Troubleshooter (35 page)

Den passed the mouth of the alley, crossing before Bear. Behind him, Bear offered Tim a frustrated glare.

"On three," Tim said.

"Goddamnit," Malane said, "we have Rich undercover right now, risking his life every minute to tie this thing up. Don't cut us short."

"One..." Tim said.

Malane was shouting, "We've got no drugs. No money. No terrorist. You play cowboy now, we lose the trail to the biggest threat on the West Coast."

Den paused beside his bike, securing the helmet over his head.

The handle on the beer truck's loading door rotated slowly until it pointed at the asphalt.

"Two..."

"You take down Laurey, the next 9/11 is on your head."

Miller's voice was high and angry. "We gotta move here. Now."

Tim lined up the crosshairs on Den's chest and hooked his finger inside the trigger guard, ready to give the final order. The FTW tattoo stood out through a sheen of sweat on Den's collarbone. Tim pictured the burst of flame erupting from Den's fist. Dray's boot, empty and upright on the asphalt. The stain at the crotch of her olive sheriff's pants. His head swam with desire; for an instant he forgot that he was here to provide overwatch for the ART team, not to execute a kill.

"We can do this," Malane urged. "We can tie the whole fucking thing up tomorrow."

Bear growled, "He's gonna walk outta here, Rack."

Tim listened for Dray's voice but for the first time couldn't hear it. She was done playing conscience. Everyone else was hidden, lost in disguise, holed up in trucks and sedans, phantom voices in his ear. Wind whistled through the balcony rails, cutting into the silence.

Bear again: "What's it gonna be, Rack?"

It was just him, the Troubleshooter, with the crosshairs on the man who'd shot his wife.

Den threw a leg over the bike and kick-started the engine.

"What's it gonna be?" Bear said.

Tim said, "Let him go."

Den carved a sharp turn, passing within feet of Guerrera. Scope to his eye, Tim watched him float unopposed up the street. The frosty MGD bottle flew by in the background. Den passed Haines's and Zimmer's Broncos, facing out of opposing driveways, ready to rev forward to form an instant barricade. Up the street a dark FBI sedan--probably Malane's--eased out from the curb behind the bike.

Moving through headlight splashes, Den drove evenly up the street, abiding the speed limit, signaling at the turn. Tim watched the black bulb of his helmet until it disappeared from sight.

Chapter
55

Squeeze, Dray. C'mon. Give a squeeze."

Tim finally slid his index finger from his wife's limp fist. Her hand fell open to the sheet. He walked around the bed and tried her other hand, but to no avail. Someone shouted from a nearby room, and he heard the tapping of running feet in the hospital hall, the clatter of gurney wheels. He sat for a few minutes in perfect silence.

Then he retrieved Dray's brush from the bag he'd brought and ran it through her hair, working out the tangles. He wet one of her wash-cloths in the sink and cleaned her face. He traced her hairline, circled her eyes, rode the bridge of her nose. Then he stopped to feel the warmth of her curved belly. Gently, he pulled up her eyelid so he could see her iris. Her eyes were emerald--true emerald--an arresting shade that had depth and layers like the infinite refractions of the gem itself.

But now they seemed flat and vacant, devoid of inner light. No longer did he hear her voice in his head. He wondered if that meant he'd lost her already, if she'd drifted beyond the pale of recovery.

"I could've killed Den Laurey," he said. "And I didn't."

But if he was looking for approval or absolution, he'd have to look elsewhere. He let go, and the eyelid pulled back into place.

Night crowded the hospital window. From his place by the bed, Tim could see neither stars nor streetlights, just the black square of glass, the opaque end of a corridor of darkness. The hospital might have been the last outpost of civilization; it might have been perched on the edge of a cliff or drifting through outer space.

He rose wearily and stretched Dray's legs, her arms. Her face, slack now for four days, no longer retained the lines and shapes that made her unique, that made her Dray. In another few days, the muscle tone would start to weaken. And her chances of recovery would weaken with it.

He was massaging her jasmine lotion into her hands when a noise at the door made him look up.

Malane came in an awkward half step, one arm still clutching the doorframe as if to indicate his willingness to extract himself from the intimate scene should Tim desire it. Tim nodded, and Malane entered and sat in the opposing chair, facing Tim across Dray's body.

"I'm sorry to bust in on you.... Bear told me you were here."

Tim continued rubbing Dray's hands.

Malane flared a few fingers at Dray, a small, awkward gesture. "I, uh, I hadn't realized..."

"That's the job. For better or worse, it's part of the job." Tim blinked a few times, then said, "But that's not why you're here."

Malane took a deep breath, blew it out, and said, "The good news is, Den Laurey stopped again up the road, used a different pay phone to place a call to Babe Donovan."

"He addressed her by name?"

"Yeah. He calls her Dunny. We got him on the parabola mike. He told her to drop the car tomorrow in the Taco Bell parking lot at Pico and Bundy."

Tim rotated Dray's foot, the cranky ankle tendons putting up resistance. "And the bad news?"

"We lost him."

Malane watched him closely, but Tim merely continued with Dray's hands, lost in the smell of jasmine.

"We were closing in, and he dropped into a ravine and disappeared. Trails. The cars couldn't..." Malane's hands flew up, clapped to his knees. "We have a line on the drugs, Rackley. That's most important. We'll pick Den up again tomorrow."

Tim looked at him, expressionless.

Malane's eyes jogged back and forth, and then his voice softened. "I'm sorry. I promised something to you, and I didn't deliver. I, uh, I at least wanted to tell you myself."

Tim said, "I appreciate that."

"You cut us in on your operation, now I'd like to cut you in on ours. You want to work with us on this thing tomorrow morning?"

Tim set Dray's hand by her side, smoothed her fingers flat. He rose and pulled on his jacket. "Yes."

Malane nodded. "Let's have us a takedown."

Chapter
56

The morning sun blazed off the windshields of the parked cars. A few gardeners sat in the back of a dinged pickup, eating breakfast burritos and slurping soda from big plastic cups. One of them stood and belched, a splash of Fire Border sauce embellishing his dated FREE KOBE T-shirt. Gordita wrappers rolled across the asphalt, urban tumbleweed. Though it was past 11:00 A.M.--beyond the sticky reach of morning rush hour--still the intersection was clogged with runoff from the 10.

Tim sat in the passenger's seat beside Malane, the Crown Vic's air-conditioned leather a considerable upgrade from the dog-chewed bench seat of Bear's Ram. Bear had parked strategically across the street. Malane offered Tim the bag of sunflower seeds, and he took another handful and continued spitting shells into an empty plastic Coke bottle.

Bear came through the radio for the fifth time in as many minutes, and Malane stifled a smile. He'd given Bear and Guerrera FBI-coded Nextels for the operation, and Tim was getting the sense that the agents tended more conservative in their radio banter.

"Now, this fucking guy," Bear started, Guerrera the ongoing person in question, "this fucking guy, now, he says he thinks A-Rod's got it on Bonds in batting. Batting. Not in the field."

They'd been sitting on the Taco Bell since 8:00 A.M., and, as on most stakeouts, conversation was running thin. Aside from the Harley parked in the farthest parking-lot space that, at this point, they were presuming belonged to a TB employee, nothing had yet demanded their attention.

A background murmur came through, to which Bear responded, "I don't give a shit if A-Rod's younger. There's Barry Bonds, and there's everyone else. Don't give me your ethnic bias." Then, more clearly, "What's the vote?"

Malane said, "A-Rod," at the same moment Tim replied, "Bonds."

"All right," Bear said. "Then we go to Car Four for the tiebreaker."

An FBI agent cut in on the primary channel. "Eyes up, eyes up. Babe Donovan approaching in a...looks like a Pinto."

"A Pinto?" Bear said.

The car drifted into view. The orange coat had given way to rust, the subtle contrast lending it a strangely camouflaged appearance.

Babe Donovan parked the car in the tiny parking lot and hopped out. The gardeners let out a volley of whistles and catcalls that silenced immediately as soon as her Sinners property jacket came into view. One of the guys tugged off his Dodgers cap as she passed, offering her a deferential little bow. She ignored them, hopping onto the Harley and pulling out, heading opposite the direction she'd come.

"We'll take it." Bear's rig, parked facing east, eased out and drifted behind her.

Tim eyed the run-down Pinto. The AT, no doubt, was secured in the trunk. They only had to follow it home.

"Just shadow her," Malane said. "Don't take her into custody until we get to the stash house. We don't want to alert--"

Wristwatch Annie turned the corner on foot, sliding along the fence line behind the restaurant. She fumbled with a set of keys, then climbed into the Pinto and sped off.

Ten vehicles in the surrounding four blocks went on alert.

They followed her in shifts, each pair of cars turning off after a few blocks to be replaced by another. Malane and Tim carried her into the finish, a well-kept single-story house in a middle-class section of Mar Vista. She pulled into an open garage, which closed immediately behind her. They drifted past, turned around, and parked up the block, waiting for SWAT to move in.

Tim sat, working sunflower seeds between his teeth, occasionally shaking the Coke bottle so the soggy shells inside gave off a wet rattle. His focus, like Malane's, remained on the platinum Jag convertible parked across the street from the house, though neither had commented on the obvious.

Malane keyed his radio. "Sully? You on the rear fence line?"

"Yup. Got the parabolic on the rear window. Want me to cut you in?"

"Please."

A faint transmission played through Malane's radio.

The sharp feminine voice said, "...we all eyeballed it now, so we start with a clean accounting sheet. I don't want one of you whining that ten cc's dropped out of the deal."

The Prophet's velvet voice: "We are agreed."

"Same goes for the cash. Count the down payment again now if you have to."

"It is all here."

"Seventy/thirty to the producer this round."

"I am aware of the deal."

"Then you won't mind touching all the bases so there's no misunderstandings. The deal's on consignment--the money down gets laid off against profit. We hold up our end, next one goes sixty/forty. Then an even split between producer and distributor. I handle the money coming and going. That's what you signed off on. Agreed?"

"That is correct. I look forward to a long collaboration."

Rustling.

"Wait. I have not tested the product."

There was a faint rumble of tires, and then, from all directions, black trucks poured onto the street. SWAT members hung off the vehicles, riding the running boards, their vest pouches bulging with flash bangs. The trucks stopped, sealing off the street and giving the target house a half-block buffer. SWAT pulled into entry formation, at least forty agents closing the divide on foot, an organized swarm of black flight suits. A Sheriff's bomb dog led the charge, positioned to check the front door for booby traps. Only now did Tim spot a rippling of bushes at the back fence line.

He clicked on the radio. "Bear? Take her. We're going in."

The no-knock entry would've made the ART squad proud. The battering ram left the door flat on the entrance floor for the agents to trample. Tim and Malane crossed the street at a jog. Inside, there were shouted commands and a few yells, but no gunshots. Smith & Wesson aimed at the floor, Tim rode in on the aftermath, the safest lineup position he'd ever taken on a kick-in. His heart was pounding nonetheless. He moved room to room in search of Den Laurey.

The Prophet, Dhul Faqar Al-Malik, lay facedown on the shag carpet of the living room, a streak of dust coloring his dark hair like a skunk's stripe. A still-packaged extraction needle lay on the carpet where he'd dropped it, beside a portable lab kit. The FBI agents had uncovered a modest weapons cache in the front closet.

A shrill voice said, "Get your fucking hands off me."

Tim stepped around the corner, where two agents were securing Dana Lake. She glared at Tim, her milky cheeks flushed a sunset shade of magenta. The money launderer--nice WASP name, clean record, just as Smiles had predicted.

"What was your cut, Dana?"