Wil said, “Was Inez there when you killed Luc?”
“Miss Gung Ho? That’s a laugh. Sonny cleared the crowd out for me. All but Robb and a gardener, or whoever that was. Not what you’d exactly call a match.”
Mia cocked her head, then they all heard it: the distant throp of helicopter rotors. Maccafee was smiling now.
“Sorry kids. Hate to say it, but you’re about done here.”
Denny fired again, gouging closer to the laptop. He said, “Last chance before it’s junk and you’re running from them faster than we are.”
“Fuck you. Put that thing down and we’ll see who’s better.”
But Wil could see the sweat on Maccafee’s face. “Jimmy,” he said to him. “All of it.”
The big man glanced toward the throp, swore, blew a breath. “Hardly matters, does it? Finally I had the kid turned by offering him Luc, all of that, the show under me. Then, bam, he gets a yen and turns back. Shame about it, too, the fucker was so sharp. Last November that was, before Inez.”
Wil glanced at Mia, focused now on Maccafee. He said, “And the stuff about turning him because of Wen’s status—that was for Lorenz?”
“Good old Inez,” Maccafee said. “She tell you we were lovers once? God she did love it at fifteen. Fresh out of the box and under her old man’s nose.” A smile, as if seeing it again. “When I found her this time, I told her I was running down Russ’s killer. She swallowed it with a spoon, even lent me his old badge. For her it was the chance to get back in the game, all the time thinking she had me on a string. Anyway, after Luc suspected the kid had taken off with his data he really tightened down. Not even Sonny got close.”
Wil pictured Lorenz holding out the handcuffs, saying to him, “Once a long time ago. On me, it turned out.”
Fifteen…The cost of going along with HIM, let alone losing everything to her father’s killer in the supposed search for him.
Wil clamped down on it, restarted. “Jimmy was coming to San Miguel to hand you the disk. What happened?”
Shrug. “Who knows? Cold feet, blood thicker than water, who cares? All I know is this storm comes out of nowhere, wind you wouldn’t believe. And it’s obvious the kid’s thinking twice about it because he’s headed back around even before it hits. So I cut him off, put a man aboard with a tow line. Couldn’t have him bolting on us. But we didn’t allow enough slack or something because next thing you know we’re angling up this wave that flips his boat like it’s a damn bait plug.”
Seeing it, Harmony a trolled lure on a too-short line, Wil said, “What about Jimmy and Wen?”
The rotor sounds growing louder.
“What about them?” Maccafee shot back. “The girl’s out in the water, they both are, and he’s trying to keep her afloat, big as she is. Next one rolls them all under—my man, the boat—us with it if we hadn’t cut the line. As it was, we barely made it back.”
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Denny said.
“Best speak for yourself,” Maccafee shot back.
“Say I buy it,” Wil said. “Why the island in the first place?”
“Why not? The idea’s what got me in to begin with. National Park with sheltered landing spots, nobody much around, you could bring in anything and pick it up later. Besides, I liked the symmetry: fuck the government the way they fucked me,” he said. “As far as Luc’s cargo went, Jimmy would ferry it ashore in his old man’s boats. That make you happy now?”
Wil could see the helicopter tracking the ridge on the valley side to stay less visible; he had to raise his voice to be heard: “Tell me one thing: Do you really think they’re going to just hand you the Dragons? These people?”
Maccafee smiled. “Ask yourself who the Jap car honchos put in charge when they want American markets on a plate. People who think American, that’s who. Money talks and bullshit walks and I deliver. They know that.”
“They’ll eat you alive,” Wil said. “All they want is the disk. You must know that.” Shouting now to be heard.
“And nobody’s getting any younger, including me.” Maccafee yelling back. “So I guess we’ll see, won’t we.”
The helicopter separated from its background. Wil could see it was an older Huey with the double doors on each side. Painted black, it hovered as if uncertain—a buzzard examining a downed deer for signs of life. Maccafee waved and the Huey settled in the firing field, orange and black shards gusting in its wake.
Three Asians armed with AK-47s stepped out with a fine-featured man in glasses, dark suit and tie, a light topcoat. Flanked by them, he cleared the still-spinning rotors and waited.
“You’ll excuse me,” Maccafee said. “Risk-reward and all that.”
Denny raised the shotgun as he might a gate and held it against his chest. But Maccafee was already walking forward, picking up the laptop and handing it to the man in the suit. They shook hands and, after words and looks, the suited man gestured to the bodies of Sonny and Machine Pistol. Two of the guards shouldered arms, heaved the bodies into the helicopter.
As it lifted off, Wil could see the suited man concentrating on the laptop, Maccafee over his shoulder. He went to the trash drum, retrieved his .45 and the Mustang, Denny following the helicopter with his eyes.
“They’ll be picking up those two at the pistol range,” Denny said. “You think you can make the rocks over there with the girl?”
“The name is Mia,” she said to him.
“What about you?” Wil said, ignoring it.
“Double your field of fire this way.”
“Nice try,” he said.
“How long do you think it’ll take Charles Schwab up there to figure it out? Go.”
Mia said to him, “Would you really have shot me?” Seeing his look, then. “Who are you?”
“I told you, no one,” he said in Vietnamese. “Now are you going to move out, or make me regret this whole thing?”
She’d made the rocks, had lost herself in them, when they heard the rotors grow in volume, saw the helicopter top the pines and head back toward them. They’d taken positions on either side of the cinder-block building, Wil with the machine pistol now as well, when the Huey pulled up about eighty feet overhead.
He could see the suited man gripping a handbar and looking down, the guards, Maccafee cocking a finger his way. Then there was a popping noise and Maccafee’s grin was gone and he was in mid-air, rotating slowly as in a gainer, bouncing on the hardpan to lie motionless.
Wil shifted off him, saw the suited man staring down as if to commit him to memory. He saw the man’s other hand leave his jacket pocket, saw the man hold the CD case out as if in disdain. Then it was spinning down, catching the light to smash apart not far from where Maccafee lay.
With a final look and a spoken command from the suited man, the helicopter canted forward and was gone, its sounds giving way to birds and the buzz of insects. And something else, the faint wail of sirens.
Denny turned from them. “Looks like I’ll have to see you around, Mojo. Way it goes for some of us.”
Fixing on him, Wil could see the kid he knew coming back. Partway stuck, but trying…trying. “Just like that,” he said. “Bali Hai.”
Denny grinned. “Wait’ll you check out Uluwatu, the lines marching in. I’ll send you directions.”
“Good as in the bank,” Wil said, feeling the same ache he’d felt watching his friend leave for Vietnam. The catch in his throat as Denny roared off grinning in his Jeep, dust lifting in the late-afternoon sun, its warmth fading in the steps in front of Wil’s Costa Mesa house.
“Just make sure you’re there.”
“Speaking of which,” Denny said, grin fading, the sirens growing less faint. “I’m not sure I’d want that dude looking at me like that.”
“Maybe. I have a feeling the shit’s flowing uphill for a change.”
“Now there’s a million-dollar thought. Hang onto that one.”
For a moment they stood there. Then Wil was clapping him on the back, Denn
y doing the same.
“Go easy, huh?” Denny said.
“And you, Den.” Feeling the heat in his friend. “Beat the bastard.”
“Copy that, all right. All the way home.”
Denny raised the bag to his shoulder. And with a brief grin and a wave, he too was gone.
70
Four minutes after Denny vanished down a path only he could see, Frank and two other sheriff’s cruisers plus a green Forest Service truck pulled up at the gate. Wil had a chance to brief Mia, to check Maccafee to determine his phone had not survived either, when a serious-looking Frank confirmed that, with a little help from the phone company, they’d homed in on his signal.
“You piss me off,” he said. “I hope you know that.”
“Did you get it?” Wil asked.
“The gist of it. Some we couldn’t hear too well, but we’re working on it.”
“The part about Maccafee killing Luc and Inez?”
“We got that.”
“Jimmy?”
“Less so because of the helicopter, but salvageable. The feds should be turning cartwheels.”
Something in his expression. Wil said, “You heard from them?”
“Last night, your friend Marotta. Somehow they cracked Luc’s e-mail encryption.” A wry smile. “Want to know what it was?”
Wil caught a glimpse of Mia drinking from a water bottle one of the deputies had given her, using some on her face and bangs. Seeing the the resilience in her, the bamboo bend, he wanted nothing more than to tell her how proud her father and mother would be of her.
“I said—”
“Sorry, Frank. The encryption?”
“If I’m not interrupting here, the code word was ‘brother,’ the Vietnamese word for it,” he said. “You believe that?”
***
They sat in Rudy Yanez’s office: Frank Lin, Wil, an assistant DA named Sanders he knew in passing, Terry Leong, who’d caught an early flight from San Francisco, and a youngish ATF agent Marotta had sent up. Wil had just finished the latest run-through after twice up on the ridge: his involvement, Maccafee’s recruiting Inez to take down Luc, him killing her when she realized what he’d done out there. The Dragons and Under Heaven, Jimmy and Wen and all of that, the key being the disk and Jimmy’s second thoughts about betraying his uncle. This after Lin’s enhanced tape.
For a moment there was silence, then Yanez leaned back in his chair, his eyes first on Leong, then on Wil.
He said, “This dark angel the girl said looked like somebody she couldn’t peg, an actor maybe. You say he was not familiar to you?”
“That’s right,” Wil said.
“Yet he was to Maccafee.”
“They seemed to know each other,” Wil answered with a glance at Terry Leong, who had a cigarette out and was rolling it in his fingers.
“Any idea how?” Leong asked.
“Paths having crossed, from what I gathered.”
“I see,” he said. “And this Mojo he kept referring to?”
Wil shrugged. “Slang for magic is all I know. Pretty generic.”
Yanez said, “Then how’d he know you had questions for Maccafee?”
“An exchange was the idea behind the meet,” Wil answered. “Maccafee knew I wanted information, so he must have.”
“You said he flew off with them in the chopper,” Leong said. “Considering who he wasted, don’t you find that odd?”
Wil took his time so as not to appear too facile or deferential. “Maybe not when you think of him as part of Under Heaven’s enforcement arm. Bringing Maccafee to heel.”
Yanez leaned forward to unwrap a cigar from a pack, sniffing it before setting it in the copper ashtray. He said, “We’ve drawn up a sketch based on the girl’s input. Detective Leong thinks he might fit for their Po Sang hitman. Sooner or later we’ll see. Which might leave you, Hardesty, with the impression I think you’re the cat’s ass.” Cold smile. “That would be a mistake. Frankly, most of what I’ve heard from you I consider deliberate obfuscation. Unfortunately, without Maccafee or your shooter, that’s all I can do about it.”
Wil met the stare as the others watched obliquely. “You have my statement and my impressions, Lieutenant. Will that be all?”
Yanez looked at Sanders and Leong, who shrugged.
“For now,” he said. “Not to imply for long.”
The ATF agent, whose name was Elizabeth Kim and who’d been largely ignored by Yanez, said, “I have a question. Mr. Hardesty, you said you cooperated with Agent Lorenz. Was that by design?”
Wil looked at her. “If you mean did I catch on, no, not until late. Lorenz was real and professional and I liked her. And if she used me because Maccafee was using her, I guess I used them, too.”
“Used in what way?”
“Two-way street,” he said. “I’d been inside Luc’s, they hadn’t. I agreed to diagram the house, which helped get him killed, nothing Lieutenant Yanez doesn’t know. For that she informed me that Jimmy had been pressured by somebody higher up the food chain.”
“Higher than the United States government?” she asked.
Not another one, Wil thought. He suddenly felt sympathy for Rudy Yanez, old-school to new tricks the hard way. “Agent Kim,” he answered, “Under Heaven may be your province. But even then I think she was having misgivings about Maccafee and a lot of things, including her father and you people. I just didn’t put it together soon enough. I’ll always regret that.”
With nods to law enforcement, Elizabeth Kim said she needed to get on the road to brief Marotta, and the meeting broke up. Outside in the hall, Yanez and Sanders having a last word, Leong having preceded them, Frank Lin said, “Holy Mother. You don’t care who you rub the wrong way, do you?”
“Thanks for going along with the call, Frank.”
“What the hell, you’re welcome. Thanks for not making a federal case of it. How are the ribs?”
“Don’t remind me,” Wil said.
Pause, a glance out the window. “You do know the DA authorized your client’s release preparatory to waiving the charges?”
Wil said, “I didn’t catch that. You mind saying it a little louder?”
“You were lucky. You do know that?”
“Never mind, I heard,” he said. “It’s okay with the hospital?”
Lin stopped at the outlet door, cracked the bar, pushed it open. “Turns out he only had a concussion,” he said. “Look, give them my regards, will you? Tell them they might have more friends in town than they think.”
71
Terry Leong stood by the glass doors, a black nylon briefcase over his shoulder. He was sucking air through the unlit cigarette and looking out into the parking lot.
“Thinking about a career move?” Wil asked as he headed for him.
Leong swung his way. “Waiting for a ride to the airport, actually.”
“Come on,” Wil said. “I’ll run you out there.”
In the car, Leong rolled the cigarette between his teeth. “Things move at their own pace down here, don’t they?”
Wil grinned. “When’s your flight?”
Leong checked the Tag-Heuer. “Seventeen minutes.”
“Time to spare.”
He was signaling for their overpass when Leong said, “You knew him, didn’t you? And don’t give me that wide-eyed look. Your dark angel and my Dao Hong shooter, one in the same.”
“There some confusion as to what my words meant back there?”
Leong angled the cigarette to the side. “Obviously Yanez had his priorities, my shooter not being among them.”
“Sorry, about that, I wouldn’t know.” Concentrating on avoiding a fat-tired pickup, the kid driving it wrestling with a hamburger.
“For now. But sooner or later, he’ll turn up,” Leong said. “And I’ll keep going until I have him—that you do know. And then I’ll have you.”
Wil shrugged. “As you say, your business.”
They could see the airport now, people leaving the g
ate toward a taxi’d-up 737. As much to get him gone as there in time, Wil sped up.
“That is, unless you wanted to tell me something to make me change my mind,” Leong said.
“Detective, I have no idea what that would be.”
“Bullcrap—run it on somebody else. Whatever you did on that ridge, at least you flushed the bastards. And you gave me the guy in the topcoat. That counts for something.”
Wil made the turn, pulled up at the terminal: Crape myrtle trees blooming pink, tile and bougainvillea, red-vested luggage checkers by the curb. Leong made no move to get out.
“He never went with them, did he?” he said. “In that helicopter.”
Wil looked past him. “Your flight, remember?”
“I figure I’ll start with your background, see who shakes out. You know how it works.”
“Up to you. I’m here.”
“Come on, Hardesty, a reason not to,” he said. “Something I can take into account.”
Wil met his eyes. “I guess you must like chasing down airplanes on tarmacs.”
“That’s too bad. For a lot of reasons,” Leong said. “You’d have liked him, you know. Artie was a good cop and a good man.”
He got out and closed the door, was adjusting the briefcase strap when Wil leaned over and rolled down the window, stuck his head through the opening to the smell of spent aircraft fuel.
“Leong? Take it or leave it: You can close the book on it, my word. He’s going off to die.” Pausing to swallow. “That’s fucking all you get. And eight screaming kids are headed for your seat.”
72
They were on the patio: Li, Mia, Vinh Tien without the bandage and the swelling; discoloration somewhat diminished, the stitches due out shortly. Matt and Wil sat sharing the sunlight and the bamboo, the fountain, the lapsang they’d brewed for him. Stroking Matt’s ears, he said to Vinh Tien, “You’re looking pretty chipper for a guy who took on the whole county.”
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