The cuffs. The Week. Eddi only had to do a short replay to catch herself up to things: Her trying to kill Raddatz. The thin man who threw a punch like he was throwing a small car.
She'd fucked up. Raddatz knew she was coming. Or just, rat that he was, had his back continually covered. However it was, Eddi had fucked up. And now there'd be some kind of very nasty retribution. If Raddatz was just, going to turn her over for attempted murder, she'd be in custody already. That he had no problem killing she knew already. But she wasn't dead. To Eddi that meant her death was going to come at a particular time and very likely none too quickly.
So she was going to die for her actions. It'd always been a possibility, though she'd thought it'd come by way of the state, not at private hands. She was going to die. Okay. Not okay, but… more immediate, more important, in her passing was there anything she could do to trip Raddatz up? Get him caught? Anything, same as setting a delayed fuse, that would after she was gone do to Raddatz what he was going to do to
her?
If there was-if- Eddi's head was in no shape to think on It. Anyway, that kind of logic was Movieville superspy thinking; the incredibly complex trap sprung from beyond the grave. Eddi was no superspy. At the moment she was little better than a screw-up cop.
A padlock popped. The rattle of a chain. Eddi couldn't tell in which direction the door was. Her senses were not working in concert. She heard the door open. She heard it close. She heard it lock again. Footsteps. Couldn't see from where they traveled. A voice came from directly above her.
The voice, Raddatz: "I'm going to tell you something; something that happened a few years back. I'll tell it to you, then we can talk about the way things are."
As long as he'd lived in LA Raddatz couldn't remember spending any significant time on Rodeo Drive, Why should he? It was Beverly Hills. It was the priciest bunch of blocks in LA County. Sick with high-end boutiques. Not stores, not shops. Boutiques. Armani, Gucci, Christian Dior, Chanel, Ralph Lauren. Valentino, Carrier and Tiffany. The priciest store on the planet-according to its own press-was on Rodeo. Bijan. Don't show up without an appointment. Don't show up without expecting to pay a min of a hundred grand. A pair of socks starts at fifty bucks. The rich bought on Rodeo. Tourists threw away good money on Rodeo so they could say they bought where the rich buy. Angelenos, regular Angelenos. didn't go anywhere, near the street. Unless they had to. Unless, for instance, they were MTac cops and somebody'd put in a call on a sighted freak.
Somebody'd put in a call. Raddatz was leading Ms element south on Rodeo.
The call had come in as a two-forty, an assault. That part was sketchy. What wasn't: One of the combatants picked up the other one and threw him a couple hundred feet. The area of eventual impact being the side of a store.
A boutique.
Threw him hard. What was left of the vie was still splattered, some kind of sick art, over the brick facade. There were a couple of the BHPD cops on patrol. They drew out, opened fire. Boxed the freak, but then backed off. It was Beverly Hills. BH cops rousted the homeless, kept the blacks and Hispanics from wandering the flats. What they didn't do, they didn't handle freaks. For that they called the LAPD.
LAPD sent MTac.
The streets'd been cleared. The civvies had been evacuated. The area was a quarter mile in circumference of ghost town. Maybe the freak had slipped away in the initial confusion. Maybe it was holed up in a dark corner next to overstocked, overpriced goods. It was up to West LA MTac-Raddatz and Carmichael and McCrae and Tice-to figure out which.
That meant going slow south on the drive.
That meant going boutique to boutique.
That meant getting into tight little spaces where cover was minimal, and getting caught in another operator's fire was a genuine concern.
And behind any door, any counter, in any dressing room, could be a freak cooling. Waiting to do damage to the cop who was a little too slow with his trigger.
Haute urban warfare.
"Clear?" Raddatz called to his element.
Down the line, over throat mics: "Clear."
"Clear."
"Clear."
That was what, twelve boutiques down. Twenty-five to go? Plus a couple of restaurants. Just as cautiously as when they'd entered the joint, the element was as much so corning out. Had to be. Relax a split second, plane your own edge, that's when you were begging for trouble.
Gloved hand under his Fritz helmet, Tice whipped clear sweat that was spilling over his brow, filling his eyes.
Raddatz, calling his progress in: "West LA to Central."
"Go ahead, West."
"We're clear. Move D Platoon down another fifty."
"Copy that, West. D Platoon moving fifty yards."
D Platoon. Special Weapons and Tactics. They were good. Plenty of them had elevated to G Platoon. Problem was, the ones who hadn't, they were okay doing overkill on the disgruntled employee of the weak huddled up in some office building looking to hand out some payback for his pink slip. Those cops'd avoided going MTac for a reason. The reason was usually fear. So D Platoon- SWAT-being the only fail-safe against a freak that got past his element didn't help Raddatz feel any better about the situation. Just more pressure. Either they got the freak, or the freak was likely to not be gotten at all.
Next up: Harry Winston's.
The four MTacs went for it, eyes moving. Always moving, sweeping, looking…
Enhanced strength. That's what they were dealing with. The perp fused the vie with a wall from two hundred feet away. That takes some kind of muscle. With freaks, what you were going up against was never certain. But, yeah, probably it was a freak with enhanced strength. That meant not just looking for somebody. That meant keeping an eye out for a truck or a generator or a mainframe computer… whatever the thing might feel like picking up same as a kid's toy and tossing your way. That possibility was obvious. But the thing could just as easily flick a paper clip at you with enough force, even with a vest it'd tear through the Kevlar and hit like a Teflon bullet. Ana should you be lucky or unlucky enough to dodge what it was thrown, get close to it, if it got you in its paws, it could crush you. Rip clean your limbs. Snap you in two. Dealer's choice. The freak being the dealer.
Sirens. Getting closer.
Raddatz: "West LA. We've got sirens?"
In his earpiece, the OIC: "Car fire on Wilshire. Fire responding. Unrelated,"
Raddatz let a breath slip from his mouth.
Keep on your toes, keep your eyes roiling. Raddatz whispered as much over his throat mike to the rest of the element as they slipped into Harry Winston's.
The House of Winston.
The King of Diamonds.
Jeweler to the Stars.
There was, there had to be, fifty mill in rocks in the place easy. Necklaces, rings, earrings, pendants, gold settings, white gold, platinum… The actual market value of the gems was maybe half that fifty mill. The cheapest… the least expensive piece went in the neighborhood of forty grand. But if you bought at Harry's, you were paying for the name, the legend, the zip code, if you were a tourist, you paid. If you were a Hollywood wife, a kept girl, your sugar daddy paid for you. On that business model Harry's had been in operation a lot of years.
Raddatz's element paid zero mind to the bling. Getting caught up in it could get 'em killed. At any price was there a rock in the joint worth losing your life over?
A lot of glass. Display cases filled the center of the boutique, ringed the edge. Should've been an easy look-see, but the sunlight pouring in refracting of; the glass and the diamonds did tricks with the eyes. Dazzled. Was like doing recon in a kaleidoscope.