It was surreal. No one screamed, but all the ordinary citizens scattered or kissed the floor. I fell on my ass and Cody dragged me up, to hug the Northwest ticketing counter next to a businesswoman who looked ready for a coronary . . . but that was not going to make her put down her mobile device, by god. Her fingers trembled as she tried to capture images of the action to send to . . . somebody . . . from her phone’s tiny screen.
The average person now appears on a minimum of a thousand cameras per week, just in the course of a normal day. Cash register video. Security cams. Traffic lights. Everybody else’s cellphones. I recalled Zetts’s archaic mention of Big Brother—an outmoded fear, now, since most people accepted that they were being watched all the time, usually by each other.
A lot of insistent, no-nonsense voices were yelling now. Weapons down, surrender immediately, lace your fingers behind your heads. Not us. The NORCO crew wasn’t even aiming at us, because we were unarmed. No. I saw an M16 muzzle snake out from behind the counter, just above our heads. Across the way I could see a lot of men in fatigues, drawing down alongside uniformed cops and airport police. More guys on the second level, with guns. Now! Now! Now!
I’m sure Dandine, in the car, was laughing his ass off.
The NORCO shooters looked to each other like befuddled lab animals, trying to intuit a group consensus on whether they should exit our realm in a blaze of glory. Then, collectively, they laid down their guns with almost reverent exactitude. Went to knees. Open palms. Laced fingers. Trusted Dad to make bail. As they flattened out, as the soldiers and cops crept toward them (using that one-two advance step so ingrained for people with tactical training—never crossing one leg in front of the other), one of them scooted laterally to avoid the spreading amoeba of crimson pumping from the dead man’s shattered skull.
People were talking now, and watching, raising the noise level to a cafeteria fusillade while the various authority figures yelled louder to make their orders heard. Cody was crab-walking, against the counter; back another step, back another step, always nudging me ahead of him. We totally fumbled our attempt at nonchalance once the downward escalators were in sight. A minute later, we were piling into the GTO at baggage claim—our prearranged pickup—trusting Zetts to magick us from harm’s blast radius.
First we’d experienced a car chase with only one car; now we had just foxed out of a gunfight with no shooting—except that single, surgical discharge. There was only one other partial casualty resulting from our trip to the airport.
By the time we hit the out-route to Aviation Boulevard, LAX had flash-frozen into its usual terrorist lockdown, and a sentry at a brand-new roadblock asked to see credentials above and beyond Dandine’s NSA jacket. Dandine smiled and shot the guy in the chest with a Taser, and we were off. Nobody apologized.
I was so adrenalated at this point, I wanted to shoot the dumb fuck myself, with a real gun, because he was an impediment. But that was just heat-of-the-moment; I’m not really like that, at all. I hoped he woke up okay.
Nobody chased us. Dandine and I sat in the back of the GTO, with Cody and Zetts up front, as we blitzed north on La Cienega.
Nobody talked, for several tense miles, until I said, “All right, I’ll start. What the hell was that all about?”
Cody had not uttered a sound since jumping into the car. Zetts was in his own head, the driving zone.
Dandine pulled a pack of smokes from his Halliburton and slotted five into his slim cigarette case. It was after midnight, therefore time to reload for the new day. He lit the straggler from the previous day’s stock and drew a deep hit of ghostly smoke that swirled around the cabin of the car and dissipated into the night.
“You guys did perfect,” Dandine said. “Exactly what was needed.”
“Gee, thanks, Pop.” I was angry and scared, and not about to let it all pass without comment. “I just saw a guy get his face blown off for basically no reason, and the first thing I thought of was you, sitting in this car with some big, fancy rifle, deciding whether to take me, or Cody, to see how many accurate shots you could fit into a five-second window.”
“Not me,” said Dandine. “That’s the beauty of it. Look, NORCO expects us to be scared, and panicked, therefore reckless. Cody calling for Gerardis directly, by name? That’s the act of a scared and panicked man.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Cody said, with no verve.
“I know.” Dandine talked placatingly, to keep us, as dupes, level. “They responded predictably, the way I thought they might. And I found out some important things we all needed to know. And in the bargain, we managed to bite them back, for a change.”
“Wait,” I said. “Go back to the second part—the part about the stuff we needed to know.”
“Remember when I told you about all those organizational rivalries? Everybody nipping at everybody else’s heels?”
“Predators predating on predators.”
“Right. I used Cody so the call would sound valid. You don’t mind, do you, Cody?”
He had slipped into sales pitch mode again. Eye contact, first names, pretend to be interested in the welfare of the client.
“Whatever.” Cody was still sour.
“NORCO has enemies. Pretenders, rather, who do the job more soullessly as a selling point of their ruthless efficiency. Zetts and I watched a carload of them roll up while you were inside. Which is why I had you use the pay phone, Cody. Somebody else is out there, listening, too—just like NORCO does. Somebody else has a red-flag system, too. And when they heard Mr. Gerardis was about to make an in-person appearance, they very well couldn’t not send a couple of assassins, you follow?”
“It wasn’t Gerardis,” Cody said. “They sent a ringer.”
“Of course they did, but our mystery guests have no way of knowing that, and probably don’t even know what Gerardis really looks like. You know, I know, but very few people in the country know that privileged trivium.”
“A what?” said Zetts.
“You’ve lost me already,” I said.
“Oh . . . shit,” Cody said.
“He’s got it.” Dandine smiled. “Tell Connie what I’m talking about.”
“This proves there’s another organization.” Cody twisted around in his seat, suddenly excited. “Another club, but this one is interested in damaging NORCO.”
“And whoever they are, they’re hot,” said Dandine. “Zetts and I watched them do the surgery. Two guys with silenced rifles. One to break the glass for the other to shoot through. One shot each. Capped off and done. They were gone before the echo died; very slick.”
“Plus you neutralize ten NORCO hound dogs as icing,” I said. “Don’t tell me all those soldiers and airport cops work for another secret company.”
“No. As soon as you were inside, I called airport security and simply told them that a group of nondescript men and women were about to waltz into their terminal, en masse, with loaded, concealed firearms.” He exhaled smoke, satisfied. “In these sensitive political times, all you have to do is cry wolf, or rather, say the sky is falling, and they’ll buy it. Terrorism works if you keep everyone afraid. We just made the police and the Army do us a huge favor. The best kind, because they don’t know they did it. We verified there are interests out there whose agenda includes disrupting or crippling NORCO. And we tilted the situation so that we—”
“Chomped a big wet bite outta their ass!” said Zetts, grinning like a lunatic.
“You could’ve let us in on it.” I spoke for Cody as much as myself.
“Wouldn’t’ve played,” Cody said. “We’d’ve tipped the game, if we knew.”
“See, Connie? It’s a game. It has occasionally dreadful consequences, but it’s a game to them, and it has to be a game to you, to us, if we want to win.”
“Yeah, except none of this is real!” I hated the way that sounded, even as it dumped out of my face. The “real” world, versus this internecine world. Those on the outside and those on the inside. The people who know
, and the rest of the people, who never suspect—the walking dead. “It’s all a lie.”
“And how do you make a lie go down smooth, Connie?”
I answered almost automatically. “You make it attractive. Appealing. What you want, or fear not having. You make it superficially logical, so no rational person could disagree with the sentiment.” My whole face went dead. Crap! He was right! “So you promise them the real Gerardis, when you know they’re listening, and set them against the guys who are making our lives hell.”
“Bravo. And not a single bystander got hurt. Reel back your own ego long enough to see that we just stung NORCO, badly, for free.”
“Terrific. Now they’ll really be pissed off.”
“They don’t know we did it. You saw those bodyguards. Not one of them made you. The lower rank and file doesn’t even know your face—it hasn’t trickled down far enough to be a priority to the grunts. It’s probably just Gerardis, and the guys above him. It’s need-to-know stuff, because they’re trying to control the orbital decay of their original situation. And that gives us a number that we can fight.”
Damn him, he was selling me. I was really starting to despise the profession of huckster.
“So what do we do now?” I said. “That frontal assault on NORCO you were talking about?” I had a vertiginous glimpse of us suiting up in black nylon, weighing ourselves down with firepower from some deadly trunk-load of weaponry, and rappelling down out of a Huey in the dark. First time for everything, as the cliché goes.
“No. Now we go for Jenks. Just like on your list.”
“You have . . . thir-ty sev-en . . . new messages. First message . . . sent . . .”
Nearly ten messages per day. Subtract Burt Kroeger, playing hale and hearty, joking about my heroic binge, my sexual appetites, and my long-suspected double life as a porn film producer. Subtract Katy Burgess, calling from a different and slightly more intimate attack vantage, concerned about the jail thing, the MIA thing, just call me anytime, Connie—okay? Some of her ploys were almost intimate. Half the incoming messages were from her.
Red flag, I thought, hating myself for it.
Subtract five from Danielle, also in the office, mostly questions about pending contracts, and one lengthy message about setting up a face-to-face with an attorney who was vetting the most sensitive of those. He really needs you to call him right away, and if you need anything, Connie . . . Her tone struck me as bullshit, too.
That left seven calls, none of them from friends, pals, exes, or business acquaintances.
Number 29 was a winner, and whoever they used to do the voice needs an Academy Award, right now. It was a perfect blend of urgency and discomfort at speaking to a stranger’s machine.
“Mr. Maddox, you don’t know me, but my name is Mr. Shannon, and I . . . well, this is a little difficult. Uh, sensitive, I mean. It’s a kind of mutual interest thing, covering the events of the past few days, and . . . well, listen, I would really appreciate a callback at your earliest convenience to discuss this matter, and, y’know, work out some kind of resolution I hope makes us both happy, okay? Like I said, my name is Jaime Shannon . . .”
“Never heard of him,” I said.
Dandine tilted his head away from the secure cellphone. “Too bad we can’t turn ourselves into electronic signals, dial up this Jaime fellow, and transmit ourselves right into NORCO.”
“That’s charming, but I hope there’s a backup plan that takes place in, you know, the real world.” It was too much to hope that NORCO had a customer service line.
“Which one?” he said, more to himself than me, with a half-smile. He drew a neat sip of his single malt, then drank half a glass of his seltzer.
We were bending the rail at a dimly lit venue called the Wily Toucan—believe me, where it was located isn’t important—which had no last call, no restrictions on smoking, and no listing in the LA phonebook. Neither one of us had ever been there before tonight. I was the guy with the address, and more important, the code word for the door. The Wily Toucan was a cocaine speakeasy, as well—no locks on the restroom doors, and a back room in which live music was played and tables-full of people tapped their feet and drummed their fingers, though their movements had little to do with the tunes. Farther back was an iron door like that of a bank vault, with a food slot through which you could buy a twenty-buck hit of blow in a press-sealed coin envelope. There was another room back there, somewhere, in which customers could aspirate their purchases. I got the impression that few people came for the bar, which was decent. No fronds. No sports. Dandine seemed oddly pleased.
“How do you know about this place?”
“Well . . . sometimes clients have special needs.” I tried a sheepish shrug. “It isn’t that hard to find if you’re motivated. There’s, what, forty people back there right now, and it’s three in the goddamn morning.” I finished off a scotch with a battery-acid afterburn. Stick to beer, I thought. I had decided I needed a drink, wanted a drink as a single note of sanity. Dandine had ordered better stuff and was playing it out, making it last.
“How long has this been here?”
“Eight years, at least.” Enough time for the owners to paint the joint’s name in a fancy design on the inside wall (with a cartoon of, what else, a wily toucan), and outfit the bar with excellent stools.
He did that vague, almost-shake of the head. “The pay-down must be astronomical.”
“Yeah, but look at the traffic, and think of the gross.”
“Point.”
“You want another?” The barkeep refreshed me; all he needed was a glance.
“No,” said Dandine. “But I’ll finish this one.” He took another sip. “I’m a lousy drinker on my best day. My stomach’s not built for it. Enough to get tipsy is enough to screw my insides up for two days, so I don’t, generally.”
“You wouldn’t, anyway,” I said, taking a long pull of beer and lighting a smoke. “That whole loss-of-control thing.”
“Hm.” He was not in a lectorial mood. He seemed to be contracting in upon himself, engaging in another whole conversation, somewhere deep inside his head. “You did very well tonight.”
“Not bad, for a tyro.” I held up my glass and he stared at it for a beat, then realized it was a small toast. I thought, how often does this guy clink glasses with anybody? “You don’t go to a lot of birthday parties, do you?”
“Come again?”
“Anniversaries. National holidays. Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners.”
He smiled again. (I keep hammering that because I need to emphasize how goddamned strange it was to see him smile, when there was no ploy to be pursued by smiling. A smile is one of the most lethal weapons in advertising.)
“What I’m saying is, you probably don’t sponsor ‘guy night’ at your house, or apartment, or wherever you live, right? Don’t know supermarket checkers or waiters by name, because you don’t repeat. You don’t have a pattern. You’re an ad man’s worst fucking nightmare—we can’t sell you anything, can we?”
“What you seem to be attempting to say, in your maladroit way, Connie, is that I don’t ‘have’ anybody, yes?”
“What about Zetts?”
He stifled some internal joke. “Are you asking me if I’m gay?”
I came close to doing a classic spit-take.
“Is there something wrong with being gay?”
I spluttered. “No, of course not, it’s just—”
“Stop. I’m not. I wish you could see your face right now. You’re blushing.”
“Yeah, right, make fun of the straight guy.”
“Zetts is just a wheel. An in de pen dent contractor who’s reliable. Most of the time.”
“I thought maybe it was a surrogate son thing.”
“That’s ridiculous. Cheers.”
We had ferried Cody Conejo to an address in Compton. He didn’t have to be told to lay low for a while. After we procured another vehicle and performed the license plate trick, Zetts signed off with
his usual jaunty salute and headed home to collapse. I passed the tapes I had stolen from Alicia Brandenberg’s suite to Zetts, who was sure to review them at leisure. It was a surer thing than waiting for a chance to do it myself; besides, if there was lascivious humping to be exploited, with Alicia making sure the camera could see faces, Zetts would pay attention. As “evidence,” it didn’t really matter. You’d be amazed what can be accomplished with digital forgery today.
Our “anonymous” carjack was somebody’s Audi A6; our options were limited, and we were pressed for time. It turned out to be one of the 4.2 models with the 300 horse power engine. While I tried to guess the shape of the option package, Zetts and Dandine went at the car like swarming wasps, and within fifteen seconds (I’m not exaggerating), both the LoJack and the alarms were useless. Dandine could drive a stick as expertly as he helmed the yachtlike Town Cars he seemed to favor; the Audi ate glassphalt like a fighter plane with no wings. (All over Los Angeles, the slurry-sealing on the better roads is embedded with tiny bits of sparkling glass, hence, “glassphalt.”) I was sitting in the suicide seat when the idea of the Wily Toucan surged into my brain the way a recovered memory surfaces after years buried in the mental marl.
As proof of my fuzziness, I tried a different tack: “Do you live in LA?”
Dandine put his glass down, empty now. “No, I don’t live in the city.” Pause. “I was seeing a woman. Up until about a year ago.”
I tried to visualize what sort of girlfriend Dandine might court. Where’s the girl? I was crazy to see what one of those deep-dish files on Dandine would look like, before NORCO. Where were the low points and embarrassments and failures in his life-line?
Closed book. No further information was forthcoming. He turned to me directly and said, “You game for Jenks?”
“Why . . . you going to cut me loose? Don’t answer that. Yeah, I’m in. Whither-ever thou goest—”
“Don’t drink any more tonight.”
“Sorry.”
We had made it through the day, to the cocktail hour. In a hysterical, perverse way, it was almost normal. Normal. As if any of us has a right to define it.
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