“Yes.”
“What are you talking about?” Olivia asked. “Who is Park?”
I raised my hand, signaling her to wait. I wanted Jim to talk while he was in the mood for it. If he had a break, he’d sit there and figure out some backdoor strategy to avoid the damage I was threatening to unload on him.
“You put him in touch with a detective?” I asked Jim. “The way you set me up with Olivia?”
“In a sense.”
“In what sense?”
“Larsen wanted to find Park. But he also wanted certain things to happen after he found Park. So he needed a very specific kind of guy. I put him in touch with somebody, and I think they got along fine. I heard Larsen made him into a regular employee.”
“He wanted a hit man, is what you’re saying. And you helped him find one.”
“You’d have to ask Larsen what he wanted.”
“Or the hit man,” I said. “He’d know.”
Jim shook his head.
“You missed your chance. He’s dead.”
“When, and how?”
“You know better than I do,” Jim said. “You killed him in Boston.”
It took me a moment to absorb what he meant.
“When I showed you the picture, you said, ‘Good for you.’ And then you told me there were more of them. I thought you were talking about feds. But you meant Larsen’s men.”
He gave the slightest of nods.
“How many?”
“I wouldn’t know. I just sent the one man. But he got more. After a while, they all looked the same to me.”
“What did Larsen want with Claire?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know what Dr. Park was doing for him?”
“Not a clue, Crowe. You know me better than that.”
“Sure,” I said. “Your client hands a briefcase to a guy who flies to Nassau and wires money to a pilot who ferries a plane full of cocaine over the Rio Grande. And you don’t know what your client does for a living. No clue. Maybe he owns a luggage store.”
“As far as I know, Larsen never handed a briefcase to anyone.”
“Then let’s just cut to the chase,” I said. “Where do I find him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where do you send the invoices?”
“An email address.”
“That’s not good enough, Jim,” I said. I looked at the phone. The video call was still connected. “How soon can you box that stuff up and get it to White’s house?”
“You took the van,” Elijah said. “But don’t worry. Your boy’s got a Porsche in the garage. I can put it all in there and give White the keys.”
“Put a bow on top.”
“You got it.”
Jim was watching the screen. Elijah had set the phone down, propped so we could see as he knelt and began to gather the stacked documents.
“Now you’ve got another choice,” I said. “It’s a tough one—do you call your clients and tell them what happened? Or keep your head down and wait for them to find out from the feds?”
Jim gave it some thought. Maybe he was thinking through his chances of skating out of this with a motion to suppress. There was a break in the chain of evidence. The conversations were protected by privilege. No way the government could use any of these documents in court. Valid points, but Jim knew the flip side, too. Which was that whether the government used the files or not, it would know everything. The feds would never forget what they saw. And Jim’s clients wouldn’t forget either.
“Jim, did you hear that?” I asked. The call’s audio feed had blanked out for half a second. “You know what that is, right? His battery’s running down. When it dies, I won’t be able to call him back. Not even if I wanted to.”
“I gave you the name.”
“Tell me where he is and I’ll keep your files safe.”
“I don’t know where he is right now. But I know something almost as good,” Jim said.
He put his head down and brought his eyebrows together. Pausing the way he would in court when he wanted the jury to lean toward him, hanging on the suspense. It was just how he was. He couldn’t help it.
“I know where he’ll be tomorrow night.”
“Really.”
“He invited me to something down in Beverly Hills.”
“What kind of something?”
“A gathering, is what he called it,” Jim said. He cleared his throat. “An opportunity. Not just the chance of a lifetime, but the chance of many lifetimes, if you want the exact words.”
“It sounds like a sales pitch.”
“Exactly what I thought,” Jim said. “So I said I might drop by. And I might’ve, just to meet his friends. Fresh blood and all that.”
“When, and where?”
“At nine o’clock tomorrow. In a house, up in the hills. He didn’t need to tell me the address—it’s Meredith’s place.”
“Whose?”
“Meredith Miles. The actress.”
“She’s your client?”
“Olivia sent her to me.”
I glanced at Olivia and she nodded.
“You’ve got her address?”
“Of course.”
I brought the phone close to my mouth and spoke to Elijah.
“Pack up the Porsche. Go any direction you want. Switch cars when you can, and find a hotel room somewhere. Bring in the files and sit tight till I call you.”
“You got it.”
I killed the connection, then glanced around the gun room. It would be wrong to say that the things in here were priceless. There were rows of English shotguns. Matched dueling pistols lay in velvet-lined cases. Their value could be ascertained, and traded upon. And from a security perspective, that was the problem. The entire house was a lure. What was in it could be stolen and fenced. Surely Olivia had thought about what a target she was. And I’d be willing to bet she’d taken some steps to protect herself.
“Do you have a panic room?” I asked her.
“Off my bedroom.”
“Can you lock it from the outside?”
She nodded.
“With a key,” she said.
“If we let Jim go, he could change his mind. He could warn Larsen,” I said. “You’ll need to keep him as a guest for a couple of days.”
I didn’t care for the way Jim was looking at me, so I dropped the pillowcase back over his head.
32
It was two in the morning, and I was in Olivia’s Jaguar, heading south. I was going to the Beverly Hills house of an Oscar-winning actress, to crash a party I had no business dropping into. I had about four hundred dollars in cash and a semiautomatic pistol that belonged to my former boss. I had a good suit but no tie. I had Elijah’s phone, but no wallet and no ID. I had three hundred miles to work out a plan.
Behind me, back in Carmel, Olivia and her butler were keeping watch on Jim Gardner. We’d taken the phone out of the panic room, then cut him loose inside. There was a kitchenette and a well-stocked freezer, and a little bathroom. I figured Jim could last two or three weeks in there, if he had to. Cozy and safe behind four feet of concrete and a steel door thick enough to stop a tank round. After Olivia closed it and turned her key in the lock, we couldn’t even hear him yelling.
I hadn’t told Olivia everything I’d seen and learned in the last forty-eight hours. She knew the main thing—that a man named Stefan Larsen had murdered her daughter by throwing her out of his helicopter. But she didn’t know about Claire’s twin, or the Creekside. She didn’t know everything Dr. Park had done for Larsen. For that matter, neither did I. But I was starting to get a picture. Jim had said it himself: Larsen was selling an opportunity.
The chance of several lifetimes.
I watched the sun come up while I sped down the Central Valley, irrigated fields stretching forever on either side of the interstate, a morning haze hanging over them. The air coming through the vents smelled of fertilizer and manure.
I was in no
particular hurry.
I pulled into a truck stop and had a good breakfast, then went into the bathroom and washed up at the sink. I took the bandages off my face and checked out the damage. Just some abrasions high on one cheekbone. The lump on my head was going down. It was bad, but it wasn’t even close to the worst beating I’d ever taken. Mentally speaking, there was still some fog. But it was lifting. Nothing I couldn’t fix with ten hours of sleep in a dive motel, a shot of bourbon, and a Tylenol.
But first, I did a bit of rolling surveillance. I drove the rest of the way to the city, came over the mountains and through Century City, and then I turned toward the heights. Meredith Miles lived on Deseo Lane, near the top of a canyon. I drove past houses that made Claire’s Baker Street home look like a caretaker’s cottage. And then, a little farther along, I must have come to the real money, because I couldn’t see the houses at all. Just the fences and the walls.
Meredith’s place was at the end of the road. Her wrought-iron fence was tall enough that she could have kept loose tigers and chimpanzees on the other side if she’d wanted to. The house was invisible, but there was a guard booth at the gate. Considering who lived on the other side of the fence, I was surprised there was only one man inside. But he was alert, and watched as I slowed down. At least I was in the Jaguar and not the Beast. The guard might remember a ’65 Camaro, but Olivia’s car was perfectly anonymous in this neighborhood.
I turned around, slowly. Just a guy cruising around, passing the time. An L.A. tradition if ever there was one. I went back down the canyon. I didn’t know L.A. any better than I knew Boston. I just drove until the buildings looked squat and sun-beaten, and then I got off the freeway and found a motor court, where I got the Manager’s Special without any fuss. Double the posted rate for a ground-floor room. Cash up front, and no need to sign the guest book.
The room was everything I expected. There was a rusted-out window unit air conditioner. One chair, one cigarette-burned table. The dull purple bedspread covered a thin, pilled blanket. The place was directly beneath the flight path to LAX. In the two minutes I spent looking over the room and turning down the bed, four jets roared over‑head.
I turned the air conditioner all the way down and pulled the vinyl-lined curtains closed. I hung my shirt and jacket on the back of the chair and laid my pants across the table. I took a shower, reconsidered that shot of bourbon, but went ahead with the Tylenol. Then I got into the bed without really toweling off. I put Jim’s gun on the bedside table, and fell asleep.
I woke at six p.m., and sat for a while on the edge of the bed. I counted what was left of Juliette’s money, then counted the bullets in Jim’s gun. Altogether, my situation wasn’t bad. I could buy thirty cups of coffee and kill nine people. And by ten o’clock, the chances were good that I’d be on my way to the nearest jail, if I was lucky, or tied up in the trunk of a car if I was less so.
I didn’t have a solid plan for preventing either option. I suppose I could’ve given up, but I had a paying client. And I had some skin in the game too—they’d hit my office, they’d broken into my apartment, and they’d tried to kill me twice. Not to mention, I wanted my car back. The Beast had sentimental value, more so in the last twenty-four hours than in the last six years. But still.
Plus, there was Madeleine. Maybe I’d been avoiding her, steering my thoughts well and clear. If she and Claire had been the products of some kind of laboratory experiment, then she was a victim just as much as Claire. If they’d taken her, and if they’d killed two people to cover their tracks, then she probably didn’t have a chance. That was the brutal probability I hadn’t wanted to consider.
By a quarter to eight, I was at the back of a three-car line waiting to get into Meredith Miles’s compound. The car in front was alongside the guard booth, window down. I couldn’t see the driver, or the guard. They must have been talking to each other, but I had no idea what they were saying. After thirty seconds, the gate rolled open, and the car drove in. Now I was second in line, and there were two cars behind me, close enough to my bumper that it would be hard to get out quickly. I’d made no promises to Olivia about how well I’d take care of her car, though, so at least there were some possibilities.
The second car’s window came down. Again, I couldn’t see the driver’s face. I could see the guard’s left arm. He looked like a big guy. Thirty seconds, and the gate opened. The car went inside, and the gate began to close. I took my foot off the brake and idled up to the booth. My window was already down. I got my first real look at the guard. He wasn’t really sitting in the booth. He was wearing it, and it was a size too small. Maybe he was moonlighting from his regular job in the NFL. His suit didn’t hide the tattoos on his neck and the backs of his hands.
“Good evening,” I said.
“Your name, sir?”
His voice was curiously high-pitched. Maybe he’d started taking steroids before he’d hit puberty.
“Jim Gardner,” I said.
He looked at me, squinting like a man who needs glasses but isn’t wearing them. I wondered how often, if ever, Jim had come down here. He usually liked to make clients come to him. But this was Meredith Miles. He might make exceptions to the usual rules. The guard eased back into the booth and extracted a clipboard. He consulted a piece of paper, moving his nail down a list. His fingers were the size of paper towel tubes. If he’d wanted to, he probably could’ve reached out, grabbed my hair, and ripped my head off my shoulders.
“There you are,” he said, in his child’s voice. “All the way at the bottom.”
“Where I belong.”
“Have a good night, sir.”
He hit the button and the gate rolled open. I nodded to him, put up my window, and drove inside. The driveway went up a hill, past stands of dry-looking pines. I’d driven two hundred yards before I caught the first sight of the house. It looked like something that belonged in the Tuscan hills. Smooth standstone and stucco, columns and cupolas, and big arched windows that served the dual purpose of looking out over the grounds while allowing someone on the outside to appreciate all the lights hidden in the high half-timbered ceilings. There were cars parked on either side of the driveway, and I pulled up behind the last one.
It was an SUV. A tan one, with mud still crusted around its wheel wells. One passenger window was badly cracked and held together with an X of duct tape. I would have known it anywhere. In a way, it was almost a relief. It’s always easier showing up at a party when there’s a familiar face. Someone you know, who you’re looking forward to catching up with.
I killed the engine, then the lights. For a moment, I sat in the car and looked around. There were people on the house’s broad front terrace, but the grounds were empty. I got out of the car, lifted Elijah’s phone, and called him. I walked slowly, not toward the house but out at the edge of the lawn’s lit-up perimeter. Just a man who wanted to finish a private conversation before he joined a group of his peers.
“What’s going on, Lee?”
“I’m at Meredith’s place,” I said. “Walking around outside, using your phone to hide my face while I look for someone.”
“You got in?” he said. “Good deal.”
“That was the easy part.”
“What’s the hard part?”
“Whatever comes next.”
“Sounds like you got it all figured out,” Elijah said.
“If I don’t call you by tomorrow morning, toss the documents in a dumpster and call the FBI from a payphone.”
“What about the Porsche?”
“Keep it. Or fence it. By then, I won’t care.”
“Okay,” Elijah said. “You gonna ask how I’m doing?”
“How are you doing?”
“Great—I got a suite at the Drake, on Union Square. Just me and ten boxes of documents, and a mini-bar you wouldn’t believe.”
“You’re at the Drake?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“I’m pulling your leg.” He paused. “I’m at the Ritz.”
<
br /> I’d come around the side of the house, and now I could see the back. It was built up the side of a hill. There was a terrace midway up, with all the usual accouterments: hot tubs, sectional furniture, umbrellas. There was a man leaning against the railing, doing what I was doing: talking on the phone where he’d be out of sight and beyond earshot. I wouldn’t have noticed him except he’d turned to take the call. As he brought the phone up, I saw his face in profile.
My driver. The man who’d brought me from the Creekside to Laytonville. Who’d objected to my early exit so much that he’d tried to put a bullet in my back. He was alone, and that made sense. His buddy from the back seat was either on ice in a Mendocino County morgue or looking at a long hospital stay.
“Hey, Elijah,” I whispered. “Have a good time at the Ritz, or wherever. Go nuts. I gotta go.”
I hung up and put the phone away. When I pulled Jim’s gun out of my waistband, I liked the way it felt in my hand. Compact and heavy, like a claw hammer’s head. I made sure the safety was on, and tucked it back under my belt. I started walking up the hillside again, following the shadows of trees. I reached the terrace and edged around until I was behind him.
“That’s not a problem,” he was saying into the phone. “That’ll happen tonight.”
He listened for a moment, and then he said, “Yes, sir.”
I waited until he hung up, and then I cranked my right arm around his throat and pulled him tight to my chest. The stiff cartilage of his windpipe was up against the crook of my elbow. I used my left hand to push my right fist inward, and I flexed my bicep to tighten the pincer. It was a classic blood choke, a crushing squeeze that cut off all arterial flow in and out of his brain. He lasted about five seconds, which was half as long as I’d hoped for.
His knees buckled, but I didn’t ease him to the ground. I wasn’t going to fall for such an obvious ruse. I leaned back, taking his full weight, and let him dangle. He kicked once, the hard-edged heel of his shoe scraping down my shin. My mouth was right next to his ear, close enough to bite it off. I’d already had a taste of the guy and didn’t want to repeat it. So I doubled the pressure on his throat. We could be headed toward irreversible damage. A shattered hyoid, a ruptured eyeball. That was all just fine with me.
Blood Relations Page 25
