A huge SUV rumbled into the lot, made a U-turn, which put the passenger side of the vehicle next to the line of cement filled poles, and turned off its lights. Moments later, at exactly midnight, a black and silver BMW pulled into the lot facing the opposite direction of the SUV, so that the driver’s sides faced each other but were several car lengths apart.
The driver’s side door of the SUV opened and a massive figure stepped out, not so much tall as broad of shoulder and narrow of hip. He stood with a briefcase in his left hand, his right behind his back, fingers wrapped around the handle of a snub nose .38.
The interior dome light of the BMW came on, the door opened and a pair of long, sinuous legs poured out of the car and on to the pavement. The woman who owned them stood nearly six feet tall. In her right hand, she held a set of car keys. Her sultry voice was calm and even.
“Its in the trunk,” Rosie Rehnquist said. She hated making good on Simms’s promises; Hubble had come up with a liver just in time.
“That’s fine, let’s get it together,” the massive figure said.
As he approached, Rosie nearly lost her composure; his presence was palpable. About two feet away he stopped and extended a beefy hand.
“Name’s Bill Rocklin. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Yeah, sure. Let’s make the trade, I’ve got to be on the road,” Rosie said, not taking his hand.
At the shortness of her response, Rocklin dropped his right hand back to the holstered pistol. He walked with Rosie to the back of the BMW. When she placed the key in the trunk lock, he stepped slightly behind her, his hand tightening on the handle of the .38.
Rosie turned her back to the open trunk, blocking the opening to prevent Rocklin from getting to its contents. She always did transactions person to person, and was used to dealing in dark parking lots at midnight. But the recipient was usually someone she’d set up. The fact that Simms had arranged this worried her. Who was this guy? The people who took possession of the organs were rarely the ones who needed them, and were in general unaccustomed to the odd locations and late hours necessary when dealing with the black market. This guy, Rocklin, was too relaxed. Rosie was used to people asking her stupid inane questions they’d adapted from bad television shows.
Bill Rocklin acted as though he’d done plenty of transactions like this.
He placed the metal briefcase on the rear fender of the BMW, popped the latches and tilted the open case at an angle so Rosie could see the money inside. She reached over and took the briefcase, snapping it shut, stepping out of the way so Rocklin could reach the box.
Without lifting the cardboard box out of the trunk, he opened the flaps, reached in and fumbled with the clasps of the ice chest.
“This the liver?” Rocklin said.
Rosie turned, looking into the trunk where Rocklin was attempting to open the lid. “Don’t open that you fool,” Rosie shrieked, then catching herself. “Sorry, it’s just that if you open the chest you’ll expose the organ and it’ll be contaminated. Your doctor will want to make sure that it’s only opened in a sterile environment.”
Rocklin grew more suspicious by the minute. He couldn’t understand why she was so insistent that he not open the chest, it wasn’t like he was going to take it out and hold it. He just wanted to look at it. How could looking contaminate?
“How do I get hold of you if there’s a problem?” Rocklin asked.
Rosie stood facing him, holding the money filled briefcase at her side, under her arm.
“Maybe you don’t understand, Mr. Rocklin. This is a black market product,” Rosie said. “We’re here in a deserted parking lot at midnight because some people consider the selling of a body part to the highest bidder not only unethical, but illegal. I thought you understood that.”
Rocklin didn’t respond, but simply turned away to lift the box out of the trunk, picking it up as though it was weightless. Turning, he stepped around Rosie and strode back to the SUV without looking back. He didn’t like her much; didn’t really care for harsh people, especially harsh women.
Rosie wasted no time. The sudden silence from this thug had totally unnerved her. With a last glance at the SUV, she threw the briefcase onto the passenger’s seat of the BMW, climbed behind the wheel, slammed the door and hung a tight U-turn out of the parking lot.
As Rocklin approached the SUV, the driver slowly lowered his window.
“Everything go OK, Rock? I heard some yelling,” the driver said.
“Guess so. Just one real up-tight bitch, that’s all.” Rocklin opened the rear passenger door, leaned in and placed the ice chest in a child carrier seat, strapping it in. “Let’s get straight home, Vince. I wanna get this to the doc as soon as possible.”
He shut the door, walked around to the front passenger side and climbed in next to the driver.
“Man, Vince, I sure hope this liver does the trick. I hate to see the old man suffer.”
Rosie was across the Golden Gate and on the freeway headed north before she finally relaxed and stopped looking in her rearview mirror. Reaching across to the briefcase, she released the two latches, lifted the lid, looked inside, and sighed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rye left the car rental desk at lax with the keys to a Ford Taurus and a memory of a time during college when he and a group of friends had driven to Los Angeles seeking the baser side of tinsel town, and found it.
The label on the video tape read Los Angeles, California, but it hadn’t given an address. Once Rye left the airport, he headed for downtown Hollywood, attempting to take the same route he and his friends had taken nearly thirty years earlier in their search for sin and debauchery. The only thing that seemed familiar was Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. He knew he was in the right area, however, when the buildings were made of brick instead of glass and stucco, the streets narrowed and the women on the sidewalk weren’t wearing as much. As a matter of fact, they weren’t wearing much of anything. He kept his windows up, doors locked. On the passenger seat, he had a clipboard with a blank sheet of paper, a street map and a page torn from the yellow pages listing adult bookstores in the area.
When he pulled into the parking lot in front of “Adult Books and More,” he began to wish he’d gotten his car from “Rent-a-Wreck.” With a pencil, he scratched off the listing on the yellow page.
The front door was metal with a steel cage bolted over it. He had to reach through a hole in the cage to get to the doorknob. Once inside, Rye tried not to look around; at age fifty-three there was nothing in the store that he hadn’t seen, heard of, or read about. It was just that it was all so openly displayed. Just to the right as he entered was a counter with the cash register, manned by a muscular black man who looked like he could have had a night job as a bouncer.
Rye turned to face the desk.
“Hi.”
He waited until the clerk looked up. There was no verbal response, just intense eye contact.
“You ever hear of a company called Lewd and Lascivious?”
“Yeah, we got all their tapes along the back wall,” he said, pointing as though he wasn’t sure that Rye could find the back wall.
“Actually, I’m interested in the company.”
The clerk didn’t let Rye finish. “Can’t help you.”