Total Immunity

by Robert Ward

  “We need to talk about that,” the man said. “I got some sensational stuff with Rollins running through the soccer game. That stuff is golden.”

  “Good,” Jim said. “But that’s more transitional stuff . We need a solid Act Two. Something that’ll top Blakely.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” the man said. “I’ve got some great ideas. You want to eat first?”

  “Nah, I’m not hungry,” Jimmy said. “And I gotta go soon. So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, okay?”

  “You gotta run, huh?” the man said.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “So let’s get started. Who is the next lucky asshole?”

  He laughed wildly this time, and it gave the other man the creeps. But he didn’t say so, and they soon got right down to work.

  14

  KYLE WAS DREAMING that he was floating in a pond while his father sat on the riverbank, dozing. Kyle saw him there, so close by he could almost touch him. And there was Michael nearby, too. Floating on his back just a few feet away. The sun was shining, the frogs were croaking. It was . . . what was that word . . . in the dream Kyle tried to find it . . . oh yeah, idyllic. That was the word.

  But there was one tiny thing that was a little amiss. There was a purple membrane of some kind floating on the pond, just a few feet away from them. It was really kind of amazing looking, bright purple, and sort of curled up at the edges. It looked like . . . a giant jellyfish, but it seemed harmless.

  Kyle found it interesting, fascinating . . . because it seemed to be growing . . . getting longer, and now it was turning into something else. Kind of like a giant clam . . .

  Only now it was moving toward them, and in a second it had kind of oozed all over Michael, and then devoured him.

  Kyle started to scream. He really couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  He turned and looked at his father, screaming, “Dad! Dad! It’s taking us. It’s coming to kill us!”

  But his father was still dozing on the pond bank, a pleasant grin on his face, as if he was having a really good dream.

  Kyle turned back and looked at the thing, and he could see Michael’s head, pushing against the purple membrane, screaming in horror. And now the thing was oozing all over Kyle as well, and he couldn’t breathe . . . the thing forced itself down his throat, squirted itself into his ears, and up his nose.

  He was drowning in ooze — and his father wouldn’t wake up.

  And he was beating at the membrane, but it just gave with every punch he threw.

  And he felt it turning hot and sticky and he knew without a doubt that in a few more seconds . . . he was going to die.

  He awoke, screaming, and tried to flail about, but he was still tied tight. The membrane was a blanket the bearded man had put over him. And the lack of breath . . . that had to be caused by the gag, which was tied even tighter.

  Why didn’t someone come for them?

  Why was his father dozing on the riverbank somewhere?

  Who the fuck had done this?

  Why?

  He looked over at his brother, who was out cold.

  The kid looked so peaceful, he hated to do it. But there had to be a way out, and they had to find it before the kidnapper came back and killed them both.

  Because that’s what he was going to do. Kyle was sure of it. After all, they had seen his face.

  He couldn’t afford to let them go now.

  Kyle looked at his ropes. Saw how they were tied to the pipes, which came out of the old boiler.

  If he could only untie his hands, get over there. Maybe he could smash the pipes, and then slide the ropes off .

  He tried to move, but he could barely get an inch before the ropes dug into his wrists.

  “Fuck!” he said. “Mike . . . wake the hell up. C’mon. We gotta get out of here. Mike, do you hear me? Do you?”

  And then Kyle felt a terrible emptiness invade his soul.

  Mike wasn’t moving. Wasn’t hearing him at all. Mike wasn’t . . . Couldn’t be dead . . .

  He saw an old can of Coke on the floor. Took careful aim with his right foot and kicked it at his brother.

  Bull’s-eye!

  The can hit his sleeping brother right on his forehead.

  Still silence . . . Kyle felt sick . . .

  And then there was movement. An eye opened, and his brother looked up at him.

  “What the fuck was that?” he said. Only it came out through the gag like “Whatfargcat?

  He sounded pissed off , like an angry little kid. Kyle smiled.

  Nodded. And looked up at the ancient pipes. It took his battered, scared, younger brother a few minutes, but finally he nodded.

  Good, Kyle thought. Because the only way they would escape this shithole is if they worked together.

  15

  JACK WAS MORE THAN a little relieved to get to work. He had serious plans for Karl Steinbach and wanted to get started right away.

  In his sixth-floor office, he addressed Hughes and Oscar, who sat on the other side of his desk, coffee and doughnuts in their hands.

  “Thanks for coming in early, guys,” he said. “We’re taking a little trip to visit our friend Karl Steinbach today. The creep called my house and practically admitted he’d killed Zac.”

  He’d thought that this information would make them both want to get moving, but Oscar looked at Hughes in a troubled way.

  “What?” Jack said.

  “It’s Steinbach, Jack. He’s not locked up anymore.”

  “What-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about?”

  Hughes shook his head. “He cut a deal with Homeland Security. Our old pal, Tommy Wilson.”

  Jack felt the fury building in his temples.

  “No way!”

  Oscar opened his palms in a gesture of helplessness.

  “The fucking guy said he knows all about terrorists out in Africa. Claims he met them in the diamond market, which is how they finance their network.”

  “Gimme a fucking break,” Jack said. “Tommy went for that?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “Mutherfucker!” Jack said. “Don’t they know he killed Blakely?

  He even left a goddamned picture of his tombstone at the crime scene.”

  “I talked to Tommy about it this morning. On the cell on the way in. He said we got no proof he did it. He also said that Stein- bach says he knows of something big these guys are going to pull off in the next few months. At LAX. That’s gotta take priority.”

  Jack slammed his fist down on the desk.

  “He’s playing these guys. Christ, has everybody in this country lost their minds?”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right, Jack,” Hughes said. “But what if you’re wrong? That’s the thing. Five thousand people could die. The airport could be fucked for a year. We’re the second team, man. And that’s how it’s gonna be from now on.”

  Jack slumped down in his chair, thoroughly deflated.

  “It sucks,” Hughes said. “Man, I gotta couple days’ vacation coming, and I sure as hell am gonna need ’em.”

  Oscar looked at Jack, who said nothing but stared moodily down at his desk.

  16

  LATER THAT NIGHT, Ron Hughes kicked back at his trailer on the beach at Ventura. The ocean smashed up against the beach below and Hughes sat by his fire, remembering his friend and partner Zac Blakely. He had Chet Baker on his CD player, and drank a Negro Modelo. Usually, coming up here to his trailer, one that he’d inherited from his uncle Herb ten years ago, put him in a perfect state of mind. He’d always been the kind of agent who could turn off the frustrations of the job with music, a good beer, and the roar of the ocean. But tonight that was impossible. The idea that the thieving rotten bastard had killed Blakely was like a stake in his heart. All the years they had worked together, doing things their own way and making it work, and the son of a bitch cuts his brakes. He wanted to get his gun and go after Steinbach on his own.

  And besides, when he looked at the evidence, he wasn�
�t really sure if it had been Steinbach at all.

  Possibly there were other people who wanted to kill Blakely . . . Blakely and himself, too. It wasn’t as though they had a shortage of enemies.

  Maybe he’d look into them as well.

  Hughes poured himself a cognac to go with his beer, and downed the shot in one gulp. He looked at his watch and a small smile lit up his lined face.

  It was 10:50, only ten more minutes until the train came by. The Northern Pacific. All the way from San Diego, through Los Angeles, then up to Santa Barbara, Monterey, San Francisco, and back again.

  When he’d first started coming up here from L.A., the train coming through at night had bugged him. The little trailer shook and rattled as the big train rumbled close by on the tracks. But after a while he’d grown to love the sight and the sound of the gleaming train streaming through the moonlight. It had become one of the natural sounds of the area, as familiar and welcome as the surf pounding the beach, the seagulls crying as they circled his home. It was a high, lonesome sound, and the boy in Hughes responded to it eagerly.

  Now he picked up his beer, slipped on his loafers, and walked out the side door toward the beach. The night was mysterious, foggy, and the beach looked hazy in the mist and moonlight. A magic place, made even more so by the fact that Hughes knew the train was speeding toward him . . . He walked east toward the tracks, taking another sip of the rich Mexican beer. It was good and cold, and it reminded him again of Blakely, the beer aficionado. It was Blakely who had gotten him to drink good beers, rather than working-class Pabst. Hughes wasn’t sure that moving up in life wasn’t somehow a betrayal of his working-class roots. But Blakely had teased him for worrying about such stuff . Called him “peasant man.” Zac had shown him the way. He owed Zac so much, and now he’d never be able to repay him.

  Hughes arrived at the tracks around 10:58. He stood there sipping the last of his beer, and waited for the first sound of the train roaring up from the south. In the wind and the moonlight and with the surf still pounding, it was always an amazing moment for him. Sometimes he’d take off his shirt and let the sea mist cover his chest, and when he heard the train whistle, and the sound of the engine rumbling down the tracks, he’d shut his eyes and imagine that he was a boy again and that he could hop the train and go . . . go anywhere. Anywhere in the world he wanted, start over, maybe live a whole other kind of life . . .

  Yeah, it was silly, and sometimes later, when he thought about it, he’d get embarrassed and red-faced thinking about his little fantasy. But what was wrong with it, after all? Didn’t everyone wish they could live multiple lives, start over and maybe be a different kind of person? A better person. Hell, maybe he wouldn’t have become an agent at all.

  Tonight was just such a night. The mist, the moonlight, the ocean, and now the train itself. He could hear it coming up the line, and he smiled and took off his shirt and felt the cool air clinging to him. He took one last long chug of beer and waited, a foot or two from the tracks, where he could feel the draft the train made swirling all over him, and there in the moonlight for a few seconds he’d be transformed . . . transformed into the kind of guy he used to dream of being when he was a kid in Reseda.

  And then he heard it getting closer to him, speeding out of the electric night, the rush of speed, the sound of the whistle, the roar of the ocean, the sound of the circling and crying birds . . . all of it was inside him as well as outside on the beach. He felt a huge happiness, a transcendent moment, of pure, clear sensation . . . felt it right up until someone stepped up behind him. Someone who seemed to come from nowhere, and who waited until the train was barreling down upon him, someone who thrust Ron Hughes onto the tracks. The whistle screamed, and as Hughes looked up, he saw the engine coming down on him like a screaming silver torpedo. And then — briefly — he felt another sensation . . . as the torpedo exploded into his chest, squashed his ribs, chest, and lungs, all in one brutal motion.

  Like the snap of one’s fingers, Ron Hughes’s life ended.

  The person who had pushed him stood there for a second, silently, filming every piece of the action. Actually, it had been a little awkward sneaking up with the camera on his shoulder. For a second or two, he felt a little resentment toward Jim, who wanted all this to happen, who thought it all up, but who left him to do the dirty work. He was too sensitive to actually see bodies flying into school walls, or people being ripped apart by machines.

  But just the same, it had been exciting to pull it off . And there was a bonus tonight. He felt as though he could actually feel the precise second Ron Hughes’s soul had left his body. That was the kind of thrill you could never get just sitting on the sidelines.

  You had to be out here, on the front lines, to feel that kind of thing.

  He was a player. Blakely, Hughes, Harper, and Hidalgo thought they were the players, but they had no fucking clue.

  Compared to himself and Jim, they were nada. Nothing at all.

  17

  JACK AND OSCAR watched as the mangled body of Ron Hughes was placed on a gurney and carried to the coroner’s van.

  Oscar kicked at the train tracks, shook his head:

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “How did Steinbach even know Ron had this place?”

  “Inside information?” Jack’s voice was as flat as his mood.

  “Yeah, but who? I’d stake my life on our guys.”

  Jack picked up a rock and threw it down to the beach. Some gulls cried and scattered away.

  “That’s what I used to say, too. Until the starting guard on our basketball team, Bobby Hansen, turned out to be a traitor. And talking about Hansen reminds me of our old pal, Super Agent William Forrester.”

  “I don’t know,” Oscar said. “I know he had it in for those guys, but killing them?”

  “You think it’s a long shot? But what about what Feeney told

  us? He saw Forrester up at Blakely’s house the night before Zac was killed. What was he looking for?”

  “Money?” Oscar said. “The City National Bank money.”

  “Exactly,” Jack said. “Here’s the way it could have gone down. Zac and Ron pull the robbery, which maybe Forrester fingered and planned for them. Then they split up the money three ways, only Forrester’s third is a lot less than theirs is.”

  “They screwed him? Why? Why would they do that?”

  “’Cause they could,” Jack said. “And because Forrester is a jerk. They figure he has no way of really knowing how big the take was, so they give him a smaller piece of the pie. But though Forrester is an asshole, he’s anything but a moron. He finds out from the bank that the cash haul was a lot more than what Zac and Ron told him. He threatens them both, and finally knocks them off .”

  “Yeah, but does he have the money?” Oscar said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he searched Blakely’s house, didn’t find it, and knocked him off . Then he comes out here, looking for the money, but runs into Hughes. Why does he do it now? One, he’s afraid they’re going to do it to him. Two, he’s seen the Stein- bach threat on the tube and thinks that’s the perfect cover for his crimes. Three, he can pin the thing on us if he wants to.”

  “Yeah, but does he really think we were in on it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. He knows we were tight with them. And if he didn’t find the money here at Hughes’s place, he is sure as hell going to come looking at us. And remember, he can still pin the whole thing on Steinbach if he wants to.”

  Oscar rubbed his neck, picked up a rock, and threw it down the beach.

  “Man, this is really one fucked-up case.”

  “Two cases,” Jack said. “That’s what we have here. Two cases intertwined. Or maybe even something more.”

  “Let’s check Hughes’s photo albums, and Blakely’s, too.”

  “Okay,” Jack said. “I’ll call Val and set up a meet.”

  At three in the morning, back at FBI headquarters, Harper and Hidalgo were still going over personnel records, looking
through endless employment files, bank and tax records of their fellow agents. By five A.M., Jack was nearly at the breaking point.

  “Not a goddamn thing here,” he said. “From these records, everybody at the Bureau is squeaky clean. I don’t even see any requests for information by Forrester.”

  “Yeah,” Oscar said. “But he could disguise his searches. Slick Billy’s capable of anything.”

  “I know it,” Jack said. “We have to find a way to check his bank records, loans, and mortgages.”

  “That’s going to be tough,” Oscar said.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “All right. We’ll table that for now. But let’s think: Who else who works here can get all the personal information on any agent?”

  Oscar sighed and opened his palms in a show of helplessness.

  “Nobody but the Director, without permission.”

  “Yeah, but forget permission. Nobody who is selling information is going to ask.”

  “Somebody who works here. Somebody who has access to the information . . . somebody who knows all the codes, passwords. Not even Forrester has all that stuff , or the clearance to use it.”

  Suddenly Jack smiled and sat down quickly in front of the computer.

  “You and I need brain transplants. There are only a few guys who can access all that stuff . And they aren’t agents.”

  He typed in the number 45-T.

  Oscar looked at it and whistled through his teeth.

  “Mira! Tech support. The invisible men.”

  “That’s right,” Jack said. “Look here. There are currently seven of them employed by us. We need to go through all their records. I’ll take the first four.”

  “I’m on it, dawg,” Oscar said.

  It took less than an hour before Jack found the record he was looking for.

  “It’s right here,” he said. “Philip Marshall, tech support, grade- eight. Got access to his TRB, and he’s run up a very sizable debt. Took out an $800,000 mortgage to buy a house in the hills.”

  “Any inherited wealth?”

  “Not much. His father was a construction worker, mother was a housewife. Grew up in Northridge, went to Cal Northridge.”