Dangerous Games (9 page)

Another of the girls heard him and started yapping in melodramatic outrage, and suddenly the whole crowd of hookers had focused on his car, screeching imprecations, pointing and hip thrusting. Their fury emboldened the whore with the blistered lips.

“Who you think you are?” she yelled. “God’s gift?”

Kolb smiled. “That’s right, bitch. That’s what I am. You have no fucking idea.”

He hit the gas and left her and the other whores behind, proud to be feeling nothing, no arousal, no need—nothing but the ache in his forehead, harsher than before.

Kolb headed home, taking a back route to frustrate any possible surveillance. He knew his partner would laugh at him for thinking he might be followed, but hell, he’d been arrested once, hadn’t he? Sometimes they really were out to get you.

As he drove, he looked around at the low-income residential streets lined with two-story apartment buildings, 1950s complexes with names like the Sunset Arms and the Hollywood Empress, buildings constructed around swimming pools and courtyards, on landscaped lots thick with date palms, buildings that had once been homes to middle-class families. Now they were hives where the filth of the city congregated, clustering together like roaches in a grease trap, playing their rap music and rutting like animals and breeding when they were fifteen, making more of their kind, crowding out men like him who had no place in the city they were populating. More and more of them every day, fording rivers, crossing deserts, riding into town concealed in the backs of delivery trucks, an ongoing invasion, a march of insects, like that movie he’d seen once, the one about the army of soldier ants that flowed forward in a flood tide, devouring everything in their path.

And no one would stop them. No one would criticize. No one would speak the truth, which was that the pattern of the world had been always that of masters and slaves—the elite to rule, the rest to be used as needed and disposed of when their value was exhausted. Past civilizations had crowned their warrior kings and left the rabble in shackles, but now it was the best of men who were penned up, made into milch cows and sacrificial animals, while the peasants ran free—

A blue van pulled out of a side street and cut him off.

He stomped on the brake and gave the other driver a long blast of his horn. The driver stuck his arm out the window and showed Kolb his middle finger.

Now, that just wasn’t nice. Kolb sped up, tailgating the van, his fist working the horn.

The driver of the van decided to act smart. He hit his brakes, trying to force a collision. Kolb swerved to avoid him, and headlights sprayed his face as brakes squealed. Some bitch in a sedan, traveling in the other direction, had nearly hit him head-on when he cut into her lane.

He saw her mouth working behind the windshield, yammering at him for getting in her way.

The van pulled away, but Kolb didn’t care. He had transferred his attention to the woman in the sedan.

He reversed down the street at high speed, then shifted into drive and shot forward, aiming his headlights at her car. Light flooded the sedan’s interior, and in the sudden brightness he could see the bitch’s expression change from hostility to panic. Everything slowed down, time congealing into a thick, clotted mass, and he was able to savor the fear on her face and the kick of adrenaline in his system. He saw her bending over the steering wheel, working the gear selector, finally punching the car into reverse and skidding partly out of his path just as his front end impacted hers.

There was a scream of shredding metal and a shower of pinwheeling sparks, and for a moment the two vehicles were locked together like two dogs in a fight, his Oldsmobile snarling like a pit bull with its jaws fastened on a rottweiler’s throat.

Then her car, still reversing, ripped free and fishtailed across the street, bumping up over a curb and spilling a line of trash cans onto the sidewalk. Her front fender had partially detached and was dragging on the street, her left headlight had gone dark, and it looked like one of the wheels was out of alignment because of some damage to the axle, but she got the car going and sped away.

He glimpsed her as she flashed past him, her head low, shoulders hunched, hands fisted on the steering wheel, a picture of terror, and he laid his palm on the horn and gave her a parting salute.

He thought about following her and maybe doing some more damage, maybe cornering her on a dead-end street and plowing into the car and smashing her against the dashboard and leaving her to bleed to death like roadkill.

No. It wouldn’t be smart to do that. Probably hadn’t been too smart to get involved in the altercation in the first place.

But what the hell, he’d needed to let off some steam.

And he could bet that some dumb bitch driving in this shitty neighborhood, probably without insurance, maybe without a license, wasn’t going to report anything to the police. Even if she did, she hadn’t had time to get his tag number or any kind of decent description.

Nobody was going to listen to her, anyway. This was the big city. Serious crimes took place here on a daily basis. Who cared about some bimbo who got her transmission banged up? He’d been a cop. If she’d come to him for help, he would have taken the report just to keep her quiet, and after she was gone, he would have chucked it in the trash. Some people didn’t deserve police protection.

He drove away from the scene. The bitch’s sedan had gotten the worst of the encounter, but his Olds had sustained some damage. Funny thing, when he’d been revved up in the heat of the moment, it hadn’t occurred to him that his car could suffer in the collision. Now it was making a clunking noise, and there was a loose rattling sound coming from under the hood.

What pissed him off was that it wasn’t even his fault. What the hell was he supposed to do when she’d dared to honk her horn at him, glare at him, make faces like an ape in a cage?

Of course, it was the scumbag in the van who’d started it by giving him the finger. Maybe if he’d stayed focused on the van driver, gone after him…

He shook his head. Wouldn’t have made any difference. No matter what price either driver paid, it wouldn’t have made him feel better.

They weren’t the real problem.

It was McCallum. She was the reason he’d gone driving.

He’d been able to forget about her—almost forget—when she was in Denver, a thousand miles away. Now she was here in LA. She had come to his territory, almost as if she was meant for him. And because there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about her, he’d lost his composure, and now he had a busted-up car to show for it.

Life sucked sometimes. And to top it all off, his headache was worse than before.

7

Tess was surprised that her hotel room was still available. Because she was checking in at eight fifteen, she’d expected her reservation to be lost, giving her an excuse to relocate. The desk clerk disappointed her with his reliability. The MiraMist had been told to expect a late arrival. At least the room waiting for her wasn’t 1625, the crime scene in the Mobius case.

A bellhop escorted her to the seventh floor and reviewed the room’s amenities, admitting only when asked that there was a daily eight-dollar charge for opening the minibar, whether or not its contents were consumed. The room was on Michaelson’s tab. Tess made a mental note to open the minibar every day.

With the drapes parted to reveal a view of the moonlit ocean beyond the palisades, she unpacked her two carry-ons. One was filled with clothing and toiletries, while the other contained her laptop and various documents from Denver. She carried nothing more personal—no photos of loved ones, no mementoes of her private life. She hadn’t had much of a private life in a long time.

She remembered when she’d been new at this, excited to be a genuine agent of the FBI. That was only twelve years ago, but felt longer. Now she was thirty-seven, unmarried. She had given all she had to the Bureau. She had given even the man she loved, Special Agent Paul Voorhees, killed by Mobius in a Denver suburb.

Had it been worth it? She couldn’t say. Perhaps she didn’t want to make that judgment because she knew what it would be.

Her cell phone rang. It had to be Michaelson, chiding her for walking out on his media spectacle.

Wrong again. The voice on the line was Madeleine Grant’s. “Agent McCallum? I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

Tess waited. It seemed unusual for a woman like Madeleine to change her mind so quickly.

“You were right,” she went on. “I didn’t give you all the information. There were certain matters I wasn’t at liberty to discuss.”

“At liberty?”

“It will all be explained. And you can have those e-mail messages I wanted to give you.”

“All right. If you want me to come back to your place—”

“That won’t be necessary. Where are you staying?”

“Santa Monica. Near the ocean.”

“There’s a coffee shop just a few blocks inland at Pico Boulevard and Tenth Street. The Boiler Room, it’s called.”

“The Boiler Room?” Tess repeated, certain she’d heard wrong. It hardly sounded like Madeleine’s kind of place.

“Can you be there in fifteen minutes?”

Tess said yes and ended the call. Madeleine’s sudden turnaround was intriguing, but something about it didn’t feel right. And there was that odd phrase of hers—
certain matters I wasn’t at liberty to discuss
. Madeleine Grant didn’t seem like a person who would be restricted by anyone else’s rules.

Tess left the hotel room, taking her cell phone and her gun.

A lighted sign spelling out THE BOILER ROOM in neon italics shone over a striped canopy and a small huddle of vagrants cadging change. Through the front windows, people could be seen sharing booths and sipping milkshakes. From what Tess could tell, nothing about the diner’s décor had changed in at least forty years.

She stepped inside, taking a moment to adjust to the glare. The place was done up in white Formica counters, Naugahyde benches, and sleepy ceiling fans. The smell of hamburger hung in the air, reminding her that she’d had no dinner. She’d thought about ordering something from room service or scavenging in the minibar. Now she wouldn’t have to.

About half the seats were occupied, a pretty good turnout on a Monday night at this hour. There were scattered couples catching a bite after a movie or a walk on the beach, a few solitary men who looked lonely, a slender kid in a baseball cap working hard on a pinball machine in the corner.

Madeleine Grant wasn’t here. Tess wondered if the woman had changed her mind about showing up. Well, she would wait long enough to have a burger, anyway.

She took a seat in a booth away from the windows—an old precaution, not to be seen from the street. She positioned herself with a view of the entrance so Madeleine wouldn’t surprise her if she walked in.

She flipped open the menu, skimming the items without interest, since she knew in advance what she was going to have.

A waitress arrived. Tess put down her menu to order. Only it wasn’t a waitress, after all, but another customer, a woman Tess didn’t know, who slipped into the bench seat opposite her own.

“Um, excuse me?” Tess said.

“You’re excused.”

Even by Left Coast standards this behavior was peculiar. “What I meant was, that seat is taken.”

“Yeah, it is. By me.”

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“Right. You’re waiting for me.”

Tess got it. She wasn’t meeting Madeleine, after all. Madeleine had sent an emissary.

She studied the woman. Early thirties, medium height. Pale face with high cheekbones and intense hazel eyes. Brown hair cut in a shoulder-length pageboy. She was trim and wiry, humming with fidgety energy, and she wore a bomber jacket, an open-collared denim shirt, and jeans. Her sneakers could be heard knocking together under the table.

Before Tess could break the silence between them, a waitress—a real one this time—appeared. “Soyburger, no fries,” her new friend said without consulting the menu. “Ice water, and a side salad, no dressing.” She had a low, rather throaty voice, edged with a huskiness that men no doubt found sexy.

Tess ordered automatically. “Hamburger, well-done. Coca-Cola.”

“Well-done?” the brown-haired woman said when the waitress had walked away. “Yuck.”

“I always order it well done.”

“To each her own.”

Tess leaned forward. “What’s going on?”

“As you’ve probably gathered, I work for Madeleine. At least I did, a year ago.”

“Doing what?”

“We’ll get into that in a minute.”

“Care to tell me your name?”

“It’s no secret. Well, sometimes it is. I’m Abby Sinclair.”

“Why didn’t Madeleine say anything about you?”

“My clients are asked to keep me out of any conversations with officers of the law.”

“Why? What do you do?”

“I’m a private security consultant.”

“That’s a fairly vague job description.”

“Then let me get specific.” Abby steepled her hands. “Madeleine was being stalked by a nut. The police didn’t do anything. They’re overworked, underpaid, yadda yadda. That’s where I come in. I do the job the police can’t do.”

“What job?”

“I stalk the stalkers.”

“Come again?”

“I identify them, infiltrate their personal lives, get to be their best friend, and assess their threat potential. If they’re a nuisance, I scare them off. If they’re something more, I take them down.”

“Take them down,” Tess echoed.

“I eliminate the threat.”

“How?”

“By whatever means are available.”

“Are you saying you’re some sort of vigilante?”

“Vigilante is an ugly word. I would say that because I’m not part of any official law enforcement agency, I don’t consider myself bound by all the restrictions and constraints that might tie the hands of, say, a police officer.”

“Or an FBI agent.”

“Yes.”

“You do realize you’re talking to an agent of the FBI?”

“Madeleine told me.” Abby smiled. “Not that she had to. I could make you as a fed from a block away.”