The Watchman jp-1

by Robert Crais

  Pike decided Larkin’s original person was a child, which might be good but might be bad. A child could not hold for long. A child would weaken with the strain of holding the outer person together, and something would give. The child would be crushed and torn into something else, which might be good or might not, but either way the original person would change. Some philosophies believed that change was good, but Pike wasn’t so sure. That belief had always struck him as self-serving; change often seemed inevitable, so if it was inevitable, we might as well put a good spin on it.

  After a few minutes, Pike moved to the dining table, broke down his pistol exactly as he had that morning, and set about cleaning it for the second time that day. He had no intention of sleeping. He still had to decide whether or not they would abandon the house, and much would depend on the Armenians. Pike was waiting for them.

  Pike had no trouble working in the dark. He swabbed the parts with powder solvent, but was careful not to use much because he didn’t want the smell to wake her. He wanted the girl to be asleep when the cousins returned.

  Pike was brushing the barrel when he heard them. He went to the front window and saw the five cousins getting out of their BMW.

  Pike slipped through the front door and down off the porch. The oldest cousin got out from behind the wheel. They didn’t see him until he reached the sidewalk, and then the youngest, who was on the far side of the car, said something, and they turned as Pike stepped into the street.

  It was quiet, this late, there in the peaceful neighborhood. The porches were empty. The old people and the families were sleeping. Cars were parked and streets were empty except for Pike and the five cousins, there in the cone of blue light.

  Pike stopped a few feet away, looking at each of them until he settled on the oldest, the one who had tried to front him in the bar.

  Pike said, “I figure she didn’t tell you we’re married. I figure you didn’t know, which is why you took her out. I figure now that you know, we won’t have this problem again.”

  The oldest cousin raised his palms, showing Pike he regretted the misunderstanding.

  “No problems, my friend. She said you just shared the house, that’s all. Roommates. She said you were roommates.”

  The younger one nodded along.

  “Hey, we were just chillin’ out here, dude. She came out and started talkin’ with us.”

  The youngest had become so Americanized he spoke hip-hop with an Armenian accent.

  Pike nodded.

  “I understand. So we don’t have a problem between us.”

  “No, man, we are cool.”

  Pike read their expressions and body language, not to see if they were cool, but to see if they had recognized her. If they or someone they knew at the club had recognized her, they would have been talking about it the rest of the evening. Pike decided they neither knew nor suspected. Larkin was just another out-of-her-mind chick to these guys, another girl gone wild. He decided they were safe.

  Pike said, “Mona has done this before and it’s caused problems. There’s a man, he’s been stalking her. We moved, but we know he’s trying to find her. If you guys see anyone, will you let me know?”

  The oldest said, “Of course, man. No problem.”

  Pike put out his hand, and the oldest shook.

  The second oldest, who had been staring with a kind of awe, finally spoke.

  “What was that you did at the club? What do you call that, what you did?”

  The youngest laughed.

  “He opened a can of whup ass, fool!”

  Two of the cousins laughed, but not the oldest, who told them it was late and they should go inside.

  The oldest cousin waited until the others were gone, then turned back to Pike with sympathy in his eyes.

  He said, “I am sorry you suffer this, my friend. You must love her very much.”

  Pike left the oldest cousin there in the blue light and returned to the house. Larkin was still sleeping. He brought the spread from her bedroom, covered her, then went to the kitchen for a bottle of water. He drank it. He took the carton of leftover jalfrezi from the fridge, but did not eat much. Pike resumed cleaning the pistol. He enjoyed the certainty of the steel in his hands-the hard and definite shapes, the predictable way the assembled weapon would function, the comfort of its simplicity. He didn’t have to think when he worked with his hands.

  Pike watched the sleeping girl while he waited for the following day.

  Day Four. Staring at the Sun

  27

  Pike slept only a few minutes that night, falling into listless naps between meditations that left him more anxious than rested. The hunt was picking up speed, and now Pike wanted to push harder. The harder he pushed, the faster Meesh would have to react, and the more demands he would make on his men. His men would grow resentful and Meesh would get angry, and Pike would push faster and harder. This was called stressing the enemy, and when Meesh felt enough stress, he would realize he was no longer the hunter. He would accept that he was the prey. This was called breaking the enemy. Then Meesh would make a mistake.

  At sunrise, Pike went into the bathroom so he wouldn’t disturb the girl. He phoned Cole and told him about the motel. Pike knew Cole was irritated by the tone of his voice.

  “Were you made at the scene?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Pike didn’t answer, and finally Cole sighed.

  “Okay, maybe not. The cops haven’t kicked down my door. Give me time for a shower, then I’ll head over.”

  When Pike left the bathroom, the girl was up. This was the earliest she had been up since he met her. She glanced away as if she was still embarrassed about the night before.

  She said, “You make coffee?”

  “Didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  She started for the kitchen, but he stopped her.

  “I have some things here. Come look.”

  Last night he had not told her about the motel, but now he took her to the table, where he had the passports and papers waiting for Cole. He held up Luis’s passport, open to the picture. She studied it for a moment, then shook her head.

  “Jesus Leone. Who is he?”

  “One of the men who invaded your home. The one who beat your housekeeper. His real name was Luis. I don’t know his last name.”

  Pike showed her the other passports one by one, but she recognized none of the men. She barely glanced at their pictures.

  “Where did you get these?”

  Pike ignored the question.

  “Have you heard the name Barone?”

  “No.”

  “How about someone named Carlos?”

  She shook her head, then picked up Luis’s passport again. She studied the picture, but Pike knew she wasn’t thinking about Luis.

  “Does it bother you when, you know, you-?”

  “No.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No.”

  She dropped the passport back with the others.

  “Good.”

  When Cole arrived, he brought a small television. Pike had not asked for it and neither had the girl, but Cole brought a thirteen-inch Sony.

  “It was just sitting in the guest room,” he said. “I’m not even sure it works.”

  Pike doubted Cole would have gone to the trouble of lugging it out to his car without checking to see if it worked, but he didn’t say anything. They had no cable, but the set came with rabbit-ear antennas. They put it on a table in the living room, turned it on, and the little set worked fine. They couldn’t get any of the cable channels, but it showed the local L.A. stations with a clear, sharp picture.

  Larkin thanked Cole for the television, but with no great enthusiasm. She had been subdued all morning; not distant, just quiet. She had made a shy smile at Cole when he arrived, and watched silently as they set up the TV, and once it was going she parked herself on the couch with a cup of coffee. She stared at one o
f the local morning shows, but whenever Pike glanced over, she didn’t seem to be paying attention. Like she was thinking about other things.

  When the girl was squared up with the TV, Pike showed Cole the passports. Cole angled their pages to catch the light.

  “These are good fakes. Excellent fakes. A dozen of these guys came up?”

  “What the man said. Now there are five.”

  Cole put the passports aside.

  “Unless they call reinforcements.”

  Pike showed Cole the maps, the airline tickets and the spiral notebook page he took from Luis. The ratty page had been folded and refolded dozens of times, and probably crushed into Luis’s pockets dozens more. Indecipherable handwritten notes covered the front and back of the page at all angles, with no sentence more than a few words long. Before the girl woke, Pike had spent almost twenty minutes trying to read it, and failed. Luis had probably taken notes while he was driving, likely with a phone wedged under his ear and one hand on the wheel. Pike guessed they were names and directions. The numbers were clearly phone numbers.

  Cole frowned at the page.

  “Guess they don’t teach penmanship in thug school.”

  Cole glanced at the plane tickets and maps, stacked them with the spiral notebook page, then examined the watch. His eyebrows went up when he read the inscription.

  “George as in George King?”

  “It’s a sixty-thousand-dollar watch.”

  “I can run the serial numbers.”

  Cole put the watch on the maps, then turned to the phones. Pike had made a list of the outgoing and incoming numbers in each phone’s call history. He had labeled the phones JORGE and LUIS. Jorge had made only six calls, all to Luis’s number. Luis had made forty-seven calls to nineteen different numbers. Cole glanced at Pike’s list, then the two phones.

  “Which is which?”

  Pike touched one phone, then the other.

  “Jorge. Luis.”

  Cole turned on the phones, then studied their buttons.

  “Too bad we don’t know the passwords. We could hear the messages. If they have messages.”

  “Leave them on. Maybe someone will call.”

  “Maybe you calling that guy wasn’t the world’s greatest idea. He’ll probably dump the phone and buy another. He’s probably already thrown it away.”

  “They would have known we had the phones when they found Luis and Jorge. I wanted to stress him.”

  Cole glanced at the girl to make sure she wasn’t listening, and lowered his voice.

  “You’ve killed seven of his people. He’s slugging Maalox.”

  “Now it’s personal. Better this way.”

  “What if he figures it’s so personal he goes back to Colombia?”

  “I’ll go after him.”

  Cole glanced at her again.

  “But you don’t think the guy you spoke with was Meesh?”

  “There was the accent. It was slight, but I could hear it. French, maybe. Or French with Spanish. Yesterday I thought he couldn’t be Meesh, but now I’m not sure.”

  “Why?”

  “How does a thug from Denver sound? His file didn’t mention an accent, but those briefs leave out a lot.”

  Cole skimmed the numbers again.

  “Okay, even if they dump their phones, I might be able to do something with this. These nineteen numbers mean he called nineteen phones, and those phones called other phones. Not all of these phones are going to be throwaways. I’ll talk to my friend at the phone company. Maybe she can get call records from the other service providers. Sooner or later we’ll hit real phones listed to people with real names.”

  Pike caught the girl watching him. The morning show hosts were talking about a paternity suit filed against a movie star, but she hadn’t been paying attention.

  Pike said, “How’re you doing?”

  “I’m real good.”

  She turned back to the television.

  Cole had returned to the airline tickets and was making notes of his own. Neither the maps, nor the tickets, nor the little scraps of paper contained a breakthrough clue, something like a hotel receipt signed by Alexander Meesh, but Pike had not expected anything so direct. Cole would have to run the numbers just like Chen was running the guns. Sooner or later something would pay off and Pike would be closer to Meesh. Pike was patient with the process. The chase was about gaining a single step. Then you gained another. Pretty soon you had the guy in your crosshairs. It was all about gaining the one single step.

  Pike left Cole to check the front windows. The cousins’ Beemer remained in its spot, and the street and the houses were normal. No new cars had appeared, and no strangers lurked in the bushes. Nothing seemed out of place.

  Even though it was still early, Pike felt the day warming and saw what the heat would bring. A light haze hung in a fading sky. By noon, the air would be rich with hydrocarbons and ozone, and would eat at their skin like invisible bugs.

  He turned from the window. The girl was staring at the television, but had been watching him again. He caught the motion as her eyes went back to the screen.

  He said, “We’ll turn on the AC today.”

  “That’s great. Thanks.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m good.”

  Pike wondered why she still wasn’t looking at him. It wasn’t like her. She didn’t seem angry and wasn’t giving him attitude. She just wouldn’t look at him when he was looking at her. Pike checked to see Cole was still working, then went to the girl. He stood so close she had no choice but look up at him.

  She said, “What?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “What?”

  “Last night. Forget it. We’re okay, you and me.”

  “I know.”

  She seemed even more uncomfortable, but made a smile as Cole called from the table.

  “I found something.”

  Cole was tipped back in the chair, holding up the spiral notebook page.

  Pike said, “You can make out what he wrote?”

  “Not the words, but I got most of the numbers. Look-”

  Pike went over, and this time the girl came with him. Cole smoothed the page on the table, and pointed out one of the numbers. 18185.

  Pike said, “Like he started to write a phone number, but stopped.”

  818 was the area code for the San Fernando Valley.

  Cole said, “This isn’t a phone number. It looks like he started to write a phone number, but it’s an address-”

  Cole put one of his handmade maps over the spiral page, then looked at Larkin.

  “This is your street. The number jumped out because I’ve been making my notes by address.”

  Larkin said, “I’m at 17922.”

  “You’re three blocks north in the 17900 block. The numbers get larger as you go south. This is where you had the accident-”

  Cole touched a place on the street where he had made a small X to mark the accident, then tapped the building next to it.

  “-and this is 18185, right on the alley they were backing out of when you nailed them.”

  Cole had written each building’s address in small block numbers. 18185 was the abandoned warehouse at the mouth of the alley.

  Pike said, “When did Luis arrive in-country?”

  Cole checked the dates on the airline ticket.

  “Not until four days after the accident. The feds had already been all over the area. Larkin was back with her father in Beverly Hills, and the wreck was old news. If they were lining up on Larkin, they would want her loft and her home in Beverly Hills, but why would they care where the wreck happened?”

  Pike knew Cole was right. Luis and his hitters would have had no reason to check out the accident site.

  “So maybe he wasn’t sent to the wreck. Maybe he went to the building.”

  “We should take another look.”

  Pike went for a long-sleeved shirt as Cole gathered up his work. When Pike was buttoning th
e shirt, he caught the girl watching him again. He had been thinking about what to do when he left her once more, but now he decided.

  “You can stay here if you want. You don’t have to come sit in the car.”

  The girl looked surprised, then glanced away again as if the weight of his eyes was painful. The Larkin he had seen dancing on the bar hadn’t been awkward or uncomfortable, and neither had the Larkin in the desert, but this was a different Larkin. Pike sensed she wanted to say something, but hadn’t made peace with what.

  She said, “I’d like to come. If that’s okay.”

  Not telling or demanding. Asking.

  Pike said, “Whatever you want.”

  Five minutes later they went to the cars.

  28

  PIKE and Larkin followed Cole down from the hills, cruising silently along streets that were unnaturally clear. The girl wasn’t sitting with her legs twisted beneath her and her shoes on the seat the way she had yesterday. She faced forward with her feet on the floor. Pike made no comment. If she wanted to speak, she would speak. Or not.

  He watched her from the corner of his eye, and twice she seemed about to speak, but both times she turned away. They were crossing Sunset Boulevard when John Chen called.

  “I couldn’t call before now.”

  Chen was whispering so softly Pike had trouble hearing him. Other people were probably around.

  “Can you call from a better location?”

  “I’m at a homicide in Monterey Park. Some douche bag poured Drano down his mother’s throat. Pinned her until she stopped kicking, then turned himself in. I been out here since six fuckin’ o’clock, man. I’m in the bathroom.”

  “What do you have?”

  “You were spot-on about those prints.”

  “Get an ID?”

  “Two out of two through the South American database at Interpol. Shit, hang on-”

  Chen’s voice grew muffled, then louder, Chen saying, “I can’t help how long-it was bad carnitas-”

  Chen whispered, “Pricks.”

  “Tell me what you found.”

  “Jorge Manuel Petrada and Luis Alva Mendoza, Petrada having been born in Colombia and showing arrests all over Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Mendoza was born in Ecuador, but he managed to spread around his career, too. Both subjects have pulled prison time and are currently wanted on multiple counts of murder, with Mendoza showing wants on three counts of rape. Where’d you get those glasses, man?”