Hot Wire (11 page)

"I've got nothing to say."

"Relax." Matthews leaned forward and clasped his hands on the table, rubbing them together mantis-style. "This is off the record. No recordings. No notes. No video cameras or witnesses. There's no transcript and none of this can be used against you in court, not that it's likely you'll ever see the inside of a court." He paused to let that sink in. "I'm not here to question you about hot cars or dead strippers or drug operations in West Oakland. That's out of my jurisdiction."

Dead strippers
. It gave me a jolt.

"So what do you want?" I asked.

"I'm interested in the man who was riding with you in your car when you were pulled over," he said. "Do you know who he was?"

I didn't say anything.

"Big guy," he went on. "Late forties, early fifties. Crewcut. Military bearing. His partner's a bald gorilla with knife scars on his face. Six-one, two-ten. Sound familiar?"

"I've got nothing to say."

He studied me for a minute, then lowered his voice.

"We know you stole the Lexus, but that was just a crime of opportunity, wasn't it? You didn't know who they were, never even saw them before, but they don't know that, right? They think you're working for someone else." He shook his head. "They caught your partner in the act – this Arnold Willis – and they still have him as far as I know. The police don't have him in custody; they just told you that to make you think they have a witness. He's in trouble, though, and so are you. Big trouble. Trouble the police can't help you with. When the cops pulled you over, the man in your car showed them his ID and they let him go, no questions asked. Now why do you think they did that?"

I just gaped at him. For once, I was really speechless.

"Let me show you something," he said.

He opened his briefcase, took out a couple of 8 x 10 glossy photographs and dropped them on the table in front of me. One of the pictures was a blow-up of me sitting in the Lexus with the door open; it looked like it had been taken from a high angle across the street from that building in the West Oakland bottoms – the one where the Lexus had parked. The other photo showed Baldy and Crewcut stomping Arn on the pavement while I was driving away. Both of the shots had that grainy look you get with a zoom lens in bad lighting.

"The Task Force told you there was a security camera on top of the building," Matthews said, glancing at the door. "That wasn't true – they were just jerking your chain. We've had the place under surveillance for months, however, but they don't know anything about our operation. The Task Force doesn't know about these pictures. They're acting on information provided by someone inside the Deacon organization."

I stared at the pictures, trying to focus.

"This Task Force complicates things, but they're a purely local matter," he said. "They have nothing to do with the Lexus or the men who grabbed your partner. I can't go into details, but this is a national security matter and we can help you with your legal issues if you help us recover the car and find out what these men are looking for." He was bearing down now, pinning me with his eyes. "They're looking for you, Emma. You're not safe here. You're not safe on the streets. You're not safe in jail. You saw what they did to your friend. They tortured her to find out where you had gone, but they're not interested in you – they want the car you stole from them last night. When we identified you from the photographs, we tried to reach you before they did, but we were already too late." He glanced at his hands. "I'm sorry."

He took another photograph out of his briefcase and dropped it in front of me. This one showed me sitting behind the wheel of my Dodge as I drove past my apartment building last night. The picture looked like it had been taken through the window of a van: I could see reflections on glass, the shadow of a vent on the right. They must've been watching my place when I showed up to check on Steffy.

"That was you." I felt totally blank. "The guys in the SUVs."

He nodded, looking grim.

"They'd come and gone before we arrived. We saw you drive by, but we lost you again until we saw the light come on in your apartment. We didn't know what had happened until we went up there to take you into protective custody." He cleared his throat, checked the door again. "Believe me, Emma, there was nothing we could have done to help her. Then you got away somehow. It was a stroke of luck that the police pulled you over when they did."

"Believe you?" I said. "How do I know you didn't kill her?"

He shook his head: Mr. Sincere.

"I give you my word," he said. "We had nothing to do with it."

"Yeah, right." My eyes were getting bleary.

"We have to find the car, Emma. You've got to tell us how to find it."

"What's the big deal with the car?"

"We don't know," he said. "It's probably not the car itself. I think they're looking for something that was in the car, but we don't know what it is. Records, maybe. Paperwork. Did you search it? Was there anything in the trunk or glove compartment?"

"Go screw yourself." I was losing it. "I've got nothing to say."

"Where's the car now? You were taking them to get it, weren't you? Then the cops pulled you over."

"I've got nothing to say."

"We're the good guys, Emma." He checked his watch. "We can help you, but you've got to trust me."

The good guys. Trust him.

Just then, the door opened and a cop I'd never seen before stuck his snout into the room and looked us over. Matthews made some hand signals, then he got up and walked over to my end of the table.

"Think about it, Emma," he said. "You're going to help me one way or another."

They left and closed the door, leaving me alone to think about it, but all I could do was sit there and stare at this dead fly on the table. I was shivering – totally exhausted. A bell chimed at the marina. A siren coughed in the lot. Then I must've nodded off, because I jerked awake and couldn't remember where I was for a minute.

The cops were arguing outside the door. I could hear Matthews, Jacobo and Chang yelling back and forth. They were really going at it and I thought I heard my name a couple times, but I couldn't tell what they were saying. At one point, they opened the door like they were going to grill me some more, but then they closed the door again and I heard their voices fading down the hall. The whole thing was strange, but whatever they were arguing about, I knew it was just a matter of time before they charged me with Steffy's murder and forced me to make a deal. Then I must've crashed out for real because the next thing I knew, somebody was shaking me awake again.

"OK, Emma." A cop unlocked my cuffs. Another one took me by the arm and pulled me to my feet. "You're free to go."

"I can go?"

"That's what I said."

"But why?"

He didn't answer.

"Why are you letting me go?"

No response.

They walked me out of the room and down the hall to the front desk, where the sergeant gave me back my property in a manila envelope and had me sign a couple forms. I had an audience. A disgusted audience. Chang and that dyke from the Highway Patrol were standing by the water cooler, glaring at me and beaming frustration because somebody had freed their rabbit. I figured Matthews had pulled rank to cut me loose and it didn't take a genius to figure out why. He'd made a lot of enemies, though. Screwed up their case in the process.

Jacobo sat on one of the benches, staring at his hands like he wanted to strangle himself. The greasy little rat must've been wetting his pants. He knew I'd figured him out. He'd seen it in my eyes. He was blown. Screwed. The Task Force must've been planning to hold me in isolation, but Matthews had trashed all their plans, not to mention Jacobo's cover. He was a rat and I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. If I talked to Deacon, Jacobo would have to go into hiding. Witness protection. Unless he could get to me first.

I took all this in at a glance. Matthews was nowhere in sight, but I saw somebody else I recognized: Brown, the sleazy reporter from the Hot Box last night. The one who'd shown me the dirty picture. He was hanging around the desk, watching me with this puzzled expression like he couldn't figure out what I had done to draw so much attention. I wondered vaguely what he was doing there – chasing dirt, most likely – but I was too stunned to care about the pervy scuzzball.

I opened the envelope and found my wallet, change and keys. Nobody said a word. The cops seemed to have lost all interest and they cut me loose – just like that. I walked out into the dazzling sunlight and saw my Dodge parked off to the side of the building. Some traffic cops walked by. They didn't even look at me.

I got in the Dodge and drove off in a daze, heading back towards the highway on Powell. I checked the rearview, but nobody was following me – nobody I could spot, anyway. The street was empty and the sun glinted on a container ship out on the Bay, reflecting off the water. I pulled up to the light at the Frontage Road intersection and almost had a stroke when a horn blared on my right. A van pulled out of a side street and blew by in the other direction, then the light changed and I hit the gas.

I was free again.

That's what they wanted me to think, anyway.

Bait on a hook.

My parents died when I was five years old, so I couldn't remember a lot about them. My mother's face was just a blur – dark eyes, black hair, a vague smell of talcum powder and perfume. My old man was a mechanic. He had a beard and he smoked cigars in front of the tube every night, laughing at game shows and yelling at the news. He was a drunk, I guess. A happy drunk. He liked to fish the Delta on the weekends and he took me along on some of his trips, even bought me a rod and this little tackle box. Sitting in the bow of his john boat, watching my bobber while the moon rose over the trees, I used to wonder what the worms thought about, dangling down there in the dark.

Now I knew.

I drove into Berkeley and circled around for a while, checking for tails, then I pulled into a Conoco near the railroad tracks and bought a gallon of gas. I still had some money left, so I got some coffee and donuts, then I parked the Dodge by the johns and searched it for transmitters. I checked the interior, engine compartment, wheel wells and trunk. I checked behind the dash and crawled around under the chassis, but I couldn't find any beepers or GPS trackers, not that I really knew what to look for.

I had to ditch the car. Even if it was clean, the cops knew what I was driving. So did Deacon. So did Baldy and Crewcut. I had no idea how many different factions were looking for me or following me around, but there had to be three or four of them including Matthews and his fleet of goons. He must've decided that I wasn't going to cooperate, so he pulled rank on the Task Force and made them cut me loose, stomping all over their jurisdiction and screwing Jacobo in the process. He was using me for bait, hoping that I would lead him back to the Lexus or something – flush out Baldy and Crewcut. One way or another, the feds had me under surveillance. No doubt about it.

I took off again, driving around the neighborhoods, watching the side streets and rearview. I drove the wrong way down a one-way street, made four right turns in a row, then headed to Berkeley Circle and parked by Indian Rock, watching the traffic and the peds walking by on the sidewalk.

Nothing. If they were following me, they knew what they were doing.

I headed into downtown Berkeley, parked on a side street for ten minutes, then I drove by the campus and got stuck in a traffic jam. Hundreds of Lefties were staging a demo against the latest war or something. I waited at a light while they marched by on the sidewalk, chanting slogans like the rest of us cared what they thought about Republicans or peace or anything else. Some motorcycle cops passed right in front of my car, but none of them even looked at me. Crowds and chaos had their advantages.

Fifteen minutes later, I abandoned the Dodge on the top level of a parking garage on Telegraph and took the stairs down to the street. The car would pile up tickets for a couple of days, then the cops would tow it to the city lot and put it up for auction when nobody claimed it. Ditching it like that was a bummer. It was the only car I'd ever owned and Vincent had loaned me the down-payment.

Horns blared on Telegraph. The sidewalks crawled with tourists, junkies, street vendors, runaways and bums from People's Park. UC students walked by with pierced ears, tattoos and the usual look of smug stupidity, mingling with trendy Marxists and Goth punks dressed in black. A couple of Earth Mothers wandered through the crowd, arm in arm, naked to the waist, making a statement about Free Expression that was older than their flopping tits. A Bible Thumper with a megaphone was preaching Armageddon on the corner by Cody's Books, trying to ignore a hippy who was screaming insults and gibberish, trying to drown him out. The scene was typical Berkeley: a tie-dyed sewer of dopers and Sixties rejects.

"Spare change?"

"Spare change?"

The bums were out in force, but they left me alone for some reason. Bad vibes, I guess. I made my way through the crowd, checking my back, watching the reflections in the store windows, then I went into this sports bar and had some coffee at a table with a clear view of the door. The coffee gave me a buzz like crystal meth. I watched a couple longhairs shoot pool for a while, then I walked back to the john, washed my face, and ducked out the back door into a garden patio with a gate leading into an alley.