“Vinh Tien’s life may turn on it. The whole case.”
From the Mission, the sloping of Spanish-style homes, trees, and streets, Wil could see the harbor masts, the now fogless islands with their etched canyons.
There was a pause. “And you thought to do this how?”
“I don’t know, an interview format, you asking the questions. Though we won’t reference an item I’ll be holding, the message will come through well enough.”
“I get it,” she said. “Subliminal, except to whoever it is.”
Wil took stock, tried another tack. “Look, Gail, I know you’re busy. But if this works, you’ll have an exclusive.”
“An exclusive, my,” she said. Then, “Hardesty, you’re so happened, you don’t even know it yet. I’d explain to you who uses whom in the news business, but I haven’t the time.” Adding before the line went to dial tone, “Try the newspaper. It’s amazing the things you find in the personals.”
Wil snapped the phone back on his belt, sat there until it passed. Allowing she might have a point, even though it wasn’t what she meant, he drove to the newspaper. By paying extra, he was able to secure three spots in the next edition and through the week, the message composed on the way:
FOUND:
On fishing trip: CD in mint condition. Crowning achievement for lucky buyer. Awaiting harmonic convergence @ ———.
To bypass the usual nutso calls, he listed his fax number and signed it Jimmy, handed it to the girl along with his credit card. He then went by the hospital, where he was told that although Vinh Tien was improved, he was seeing no visitors that day, doctor’s orders.
Wil drove west to the Tiens, took Matt for a run, went home to wait.
***
He was in the supermarket checkout line when his phone sounded: forty-eight hours of status quo later, Denny taking his shift at the fax machine. Looking apologetically at the checker and the woman in a pink top and matching nails behind him rolling her eyes, Wil punched in.
“Damned if it didn’t work,” Denny with elation. “You decent?”
“Getting groceries,” he answered. “Go.”
“Okay. Typed out, it reads, Jimmy: Imperative we acquire lost item. Fax phone number to above, 4PM today, so we may confirm.. Serious Buyer. Hot damn, huh?”
Wil glanced at his watch: three-twenty. Depending on traffic, enough time to get home for the call.
Denny added, “I have a confession, though. It came an hour ago. Figured I had the time, so I faxed the phone number back then called transmission places in the directory, thinking the fax might have come from one.”
“Get any hits?” Wil said as the woman in pink nudged him with her basket to pay attention. He nodded at her, threw in a smile.
The woman did not smile. Rather, she pointed at the checker who was waiting with his total, the distraction almost causing him to lose the phone as he shouldered it to his ear going for his wallet. Long enough to hear, “You still with me? How close are you to downtown?”
65
The fax location was an office service place: young men and women bustling around in chinos and blue oxford shirts as the copy machines hummed and collated and customers waited as though mesmerized. Those, that is, not glued to the rental computers.
Wil checked his watch: three fifty-six. Spotting the phones a glass door this side of the rear entrance and the beamed-over breezeway, he found a copy machine he pretended to use. At four sharp, Tom Maccafee in khaki pants and light gray windbreaker, entered via the rear. Glancing around he pulled a taped OUT OF ORDER sign off the phone nearest the door, crumpled it into his pocket, and picked up the receiver. Wil watched him dial his number, then face the wall and the door.
Denny must have picked up at his end because Maccafee was getting set to talk when Wil moved in close enough to press the Mustang into the man’s kidney unobserved.
“Reach out and touch someone,” he said.
The broad shoulders stiffened; in a forced breath, eased. Maccafee said, “That supposed to scare me, Hardesty? In here?” Eyes still on the exit, phone to his ear.
“I’ll take that,” Wil said, reaching for it. “While you think about all you’re going to tell me.”
Maccafee handed it to him. “Would you believe I was halfway expecting you?”
“Sorry, but it’s the other half I’m interested in.” Then, into the receiver, “We’re in place here.”
“Ditto,” Denny said into Wil’s other ear.
“How very military,” Maccafee observed. “Who’s that on the other end? Your dog?”
“What’s up is this,” Wil said. “You and I are going to leave by those doors and stroll out to where I’m parked. Then we’re going to swap war stories while we wait for my dog to show up and drive us someplace more conducive to conversation.”
“You didn’t actually think I’d come alone, did you?”
Wil nudged the gun tighter. “If you mean Lorenz, who was afraid that something had happened to you because you had enemies, she’s dead.”
“Ah yes, poor Inez. No, that’s not who I meant. And are you really this dense?”
“Looks that way,” Wil said. “Move, please.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Feds don’t like people impersonating them, Maccafee, especially ones who get their agents killed.” Then, into the receiver, “We’re leaving to the car.”
“So I heard,” Denny came back. “You okay till then?”
“I think our man’s more willing to take his chances with us than with the Justice Department.” Turning to Maccafee. “That right?”
“Maybe neither.”
“The door,” Wil said with a gesture toward it.
“Speaking of thresholds,” Maccafee said. “It might be useful to think about the one you’re crossing.”
“I keep hearing that, but here I am. Move.”
“Not after I show you what’s still drying in my pocket.”
Knowing it was bluff and yet not, what would go wrong if it could, Wil said into the receiver, “It’s probably nothing, but hold a minute.” Then, to Maccafee, “Thumb and index finger, nothing sudden or it’s over.” Feeling the bottom drop as Maccafee held up what he’d fished out of his windbreaker.
Son of a bitch.
“Change of plans,” he said into the phone. “I’ll have to explain later.”
“Trouble?”
“Polaroid. Not good.” Backing off the Colt.
“All right,” Denny said. “Calm and control. We’ll get our at-bats, but not if you play the hero. Hear me?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
Feeling as if he were cutting a lifeline to the surface, he replaced the receiver, Maccafee turning to face him.
“You reset the safety on that thing?” he asked, and to Wil’s nod, “Good, then it’s my turn. Outside and to your left, the breezeway.”
Wil complied and, with Maccafee behind him, saw an Asian man in glasses beside a planting of banana trees. He saw the walk devoid of customers, caught Maccafee’s nod, then a blur of motion where the Asian man had been.
Hot white haze.
Red tile.
From far off: “Whoever your dog is, Hardesty, you’re both out of your league. Now where’s the disk?” Down on all fours, mouth open for the slightest air.
“Not here,” he managed to gasp. “No place you’d find.”
“Debatable another time,” Maccafee said. “How’s the disk still readable?”
“Sealed with tape. I checked.”
“And saw on it what? Now, please.”
“Numbers. Other stuff.” Spitting drool.
Maccafee squatted and smiled. “You know, my friend could take you off and nobody’d notice, he’s that good. And if you had residual doubts about me, think Inez.”
“Fuck you,” Wil spat. “Get you nowhere.”
“I just hope you have proof that you were down there and this isn’t some trick.”
“Dedication plaque. Pried
it off.”
“More. What else?”
“Crown mark. Lower right base.”
The smile broke Maccafee’s face. “Then I guess we’ll be in touch, won’t we? And in the interest of not wasting any more time with dogs, I’ll take your cell phone number.”
Wil gave it to him; Maccafee wrote it down. Rising, he gestured to the Asian man.
Wil felt the kick coming; still it was delivered by a mule. For long moments he lay knees-up in a ball. Finally, he got to his feet and hunched toward the Bonneville, customers using the lot looking through him or away while the Polaroid of Mia Tien gagged and bound to a chair, eyes imploring and hair plastered to her forehead, burned a hole upward of his screaming ribs.
***
Li Tien finished wrapping his ribs with strips torn from a sheet, taped it, and set the roll down, having noticed the injury as Matt leaped against him in welcome. Matt, sensing something major was wrong, now lay quietly beside her.
“She is my life,” Li said, her voice barely audible, already having rejected the idea of adding Mia to Vinh’s list of problems. “As Jimmy was his father’s.”
“For what it’s worth, I can’t see them hurting her,” Wil said for her benefit, Li’s bearing reminding him of wired-together rebar as he put his shirt back on. “They took her to exchange for what they want.”
“And what they want is on the disk?”
“What they think is on it or they wouldn’t have risked taking her,” he said. “Which doesn’t mean they won’t carry out their threat.”
Li’s voice went further strained. “To harm her if we involve the sheriff…”
Wil tried his range of motion, the pain in his side at least mitigated. “In the end we’ll have to, but yes. It depends on where they’ll want to make the exchange.”
She regarded him with dull eyes, river stones. “My daughter for this disk that is not real.”
“In essence, yes,” he said. “They have too much invested not to try.” Wishing he felt as much confidence as ache.
Li Tien lowered her hand to Matt, her eyes not leaving Wil’s. She said, “So if you cooperate with them, give them what they think they want, this will work?”
Wil felt the throb start in his left temple. “I can only hope, Li. And make it work.”
66
Eight-forty, trees and unlit roofs fading against a not-yet-starred sky. Lisa pulled into her drive and Wil met her at the porch.
“I thought that was your car,” she said to him. Then, seeing his face, “I was at dinner with some people. What is it? Something bad?”
“Bad enough,” he said, “I know how this may sound so soon after our talk, but I need a favor. A big one, Leese, not lightly asked.”
“All right,” she said after a pause. “You want to come in?”
“Thanks. But what I need probably means going back to the office.”
He could see the fatigue, maybe some wine there, a little sag creep in when he said it. He saw her take a breath.
“Wil, I have to ask. Does this involve hurting anybody? Because I won’t have it in my life. Not after all that’s happened. Not after all that went into this.”
He said, “The opposite, Leese. If it works as I’m hoping.”
“You can assure me of that?”
“Much as I can and be straight with you.”
“I see,” she said with a tired familiarity. “And how straight were you this morning? Or was that all part of the softening-up process? Turning on the charm until the ex-wifey melts.”
Wil said nothing. Neither could he meet her gaze.
She said, “Tell me that this whatever-it-is wasn’t at least on your mind this morning.”
Door’s open, he thought. Save something.while you’re at it.
Finally: “I can’t do that, Leese. Because straight-up, it was.”
“Well, at least you’re honest about it. Goodnight, Wil.”
He could feel it slipping away: them; the future; Mia and Vinh and Li; himself, in any definition of his choosing. He said, “Leese, I don’t know how I can make it plainer. What I’m asking now has nothing to do with earlier. That’s why I didn’t bring it up, it wasn’t the time. Plus I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I’d need it.”
“And now you are sure?”
“That’s right.”
“And tomorrow’s not okay…”
“No,” he answered her. “Tomorrow is decidedly not okay.”
She broke it off, searched her bag for her keys, found them. She said, “For some unknown reason I believe you. But I can’t take any more standing in these shoes.” Heading for the front door. “You can explain what you need while I change.”
***
Lisa ran him out at midnight, promising the disk before office hours if he’d just leave, that he was bigtime getting on her nerves. He’d checked in with Denny and was headed home, sweating a call from Maccafee before the disk was ready, when his phone sounded.
Damnit. Not this soon.
“Yeah,” Wil finally picked up.
“What did you think?” Maccafee said. “That I’d just go away?”
“Before I agree to anything, Maccafee, I want proof she’s alive.”
“Hell, I was even going to suggest it,” he said. “You want to make sure we’re men of our word. Hang on a second.”
Wil heard the receiver muffled, then, “Hardesty?” The ragged edge in her voice going right through him.
“I’m here, Mia, right here,” he said. “I’m working on it.”
“They told me my dad was dying, that my mom was at the hospital and I had to come when they said. They did something to my car.”
Wil gripped the wheel. “Your dad’s okay. And it isn’t you they want, it’s me, something I have. It’s going to be all right.”
“Hardesty? I’m sorry for what I said. I was wrong—about you and everything. Because I was mad, I—”
“Shhh, it’s all right,” he told her. “Just hang in. They love it when you’re scared.”
“You’ll tell my mom that I’m—”
At the slap, her sharp cry, Wil nearly sideswiped a flatbed. Horn and swerve, the truck driver shaking his head in the oncoming lights as he sped off.
“Mia?”
“That was just a love tap to convince you we’re serious,” Maccafee’s voice came on. “Nowhere near what we could do to liven up a long night.”
Red-black-red. “Your is coming, Maccafee. Count on it.”
“Finally we’re in agreement on something,” the man said. “Now—you know West Camino Cielo off San Marcos Pass? The shooting range where the pavement ends?”
“It’s been awhile,” Wil said, finding his breath. Time…
“I think so.”
“Sure you do,” Maccafee went on. “Shotgun side on the right, four miles in. Five a.m., as in hours from now. And Hardesty? I’ll have people with phones along the way. Anybody with you and she’s dead twenty minutes before you pull up. A long twenty, plus I’ll be gone. Comprende?”
Wil racked his memory for the trap and skeet layout, managed only that the road leading to it was narrow and old and that the shotgun side was just off the ridge. The side overlooking the Valley rather than the ocean.
“I’ll be there,” he said.
“Good,” Maccafee signed off. “Rise and shine.”
67
“Smart,” Denny was saying. “Anyone hearing shots thinks it’s just some early bird member popping off.” Black jeans and sweatshirt; index finger on the broken yellow line running along the Santa Ynez range until it met solid road at the 3,000-foot level. “This a back way in there?”
Just off the phone with Lisa, Wil said, “Rutted dirt and rocks, more fire trail than anything.” He’d had to tell her they’d need the disk sooner than expected, that he’d be by at four to pick it up and to do as much as she could by then. And afterward, he’d hadn’t wanted to hang up.
“The Explorer has four-wheel drive.” Denny working the action o
n the Mossberg pump he’d scored at the north county gun dealer’s.
“You’re talking twenty miles, Den—winding, exposed road, no speed. Sometimes there’s a chain across it for no apparent reason.”
“And? I’ve got a bolt cutter in the bag.”
Wil gulped coffee he’d made them to stay alert.. “With what time we have left and not knowing where they are, it’s too much of a gamble. Better to go in off San Marcos, park near one of the bottom houses like it’s yours and walk in.”
“Your turf, if that’s what it takes.” Loading red double-aught shells into the Mossberg. “What about you?”
“Lisa’s at four, the Pass by four-thirty. On-site at five.”
Denny swore. “No sooner than that?”
Wil said, “The longer she has, the more authentic she can make the numbers look. It’s not perfect, but it’s worth it.”
Denny set the safety, returned the shotgun to its nylon bag. “Meaning you actually believe your ex-wife’s old client spreadsheets are going fool these guys?”
“With luck,” Wil said, “depends on who’s scanning it.” Thumbing .45s into the second of his spare clips, already having loaded .380 rounds into the Mustang’s spares. “Maccafee’s waited this long, it has to be the key to something for him. The exchange will be rushed and the sheets doctored to look real. As long as they don’t look too closely.”
“Said he, thinking like a Vietnamese gangster.”
“Speak now, you got something to say,” Wil said, more tired than annoyed. “Well?…”
“It’s not the plan that worries me, Mojo.” Chambering a .40 round into his black-finish semi-auto. Slipping it holstered into the bag and verifying two a.m. on his watch. “You mentioned there’s a pistol and rifle range before you come to the skeet area?”
“On the left,” Wil said. “Up a drive with a gate.”
Denny said, “I’ll check that, too, they might bivouac there. Can’t have reinforcements crashing your party. And the way your guy Maccafee promised he’d be gone if you brought in the law smells like a slick to me.”
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