Runaway Heart (46 page)

     
"You do?" he smiled suggestively. "How were you
thinking of paying Miro back?"

     
"Don't start with that," Jack smiled. "But you
saved my life. I just want you to know I'll never forget it."

     
"Now you're making Miro blush."

     
"How can you tell?" Jack quipped.

     
"Take my word. . ." Miro smiled, then winced. "Oooh
. . . sorry . . . hurts."

     
"So, what can I get you? Anything. Just name it."

     
"Jack, would you go to my office, make sure the Reflections
answering machine isn't maxed? Pick up the messages and call the boys in the
book to give them their appointments?"

     
"Uh. . . sure," Jack said. "You mean set up some,
uh. . . whattayacallit. . . dates?"

     
"Yes. . . dates." He didn't smile because it hurt, but
his eyes were twinkling as he gave Jack the key.

     
"I have to be back in court at three this afternoon, but I
guess I could do that," Jack agreed hesitantly.

     
So Jack Wirta, ex-LAPD sergeant and one-time kick-ass homicide dick,
cabbed across town to Reflections where he opened the door with Miro's key,
entered, and hit the playback button on the answering machine.

     
"This is Leon,"
a voice said.
"I'm calling for
Marlon. I'm ready to party. Call me at 555-3478."

     
Jack wrote it down: Marlon—Leon's ready to party. He found a book
of names, flipped it open, then had to scan the whole book because he didn't
have a last name. There was only one Marlon, so Jack phoned and left a message
on his machine with Leon's number. So far so good. Forgetting that prostitution
was a crime, he thought this was pretty easy.

     
The next message was from somebody named Carl, for somebody named
Jack, but Wirta didn't know if that was Jack with the nipple pierce or Jack
with the fox terriers.

     
Jack Wirta, temporary escort service intern, worked on the
Reflections weekend business for almost an hour. He had done some strange
things in his life, but this was number one on his list of all-time favorites.

The van ride to Indio was long and
nobody had much to say. Jack thought the driver, an overweight deputy marshal
in a too-tight uniform, might have been snoozing between Banning and San
Bernardino, but that was just an impression and he hoped he was wrong. Jack
rolled down a window to perk himself up some. He'd had enough freeway madness
for awhile.

     
On the highway to Indio the terrain became decidedly less
interesting. Shopping malls and gas stations thinned down to roadside jewelry
stands and faded real estate signs.

     
There were two Indio Sheriff's cars parked at the side of the road
as the Econoline vans turned onto the dirt lane leading to the Ten-Eyck
reservation. The deputy had cut the old padlocks off the gate and it was now
standing open.

     
"This the whole shebang?" an Indio deputy sheriff
drawled as he stood in the desert heat with his stomach and gunbelt sagging.

     
Judge Krookshank got out of the lead van and stood at the side of
the road while Joseph Amato gathered up his collection of identical
co-counsels. Most of the attorneys looked slightly more human to Jack with
sweat on their faces and their ties rolled up in their pockets.

     
"Okay," Krookshank said to Herman. "This is your
discovery, so you do it."

     
They all squeezed into the front van and rumbled past the main
gate led by the Sheriff's department escort car, jouncing along on the dirt
road, all of them cheek to jowl, scowling like prisoners who didn't make bail.
Herman was looking out the window trying to spot the chimera lab, which he was
pretty sure would be a big brick or concrete
block science pod. What they saw was considerably less
noteworthy. There was certainly no shortage of cactus, broken trucks, and old
tires. It was an impressive collection of rubble, but there wasn't one chimera
to be seen. There were a few trailers rusting away in the dusty sunshine, but
no huge concrete research facility. No little furry soldiers with human faces
and talking computers. No spirited games of Capture the Flag taking place in
the desert heat with DARPA coaches holding clipboards, scoring, and shouting
instructions. . . just seventeen hundred acres of arid desert.

     
"Let's look in that one," Herman said with a sigh,
pointing at a rusting, silver Airstream trailer. They climbed out of the van
and Herman knocked on the door. Russell Iban-azi had some keys and opened up.
It was empty.

     
"This was Bob Horsekiller's place," Izzy said.
"He's got a big Spanish Tudor on Charing Cross Road now."

     
Good for Bob Horsekiller,
Jack thought, as he looked inside the
threadbare trailer.
I'd rather live in a mansion on Charing Cross, too.

     
There was nothing inside the Airstream but broken furniture.

     
Back in the van, they headed off again. Herman was getting
frustrated. "It has to be a large facility," he said, then pointed at
a dirt road. "Try that one—there."

     
The van swung right and headed in that direction. More tires, more
trailers, some stables, and an occasional dilapidated wood barn.

     
Herman got out and checked everything, walking into empty living
rooms, kicking old rugs, unlocking the empty barns and leading them inside
where there was nothing but empty stalls and piles of petrified horseshit.
Through it all they were getting strafed by horseflies large enough to carry
passengers.

    
 
Up until now
Amato had remained silent, but he had started smiling. "Seen enough?"
he quipped, managing to sound bored and ballsy, prickish and disgusted. Ten
letters, two words and it was all there.
Brilliant,
Jack thought.

     
Then the tour was over. Izzy seemed glad to be heading
out of there.
His dark childhood memories of the place reconfirmed. He was a resident of Bel
Air now and his Michelins were where they belonged—under his Porsche, not his
porch.

     
They stopped at the gate. The sheriff waited as Russell Ibanazi
locked up tight, putting on new padlocks he had brought with him. What he was
protecting seemed a mystery.

     
"Anything else before we go home?" Krookshank asked.

     
"No. . . no. . . I guess not," Herman replied. He looked
over at Susan, who shrugged.

     
Jack watched Herman carefully. He looked very old in that moment,
older than his fifty-five years, heavier than his two hundred and forty pounds,
more worn and tired than his shiny black suit.

     
"Oh well," Herman said. Two words, and they conveyed
nothing but fatigue. Herman seemed outgunned and out of
luck.

     
Jack felt sorry for him. It must be hard to believe in something
so passionately and be completely wrong.

FORTY-EIGHT

"
I
'm worried about
Dad," she said. "I've never seen him this way before."

     
They were sitting in La Dome, a very trendy Hollywood restaurant.
Jack had made the reservation. He couldn't afford the place. Jack usually tried
to avoid restaurants where the price of a dinner for two was higher than his
golf score and where the waiters were better looking than he was. La Dome
definitely fit that classification, but women liked this place. Stars dined
there. What a thrill to look over and see Jim Carrey comically spitting his
water out onto the floor while your date is nibbling a seventy-dollar plate of
Duck a la Bordelaise. The cheapest thing on the menu was a monkfish cooked
whole. Jack ordered that. Susan had the lobster. After the waiter left she
said, "I'm worried about what will happen in court tomorrow. We only have
Carolyn Adjemenian to verify that this gene map is legit and proves the
existence of the chimeras. Amato will have a parade of lying experts, all guys
from government labs, paid through secret government contracts, who will bullshit
like car salesmen to prove his point. I can't let Dad fail. I can't let them
destroy him, steal his soul."

     
"Yeah," Jack said. Strange way to put it, but he knew
she was right. As he was looking at her in the dim light of the restaurant he
was thinking that she had to be one of the most remarkable women he had ever
encountered. It wasn't just her physical beauty, it was the way she kept
standing in there, fighting for her poor, wheezing father right to the end,
never once doubting him, even in the face of total
defeat. Their
trip to the desert had revealed tumbleweeds and dust devils, but not one furry
hybrid monster. But she had never lost faith. Even now she was still trying to
salvage the mission, still trying to bail Herman out.

     
"Dad and Sandy saw a chimera," she said suddenly.
"You saw Sandy's drawing. We need to find out where the government took
them. . . where they are. We need to catch one."

     
"Right. Good idea," Jack replied somewhat less than
honestly, as his plate of monkfish arrived. The head was attached and his meal
was staring at him, giving him the fish eye.

     
Susan was saying, "He just never looks crushed like that.
Even after the MK Ultra case he got angry and rededicated himself. He's just
sort of sluggish now, going through the motions with Sandy, like his spirit is
gone—like he doesn't care anymore."

     
All afternoon Jack had been plagued by a thought, but he'd been
trying to ignore it. Part of him wanted to just bag this whole case, shake
hands with Herman, kiss and make love with Susan, and hope the business with
the chimeras would all fade away. But another part of him, the heroic, rarely
seen part, wanted to help pull lumbering Herman Strockmire Jr. out of his funk
and save the day for the corny but valiant Institute for Planetary Justice.
This thought he'd been having—this epiphany—had been rattling around in his
empty head like a marble in a metal bucket for about three hours. He had
desperately tried to push it away. It was a question really, and maybe there was
no answer. But maybe there was; and if the answer was what he thought it was,
it threatened to not only ruin this romantic evening with Susan, but to take
them down a road that Jack was pretty sure he didn't want to travel.

     
All of this must have been playing across his big movie screen of
a face, colorful and obvious as a Steven Seagal flick, because suddenly Susan
asked, "What is it? What are you thinking?"

     
"Huh?"

     
"You look like you just had an idea."

     
"I don't get many ideas. It musta been gas."

     
"What were you thinking, Jack? I want to know," she
demanded.

     
"Well, if you must know, I was thinking you are one of the
most beautiful people I've ever had the pleasure to know, and I think I'm
falling in love with you."

  
   
"Jack, that wasn't it."

     
"But it oughta earn me some points, though." He smiled.
"It was sweet and endearing and . . ."

     
"Jack!"

     
"Okay, okay, what I was thinking was. . ." He took a
deep breath. "Everything that happened today makes no sense at all when
viewed against what happened yesterday. That's it. That's the whole idea. Let's
go to the next subject. Hey, this is a great-looking fish, isn't it? I love it
when you can have eye contact with a meal."

     
"Whatta you mean?" she said. "Explain that. And I'm
not talking about the food. The thing about what happened yesterday not being
in sync with today."

     
Jack put down his fork and sighed. "We go out to that
reservation and it's nothing but a used-tire exhibit. . . some old trailers, a
few run-down barns. Nothing."

     
"So?"

     
"So, why is . . ." He stopped.

     
"Yes?"

     
"Why is there a Code Sixty-one on that place?"

     
"A what?"

     
"It's a federal no-fly zone restricting all flights over that
reservation from the ground all the way to outer space. They only have Code
Sixty-ones over top-secret military installations. If there's nothing out there
to hide, why the FAA restriction, and why did a Blackhawk helicopter chase me
off when I tried to fly over it? Why did they arrest and try to kill me if
there's really nothing out there?"