The Murder Book (55 page)

“Oh, yeah, him.” He leveled the pistol downward, peppered Bill’s frame with a burst that nearly cut the blind man in two.

The fragments of Bill’s corpse bucked and flopped and were still.

Coury said, “Any more questions?”

He marched me out of the forest. A pile of cinders, snarls of electrical conduit, random stacks of bricks, and twisted metal chairs were the remnants of the little green house. That and something contorted and charred, lashed and duct-taped to a chair.

“Playing with matches,” I said. “Bet you liked that as a kid.”

“Walk.”

I stepped onto the gravel path. Keeping my head straight but moving my eyes back and forth. Nacho Vargas’s corpse remained where it had fallen. No sign of Aimee or Bert.

A cloud of musk hit my nostrils, sickly sweet as a Sacher torte. Coury, walking close behind me.

“Where we going?” I said.

“Walk.”

“Walk where?”

“Shut up.”

“Where are we going?”

Silence.

Ten steps later, I tried again. “Where we going?”

He said, “You are
really
stupid.”

“Think so?” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the short man’s silver gun and wheeling fast.

Inertia caused him to pitch forward, and we nearly collided. He tried to step back, free the machine pistol, but couldn’t get enough room to maneuver. Stumbled.

He hadn’t bothered to pat me down. Overconfident rich kid who’d never grown up. All those years of getting away with bad stuff.

The little silver gun shot forward, as if of its own accord. Coury’s goatee spread as his mouth opened in surprise.

I focused on his tonsils, shot three times, hit with every bullet.

I took his machine pistol and pocketed the silver gun, scurried off the gravel, found refuge behind a sycamore. Waited.

Nothing.

Stepping on greenery to muffle my footsteps, I inched forward, heading toward the road. Wondering who and what awaited me there.

I’d been overconfident, too, thinking Vargas and the small man had made up the entire army. Too important a job for a pair of thugs.

Coury had been a precise man who specialized at deconstructing high-priced machines and reconstituting them as works of art.

A good planner.

Send in the B team while the A team waits. Sacrifice the B team and attack from the rear.

Another ambush.

Coury had come himself to take care of Bill. Bill was a living witness, and eliminating him was the primary goal. The same went for Aimee. Had he taken care of her — and Bert — first? I hadn’t heard gunfire as I carried Bill away, but the firebombs and the kerosene blast had filled my head with noise.

I walked five steps, stopped, repeated the pattern. The mouth of the gravel drive came into view.

Choice point, none of the options good.

I found nothing.

Just the Seville, all four tires slashed flat, hood open, distributor cap gone. Tire tracks — two sets, both deep and heavily treaded — said the pickup and another working vehicle had departed.

The nearest house was a quarter mile up the road. I could barely make out yellow windows.

I was bloodstained and bloodied, one side of my face scraped raw, and my burnt hand hurt like hell. One look and the residents would probably bolt their doors and call the police.

Which was fine with me.

I almost made it before the rumble sounded.

Big engine, heading my way from Highway 150. Loud enough — close enough — for visibility — but no headlights.

I ran into the bushes, crouched behind a flurry of ferns, watched as the black Suburban sped past and slowed fifty feet before the entrance to Bill and Aimee’s property.

It came to a halt. Rolled forward, twenty feet, stopped again.

A man got out. Big, very big.

Then another, slightly smaller but not by much. He gave some kind of hand signal, and the two of them pulled out weapons and hurried toward the entrance.

Anyone at the wheel? The Suburban’s tinted windows augmented the night and made it impossible to tell. Now I knew that a run for the neighbors’ house would be risky and wrong: Coury’s shooting of Bill resonated in my head. Coury had pulled the trigger, but I’d been the angel of death, couldn’t justify extending the combat to more innocents.

I crouched and waited. Tried to read my watch, but the crystal was shattered and the hands had been snapped off.

I counted off seconds. Had reached three thousand two hundred when the pair of big men returned.

“Shit,” said the shorter one. “Goddammit.”

I stood, and said, “Milo, don’t shoot me.”

A
imee and Bert sat in the third row of the Suburban. Aimee clutched Bert’s sleeve. Bert’s eyes lacked focus.

I got in next to Milo, in the second row.

At the wheel was Stevie the Samoan, the bounty hunter Georgie Nemerov called Yokuzuna. Next to him sat Red Yaakov, crew-cut head nearly brushing the roof.

“How’d you find us?” I said.

“The Seville car got tagged, and I got hold of the tagger.”

“Tagged?”

“Satellite locating device.”

“One of Coury’s car gadgets?”

His hand on my shoulder was eloquent:
We’ll talk later.

Stevie drove to Highway 150 and pulled over just short of the 33 intersection, into a tree-shaded turnaround where three vehicles sat. Toward the rear, half-hidden by the night, was the pickup truck, front end facing the road, still loaded with fertilizer. A few feet away was a dark Lexus sedan. Another black SUV — a Chevy Tahoe — blocked both other vehicles.

Stevie dimmed his lights, and two men stepped from behind the Tahoe. A muscular, shaved-head Hispanic wearing a black muscle T-shirt, baggy black cargo pants and a big, leather chest holster, and Georgie Nemerov in a sport coat, open-necked white shirt, rumpled slacks.

The muscular man’s T-shirt read: BAIL ENFORCEMENT AGENT in big white letters. He and Nemerov approached the Suburban. Milo lowered his window, and Nemerov peered in, saw me, raised an eyebrow.

“Where’s Coury?”

Milo said, “With his ancestors.”

Nemerov tongued the inside of his cheek. “You couldn’t save him for me?”

“It was over by the time we got there, Georgie.”

Nemerov’s eyebrow arched higher as he turned to me. “I’m impressed, Doc. Want a job? The hours are long and the pay sucks.”

“Yeah,” said Yaakov, “but de people you got to meet are deezgusting.”

Stevie laughed. Nemerov’s smile widened reluctantly. “I guess results are what counts.”

“Was there anyone else?” I said. “Besides Coury?”

“Sure,” said Nemerov. “Two other party animals.”

“Brad Larner,” said Milo. “That Lexus is his. He and Coury arrived in it, Larner was driving. He was parked near the house, waiting for Coury, when we spotted him behind the truck. Dr. Harrison and Caroline were tied up in the truck bed. Another guy was at the wheel.”

“Who?”

Nemerov said, “Paragon of virtue named Emmet Cortez, I wrote a few tickets for him before he went away on manslaughter. Worked in the auto industry.”

“Painting hot rods,” I said.

“Chroming wheels.” Nemerov’s grin was sudden, mirthless, icy. “Now he’s in that big garage in the sky.”

“Rendered inorganic,” said Stevie.

“Steel organic,” said Yaakov. “Long as deyr someting left, he steel organic, right, Georgie.”

“You’re being technical,” said Stevie.

“Let’s change the subject,” said Nemerov.

“P
ancakes,” said Milo.

It was 10
A.M.
, the next morning, and we were at a coffee shop on Wilshire near Crescent Heights, a place where old people and gaunt young men pretending to write screenplays congregated. One half mile west of the Cossack brothers’ offices, but that hadn’t been what drew us there.

We’d both been up all night, had returned to L.A. at 6
A.M.
, stopped at my house to shower and shave.

“Don’t wanna wake Rick,” he’d explained.

“Isn’t Rick up by now?”

“Why complicate things?”

He’d emerged from the guest bathroom, toweling his head and squinting. Wearing last night’s clothes but looking frighteningly chipper. “Breakfast,” he proclaimed. “I know the place, they make these big, monster flappers with crunchy peanut butter and chocolate chips.”

“That’s kid food,” I said.

“Maturity is highly overrated. I used to go there all the time, believe me, Alex, this is what you need.”

“Used to go there?”

“Back when I wasn’t watching my figure. Our endocrine systems are shot so we need sugar — my maternal grandfather ate pancakes every day, washed them down with three cups of coffee sweeter than cola, and he lived till ninety-eight. Woulda gone on a few more years, but he tumbled down a flight of stairs while ogling a woman.” He pushed an errant thatch of black hair out of his face. “Unlikely to be my fate, but there are always variants.”

“You’re uncommonly optimistic,” I said.

“Pancakes,” he said. “C’mon, let’s get going.”

I changed into fresh clothing, thinking about Aimee and Bert, all the unanswered questions.

Thinking about Robin. She’d called last night, from Denver, left a message at 11
P.M.
I phoned back at 6:30, figuring to leave a message at her hotel, but the tour had moved on to Albuquerque.

Now, here we were, facing two stacks of peanut butter hotcakes the size of frypans. Breakfast that smelled eerily of Thai food. I corroded my gut with coffee, watched him douse his stack with maple syrup and begin sawing into it, then took hold of the syrup pitcher in my unburnt hand. The ER doctor at Oxnard Hospital had pronounced the burn “first-degree plus. A little deeper and you would’ve made second.” As if I’d missed a goal. He’d administered salve and a bandage, swabbed my face with Neosporin, wrote me a scrip for antibiotics, and told me to avoid getting myself dirty.

Everyone at the hospital knew Bert Harrison. He and Aimee were given a private room near the emergency admissions desk, where they stayed for two hours. Milo and I had waited. Finally, Bert came out, and said, “We’re going to be here for a while. Go home.”

“You’re sure?” I said.

“Very sure.” He pressed my hand between both of his, gave a hard squeeze, returned to the room.

Georgie Nemerov and his crew drove us to the spot at the entrance to Ojai where Milo had left his rental Dodge, then disappeared.

Milo had joined up with the bounty hunters, formulated a plan.

Lots of questions…

I tipped the pitcher, followed the syrup’s drizzle, watched it pool and spread, picked up my fork. Milo’s cell phone chirped. He clicked in, said, “Yeah?” Listened for a while, hung up, stuffed his face with a wad of pancake. Melted chocolate frosted his lips.

I said, “Who was that?”

“Georgie.”

“What’s up?”

He cut loose another triangle of hotcake, chewed, swallowed, drank coffee. “Seems there was an accident late last night. Eighty-third Street off Sepulveda, rental Buick hit a utility pole at high speed. Driver and occupant rendered inorganic.”

“Driver and occupant.”

“Two db’s,” he said. “You know what high-speed impact does to the human body.”

“Garvey and Bobo?” I said.

“That’s the working hypothesis. Pending verification of dental records.”

“Eighty-third off Sepulveda. On the way to the airport?”

“Funny you should mention that, they did find tickets in the wreck. Pair of first-class passages to Zurich, hotel reservations at some place called the Bal du Lac. Sounds pretty, no?”

“Lovely,” I said. “Maybe a ski vacation.”

“Could be — is there snow there, right now?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “It’s probably raining in Paris.”

He motioned for a coffee refill, got a new pot, poured, and drank slowly.

“Just the two of them?” I said.

“Seems that way.”

“Odd, don’t you think? They’ve got a full-time chauffeur and choose to drive themselves to the airport? Own a fleet of wheels and use a rental car.”

He shrugged.

“Also,” I went on, “what would they be doing on a side street in Inglewood? That far south, you’re heading for the airport, you stay on Sepulveda.”

He yawned, stretched, emptied his coffee cup. “Want anything else?”

“Is it on the news, yet?”

“Nope.”

“But Georgie knows.”

No answer.

“Georgie has the inside track,” I said. “Being a bail bondsman and all that.”

“That must be it,” he said. He brushed crumbs from his shirtfront.

I said, “You’ve got syrup on your chin.”

“Thanks, Mom.” He threw money on the table and got up. “How ’bout we take a little digestive stroll.”

“East on Wilshire,” I said. “Up to Museum Row.”

“You are nailing those hypotheses, Professor. Time for Vegas.”

We walked to the pink granite building where the Cossack brothers had once played executive. Milo studied the façade for a long time, finally entered the lobby, stared down the guard, left, and returned to the front steps where I’d been waiting, pretending to feel civilized.

“Happy?” I said, as we headed back to the coffee shop.

“Ecstatic.”

We retraced our walk to the coffee shop, got into Milo’s rental of the day — a black Mustang convertible — drove through the Miracle Mile and across La Brea and into the clean, open stretch of Wilshire that marked Hancock Park’s northern border.

Milo steered with one finger. No sleep for two days but beyond alert. I had to fight to keep my eyes open. The Seville had been towed to a shop in Carpenteria. I’d phone in later today, get a report. Meanwhile, I’d drive Robin’s truck. If I could stand the sweet smell of her permeating the cab.

He turned on Rossmore, drove south to Fifth Street, hooked back to Irving, and pulled over to the curb, six houses north of Sixth. On the other side was Chief Broussard’s city-financed mansion. An immaculate white Cadillac sat in the driveway. A single plainclothesman stood guard, looking bored.