Crosscut (42 page)

And looked again.

Dumped outside the elevator was his hardware. Fucking Swayze. He opened the door.

 
Outside Argent Tower I paid the cabbie and strode with Mom across the plaza toward the entrance. It was eight thirty.

“Stormtrooper,” I reiterated. “Eva Braun.”

“Let it go.”

But I kept seeing that snotty smirk on the flight attendant’s face when we landed at LAX, and instead of my phone she handed me a form. “Fill this out and apply at our customer service counter for the return of your property.” Twitching lips. “They’ll be open tomorrow at nine.”

Mom didn’t have a cell phone, so on the way out of the airport I stopped at a pay phone and tried one last time to reach Agent Heaney’s LAPD contact. She wasn’t available, and I didn’t know if she had received my earlier message.

Lights were firing up in the skyscrapers along Wilshire. But Argent Tower, nearly empty, reflected the last embers of sunset, scarlet and orange multiplied a thousand times. On the lower stories a few office lights were burning. The top two-thirds of the building were dark. Only one floor in the building was brightly lit. I counted: eight. Primacon.

We approached the revolving door. The cracked plate-glass window had been replaced. In fact, all the plate-glass windows had been replaced. They were crosshatched with packing tape labeled, ULTRAGLAS. Argent Tower, it seemed, didn’t want any more mayhem.

I took Mom’s elbow. “We stay downstairs if at all possible. Okay?”

“Fine by me.”

“If it turns out that the only way to do this is to go up to Swayze’s lab, then I’ll go and you stay in the lobby.”

Her face was severe, the laugh lines deep and tired around her eyes. “You’re not going anywhere by yourself. That’s why I came with you.”

“This is protection. You stay with the security guard down at the front desk. If I’m not back down here with Jesse in five minutes, call nine-one-one.”

“They’d arrest him.”

“If it gets to that stage I’d rather take our chances with the police. I don’t trust Maureen Swayze.” I attempted a lighter expression. “You taught me that.”

“Glad it sank in.” She looked into the lobby. “Let me take point on this.”

The doors were locked. Inside the towering lobby, Archie the Gray sat behind the desk looking bored to wood. Beyond him the atrium soared into gloom. Mom knocked on the glass.

Archie sat up as if he’d been poked with a trident. He trundled across the lobby, suspicion in his eyes, and called to us from beyond the glass. “What do you want?”

She gave him her most dazzling welcome-aboard smile. “Angie Delaney to see Maureen Swayze.”

 
Five more yards. His shoulders ached and his shirt clung to his back. His hands hurt like hell. He was wearing his gloves, so his palms weren’t getting torn up, but his backside was going to be in a sorry state, and there went his goddamned jeans
again
. He stopped and hitched them up.

The ventilation system droned. The fluorescent lighting hummed and flickered. He drew a breath and kept going, tossing his wheel alongside him. Four more yards. Someplace above him tires squealed around the entrance ramp, and he stopped again, hoping. And he picked up the tire iron from his lap, just in case. But the building was virtually deserted. Nobody was going to bother driving all the way down to level five.

He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. Swayze had dumped his gear near the elevator either because she thought he wouldn’t make it this far, or she truly didn’t expect him to wake up from the sedatives. He kept going. She had no idea that dragging his ass across the garage didn’t just wear him out; it fucking infuriated him. She thought she’d seen him ruthless. She had no idea.

Two yards. One. He grabbed the frame. Under the seat cushion he found the car keys. He got to work.

 
Archie frowned, his toad’s mouth drawing down, and unlocked one of the side doors.

“Thanks,” Mom said, leading me in. “Could you phone up to Primacon and tell Dr. Swayze that I’m here?”

Our footsteps echoed on the marble. The atrium was spooky in the deepening light. The painters’ tall scaffold had been moved next to the railing for the mezzanine. It looked like a bizarre museum specimen, a spindly dinosaur skeleton.

I said, “How’s the guard who was injured the other day?”

Archie shook his head. “Still in intensive care. It ain’t looking too good.”

We followed him to the desk, and he grabbed the phone to call Primacon. I crossed my arms, feeling chilly and anxious. On Archie’s side were a computer and a monitor for the building’s closed-circuit television cameras. I saw hallways, a back door, the entrance to the parking garage on Wilshire, and the exit around the corner on the side street.

“What’s that?” I said.

Archie looked up from the phone. I was pointing at one of the monitors. It showed only . . . concrete?

He gave the monitor a passing glance. “Parking garage. It’s been out of whack all day. Sometimes the cameras slip on the mount. Maintenance is scheduled to get on it in the morning.”

I looked at the other monitors. Cameras covered levels one through three, though I knew the garage went a couple of levels deeper than that. Unease lowered across the back of my neck.

“The morning?” I said.

Archie’s gray face crunched with confusion. “Look, we only got a skeleton crew, and this building’s still getting the final tweaks. Construction ain’t even finished yet.”

“That camera’s pointing at the ceiling, so you can’t see what’s happening in the garage. Doesn’t that make you uneasy?”

He peered, his toad mouth pursing.

“Who else is on security tonight? Do you have an armed guard? Get them down here,” I said.

He glared at me. He didn’t like being told his job, but he didn’t seem to be doing it.

“Please,” I said.

Mom tugged on my elbow and pulled me away from the desk, out of Archie’s earshot. “I’m getting a funny feeling about this.”

“You never get funny feelings.”

“I know. That’s why I think we should leave.”

My radar was lighting up as well. Nothing specific, but a vague collection of miscues overlaid with the big drumming fact that Jesse had to be here, someplace nearby, in deep shit.

“No,” I said. “I can’t leave him here. But it’s time to call the police.”

 
Jesse fired up the truck and backed it out. His arms were tired to the point of shaking. Long time since he’d been that tired, maybe after doing sets of two hundred fly in the pool. He turned the truck around and headed up the exit ramp. He never thought he’d be so damn glad for all his wheels.

On level four he swung into the garage, checking to see if Swayze’s BMW was there. He didn’t know what she was up to, and he intended to find out. But the only vehicle on four was a dusty pickup with monster tires and a bull bar on the front, parked near a maintenance room. The door to the maintenance room was open, and inside he saw pipes and heavy equipment. He U-turned and went up to the next level.

There was the BMW. He cruised past, feeling the urge to key it, to write something obscene in German along its gleaming flanks. He stared for a moment. No. Swayze would come later. Right now he had to get to a phone and reach Evan. And he didn’t trust anybody in Argent Tower as far as he could throw it. He had to find a pay phone.

He gunned the truck up to level one and across the garage toward the exit at the far end. There was a gas station a couple of blocks up Wilshire, and it had to have a pay phone. He punched it up the exit ramp, clanking over the one-way spikes, and out onto the street. Behind him the bleak office lights of Argent Tower shone in the dusk like clown teeth. He watched the building recede in the rearview mirror, relief growing with every foot it fell behind him.

 
Mom and I headed back to the desk. Archie was staring at the CCTV monitor, scratching his nose. He picked up a walkie-talkie.

“Atkins? You there?” he said.

A voice fuzzed back. “Ten-four.”

“Where are you? Need you to check out the camera in the garage.”

“Garage? By myself?”

He was probably thinking of the guard lying in ICU because he’d gone down in the parking elevator to look for Coyote. The phone rang on the desk, a light blinking.

“I’m coming down,” blurted the walkie-talkie. “I’m up in the Sky Bistro; give me a minute.”

Archie picked up the phone. “Yeah, Dr. Swayze. Lady to see you here, name of . . .” He looked at Mom.

“Angie Delaney.”

He repeated it and listened. “Yeah, that’s what she says. Angie.” Now he glanced at me. “You Evan?”

I nodded. My radar was pinging louder now. Needles and pins were tingling along my palms.

With a huge
thunk,
the sound of a big electrical switch being thrown, the lights went out.

The lobby went dark and the air-conditioning shut down. Out on Wilshire, headlights streaked by. Protectively Mom took my hand.

The walkie-talkie fuzzed. “Archie, we got a blackout up here.”

“Here too.”

I pointed at Archie. “Call the police.” I pulled Mom away from the desk. “Let’s go.”

The phone at Archie’s desk rang again. He answered it, saying, “Yeah, Dr. Swayze.”

I tugged Mom toward the door.

Archie called out: “Hey. You ain’t going nowhere.”

I pushed the bar to open the side door out to the plaza, but it didn’t budge. Archie had locked it behind us when we came in. I turned. Through shadow I saw that he was still on the phone with Swayze, nodding intently.

“Let us out.”

Emergency lighting kicked on, spot floodlights casting eerie light from corners and high angles in the atrium. The painters’ scaffold reared toward the mezzanine, bony and reptilian. Deep in the bowels of the building a generator whined into action and skeleton power returned. The closed-circuit television monitors swelled back to life. Archie, uplit in the light emanating from the screen, glared like a spooked frog.

He hung up the phone. “Get away from the door.”

My heart was skipping like a record needle. “Let us out,
now
.”

He came around the desk. “I said, move away from the door.”

He was coming at us. Incredulous, I said, “Nine-one-one. Three numbers. Jesus, do it.”

His eyes had the dead shine of a sledgehammer. “Nobody’s getting out. Security protocol. We lock down, so that way nobody else gets in.”

“What did Swayze tell you?” I said.

“Not to listen to you. That whatever you’re pulling, not to fall for it. Get away from the door.”

“I’m not trying to let Coyote in. Don’t you understand? If the lights and power have been shut down, that means Coyote is
already
in.”

He grabbed my arm. Mom jumped at him.

“Hands off my daughter.”

She snatched hold of his hand and pinched. Archie howled and let go of me. Mom and I ran.

 
The gas station was brightly lit, and outside the minimart there was a pay phone. Jesse pulled up next to it.

He had a bunch of change in the cup holder, enough, he hoped, to call Evan in China Lake. His second call would have to be to the LAPD. He figured he was in trouble up to his armpits. Leaving a murder scene, at the lair of a serial killer—the cops must be going nuts, and he bet everything that Swayze hadn’t called and squared things up for him. He glanced over his shoulder at the office tower. Finding out what her game was, that was item number three tonight.

He stopped still, coins shining in his palm. Argent Tower had gone completely dark.

He started the truck and pulled up to the front of the minimart, pounding the horn. Inside, the clerk stared out from behind the counter, frowning. He waved to her but she shook her head. She wasn’t allowed to come out. He grabbed the disabled placard and held it up so she could see and kept waving to her. Finally, reluctantly, she stepped out from behind the counter and opened the door.

“Call the police,” he said.

He was still trying to explain to her even as he pulled away, screeching out into traffic, thinking of that big dusty pickup with the bull bar parked next to the maintenance room down in the garage. Horns honked around him. He gunned the truck back toward Argent Tower.

 
We ran into the gloom, past the desk, and across the soaring lobby.

“There’s a back door. I saw it on the TV monitor.” I glanced at Mom. “What did you do to Archie to make him let go?”

“Pressure point. Takes down the meanest unruly drunks, so be glad for stormtrooper stewardesses.”

We turned down a hallway and found ourselves confronted with locked double doors. We turned back. Archie stood in the center of the lobby, waiting for us. I veered past one bank of elevators, aiming for the mezzanine stairs.

The elevators pinged and the doors opened. I skidded to a stop, heart bouncing. A uniformed security guard stepped out, walkie-talkie in hand.

Archie shouted, “Grab them.”

Simultaneously Mom and I blurted,
“Assholes.”

The guard was a scrawny guy with fuzz for a mustache. His face pinched and he stalked toward us. Mom pawed through her purse.

“I’ll Mace you,” she said.

I yanked her off in another direction, toward the stairs that led down to the garage. Slamming the bar on the door, I pulled her into the stairwell. Ice-hot emergency spotlights turned the walls white.

We burst out of the stairway one flight down on level one. The garage was empty. Forty yards away, the entrance ramp led out onto Wilshire. We hurried toward it.

“We have to get to a phone. We can’t just leave Jesse here, and if . . .” Catch in my throat. “If he’s hurt bad . . .”

A grinding noise obscured my voice. My eyes bugged.

“Oh, no. Mom, run.”

Up at the top of the entrance ramp, a metal grate was cranking down. We ran. And damn, my mother was in good shape. She pumped her arms, sprinting beside me. The grate clattered farther down, six feet from the ground, five, four.