The Kill Clause tr-1 Page 25

  Wheelbarrows, parked trucks, and exhaust crammed the street. A guy with comb-mark-stiff hair strutted past, wearing a sweatshirt with a peeling Versace emblem, his pinky intertwined with that of a girl holding a purse proclaiming Guci-marked down one c.

  Bastard offspring of the city of varnish.

  The guy threw Tim the stink-eye, probably figuring he was checking out his girlfriend, so Tim looked away to defuse matters. A young man with a bushy beard came by, T-shirts draped over his arm. He caught Tim looking and held up a sample. The shirt featured Jedediah Lane’s head midexplosion, under a bloodred caption that read TERRORISM BLOWS. Tim studied the photo as if it contained some inscrutable secret or the power to pardon. For an instant he wasn’t sure whether the caption referred to Lane himself or Lane’s assassin. At the vendor’s approach, Tim shook his head, and the man moved on.

  With laughing Mexican colors and a robust husband-wife team working the register, the stall beside Tim’s car drew his attention. It exclusively featured wedding-cake ornaments. Tim sat staring at the plastic brides and grooms of all shapes and ethnicities, feeling his temperature starting to rise, wondering how a marriage between two people who loved each other madly could feel as though it were slipping away.

  With relief he saw that he’d passed the requisite ten minutes to put him at Debuffier’s at the specified time, and he drove off. He parked several blocks away and strolled around the corner. Chipped-stucco houses rose humbly behind cheap metal fences. Two kids with basketball players’ numbers shaved into the backs of their heads zipped past on elongated skateboards, catching air off a buckle in the sidewalk left over from the last earthquake. Rusted cars languished along the curb on both sides of the street, and-to Robert’s credit-there were a handful of service vans, which made sense given the block’s apparent demographics. The decals and signs were varied and colorful. Armando’s Glass Works. Freddy’s Industrial Cleaning. The Martinez Bros Carpet Care. Several of the eponymous entrepreneurs were spending their Saturday sitting on browning lawns, petting Rottweilers and drinking Michelob from the can. The unusually brisk wind carried the sweet-rot smell of lukewarm beer and old wood.

  On the north side of the street, Debuffier’s house loomed larger than its neighbors, a sprawling wooden abomination of no discernible architectural style. The porch’s arched entrance should have lent a warmth to the house, but the wood was fragmented, the splintered ends jutting out to add sloppy denticulation to the mouthlike hole. The roof, even more perplexing, was a cacophony of styles-here pitched, there hip-and-valley. Sitting importantly back from the street behind a lawn long since gone to dirt, the house itself was not so much large as complex-a collision, most likely, of the labors of rival builders over virtually unrelated phases of building.

  Most of the parked vans’ side windows were tinted. Tim crossed to the north side of the street, opening up a better angle from which to glance back into the van interiors through the windshields, but the majority of the vans were partitioned. Freddy’s Industrial Cleaning looked most suspect. From how low it was sitting on the shocks, it was housing either heavy equipment or a few full-grown men. The Caucasian name didn’t help either.

  Tim walked over, pretending to fumble in his pockets for the keys. He paused at the driver’s door, waiting. The clicking of the doors’ automatic locks told him he’d bet right. He slid into the seat, facing forward, and pretended to adjust the radio despite the fact that the neighboring yards were all empty. The van smelled of sweat and stale coffee, and the dash was high; Tim wondered if the Stork had trouble seeing over it when he drove.

  He moved his lips only slightly when he spoke. “Not bad, boys.”

  A crumpled VanMan Rental Agency receipt was wedged in the cup holder, beside a Big Gulp. Tim could just make out the name on the top line, written in the Stork’s shaky hand: Daniel Dunn.

  Danny Dunn, Tim thought. An appropriate alias.

  Robert’s voice, peeved and cracked from dehydration, lofted over his shoulder. “How the hell did you find us?”

  “Just sniffed you out.” Tim removed his lead gloves from his back pocket and slid them on. “Have you switched the car out?”

  “Yessiree,” the Stork said. “I brought the van first thing this morning.”

  “Where’s the car you sat in last night?”

  Robert’s gruff voice again. “I peeled out and returned it, then bused back. Relax-we’re all clear.”

  “Good.”

  “Debuffier left early for lunch, so let’s get on it.” A set of keys tapped Tim on the shoulder, and he took them and started the van. “His house is on a double lot, so it backs on the street one over. Pull around the block and park there-much quieter.”

  “There’s a gap in the back fence begging to be utilized,” the Stork said.

  “Where’s Mitchell?”

  “Over there. He’ll meet us at the back door in five.”

  Tim eased around the block. “Good vehicle,” he said. “Silent. Ordinary. Forgettable.”

  “I’m glad you’re pleased with my selection, Mr. Rackley.” The Stork sounded incredibly proud of himself, almost gleeful. “I even took back the first van they rented me because it gave off a distinctive rattle.”

  “Kind of like you,” Robert said.

  Tim parked a few feet away from the triangular gap in the fence. The street was dead quiet, so he got out and pulled open the rear doors. Already wearing latex gloves, the Stork and Robert burst from the back, inhaling deeply and fanning their shirts. Robert ducked through the fence gap immediately. The Stork shouldered a black bag by the strap, staggering under its weight. Tim took the bag from him, slammed the rear doors, and ushered him through the fence.

  Mitchell was crouching at the rear door, Robert at his side. Mitchell’s eyes lit on the Nextel’s bulge in Tim’s pocket, and he stood up violently. “Turn off the cell phone. Now.”

  Tim and the Stork froze. Tim reached down and turned off the phone. “You have electric blasting caps on you?”

  “That’s right.”

  If Mitchell had electric blasting caps, Tim’s cell phone should have been nowhere in the vicinity. When induced, Nextels, like most mobiles, kick out an RF signal just prior to ringing, responding to the network and identifying themselves as operational. The induced current, sufficient to ignite an electric blasting cap, can set off a boom ball before the phone even chirps. Tim understood now why Robert hadn’t suggested they maintain phone contact during the entry.

  Tim’s eyes went to the explosive sheet at Mitchell’s feet, a twenty-pound roll of place-mat-thick PETN, pentaerythritetetranitrate being a bitch to pronounce but easy to rip or cut, a stick of gum to C4’s Bubblicious. It peeked out from Mitchell’s det bag, olive drab, the shade of death.

  “Can’t you follow instructions?” Tim tried to keep anger from his voice. “I made extremely clear you were to do nothing but surveil.”

  “And we haven’t. I happened to have the bag with me-”

  “We’ll deal with this later.” Tim nodded to the door. “What’s the situation here?”

  Mitchell returned to his anthropologist’s crouch by the knob. “It’s a tough one. Outswinging with a latch protector, so we can’t work the credit-card slide.”

  The Stork set his hands on his hips, then gestured Mitchell aside with an impatient flick of his hand. “Move.”

  Adjusting his glasses, he leaned forward for a closer look at the lock. He brought his face to within inches of it, tilting his head like a predator inhaling scent. He spoke softly, with a singsong cadence, a girl talking to her favorite doll. “Restricted-keyway tumbler lock with reinforced strikes. Aren’t you a pretty one? Yes, you are.”

  Tim, Robert, and Mitchell’s exchange of amused looks was cut short when the Stork reared back, his eyes still intently focused on the lock but his hand extended as if beckoning a waiter. His plump fingers snapped. “Bag.”

  Tim swung the bag down to his feet. The Stork’s hand rustled within and removed a can
of spray lubricant. He inserted a thin extension tube into the nozzle and directed the spray toward the cylinder. “We’ll just lubricate you up, won’t we? That’ll make things easier for us.”

  Next he reached for a pick gun. The tool, with its pull-handle trigger that set a thin protruding tip in continuous motion, resembled an electric hand drill or an elaborate sexual device. Fisting the unit, the Stork slid the tip into the lubed lock and initiated it, working a complicated angle through a precise series of clutchings and readjustments. He set his ear to the door, presumably to listen to the pins jumping above the shear line, his other hand gripping the knob. His mouth was shifted to the right, clamped down on his lower lip. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was in the company of others.

  “There you go, darling. Open up for me.”

  There was a shift in the noise of the pins, a click indicating a sudden symmetry or resonance, and the Stork’s other hand moved lightning-fast, twisting the knob, which gave up a half turn.

  He looked at the others with a satisfied and slightly worn-out grin. Tim half expected him to light up a cigarette. The Stork’s smile faded quickly as he leaned forward, setting his shoulder against the door.

  “Wait,” Tim said. “What if there’s an ala-?”

  The Stork shoved the door open.

  The insistent beeping caused Tim’s mouth to go dry, but the Stork calmly walked over to a keypad on the wall and punched in a code. The alarm ceased.

  They entered, pistols drawn, and listened for any signs of movement in the large chamber of the house. Mitchell and Robert had matching Colt. 45s, single-action semiautos that require cocking before the first round can be shot. They fire with only three pounds of trigger pressure instead of the fifteen a double-action demands. The big-bore guns were powerful, hairtrigger, and illegal, not unlike both brothers.

  “How did you lift the code?” Tim whispered.

  “I didn’t. Every alarm company’s got a reset code.” The Stork pointed to the emblem at the base of the keypad. “This one’s an Iron-Force-30201.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “Yessiree.”

  They stepped through a small room containing a broken washing machine and into the kitchen. Food-caked plates and soggy boxes. Mustard yellow linoleum peeling up at the edges. Endless empty rum bottles and a thin layer of crumbs covering the countertops.

  A faint tinny echo sounded somewhere in the house, slightly animated, almost vocal. Tim’s hand shot up, flat, fingers slightly spread, a point man’s patrol warning. The others stood perfectly still. A minute of silence passed, then another. “Did you hear that?”

  “No, nothing,” the Stork said.

  “Probably the pipes knockin’.”

  “Let’s get moving,” Tim said, his voice still lowered. “Stork-get back outside. A two-tap horn alert if he happens to come back early.”

  “He did leave early.”

  “That’s why you’re gonna keep an eye out for us.” Tim waited for the Stork to scurry outside. “Safe the house and meet back here in two minutes. I’ll take the upstairs.”

  “Look,” Robert said, not bothering to whisper, “we’ve been on the house all night, all morning. There’s no one else-”

  “Do it,” Tim said. He disappeared through the doorway toward the front of the house, moving through several rooms stuffed with oddities-boxes of auto calendars, overturned tables, stacks of bricks. A pile of bright fabric curled around the base of the stairs; Debuffier had probably bought it on garment row. Tim searched the upstairs rooms, which reeked of backed-up plumbing and incense. All the mirrors had been covered, draped in swatches of colorful cloth. Debuffier either fancied himself a vampire or feared his own reflection; from his booking photo, Tim would’ve put money on the latter. Each room was empty and uninhabited; the master bedroom was probably downstairs. Tim took care not to leave footprints where dust had collected more heavily on the floor.

  Robert and Mitchell were waiting for Tim in the kitchen.

  Tim’s watch showed 12:43. “Clear?”

  “Except for the basement door,” Mitchell said. “Solid steel set in a steel frame. Locked.”

  “We’ll get the Stork on it in a minute.” Tim snugged the. 357 against the small of his back. “Let’s take a slower turn through the ground floor. Focus on details so we can draw up a full blueprint of the place later.”

  Another sound, a metallic moan, this one undeniable. Tim felt his stomach constrict, his mouth cotton. He inched in the direction from which the sound had come, through the other doorway, the twins just behind him.

  “What was that?” Robert asked.

  Mitchell adjusted the strap of his det bag, which was slung over his shoulder. “Sounds like a furnace straining.” His tone was unconvincing.

  Tim turned the corner into a back hall that dead-ended in a bathroom and came face-to-face with the enormous steel rise of the basement door. Its placement within the drywall indicated that it had been newly installed. Tim tapped it lightly with a knuckle-solid and thick as hell. Leaning forward, he placed his ear to the cold steel but got back nothing except the quiet hum of the water heater. The hall was dark-pink, flowery curtains had been pulled shut over the single window overlooking the side yard.

  “Robert, run out and get the Stork. Tell him I want through that door into the basement.”

  12:49. If Debuffier had left early, he’d have been gone an hour now. His transit time to the restaurant was at least ten minutes, so he’d likely be home within ten or fifteen minutes, depending on how much he disliked spending time with his mother. As Tim waited tensely, Mitchell sized up the door with a breacher’s imprecise precision, spread fingers pressing into the steel as if it would give.

  Struggling under the weight of his bag, the Stork returned with Robert. He thunked down the bag, gave one glance at the large bolt of the door lock, and proclaimed awfully, “That’s a Medeco G3. I’m not tangling with her.”

  Another sound, paradoxically guttural and high-pitched, issued faintly through the door. Tim noted from the sheen of sweat across Mitchell’s forehead that the sound was having the same unnerving effect on him.

  Half-moons of sweat had darkened Robert’s T-shirt under the sleeves. “Probably just some mumbo-jumbo crap. A tied-up lamb or some shit.” His thumb flicked nervously back and forth across his forefinger, as if trying to make a cigarette materialize.

  “I could blast the door,” Mitchell offered.

  “No way,” Tim said.

  Mitchell had one of the blasting caps out of his pocket and was working it in his hand. “I want to know what’s down there. That’s where they uncovered all the weird shit on the house search.”

  The Stork’s mouth shaped into his crescent of a smile. “I could let Donna have a look around.”

  Robert’s and Mitchell’s brows furrowed with humorous synchronicity. “Donna?”

  “Bust her out,” Tim said. “Whatever she is.”

  “Whoever she is.” The Stork removed a shoebox-size unit with a protruding black-plastic-coated rod and a blank liquid-crystal TV screen the size of a Post-it. The rod, a flexible fiber-optic minicam, had a fish-eye lens embedded in the tip. He clicked a switch, and the screen reflected back their three drawn faces in a washed-out blue light.

  “Big deal,” Robert said. “It’s a Peeper-we’ve all used ’em. It’ll never fit under the door. Gap’s not big enough.”

  “That’s not Donna.” The Stork extracted a tiny Pelican case from the bag and laid it lovingly open. Inside was an incredibly slender rod, almost a black wire, that ended with a wafer-thin rectangular head. “This is Donna.”

  He removed the Peeper’s protruding rod and screwed Donna in its place, pausing to knead a knot from one arthritic hand. The head slipped under the door effortlessly, and they caught an up-close glimpse of a dead mouse bunched on the splintering wood of the top stair. The screen blinked out, then back on. “Come on, baby.” He looked up at them apologetically. “She’s a little finick
y.” His hands were shaking, and he flexed and unflexed them, grimacing. He tried to clutch the thin rod and exhaled hard in frustration.

  “We got it from here,” Tim said. “Leave her with us, go post out back. Remember, two-tap the horn.”

  “But-”

  “Now, Stork. We’re unprotected in here.”

  With a sad parting look at Donna, the Stork hoisted his bag and retreated. His footfall was so silent that when he turned the corner, it was as if he’d vanished.

  Robert and Mitchell crowding around him, Tim worked the wire, trying his best to angle the unseen lens. They took in the basement in vertiginous flights as the lens swept back and forth. The screen blinked off again.

  “Goddamnit, Donna,” Tim said, “work for me.” As soon as he realized, with needling embarrassment, that he’d personified and pleaded with a minicam, the screen bloomed anew, and he found himself thinking that maybe the Stork had something. His prognostication of a bleary future-himself and the Stork double-dating twin upright vacuums bedecked with wigs-was quickly interrupted by the steady basement view his firmer grip on the wire granted.

  A stretch of stairs, maybe ten, leading down into a cold concrete box of a room. Urns and drums were scattered about, as well as dribbles of red and white powders. From atop a mound of melted wax protruded a chorus of still-lit candles, reflected back in a mirror leaning against the wall. In the middle of the room sat a refrigerator/freezer, the freezer compartment above. Feathers were strewn across the floor, lending it a fuzzy, organic texture like a tight-stretched hide. A single wobbly and scarred table held a few more candles, two headless roosters, and an incongruous pencil sharpener. It was hard to picture Debuffier sitting down here puzzling over the Sunday crossword.

  Robert exhaled tensely. They all started when the sound-now even more clearly a moan-rose again into faint audibility. The jerk of Tim’s hands brought the inside of the door into view, along with the thick steel bolt thrown through hasps drilled into studs on either side. No kicking down that door.

  Relinquishing Donna to Mitchell, Tim stood, frustrated. He fingered aside the clingy pink curtain and peered into the side yard. Partially in view, the Stork was flattened against the far fence in a position of cover halfway to the van. Hiding.