Forty Thieves (26 page)

“What do you think that means?”

“That they talked without phones,” she said. “I’ll bet they were roommates.”

“Could be.”

“So what do you want to do?” Nicole asked.

“Let’s start by getting the billing addresses connected with all these numbers. I’ll call Ron at the phone sales service and tell him to get started on it.”

He took out his own cell phone and dialed the number of his friend Ron at the telemarketing company.

Sid and Ronnie Abel drove east from their hotel to Ventura Boulevard and north on Laurel Canyon, then to Victory Boulevard, and made their way to a rental lot at Burbank airport, where they rented a new car, and transferred the equipment they had brought to the back of it. They drove north and west toward the group of housing developments they visited when they had taken the James Ballantine case.

They headed directly to the streets of new houses surrounding the building site where the person in the car had shot out their windshield.

Ronnie said, “It’s different in the daylight.”

Sid said, “Everything looks different in the daylight.”

“I know. But when we were here before, it seemed desolate, empty. It looked as though there were no people and there never would be any.”

“Not for much longer. Look at the construction site now. They put those houses up fast.”

When they reached the intersection with the gravel road Sid slowed down and looked. The few skeletal frames of
houses had all grown taller, and now they were clad in sheets of plywood. Roofing material sat in stacks on roofs, and two more foundations had been poured in the past few days.

They passed the spot along Renfrew Street where the dark sedan had been parked on the night when the driver saw the Abels and took off at high speed. Today Sid followed the route he had taken that night when he went in pursuit of the dark sedan. He made the right turn onto Clovermeadow Lane, the residential street where there had been an open storm sewer when Ballantine was killed. He let the car coast along. Then his eyes moved to the houses.

“Interesting,” Sid said. “The place must have sold out quickly.”

Every house appeared to be occupied. There were children, their mothers sitting on porches and patios to watch them, a young man jogging on the street.

“Those are big houses, too,” said Ronnie. “They must be pretty expensive.”

“Seen enough?”

“Yes.”

Sid stopped and completed a three-point turn, and then drove back the way he came. He turned right at the corner.

Ronnie looked at her phone. “The address is 9-7-6-5 Wintergarden Way. The third street.”

They went past two streets that were nearly identical to Clovermeadow, all two-story houses that were identical except for cosmetic variations. Wintergarden was a bit older, and slightly more varied, as though most of the lots had been occupied by houses before the contractor with the pattern took over.

They turned onto the street and drove along slowly, reading the house numbers until they found 9765. It looked like the others in the area, with two floors and an attached two-car garage, a tiny green lawn, and a flowerbed in front. Ronnie used her cell phone to take photographs of the house, and then of the whole block.

The Abels continued to the end of Wintergarden Way and then turned onto the next street, which was called Callalily Street. They cruised up the street, studying the houses that backed up to Mira Cepic’s house. “It doesn’t look as though there’s an easy way from this side to get a look into her house,” Ronnie said.

“Want to try having our talk with her while we’re up here?” said Sid. “Her house looks occupied. She might be home now.”

“Not yet,” said Ronnie. “I think we should wait for our background checks to come through. Everything real we’ve learned about Ballantine has been from the women in his life. We’re probably not going to get more than one chance at this woman, and she’s the last one. I’d like to have every bit of information we can get ahead of time. We may need the leverage.”

“Let’s go get something to eat, and then we’ll come back after dark and take another look.”

Sid and Ronnie returned to the neighborhood at nine thirty, when the sky had already been dark for an hour. They parked their rented blue Accord on a street a block to the north of the gravel road. Ronnie took out her Glock pistol, rechecked
the magazine, and pushed it back in, then returned the pistol to the shoulder holster under her jacket.

Sid did the same, and then returned his pistol to the holster on his belt under his sport coat.

She looked at him. “You don’t usually do that. I do that. Are you nervous?”

“No more than usual,” he said. “But I haven’t forgotten that the last time we were out here after dark, we had people shooting at us.” He took out his compact camera, made sure the flash was off and the battery was strong, and put it into his coat pocket.

Sid and Ronnie got out of the rental car and began to walk.

It was another warm evening. There had been a strong breeze just before sundown, but when the sun disappeared, the wind had stopped and the air became still, so it felt as though the world were a giant room. The last of the spring rains seemed to have ended for good, and the next rainy day would probably be in November, eight months away. The thought made Sid remember that last year was an El Niño year, and about this date the rainy season had been far from finished. After James Ballantine was found, it had rained every other day for a while.

As Sid and Ronnie walked, they looked at the houses they passed. This neighborhood was like a thousand others in the city. Some cars were parked in open garages, and others sat in the driveways, probably because the garages were being used to store the mountains of mostly useless stuff people accumulated. It made Sid remember that he and Ronnie didn’t have to worry about belongings anymore. Their house had been burned to ashes and then bulldozed and hauled away in dump trucks.

Sid could see the lights on in the house windows, a couple of kids staring at computers, and in other parts of the house there were television sets throwing a fluctuating bluish light on white ceilings. A woman came out of a kitchen carrying a toddler in pajamas. Sid and Ronnie crossed the street in a dark zone to keep from drawing the attention of a man who was working on a car in his garage. The Abels went by unnoticed, like passing shadows.

They skirted Renfrew Street, passing outside the circles of light under the last few streetlamps so they would not be easy to see. In another minute they were in the margin of the broad, weedy, brush-choked field that was bisected by the gravel road. They moved more slowly now, choosing the places where they set their feet, stopping now and then in the clumps of bushes and saplings to survey the land for the next few hundred paces ahead. Beyond the gravel road they could see the lights of the streets they had visited this morning.

After a few minutes they were passing Clovermeadow, the first street of occupied houses. By ten they were on Callalily, the street behind Mira Cepic’s house. They walked along like an older couple out for their evening stroll. By now, they were the only pedestrians on the street. Ronnie knew that their gray hair had helped them avoid suspicion many times, and it might again if anyone saw them tonight. A few years ago, their daughter, Janice, had told Ronnie she should start dyeing her hair instead of letting it go gray. Ronnie had said, “Do you have any idea what gray hair is worth in our business? Middle-aged women are invisible. Men can’t even see us.”

They walked along Callalily, past one house, and then another, until they came to the one right behind Mira Cepic’s house. It looked perfect. There were no lights visible
in the windows. The Abels didn’t change their pace. They simply turned and walked up the front lawn and onto the strip of grass beside the house.

Moving ever more slowly, they made their way to the edge of the yard. There were no dog bowls or dog toys in the yard, and there was no fence, so they kept going until they found a spot between that house and its neighbor where they could take cover and observe. The house had a chimney that protruded from its side far enough to hide Ronnie, and directly across from it was a small metal shed meant to hold garden tools. Sid took a position behind it.

The back of Mira Cepic’s house was only twenty feet ahead of them now. There were lights on in the kitchen window, and a softer light glowed from another back window that was probably a bedroom, with the curtains closed. A few feet from it was a small, textured glass window that was undoubtedly the bathroom of the master suite.

Ronnie watched the house while Sid took out his compact camera and turned it on. The camera had a zoom feature with a four-power capability, and he aimed the camera and adjusted it.

They waited for a few minutes, but there was no activity in the kitchen. Sid signaled Ronnie to stay where she was, and moved cautiously along the side of the house. He came to a window and moved his head close so he could bring one eye to the corner.

Mira Cepic was in the living room, sitting in front of a high-definition television set about five feet wide. She was around forty, with blond hair to her shoulders. Her cheekbones were prominent, and she had a thin, angular look, like a marathon runner or a retired model. The fact that she wore
no makeup and her hair was not combed didn’t disguise the fact that her face was pretty. Her arms were bare to the shoulder, and they looked thin and sinewy.

Sid was aware that the human eye was extremely sensitive to movement. If her eye caught motion, not only would the sensation reach her brain, but she would also not be able to resist looking. Sid took at least a minute to move the camera far enough into the corner of the window so the lens could see the woman. He took three photographs. He noticed that what she was watching was a television show about young women trying on wedding gowns. He slowly lowered the camera, and then just as slowly withdrew. He made his way back to join Ronnie at the rear of the house. She looked at him inquiringly, and he nodded.

Sid and Ronnie prepared to turn and go back out to Callalily Street. But they both sensed a change. There were faint sounds from inside Mira Cepic’s house. Then the woman appeared in the kitchen. She moved past the window to the refrigerator, where she took out a bottle of beer. She reached up and opened a cupboard for a glass.

Sid began shooting pictures of Mira Cepic again. She faced the rear window as she opened her bottle with an opener, and then turned away. A moment later the kitchen light went out. Sid and Ronnie waited a few minutes and then stepped out onto Callalily Street, and turned south at Renfrew Street, heading for the place where they had left their rental car.

“We got a good look at her, anyway,” said Ronnie. “And pictures. I also took a couple of shots with my phone while I was sitting there.”

“What did you think of her?”

“I think I want to see whatever information our trace has come up with before I commit myself.”

“You don’t have a good feeling either, huh?”

“I think she probably cleans up really nicely when she wants to. But my first impression is that she looks a little bit hard.”

“Maybe it’s time to start cooperating with the official investigation,” said Sid.

“Let’s get these pictures to Miguel Fuentes at North Hollywood, and see if he can find out anything.”

Ed and Nicole Hoyt watched Renfrew Street for half an hour, but they never saw the Abels after they went up toward the far side of the field and turned down another street. Nicole said, “I guess they’re gone for tonight. I wonder what they’re doing around here. Do you think they found that Mira Cepic woman’s house?”

Ed said, “How would they find the girlfriend of one of those dead Russians? They can’t know about the Russians, let alone who they called on their cell phones. I think the Abels are still hung up on finding out where Ballantine went into the sewer. I really hated to pass up a shot at them, though. They were out in the open, without much to hide behind.”

“So were we. Even if we weren’t out here where people would get alarmed at the shots and come after us, what would be the point?” asked Nicole.

“We got two chances at them at their house, and nothing we did seemed to put them in front of a bullet,” he said. “Then we planted a bomb and knocked over a robot. It’s been frustrating.”

“Boylan hired us to do that job, and he’s dead. We got much more money from his house than he would have paid us for the Abels,” she said. “I think we came out a mile ahead on them. If we find the guy who hired Boylan, we’ll be even further ahead.”

“We did okay, I guess,” he said. “But you can’t make a living killing the people who hire you.”

“Why not?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Why is that money any worse?” she said. “Money is money.”

Ed smiled. “It’s a funny idea. You get people to hire you to kill somebody, and you kill them instead. You take the money they would have paid you, and any other money they had.”

Nicole said, “That’s what we ought to be doing. Seriously. When somebody hires you to do a killing, you know they’re doing it because they aren’t up to a wet job themselves. In other words, they’re weak. You know they have at least as much money as they’re promising to pay, because hiring a killer and not paying him is something not even a moron would do. And they also have other money, at least as much as they’re offering you. So if you kill them instead of their enemy, you can double your money.”

“Jesus, Nicole.” He stared into the night. “But I have to admit, the biggest thing I worry about when we do a job is that somehow the client is going to get caught, because he’s actually got some reason to hate the target—something to make the police suspect him. And when the police start talking about death penalties and stuff, he’s going to give us up.”

“Right,” she said. “The client is definitely the biggest threat.”

“We’ll have to think about going into the client-killing business. But it’s got to be after we get whoever is sending these people after us.”

“Yeah,” she said. “You have to wonder, if he had the insect people, why would he bother to hire Boylan?”