The pilot circled around for a few moments, taking a long look down at the burned-out wreckage of the first helicopter below him. Then he veered steeply away, heading west. The roaring quickly dwindled to a distant drone, and then nothing.
Santos said, ‘We will have to leave Mikey here. We cannot take his body with us. Let us find a good place and cover him with stones. The Great Spirit will look over him until we can come back for him, just as we will one day return for his mother.’
SEVEN
Joseph Wrack was hunched on the black leather corner couch in his office eating a take-out chirashi zushi, Japanese vinegared rice with fish. It had been delivered from Seattle Best Teriyaki on East Hospitality Lane, which had not yet had its water supply cut off, and would probably escape the ‘rotational hiatus’ because of all the four-star hotels in the area.
He was watching a news update on the nationwide effects of the drought. The President had announced this morning that ‘we are now looking at a situation that is considerably more serious than we had first envisaged.’ The TV report showed billions of acres of devastation, especially in the Midwest. In Iowa, soybean and corn crops had withered and dried up; wheat fields in Kansas had been blackened for lack of rain; and potatoes in Idaho and Wisconsin and Colorado were far too shriveled to be worth digging up. Apple trees in Oregon had failed even to blossom this year, and in California, broccoli was turning yellow even before it was harvested, and the wetlands in the Sacramento Valley which produced most of the nation’s rice looked like sun-cracked deserts.
Joseph Wrack was not watching the news to be told something that he didn’t know already. In fact he knew that the drought was at least twice as serious as the President was trying to make out. Governor Smiley had been regularly keeping him informed on the confidential reports that he had been receiving from various agricultural associations like the Visalia citrus growers and the Napa Valley wine growers. Orange groves had produced seventy-two percent less marketable fruit than two years ago; and in Napa, Chardonnay grapes were drying into raisins while they were still on the vine.
Joseph Wrack’s interest in the news was to see how many lies and half-truths the President could get away with, just to keep the nation calm. His entire career in security had been devoted to catching people out when they were lying, and he liked to think that he could tell when somebody was being evasive or mendacious simply by their tone of voice, or the way they swept their hair back, or suddenly beamed when they imagined that their audience had actually believed them.
He was chasing a small shred of fish around his bowl with his needle-pointed Japanese chopsticks when there was a knock at the door and Jim Broader barged in. Jim Broader’s blood pressure must have been high, because his swarthy complexion was even darker than usual, as if his head were going to burst. One of his shirt tails was hanging out, and he was wheezing.
‘Boss!’ he gasped, and leaned against Joseph Wrack’s desk while he tried to get his breath back. ‘Boss!’
‘For Christ’s sake, Jim. This is my first break all day. I’m trying to enjoy a very late lunch?’
‘Sorry, boss. It’s Martin Makepeace and Saskia Vane.’
Joseph Wrack set down his bowl on the coffee table in front of him. ‘We’ve caught them?’ he said, hoarsely. ‘Don’t tell me we’ve caught them!’
Jim Broader shook his head. ‘No, boss. I just received a message from Eye-Sky Five. They located them all right, in the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve.’
Joseph Wrack stood up, and triumphantly punched his right fist into the open palm of his left hand.
‘What did I say? What did I tell you? I said they weren’t going to head north, didn’t I? I said they weren’t going to Vegas. They must have stopped someplace in the mountains overnight, because of the kids!
He paused, and then he said, ‘So where are they now? If we didn’t catch them, why didn’t we catch them?’
‘We don’t know where they are, exactly. Eye-Sky Three eyeballed them first. They had them cornered, by the sound of it, although the terrain wasn’t suitable for touchdown. Eye-Sky Five landed as near as they could and their snatch team went down on foot.’
Joseph Wrack circled around the end of the coffee table and slowly approached Jim Broader as if he were a black panther walking up to a fear-paralyzed bullock.
‘What happened, Jim? Tell me.’
‘We don’t know, exactly. It must have been Makepeace. You know that he’s armed with a sub-machine gun.’
‘What happened, Jim?’ Joseph Wrack’s voice was lowered to a rasping whisper, so that he was almost inaudible.
‘Eye-Sky Three went down, boss. Robbins said that it was totaled. Looked like the fuel tank went up.’
‘Casualties?’
Jim Broader was so nervous that he was spitting. Joseph Wrack wiped his saliva from his cheek with the back of his hand, but stayed unflinchingly face to face with him.
‘Nine altogether, boss. All of the team in Eye-Sky Three and four of the team from Eye-Sky Five. Robbins was the only survivor.’
‘Nine,’ said Joseph Wrack. ‘Nine.’
He walked over to his desk, opened up a silver-plated box, and took out a panatela. He lit it, and for a moment his head disappeared into a cloud of blue smoke. Jim Broader watched him anxiously as he went to the window and stood looking out over East 4th Street.
‘Boss?’ he said, after a while. ‘Do you want me to inform their families?’
Joseph Wrack turned around and stared at him as if he had said something blasphemous. ‘Do you know how much an AS-50 AStar actually costs?’ he asked.
‘Yes, boss. A couple of million, give or take.’
‘Two million three hundred thousand to be more precise. And do you have any idea how much we have to pay for insurance?’
‘Yes, boss. I have seen the figures. It’s, er – it’s a hell of a lot, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Jim. It’s a hell of a lot. It’s a hell of a lot. And in the space of two days, we have also had to write off one prison bus and two brand-new Cadillac Escalades. Our insurance premiums are going to go through the roof. Not to mention what this is doing to our reputation as the Inland Empire’s most efficient and trustworthy security service.’
‘Yes, boss.’
Joseph Wrack turned back to the window. There were only a few pedestrians walking along East 4th Street but the way he looked down at them reminded Jim Broader of Harry Lime in The Third Man looking down from the fairground carousel at the diminutive people on the ground and asking, ‘Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?’
Instead, he said, ‘I want a full report on this, Jim. I want to know exactly where and how it happened. I want a detailed cost breakdown, including an estimate of how much excess our insurance companies will expect us to pay. I also want a comprehensive marketing analysis. We need for people to be on our side. We need to evoke sympathy. We lost these nine guys fighting to protect our local community. “Our sacrifice for your safety,” that kind of thing.’
‘How about their families?’
‘Yes, those too. Give me all their contact details. I’ll talk to them personally.’
‘I really don’t mind doing it myself, boss. I knew most of those men pretty well.’
‘No, no. leave it to me. Breaking the news to a woman that her husband’s been killed, that needs tact. That needs compassion. You wouldn’t know compassion if it came up behind you and bit you in your big fat ass.’
Jim Broader stood up straight and tucked in his shirt tail. ‘OK, boss, I’ll get on to it.’
‘I don’t need it right away, Jim. Tomorrow or the day after, if you like. There’s something else you have to do first, and you know what that is, don’t you?’
‘Boss?’
Joseph Wrack came back across his office and stared at Jim Broader with an idiotic grin on his face.
‘You have to find Martin Makepeace, Jim, that’s what you have to do first. You have to find Martin
Makepeace and waste him. I don’t care how you do it. Just bring me back enough evidence that you’ve done it. One hand would do. Or even one finger. Or one of his eyeballs. If he’s not extinct by this time tomorrow, Jim, I will seriously want to know why.’
Once Jim Broader had gone, Joseph Wrack returned to the black leather couch and the TV news, although he didn’t turn the sound back on, and after watching it for only two or three minutes, he switched it off altogether. He had seen enough aerial views of drought-ravaged wheatfields and interviews with politicians who were all furrowing their brows to appear as if they genuinely felt the nation’s pain.
‘Goddamned hypocrites,’ he said, out loud. He hated hypocrisy. If there was one thing that he had learned from his father, it was that if you are going to be a shit, then act like a shit. Don’t go around smiling and clapping people on the back, pretending that you’re Mr Appreciative Guy.
He was also too angry to think about the drought. He was so angry that it was knotting up his stomach, as if he had acute diarrhea. He had built up Empire Security Services on the principle of absolutely no compromise. His guards were trained to open fire first and worry about the consequences afterward, and would-be bank robbers and jewel thieves knew that they would, which is why ESS-guarded businesses reported fifty-six percent less attempted crime than businesses guarded by their competitors.
Over the years, Joseph Wrack had tirelessly developed contacts in state and county and city government, as well as the DA’s office and the judiciary. Even when his men caused collateral casualties, or shot somebody who simply had the misfortune to look like a robber, they were very rarely prosecuted and even more rarely found guilty.
He stood up, and then he sat down again, biting his knuckle. He felt like calling for a helicopter and going out in search of Martin Makepeace himself, and then strangling him in person. How had Makepeace dared to wreck his bus and his SUVs and his helicopter and put ten of his men out of action? Jesus – he was only some pissant social worker in the children’s department.
There was another knock at the door. Not Jim Broader again with yet another of his dumbass questions. But a smart young black woman in a pink floral blouse and high-waisted white slacks came in. She had a short shiny bob streaked with pink and she was immaculately groomed, her cheekbones emphasized with rose-colored blusher, her lips painted in a cupid’s bow, her long nails perfectly polished. She wore heavy-rimmed, upswept spectacles, which made her look academic as well as sexy.
‘Abelina!’ said Joseph Wrack, standing up again. ‘Haven’t seen you since when, for Christ’s sake?’
Abelina King waved one hand from side to side and wrinkled up her nose. ‘Still smoking those cat turds, Joseph?’
‘It’s the coffee that comes from cat turds, Abelina. What I smoke is the finest Havana panatelas.’
‘Whatever you say, J.W. They still smell like cat turds.’
‘What the hell are you doing in town?’ Joseph Wrack asked her. ‘I thought you were permanently based in LA these days.’
‘I am, J.W., I am. I only came back to get my mother. I heard about the riots and I thought it was time to get her out of here. Mind you, we’ve had riots in LA, too. Six people got killed in Crenshaw only the day before yesterday. There was nothing on the news about it, but my friend told me. It doesn’t seem like there’s nothing on the news these days except “don’t use too much water and everything’s going to be fine”. Yeah, right … just as soon as it starts to rain again.’
‘So, how can I help you?’ asked Joseph Wrack. ‘Sit down, why don’t you? How about a cup of coffee?’
‘Cat turd coffee? No thanks. Anyhow, I’ve come here to help you, not the other way about.’
‘Oh, yeah? And how are you going to do that?’
‘Your man got in touch with me. What’s his name, the guy with the breath that smells like onions. Jim something. Used to be a cop.’
‘Jim Broader? He’s my deputy. He’s OK, Jim, apart from the breath, and he’s not exactly Einstein. But he keeps the troops in order, and he’s wily enough. After all, what we’re looking to do here is keep banks from being robbed, not work out if we can travel backward in time.’
Abelina King sat down on the edge of the black leather couch and crossed her legs. ‘A glass of water would be good,’ she said. Joseph Wrack went across to the fridge in the corner of his office and took out a bottle of Arrowhead.
‘You want to drink this slow, and savor every drop,’ he told her, as he poured it out for her. ‘This is worth its weight in water.’
‘Thanks,’ said Abelina King. ‘Jim Thing said you were interested in Saskia Vane, and whatever involvement she might have with Governor Smiley.’
‘That’s right. Halford told me that Saskia Vane owes him some kind of a favor, but he wouldn’t tell me what it is.’
‘And what makes you so curious?’
Joseph Wrack gave her a tight, humorless smile. ‘I’m curious about everybody and everything, Abelina. It’s my job. The more I know, the less I get taken by surprise. And you know me. I don’t like surprises. They give me heartburn.’
‘Well, I don’t know everything, J.W., and what I do know I don’t know for certain. But Saskia Vane used to be married, not too many years ago. Her maiden name I think was something like Kaminski or Kaplinski or Kaplonski, something Polish anyhow. She was an attorney, and she met David Vane when she was defending him on a charge of possession. He was a record promoter. You’ve heard of Mind Explosion? Lenny Lucas and the Angels? Kathy Rose Duncan?’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of them,’ said Joseph Wrack, impatiently. ‘Mind Explosion were crap. But go on.’
‘During his trial, Saskia became totally besotted with David Vane and after he was acquitted they got married. From what I heard, though, it wasn’t an easy marriage. A broken plate special, if you know what I mean. David Vane was an irredeemable cokehead and very generous with his affections to all of the teenage girls who used to come backstage at his concerts, while Saskia on the other hand was domineering and very possessive and always needed to take control.’
‘So – OK – where does Halford Smiley come into this?’
Abelina lifted one cautionary finger. ‘This I got third- or maybe even fourth-hand, so I can’t swear to you, J.W., that it’s true. But I do know for certain that Halford Smiley and David Vane had known each other since college, or even further back than that. They had hung out together, shared girlfriends together, smoked pot together, like who didn’t?
‘Halford Smiley as you know ended up marrying Mona Van Pelt, and I don’t think anybody is under any illusion as to why he married her. It begins with “m” and ends with “y” and rhymes with “honey”. Mona was amazing looking, no question. She still is. But she’s always been a frigid stuck-up society bitch who has no interests in life except for her charities and her Chihuahuas. The only things that really turn Mona on are her dogs’ undying devotion and other people’s abject gratitude.
‘Whenever Mona was away on one of her charity trips to Africa, or wherever, Halford Smiley would throw parties and have his friends around, as well as quite a few girls. S and M parties, that’s what I was told. Leather and whips and handcuffs, that kind of a party.’
‘Yes, I heard about those,’ said Joseph Wrack. ‘I seem to remember that The National Enquirer were all ready to run a story about them, weren’t they, but Halford managed to get an injunction.’
‘Not without a little help from Saskia Vane,’ said Abelina. ‘Apart from the fact that she was a hotshot lawyer, she and her husband had been to those parties, too. I think she was just as anxious as Halford Smiley that the details wouldn’t come out.’
‘I still don’t get it,’ said Joseph Wrack. ‘From what you’re saying it sounds like Halford owed Saskia Vane the favor, not the other way about.’
‘I know … and like I say, I was never told about any of this first-hand. I’m a studio publicist, J.W., not a news reporter. I wasn’t going to go digging to find
out what really happened. All I know is that about six months after The National Enquirer thing, David Vane was found dead. He was discovered in his own home, but what the news reports didn’t say was that he and Saskia had been to one of Halford Smiley’s parties the previous evening.’
‘So what was the cause of death?’
‘The coroner said auto-erotic asphyxiation. Strangled himself to get his jollies. You know, like David Carradine maybe did.’
‘I’m still at a loss here. What exactly are you suggesting? Do you think that David Vane might have died at Halford’s party, and that they might have smuggled his body back to his own home, so that Halford wouldn’t be implicated? That wouldn’t have done Saskia any favors.’
‘I’m sorry, J.W., that’s all I know,’ said Abelina. ‘If you want to find out more, you’ll have to find it out for yourself. Me and my mother are leaving town. She’s waiting for me downstairs, in reception.’
‘OK,’ said Joseph Wrack. He sat there for a moment, thinking, and then he stood up. ‘Thanks for coming in, Abelina. It’s been great to see you again, whatever.’
Abelina stood up, too. ‘I can’t tell you something that I don’t know, J.W. No point in making it up, either. You make things up, you always get found out, in the end.’
Joseph Wrack opened the door for her, and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Safe journey back to LA,’ he told her.
When she had gone, however, he went over to the map on the wall, and stood in front of it, breathing hard. He traced his finger across it until he found Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. Then he punched it so hard that he made a triangular tear in the map itself, and dented the plaster wall behind it.
EIGHT
‘I’m dying,’ said Saskia. ‘In fact, I wish I could die. Just close my eyes and never wake up.’
‘Have another drink,’ Martin told her. ‘You’re probably dehydrated. Dehydration lowers your blood pressure, makes you feel depressed.’
‘If I have to drink any more warm Mountain Dew I’m going to throw up, I swear it.’
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