It seemed to me I was up against something worse than just a commercial murder operation. Something more evil had reared its head this morning. Now, as Myers and I crossed the grassy park past one of the slender, HardSteel pylons of the Wilshire Monorail, we were escorted by one medium-sized and one very tall black man, both seeming dedicated to Myers' survival.
I decided that when I got to the car, I'd transmit a copy of Myers' video statement to Joe, with a recommendation that he transmit copies to whoever—the feebs and Lane County, I suppose. Promptly, before Masters tried blowing up our office building. These new semi high-rises, built to current earthquake specs and with key structural elements made of HardSteel, could stand a lot. But a delivery van loaded with high explosives rammed into the entryway? Or a well-trained hit team with assault rifles and grenades, preceded by a couple of pleasant-looking guys with Uzis in their attaché cases and pistols inside their jackets? Guys who could take out the lobby guards before the man at the desk could hit the switch that locked the elevators and stairwell doors?
Sure I was paranoid. I'd earned it.
As far as that was concerned, my escorts, my Choi Li Fut, the Walther under my arm, and Myers' undoubted close-combat skills wouldn't mean a thing against an armed hit team with orders simply to kill. My real security lay in staying on the move, location unknown.
Shortly we were walking along Sixth Street, striding out, unconsciously hurrying. A block ahead, just across from the handsome, vine-grown privacy wall of the Frederic Knepper Village greenbelt, stood the First Congregational Church. Its parking lot was surrounded by a waist-high, ornamental stone wall overgrown by ivy.
I stopped. "Just a minute, guys," I said. The lot would be a perfect ambush site. But hell! That was silly! Who'd know I left the car there? All I'd told Fidela was, I was going to Lafayette-MacArthur Park, and I was reasonably sure no one had followed me.
Unless . . . Had Steinhorn been carrying a key to one of the vehicles? Each company vehicle was fitted with a 360-degree, narrow-band pulse beacon, so they could be located in emergencies from our office and from our other vehicles. Joe had a policy that you left them on except under certain conditions, unusual and specified. Some of our vehicles were kept in the outside lot, and when Steinhorn left the building, he could have . . . But hell, he hadn't even known I'd be going out that morning! And given Steinhorn's appearance, the gate guard would have called the office. Policy was to report anything unusual. And the office would have let me know.
But if someone cut me down with an assault rifle as I entered the parking lot, all that logic wouldn't mean squat. Paranoid was the word all right, but just the same . . . I looked at Jones. "Arnette," I said, "there's something I need you to do."
He looked at me suspiciously. I opened my gadget pouch, took out the minicam, then popped out the backup cube I'd made and handed it to him. "I want you to take this to the nearest police station. Tell them Martti Seppanen from Prudential gave it to you. In case anything happens to Robert and me." I repeated my name so he got it. "And tell them what it's about. So they take the time to listen to it."
He put the cube in his pocket, but stood as if unwilling to leave Myers. He still didn't trust me. A thought came to me then, and I looked at the other guy. The thought was of the biggest eager beavers in L.A. television news. Taking out my minicam again, I popped in another microcube for copying, then stood there watching the red light blink. When it quit, I took the cube out and held it up, looking at the other dancer. "I need someone to get this to KCBS-TV for me. To the news director."
He was a slim muscular black with sharp, pretty much Caucasian features. Just now he was grinning. He knew exactly what I had in mind. "I'm your man, shark," he said.
"You know where it is?"
"On Sunset, where it crosses the one-oh-one." His accent struck me as Jamaican.
"Good. When this gets aired, the danger of Robert and me getting hit goes way down, quick." I put it in his outstretched hand.
"It's done," he said, and started to turn away. I put my hand on his arm.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Duncan."
"Thanks, Duncan." I put out a hand and he shook it.
"That's all right," he said. "You have good luck, eh?" Then he took off at an easy lope, presumably for a monorail station a couple of blocks west.
Arnette hadn't been happy; now he looked resigned. "All right," he said, "I'll take this one to the Rampart Station. It ain't far." He too left us then, jogging northward up Hoover to bypass the privacy-walled Alvarado Village. By that time Duncan had reached the corner of Occidental, where the parking lot began, and was crossing Sixth against the light, through a gap in the traffic.
"Okay, Robert," I said, "let's go." If there was an ambusher behind the stone wall . . . Hell, I thought, it's just your nerves. And I was right. When we walked through the entrance, we were the only ones there. I looked the vehicle over. It had been locked, and still was. Had someone rigged it to blow up? I looked it over, through the windows and underneath. Nothing. Still, I was pretty uncomfortable, inserting the Ferroplast key into the slot, and even more so pressing the latch release and opening the door. Then Myers and I got in. I shut off the beacon, activated the motor, drove out of the lot, and started west on Sixth, feeling a lot better.
Until, in an approaching car, I saw two faces I knew. One was Steinhorn; he was driving despite a swollen nose and two swollen eyes. The other was Kelly Masters; I knew his face from Carlos' video footage. I saw Steinhorn's mouth open as if shouting, and Masters turned. His eyes latched onto me like something—evil, as if he were memorizing my face. All this in about two seconds; then they were past me.
In my rearview mirror I saw Steinhorn try a U-turn to come after me. The move depended on other cars swerving or braking quickly enough to avoid hitting him. Two of them didn't. He sideswiped one of them, and at almost the same moment the other one broadsided him. I was just coming to the intersection with Vermont Avenue. I turned north, my heart rate about a hundred and sixty.
31
THE WORLD TURNED
UPSIDE DOWN
I'd planned to drive to the office and deliver Myers. I'd also figured to call Joe and tell him what I'd learned. But that morning's bombing, and the encounter with Steinhorn and Masters, had shaken me. I didn't trust my assumptions anymore. It might be dangerous to go to the office. It was hard to imagine that SVI would start an actual shooting war with us, but they'd already blown up a building and killed a lot of people.
Tooling north up Vermont, I decided to leave Robert off somewhere first. If there was an ambush waiting for us near the office, I wanted him safe. Molly Cadigan's wasn't too far; I'd see if she'd keep him for a few hours. When the police got the cube, SVI would soon be out of business.
I turned the short wave on to the police band. It was way too soon for Arnette to have arrived at the LAPD's Rampart Station, but when they broadcast a bulletin to watch for SVI's people, I wanted to be sure to catch it. Maybe, I thought, I should call LAPD headquarters and tell them about Masters. Maybe they could pick him up at the wreck. I'd do that, I decided, at the next stop light, when I had a break from dealing with traffic.
As luck had it, the next several signals were green. I was on the Hollywood Freeway overpass when a police broadcast grabbed my attention. It wasn't what I'd expected. Three cars were ordered to watch for, and arrest for questioning, a black Hispanic male named Hector Duncan, height about five-eleven, weight about 170, believed to be on foot in the vicinity of the CBS studios on Sunset Boulevard. And to bring him downtown to detective headquarters!