Nature of the Game (37 page)

“Pennsylvania.” Wes had a Bar membership card from that state that didn't show his place of employment.

“Who's this friend you think I got?”

“A man named Jud Stuart.”

“Oh.”

An icy water pellet hit Wes's shirt. The sky above the garage churned with pregnant gray clouds.

“I just need to talk to him,” said Wes. “Let him know about the inheritance. Straighten out a few details.”

“Who died?”

“I'm sorry, that's confidential.”

Dean laughed. He tossed the wrench into a tool chest.

“You're lucky and smart, Wesley,” said Dean with a grin. He looked around his neighborhood; at the house where the woman had drawn the shade. The wind stirred trash in his garage. From across the street came the dinging of a tricycle bell.

“How so?” asked Wes.

“
Smart
, because like you said, Jud's my friend. And
lucky
, 'cause I'm on my way to meet him. Now.”

Don't let him slip away!
Wes thought. He said, “I'll come along. Save everybody trouble. Get him the good news.”

Dean smiled. “If that's what you want.”

“We'll take my car,” said Wes.

“I'll go inside and get my jacket.”

A maroon windbreaker dangled from the fence. Wes pointed to it. “What's that?”

“Ah.” Dean shook his head. “How'd I forget?”

Dean slid into the jacket, put the toolbox in the gaping garage. He pulled down the heavy overhead door with one hand.

“Let's go riding in the car-car,” said Dean.

On the freeway, Wes asked, “Where are we going?”

“Just far enough,” said Dean.

From the first freeway to a second. Traffic was light.

“Where are we going?” Wes asked again.

“A public place. A safe place. Jud is a cautious man.”

“He's just a name to me,” said Wes. “What's he like?”

“He's the man,” whispered Dean. “He is
the
man. Others pretend, he
is
. He knows.”

“What does he know?”

“The big secret.” Dean smiled.

“What's that?” asked Wes, his heart racing.

Dean's black eyes pulled back from the windshield; fire danced in them as they turned and touched Wes.

“Everybody dies,” answered Dean.

Cars whizzed by them. Rain dotted the windshield. The rush of their journey sucked the water droplets up the glass, away.

“Take that exit,” said Dean.

The sign said Barham Boulevard. Houses clung to the hills beside the highway. A black tower skyscraper poked the clouds. Roads and houses stretched off into the mist.

“Used to be, I didn't talk this much,” said Dean.

A concrete ditch paralleled their path. Beyond it were hangar-like tan buildings. Movie billboards perched on those flat roofs. Wet emerald grass covered the hill to their right.

“How did you meet Jud?” asked Wes.

“People put us in touch.” Dean smiled. “He beat me once. At his old condo by the beach. I'd been careless with his trust. Didn't know who he truly was. He took me down to the garage. It was like dancing with an angel. Then I knew.”

“That he was the man,” said Wes.

Dean shrugged. “Somebody has to be.”

“What man is that?”

“If you need to ask, you can't know.”

I don't want to know
. Wes feared he'd flown across country only to cruise aimlessly with a burnt-out case. They drove past Forest Lawn cemetery, with its white stone mausoleums.

“What was he doing back then?” asked Wes.

“Go right,” ordered Dean, pointing to a park entrance.

The paved road rose and fell through the park like a roller coaster. They passed picnic grounds and barbecue pits. Wes saw five horseback riders winding their way through the trees. Their leader wore a yellow rain slicker and a cowboy hat.

Dean snickered. “Here comes the cavalry.”

A mile later, they reached a chicken-wired field with a two-tiered building at its far end. Hundreds of white balls dotted the ground inside the fence. As they passed the parking lot, four Japanese men in brightly colored pants and jackets and white caps unloaded golf bags from a Toyota.

“I'm about out of time for this,” said Wes.

“We're about there,” answered Dean. “Go that way.”

Down a residential street. They turned right, the road climbing through the hills of elegant Spanish and Tudor mansions. A Mexican gardener clipping grass watched them fade into the mist.

“This is the perfect place,” said Dean as they topped the hill. The evergreen trees ended. A massive parking lot waited off to the right. To the left, on the crest of the hill, was a castle.

Not quite a castle. A gray stone building with brass double doors, cathedral windows, a giant green copper dome rising from a tower in its center, and smaller copper domes on each end.

“What is this place?” asked Wes.

“Griffith Observatory.”

“Jud is
here?
”

“It's perfect,” said Dean. “You'll see. It's all here.”

An orange school bus was the only other vehicle in the parking lot. As Wes parked, the bus door opened, and thirty teenagers ran out into the cold.

“Day like today,” said Dean, “thought we'd be up here alone.”

“Where is he?”

“He'll be around the back. Watching to be sure it's me and I'm okay. When he's sure of that, we'll see him.”

“We better,” said Wes. “Where's his car?”

“Beats me,” said Dean.

As they walked across the lawn, Wes noticed Dean limped. And Dean saw Wes's look.

“Long time ago,” said Dean, “I wrecked my bike. Storms make it stiff. Something like that, embrace the pain. Do what you do.”

Two teenage girls ran past them, stopped

“Okay,” said the chubby girl, “what are we going to do?”

Her friend was pretty, brown haired.

“Like,” she said, “you stand there, see, and I stand like this….” She put her back to the hills, cocked her hip, and held her right hand at shoulder level, palm up. “You take the picture, and it'll look like the sign is in the palm of my hand.”

Rising from the hills behind her hand were the huge white letters: HOLLYWOOD.

“Come on,” said Dean, “we go around to the right.”

Side by side, they followed the red concrete path running along the Observatory's white stone wall.

“Where is he?”

“Just a little further.”

The path followed the curve of the middle dome. A waist-high, white stone parapet overlooked the city. The Observatory sat on the crest of a sloping hill; the walkway was above the treetops. Dean brushed his hand over a coin-operated brass telescope.

“Hell of a view, isn't it?” he said.

Beyond the edge of the parapet lay an endless urban checker-board under a cold gray fog. Dean stepped in front of Wes, pointed at a distant building whose top vanished in the mist.

“Used to be they didn't build vertical like that because of earthquakes,” said Dean.

Wes glanced toward the skyscraper.

Dean slammed his fist into the lawyer's stomach.

The punch knocked Wes's breath away. He staggered back as another punch rammed into his chest. His mind burned and he collapsed into the other man's grasp.

For an instant, Wes knew nothing. Consciousness returned with his breath. Dean's hands were under Wes's sports jacket, sliding along his sides, his back.

Gun
, thought the Marine.
He's looking for a gun
.

Dean had braced his prey against the parapet. Wes pushed off with all his strength, driving his shoulder into his attacker's chest, knocking him back into the curved stone wall.

But Dean bounced off the stones, his fists jabbing. Once, twice, three times he landed punches, his simian arms and huge hands keeping him out of the Marine's range. Dean switched to combinations, double shots to the ribs, back to the head.

Primal rage Wes hadn't felt in a dozen years roared through him. He charged through a barrage of fists.

The two men grappled, twisting, bouncing off the dome, off the parapet. The city whirled around them. Dean grabbed Wes's tie; Wes jabbed his elbow into Dean's face. Dean slammed Wes against a column; Wes swung a brass telescope into his attacker's head, then kicked him in the leg he'd favored and thrust his knee up, aiming for the groin.

Missed
. Dean grabbed Wes's raised thigh. Lifted him off the ground, bent him across the foot-wide stone parapet.

The world reeled upside down, Wes's head and shoulders hung over the stone. His legs scissored Dean, squeezing, holding on as he tried to grab the hands that were pummeling him. Pushing him.

Over the edge.

“You want the man!” screamed Dean. “You wait for him in hell!”

And Dean smashed his fists in Wes's stomach, into his thighs. He pulled Wes's legs apart.

Threw him off the Griffith Observatory parapet.

Twenty, thirty feet West fell. He tumbled through a pine tree, fell onto a thick bush. Slammed into the earth.

Afternoon sunlight drifted through the living room windows of an ordinary house in a Los Angeles neighborhood known for its ordinary houses. The living room walls were bare, chipped yellow paint. A ragged couch took up one wall. Across the room sat a color TV. Newspaper and magazines lay scattered on the wood floor. A red sock lay crumpled in the hall leading back to the bedroom and bathroom. A fly buzzed in the kitchen, was silent.

“
Police!
” yelled a voice from the driveway.

The front door crashed open.

First man through came fast and low, pistol clenched in the two-handed grip. He jumped clear of the door, threw his back against the wall, zeroed his gun at anything that lived. He had a beard and long hair and wore a nylon jacket emblazoned
LAPD.

Second man through, gun aimed, ran to the door leading to the kitchen, slammed his back around the corner from its opening. Third man through the door did the same at the hall leading back to the bathroom and bedroom.

Fourth man through the door was L.A. homicide detective Rawlins. The black cop's 9mm was drawn, his face was grim.

Two more cops in nylon jackets ran in behind Rawlins. One trained his gun into the kitchen, one aimed into the bedroom.

The bearded cop who'd been first through the door whispered, “
Moving!
”

He jumped into the bedroom. Rawlins kicked open the bathroom door. Another cop searched the kitchen.

A minute later, the bearded man yelled, “Clear!”

One cop reported the news into his hand-held radio.

“Garage is clean,” he told the other men in the room.

“Let him in,” said Rawlins as he holstered his gun.

The bearded cop emerged from the bedroom, panting and pale, sweat on his forehead.

Wes shuffled into the house.

His handsome face was an ugly rainbow, black and blue and red-scraped, disinfectant orange beneath the emergency room Band-Aids on his forehead, his cheek, his jaw. The old scar on his chin was a dark line on pale flesh. He couldn't stand straight and favored his left leg. His breathing was shallow. His tie was gone. His clothes were streaked with mud and torn.

After the fall, he lay unconscious for what he figured to be five minutes. His throbbing head woke him. He was facedown on broken brush. He got to his knees, vomited. Looked up.

The parapet was deserted.

It took him twenty minutes to crawl and stumble and stagger up the slope of the hill, around the edge of the Observatory.

His rental car had vanished from the parking lot.

Inside the Observatory, he begged the woman behind the souvenir counter to call LAPD detective Rawlins instead of an ambulance. She and the old man in a gray suit and thin black tie cleaned the dirt off with towels from the bathroom.

He told them he fell while looking at the view.

They whispered to each other about suicide.

Rawlins drove him to a hospital. Wes convinced him to help, but it was three hours from the time Dean attacked Wes until the bearded cop kicked in the door on that ordinary house.

“You sure you got the right place?” asked Rawlins as Wes looked around.

“My car's ou' front,” mumbled Wes. “Hot-wired.”

And thank God I left all my files in D.C., kept the pictures of Jud inside my jacket pocket
, thought Wes. Dean knew no more from searching the car than Wes had told him. Even the rental car agreement was safe inside Wes's sports jacket.

“Who is this guy?” said the bearded cop. “Junk in the bathroom. Beer in the frig, moldy bread, flies on sardine cans in the kitchen. Dirty sheets and old clothes, tools, cartridges, weird fuck magazines. But hell, shopping-cart people own more shit!”

He kicked the TV. It blared on, startling them all.

“Motorcycle's gone,” said Wes. “What ‘e had, couple bags, always packed. Gone.”

“Don't worry,” said the bearded cop. “We'll APB the shit. Assault on a peace officer. Every badge west of the Mississippi will be scanning for his sorry ass.”

“No,” said Wes.

The bearded cop blinked. “What?”

“No APB,” said Wes. “No wants or warrants, no alert. We missed him here, can't turn 'verybody loose.”

“Why the hell not?” said the bearded cop.

“Thanks for your help, but—”

“Fuck you, Jack!” yelled the bearded cop. One of his buddies held his arm. “I fuckin' went through a
door
for you! Fellow cop messed up by a freak, fuck that shit! Nail him! Fuck all the
due process
procedure bullshit: kick the fuckin' door! You think this vest would stop a shotgun? An AK-47? My face ain't wearing a fuckin' vest and I went through that door! And now you fuckin' say
forget it?
Well, forget fucking you, Jack, you and your federal fucking bullshit!”