Killer in the Hills (11 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I was knocked out once during my boxing days. I had gotten up off the mat in a few seconds with a blind rage I’d never felt before. My mind was blank and my body did the thinking for me as I beat my opponent to the canvas and the ref had to pull me away. Anger trumps fear.

When I come to on the wet pavement I feel the same clarity of rage. Judging from the distance the three men have walked from the Hummer, I have only been out for a few seconds. Melvin is on top of Karen and me—unconscious or dead—and the three men are approaching slowly, following their guns. I wipe the blood from my eyes on the back of Melvin’s jacket and peer over his shoulder at the three men. I feel around the ground for the 500, reaching under Karen’s legs briefly. She isn’t moving.

Leading the trio of gunmen is a tall, heavily-built man in a black leather coat. He has long black hair and tinted glasses in thick black frames. Behind him are two short, squat men who look like the men from the airport.

The tall man stops, about twenty feet from us. He says something and the two short men fan out, flanking us. I try to keep all of them in sight as I feel around for the gun, my mind blank, my body on auto-pilot, working faster than my mind can keep up. Melvin’s right arm is twisted behind him and I move my hand down his arm and find the 500 still in his grip. The tall man says something that I recognize as Russian and one of the short men walks up to us and places a boot on Melvin’s shoulder and kicks Melvin’s 260-pound frame off of us and I raise the 500 with both hands and shoot the short man in the face. Then I shoot the other short man in the chest, and then I shoot at the tall man. He fires back at the same time. We both miss.

Karen sits up and screams. I shove her back down and climb on top of her as the tall man runs back to the Hummer and opens the driver’s door and fires from behind it. He fires wild—his gun is fully automatic and the bullets snap past my head and pepper the pavement around us. I aim at the center of the Hummer’s door and fire and the door is blown halfway off—left hanging by a single hinge. The tall man ducks back to the rear of the Hummer and I roll off of Karen, grab her up in my arms, and try to run.

We only get a few steps before the Hummer’s engine roars and I turn and see it bearing down on us. I hold Karen with one arm, keeping her behind me as I turn and aim at the Hummer, trying to remember if the 500 holds six rounds or five. I fire at the Hummer and miss. A shock of pain shoots up my forearm—for a heartbeat I think I’m shot, then I realize that firing the 500 off-balance and one-handed has broken something in my rebuilt wrist. I jump out of the way of the Hummer, taking Karen with me. We hit the ground and the Hummer swerves around us, the door flying completely off and sliding into my leg. It is heavy with armor and the impact stuns me for a moment. Karen makes a panicked, animal sound and twists away from me and runs toward the brush at the edge of the lot. The Hummer U-turns and heads after her. I get up and try to run but my leg buckles. I look down and see a long, sharp shard of the door’s broken hinge sticking out of my thigh. I pull it out. The Hummer drives up alongside Karen and the man grabs her and pulls her inside without stopping. I aim the gun at him but he is holding Karen too close. He floors it and the Hummer fishtails on the wet pavement and I aim at the left rear tire and pull the trigger but the gun is out. The Hummer plows through a chain-link fence, bounces off the curb, and speeds up into the hills and is gone.

I go to Melvin. There is an entrance wound above his right eye and the back of his head is bloody. He is not breathing. I feel for a pulse on his neck and wrist and feel nothing. I perform CPR for a minute and check his pulse again—nothing.

“Come on, buddy,” I say, and continue chest compressions.

Sirens swell somewhere. I realize that I have heard voices since the Hummer left, and look up and see two men by the guard station near the entrance to the stadium, about a hundred yards away.

I keep up the CPR until I feel a weak, irregular pulse in Melvin’s neck, and a long line of flashing lights winds down the hillside toward the parking lot. When I catch a glimpse of a red cube van—Pasadena Fire Department paramedics—I step up the CPR until the caravan of screaming PFD vehicles roars up to the lot. Then I tuck the 500 into my waistband and pull Melvin’s custom speed-loader from his belt and pocket it. I go to the two men I shot and grab their guns, phones, and wallets. I glance at the man I shot in the face and his head is mostly gone.

I run.

The paramedics reach Melvin just as I tear a hole in the thick brush at the base of the hillside.

Run.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Forty minutes later I park the Corolla in the underground lot beneath a shopping mall on Ventura Boulevard, in Studio City. The car is running on fumes and so am I. The climb back up the hillside pumped a lot of blood out of the wound in my leg, soaking the lower half of my pant-leg and leaving me lightheaded.

I avoid the escalator and take the enclosed stairs to the ground floor of the mall and go inside the Rite Aid. It is nearly empty. I try to avoid the security cameras but there are too many. I am wearing my baseball cap low and my dark pants don’t show the blood, although I am limping and leaving red tracks from my bloody shoe on the gleaming white tile floor. I buy bandages, hydrogen peroxide, pain relievers, medical tape, towels, a pair of sweatpants and socks, and two quarts of Gatorade. I pay with cash from the headless man’s wallet. The clerk—a heavyset young Asian man—stares at my muddy clothes in a way I don’t like, so I leave quickly and go back to the car and drive out of the mall.

A couple of miles east of the Rite Aid I spot a dark, empty overflow lot by the Metro station across from Universal Studios. I pull into the lot and park in the darkest corner of the lot, under a freeway overpass. I tilt my seat halfway back and take off my pants and pour hydrogen peroxide into the wound in my thigh. It stings like fire, but it takes my mind off of the throbbing pain in my wrist.
The principle of counter-irritant.
I dress the wound in my leg with large cotton bandages, then rip one of the towels into strips and tie two of the strips tightly around my thigh, but not too tight. I wrap my wrist with tape—I’m certain it’s broken but there’s nothing I can do about that now. I put on my new sweatpants and socks and drain half a quart of Gatorade to wash down six Advil tablets. The Advil will make the bleeding worse, but the pain in my leg and wrist and will abate. I am shaking and my breathing is shallow and my heart is racing and now my thoughts catch up with my limbs.
After the battle comes the fear.

I tilt my seat all the way back and pull a towel over me and crank up the car’s heater to warm up and avoid going into shock. I close my eyes and let the pills work and focus on my breathing and after about five minutes I catch my breath and my pulse slows back down to something resembling normal. Now I can take stock and think about what to do next.

The wallets from the dead men contain a total of eleven credit cards and five drivers licenses. Combined, they also hold a little over six hundred dollars cash. I match three of the credit cards with the names on three of the licenses, and put them in my wallet. I put the unmatched cards in my pocket. The radio has been playing the local news station softly since I turned it on when I left Pasadena. I have heard a couple of reports about a “shooting incident” at the Rose Bowl, but nothing concrete—nothing about Melvin or Karen or me.

The two guns from the dead men are both 9mm—a Glock and a Ruger. Both magazines are full, each with fifteen rounds. They never got a shot off, which means the tall man is the probably the one who shot Melvin, firing from the passenger seat as they rolled up. Karen had described Sal as tall and big, with long hair, so I reason that the tall man who shot Melvin was Sal.

I load Melvin’s 500 with rounds from the speed-loader, then put all of the guns under my seat and focus on breathing normally for another minute.

Now what?

I could gas up the Corolla and drive to LAPD headquarters and turn myself in. I haven’t heard anything about a warrant for my arrest for Zach, but it must be in the works. It has been an hour since the Pasadena FD arrived at the Rose Bowl, so they’re still in the early stages of processing the crime scene. It’s possible Melvin told someone he was going to meet me. He would be required to, of course, but I’ve known him to make exceptions when circumstances overrule the rule. Plus he told me he wouldn’t, and Melvin has never lied to me. Regardless, it won’t be long before somebody—Marsh, probably already—connects the dots to me and I won’t be able to move anywhere. An FBI agent has been shot, maybe killed, and every sworn officer in every jurisdiction everywhere will be out for blood.

If I
don’t
turn myself in it won’t be long before I’m caught or shot on sight. And then I’m no use to Karen or anyone else. I have no idea what the FBI or LAPD knows about Karen, or Sal, or me. Even if I come in now, my arrest would take up valuable time—it would turn focus away from Karen, and who knows how much of my story the police would believe.

In the meantime, they have her.

Somewhere, she is with them, right now.

I think of nail guns again, and I force the thought away.

Which is best for her? Turn myself in now and tell them everything I know? Or try and think of anything else I can do, on my own? They don’t have me yet. What can I do before I turn myself in?

Think. Replay what just happened…

Sal somehow followed Melvin to the Bowl.
How? Melvin would have spotted him…

Once I showed up with Karen, Sal made his move. He drove up, shot Melvin, tried to shoot me, and grabbed Karen. He took a huge risk taking her alive. If he only wanted her silence he would have simply rolled up and shot us all. But he didn’t, which means she’s worth a great deal to him alive—a hell of a lot more than a credit card scam, or hooking.

What would make her so valuable to him?

My thoughts race, scattered and disordered.

Sometimes, when I get stuck on a writing problem, I clean up my office to clear my head. I decide to clean up the car interior and hide the guns better and I notice my bloody pants on the floor in front of the passenger seat, in a heap where I had tossed them. I pick them up to fold them neatly under the seat and they feel heavy and I remember the cell phones I lifted from the dead men. I pull them from the pockets and start scrolling through the call records. The first phone has no numbers that mean anything to me, but the second one has a number with a 310 area code that I recognize from somewhere.

Then it hits me.

I know the number.

I stuff the pants under the passenger seat, then put the car in gear and drive out of the parking lot and head for Vineland. I pull into a gas station and try two of the credit cards from the dead men but both are rejected at the pump. I realize I have nothing to lose by using my own credit card at this point, so I use it to fill up the car. I’ll be far away from here by the time anybody catches the charge and tracks it. And by then I won’t care. I fill the tank and get back in the car and turn left onto Vineland and make my way up into the hills. When I reach Mulholland I turn right, heading west.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Just as I reach Pacific Coast Highway there is an on-scene report on the radio about the Rose Bowl shooting. Two unidentified men are dead, and an FBI agent is in “grave condition” at an undisclosed hospital. I listen for a while but there is no other information of any use.

I turn right onto PCH, heading north. In ten minutes I am in Malibu. I get as close as I can to the Colony, then turn left and pull into the parking lot at the Motel Miki. I park close to the beach, then gather up the phones, two of the guns, and Erlacher’s keys. I get out of the car, stick the Glock in the back of my waistband, and hold the 500 in my hand as I walk down the sandy path to the beach.

I limp along the beach for a while, until I pass the Colony. At the north end I see a house—a massive box of concrete and glass that dwarfs all surrounding structures.
The big one.

The entire western wall of the house is glass, and as I get closer I can see Erlacher inside, in the large, open living area. He’s on a cell phone, pacing back and forth. I walk closer along the hard, wet beach, following the jagged line between sea and sand, thankful for the thick blanket of clouds that hide the moon.

When I’m about thirty feet from the house, I kneel behind a small sand berm, wincing at the pain in my leg. I can see Erlacher from here but if he should look my way he can only see the top of my head, if anything. I see a second man in the house—a fit, movie-star handsome guy in jeans and a dark, tight-fitting crew-neck sweater. He is sitting on a black sofa, sipping from a bottle of water. He looks familiar but I can’t place him.

I find Erlacher’s number on the headless man’s phone and press CALL. I peer over the sand berm and see Erlacher take the cell phone from his ear to look at the ID. Then he answers.

“Hello?”

“Elli. It’s Jack.”

I see Erlacher stop pacing and go over to the handsome guy and tap him on the shoulder. Handsome gets up and goes to Elli and tries to listen in on the call, his ear next to Erlacher’s phone. I get up and move toward the house, watching them.

“Hey, Jack. Where are you, man?”

“Just left the Rose Bowl,” I say, as I reach the deck. I stand under it, near the stairs that lead up to the house.

“Yeah?” Erlacher says.

“Yeah,” I say. I head up the stairs to the deck, slowing as I reach it. I see Erlacher go to a bar that takes up most of the east wall of the living area. The handsome guy follows him. Erlacher opens a bottle of something and pours.

“Are you alright?” he says.

“I’m fine, but I have a question for you.”

“Sure, man,” he says. “What is it?”

“There’s something I want to show you first,” I say.

“Okay,” he says. “Where are you? I’ll come meet you.” He takes a drink and goes to a large table with enormous, square steel legs and a thick glass top. He picks up a pen by the telephone on the table and leans over to write on a yellow legal pad.

“I’m close,” I say. “Why don’t I come to you?”

Erlacher hesitates, his pen raised over the pad.

“Ah…okay,” he says.

“Alright if I come by right now?”

“Sure,” he says, then picks up the handset from the telephone base on the glass table and starts dialing.

I walk up to the glass wall and point the 500 at him. He’s about ten yards away.

“Put the phone down, Elli.”

He stops dialing, then whirls around and sees me and drops his drink, which shatters on the bleached hardwood floor.

“Holy shit, Jack,” Erlacher says on the phone. The man in the sweater sees me and starts to reach around his back with his right hand.

“Tell your friend to show me his hands or I’ll shoot him right now,” I say.

Erlacher says something to the guy in the sweater and he raises his hands.

“Put the cell down and open the door,” I say.

Erlacher stares at me for a second, then tosses his cell on the table and comes toward me with his hands half-raised and opens the sliding glass door.

“Jesus, you scared the hell out of me, dude. Come on in.”

He slides the door open and I walk inside. The large living space has a soaring ceiling with exposed steel beams, hospital white walls, recessed steel shelves, and a black leather sectional sofa that looks uncomfortable. Enormous, artless abstract paintings hang on every wall that isn’t glass. The only warmth in the room is from a gas fire in a black granite fireplace that has a steel hearth.

“You look like shit, dude,” Erlacher says. “You alright? Can I get you something?”

“I’m fine.”

“Jack, this is Tony Salerno,” Erlacher says. “You know Tony.”

“P.I. to the fabulous,” I say to Salerno, recognizing him. “Last time I saw you, you were on the news, perp-walking to your arraignment.”

Salerno grins. He has perfect teeth, bleached white against his flawless tan. His trim black hair is slicked back neatly.

“I could say the same about you,” he says.

“You can put that away,” Erlacher says, looking at the 500. “It’s cool, there’s no one else here.”

I point the gun at Salerno.

“Turn around,” I say. He turns and I go to him and lift up the back of his sweater and pull a small automatic from his waistband.

“Any others?” I say.

“Nope,” Salerno says. “And I got a CCW for that.”

“Good for you,” I say. I pat him down and find a wallet and a cell phone, which I drop in a carafe of ice water on the bar. I put the little automatic in the pocket of my sweatpants, which are getting weighed down with weapons, then I nudge Salerno toward the sofa with the 500.

“Sit down, where you were,” I say. Salerno returns to the sofa and sits. I move behind Erlacher and pat him down.

“Jack, what the hell, man?” Erlacher says, with a forced smile. “What’s going on?”

I step away from him and take the dead man’s phone from my pocket and toss it to him. He fumbles it and drops it, then picks it up off the floor.

“What’s this?” he says.

“It’s a phone that belonged to one of Sal’s guys,” I say. “You talked to him twice today.”

“What are you talking about?” he says. His fake smile evaporates and he looks down at the phone. “What the hell is this supposed to mean?”

“It means you paid Sal to pick up Karen tonight,” I say. “Is he bringing her here or are you going to meet him?”

He stares at me for a moment, then shakes his head and waves me off and turns his back and goes to the glass table. He picks up the land-line handset from its cradle on the base.

“You’re fucked up, bro,” he says, glancing down at the blood seeping through my sweatpants. “Your leg’s messed up and you look like shit. You need a doctor.” He starts dialing a number on the handset.

“Put the phone down, Elli.”

He keeps dialing.

“Put it down. I won’t tell you again.”

He raises the phone to his ear and smirks at me.

“What’re you gonna do, shoot me?” he says.

I shoot the phone base on the table. The phone base explodes and the entire glass top of the table shatters. Erlacher jumps back, his tiny eyes open wider than I would have thought they could open. My ears ring from the blast. Salerno stands up.

“Fucking…
shit!
” Erlacher says, staring at me, then at the shattered glass all over the floor.

“Sit down,” I say to Salerno. He sits. I point the gun at Erlacher.

“I gave the cops the security video from the Marmont that shows you going into the room where you killed Penelope. Was she blackmailing you because you were going to Karen’s site? Or was Sal? Or did you pay him to pick Karen up so you could take her away for other purposes? Or is it all of the above?”

He stares at me like I’m a gray whale that slid up from the ocean and asked for a towel.

“Rhodes, you’re in enough trouble as it is—” Salerno says.

“Be quiet,” I say, keeping my eyes on Erlacher. “Why do you want to get your hands on Karen so badly? Do you plan to kill her or just buy her?”

Erlacher doesn’t move. He stares at me.

“Got your jet fueled up? Where’s it going? Gonna take her to the Maldives and make her your child-bride? Or your slave?”

He looks at the gun, calculating.

I move to Erlacher’s side so I can keep Salerno in sight, and aim the gun at Erlacher’s left temple from three feet away. I put my thumb on the hammer spur of the 500 and pull it back, cocking the gun with a loud click that echoes in the big room. Erlacher’s face turns white and he edges away from me. I have always marveled at the power movie clichés have over movie executives.

“I don’t have to buy her,” Erlacher says. “She’s in love with me.”

“Really,” I say. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

“It’s true,” he says. “I love her and she loves me. I know, she’s young—and she’s your kid—but it’s true. You don’t believe me?”

“No.”

“Why not?” he says.

“You’re an ugly middle-aged creep with the personality of a monitor lizard.”

“You don’t know her like I do,” he says. “I’m gonna get her out of here—out of trouble—away from the life. Take her someplace safe, take care of her.”

“She doesn’t even know who you are. She never mentioned you, never asked me to take her to you. You’re gonna have to do better, Elli. So I’ll ask one more time: is Sal bringing her here? Or are you meeting him somewhere to get her?”

“There’s a million dollars cash in a safe in my bedroom,” he says. “It’s yours. I’ll put another million in a numbered account and give you the number. No bullshit, no tricks. I suggest you do something incredibly smart, and take the money and go.”

“No, thanks.”

“How much do you want? Three million? Four?”

“Did you kill Fat Zach?”

“I never killed anybody.”

“You paid Sal or him to do it,” I say, nodding at Salerno. “You knew Zach had the video, so you had somebody go get it and they shot him.”

Erlacher shakes his head.

“No,” he says.

I nod toward the sofa.

“Might as well sit down,” I say. “I called a detective at LAPD before I called you. They’ll be here soon.”

Erlacher’s face turns red and he starts pacing.

“You stupid…
motherfucker
,” he says. He strides around in a tight circle, rubbing his forehead so hard it leaves a dark blotch. “These people…they’re not people you
fuck
with.”

“Tell that to the two of them I just killed.”

“Listen to me, asshole, they got a fucking
army
out there in Glendale,” he says. “I’ve
been
there.”
His face has gone from red to purple and his eyes are wet. He is either terrified or enraged or both. I figure both.

“Take it easy, Elli,” Salerno says from the couch.

Erlacher comes closer and yells at me, spitting.

“They got
footsoldiers
up and down the valley. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here. You’re a
dead man
. Take my money and get out
because I’m not going down with you.”

“You seem upset, Elli,” I say. “That makes me think they’re bringing her here. That, plus the fact that you’ve got an armed goon in an Armani sweater here with you.”

“Zegna,” Salerno says.

Erlacher stares at me, his chest heaving. His cell rings from the glass-littered floor where the table used to stand. I go and pick it up, keeping the gun on him. The ID on the phone says FRONT GATE.

“The gate,” I say, and toss the phone on the couch in front of him. “Let them in.”

The phone rings again. Erlacher looks at Salerno.

“I just want her,” I say. “I don’t care about you.”

The phone rings again. Erlacher doesn’t move.

“If you don’t answer it I will,” I say. I take a step toward the phone.

Erlacher picks it up before I reach it.

“Speaker,” I say. I point the gun at his face.

He presses the speaker button.

“Yes,” he says.

“Mr. Erlacher, this is the front gate,” I hear a female voice. “I have a Mr. Williams here to see you.”

“Okay, let ‘em in,” he says. He ends the call and looks at the glass all over the floor.

“What do I do about
that?”
he says.

“Nothing,” I say. “Let’s go. Out the back.” I point the gun toward the sliding glass door to the deck.

He looks at Salerno again.

“I just killed two of Sal’s guys,” I say. “You want them to walk in and find me here with you?”

Salerno gets up.

“Come on, El,” Salerno says.

Erlacher follows Salerno to the sliding door. I trail them out, keeping the gun on them, and slide the door closed behind us.