The Exile

by Allan Folsom

  Again Raymond looked away, only this time he changed his grip on the rail beside him and slid his free hand under his jacket to take hold of the Beretta in his belt. Just then the bus began to slow and he saw the bright lights of the Transit Center, then felt the swing of the bus as it turned in. He looked back to the old man. He was still watching him.

  It was unnerving enough even without the Transit Police, and Raymond knew he had to do something to break the man’s train of thought before he came to a conclusion and acted on it. As a result he did the only thing he could think of. He smiled.

  What came next was the longest moment of his life, a point in time where the elderly man did absolutely nothing but continue to stare. Raymond thought he would go crazy. Then, finally, and to his undying relief, the old gentleman smiled back. It was an immense, knowing smile, one that cut to the quick. A smile that said he knew exactly who Raymond was, but for reasons particular to himself had decided to keep it a secret. It was a gift from one stranger to another. One Raymond would cherish forever.

  43

  THE BARRON/HALLIDAY CAR, SANTA MONICA FREEWAY. 5:10 P.M.

  Halliday was pushing eighty, weaving in and out of freeway traffic, the red and yellow light bars flashing in the rear window.

  “What do you think’s going on with him?” Halliday asked. It was the first time he and Barron had been alone since that morning when Halliday had sent Barron hustling to Criminal Courts to make certain Raymond wasn’t allowed out on bail.

  “Three identical safe deposit keys to a box most likely in a bank somewhere in Europe. Raymond Oliver Thorne, born”—Halliday stumbled over the pronunciation—“Rakoczi Obuda Thokoly, Budapest, Hungary, in 1969, becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1987. He’s raising hell in L.A., but he’s got all this London and Europe and Russian business. Who the hell is he and what the hell is he up to?”

  London and Europe and Russia.

  Other things had come to light after Raymond’s murderous rampage began and the Scientific Investigations people started going back over the things found in his valise in earnest. Along with the Ruger automatic, the clips of ammunition, the passport, and the safe deposit keys—keys manufactured by a Belgian company that did business only in the European Community; and a company that could not (or perhaps would not) divulge to anyone, police agencies included, the location of safe deposit boxes that their safe deposit keys would unlock—had been a neatly folded change of clothes (sweater, shirt, socks, underwear, a shaving kit)—and a slim and inexpensive daily calendar. Inside it, four dates had been checked off and a simple handwritten notation made beneath each.

  Monday, March 11. London.

  Tuesday, March 12. London.

  Wednesday, March 13. London, France, London.

  Thursday, March 14. London. Beneath this was a short entry written in a foreign language and then, in English, Meet I.M. Penrith’s Bar, High Street. 8:00 P.M.

  Friday, March 15. 21 Uxbridge Street.

  That had been all until:

  Sunday, April 7. After the “7” was a handwritten forward slash followed by a single word written in the same language as the one under the March 14 date, a language quickly discovered to be Russian. Translated, the notation read: April 7/Moscow. The translated March 14 entry read: Russian Embassy/London.

  What any of it meant or how it pertained to what Raymond was doing or had done, if anything, was impossible to tell. The only connecting factor was that he’d had a plane ticket leaving L.A. on March 11 that would have put him in London on March 12. What he had planned to do when he got there and whether any of the other dates had to do with why he came to L.A. or had been in Chicago was equally impossible to tell.

  The FBI had been given access to the information to cross-check with their terrorist identification databases, and the London Metropolitan Police had been contacted. So far nothing untoward had come back. The dates were simply dates. London, France, and Moscow were nothing more than places, as was the Russian Embassy in London. The 21 Uxbridge Street address was also in London and within walking distance of the Russian Embassy, but it was a private residence, the ownership of which was being checked. Penrith’s Bar on High Street was in London, too, but it was merely a city pub frequented by students, and who I.M. was was impossible to know. So aside from the Ruger, the passport, and possibly the safe deposit keys there seemed little else to be gleaned from what they had unless they got Raymond himself and asked him.

  “We kill him, we’ll never know,” Barron said quietly.

  “What?” Halliday’s eyes were on the freeway in front of him.

  “Raymond.” Barron turned to look at Halliday directly. “The ‘go’ is on for him, right?”

  Halliday changed lanes quickly. “Red showed you the photos, didn’t he? Little speech about this ‘old witch of a city,’ the warning about your oath to the squad, threatening you not to try and walk away from it. We all got it.”

  Barron studied him, then looked away. Next to him, Halliday was the youngest of the squad. There was no way for Barron to know if Red had told him about every felon they’d taken down, so there was no way to know how many Halliday had been present for, or might have even done himself. What was clear, just in his manner and the way he talked about it, was that he had become immune to it. By now it was just part of the job.

  “You want to talk about it?” Halliday slowed behind a Cadillac limousine, eased the wheel left, then pounced on the accelerator. The car veered into the breakdown lane and shot forward in a storm of freeway dust.

  “About what?”

  “About the ‘go.’ You got a problem with it, talk, get it out. That’s the way it works, one player on the team talking to another about something that troubles him.”

  “It’s okay, Jimmy. I’m fine.” Barron looked away. The last thing he wanted was further justification for murder.

  “John.” Halliday looked over, warning written all over his face. “The legend is that no one has ever quit the squad. It’s not true.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Abruptly Halliday looked back, then goosed the siren and cut hard across four lanes of traffic to take the next off-ramp. At the bottom he slid to a stop behind a line of cars, then revved the siren again and swerved around them, taking a hard right through a red light and racing off, heading north on Robertson Boulevard toward Beverly Hills.

  “May 1965, Detective Howard White,” Halliday said. “August 1972, Detective Jake Twilly. December 1989, Detective Leroy Price. And those are just three I happen to know about.”

  “They quit?”

  “Yeah, they quit. And they’re all dead because of it, by and for the squad. All honored by the department as heroes afterward. That’s why I said if you have a problem, talk it out. Don’t be stupid and think you can act on your own. You’ll end up with a bullet in your head.”

  “It’s okay, Jimmy, don’t worry,” Barron said quietly. “Don’t worry.”

  5:20 P.M.

  44

  LAX, LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. 5:55 P.M.

  The shuttle bus’s doors closed, once more compressing the pungent smell of sea air and jet exhaust with the stale body odors of weary travelers as the driver pulled away from Tom Bradley International Terminal and into traffic inside the airport’s inner loop.

  Raymond stood midbus, as anonymous as anyone else, gripping the handrail and waiting patiently for the stops at Terminals 2 and 3 and then Tom Bradley International Terminal, where Lufthansa was located.

  Increasingly, his nerves were on edge, knowing that with each passing minute more and more Angelenos would be seeing the television news broadcasts. What had Barron said? “There are nine million of us and only one of you.” How long would it be before one of them recognized him and pulled out a cell phone right there to call the police?

  Lucky as he’d been, he had yet to reach the Lufthansa counter and the major hurdle of using Josef Speer’s passport and credit card to purchase a ticket. And afterward, assuming he
was successful, there were still more than three hours before his flight took off, which meant waiting in public all that time. The Baroness had assured him that if he had the wit and guile to survive, this would be an experience beyond value, and she was right. So far those tools had worked, and he knew if he stayed alert and did not fall prey to his own fears or the tenacity of the police, if he kept on just as he had, there was every reason to believe that by this time tomorrow he would be in London.

  LAPD PARKING GARAGE, PARKER CENTER. 6:25 P.M.

  John Barron went through the motions as if in a dream—unlocking the Mustang’s door, sliding behind the wheel. He barely remembered the interview with the teenage girl at the pizza shop in Beverly Hills. At about 2 P.M. she had observed a man she thought looked like the police fugitive whose photograph she had seen on television, but she hadn’t thought much about it and had gone home. Then she’d seen his picture on TV again and told her mother, who immediately called the Beverly Hills PD. They had interviewed her and taken her back to the pizza shop, where she described the circumstances and pointed to the spot where he had been standing. She told the same story again to Halliday and Barron when they arrived. The man had looked like Raymond. He had worn jeans and a blue-jean jacket. She couldn’t tell if he’d had purple hair, because he was wearing a baseball cap. If the cap had had an identifying logo, she didn’t remember.

  The Beverly Hills woman Lee and Valparaiso had talked to had given a similar description of a young man she’d helped to find a bus to Santa Monica at a little past two. Right there was a bingo because the times of day coincided. It told them, too, he had gone west from Brighton Way to the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards. The older woman had added to the teenager’s description by saying he had been exceedingly handsome and was carrying a backpack.

  That information in hand, Red had immediately ordered the investigation moved to the area between Beverly Hills and Santa Monica and brought in the L.A. Sheriff’s Department and the Santa Monica PD. Brought in, maybe, but as everyone knew, Raymond belonged to the 5-2, and if he were found the media and the public would be kept far away until they got there and took charge.

  Barron started the Mustang’s engine, eased the car out of the parking space, and headed out of the garage. He was going home, as was Halliday, to get some rest while Red and the others stayed on the job, coordinating efforts from Parker Center.

  Home? Rest? What did that mean?

  For nearly five years he had thought he was in an honorable profession, and then came the seemingly dream promotion to the 5-2. Then, almost overnight, the dream wrenched into an unthinkable nightmare, all twisted and warped and turned upside down. The idea of standing by and watching while Raymond was killed sickened him. Yet if Raymond had so much as raised a weapon against any of them, Barron would have shot him in an instant with no second thought at all. And the fact was he had tried to bring him down in the parking lot outside Criminal Courts, but Raymond had spun away at the last second and he’d missed the kill shot. So if he could have done it right there in public, why was it any different just to get him somewhere alone and do the same thing?

  Initially the answer had been easy. He was a cop, not a murderer. Red’s warning had given him more reason than ever to quit the 5-2. And frightening as it had been, Halliday’s warning had not deterred him. The problem was time. In going along with the squad, showing nothing, as he’d planned, until Dr. Flannery had found a place for him to take Rebecca, he was giving the 5-2 and himself every chance to catch Raymond. And when it happened he would be forced to be a part of his execution. Horrible enough in itself, but not as vile as the thought that had come over him that afternoon and continued to haunt him still—increasingly he was beginning to see how killing someone like Raymond could be justified. And once that premise was accepted the rest was easy. Just go along with it like the others did—impervious, immune, unaffected—believing it was for the good of everyone and the right thing to do.

  “No, goddammit!” Barron spat out loud.

  The whole thing was like some monstrous seductive drug and something he could not and would not be part of again. It was only a matter of time before they caught Raymond. Only a matter of time before they had him alone and one of them put a gun to his head and squeezed the trigger. That meant he had no choice but to go to St. Francis, collect Rebecca, and leave Los Angeles right then, right now, tonight.

  45

  6:30 P.M.

  Barron felt the pound of his heart and the cold sweat on his forehead as he eased the Mustang out onto the street. A moment later he clicked on his radio, tuning it to the 5-2’s secure channel 8. He wanted to know where they were and what they were doing.

  He heard nothing. The channel was silent.

  Abruptly he clicked to the main LAPD frequency, thinking maybe there was something there, but all he heard was the usual police chatter.

  He turned down San Pedro Street and clicked back to channel 8. It was as silent as before.

  Ahead he saw a man with crutches in the crosswalk. He slowed and stopped, waiting for him to pass. Sitting there the thought came to him that the squad should have done their homework better. Known more what kind of a person he really was before they brought him into it.

  The man with crutches reached the curb. Barron touched the accelerator and the Mustang shot forward. At the end of the block he took a hard right toward the freeway and Pasadena, his decision made, Raymond erased from his thoughts.

  Channel 8 was still silent, and he switched the radio to channel 10, the frequency Central Dispatch used to communicate with the 5-2. As he did the radio suddenly came to life.

  “Commander McClatchy.” Dispatch was trying to reach Red.

  “McClatchy.” Red’s voice came back.

  “German student tour group staying at the Westin Bonaventure. One of their people is missing. They just saw the composite sketch of the MacArthur Park victim on TV. They believe it’s him. Male Caucasian, twenty-two years. Josef, with an f, last name Speer. S-P-E-E-R. His hair was dyed purple. He hasn’t been seen since before noon.”

  “Copy. Thank you.” Barron heard Red pause, then, “Marty, Roosevelt. Get the hell back to the Bonaventure.”

  “Copy.” Valparaiso’s voice came back.

  “Christ!” Barron said out loud. Why the hell hadn’t he thought to look for the victim in the hotel? Raymond had been there, it was a natural. His prey was right under his nose. He’d found him and used him to get past the police units and then took him to MacArthur Park. Immediately a second thought flashed. Raymond’s notes were focused on Europe and Russia, and the kid was German!

  Barron glanced at the dashboard clock.

  6:37 P.M.

  He picked up his cell phone.

  46

  “Dan Ford, hang on a minute,” the one-eyed reporter said. He was bent over, fussing with the printer-connection plug on his laptop, a half-eaten tuna sandwich on the desk beside him, the telephone receiver tucked under one ear.

  “It’s me,” Barron said sharply.

  Ford stood up. “I’ve been trying to get you.” His questions came rapid fire. “Where the hell are you? What’s with your cell phone? What’s going on with the Beverly Hills PD?”

  “They found a body in a car, a New Jersey consultant. Looks like Raymond’s work.”

  “You get an ID on him? How did Raymond get to Beverly Hills? Any more on the kid in the—?”

  “Dan—I need your help. You in your office?”

  “More or less.” Minutes earlier Ford had just come huffing and sweating into his tiny cubicle of an office in the Los Angeles Times headquarters after several hours of covering the LAPD missing persons unit scouring the area around MacArthur Park trying to get an identification of the dead man.

  “Let me find my chair.” Ford walked around his desk holding the phone, lifting the cord over the piles of notes, books, and research materials that took up every inch of free space. “It’s gonna rain, you know, and soon. I can f
eel it all through my body. My wife thinks I’m nuts.” Dan Ford might have been twenty-six but any hint of rain gave him more sore joints, sore muscles, and sore bones than someone three times his age. It also gave him a throbbing ache behind his good eye.

  “Dan, I didn’t call for a weather report.” Urgency punched through Barron’s voice.

  “What do you need?” Ford found his chair and sat down.

  “Bring today’s international airline schedules up on your screen. I want to know what flights are still to go out from LAX to Germany tonight, nonstop.”

  “Germany?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Raymond?” Ford felt a rush. Barron knew something or was guessing something.

  “Maybe, I don’t know.”

  “Where in Germany?”

  “Don’t know that either. Try the three big ones, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Hamburg. Raymond had a ticket for London in his bag. It’s only a puddle jump there from any one of those cities.”

  Ford swiveled his chair and pulled his laptop to him, clicking onto the Times in-house travel reference.

  “Why Germany?”

  “Serendipity.”

  “That’s a no-answer, John. You don’t tell me, I don’t look it up.”

  “Dan, please—”

  “Okay. Why nonstop?”

  “I doubt he’d take a chance putting down at some other U.S. airport. He’s too hot.”