Class Fives: Origins (2 page)

Thirty seconds later the black and white police cruiser turned the corner at the far end of the quiet street and glided along it, like a predator aware of the effect its appearance would have and enjoying a sense of power. It rolled in front of the long, wide apartment building and slid slowly to a stop directly across the street from the glass front door of the structure.

Sergeant Dan Sinski, a twenty two year veteran of the LAPD, looked over, his eyes automatically probing the gloom visible inside the structure for any movement.

Beside him, in the passenger seat, Officer Jim Belles, in his fourth year as a Los Angeles police officer, looked down at the paper attached to the clipboard on his lap.

“1540 Kittridge, apartment 220” he said almost mechanically.

Dan nodded thoughtfully, lost for a moment in his own musings, then sighed.

“Let’s go,” he said, reaching for the door handle.

He dug in his pocket, letting his fingers identify the quarter and pulled it out, placing it on the counter before him. The clerk nodded absently, scooped it up and dropped it into the open register drawer.

Roger Malloy sighed, took the newspaper off the counter and moved through the door into the parking lot of the convenience store, gazing down to scan the headlines. It was some typical rubbish about some political scandal or other, just one more of the amazing collection of banalities that constituted the endless grind that was modern life.

Christ, he thought, why are people so goddamn stupid? A little ripple of annoyance flitted through his chest and he snapped the paper double, glancing up as he stepped off the curb into the parking lot.

When he looked over to where his car was parked he jerked to a halt.

The large delivery truck that had followed him into the lot was now parked, its wide tail end standing fully open, a long metal ramp extending down from it to the asphalt, and the heavyset man in the light blue coveralls was just maneuvering the oversized dolly loaded with boxes down it. And it was parked directly in front of Roger’s car, totally blocking him in.

Damnit, he thought and moved toward where the delivery man was now turning to tip the dolly and start across toward the convenience store.

“Hey!” Roger called, “You’re blocking me in.”

The man glanced up at him, his face tight and unfriendly.

“Yeah, well, I got to make this delivery,” he said, gruffly, turning and starting to draw the heavily laden dolly along behind him.

“Oh yeah? And how long is that going to take?” Roger snapped back, now standing at the rear corner of the truck.

“As long as it takes,” the delivery man said, and there was a smirk somewhere in his tone.

He pulled the dolly to the edge of the walkway in front of the convenience store door and managed to haul it up over the curb with a grunt.

Roger stood, fuming, his anger growing.

Ok, he told himself. Just call the police. Just take out your cell and call the cops.

But then he remembered that the start time of the movie was less than a half hour from now, and he still had to get parked and get his ticket. And this bastard goes and blocks him in.

No, he thought firmly, just call the cops. That’s all. It’s not worth it.

He watched, fuming, as the delivery man managed to swing the door open and glide the dolly into the store, then ease it upright, centering its heavy load.

And then he turned, looking out the glass door, directly at where Roger stood, and for a moment Roger thought he could see the guy smile. Then, to Roger’s surprise, the delivery man moved over to the counter, turned to lean a hip against it, cross his arms and simply stare out at where Roger was rooted, his anger now boiling up to full.

Fuck it, Roger thought, turned and moved briskly along the length of the large vehicle.

He didn’t even hesitate as he rounded the front of the truck, shifting the folded newspaper to his right hand, then leaned down to take a firm grip under the truck’s front bumper with the other.

I really shouldn’t be doing this, he managed to tell himself, before he straightened upright, the truck emitting a squeaky, metallic groan as its front wheels lifted from the surface.

Too late now, he thought, and took a step.

The locked pairs of tires instantly roared quietly with a grating, skidding sound as they scraped across the asphalt of the lot, and the dangling ramp at the rear of the truck jangled, bumping on the surface.

Roger took a dozen steps, enough to be sure that access to his car was clear, then simply released the bumper.

The cab banged down loudly, the sound dying away to quiet squeaks of offended joints.

Roger stepped back around the side of the truck, his eyes searching out the front door of the convenience store. He spotted the delivery man now standing in front of the counter, his body upright, rigid and unmoving.

As he reached the rear of the truck and moved along the side of the ramp, Roger stopped, glancing down at it before returning his attention to where the delivery man stood, rooted, inside the store.

What the Hell, he thought.

He raised a foot, placed it on the edge of the ramp, and shoved down.

Like a piece of aluminum foil, the ramp bent sharply with a loud, sudden squeal.

Lifting his foot, Roger saw that the ramp was now almost “L” shaped, one end still attached to the rear of the truck opening, the other end almost parallel to the ground for half its length.

Have a nice day, asshole, Roger thought, continuing to stare at the man inside the store, and then smiled pleasantly.

He climbed into his car, cranked up the engine and pulled toward the entry of the parking lot. He didn’t see that the delivery man was now frantically waving his arms at the confused and frightened clerk and demanding he call 911 immediately.

I really shouldn’t have done that, Roger thought. Oh well. Guess I’m not going to be shopping here any more.

He turned into the road and pushed, gently, on the gas pedal.

John Kleinschmidt glanced down at the speedometer, assuring himself that he was just within the speed limit, and ordered himself to relax, leaning back against the seat and raising a hand to wipe it over his face before propping his elbow on the sill of the open window.

What do I do, he wondered nervously? What do I do?

He hadn’t thought to prepare for something like this and he inwardly chided himself for his complacency. Just because everything had gone smoothly for so long now, he’d gotten careless and sloppy and that made him not only angry at his own stupidity, but also immeasurably tired.

You had to go and try to be a hero, he told himself. Had to stick your nose in where it didn’t belong, get your stupid ass involved in something that was none of your business and look what happens.

Okay, he ordered himself, calm down. Think. One step at a time.

First, he knew, would be to see if he could work out some kind of story that would explain that little adventure in that damned liquor store yesterday. Geez, he moaned internally, why did I have to do that? Why didn’t I just get out, walk away? But no, I had to stick my nose in and now – Now what, he suddenly wondered? Was he some kind of suspect? But suspected of what? Ok, so he’d smacked the dumb bastard with his own gun, maybe knocked him cold but surely –

A sudden wave of icy fear flowed over him.

Had the guy died? Had he cracked his skull or something? He hadn’t hit him all that hard, had he? Just enough to knock him cold, that’s all.

Ok, he told himself, first thing. Get a newspaper. Check for some kind of notice about it. Find out if the guy was really hurt bad or just wound up with a nasty headache.

And, he considered, if the guy hadn’t been hurt too bad, try to find a way to justify what he’d done. He could say he’d caught sight of the guy walking up to the door already reaching into his pants to position the gun. No, that wouldn’t fly, he told himself. They’d ask him what if the guy had been a plain-clothes cop? Or some kind of security guard? How could he know that in fact the guy was going to shove the gun in the clerks’ face and demand all the cash in the register? How could he know that when the terrified clerk had hesitated a fraction of a second too long that the guy would pump a bullet clean through his forehead?

He knew, he reassured himself, because he’d seen it happen. Standing not five feet behind the gunman, feeling his own body spasm in shock at the noise of the shot, watching the body of the clerk crumple to the floor on the far side of the counter. Hell, he could still remember the taste of the gun smoke in his mouth. And if he hadn’t managed to jump back as the guy finally sensed him standing there and was already turning, the gun swinging around toward him, he’d probably be dead himself right now.

Ok, he thought, he could have jumped and simply walked away before it all went down, but how could he have done that, knowing that a man would die if he distanced himself from it? He’d had to do something. Catching the son of a bitch the instant he walked in the door was all he could think of, and all he had time to manage.

But how would he explain that to the cops? Maybe, he considered, he could say he’d seen the guy drive up, park, pull out the gun, check it for ammo, then get out of his car, shoving it into his pants at his back. Isn’t that what those types did on TV and in the movies? Wasn’t that an unmistakable clue that a robbery - and perhaps worse - was about to go down? Or was that just movie bullshit?

Christ, he thought bitterly, what a fricking mess.

And he was already planning to hit the track this week-end. Well, he supposed he could still do it, hopefully pick up some quick cash.

Despite the tension of the current circumstances he couldn’t prevent himself from grinning slightly. Hitting the racetracks was, after all, what passed for his job.

Yes, it was stupid and kind of a cheat, but it was what he did. And he really wasn’t doing anything bad, wasn’t stealing anything. Not technically. After all, someone was going to win, right? All he did was make sure it happened to be him. And whom did that hurt? But he had long ago stopped dwelling on that aspect of things. I mean, he couldn’t let himself be constantly responsible for everybody else, could he? He had to watch out for himself.

Ok, he admitted, maybe he did cheat, just a little bit. But that wasn’t stealing.

And it really was the perfect application for his bizarre ability. He just had to use it carefully, not get carried away, that’s all.

Ever since he’d realized he had this thing, he’d wondered how he could make use of it, and it had finally hit him that time he’d headed down to Atlantic City from where he had been living in Hackensack, up at the grubbier end of the state of New Jersey.

And it was so simple.

He would go to some racetrack, greyhounds, trotters or thoroughbreds, it really didn’t matter, and would wait until the running of the first race of the day. They were fast races, usually no more than a couple of minutes. Another minute to post the results. Three minutes or so. If the payout was big enough, or some long shot
came in at big odds, he would find a quiet corner, jump back and then make his bets. In a way it was like fishing by knowing exactly where the fish were going to be at exactly the moment the hook dropped into the water above them. You couldn’t miss.

The only thing he had to be careful about was that doing too many jumps too quickly caused him mind-numbing headaches.

One time he had capitalized on five unexpected long shots in an eight race card, and by the time he collected the last of his winnings he felt like he would throw up the whole way home.

That was when he made his first mistake.

Up until that point he had been careful, always betting moderately, pocketing the majority of his win from each race and only making a limited bet on the next, so that at the end of the day the ten or twenty thousand he’d won had been spread out over numerous races and would go undetected on anyone’s cheating radar. And as long as he rotated tracks on a regular basis, used different betting counters for each race, he was never memorable enough to even be noticed.

But after that heavy day of jumping he became more cautious about extending himself. So the next time he hit the track he’d lucked into a massive long shot with the first race and decided to bet everything he’d brought with him. The result was almost a hundred thousand. And suddenly he was having to fill out tax forms and getting his name and identity recorded, and he realized he could never return to this particular track.

That was when he had begun his travels, driving around the country, working his way through the dog tracks in Florida, the various trotter races in the Midwest, and now he had arrived here, in California.

He had intended to hit Hollywood Park and Santa Anita before moving on to Del Mar. He had been putting it off for some time now and his remaining cash had dwindled considerably. He had just enough put by to make one big killing on a single race and then disappear for a couple of years, maybe head out of the country and see what Europe had to offer in the way of pickings. And racing season was about to end.

So what to do? How to work his way out of whatever complication he’d brought on himself this time?

He sighed, leaning back in the seat and raising an arm to draw his hand over his face once more.

Maybe it would be best to just go talk to the cops. He hadn’t done anything really wrong, after all. Maybe he could talk his way out of it. And if he couldn’t, then what? Take off again? Move out of state?

“Idiot,” he muttered at himself and reached to flick on the radio, instantly flooding the vehicle with loud, jangling rock music. “Mr. Hero,” he said. “Dumb ass.”

He drove on, into the afternoon.

Dan rolled the mouse and watched the cursor zip across the screen to the icon for the virtual form in which to record his experiences of the day’s patrol. Another half hour, he told himself, and he could get out of here, maybe get home in time to catch the last quarter of the game on TV.

The Lieutenant stepped out of his small office, flipping through the manila folder, pausing to scan the pages for snippets and phrases that would provide him with the gist of the many paragraphs of rather unimpressive prose that made up the report.