“What do I get?”
“Life in prison without the possibility of parole. Any place in the federal system you choose within the continental United States. A guarantee from the governor of the State of California that you will be looked after by the medical staff and receive any medications that you require.”
“Sounds like paradise,” he said.
“Beats tying a sheet around your neck and ending up in a hole in the ground.”
He paused a moment, reviewing the photos as he considered her proposition. His eyes lingered on the shot of Ramira. Then he found the reporter’s dog in the pile and looked at it for a long time. Most juries liked dogs.
“I’m gonna need to think this over,” he said.
Lena nodded. “You’ll be taken to Men’s Central Jail for the night and placed in isolation. You can think it over and we’ll talk tomorrow morning. The offer’s good until then.”
Lena gathered the photos, returning them to her files. As she got up to leave, Cava tried a third time.
“It’s not like I was hiding,” he said. “But it had to start somewhere. How did you find me?”
She turned from the door and looked at him, thinking about Denny Ramira and the investigation that had cost him his life.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said.
45
Maybe it was the stars, the planets, or even some weird moon thing that crazy people talk about. Some sort of perfect astrological alignment that he didn’t understand and couldn’t see because the clouds covered the sky. Maybe he had an angel looking over his shoulder. A halfwit angel who took him on as a test case or lost a bet. After all, there had to be a reason why they called this place the City of Angels.
Or maybe this was the moment. The big one when the door opened and the rest of your life winked at you from the other side.
Nathan G. Cava watched Parker Center fade into the night, then turned to the two cops sitting in the front seat. He hadn’t caught their names when they cuffed his wrists behind his back. And he hadn’t bothered to ask who they were as they led him out of the building to an unmarked car for what everyone believed would be his last ride as a free man.
They were older guys. Seasoned veterans. At the end of their shift and making the trip before they went home. Cava didn’t want to know their names because they were part of the moment, too.
The car stopped at a red light on North Alameda Street. Men’s Central Jail was a brief five-minute drive somewhere up the road. The cops weren’t talking to each other, so Cava had to become still.
Maybe it was just the morphine, he thought-some small amount that remained in his system, relaxing his muscles and joints and making his body extraordinarily pliable tonight. Maybe it was his will to live. His will to spend the rest of his days as a free man under the sun. Or, the secret that he had kept from Lena Gamble and every other cop that he wasn’t as stupid as they thought. That all his money was safe and secure because he never kept it anywhere near his apartment.
Cava didn’t care either way. All he knew was that he had a chance. One last chance to squirm through the door before it slammed shut.
The car started moving again. Cava had managed to slip his bound wrists underneath his body and work the handcuffs behind his knees. Leaning forward slightly, he strained to lower his hands to the floor. If he could just step through them. If he could just manage to bring his arms forward-
A thought surfaced. The sound of a jail cell door reverberating in his skull.
Cava bent his legs and pushed his wrists lower until he reached his heels. All he needed was another half inch. It suddenly occurred to him that he wasn’t wearing his Bruno Maglis. That he had been given a cheap pair of slip-on sneakers. He looked back at the cops as he slid them off his feet, then pushed down as hard as he could. His socks were sweaty and he could feel the chain between the handcuffs begin rolling over the moist cotton until-
He’d made it.
He leaned back in the seat, masking his smile with a darting look out the window. His mind was a jumbled blur. Everything crazy. He slipped his feet back into those twenty-three-dollar shoes and felt his stomach get hot.
They had just crossed over the Santa Ana Freeway and were passing Union Station on the right. Up ahead he could see a series of industrial buildings marring the landscape. The street looked darker there. One empty parking lot after the next. He turned back to the cop sitting in the passenger seat, trying to remember how the man’s gun sat on his belt. Cava knew that he would only get one chance. That although he would have the element of surprise on his side, his move would have to be decisive and smooth. But even more important, the car would have to be moving fast enough that the driver couldn’t let go of the wheel and interfere. Cava estimated that he needed three seconds at over 30 mph, no more and no less.
The car stopped before another red light. The cop behind the wheel gave him a hard look through the rearview mirror.
“Everything okay back there?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m making my list and checking it twice.”
The cop kept staring at him. Giving him the evil fucking eye. Cava looked away for fear the man might read his mind. When the light turned green and they started moving again, he watched the speedometer begin to rise and worked on controlling his breathing. He slid behind the cop in the passenger seat, his eyes still on the dash. The car continued to accelerate forward into the barren cityscape. Ten mph turned into 20, then became 30 and 40, until they topped out at 50 mph.
Kill speed.
Cava grit his teeth and reached deep down in his rotten gut for the courage. And then he burst through the cosmic door, swinging his arms over the man’s head, grasping the gun at his waist and pulling up until he found his prey’s neck and drew the chain between the handcuffs tight.
The cop struggled beneath the chain, kicking his legs into the windshield. The car started swerving, the cop behind the wheel slamming on the brakes. Cava jacked the slide on the semiautomatic, saw his own face in the rearview mirror and didn’t know who he was. He jerked the gun up and to the side, pulling the trigger on the driver as he throttled the cop in the passenger seat. The gun roared, loud as a jackhammer inside the tight space. One shot after another, cut against the sounds of both men screaming. Cava could feel his arms shaking. His entire fucking body. He could see the rounds moving to the left-breaking through the windshield, the door, and then finally, exploding into the driver’s face.
The car veered off the road, smashed into something, and flipped over. Skidding across a parking lot, Cava rode it out as best he could watching the roof beneath his feet collapse in slow motion. When the car finally ground to a stop, he took a deep breath and shuddered.
He could smell gasoline in the air. A lot of it. From the glow outside the window, he guessed that the back of the car was burning but couldn’t see the flames. He looked under the front seat, everything still upside down. Both cops were strapped in with their feet up in the air like a pair of dead astronauts all set for their rocket launch to heaven. Cava could hear the flames now and scurried into the front compartment. Once he found the keys to the handcuffs, he grabbed the gun and crawled underneath the cop in the passenger seat out the window.
He was hyperventilating. The flames were beginning to engulf the car. He could hear sirens breaking through the night. But as he worked his way out of the handcuffs, he heard something else. He turned to the car and looked in the window. The cop in the passenger seat was staring back at him. He was reaching out the window and moaning, his face awash in blood.
Cava checked the progress of the fire, then looked back at the cop. The sirens were getting closer, but help probably wouldn’t make it in time.
He shook his head, thinking about the guilt that was piling up. The idea that once the killing started, it took on a life of its own and was hard to stop. He could feel the cosmic door closing on him and knew that he needed to find a new set of wheels and bolt. He picked up the gun with a jittery hand and put two rounds in the cop’s head. Then he ran off.