They loaded the equipment into the trunk of the LeBaron, which was beginning to draw a crowd. The little yellow convertible stood out like a debutante among the rusted, primer-painted muscle cars. This became Lockwood's first tactical problem. They had drawn a crowd of teenaged street bravos. The G-sters were standing on the brown lawn next door, gold Turkish ropes around their necks, looking down innocently at their spit-shined Santa Rosa hightops. Their gang flags were hanging from pockets bulging with foreign automatics. They looked on hungrily as the computer equipment was loaded into the trunk, licking their lips like coyotes watching a French poodle.
Lockwood knew that if he accompanied Malavida back up into the apartment, the trunk would be pried open with a crowbar, and in ten seconds they would lose it all. He pulled Karen aside.
"I gotta stay down here and protect this stuff. You go with Mal. If he takes off, yell."
"What are you talking about? He's not gonna take off." Malavida was just finishing packing the first load into the trunk.
He turned and looked at Lockwood. "One more trip. You coming?" "Go ahead," Karen said, catching Lockwood by surprise. Malavida immediately turned and jogged back to the stairs. Lockwood started after him, but as he did, the street bravos surged toward the LeBaron. He had to stop or Karen would be left protecting the car alone. He knew instantly he'd made a bad field decision and had let the play get away from him.
"This is fucked. He's going to go out the window up there and across the roof. We'll never see him again."
"Nonsense, he'll be right back," she said confidently.
A minute later, Malavida came back down with the last load of computer equipment and placed it in the trunk. Then he went up and kissed his mother good-bye. Karen and Lockwood could see them on the landing. They could see Elena put her hand up to her youngest son's handsome face. They watched in silence as he hugged her… mother and son rocking back and forth with their arms around each other in their own special cadence. Karen could feel the love all the way from where she was standing. Her heart went out to Malavida. She began to suspect he was nothing at all like the bitter young man who was so angry at Lockwood.
"How did you know?" Lockwood finally asked as Malavida headed back toward them.
"You're a prize" was all she said.
He got behind the wheel, slightly pissed, and threw the handcuffs into the glove compartment. Malavida got into the back; Karen sat up front.
They pulled past the street gang, headed back to 605, and got on, going west. They rode in silence. Karen knew, Malavida wouldn't run. She had seen it in his eyes when he pleaded with them to take off the cuffs, and again when he first hugged his mother. He would never run with Elena watching. He worshiped her. It startled Karen that John Lockwood didn't know that. And then she remembered what she'd read in Lockwood's file: He'd never known his mother. His mother had been the system. For Karen, it explained everything about him.
Chapter 11
They arrived back at the wood-frame house in Studio City at 1:30. Lockwood rang the doorbell and, after a minute, Claire opened the door. The first thing he noticed was she had cut her hair. It was in a helmet cut that would have been ugly on most women, but Claire was startlingly beautiful, and it somehow flattered her strong Scandinavian features. The short hair gave her an efficient, streamlined, no-bullshit look that he assumed was an asset in her new job at the media-buying firm of Latham, Brown, and Forbes.
They exchanged deadpan "Hi's," and then she opened the door a little further, her eyes sweeping the street where Malavida and Karen were unloading equipment from the trunk of the LeBaron. The early afternoon sun was hot and a slight breeze ruffled the maple leaves on the pretty flower-lined street. He followed her gaze.
"They're working the case with me. I was wondering if we could hook a computer to your phone. It's a long-distance call, but I'll pay time and charges-"
"I see nothing much has changed," she said.
"That's not fair, Claire. I'm out here on business. If I'd gone to the Federal Building, I wouldn't have had time to see Heather. I couldn't just drop them on a street corner." He felt himself trudging onto a familiar battlefield that, experience told him, would be won by neither of them. He knew they were only a few shots away from a series of low blows that would suck them down the drain of mutual disappointment. He tried to stop it. "Please, let's not do this…"
"Okay, John, let's not." She opened the door for him. Lockwood motioned Malavida and Karen to come in. They carried the armloads of computer equipment into the house.
The house was strictly Claire. French Provincial. Oversize chintz-covered furniture stood against flowered wallpaper like overfed visitors.
He introduced her to Karen Dawson and Malavida Chacone, and thought with dread that it was a testament to the death of their relationship that Claire had not shown a single twinge of jealousy on being introduced to the beautiful criminologist. His ex-wife led them into the den. Malavida and Karen started setting up the equipment on the desk next to the phone.
"Where's Heather?" Lockwood asked.
"She's out back. I didn't tell her you were coming, because sometimes, as you recall, you didn't."
Lockwood absorbed that shot as well. He was determined not to put the gloves on with Claire. He found his way to the backyard where his daughter had set up an easel and was painting with a brush. As he got nearer, he could see she was painting a horse in remarkably accurate proportions.
"Hi, baby…"
She turned and, for a moment, stood frozen. He filed away a mental snapshot for the book of memories he kept in his head. She was a miniature Claire. It was as if his gene pool had not even entered the mix. She was beautiful, with her mother's blond hair and blue eyes. Then she unfroze and yelled "Daddy!" as she ran toward him. He wrapped her in his arms, holding her. He could smell her child's fragrance and was instantly aware all over again of how much he had lost. He recalled how each time he had disappointed Heather or Claire, there had seemed to be no other answer; yet when he stood back and viewed the whole ten years, he knew he had been lying to himself and to them. His job had always been the obsession he couldn't control. Whenever he was on the hunt, something he didn't understand overtook him… a need to win, a competitiveness that couldn't be compromised. The job made horrendous demands on his life and was loaded with deadlines, court cases, depositions, stakeouts, surveillances, and drug busts. If he didn't take the junk off the streets, other men's children could die. It was a rationale that vacillated between religion and excuse. Right now, as he held his ten-year-old daughter, he knew it was also a betrayal of his parental obligation.
"Daddy, how long can you stay? Will you take me to the zoo?"
His voice was thin as he uttered the words one more time, "I can't, honey. I have a meeting tomorrow morning in Washington, so I have to leave tonight." And then he looked up and saw Claire watching through the window. Her expression told him that, without hearing, she knew what he had just said.
The den was small, but there was a nice French Provincial desk where they set up the laptop, unpacked the large monitor from its box, and connected it. Malavida attached the modem and, when Karen was not looking, he slipped a disk out of his tool kit into the laptop, and typed a quick sequence, starting a logging program which would lurk in the background and save everything that was typed in. The last thing he did was unroll his favorite poster: Snoopy, with his straight-line smile, in his trusty red biplane, scarf flying. He taped it to the desk in front of him. "Good-luck charm," he said to Karen. "We're set up now, but first we need to log into a host computer. How 'bout the one at U. S. Customs in D. C.?" he asked. "If you have a local dial-up, we won't stick Lockwood's ex with the phone bill."