Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (11 page)

“Is there anything else?”

He sounds annoyed now.

“Sure. There were a number of civilians killed and wounded during the attack. Considering the means at your disposal you might want to think about compensating them or their families.”

“We have no liability there. We didn’t attack them and we didn’t negligently permit the attack to occur.”

“I wasn’t thinking of liability, I was thinking of conscience.”

Jerome laughs like he hasn’t heard a better joke in a while. He clearly seems to think that I’d intended the comment as a kind of humorous banter.

“A little outside my bailiwick, conscience,” he says, still laughing.

No shit.

Suddenly a thought strikes him.

“The P.D. don’t know you’re working for us, do they?”

“Client confidentiality is the name of the game in my business, Mr. Jerome. I told them that my office had numerous cases and that the attack could have been related to any one of them. If they come snooping around my data files I’ll just… well, I’ll call you for a referral and then hire a high-priced lawyer to keep all our secrets safe.”

“Perfect, perfect,” he says, back in jovial mode. “Well done. I knew I made the right choice when I came to you.”  He turns serious again. “Still, this is a disturbing turn of events. Let me make this plain. If whoever attacked Max is still on the hunt, I expect you to find out who they are. Information is key here. The only way we can protect Max, and you for that matter, is by knowing who the enemy is.”

“Absolutely.”

“Great. I’m glad to see we’re on the same track. Any ideas?  Besides the 
Suerte
?”

“And Porsche,” I remind him.

“She’s out of it,” he says dismissively. “Her wiring will hold.”

“No, nobody new is on the radar.”

“So what do you plan to do?”

“My tech is still working the data. I’ve called one of my men to come in and assist her, an extra pair of hands as it were. He’s on his way, so he’ll need clearance to the compound.”

“We’ll need to check him first.”

I shake my head.

“No time, I need him here now. You checked me Mr. Jerome, very carefully I assume, and I checked my man. I’m clean so he’s clean.”

He doesn’t look happy with it.

“If you say so.”

“Other than that I’m going to give the P.D. a little time to develop their case. It shouldn’t take long to ID the dead guy at least. Right now the men who attacked me are the only real lead we’ve got back to the source.”

“That makes sense.”

“What I do after that depends on what I hear from my friend. Hopefully whatever he discovers will point me in one direction or another.”

“And if his information doesn’t point you anywhere?”

“Then I have another plan, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“As long as it doesn’t put Max at risk. I don’t want him used as bait or anything of that sort.”

He really doesn’t get it. He things he’s in control of this thing, but he’s not and I’m not.

“He’s already bait, Mr. Jerome. They breached security once. Conceivably they could do it again. That’s another reason I want my man in here. I can’t be here all the time and I want someone with combat training and experience at hand for Max’s safety.”  
And Carmen’s
, I think to myself but don’t say.

“All right then.”  He stands, clearly signaling that our meeting is over. “Unless there’s anything else?”

“Nope. Anyone else tries to kill me you’ll be the first to know.”

He laughs again.

“You Forces guys, you crack me up. Nothing fazes you.”

Nothing except fatass lawyers.

I return to the house and head for security, where I find Carmen in a trance and TJ sprawled in one of the sim chairs. He’s not hooked up, though, just lolling there.

“TJ.”

“Hey Gat,” he says, a sleepy smile smearing across his broad face.

“Everything quiet.”

“As a fucken’ church man. I could go to sleep.”

His smile widens. TJ—short for Thomas James—would sooner kill his mother than fall asleep on duty. He’s a mellow guy with a quick grin, the kind who can talk with just about anyone, whether the other person is homeless or the New York ambassador, always at his ease. But appearances are deceiving. TJ can go from joking to killing and back to joking again in the space of second—I’ve seen it. Still, he’s no Felon. He’s fully human, just very effective at what he does. His smile is real.

“Nighty night then, TJ, enjoy your nap. I have to make a run. I’ll check in. Call me if anything pops, ok?”

“Aye aye. You’ll be the first.”

“Thanks for doing this TJ. I know Pileggi was a lot more interesting.”

He shakes his head, looking like a puppy.

“No man, thank 
you
. Quality time with Carmen. I save her life, maybe she’ll finally go out with me.”

Carmen’s deep in her trance and can’t hear us, not that TJ would care if she did. He’s been asking her out for two years now and for two years she’s been saying no. After that long it either turns nasty or becomes a joke, and with TJ of course it became a joke.

“In that case I hope something pops. You’re gonna die of heartbreak one of these days.”

He heaves a sigh, playing along, but I suspect it’s partly real.

“Don’t I know it. Sooner, Gat.”

“Sooner, amigo.”

I leave the two of them together. Or rather I leave the two of them in the same room, Carmen with her head in the clouds and TJ with his heart on his sleeve. Finding my way through the ghostly, lifeless house, I leave. Out front I start up my bike and drive down to the gate. Despite the efficacy of the L.A.P.D., I can’t just sit around and leave things in their hands, and it occurs to me that there’s some investigating I can do on my own.

It’s obvious that the men who attacked me weren’t really homeless, but it’s still possible that they posed as homeless for a while before the attack, waiting for the right opportunity to take me out. If they did, then someone in L.A.’s genuine homeless population might know something about them. It’s a slim chance, but I can’t afford to ignore any possibility and at the moment and I have no other leads to follow.

The thing is, I can’t just start approaching homeless people in the street and asking them if they know anything. First, they wouldn’t talk to me. They are rightfully both resentful and afraid of people from my world. Second, there are simply too many of them. I could question people for a decade and never find the person I was looking for, the one person who knows something helpful.

There might be a way, though. The homeless aren’t a cohesive unit, god knows, but they aren’t just scattered individuals either. They have their small societies, their friendships, families, and networks. They are interconnected by their desperate need and their limited resources. They share information with each other about food, shelter, and threats. There are even, to some extent, leaders amongst them, and there are a few points where their world actually intersects with the L.A. that I know and live in.

I direct the bike to one of those points. Calvin Hearn is another ex-forces acquaintance, but he’s as unlike Felon as it’s possible to be. I first got to know him in boot camp, where he would talk to me whenever he could find me away from the others. He was never really a friend, and was sometimes a bit annoying in the way a dependent younger brother can be annoying, but I felt bad for him. He was eighteen years old, and insecure. The shell he’d been dropped into had skin a shade lighter than mine, a lean, ectomorphic physique, and large eyes that reflected his fear. He’d joined up because he couldn’t find a job but once he was in he’d realized he was far from shore and didn’t have the first clue how to swim. He was desperately treading water and fearing the worst.

“I don’t think I’m up to this Gat,” he’d say again and again. “I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

He was right to avoid the other soldiers in these confessional moments. Most of them would have laughed in his face and repeated every word to the brass. I liked to think I was different. I’d tell him that he was doing all right, that everything was going to be okay, but the truth is I was lying. He was making it through basic training, but there was no way he was going to be okay. He was going to fall apart at some point, to break in some essential way, and it was obvious. I just didn’t know what else to say; I couldn’t think of any way to make him feel better. You can’t just quit the Forces because you’ve decided you made a mistake signing up. Once you’re in you're in, and you stay in until you get killed, you get invalided out, or your contract is up.

Cal made it through basic training and even did all right on our first few missions. He was never a stellar soldier, but he surprised himself by not cracking under the pressure of combat and started to gain confidence in himself. At that point he stopped coming to me and I didn’t seek him out. He didn’t seem to need my help any more. Then came Tijuana and no one could have helped him.

I have no idea where Cal was during that op, but by the time we finished stomping all over the city in our big combat boots and regrouped back in California, he was catatonic.

Ironically it was Felon who’d pulled him out and gotten him into the Jenny, because Cal would never have made it on his own. Felon came across him at sunset, long shadows stretching out across the ground everywhere you looked as evening began to creep up. Cal was sunk to his knees in the middle of a street littered with bodies and body parts, wounded children, dead fathers, dying mothers. His hands were clasped together, big eyes shut tightly, praying in a feverish stutter amidst the carnage, the burning buildings, and the endless smoke and screaming. Felon had nothing but contempt for weakness, but he was loyal to the Forces and would never have considered leaving another soldier behind. He picked Cal up, threw him over his shoulder, and carried him back to the landing zone, firing his weapon all the way even though there was no one fighting back. That was just how Felon was, and pretty much still is. Any chance to fire off a round.

Cal was discharged based on his breakdown, invalided out, and I lost track of him. I assumed that he would simply stay the way he was, incoherent and babbling prayers, for the rest of his life. Felon let me know otherwise, though. An L.A.P.D operation targeting a series of break-ins had focused on a small group of homeless who the P.D. thought were behind the thefts. Felon had gone to a small Christian mission that a couple of the suspects were known to frequent, showing up for free food each evening. When he arrived, Felon looked for the pastor in charge of the mission. What he found was Cal.

Apparently Cal, who’d been placed indefinitely in a Forces psychiatric center, had returned to the world by degrees. His obsessive prayers had stopped, although he had obviously undergone some kind of personal revelation because he still prayed, in a more normal fashion by this point, at least four or five times a day.

Eventually the chaplain at the center had taken Cal under his wing. And why not? The Forces was just about the most atheistic organization in California and the chaplain didn’t have much else to do. Most of the men he approached with his offers of faith and guidance told him to go to hell, by which they meant a place like Tijuana, or maybe Bowling Green, not some anemic theme park with pitchforks and lakes of fire. So he and Cal had studied the Bible together and prayed together, and under his ministrations Cal had slowly become more and more functional.

Ultimately, when Cal was well enough to be discharged from the hospital, the chaplain had suggested he study theology. Cal had his Forces pension and education credits and did just that, attending a small Christian college. When he graduated, he started the Saint Francis Mission, using seed money from the college to rent a small store-front on Yucca Street near Vine, at the core of one of the largest populations of homeless in L.A.

But the man Felon found wasn’t the same boy he’d once ridiculed. Felon knew the street names of the men he was after. He wanted legal names if Cal knew them, and he wanted Cal to help arrest the suspects. Not that he expected Cal to actually lay hands on them, simply to wait until they came to the mission and then point them out. He had started in on Cal by reminding him that he’d saved Cal’s life. When that approach failed, Felon naturally defaulted to threats and intimidation, expecting Hearn—the cowering mess, the weakling—to capitulate quickly. To his surprise that didn’t work either.

“Damndest thing Gat,” he told me. “That fucker used to hide under a chair if I yelled ‘boo,’ but I couldn’t get him to budge, no way, no how. He was totally calm, and you know what he says to me? He says ‘I’m ready to die for my flock if I have to.’ I’m telling you Gat, he really 
believes
 this God stuff.”

To Felon that was like believing in a flat Earth, or peace, or something equally absurd.

I stop the bike in front of the Saint Francis Mission, hoping I might have better luck than Felon did. After all, I’m not looking for actual homeless people to arrest or harass, I’m looking for assassins who pretended to be homeless in order to kill me. I’m hoping that Cal might be upset, not only at the notion of murder, but at the fact that his flock is being used as a cover.

Taking off my helmet I dismount. The mission is ramshackle, one in a row of storefronts, with dull green paint peeling off the wooden door. Orange curtains are drawn in the windows, which are protected behind large metal grates, permanently bolted into place. A sagging plastic banner hangs above the windows, with the mission’s name in the middle and a stylized dove on either end. Outside, a couple of men in raggedy clothing sit on the sidewalk, leaning against a lighting pole and eying me suspiciously.

“The fuck you want?” one of them calls out as I make for the door.

“I’m here to see Pastor Hearn. He’s an old friend of mine.”

“Hmf,” the man grunts, clearly not believing me but having no way of stopping me from entering.

I push the door open and enter an empty room. The inside is in better repair than the outside, at least. There is a motley collection of worn chairs in place of pews, no two the same, but the interior is spotlessly clean. The walls have been carefully painted with cheap yellow latex, the front windows admit a light that is weak and orange through the filter of the curtains. The curtains don’t quite meet in the middle, though, and a thin shaft of bright, pure sunlight cuts through the gap, illuminating dust motes in the air and splashing itself garishly across a narrow strip of worn wooden floorboards. There’s a smell of cleanser or disinfectant in the air. At the front of the room a simple lectern serves as a pulpit, behind which a large, plain, metal crucifix hangs on the wall. Aluminum by the look of it. To the right of the lectern is an ill-lit passageway into the back of the building. I stand at its entrance and call out.