Damn. Art looked to the A-SAC and stood. “We’ll check it out.”
Hidalgo stood, too. “Fast.”
Art gave a crisp nod and turned to Burlingame. “The address?”
“On my desk.”
“Let’s do it.”
Cars were like fingerprints, but infinitely more simple to dispose of. Activities and people could be traced to, or through, a car, and the Oldsmobile Cutlass involved in the shooting of Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Fitzroy made it only as far as Orem, Utah. There it was left burning in an empty parking space of a large apartment complex in favor of a Volkswagen van with a rickety box trailer attached whose owner would be needing it no more. That lasted the rest of their journey to Baltimore, then it, too, had to be done away with in favor of “clean” transportation. And more transportation.
Darian eased the just-purchased ‘84 Volvo sedan into the space to the right of the later-model Ford van. Its door slid open as he stopped.
“Brother Darian,” Roger said, sitting in the van’s first bench seat and running a hand over his newly shaved head. “Like my new doo?”
Mustafa leaned forward and looked from the front window. “We all need to look different.”
Darian nodded agreement, though they’d have to retain some individuality. “As long as we’re not four bald black guys running around together. And lose the hat, Brother.”
Mustafa reached up and slid the brimless NALF cap off.
“Where’d you ditch the Volkswagen?” Darian asked.
“In the river back off Ninety-five,” Mustafa answered, turning back to Roger. “What was the name of the place?”
“Laurel, wasn’t it?” the smooth-headed revolutionary responded without surety.
Mustafa shrugged. “Anyway, it’s nowhere near here.”
Roger bent down and looked past Darian to the passenger seat. “Brother Moises. How goes it?”
“It goes, Brother Roger.” Moises ran a hand over his still intact buzz cut. “But I’ll keep my doo, if you don’t mind.”
“Better put some whiskers on that baby face, then,” Roger ribbed. “Make that boy look full-grown, Brother Darian.”
The NALF leader ignored the joking and looked to his number two. “I made the call.”
“Good.” Let them know that the black man knows how to strike back, Mustafa thought.
“Did you find a place?” Darian asked.
“A little apartment over by Mercy Hospital. You and Brother Moises?”
“We’re going to look now.”
Mustafa removed a piece of paper and handed it to Darian. “This is the phone booth across the street from our place.”
“Okay. Settle in and lay low. We’ll call you a week from today.”
Mustafa nodded. “Next Monday.”
“Two in the afternoon,” Darian said, putting the cream-colored Volvo in reverse. “Don’t be late.”
“Never,” Mustafa promised.
Art exited the “headquarters” of the New Africa Liberation Front on South Vermont to the sound of thunder in the distance and the sight of Director Gordon Jones approaching from his car. The director’s accompanying entourage was hanging back.
“Sir,” Art said as Jones stopped just short of him.
The director acknowledged the greeting with a nod and looked past the agent to the nondescript front of the NALF’s apparent home. “They’re the ones?”
“It appears so,” Art said without conviction. He saw the director notice his hedging straight away. “They have to be. No one outside the team or the Army captain in charge of the building search knew where that cylinder was found.”
“Are we sure it was these guys who made the call?” Jones inquired.
“A note left inside says the same thing their call did,” Art informed him. “I can’t see any reason not to believe their claim.”
Jones looked to his agent now. “Then why don’t you sound as sure as your words?” An answer didn’t come, and that didn’t surprise the director. “Not the perps you expected.”
“No, sir.”
The drizzle that was almost nonexistent suddenly gained form. Drops tapped Art’s head, while Jones opened a collapsible umbrella for them both. “I read the reports your A-SAC was sending. You were leaning toward John Barrish as a suspect.”
“Yes, sir.”
The New Africa Liberation Front. Jones looked again to the storefront, then back to Art. “And now? What explains this? It doesn’t exactly fit into that theory.”
From any other person, in any other tone, Art would have seen this as a mocking attack on the work he’d done so far. But it was not. The director was simply searching for answers. For the answer.
“Barrish was still involved with Allen, Kostin, and Royce,” Art began. “I’m sure of that. These guys… I don’t know.”
“Customers?” Jones suggested.
“Kostin the salesman.” Art considered that.
“Selling his wares to whoever on the side,” Jones added. “The ‘whoever’ in this case was the NALF.”
Art nodded, but it was only a series of muscle contractions. He couldn’t add complete agreement to that scenario. But he couldn’t dispute it with any credible evidence to the contrary, either.
“You didn’t screw up, Jefferson,” Jones said. “You had a target. A good target. No one knew there was more than one.”
Screw up? Did I?
“A-SAC Los Angeles says you’re still on this. Find these bastards.”
Again Art nodded, but little was behind this gesture either. Too little, too late…at least for those in the World Center. “Will do, sir.”
Jones lingered for a moment, then walked back to his car as the sky opened to a full downpour. Art Jefferson stood in the rain and watched him drive away.
EIGHTEEN
Direction
Frankie grabbed the phone on the second ring as Art paged through what information the LAPD had provided on the New Africa Liberation Front. “Aguirre.”
The prolonged silence after that brought Art’s eyes up. His partner’s head was bobbing gently at what was being said over the phone, her pen jerking like a seismograph’s stylus back and forth across a legal pad.
“Spell it,” Frankie said. “O-R-E-M.” She listened for a few seconds more before hanging up.
“What is it?”
“Utah Highway Patrol had an officer killed the night of the World Center attack,” Frankie explained. “The officer had a camera setup running and it recorded the thing on tape. There was some bad glare from his spotlight on the back window of the car, so they sent it to our lab in Washington for enhancement. It came back this morning, with — guess who — Darian Brown shown gunning down the officer. There were three other male blacks in the car.”
“It was at our lab and our people didn’t recognize him?” Art shook his head.
“Well, they found the car torched right after the shooting and traced it back here,” Frankie continued. “The RO sold it just before the attack to some guy. It was a cash-under-the-table deal, so no paperwork. They had no way of knowing the two were related until they got the tape back and matched it with our bulletins on the NALF.”
The drip of Art’s decaf filling the pot marked the silent seconds as he thought. “Three other males plus Brown, huh? We only know of Brown and two others. They picked up someone new.”
“Or someone we didn’t know about.”
“Hmmm,” Art grunted. “They found the car in Orem?”
“Yeah.”
“I assume they’re running down all stolens there.”
“Six the night of the murder,” Frankie reported.