Blood and Sand Read online

  He doesn’t. He looks at the ground.

  “You handcuff me, and you take my car keys, and you tell me we’re waiting on a judge’s order. Because this man played golf with senators —”

  “That’s not why.”

  “— so we needed to wait. We needed to wait while they woke the judge. But our boss decided my hunch wasn’t sufficient and morning was soon enough. So we waited. And we waited.”

  I wait. I’m good at it when I need to be, better than most. When I need to get going, though, I’m the worst. When I’m cuffed in a car, for example, while an abducted kid’s at a lake house and I’m the only one who seems to have her priorities straight, I might get pretty crazy. I might wait ’til my partner’s outside calling our boss to see if we’ve got the go-ahead yet, and I might snap my thumb to get out of my restraints.

  I had the car’s spare set of keys in the visor and I was gone in sixty seconds, leaving Dane on the corner like a dufus.

  But I don’t need to say any of that. He’s reliving it. I can tell by how hard he’s trying not to. The new crow’s feet by his eyes cut deeper, taking the blond-haired, blue-eyed, apple-cheeked Catholic boy from Boston and trading him in for a haunted old man.

  He gets off the seat. I turn around without delay, hiking my knee to start the bike.

  He asks, “Is that why you ride these now?”

  “Harder to handcuff me to it, yeah.” I pause. “What? What else?”

  Dane hates himself for whatever he’s about to say. Then he says it, and I hate him, too. “Would it have made a difference if the boy had lived?”

  I kick the bike to life. “He didn’t.”

  Speeding off without a backward glance, I go east a mile and drop into Tuttle’s truck stop. I buy a handle of vodka, fresh bandages, and a bottle of adhesive that mimics new skin. It smells like nail polish remover and feels pretty similar as you’re slathering it on an open wound. But it hardens like epoxy, and honestly, after dousing my cut in the alcohol first, any additional sting is a drop in the bucket.

  Chapter 10

  It’s four-thirty. Give it an hour and the traffic will be starting. For now, though, the freeways are still deserted. So is the office park when I pull in. I put on some gloves and pick the lock, hearing the beep of an alarm system. I take a look at the brand and chuckle to myself, getting my nails under the keypad and pulling it out of the wall. Strip this wire, strip that wire, feed the charges into each other and the beeping stops. When it comes to security, you get what you pay for. I shut the door behind me.

  There’s a receptionist desk. It’s neat, anally so, with everything at right angles. The nameplate says, “Doris Baker”. I go around, shove the chair out of my way and pick up a framed photograph of Fake Hattie with a laughing little boy. They’re wearing mouse ears in front of Cinderella’s Castle. The frame has “Grandma” written sloppily in puff paint across the bottom.

  “Damn. You didn’t stop at the eyebrows.” In the photo, she’s got a stylish cut and a realistic-ish red rinse instead of the gray perm-helmet Hattie sported. Her manicure, makeup and clothes are of the understated, overpriced variety — quite the contrast to Hattie, who wore Goodwill all the way and maintained a cheap set of pink claws with home press-ons. I saw them in the medicine cabinet.

  I’m into the second drawer before I finally find something with a company name. “Joshua Lewis Talent Agency”, and under that: “Specializing in Child Actors and Models”. I feel like I’m scuba diving through sewage as I read contracts with dubious legalese, parent release forms for go-sees and auditions, and thirty-two more flavors of paperwork to help convince a rube from Nowheresville that the their son or daughter is about to hit the big-time.

  There’s one door down a short hallway to my left, and I’m sure what I’m going to find when I barge in. I’m partly right; it’s a mess. Gus-style mess: food wrappers, coffee mugs with a few last cold sips, stray paper.

  What I don’t expect is for the window to be open. Or for the filing cabinet drawers to be slid all the way out, obviously ransacked. Children’s headshots carpet the floor.

  I hit whatever’s closest. It turns out to be a wall. Debating the usefulness of searching this rat’s nest, I decide against it. I’ve got a day ahead of me that’s only getting more impossible with each passing minute, and I need to get started.

  I make sure to shut the window and bolt the door. I’m texting Dane that somebody beat us here but he should put a rush on searching it anyway. My face in my phone, I’m walking past the offices to my bike (important rule of conducting illegal searches: don’t park directly in front of the place you’re breaking into).

  I’m not sure why I look up. He sure as hell isn’t making a sound, standing there. A figure, a cut-out — it’s too dark to see features. But it’s not too dark to see he’s wearing a fedora.

  “Jones?”

  We’re a hundred feet apart. There’s a low hill giving the office park some privacy on my right. On my left, of course, sprawling for a quarter-mile, are dark office suites.

  He doesn’t nod, doesn’t lift a hand. My bike is right beside me, and I’m tempted to touch it, verify it’s there. I’m tempted to jump on it, gun it out of here, but I don’t. I’m still holding my phone, and I could call Dane, or 911. But I don’t do that either.

  “You had a contract,” I say. “On Hattie, on Polly. Didn’t you?”

  He’s not broad or tall. He doesn’t move and he doesn’t speak. He’s like a black hole where a being should be.

  “What cut of the eighty-million were you supposed to get? Ten percent? Twenty?” I feel a familiar, bizarre calm. “Gus threw the plan together and told your employers he had it wired, right? You show up, and it turns out the plan’s a joke. But you figure you can wire it for him — the payday’s too good to take a walk.”

  I hear ascent in the silence, but that could just be that I’m thirty yards and change from a legendary professional killer and I’m still talking. Over-confidence, y’know? “What I don’t get is why you let Gus come along on the hit.” I’ve always thought better out loud. I answer my own question. “He lied. He told you there was a trick to the locks.” I nod like Jones is confirming it. “In a way, it’s the truth. They stick, as you found out. Where’d he shoot you, anyway?”

  I let the quiet have us for a while, to see what he’ll do. He does nothing. The brim of his hat shifts an inch, once, like he’s discouraging a fly from landing on his cheek. I should be pissing down my leg, but I’m at my most serene when dealing with psychopaths. There’s an honesty to them, a purity. I feel like I can truly be myself. I explained this to a shrink once. She cut our session short and never let me make another appointment. Which I guess is fair.

  “What I think I do get,” I say, “is why you’re still here. You didn’t do Polly personally, and you need confirmation. Also —” Here’s the tricky part: can he be reasoned with? “— there are players in this who’ve seen your face, who can describe you. Right? The girl, for example. Polly’s double. You came here to steal her file, get her home address. She’s not a threat, Jones. She’s catatonic.” Not quite true, but hey, I left my halo at home. “And the secretary? Doris? Forget it, she’s dummied up. There’s nothing here for you to clean. Got me? Gus pooched it, it’s over. I’m here to find Polly’s body, and then I’m out.”

  He knows all of this. To do the things he’s done and still be alive and free means he’s got IQ to spare. So there’s something I’m missing.

  He raises a gloved hand. He points at me.

  I think of the boy, the one I unpacked from a box. Jones making it personal, tipping his hat to me with that grisly gift. My calm changes character, to something very, very dangerous. “You want to go toe-to-toe with me? You want to turn this into a game? What, you haven’t had a worthy opponent in a while?” I smile in a manner that’s more like a dog baring its teeth. “Sure, pal. Let’s go. But here’s a tip, and I would really listen if I were you. Leave the kids out of it. I remember that
special delivery, and for that alone, I will kill you. But you mix one more little boy or girl into this, and you’re going to meet a side of me you won’t like at all. Your screams are going to be the music I fall asleep to for the rest of my life. Got that?”

  His shoulders rise and fall, like he’s taking a big breath of a smell he absolutely loves.

  “Okay,” I say, getting on my bike. “I’ve got shit to do, but come find me when I’m done.” I start it up, spin around and do a sedate fifteen miles per hour. I peek back before a turn. Jones is gone.

  I swerve a little. Just a little. I’m back on the 101 twenty minutes later, watching the skyline start to blush. I know the way, and I drive it on autopilot, zipping between the traffic that’s materialized like phantoms from the asphalt.

  Chapter 11

  The LA field office got a refresh a couple of years ago. Sexy new security, nifty tech. I call upstairs before I even attempt the metal detectors. They’d try to take my jacket for sure.

  The escort they assign me is named Bert, a desk-rider who walks me through having my photo taken and getting a name badge. I put up with it until I pin the badge to one of my coat’s thirty-five zippers. Then I thank him, shake him off and head to interrogation.

  I walk into the observation room, and three guys from my past federal-agent life tell me hello. They shut up after that. It’s not the time to catch up. Through the mirror, Dane’s taking a walk around Gus, firing questions.

  “Where’s Polly?”, “Who’s the girl in the kennel?”, “How’d you get your secretary to be a part of this?”, “What made you think it would ever work?”

  And so on.

  Gus looks like a slacker in the principal’s office, busted for cutting class. His arm has been splinted — I must have cracked something in there — and his nose has one of those over-the-top bandages that makes him look almost as stupid as he is.

  Almost. “Hey, man,” he says, interrupting Dane’s barrage. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I was at Lucy’s all night. Call ‘em. Call ‘em and ask for Rayna, she’ll tell you.”

  An agent to my left says, “He does know we arrested him downtown five hours ago, right?”

  “Don’t count on it,” I say. “Where’s the granny?”

  “She’s in 5. Won’t say anything to anybody. Didn’t even ask for a lawyer.”

  “Did Gus?”

  “Yeah, he made the call. I could hear the attorney shouting at him to shove it before hanging up.”

  I make for the door. “Name of the lawyer?”

  “Our old pal Grayson.”

  I exit, take one step, enter, and Gus and Dane look over at me with polar opposite expressions: alarm and relief.

  “Mind if we chew the fat?” I ask Dane.

  “Not at all,” he says, giving Gus a big smile. He leaves and shuts the door.

  I sit and put my feet up. “Grayson Brees,” I say. “Mob lawyer extraordinaire. Telling you you’re on your own when you’re in a federal interrogation cell.”

  He’s cuffed to the table, but he’s drawing his splinted arm back, protecting it with his right. “You can’t hurt me. You’re a cop or a fed or whatever, you can’t hurt me.”

  The timbre of my voice could be a lullaby. “Gus, we’re just talking here. That’s all that’s happening.”

  His breath is heavy whiffs of never-brushed teeth.

  “There’s a few things I don’t know,” I say, “but I don’t need to know them. I’m not like these other guys. I’m not building a case.”

  I can practically feel the men in the observation room shifting uncomfortably in their chairs.

  “For instance,” I say, “I don’t know how much you owe. I’m gonna guess it’s a lot. How much money can an idiot lose in underground gambling rings? Sky’s the limit there. At least, it is until they turn off the tap and tell you to pay up or else. So you do the logical dirtbag thing and try to start a kiddie porn business. But you don’t call it that, you call it a talent agency. And all these self-centered, unfulfilled or just plain poor parents fax you photos, sign representation agreements, and believe you when you say you can find their kids legitimate showbiz work when you are, in fact, trying to figure out how to get them to take their clothes off in front of a camera and where you can sell their bodies for the highest price once they do.”

  I sit forward. Gus leans back.

  “But you never got it off the ground. You rented an office, hired a secretary, accumulated clients from all over the country, and were probably doing some aggressive dirtbag networking to see how to get your perv party started when, one hot evening, you’re fixing a door outside the laundry room and you overhear that the old bat upstairs hit the jackpot.” I smile at him. “And then you lied to the mob.”

  “I didn’t lie!” His cuffs rattle as he tries to gesticulate. “I didn’t lie, I fudged it. That’s all I did, I fudged it. I was telling them she had the winning ticket and they asked if I saw it and I said yeah. I said, ‘Yeah, I saw it, it’s the real deal.’”

  “You fudged it.”

  “I fudged it, that’s all.” Hearing his own voice is soothing him.

  I decide to let him soothe himself further.

  But even I’m surprised when Gus says, “The guy they sent was scary. Real scary, never talked. He wore this hat, like the ones in old movies. They told me — on the phone they told me to give him the keys and let him handle it, but I told him, I said, ‘You don’t want to do that, man. The locks are tough.’ Then —”

  Then it occurs to Gus that he’s about thirty more seconds from a full confession. It’s a delicate moment. Most criminals know it’s by far their best bet to clam up if they’re caught. Even the stupid ones know this, especially the stupid ones who’ve had the lesson taught to them by organized crime enforcers. My ace is this: Gus wants to talk. Gus has been cooped up with his secretary in some cruddy, out-of-the-way hiding place for twenty-odd hours, and he’s a social animal. Most would-be pornographers are.

  They’re also ego-driven. “Then,” I go on for him, “the locks were too tough even for you, Mister Building Superintendent.”

  “No, it was that bitch Hattie. That bitch was always trying to fix stuff herself. She messed up the lock way worse than it was. It wasn’t that bad before, I’m sure of it.”

  “Yeah, she was a tough lady.”

  “Pssh, I’ll say. Bitch was like a linebacker. Even after — y’know, the guy they sent? He shot her. He shot her twice, and she kept coming.”

  This is a lie. I know it, and he knows it. Gus fired those first shots. The gun I took off of him is in line for ballistics testing. I doubt the boys behind me will use it, but I go ahead and get the false statement repeated for the record anyway. “He shot her twice with a .22?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, he had a .22. A lot like mine. Even — like, I’d say exactly like mine. It was weird.”

  Wow. Just . . . wow. “Super-weird.”

  Gus is getting in the groove, now that he thinks I’m buying it. Suspects like this can turn into Scheherazade on steroids if the interrogator knows how to string them along. “So I’m surprised,” he’s saying. “I’m, like — I don’t even know what he’s doing or anything. I thought we were gonna, y’know, put ‘em away for a while. Put ‘em somewhere. Hattie and Polly.”

  “You just wanted the money.”

  “We just wanted the money, yeah. Then we’d let ‘em out and they’d be fine. I didn’t know we were gonna, y’know, kill them or anything. I would’ve never been there if I’d have known that.”

  “Sure.” I’m managing not to smile by the barest of margins. This is like taking candy from a baby that’s asleep. And hates candy.

  “Sure, so — y’know, I’m even — I get in the way. I try to stop him from shooting her, right? I get in front of the guy and go, ‘Hey no, man, this isn’t what I signed up for.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Yeah, it was crazy. Polly, she was a nice girl. She was coming on real pretty and I �
� look, I love kids. What you said about my agency, you’re wrong. I was gonna get licensed and all that as soon as I — once I had enough kids.”

  I’m not missing that he just used the past tense for Polly. “Oh. Oh, okay, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. I asked Hattie once if Polly’d thought of modeling. Bitch bit my head off. So — hey, I didn’t like Hattie, but I never would’ve killed her. I don’t kill people.”

  “Got it.”

  “Right. But this guy — like I said, scary guy. He, uh — he switches guns. I don’t know why, maybe he’s crazy or something. He switches guns and he gets around me and he takes Hattie out. Then he goes to Polly’s room, drags her out and does her right there.”

  I give him a second.

  Gus’s lightbulb goes on. “And he switched guns again. To do Polly. Weird guy.”

  “Very weird.” Christ. If this gets to trial, I’m going to have to pop a valium so I don’t laugh myself into seizures on the witness stand.

  “Hey,” he says, “can I get a breakfast burrito? There’s this place on Sepulveda —”

  “I’m confused, though.” I’m not, though. I’m amused, I’m disgusted, but the last thing I am is confused. “If you were going to put Hattie and Polly away, how were you going to claim the money?”

  He puts on a sly, slimy grin. “I wasn’t. Hattie and Polly were gonna claim it.”

  “How would they do that if you’ve put them away somewhere?” I want him on the record for fraud, too, but I’ve got a bad feeling that he’s lapsing out of his storyteller schtick. It happens pretty reliably with this type of suspect as well. If the interrogator is a man, the suspect will try to make friends. If it’s a woman . . .