The Exile

by Allan Folsom

  Barron took a sip of hastily made instant coffee and dialed the number he had been given and waited as the call rang through. On the counter beside him rested a .45 caliber Colt Double Eagle automatic. It was his own gun, pulled from a locked drawer in his bedroom to replace the Beretta Raymond had taken from him at the airport.

  “Stemkowski,” a rugged, raspy voice came back as the phone was picked up.

  “This is John Barron, LAPD, Five-Two Squad. Sorry to wake you, but we’ve got a real bad man on the loose out here.”

  “So I hear. What can I do?”

  A real bad man. Barron was alone in his house dressed in sweatpants and a worn LAPD Academy T-shirt. He could have been stark naked standing in the middle of Sunset Boulevard at rush hour for all it mattered. He wanted as much information as Chicago PD homicide investigator Jake Stemkowski could give him on the men killed in the tailor shop.

  “They were tailors,” Stemkowski said. “Brothers, sixty-seven and sixty-five years old. Last name Azov. A-Z-O-V. They were Russian immigrants.”

  “Russian?”

  Suddenly Barron flashed on the notes in Raymond’s daily calendar. Russian Embassy/London. April 7/Moscow.

  “That surprise you?”

  “Maybe, I’m not sure,” Barron said.

  “Well, Russian, whatever, they had been U.S. citizens for forty years. We retrieved a file of Russian names covering half the states in the country. Thirty-four in the L.A. area alone.”

  “L.A.?”

  “Yeah,” Stemkowski grunted.

  “They Jewish?”

  “You thinking hate crime?”

  “Maybe,” Barron said.

  “Maybe you’re right, but they weren’t Jewish. They were Russian Orthodox Christians.”

  “Get me the list.”

  “Soon as I can.”

  “Thanks,” Barron said. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Nope, time to get up.”

  “Thanks again.”

  Barron hung up and stood there. In front of him was the .45 Colt Double Eagle. To the right, near the refrigerator, was the photograph of him and Rebecca taken at St. Francis with the caption “Brother and Sister of the Year” under it. He didn’t know what to do about Rebecca now. Though it had been barely forty-eight hours, everything that had gone on before seemed to be in a distant past. The horror and revulsion he’d felt at Donlan’s execution, at finding out what the squad did and had done for so long, at Red’s warning and Halliday’s, too, all seemed part of another life, lived when he was a much younger man. All that mattered now was that Red was dead and his killer was still out there. A man they knew almost nothing about but who would kill again and again until he was stopped. The sense of it filled him with rage. He could feel the pump of his heart and the blood rushing through him. His eyes left the photograph and swung back to the Colt automatic.

  It was then he realized what had happened. He had become what he feared most. He had become one of them.

  57

  BEVERLY HILLS. SAME DAY, THURSDAY, MARCH 14. 4:40 A.M.

  Raymond hunched over the computer screen in Alfred Neuss’s small study. On it was a coded message from Jacques Bertrand in Zurich. Translated, it read:

  Documents being prepared in Nassau, Bahamas. Aircraft arranged for. Confirmation to follow.

  That was all. The Baroness had told him earlier that arranging for a passport to be prepared and delivered to the pilot who would bring it to him would take time. He had told Bertrand to cancel the entire thing after alerting him to the fact that he had abandoned the original plan and was on his way to Frankfurt. So they’d had to begin the process all over. It had been no one’s fault, it just was. No, that was wrong, it was something else.

  God was still testing him.

  ST. FRANCIS SANCTUARY. 8:00 A.M.

  The thing John Barron looked at was pure white. Then he saw the hand, its fingertips covered with red, touch the white, making a big, scarlet circle. An eye was dropped into the middle of it, then a second eye. Then a quick triangular nose. And finally a mouth, downturned and sad, like the mask of tragedy.

  “I’m okay,” Barron mouthed. He tried to smile, then turned from where Rebecca stood finger painting at her easel in St. Francis’s cramped little art room and went to an open window to look out at the sweeping green of the institution’s carefully tended lawns.

  The rain from the night before had given a God-cleansing shower to the city, leaving Los Angeles clean and fresh and drying out in sparkling sunshine. But its purity and radiance only masked the truth of what Rebecca had drawn—too many people were dead and he was going to do something about it.

  Barron started at a touch at his sleeve and turned. Rebecca stood beside him, wiping the last of the finger paint on a small terrycloth towel. Finished, she put the towel aside and took both his hands in hers and looked up at him. Her dark eyes reflected everything he felt—his anger and pain and loss. He knew she was trying to understand all of it and was upset and frustrated that she could not tell him so.

  “It’s alright,” he whispered, and put his arms around her. “It’s alright. It’s alright.”

  PARKER CENTER. 8:30 A.M.

  Dan Ford had positioned himself in the front row among the cameras and microphones as the mayor of Los Angeles read from a written statement. “Today the people of Los Angeles mourn the death of Commander Arnold McClatchy, the man everyone knew as Red. ‘No hero, just a cop,’ as he would say, who gave the supreme sacrifice so that a fellow officer might live—”

  The last words caught in the mayor’s throat and for a moment he paused. Then, collecting himself, he continued, saying the governor of California had ordered flags to be flown at half-staff over the state capitol in McClatchy’s honor. Further, he said, following the commander’s wishes there was to be no funeral, “just a simple gathering of friends at his house. You all know how Red hated things maudlin and liked to get them over quickly when they started to get that way.” There was a brief smile but no one laughed. Then the mayor passed the microphone to Chief of Police Louis Harwood.

  As quickly, the mood changed from somber to stern as Harwood said that at his orders, members of the 5-2 Squad would not be available to the media. Period. They were working to apprehend the fugitive Raymond Oliver Thorne. Period. Any questions the press might have were to be addressed through LAPD Media Relations Division. Period. End of session.

  Local media people who covered the LAPD understood. The rest, who, by now, numbered nearly a hundred—with more on the way as the international press began to flood in—felt they were being kept from the center of a huge, ongoing drama. And they were, purposely. Apart from respecting the privacy and devastating sorrow of the men of the 5-2, the department itself, suffering its own grief and loss, was enraged at the treatment the media was giving the whole thing.

  The killing of Red McClatchy not withstanding, five other peace officers and two civilians were dead and the killer was still on the loose. As a result the 5-2’s legendary reputation as one of the finest law enforcement units in the country was starting to be portrayed to the public as, if not inept, then certainly ironic. Overnight, Raymond’s actions had made the City of Angels the Wild West again. Instantly a cold-blooded killer had become a tabloid hero, a bold, daring outlaw someone had dubbed “Trigger Ray Thorne,” whose headline exploits were being blazoned across the world. Seemingly without conscience or past, Raymond Oliver Thorne had become a twenty-first-century John Dillinger and Billy the Kid rolled into one. He was a young, super-handsome, fearless, and merciless gunman who shot his way out of impossible situations and outwitted the authorities at every turn. Better yet, he was still at large, and the longer he stayed that way the greater the already huge television ratings and gargantuan sales of daily newspapers.

  That kind of circus was something the LAPD would not tolerate, especially now, when every reporter there wanted an interview with some member of the squad. The simplest solution, it was concluded, was to keep them incommunicad
o from the media. And that was what had been done.

  The lone exception was Dan Ford. The department knew they could trust him not only to report the truth but to keep silent when he knew things that would make the tabloids salivate and intensify the circuslike atmosphere or interfere with the investigation. For instance, his knowledge of the ballistics test connecting Raymond to the murders in Chicago. Or the ongoing investigations into the torture-murders in San Francisco and Mexico City. Or, more personally, that at Halliday’s phone call confirming the Chicago-murder association, John Barron had abruptly cast off his tragic pall and been immediately in touch with the Chicago PD and its homicide detective assigned to the Pearson Street murders. These were the kinds of things Dan Ford knew but kept to himself, and that was why the department let him in when the others were kept out.

  58

  BEVERLY HILLS. 8:45 A.M.

  Raymond stared at the computer screen. It had been exactly four hours since he had received the e-mail from Jacques Bertrand. What was taking so long to confirm the rest he didn’t know. He wanted to pick up the phone and call him, demanding to find out. But he couldn’t.

  All he could do was wait and trust this was not the day Neuss’s maid or some other household help would show up and demand to know who he was and what he was doing there. Instead of worrying, he kept the Beretta at hand and put his full energy into a systematic search of the files in Neuss’s computer and then of his apartment—examining every drawer, closet, cabinet, piece of furniture, even planter, inspecting literally every inch of the space, looking for another safe deposit key or information that would tell him the location of the safe deposit box. Everywhere he turned up nothing. The closest he had come was finding a false drawer in Neuss’s wife’s dressing table where she kept her jewels. The jewels were there. The key was not. The information was not.

  In the end all he could do was put things back the way he found them and wait for Jacques Bertrand to confirm what he’d promised.

  And hope no one watching television news or reading a morning newspaper had seen him walk down Linden Drive last night, or glimpsed him from an apartment window across the street.

  ZURICH, SWITZERLAND. SAME TIME, 5:45 P.M. ZURICH TIME.

  Baroness Marga de Vienne’s attention was on the television so tastefully mounted into the mahogany bookshelves in Jacques Bertrand’s elegant private fourth-floor office on the Lindenhof, a quiet square overlooking the Old Town and the River Limmat.

  As beautiful at fifty-two as she had been at twenty, the Baroness—dressed in a dark, tailored, and very conservative traveling suit, her long hair turned up under a lambskin cloche hat hiding most of her features—was clearly uncomfortable. Rarely did she meet face-to-face with her attorney. Their business was done by secure telephone and encrypted e-mail, and most certainly when they did meet she did not come to him. But this was different. She had come to Zurich because things had changed markedly. What only days before had been a precisely timed, precision-drawn, but essentially very simple operation had turned into a nightmare of unforeseen happenstance. Raymond’s very survival now depended as much on them as on him. What they would do now about Friday in London or April 7 in Moscow had to be fully reconsidered.

  Whether Neuss and Kitner suspected who had committed the murders in the Americas there was no way to know. Even if they had seen his likeness on television it was doubtful that after all these years they would recognize him, especially when they would have remembered someone with dark hair and dark eyebrows, not the blond man with blond eyebrows and the cosmetic surgery to his nose that wholly changed his facial appearance. Still, it was clear that Neuss had gone to London on the spur of the moment, most probably because he was afraid that whoever had killed the others might well come after him next. Moreover, once in London he would confer with Kitner about what to do next, which might very well entail moving the pieces from wherever they were now to still another safe deposit box elsewhere and complicating matters all the more.

  Yet troubling as that was, it was nowhere near as troubling as what they saw on Bertrand’s television screen now: Raymond’s photograph broadcast on a CNN special report, and with it, scenes videotaped the previous night at Los Angeles International Airport of the aftermath of his shoot-out with Los Angeles police and his killing of three of them—one, a most prominent and beloved detective—as he tried to board Lufthansa flight 453 to Frankfurt.

  The abrupt ring of Bertrand’s telephone interrupted the news story, and he picked up. As he did, the Baroness’s gloved hand hit the mute key on the remote and the sound of the television faded.

  “Yes,” Bertrand said in French. “Yes, of course, notify me immediately.” He hung up and looked at the Baroness. “It’s done. The plane is in the air. The rest will be up to him.”

  “God is trying us all.” The Baroness turned back to the television to see a tightly edited montage showing the massive scope of the police manhunt for Raymond as departments across California positioned themselves to apprehend him. As she watched, her thoughts turned inward and she wondered if he were strong enough to make it through.

  Or if she should have pushed him even harder.

  LOS ANGELES, PARKER CENTER. 9:05 A.M.

  Barron walked quickly along an inner corridor talking on his cell phone to Jake Stemkowski in Chicago. Despite Chief Harwood’s order, a phalanx of media had tried to corner him as he’d arrived and just as Stemkowski called. Uniforms had forced the media to retreat, and he’d taken a side door and come up a back elevator, pulling out the phone as soon as he knew he had clear reception.

  “We put together the list of Russian names and addresses found in the murdered Azov brothers file,” Stemkowski said. “I’m faxing the whole thing to you now. We’ll keep on it and update you with anything new.”

  “Thanks,” Barron replied.

  “Sorry about your commander.”

  “Thank you.”

  Barron clicked off and opened the door to the 5-2 squad room. Polchak was there; so was Lee. They were standing at the window near his desk, as if they’d been waiting for him. He could tell they’d been drinking, but they weren’t drunk.

  “What is it?” He closed the door behind him.

  Neither Polchak nor Lee said a word.

  “Halliday and Valparaiso go home?”

  “Just left,” Polchak said tersely. He still wore the same suit he had at the airport, his eyes were heavy, and he had a stubble growth of beard. “You let that asshole take your gun. You fucked up bad. But then you know that.”

  Barron looked to Lee. Like Polchak, he wore the same clothes as the night before and had the same heavy eyes, the same stubble of beard. Neither of them had been home since they’d delivered the news to Red’s widow. Clearly neither was in the best emotional state, but it made no difference. To them Red had been a god. Barron was a young, green fuckup who should have killed Raymond and didn’t—and then had made things all the worse because Raymond had taken his gun from him and killed Red with it. Those things put together made what he saw in their faces unmistakable. They were blaming him for Red’s death.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  “You armed?” Polchak’s eyes were filled with a disgust that bordered on hatred.

  “Why?” Barron was suddenly wary. Did they hate him enough to kill him here?

  “Raymond took your gun,” Lee said. “He killed Red with it.”

  “I know.” Barron studied each man, then slowly opened his jacket. The .45 Colt rested in the holster at his waist. “I had it at home.” Barron let the jacket swing closed.

  “How you feel about me isn’t important. The only thing that matters is getting Raymond off the street. Right?”

  Polchak stood breathing, his eyes searching Barron’s. Finally he grunted, “Yeah.”

  Barron looked to Lee. “Roosevelt?”

  For a long moment Lee said nothing, just watched him as if he were deciding what to do next. For the first time Barron realized how big he was.
Huge, as if he could crush him with one hand.

  A hum from the fax machine broke the moment as Stemkowski’s transmission came through from the Chicago PD. It was enough, and Lee nodded. “Right,” he said. “You’re right.”

  “Okay.” Barron stared at both men and then went to retrieve the fax.

  He tried to ignore them as he scanned the phone list Stemkowski had compiled from the address book of the murdered brothers. Azov, their family name, was Russian, as were most all the other names on the list, as Stemkowski had said. The majority of the addresses were scattered over Southern California, mostly in and around L.A. A handful were north in the San Francisco Bay area.

  Barron read down the list once, then did it again. The first time he missed it completely. He nearly did the second time as well and was about to write the whole thing off as useless when something caught his eye and he looked back. A name two-thirds of the way down the page was not Russian, or at least didn’t appear to be, but the street address was all too familiar. Abruptly he looked to Lee and Polchak.

  “The Chicago murder victims had a friend in Beverly Hills. He has a business just a few doors down from the pizza shop where the girl said she saw Raymond and only a few blocks from where the Beverly Hills PD found the car with the consultant’s body. The address is nine-five-two-zero Brighton Way. The friend’s name is Alfred Neuss.”