by Ken Douglas
“Annie Oakley,” Gordon said.
“I guess,” Maggie said. Then, “We have to go to Huntington Beach.”
“Gotta make a short stop first.” Gordon pulled a pack of cigarettes from the visor above his head, tapped one out on the wheel, pushed in the cigarette lighter.
“You don’t smoke.”
“Only when I drive.” Gordon lit the cigarette, sucked in the smoke, exhaled. He looked at her, smiled. “Tell me about the hair.” Gordon took another drag on the cigarette. They were out of the Shore now, in Long Beach. Gordon moved the car into the left lane, signaled when they approached the freeway, took the on ramp.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Start from when you left the Whale and keep going till you get to where we are now. Take your time, we’ve got a ride ahead of us.”
Maggie wanted to ask where they were going, but she didn’t. Gordon had a right to know. She told him. It didn’t take so long, just till Gordon turned onto the San Diego Freeway, headed toward the airport.
“Sit back, relax. I’ll let you know when we get there,” he said.
More than anybody, Maggie trusted Gordon. She closed her eyes, she was so tired. She opened them when Gordon glided the car off the freeway. She wasn’t familiar with the area, Imperial or Roosevelt, up by the airport. Inglewood maybe. She was about to say something, but Gordon turned into a warehouse complex. One of those places where you store your stuff when you have nowhere else.
He guided the car to a post in front of a sliding gate, stuck his hand out the open window, punched some numbers on a keypad. The gate creaked open, the wheels needed oil. He drove past a row of warehouses with roll up garage doors and stopped when he came to the last one in the line of the first complex.
“Wait here. This won’t take long.” He got out of the car.
Maggie watched as he turned the dial on a combination lock. He missed the combination the first time. It was dark, after all. He tried again, pulled the lock open, took it off, pulled up the door.
He went inside, rolled the door down after himself. Maggie saw light creep out from underneath, heard noise, like he was moving boxes around. She looked around the warehouse complex. Dark. Spooky. She was in either the bad part of West L.A. or Inglewood. Gangbanger territory. She didn’t belong here, especially at night.
She hunched down in the seat, even though there was no one to see her. Every few seconds a car went by on the street back by the sliding gate, but none stopped. She sighed, no one was coming in after her. Besides, she had the gun. She reached into the back, got the grip and got the Sigma out.
She ejected the clip, racked the slide and pumped out the one in the chamber. She emptied the clip, counted out ten rounds. The gun held sixteen, plus one in the chamber. She’d fired off seven at Nighthyde. She thumbed the rounds back into the clip, shoved the clip back in, then chambered a round. Loaded again, she sat up, gun in her left hand, ready for action.
She heard the creaking sound behind her, looked out the rear window. The gate was opening. A car cruised in. Slow. The headlights went off as soon as the car passed the gate. Whoever they were, they didn’t want to be seen. Maggie ran her thumb along the butt of the Sigma. She’d shot a man tonight. She didn’t want to do it again.
The car motored toward her. It was one of those gangbanger cars, lowered, darkened windows. It slowed to a crawl. Maggie felt her skin creep as it got closer. For a second she felt like slinking down in the seat, but she tossed off the thought. There were no other cars in the complex. If whoever was in that car was going to check out Gordon’s car, they’d see her, even if she scrunched down.
The car came closer. A Toyota, similar to the car she’d seen leaving the police station earlier. Kids out enjoying a hot night. She’d waved to them, got a thumbs up in return. Somehow, she didn’t think the kids in this car were going to be as friendly.
The car slowed even more as it approached, came along side, stopped. Maggie scooted over behind the wheel. The window was down. The Toyota’s passenger window came down. She was facing a black youth, seventeen or twenty, she couldn’t be sure. He was wearing the red bandanna of the Bloods. He smiled, he had a gold tooth. Top, left front. He ran his tongue across it. Maggie had never seen anything so sinister in real life.
“Hey sister, what’cha doin’ out alone on such a dark night?”
“I’m not alone,” Maggie said.
“Don’t see no one.” The kid was smirking.
“I have my nine millimeter friend with me and I’ve already killed one man tonight.” She brought the gun up to the window, pointed it at the gold tooth. “So, kissing your sweet ass goodbye would be like icing on the cake.”
“Hey, we don’t want no trouble.” All of a sudden the kid’s attitude went away.
“Well, you found it.” She was shaking inside, but determined not to back down.
“You ain’t the only one with a piece,” the kid said.
“No, I suppose not.” She smiled at the kid. “So, should we start shooting now?”
“Leave the bitch,” the driver said.
“You one lucky lady,” the kid said.
“Luck is my middle name.”
“Yeah,” the kid smiled back as the roll-up door opened. The kid took one look at Gordon framed by the light coming from the inside of the warehouse and rolled up his window. The car eased away.
Maggie froze when she saw him. He was holding a pump action shotgun in his hands, ready to use it.
“What was that about?” he said.
“Nothing, just some kids,” Maggie said.
“Wearing Blood colors,” Gordon said.
“Kids gotta have friends,” Maggie said. “Maybe with a little direction they’ll grow up to be fine young men.”
“And maybe not.” Gordon opened the back door, tossed the shotgun onto the back seat.
“Yeah, maybe not,” Maggie said.
“I got some more stuff.” He went back into the warehouse, came out with a couple of boxes. He put them into the back as well.
Maggie was torn between watching him and the kids in the Toyota. They stopped in front of a roll-up door in the next building.
“Probably where they stash their drugs.” Gordon got in, started the car. “Good spot. Centrally located, safe from the cops.”
“What do you mean?” Maggie said.
“They’d need a warrant to bust into one of these places,” he said. The gate opened automatically as they approached. You needed the code to get in, anybody could get out. He looked in the mirror, turned and looked out the back window. “Yeah, the kid who went into the warehouse is coming out already.”
Gordon drove out of the complex. The Toyota came up behind. Gordon turned left toward the freeway. The Toyota turned right toward the hood.
“What’s in the boxes?” Maggie asked.
“Stuff from a former life,” Gordon said.
“Former life?”
“I was in the FBI.”
“They let you keep shit like that pump action in back?”
“Twenty years, you acquire stuff like that.”
“So, what else you got?”
“A couple kevlar vests, some Glocks, a twenty-two throw-down, some other stuff.”
“So, what’d you leave back in the warehouse, a tank?”
“No, it’s mostly Ricky’s things from before we were together. He had this horrid furniture. I like classy stuff.”
Maggie nodded, he did like classy stuff. His apartment was tastefully furnished with restored antiques. Anyone would think he was wealthy if they saw his furniture. And it went with the image of a sophisticated gay man. The shotgun and the stuff in the boxes in back, did not.
Gordon was the best friend she’d ever had, but she was beginning to wonder just how well she knew him.
“Police,” Gordon said. A black-and-white was just ahead, coming toward them on the other side of the street. “Scoot over here. Act like we’re lovers.”
Maggie moved over next to Gordon, draped an arm over his shoulder, snuggled her head against him. She felt him turn toward the cruiser as they passed.
“It’s okay now.”
“What was that all about?”
“I got a beat up looking car. They expect that here, but if they see Joe Whitebread, they might wonder what he’s doing in this neighborhood so late.” Gordon had his eye on the mirror. “When they looked over and saw an old guy like me smile back with an obviously younger girl clinging to his neck, they assumed you were a hooker.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I told you, I was in the FBI. I know this kind of stuff. Besides, that’s the kind of smile I gave them.”
“That’s so degrading.”
“Uh oh,” he said.
“What?”
“We have a tail.”
“How?” Maggie turned around, saw headlights behind. Then the blue and red lights on the cop car came on.
“Turned his headlights on when he saw the black-and-white.” Gordon slowed.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s get out of here.”
“I want to see how it goes.” Gordon killed the lights, stopped in front of a two story white house, reversed and parallel parked between a pickup and a VW bus. He did it fast, like a pro, like a cop.
“I don’t think this is a good idea.” Maggie thought the house looked like it was once the proud home of an upper middle class family, but the ghetto had expanded, chasing the affluent out of the area. Now the house seemed to be falling apart.
“He must’ve been waiting outside my place,” Gordon said.
“Let’s go,” Maggie said.
“I checked in the rearview when I was busting all those stop signs and didn’t see anything. He was running without his headlights, otherwise I’d have spotted him.”
“Should we be waiting here like this?”
“The cop let him go,” Gordon said, ignoring her. “That was fast.” Then, “Down!”
They ducked.
Gordon popped his head up as soon as the car passed. “Black BMW.”
“What?” Maggie was up now, too.
“Your friend from earlier this evening.”
“How can that be?”
“Good question.” Gordon started the car, pulled away from the curb without turning on his lights.
“What are you going to do?”
“Do you have to ask?”
“I guess not.” Maggie settled back, eyes on the Beemer’s tail lights. “He’s getting on the freeway?”
“Yeah.” Gordon slowed, waited till the BMW was around the on ramp and out of sight before turning on his headlights. Then he accelerated through the ramp.
“This car really goes,” Maggie said.
“A hot rod in disguise,” Gordon said. “Four hundred twenty-seven cubic inches tuned to perfection under the hood. Holly four barrel carb. This old girl can do a hundred and fifty all day long and go from zero to sixty in six flat.”
“So can a lot of cars these days, that BMW for instance.”
“Yeah, but who’d expect it of a twenty-something year old Ford? Mechanically she’s new, but she’s ordinary looking, an old man’s car.”
“Gordon, nobody drives cars like this anymore.”
“That car up there is a product of precision engineering, like the space shuttle. It’s fast, it’s flashy, it screams money. Ricky had a BMW when we met. I hated it, all that computer crap under the hood. Give me an old American car any day, something a human can understand. Besides, there’s nothing like the feeling of four hundred cubic inches rumbling under the hood.”
“You surprise me.”
“What? I can’t be macho?”
Maggie laughed as the BMW moved into the fast lane. Gordon did too. It felt good, laughing, but it was serious business they were about, the laughter was short.
“That bastard drove me into the bay.” Maggie didn’t want to forget that.
“Maybe not,” Gordon said.
“What do you mean?”
“He followed you, sure. But that doesn’t mean he meant you ill will.”
“Sure he did, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now.”
“You said you noticed him right after you left the police station. How do you know he’s not a cop? Maybe he was shadowing you for your own protection.”
“In a BMW?”
“Coulda been a cop, you never know. I used a 450SL on a stake out once.”
“Gordon, he chased me.”
“Sounds more like you might’ve run. Why’d you do that?”
“I don’t know.” Maggie clenched her fists. “I just did.”
“You could’ve driven back to the police station, or into a gas station, someplace with people.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“You will next time.”
“So, you think it was a cop?”
“In a BMW? Get serious.”
“Gordon!”
“I said it coulda been, I didn’t say it was. I was trying to make a point. You ran without thinking and now you don’t have a car. You had other options.”
“So, you don’t think it was a cop?”
“No.”
They followed the BMW as it got off the Long Beach Freeway at Lakewood Boulevard and they stayed a safe distance behind when it took the Traffic Circle onto Pacific Coast Highway. It stopped at an office building where PCH intersected Anaheim. Gordon drove on by.
“Now what?” Maggie said.
“We go back.” Gordon turned, parked around the corner. He opened his door.
“You’re not going in that building?”
“I’ll be right back.”
“I’m coming.” Maggie reached over the seat, seeking the grip in back.
“Leave the gun.”
“No.” She pulled it out, got out of the car. She stuffed the gun between her Levi’s and the small of her back, pulled the sweatshirt down over it just like she’d seen Thomas Magnum do so many times on TV reruns when she was in high school. “Alright, let’s go.”
Gordon led her around to the front of the building, tried the door. “Didn’t lock up after himself.” He pushed through the glass doors.
“Don’t these buildings have a security guard or something?” Maggie whispered.
“Five story office building, four or five offices to a floor-I don’t think so. Custodian probably locks it around six, it would lock automatically after anyone leaving late, but if someone opened it with a key-”
“And forgot to lock it after himself-”
“Exactly,” Gordon said.
Inside, they were in a lobby, high ceiling, marble floor. A reception desk to the right of the double glass doors was empty now. Light from streetlights outside gave the lobby an eerie feeling, like walking through a horror movie. Tingles rippled up Maggie’s spine, turned to ice at the back of her neck.
“Look there.” Gordon was pointing to a legend on the wall between double elevators.
“Long Beach City Bank, so what?” Maggie said. There was the bank, a travel agency and an Italian restaurant on the first floor.
“Third floor, Hightower, Private Investigators.” He turned to her. “I need to know you’re safe in the car.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No argument. If you don’t go to the car right now, we’re leaving. Then we’ll never know what the guy in the BMW was all about.”
“Gordon.”
“No, it was stupid of me to even let you get this far.”
“I’m coming.”
“No!” He was whispering, but he was firm. “I’ve been trained for this, you haven’t. You’d be in the way.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Maggie backed through the doors as Gordon entered a stairwell next to the elevators. She didn’t want to go back to the car, but a part of her was secretly relieved. She’d had enough of guns and shooting to last a lifetime. It was good Gordon was taking ov
er.
She got in the car.
Safe.
Thank God for Gordon.
She pulled the gun from its place behind her back and put it in the glove box. A car went past, lights splitting the dark. Only now did she realize how late it was. She looked at the dashboard clock. Midnight. How long had Gordon been up there? Maybe she should check on him.
But he’d said to stay in the car.
Ten minutes later she couldn’t stand it anymore. He’d been gone too long. She got out of the car, walked to the office building, opened the door and stepped into the lobby. She looked up at the legend. The private investigator Gordon wanted to check out was on the third floor. She looked for the office number, but she saw something else. She took two steps forward, stood between the elevators, stared up and read.
The District Office of the 35th Congressional District
5th Floor, Room 500.
Now she knew where the man in the black BMW had gone and it wasn’t to any private investigator on the third floor.
The elevator on the right started to move. She looked to the numbers above it. It was coming down from the fifth floor. She stood transfixed as it descended to the fourth floor, then the third. Any second it was going to open and she was going to be caught. She cast her eyes around the lobby, saw the reception desk and ran toward it.
She heard a bell tingle as she dove behind the desk. The floor was cold and hard. She took baby breaths that sounded jack-hammer loud to her ears, but she knew nobody else could hear.
A whoosh of sound hit her as the doors opened. Not loud, she told herself, not really.
“Everything is on track, except for your loose end.” It was a radio voice, smooth and cultured.
“I’m gonna take care of it.” A hard voice. Maggie wished she could see their faces, but no way was she going to risk popping her head up for a quick look.
“Soon, I trust.” The radio voice again. Maggie shivered, because all of a sudden she recognized it, knew who it belonged to.
“You can count on me-” The hard voice was swallowed up with the sound of the front doors opening and a car passing by outside.
The doors closed, a sonic boom to her heart, then silence. She breathed a sigh of relief, cut it short when she heard someone charging down the stairwell behind her. Horrified, she reached behind herself for the gun. It wasn’t there. She’d left it in the car and any second someone was going to come bursting out of the stairwell and she’d be the first thing he saw, because although she’d been hidden from the elevators, she was in clear sight of the stairwell.