Last Shot Page 24

  “Tess. Kaitlin. Whoever. It’s too expensive’s my guess. Look, I can’t be here long and I need some answers.”

  Sam tugged at the comforter so it slid down over his head, leaving his hair mussed and his glasses pitched left. With a few wiggles of his cheeks and a nose scrunch, he righted the frames without raising his hands. “If I help you, can I get my gene?”

  Walker looked away, but the kid’s reflection was waiting in the mirrored closet door and then in the dark window. “Sure.”

  Sam’s hopefulness forced a smile. “Promise?”

  Walker said, “At the commercial shoot, you rode in a limo, right? Who was there?”

  “Dolan, Chase, a bunch of camera guys. Oh—and that guy with the Magnum, P.I. shirts. Mr. Keating.”

  “What was the limo company called?”

  Sam scrambled out of bed. “The driver gave me a card. He said I could call him if I ever needed a limousine.” He dug in a drawer and handed a glossy card to Walker—ELITE CHAUFFEUR SERVICE, no driver name. “I was gonna call him for Mom’s birthday. She was gonna be thirty-nine, you know, and…darn it…darn it.” He returned to the mattress and pulled the comforter back over his head, and then Walker heard him snuffling.

  “Take that thing off your head.”

  Sam tugged it off. He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then wiped his nose on his shirt.

  “Was your mom with you the whole time?”

  “Except when she left once in the middle to get her jacket from the limo. I was nervous, but she said she’d be right back, but then she wasn’t. Not until they smeared off the makeup and stuff from my face—not girl makeup but TV makeup that even guys are supposed to wear. Then she was all weird when she came back.”

  “Weird how?”

  “On the drive home, I thought she’d be all happy, but she wasn’t. She had her jacket on, zipped up all the way, but it was hot.”

  Walker felt his skin get taut, as in a cool breeze.

  The words of Victor the incompetent waiter returned, now sharpened with meaning. I heard him say something about what happened in the limo at the shoot. He was sorta, I guess, apologetic without really being apologetic. I remember thinking, The problems these rich folks have, right?

  “Come here.” He walked out, Sam at his heels, and shoved open the door to Tess’s room.

  Walker reached the mass of clothes crowding the closet. Some of the items he recognized from his childhood. Tess had never been any good at giving away old clothes. Too many years being broke, too many times coming up short for a date, a job interview, an outing with a new friend. Some of her clothes from her teenage years had cycled back into style once or twice already, and some never would.

  Walker turned, expecting Sam at his side, but Sam stood in the hall, two feet back from the threshold. “Come on. Come in here.”

  Sam’s face was red, maybe from crying or maybe because he was going to again. He didn’t move.

  From the kitchen Kaitlin yelled, “Dinner in fifteen, Sammy!”

  “Get over here,” Walker said.

  His lips trembling, Sam regarded the white patch of carpet, the neatly made bed. He took a cautious step forward, one shoulder raised nearly to his chin, half cowering. He kept his eyes on the floor and stepped quickly to Walker’s side. His hand reached out and grabbed at one of the cargo pocket flaps on Walker’s pants. He twisted, pulling at the fabric.

  Walker pointed at the virtual wall of fabric. “What did she wear to the shoot?”

  Sam raised a quaking hand and scratched his shoulder. “A yellow one, but it’s not here.”

  Walker caught a haze of yellow through the window of a garment bag. He tugged the bag free, unzipped it, and laid it open, exposing a run of fabric. “This one?”

  A nod.

  “Okay. Get outta here.”

  Sam ran from the room. Walker pulled the sundress free. One thin cornflower blue strap had been torn. A rip extended the side slit.

  Had Tess been raped in this dress? Just mauled? He thought of his sister, like all those skinny, scared kids hauled to Boss’s cell.

  The assailant had lent her the car to get home. Gentlemanly. She’d ridden away from the shoot, jacket zipped to her chin so Sam wouldn’t know. And then, ever mindful, she’d stored the evidence, readying for a counterattack she hadn’t lived to make.

  Walker shouldered against one of the broken closet doors, clutching the puddle of fabric in both hands. His head hummed, the sound the power lines give off over a desert road where nobody lives important enough to complain.

  He balled the dress and stuffed it back into the closet. It took his legs a moment to respond, and then he walked out.

  For once Sam’s TV was dark. He sat on the floor, knees poked up into his T-shirt like he was cold. Walker paused at his doorway. Looked back. Gave him a little nod.

  Sam nodded back.

  Chapter 45

  Through the humid night air, Tim and Bear could hear the popping of ammo and the strained shouts of hunters stalking prey. Darkness had settled over the Ballona Wetlands, the largest habitat of its kind in Los Angeles. A decades-old struggle between developers and environmentalists had resolved for the time being with the city relinquishing a few scattered parcels to environmentally friendly businesses. Industry’s encroachment was nothing new; the Spruce Goose had been constructed on these very wetlands back when Howard Hughes held the deed.

  An Olds Cutlass Supreme from the seventies was parked by the awning, looking postcard pristine with its broad, smooth hood, a sparkling powder blue coat, and a restored white soft top devoid of bird shit—no small feat in the wetlands. The license plate inquired provocatively, RUGAME?

  Behind the building, green netting enclosed the fifteen-acre preserve. Tim and Bear walked along the perimeter, peering in, their shoes sinking in mud. The hunt-zone motif was Disneyland jungle—wide fronds, pump waterfalls, mud wallows, camo-splattered boxing heavy bags feathered with leaves and swinging like mini-golf distractions. Tim caught a flash of flesh deep in the foliage, the frenzied run of the outgunned, and then the chuffing of four men, hunting in pairs, closing the distance.

  By the time he and Bear retraced their steps to the entrance, his cuffs clung wetly to his ankles. They stepped into the lounge and took a moment getting their bearings, Bear readjusting the star on his belt like an old-school deppity. The roomful of men hummed with the locker-room and private-club glee of the unsupervised. A focused gentleman at the bar practiced a spin move into the holster, dropped his paintball gun, and patiently set up for another try. Thumbtacked to the bamboo wainscoting were flyers advertising used equipment, martial arts classes, and car pools to gun shows and paintball tournaments.

  “Car pools?” Tim read incredulously.

  Bear said, “Hard to get around when you live with your mom.”

  Three middle-aged guys with aggressive sideburns were oohing and aahing over a new scope, ignoring the woman with porn-star dimensions nestling into the lap of a self-satisfied gentleman. Evidently hard feelings didn’t persist after the pursuit. Not when there was recompense for making nice.

  One of the lap dancee’s clean-cut cohorts did a double take at Tim.

  Tim offered him a curt nod. “Your Honor.”

  The justice hastened for the exit, reseating his tie and frowning severely as if on to weighty matters. Tim and Bear pressed on past the tiki zone. An undulating gauze curtain led back to the preserve. In the rear office, which doubled as a staging area, a group of eager weeknight warriors, tacked up from camo socks to face paint, endured an orientation; their group hunt was about to kick off.

  Someone was streaming an MPEG from Iraq on his PalmPilot, sharing the footage with a cluster of onlookers. Tim recognized the distinctive percussion of twenty mike-mike rounds, the whooping blades of either an Apache attack helo or a Cobra Gunship. “Check it out,” the ringleader said. “The terrorist pops back into view and”—assorted cries and exclamations drowned him out—“just disintegrates
.”

  From all sides carried snatches of other conversations, rife with buzzwords.

  “—got a new Violent bolt for his Intimidator. The bad boy’s Teflon, so the internal diameter stays nice and smooth—”

  One voice, notable for its high tenor, stood out from the cacophony. The hefty presenter in the staging area paced in front of the rookie shooters like a drill sergeant. “No shooting under five meters. No head shots. Don’t aim for the genitalia. Bouncers don’t count—only bursts. Everyone sign your waivers?”

  A price board behind the counter announced the fifteen-hundred-dollar entry fee. To the side a video tech gone bulky with elbow and knee pads adjusted the settings on his digital camera.

  Tim knew before he saw the name on the speaker’s nickel badge. Wes Dieter’s discerning gaze snagged on one of his charges. “Get your barrel plug in, pal. This isn’t a game.”

  Bear couldn’t stifle a guffaw, and five pairs of night-vision goggles swiveled toward them. “Hey, man,” one of the paintballers said, gesturing at Tim, “it’s the Troubleshooter.” A few of the guys offered waves, and one chucked Tim’s shoulder. Tim caught Wes staring, too—that odd blend of reverence and disquiet.

  Good to know his fame had reached such rarefied circles.

  Wes returned his focus to the men before him. “You boys ready to hunt some pussy?” A chorus of cheers. “Candy Racer, you’re on!”

  A side door banged open, and out paraded an Asian woman with flawless tanned skin and breasts too high and hard to have been factory equipment. She wore goggles, low-cut tennis socks with lime-green poofs at the heels, black Pumas, and that was it.

  Bear’s mouth finally got the better of him. “Can’t you at least give the girl a helmet?”

  Wes cast a know-it-all gaze in his direction. “Deers don’t wear helmets, do they?”

  “I believe it’s ‘deer.’”

  “What?”

  “The plural of ‘deer’ is ‘deer.’”

  “I said ‘deer.’”

  A couple of the men nodded in agreement, eager to get on the range. Bear looked to Tim, and Tim shrugged. Bear pretended to be peeved, blowing a jet of air where his bangs would be if he didn’t have cropped Polish hair.

  Wes walked over and stroked Candy Racer’s well-toned flank, then administered it a jockey’s smack. To whoops and cheers, she sprinted off into the preserve, the gauze curtain whistling around her. “Remember, boys, she gets a two-minute lead.”

  “Last I checked,” Bear said, as it became increasingly clear who was going to have to play good cop this round, “deer don’t wear goggles either.”

  “You’re a perceptive guy and a shrewd grammarian,” Wes said, minding his stopwatch. “But city business services came down on me. We used to be able to shoot the girls anywhere on their bods, too, but then we had to add regs. We still do our best to simulate natural conditions.”

  “Of what?” Bear said. “Berserking Vikings in the Amazon Basin?”

  “We’re an environmentally sound business.”

  “Jungle orchids being indigenous to the Ballona Wetlands.”

  “Hey, they like green, they got green.” Wes clicked his stopwatch ahead of schedule and said, with a tough-guy delivery, “Game on.” He waved on the paintballers, who shuffled eagerly off into the preserve, barking code words. “It’s bad enough the fuckin’ Christians are cracking down. I don’t need Johnny Law harassing me in front of my clients. You here on official business, or just to express your personal views on the morality of leisure?”

  Before Bear decided to wax poetic with synonyms for “clients,” Tim said, “We’re working a murder investigation that points here.” He flashed a picture of Tess without asking a follow-up question, just to see what he could read in Wes’s face.

  Wes’s eyes snagged on the photograph an instant, and then he shuffled back behind the counter and plugged a few paintball guns into an automatic washer, seating the water nozzles into the gun barrels. A fat tabby leapt up from a hidden crouch, purring and parading across his shoulders. “What pointed you here?”

  “Paint. My guy traced it to your place. You make your own paint-balls?”

  “Have ’em made, sure. I need to, place like this, bare flesh and all. Besides, hard-shell mishaps can get expensive. A paintball ricochets around enough, it hits the guy with the most expensive lawyer.”

  The cat’s face spread in a hiss that made Bear take a step back. Wes smiled and glanced down at his clipboard. He clicked on a loudspeaker, and his high-pitched voice echoed through the building: “Santa Monica Blood Warriors on deck. Start suiting up at the half hour. Tunnel Rat, you’re in the hole.” He hefted himself onto a barstool, the cat taking flight to the back counter.

  Mounted above a computer monitor was a trophy shot of Wes in the preserve. One boot rested on the sweat-slick rump of a naked, prostrate black woman Tim recognized from semipro beach volleyball tournaments sometimes aired on the local sports channels. The blatant misogyny and—accidental?—racist overtones must have brought an inadvertent scowl to Tim’s face, because Wes looked at him, a touch self-conscious in the face of the Troubleshooter’s judgment, and said, “Hey, man, these chicks take home three hundo a run, a cool half grand if they don’t get hit. Beats waitressing for tips.”

  “Socially responsible of you to keep them off the mean streets,” Bear said.

  “I provide people with a little diversion, and a very good income to some just-about-unemployable women. And—unlike your jobs—it’s fun. You see, in here I’m king. Four-time course champion. I can hit an ace of spades with a nine mil at twenty yards.”

  “That’s great if you get attacked by a bridge club.”

  Tim wheeled on Bear. “Take out the tampon, Jowalski. If some dumb broad wants to get shot in the tits for three hundred bucks a pop, who gives a shit?”

  Bear raised his hands—a classic What do I need it for?—and walked out.

  After the front door slammed, drawing giggles from two of the quarry-turned-strippers, Tim pivoted back to the counter. “Sorry ’bout that. He’s a former bull cop. Old dog, old tricks. He hasn’t figured out that when you need answers from people, you don’t bust their balls first. We’re dependent on guys like you to make headway, you know? We’re not writing speeding tickets here. Jesus Christ.”

  “Hey, whatever. Don’t worry about it. I’m used to dealing with assholes.”

  “I bet you see all kinds through here.”

  Wes said, “Believe me.”

  “’Nam vets?”

  “Oh, yeah. Now and then. Old guys, but man, are they mean. Former law enforcement, too. Rich college kids—mostly USC. Lotta Persians. We get some guys training for tourneys, like the squad that just deployed to the preserve.”

  Tim leaned over the counter conspiratorially, setting his weight on his elbow. “Anyone…shadier?” The pause was a beat too long, giving Wes too much time from brain to mouth, so Tim offered his hand. “Tim Rackley.”

  “I know who you are.” Wes thumbed out his badge from his shirt so Tim could read his name. “And I’d be happy to help a stand-up dude like yourself.”

  “Look, Wes, you’re the owner. A guy like you, a big shot here, well liked—you got your finger on the pulse. Who comes through here?”

  Wes cast a glance around, then lowered his voice to match Tim’s. “We get some Soldier of Fortune types, sure. A lotta whispered conversations at the bar. This place is the real deal. A place to get stuff, ya know? But I got a good thing here—count those guys. Each one is paying fifteen hundo. Overhead, dick. I walk out with forty, fifty K a week. Your partner would call me a less-than-model citizen—but I’m paying my taxes and putting it away, not jeopardizing my retirement just to know what deals get made here.”

  “No fuckin’ way. Not with hard-core operators moving through. That’d be like making me responsible for what every guy in my platoon did on liberty.”

  “Exactly. I can’t see every inch of this operation. I make sure I don�
��t. But you know, a guy’s been around, like me, a guy hears things. Whispers.”

  “Right. Like maybe one of these boys”—a wave at the crowded lounge—“takes his hunting to the next level?”

  Wes glanced around, having a hard time keeping the glint of pride from showing in his eyes. “I’ve heard hits come through here. I think it’s all bullshit. What have you been told?”

  Tim held a poker face. “We’ve got solid evidence implicating Game.”

  Wes took this in with a regretful nod. “Maybe a money drop got set up here—the jury’s still out. That guy Sands all over the news—got his head blown off in Bel Air?” He hesitated a moment. “He was in here. June sixth. Rented two lockers. Left a briefcase in one overnight. Maybe he was the cash courier, maybe not. Maybe someone came in here after, picked up the cash and the contract.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m a computer guy at heart, so I bounced through the right chat rooms for a little follow-up.”

  “Which sites?”

  “The usual BS. Mercenary forums. Silencer chat rooms. Militia sites, you know.” Wes jotted down several URLs, and Tim pocketed the slip of paper, knowing that Guerrera would likely surf around and find little more than wannabes jawing off behind the protection of virile screen names. “The topic’s in the wind, all right,” Wes continued. “People giving theories anonymously.”

  “What name’s being bandied about?”

  Wes actually looked both directions before leaning across the counter and putting his mouth inches from Tim’s ear. He smelled of coconut lotion. “The Piper.” He settled back on the barstool, the cat jumping into his lap. “No one knows who the guy is. I coulda seen him here like every week and not known it. The guy’s stone cold, I heard. Stays remote, can only be contacted through the Internet. The chat rooms I gave you? Like those, but ones that guys like us can’t even find.”

  “Is that all you know?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know anything. That’s what’s in the wind.”

  Tim showed Wes a photo of Walker. “Seen this guy?” He watched Wes closely, but he remained impassive. “Uh-uh.”