Last Shot Read online

  Gregg Hurwitz

  LAST SHOT

  For Marjorie Hurwitz,

  my mother

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  The mood inside was nice and mellow until Spook taped…

  Chapter 2

  Decked out in Spider-Man shoes, an empty belted scabbard, Evel…

  Chapter 3

  Bear accelerated down the Harbor Freeway, his overused Ram protesting…

  Chapter 4

  The guard at the console gave them a cordial nod…

  Chapter 5

  Unlike Sasso, who pivoted corners on the ball of his…

  Chapter 6

  Tim, Bear, and Newlin sat on frail rolling chairs in…

  Chapter 7

  The crow lurched from one foot to the other on…

  Chapter 8

  Bear crouched with his prodigious ass floating above his heels…

  Chapter 9

  Fifth and Wall. The nucleus of a few blocks that…

  Chapter 10

  The rusting horizontal slats groaned their displeasure as the metal…

  Chapter 11

  Even at 12:21 A.M., cars lurched past the drive-through window…

  Chapter 12

  The run-down community within earshot of freeway traffic showed off…

  Chapter 13

  Boston bounded past Tim over the porch, leapt through the…

  Chapter 14

  Walker sat on the sagging couch watching the dust filter…

  Chapter 15

  Dolan cracked his knuckles for the third time that morning,…

  Chapter 16

  Maintaining a disciplined stillness at the head of a preposterously…

  Chapter 17

  Tyler’s sturdy legs flexed as he tried to reverse his…

  Chapter 18

  Within the hour, when their stretches get stuck in traffic,…

  Chapter 19

  There was no lock on the door, which made Walker…

  Chapter 20

  Multiple-voice yelling rose above the blaring TV inside. Tim gave…

  Chapter 21

  A stray dog licked the necks of soda bottles in…

  Chapter 22

  The stumps of Marcel Deron’s arms waved in circles as…

  Chapter 23

  Soiled with a fringe of water stain and an excessive…

  Chapter 24

  Tim flipped through the visitor log as he and Bear…

  Chapter 25

  This time, despite the broken latch, Walker knocked on the…

  Chapter 26

  An attractive redhead sat behind a curved shield of a…

  Chapter 27

  I need to be clear on this matter: I’m going…

  Chapter 28

  Walker stepped down quietly into the model home’s family room…

  Chapter 29

  The denim couch seemed to sink around Pierce Jameson’s weight,…

  Chapter 30

  A ’72 Olds Cutlass Supreme held down the VIP space…

  Chapter 31

  We’re past the twenty-four-hour mark.” Tannino leaned into the squad…

  Chapter 32

  Wearing a light cotton Tommy Bahama camp shirt against the…

  Chapter 33

  Kaitlin opened the door, smoothing down a poof of bed…

  Chapter 34

  Lights killed, the oversize Bronco idled beneath an overhang of…

  Chapter 35

  Tim crouched over the blown-wide mass of flesh protruding from…

  Chapter 36

  Ortiz got off a solid blow, and Kenny Shamrock’s nose…

  Chapter 37

  You’re not safe here.” Kaitlin followed Walker down the hall,…

  Chapter 38

  The command post took shape as it usually did, around…

  Chapter 39

  The churning of the roller bottles in combination with the…

  Chapter 40

  I said no lime.” The paunchy gentleman waved off the…

  Chapter 41

  Dean barely glanced up when Tim and Bear entered. His…

  Chapter 42

  Tim screeched his Explorer around overburdened gardener trucks clogging Wilshire’s…

  Chapter 43

  Sam ground a stick into the top of the anthill,…

  Chapter 44

  Kaitlin looked up from the pot on the stove and…

  Chapter 45

  Through the humid night air, Tim and Bear could hear…

  Chapter 46

  At half past nine in the morning, the electricity kicked…

  Chapter 47

  A young security guard led Tim and Bear down the…

  Chapter 48

  The scent of brine, damp wood, and seaweed brought Walker…

  Chapter 49

  Tim’s head throbbed from too much caffeine and from squinting…

  Chapter 50

  There’s a pay phone on the northwest corner of Baldwin…

  Chapter 51

  The pay phone rang, and Tim snatched it off the…

  Chapter 52

  Tim turned off the phone, sat on the garden bench,…

  Chapter 53

  A lingering party remained at a back table inside the…

  Chapter 54

  What were you thinking?” Dray set a plate down on…

  Chapter 55

  The ground stank of sewage, and the night canyon fog…

  Chapter 56

  Esteban Martinez, attorney-at-law. Tim, Bear, and Dray sat on the…

  Chapter 57

  Walker flicked Tim’s gun to indicate the front seat, sliding…

  Chapter 58

  The front rooms of the Kagan house, mood-lit for a…

  Chapter 59

  Other kids ran and squealed with after-school exertion, but Sam…

  Chapter 60

  Tim nosed out from behind a moving van and floored…

  Chapter 61

  The house, when quiet, worried Tim. Tyler’s squalling arrival on…

  Chapter 62

  Given the VIP handling, the carefully negotiated seating, and the…

  Chapter 63

  The glass sculpture behind the podium webbed instantly, thousands of…

  Chapter 64

  The Nextel felt hot against Tim’s cheek; he realized he…

  Chapter 65

  Tim had called for backup, but there was no way…

  Chapter 66

  Before Tim could comprehend that the explosion came in surround…

  Chapter 67

  Walker left the Accord two blocks away in an alley.

  Chapter 68

  Dolan had spent the last hour pacing laps around the…

  Chapter 69

  The lawn was overgrown. Not a noteworthy observation elsewhere, but…

  Chapter 70

  Sam sprawled on the bed, mouth ajar, glasses askew over…

  Chapter 71

  Tim remained two strides into the dark apartment, gunfacing his…

  Chapter 72

  Seemingly relieved to be back in submissive charge, Edwin made…

  Chapter 73

  Morgenstein stepped out of the shower with a shaggy bath…

  Chapter 74

  I heard you got shot.”

  Chapter 75

  Freed fussed at a contraption that looked like something out…

  Chapter 76

  Timing his approach to dodge overlapping security patrols, Dolan arrived…

  Chapter 77

  Using his left arm to cradle twenty or so vials…

  Chapter 78

  Edwin answered the door, regarded the FBI team soberly, nodded,…

  Chapter 79

 
The desert scent of sage drifting through his open window,…

  Chapter 80

  The alarm chimed at 2:00 A.M. Dray’s complaint was unintelligible.

  Ninety Days After Walker’s Death

  Kaiyer walk hisself.”

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Gregg Hurwitz

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  The mood inside was nice and mellow until Spook taped razor blades to his hands and slashed up two Aryan Brothers and half a correctional officer. So that meant Terminal Island was on edge and the population unshaved—disposable razors being accountable items the screws hadn’t kept accountable. Every morning this week, Walker had to stand in line with the other boarders for his shot with a piece-of-shit Norelco, the CO dipping the cutting head in Barbicide between shearings.

  The inside heated up in August. Air like fever. Men slept worse, got antsy. Got violent. Some, like Spook, got creative. Walker steered clear, as always, of the ensuing bullshit. He kept out of the yard—too much trouble brewing—to sit on the stacked footlockers in his house upstairs and take in the sights.

  Two wind-battered palm trees, row of Dumpsters, anchor resting atop a concrete pillar at the coast guard facility across the way—all strained through two layers of chain link and some nifty coils of razor wire. The view wasn’t much. But it was all he had. He loved the two palms—Sally and Jean Ann. Loved how their crowns could hold the evening light, bathed in gold a good half hour after the grounds were puddled in shadow. If he mashed his face to the concrete wall, he could make out the edge of a third tree, but he didn’t know that one well enough to name her.

  Walker pulled back from the iron bars and regarded his house. He knew this view well, too. All six by eight of it. Bunk beds, metal, one solid piece. Stainless steel toilet and sink. Technically, the walls were supposed to be bare, but by the window Walker had used chewing gum to put up a picture of Tess, mostly because he didn’t know what else to do with it. Aside from the photo and a few cigarette burns on his footlocker, he hadn’t made much of an imprint on the place in two and a half years.

  His cellie, a soft-spoken rapist renamed Imaad, had been more active in his nesting. An Arabic phrase, rendered in gold calligraphy, glittered from a black velvet banner. Below it a postcard of a mosque was stuck to the wall with paste, since he claimed that chewing gum contained—Allah forbid—gelatin. A prayer rug, woven from lovingly twisted cords of toilet paper, stood rolled up in a corner. Atop the frayed end, safely above belly level, rested a worn Koran, the leather binding long gone to pieces. Imaad, who was well behaved and aggressively introverted, tolerated Walker as Walker tolerated him. Yesterday Imaad had drunk ammonia with his Cup o’ Noodles, his puking buying him a lay-in at the infirmary so he wouldn’t have to mix with the general pop. A good move for a model prisoner, given the smoke on the horizon.

  After Spook’s Schick escapade, the Gorillas and the Aryans were due to let more blood. And the cholos weren’t about to get left out either. The Norteño cell lieutenant’s punk had gone renegade and gotten picked up by a jocker from Surrenos, stoking the embers of a dormant vendetta. An unnatural silence had permeated the block the past few nights. Convicts were stockpiling food. Despite the heat, gang members only ventured out in canvas jackets, padding their undershirts with magazines and newspapers as insurance against stickings. It was like gas had been leaking through the grounds all week and everyone was holding their breath, waiting for somebody to strike a match.

  Walker’s right arm sported a dark comma above the biceps—yin of yin-yang fame. Tommy LaRue from D-Block was the ink slinger, but the tattoo had gone unfinished after his kit was confiscated in the wake of the May riot. Walker had smuggled the needles out of Unicor, where the prisoners toiled for a buck twenty an hour stitching and packing and making useful things like paper targets so cops could practice shooting them. He’d shoved the needles beneath the surface of his heel callus and delivered them to LaRue, who tied them with a shoelace to the point of a pencil. The ink was easy—burn a Bic pen filler heroin style in a spoon, then mix the soot with toothpaste and soap. The lace soaks up the ink, the needles open the skin, and—had no shakedown occurred—Walker would’ve gotten his yang. But since Kelly O’Connell felt inspired to throw a flaming mattress off the third tier, Walker had to walk around for three months like an asshole with a big tadpole on his arm. To be fair, Kelly’s riot had also provided free entertainment. First the bedding and burning trash raining down onto the range floor, showering sparks. Then the boarders got to sit on the bare mesh of their beds and watch the mini-frontloaders at work, scooping up the charred mounds below. That one had made the papers, and they’d paid for it. Petty reprisals for a month. No basketballs. No magazines. No dessert.

  Walker glanced at Tess on the wall and felt his thoughts sharpen, pricking him with imagined scenarios. The only treatment, he’d learned, was to tune out. Weights, headphones, or the four-star view.

  He was just reconvening with Sally and Jean Ann when Boss sent for him. Walker didn’t like being sent for, and if it was anyone else, he would have ignored the summons, but Boss hadn’t sent for him in months, and when Boss sent for you, you went.

  Sweet Boy repeated the request, leaning against the doorway with a bent wrist propped against a smooth cheek, and Walker said, “I heard you.”

  “Boss says now.”

  “Boss can wait.”

  Sweet Boy’s eyelashes flared, as if Walker had wiped his nose on the pope’s robe, and he made a snitty little noise at the back of his throat and withdrew.

  Walker rose and stretched. The powdered eggs from breakfast had left a foul taste in his mouth, so he brushed his teeth, tapped the rubber Department of Corrections toothbrush on the lip of the sink, and dropped it into a cup from the chow hall. A titanium cross escaped his shirt when he leaned to spit. His first month in, LaRue had gotten the thin black cord—more like a shoestring—for Walker to hang the pendant on. LaRue could get anything, from Albanian hash to the e-mail address for Catherine Zeta-Jones’s publicist so you could write and get a signed head shot. LaRue was the closest thing to a friend Walker had in here. Or, for that matter, anywhere. He served everyone and no one, and Walker liked him for his democratic refusal to cultivate alliances.

  Walker stepped out onto the catwalk, glancing over the waist-height rail to the concrete plain of the range floor forty feet below. He could hear the clink of weights and shouts from the boccie court out on the North Yard. The echoes bounced off the high ceiling, came back distorted.

  LaRue was scurrying toward him, head down, elbow pressed to his side to hold firm whatever contraband he was muling under his shirt. They clasped hands, bumped opposite shoulders.

  “Let’s see the tat.” LaRue shook his head at Walker’s forlorn yin. “We’ll get it finished up as soon as this shit blows over.”

  “You got word for me?”

  “Expect to have it by lunch.” He produced a cigarette from thin air, handed it to Walker, and scurried off to finish his rounds.

  Walker stuck the cig in his mouth and continued down the catwalk. Boss Hahn, a shotcaller for the Aryan Brotherhood, occupied the best cell on J-Unit’s third tier, right next to the TV room. Kelly’s arm greeted Walker at the cell door, but Boss tipped his chin in a faint nod, the limb withdrew, and Walker stepped inside.

  A red sheet over the window cut the light to a soft glow. Sweet Boy reclined on the bed reading a romance paperback. Boss’s cellie, Marcus, was taking a dump, one foot out and clear of his pants in case a brawl broke out; if nothing else, prison kept you ready for dirty fighting. The smell mixed with that of the ramen noodles on the hot plate. After a while you barely notice stuff like that. An AB strongman, Marcus was missing two front teeth, so he could smile clench-jawed and still stick his tongue out at you.

  His weight bowing the footlocker he straddled, Boss leaned over a paper c
hessboard. The pieces were carved from soap, half of them blackened with shoe polish. A bottle cap stood in for a missing pawn. Boss tapped a knight’s head. Blunt fingers, wide at the nails. His arm was so loaded with muscle that the bulges met one another in tangential circles—delt, biceps, forearm. Like Walker, Boss wore the standard fare: khaki pants, tan button-up. His influence showed in his Nikes—Walker wore issued canvas slip-ons—and in the red-and-white cartons stacked up the wall opposite the bed. Boss was rich in cigarettes, and in prison cigarettes bought you anything from a punk to a shiv in your enemy’s kidney. Inked on Boss’s neck was the Aryans’ symbol: shamrock and triple sixes. He was old-school AB, before they wised up and started hiding the brands.

  Kelly returned to his seat across the board from Boss. Boss continued to study the situation, a mildly pained expression on his face. He jerked his wide head in Sweet Boy’s direction. “Why didn’t you come when she told you to?”

  Walker shrugged. Shifted the unlit cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other.

  “Answer him.” Kelly sprang up in Walker’s face. “You gonna make a move, GI Joe? No? Then fuckin’ answer the man.”