The Triggerman Dance (47 page)

He sped south again, staying low into Mission Viejo. "Down on one of those little streets—they all look the same to me—was where the Nightstalker took two of his victims. Raped the woman, shot the man in the head. Ramirez—a Mexican."

Then south and west to San Clemente, hovering near the pier, spotlighting a narrow road leading down to a parking lot. "That's where a tough Mex gang speared a seventeen-year old surfer in the head with a sharpened paint roller. He died in the hospital a little while later."

Holt ran the spotlight across the cars in the lot, looking down from the port window of the Hughes. "I find these places from newspaper articles. I come out to the ones I feel might have resonance for me. Because when you get right down to them, when you put your feet on the ground where these things happened, you understand how ordinary it is. They don't happen in cursed places. They don't happen in certain parts of the country where you expect it. When you stand down in that parking lot and look around you—like I have a half dozen times—you see that things like this can happen anywhere. It's in the fabric now. As I told you before, these interlopers don't understand the value of where they are. They should not be here. But this is our country, our world. My years at the Bureau did nothing to change it—in fact, it got worse. But I refuse to go through my life up on Liberty Ridge and ignore it. I'm not immune. Patrick and Carolyn proved that to me. They're all around us now, John. The killers and the fools, the rapists and the morons, the vicious, the stupid, the ignorant and the murderous, the desperate and the furious. This is our context now. And that is why I started Liberty Operations. I'm trying to stanch the fear. Make people feel safe from each other. Give people the freedom of security. When a family buys protection from Liberty Operations, they get protection. They get consultation on home alarm systems, safes, firearms defense if they want it, tear gas certification, manual self-defense. They get threat assessment. They get mirrors to check their cars for bombs, scanners to check their mail. They can get training for their dogs. They can get scramblers and tape recorders for their phones. They can get training to use any self-defense gadget on earth, and the gadget, too. They get armed response from the Holt Men. They get follow-up investigations if the cops don't make an arrest. They get preemptive action, preventive strikes, protective aggression. They can even get extra-legal satisfaction, once known as vengeance, John. Expensive, but I provide it. They get two-thousand strong, healthy, capable Holt Men on the streets twenty-four hours of every day. Men who observe. Men who protect. Men who are on their side. Holt Men. The new centurions. Guardians of freedom. Best men in the world." Holt spun the chopper back around to the north and accelerated through the darkness. He was thankful again that the Hughes was strong as ever, because he was not. Fading, he thought, but not faded; going but not gone. The orange and black machine supplied the strength that was draining from his body every hour of every day.

Rage on.

"Reach behind you," he said.

John found the bundle and unwrapped it on his lap.

"Put the vest on under your coat. Don't fire that forty-five unless it's to save your life."

Holt smiled at John's puzzled look.

"Let's go to work," he said.

chapter 31

He set the Hughes down in a small vacant field on Bolsa, not far; from Little Saigon. It was private property and he knew the owner, knew his chopper would be safe there behind the chain link fence with the concertina wire on top and the patrolling Dobermans the owner would release when they were off the lot.

He saw the two command and control vans—orange at black, clean and waxed to a finish that reflected the streetlight along the avenue—waiting on the street at the far end of the lot. He jogged across the barren dirt, waving John toward the vans. The young man looked perplexed but game. Holt could feel his heart beating evenly in his chest, and a growing affection for his newest apostle, whose lanky body and long coat moved through the darkness behind him.

He saw four of his lieutenants standing outside the vehicles, arms crossed, waiting for him. There stands justice, he thought: Kettering, Stanton, Summers and Alvis. The best of the best. Holt Men.
The Men.
They were in standard patrol uniform—black pants and boots, short-sleeved button-down black shirts over Kevlar vests, bold orange neckties knotted in half-windsors and tucked into the shirts just below the third button. Each wore the sidearm they were licensed to carry on the job, and the hip radio ammunition belt, flashlight and handcuffs.

Holt's eyes were strong now and Clarity informed every movement of his body, every thought that issued from his mind. He slipped into the Kevlar vest offered by Summers. He cinch the shoulder holster over it, slid out the .45 Colt Gold Cup with which he was certifiably lethal, checked the clip, jacked a round into the chamber, safed it and set it back into the leather.

"What's the word from Terry?" he asked. Terry, the ersatz fence, Terry the mole, Terry the confidant of the Bolsa Cobra Boys who were the mark tonight.

"Terry says we're on," said Alvis. "Sometime after midnight. Six of them."

"How's the family doing?"

"The girls are with friends. Mr. and Mrs. were having dinner when we left. They're scared and they're laughing a lot."

"Good," said Holt. "This is John Menden. Friend of the family. Good guy. May be working with us in the future."

The Men shook hands with John.

"Nice work, what you did out in Anza," offered Stanton.

John thanked him.

Holt could sense that they were mildly surprised, certainly wondering about Fargo, but saw no need to explain. There's plenty of room in the world for good Men, he thought. Someday there was bound to be a changing of the guard.

He climbed into the first van, motioning John to follow. Summers drove and Alvis sat in the back with John. Holt watched the bright lights of Little Saigon pass by on either side, saw the noodle shops and cafes, the empty parking lots littered with flyers, the steel gratings behind the shop windows, the young people still out walking. He turned and spoke to John:

"Our clients are the Vu-Minh family. He's a dentist; she's a lawyer. Been in the country since 1974. Two daughters. Bright and beautiful. The Bolsa Cobras picked them for obvious reasons—nice house, plenty of income. Upper middle class and unsuspecting. We've got a man close to them. Now, we're going to let them move in, start their thing, then kick their fucking butts."

"How many men will you use?"

"Six, including you, inside. Five pursuit vehicles with two men each and the two vans, which are about to get fresh crews. One helicopter, in case things fall apart. Stay close to me and do what I say. Don't do anything else. Clear?"

"Yes, sir."

They pulled along the curb ten minutes later. The house was in an older suburban neighborhood shaded by jacaranda trees that threw dark profiles against a darker sky. Holt looked up to the stars beaming in the cloudless night. He walked up the driveway toward the house. He saw two more of his Men coming from the front door, followed by Mr. and Mrs. Vu-Minh. New Men, he noted: Rodgers and Mason. He stopped as they approached, but said little more than a short hello to Allen and Joan Vu-Minh. Stanton had already told them what would happen, and this was no time for elaborate Asian pleasantries.

He stood in the doorway of the home and watched the two command and control vans slide off toward the avenue. He closed the door and locked it. He watched Kettering place the long canvas bag on the carpet and distribute the four semi-automatic shotguns, keeping one for himself. He smelled the sweet aroma of mint and noted the plate of spring rolls left by Joan Vu Minh on the living room coffee table. A pot of tea and six small cups sat beside them. He noted the lacquer paintings on the walls—romanticized treatments of pre-war Saigon, pastoral scenes from the Vietnamese countryside. The furniture was modest and tasteful, with Asian accents incorporated into Western design.

The home brought contradictory feelings to Holt, a state of mind with which he was never comfortable. It was obvious that Vietnam needed people like Allen and Joan Vu-Minh more than the United States did. The land needed its people and the people their land. It was also possible that the Vu-Minhs would have been persecuted—perhaps executed—if they had stayed behind after the fall. More to the point, they were citizens of the republic now and they deserved justice.

He dispatched Summers, Stanton, Alvis and Kettering to their positions: two in one of the girl's bedrooms and two in the other.

He took John into the living room, made sure the drapes o the windows were closed, then turned off all the lights except on in the kitchen. In the faint houselight he motioned John, then moved down a hallway and into the Vu-Minhs' master bedroom He turned on a lamp and moved two chairs against the far wall, beside the light switch, facing the door. He turned off the lamp and moved in darkness to the chairs. He sat and flipped the light switch on and off three times.

"Sit next to me," he ordered John. "Listen. The Bolsa Cobras have a little different routine from other Vietnamese home invaders. They don't like daylight hours. The last three jobs they pulled were done around two a.m. They pick a door lock— usually the front door—let themselves in and catch the victims sleeping. Tie them up at gunpoint. Take them into a bathroom, fill the tub and dunk the woman's head until the man tells them where the cash and jewelry are. If the man won't tell, they dunk him and work the wife. If she won't tell, they ransack the place. They haven't hit families with kids, yet. They like older people, people with savings. You know the Vietnamese don't trust cash and don't trust banks, so they keep lots of Krugerrands and jewelry. Keep it at home. They also don't trust the law. Allen and Joan are known to have money. They do charity work. They drive expensive cars. They make the papers. So the Bolsa Cobras have decided to branch out and try a younger family with kids. They usually work in pairs. They've bulked up to six for this one. They'll be full of adrenaline. Nervy. Quick."

"Will they shoot when they see us instead of a sleeping couple?"

"They won't know what hit them."

Holt sat in the darkness and listened to the blood moving through his body. He tried to feel the bad cells replicating but he could not. His eyes were strong again—they were always strong when he was doing justice—and even in the dark it was easy to become familiar with the room. He could smell Mrs. Vu-Minh's perfume mixed with the fresh odor of soap that moved in from the bath. He thought about those early years with Carolyn, when he'd graduated from law school and entered the Bureau. Just them in the little apartment in McLean, the Bureau training programs, the long Sunday dinners at the Fish Market with some of the other trainees. His favor in the eyes of Walker Frazee, who brought him along and sent him west as soon as he could because Frazee was a Mormon and a family man too and he knew how badly Holt wanted to be back in the land that had bred him. Holt chose not to think of his excommunication when he renounced the church those many years later, when Patrick's death had turned loose all that was furious and secular and ungodly inside him, when he had been unable to sense the presence of God anywhere upon the earth, in any form. Holt did not think of that. Instead, he thought of Patrick's birth and the overwhelming, unforeseeable pride he felt when he first took Pat's little body into his arms. He thought of the way that Carolyn looked when she was feeding their infant son, her hair up and her robe open around her breast and the aura of wisdom that had surrounded her ever since she had become a mother. It was as if she had connected with something inside her that he—and even Carolyn herself—had never known was there. He thought of Pat's first steps, the funny little outfits Carolyn always got for him, the evolution of the boy's smile from gummy toothlessness to the manly assurance of Patrick, age twenty-two, graduating from college. He thought of Valerie's premature birth, the natural debut of her headstrong personality. He pictured her with the little ribbon taped to her head at Patrick's insistence because she was born bald and Pat thought a girl needed a ribbon, hair or not. He remembered the time at the breakfast table one Saturday when Valerie announced that Pat had dreamed the night before about driving a car and she knew this because she had been in the back seat. He could see her shooting her first round of trap at age six—she knocked down four—and how proud he was that she stood like him on the trap range, brought her gun up like he did, called for the bird like he did, held her gun at rest like he did, set her empties back into the ammo pouch like he did. He remembered her coming down the stairs for her junior prom and ho she seemed to contain enough life and beauty to animate a dozen young girls all at once. He thought of all these things and marveled that the world had stripped so much away but left him standing. He could feel the great fury that animated him in slumber, resting. He understood that he now had, in John, an avenue to Susan Baum. He could feel things beginning to end.