Last Shot

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “Let me know if you do.” Tim pocketed the picture. “I’ll need a list of your employees and clients. We won’t let leak that you slipped it to us.”

  Wes’s face reddened. “Employees, sure, but you think we keep a client list here? Not with this business. I’d be finished.”

  “You knew Ted Sands by name, and I doubt he ambled up with his briefcase full of cash and gave his driver’s license as collateral to reserve the lockers. Can’t exactly recognize him from the picture the Times ran either. Even if the names your clients sign on your waivers are bullshit—which I’m sure they are—and even if the occasional credit card you run traces to an offshore account or a shell corp—which it might—I know you keep different records for when you need blackmail leverage on a powerful client or for when the girls rent out after hours. If not, you’d be a fool and an incompetent pimp, and we both know you’re neither.”

  “I don’t have shit.” Some of Wes’s swagger was returning, along with the first premonition that he might have been duped. “And if you serve on me, you won’t get anything either. There’s nothing to get.”

  Tim straightened up. “Listen to me closely, Wes. You’re gonna get me those names, and you’re going to do it right now while I wait. And I’m not waiting long.”

  Wes affected a casual sneer, but his voice came out higher than usual. “Or else?”

  “We will tear apart every square foot of your operation, and we’ll do so with vigor and pleasure. I will call my buddy at the IRS, my brother-in-law who’s a comer in the Office of Finance, and my niece who’s a lesbian feminist in the U.S. Attorney’s Office looking to make a name. We will write you up, tie you up, and drag you into court for nuances of the law you’ve never heard of, right down to the missing side view on your Oldsmobile out front. I will post federal agents outside your property to tip their hats to all the ministers and judges who come in here to shoot naked girls’ flanks. By the time the news crews catch wind, there won’t be space for their vans to park. You think that’ll go over swell with your ‘clientele’? Look at me.” Tim snapped his fingers, terminating the drift of Wes’s dismayed eyes. “I will ruin your life. I will eat you for lunch and come back for seconds. There is a murder investigation we have traced here, and I will see the law do right by that victim if I have to burn you and every other woman-hating shitheel who’s plunked down a dime in this fuckhole.”

  Wes’s mouth had creaked slightly open. A line of sweat glistened in the strands of his scraggly mustache. Tim’s voice had not raised a notch.

  Tim said, “I will be patient until I leave this room. Now, you give me those names to make me go away happy or your carefree life ends in”—he reached over the counter and retrieved Wes’s stopwatch—“five minutes.”

  Thirty-seven seconds passed, and then Wes slid off the barstool, falling onto his feet. He fussed at the computer with the lethargic motions of the chronically depressed and printed an employee list, then retrieved a lockbox from a cabinet and removed a mound of license-plate photos, some with names and addresses written flash-card style on the backs. He dumped the pictures into a plastic bag with the spreadsheet and handed them over at exactly 4:23.

  Tim tossed him the stopwatch and left, nodding politely to the ladies at the bar on his way out the door. As he pulled in his first lungful of fresh wetland air, Bear eased the Explorer around, meeting him under the awning like a well-trained valet.

  Chapter 46

  At half past nine in the morning, the electricity kicked back on. The TV blared; the cheap chandelier over the kitchen nook flickered to life; a square worker’s fan by the garage door revved up so fast it blew itself over.

  At the commotion Walker had sprung from the floor up over the couch into the best position of cover the family room afforded; he found himself in a high-kneel shooting stance, his Redhawk trained on the front door. He returned his revolver to the back of his jeans and rose.

  He unplugged the fan, which was rattling its death throes against the floorboards, then turned off the lights and the garbage disposal, which was roaring its waterless displeasure. He couldn’t locate a remote, so he thumbed down the volume on the TV itself, leaving the morning anchor to murmur in the background about Gaza settlements.

  The disposable cell remained on the arm of the sofa where he’d left it, resting atop Tess’s tiny bound calendar. He picked it up, hit “redial,” and waited for the same answering machine he’d gotten the previous nine tries.

  This time a woman answered. “Elite Chauffeur Service.”

  “Yes, hi, I’m calling from the billing department at Vector Biogenics, and I’m showing an outstanding invoice from April nineteen.”

  “Just a minute, sir.” She hammered on a ridiculously loud keyboard. “Yes, here it is. I show that it’s been paid in full.”

  “This was the trip to the studio?”

  “Yes, Quixote Studios. The limousine was booked through Mr. Kagan’s office.”

  On the TV, Walker’s booking photo appeared in the graphics box above the newscaster’s shoulder. He walked over and clicked the volume back up. “That’s the one. Apologies—I must have my records crossed.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  An attractive Asian reporter had filled the screen. “Tim Rackley, known as the Troubleshooter—”

  “Oh, and one more thing,” Walker said. “The driver we used last time, Mr. Kagan liked quite a bit. What was his name?”

  “Chuck Hannigan.”

  He asked her to spell the last name, then asked, “Is Mr. Hannigan available today?”

  “Oh, no. He’s quite busy. He’s available after six?”

  Walker declined, thanked her, and hung up.

  Looking a touch uncomfortable under the studio lighting, Tim Rackley spoke directly to the camera. He seemed to stare into the model house’s family room and address Walker alone. “—message for Walker Jameson. I understand that you believe firmly in what you’re doing. I have shared your motivation. We have information about your sister that impacts what you’re trying to do.”

  To Tim’s side the newslady couldn’t contain her surprise—hot damn, a scoop unfolding right before her. Walker would bet his own face held an equal measure of shock.

  The exploitation of Tess Jameson, take two.

  Tim said, “I want you to contact me at the number below, anytime, day or night.”

  A 213 number popped on-screen like a telethon prompt.

  Walker stepped in front of the TV, going face-to-face with the Troubleshooter. He might have been looking into a mirror.

  “Careful what you wish for,” he said.

  Chapter 47

  A young security guard led Tim and Bear down the shiny warehouse corridor. Storage racks, bolted to the concrete floor, stretched up to the forty-foot ceiling, assiduously labeled boxes and crates filling each shelf. Industrial rolling ladders with handrails were parked at intervals like well-tended vehicles. In the dirt yard outside, the spike-collared Doberman kept protesting the deputies’ intrusion. Barks and growls reached through the high windows, echoing around the bare walls of the vast building. Even Bear, nicknamed the Dog Whisperer around the Arrest Response Team for his preternatural rapport with the explosive-detection canines, had failed to settle him as he and Tim had strode to the long-term-storage warehouse’s entrance.

  Tim checked the lettering on the storage containers looming overhead. MARCONE. MARDEL. And at last a raft of MARTINEZes. The common surname continued around the corner to the next aisle before Tim encountered a run of legal-width cardboard boxes stamped ESTEBAN MARTINEZ, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. The file boxes, organized roughly by date, carried stickers in hazard-warning orange—CONFIDENTIAL: LAWYER-CLIENT MATERIALS.

  Tim rolled a ladder over and put his foot on the bottom rung to begin his ascent. The guard rested a hand on his forearm, halting him, and turned to Bear, whom he figured for the heavy. “Listen, you can check out whatever, but I know you’re not supposed to open anything without a warrant.”

>   Bear quelled the kid’s concerns with a Godfather-like patting of the air. “Like we said, we’re just following up on a trademark infringement. If there’s no knockoff logo on the outside of the box, we’re out of here. If there is, we’ll come back with paper.”

  Tim scaled the ladder, reaching this year’s June dates on the third shelf up. He located the box from the last week of the month, grabbed it by a punched-out handle, and jogged it loose, letting the shelf support the far end. Barely pulled into view, a typed label filled the index square on the lid’s side flap. Tim scanned the names, none of them familiar, then tried again with the neighboring box from mid-July. Will Newell. Fred Marcussen. Theresa Jameson.

  The box Tim held propped before his face contained the legal records of Tess’s meetings with her attorney on a matter likely involving Vector Biogenics. Meetings that had taken place days before her murder.

  And Tim couldn’t so much as crack the lid.

  Bear regarded the box reverently. Tim squirmed his hand around through the punched-out handle, fingertips brushing papers. He let the tiny metal device fall inside, nodded at Bear—mission accomplished—then said, with feigned exasperation, “No logo. Struck out,” and shoved the file box back into its slot among the others.

  He descended the ladder, and he and Bear headed out, leaving Tess’s files behind.

  Chapter 48

  The scent of brine, damp wood, and seaweed brought Walker back to exotic ports of missions past and made him crave the burn of tobacco in his lungs. Crouched at the dark brink of land, he kept his gaze fixed way at the end of the floating dock, where a houseboat rocked in its slip. The sole point of living movement, a man stooped and shuffled, waxing his deck with hand-slip brushes. Unseen crabs scuttled on the throw of black rocks at the water’s edge. The slips were dotted with weekend sailboats, Bayliner cruisers, and motor yachts too spit-polished to be more than vanity possessions. A quiet place to live, undisturbed among the playthings of the rich.

  The dock was well positioned at the edge of the two-mile channel off the harbor that gave Marina del Rey its name, a good distance up from Fisherman’s Village with its rip-off New England buildings, cobblestone paths, and landlubber tourists wielding ice cream cones. The village’s boutiques were long closed, but the eateries still threw wobbly streaks of light across the black water. When the wind shifted just so, it carried a few rueful notes from the seafood restaurant’s bad string quartet. A plane rumbled overhead, three dots of light blurred by the thin August clouds, still climbing from the LAX runway it had left behind five miles south.

  The strip-planked houseboat was good and light, with enough salt in its wounds to lend it a cranky, rustic character. A white life preserver, flaked into a mosaic on the pilothouse wall, announced The Jeeves—a dead giveaway. As was its owner’s air of strained dignity; he was a service-industry lackey if Walker had ever seen one.

  An afternoon intel-gathering trip to an Internet café had yielded a wealth of data, including the address of the mail drop in the boatyard deckhouse ten yards from Walker’s back. There between the laundry room and coin-accessed showers for the live-aboards was the name Walker sought, rendered on a blue sticky band cranked out of an old twist-top label maker.

  The man rose from all fours, stretched his back with a hands-on-hips arch, and settled on a bench with an Amstel and a cigarette.

  Walker headed for the boat, minding the bob of the dock beneath his feet. The man watched him as he passed through one spill of lamplight and then another.

  Walker stopped on the dock at the edge of the thirty-five-foot slip, the man rocking out of time with his own rise and fall. The trusty ropes creaked, straining against their moorings. The man took a pull from his beer, not yet fearful.

  “Chuck Hannigan?”

  “That’s right.”

  Walker stepped up onto the houseboat.

  Hannigan set down his beer and rose quickly. “You’re supposed to ask permission to come aboard.”

  Walker strode to the triangular hatch at the bow. The just-waxed deck was slick. No grime, no oxidation. Chuck Hannigan made a fine swabbie.

  Walker pulled the anchor onto the deck, throwing the toggle so the windlass fed chain out into a puddle at his feet. He dragged the anchor to the prow, the crown raising peels of epoxy varnish, the chain rattling behind. Hannigan looked scared now, his body bladed to hide one arm. Walker dropped the anchor at Hannigan’s feet and was not surprised to look up into the barrel of a flare gun.

  Walker’s hands blurred, and then both of Hannigan’s arms were twisted back on themselves, the muzzle pressed into the soft pouch of flesh beneath his chin. Walker’s face was inches from Hannigan’s, so close he felt the heat of the cigarette cherry against his cheek. He nodded, and then Hannigan nodded, and Walker pried the flare gun free and released him. Hannigan let out a shaky breath. Walker tossed the flare gun overboard, then kicked open the rail gate. Removing a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket, Walker secured one end to the anchor chain, the other to Hannigan’s ankle. Hannigan looked down, eyes glazed, just now seeming to comprehend that Walker had cuffed him to the anchor. The cigarette, now long on ash, dangled from the corner of his mouth.

  “You know who I am?”

  Hannigan said, “I just figured it out.”

  Walker toed the anchor toward the open rail gate, and it coasted a few inches on the waxy deck. Some water lapped up, beading on the wood.

  Hannigan said, “Don’t.”

  A trilevel yacht drifted past, couples twirling with champagne glasses on the upper deck. It passed swiftly, trailing laughter and the smell of weed, and the wake rocked The Jeeves, causing the anchor to slide about a foot toward the rail gate. Hannigan let out a little cry, ash falling across his chest.

  Walker held up the handcuff key between his thumb and forefinger like a photo slide.

  “If I tell you everything, will you let me live?”

  Walker gave a nod.

  “I’ve been waiting to tell someone. Waiting for someone to come, I guess. Hell, maybe I was waiting for you.” Hannigan flicked his butt overboard and tapped the pack in his pocket, waiting for Walker’s approval before he removed and lit another cigarette. “It was at this commercial shoot, right? I’d picked up your sister and your—I guess it’d be your nephew?—at their house. Nice lady, your sister. I really liked her. Mr. Kagan—”

  “Chase?”

  “That’s right. He was in the limo, too. I drove them to the shoot and waited in the limo bay in the garage. It’s an underground garage, real private, you know? No one was there.” His voice grew strained. “I stay with the car always, right? So Ms. Jameson comes out to get something—her purse, maybe—and Chase followed. He ducked inside. Started flirting heavy. She didn’t want any. A nice lady, like I said. So he, you know…”

  “He what?”

  Hannigan’s lips quivered. A drop of sweat rolled down his right cheek, staining his shirt. “He forced himself on her.”

  “Who was there?”

  “Just Mr. Kagan—Chaisson Kagan. But this other fellow came out—Hawaiian shirt?—to check on things. The windows were tinted, but he must’ve heard…”

  Walker nodded him on.

  “…something. He knocked on the window, then Chase rolled it down a bit, and…well, then the guy sort of stood guard.”

  Walker started to talk but had to clear his throat. “Anyone else?”

  “Dolan Kagan came out also. He saw from a distance, maybe. I don’t know what he saw. The other guy told him to go away.”

  “So Chase could finish.”

  Hannigan wiped his cheek. “I guess so.”

  “And you sat there.”

  “I did. I sat there.” A defeated pause, and then Hannigan rallied to his own defense. “I’m not a bad man. I’ve not slept, barely, since it happened. Like I said, she was a nice lady. But what was I gonna do? Look, guys like that, they pay my rent, right? I can barely afford to live out here on this square of water. They got
fancy lawyers and press agents and publicists in their back pocket. I’m gonna…what? Press charges?” Hannigan wept silently into the fold of his hand. “I’ve had all order of things happen when I’m up front, behind the divider, but never anything like that. Never anything like that. Never.”

  “You were in the car. The whole time.”

  “I was,” Hannigan said. “I was.”

  Walker stared out at the world’s largest man-made marina. Then he kicked the anchor off the boat. It plunked into the water, the chain grinding across the deck’s edge as it paid out, kicking up chips and splinters.

  Hannigan’s voice came high with disbelief. “You said you wouldn’t kill me if I told you!”

  “Changed my mind.”

  “Give me the key! Please, God, give it to me!”

  Walker flipped the key in the water. He and Hannigan stared at each other, and then the chain pulled tight and Hannigan slammed to the deck and skidded off into the water with a splash. His cigarette, still lit, remained behind on the deck where it had been jerked from his mouth or he from it.

  His churning was barely audible among the groan of the boats, the slap of water against the pilings, the cry of the night birds; he was just a few feet below the surface. After a minute or so, Walker sensed only the regular sigh and heave of the sea.

  He picked up Hannigan’s cigarette, placed it in his mouth, and headed along the dock for land, the orange dot moving through the mist like a firefly.

  Chapter 49

  Tim’s head throbbed from too much caffeine and from squinting at online databases. He threw down one of the few license-plate photos lacking a name on its back and rubbed his eyes. To catch Walker they had to get a step ahead of him, to locate his next target before he did.

  Using a hit man to lure a fugitive was ambitious, but Tim knew, if the lead was accurate, that Walker would be gunning for the Piper sooner or later. The Service would have to find him sooner. Set up surveillance. And wait.