The Replacements (29 page)

I rounded the first corner to a long driveway leading down the side of the hospital that dumped out into the street. Halfway down the block was a park. If I could make it to the park, I'd have a chance to get lost in all the trees and bushes. I put on a burst of speed. The two cops behind came around the corner with their cop noise, running boots, creaking leather, jangling equipment.

Up ahead a cop car bounced into the driveway from the street, red lights and siren blaring, cutting off my escape route.
In a last-ditch effort, I turned, hit the eight foot chain-link fence, and started up, fingers clawing for purchase.

A hand grabbed my ankle. “Got you, asshole.”

They pulled me down and jumped on top. The cop car stopped with the bumper right at my head. They kicked and slugged and hit me with batons. They cuffed me and shoved me into the back of the car.

Tears of frustration filled my eyes. No way would I get out of this. Mack would not be there this time to rescue me. I didn't care about me. Now Marie didn't have a chance. Who would look for her?

The driver headed onto the San Bernardino Freeway. They'd transport me to the jail to book me in on the murder charge. A tick-tock pounded in my head. Time was against me. An evil, unstoppable enemy who sped along unabated.

Outside, eucalyptus trees whipped by in an endless procession. If only I could somehow escape and get into those trees. I put my face up close to the cold black screen that separated me from the cops and tried to see the MDT, the Mobile Dispatch Terminal, searching for any information that might help me get out of the car. There wasn't much time. Once inside the jail, all would be lost. Tick-tock. Yards sped by and turned into miles.

We exited at Etiwanda Avenue. A quarter mile later, we turned into the driveway of The West Valley Detention Center. The tall sally port opened to let us pass into the jail yard. I pivoted in the seat to watch out the back window as the gate rolled behind us and clanged shut with a finality I would never forget.

The two uniforms got out and stowed their weapons in the trunk of the unit before they both came around, opened the door, and pulled me out. Each held firmly to an arm even though I could go nowhere but through the solid steel door into the jail. I was their prize catch. A murder suspect, a shooter of cops, and they were the captors.

The one with sandy hair leaned up close to my ear as he
stutter-stepped to keep up. “Say good-night, asshole. You're goin' away forever.”

I stopped dead and stared at him. Sandy hair smiled and yanked on my arms. We continued.

They sat me on the concrete bench and filled out the booking slip and the health screen. I gave them the answers to all their questions by rote. My mind was spinning out scenarios of escape, any kind of plan. I needed to calm down and focus, or I'd be nothing better than a trapped animal banging around in a cage.

The intake deputy on the other side of the reinforced glass window asked, “You want to make a phone call?”

A phone call. I could call someone, anyone who might help. But who? The moment, however brief, lingered. There was no one. “No. No phone call, thanks.” Thanks? Why'd I say that?

I sat on the bench with five other malcontents, all lacking teeth here and there, dirty hair, and reeking of body odor. All waiting to be classified. Street people who'd be better off with a warm place to sleep, a roof over their heads, and three meals a day. Except one, whose clothes, a rumpled disheveled suit that hung off him. His hair was mussed, his eyes watery, the classic drunk driver. He looked right at me from two crooks over and leaned in. “Hey, man, I know you? Sure, I know you. You're some kinda celebrity, right?” His breath was sweet with bourbon and cherries. A soured ignorance wafted my way.

“You've mistaken me for someone else.”

“No, no, I never forget a face. I've seen you someplace.” He sat back on the bench with a look of consternation as he tried to pull up the memory of my face the thousand times it had been shown on television nine months ago, a featured program on
Most Wanted
.

I looked at my wristband. Damn. They'd figured out my real name. They had booked me under the alias Leon Byron Johnson I'd given them, but they must have later found my real name through a CALID fingerprint check. Since they had my real name, the warrant must have popped. I was caught. Booked on a
warrant for the murder of my friend Chantal, back from before when we fled the States for Costa Rica. I didn't do it. My old friend Robby had set me up to take the fall. I was boxed in tight. Robby was the only witness, and he was dead.

No, don't think that way. Every problem has an answer. There have to be options
.

I put my head back and closed my eyes. The drunk down the way leaned over. His odor spoke before he did. “
Survivor
, right? You were on that one in Bali, or some shit. The guy who ate that lizard and got sick, right? Kicked off the island because you ate that lizard. Hey, man, that chick on there, the one with the short red hair, was hot. Did you have a chance to do her? Did you get a crack at that?”

I couldn't think with his yammering. I opened my eyes wide and leaned over. “The name's Bruno Johnson.”

The smile in his eyes faded first, followed by the one on his mouth, as his alcohol-soaked brain cells kicked in and he put the name to the face. He turned face front and shut his yap.

Gradually, my mind eased and drifted back to where all this had started. How simple life had been working a cabana bar on the beach. Going home every night to see Marie's smile, the glow in her eyes, the joy of having the children, the tone in their perfect little laughs and giggles. Then the memories sped up. Images of the last two days came faster and faster in a kaleidoscope of color and pain, emotional and physical. I sat forward. A possibility, a small, ever-so-minute answer, burst to the surface. Sure, sure, that might just work. It had to work, there wasn't anything else.

I jumped up. “Hey, I want that phone call now.”

The custody deputy took me out of the classification holding and into the hall to use the phone. I dialed Barbara Wicks. On the other end her phone rang once. She didn't pick up. Her phone readout would tell her the jail was calling. She'd have to know the caller was Bruno-the-dumbshit-Johnson on the line. Her phone rang a second time. She didn't pick up. If she didn't answer, the weak plan forming in the back of my brain wouldn't see the light of day.

Her phone rang again. She picked up, but said nothing. I said, “Hello.” My tone was far too desperate.

She said nothing.

“Barbara?”

She said nothing. Her breathing came over the phone.
She'd asked me not to take Mack along. She'd begged me
.

“Barbara, please?”

More breathing. In the background a PA system paged a doctor. She was at St. Bernadine's with Mack.

I said, “I know it's not fair for me to ask a favor, but I desperately need one.”

Her voice came over terse and angry. “You've got a lot of nerve, Bruno Johnson, calling me after what you've done.”

My face flushed hot. “I have the nerve? Who's the one who came down to Costa Rica to ask
me
for a favor? Who had the most to lose?”

“How dare you throw that back at me,” she yelled. “John's in surgery right now.” Her voice broke with emotion. “His odds aren't good. He has internal injuries. He's bleeding internally.”

“I'm sorry. You know I didn't mean that to happen.”

“
Didn't mean that to happen
? What
exactly
did you think was going to happen when you took Karl Drago, a degenerate murderer, into the Sons of Satan clubhouse to commit a robbery?”

“It was a risk I had to take.” My voice trailed off. She was right. How imbecilic raiding the SS clubhouse for a pot of gold. No, for a golden doughnut.

“I asked you not to take John with you,” she said in a quieter tone.

“Wait, Barbara.”

Her voice again caught with emotion. “He's in custody, Bruno. He comes out of this alive, he's going to do time for what happened. He'll never be a cop again. Being a cop defined him. It's all he's ever wanted to do.”

I gripped the phone, put my head against the wall, and closed my eyes. I knew exactly how that felt. “I've really screwed this up, I know, and I have no right to ask you for a favor.”

“Damn straight, you don't.”

“Wait, wait, don't hang up.”

Her breath came hard into the phone, but she didn't hang up.

“Barbara, Jonas has Marie and Eddie.”

Her breath caught. “Oh my God. You're sure?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea where he's holding them?”

“No. Are you going to help me?”

“You're in jail on a murder warrant. I told you. You get picked up, there would be nothing I can do for you.”

“I just need you to make one phone call.”

I sat alone in the holding cell watching the clock. I had told Barbara to tell the US attorney one hour or the deal was off. I didn't know if what I had to deal was enough, but it was all I had. And I needed them moving fast. One hour ticked by, then another fifteen minutes. I had calculated in the extra time this part would take. The assistant US attorney would want me hungry for the deal; they'd want the extra power driven home with the emphasis that they were the ones in control. They didn't know what I had in mind, what I wanted to negotiate with, they just wanted a cop-out, a confession to make their jobs easier.

At one hour and twenty minutes, the deputy came for me and escorted me to a large, comfortable interview room, not one often used for regular crooks. I sat in a hard plastic chair at a hard plastic table, hands cuffed in front of me.

I didn't have one minute to spare. I looked up to the ceiling where there had to be a pinhole camera and said, “No more bullshit games. Get in here right now or the deal's off.”

I watched the clock on the wall. The red second hand swept around the dial once. The door opened. Three men and one woman came in, all wearing suits. They didn't sit down. The men folded their arms and leaned against the wall. The woman said, “Just to be fair, we don't think you have anything worth trading, not enough to let you go on a murder charge. We are here at the express request of Montclair Chief Wicks.”

“First off,” I said, “I know you've had the time to check
out the case that this murder warrant is based on. I didn't kill Chantal. She was my friend and, if it goes to trial, there is every likelihood that I will walk.”

I didn't want to tell her that Robby Wicks, my old supervisor, my friend and husband to Barbara Wicks, had killed Chantal. Any defense put forward would have to put Robby out front, and I didn't know if I could do that. Even after all that Robby had done.

One of the men, shorter, stout through the shoulders, wearing a blue suit with gray pinstripes, said, “And there's the other matter of the kids.”

Was he now referring to the kids I had taken down to Costa Rica? I had left no evidence behind. They knew about Wally, but not the others, not for sure they didn't. They only had rumors, supposition, circumstantial evidence. When Robby was alive, Robby had been hunting the children. He and I had played a little game of fox and hounds. I was sure he had told no one. Now that Wally had been reunited with his father, the pressure had come off. What they had was conjecture, speculation, and, most of all, embarrassment for being outsmarted.

I played dumb. “What kids?” When I said it, I remembered they had me on video putting Jonas in the trunk at the mall. They thought I had the two children, the little girls Jonas had taken, Elena Cortez and Sandy Williams.

Blue suit said, “Chief Wicks told us you didn't take those kids. But you did grab Jonas Mabry, and you will have to answer to that if and when we capture him.”

He had tipped his hand, the first to give up something. I might grow to like him. I looked at him. “FBI or AUSA?”

He shrugged.

“Tell us what you have,” said the woman.

I looked her in the eyes for a long moment, then shifted back to blue suit, where I was getting a little slack. “I know the FBI set up Karl Drago to be killed by the Sons of Satan in order to get a RICO on Clay Warfield.”

His eyes twitched. He wasn't ready for such a large serving of truth and reacted with his expression. I had him.

The woman's mouth dropped open. She hadn't known. She wasn't a Fed. She recovered and said, “Speculation and conjecture. Not enough to trade for a murder charge.”

I looked back at her. “You're County, aren't you? You're with San Bernardino County District Attorney's office?”

She smiled. “Wrong. Los Angeles. Your murder occurred in LA county. And because of all your past crimes, I've been instructed not to negotiate with you.”

“I told you, it's not my murder. You drove all the way out here
not
to negotiate with me?”

She dropped the smile. I looked back at blue suit. “I have enough circumstantial evidence to go to the press with you using Karl Drago as a staked goat.”

He held eye contact and shrugged. “Do what you have to do.”

They turned in unison to leave.

“I can give you Clay Warfield and most, if not all, the SSs in Southern California. I can do it with one predicate crime.”

They froze and slowly turned back. Blue suit asked, “How?”

I'd said the magic words. “Ill-gotten gain, proceeds obtained through a criminal enterprise that will also establish tax evasion.” The same thing that took down Capone. I wasn't handing him a murder and mayhem predicate, but RICO carried a lot of years, and the blue suit would understand that you put enough defendants under that kind of pressure and they will start to roll. The whole SS organization would fall.

“Where is it?”