One roll, ready for pickup.
The photograph looked like shit, but it did its job. Pronounced against a blur of yellow stucco were five large painted numbers. The picture had been taken at a slant, encompassing the corner street sign. All the info, in one neat little snapshot.
I lowered the photograph and stared at the real thing. Precise angle, precise distance. I was standing where the photographer had been when he'd snapped the shot-across the street on an apartment-complex driveway leading sharply down into an underground garage. As I leaned against the retaining wall, my head was just above street level. An inconspicuous spot. Which was good, given the dark sedan pulled to the curb in front of the neighboring building.
The picture was one of only two that were exposed in the roll, waiting for me at the photomat I'd visited last time. Logic dictated that Mack was the guy who'd taken them. After all, he'd left me the first film-processing slip. But two things bothered me: The quality of the picture was poor by the standards of a professional photographer. And the film was a standard 35mm, not the high-end Ektachrome he'd used before.
I slid the second photo out from behind the first. A head-on of an apartment door. Above the peephole, in tarnished brass-2G. Anyone or anything could be behind that door, and anyone or anything could have been leading me there. But I had to go.
I glanced back up the road at the dark sedan. Tinted windows. Engine off. But I knew that the car wasn't unoccupied. The mole Wydell had warned me about?
Bracing myself, I stepped out from cover and walked briskly up the sidewalk, heading away from the sedan, hugging the buildings. The glut of apartments here, south of Pico near Lincoln, had been untouched by the Westside richification. Peeling paint, crumbling stucco. Tree roots had buckled the concrete in several places. I was sweating, desperate to look over my shoulder. I tried to hurry, then tried to slow down. No car door opened behind me; no engine roared.
Turning the corner, I passed my parked truck and looped back behind the complex. I hopped over a locked gate onto the pool patio. The door from the courtyard into the building was unlocked. I took the stairs, easing out onto the second floor. A damp hall, carpet still holding on from the seventies. Down the length, past a laundry room, through a fire door, and there it was. 2G.
The door was slightly ajar, the latch resting against the plate.
I stood and listened. Nothing.
I didn't like that unsecured door one bit. Before I went through it, I wanted to check out the rest of the floor, scout some exits, make Liffman proud.
I reversed down the hall to an emergency stairwell that dumped out into a side alley. On my way back to 2G, I ducked into the laundry room. Dry heat. Shoving the window open, I glanced down. Six feet below was a pool shed.
Cautiously I made my way back up the hall. Through that open sliver in the doorway of 2G came a sharp odor. I knocked, and the door wobbled open a few inches. No answer.
I stepped inside. The reek of gasoline. The sun was low and fat in the street-facing window, making me squint. A figure in a chair, head bowed. Newspaper spread on the floor under and around him.
The place was torn apart. Drawers emptied. Couch cushions slashed. Chairs flipped over. A familiar tableau. The big window was open, a faint breeze lending body to a limp, shoved-back curtain.
"Mack?" I eased forward. The front of the man's shirt was stained. A crimson bib.
My shoes padded on the moist newspaper. The print wadded and blurred, soaked in gasoline. The man was bound to the chair, cloth strips tying his wrists and ankles. Wild blond hair, just like Charlie's.
My breath came back to me as an echo, as if off the walls of a cavern. I reached out an unsteady hand, gripped the hair, and raised the head. The resemblance was shocking. Not just the Mick Jagger mouth but also the wide brow and intense, neurotic eyes. The Voice in the Dark, a dead ringer for his father as a younger man. The major difference being the second smile etched across his throat.
Stunned, I let go of Mack's head, and it flopped forward again, chin to chest. Mindful of the window, I dropped to the floor. His bare foot was inches from my head. I fought my stomach back into place. I hadn't seen a dead body since Frank's, and the smell alone about undid me.
The abraded flesh, the restraints, the gasoline dousing-no question he'd been persuaded to talk. Which meant he'd talked about me. And likely revealed his photo-slip gimmick, which they'd imitated with a lousy picture shot on cheap film.
I'd either sneaked in past whoever was watching or walked into their setup. Despite the open window, the gasoline fumes were starting to get to me. I crawled over to the window and peered down at the street. The sedan was still parked in its spot, the impervious black windshield throwing off a glare.
I turned, my back to the wall beneath the window, regarding the tossed apartment. Mack's killer or killers looking for whatever Charlie had been trying to sell. Or for the banded hundreds, still crammed into the pasta pot beneath my kitchen counter, where even Mack didn't know they were. Mack had told me he had a second key from Charlie. I assumed he kept it hidden-but where? Probably close, where he could access it in an emergency. I thought about Charlie's sleeping on top of that floor safe every night. Maybe he'd taught his son where to conceal things, as Frank had taught me. Frank and Charlie, platoonmates and colleagues, had a few tricks in common. Had they been trained to seek out the same hiding places?
I crawled to the sink and, staying low, reached up over the counter into the sink and worked my hand into the garbage disposal.
A magnetic box under the lip.
I yanked it free, fought it open. Another key.
Brass, just like the other one, but this was numbered 228. Probably right next to the P.O. box that had held the torn page of numerals. I'd been within a foot of whatever this key guarded. Oblivious. I flipped it over, read the familiar print: U.S. GOV'T, UNLAWFUL TO DUPLICATE. I shoved the key into the case, the case into my front pocket.
What else could I find that they hadn't? And how much time did I have?
With mounting panic I scurried toward the bedroom, skidding over fallen books, the titles staring up at me in bold-Living Sober, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, The Big Book. A stripe of wet carpet ran under and ahead of me, a guiding trail. My face was down near the floor, close enough that the vapor stung my eyes. Mack stared at me from the chair, a dark smudge at the edge of my vision.
In the bedroom a file cabinet by the double futon had been knocked over, photographs and papers scattered. I dug through the mess on the floor. Loose film cases, holding Ektachrome 100. Another contained a dime bag of weed. So much for living sober. Among glossy eight-by-tens of armchairs and bookcases, I found a picture of me climbing down the telephone pole the night I'd gone to Frank's old house.
The nightstand light had tilted over, throwing an ellipse of gold across a book. Twelve Steps. No dust jacket.
I'd slid over another book wrapped in that dust jacket on my way to the bedroom. Clambering on all fours back to the main room, doing my best to ignore the slumped, bound form across the way, I flung the books aside until I found the dust-jacket lettering-Twelve Steps. I tore off the cover to reveal what it was hiding-a leather-bound journal.
My fingers moved furiously through the pages. A ledger. Some pluses. A lot of minuses. Next to each sum was what I assumed to be a basketball score. LA 98, Miami 102~ $8,000. NC 88, Duke 90, $8,000. Interspersed were steep interest charges. The debt, as of last month, was $383,918.00.
The Voice in the Dark had been clear. I need my money. Not I want my money. As soon as the other addictions had fallen away, a new one had grabbed him.