and spitting teeth. I slammed the chair into the wall—once, twice, three times—pulling at my right arm. The big one was up and hit me in the stomach, then again in the mouth. My right arm popped free of the tape. I hit him in the face and forced him back, hands slipping—there seemed to be blood everywhere. He had my tire iron now and was coming back at me—the chair was still taped to my left arm and I swung it at him, gained a second, got my Derringer from my ankle, and squeezed off the other shot. This time he stayed down.
I didn’t know how close Balam was and I wasn’t anxious to see him. I wrestled the rest of the duct tape off of me and started unplugging wires. I freed up the two hard drives and pulled them out from under the console, grabbed one in each hand, and stumbled out the door, ignoring the whimpers and moans from the two bleeding men.
The Painted Gun Page 14