Dark Rivers of the Heart (15 page)

In a corner of the parking garage beneath the agency’s building in downtown Los Angeles, Roy Miro had a final word with the three agents who would accompany him to Spencer Grant’s house and take the man into custody. Because their agency did not officially exist, the word “custody” was being stretched beyond its usual definition; “kidnapping” was a more accurate description of their intentions.

Roy had no problem with either term. Morality was relative, and nothing done in the service of correct ideals could be a crime.

They were all carrying Drug Enforcement Administration credentials, so Grant would believe that he was being taken to a federal facility to be questioned—and that upon arrival there, he would be permitted to call an attorney. Actually, he was more likely to see the Lord God Almighty on a golden airborne throne than anyone with a law degree.

Using whatever methods might be necessary to obtain truthful answers, they would question him about his relationship with the woman and her current whereabouts. When they had what they needed—or were convinced that they had squeezed out of him all that he knew—they would dispose of him.

Roy would conduct the disposal himself, releasing the poor scarred devil from the misery of this troubled world.

The first of the other three agents, Cal Dormon, wore white slacks and a white shirt with the logo of a pizza parlor stitched on the breast. He would be driving a small white van with a matching logo, which was one of many magnetic-mat signs that could be attached to the vehicle to change its character, depending on what was needed for any particular operation.

Alfonse Johnson was dressed in work shoes, khaki slacks, and a denim jacket. Mike Vecchio wore sweats and a pair of Nikes.

Roy was the only one of them in a suit. Because he had napped fully clothed on Davis’s couch, however, he didn’t fit the stereotype of a neat and well-pressed federal agent.

“All right, this isn’t like last night,” Roy said. They had all been part of the SWAT team in Santa Monica. “We need to
talk
to this guy.”

The previous night, if any of them had seen the woman, he would have cut her down instantly. For the benefit of any local police who might have shown up, a weapon would have been planted in her hand: a Desert Eagle .50 Magnum, such a powerful handgun that a shot from it would leave an exit wound as large as a man’s fist, a piece obviously meant solely for killing people. The story would have been that the agent had gunned her down in self-defense.

“But we can’t let him slip away,” Roy continued. “And he’s a boy with schooling, as well trained as any of you, so he might not just hold out his hands for the bracelets. If you can’t make him behave and he looks to be gone, then shoot his legs out from under him. Chop him up good if you have to. He isn’t going to need to walk again anyway. Just don’t get carried away—okay? Remember, we absolutely
must
talk to him.”

Spencer had obtained all the information of interest to him that was contained in the files of the Nevada Gaming Commission. He retreated along the cyberspace highways as far as the Los Angeles Police Department computer.

From there he linked with the Santa Monica Police Department and examined its file of cases initiated within the past twenty-four hours. No case could be referenced either by the name Valerie Ann Keene or by the street address of the bungalow that she had been renting.

He exited the case files and checked call reports for Wednesday night, because it was possible that SMPD officers had answered a call related to the fracas at the bungalow but had not given the incident a case number. This time, he found the address.

The last of the officer’s notations indicated why no case number had been assigned:
ATF OP IN PROG. FED ASSERTED.
Which meant: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms operation in progress; federal jurisdiction asserted.

The local cops had been frozen out.

On the nearby couch, Rocky exploded from sleep with a shrill yelp, fell to the floor, scrambled to his feet, started to chase his tail, then whipped his head left and right in confusion, searching for whatever threat had pursued him out of his dream.

“Just a nightmare,” Spencer assured the dog.

Rocky looked at him doubtfully and whined.

“What was it this time—a giant prehistoric cat?”

The mutt padded quickly across the room and jumped up to plant his forepaws on a windowsill. He stared out at the driveway and the surrounding woods.

The short February day was drawing toward a colorful twilight. The undersides of the eucalyptuses’ oval leaves, which were usually silver, now reflected the golden light that poured through gaps in the foliage; they glimmered in a faint breeze, so it appeared as if the trees had been hung with ornaments for the Christmas season that was now more than a month past.

Rocky whined worriedly again.

“A pterodactyl cat?” Spencer suggested. “Huge wings and giant fangs and a purr loud enough to crack stone?”

Not amused, the dog dropped from the window and hurried into the kitchen. He was always like this when he woke abruptly from a bad dream. He would circle the house, from window to window, convinced that the enemy in the land of dreams was every bit as dangerous to him in the real world.

Spencer looked at the computer screen again.

ATF OP IN PROG. FED ASSERTED.

Something was wrong.

If the SWAT team that hit the bungalow the previous night had been composed of agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, why had the men who showed up at Louis Lee’s home in Bel Air been carrying FBI credentials? The former bureau was under the control of the United States Secretary of the Treasury, while the latter was ultimately answerable to the Attorney General—though changes in that structure were being contemplated. The different organizations sometimes cooperated in operations of mutual interest; however, considering the usual intensity of interagency rivalry and suspicion,
both
would have had representatives present at the questioning of Louis Lee or of anyone else from whom a lead might have been developed.

Grumbling to himself as if he were the White Rabbit running late for tea with the Mad Hatter, Rocky scampered out of the kitchen and hurried through the open door to the bedroom.

ATF OP IN PROG.

Something wrong…

The FBI was by far the more powerful of the two bureaus, and if it was interested enough to be on the scene, it would never agree to surrender all jurisdiction entirely to the ATF. In fact, there was legislation being written in Congress, at the request of the White House, to fold the ATF into the FBI. The cop’s note in the SMPD call report should have read:
FBI/ ATF OP IN PROG.

Brooding about all that, Spencer retreated from Santa Monica to the LAPD, floated there a moment as he tried to decide if he was finished, then backed into the task-force computer, closing doors as he went, neatly cleaning up any traces of his invasion.

Rocky bolted out of the bedroom, past Spencer, to the living room window once more.

Home again, Spencer shut down his computer. He got up from the desk and went to the window to stand beside Rocky.

The tip of the dog’s black nose was against the glass. One ear up, one down.

“What do you dream about?” Spencer wondered.

Rocky whimpered softly, his attention fixed on the deep purple shadows and the golden glimmerings of the twilit eucalyptus grove.

“Fanciful monsters, things that could never be?” Spencer asked. “Or just…the past?”

The dog was shivering.

Spencer put one hand on the nape of Rocky’s neck and stroked him gently.

The dog glanced up, then immediately returned his attention to the eucalyptuses, perhaps because a great darkness was descending slowly over the shrinking twilight. Rocky had always been afraid of the night.

EIGHT

The fading light congealed into a luminous red scum across the western sky. The crimson sun was reflected by every microscopic particle of pollution and water vapor in the air, so it seemed as though the city lay under a thin mist of blood.

Cal Dormon retrieved a large pizza box from the back of the white van and walked toward the house.

Roy Miro was on the other side of the street from the van, having entered the block from the opposite direction. He got out of his car and quietly closed the door.

By now, Johnson and Vecchio would have made their way to the back of the house by neighboring properties.

Roy started across the street.

Dormon was halfway along the front walk. He didn’t have a pizza in the box, but a Desert Eagle .44 Magnum pistol equipped with a heavy-duty sound suppressor. The uniform and the prop were solely to allay suspicion if Spencer Grant happened to glance out a window just as Dormon was approaching the house.

Roy reached the back of the white van.

Dormon was at the front stoop.

Putting one hand across his mouth as if to muffle a cough, Roy spoke into the transmitter microphone that was clipped to his shirt cuff. “Count five and go,” he whispered to the men at the back of the house.

At the front door, Cal Dormon didn’t bother to ring the bell or knock. He tried the knob. The lock must have been engaged, because he opened the pizza box, let it fall to the ground, and brought up the powerful Israeli pistol.

Roy picked up his pace, no longer casual.

In spite of its high-quality silencer, the .44 emitted a hard thud each time it was fired. The sound wasn’t like gunfire, but it was loud enough to draw the attention of passersby if there had been any. The gun was, after all, a door-buster: Three quick rounds tore the hell out of the jamb and striker plate. Even if the deadbolt remained intact, the notch in which it had been seated was not a notch anymore; it was just a bristle of splinters.

Dormon went inside, with Roy behind him, and a guy in stocking feet was coming up from a blue vinyl Barcalounger, a can of beer in one hand, wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt, saying “Jesus Christ,” looking terrified and bewildered because the last bits of wood and brass from the door had just hit the living room carpet around him. Dormon drove him backward into the chair again, hard enough to knock the breath out of him, and the can of beer tumbled to the floor, rolled across the carpet, spewing gouts of foam.

The guy wasn’t Spencer Grant.

Holding his silencer-fitted Beretta in both hands, Roy quickly crossed the living room, went through an archway into a dining room, and then through an open door into a kitchen.

A blonde of about thirty was facedown on the kitchen floor, her head turned toward Roy, her left arm extended as she tried to recover a butcher knife that had been knocked out of her hand and that was an inch or two beyond her reach. She couldn’t move toward it, because Vecchio had a knee in the small of her back and the muzzle of his pistol against her neck, just behind her left ear.

“You bastard, you bastard, you
bastard,”
the woman squealed. Her shrill words were neither loud nor clear, because her face was jammed against the linoleum. And she couldn’t draw much breath with Vecchio’s knee in her back.

“Easy, lady, easy,” Vecchio said. “Be still, damn it!”

Alfonse Johnson was one step inside the back door, which must have been unlocked because they hadn’t needed to break it down. Johnson was covering the only other person in the room: a little girl, perhaps five, who stood with her back pressed into a corner, wide-eyed and pale, too frightened yet to cry.

The air smelled of hot tomato sauce and onions. On the cutting board were sliced green peppers. The woman had been making dinner.

“Come on,” Roy said to Johnson.

Together, they searched the rest of the house, moving fast. The element of surprise was gone, but momentum was still on their side. Hall closet. Bathroom. Girl’s bedroom: teddy bears and dolls, the closet door standing open, nobody there. Another small room: a sewing machine, a half-finished green dress on a dressmaker’s dummy, closet packed full, no place for anyone to hide. Then the master bedroom, closet, closet, bathroom: nobody.

Johnson said, “Unless that’s him in a blond wig on the kitchen floor…”

Roy returned to the living room, where the guy in the lounge chair was tilted as far back as he could go, staring into the bore of the .44 while Cal Dormon screamed in his face, spraying him with spittle: “One more time. You hear me, asshole? I’m asking just one more time—where is he?”

“I told you,” the guy said, “Jesus, nobody’s here but us.”

“Where’s Grant?” Dormon insisted.

The man was shaking as if the Barcalounger was equipped with a vibrating massage unit. “I don’t know him, I swear, never heard of him. So will you just, will you just please, will you point that cannon somewhere else?”

Roy was saddened that it was so often necessary to deny people their dignity in order to get them to cooperate. He left Johnson in the living room with Dormon and returned to the kitchen.

The woman was still flat on the floor, with Vecchio’s knee in her back, but she was no longer trying to reach the butcher knife. She wasn’t calling him a bastard anymore, either. Fury having given way to fear, she was begging him not to hurt her little girl.

The child was in the corner, sucking on her thumb. Tears tracked down her cheeks, but she made no sound.

Roy picked up the butcher knife and put it on the counter, out of the woman’s reach.

She rolled one eye to look up at him. “Don’t hurt my baby.”

“We aren’t going to hurt anyone,” Roy said.

He went to the little girl, crouched beside her, and said in his softest voice, “Are you scared, honey?”

She turned her eyes from her mother to Roy.

“Of course, you’re scared, aren’t you?” he said.

With her thumb stuck in her mouth, sucking fiercely, she nodded.

“Well, there’s no reason to be scared of me. I’d never hurt a fly. Not even if it buzzed and buzzed around my face and danced in my ears and went skiing down my nose.”

The child stared solemnly at him through tears.

Roy said, “When a mosquito lands on me and tries to take a bite, do I swat him? Noooooo. I lay out a tiny napkin for him, a teeny tiny little knife and fork, and I say, ‘No one in this world should go hungry. Dinner’s on me, Mr. Mosquito.’”

The tears seemed to be clearing from her eyes.

“I remember one time,” Roy told her, “when this elephant was on his way to a supermarket to buy peanuts. He was in ever so great a hurry, and he just ran my car off the road. Most people, they would have followed that elephant to the market and punched him right on the tender tip of his trunk. But did I do that? Noooooo. ‘When an elephant is out of peanuts,’ I told myself, ‘he just can’t be held responsible for his actions.’ However, I must admit I drove to that market after him and let the air out of the tires on his bicycle, but that was not done in anger. I only wanted to keep him off the road until he’d had time to eat some peanuts and calm down.”

She was an adorable child. He wished he could see her smile.

“Now,” he said, “do you really think I’d hurt anyone?”

The girl shook her head: no.

“Then give me your hand, honey,” Roy said.

She let him take her left hand, the one without a wet thumb, and he led her across the kitchen.

Vecchio released the mother. The woman scrambled to her knees and, weeping, embraced the child.

Letting go of the girl’s hand and crouching again, touched by the mother’s tears, Roy said, “I’m sorry. I abhor violence, I really do. But we thought a dangerous man was here, and we couldn’t very well just knock and ask him to come out and play. You understand?”

The woman’s lower lip quivered. “I…I don’t know. Who are you, what do you want?”

“What’s your name?”

“Mary. Mary Z-Zelinsky.”

“Your husband’s name?”

“Peter.”

Mary Zelinsky had a lovely nose. The bridge was a perfect wedge, all the lines straight and true. Such delicate nostrils. A septum that seemed crafted of finest porcelain. He didn’t think he had ever seen a nose quite as wonderful before.

Smiling, he said, “Well, Mary, we need to know where he is.”

“Who?” the woman asked.

“I’m sure you know who. Spencer Grant, of course.”

“I don’t know him.”

Just as she answered him, he looked up from her nose into her eyes, and he saw no deception there.

“I’ve never heard of him,” she said.

To Vecchio, Roy said, “Turn the gas off under that tomato sauce. I’m afraid it’s going to burn.”

“I swear I’ve never heard of him,” the woman insisted.

Roy was inclined to believe her. Helen of Troy could not have had a nose any finer than Mary Zelinsky’s. Of course, indirectly, Helen of Troy had been responsible for the deaths of thousands, and many others had suffered because of her, so beauty was no guarantee of innocence. And in the tens of centuries since the time of Helen, human beings had become masters at the concealment of evil, so even the most guileless-looking creatures sometimes proved to be depraved.

Roy had to be sure, so he said, “If I feel you’re lying to me—”

“I’m not lying,” Mary said tremulously.

He held up one hand to silence her, and he continued where he had been interrupted:

“—I might take this precious girl to her room, undress her—”

The woman closed her eyes tightly, in horror, as if she could block out the scene that he was so delicately describing for her.

“—and there, among the teddy bears and dolls, I could teach her some grown-up games.”

The woman’s nostrils flared with terror. Hers really was an exquisite nose.

“Now, Mary, look me in the eyes,” he said, “and tell me again if you know a man named Spencer Grant.”

She opened her eyes and met his gaze.

They were face-to-face.

He put one hand on the child’s head, stroked her hair, smiled.

Mary Zelinsky clutched her daughter with pitiful desperation. “I swear to God I never heard of him. I don’t know him. I don’t understand what’s happening here.”

“I believe you,” he said. “Rest easy, Mary. I believe you, dear lady. I’m sorry it was necessary to resort to such crudity.”

Though the tone of his voice was tender and apologetic, a tide of rage washed through Roy. His fury was directed at Grant, who had somehow hoodwinked them, not at this woman or her daughter or her hapless husband in the Barcalounger.

Although Roy strove to repress his anger, the woman must have glimpsed it in his eyes, which were ordinarily of such a kindly aspect, for she flinched from him.

At the stove, where he had turned off the gas under the sauce and under a pot of boiling water as well, Vecchio said, “He doesn’t live here anymore.”

“I don’t think he ever did,” Roy said tightly.

Spencer took two suitcases from the closet, considered them, put the smaller of the two aside, and opened the larger bag on his bed. He selected enough clothes for a week. He didn’t own a suit, a white shirt, or even one necktie. In his closet hung half a dozen pairs of blue jeans, half a dozen pairs of tan chinos, khaki shirts, and denim shirts. In the top drawer of the highboy, he kept four warm sweaters—two blue, two green—and he packed one of each.

While Spencer filled the suitcase, Rocky paced from room to room, standing worried sentry duty at every window he could reach. The poor mutt was having a hard time shaking off the nightmare.