by Al Roker
“Get going, Billy. And don’t do anything stupid,” Stew said, his voice sounding as if the seat were talking to me.
“Or what? You’ll shoot me?”
“You and the security guards.”
“What’s a few more murders, right?” I said.
That shut him up.
I started the car. Through the bars of the gate, I saw a silver Prius ambling past soundlessly, headed for the security kiosk.
I backed until I hit the beam that slid the gate open, then continued backing into the lane. I put it in drive and crept forward until I could see the taillights of the Prius. When they disappeared I counted to fifty, then got moving.
The youthful Rambo was on duty with a guard only a few years older, probably the one MIA the previous night. He was the personification of the surfer dude, tanned, lanky, and slightly spacey. Unlike Rambo, he was hatless, the better to show off his long, curly blond locks. He gave me a funky salute and almost crooned, “Have yourself a merry evening, sir.”
“Thank you,” I said. Then, following the script, I added, “As Rambo can tell you, my name’s Blessing.” Hearing his name, Rambo joined us, waving. “I’m moving out of the Villa Delfina tonight. Please make a note on your log that I left the keys in the guesthouse for the realtor.”
“Sure thing,” the blond said.
“Pleasure meeting you, Mr. Blessing,” Rambo added.
And thus ended my Malibu stay.
“That was nice,” the car seat said.
Round the bend, the silver Prius was parked by the side of the road. I pulled up behind it.
“Oh, man. I hope that means I can get out of this vise,” Stew said.
I did not reply. I just remained behind the wheel as I was told.
Before too long, Blaney’s Mercedes parked behind me, and he got out.
He’d taken off his glasses.
He walked to the other side of the Lexus and opened the passenger door, and I got a good look at those cloudy eyes. Pretty damned unnerving.
“You can come out now, Stew,” he said. “Unless you like it back there.”
“Take this fucking gun,” Stew said, holding the weapon up. When Blaney complied, the actor extricated himself from the well, accompanied by a series of moans, grunts, and curses.
“Now what?” he asked.
“You sit right down on the passenger seat and keep Blessing obedient while he drives.”
“I’m not doing that again. While I was shepherding the musician, I kept thinking: What do I do if he runs a red light or signals a cop in some other way? Do I shoot him? And then what? Shoot the cop? Forget it.”
“What do you suggest?”
“You take the passenger seat, and I’ll drive your car.”
“Nobody but me drives my car,” Blaney said.
“Why don’t we just call this whole thing a mistake?” I said. “I’ll go find a hotel.”
“Let Billy drive the Prius,” Stew said. “Trey can carry the pistol.”
“Forget Trey,” Blaney said. “I don’t think he’s ever held a gun in his life. Here’s the deal. Trey leaves the Prius where it is. We’ll drop him off here after we’re done. He drives the Lexus, and I drive my car with you and Blessing in back.”
Carpooling can be murder.
Chapter
FORTY-SEVEN
“Where is this so-called dump?” I asked, as our caravan of two rolled south on the PCH.
“Doc’s private burial ground,” Stew said. “How many stiffs you put in there, Doc?”
“Shut up that kind of talk,” Blaney growled.
My nose itched, and I reached for it, forgetting that my right wrist was cuffed to the metal handle above the right door. It took me only a few seconds to remember my left hand was free. It’s called flexibility. “How long a drive will it be?” I asked.
“A couple hours,” Stew answered. “Maybe longer. Depends on traffic. What difference does it make?”
“The longer it takes, the longer I live.”
Blaney was a good wheelman. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, but he took it easy, keeping the big car cruising at the legal limit. For obvious reasons.
“Nice car,” I said.
“Damn right.”
“What year Mercedes?”
“ ’08.”
“What do you call the gray color?”
“Gray.”
Point made.
After about fifteen minutes of silence, Blaney clicked on the radio. A late-night DJ was introducing Jerry Goldsmith’s score for the movie Wild Rovers.
He quickly changed the station, coming in on the middle of Def Leppard’s “When Love and Hate Collide.”
“Fuck you, Doc,” Stew said. “Go back to the other station.”
“My car. My music,” Blaney replied.
We headed east along the Santa Monica Freeway. So far, it had been a familiar route. But eventually we moved beyond that. “Where are we, exactly, Stew?”
“East L.A. You wouldn’t like it here, podnah. Trust me.”
“What the hell was that?” Blaney asked suddenly. He turned down the radio.
“What was what?” Stew replied.
“A beep.”
“How should I know? It’s your car. Your fucking music. Your fucking beep.”
Blaney turned the radio off. “It was an electronic beep. Didn’t you hear it?”
“No.”
“You did check Blessing for a wire, right?”
“A wire? You nuts?” Stew replied. “He was wading in the water when I grabbed him.”
“I definitely heard a beep. Check.”
I used my left hand to lift up my shirt, exposing an impressively handsome, subtly muscled brown chest with not a sign of a wire.
“Clean.”
“Check his shorts,” Blaney demanded.
“You check his shorts,” Stew said.
We approached a green sign that stretched across five highway lanes. We took the lane marked 605 North.
“Where does this lead?” I asked.
“Right past El Monte, considered the end of the Santa Fe Trail by its natives—very few of them black, by the way, Billy.”
“Then where?”
“Damn if you don’t sound like a kid on a family outing,” Stew said. “The next big town will be Azusa.”
“Then Cuc-amonga?” I asked.
Stew smiled, evidently remembering the old Jack Benny gag routine. He’d probably seen it during its first run. “No. We won’t be makin’ it to Cuc-amonga this trip.”
Somewhere in the Azusa area, Blaney left the freeway and headed up a winding road, going north, according to the little lighted compass on his rearview mirror. “What do they call this?” I asked, gesturing with my free hand toward the craggy moonlit landscape.
“Podnah, you are looking at the San Gabriel Mountains. And we are now in the Angeles National Forest, the wild and woolly edge of Los Angeles. Newsweek magazine called it the Prime Evil Forest. Acres of pot. Human bones. Wild critters. Predators of every stripe.”
“Welcome home, boys,” I said.
“You don’t hear that beep?” Doc shouted.
“In your head,” Stew said, looking at me and making a finger-circle, “this guy’s nuts” gesture near his temple.
“What do they call this street?”
“Chico Canyon Road. Doc’ll be taking a dogleg soon onto a skinny little path. Don’t ask me its name, because I haven’t a clue. May not even have a real name. It leads to a generally unknown ridge to one of the steepest cliffs in this part of the US of A. Take one step too many and you go down, down, down, past inaccessible canyons and ravines untrammeled by living human toe. Right, Doc?”
“Not listening.”
“Then why’d you answer?” Stew chuckled.
So nice to see his good humor was returning.
“That where Gibby and Fitzpatrick now rest?”
“Along with some of Doc’s other patients.”
“There’s
my blue rock,” Blaney said. He swung a sharp left onto a road that looked more like a tar-covered bike path. The Mercedes-Benz took the bumps and potholes in stride.
We drove upward for at least fifteen minutes. The higher up, the lower the temperature. In my shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops, I was getting downright chilly. It didn’t help that the fog, merely wispy when we entered the mountain range, had quickly thickened to the density of a cumulus cloud. A giant, damp, cold cumulus cloud.
The Lexus, with Trey at the wheel, was maybe two car lengths behind, but, with the fog and a moisture that coated the rear window, I couldn’t see much more than its headlights. Beyond that, the road looked dark and empty.
That could be a problem.
“Can you see where you’re goin’, Doc?” Stew asked.
“That a comment about my eyes?”
“It’s a comment about the fog.”
“What fog?” Blaney said, and laughed.
Everybody was so jolly, now that Billy was about to be thrown into a bottomless ravine.
“You sure this … whatever it is, has no name?”
“Doc?”
“The road?” Blaney asked. “Yeah, it’s got a name. Dump Road.” He laughed again.
It was like Comedy Central in our sleek death car.
“Hey, Stew!” I said. “Knock, knock.”
He looked at me, half grinning. “Okay. Who’s there?”
“Three dead bodies in a ravine, covered by insects, flesh being ripped away by birds of prey and vermin.”
He scowled. “Not funny, Billy.”
“My point exactly.”
“Just passed the yellow rock,” Doc announced. “Won’t be long now.”
“As the mohel said, putting away his knife.”
“You know, Billy, you’re pretty damned weird,” Stew said. “But I gotta give you props for holding up.”
“That’s how I roll.”
Blaney stopped the sedan, turned off the engine, and killed the lights. “We’re close enough,” he said. “Don’t want to push our luck in this fog.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and removed something. He reached back with it. The key to the cuffs.
Stew took it with his free hand. He hesitated, apparently wondering if he could unlock the cuff left-handed. Then, having switched the gun and key, he paused again, trying to figure out how to get the key to the lock without moving close enough for me to make a grab for the gun.
Blaney watched him until he could stand it no longer. “Give him the goddamn key, Stew, and let him unlock it himself. If he tries anything, shoot the bastard. I’m gonna bring the Lexus up.”
He threw open his door, letting in a wave of cold, wet fog before slamming it again.
On the long drive to Dump Road, along with the other things I was hoping to achieve, I’d tried to figure out my options once we’d arrived at the live-or-die moment. I was limited by the fact that there were only four objects in play on the backseat. Stew and myself were two. He was bigger, stronger, and more athletic. My being more alluring to the opposite sex didn’t count. No way could I overpower him.
Object three: the gun. I refer you back to the overpowering thing. That left me with object four: the set of handcuffs.
My original plan involved distracting Stew when he tried to unlock the cuffs. I had one very powerful distraction. But my having control of the key was a major improvement. Still, I thought I’d use the distraction anyway. It couldn’t hurt. Unless it compelled him to shoot me.
He held out the key.
“What made you decide to frame Roger?” I asked, taking the little metal object.
“That cop, Brueghel, showed up the day after the bombing,” Stew said. “Scared the shit out of me, but he just wanted to ask about the fight you and Roger had. I could tell from the questions he asked, he thought the bomb had been meant for you. And for some reason, he really wanted Roger to be the bad guy. So I figured why not make him happy? Doc did the black-bag job at Roger’s.”
I turned until I was facing the right door, blocking my action with the key. “I thought you might have had another reason for throwing Roger in the fire.” I was having trouble with the key. I always do. “A personal reason.”
“You mean Dani?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“There wasn’t anything there. She told me … convinced me there was no sex going on.”
The double lock clicked, and the cuff’s jaws popped apart, freeing it from the door handle. “I hope not,” I said. “He was her real father.”
There was a moment of total silence in the car. Well, not total. Just the barest discernible beep was coming from the right pocket of my pants. Blaney must have had the hearing of a dog or a teenager.
“What the fuck did you say?” This was Stew in his Owen Wister “Smile when you say that” Western gunfighter mode.
I kept facing the window, believing he considered himself too heroic to shoot a man in the back.
“Think about it, Stew. Does she look like you? Brunette hair. High cheekbones. Green eyes?”
“That … That doesn’t … You don’t know …”
“You were on location in Canada, making a cop movie,” I said. “Gloria and Roger were in Palm Springs making a baby. You do the math.”
He was breathing like a fat man who’d just run up a flight of stairs. “You … You’re … Roger’s a lying fuck if …”
“I didn’t hear about it from him,” I said, hoping Gloria would forgive my betrayal of confidence.
He screamed, and I felt his hand digging into my shoulder, trying to turn me around. I did turn, quicker than he’d been expecting, and using the handcuffs like brass knuckles, did my best to mess up his multimillion-dollar profile.
His gun exploded, punching holes in the car door and shattering the window. By then I was scuttling past his legs, heading for the opposite door. The noise had been so loud it left my ears painful and barely working.
My punch had busted his nose, but it hadn’t put him out. The pain distracted him enough for me to crawl past him and get the door open. Another shot went through the top of the car as I tumbled out onto my bare knees.
“What the hell’s goin’ on up there?” Blaney yelled from somewhere in the fog.
I wasn’t sure I could stand, and I figured I’d be less apt to get shot if I stayed down. I belly-crawled away from the Mercedes and into the mist. I had no idea where the cliff’s edge might be, and the fog had grown even thicker. I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me.
It became a case of crawl a little, reach out and test for terra firma, crawl a little more.
I heard angry voices behind me. Blaney screaming about the damage to his car. Stew yelling that he wanted to cut out my heart. Poor Stew—he’d brought a gun to a heart-cutting contest.
I removed my cellphone from my pants pocket, held it to my ear. “Somebody, be there, please,” I said softly.
It was silent. Dead. Except for the tiniest beeps from its inner mechanisms. My heart sank.
At the guesthouse, I’d seen the cellular and grabbed it when the gang was busy arguing and emptying out my closet. Remembering Cassandra’s instruction about the ease of returning calls, I’d found Brueghel’s number on the list, turned the sound down as far as it would go, and called him. Then I’d put the phone in my pocket.
I’d hoped he’d had access to his phone. I’d hoped he’d been able to hear our conversation well enough to get the drift of what was going on. Along the drive, I’d had other hopes. That turning down the incoming sound had had no effect on the transmitting sound. That we weren’t traveling in a dead zone. That Brueghel wouldn’t be too late to save me.
Finally, I’d hoped that if nothing else worked, I’d die from fright or heart failure or flying seagull, anything, before I hit the bottom of the ravine.
That last hope had returned, growing stronger with every moment of cellular silence.
Damn! I would have slapped myself behind the head
if this had been a sitcom. The volume was turned down. I turned it up from zero and heard “—ing, this is Mizzy Campbell. Can you hear me?”
“Sweetest sound I ever heard,” I said.
“Great. We’re trying to find you. Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to locate your unnamed road, and the fog is not cooperating. Did you see anything that might help us find the road?”
“It’s a narrow macadam,” I whispered. “I didn’t see it, but the driver, Doc Blaney, said it was marked by a blue rock. There’s a yellow rock further up.”
“Thanks. We couldn’t hear Blaney very well. Just you and Gentry. What’s your situation?”
“Facing death would cover it.”
I heard Brueghel grumble something.
“Pete says for you to hang in there.”
Heart-stoppingly close behind me, I heard Trey yell, “It’s coming from over here.”
I saw his outline in the fog.
I dialed down the phone’s volume and replaced it in my pocket. Then I crawled onward, finger-testing the ground in front of me.
Never look back is the advice of choice.
I looked back. Two vague outlines.
Onward.
My hand swept emptiness.
I was less than an arm’s length from the edge of something. My worst-possible-scenario outlook told me it had to be the first step to eternity.
I felt the edge and backed a little.
“The flashlight’s no damn use,” Blaney yelled to my right. “It doesn’t cut through. We need, I don’t know, a blower of some kind.”
I moved left quietly, on elbows and knees. Maintaining arm’s distance from the edge, I was struck by the fear that I was on an outcropping surrounded by empty space on three sides. That stopped me.
I flattened on the ground, determined to stay there until the detectives found me, or Blaney and his cohorts found me, or the cows came home. I was cold and damp. My knees were scraped raw. And to top it all off, I had to pee.
It wasn’t pleasant.
“Well, look what I found.”
It was Blaney, standing beside me, pointing a gun at my head. “You are so going down,” he said.
I pushed up into a sitting position. That’s all I did, I swear to God. I’m not sure how Blaney interpreted it. A threat, I guess. He took a backward step … and wasn’t there anymore. Just like Wile E. Coyote.