Unwanted Company - Barbara Seranella (33 page)

"That's more of the attitude we like to see,"
Whiskers said.

"
What did Ellen tell you about her trip to
Mexico?"

"
Just that everybody got drunk. She wandered
away from the car and got lost. The next morning she hitched back up
to Los Angeles, and I had to go down to Mexico to get my car back."

"
That's it?" Blondie asked.

"
Ask her yourself," Munch said.

"
We're polygraphing her now," he said.

Munch relaxed back into the chair and fought back a
smile. Ellen ate lie-detector tests for breakfast. "Do what you
have to do."
 

CHAPTER 27

After Victor left the car, Raleigh went to a pay
phone and dialed the day's number. When he heard the call go through,
he said, "Echo, bravo, two, niner."

"Confirmed."

Several beeps sounded, then another man came on the
line. "What's the status with Gameboy?"

"He's making the exchange right now."

"We've begun tracking. Good job."

"
Any word on our bogies?" Raleigh asked.

"
The two women were apprehended?

"Have they been debriefed?" he asked.

"
Yeah, you can relax. The Summers woman
remembers nothing from the time she left the bar until she woke up in
the bushes the next day."

"
You confirmed that with a polygraph?"
Raleigh asked, wiping his hands on his pants.

"She came across one hundred percent truthful."

Raleigh knew the news
should have given him some sense of relief, yet it didn't. The way
this mission had gone to date, he knew it was much too soon to start
celebrating. Nothing in this world was ever one hundred percent. That
was one of the reasons people like him were needed.

* * *

Victor entered the small kitchen off the pressroom
and set his case of coffee on the counter. A swarthy man wearing a
head scarf approached Victor with a canvas athletic bag in one hand
and a cumbersome aluminum briefcase in the other. Victor took the
bag. The Libyan locked the door behind himself. Victor pointed to the
case of coffee cans next to the sink. The Libyan nodded curtly and
set his valise down next to the cardboard box. He opened the
briefcase, and Victor saw delicate and expensive-looking test
equipment nestled in foam rubber.

While Victor unloaded and then stacked the cash on
the counter, the Libyan made a small puncture in one of the cans and
placed a small piece of what looked like gum foil over the opening.
He then took the foil and placed it inside a device that was
approximately the size of a portable typewriter. That would be a
neutron detector, Victor knew. As much as he understood the process,
plutonium's neutron-emitting properties were what split atoms and
created fission. The Libyan studied the screen on his machine, then
brought out a second device. This piece of equipment was slightly
smaller than a shoe box with an L-shaped handle. Two dial-faced
gauges protruded from the end. One was labeled ALPHA RADIATION, the
other BETA RADIATION. Along the side in neat black letters were the
words: SCINTILLATION COUNTER. Victor returned his attention to the
bundles of cash, while the quiet man in the head garb did his thing.

Some minutes passed. Then, apparently satisfied with
what his instruments had detected, the Libyan resealed the opening he
had made in the can with a lead-colored paste.

Throughout the exchange, the two men said nothing.
Victor finally broke the silence with, "Are you satisfied?"

The Libyan nodded. Victor clapped him on the back.

"
Very good," he
said. Satisfaction was always good.

* * *

Raleigh watched Victor approach the car clutching a
canvas bag to his chest.

"
How did it go?" Raleigh asked.

"
No problem."

They got on the 405 freeway and drove north. Victor
asked no questions, which suited Raleigh just fine. The sooner he was
shed of this guy the better. Once again, it had all come down to him.

"
We had to make some adjustments to the plan.
Seems there was a witness to what happened in Mexico."

"Ellen?"

"That's right, and she's threatening to go
public."

"
This is bad," Victor said. He smiled. "Bad
for you."

"
We're going to turn it around."

"
Turn what around?"

"You're really going to disappear, Victor,"
Raleigh said. They had crested the Sepulveda pass. Raleigh stayed in
the right lane, the one that fed into the Ventura freeways. They
passed under the sign that read VENTURA FREEWAY WEST. Victor nodded
at the passing scenery, smiling. "At last."

They got off the freeway at Sherman Way and followed
signs to the Van Nuys airport. "We're going to go one better
than you simply dropping out of sight. We're going to make sure that
nobody ever looks for you."

Raleigh reached behind him and grabbed a valise. He
hoisted it between the seat and dropped it in Victor's lap.

"
Open it."

Victor did. "This is just blank paper," he
said. "Hotel stationery."

"Take the pen and write your suicide note."

"
My . . . ? Oh, I see. Very clever."

They stopped at a padlocked gate. Raleigh got out of
the car. Shielding his activities from Victor, he picked the lock and
swung the gate open. When he got back into the car, Victor was still
staring over the blank page.

'
°What should I say?" Victor asked.

'
Just write that you can't go on living this double
life. Apologize to your family and country. Say that this was the
only way out for you. "

Victor nodded as Raleigh spoke. The hotel pen moved
quickly across the page. "This is a good idea. Make sure a copy
of this note gets to my brother's superiors."

Raleigh was gratified that Victor was thinking of
someone else besides himself for a change. He knew the Romanian had
left his brother holding the bag for the missing shipment of uranium.
lf Raleigh had had a brother, he would never have done such a thing.
If he had had a brother, the two of them would have stood together
against their mother.

"Say that what happened in Mexico was
unavoidable," Raleigh told Victor. "That someone must
answer for the tragic way those three people died."

"Three?" Victor asked, his pen stopping.

"
Work with me, Vic," Raleigh said.

"Only in America," the Romanian mumbled, as
Raleigh jumped out of the Vega to open the door of an abandoned
hangar. He pulled the car inside.

"
Where's my Cadillac?" Victor asked. I

"
It's coming. "

Raleigh opened the trunk and pulled out a wad of
pastel fabric. From a brown paper sack he withdrew a 9mm automatic.

"Victor," he called as he squeezed clumps
of swimmer's wax into each ear. "Come on over here."

Victor walked to the back of the car.

"No, over here," Raleigh said, moving
toward a low steel cart covered with a canvas tarp. He handed Victor
the gun.

"Hold this like you're going to shoot it. We
need your prints on the gun."

"
Is it loaded?" Victor asked.

"
Now, how safe would that be?" Raleigh
said.

Victor wrapped his hand around the butt of the gun
and slipped his finger into the trigger guard. Raleigh grabbed
Victor's hand and with one deft move was standing behind him. The gun
now pointed at Victor's temple. Raleigh angled the muzzle away from
himself and slipped his own finger over Victor's. The trick was to
find the temporal lobe. He favored eye sockets, but those entries
were rarely seen in suicides, and it was important this look
authentic.

Victor's body bucked in his arms. For all his
excesses, Victor was still strong.

"Time to pledge allegiance," Raleigh
whispered into the man's ear, then he squeezed the trigger. The pop
of the gunshot resounded sharply off the hangar walls. Victor jolted
backward, nearly butting Raleigh's head. And then he was still.
Raleigh allowed the body to drop, holding the gun hand so that
Victor's grip stayed intact.

Raleigh placed the hand with the gun still in it to
the dead man's side and removed the wax from his ears. The finishing
touch was the wad of pink fabric. Raleigh ran a finger lovingly over
the embroidery, feeling a surge of his juices at the sight of the
delicate little crotch panel between the seams of white elastic. He
pressed that sweet spot of the panties briefly to his lips,
regretting the need to give them up.

"
So be it." He sighed, stuffing them into
Victor's pocket.

"You're it, Vic. As my mother would say, you've
been wicked. A very wicked boy."

He brought up the edges of the tarp so that they
covered the body, then wheeled it over to a door that connected to
the next hangar. There was a brand-new taupe-colored Cadillac
Eldorado with leather upholstery parked there already. He threw the
canvas bag full of cash behind the driver's seat, then went back to
mop up the trail of blood.

He used industrial-strength floor cleaner and a
high-powered hose, humming as he worked. This was the last time he
would be cleaning up after this asshole.

Twenty minutes later there was nothing to identify
the hangar as a crime scene. He removed the Vega's license plates and
brought them over to a neighboring hangar. The facility had been
vacant for months, the lease and prepaid rent seized by the
government when the former tenants had been caught smuggling drugs.
The Vega, whenever it was found, would be untraceable.

Raleigh let himself into a smaller room that had once
served as an office for the former tenants. He sat down behind the
desk and studied the posters lining the walls. Bikini-clad women
sunned themselves on virgin beaches while cerulean blue waters lapped
at their toes. He was due for an extended vacation. Lord knew, he had
it coming.

He looked at the phone for a minute before picking it
up. Might as well make a clean sweep of things. He dialed his
estranged wife's number.

"
Pam?" he asked when she answered the
phone. "Please don't hang up."

"
What do you want?" she asked.

"I was hoping we could spend some time
together."

"
Oh, yeah? Who's Ellen?" she asked.

"
Ellen?" he echoed, his hand gripping the
phone.

"Yeah, she called this morning. She said she had
some tape you left behind in her limousine. Some kind of bandage
stuff. When were you in a limousine?"

"It was part of a job."

"
Oh, I see," she said, the familiar
coldness slipping back into her voice.

"
Did Ellen mention where I could pick up the
tape?" he asked.

"
I don't know why I have to be involved in this.
How did she even have my number? What's going on?"

"
Please, Pam," he said, feeling the blood
pounding behind his eyes. "What exactly did she say?"

"She said you owed her for damages. I told her
we were legally separated and that I wasn't responsible for your
debts."

"
You have no idea how much you're responsible
for," he said. "None of you women ever think you have to
pay." He slammed down the phone. That was going to change.
 

CHAPTER 28

"
Did you know about this?" Mace asked
Caroline, still feeling the devastation of watching Asia and Munch
wrenched from each other. Goddamn her and her complicated life. The
child had cried and screamed for her mother as she was led away, even
beseeched Mace to do something, anything. The agents had at least had
the sensitivity not to handcuff Munch in front of the kid.

"I knew she wasn't the birth mother,"
Caroline said, hanging up the phone after leaving a message for her
friend who worked for the Dependency Court system as a children's
advocate.

"Were you going to tell me?" Mace asked.

"Where are the parents?" Cassiletti asked.

"They're dead," Caroline said. "The
mother died of a drug overdose when Asia was four months old. The
father was killed in a shooting two months after that."

"Munch said that he got on the wrong end of a
dope deal with some bikers," Mace said. "She left out the
part about not being the real mother."

"The birth mother," Caroline corrected.
"She's raised that child as her own for the last six years."

"Sounds like the kidnapping charge is a
stretch," he said.

"It's complicated," Caroline said. "But
I'm sure we can help her."

We
, Mace thought.
She
said, WE
.

"Sir?" Cassiletti said. Caroline and Mace
both shifted their attention to the big man. "What do you
suppose Ellen meant about turning over the rock he was lying under?"