The Deader the Better (31 page)

“That’s what I’ve been picturing,” Kurtis said.

“Nah,” Carl said. “As usual, some Jap got his head out of
his ass first. Asked himself the obvious question.” He looked from
Kurtis to me. We were supposed to guess. “I give up,”

Kurtis said.

“What item can be found screwed to the ceiling in every public
space in the civilized world?”

Kurtis and I engaged in a spirited round of synchronized
shrugging.

“A smoke detector,” Carl said derisively. “Gotta have ’em.
It’s the law.” He held up a chrome tube. “Japanese,” he said.

“Use ’em to check up on their employees. Transmits up to four
miles, variable remote focus.” He pulled two wires from the end.
“Low voltage. Same as the smoke detector. Made to fit right into
all the standard models.” He jiggled the wires.

“You just twist white to white and black to black, aim the thing
wherever the hell you want it…got holes all around to let the smoke
in…snap the cover back on and you’re on your way. Two minutes
tops. Thing runs forever.”

He turned to me. “No way Kurtis goes back in. Whatever we use is
probably gone forever. Fortunately for you, this is all shit we got
while doing inspections. We find good shit, we keep it and give the
client something not so good. If it’s traceable, it’s not to us.”

“How can I be sure they’re pointing where we want them?”

Kurtis asked.

“I’ve got an earpiece radio for you. You hook ’em up,
turn’em on and Robby and I will help you with the final
adjustments.”

“I’m looking for in and out twenty minutes tops.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Carl said. “When you want to go
in?”

“Eight or so,” Kurtis said. “As long as it’s dark. It’s
a lot easier to explain what you’re doing around someplace at
eight-thirty than it is at four A.M.”

Robby came out of the RV carrying a handheld radio and a black
electronic device about the size of a ghetto blaster. He was talking
into the radio. “Keep turning it that way…more…more…stop.
Right there.” As he spoke, a series of red lights flickered across
the face of the gizmo. “Okay, next one needs to go to the
left…yeah, toward the ocean…more…more…”

“They’re overlapping the fields,” Carl said. “Ya get ’em
up high so ya don’ have rabbits setting the damn things off.”

Twenty minutes later, we had an electronic perimeter set up. For a
final test, Floyd started at one end and walked the length of the
cut. As he moved through the trees, the red lights began to glow in
series. Robby fiddled with a knob. The next light was accompanied by
a loud chirp, and then the next. Robby chuckled. “Ya gotta like
it,” he said. Robby pushed the button and spoke into the radio.
“That’s it. We’re done.”

Robby and Kurtis disappeared inside the motor home. They came back
out wearing white coveralls with Pacific Power logos on the chest.
White sky, green trees and blue water. Underneath, WORKING TOGETHER
FOR WASHINGTON. Each man carried a yellow hard hat under one arm.

“Ready when you are,” Robby said to Carl.

“You got your phone?” I asked Kurtis. He nodded. Carl spoke to
Robby. “Careful with the juice, huh? Power company don’t exactly
send its stars out to bumfuck like this. Everything may not be where
it belongs.”

“I won’t run with scissors, either,” Robby assured him. Carl
and I watched in silence as they walked over to the cherry picker.
Robby walked around to the back, opened one of the storage
compartments and pulled out a pair of magnetic signs. Pacific Power.
Same logo. Same slogan. Stuck them on the doors, stepped back to
check the alignment. Made an adjustment. Got in and left.

“Feels good to be fucking with folks again,” Carl said. I
turned to Floyd, who sat on the lawn, leaning back against the
barbecue grill, catching some early afternoon sunshine. “You might
as well come with me,” I said. “Way things are going, if I leave
you here, I’ll be battered and bitten by an old lady and her dog.”

IF YOU’LL PERMIT ME THE PHRASE, MONTY’S EYES WERE as big as
saucers as he looked around the inside of the motor home. A dozen
small TV monitors, each with its own audio and video recorder,
completely covered one inside wall. The collection of equipment,
dials, lights, knobs and handles made an airline cockpit look
user-friendly. From the outside it appeared that the lovely flowered
curtains were closed, which in the strictest sense was true. What you
couldn’t tell from the outside was that the curtains had been
stiffened with epoxy resin and were permanently screwed in place and
that the interior had been gutted and turned into a mobile electronic
surveillance command post. Like every other vehicle Carl owned, the
RV was fitted with a hydraulic lift for his chair and had been
completely retrofitted so it could be operated from the chair using
hand controls.

“A little of their own medicine,” Monty enthused. The sight of
Carl in his wheelchair rolling around inside the RV seemed to confirm
his worst fears. “Almost got you, huh? Like they did Leo,” he
said.

“They’ll stop at nothing,” Carl told him. He turned to me. A
flick of his eyes told me he wanted me to get rid of Monty, who for
the past half hour had shown no inclination to leave. Floyd was down
at the far end of the bank of monitors, wearing a set of headphones,
tuned into regular TV, watching a cooking show.

I put my hand on Monty’s bony shoulder. “Come on,” I said.
“Time to let these guys do what they’ve been trained to do.”

He didn’t like it. He’d waited a long time for the
counterattack and wanted to be among the first rank. “Deniability
is crucial,” I insisted. “What you don’t know, you can’t give
up under the truth drugs.”

“Oh yeah,” he said tentatively.

I began to steer him toward the door. “They’ll pump you so
full of truth drugs you’ll think you’re Roseanne Arnold. You
won’t be able to help yourself.” I kept talking and steering
until I had him back inside, behind the motel desk. I slapped the
counter. Gave it the voice-of-doom narration.

“This is the front line,” I said. “Right here. We’re
counting on you.”

When I got back to the RV, Carl was talking to Robby on the radio.
The monitor in front of Carl flickered with blue static. “Anything
yet?” Robby’s voice.

“Nada,” Carl said. “Check the ground.”

A moment later, the screen lit into a street scene and then, just
as suddenly, reverted to static. “You had it for a second there,”
Carl said.

“Hang on,” Robby replied.

I tapped Carl. “I’m going to do a drive-by,” I said. He
nodded and adjusted two green dials. I hopped down from the RV and
walked across the thick carpet of leaves toward the Malibu. Suddenly
it was Indian summer in the middle of January. One of those Pacific
Northwest days when the complex weather systems collide and
momentarily seem to forget the season. Bright blue sky. Not a cloud
in sight. Must be fifty-five, pushing sixty degrees. No breeze to
speak of. I drove with the window down. The minute I turned left off
the highway and headed for the City Building, I could see Robby, way
the hell up in the air. Damn near as high as the hydraulic arm would
lift the bucket. Maybe forty feet in the air.

I followed the arrows around the parking lot. The cherry picker
was braced against the street, its four hydraulic legs spread for
balance, inside a perimeter of orange traffic cones. Robby was
working at the very top of the pole. He wore a headset. I could see
his lips moving as he talked to Carl back in the RV. Kurtis waved a
bright yellow flag with a flair seldom seen in roadwork. I rolled
down the passenger window and pulled to a stop next to Kurtis. “So
far, so good,” he said.

“You guys go right back to the ranch,” I said. “Soon as we
see you go by, we’ll pack it up and follow.”

“You got it,” he said.

The lower section of the hydraulic arm whined and began to fold
itself back into the bed. I jammed the car in park and got out. Robby
manipulated the three colored handles in the bucket as he lowered
himself back into the truck. “One down. One to go,” he said.

Kurtis pointed to a mercury vapor light along the curb. The light
nearest the back door of the City Building. “As long as we’ve got
this erection set, we’re going to fix that light so it doesn’t
work. Robby says it will just take a minute. Discretion, valor and
all that.”

“Good idea.”

I got back in and headed to the Black Bear. Monty was sweeping up
out front when I rolled back into the lot. He came limping over to
the window.

“Next half hour or so a white cherry picker with Pacific Power
signs on the side is going to come down the road heading west,” I
told him. “I need you to keep an eye out for it and come and report
when it passes. Can you do that?”

“Damn right I can.”

“Also, we’re going to need room nine for the next few nights.”

“When?”

“Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.”

He held out his hand. “Hundred twenty bucks,” he said. I dug
in my pocket, came up with six twenties and handed them over. I
guess, as far as Monty was concerned, service to the cause was one
thing, but commerce was another. Floyd had turned one of the picnic
tables right side up and was lying on it basking in the afternoon
sun. “Hell of a day,”

he said. “First camera works like a charm,” he said. He sat
up. “I can’t believe the shit this guy’s got. It’s fuckin’
scary, man. You got somebody like Carl on your ass, you can’t fart
without him knowing it from across town. Personal privacy is a thing
of the past, man, a thing of the past.” He shook his head.

Disabling the streetlight must have been as easy as Robby had
said. By the time I got through discussing privacy in peril with
Floyd, he already had the second camera secured on top of the pole
and was testing its field of vision under Carl’s direction. I stood
and watched as they tested it left and right, up and down, zoom and
back.

“That’s it,” Carl said. “Button it up and get out of
there.”

He turned to me. “That’s it until Kurtis goes in tonight,”
he said.

“Monty’s going to tell us when they go by.”

“That fucker worries me, Leo.”

“He’ll be all right,” I said with more confidence than I
felt. Carl began shutting the consoles down. Flipping switches,
turning dials and toggling toggles. “Might as well leave this beast
here until tonight,” he said.

Floyd stuck his head in the door. “Buck Rogers says the truck
just went by.”

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“HE’S GOING UP A PIPE…” I COULD HEAR FLOYD breathing into
the phone. “Fucker’s like a monkey,” he said. “He’s on the
roof and moving. In the shadows now; I can’t see him anymore.”

It was eight-thirty-five. Perfect night for a burglary. Outright
balmy and no moon. Boris, Robby and the Boys were holding down the
homestead. The fellas struck out in Port Townsend, but had a hell of
a time doing it. Maybe it was like Ralphie said. Maybe the old guy
found religion. Carl and I waited in silence. Four minutes until
Floyd spoke again.

“Coming back down from the roof. Okay. Doing the door. Still at
the door. He’s inside.”

“Hang on and keep the line open,” I said. Two minutes later,
Kurtis’s voice crackled from the speaker. “Number one,” he
said. “City attorney’s office. Got number one?” Carl said he
heard him loud and clear. So clear, in fact, that I could make out
the sound of Kurtis setting a chair under the smoke detector and then
the snap as he pried off the plastic cover. Bingo. The first monitor
blinked twice and then stayed on. Looking nearly straight down onto
Mark Tressman’s desk. The plastic slats segmented the view as if we
were looking through iron bars. “How’s the view?” Kurtis asked.
Carl told him it was fine. We watched on the monitor as Kurtis
returned the chair somewhere out of camera range and then walked back
through the picture on his way to the mayor’s office. The process
was repeated two more times without incident. Three monitors were now
lit. Tressman, the mayor and Nancy Weston were well on their way to
having their fifteen minutes of fame. Kurtis had been inside for
eighteen minutes. Kurtis had just entered the engineering and
inspections office when Floyd’s voice broke the spell. “Got me a
police cruiser,” he said. “No hurry. Looks like routine patrol.
Not to worry…not to worry.”

“Steady,” I said.

“It’s fat-ass. Getting out. He’s out checking the fucking
streetlight. Dumb fuck’s pounding on the pole. Dork.”

We waited an agonizing minute.

“Back in the car…driving…stopped again. Fuck,” Floyd said.
“He’s getting out again. Heading for the door.”

“Has he been on the radio?” I asked.

“No.”

No backup. After his embarrassing debacle with Floyd and Boris the
other day, Harlan Spots was going to handle this one himself. Get
back a little face.

Kurtis was on the speaker. “Audio four,” he said. Carl raised
an eyebrow. “Keep going,” I mouthed.

“Loud and clear,” Carl replied. “Let’s get this last one
and get the hell out of there,” Carl said.

“He’s found the door open. Reaching for his piece. Got it out.
Starting inside.”

“Stop him,” I said into the phone. The sound of the cell phone
hitting the car seat resounded from the earpiece.

“Tell Kurtis to stay where he is,” I whispered to Carl.

“Hang tight for a minute, Kurtis.”

“Problem?”

“Maybe. Stay still and quiet.”

Carl covered his mike with his hand. I paced up and down the
narrow aisle. Seemed like an hour before Floyd’s voice stopped me
dead.

He was out of breath. “Get the kid out of there,” he said. I
heard the Blazer start. Floyd breathing hard as he turned the wheel
and the squeal of tires.

“Let’s go, Kurt, move your ass,” Carl growled into the
headset.

Another minute passed. Kurtis over the speaker. “Oh, man…”