Meanwhile I still had the lead I'd dug up the day before: Robert Myers. Carlos wasn't in—he was flying to Fresno that morning—or I'd have told him what I had in mind. So I clipped a gadget pouch on my belt, with some stuff I'd need, then told Fidela where I was headed, and left.
* * *
I took Sixth Street east toward downtown, and parked in the shade in the big lot at the First Congregational Church between Commonwealth and Occidental. Then I crossed the street to Lafayette-MacArthur Park, and started circulating. It's an open-access park south of Sixth Street, a mile long and half as wide. That's a lot of city blocks, and it always has a lot of people. Even finding someone seven feet tall and wearing a feathered headdress could take awhile.
The eastern section north of the lake is sort of a bivouac for street people—a lot of Plastosil bubble tents that the city set up, with interspersed latrines and showers, and stand-up mess tents with rice, beans, bread and cheese, and whatever produce is a glut on the current market.
There aren't as many street people as there used to be, and they're different from the street people of the eighties and nineties. A good job is still a problem for the functionally illiterate, but they're a lot less common than they were years ago. For a lot of today's street people, it's the rate of change that's gotten to them, and they've opted for days in the sun, with music or drugs or both, till they get bored with it or maybe die. When the weather's nice, there's a sense of fun and laughter. When it rains or a Santa Ana blows in, those who stay tend to get gloomy and suicidal, or surly and mean. Sort of a manic-depressive subculture. But this day was beautiful—sunny, temperature about 75, and a light breeze.
I'd been walking around for the better part of an hour, when I saw a small crowd on the west shore of the lake, gathered around some drumming and chanting. I drifted over. In the center of them, some guys, mostly blacks, were bounding up and down in a Watusi-looking dance. One of them was going so high, he looked like he was on a pogo stick. He wore a feathered headdress that added an extra foot to what was already way more height than anyone else there. Arnette Jones, I decided, and moved in closer. Maybe Robert Myers was one of the other dancers.
He wasn't. He was sitting cross-legged, slapping the bongos. I recognized the face from his picture. He was a caramel-colored, average sized, athletic-looking black. The dance was nearly over by the time I moved in. A tallish, lean-looking guy was doing a sort of rap counterpoint to the chant in some African-sounding language. He changed tempo, speeding up and raising his pitch; the drums crescendoed; then everything stopped, the dancers streaming sweat.
I'd already gone over and squatted down beside Myers. He looked at me, not very alert, under the influence of some chemical, hopefully New Orleans Sugar. It's supposed to be big with musickers, and they can shake it off if they need to. "Robert," I said quietly, "I'm trying to bust Kelly. For the abduction of Ray Christman. And for Christman's murder, if that's what he did to him."
He turned to me, coming back into the world a bit.
"Steinhorn's in L.A.," I went on. "Steinhorn and others. They've already killed McCarver. Maybe you knew that."
He shook his head.
"They don't wish you well, either. Kelly's gone kill-crazy, and if I could find you, his guys can. This morning he car-bombed the apartment house I live in. Lived in. It killed a lot of people; it's not known how many yet. If my wife had been in town and I hadn't gone out for breakfast, she and I would be dead now. That's what they had in mind."
I held his eyes. "If you're willing to give me your deposition regarding SVI and Christman, I can hide you where you can't be found. Not in the time Kelly will have. Because with your statement we can nail the sonofabitch. And as far as I'm concerned, you won't have to name any other names than Kelly Masters."
He was looking at me, apathetically but taking it all in. With the music and dancing over, the crowd was dispersing. Arnette Jones and another dancer were standing by though, to find out what was going on between me and their buddy.
"Robert, you want us to run this shark?" Jones asked. In street argot, a shark's a detective.
Myers shook himself, physically. "No," he said, looking up at Jones. "I told you I was in deep shit. Maybe the shark's got a ladder for me to climb out with."
I took the minicam out of my pouch and found his face in the viewfinder. I was going to get his statement now, before anything happened, before anything ran him off. I deliberately didn't read him his rights. It might spook him. Of course it would make him hard to prosecute, but if he netted Masters and company for us, that was fine with me. Joe and Carlos would understand, even if they weren't overjoyed. And if the prosecutor's office bitched, their heart wouldn't be in it. They're not what you'd call naive, and they've negotiated more than a few plea bargains.
"All right," I said, "if you'll speak slowly and clearly, starting with your name . . ."
He took a deep breath. "My name is Robert Fielding Myers. I was copilot of the skyvan that forcibly removed Ray Christman from Church of the New Gnosis property in Oregon about 7 October, 2011." He sounded like someone trained on being debriefed. I wondered if that was his Ranger training, or something the SVI taught its people. "Mr. Christman and a female companion were abducted by personnel acting for my employer, Servicio Viajero Internacional, of Ensenada, State of Baja California del Norte, Mexico. I'd been briefed as an alternate to the abductors, but I wasn't used in that role. I was the copilot.
"The managing partner of SVI, Kelly Masters, was the pilot. Masters is an ex-OSS officer. Christman was flown to Mexico alive and in constraints, to a place about twelve kilometers from Ensenada, arriving there at approximately 0230 hours, Pacific Time.
"After we arrived, I went home to bed. The next day I was told that Christman and the woman had been taken to a shut-down pottery works across the road, where they were killed, then cremated in a large pottery kiln. Their ashes, I was told, were dumped in a manure pit on an adjacent dairy farm, and covered with manure."
Myers hadn't changed expression during his recital. "How did they kill him?" I asked.
"The plan had been to resedate him, then suffocate him. But because Christman was a large man—this part is hearsay, from, uh, one of the guys there—because Christman was a large man and it was uphill to the pottery works, they decided to have him walk there before they resedated him. They didn't want to carry him. They told him they planned to hold him for ransom. Inside the plant though, he started to fight and kick, as if he realized what they had in mind. Maybe the kiln was on and he could hear the gas flames, I don't know. Then Mr. Masters shot him and they cremated him. While he was in the kiln, they suffocated the woman, and when they finished cremating Christman, they cremated her. And that's it."
"Thanks, Robert." I popped another microcube into the minicam and started making a copy. "That seems to cover it. We got samples of the dried blood from a mop, and from pores in the concrete. Your statement should clinch it. Now let's get you out of here."
I got to my feet and helped him up. Jones and the other dancer had heard the whole thing. I wasn't very comfortable with that, but I couldn't see what harm could come of it. There hadn't been anything I could do about it anyway, not and get Meyers' statement.