Void Moon (1999)

by Michael Connelly

  The door closed and Karch watched as Renfro's feet started moving around the car to the driver's door. Karch wanted to curse but knew he had to be silent. He continued unspooling the line from the antenna.

  As Renfro opened the car door Karch used the sound as cover as he pushed himself down the length of the Cherokee. He was now directly below the rear bumper, the lower half of his body protruding from beneath the car. He reached the antenna up and wrapped the wire around the exhaust pipe just as the car started and he was hit with a blast of hot exhaust.

  Karch stifled a cough and quickly brought the disk up and placed it on top of the bumper, where it would be in a direct line with the satellites above. He used the last piece of tape from his sleeve to tape the wire down and hold the antenna to the bumper.

  It wasn't a finesse job but it would have to do, given the circumstances of the installation. He knew the GPS antenna would be spotted the first time Renfro looked at the back end of his car. But Karch was gambling that that wouldn't happen this night. What mattered was the next hour, maybe even less.

  The Cherokee shuddered as it was put into drive. It started to move away from the curb. Karch let the bumper pass over his face and then quickly rolled off the Rollerboy and pressed himself to the curb. He kept his head down and listened for any hesitation in the Cherokee's engine. There was none. Renfro kept his foot on the gas and drove off. He never looked back. Or if he did, he was checking the road behind him, not the curb.

  Karch finally looked up as the Cherokee receded from view. He smiled and got up.

  As soon as Karch got to the Lincoln he took the laptop computer out of the briefcase, raised the antenna and booted up the QuikTrak software. With the receiver and the equipment he had just installed on Renfro's car, Karch would be able to track the Cherokee's movements with a global positioning system that took a signal transmitted from the car to a constellation of three satellites miles overhead and then back down. The satellites triangulated the precise location of the car and sent the data by cellular link to the cellular modem in Karch's computer. The QuikTrak software allowed him to follow the car's movements with real-time data displayed on street-level maps on the computer screen, or he could download historical data from the satellite that would show the car's entire movement over a selected time period.

  Karch was first interested in making sure the installation had no flaws and he would be able to track the Cherokee by satellite. As a fallback he had committed the car's license plate number to memory and would be able to locate the car through the archaic means of a DMV trace in the morning, a move he hoped to avoid because it would leave an official trail of his activities.

  He typed in the receiver code and frequency and waited. After what seemed like an interminable wait during which he could feel beads of sweat pop from his scalp, the lines of a map began to appear on the screen. After the street lines came the words Los Angeles Region Map. Then a pulsing red star appeared and began trailing a line. It was the Cherokee. The legend at the bottom of the screen gave the location.

  RIVERSIDE DRIVE - WESTBOUND - 23:14:06

  Karch smiled. He had him. The installation was successful. He would be able to follow a map right to the treasure. He hoped.

  "Fucking A," he said out loud.

  He decided not to follow the Cherokee's real-time movements in his own car at the moment. He figured that it was likely that Leo Renfro had opened the padded envelope in the mail shop or in the car. Either way, the playing card he found inside would be both confusing and threatening. It was Karch's guess - based on Leo Renfro's two drive-bys before finally stopping at Warner Post & Pack It - that his target would take a circuitous route to his next destination in an effort to carefully identify and then lose any surveillance. He typed in a command creating a file for historical data collection beginning immediately. He then closed down the program and put the laptop back into the briefcase.

  Just after pulling down the zipper on his jumpsuit and opening the window to get some air, Karch heard a woman's sharp scream from the other side of the parking lot. He turned toward the sound but didn't see anything. He opened the door and got out and looked around. He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He was about to get back into the Lincoln when he heard another shout and saw movement on the other side of a BMW parked about ten slots away.

  Karch wasn't wearing his holster with the Sig Sauer. He had taken it off and left it under the front seat before putting on the jumpsuit. Rather than get the weapon now, he peeled off the top half of the jumpsuit and reached behind his back to remove the little . 25 from the magician's pocket in his pants. He then tied the arms of the jumpsuit around his waist and went to investigate the screams.

  Palming the small black pistol as he casually walked down the row of cars, he got to the BMW and heard the sounds of crying. He saw a couple standing at the front of the car. A young man and woman. The man had the woman bent backward over the front hood. He was leaning on her and kissing her neck while her head constantly rolled back and forth as if trying to get away from the rest of her body.

  "Everything all right there?" Karch called.

  The man looked over at him.

  "We're fine. Why don't you just piss off?"

  Karch started moving down the side of the car. The man suddenly stepped away from the woman and turned to Karch. He stood arms and feet wide apart and waiting.

  "Why don't you leave her alone?" Karch said. "It doesn't sound like she - "

  "Why don't you fuck yourself? She's fine. She just likes to yell, okay?"

  "No, not okay. Maybe you just like to make her yell. Makes you feel like you're in control of things."

  The guy suddenly leapt forward in a charge that Karch was expecting. Like an experienced bullfighter he quickly sidestepped the charging beast and used his hands to redirect his opponent's momentum into the side of a minivan. The man hit the side door of the van headfirst, causing a dent in the door panel. As he was straightening up and turning around, Karch moved in. He dropped the . 25 into place in his hand and brought it up under his opponent's chin, driving the muzzle deep into the soft underside of the jaw.

  "You feel that? Feels small, right? It's a twenty-five, just a pop gun really. Very unreliable unless you get in close like this. I cap one off like this, the slug will go right up into your brain and it won't be strong enough to get out. It'll bounce around inside there a few times and cut everything up in there to mush. Probably won't kill you but you'll be wearing a slobber guard and riding a wheelchair the rest of your - "

  "Hey, leave him alone," the girl said from behind him. "He didn't do anything."

  Karch made the mistake of not watching her.

  "Shut up and back away. This guy - "

  She grabbed Karch from behind then and he used his left arm to roughly shove her backward while keeping the gun pressed against the man's neck. He heard her hit the BMW hard and then fall to the pavement.

  "Johnny!" she cried out.

  "See what you did?" Johnny cried out. "Big man. Look what you did to her. A knight in shining bullshit."

  Karch pulled back from him and stepped backward until he could keep his eyes on Johnny and see the girl as well. She was sitting on the pavement, her legs spread and looking a little dazed. Johnny ran to her and she grabbed him around the neck. She started crying again.

  Karch turned and started walking quickly to his car. He was thinking Why the fuck did I do that? I'm here for one reason only.

  He got into the Lincoln, backed out and drove away. He saw Johnny standing in the lot behind him, watching him go.

  Karch pulled to a curb on Magnolia Boulevard, put on the dome light and got the National Law Enforcement Association frequency book out of the glove compartment. He had bought the book from Iverson for $ 500 . It listed every federal, state and local law enforcement agency and the radio transmission frequencies assigned to them. Printed in large letters across the top of every page was "Law Enforcement Use Only." Karch had laughed the first t
ime he saw that.

  He found the listing for the Burbank Police Department and punched in the three patrol frequencies assigned to the department on the scanner mounted below the dashboard. He then locked in a repeating scan on the three frequencies and waited and listened. If the couple he had just tangled with called in a report, he needed to know about it.

  Things seemed quiet in Burbank for a Thursday night. A couple of domestic disputes went out to patrol units and then came a call to the parking lot at Presnick's bar. It had been reported as an assault and threat with a firearm.

  "Shit!" Karch yelled loudly.

  He banged his fist on the steering wheel. He looked at his watch. It was almost midnight. He knew he wasn't too far from Burbank Airport. He could go there and try to find another set of plates. But it was getting late and he knew he needed to get out of Burbank. He put the car in gear and drove until he reached a residential street. He turned onto the street and drove a block down before stopping. He killed the lights, reached under the seat for the car's proper license plates and got out with the drill. A minute later he got back in with the stolen plates in hand. He shoved them under the seat and put the car in gear. He drove a full block before putting the lights back on.

  He drove west and didn't stop again until he was clear of Burbank and well into North Hollywood. He listened to a description of himself being broadcast on the Burbank frequencies and had to smile. The description that went out was fifty pounds too heavy and ten years too old. The rest was so generic it didn't matter. The tag number that went out accurately matched the plates now under his seat but the make of the car was off. It was described as a black Ford LTD. Karch lit a cigarette and tried to relax. Burbank was not going to be a problem.

  It was now midnight and Karch thought that enough time had gone by for Leo Renfro to have gotten to wherever he was going. He pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour supermarket called Ralph's and stopped the car. He had just opened the QuikTrak receiver when his pager went off. He checked the number and saw the page was from Grimaldi. He decided not to call back and even turned the pager off. He didn't want it sounding again at an inopportune time.

  The QuikTrak software booted up and Karch typed in a command asking for the historical data file on the movements of the transmitter beneath Leo Renfro's car. A map of northern Los Angeles appeared on the screen with a red line delineating the car's movements. Karch had been right. Renfro had gone on a long and convoluted drive around the Valley, driving in circles and making several U -turns. The computer showed the transmitter to be static for the last twelve minutes. Renfro had stopped. The computer placed the car on Citron Street in Tarzana.

  "Here I come, Leo," Karch said out loud.

  He put the Lincoln in drive and nosed it out of the parking lot on his way to Tarzana.

  30

  THE Cherokee was found easily enough. It was parked in a driveway in front of a small house on Citron. As Karch drove by he wondered why Renfro hadn't put it into the garage. He kept driving and continued around the block, looking for anything unusual or suspicious. He then pulled the Lincoln to the curb a half block away from the Cherokee. He worked his arms back into the sleeves of the jumpsuit and zipped up. He got his Sig out of its holster and attached the silencer. Leaving the Lincoln unlocked in case a quick escape was necessary, he headed down the street on foot.

  Before approaching the house Karch got down on the pavement next to the Cherokee and reached underneath for his satellite equipment. He pulled it off the pan and jerked the wires free. He then went to the rear of the car to recover the disk antenna and put the equipment in the mailbox at the foot of the driveway. He planned to grab it later on when he headed back to the Lincoln.

  Curious about Renfro's decision to park the car in plain sight, he walked to the garage and shined his penlight through one of the small windows on the door. The garage was completely filled with stacks and stacks of champagne cases. He assumed it was a stolen shipment and wondered if it would be worth his time and efforts later to have the shipment removed and sold. He could probably sell it all to Vincent Grimaldi for a nice profit.

  He dismissed the idea and focused on the task at hand. He crossed the front of the house and moved down the left side, carefully looking for indications that Renfro had dogs. He wasn't concerned with alarms. People who worked the wrong side of the tracks rarely had alarms. They knew how easy they were to compromise, and they didn't want any kind of security system that could possibly bring the police to their door.

  There was a wooden gate halfway down the side of the house. Karch easily scaled it and dropped over. He ran the light over the grass and in the shrub beds running down the side of the house. There were no dog droppings anywhere and no sign of any digging in the plants. He flicked the light off and continued down the side to the backyard. The moon was bright and he didn't need the light.

  At the rear corner of the house Karch stepped out and saw the glowing blue surface of a pool. Just as he began moving along the back wall, he heard a sliding door open. He scrambled back to the corner and took a position giving him a view of the rear. A man stepped out through a sliding door and walked to the edge of the pool. It was the man from the mail drop. Renfro. He looked down at the pool and Karch saw an automatic vacuum moving slowly along the bottom. The man then looked up and seemed to be staring at the moon. Karch stepped out from his position and raised his gun.

  Because of the background hiss from the nearby freeway Renfro never heard him. Karch put the cold end of the muzzle against the back of his neck. Renfro tensed but that was all. People in his line of work expected sooner or later to feel the cold muzzle of a gun against their neck.

  "Nice clear night, eh?" Karch said.

  "I was just thinking that," the man said. "Are you the ace of hearts?"

  "That's me."

  "I looked but I didn't see you."

  "That's because I wasn't there. You're about a decade behind, Leo. I put a satellite bug on your car. I didn't need to follow you."

  "Live and learn."

  "Maybe. Let's go inside and talk. Keep your hands up where I can see them."

  Karch grabbed the back of Renfro's collar with one hand and held the gun against his back with the other. They headed back toward the house.

  "Anybody else inside?"

  "No, I'm alone."

  "You sure? I find anyone else in there I'll kill them just to make the point."

  "I'm sure you will. There's no one."

  They went in through the open sliding door into an office. Karch saw the desk at one end of the room. One entire wall was covered with more cases of champagne. Karch roughly pushed Renfro toward the front of the desk and let him go. He then reached back and closed the sliding door.

  "Stay in front of the desk."

  Leo did as instructed. He kept his hands held up, chest high. Karch came around and went behind the desk. He noticed that sitting on the desk was the padded envelope he had left for Renfro at the mail drop as well as the envelope that had already been in the box. The flaps on both envelopes were torn open. Karch sat down in the chair behind the desk and looked up at Renfro.

  "Been a busy man, Leo."

  "Oh, I don't know. Things are kind of slow."

  "Really?" He nodded in the direction of the wall of champagne. "Looks like you're about to start celebrating something big time."

  "It's an investment."

  Karch picked up the padded envelope and shook it until the ace of hearts dropped out onto the desk. He tossed the envelope over his shoulder and picked up the playing card.

  "Ace of hearts. The money card, Leo."

  He put the card into one of the pockets of his jumpsuit. He then picked up the other envelope and looked at it.

  "I'm curious. What does the seven-seven-three mean? That some kind of code?"

  "Yeah, it's a code. An area code."

  Karch shook his head.

  "I should've known. Where?"

  "Chicago. It's the ne
w one."

  "Yes, that's right. You work for Chicago."

  "No, that's wrong. I don't work for anybody."

  Karch nodded but the smile on his face indicated he didn't believe Renfro. He picked up the other envelope and shook it. Two passports fell onto the desk. He picked up one and opened it to the photo page. Paper-clipped to one side was an Illinois driver's license and two credit cards. But Karch was more interested in the photo.

  "Jane Davis," he read out loud. "Funny, that looks like Cassidy Black to me."

  He looked up at Renfro to catch his reaction. For a moment it was there. Surprise, maybe even shock. Karch smiled.