The Survivor Page 13

  Nate held out his hands, a felon at gunpoint, “I’m sorry. I—”

  She flew across the room and ripped the diary from his hand. “I can’t believe you. I get that you’re dying and everything, but you can’t just sail in here and start prying around in my stuff and reading my journal.”

  “Seriously,” Jason added.

  “Can we get this clown out of here?” Nate asked.

  “Chillax.” Jason showed him his palms. “I’m leaving.” He kissed Cielle, keeping his eyes on Nate the whole time, a little power move that, on another day when Nate owed his daughter less, might have resulted in a broken nose. And then the kid was gone, thumping down the stairs whistling the chorus from “Paradise City.”

  Nate faced his daughter across a floor littered with dirty clothes and torn-out magazine pages.

  She glowered at him. “Why are you back here?”

  “What?”

  “Why’d you come back again? I assume it wasn’t just to read my diary.”

  He wanted so badly to be straight with her, to paint the whole picture, taking some of the edges off the gory points, but he wasn’t sure what was best, and Pete and Janie certainly deserved a vote. He cleared his throat to stall, but Cielle was having none of it.

  “What were you doing at the bank, Nate?”

  Quite a lane change. He heard himself hesitate a beat too long. “Bank stuff. Making a deposit. But I was interrupted by the robbery—” A second late he caught his choice of words.

  “Interrupted? From what? Making a deposit?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “In the news you said you were in the bathroom.” Her gaze, steady beneath those long eyelashes. Questions and emotions whirring beneath the surface, slot-machine reels that wouldn’t land. Did she know?

  He chewed his cheek, not wanting to lie more but not willing to tell his fifteen-year-old daughter that he’d been planning on killing himself.

  Finally she said, “At least do me one favor. Let’s not pretend that either of us doesn’t know you’re lying.”

  “Okay.”

  Relief showed on her face, though she covered quickly, wiping her nose roughly on her sleeve. More silence.

  He started for the door.

  “You hate him,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Shithead Jason. You hate him.”

  Nate paused, hand on the knob, trying to switch lanes. The dispute loomed ahead like a pileup. “He doesn’t exactly make a glowing first impression.”

  “Jay is a musician. He’s an artist.”

  “No. Eric Clapton is an artist. Jason is a mouth breather with a guitar.”

  “Who’s Eric Clapton?”

  Nate thought, I’m gonna kill myself in earnest.

  She was already caught up in her objection. “Who do you want me to date? One of those is-this-gonna-be-on-the-test dorks from my AP classes? I like Jay because he’s different. And you know what else? He’s here for me. Unlike some people.”

  “I know you still like me a little.” Nate gestured at the uncovered family portrait in the closet. “You keep the ridiculous picture of us in here.”

  She curled her broad shoulders, withdrawing into herself, her hands gone again in her sleeves, turning the cuffs to puppet mouths. “Nowhere else to store it.”

  He nodded. They were done here. As he passed her on his way out, his arm brushed lightly against hers, and he realized that this touch of fabric was the first physical contact he’d had with his daughter in years. How had it gotten here? The question weighed on him all the way down to the kitchen.

  The smell of burned onions laced the air. Pete paced, circling the island, and Janie sat on the barstool. She was grimacing in pain, her head tilted and one arm stretched low with the wrist cocked back.

  “I have an acquaintance who’s a cop,” Pete said. “We have to take this to someone who knows what the hell he’s doing.”

  “And say what?” Nate asked. “What proof do we have? A pair of handcuffs in a warehouse? Even the ice has probably melted by now.”

  “This is out of our league, Nate. And certainly too much for you to handle. We need to enlist the help of folks whose job it is to deal with people like this.”

  “Pete, I researched this guy. He’s a heavy hitter. He means what he says.”

  “He made a death threat. On a girl. They can move on him fast, get him behind bars.”

  “Investigations take time. A lot of time. And Pavlo Shevchenko is rich and connected.”

  “So he owns cops?” Pete’s voice rose, fear and frustration masquerading as anger. “Federal agents? Who will do what? Call to warn him?”

  “I work in a cop shop, Pete. It doesn’t take a dirty cop. It takes one clerk with a big mouth. One IT guy willing to search a file. Trust me, I looked stuff up today I wasn’t supposed to.”

  Jane lifted her head and pulled her arm across her chest, tugging at the back of her elbow, grimacing.

  “I’m talking about one offline conversation,” Pete said. “With someone I trust.”

  “Are you willing to take that chance?” Nate stabbed a finger up, aiming in the vicinity of Cielle’s bedroom. “Given what he’ll do to her if you’re wrong?”

  Pete stopped pacing, his long face looking even longer. The drain dripped invisibly beneath the sink.

  “No,” Janie said. “Not yet anyway.”

  “Shevchenko gave me five days,” Nate said. “I have until Sunday.”

  “To do what, Nate? Rob a bank?” Pete blew out a breath, ran both hands through his thick hair. “You make messes, Nate. That’s what you do. And other people clean them up for you.”

  Janie gripped the top of her head, pulling gently to the side, trying to stretch out the knot she always got on the right side when she was tense or upset.

  “Her shoulder.” The words came out more sharply than Nate had intended.

  “What?”

  Nate pointed at Janie. “Rub her damn shoulder, Pete.”

  A puzzled pause, and then it finally dawned, and Pete stepped behind her, massaging. Janie grimaced against the pain.

  Nate took her hands across the island and looked into her scared blue eyes. “No matter what I have to do, I will not let them hurt our daughter. I promise you.”

  She gave the slightest nod. He started out.

  Pete called after him, “Where are you going?”

  “To handle it.”

  Nate passed Casper at the front door, gnawing on Pete’s wing tips. He seemed to be enjoying the hot sauce.

  Chapter 18

  The Los Angeles County Department of the Coroner was closing up as Nate slotted the Jeep into a parking spot. The imposing administrative building, a majestic interlace of brick and stone, pinned down a street corner on North Mission at the brink of the USC Medical Center. The building had first been dropped into Boyle Heights, a not-altogether-pleasant East L.A. neighborhood, as the County General Hospital. Ceramic floor tiles still spelled out the original function. Given the surfeit of movies that used the location and the glut of tourists—yes, tourists—it was the only coroner’s office, at least that he’d heard of, with a gift shop. Among the expected macabre paraphernalia, it sold coffin couches and chalk-outline beach towels. A sign by the cash register declared, CHECKS ACCEPTED WITH TWO FORMS OF ID OR DENTAL RECORDS.

  It was Wednesday night, so Nate’s favorite coroner, Eddie Yeap, would be toiling into the wee hours. Nonetheless, Nate put a spring into his step before the front door locked. As he had learned in his job: Always start with the body. In this case it was all he had. If he was ever going to figure out a way into Urban’s safe-deposit box, he’d need to find out as much about the man as possible. And finding out as much as possible about the deceased happened to be what Nate was best at.

  Department security had been beefed up since the O.J. trial had brought to light evidentiary chain-of-custody weaknesses. Winding down the corridors, Nate greeted the sets of guards by name, finally ending up in the doorwa
y of one of the wide, cool autopsy rooms. Eddie stood hunched over a corpse, his wet latex gloves pulling up into view, gripping a pair of angled scissors. A soft little man with a nervous laugh, he inexplicably referred to all the corpses as “Jonesy.”

  “Mr. Overbay. Heh. Serving another death notification tonight? They’re keeping you as busy as me. Heh.”

  The understaffed department processed over twenty thousand autopsies a year, and even so a crushing backlog waited in the wings. They were running out of space quicker than a state jail, the main lab and crypts jammed to capacity. Some years back there’d been a big stir when rats had gotten into the refrigerated annex behind the main building and chewed up the inert inhabitants.

  “Yeah. Must be a full moon.” The chill tightened Nate’s arms, raised the hairs at his nape. “Did you work on Danny Urban?”

  “Nine mil above the right eyebrow. A hit man. Heh. That got Jonesy fast-tracked.”

  “Anything unusual about him?”

  “Guy had a whole damn armory in his closet, a real gear queer. Cops took assault rifles and no foolin’ C4 into evidence. Not yer average Jonesy.” Eddie glanced up. “You give ’em all the treatment, don’t you? Sit and hold their hands. Read the reports. Even a hit man. Heh. I guess if it helps you with the next of kin. Not their fault, I suppose.”

  Nate mustered a flat smile in response, glad to find Eddie focused again on his work. “Where’d you store him?”

  “Dunno. Check the computer. I’m logged in. I’d do it myself, but”—he shrugged, gloves buried to the wrists in the Y incision—“got my hands full.”

  Nate checked the computer, then found his way to the appropriate crypt. A security guard unlocked for him the thick metal door, which released a waft of cold, medicinal air as it yawned open. The corpses were not stored in metal drawers but slotted in plain sight on trays that lined the walls like bunk beds on a submarine. Full to the rafters. Nate moved among the scattered morgue gurneys that accommodated the overflow, checking tags attached to body bags or to the flesh itself. A short ways in, he found Urban’s gurney and nodded a thank-you at the guard, who left him alone with the body, as was their arrangement.

  When Nate unzipped the body bag, it exhaled a puff of sweet rot and ethanol. As the vinyl fell away, Urban’s face emerged, cold and firm. The ridiculousness of the task struck Nate. But he hadn’t known where else to start.

  “What’s your safe-deposit-box number?” he asked Urban.

  The unblinking eyes stared up at him.

  Nate searched the corpse, taking his time. Hairline, toes, shoulders. One ankle was swollen and discolored; Urban had probably twisted it in the shoot-out. Nate didn’t know what precisely he was looking for and discovered nothing of interest. Giving up, he sat beside the corpse and, more from habit than anything, took the intact hand in his own weakened grip. Alone with the dead, he considered the enormity of the job before him. A little more than four days to break into a safe-deposit box for which he had no number, to retrieve he knew not what. If he didn’t figure something out, Cielle would be next on that slab. So much to accomplish before he could rest.

  As he rose despondently, Urban’s cool hand slid from his and he felt a slight rub on the finger. He turned over the hand, examining the white flesh. A thin seam of something sticky across the pad of the index finger. And a bit more under the nail. Adhesive?

  The heavy door boomed back into place behind him when he exited the crypt, and he grabbed a few lungfuls of moderately fresher air as he crossed to the autopsy room. “There’s something sticky on Urban’s hand. Did you identify it?”

  “I remember something,” Eddie said. “Turned out to be insignificant. Report’s on my desk, though, you wanna take a look.”

  The file was there in Eddie’s tray, fifth down in a towering stack. Eddie had run the substance found beneath Urban’s nail, the lab identifying it as duct-tape adhesive. Stuck to the adhesive was a strand of white carpet matching that in Urban’s bedroom, where he was found.

  Chewing his lip, Nate stared at the result, trying to figure out some way to make it relevant. Then he jotted down Urban’s address and headed for the exit.

  * * *

  The sky above the row of town houses had turned charcoal by the time Nate arrived at Danny Urban’s Van Nuys address. A shoe-box-size package waited on the porch, the orange-and-blue FedEx label frayed from transport. He toed it. Surprisingly heavy, it gave off a clank, its contents shifting. Behind a crisscross of crime-scene tape, the front door was locked. Judging from the way the door jiggled beneath Nate’s hand, however, it was not dead-bolted. He took a step back, looked in either direction, then kicked the door in. Ducking through the tape, he entered, reached back for the FedEx box, and eased the door shut behind him in the damaged frame. Then he clicked on the flashlight he kept stored in the cargo space of his Jeep.

  The bullet holes pockmarking the entry wall addressed a question that had been lingering in a corner of Nate’s mind: Why hadn’t Shevchenko’s men tortured Danny Urban to force him to give up the number of his safe-deposit box? Answer: They hadn’t had a chance to. That’s the problem with trying to knock off hit men. They know how to shoot back.

  Squatting, Nate opened the FedEx box, yanking and tearing until the cardboard gave way. When he glanced inside, the contents set his head ringing, and he glanced away and then back as if hoping to find something else there. Nested in the U of a curled hunting catalog were maybe twenty lock-blade knives. They looked so ordinary resting there, but Nate knew what they represented. Urban, stocking up for future jobs.

  He left the box on the floor. The narrow flashlight beam restricted his view, so he progressed slowly, each movement a stomach-churning reveal. The town house’s interior told the story of the assault. Bloodstains on the counter in the kitchen, where the fingers of Urban’s left hand had been shot off. He must have had a weapon within reach when they’d burst in, for he’d returned fire quickly, punching divots into the entry wall and shattering a hanging mirror. Cupboards and drawers tossed, Shevchenko’s men turning the place upside down in their search. Bloody handprint on the wall halfway up the stairs. Cabinets knocked open in the hall off the landing, side table shattered by bullets. Bedroom door ajar, painted with a stroke of red. And then the cluttered master suite, covered with porn DVDs, Soldier of Fortune magazines, and faux-antique furniture. Nate stepped over a fallen chair, taking in the lush white carpet marred with more handprints and finally matted down where Urban’s head had landed once the triggerman—probably Misha—had caught up to him.

  Tufts of foam poked through slashes in the mattress. A letter desk in the corner had been searched. The drawers were empty, half pulled out, papers rifled through by the Ukrainians or the cops or both.

  Nate squatted over the amoeba of blood, which had hardened to rust in the thick carpet. Thinking about that white strand recovered from the duct-tape adhesive beneath Urban’s nail, he looked at the handprint smudges leading from the door at intervals. Urban had been dragging himself to safety. Nate pictured him wounded and desperate, clawing forward with a hand and a half, bathed in sweat as footsteps grew loud behind him. If they’d done this to a hardened hit man, what chance did Nate have against them?

  He spun, scanning the wall, the flashlight beam picking across a stack of army-surplus woodland-camo fatigue shirts, a dented DVD player, and a single dirty sock. Something shiny winked at him, half hidden by the leg of the letter desk.

  A roll of duct tape.

  A crackle of electricity moved through him, pricking his skin, trepidation and excitement rolled into one. He crossed the room and picked up the roll. One edge speckled with blood. A few indentations, millimeters apart. Teeth marks. Nate called to mind the crime-scene photo, Urban’s square teeth spaced inside the terrible oval his mouth had formed in death. The man had needed to bite to tear the tape since by the time he’d gotten upstairs, he’d had only one functional hand.

  With murderers on your heels, why go after duct tape?<
br />
  Nate dropped the roll. Walked back to the blood splotch. Nothing. The flashlight beam moved toward the doorway as if of its own volition, illuminating the fallen chair. Then, slowly, Nate pulled it north to the ceiling above it.

  A fan.

  The electricity along his skin surged into a current. Urban had run up here not only to get away but to hide something. The thing Shevchenko’s men were after. He’d stood on the chair and taped it to the fan. He’d fallen off the chair. Twisted that ankle. Tried to crawl to a position of cover. And then.

  His heart thundering, Nate walked across the room. Righted the chair and stood on it. Reaching up, he felt along the tops of the fan blades. Sure enough, on the second blade his fingers touched a lifted edge of duct tape. He tore it free and held it under the flashlight.

  Adhered to one side like a glittering jewel—a safe-deposit-box key. Stamped on the head, 227.

  He blew out the breath burning his chest, his vision spotting. Clenched the key in his fist. Relief. Now all he had to do was impersonate a dead hit man, provide false documentation at the bank, get into the vault, trick a manager into using the guard key, and remove the box’s contents while leaving no trace. Piece of cake. But still. He had the key. Which was further than Shevchenko and his team of expert thugs had gotten. Maybe Nate could find a way out of this yet.

  The sudden ring of his cell phone cut through the silence, scaring him upright. He wobbled on the chair and had to take a quick step down, nearly turning his ankle in solidarity with Urban. His hands fumbled over the phone, finally opening it.

  “Nate. Nate?” Janie’s voice, thin, wrenched high with fear. “You have to get here now.”

  Chapter 19

  Nate screeched up into the driveway, back tire swiping across the lawn. Flew from the Jeep, leaving the door ajar. He banged on the house door, shouting, and then hands fussed at the dead bolt and chain and Janie was there, her nostrils and the rims of her eyes red. He grabbed her shoulders. “Where’s Cielle?”

  “Cielle’s okay. She was up in her room. With Casper.”