“No point,” I said.
“Gotta keep moving forward,” he said. “No point in looking back. Right?”
“Right.”
But a plain truth filled the space between us- unseen but corrosive.
No one had cared because he’d been second cadre all the way. Too unimportant to kill.
31
I pulled out of the network lot. This time someone followed me.
At first I wasn’t sure, wondered if the time spent immersed in Crevolin’s fugitive memories had made me paranoid.
The first hint of suspicion came at Olympic and La Cienega, just east of Beverly Hills, as I squinted into a platinum sunset glare that ate through my shades. A tan car two lengths behind me changed lanes the moment my eyes hit the mirror for the twentieth time.
I slowed. The tan car slowed. I looked back, trying to make out the driver, saw only a vague outline. Two outlines.
I slowed some more, received an angry honk for my efforts. I picked up speed. The tan car held back, stretching the distance between us. We cruised that way for a while, then hit a red light at La Peer. When things got moving again, I eased into the fast lane and put on as much speed as the crush would allow. The tan car continued to hold back, retreated into vehicular anonymity. By Doheny Drive, I couldn’t see it anymore.
So much for high intrigue.
I tried to relax but kept drifting back to exploding warehouses. My imagination gorged itself on conspiracy theories until my head started to hurt. Then I noticed it again. Center lane, two lengths behind…
I managed to get into the center lane. The tan car moved out of it, into the fast lane, coming up on my left. Wanting a better view?
Making sure not to move my head, I snuck a peek in the mirror. Still there.
Traffic in the right lane was dragging a bit now. I squeezed into it, settled into the slower pace. Hoping for a view of my own. The vehicles that had been in back of me whizzed by. I kept an eye to the left, waiting for the tan car to pass. Nothing.
Rearview peek: gone.
Another light at Beverly. Behind me, again. Two lengths.
It took until Roxbury for me to get back into the fast lane. The tan car stayed with me, all the way to Century City.
The sun was nearly down. Headlights came on. The tan car became a pair of yellow spots, indistinguishable from hundreds of others.
The loss of visibility made me feel violated, though I knew I was also less easy to spot. Anger took the place of fear. Felt a whole lot better than fear.
Practice-what-you-preach time, Doc.
Best-defense-is-a-good-offense time, Doc.
Just before Overland, I made a sudden move into the center lane, then the right, drove a block and made a quick turn onto a side street, just past a Ralph’s market. Speeding a hundred yards, I doused my lights, pulled over to the side, and waited, the engine still running.
Residential street. Small nicely kept houses. Tall trees. No foot traffic. Lots of parked cars on both sides; my turn to blend in.
The first set of headlights from Olympic belonged to a gray Porsche 944 that zipped by at fifty per and pulled into a driveway at the end of the block. I made out the shape of a man with a briefcase. He disappeared into one of the bungalows.
Soon after came a Dodge Ram van with the logo of a plumbing company on the side, driving at moderate speed. It stopped at the next corner and turned right.
Then nothing for several minutes. I waited, almost ready to concede the afternoon to paranoia, when I heard an automotive hum coming from Olympic.
Heard but didn’t see.
The side mirror revealed a faintly resolving image, just a hint of chrome under streetlight: a car with its headlights off, making its way slowly toward me.
The hum grew louder.
I slumped low.
The tan car cruised by at ten per. Plymouth sedan. Not unlike the unmarked Milo used. Not unlike the car he’d thought had been following us on our way to the Holocaust Center.
Ten miles per. Slow cruise. The way cops cruise when they’re looking for trouble.
My engine suddenly sounded deafening. They had to hear. I should have turned it off…
But the tan car kept going, turned right, and disappeared. I pulled out, keeping my lights off, and went after it. Caught up just as it made another right turn. Tried to read the license plate, couldn’t, got closer.
Not close enough to make out any details of the two people inside.
I nudged the accelerator, came just short of tailgating.
Switched on my lights.
Nonreflector plates, a number, two letters, four more numbers. I shot a mental snapshot, developed it just as the passenger swiveled sharply and looked back.
The tan sedan came to a sudden stop. I jammed on the brakes to avoid rear-ending it. For a moment I thought there’d be a confrontation, was prepared to back away. But the tan car peeled rubber and took off.
I let it go, preserving letters and numbers in my head until I got home.
Still no luck reaching Milo; where the hell was he? I called his house and got the machine again. Phoned the Cedars-Sinai emergency room and asked for Dr. Silverman. Kick was in the middle of surgery, unable to come to the phone. I called the machine again and recited the tan car’s license number, explained why it was important to trace it as quickly as possible, and gave a summary of what I’d learned from Terry Crevolin. Talking to the damned thing as if it were corporeal, an old pal. Mahlon Burden would have been proud of me.
When I was through I phoned Linda at home.
“Hi,” she said. “Have you seen it yet?”
“Seen what?”
“The Massengil stuff hitting the fan- right now, the six o’clock news. Call me back when you’ve had your fill of it.”
The newscast was featuring the second assassination of the late assemblyman, this one not nearly as quick and clean as the ambush in Sheryl Jane Jackson’s backyard. A photo of Massengil that could have been a mug shot. An old one of Cheri T in a corkscrew hairdo and white eye shadow that was. The jail photographer had preserved her looking like the hollow-eyed, switchblade-in-purse streetwalker she’d once been.
The gloating anchorwoman went on in a sultry voice about sex for hire… the exact relationship between the two victims and Jackson still being unclear… sex scandal… sex sex sex… Massengil’s reputation as a law-and-order politician who’d campaigned against pornography… twenty-eight years in the state legislature advocating… sex… psychological adviser… sex…
She needn’t have bothered talking. Pictures were still worth millions of words: Massengil open-mouthed and snarling, Dobbs’s well-fed sanctimoniousness. Cheri’s eyes, full of corruption and defiance.
Now an action shot. Ocean Heights. The Widow Massengil walking out of her front door to a waiting car, black-garbed, face and snowy bouffant hidden by veil and hands. Hobbling, hunched, in the protective grip of all four sons. Flashbulbs popping, microphones thrusting. The bereaved family fleeing with all the dignity of war criminals hustled to the tribunal.
The station’s resident political commentator came on, wondering who was going to fill Massengil’s unexpired term. Apparently a political technicality was operative: Since Massengil’s death had occurred after the nominating period for his next term, there would be no special election and the remaining eight months of the term would go fallow. In accordance with tradition, the widow had been considered the most probable replacement, but today’s disclosures made her an unlikely contender. Faces of possible candidates flashed on the screen. A deputy mayor I’d never heard of. A former TV anchorman- with an obsession about separating paper trash from the rest of the garbage- who surfaced every few years to play small-time Harold Stassen and was regarded as a municipal joke.