Dangerous Games

by Prescott, Michael

  “Agent McCallum?” A clipped female voice, sounding a note of surprise. “Well, you’re surprisingly easy to get hold of. The front desk connected me directly. Don’t you have a secretary to take your calls?”

  Yes, I do, Tess thought. In Denver. “Who am I speaking to, please?”

  “I’m sorry. My name is Madeleine Grant.”

  “How can I help you, Ms. Grant?”

  “I’m not sure you can. The fact is, I’ve already called the tip line, or hotline, that special phone number you people set up. No one got back to me. I assumed what I had to say just wasn’t very useful, but when I heard you had been brought in on the case, I began to think I ought to try again.”

  “Why is that? What do I have to do with anything?”

  “Well, it’s Mobius, you see. That’s the connection.”

  Tess wondered how long she would have to continue this conversation, which she had already dismissed as a waste of time. “I don’t understand,” she said patiently. “What connection?”

  “The connection to my case. The stalking case.”

  “Stalking?”

  “Haven’t you people even reviewed the tips you’ve been given? What’s the use of establishing a phone number—”

  “I just got on board, Ms. Grant. I’m still not up to speed.”

  “Oh, I see. I suppose that’s understandable, then.” She sounded dubious. “Well, last year, someone was stalking me. He was arrested, sent to prison. Now he’s out.”

  “He was sent to prison on a stalking conviction?”

  “Yes, but it should have been kidnapping.”

  “Kidnapping?”

  “He was planning to kidnap me. They found the evidence. I said all this in my first phone call.”

  “Can you remember when you made this call?”

  “Of course I remember. It was just this morning, after I read the story in the Times. They quoted the text of that message he’d made the second woman write.”

  “And why did you call this morning?”

  “Because the wording of that message was very similar to a message he sent me.”

  Tess was beginning to feel mildly intrigued. “You say this man was only recently released from prison?”

  “That’s right. Last December. He served less than a year. Can you imagine? Ten months for what he did. No wonder this city is falling apart, when they let animals like him—”

  “You said there was a connection to Mobius?”

  “This man was obsessed with Mobius. So when I heard you’d been brought in, right after I’d made my call, naturally I assumed there was something in this case connecting it with Mobius and that’s why you were here.”

  “Ms. Grant, will you be home this evening?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Would it be possible for me to come see you?”

  “Absolutely. I can’t believe that no one has followed up on my first call. It’s been hours—and there’s rain in tomorrow’s forecast. What do you people do all day? The police, the FBI—we can’t count on any of them anymore….”

  She went on this way until Tess had a chance to take down her address. She lived in Bel Air, conveniently close to Westwood. Tess promised to be there as soon as possible and hung up before the woman could begin another diatribe.

  She rummaged through the tips until she found the one from Madeleine Grant. She knew she shouldn’t run down the lead herself. That wasn’t her job. She was supposed to pass it on to Michaelson. But if she passed it on, it might not be covered for days. And she had a feeling about this one. Or maybe she just wanted a little drama in her life.

  She reviewed Madeleine’s tip. Only the bare outline of her story had been taken down, and the details remained obscure. There was just one fact in the report that had not been included in their conversation—the name of the man who’d been sent to prison for stalking her, the man obsessed with Mobius.

  His name was William Kolb.

  4

  Kolb lay on his futon, staring up at the dark ceiling. Behind the drawn window shade, night had fallen over Los Angeles.

  But even in darkness and solitude, he couldn’t escape the events of the day.

  “Live with your mama, don’t ya, rent-a-cop?”

  “You bet he does. He gives it to his mama every night.”

  “That true, man? You do it with your madre?”

  Their voices snapped at him like small angry dogs. The kids passed him every day—young pachucos, gangbangers, or would-be gangbangers, anyway—and they always made comments as they went into and out of the store. They would laugh and make gestures and hand signals, and toss off jokes in Spanish that he couldn’t understand, trying to impress their girls, the tattooed, nose-ringed, overly made-up girls who hung with them.

  “Shit, man, don’t ya even speak English?”

  “You must be one sad dude, gettin’ stuck with this job. Guys cleaning toilets got more dignity than you.”

  That had made their girls laugh, showing their white teeth. There had been two girls and three boys, none older than seventeen. Their faces were dark-skinned and broad, like Inca carvings.

  “Don’t you got an answer, jackoff?”

  “Screw it, this guy’s too dumb to say nothin’. Just stands there. He’s a gork, man. Friggin’ brain-dead.”

  “Bet he stands there when it’s a hundred degrees.”

  “Shit, I bet he stands there even in the fuckin’ rain.”

  They’d been wrong about that. He had better things to do in the rain.

  Finally they’d left him, swaggering into the air-conditioned environs of Jonson’s Food & Drug, a store that contracted him at $10.75 an hour to stand guard, unarmed, in a gray uniform and cap.

  He knew that some of the other guards at Jonson’s had tried to get friendly with the neighborhood kids, learn their names, make small talk. There was Thurber, for instance, the overweight guard who’d arrived this evening at four thirty-seven to relieve him and start the night shift.

  “Hey, Bill,” Thurber said with a smile.

  He didn’t like being called Bill. William was his name. “You’re seven minutes late,” Kolb said.

  “What’s seven minutes between friends?”

  Thurber was not his friend. He had no friends. But he let it go.

  “Any trouble today?” Thurber asked.

  “Usual assholes. Smart-talking kids.”

  “You get to know some of these kids, they ain’t so bad.”

  “Why would you want to get to know them?”

  Thurber shrugged, as if the answer were obvious. “Can’t just stand here all day.”

  “Sure you can. That’s the job.”

  Kolb had nothing more to say to Thurber. Thurber was a fool. He wanted to make friends, wanted to be liked. This was a sign of weakness. Kolb was better than that. He never spoke a word to the kids. He showed no reaction to their taunts. He took the insults. He would not be provoked into any response. Nothing could touch him. He was forged of will and discipline. He was stone, he was steel, he was beyond all feeling.

  But tonight his head sure hurt like a son of a bitch.

  He’d been getting the headaches a lot recently. Bad headaches, the kind that pressed down hard between his eyes like someone’s thumb grinding into the bridge of his nose.

  The headaches annoyed him, less because of the pain than because of the betrayal they represented. He expected his body to function properly. It was a tool, which he kept in good working order, and he expected it to operate as required.

  In the old days he never got headaches. He could tangle with gangbangers and street scum throughout an eight-hour shift, spend another few hours downing beers and telling lies in a cop hangout, get an hour’s sleep, and return to work fresh and strong. He had never been sick.

  But now the headaches would come and there was no way to fight them off, no way to deal with them except to lie down in the dark and make his mind blank and hope for sleep.

  He’d never been any
good at introspection, but vaguely he knew that the job had something to do with the headaches. At first he’d been happy to get the work. He’d been given a uniform and a badge, and it was almost like being a cop again.

  Or so he’d told himself when he examined his reflection in the polished steel door of his locker. I’m back, he’d thought.

  But it had been a lie. As a cop, he’d had power. He hadn’t been obliged to take any abuse. The gangbangers and their whores wouldn’t dare laugh at him. He’d enforced his authority, ruling the world defined by the parameters of his patrol. Wearing the blue suit, laden down with the Kevlar vest and the Sam Browne belt and the Beretta and the baton, he had been more than a man. He had been something mighty, something invincible, a lord of the earth, breathing power, inspiring fear.

  Kids who went running and gunning after dark and expected to die before they turned eighteen, kids raised on legends of quick riches and quick deaths—those kids cast their eyes down to the pavement when he went by. No jokes, no mutterings in Spanish, no flashing teeth or indecipherable hand signals at his expense. He owned his turf.

  All of that was lost to him now, and pulling guard duty at a grocery store was not enough to compensate.

  But it didn’t matter. The job was only a stopgap measure. When the security firm eventually ran a criminal background check, they would find he’d lied on his application when he checked the “no” box in response to the question: Have you ever been convicted of a felony? By all rights, they should have canned his ass already, but they were a slipshod outfit, in no hurry to discover that any of their employees needed replacing.

  The job had served its purpose, brought in money when he needed it. Now he was free of such concerns. He could quit at any time. Only prudence kept him anchored to his daily routine. He had learned caution—learned it the hard way.

  The phone rang. It rested only a foot from his head, on an end table, and its shrill cry drilled through his ear canals.

  If he wanted to know who was calling, he would have to pick up. He had no message machine—didn’t believe in putting things on tape.

  He lifted the handset. The keypad glowed. He closed his eyes against the light.

  “Yes,” he said into the phone, without rising, without moving his head at all.

  “She’s here. They brought her in.”

  It took him a moment to process the words. “Who?” he asked, but he already knew.

  “Who do you think?” The other man was cautious enough not to say any names over the phone.

  Kolb frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you’ll find out anyway. It’s been on the news.”

  “She’s joining the investigation?”

  “Yes.”

  “So she’ll be in town awhile.”

  “For the duration.”

  “They must be putting her up at a hotel.”

  “I guess so.”

  “What hotel?”

  “I’m not saying a word.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want you getting distracted by a private agenda.”

  “I won’t get distracted. I won’t do anything.”

  “Then you don’t need to know where she’s staying.”

  “I’d like to get a look at her, that’s all.”

  “You’ve seen her a million times.”

  “Not in the flesh.”

  “Maybe you’ve got a thing for her.”

  “Maybe I do. Love your enemy, right?”

  “I didn’t think that was your philosophy.”

  “Sure it is.” Kolb stared into the dark. His voice was low and distant. “We love whatever gives our life meaning. Whatever brings us a sense of purpose. Our enemies do that for us. We’d be lost without them.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear you’re in such a charitable mood. Because we can’t afford to get caught up in some kind of fucking vendetta.”

  “It’s not an issue.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. I know how bad you…” His voice trailed off momentarily as the call broke up. “…that woman.”

  Kolb lifted himself to a sitting position. “You on a cell?”

  “Yeah.”

  “God damn it. You know cells aren’t secure.”

  “Nobody’s listening.”

  “How can you know?”

  “There are ten million cell phones in this city. Okay? It’s physically impossible to listen in on all of them.”

  “Fucking computers can scan ten million calls looking for hot-button words.”

  “Hot-button words? You mean like ‘terrorist,’ ‘bomb,’ ‘assassination’—”

  “Shut the fuck up, asshole.” Kolb could imagine an array of supercomputers homing in on the conversation right now.

  Laughter on the other end of the line. “I’m just jerking your chain. Nobody’s monitoring the damn call. Just chill.”

  “Chill? You’re talking street now? You watch a Chris Rock special on HBO or something?”

  “I’m in a good mood, that’s all. Money in my pocket has a way of lifting my spirits.”

  “It’s not in your pocket yet.”

  “Figure of speech.”

  “You haven’t tapped into the account, have you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Because I don’t want you spending it. That’s a rookie mistake. Neither of us changes our routine. I keep my job, and you keep yours. And we both keep our heads down.”

  “I know the drill. I haven’t touched it. Not one dime.”

  “Be sure you don’t. We’re not throwing it all away just because you get impatient.”

  “Don’t worry about me. It’s you I’m worried about. You and…her.”

  “I already told you, I won’t try anything.”

  “I hope that’s true. We’ve got more important things on our agenda. We can’t go running around after some dumb bitch.”

  Kolb lay down again. “Now, now. Show the lady some respect.”

  “Love—and now respect? It’s a whole new you.”

  He shut his eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with respect. The Cherokee, you know, used to apologize to the spirits of the deer they hunted. They asked forgiveness for taking the animals’ lives. That was a sign of respect.”

  “I doubt the deer saw it that way.”

  “You never see the big truths. You’re too wrapped up in details.”

  “It’s the details that can get us caught.”

  “And it’s the truth that will set us free.”

  “Just leave her alone,” the other man said. “I mean it.”

  A click, and the call was over.

  Kolb replaced the handset, then folded his hands over his abdomen. He stared into the darkness, feeling the slow movement of his belly in time with the push and pull of his breath, and thought about Special Agent Tess McCallum of the FBI.

  He hadn’t lied. He did respect her, even love her, in his way.

  He would like to tell her so, someday. And like the Cherokee, he would apologize before he slit her throat.

  5

  Larkin caught Tess leaving the office suite. “Done already?” he asked in obvious disbelief.

  “Just stepping out for a while.”

  “Michaelson needs that report before nine A.M.”

  “He’ll get it,” Tess said, and disappeared through the door before Larkin could say anything further.

  It occurred to her, as she drove out of the parking lot, that she should have been accompanied by another agent. FBI fieldwork was customarily done in pairs. She was alone—and heading for a rendezvous with a woman whose motives in contacting her were still not entirely clear.

  She replayed the phone conversation in her mind. Something seemed wrong about it, but she needed a minute’s thought to identify the anomaly. Madeleine had begun by calling the tip line and had followed up with a call to the Bureau. But why bother with either approach? Why not contact the LAPD detective who’d arrested Kolb?


  A prickle of unease fingered her spine. Pieces of the story didn’t fit.

  She guided the Crown Vic out of Westwood. Bel Air sprawled to the north, in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, which rose in folds and rifts to Mulholland Drive at the crest. She climbed twisting streets, following the map book she’d found in the glove compartment.

  Rounding a switchback curve, she spotted a pair of bright yellow eyes in the sweep of her headlights. They flashed away into the woods edging the road. She glimpsed lean gray legs and narrow hips—a coyote. They still roamed these hills, feeding out of garbage cans, prowling the carefully tended gardens. It was almost eerie to catch a hint of such wildness when the concrete clutter of the city lay only a mile away.

  On another stretch of road she passed a security patrol unit gliding in the opposite direction, a sleek, dark vehicle, silent as a shark. Bel Air had its own private security to supplement the police force. She felt as if she’d left LA and entered a foreign territory, one with its own authorities and its own rules.

  Madeleine Grant’s home lay on a lushly landscaped cul-de-sac. The house was deeply secluded, nested inside a wrought-iron perimeter fence and layers of foliage. Posted on the fence was a sign warning that the property was protected by an alarm system. The fence itself was high and topped with sharp spikes. Trees that might have allowed an intruder to climb up and over had been trimmed back, their branches lopped to leave a zone of dead space around the fence. Ms. Grant took personal safety seriously.

  Tess pulled up to the gate and lowered her window, announcing herself to the intercom. For a moment there was no answer. She had the curious sense of being watched. Then she saw a surveillance camera mounted over the gate, its lens gazing down at her.

  Then a metallic voice rasped, “Come in,” and the gate slid open on a metal track. She drove down a long circular driveway that looped around a lighted koi pond with a marble fountain, and parked alongside the front steps of the house. It was a two-story Tudor that looked disarmingly small but no doubt extended far back into the property. Lights were on, both inside and outside.

  She got out, fingering the gun in her coat to reassure herself that it was there. She glanced around at the large property, taking in the thickets of eucalyptus trees, the beds of flowers artfully arranged.