Chappelle’s neck turned red. “Yes… yes, sir,” he found himself stammering unhappily. “We’re… we’re trying to recruit him to the team.” Even as he said it, Chappelle suspected that he would regret that statement for the rest of his life.
This time, they took Harry Driscoll’s car, lit up in red and blue and wailing like a banshee. Without the lights and sirens, they never would have reached Inglewood, a suburb south of downtown and near the airport, in under twenty minutes.
The mosque was an unobtrusive structure, built with discretion in mind. Harry and Jack pulled into the parking lot and looked up, seeing a short tower with the faintest resemblance to a minaret. The lawn was well-tended but nondescript, and instantly Jack wondered why they needed a landscaper. His question was answered, though, when they passed the outer wall into a courtyard that was all fountains, flower beds, and pathways, like something out of 1001 Arabian Nights. Beyond the garden lay the mosque proper.
There was a short, thin, brown-skinned man in gray work trousers and a gray work shirt, down on one knee, pulling weeds from one of the flower beds. He didn’t look up until they were standing almost on his ankles.
“Bas Holcomb?” Driscoll demanded.
“Que?” the man replied.
“Are you Bas Holcomb?”
“Oh. No!” the man said, smiling and standing, clapping dirt off his hands. He spoke in quiet, clipped English, as though uncomfortable with his command of the language. “My name is Javier. Espinoza. I work for St. Francis Landscaping. That’s—”
“His company, we know,” Driscoll interrupted. “Is he here somewhere?”
Jack’s cell phone rang, and Harry continued the interrogation while Jack stepped aside.
The gardener shook his head. “I no see him. He supposed to be here?”
“You tell me,” Driscoll retorted.
The gardener shrugged. “’S not my usual job. I covering for the regular guy. He sick. I usually work at another place for them.”
Jack closed his phone and looked at Driscoll irritably. “My people just got ahold of the car rental agency. The Chrysler was supposed to have been returned yesterday. Holcomb’s house is vacant, and he hasn’t made a call from there in forty-eight hours.”
“He skipped town,” the detective deduced.
“It gets worse. The Chrysler was found this morning abandoned on a side street. No prints. No one’s heard from him in days.”
Driscoll knew what Jack was thinking, but they couldn’t discuss it in front of a civilian. “Okay,” he said to the gardener. “If we need to talk to you, can we reach you through the landscaper?”
“Sure,” Javier Espinoza said, “or most days at the other place. That’s where I work for them.”
“What’s the other place?”
“Sante Monica.”
Nina didn’t hesitate. She pulled her car up to the little postwar bungalow on Twenty-sixth Street below Pico, walked up the little path, and kicked in the door. She didn’t throw around that much weight, but what she lacked in size, she made up for in technique. Her foot connected right where the bolt should be, and the door flew inward, banging against the wall, and Nina was already inside, scanning the room over the top of her muzzle.
Diana Christie ran halfway into the room, startled by the noise. Her left arm was in a sling and she held a small semi-automatic in her right hand, but she didn’t raise it. When she saw Nina, her eyes filled with fear.
“Drop the weapon!” Nina ordered.
Diana did so immediately. She held up her good arm and backed away from Nina. “Oh god,” she said in sheer terror. “Get out of here. They’ll know! They’ll know!” She sounded on the verge of hysterics.
“Down on the ground!” Nina demanded, advancing steadily.
“No, please, you don’t understand—”
“Get on the ground, now!” Nina was almost within arm’s reach. Suddenly, Diana Christie bolted. She ran out of the living room and down a hallway, then through another door. Nina followed a few steps behind, and they ended up in a small, cramped garage, with Diana on the far end pressed against the door, and Nina at the interior door, her sights level on Christie’s chest.
“Get out of here!” Christie pleaded, tears streaming down her face. “Get out of here!”
Nina was about to respond, but a bomb went off, and a gruesome image of bright lights and blood splashed across her retina.
Mulrooney heard Michael enter his office. He could always tell it was Michael by the sound, or rather, the near-lack of it. Michael’s footsteps reminded him of the padding of cat’s paws from his childhood.
“Big day, Michael,” Mulrooney said.
“Very big, Your Eminence,” the security man agreed.
Mulrooney noticed that Michael had lost some of his gleam. There had always been a sort of sheen around the man, a halo, for lack of a better word. Now it was tarnished. “Is everything all right with our… problem?”
Michael shrugged uncertainly, a gesture as uncommon as the fatigue that showed on his face. “I believe so, Your Eminence, but I can’t be sure. Dortmund is no longer a problem, and of course Giggs is gone. Collins is also dead.”
The Cardinal felt no remorse. “Monsters all. If it weren’t to protect the church, I’d have thrown them out myself. Is there any… are there any witnesses?”
The security man said, “No one firsthand, Your Eminence. I don’t know what Father Collins might have told the police officer, but at least Collins himself cannot testify to anything.” Michael could not bring himself to mention the other man who knew so much about the abhorrent acts of the clergy, and the church’s attempts to cover them up: that bastard Yasin, whom Michael would deal with someday.
Mulrooney nodded with satisfaction. “Then you’ve done as much as you can, Michael. Thank you. You are a soldier for the true church.”
Mulrooney said, and Michael received, the phrase the true church with a profound respect. When Michael didn’t reply, Mulrooney continued. “I can’t wait until this damned conference is over. I want that false Pope out of my diocese!”
“It will be over soon, Your Eminence,” Michael promised. “But on that count, I have a favor to ask of you. You must excuse yourself from the Unity Conference. Make an appearance at the reception, but then beg off.”
Mulrooney almost passed over the request, disregarded it, but it stung him after the fact, like the butterscotch taste of whiskey that burns the throat a moment later. He stopped — his every muscle locked into place where he sat, as he might have done if a wild dog had suddenly appeared in his office, growling at him.
“Michael, what is going on?” he asked.
Michael had been preparing for this conversation, but in no version had it seemed satisfactory. “Your Eminence, there is nothing for you to know. Or, rather, there are two things. First, that you must be out of the reception hall a few minutes after it begins. Second, that everything I do, I do to protect the true church.”
Mulrooney studied Michael, and felt in that moment that although the man had worked for him for several years, and that (though the Cardinal would barely admit it to himself) Michael had done many unscrupulous deeds at his request, he didn’t really know the man at all. “Have you… are you going to do something?”