by Allan Folsom
“Is something wrong, Detective?”
“It’s—” Barron searched for the right word. “Personal, confidential—and,” he added, “extremely urgent, for reasons I can’t explain yet. I want to change some things in my life, and the first step is finding a place for Rebecca. I haven’t really thought where, maybe Oregon, Washington State, or Colorado, somewhere like that. But it needs to be away from here and done as soon as possible.”
There was a long silence, and Barron knew she was trying to understand what was going on. “Detective Barron,” she said finally, “considering Rebecca’s condition, I think you and I should sit down and talk.”
“Hey, John!”
Barron looked up sharply at the sound of his name. Halliday had just entered the room and was coming toward him quickly.
Barron turned back to the phone. “Let me call you a little later, Doctor. Thank you.” He clicked off just as Halliday reached him.
“There is no Raymond Thorne on Eighty-sixth Street in Manhattan,” Halliday said emphatically. “The German computer company he claimed he worked for doesn’t exist. His prints and ID came back clean from the Chicago PD, but we just found out they had two men tortured and shot to death in a tailor shop last Sunday not long before Raymond got on board the Southwest Chief. The murder weapon wasn’t recovered, but the autopsies suggest it’s about the same caliber as the Ruger found in Raymond’s bag. They want a ballistics test done on it.
“That bag also had a first class ticket in the name of Raymond Thorne from L.A. to London on a flight that left LAX at five-forty Monday afternoon, which suggests he wasn’t originally planning a two-day train trip to get here. I’m working with the Feds trying to get someone at State Department Passport Assistance to get us a readout on the magnetic tape on his passport. Polchak’s setting up the ballistics test. You go down to Raymond’s hearing at Criminal Courts and make sure the judge doesn’t let him out on bail.”
For the briefest moment Barron sat staring, as if he hadn’t heard.
“John.” Halliday pressed him. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yeah, Jimmy, I heard.” Barron was suddenly on his feet and sliding the cell phone into his jacket. “I’m on my way.”
25
CRIMINAL COURTS BUILDING, SAME TIME, 7:50 A.M.
Dressed in his orange jumpsuit, his hands cuffed behind him, Raymond shared an elevator with two thickly built deputies in tight uniforms who had escorted him from Parker Center and were taking him to his hearing in a courtroom on an upper floor. This was the moment he’d decided on between the few brief hours he’d slept during the night.
The idea that he might use the young and uncertain Detective Barron as a way out still lingered, but time was passing quickly. His original purpose in coming to Los Angeles had been for a final confrontation with the arrogant and outspoken Beverly Hills jeweler, Alfred Neuss. That he had chosen to go to him last was integral to the operation.
The initial phase of the plan had been to quickly and quietly collect the safe deposit keys from the people in San Francisco, Mexico City, and Chicago, and then equally quickly and quietly eliminate the keys’ holders. If that phase had worked as it should have, he would not only have the keys but at the same time would have learned the name and location of the French bank that contained the safe deposit box. Having that information, he would have immediately sent the first two keys by overnight express to Jacques Bertrand in Zurich. The third key would be sent the same way to the Baroness in London, where he would collect it upon his arrival on Tuesday. The following day he would travel to France and retrieve the contents of the box and then return immediately to London for crucial appointments the next day, which was Thursday, the day before they would carry out the deed itself—which was to be done in London on Friday, March 15, which was, most ironically, the Ides of March.
The second phase of the plan, and the reason for making Alfred Neuss his final stop in the Americas, had been to kill him—an act that would add immense leverage to their power base for what was to come on Friday. But his failure, even after torturing his victims, to learn the bank’s name and location made him realize that the distribution of the keys had merely been a safeguard, and that without knowing where the box was, forwarding the safe deposit box keys to either Bertrand or the Baroness would be senseless. The truth, as he finally realized, was that only two men in the world knew in what bank and in what French city the box was located, and Alfred Neuss was one of them. It was a truth that greatly ratcheted up the game and made getting to him more urgent than ever.
From the beginning timing had been everything, and it still was. All the more so in light of the information the police would now have. It meant he had no choice but to take definitive action before he became implicated any deeper in the American judicial system.
7:52 A.M.
One floor passed, then two.
The deputies were staring ahead, not looking at him. Jaws set, pistols clipped into rugged belt holsters alongside nightsticks and handcuffs, radio microphones fastened to shirt collars, their bulging muscles and steely, detached attitude conveyed the obvious intimidation: They were fully prepared to take any action necessary in the event their prisoner became difficult.
Yet Raymond knew that despite all that bearing and bravado they were little more than city workers collecting a salary. His motivation, on the other hand, was immeasurably larger and infinitely more complex. Taken with the extent of his training, the difference was immense.
26
7:53 A.M.
Neither deputy saw Raymond turn his wrists nimbly behind him, nor saw him slip off one handcuff, then the other. Neither saw his left hand move forward to flip the holster loop covering the closest deputy’s 9 mm Beretta. It was only in the nanosecond that followed that they sensed danger and started to turn. By then it was too late. The Beretta was placed behind the first deputy’s ear and then the other’s, one, two, with blinding speed.
The ear-shattering roar of the gunshots filled the tiny chamber, dying away just as the elevator reached its designated floor and stopped. Calmly, Raymond pressed the button for the top floor, and the elevator started upward again. One of the deputies moaned. Raymond ignored him, the same way he ignored the pungent smell of gunpowder and the blood slowly oozing across the elevator’s floor. He stripped off his orange prisoner’s suit and pulled on the first deputy’s pants and shirt. Then he took the guns from both men and stood up, adjusting his deputy uniform as the elevator came to a stop.
Immediately the door slid open, revealing a broad hallway in a public building filled with people. Quickly he touched the button for the ground floor, then stepped into the hallway. A half second later the elevator doors closed behind him and he walked off into the crowd, looking for the nearest staircase.
7:55 A.M.
The Criminal Courts Building was two blocks down and across the street from Parker Center, and Barron walked the distance quickly, the core of him locked into the nearly overwhelming rawness of his own emotions, the rage and anger toward the squad, who they really were and what they had done so coldly not just to Donlan but to him. At the same time, the practical side of him told him it would take time to find a place to relocate Rebecca, and until that time came and he actually put her in the car and made the move, there was nothing he could do but play along, do his job, and not tip his hand.
7:58 A.M.
Dressed in the fallen deputy’s uniform, the Beretta automatics of the dead officers tucked into his waistband, Raymond ran down one flight of fire stairs, and then another. Suddenly he stopped. A man in jeans and a black jacket was coming up the stairs. Who he was or what he was doing there made no difference. What Raymond needed was something to cover his uniform and the Berettas. The black jacket would do.
Immediately Raymond started down.
Two stairs. Three. Four. The man was right there. Raymond nodded as they passed. A half beat more and Raymond turned and went back up.
8:00 A.M.
He walked down it deliberately, trying to act as if he had some particular destination. Signs were everywhere. This court, that court, restrooms, elevators. The sheer number of people he had to move around slowed him, and that was troublesome because time was an ever more important factor. By now the bodies of the deputies would have been discovered, and with them his orange prisoner’s jumpsuit. At any minute he could expect the building to come alive with an army of law enforcement officers looking for him.
“Hey, you!” A bailiff with a radio-microphone on his shirt collar was coming toward him. To this man the jacket did not hide his uniform. Instead it called attention to it. Raymond ignored him and kept walking.
“I said you! In the deputy pants!” The bailiff kept coming. Raymond looked back and saw him start to speak into the microphone at his collar.
Raymond simply stopped and turned, firing point-blank with both guns. The roar of gunshots shook the hall. The bailiff danced sideways, then fell backward, toppling over an elderly man in a wheelchair. People screamed and ran, ducking for cover. Raymond walked quickly away.
5-2 SQUAD ROOM. 8:02 A.M.
“We’re on our way! Barron’s there now!” Halliday slammed down the phone and headed for the door. Polchak was running and already halfway through it.
CRIMINAL COURTS BUILDING. 8:03 A.M.
Barron fought his way across the main floor against a torrent of panic. Terrified people coming from everywhere were trying to get out of harm’s way, running from the cafeteria and the main corridor by the elevators, pouring out of fire-stairs doors. All he knew was what Halliday had radioed: The two deputies transporting Raymond had been killed, and there had been shooting on an upper floor.
“Christ!” he muttered under his breath, his personal monsters shoved aside by the immediate crisis and the rush of adrenaline surging with it.
Suddenly a man in a black jacket pushed past Barron in a crowd rushing from a fire-stairs door. It was another step before Barron realized.
“Whoa!” He whirled to see Raymond struggle through an emergency exit and take off, hurtling past the throng of people trying to escape him.
Barron’s Beretta came up in his hand and he shoved his way toward the door, knocking people aside as he did. Outside he could see Raymond running down the long zigzag pedestrian ramp toward the parking lot. At the same time, uniforms were racing in from everywhere.
“Black jacket!” Barron barked into his radio. “He’s heading down the parking lot ramp!”
Raymond hit the bottom of the ramp on the run. Using the crowd for cover, he saw the street and ran for it.
A split second later Barron bolted out the doors and raced down the ramp. At the same time, Halliday and Polchak banged through the doors behind him.
“You! Black jacket! Freeze!” A female voice barked behind a racing Raymond.
He whirled, his hand reaching under the jacket, a stolen Beretta coming up in it. A uniformed policewoman stood twenty paces away, her weapon pointed right at him.
“Watch it!” Barron screamed too late.
Boom! Boom!
Raymond squeezed off two quick rounds. The policewoman staggered backward and fell to the pavement, her gun firing once as she did.
Raymond glanced back toward the building, then dodged around a Cadillac and took off, ducking behind parked cars, running for the street. Barron pulled up hard at the base of the ramp, Beretta held in two hands, taking careful aim. Raymond saw him and twisted away just as Barron fired.
Searing heat tore in a straight line across Raymond’s throat, throwing him off balance. He nearly fell, then recovered and half staggered, half ran on, one hand pressed against the wound at his throat. Behind him three black-and-white patrol units screeched into the parking lot. To his left he could see three more slide around a corner coming down the street toward him. At the same time, a taxi pulled up directly in front of him. A rear door opened and a middle-aged African-American woman got out, followed by a young African-American teenage girl.
Raymond pulled his hand from his throat. There was a little blood, but not much. The slug had merely creased and burned him. In five steps he was at the cab. His left hand flashed out and he dragged the terrified teenager to him. Spinning her around, he shoved a Beretta automatic tight against her head and looked up. What he saw was a dozen or more heavily armed uniformed police coming toward him. He could see them trying to find a way to shoot him without killing her. To both his left and right, more black-and-white police cars cordoned off the street. Then he saw John Barron push past the uniforms and come toward him. Two of the plainclothes detectives from the garage were with him; one of them had been on the train.
“Stop there!” Raymond yelled, his eyes going to the middle-aged woman who had climbed from the cab with the girl. She stood frozen in the middle of the street caught between him and the police. She was staring at him, horrified.
“Put down your weapon, Raymond!” Barron shouted. “Let her go! Let her go!” He and the other two were twenty yards away and still coming.
“One more step, John, and I will kill her,” Raymond said loudly but calmly, his blue-green eyes locked on Barron’s.
Barron stopped; so did Halliday and Polchak. There it was again. The familiarity, the cool composure.
“See if you can work your way for a side shot,” Barron said quietly.
Halliday moved slowly left, Polchak right.
“No!” The woman was suddenly screaming. “No! No! Everybody stay away from him! Stay away!”
“Hold it,” Barron breathed. Halliday and Polchak stopped where they were.
“Thank you,” Raymond said to the woman. Then, with the gun still to the girl’s head, he backed up until the two were against the cab. Inside he could see the cabbie hunched over, trying to hide from sight.
“Get out!” he commanded. “Get out!”
Like a scene out of a cartoon, the driver’s door flew open and the cabbie bolted out.
“Run! Run away!” Raymond shouted. And the cabbie ran off toward the police. Then Raymond swung back to look at Barron.
“Please move the police cars, John, we’re going that way.” He nodded toward the street in front of him.
Barron hesitated, then looked to a uniformed sergeant behind him. “Let him out.”
The sergeant paused before speaking into his radio. A moment later the black-and-whites at the end of the street backed up, opening the roadway.
The Beretta held fast against the young girl’s head, Raymond shoved her into the taxi’s front passenger seat, then slid in behind the wheel. The door slammed. There was a shriek of tires and the cab screamed off. Two seconds later it rocketed past the black-and-whites at the end of the block and was gone.
8:14 A.M.
27
CRIMINAL COURTS BUILDING. 8:15 A.M.
“How the hell could he get away? There are a hundred uniforms in this building. Fifty more outside!”
Valparaiso at his sleeve, McClatchy pushed angrily through a gang of uniforms, dismayed judges, and court officers. Shoving through a door, he went fast down the fire stairs toward the basement. McClatchy was angrier than Valparaiso had ever seen him. It got even worse as the word “hostage” came over their radios in a scramble of police-speak as they pushed through the door at the bottom and went into the underground garage, where Polchak waited behind the wheel of Red’s unmarked Ford.
“What hostage?” Red barked at Polchak, buckling in beside him as Valparaiso jumped into the rear seat.
“Teenage female,” Polchak told him. “African-American. That’s all we know. Her aunt was with her, they’re talking to her now.”
“Where the hell is Roosevelt?”
Red light and siren, Polchak screamed up the ramp and turned into traffic. “Taking his kid to the denti
st. His wife works,” he said, nearly sideswiping a city bus.
“I know his wife works!” McClatchy was furious. At them, at the hundred and fifty other cops, at the whole thing.
“Christ!”
Five black-and-whites and one unmarked detective’s car followed the United Independent taxi, number 7711, through the city streets in a slow-speed chase. Each car had its powerful roof lights dancing, but that was all; the sirens were purposely kept silent. Above, Air 14, an LAPD helicopter, had been quickly scrambled and was keeping pace. All along the route—South Grand Avenue to Twenty-third Street, Twenty-third to Figueroa, then south on Figueroa—people stood on the sidewalk waving and cheering as the 7711 taxi passed. The whole show was being seen live on TV as helicopters from three television stations followed the action from high above. Police chases were common in L.A. and had been for years, but they were still followed by a massive television audience that had station managers wishing they could have two or three a week just to boost ratings.
Barron and Halliday rode in 3-Adam-34, the lead black-and-white, commandeered from the mass of black-and-whites that suddenly descended on the Criminal Courts Building. This was no thrill-a-second movie chase; this was a solemn procession at twenty-five miles an hour. All they could do was follow, and try to project what Raymond had planned for the moment when it ended. If they had any advantage at all, it was that Red McClatchy was one of the best hostage negotiators in the business and that two of the following four black-and-whites held crack LAPD sharpshooters.