The Survivor Page 6

  Abara was nodding along; he’d heard this all already. Clearly, repetition was a big part of the investigation—sifting through the evidence again and again, looking for flecks of gold.

  The robbers’ bodies lay where they’d fallen, hoods now tugged off, flight suits sliced open and peeled back like flayed skin. Nate walked where directed, minding the cones, the blood spatter. He found himself crouching over the first corpse in the lobby, regarding the clean-shaven face. You’re gonna want to listen now, girlie. So much less menacing without the black hood and bug eyes. Younger than he’d have thought.

  Nate wanted to reach down and touch the waxy features. “He’s what? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”

  “This one?” Abara checked a black leather notepad. “Twenty-six.”

  Nate wondered about the next of kin. Who would answer the door to the death notification? Sickly mother? Pregnant girlfriend? Nine-year-old son, home from soccer practice? Gazing at the bodies sprawled on the tile, Nate was all too aware of how the loss of these lives would ripple out. Awe settled in, a sense of the enormity of what he had done, but he expected to feel something more, too. A hint of remorse, perhaps. But no. There were too many other parts to this equation. Those bullets riddling the bank manager’s stiff pantsuit. The cool white hand he’d gripped through the window. A young girl’s earlobe, darkened with her mother’s blood.

  The security director had been pulled away, but Abara was still at Nate’s side, asking a question: “You said the sixth man had an accent?”

  “Eastern Europeanish,” Nate replied.

  “Russian? Polish?”

  “More Russian, I’d say. But I don’t know.”

  Abara gestured at the bodies. “Local dirty white boys, all five. Accent no makee the sense, hoss. You sure you weren’t hearing things?”

  “I’m sure. Do you know who they were? The dead ones?”

  “Yup. They’re an Inland Empire team. Been on our radar a little more than three years. But a few things don’t add up. One: What the hell were they doing in Santa Monica? They’ve never even made it west of Victorville for a job. And two: What’s with the sixth man? They’ve always run jobs as a five crew.”

  “Maybe they recruited,” Nate said.

  “I don’t know. Five men’s generally the most you see in a job like this. Six is the tipping point for logistics—more trouble than help.”

  “The sixth man seemed to be the crew leader.”

  “So you said. In that case why would a new recruit run the show?”

  Nate closed his eyes, put himself back in the vault. The scuff of that boot behind him—Number Six, lying in wait with the letter opener. The whistle of movement, steel through air, and the hot pain in his shoulder. He heard the voice, a low rush of menace—He will be greatly angered by you—and couldn’t ward off a shudder. “They were working for someone.”

  “Right,” Abara said. “‘He’ from ‘He will make you pay.’” They’d been through this as well. Stepping past the teller gate, the agent gazed at the blasted drywall of the ceiling and ran a hand over his utilitarian buzz cut. “AKS-74U assault carbine.”

  “You can tell from the bullet holes?” Nate asked.

  “No.” Abara grinned. “Crime-scene report. Now can you walk me through it?”

  “I already have. Several times.”

  Abara pressed his fingertips together. “I got this wife, yeah? She loses her damn birth-control pills. I’m talking two, three times a week. Not a good thing to lose. And I always tell her, I say, ‘Honey. Retrace your steps.’ And she argues and argues—Puerto Ricans, right? But when she finally listens? There they are. So what do you think. Can you do that for me?”

  Nate said, “Find your wife’s birth-control pills?”

  No smile. Instead Abara pointed at the window, still cranked open as Nate had left it, swath of blood across the pane. Nate took a moment, chewing his lip. Then he walked over, set his hands on the sill, and leaned out into the cool dusk air.

  “Whoa, cowboy.” Abara’s voice sounded distant behind him. “Want to reel it back a little?”

  Nate pulled himself in. Nothing was left of the teller with the pretty green eyes but a collection of evidence cones at his feet. He set about retracing each move, starting with his tumble through the window over her lifeless body. One detail at a time. The tiny puffs of drywall. The relentless screech of the saw. The bullet sailing past, so close it trailed heat across his cheek. Recounting all this now in relative solitude made it more real, and with every step he took, a black tide rose in his chest, threatening to choke off his words. He had shot two men on the main floor and was stepping back toward the vault when something glinted under a desk, catching his eye. He walked over, crouched, and picked up the pearl clip-on earring. Cradled it in his hand. Flashed on its owner’s limp arm unfurling, her rings clacking tile. The black tide climbed into his throat, catching him off guard, and he eased himself down to sit on the floor. Several of the cops paused and looked at him. Then a few CSI techs. The movement around him ground to a halt, the focus of the room pulling to him. He swallowed hard, tried to keep the emotion from his face, but he could feel his cheeks turn to pins and needles.

  “Sorry.” He clutched the earring, the clasp digging into his palm. “Just give me a sec here.”

  Abara waved the others to get back to work and squatted next to him. “Take all the time you need.”

  After Nate caught his breath, he finished the walk-through, ending with his face-to-face with Number Six in the vault. Abara scratched his head with a pen. “Can you look at some security tape, see if you can pick out the crew leader?”

  “I thought they wiped out the footage,” Nate said.

  “We got some in the service elevator and back hall before they pulled the plug on the digital feed.”

  Nate followed him to a rear office filled with monitors, where the security director and two Robbery-Homicide detectives waited, the screen before them fluttering on pause. The footage showed the robbers crowded in the service elevator, six forms covered with black fabric. The director clicked PLAY, and they all watched the men ride up, waiting to explode into action. Wrists jiggled. Boots tapped. Gun slides were racked, magazines reseated. Every man a jumble of live nerves.

  Except one.

  Number Six, the smallest of the crew, stood perfectly still, his head on a slight tilt, those patches of mesh staring directly up at the security camera. Staring directly, it seemed, at Nate.

  Beneath the crisp folds of his T-shirt, Nate’s skin went clammy. The man’s quiet poise. No suggestion of what was to come. He might have been riding the elevator up to see a movie or visit a friend. That slender, compact build. The faint accent. He will make you pay in ways you can’t imagine. The threat recalled sent a blade of ice up Nate’s back. He was already dead, ready and willing to find the next opportunity to pull the plug himself. So why be scared?

  Maybe because he sensed the promise hidden in that calm voice, the promise that whatever he would deliver would be worse than death.

  Nate swallowed dryly and pointed at Number Six.

  * * *

  Riding down in the elevator, Abara said, “We’re gonna need you at the press conference outside.”

  “Press conference?” Nate said. “So you’re gonna help ID me for the guys who want to kill me?”

  “The media’s already dialed into the story. There’s a picture circulating the Web of you walking out of the bank carrying that little girl—looks like a Bruckheimer one-sheet. If we don’t trot you out, you’ll have media crawling up your ass for weeks. Smile pretty for the cameras, satiate everyone’s appetite, and no one’ll remember you by tomorrow.”

  “The guy threatened me. Face-to-face. And I believed him. Whoever his boss is, I killed five of his guys and screwed up his robbery.”

  “I doubt they’ll come after you. Bank robbers and cold-blooded murderers fit different profiles.”

  “A comforting factoid.”

  “I’d imagin
e not.” Abara removed a business card and handed it to Nate. “My cell’s on the back. Something freaks you out, anything you need, call me. And I’ll make sure LAPD has a squad car drive by your place at intervals for a few nights until the scare wears off.” Abara took note of Nate’s expression and said, “What do you expect? A Secret Service detail?”

  “Nah,” Nate said. “If I get killed, I get killed.”

  Abara’s smooth forehead wrinkled a bit at that one. They hit the ground floor, their footsteps ticking across the lobby. Abara spun them through the revolving door, and a wave of noise and heat hit them. Bodies and news crews everywhere. In the middle of a small clearing stood a podium. Before Nate could get his bearings, he was ushered forward to the bouquet of microphones, a police captain stepping aside. Nate blinked and gazed out. Above all else there were lights—bright lights that hid the faces of his interlocutors. Questions sailed out of the white blaze.

  “When you took them on single-handedly, what were your thoughts?”

  Nate moistened his lips. “I was just reacting to what was in front of me. I guess it took me thirty-six years not to think for once.”

  “Did you have a mission plan in mind?”

  There was a particular chagrin, Nate realized, in being taken more seriously by others than he took himself. “Point and shoot?” he offered.

  A feminine voice from the back: “Were you scared?”

  “No, not really. I was angry.”

  “At what specifically?”

  “They killed three people. Kicked a woman in the face. Seemed on the verge of shooting a little girl.”

  Bass voice in the front row: “So you think they all deserved a death sentence?”

  Nate said, “I think if I hadn’t shot them, they would’ve killed more people.”

  “Yes, but still. There are laws.”

  Clearly, the reporter intended to goad him. Nate thought about how in the past he might’ve responded with something appropriate. He sorted through all the replies he’d ordinarily think to make, the placating gestures, the tempered assurances. But then that feeling returned, the sensation he’d encountered as he’d floated through the teller gate, bullets carving the air around his face. Liberation. And he replied, “You want laws? Here’s a law for you. Don’t fucking rob banks and kill innocent people.”

  A hush descended. A reporter reached over to her cameraman’s gear and clicked off the live feed. A firm hand hooked Nate’s waist, politely conveying him to the side, and then the police captain replaced him in front of the microphones. “I think that’s enough questions for the time being.”

  Biting off a smile with perfect white teeth, Abara led Nate off. Once they were clear of the crowd, they nodded good-bye, and Nate went to find his trusty, rusty Jeep Wrangler where he’d parked it an eternity ago this morning. Climbing into the driver’s seat, he realized that he felt neither embarrassment nor regret over his final reply at the podium. He had said exactly what he’d wanted to. Just as this morning he’d done precisely what he’d needed to. No fear. No capitulation. No paralyzing self-scrutiny. He had—literally—nothing left to lose. He pulled on his seat belt, set his hands on the wheel, and the thought hit him: What a trite goddamned shame that he had to be dying to learn how to live again.

  Chapter 9

  Plan B: Nate would drive home and kill himself. Handful of Vicodin, some alcohol, a languid drift into the sweet hereafter. Given the press conference, news of his fake hero stint would spread quickly, complicating matters, making him answer questions he’d rather not. It would be best to handle business before opening up the whole can of worms with Janie and Cielle, especially since he’d managed to keep everything from them for this long.

  After months with depression gnawing at his skull, he’d settled on a plan and had felt energized. Foot on the accelerator, a last burst of gas to take him over the cliff edge. He had to see it through now before he ran out of steam.

  To fortify himself for what was to come, Nate stopped off at a diner for another last meal. The middle-aged waitress had tired eyes, crayon marks on the hem of her uniform, and a pale band of skin around her ring finger. “Triple-scoop hot-fudge sundae?” she asked. “That’s it?”

  He smiled up at her. “That’s it.”

  He savored each bite and left her a $207 tip—all the money in his wallet. Where he was going, he wouldn’t need it.

  He was lurching between red lights on Wilshire on his way home when a dark Town Car pulled up beside him. It rolled forward, nosing dangerously into the intersection to bring a tinted back window even with him. He glanced across, sensing a presence behind it. Someone watching. A sheen of perspiration sprang up on his arms, the nape of his neck. He looked at the streetlight. Glanced back over. Menace emanating from that square of black glass. The tint was darker than standard, illegally so. The Town Car was too far forward for him to make out anything of the driver save a sliver of ear and an old-fashioned cap. He drifted up to get a better look, but the Town Car matched his movement precisely, pushing farther out into the red light, making a passing car honk and swerve.

  He stopped. The Town Car stopped. That tinted rear window so close now he could reach across and knock on it. He rolled down his window and was proceeding to do just that when the tinted glass moved as well, lowering two inches. A hand emerged, a cigarette stub poking from between the index and middle fingers. A tattoo branded each knuckle, and yet the nails looked manicured, and three stripes showed at the wrist—pale flesh, cream French cuff, dark suit. The smoke reached Nate’s nostrils. The cigarette burned down, and the hand adjusted, a quick pulse, and pinched the cherry between the two knuckles. A wisp of black smoke—burning flesh—then the hand let the dead stub fall.

  An echo from the bank vault played in Nate’s head, that accented voice: He will make you pay in ways you can’t imagine.

  Numbness spread through his body, a stand-in for fear. Slowly he became aware of a cacophony of bleating behind him, the din of horns, and he realized that the light had changed to green sometime ago. He stood on the brake pedal, a game of chicken, the two vehicles blocking a corridor of traffic.

  A sharp ring issued from his lap, startling him into a jolt, sending his old-fashioned clamshell cell phone to the floor. He chased it around, and when he straightened back up, the Town Car was gone from its spot beside him, already way up ahead, shrinking to nothing. But one detail grabbed his attention before it vanished: There was no back license plate.

  Enduring curses from L.A. drivers all around, he accelerated, glanced at caller ID, then fought the phone open. Jen Brown, his tough-minded boss, calling from downtown. Probably caught wind of the robbery. He said, “I’m okay.”

  “Good to know,” Jen said. “But I wasn’t asking.”

  Maybe word of his fake hero stint wouldn’t spread quickly.

  “I need you to pay a house call,” she continued. “Sean and Erica O’Doherty of Encino.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not been the easiest day.”

  “Imagine what theirs is gonna look like.”

  He took a deep breath. Considered those pills awaiting him, and how he’d do well to get to them before the man or his bank robbery cohorts caught up to him as promised. “I don’t think I can do it right now.”

  “Okay. Then I’ll send Ken.”

  “Ken? Not Ken. Last time he—”

  “I know,” she said wearily. “He left a note pinned to the door. Let’s skip the outrage. We’re shorthanded, and you’re the only guy who does it right. Blah, blah, blah. Pretty much every time you say you can’t, you wind up doing it anyway. So let’s just pretend we already had this part of the conversation.”

  He gritted his teeth. “You got the file?”

  “Right in my pretty little hand.”

  He sighed, turned onto the freeway. “You know how to manipulate people.”

  “I’m not a cop for nuthin’.”

  * * *

  Nate triple-checked the address befo
re ringing the doorbell. At the side of the porch was a teak bench, its base lined with shoes. Loafers and sneakers and a pair of worn Converse high-tops with peace symbols Magic Markered on the sides. The stab wound throbbed in his shoulder, and he hoped it wasn’t bleeding through the hospital-issue T-shirt.

  Footsteps approached, and Nate closed his eyes, gathered himself. A pleasant woman in her forties answered, her husband behind her in gym clothes, a folded Wall Street Journal under his arm. The woman’s eyebrows rose with surprise. “Hi…?”

  He took quick note of the marble floor of the entry. “I’m Nate Overbay. Are you Erica? Sean?”

  “Yup.” Sean glanced at a runner’s watch with an angled face. He was a husky man, former athlete, with a wedge of dense copper hair. “What can we help you with?”

  “I work with LAPD. May I come in?” Nate wanted to get them seated; Sean O’Doherty was a big guy, and it was a long fall to that hard marble floor if he fainted.

  Erica nodded nervously. On their way to the couches, Sean let the newspaper drop. They sat, and Nate asked, “Just the two of you home?”

  Sean said nervously, “Yeah, yeah, just us.”

  Nate set his hands on his knees. He hated this moment most, the moment before the world flew apart.

  He cleared his throat. “At two-thirty today, your son Aiden was driving from his dorm room to guitar practice. He was struck by another car and brought into the USC Medical Center with severe injuries to his head and chest. He was unconscious. The medical staff did everything they could to revive him, but they failed, and he died.”

  A cry flew out of Erica. Her face turned red, and she leaned back into the cushions. Sean was standing; he’d moved so fast that Nate had missed the transition from couch to feet, and the man wobbled a moment and then sat down again. He was breathing hard, nostrils flaring. Nate gave them maybe ten seconds, which stretched longer than ten seconds seemed like they could.