by Dick Yaeger
I was in no mood to carry a sign for his stupid rally or flip pancakes at a campaign breakfast. “Not interested.”
“It’ll only take an hour.”
“Not interested.”
“You get paid.”
That got my attention. Maybe it wasn’t menial political bullshit after all. “How much?”
“Five grand.”
O’Farrell frowned.
I shrugged.
“Who do I gotta kill?”
He chuckled. “Nothing like that. It’s all above board and simple like I said.”
“I’m not stupid, Leonard. No one pays five big ones for an hour of above-board-simple.”
“I can explain, but not over the phone.”
I looked at O’Farrell. He rolled his eyes.
I had to know more. “Well . . . I could use the cash.”
“Good. Meet me at 228 Pinsk Avenue. Exactly at noon. Don’t be late. Drive your Jag.”
“That’s a rough part of town to park a Jag.”
“You won’t be there long. Don’t be late.” He hung up.
“Not much time,” I said, putting the phone back on the table. “It’ll take good part of an hour to get there with normal traffic.”
“We should think this through, Hunt.” He sat on the bed with a serious look, cross-legged, still naked.
“Something big is going down.” I pulled on a pair of Levis. “I’m going to make sure he goes down with it.”
“Could be dangerous.”
“I was a cop, remember? I’m trained for this.” My favorite hoodie went over my sports bra. “He’s smaller than I am. I can take him if I have to.”
“What if he’s discovered your true identity?”
I stopped and looked at him. Good question. I sat on the edge of the bed and put my hand on his knee. “I’ll be careful.”
“Think about it. He’s offering a five grand carrot to get you to meet him on the city’s outskirts. And why the rush unless he wants you to act without thinking?”
I picked up the German Riesling bottle and set it on the table. “Did we really drink all this?”
He grinned and nodded.
“Where are the glasses?”
“We didn’t need them.”
Last night came back to me. The weight of a potential disaster that was my fault had overwhelmed me. When it lifted, I was relieved, free, and unrestrained. “It was good, wasn’t it?”
“It was . . . and a little ‘loud and disorderly,’ as they say in the precinct halls.”
I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead, listing Lenny’s comments, trying to finish the big picture with only a few pieces of the puzzle—above board, legal, easy, needed a replacement, a woman, middle of the day, middle of the week, businesses open, schools open . . .
The flashbulb went off. The pieces fit. I spun around to face him and put my hands on his shoulders. “It’s not about me, Frank.”
“What then?”
“It’s another school shooting. He needs an innocent decoy like the first two. Someone to distract the cops while the shooter vanishes and hides his weapon and clothes in the boiler room, or whatever he does with them. What better decoy than a nice-looking bookkeeper in a Jaguar?”
“But Cal Trabajo’s school replacements all checked out.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s using something else to get the shooter into the school, but he still needs the diversion to help the shooter’s escape. I’m sure of it.”
He frowned, knowing I was right. This was no longer about my instincts. The pile of knowns was growing too large to ignore.
“Okay. Makes sense. I’ll call Braklin. He can be there before you.”
“No. Lenny’s not the shooter. The cops will scoop him up, and we won’t learn who the shooter is and where it’s goes down until it’s too late.” I bit my lip. “And it’s going to happen in the next few hours. I have to hurry.”
He didn’t argue. “Take a gun.” There was no emotion in his voice. He looked me straight in the eye.
I grinned. The business-like comment from a guy sitting naked on my bed was funny. I hadn’t carried a weapon since becoming a PI, but he was right. There were too many unknowns that could turn to shit. I retrieved my Sig Sauer P238 and underarm holster from the bedside table drawer. Frank watched as I checked the weapon, slid a round into the chamber, and engaged the safety.
“Leave your phone on so I can listen,” he added with a deadpan expression. “I’m going to follow you.”
“Okay, but stay in your car out of sight.”
“I’ve also been trained. Remember?”
“Then you better put your pants on.”
P insk Avenue was an isolated three blocks not far from a Superfund site at the edge of town. Home to a handful of itinerants and druggies, the police only patrolled there when a new member of the city council wanted it cleaned up. The item remained on the city’s agenda for a month and then forgotten until the next election enshrined another neophyte into the revered council chambers. My recollection was that the cumulative police time spent on Pinsk Avenue was about thirty minutes every two years.
I turned onto the street. “Still with me?” I said into my phone in the pocket of my hoodie.
“Loud and clear.”
I glanced in my rearview mirror for a sign of O’Farrell following. I’d seen nothing since leaving my apartment forty-five minutes ago. He was good, but would need a hint to find the correct address among missing house numbers. Indeed, there was none on the one where I found Lenny’s rusty pickup in the driveway. I parked my Jag at the crumbling curb.
“My car’s in front of the house. Hang back. I’m going in.”
“Okay. Good luck, Babe.”
I grinned at the “Babe,” adjusted the Sig Sauer under my arm, took a deep breath, and opened the car door.
The roof over the front porch of the tiny single-story clapboard house sagged under a thick layer of dead leaves. The windows seemed recently boarded with new plywood. Weeds too tall to support their weight slumped over a broken sidewalk beneath a dying elm tree. The air hissed with flying insects.
Lenny appeared on the front porch as I approached, looking up and down the street. I followed his gaze. O’Farrell wasn’t there.
“You by yourself?” he asked.
“What’s it look like?”
I followed him across the squeaking porch boards into the dim but clean front room. The boarded windows yielded only a few bright dots from the noontime sun outside. A half dozen cardboard boxes, three folding chairs, and a long wooden table were the sole occupants. On the table were a laptop computer and an M1911 .45 pistol.
“Give me your phone,” he said.
“Why?”
“I’ll return it when you’re back. For now, you have to stay focused. I don’t want you calling or talking with anyone.”
I hesitated. This was not a good start. Losing the link to O’Farrell was bad, but the possibility of him browsing my phone would be disastrous.
“What if I need to call you for further instructions?”
“You won’t.”
“Women don’t go anywhere without their phone.”
He held out his hand and didn’t reply. His eyes narrowed and lips clenched in a determined, almost frightening expression that I hadn’t seen before. If I refused, a confrontation was inevitable. Would it be deadly? I glanced at the weapon on the table.
I grinned, nodded toward the table and said, “You gonna shoot me with that .45 if I don’t?” hoping O’Farrell was paying attention.
He didn’t flinch.
I unzipped my sweatshirt partway. “It’s hot in here.”
I turned off my phone and handed it to him. A gunfight wasn’t what I came for.
“Good,” he said. His face relaxed, and he laid the phone on the table.
“I want you to drive your Jag to 2211 Bobcat Lane.”
“What’s there?”
“Be there at exactly two thirty and find a sp
ot in the parking lot that you can exit quickly. Get out of your car and inspect your tires. You’ll hear a few short bursts of gunfire. When—“
“Gunfire? I don’t like the sound of this, Leonard.”
I was right about his intentions and my role. I knew where and when, but not who.
“Who’re you shooting up, Leonard?”
“It’s not me,” he said, then continued. “When the gunfire stops, wait a few seconds, get back in your car and leave. If—”
“Jesus! What’s this about?”
“If the police stop and ask why you were in the parking lot, tell them you thought one of your tires was going flat.”
“Police?”
“They can’t pin anything on you. You’re an innocent bystander. Like I said, it’s easy.”
“Okay. I think I understand. You need some sort of decoy, a diversion, but what the fuck’s going on?”
“You’re better off not knowing. As the pols say, ‘plausible deniability’ is your best alibi.”
“Don’t bullshit me. What’s at 2211 Bobcat Lane?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’m out of here.” I walked to the table and reached for my phone.
He stepped in front of me and grabbed my upper arm, squeezing hard. “Can I trust you?” he asked, inches from my face. Beads of sweat were forming below his hairline.
“Look, I ain’t gonna rat you out for heisting a liquor store or a Seven-Eleven.”
He let go of my arm. “It’s a school.”
“You mean one with kids? You’re going to shoot up a school full of kids?”
“It’s all for the best. They’ll be memorialized as martyrs. Their faces will be in the papers for weeks and people will lay flowers in the spot they died.”
“That’s barbaric.”
“It’s fundamental to keeping the gun control issue alive—in the public’s face. They only remember for a month.”
“How can you do such a horrible thing?”
“I said that it’s not me. I’m not the shooter.”
“Who then?”
“Some gang-banger loser. He’s doing it for the money, but it’s important that he get away clean. We don’t want him caught and interrogated. He’s being paid plenty to leave the country and vanish.”
“We? Who else is involved, Leonard?”
He shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell me, but I’d heard ample. I knew where and when, and had to notify O’Farrell and Braklin at once.
“No. I’m not gonna do it.” I nodded toward the table. “Give me my phone.”
“I’ll pay you more—twice as much. Ten thousand.” You’ll be innocent. Just stop to look at your tires.”
“You can’t pay me enough to do that.”
“Twenty thousand. then. Cash. I’ll have it for you tonight.”
“Christ! Where’d you get that kind of money?”
“The senator.”
“He knows about this?”
“Yeah. It’s him—his idea.”
That surprised me. I didn’t like Evans and was convinced he was a crook. It required an incredible leap to learn he was the brains behind a plan to murder masses of children.
“Where’s he get the money?”
“I don’t know. He’s a rich politician. Got a stash somewhere.”
CAIV raced through my head—the Committee Against Indigent Violence. What a ghastly mockery of charitable giving.
“Evans believes that a strict gun control bill is his ticket to becoming governor,” he went on. “When all of California’s guns are confiscated, he thinks he can ride the same horse to the presidency.”
My instincts could not have imagined such insanity. I wanted to scream at the ignorance and inhumanity. My mouth parted, but no words came out. I didn’t know where to start.
“So what if a few children die,” he continued. “They’re giving their lives for the greater good. Think how many people will be saved when there are no more guns.”
I felt ill. After seven years as a cop, it wasn’t like me to be affected by man’s inhumanity toward his fellow beings. For the last two weeks, I had the normal detached involvement with the school shootings. I was an outsider looking at a case for a client. Granted, it was horrible, but I was isolated. Now I was face to face with the malevolent evil behind it. I had two choices—subdue Lenny and probably kill him, or keep playing along. I looked at my watch—one o’clock. The shooter, whoever he was, had to be stopped.
“All right,” I sighed. “I’ll check my tires and see you back here tonight.”
“Good.”
As I turned to leave, the door opened. A thirty-something Middle Eastern man in coveralls stood in the doorway. He was thin with shoulder length hair, a sparse beard, and a Giants ball cap on backwards. Around his waist was a carpenter’s tool belt. He carried an assault-weapon bag with pockets for four extra magazines.
“That Jag out front is decoy?” he said. “Nice.”
“Yeah.” Lenny nodding toward me. “Sara here is on our rally team. Also works for Maria.”
The newcomer stared at me for a moment before unzipping the gun bag and pulling out a Kalashnikov. He dropped the bag, chambered a round in the rifle, and pointed it at me.
“Her name not Sara. It Hunter. Hunter Quinn. She was cop, now private eye.”
Lenny stepped away from me, frowning. “How do you know?”
“She testify against little brother for having dirty pictures on computer.” He leered at me. “He doing ten to fifteen at Victorville.”
I remembered the case. The dirty pictures were child pornography, and I’d uncovered him selling DVDs of them online, which turned it into a federal crime.
“Shit!” Lenny said. “This really complicates things.”
“No,” the stranger said. “It make for more fun.”
He walked toward me, the AK47 still pointed at me and stopped an arm’s length away just as I caught a glimpse of the rifle butt swinging toward my head.
I heard duct tape tearing and felt my ankles being bound. The side of my head hurt like hell. Was it bleeding? I wanted to touch it, but my hands were tied behind the chair. My gun was gone. My vision was blurred. I closed my eyes and listened to voices that seemed far away like a dream.
“This one’s canceled,” Lenny said to the shooter. “You’re done for now. Go back to the school and tell them you quit.”
“Bullshit. I want rest of my money. Ninety grand. You got with you?”
Lenny chuckled. “You think I’m stupid? You know the rules. You’ll get it when the job is done—when it’s reported on the evening news.”
“Fuck you. I do school with or without woman for decoy. And if I not get money, newspapers will get interesting phone calls.”
“It’s too risky without the decoy. You got ten grand already. Consider it a gift and get lost till I need you again.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “This Sara . . . this new Hunter Quinn news has fucked things up.”
“Shit. Just do her.”
“I have to think it through.”
“I do her for ten more and then go finish Blaise.”
My head throbbed. Who was Blaise? Sounded familiar. Blaise . . . Blaise? Shit! It was Blaise Pascal Elementary; the school Bubba’s daughter goes to. Damn!
“No. It’s over. Get the hell out of here,” Lenny said. “Quit that job at the school. Go to a titty bar, have a drink, and get a lap dance.”
“She your problem,” the shooter replied. “You waste her. I finish job. You pay me what you promise tonight.”
“No! Wait.”
The door opened and slammed shut. I heard heavy footsteps cross the porch and then silence.
I opened my eyes, blinking, trying to focus. Leonard was staring at me, squinting, lips a thin line, eyebrows in a deep V. “You bitch!”
My head still pounded. I scanned the room. My Sig Sauer was on the table next to Lenny’s .45. No way I could reach it. O
’Farrell was outside somewhere and didn’t know what was happening. Could I get his attention? A signal of some kind. A noise? Scream? Would Leonard kill me? Did he have the guts? He looked pissed, on the edge. I needed to calm him, try to engage him.
“He wasn’t a Cal Trabajo placement,” I said as if it were a statement, not a question.
“What? You know about that?”
“I was her bookkeeper, remember?”
“Fuck.”
“You used another placement agency, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer, but his face relaxed somewhat.
“You finally figured Cal Trabajo was too close to the senator,” I said. If I kept him talking, O’Farrell might come investigate. Might hear us.
He continued to stare, biting his fingernails. He glanced at the guns on the table.
The porch squeaked. He jerked his head toward the door.
I rocked and twisted my chair to deflect his attention. Its legs thumped and scraped on the wooden floor.
“Knock it off, bitch.” he barked.
If O’Farrell was out there, he surely heard that.
Another squeak from the porch.
Lenny grabbed his .45 and pointed it at the door. He was gonna shoot!
“He’s got a gun, Frank,” I yelled.
Lenny shot through the door. Thumps and shuffling came from the porch. He paused for a moment to listen and then continued firing, high and low, until his gun was empty, the slide back, the empty chamber exposed.
“Noooo,” I screeched.
The door swung open and Braklin came through, his weapon at the ready. Jesus! Where did he come from?
Lenny spun and grabbed my gun off the table. Braklin fired. Lenny fired back. They traded shots—I don’t know how many. Both went down to their knees. O’Farrell came from behind Braklin and double-tapped Lenny in the head. Braklin and Lenny both lay on the floor, not moving.
“Blaise Pascal Elementary” I yelled at O’Farrell who was already reaching for his phone. “The shooter’s on his way.”
“O’Farrell. FBI,” he said into his phone. “Shots fired. Officer down. Two-two-eight Pinsk. Send an ambulance and make it fast. And send SWAT to Blaise Pascal Elementary School. There’s a shooter on his way.”