Troubleshooter (2005)

by Gregg - Rackley 03 Hurwitz

  Tim's adrenaline had ignited an explosive fury. He heard the low, rageful growl of his own voice as if it were separate from him. "You choose."

  Chief's defiant eyes strained to take in Tim. His biceps tensed, and then his gun hand whipped from the drawer, finger dug through the blank eye of the trigger guard.

  Tim squeezed.

  Breathing hard, he remained for a moment with his knee dug between the slack shoulder blades, listening to the moist descent of brain matter on the opposing wall. Then he drew himself up, checked the closet, and shouted "Clear!" down the hall. Spread on top of the nightstand were diagrams of explosives. He gathered them up, doing his best to make out the cramped scrawl in the dimness as he headed back toward the front of the unit. Pipe bombs. Scored tubes to create more shrapnel. He flipped to another diagram, squinted at the dark sketch.

  BBs. Gunpowder filler. A filament wire.

  The lines took shape as a light-socket bomb. He glanced up as Maybeck reached for the switch.

  "Wait, don't--"

  The floor jumped with the boom. The screech of rent metal. The whine of ricochets. When he heard only the tinny white noise of eardrum aftermath, Tim glanced up from the carpet. The five deputies in the entry stirred, finding their feet, dusting themselves off, picking shrapnel from their tactical vests. Maybeck's nylon raid jacket was sliced neatly down the front. With trembling fingers, Maybeck plucked a twisted metal shard from the Kevlar covering his stomach. His fingers went to the gash, came away bloodless. His sigh of relief was shaky, verging on tearful. He helped Bear up, and they all limped outside, patting themselves down for leaks and gashes.

  Miller held a black Mag-Lite knuckles up, surveying the interior. He chewed his lip, his jaw tight, facing off with the darkness. Tim noted a tremor in the sun-beaten skin at the corner of his eye. His own nerves had not yet calmed. Malane showed up and poked around, nodding to himself as if dispensing approval.

  Watching the FBI agent explore the front shrubs, Bear spoke in his version of a whisper. "'Liaison' my ass. He's working a cross-agenda."

  "Agreed," Tim said. "So let's figure out what it is."

  Malane observed the empty American Spirit pack impaled on his pen.

  "I feel more like he's playing spy guy. Lining up the case for his funny-handshake brethren to take over. Slowing us down where he needs to."

  "Good luck there."

  They broke apart from their mini huddle as backup arrived. It took the LAPD Bomb Squad nearly an hour to clear the building. As outlets and sockets were ruled safe, lights clicked on, illuminating the duplex a section at a time. The bomb technicians used their own dogs; Chomper watched alertly from the sidelines, licking his chops and whimpering wistfully. They found trip wires in closet thresholds and a scattering of shotgun-shell-loaded mousetraps in drawers.

  Bear discovered a file cabinet hidden behind hanging clothes in the bedroom closet and went to work on the lock. The see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil stickers--one monkey on each drawer--seemed not only a fine specimen of dry Sinner humor but an indication that the cabinet held confidential material.

  Criminalists from LAPD's Scientific Investigation Division showed up to give the Sheriff's CSI guys, who'd already started processing the body, jurisdictional grief. Marshal Tannino was en route; Tim figured he'd let him untangle egos.

  He took a moment before reapproaching the body. If a kill was within ROEs or Service regs, if it adhered to the laws of fair play imperfectly defined in his own heart, he could sleep soundly at night. He'd killed often with the Army Rangers, though he'd never taken to it the way some of his platoonmates had. He'd inured himself to the guilt and horror over time, but he still felt enough to register his impassivity as a loss.

  Staring at Chief's body now, he felt renewed rage about his wife's unresolved fate. The emotion unnerved him.

  If you feel that much, you shouldn't be killing people.

  "Not now, Dray."

  Thomas glanced over. "What'd you say?"

  "Nothing."

  You feel good about wasting that guy?

  No. Yes.

  Can't tell us much now, can he?

  I guess not. "I didn't have a choice."

  Right. You had to put the gun to his head. You couldn't have shot him in his gun hand. You don't exactly have shitty aim, Troubleshooter.

  The guy looked on while Den shot you off your feet. You left a boot behind on the asphalt.

  Nice try, but you know damn well what I'd want. Leads. Answers. Not just bodies.

  Tim stared at the spray across the pillow, the wall.

  Don't get me wrong. I'm not crying over Chief's demise. I'm just saying, if you kill 'em, you can't much use 'em.

  Bear stopped fussing with the lock and walked over, his brow furrowed with concern. "What are you doing?"

  "Just talking to myself."

  "Don't make it a habit. The church elders will gossip." He shot Tim a warning stare and withdrew to the file-cabinet lock. Bear was terrible with a pick set, but he wouldn't admit it. Tim had once waited a half hour for him to fumble his way into a school locker.

  Snapping on latex gloves, Tim regarded the corpse with greater detachment. First step: confirm ID. No wallet in the back pocket made sense, given Chief's hours in the saddle. Tim tilted the already stiffening body and tugged a wallet from the front pocket, freeing a few coins and sundry bits of pocket trash. Looking at the license photo--the proud, meticulous lines of facial hair etching the beard; the erect, compensatory posture--Tim couldn't help but think of Terry Goodwin, Wunderdeed. Her relieved collapse back onto her bedspread after she heard Chief's voice on the phone. The memory, in combination with the ripe odor, made him faintly nauseous.

  Nestled in the sheets beside two pennies and a generic book of matches was a torn paper crumpled around a wad of gum. Fuzzy with pocket lint, it yielded grudgingly when he unwrapped it. A ripped receipt, Flying J Travel Plaza, Nov 8. A partial credit-card number terminated at the tear: 4891 02--. With a purchase date and location, they'd have no problem retrieving the full data.

  "We've got a credit-card number," Tim called out. "And I assume this isn't the one Teflon Pete uses to buy clubhouse groceries." Freed was waiting with a plastic Baggie. Tim dropped the gum-laden receipt inside and said, "Get on the horn to Visa and figure out how to get those statements. And if it's linked to a bank account, I want ATM hits, too."

  The smell was starting to get to him, so he stepped outside. Tungsten-halogen lights glowed over the roof; Tim could hear the field reporters starting their on-site pickups. He walked around to the side to get a peek at the news vans crowding the curb.

  Guerrera crouched beside the motorcycle at the gate. He'd removed the seat and set it on the concrete at his feet. Dressed in bathrobes and sweats, neighbors milled around on the other side of the street. Tim waved at an elderly woman staring out from her porch, and she retreated inside as if caught doing something wrong.

  Collapsing his telescoping mirror against his thigh, Guerrera rose. "Cono." He gestured at a toggle switch on the handlebar. "That's the kill switch."

  "For what?"

  "For the pin-trigger mechanism laid in the frame tubing just below the seat. Someone tries to steal the bike, he gets a shotgun spray right up the culo. Penetrates the gut--not an easy way to go." Guerrera reached in gingerly with his pocketknife and withdrew a twelve-gauge shotgun shell from the center post. "A trip wire runs to the rear wheel. I saw a cruder version once in Miami. The discharge'll tear the spine right out of a person." He shook his head, admiring the engineering.

  "Tom-Tom's work?"

  "Likely. Which means it's probably standard feature on all nomad bikes. You don't watch your ass when we seize property, it'll get ripped right off you."

  Bear shouted from inside, and they headed in. A few file-cabinet drawers stood triumphantly open. Shirts pulled up over their noses, hands turned magician-white in latex gloves, Thomas and Freed flipped through files, laying out documents on the carpet.<
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  "Check this." Bear used a pinkie to open the bottom drawer. A bunched mass of cracked leather, the CHOLOS top rocker partially visible. Bear poked at the jacket with the end of a pen, bringing a fold-hidden patch into view. CHOOCH MILLAN.

  "Okay," Tim said. "But we don't need evidence. We're not making a case. We need current red flags."

  Thomas pointed at the diagrams and schemas spread on the floor. "We've got operation plans for the transport-van break and the Palm-dale massacre."

  "Any future plans?"

  "Not so far."

  "So what else is in there?"

  "These two drawers are filled with intel on the Cholos," Freed said.

  Thomas broke in. "More than you'd ever want to know about a bunch of dead guys."

  "Hangouts, relatives' addresses, ex-wives. There's a list in there must have every woman El Viejo's put his dick in since the Wall fell."

  Bear dropped a binder into Tim's hands. "This makes for the best reading."

  Inside, Tim found mini dossiers on cops, prosecutors, and rival bikers. An eight-by-ten of Raymond Smiles was crossed out in red--Richie Rich's diploma. An attached report identified Smiles as a top federal enemy of the club, detailing his field experience, which ranged from anti-narcotics to counterterrorism. When Tim flipped the page, he found his own face staring back at him--a shot of him lying on his stomach taking pictures at Nigger Steve's funeral. Once the chill subsided, he realized that part of him was flattered he'd made the hit list. A thought caught him off guard: What if he got taken out and Dray awakened alone? Or worse--if she didn't and they were gone. No Rackley left. It would be as if their family, for ten years the self-important center of their own production, had never existed. Or yet another disturbing variation: Their child could be orphaned before birth, excised from an insentient body to be greeted by two pensions, a garage sale, and Bear.

  Their jobs gave them a courtside view of the void, a comforting illusion of separateness and control, but never before had the costs been so evident. After Ginny's death Tim had rejected the law and his badge, weary from the essential uselessness of it in the face of universal mechanics. He'd wanted back in the Service so desperately, and now he was in, but with his wife shot and a crosshairs on his own head. The dullness Jim had carried behind the eyes the past few days suddenly clarified; Tim felt the sentiment it bespoke resonate in his bones, a low-register chuckle not unlike Uncle Pete's.

  What were his options? Get a job selling mattresses? Urge Dray to take up quilting? The notion of retreating under fire would be as unappealing to her as it was to him.

  At Bear's urging, Tim continued through the binder. The last section contained images of dead Cholos--crime-scene shots, news photos, and, most disturbing, moment-after Polaroids.

  The deputies perused the files, their discouragement growing as little useful information was revealed. If nothing else, Tim had to admire Chief's spy skills; the intel he'd managed to acquire on the Cholos was staggering in its scope and specificity. The Sinners were wise to keep Chief--and the files--segregated from the rest of the club.

  Lash had told them as much--The intel officer runs separate from the pack, never goes to the clubhouse. Keeps his own safe house, even.

  Guerrera muttered, "This shit might be useful if we were going after the Cholos."

  Tim's hands stopped their movement. His head snapped up. "Exactly." He shoved the binder at Bear and began digging through the hanging files in the two drawers dedicated to Cholo intel.

  "Rack?" Bear said. "What's going on?"

  "We're in the wrong house." Tim sensed the others reacting with puzzlement, but he continued blazing through the file tabs, racking his brain to match the names to those on the list of the dead from the Palmdale massacre. El Viejo. Dead. Frito Terrazas. Dead. Gonzo Ernez. Dead.

  A name finally distinguished itself from the others; Tim didn't recognize it from the coroner's roll. He yanked the file free and flipped it open. Meat Marquez. Identifiers, bike information, and an address were typed neatly beneath a surveillance photo. Bear, Guerrera, Thomas, and Freed crowded around, realization dawning.

  Tim nodded at Chief's stiff corpse on the bed. "We got the wrong intel officer."

  "Huh?" Bear said with mild irritation. "Which intel officer do we want?"

  "Not the Sinners'." Tim grabbed the page from the file, thumb creasing the Lancaster address. Guerrera and Bear barely kept pace down the hall.

  They passed Tannino in the entry. Without a word he took Tim's.357 into evidence, handed him a fresh one, and continued back toward the body.

  Chapter 27

  Needle-nose pliers protruded from the hole that had been Meat Marquez's nose. His head was wedged in the jaws of a vise, distorted by the pull of his body weight. Tim, Bear, and Guerrera stood in a loose triangle around the body, motionless on their feet as if the slightest movement might wake Marquez up. Bear's great, broad shoulders sagged, worn down by disappointment. Tim glanced at the sheet from Chief's file on Meat, the typed address matching the brass numbers hammered beneath the light outside, then crumpled it up and shoved it into his pocket.

  Meat had been the last nomad of his kind--the hearts of the other three, Den and Kaner had left on the Cholo clubhouse doorstep, the bit of improvisational surgery that had won them matching convictions. After the past three days, Tim understood the strategic implications of the first rule of biker gang warfare--kill the nomads.

  The deputies' preliminary walk through the garage conversion had turned up nothing in the way of files.

  The complaint of the A/C explained the merciful chill in the air; the nomads had likely maxed the unit while they tossed the place so they wouldn't be assailed with the stench as Meat started living up to his name. A flipped cot soaked up engine grease. Tufts of mattress stuffing floated in oil puddles. Plate shards littered the kitchen. Smashed floorboards stuck up like stubborn weeds. A porcelain Virgin Mary lay shattered at the base of a shelf.

  "At least we know how they intercepted the Cholos' funeral route," Bear finally said.

  Guerrera broke their unspoken vow of stillness, toeing the remnants of the tchotchke Holy Mother. Tim figured Guerrera was being sentimental until he called them over and pointed at the interior of the statue base. A clear key outline showed against the sticky dust that had accrued inside.

  The tip of a footprint--boot edge rendered in oil--pointed toward the bathroom. Guerrera picked up its next appearance after a six-foot interval, the long stride indicating Kaner.

  Tim and Guerrera stood shoulder to shoulder in the tiny white square of the bathroom, Bear crowding them from behind. In the main room, the air conditioner groaned like a tired engine on a steep hill.

  Guerrera ran a hand over the tiles that sheathed the lower half of the walls like wainscoting. An offset edge. He tugged gently, and the tiles swung as one piece, exposing a file cabinet set back in the space between wall studs. Tim felt a long-overdue flush of excitement.

  The top drawer slid too easily under the tug of Guerrera's finger. The hanging file folders remained, each tab listing an individual Sinner, but the contents had been pulled. The next two drawers revealed the same. After killing Marquez, the nomads had wisely purged all the intel on their club. Tim stared at the empty Den Laurey file and cursed sharply. They withdrew to wait for CSI. Doubleheader Friday for the crime lab.

  Standing over the rigor mortised body, Bear grimaced. "Whatever groundwork they're laying, it's thorough as hell."

  "But for what?" Guerrera's rhetorical hung in the refrigerator-cool air.

  Flashing blue lights cast a glare through the garage-door windows, mapping waves across the ceiling. A few more vehicles pulled up outside.

  The A/C emitted a creaking groan. Tim walked over and examined the main vent. The rush of air felt uneven. He placed his hand in front of it. Cold air was seeping from the edges, but the center gave off nothing. He pried the panel free and removed the dusty filter. A folder slipped out from behind, slapping the floor. Tim sna
tched it up.

  An assassination dossier, containing surveillance photos of Goat. Astride his Harley. Weaving through traffic. A familiar, horrifying close-up of the marred flesh of his face. Emerging from a commercial building into an alley. The location of the last shot was nondescript--no address, no telling marks on the wall. But captured in the background was a sliver of the world's most recognizable image--the golden arches. One enormous yellow leg had been captured, and a segment of pantile roof. A Dumpster blocked part of the alley, its faded stencil showing a floral emblem.

  Tim slid the photo back into the file and rolled up the garage door, revealing four black-and-whites and a CSI van cramming the brief driveway. A few more units turned onto the street, lights flashing soundlessly, a KCOM news van drifting ominously behind. Having been assailed by reporters outside Chief's duplex, Tim quickened his step.

  The three deputies threaded through the growing mass of cops, climbed into Guerrera's G-ride, and disappeared into the night.

  Chapter 28

  Tim lowered the photograph, but the scene remained, a midnight rendering of the identical angle. Same thin run of alley, same doorway, same yellow half arch, now filtered through Bear's bugsplattered windshield. Despite the ubiquity of McDonald's, the combination of identifiers--oversize freestanding arches, pantile roof, Renegade Rose's Rent-a-Dumpster--had enabled them to cross-reference surrounding areas and narrow the field fast. The doorway belonged to a seemingly disused warehouse in Simi.

  "We're just looking around, right?" Guerrera asked as they climbed out.

  Bear pulled his shotgun from the trunk. "Sure."

  Tim emptied the new .357, checked the trigger tension again, then refed the six rounds. Guerrera nodded once, mouth pursed, and followed them silently toward the building. Securing the door, a shiny new padlock didn't match the rust of the hasp. Guerrera squatted and retrieved the severed pin of an older lock from a cluster of leaves.