“Go. That way.”
The cab driver pulled out sharply. “I can’t flip a U here, pal.”
Tim slid low in the seat as the cab passed the front of his building. Two cop cars were parked at the entrance, flanking the Beast, which idled at the curb. Bear’s broad frame was immediately evident among the other Arrest Response Team deputies, cut from the headlights’ glow like a dark statue. Joshua stood facing him, wearing a plush bathrobe, shaking his head. They did not look his way as the cab passed.
“Get to a freeway,” Tim said. “The 101. Hurry up.”
The cabbie waved a meaty hand dismissively, his other busy keeping time with the aria, sweeping back and forth as though spreading butter on toast.
One block away, a block and a half. Tim felt no abatement of his unease. When they turned the corner onto Alameda, he experienced the suffocating sensation of moving into an ambush, his second in less than twenty-four hours. The city seemed to pull in and around him-random, disparate movement suddenly given direction and meaning, a car here, a bystander’s turned head, the glint of binocs from a passing apartment building-and Tim thought again, How? How are they still on me?
Behind the wheel of a dark Ford sedan parked curbside, a face glowed with the light of a GPS screen. Coke-bottle glasses, pasty skin-the archetypal electronic-surveillance geek. Tim’s eyes tracked up a telephone pole, spotting a cluster of cell-site tubes.
Beaten at his own game. Somewhere, through his quickening alarm, a phrase rose into consciousness: the Revenge of the Nerds.
Several blocks away, the whine of sirens became audible, closing in.
Tim dug in his pockets, pulling out the Nextel and the Nokia. The Nokia was certainly clean-he’d just gotten it, and no one had the number. The Nextel’s top button glowed green, showing a good connection to network.
The cab was surrounded by trucks and cars and two other taxis. The cabbie accelerated to make a green light, and they started up the ramp to the freeway, the other lanes and traffic peeling off. Tim leaned out the window and took his best shot, tossing the Nextel through the open back window of the taxi beside them as it drifted away, its lane veering right.
The cell phone struck the sill and bounced in, landing in the lap of a surprised matron wearing an excess of makeup. Oblivious, Tim’s cabbie turned up the radio and kept humming, kept conducting. Tim twisted in his seat, looking out the rear window. A wall of vehicles with blaring sirens swept right, hard, just before the exit, following the other taxi and closing in hard. Down on the patchwork streets below, he made out the flashing lights of two vehicle checkpoints he’d narrowly missed.
It wasn’t until they’d passed two exits without any sign of a tail that he relaxed.
He had his weapon, loaded with six bullets, his Nokia phone, the clothes on his back, and a little over thirty dollars in cash. The rest of his stuff was in the trunk of the Acura, which he’d go back for tomorrow, if the area was clear. He’d signed the lease on his apartment as Tom Altman, so that meant his bank account was either frozen or soon would be. He had the cabdriver drop him off at an ATM and succeeded in pulling out six hundred dollars-the maximum withdrawal.
He walked up the block and made a call from a phone booth. Not surprisingly, Mason Hansen was in the office.
“Working late?”
A long pause. “Rack, listen, I…Look, they told me what was going on. I had to…”
“They pulled my phone number from the records of the cell phone you sourced for me, didn’t they? And you confirmed it for them.” A cop car drove by, and Tim turned away, hiding in the phone booth like a down-at-heel Superman. “You knew mine was the number dialed at 4:07 A.M.”
“Your colleagues came in with warrants. What was I supposed to do?” His voice picked up anger. “And you didn’t exactly come clean with me either. You’re in deep shit.”
“You can stop your trace. I won’t be on long enough.”
In the background Tim heard the faint chirp of another line-probably Bear calling in. He was about to hang up, but Hansen’s voice caught him.
“Uh, Rack?” A nervous pause. “You’re not gonna come after me, are you?”
The note of anxiety in Hansen’s voice shot straight through Tim, leaving him wobbled. “Of course I’m not going to hurt you. What do you think I am?”
No answer. Tim hung up.
His palms had gone slick with sweat, a reaction his body reserved not for fear or strain or even sadness, but for shame.
The Kill Clause
41
SINCE HE FIGURED Bear would have deputies all over Dray’s for the night, Tim cabbed back and checked into a shitty motel downtown, a few miles from his old apartment building. He’d be able to scout the Acura first thing in the morning and maybe reclaim it.
The bedspread smelled like shaving cream. He called her from the Nokia, knowing they couldn’t be set up to trace it. “Andrea.”
A sharp intake of air. “Bear said you’d been shot. They found blood, bandages in the bathroom when they flushed you out.”
“Superficial. It’s nothing.”
She heaved a sigh that kept going and going. “Say it again,” she said. “I thought I might not…Say my name again.”
He hadn’t heard relief like that in Dray’s voice since he’d phoned her from base after a deployment to Uzbekistan went a week over. “Andrea Rackley.”
“Thank you. Okay. Deep breath.” She followed her own instructions. “Now, you want the bad news or the bad news?”
“Start with the bad news.”
“I got nothing and more nothing. ‘Danny Dunn’ didn’t put out. And I’m oh for twenty-three on black PT Cruisers in the area. None of the licenses checked out. Not a one.”
Tim felt his last flicker of hope gutter.
“That and the damn safety-deposit key took me all day today. Good thing I don’t have to work for a living. I’m hitting a few more banks first thing tomorrow, so we’ll see.”
Tim tried to keep the disappointment from his voice. “When you talked to Bear, did he mention why my name isn’t out to the media?”
“The service isn’t salivating at the prospect of the press. And the district office isn’t eager to follow LAPD’s nosedive in public esteem. I’d guess they’re determined to keep it in the family until they nail your ass. Let the out-of-towners take the heat for now. Plus, it’s not as though you’re a live threat to kill innocents. You’re just after them.” She snickered. “The Vigilante Three.”
“Let the animals kill each other.”
“Something like that. Or maybe they know you stand a better chance than they do at tracking down your team before things get even more out of hand.”
“Then why are they kicking down my door?”
“Tannino’s got his ass to cover. And the service’s. A lot of due diligence getting thrown around.”
“He must regret ever laying eyes on me.”
“I don’t know. Bear claims Tannino’s upset that he couldn’t protect you more on the Heidel-Mendez shooting. He knows it was a good shooting, and he knows you got hung out. He admires the way you went, Bear says, that you threw in your badge like an old-schooler. Gary Cooper all the way. But he thinks that’s what pushed you over the edge, especially after Ginny. He feels partially responsible, the dago softy.”
Tannino’s decency, in the midst of all this, moved him. But if the full-force ART entry on Tim’s apartment was any indication, it wouldn’t buy him an extra inch when the cards were down.
“I need some help, Dray. See if you can pull some cash out of our account for me. A couple grand.”
“I’ll do it first thing. Hell, I’m spending the morning running around to banks, not like it’s out of my way.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m your wife, stupid. It’s part of the deal.”
The sheets smelled of dust, and the pillow was so soft his head parted the feathers, angling uncomfortably to the mattress.
He awoke with a cramp that stretched from his neck down through his rib cage. The showerhead coughed and spit lukewarm water. A swirl of stray hairs clogged the drain. The towel was so small Tim had to strain his shoulders to dry his back.