Evan moused over to Danny Slatcher’s criminal-record history and pushed the button.
What he saw cut his excitement off at the knees.
Redacted file.
Two words that carried a host of implications. Not to mention complications.
Evan realized he was clenching his teeth. He clicked the next link, for Slatcher’s ATF Violent Felon File, knowing already what he’d find.
Redacted file.
And the next. And the next.
Evan set down his highball with a clink, looked over at Vera in her mound of glass pebbles. But the plant had nothing to offer.
Danny Slatcher was not a two-bit gun for hire. Or a high-end hit man for the mob. He was something much more lethal.
Evan didn’t like the notion singeing the hairs on the back of his neck, making the acid crawl the walls of his stomach. He knew now that he had to get to Slatcher’s perch in Chinatown to reconstruct the shooting from the other side of the scope. Whether LAPD still had the building sealed off or not, Evan had to infiltrate the crime scene.
27
Cat and Mouse
Lotus Dim Sum seemed back in working order, the windows replaced, the glass swept from the sidewalk. Two days after the shooting, the apartment across the way still remained under LAPD control.
From beneath the glowing pagoda gate of Chinatown Plaza, peering up from the shadows, Evan took in the apartment on the top story of the building. He munched fresh-baked almond cookies, pulling them from their neat stack inside the Baggie. Though he’d covered his fingertips with a thin sheen of superglue, he could still distinctly feel the crumbly texture of the baked flour. He preferred superglue to gloves, as it was less conspicuous and left him more tactile precision. The apartment building Slatcher had used looked to be the nicest in the tight row along Broadway, the neighboring complexes shabby and peeling, the balconies serving as overflow storage for bicycles and surfboards, dead plants and drying laundry.
Evan’s previous drive-bys had clarified that Slatcher had fired not through a window, as he’d first assumed, but through the sliding glass door of a balcony. The event itself — a sniper shooting into a crowded restaurant, causing a stampede — had a terrorist-like scope, and LAPD had responded with a commensurate show of force, enfolding the building in a lockdown. Three patrol cars were in evidence, parked at intervals along the curb. Yellow and red neon glowed down from the gate, mapping patterns across Evan’s face as he waited and watched, trying to place the locations of the various police officers.
Several remained in their vehicles. Uniformed officers screened the building’s residents at the front entrance, the garage, and the rear and side doors. Two more patrolled the interior, popping into view from time to time in the windowed stairwells. He clocked their patterns, noting that they spent disproportionate time on the third floor. One of the officers stepped into the shooter’s apartment on her rotation, appearing through the glass sliding door as she checked the rooms, the kitchen, the balcony. There was no getting into the building through any traditional means.
A shift of the wind brought the click of mah-jongg tiles from a back room across the plaza. Evan ate the last cookie in the stack, dropped the wrapper into a trash can, and hustled across the street, nodding at the cop sipping coffee behind his steering wheel.
Evan entered the building next door to the one used by Slatcher and rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. From the street he’d scouted the apartment at the end of the hall, noting that all the lights had been out. A plastic holly wreath, muted with dust, festooned the door. The lock was an insult to its name; he got through it with a simple zip of a credit card.
A wheezy snore emanated through the open bedroom door off the tiny foyer. Ancient carpeting padded Evan’s steps as he moved through the apartment and onto the balcony. The chirp of the venerable sliding door in its tracks barely rose above the whoosh of the wind. Without slowing, Evan stepped over the balcony railing, pivoting and sliding his hands down the posts so he was dangling four stories above the street. A slight swing of his legs pendulumed him away from the building and back, and he let go, dropping onto the balcony below, landing in a spot of cleared space between a row of surfboards and a mini-fridge.
Through the pollution-clouded glass of the sliding door, he could make out the dinner party in progress one room over. Wineglasses clinking over a well-set table, feminine laughter, the waft of roast chicken and leaded hot cider.
Evan put his back to the diners and peered across the alley to the building opposite. The sniper’s building. It was too far to jump. But he wasn’t planning on jumping.
From the stack of surfboards, he slid out a longboard and lifted it, extending it horizontally out over the alley. The tip caught the lip of the balcony across. He set the back of the board down on the railing before him, then climbed gently up onto it, preparing for his tightrope walk. The surfboard wobbled slightly as he inched out over the alley.
One cautious step. Another.
From below carried the sound of a car door slamming shut. He looked down at the police cruiser below him. The heavyset cop — the one he had nodded to as he’d crossed the street — had emerged from his car. Styrofoam cup in hand, he shuffled directly beneath Evan into the alley. Evan froze, his arms slightly extended, a bird debating flight. The board shimmied, threatening to topple, his calves and thighs screaming to hold it in check. The cop hurled his coffee cup into a Dumpster, the wet thunk echoing up the tight alley walls. Hitching his pants, he retreated to the cruiser. The door slammed.
Evan exhaled.
Then he kept on. A few more painful steps brought him to the opposing balcony. He hopped down, drew the surfboard across, and tilted it behind a tall fern, stashing it there for his retreat. Lights glowed deep in the attached apartment, but no one was in view. Evan picked the cheap lock on the sliding door, cut diagonally through the room, and eased out onto the west-facing balcony, the one overlooking Broadway. Using it as a launching point, he hopped across two parallel balconies, passing unnoticed before a make-out session in progress and then two grown men immersed in Grand Theft Auto. One last jump brought him to the sniper’s roost.
He shot a cursory glance across Broadway. The vantage gave a nice, clear shooting angle into the restaurant, but the rest of the plaza was mostly blocked from view. Slatcher’s follow-up shots had to have been taken from higher ground. The roof.
Evan turned to face the apartment itself. A perfect circle the size of a Frisbee had been cut into the glass door right beside the handle. The hole had been made by a circular glass cutter with a suction cup, a favorite of thieves. And snipers. Evan knew from experience how much the missing glass helped — no bullet refraction, no suspiciously slid-back door, no crack for the wind to fluff a curtain and draw the eye. The room beyond was clearly unoccupied, neatly vacuumed, prepped to show potential renters. The front door faced him directly across.
Evan was about to reach through the hole and unlock the slider when the front door opened. He pivoted out of view just as the female cop stepped into the apartment, her flashlight sweeping the room. He kept his shoulder blades pinned to the stucco wall beside the glass, hoping she’d head for the kitchen first as on her earlier patrols. But the flashlight beam wagged back and forth, approaching.
She was heading straight for the balcony.
Evan jumped up lightly, grabbing the edge of the flat roof, his palms facing inward. The lever clicked beside him as the cop unlocked the door. It started to rattle open. Evan hoisted his legs up and over his grip, a variation on a gymnast’s high-bar rotation. As the cop’s boots tapped out onto the balcony, Evan slid smoothly onto his stomach on the roof and pulled his hands back from the edge. His shirt made a slight grinding sound against the graveled tar paper, and the flashlight beam shot up over the roof’s edge, a science-fiction effect. He remained motionless, not so much as breathing. The beam played along the concrete lip. He could smell the faintest trace of the cop’s perfume.