We Know (aka Trust no One) (2008) Page 17

  By 11:30A.M.,I had a pretty good case of cabin fever and was glad to head out to meet Induma at Starbucks. I got there a bit early and made my way through the rush to the pay phone in the back. Customers were cycling past the counter rapidly, on their morning schedules, ordering in abbreviations and using the proper, ridiculous terminology. Shouldered to the wall near the bathroom, pressing the receiver to my face, I felt more out of place than usual. Maybe I was having another hiccup of envy for the liber-adjusted, with their BlackBerries and leather folios and buckets of caffeine. I tugged the well-traveled paper slip out of my pocket and dialed the pager number Kim Kendall had given me.

  The first ring cut short. "This number is no longer in service. If you believe you have reached this recording in error-- "

  Hanging up, I noticed Induma pushing through the crowd, holding her laptop down against her thigh. She wore a cashmere sweater, hooded and blood orange, that brought out the hidden hues of

  her caramel skin. Using a napkin, she wiped down a table, bused the empty cups, then sat. As I approached, she kept her eyes on the screen. Her slender fingers flying across the keyboard, she kicked out a chair that rocketed into my hands. "Sit down. Is this him?"

  On the laptop screen was a picture of Charlie, a match of the one Wydell had flashed in my face after they'd raided my place. Loose scowl, blue blazer, slicked-back hair. A training-school head shot, archived on a state employee pension site that Induma had somehow accessed. Special Agent Charlie Jackman. California State Police.

  Confronted, at last, with proof, with a name.

  "That's him," I finally managed. "That's him. He was real. He was there."

  She studied me with her large brown eyes. "I never doubted it."

  "What the hell is the California State Police?"

  "What the hell was the CSP. They were merged into CHP in '95. And guess what fell under their jurisdiction?" Induma's gaze was steady across the top of the computer. "Protecting high-ranking state officials." She took in my stunned reaction, nodding. "That's right. They were a security police agency. Seventeen years ago Charlie Jackman was a dignitary-protection officer who worked close-in

  detail for--"

  "Governor Andrew Bilton," I said. "Holy shit.

  Charlie didn't have dirt on Caruthers--"

  "He had it on Bilton."

  The Voice in the Dark's words, considered from this angle, made as much sense. Charlie had a lot of respect for Caruthers. He was going to try to help him. He told me he had something Caruthers needed for his election bid.

  For the first time in days, I felt hopeful. The further this stayed from Caruthers, the further it stayed from Frank. I thought about how Bilton had tried to reel me in early, arranging to talk to me after I'd regained consciousness in that hospital room. How his self-assured voice had sounded later on the phone, the threats he'd buried beneath that superficial charm: If you mess around on certain stages, the spotlight finds you eventually. How his links to the Secret Service were now vastly stronger than Caruthers's. How the message divulged by Kim Kendall pointing to Caruthers-- Godfather's with Firebird--had smelled like disinformation.

  "Charlie brought the dirt on Bilton to Frank," I said, "thinking Frank would broker a deal for the Caruthers camp to buy it. As Caruthers's guy, Frank would've had to bring any intel to him. But for whatever reason, Caruthers didn't bite--maybe it was too hot, maybe he didn't want to stoop to dirty politics. When Bilton's guys caught wind and came looking, Charlie hung the blame on Frank."

  "That's certainly," Induma said, "one possibility."

  "And?"

  "The other, just as obvious, is Charlie brought it to Frank because he needed an outside man to blackmail Bilton. Working for Bilton, he couldn't do it himself."

  A new dark cloud. Another array of considerations. I sagged back in my chair.

  "There are two choices here," Induma said quietly. "Frank either brought it to Caruthers for the right reasons or to Bilton for the wrong ones." She watched me consider this for a moment, then directed her frown back at the computer screen. "Why did your mom say Charlie worked for the Service?"

  "Because it seemed like he did. He was another dark-suit earpiece guy when she met him."

  "Well, Charlie pulled a damn good disappearing act. He took early retirement a week after your stepfather was killed. Then he pretty much vanished. No tax returns, no mortgages, no phone numbers. And I know where to look." Turning back to the screen, she slid a finger across the touchpad, tapped with her thumb. "Charlie had one son. Mack. Thirty-eight."

  "Mack Jackman?"

  "I went to elementary school with Ronnie Ronald. 'Mack Jackman' is rock-star cool by comparison."

  The screen loaded. A home page. Mack Jackman Commercial Photography. It featured numerous catalog pictures of furniture. A beechwood leather

  couch. A pale sea green faux-suede chaise. A dining-room table, espresso stain and frosted glass.

  Induma said, "The film used to take your picture outside Charlie's? Kodak Ektachrome 100. What'd the guy at the photo place tell you? 'Fine grain, high sharpness, makes your colors pop.'"

  "If you're shooting something where you need really accurate color," I said. "Clothes or curtains."

  "Or furniture," Induma said.

  I clicked the "Art Shots" button on the Web site, and a few black-and-white cityscapes appeared that I recognized from the hall outside Opaque. The Voice in the Dark, tight with restaurant management as I'd thought; the smug Swiss host had made clear his unwillingness to give up anything, and the waitstaff could hardly play eyewitness. I wondered if there was some connection between Charlie and Kim Kendall, the other art photographer in the mix.

  "I checked the Web page's source," Induma was saying. "The page elements are stored in date-sorted directories. He used to add docs from the server every few days, but he hasn't added a new one since June."

  "Which in English means . . . ?"

  "This site hasn't been updated in three months. Not much of a way to run a business. He went off the grid. No new leases, no new jobs, no forwarding information."

  "Money trouble," I said. "Hiding from whoever

  he owed. Then his dad swooped in to save the day."

  Induma tapped the laptop with a thumb. "I couldn't source that pager number you got off that girl. I obviously don't have clearances for all the law-enforcement databases, but still. Whoever set up that pager knows what he's doing. How to not be seen, not leave trails." She folded her laptop and stood. "When's Mack contacting you? To give you the other key?"

  "I don't know. But not soon enough." I jotted my cell-phone number on a piece of paper, and she tucked it into a pocket. I took her arm. "Thank you." The cashmere was soft against my fingers. I rolled my thumb across the fabric. "You were wearing this when I met you."

  "You remember?"

  "With dark blue jeans and open-toed sandals. Your toenails were painted a deeper shade of orange, and your hair was pulled back in a tortoise-shell clasp."

  She stopped, laptop against her thigh. I watched her chest swell and settle beneath the sweater.

  I said, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you everything then."

  Behind her, around us, people jostled and scraped by and sipped on the go. Her lips twitched--a bittersweet smile--and then she turned and disappeared through the door.

  Chapter 29

  Dripping with sweat, I sat on the bench before my locker. I'd hit the weights, jumped rope for twenty minutes, then run myself to exhaustion on the treadmill. The workout should've cleared my head, but instead I felt jumpy, antsy to get home to see if DHL had dropped off a transparent cell phone at my government-issued front door.

  I tugged open the locker. Through the curtains of my hanging clothes, my money clip sat on the thin metal shelf. Still fat with cash--I'd stopped at an ATM--but something was different. A piece of paper was tucked beneath the clip, parallel with the top bill. I withdrew the fold of cash, pulled the silver clip free, and stared down at a familiar film-proc
essing slip.

  One roll, ready for pickup.

  The photograph looked like shit, but it did its job. Pronounced against a blur of yellow stucco were five large painted numbers. The picture had been taken at a slant, encompassing the corner street sign. All the info, in one neat little snapshot.

  I lowered the photograph and stared at the real thing. Precise angle, precise distance. I was standing where the photographer had been when he'd snapped the shot--across the street on an apartment-complex driveway leading sharply down into an underground garage. As I leaned against the retaining wall, my head was just above street level. An inconspicuous spot. Which was good, given the dark sedan pulled to the curb in front of the neighboring building.

  The picture was one of only two that were exposed in the roll, waiting for me at the photomat I'd visited last time. Logic dictated that Mack was the guy who'd taken them. After all, he'd left me the first film-processing slip. But two things bothered me: The quality of the picture was poor by the standards of a professional photographer. And the film was a standard 35mm, not the high-end Ektachrome he'd used before.

  I slid the second photo out from behind the first. A head-on of an apartment door. Above the peephole, in tarnished brass--2G. Anyone or anything could be behind that door, and anyone or anything could have been leading me there. But I had to go.

  I glanced back up the road at the dark sedan. Tinted windows. Engine off. But I knew that the car wasn't unoccupied. The mole Wydell had warned me about?

  Bracing myself, I stepped out from cover and walked briskly up the sidewalk, heading away from the sedan, hugging the buildings. The glut of apartments here, south of Pico near Lincoln, had been untouched by the Westside richification. Peeling paint, crumbling stucco. Tree roots had buckled the concrete in several places. I was sweating, desperate to look over my shoulder. I tried to hurry, then tried to slow down. No car door opened behind me; no engine roared.

  Turning the corner, I passed my parked truck and looped back behind the complex. I hopped over a locked gate onto the pool patio. The door from the courtyard into the building was unlocked. I took the stairs, easing out onto the second floor. A damp hall, carpet still holding on from the seventies. Down the length, past a laundry room, through a fire door, and there it was. 2G.

  The door was slightly ajar, the latch resting against the plate.

  I stood and listened. Nothing.

  I didn't like that unsecured door one bit. Before I went through it, I wanted to check out the rest of the floor, scout some exits, make Liffman proud.

  I reversed down the hall to an emergency stairwell that dumped out into a side alley. On my way back to 2G, I ducked into the laundry room. Dry heat. Shoving the window open, I glanced down. Six feet below was a pool shed.

  Cautiously I made my way back up the hall. Through that open sliver in the doorway of 2G came a sharp odor. I knocked, and the door wobbled open a few inches. No answer.

  I stepped inside. The reek of gasoline. The sun was low and fat in the street-facing window, making me squint. A figure in a chair, head bowed. Newspaper spread on the floor under and around him.

  The place was torn apart. Drawers emptied. Couch cushions slashed. Chairs flipped over. A familiar tableau. The big window was open, a faint breeze lending body to a limp, shoved-back curtain.

  "Mack?" I eased forward. The front of the man's shirt was stained. A crimson bib.

  My shoes padded on the moist newspaper. The print wadded and blurred, soaked in gasoline. The man was bound to the chair, cloth strips tying his wrists and ankles. Wild blond hair, just like Charlie's.

  My breath came back to me as an echo, as if off the walls of a cavern. I reached out an unsteady hand, gripped the hair, and raised the head. The resemblance was shocking. Not just the Mick Jagger mouth but also the wide brow and intense, neurotic eyes. The Voice in the Dark, a dead ringer for his father as a younger man. The major difference being the second smile etched across his throat.

  Stunned, I let go of Mack's head, and it flopped forward again, chin to chest. Mindful of the window, I dropped to the floor. His bare foot was inches from my head. I fought my stomach back into place. I hadn't seen a dead body since Frank's, and the smell alone about undid me.

  The abraded flesh, the restraints, the gasoline dousing--no question he'd been persuaded to talk. Which meant he'd talked about me. And likely

  revealed his photo-slip gimmick, which they'd imitated with a lousy picture shot on cheap film.

  I'd either sneaked in past whoever was watching or walked into their setup. Despite the open window, the gasoline fumes were starting to get to me. I crawled over to the window and peered down at the street. The sedan was still parked in its spot, the impervious black windshield throwing off a glare.

  I turned, my back to the wall beneath the window, regarding the tossed apartment. Mack's killer or killers looking for whatever Charlie had been trying to sell. Or for the banded hundreds, still crammed into the pasta pot beneath my kitchen counter, where even Mack didn't know they were. Mack had told me he had a second key from Charlie. I assumed he kept it hidden--but where? Probably close, where he could access it in an emergency. I thought about Charlie's sleeping on top of that floor safe every night. Maybe he'd taught his son where to conceal things, as Frank had taught me. Frank and Charlie, platoonmates and colleagues, had a few tricks in common. Had they been trained to seek out the same hiding places?

  I crawled to the sink and, staying low, reached up over the counter into the sink and worked my hand into the garbage disposal.

  A magnetic box under the lip.

  I yanked it free, fought it open. Another key.

  Brass, just like the other one, but this was numbered 228. Probably right next to the P.O. box that had held the torn page of numerals. I'd been within a foot of whatever this key guarded. Oblivious. I flipped it over, read the familiar print: U.S. GOV'T, UNLAWFUL TO DUPLICATE. I shoved the key into the case, the case into my front pocket.

  What else could I find that they hadn't? And how much time did I have?

  With mounting panic I scurried toward the bedroom, skidding over fallen books, the titles staring up at me in bold--Living Sober, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, The Big Book. A stripe of wet carpet ran under and ahead of me, a guiding trail. My face was down near the floor, close enough that the vapor stung my eyes. Mack stared at me from the chair, a dark smudge at the edge of my vision.

  In the bedroom a file cabinet by the double futon had been knocked over, photographs and papers scattered. I dug through the mess on the floor. Loose film cases, holding Ektachrome 100. Another contained a dime bag of weed. So much for living sober. Among glossy eight-by-tens of armchairs and bookcases, I found a picture of me climbing down the telephone pole the night I'd gone to Frank's old house.

  The nightstand light had tilted over, throwing an ellipse of gold across a book. Twelve Steps. No dust jacket.

  I'd slid over another book wrapped in that dust jacket on my way to the bedroom. Clambering on all fours back to the main room, doing my best to ignore the slumped, bound form across the way, I flung the books aside until I found the dust-jacket lettering--Twelve Steps. I tore off the cover to reveal what it was hiding--a leather-bound journal.

  My fingers moved furiously through the pages. A ledger. Some pluses. A lot of minuses. Next to each sum was what I assumed to be a basketball score. LA 98, Miami 102~ $8,000. NC 88, Duke 90, $8,000. Interspersed were steep interest charges. The debt, as of last month, was $383,918.00.

  The Voice in the Dark had been clear. I need my money. Not I want my money. As soon as the other addictions had fallen away, a new one had grabbed him.

  I forced my eyes back to Mack. From behind, despite the cramped angles of his bound limbs, he looked as if he'd nodded off. Bound and doused with gasoline--the style seemed more crime syndicate than Secret Service. Had Mack been killed not by Bilton's crew but by his bookie's people? So why would they want to lure me to the scene with a photomat slip? Th
e answer came with a shudder: Mack would've told them I had the money.

  Bookie murder or Service hit. Neither option a comforting one.

  I scrambled into the bedroom again to continue my search. As I crossed the threshold, something fell from the back of the ledger. An old-fashioned envelope, yellowed and brittle. It was unopened, a date scrawled across the seam in faded blue ink: 5/91. The month of Frank's death. Crouching, I tore at the flap, the paper slitting my finger. A Polaroid fell out into my waiting palm. Bilton at a campaign field office, wearing a smile and a too-narrow brown tie, his arm around a beaming woman in her late twenties. She wore turquoise dangly earrings, and her hair was center-parted behind a pouf of bangs. A sign behind them proclaimed BILTON FOR GOVERNOR! Nothing on the reverse.

  Our future president popping up in the back of a gambling ledger with a woman other than his wife. Who was she in all this?

  No time to ponder--someone could kick in the front door any second. Pushing the photo into my back pocket, I looked desperately around the bedroom. In my excitement I'd risen from my half squat. Standing in full view of the window. The angle still hid me from the street and the sedan below, but I stared with dread at the windows of the apartments across.

  A wink of light from the opposing rooftop caught

  my eye.

  Before I could react, I heard something strike the kitchenette, simultaneous with a pneumatic thump from outside, like a tennis ball leaving a court cannon. I looked through the doorway. Something pinged around the small corner kitchen, sending up chips of tile. Shot in through the open window one room over? I watched it spin on the cheap linoleum, then stop.

  A miniature rocket, no bigger than two inches, narrow stem connecting the warhead to a fin assembly. It looked like a fat, olive drab dart.

  I don't remember leaping. I only remember flying in the air toward the back wall when the overpressure lifted me from behind, flipping me over. Shrapnel studded the walls instantly. Air sucked past me, drawn toward the front door, and then the room seemed to pulse, flames billowing up everywhere at once, clouds of brilliant orange. I scrambled to my feet as the flames advanced, curling the pictures on the floor, scaling the walls.