Troubleshooter Page 30
The clock showed 9:14, but it might as well have been midnight for the silence in the rest of the building. No footsteps overhead, no doors shutting down the hall, no lit windows across the way.
“All right, guys,” Tim said. “Let’s fetch.”
His mouth tight and his eyes on the carpet, Tannino kept his post in the doorway as they brushed past in groups of two.
Tim was one leg into the Explorer when Guerrera called his name. He paused, Bear grumbling impatiently from the passenger seat as Guerrera jogged across the underground parking lot.
The sheet containing the leads fluttered at Guerrera’s side. Sweat from his hand had bled a half-moon into it. “Rack. I lied.”
“About what?”
“The higher-probability locations. You were right. Nearer the mother chapter. Not Kaner’s place.” He offered the paper, looking uncomfortable under Tim’s gaze. “Hey, they’re just leads. Who knows. Maybe Thomas and Freed make the collar. Maybe none of us do. I just want to keep my backyard clean.”
After a pause Tim swapped Guerrera’s sheet for the one in his back pocket. “Why the change of heart?”
“I figure maybe Jim isn’t the best guy to go through that door right now.”
Tim arched an eyebrow. “Just Jim?”
A half grin. “Don’t push your luck, white boy.”
65
Tim and Bear checked three bars, a strip club, and a pay phone outside a motorcycle-parts store. Boston and Precious rode along, tongues lolling; after his schedule over the past week, Bear insisted on playing guilty weekend dad. Out in the field, he and Tim fell back into the interrogation rhythm they’d perfected over the past years. They spoke to a bald bartender wearing a dog collar, a woman walking her calico on a leash, two gas-station convenience-store clerks, and an exotic dancer who insisted on replacing her nipple tassels—to Bear’s evident discomfort—while describing her on-the-side clientele. The only hit they got in the first four hours came from a homeless woman living behind an adult bookstore, whose eyes lit up at Den Laurey’s photo; she ID’d him as the guy from Gladiator.
The blue panels of the sixth pay phone gleamed in the glare of Tim’s headlights. Scarred by restroom wit and cigarette burns, the unit was bolted into a sawdusty wall off the front porch of a freestanding country bar. Despite saloon doors and Loretta Lynn’s jukebox lament about pappy a-hoein’ corn, the bar suffered from a confused identity. A punk sporting an algae-green Mohawk tossed darts with a lip-pierced person of ambiguous gender, while four unaffiliated bikers nursed drafts at the bar. ESPN recapped Pittsburgh’s trouncing in the Continental Tire Bowl, as if anyone cared. A girls’ night out had somehow wound up in a corner booth, grating laughter radiating from a trio whose feathered hair seemed more vintage than retro. Wine coolers and buffalo wings dotted their table, and the saccharine scent of drugstore perfume was evident from the doorway. Only the bartender, an old guy wearing a Stetson Cattleman and a belt buckle the size of a Christmas platter, looked at home in the decor. Then again, they were north of the fish hatchery, out where the Fillmore citrus groves faded into God knows what, so a watering hole earned its nickname here. They’d passed a gas station a quarter mile back, but before that it had been a long run of dusty road, with scattered lights twinkling out from the dark hillsides like Ewok eyes.
One of the corner-booth gals offered Bear a giggly wave as he and Tim headed for the bar. Loretta gave way to “London Calling”—three guesses who’d dropped that quarter—and a kid in grease-stained Dickies shuffled out of the men’s room, trailing the smell of weed and a streamer of toilet paper. The bartender worked his way down to them, polishing nothing much off the bar with a rag that looked as if it had stuffed a hole in a flue for about a decade.
“What’ll it be?”
Bear tilted his hand, showing off the photo of Den cupped inside. To try to lessen the false positives, they’d chosen a different picture from the one that had been running on the news. “Seen this guy?”
“Nah.”
The kid from the bathroom leaned over, concerned. “You guys cops?”
“Yeah, but no worries, Cheech. We’re after bigger game.”
“Like who?”
Bear flashed him the picture, and the kid’s eyes widened about a millimeter, the closest approximation of surprise he could currently muster. “Yeah, I seen that guy.”
Bear looked skeptical. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. He came into the station.” He twisted on his barstool, pointing back up the road. “Needed a spark plug.”
“What was he driving?” Tim asked.
The kid blinked a few times. He pulled something off his tongue and flicked it, then blinked some more. “Uh, nothing. He needed a spark plug.”
“So he walked?”
“Cars don’t work so hot without spark plugs.” He laughed a slow laugh, then took a pull from his Coors. His eyes went longingly to the bags of chips clipped up behind the bar.
Tim snapped his fingers in front of the kid’s eyes, and the dilated pupils pulled back into semifocus. “He walked? No one dropped him?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. Maybe the day before.”
“How many houses are within walking distance of there?”
“Not many.” The bartender returned, trailing his rag along the counter. “There’s a pocket community up a half mile north where the pass drops, but aside from that you gotta good run of ranch ’n’ farmland either direction.”
“How many houses in the community?”
“I’d say thirty.”
“You forgot the new mods they put up on Grant,” the kid said.
“Yeah, so thirty-five.”
“Did this guy walk in from the north?” Tim asked.
The kid squinted up his face thoughtfully and nodded. “Went back that way, too.”
66
As the Explorer flew down the dark road, Bear tried to ease Tim’s expectations. “We’re working off the memory of a stoned kid. No one else in the bar recognized the photo.”
“We got the location from both angles, Bear. It’s a good, strong hit.”
Uncle Pete had driven through the area only once, five and a half months ago. Tim hoped he’d done so to conduct some business at a Laughing Sinners safe house in the pocket community, a house where Den could now be lying low. They had Dana Lake placing a call to the bar’s pay phone three days ago. The cross-ref had popped the location to the top of the list.
A reinforced-concrete barrier protected the patch of prefab-looking tract houses from the two-lane thoroughfare. Tim turned off into the small grid of streets, which terminated at the base of a forbidding hill. There were maybe five square blocks in all, and Tim moved through them systematically.
“Not a bad spot,” Bear conceded. “You got no dead ends, and all roads dump out on the main road. Plenty of turnoffs within a mile either direction.”
“Some open flats, too,” Tim said. “If he got creative on a bike, it would be tough keeping up.”
He circled the final block and pulled to the curb. Boston muscled in on Precious’s space in the back, and Precious let him hear about it with a low growl. Bear turned around in his seat like an angry vacation dad, and they silenced.
Bear settled back into his seat. “I’d bet the safe house is gonna be forward on the first two streets. If the shit goes down, they don’t want to get trapped at the base of the hill.”
Tim killed the lights and cruised the first two streets again. One house amid all the others, virtually identical, caught Bear’s eye. He pivoted, then indicated a side window barely in view above an empty, fenced-in dog run. A blanket, tacked from the inside, covered the glass.
Tim pulled past a few more houses, flipped around, and parked.
They sat for a minute, taking in the view. A dark house at the end of a dark block. A blanket blocking a window, providing some economical privacy. Just like at the abandoned meth lab where they’d run down Kaner.
Wide alleys, designed to accommodate boat trailers and still leave room for the garbage truck, sliced between the rows of houses. Sidearms drawn, Tim and Bear eased their way along the dirt trail, dodging puddles and tarp-covered mounds of firewood. TVs lit the back windows of nearly every house. A woman’s laughter, reduced to bronchial wheezing, drifted out a screen door. Wheelbarrows. Refrigerator planters. A single-horse trailer hitched to a souped-up Camaro.
Precious, glad to make use of her training, stalked silently at their sides. They reached the corner of the house in question and stopped behind a shed.
Their eyes traced the two-story house. The roof overhung a vine-covered veranda that was jumping distance to the neighboring dormer, a carport, and the shed behind which they squatted. Two men couldn’t cover all the ways out.
The gate latch gave with a click, and they crept through the backyard. A thickening odor came from the dark crust of leaves turning to chlorinated mulch on top of the pool cover.
The TV blared, as in the other houses they’d passed. Melissa Yueh chattered on about pharmacist errors and pending lawsuits. The lights were off, the interior illuminated only by flickering blue light that mapped patterns on the ceiling and bare walls.
Tim and Bear eased up on the back veranda, half shadowed by a lattice of moonlight strained through the cheap pergola. Lozenges of light played over them, accentuating their movement, but when they stood still, they disappeared in the camo spatterings. Precious’s claws scraped the warped deck ever so slightly. Gnats plinked against the porch lamp. A spill of kitty litter, probably dumped through the nearby kitchen window, textured the veranda’s edge. Someone moved swiftly from room to room, wearing boots or heavy-soled shoes. A mosquito-eater fluttered along the rafters, beating itself against the wood. Intertwined with the overhead trellis, the long-dead carpet of nasturtiums scratched and rattled in the breeze.
Tim and Bear leaned over to peer through the windows on either side of the back door, but they looked in on an empty living room. Melissa Yueh continued to chirp, the TV on a wicker stand to the side of the carpeted staircase. The smoke detectors had been removed, and mounds of kitty litter occupied the room’s corners. A yellow-and-rust couch with herniated cushions blocked much of the floor from view. An open door to the garage revealed a pristine Harley, faintly illuminated by a bare, dangling bulb. Danny the Wand–detailed with flame yellow and orange, the motorcycle aimed at the closed garage door.
Ready for takeoff.
A polished metal top case was mounted to a cargo rack behind the bike’s seat. Bear pointed and mouthed, “Allah’s Tears?”
Bear gestured for Precious to safe the back door. She nosed along the jamb, then rose to her hind legs, retracting her paws so as not to scratch against the wood panels. She dropped down to all fours but didn’t sit—no booby trap.
A dark figure came in from a front room, holding two fistfuls of clothes. He passed right before the windows and sat on his knees on the water-stained floorboards of the living room, facing away, stuffing the clothes into a backpack. He was shirtless, his skin oily with sweat, and though he was shadowed, Tim could discern the tattoos swarming across his shoulder blades. Den strapped a snub-nosed .38 to his ankle and tucked a Colt .45 into his belt.
Tim and Bear pulled behind the pool, keeping an eye on the shadow in the living room. Bear radioed in for backup, speaking in a murmur.
Tim got Guerrera on the line and gave him a whispered summary.
“So you think the AT’s in the case on the bike?” Guerrera asked.
Tim could hear the squeal of tires as Jim banked sharply—they were hauling ass. “I’m guessing. Why?”
“I don’t see him making a getaway on a theme bike. Kind of dumbass for Laurey, no?”
“You think it’s a decoy?”
“He wouldn’t leave without his bike. Was it his bike?”
“I don’t know. The new paint job.”
“What was the engine? Panhead or knucklehead?”
“I couldn’t see clearly.”
“Were there aluminum heads on the engine?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a panhead. Not his bike. Remember, Den rides a knucklehead.”
Tim flashed on the unlikely trailer he and Bear had passed in the alley. “I gotta go check something out. Get here soon.”
“Twenty minutes and closing.”
Bear came back and crouched beside Tim.
“Comm center said twenty minutes for backup,” he whispered. “That’s what Guerrera gave me. Could mean thirty.”
“True.”
“Guerrera thinks the garage bike’s a decoy.”
“So where’s the real bike?”
“I’m thinking back there. With the AT.”
Bear followed him only as far as the rear gate so he could keep an eye on Den’s form moving in the living room. Tim climbed up the already lowered ramp to the lonesome horse trailer—an inconspicuous getaway vehicle if ever there was one. He picked the lock swiftly and swung the gate open. Pointing out at the ramp, a chopper. Spraypainted black. Knucklehead engine.
The bike looked the same as when Den had ridden up to the Suicide Clutch bar, except that a thick-lidded metal container the size of a shoe box had been bolted, then arc-welded, to the frame behind the seat. Tim took one look at the dense Medeco double-cylinder lock and knew he couldn’t get through it with a pick. Or, from the look of it, with a blowtorch. He tapped it with a fist, and it gave off a hollow ring. Quarter-inch steel or thicker. A hefty safe for the product.
Ten yards down the alley, Bear was on his tiptoes, keeping the living room in view. Tim snapped Precious over and directed her nose to the box. She was explosive-detection trained, not a drug dog, so she hit on the booby trap under the seat first. It took some direction to get her refocused on the box, but when she was, she reacted strongly, licking the seam of the lid. Tim ordered her to seek, and she sat immediately; she’d registered a strong scent. It was hard to believe the small metal box could contain nearly $50 million of product.
At his post, Bear looked from Precious to the motorcycle. “This bike cannot leave here,” he said. “No matter what.”
Tim reached into a pocket and came out with his knife. He leaned over the bike for a moment, cut a wire in the frame tubing, and straightened up. “It won’t,” he said.
He and Bear made their way back to the veranda. They crept to the windows.
Den was where they’d left him, on his knees in the living room before the TV. He zipped up his bag and gave it a pat. His hand tapped what looked like an empty sheath, hung over his arm shoulder-holster style, and he cursed and headed back into the house’s interior.
Bear gestured to where his watch would have been and whispered, “He’s splitting. We gotta make a move.”
“We should cover the trailer and let him come to us.”
“What if he catches wind?” Bear pointed at the vivid Harley in the garage. “Just because it’s a decoy doesn’t mean it don’t run.”
“True. But we’ve got more doors and windows than we can stay on top of. We go in after him, he could get around us, and the AT’s wide open.” Tim ground his teeth, hoping Dray would contribute to the debate. It occurred to him that she’d been off the air for a time now, and he dreaded what that could mean. He’d never thought of himself as superstitious, but his inability to find her voice in himself—her vanishing—seemed a bad omen.
A deep breath fluttered Bear’s nostrils. “You took care of the bike already.”
“Not the Camar
o. He can just pull the trailer pin and take off.”
“If he’s willing to leave his bike. And the drugs.”
Tim stepped away from the glass. “Why take the gamble? I’ll run back, disable the Camaro.”
Approaching footsteps creaked the floorboards. Tim froze—too late.
He and Bear regarded each other on the back porch, Precious waiting silently behind them, pressed to their calves. Despite the cold, big drops of sweat stood out on Bear’s forehead. They hung at the hairline, defying gravity. Tim felt his own heart pounding, making his face flush, his ears throb. His hands tightened around the grip of his Smith & Wesson.
He nodded.
He freed his Mag-Lite from his cargo pocket and pointed it at the ground. He would have preferred night-vision goggles to breach the dark house, but the heavy flashlight would have to do.
Den returned from the far room, now wearing a black tank top. The bowie knife gleamed, showing off its sinister curve until he jammed it into its sheath. He sank to his knees again, partially disappearing behind the couch, and dumped a few more items into the backpack.
“… authorities believe that Den Laurey, considered armed and extremely dangerous, remains at large in the Greater Los Angeles area….”
Den’s head snapped up, the TV framing it almost perfectly. Then he reached for something on the floor. His shoulders rippled with an unseen motion of his hands, and then he rose, street-ready in his originals, the flame-ensconced laughing skull ascending into view from behind the couch.
Melissa Yueh continued, “… locates this man, Den Laurey, they are urged to contact …”
For once the local news star’s irritating habit of hogging live screen time was a blessing. Den hovered in front of the TV, waiting to hit the “power” button until his coverage was done.
Tim and Bear exploded through the back door. “Freeze! U.S. Marshals!”
“Hands up! Get ’em up!”
The circle of Tim’s light captured Den’s face, frozen in surprise. His hands were raised, the ftw tattoo peeking out from the collar of his tank top. The leather jacket hid his knife and at least one gun. Backing slowly to the wall, he squinted into the light. His stubbled cheeks tensed, then relaxed as his lips pursed in an intimation of a grin, his expression a perfect match for the mug-shot smirk filling the TV screen. “Troubleshooter.” He might have been greeting an old friend.