Or She Dies Page 33

  The walls shook. Pounding footsteps and shouted directives conveyed not just brisk efficiency but wrath. They were gunning for a cop killer, a murderer who’d shot holes through two of their own.

  I flew across the back lawn, leaping up onto the fence and spotting a pair of squad cars slant-parked in front of the grille of Ari’s pickup, blocking off the street. Patrolmen climbing out, talking — they’d missed the white flash of my face in the night. I dropped down silently on the mulch by the greenhouse, my chest heaving.

  One said, ‘You hear that?’

  My knee had struck the slats on my way down, a rasp that reverberated like thunder in my memory.

  Brush and branches half obscured me. In the windows of both floors, I could see SWAT officers wielding semiautos. Upstairs, a face shielded with tactical goggles tilted toward my office desk, rifled papers fluttering up into view.

  Behind me and the fence, the click of a flashlight, and then a beam prowled the branches overhead, ticking back and forth as the cop approached. From the house a voice, heightened against the nighttime quiet, called out, ‘Sweep the backyard!’ and I saw a balaclava-hooded head, moving in concert with the barrel of an MP5, float across the kitchen window toward the back door.

  My bloodless fist, cinched around Ariana’s useless keys, stood out against the dark ground. Pressed to my kidney, the pistol beckoned. I touched my hand to the grip, then pulled away as if it had burned my palm. What was I going to do? Draw down on a SWAT team?

  Crunched against the slats at the base of the fence, my back picked up the vibration of footsteps closing in from beyond. Cobwebs draped across my wet brow. Across the yard the knob of our back door jostled. Directly above me a meaty hand hooked over the top of the fence.

  Wedged in the angle where splintering wood met moist earth, I had nowhere left to go. My mouth cottoning, I looked around frantically.

  Through a skein of dusty sumac, I spotted the section of sagging fence between our yard and the Millers’. A post had keeled over, leaving a break in the slats. I scrambled on all fours, gliding across the soft mulch.

  The cop’s boots knocked the fence, and I heard him grunting, trying to pull his weight up for a look. Across the lawn the SWAT officer kicked through the rear door, the knob taking a bite from the outside wall.

  Behind me the cop landed on our side of the fence with a harrumph. I whistled through the gap onto the Millers’ property an instant before our backyard lit up with intersecting flashlight beams. Rolling to the side, I found my feet in Martinique’s flowerbed. I scurried across the well-kept back lawn, crossed the stamped-concrete patio in a few strides, and swung into their kitchen through the rear door.

  Martinique lowered the salad bowl she was scrubbing with ridiculous yellow kitchen gloves and regarded me, her mouth slightly agape. I’d frozen as well, my feet still on the outside step, but my weight forward on the hand gripping the doorknob. Beyond her in the family room, his back to us, Don sat watching CNBC with the volume raised. The only movement was the financial pundit raving about the subprime crisis and the kitchen faucet going full blast, spewing a vibrating column of water. I barely dared to move my eyes to take in the room. To my right, their washer and dryer, the lids heaped with dirty clothes, the day’s mail, and Don’s laptop carrier. Five steps forward, the door to the garage.

  Martinique turned her head, her mouth open to call to Don, but something stopped her.

  I mouthed, Help me.

  Car tires splashed water out front, and blue light came wavering across the sponge-painted ceiling. ‘The hell you think that jackass got up to now?’ Don said, standing and dropping the remote onto the cushion. ‘I’ll go upstairs, see what I can see from the den.’ He turned, draining his scotch. Not bothering to look up at Martinique and me, he set the glass on the sofa table, said, ‘This is dirty, too,’ and trudged to the stairs. Neither she nor I had breathed.

  Finally her eyes swiveled to the window, the flashlight beams along the fence line now. For a moment I thought she was going to cry out for help.

  But her voice came in a low purr. ‘I’m not getting involved.’ Her mouth grim, she set down the salad bowl, walked past me, wafting the scent of almond soap, and pulled open a cupboard above the washing machine. Jangling from a silver hook, the keys to Don’s Range Rover. ‘I have too many dishes to clean to notice a goddamned thing.’

  She returned to the sink, dutifully pulled another bowl from the stack, and went to work on it, humming. I crossed the space, unhooked the keys, and stepped into the garage.

  Then I came back and grabbed Don’s laptop. Martinique didn’t so much as glance over, but I swore I detected a hint of satisfaction in the set of her mouth.

  The garage door opened smoothly, on well-greased tracks. A SWAT van and police cars clogged the street in front of our curb, and the house was inundated with uniforms. Our front and side yards were crawling with cops, too — a marksman had even climbed up to check the roof — but their main focus was bushes, shadows, and radios. The upstairs hall window framed Gable’s face; he was glowering out as if picking a fight with the darkness, his gaze passing blankly over the lawn, the street, the black Range Rover creeping from the neighbor’s garage.

  Signaling like a good citizen, I pulled out and turned left down the hill.

  Chapter 54

  Parked in an alley behind a gas station, I looked at the items I’d carried out of the fray, aligned neatly on the passenger seat. Don’s laptop. A sheaf of twice-folded documents, wrinkled from my pocket and moist from rainfall. And the real-life MacGuffin, a white-silver disc.

  The golf hat from Don’s backseat was tugged down over my scraped-up face, the pistol hidden in the back of my jeans. I’d switched out the Range Rover’s license plates with those from a pea green Buick reposing in an apartment carport. I needed to buy time before the theft was noticed, and the Buick’s plate frame — ZACHARY AND SAGE’S GRANDMA! — hinted that the owner probably wouldn’t be heading out to trip the light fantastic at 9:30 P.M. Boosting cars wasn’t bad enough; I’d been reduced to stealing from a granny.

  With nervous anticipation I booted up Don’s Toshiba and started to insert the CD. But I hesitated with it halfway in. Did I want to know what it contained? Once I did, could they let me live? Curiosity tormented me, but I fought it off, withdrawing the CD and placing it back on the leather, where it glared up at me. Whatever was on it would surely open up another world of trouble, and I couldn’t afford to have any more distractions between me and Ariana.

  The longer I delayed, the greater the likelihood that the cops would catch up to me. Or that Ariana’s kidnappers would lose patience with her or find her inconvenient. The smartest move would be to call Verrone now and tell him I had the CD. He’d know I’d lied about the safe-deposit box, but as long as I had what he wanted, I couldn’t see why he’d care.

  The throwaway cell phone had run out of juice, so I turned on my trusty Sanyo. Jerry had said that calls a few minutes long were tough to track, so I’d keep it short. Rehearsing what I was about to say, I punched in Ariana’s number. My thumb hovered over ‘send.’ But something wouldn’t let me put the call through.

  Maybe it was the image of Mikey Peralta laid out in that hospital bed, fist-size dent in his forehead. Or the crimson halo spreading on the floor beneath Deborah Vance’s hair. I wanted desperately to believe that as long as I didn’t set eyes on whatever that CD contained, Ariana and I would be safe. I wanted to believe that if I gave the Ridgeline crew what they wanted, we could shake hands and walk away. But the truth I didn’t want to acknowledge was what was freezing my thumb over that ‘send’ button. And that reality made itself known now, like a punch to the gut: my wife and I had already crossed the point of no return.

  With two dead cops, a pair of kidnappings, and RHD and SWAT gunning for me, everything had spun out of control for Ridgeline, as it had for me. There was no way they could still entertain the notion that they could rein this back into a simple frame-up and leave
me holding the bag.

  Before the plan had derailed, they had needed me alive to insulate Festman Gruber, their employer, from suspicion in Keith’s murder. But now Verrone, DeWitt, and whoever else constituted Ridgeline seemed to have switched to full-blown damage-control mode. Their objective now was self-preservation. Which meant acquiring leverage. Covering their asses. And eliminating witnesses. Mikey Peralta’s ‘car accident’ and Deborah Vance’s ‘revenge shooting’ were pretty good indications of what they planned to do to me and Ariana once our usefulness was exhausted. We knew too much now. We’d seen too much. They’d keep Ari on the hook just long enough to lure me in.

  Aside from those copied documents, the CD staring up at me was my only ammunition.

  If I delivered it to Ridgeline, they’d kill me and my wife.

  I looked down at the phone, those ten digits glowing on the screen. Then at the CD on the passenger seat. The phone. The CD. Phone. CD.

  It was time to change the plan. To go on the offensive.

  The only way to beat them was to outplay them at their own game.

  With a renewed sense of purpose, I turned off the phone, fired up the computer, and slotted in the CD. A single PDF file popped up, which I double-clicked. Fifteen pages, charted by the right scroll bar. Tables and graphs. A CONFIDENTIAL stamp, conspicuous yet translucent, halved each page at a diagonal. The cover sheet stated, FESTMAN GRUBER — INTERNAL DOCUMENT ONLY — DO NOT REPRODUCE, followed by a few paragraphs of dense legal threats.

  I clicked from page to page, scanning numbers and columns, waiting for the data to take shape. A graph on the tenth page, labeled ‘Internal Study,’ spelled it out plainly enough even for my geometry skills, atrophied since sophomore year of high school.

  Three lines charted sonar decibels across various months. The blue one, a steady horizontal, showed the existing legal limits. Another, flying high above the law, indicated the decibels reached by Festman Gruber’s sonar system. They peaked north of three hundred decibels, well above even the figure Keith had thrown at me through a puff of clove smoke from his deck chair.

  In other words, illegal activity.

  A green line across the bottom of the page, far beneath the legal limits, puzzled me. The key labeled it simply NV.

  The letters tugged at a memory, tripping an image I’d seen in the documents I’d pulled off the Ridgeline copy machine’s hard drive. Grabbing the papers, I shuffled past the creepy picture of me, past Keith Conner’s phone records, past those ATM slips positioned like dominos, finally finding the surveillance shot of the older man with a silver goatee exiting a limousine. The next picture of him included the image I was looking for, a logo painted on the lobby window of the high-rise in the background. The logo was an elegant one: encompassed by a ring, an N quarter-turned like a dial so the letter’s diagonal and second upright suggested a V.

  NV, all tied up in a neat little circle.

  So it was a corporation.

  I studied the gleam off the limo’s wax job, the formidable building, the man’s confident bearing. It all seemed to suggest that he was someone high up at NV. The fact that he’d been placed under Ridgeline surveillance, in turn, suggested that his company was a rival to Festman Gruber.

  I needed a name.

  Beneath the photo was a copy of a cell-phone bill that belonged to a Gordon Kazakov. Several of the phone numbers were underlined, but they meant nothing to me.

  I drove off, searching for a Starbucks. In Brentwood that took four blocks. I tucked the Range Rover into the curb in front, close enough to pirate the wireless internet signal, then neurotically slotted a few quarters in the meter, though it was well past the hours of operation. My eyes swept the window and caught on a wall clock over the espresso machine — 10:05.

  Less than sixteen hours until Ridgeline would kill my wife.

  The light banter and scent of java from inside struck at my nerves, reminding me how far I’d skidded off the tracks. With the hat brim pulled low over my bruised face, I turned from all that light and warmth and scurried back to the vehicle. Door locked, laptop open, and voilà — a Linksys internet connection.

  Google Images spit out a number of pictures for Gordon Kazakov, the man in the surveillance shot. A few clicks showed him to be the CEO of North Vector, NV of the nifty logo, a Fortune 1000 powerhouse specializing in — surprise — global defense and technology. In addition, he owned two football teams in Eastern Europe, a low-fare airline with a hub in Minneapolis, and a historic mansion in Georgetown. But the most interesting bit of news was hidden in a recent Wall Street Journal profile. Though North Vector had made no official announcements, the article suggested that it had a revolutionary sonar system nearing viability.

  A competing system that — according to the smuggled document — functioned using not just legal but markedly reduced decibel levels. The comparison, judging by the graph, didn’t look flattering for Festman.

  The muscles at the base of my neck had tightened into knots so unyielding that they felt inanimate when I reached back to knead them. Closing my eyes, I ran through what I knew, searching out the hairline crack where I could drive in a wedge.

  Ridgeline had been hired by Festman Gruber to do their dirty bidding — to make sure that nothing interfered with Festman’s defense contracts until that Senate vote went through. But Ridgeline seemed to be growing increasingly distrustful of their employers. They’d started keeping backup records of the illegal activity they conducted on behalf of Festman. They’d even gone so far as to acquire a confidential internal study showing Festman’s sonar system to be operating outside legal parameters, a document that, if leaked properly, could probably do more damage to Festman’s pocketbook than a Keith Conner documentary.

  I massaged my temples, considered the angles. I thought about something Ariana had told me the night we’d received that first menacing phone call and discovered the cameras in the walls. We were huddled out in the greenhouse, running through our lack of options, and she’d said in exasperation, We don’t know people big enough to help us.

  For a good time, I stared at Gordon Kazakov’s cell-phone bill. Then I called the bold number in the header. Five rings. Seven. No voice mail?

  I was about to hang up when a voice answered. Smooth as bourbon.

  I said, ‘Gordon Kazakov?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘The enemy of your enemy.’

  A pause. ‘Who’s my enemy?’

  I said, ‘Festman Gruber.’

  ‘I’d like a name, please, sir.’

  I took a breath. ‘Patrick Davis.’

  ‘I see that they’ve been busy on your behalf.’

  How could he know that? But I was eager to finish the call and turn off my Sanyo again before the signal could be traced. So I got to the point. ‘I have something you want.’

  ‘I’ll meet you.’

  ‘That’ll be difficult,’ I said. ‘Don’t you live in Georgetown?’

  ‘I’m in Los Angeles,’ he said. ‘I promised my wife she could meet Keith Conner. That was before, of course, but I’d booked some business the first part of the week.’

  My bewildered silence must have spoken volumes, because he said, by way of explanation, ‘The first day of production was to be Monday.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘You were involved with the movie?’

  ‘Son,’ he chuckled, ‘I was financing it.’

  Chapter 55

  Hotel Bel-Air, tucked into twelve bucolic acres of priceless real estate, was of course where a Gordon Kazakov would stay. With their sheltering trees, private paths, and white-noise brook, the grounds were the embodiment of discretion. The hush-voiced staff had played host to royalty of every definition, from Judy Garland to Princess Di. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio used to sneak off here to get away, and now I was doing some non-royal sneaking of my own, past the dinner patrons trickling out with their eco-farmed furs and bloody lipstick.

  Ari and I had come here for an anniversary meal
once, though we couldn’t afford the overnight. Intimidated by the waiters, I’d overtipped, which was probably undertipping. We’d sidled out, thanking everyone too profusely, and I’d never been back. Until now.

  Having parked up Stone Canyon, I took a path along the brook to dodge the valets. A foursome strolled over the bridge above me, and Keith Conner’s name sailed from the low murmur of their conversation as if it were aimed at me. Lowering my face, I kept walking, and so did they. The rain had stopped, leaving the air clean and sharp with the scent of vegetation. Passing three floating swans and as many signs warning of their temperament, I headed under a nearly horizontal California sycamore, crossed a patch of lush grass, and regarded the private stairs leading up to Room 162. Tea lights flickered on each step, a romantic touch, but to me the shifting shadows felt merely ominous. In choosing to trust Kazakov, I’d placed my freedom and Ariana’s life in his hands. For all I knew, he’d called LAPD already and they were all waiting for me inside, oiling their semiautos and sipping Campari.

  There was much to gain and everything to lose.

  Steeling myself, I headed up the stairs. I knocked twice, once, then twice again.

  A dry voice came through the wood — ‘I was just kidding about that’ — and then the door tugged open. I tensed, but there was no Gable, no SWAT, no hired muscle, just Kazakov in a white bathrobe and his wife across on a couch, dwarfed by the expansive suite.

  He rubbed an eye. ‘Come in, please. Forgive my getup, but I don’t dress for anybody after ten anymore.’ A handsome man, though he looked older than he had in the photos I’d seen, maybe closing on seventy. ‘Need something for that?’

  He was so matter-of-fact that it took a moment for me to realize he was talking about the bruising on my face. ‘No, it’s fine.’