Schaeffer considered his options. He could stay behind this tree and let the shooter try to improve his angle to get a better shot. Either the shooter would succeed or he would fail, and he might make a mistake that let Schaeffer know where he was. It was only a half hour or so before dawn. At that point the shooter would have to leave or risk being seen and caught in a police blockade that closed off all the streets. Schaeffer could try to get to better cover than this tree trunk. There were several spots not far away-a stone house was behind him and to his left, but it was set far back from the street. And there were other trees he might use as way stations for a move up the block to the next corner.
As he considered, a delivery truck appeared up the block to his left and came toward him. He looked to his right to spot any obstacles. As the truck approached, he tried to see as much as he could of the area where the shooter must be. He still couldn't see anything conclusive, but there was a thick hedge that ran along the side of the big house across the street.
He judged the speed of the delivery truck, pushed off his tree, and ran beside it. He could see the side of it now, and the logo said it was from a bakery. The truck was going about twenty miles an hour when it passed him so he couldn't quite keep up with it. But a few seconds later the brake light beside him glowed and the truck began to slow for the stop sign at the next corner. He was with it now, fully hidden by it. He had not heard the sound of a bullet hitting anything yet, but he was sure the shooter must know that he'd left his tree.
The truck reached the end of the short block and stopped for the stop sign, but he kept running, sprinting across the intersection. The truck caught up with him and he ran with it for a few yards. But the long block gave the truck driver a chance to increase his speed, and the truck accelerated away from Schaeffer, revealing an alarming sight. A man had been running with him on the other side of the truck, and he was clearly the sniper. The man held a short rifle with a silencer, and he was just slowing down, turning his head to see whether he had outrun his prey.
Schaeffer was slightly behind him, and before the man could turn and bring the rifle around, Schaeffer shot him twice in the back and once in the head. Schaeffer's shots were loud, and there was a flurry of wings as a flock of frightened birds flew off above him. He turned to the right and ran. He had left his car three blocks away in a lot beside a closed restaurant on Fair Oaks, and now he ran as though he were an early morning jogger. He kept up a steady pace with his head up and his strides long, and he was there in under two minutes. He got in and drove north toward the freeway entrance. He noticed a small piece of paper, like a business card, under his windshield wiper. At the first red light he opened the door, snatched the card, and tossed it on the seat beside him, then drove. He got on the freeway, checked his mirrors frequently for a few minutes, and then began to think about what had just happened.
The man he had just killed was a professional shooter. One of the families-probably the Lazarettis-had gotten smart and realized that they probably shouldn't sit around waiting for him. They had also apparently admitted to themselves that the middle-aged, overweight former legbreakers they had been depending on weren't going to be able to protect the bosses from a determined attacker. All the families must have learned he had killed the Castigliones by now, and they had gone into protective mode. One of the families had hired a pro.
Schaeffer hoped the man had been a solitary operator, as he had once been. He didn't want to have to begin worrying about ambushes, booby traps, and assault weapons, but for the moment, at least, he would have to. His guess was that the Lazaretti family had done this. They were the family that had the longest and deepest relationships with violent locals. Operating drug distribution rings wasn't the same as passing money to movie and music companies. The people you met were a bit more feral.
The man had been waiting in an area that was ambiguous. It was near the house of Tony Lazaretti, the one who ran the Lazaretti interests, but it was also about a block down the street from the Castiglione caretaker, Mike Bruno. The Balacontano faction's ambassador to the film industry was Jimmy Montagno, and his house was only a block to the east. The man had not been waiting at one of the houses; he had simply set himself up in the neighborhood to see if anybody came to look around. That was smart.
He couldn't let down his guard now. There were still police, and there was no guarantee that the shooter he'd killed had been alone. That was disconcerting and made him look again in all of the mirrors to be sure a second shooter wasn't in a car following him. His eye caught the little white card that had been stuck under the windshield wiper of the car. He picked it up from the seat.
He was expecting an ad of some kind, but one side was blank, and the other had small, neat handwriting in black ink. CALL ME. URGENT. The phone number was the one Elizabeth Waring had given him in the Chicago church: 202 555-8990.
She had found his car in this city thousands of miles from the place she'd last seen him. How? Was there a global positioning system the Justice Department had activated? LoJack? The car had an antitheft system. Maybe she had triggered it. Maybe in Chicago the FBI had taken pictures of the license numbers of all the cars parked around Vince Pugliese's building that night, and she had somehow narrowed down the list. He had driven to Los Angeles quickly, trying to get to the next target before everybody reacted to the deaths of the Castiglione brothers. He'd stolen some California plates this morning off a pickup truck that was up on blocks and covered by a tarp, but hadn't put them on his car yet. The Illinois plates were still on the car, and that would have made it easier to spot. But if she'd known this was his car, why hadn't there been a contingent of FBI agents waiting with body armor and automatic weapons?
He left the freeway in Silverlake, drove to a quiet hillside street where his car was shielded from the windows of the nearby houses, and removed his Illinois plates. He drove a few more blocks, stopped, and put the California plates on his car.
He coasted downhill and found a convenience store on the first major street and went to the pay phone on the outer wall. He dialed the number of Elizabeth Waring. He waited a long time while the number rang, and he knew she must have gone to sleep after she'd found his car. When her voice came on, she sounded groggy and disoriented. "Hello?"
"What did you want?"
"I found out that the Lazaretti family hired a team of hit men to go after you."
"Why didn't you try to trap me when you found my car?"
"It cost me years to intuit your existence, then to meet you and realize how much you know. I want you to live to tell me about your former friends. Meanwhile, I thought I'd better warn you about the hit men, or you might get killed."
"I had already noticed a change in strategy. Thanks for the tip, though. It tells me a lot. Take care."
"Wait. I'm in Los Angeles right now. I need to talk to you in person. Is there anywhere you're willing to meet me?"
"Where are you staying?"
"The Sheraton Universal."
"I'll be in touch." He hung up, already wondering why he had called her and regretting that he had implied that he would meet her. She was dangerous and distracting at a time when he needed to keep up the pressure on the bosses. He hoped one of them would panic and do something stupid, but no matter what, he had to keep them nervous and off balance.
He knew the flaw in his reasoning was that it committed him to a course that probably wouldn't end well. He might be able to get a couple of families to begin picking each other off, but making them that agitated would first require him to accomplish a slow-motion massacre. He would have to show up in an increasing number of places where people would be waiting for him. And if he managed to get through it, all of the families would be more interested than before in killing him. What he was doing was arranging his own last stand, not his escape.