Runyan tossed the carefully packed black nylon stuff bag into the back of the cabin, then stood on the wing to help Louise into her seat. “My mother. She wanted to see the cherry blossoms in bloom.”
His eyes were challenging, glinting with either excitement or anger. After a long moment, the pilot sighed and turned away toward the instrument panel. “Sheee-it, mother,” she said, giving the first word two syllables, “ain’t no cherries in L.A. — let alone blossoms. Just mahture fruits with grey chest hair and medallions on gold chains.”
The plane was moving even as Runyan climbed into the copilot’s seat; it bumped and jittered as it gained speed, as if it were a handy target for anger that should have been directed at Runyan. The landing lights tossed exaggerated shadows out beyond the clumps and tufts of grass on the runway. They slanted up and away sharply, the engine almost stalling.
She picked up California 99 and followed it down the fertile San Joaquin Valley, the land just blackness below them, pinpointed with farm lights and the moving broken firefly chains of traffic on the highway. The I-5 Grapevine showed the way through the San Gabriel Mountains, which cup Los Angeles down to the sea, giving it both its climate and its smog. After locking on to the Burbank radio beam, she jerked off her big earphones to glare at him.
“Louise,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Grace.”
Grace was a stunningly beautiful woman, Louise realized, five or six years younger than she. And not at all interested in Louise. She spurned the proffered hand.
“I thought you was a fucking professional,” she said to Runyan.
He sang loudly, “I’m a beauty, I’m a daisy, I’m humpbacked, I’m crazy, I’m knock-kneed and bow-legged as well!” He grinned. “A song my daddy taught me.” He grabbed the controls and jerked the half-wheel over and down to the left.
“Whut’re your doin’, honky shit toad?” shrieked Grace.
It was instantly apparent that Runyan knew exactly what he was doing. As she tried unsuccessfully to wrest back control of the plane from him, he executed a rapid series of intricate maneuvers — Immelmanns, barrel rolls, stalls. Then he levelled her off and picked up the Burbank radio beam again.
“It’s just like riding a bike, Grace,” he said. “You never forget how.”
“I knew you were fucking trouble the moment you walked into Taps’s office,” she muttered.
“Was thrown in,” Runyan corrected her. “This isn’t trouble, Grace. This is the end of trouble.”
Chapter 25
It was 1:21 in the morning. As they passed the Sunset Boulevard exit, Grace got the rented Cougar into the right lane of the San Diego Freeway. Traffic was late-night fast but light. Louise was beside her in the front seat; Taps and Runyan were in the back. The night was clear and dark and crisp, 20 degrees warmer than Yosemite had been.
“Brother Blood’s out making a coke buy,” said Taps. “You got one hour for sure, maybe more.”
“An hour’s enough,” said Runyan, fighting to keep the irritation out of his voice. Pregame tension.
“So you keep telling me,” said Taps. Tension strummed in his voice also.
They must have gone over the plan in broad strokes a hundred, two hundred times in Q, a fantasy scheme to pass a few of the endless prison hours. Now it was happening.
Grace took the Wilshire Boulevard exit, following the offramp down and around under the freeway past the sterile landscaped Veterans Administration, then east on Wilshire past the anachronistic one-story red-roofed Ships Restaurant in Westwood, a gaudy soft palate for the new high-rise condo teeth that lined Wilshire like multimillion-dollar inlays. A half mile beyond, she turned off near the ultraprivate L.A. Country Club.
She turned again, then slowed to crawl past a pair of high-rise condos that took up an entire block. She pointed.
“Brother Blood’s penthouse is in the one on the right.”
“You go in the one on the left,” said Taps unnecessarily. “Not so much security.”
Runyan didn’t say anything at all. He wished Taps hadn’t come up with that idea about Runyan not leaving the penthouse with the bonds on his person. He desperately wanted it not to mean the obvious, but he’d have to find out the hard way.
Grace turned right at the next corner, then right again and stopped. They were now behind the buildings. Runyan took a deep silent breath, gripped his black nylon stuff bag.
“Twelve minutes,” he told the back of Grace’s head as he opened his door and stepped out into the street.
Without turning, she said, “I’ll be ready.”
Runyan closed his door without slamming, went around behind the back of the waiting car to the curb side. Although the street was residential-area deserted, he could hear occasional cars on Wilshire two blocks away. Louise reached a hand out of her window and he took it. Her skin was warm, almost hot, as if she were slightly feverish.
“Eight years,” he said with a nervous grin. Eight years in the belly of the beast.
“Eight years better,” Louise said.
Runyan nodded jauntily; his jitters had disappeared at her words. Taps stuck his head and one arm out of the rear window; the manicured nail of his long brown forefinger made tiny ticking noises against the crystal of his watch.
“The power goes off fifteen minutes after Grace goes in. Then you got ninety seconds to get on and off the cable, or—”
“Or I fry,” said Runyan.
“And remember Brother Blood owns the damn building, so when you’ve made the switch—”
“I know what to do,” Runyan said flatly.
Grace drove aimlessly to kill the extra minutes. Taps leaned his forearms on the back of the front seat, his head behind and between those of the two women in front of him.
“We got a couple minutes for insurance. Swing by the dealer’s an’ make sure Brother Blood is where he’s spozed to be.”
They crossed Beverly Glen on Lindbrook, near Holmby drove by a long black Mercedes limo with a middle-aged black chauffeur leaning against the front fender and smoking a fat brown cigar.
“Yeah!” exclaimed Taps. “We’re on!”
Grace drove the Cougar back the way she had come, stopped on a side street a block from the condos. Taps got out; he wore work clothes and a Dodgers souvenir baseball cap and carried an electrician’s tool box.
“You got five minutes,” he warned Grace.
“I be late, shugah,” she drawled, “you fire my ass.”
Taps watched the car drive away. It was all expensive homes here, in the multi-hundred-thousand-dollar range. Pool man on Mondays, wetback Mexican gardeners on Wednesdays, private school for the kids, vacation in Puerto Vallarta with Europe every third year. Well, his turn now.
He walked quickly back to a manhole cover flush with the concrete, took a stubby wrecking bar out from under his windbreaker, inserted the bent end into the socket, and heaved the cover aside. It grated loudly in the still night air. He sat down on the edge, found the ladder with his toes, shot another look around, then went down out of sight. The cover grated back, clanging dully into place. The street was deserted again.
Grace had parked the Cougar in mid-block so it wasn’t really in front of either high-rise. Louise, leaning back against the locked door on her side of the car, watched Grace use the tipped-down rear-view mirror to make herself into a whore. Grace caught her eye in the mirror and winked.
“Your man’s gonna be just fine, honey,” she said.
“I thought you didn’t like him,” said Louise coldly.
“Said he was trouble.”
From a handbag big enough to hold an Uzi machine gun, she took purple three-inch spikes and a bright purple silk scarf. She cinched the scarf tight around her middle, leaving the ends hanging over one hip. Then she jerked the zipper of her shimmery red jumpsuit down almost to her navel.