by Robert Ellis
The black coupe barreled over the curb behind him and down the sidewalk, knocked over a mailbox, and bounced back onto the street, its tires screeching.
Matt kept shouting as he sprinted forward. But it looked like Grubb had become frightened now, and Matt watched the man freeze in the middle of the crosswalk.
The Mercedes rocketed toward its victim—the street clear ahead. Thirty yards away from the target soon became twenty, then only fifteen—and Grubb was just standing there.
Matt charged into the intersection and lowered his shoulder, trying to beat the car to its prey. He drove his upper body into Grubb’s waist, thrusting him backward and tackling him onto the sidewalk. He could feel the hard rush of air as the Mercedes missed its mark by only inches and blew by them.
Grubb was down, but he looked okay.
Matt got to his knees and eyeballed the black coupe. It seemed like madness. The car was right in front of them, spinning in a controlled circle and sideswiping any other car that was in its way. When the front end swung around to Fifth Street, the engine seemed to light up and the Mercedes shot down the one-way street splitting oncoming traffic into two. Cars veered off the road. A city bus driver must have lost sight of the black coupe in the darkness, swerved at full speed, and plowed into the taco truck.
And then time stopped.
Matt could see it happening in slow motion—in utter disbelief. The bus rear-ending the taco truck and the gas tank bursting into flames.
He screamed at the top of his lungs.
He looked down at Grubb, still confused and panting on the sidewalk, then jumped to his feet and bolted over to the taco truck. The entire rear end was engulfed in flames. Ripping open the front door, he looked inside and saw all four people lying motionless on the floor under piles of shattered glass. The three SIS officers, two men and a woman, were facedown. Cabrera was on his back, his eyes open and pointed Matt’s way but blank.
None of it good. None of it good.
Matt grabbed his partner’s forearms and dragged him out the door, onto the sidewalk, and away from the burning truck. Police were beginning to arrive shouting that the gas tank was going to explode.
Matt pushed the cops out of his way, hard and fast, and in one case with a closed fist. Running back into the truck, he locked his hands around the woman’s wrists, yanked her out of the shattered glass, and dragged her onto the sidewalk beside Cabrera.
The flames were getting bigger, the fire hotter, the truck ready to blow.
He dove back in, eyeballing both men as he rushed to turn them over. He knew from his time in Afghanistan that one of them was dead. The man’s head was hanging off to the side, his eyes stuck to the roof of the taco truck. Matt wanted to scream again but didn’t. Instead he grabbed the dead man’s wrist, and then the second man’s arm, digging his heels into the floor and wrenching their heavy bodies out into the fresh air.
Seconds ticked by. Time jumbling down the drain. The taco truck had just started to make an odd whining sound. After a few moments, the strange noise stopped, the silence even more daunting.
And then night turned into day.
Matt heard the loud crack, saw the bright flash, and watched the taco truck lift off the street and explode before his eyes.
The concussion from the blast knocked people down. Matt could hear them screaming in terror on both sides of the street. Shattered glass and shards of metal began to fall out of the dark sky like frozen rain.
Matt wrapped his arms around Cabrera, shielding his partner from the storm. As the fireball rose over their heads, he saw his partner blink his eyes. He looked him over in the flickering light. He guessed that his right arm and leg were broken, and he spotted blood seeping through his shirt just below his rib cage.
He looked up at the cops staring at the fireball. “Hey, hey, hey,” he shouted. “We need help over here. What are you guys doing? Where the hell are the EMTs?”
Matt ripped open Cabrera’s shirt and examined the wound. Blood was oozing out of a slice that might have been caused by broken glass during the crash. The wound looked shallow and didn’t appear to be life threatening.
“Can you talk?” he said.
Cabrera nodded.
“Say something.”
He shook his head, writhing in agony. “I can’t.”
“You just did,” Matt said. “I want you to move your left hand. Not your right. Just your left hand.”
“You think my neck’s broken?”
“Just try moving the fingers on your left hand.”
“Oh my God, Jones. Oh my God.”
Cabrera’s eyes dropped to his left hand. A long moment passed as he appeared to struggle. But then his fingers moved.
The relief was overwhelming, and Matt saw a tear drip down his partner’s cheek. Matt closed his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t catch his breath and felt dizzy. He shook his head and looked away. He could still see the black coupe and the open path the car had cut all the way down Fifth Street. All the wrecked cars, some of them on fire, lining both sides of the street. When the Mercedes made a turn onto Grand Avenue and disappeared, Matt looked around for a cruiser and realized that no one was even in pursuit.
His skin flushed. His entire being lit up.
He tried to pull himself together and turned to check on Grubb but didn’t see him on the sidewalk. He grabbed hold of a street sign and pulled himself to his feet. When he turned, he spotted Grubb racing across the intersection into the park. Burton and McKensie were on the corner but unable to stop him as he sprinted by and vanished into the night.
Matt glanced back at Cabrera, then gazed across the intersection until his eyes stopped on a limousine idling safely on Flower Street. The rear window was down, but it didn’t need to be. Matt knew exactly who was riding in the back seat and who was sitting beside her.
He watched the limo pull into the open street, the traffic behind it at a standstill. As the car drove off, free as a bird, the flames from the burning taco truck filled the limo’s interior with bright red light.
That’s when he saw her eyes. Her brutal face.
The city councilwoman had been here tonight.
FORTY
Matt watched two EMTs lift the gurney and roll Cabrera into the ambulance. As they closed the doors, one of them gave Matt a hard look.
“You sure you don’t want to come with us, Detective?”
“I can’t,” Matt said. “I don’t have time.”
“But you need medical attention.”
“What are you talking about?”
The EMT shot him another look. “Have you seen your face?”
Matt wiped his cheek, felt his skin stinging, and saw the blood on his fingertips.
“I’ll stop by later,” he said. “I’ve gotta meet somebody first.”
The EMT shrugged. “Suit yourself, pal.”
Matt watched the man hop in behind the wheel. The engine was already idling, the LED light bars, flashing. When the ambulance drove off without a siren, Matt took it as a sign that his partner might be banged up and broken but would be okay in the end.
He turned and started walking down the sidewalk. Burton and McKensie were standing on the corner with a handful of plainclothes detectives. It sounded like they were planning their delayed pursuit of the Mercedes. McKensie had ordered the choppers in, along with providing a description of the banged-up car to everyone on the ground. Matt wished that he could have avoided them because he wasn’t sure how much time he had, if he had any at all. Lane Grubb would be making that decision for him.
“I’ve gotta go,” he said.
McKensie grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back, his voice tainted by sarcasm. “Where?”
“The Red Dragon.”
“Do you really think Grubb’s gonna show?”
Burton shook his head. “I saw him run away, Matt. He didn’t look like he was gonna stop running anytime soon.”
“That’s why we picked a backup location, right? I’ll see
you guys later.”
Matt didn’t wait for a reply and started jogging down Flower Street. He’d parked in the garage halfway down the block and just this side of the California Club. Within five minutes he was barreling through the city headed for Chinatown. At one point when he’d reached a red light and was buried three cars back, he glanced in the rearview mirror. He didn’t recognize himself at first and turned away. When he looked back, he eyeballed the specks of blood from small cuts peppering his cheeks and forehead. He thought about the shattered glass and shards of metal that rained out of the sky. When it occurred to him how lucky he’d been that his eyes were spared, he turned away and never looked back.
Bamboo Lane was a narrow one-way street between Hill and Broadway at the north end of Chinatown. Matt spotted the street and skidded into a parking spot on Broadway. Before getting out of the car, he checked his piece, then holstered the pistol and took a moment to look up and down the street. He eyed the traffic carefully, then got out of the car and gave the street another long look. If the Mercedes had been here, he felt confident he would have seen it.
He looked back at the two-way traffic, picked his spot, and made a harrowing run through the passing cars until he reached the other side of the street. It could have been his imagination, but Bamboo Lane seemed dark tonight. As he walked down the narrow road, he could feel his heart beating in his chest. The Red Dragon was on the left, almost at the end of the block. Matt passed the restaurant, gazing at the red door and through the windows at the people seated at tables. He wanted to come in from the back. Picking up his step, he walked around the corner, then entered the alley behind the buildings.
The passageway was tight and gloomy. Avoiding a long series of the trash cans, discarded building materials, and lawn chairs set around charcoal grills, he kept his eyes on the buildings and started counting. When he thought he had the right place, he peered through the screen door into the kitchen and walked in.
An old man working an oversize wok whom he recognized said something to him in Mandarin and pointed at the door to the private dining room. Matt met the old man’s eyes.
“Alone?”
The old man nodded. “We take care of him, like you say.”
Matt bowed his head slightly in gratitude—or was it relief?—then exhaled as he stepped through the kitchen and pushed open the door.
His eyes swept through the dark room. He found Grubb seated at a table in the corner with a single place setting and a single candle illuminating the entire room. Lowering his gaze, he realized Grubb was pointing a Beretta 9mm pistol at him.
Matt grimaced. “Why the gun?” he said.
Grubb’s eyes looked dead as he stared back at him. “I need to feel safe.”
“Put it on the table, Grubb.”
The man shook his head back and forth without saying anything.
Matt checked the room again, just to confirm that they were alone. His vision had adjusted to the darkness. When he turned back, he noticed the syringe and five bags of smack laid out on the wooden table beside a glass of water and the place setting. Looking Grubb over, he saw that he’d already rolled up his right sleeve and wrapped a rubber tourniquet above his elbow. Already emptied one of the five bags of white powder into a soupspoon.
“Are you gonna shoot up?” Matt said.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because you won’t be safe.”
Grubb laughed, exposing his rotten teeth. Then he laughed even more, like he’d just heard a good joke.
“Why are you doing this, Grubb? How could you let this happen to yourself? You already have all the money you could ever need. What are you doing in LA?”
Grubb’s eyes rose from the table and burrowed in. “Is this the part they call the interrogation, Detective? If it is, you can stop with all the stupid questions. I’m not in the mood right now.”
“Would you mind if I sat down?”
“Not at this table,” he said, looking the place over. “That one.”
Matt pulled a chair out and sat down at the table in front of Grubb’s. “What about the piece?”
“What’s a piece?”
“The gun.”
“The gun stays here.”
“What about pointing it at something other than me? You know, just in case it goes off.”
Grubb nodded, panning the muzzle to the empty table beside Matt. “Good?” he said.
Matt shook his head. “No, Grubb. It’s not good, but it’s better.”
Grubb picked up the glass of water and took a sip. After resting the glass on the table, his eyes seemed to dim, and he remained quiet.
Matt leaned forward in his chair. “I’m gonna need to know what’s going on,” he said. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s happening.”
The man looked at him, then looked away. He appeared to be thinking something over and having difficulty doing it. Matt guessed that it was the heroin already in his system—the back end of his afternoon high.
“I overheard you talking,” Matt said. “You got into it with Sonny last night. You were saying something about the risks. There weren’t supposed to be any.”
“He promised. Sonny told us that it was gonna be easy. He said there was nothing to worry about.”
“How’s Dee Colon fit into your trouble-free life, Grubb?”
The man shrugged. “After you showed up with those pictures of Robert Gambini, we realized that we needed protection. It was supposed to be a single payment, but she could smell the money. You know, the way politicians do these days. She has the knack and wanted more. She wanted in.”
“Is she in?”
Grubb shook his head. “Nobody gets in. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it has to be. Sonny’s trying to stall, but she’s not buying it.”
“What about Robert Gambini? Are you in with him or not?”
“Not even close, Jones,” he said. “And for the record, that’s another stupid question.”
Matt took the hit but ignored it. He’d figured out who Grubb was a long time ago.
“Gambini beat you up last night,” he said. “What’s he want out of this?”
Grubb’s hollow eyes narrowed. “Everything.”
“You mean a big piece. Fifty, maybe seventy-five percent.”
“No,” Grubb said. “I mean he wants everything.”
Matt looked across the table, sizing Grubb up and still baffled by the idea that three Wall Street assholes, the Brothers Grimm, could be so naive. The idea that these idiots thought they could walk into LA and muscle in on the drug business without risk or worry seemed so ludicrous.
“What do you know about the murders of Moe Rey and Sophia Ramirez?”
“Are you talking about that stupid Mexican girl?”
Matt winced as he heard Grubb say the words. He noted the anger in the man’s voice. The hate.
Matt steadied his gaze. “What do you know about their deaths?” he repeated.
“If that stupid kid hadn’t gotten herself killed, none of this would be happening right now. That’s what I know about it.”
Now there was new anger settling into the room. Not just in Grubb’s voice but the storm crashing through Matt’s body. He wished Robert Gambini had hit him a couple more times in the face last night.
“What are you trying to say, Grubb?”
The man sat back and sighed. “Nothing, Jones. I can see you wouldn’t get it, so why waste time. The only thing you need to know is that I want out. Are you gonna help me or not?”
Matt didn’t answer the question. Instead, he’d reached the point of self-doubt and needed to think it over. Grubb wasn’t worth helping. And it no longer seemed worth the bother of keeping him safe either. That was the bottom line. Unfortunately, these ideas went against everything Matt had always stood for, everything he had learned as a soldier and then again as a cop and a detective. He was there to serve all things living, even if he felt like killing them. Shooting them. Beating the crap out of them.
<
br /> His mind surfaced, and he gazed across the two tables at Grubb. The man had given into his wants and needs and had placed the Beretta beside his napkin. Now he was holding the soupspoon filled with white powder over the candle.
“You sure you want to do this, Grubb? Why don’t we just walk out now? We’ll drive over to police headquarters. It’s just a couple of blocks away.”
“We’ll do that later. Order something to eat. It’s on me.”
Grubb’s hands were quivering as he began filling his syringe with the hot load. Matt thought about going for his .45, but Grubb’s pistol was still too close.
“You know the smack they sell out here is stronger than the crap they sell you guys on Wall Street.”
Grubb gave him a look with those dead eyes of his. “I can handle it, Jones. You think I’m a pussy?”
“I think you’re a lot of things, Grubb. The problem with smack is you just never know.”
Grubb tightened the rubber tourniquet and slapped his arm in search of a fresh vein.
“You’re an asshole, Jones. Trying to scare me like that. Wow. Cops. I’ve read all about you. I guess that’s what happens when your momma dies on you, and your rich daddy walks out on you. Shit, you grew up dirt poor like a stupid welfare brat.”
Grubb found the vein, stabbed it with the needle, backed blood into the syringe, and gave the plunger a hard push. Matt watched the smack rush down the barrel and vanish into Grubb’s arm. Grubb gave him a look and had a wiseass smirk on his face. He started to laugh, even giggle, but it was short-lived—maybe only a second or two. Then the stupid man fell back in his chair and collapsed onto the floor.
FORTY-ONE
It felt like someone was watching him from behind his back. Like he’d been transformed into a machine that had been programmed. He could see himself stuffing Grubb’s pistol inside his belt, then moving over to the body on the floor.
It wasn’t about Grubb anymore. It made no difference who he was or even how he got there. The number of zombies walking the streets these days had become quantifiable over the past four years at a steady 30 percent.