Total Immunity (10 page)

“So . . . the black man?” Oscar said. “What time was it?”

“Well, let's see, I watched
Miami Vice,
and then I started to watch an infomercial . . . I was hoping it was a new one, but it was only the same old Ron Popeil and his Roaster Oven . . . I've seen it about five hundred times. Anyway, that means it was about two thirty in the morning, because as soon as the oven commercial came on, I decided to step outside for some air. So I walked over to the curtain and looked out the window, and I saw this guy coming by. Big black man. Now, I don't have anything against black people. I mean, I hate rap, but when I was younger I used to adore Sam and Dave. Which one was it that sang the high parts on ‘Hold On'? Was it Sam or Dave?”

“Sam,” Jack said.

“Right, of course. Did you know they hated each other? Very sad. The Soul Men hated each other. That makes me sick to my stomach. Doesn't it make you sick, Mr. Toodles?”

The dog gave a sharp little bark and licked Fred J. Feeney, Crimefighter, on the chin.

“Anyway, I looked out, and this big black man was driving by in one of those big cars . . . what do they call them?”

“Pimpmobiles?” Oscar suggested.

“Yes, that's it. A great big pimpmobile. Not very ‘canyon' at all. I mean, we have weirdos, but pimps are sooo South Central. At least that kind of pimp. If we had a pimp, it would be more like a canyon pimp, a guy who wears Levi's and T-shirts and eats veggies, and does all his pimping on a cell phone, and his car would be a hybrid. Hybrid pimps, I love that. Do you love that, Mr. Toodles?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “He loves it. Did you get a look at the guy's face?”

“Yes, I did. Very scary. Big and pimp-ugly. Though I am not saying that because he is black. People up here in the canyon are not racist. But just the same, he was ugly as homemade sin. But not because he was black . . . you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I got it. Hey, listen, Freddy, you think you could recognize this guy again if we showed you a picture of him?”

Suddenly Fred J. Feeney went from his speed-rapping self back into the scared little guy who'd answered the door.

“But that would mean getting involved,” he said. “That might put Mr. Toodles and myself at risk. I don't know about that.”

“You want to help solve the case, though, don't you?” Oscar said.

“Yes, of course,” Feeney said, squeezing Mr. Toodles like a child squeezing her doll. “But what if that guy found out I identified him. I remember an episode of
The Shield
where a guy sees a murder and gang members stick his head on an electric stove! Oh, awwwwful!”

“Don't worry,” Jack lied. “The guy will have no idea who identified him.”

“You're sure?”

“Sure I'm sure,” Jack said.

“Well, when would we go over the . . . what are they called . . . mug shots?”

“How about right now?” Jack said.

“Now? Right now? This second? Well, how do we feel about that, Mr. Toodles?”

He put his ear down next to the terrier's mouth. Mr. Toodles licked his lobe. Feeney looked up, smiling.

“Mr. Toodles says he's up for it. So, I guess so. But before we go, he reminded me that I have to feed him.”

He patted the dog and smiled. Toodles licked him again.

“No problem,” Jack said. “You go right ahead and feed Mr. Toodles, then we'll all go down to headquarters together. Hey, one question though: What's with Mr. T's bikini?”

Feeney smiled as if he was awaiting that very question.

“Well, the thing is, Toodles loves to swim, but naked doesn't work for him. He's a very modest animal. Hence the suit.”

“Makes sense to me,” Oscar said.

“Yeah, got it,” Jack said.

“I'll be right back,” Feeney said. “I just gotta grind up his filet mignon.”

As Jack and Oscar drove up to the crowded parking lot of the FBI Building, Fred J. Feeney kept up a consistent chatter with his dog, Toodles.

“Look at the building, Toodles,” he said. “Look at all the people. Some are agents and some are criminals. Isn't that right, Mr. Toodles?”

And some are raving fucking maniacs who talk to their fucking dog as if he was a hand puppet, Jack thought.

He quickly parked the car in a space about five hundred yards away from the back entrance, and then had to wait while Feeney commented on every single person who came by.

“Look at that funny man,” Feeney said as a huge man with a tattoo of a devil walked by them. “He's all dressed up like the devil, isn't he, Mr. T. He'll be going to hell pretty soon, and then he won't think it's so funny.”

Jack looked at Oscar, who whispered: “Being with this guy is
already
like being in hell.”

They rode the elevator up to the sixth floor to Jack's and Oscar's cramped offices. Toodles began to bark in a panicky fashion.

Feeney petted him solemnly and said, “Mr. Toodles thinks he's going to jail, don't you, Mr. Toodles? Mr. Toodles thinks he's headed to the gas chamber!”

Jack felt a terrific urge to laugh and had to restrain himself.

At Jack's crowded cubicle on the sixth floor, Fred J. Feeney looked through the mug shots while holding Toddles on his lap.

“No . . . no, no,” Feeney said, rapidly turning the pages. “We didn't see any of these bad men, did we, Mr. Toodles?”

Jack stood by, drinking some water from the cooler, trying to keep his patience.

“No, wait . . . oh, look here,” Feeney said, looking up at Jack with a half smile on his face.

“That the guy?” Oscar said, moving in behind Feeney to get a better look.

“No, that's not him. It's just that he's so ug. Mr. Toodles thinks so . . .”

“Hey, Fred,” Oscar said, “you think you could limit your comments to the matter at hand?”

Feeney sighed, then looked again at the man's picture.

“Well, if that one there . . . isn't a criminal, he damned well should be!”

He sighed and looked through a few more pages. Then:

“Oh, look here,” he said.

“More ugliness?” Jack said.

“No sirree bob,” Feeney said. “This is the guy. You remember him, don't you, Toodles?”

The dog gazed at the picture, but made no comment.

“You sure?” Oscar said.

“Oh, yes,” Feeney said. “I never forget a face. Now, names I'm not that good at. Like I sometimes get Melvin all mixed up with Don. And Le Roy all mixed up with Lester. Don't ask me why, but my mother was the same way.”

Jack looked down at the picture Feeney had pointed out.

It showed a picture of a large black man, forty-two years of age. His name was Edward T. Rollins.

“Arrested for car theft, interstate flight. Been a member of a chop-shop gang in Reno, Nevada, and Tijuana, Mexico.”

“Car nut,” Oscar said. “That's gotta be our boy.”

“No known address,” Jack said. “I'm thinking we oughta ask Michelle Wu about this.”

Oscar nodded. “Yeah, if anyone knows about it, she would.”

Feeney looked up and smiled in his goofy way.

“Did I do good, guys?”

Jack smiled down at him and even felt a little shot of warmth for Fred and his dog.

“You did real good, Fred. I think we might even have a crime- fighter's badge for Toodles here.”

He reached into his desk and found a toy agent's badge that agents routinely gave out to school kids who toured the building.

“Oh, wow! Thanks, fellas. Say, look at that, Toodles. We're agents. Yes, we are, aren't we, Toodles. Agents of the FBI.”

Oscar shook his head again, and Jack thought of how funny Zac Blakely would have found all of this. That was the thing about Zac; he knew where to find a saving laugh. He always said that one thing he knew for sure: He'd never die from stress. Not with his sense of humor.

10

MICHELLE WU LIVED in Koreatown, but nobody knew exactly where. Jack had a cell-phone number for her and she agreed to meet him at a place called General Wang's Noodle Factory, a stucco building near Western, where nobody had made noodles for thirty years. She made it clear that she didn't want to see Oscar or anyone else, and if they showed, she wouldn't appear.

So at eight that night, Jack found himself parking behind General Wang's Noodles on Eighth Avenue, and walking into a dark alley, where he looked for a long flight of rotted steps which led to the third-floor door that still had a picture of General Wang himself, a bespectacled Korean who held a steaming plate of noodles.

Jack rang a bell and a Korean the size of Goliath came to the door. Jack explained to him who he was, leaving out the fact that he was a federal agent, and followed him inside. Once inside the door, the giant frisked him professionally and, satisfied that Jack wasn't carrying a weapon, grunted and pointed to the back of the building.

They walked through hallways strewn with trash, and then entered a freight elevator that took them to the top floor.

The man never spoke at all. When they arrived, he opened the old hand-cage door and grunted again. Jack took this to mean he should get out, and did.

He looked to his left and saw a car sitting under klieg lights. Jack walked toward the racer, a Honda EG hatchback tuner car, a twelve-second car, the model street racers used in pink-slip contests.

Jack saw a pair of shapely legs sticking out from under the engine block and walked toward them.

“Hey, white boy,” Michelle Wu said.

“Hey, yourself,” Jack said. “You tricking this baby out all by yourself?”

“Oh, yeah,” Michelle said. “I'm getting the fuel injections put in. Pink baby. This little car gonna bring home a lot of other cars for Mama. All perfectly legal, of course.”

“Of course,” Jack said. “We know that a woman of your ilk would never traffic in anything illegal.”

There was a chuckle from underneath the car, and then Michelle Wu slid out on her dolly and looked up at Jack.

Jack smiled at her. She was so strikingly beautiful that it sometimes hurt his face to look at her. He couldn't simply stare at her, though that was his initial instinct. Her black eyes seemed to reflect moon and starlight even in a room as dark as this one. Her body was trim, her breasts small but perfectly shaped. Her flat stomach, her stunningly shaped legs . . . the whole package was devastating.

“You come to arrest me again, white boy?” she said, slipping off the dolly and effortlessly standing by his side.

“Not unless you're stealing cars again and breaking interstate- flight laws,” Jack said, smiling.

She leaned into him, purposely rubbing her breasts on his chest, and kissed his cheek. Her lips were full, and yet soft. Jack felt the immediate stirrings of desire and pulled himself away. The truth was, even now, as involved as he was with Julie, he didn't trust himself around Michelle, and he sure as hell didn't trust her. She was beautiful, brilliant, and an amazing mechanic and driver . . . but there was something constitutionally wrong with her. She would rather invent a lie even if it was easier to tell the truth. She lived for action and excitement and, as fast as she could turn you on, she could also become bored and truculent.

She didn't merely live in the fast lane, she
was
the fast lane.

Now she was all charm, leaning against Jack as she put on a high-heeled shoe, which emphasized her perfect calves.

“I never stole cars,” she said, pouting and playing the hurt little girl for Jack. “You had it all wrong about that.”

“I know,” Jack said. “You had no idea that the cars you were running down to Mexico to the Encinitas chop shop were illegal, right?”

“Right,” Michelle said, fiddling with her other shoe. “I drove down there to race them. How could I know they were hot? Baby, have a little faith in me.”

“That's exactly what I
do
have,” Jack said. “A
little
faith. Very little, but more than I did this time last year.”

Michelle rolled her amazing dark eyes and picked up a wrench.

“I gotta fix the timing mechanism. So are you still going out with that little white angel-girl, Julie?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I am.”

“Such a waste,” Michelle said. “She's no good for you. She's mental.”

“No,” Jack said. “She's sensitive, that's all.”

“No, weak,” Michelle said. “When you want a strong woman, call me. You and me are meant to be together.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jack said. “It's our destiny.”

“Well, of course, silly,” she said. “So if you're not here to sweep me off my feet, then why?”

She gave Jack her best “what can a little thing like me do for a big cop like you” look.

“There's a guy hangs out in the car scene . . . Eddie Rollins. You know him?”

As she slid back under the hood, she said, “Maybe. What'd he do?”

“Maybe he murdered one of our agents. Zac Blakely. My old partner. You know anything about him, you tell me now.”

She slid back up and looked up at him.

“Zac Blakely.” She frowned, looked as though she was turning the name over in her mind.

“That name sound familiar to you?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It does. I think I heard you talking about him. But maybe somewhere else, too. I can't quite recall it.”

“His death was on the TV news last night.”

“Yeah,” Michelle said. “I guess that's how I know it. You think this guy Rollins did it?”

“Maybe,” Jack said. “You know him, Michelle?”

“You got a picture?”

Jack reached into his coat and handed her the mug shot.

Michelle looked at it, and then back up at Jack.

“You want to come under here with me?” she said. “I've got some pipe work I have to do.”

Jack managed a small smile. “You recognize him?”