by Robert Ward
Jack looked at Oscar, who whispered: “Being with this guy is already like being in hell.”
They rode the elevator up to the sixth floor to Jack’s and Oscar’s cramped offices. Toodles began to bark in a panicky fashion.
Feeney petted him solemnly and said, “Mr. Toodles thinks he’s going to jail, don’t you, Mr. Toodles? Mr. Toodles thinks he’s headed to the gas chamber!”
Jack felt a terrific urge to laugh and had to restrain himself.
At Jack’s crowded cubicle on the sixth floor, Fred J. Feeney looked through the mug shots while holding Toddles on his lap.
“No . . . no, no,” Feeney said, rapidly turning the pages. “We didn’t see any of these bad men, did we, Mr. Toodles?”
Jack stood by, drinking some water from the cooler, trying to keep his patience.
“No, wait . . . oh, look here,” Feeney said, looking up at Jack with a half smile on his face.
“That the guy?” Oscar said, moving in behind Feeney to get a better look.
“No, that’s not him. It’s just that he’s so ug. Mr. Toodles thinks so . . .”
“Hey, Fred,” Oscar said, “you think you could limit your comments to the matter at hand?”
Feeney sighed, then looked again at the man’s picture.
“Well, if that one there . . . isn’t a criminal, he damned well should be!”
He sighed and looked through a few more pages. Then:
“Oh, look here,” he said.
“More ugliness?” Jack said.
“No sirree bob,” Feeney said. “This is the guy. You remember him, don’t you, Toodles?”
The dog gazed at the picture, but made no comment.
“You sure?” Oscar said.
“Oh, yes,” Feeney said. “I never forget a face. Now, names I’m not that good at. Like I sometimes get Melvin all mixed up with Don. And Le Roy all mixed up with Lester. Don’t ask me why, but my mother was the same way.”
Jack looked down at the picture Feeney had pointed out.
It showed a picture of a large black man, forty-two years of age. His name was Edward T. Rollins.
“Arrested for car theft, interstate flight. Been a member of a chop-shop gang in Reno, Nevada, and Tijuana, Mexico.”
“Car nut,” Oscar said. “That’s gotta be our boy.”
“No known address,” Jack said. “I’m thinking we oughta ask Michelle Wu about this.”
Oscar nodded. “Yeah, if anyone knows about it, she would.”
Feeney looked up and smiled in his goofy way.
“Did I do good, guys?”
Jack smiled down at him and even felt a little shot of warmth for Fred and his dog.
“You did real good, Fred. I think we might even have a crime- fighter’s badge for Toodles here.”
He reached into his desk and found a toy agent’s badge that agents routinely gave out to school kids who toured the building.
“Oh, wow! Thanks, fellas. Say, look at that, Toodles. We’re agents. Yes, we are, aren’t we, Toodles. Agents of the FBI.”
Oscar shook his head again, and Jack thought of how funny Zac Blakely would have found all of this. That was the thing about Zac; he knew where to find a saving laugh. He always said that one thing he knew for sure: He’d never die from stress. Not with his sense of humor.
10
MICHELLE WU LIVED in Koreatown, but nobody knew exactly where. Jack had a cell-phone number for her and she agreed to meet him at a place called General Wang’s Noodle Factory, a stucco building near Western, where nobody had made noodles for thirty years. She made it clear that she didn’t want to see Oscar or anyone else, and if they showed, she wouldn’t appear.
So at eight that night, Jack found himself parking behind General Wang’s Noodles on Eighth Avenue, and walking into a dark alley, where he looked for a long flight of rotted steps which led to the third-floor door that still had a picture of General Wang himself, a bespectacled Korean who held a steaming plate of noodles.
Jack rang a bell and a Korean the size of Goliath came to the door. Jack explained to him who he was, leaving out the fact that he was a federal agent, and followed him inside. Once inside the door, the giant frisked him professionally and, satisfied that Jack wasn’t carrying a weapon, grunted and pointed to the back of the building.
They walked through hallways strewn with trash, and then entered a freight elevator that took them to the top floor.
The man never spoke at all. When they arrived, he opened the old hand-cage door and grunted again. Jack took this to mean he should get out, and did.
He looked to his left and saw a car sitting under klieg lights. Jack walked toward the racer, a Honda EG hatchback tuner car, a twelve-second car, the model street racers used in pink-slip contests.
Jack saw a pair of shapely legs sticking out from under the engine block and walked toward them.
“Hey, white boy,” Michelle Wu said.
“Hey, yourself,” Jack said. “You tricking this baby out all by yourself?”
“Oh, yeah,” Michelle said. “I’m getting the fuel injections put in. Pink baby. This little car gonna bring home a lot of other cars for Mama. All perfectly legal, of course.”
“Of course,” Jack said. “We know that a woman of your ilk would never traffic in anything illegal.”
There was a chuckle from underneath the car, and then Michelle Wu slid out on her dolly and looked up at Jack.
Jack smiled at her. She was so strikingly beautiful that it sometimes hurt his face to look at her. He couldn’t simply stare at her, though that was his initial instinct. Her black eyes seemed to reflect moon and starlight even in a room as dark as this one. Her body was trim, her breasts small but perfectly shaped. Her flat stomach, her stunningly shaped legs . . . the whole package was devastating.
“You come to arrest me again, white boy?” she said, slipping off the dolly and effortlessly standing by his side.
“Not unless you’re stealing cars again and breaking interstate- flight laws,” Jack said, smiling.
She leaned into him, purposely rubbing her breasts on his chest, and kissed his cheek. Her lips were full, and yet soft. Jack felt the immediate stirrings of desire and pulled himself away. The truth was, even now, as involved as he was with Julie, he didn’t trust himself around Michelle, and he sure as hell didn’t trust her. She was beautiful, brilliant, and an amazing mechanic and driver . . . but there was something constitutionally wrong with her. She would rather invent a lie even if it was easier to tell the truth. She lived for action and excitement and, as fast as she could turn you on, she could also become bored and truculent.
She didn’t merely live in the fast lane, she was the fast lane.
Now she was all charm, leaning against Jack as she put on a high-heeled shoe, which emphasized her perfect calves.
“I never stole cars,” she said, pouting and playing the hurt little girl for Jack. “You had it all wrong about that.”
“I know,” Jack said. “You had no idea that the cars you were running down to Mexico to the Encinitas chop shop were illegal, right?”
“Right,” Michelle said, fiddling with her other shoe. “I drove down there to race them. How could I know they were hot? Baby, have a little faith in me.”
“That’s exactly what I do have,” Jack said. “A little faith. Very little, but more than I did this time last year.”
Michelle rolled her amazing dark eyes and picked up a wrench.
“I gotta fix the timing mechanism. So are you still going out with that little white angel-girl, Julie?”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I am.”
“Such a waste,” Michelle said. “She’s no good for you. She’s mental.”
“No,” Jack said. “She’s sensitive, that’s all.”
“No, weak,” Michelle said. “When you want a strong woman, call me. You and me are meant to be together.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jack said. “It’s our destiny.”
“Well, of course, silly,” she
said. “So if you’re not here to sweep me off my feet, then why?”
She gave Jack her best “what can a little thing like me do for a big cop like you” look.
“There’s a guy hangs out in the car scene . . . Eddie Rollins. You know him?”
As she slid back under the hood, she said, “Maybe. What’d he do?”
“Maybe he murdered one of our agents. Zac Blakely. My old partner. You know anything about him, you tell me now.”
She slid back up and looked up at him.
“Zac Blakely.” She frowned, looked as though she was turning the name over in her mind.
“That name sound familiar to you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It does. I think I heard you talking about him. But maybe somewhere else, too. I can’t quite recall it.”
“His death was on the TV news last night.”
“Yeah,” Michelle said. “I guess that’s how I know it. You think this guy Rollins did it?”
“Maybe,” Jack said. “You know him, Michelle?”
“You got a picture?”
Jack reached into his coat and handed her the mug shot.
Michelle looked at it, and then back up at Jack.
“You want to come under here with me?” she said. “I’ve got some pipe work I have to do.”
Jack managed a small smile. “You recognize him?”
“What do I get if I say yes? A date?”
“You get another day outta jail,” Jack said. “Come on, Mi- chelle. I’m not in the mood to fuck around. Blakely was a great agent and one of my oldest friends.”
She smiled and pointed one perfect leg up at him.
“I know him,” she said. “He lives with his sister out in Monterey Park. He’s always hitting on me, trying to get me to come over. To discuss rods, ya know?”
“You know the address?”
“It’s written down somewhere. Maybe in my bedroom. Maybe you’d like to help me find it?”
“Maybe you’ll go get it right now, Michelle.”
“Maybe I will,” she said. “After all, anything for my Jackie.”
She slid back out and got up again, and when she walked away, she put a little spin in her hips that made Jack crazy. Who would know if he had a little thing with her? What man could resist her? Then he thought of Julie waiting for him at home, taking care of Kevin, and told himself he was just tired, weak, and how it was totally against policy. But as she walked back, smiling at him, he felt desire sweep over him all over again.
11
AS JACK AND OSCAR headed out the Hollywood Freeway south toward El Monte, Oscar looked up from the road for a second at the giant terminator pest control sign, which hovered over the traffic. The sign featured a man dressed in a top hat and pince-nez glasses. In his hand was a giant mallet and in front of him were a couple of very dead-looking cartoon rats.
“You see that man?” Oscar said. “The Pest-Control Hombre?” “What about him?” “When I came to this country from Salvador with my parents in the summer of 1966, we stayed at the motel right down there. The first thing I saw when I woke up that morning was that sign. Man, it was scary. That funny-looking dude and those rats. See, when I was a boy in Salvador, my papa always talked about America and especially Los Angeles as the land of movie stars, Rolls-Royces, and swimming pools in every backyard, but when I wake up and see that sign, I think to myself, ‘No, Papí must have it all wrong. There must be many rats here, and they need somebody to kill them all.’”
Jack smiled and looked across the seat at his partner.
“I have often thought maybe that was the day I decided to become a cop.
“I kept staring at that sign, and I felt like I was learning something I didn’t want to know. But I could never forget it. And then we stayed with my uncle Felipe, and he had rats in his basement. And no swimming pool . . . and he didn’t drive a Rolls- Royce, neither, but a Tijuana taxi . . . a broken-down old pickup that shot black smoke out of its pipes and fouled up the air.”
“So you were a force for good,” Jack said as they headed by the brightly lit downtown, the huge glass buildings where deals were made in which neither of them would ever be included.
“Yeah. That was me,” Oscar said. “Captain Pest Control. Funny, isn’t it, how a sign you see when you are ten can send you down a path for your whole life.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Funny as hell.”
They drove from the Hollywood Freeway to Indian Avenue, then crossed the park and turned left at Serrano Street.
Behind them the park was supernaturally bright with soccer players, shouting, laughing, running under the neon. Ahead of them there was a Salvadoran restaurant called Sylvia’s.
“Just a block down there,” Jack said. “Cienfuego Gardens.” “Yeah,” Oscar said. “Don’t you love how they always call the
projects ‘gardens’? The only thing that grows down here is marijuana.”
“Let’s park down here a block. Just in case . . . our boy is making a little guest appearance.”
Oscar pulled over to the side behind a rusted-out Taurus. They checked their weapons, got out, and shut the doors softly, then started down the street. They’d walked only about three feet when a huge rat ran across the street not ten feet from where they were.
“You bring your mallet, Pest Man?” Jack laughed.
“Got it right in my holster,” Oscar said.
The house was a run-down Tudor, with a sharp-edged roof that looked to Jack like an elf’s castle from a children’s book he’d used to read to Kevin. But any elves in this castle would all be crack-smoking fiends. They made it up to a side entrance and looked at the mailbox. It read Rollins, Edith.
“Upstairs,” Jack said.
They looked up and saw a light on in the window.
“Look like she’s home,” Jack said. “I’m going point.”
Oscar nodded as they headed up the steps.
On the small porch Jack rapped on the door. Oscar stood one step below him, revolver out.
Inside there was a woman’s voice.
“Who is it?”
“Edith Rollins?”
“Who wants to know?”
“FBI, ma’am. We need to talk to you. Please open the door.”
There was a frozen silence, and then the sound of feet scurrying away from the door.
Jack looked at Oscar, then nodded.
“I’ll ask you one more time, ma’am. Then we’re coming in.”
There was no reply.
But inside Jack heard something crash to the floor.
“Sounded like a lamp.”
“Yeah, somebody’s in a big hurry.”
“Kick the muther down!”
Jack nodded and yelled one last time.
“FBI! We’re coming in!”
He lifted his right leg and, with one powerful shot, kicked in the front door.
They ran into the small, crowded room, guns out, standing back to back as they 360’d the room. Then from the back of the apartment they heard the sound of scraping furniture.
“Back window,” Jack said.
They ran down the hallway toward the back bedroom, but were met halfway by a small, red-eyed woman wearing a ragged pink bathrobe and shoes with frog faces on the toes.
“There’s nobody here, officers,” she said, bracing herself in the hallway.
“Ma’am,” Jack said, “move out of the way. Now!”
She didn’t budge, but stood there with her two arms pushed against the walls.
“Are you going to shoot an unarmed old woman?” she said in an even, almost amused tone.
“No,” Jack said. “We’re not.”
He walked up to her and gave her a stiff arm to the right shoulder. She fell backward in a heap, screaming.
“Help, help! Police brutality!”
Jack and Oscar tried not to step on her as they jumped across her body and ran into the bedroom. The back window was open, and Jack jumped over a pile of dirty clothes on the floor and
quickly looked out on the park and street.
At first Jack saw nothing but the soccer game down below played under the surreal neon lights. Then he turned and looked up at the roof above him. A pair of legs was scrambling up a drainpipe.
“On the roof,” Jack said.
They ran back out through the hallway. When they got into the living room, they saw Edith Rollins sitting on her couch. She screamed at them as they flew by and out the door.
“Both of you are going to fucking die!”
Jack gave Oscar a funny look.
“You’re gonna have to wait in line, bitch,” he said.
They hit the steps and flew up to the roof.
The stars shone above them, the cries of the soccer game were below. Jack pointed to the big air-conditioning unit in the middle of the roof.
Jack took the left way around, Oscar the right.
Jack hugged the wall and came around quickly. There was nobody.
Oscar slid around the edge of the unit, and as he did, Rollins appeared from behind a chimney to his right.
Oscar turned, but not quickly enough, and Rollins shot him in the chest. He fell backward, grunting as he hit the tar roof.
Jack came running around, but by the time he arrived, Rollins had turned and made a dead run for the rooftop edge. He soared in the air and landed on the nearby roof, tumbled, rolled to his feet, and disappeared down the steps.
Jack knelt down to help Oscar.
“Where’d he hit you?”
“It’s okay. I’m fine. Go.”
He ripped open his shirt and showed Jack his Kevlar vest. Smoke billowed out of two bullet holes.
“Go!” Oscar said. “I’m right behind you.”
Jack turned and ran down the steps by Rollins’s apartment, where Rollins’s sister stood by the door.
“You eat dog, you fuckface!”
The absurdity of her curse struck Jack funny, and as he ran, he began to laugh.
On the street, he looked across at the park, and in the middle of one of the games he saw a big black man running across the field. He heard the crowd scream, and as he took off after him, Jack saw Rollins head for the sidelines toward a crowd of mothers and fathers who were watching their kids play.