by Robert Crais
I said, “This is everything?”
“Yes, sir. These five.”
Pike tucked them into his pack, then moved the ladder to the middle of the garage, and removed the cover from the garage door’s opener.
Tyson said, “What’re you doing?”
“They paired a remote to your opener so they could open the garage. Now their remote won’t work.”
He snapped the cover back into place, went to the transmitter, and looked at me.
“We can take it, kill it, or leave it, whatever you want.”
I thought for a moment, and felt an idea.
“When we stop jamming the signal, will it transmit again?”
“Yes.”
I took out my phone, and studied their pictures. Two men with rare skills.
Tyson said, “What are you doing?”
I smiled, and moved to the door.
“Sending a message.”
Pike cocked his head, and found some telling sign in my eyes. The corner of his mouth twitched. Pike, dying with laughter.
Two men.
With rare skills.
38
HARVEY AND STEMMS
THE EXTRA-LARGE IN-N-OUT CUP sat in a puddle on Jasmine Reed’s kitchen counter. Harvey shook the cup, rattling ice.
“Split less than an hour ago. They won’t be back.”
“Without their cars?”
The Connor kid’s Volvo was parked across the street, and the girl’s Mini was in the garage.
Harvey shrugged.
“All the cash they’ve stolen, they could’ve bought a Porsche. Question is, why did they leave so fast?”
Harvey and Stemms had entered Jasmine Reed’s apartment, and found a half-eaten In-N-Out double-double burger cratered on the kitchen floor. A second double-double and a single sat on the counter by the cup, still wearing their wrappers.
Stemms squatted by the fallen burger, and considered the halo of sauce and lettuce around it.
“I’m not liking this, Harvey. You don’t drop a burger, and leave it, not even if you’re an arrogant, criminal dipshit. You pick it up.”
“As I said, they’re gone.”
“You leave food on the floor, you’re being chased, or you’ve been grabbed.”
They stared at each other for a few miserable seconds, then quickly searched for the laptop.
Stemms was in a foul mood when they left.
Harvey planted a gizmo above the door, but Stemms believed they had lost their advantage. If the laptop had been at Jasmine’s apartment, it was gone, and if Jasmine was blown as a lead, they needed a new direction. Stemms was frustrated when they returned to the Chrysler, and annoyed when Harvey’s phone screamed with an incoming alert from the Connor boy’s home.
Harvey didn’t set his phone to beep or buzz or vibrate like a normal person. Harvey’s phone screeched with a string piece from the Hitchcock movie Psycho, the scene with Janet Leigh in the shower, the knife rising and falling, the string section shrieking with short, staccato stabs, the lone violin slashing through the fermata with discordant glissandos, more violins joining the first, violas adding their teeth, mad strings schooling like orchestral sharks at a blood-drunk feast.
Stemms hated it.
“Turn it off, Harvey. Please. We don’t need to hear the shower.”
Harvey would let the track play if Stemms didn’t stop him, the third movement fading to the monotonous sound of the shower, Janet Leigh’s blood circling the drain.
Harvey said, “What are you talking about? You love this piece.”
“I hate the scene, all right? Hate the scene, hate the score, hate everything about it. I never want to hear it again. Hint.”
The motion sensor had already alerted them four times that day, so Harvey and Stemms didn’t jump to see what triggered the alarm. So far, the Connor residence had been visited by two nicely dressed women who appeared to be Jehovah’s Witnesses, a gardener, a guy who read the gas meter, and a Saint Bernard dog who wandered through the yard like it was lost.
Harvey turned to face him, shocked and incredulous.
“But you know this piece by heart. You played it like a boss! What do you mean, you don’t like it?”
“Playing it doesn’t mean I like it. I played it for the kid.”
“I’m having trouble here, Stemms. You were brilliant!”
Stemms was sorry he mentioned it. He should’ve just plugged his ears.
Six years earlier, a job in Albuquerque flipped sideways, so Harvey and Stemms blew south to Ciudad Juárez, three miles down from El Paso. Second night, hungry, they happened upon a run-down cantina out on Highway 2. A dump, strictly for locals, men with dusty boots and women with rough hands, but the cervezas were cold, and the carne asada was smoky with roasted chiles. Had a kid there, maybe nineteen or twenty, playing Mexican cowboy songs for tips. Stemms knew the kid was gifted before their first beer. This Mexican kid, he sat perched on a stool in the corner with only his strings for company: a fifty-cent mandolin, a twelve-string Gibson covered with cigarette burns, and a stained violin so scarred and ugly Stemms would’ve bet his Tesla the kid used it to kill rats.
Stemms liked the kid’s open smile, and the effortless way he pulled off riffs and difficult chord changes while yakking with customers, almost as if the music carried his fingers. Stemms had no idea what they were saying, but Harvey spoke pretty good Spanish, and translated.
Couple of hours and five or six cervezas into the evening, the kid blew his mind. The crowd had thinned, and people weren’t so quick with requests. The kid finished off yet another dull ranchera ballad, traded the mandolin for his twelve-string, and finger-picked the opening bars of Sonatina Meridional, a complicated composition by Manuel Ponce.
Stemms was so surprised he kicked Harvey under the table.
“Holy shit.”
Harvey said, “What?”
“Manuel Ponce.”
“The kid?”
“The composer. Listen.”
Stemms was on the edge of his chair when the kid finished, and shouted his first request of the evening.
“Sonata Tres!”
He held up three fingers, hoping the kid understood. Sonata Tres was one of his favorites.
The kid grinned, and opened the Sonata like he had played it a thousand times. More couples left, and the drinkers thinned. The kid followed the Sonata with another by Ponce, and then a Segovia. Halfway through the Segovia, Stemms walked over, dropped a C-note in the tip jar, and gestured to ask if he could use the kid’s fiddle. The kid nodded happily.
Harvey said, “Don’t be a douche, Stemms. C’mon.”
Stemms plucked softly at the strings, adjusted the tune, and as the Segovia ended, Stemms planted the fiddle under his jaw and swept into Bach’s Violin Concerto in E Major. The sun sparkled in the kid’s glee, and he fell in with his guitar, swooping and flying along with the violin.
Harvey jumped to his feet and applauded.
“Holy shit, Stemms! Are you kidding me? For real?!”
Stemms played the first and second movements, but stopped at the edge of the third, and the kid looked surprised.
Stemms pointed the bow at the kid, the bow saying your turn. The kid thought for a moment, then let out a looping maniacal laugh and launched into Wipe Out, by the Surfaris.
Stemms kicked Harvey again and applauded. Then the kid finished, and spoke to Harvey in Spanish.
Harvey said, “He wants to request a song.”
Stemms raised the bow, saying, bring it, whatever you want.
The kid said, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”
Harvey roared.
Stemms did his best with the Iron Butterfly classic, then threw one back to the kid, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, after which the kid double-downed with Mike Post’s theme for The Rockf
ord Files. Stemms saw his raise with Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn, and the kid fired back with Lalo Schifrin’s Mission Impossible.
Harvey, drunk as two fucks by then, got in on the play, shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Talking Heads! Psycho Killer!”
The kid owned it.
They went back and forth. Stemms riffed Machine Gun by Hendrix, which was a bitch to pluck on a fiddle, and the kid fired back with Metallica’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, playing his twelve-string all badass and nasty. Stemms brought it low with Hurt, the Johnny Cash version, which Stemms dearly loved, a song so filled with pain he cried each time he heard it. He sang the lyrics as he strummed the slow, wounded chords. What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know goes away in the end. Even Harvey cried. Even Harvey.
Harvey said, “Stemms, you’re breaking my heart, you bastard. Where’d you learn to play like this?”
“Nowhere.”
Then it came back to Stemms, and the kid asked for the Hermann piece from the movie, the movement known as The Murder, so what was Stemms supposed to do, after sharing so much music? He bent to the fiddle, and tortured the strings.
Must’ve been three or four in the morning. Five rough men stumbled in, loud and large, edgy from crank and screaming for tequila. Harvey peeped guns, and glanced a warning to Stemms. Cartel banditos.
The kid quickly began packing his instruments, and the bartender roused the whore. One guy, a tough-looking middleweight with a scrambled nose, swaggered over to the kid and scooped up his twelve-string.
Harvey’s chair scraped the floor when he stood.
“Watch this.”
Stemms touched his arm, stopping him.
“What’s he saying?”
“Something about songs. He’s gonna play some songs.”
The guy walked back to his friends, strumming the guitar, and the kid didn’t know what to do, stood there, empty and scared.
Stemms got up.
“Go on, Harvey. Best you leave.”
“My ass.”
Harvey reached under his jacket, his big face gone dark.
Stemms picked up an empty Jalisco bottle, and threw it. Hit the dude’s head and bounced off his ear. Dude didn’t even know what happened, touched the side of his head like he expected to find ants, then he and his friends turned.
Stemms said, “Tell him the guitar belongs to me. I’ll let him have it if he sucks my dick.”
Harvey passed along the offer, swaying like a rattlesnake.
So the guy, Mr. Cartel, a cold-hearted savage, reared back to swing the guitar. Stemms shot him twice in the chest, flashes like lightning in the tiny cantina, thunder shaking the walls.
The Frito banditos stood frozen like turds, not sure what had happened or why.
Stemms said, “Give’m a pat, Harvey? Please?”
Harvey tossed their guns and knives and wallets behind the bar, but kept their keys. Harvey knew what was coming. He couldn’t stop smiling.
Stemms waved his pistol at the door.
“Tell’m to carry the guitar thief outside.”
Stemms did not look at the kid or the bartender, nor speak to them.
Out in the parking lot, the pallbearers loaded the stiff into a battered Toyota Land Cruiser. Harvey told them to take their asshole friend, and feed him to the snakes. Happy to get a pass, the banditos piled in and fired the engine. Harvey and Stemms shot them, a double-tap each in the head. Harvey dragged the driver from behind the wheel, loaded him into the back with his friends, and followed Stemms out along Highway 2. Harvey was covered with so much blood when they finished, he stripped, and rode back to their motel naked.
Harvey and Stemms stayed in Ciudad Juárez for another eight days, but did not return to the cantina. Stemms thought about the kid every so often in the years since, and wondered how he was doing. Wondered if he kept that twelve-string guitar.
Stemms had played the Hermann piece for the kid, but he had hated that scene and the score from as far back as he could remember, and now Harvey had it on his damned phone.
“I was screwing around, Harvey. I wasn’t brilliant. I’m begging, change your alert to something else. I hate that fucking scene. Please.”
Harvey gaped, flabbergasted. He could just do it and move on. He couldn’t let go.
“I don’t get it. Every film school on the planet teaches that scene. It’s one of the best-known scenes in the world.”
“Which makes it all the worse.”
“Makes what worse?”
Stemms felt himself getting a headache.
“She just stands there and takes it, Harvey. Does that make sense, ’cause I’m missing the brilliance?”
Harvey shook his head, confused.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re taking a shower. A knife comes out of nowhere, and some asshole stabs you. Not once, but over and over. You just going to stand there?”
Harvey seemed even more confused.
“She was caught off guard.”
“You wouldn’t try to get away? You wouldn’t jump out the shower, or grab the guy?”
“I’d take the fuckin’ knife, and gut the freak, Stemms, but she wasn’t us. She was in shock.”
“I hate that scene. It’s evil.”
“You should see your face. It’s a movie.”
“You have no idea.”
Harvey rolled his eyes.
“Oh, okay, here we go. Enlighten me.”
“Four Oscar nominations. Golden Globe Award. Edgar Award. Huge box office all over the world, and this was 1960, a more innocent time, before people were all fucked up, right?”
“Okay. And?”
“It’s the message, is what I’m saying. The subtext. That scene misled a generation of young women. The message was bad.”
Harvey gave him the dumb cow eyes. Stemms sighed and kept going.
“The message was, women are powerless. Here’s this lunatic, he’s stabbing her, what did she do, the chick in the movie? Just stood there. So what’s being modeled? Whatever some guy does to a woman, they’re supposed to take it. That’s the message, Harvey. Don’t fight. Don’t try to get away. You’re helpless. Isn’t that a terrible message for all those young women?”
Harvey cleared his throat, and turned to his phone.
“Let’s check the alert. Bet you a buck it’s another dog.”
“Point being, dump the Psycho piece. I’m begging.”
Harvey tapped away on the phone, ignoring him.
“You could go with Jungle Boogie by Kool and the Gang, coming in right at the top where they’re singing ‘Get down Get down,’ or Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf, coming in on ‘I like to dream.’ You like Steppenwolf.”
Harvey sighed, and kept tapping.
“Go with the Steppenwolf, Harvey. We’ll be happier.”
The app finally opened, and Harvey accessed the feed.
“Check it out, Stemms. We’ve got something.”
“What?”
“Lemme wind it back.”
Harvey leaned closer, holding the phone so they could watch together.
The image had the hyper-real clarity of high-def TV with a wide-angle bend. A man walked up the drive. Harvey nudged Stemms, and leered.
“The Corvette guy. Dropped by for another slice o’ Mom.”
Only, the Corvette guy didn’t go to the door. He came directly to the camera, looked into the lens, and held up his phone. He held the phone close, showing a photograph.
Harvey tipped forward, his voice turning raspy and soft.
“That’s me.”
Stemms felt the stillness spread, a kernel of loss that filled his chest and dulled his belly.
Harvey breathed hard beside him, panting like a big dog on a hot day.
“He has my picture, Stemms. How’d he get my picture?”
The man lowered his phone and reached toward the lens. His hand grew larger until the screen went black, and Harvey’s phone screeched another message alert.
Harvey frantically killed the music.
“System fail. He killed the camera.”
The Psycho score screamed again.
“System fail. The living room.”
Stemms closed his eyes. He took a slow breath, and cherished the stillness.
“The burger.”
“What?”
The Psycho score screamed a third time. Harvey punched the dash, and read the alert.
“System fail. The transmitter’s gone.”
“He’s why they left the food. He beat us, Harvey. He found them first.”
Harvey’s face turned purple. Mountain-range veins cut his forehead.
“STEMMS! He has my PICTURE!”
Stemms fired the engine, and pulled into traffic.
“Relax, Harvey. Breathe.”
Harvey took a breath, and straightened himself.
“We’re compromised. We should tell the client, and let him bring in a new team.”
“Let’s think it through.”
“What’s to think? The client’s at risk. This isn’t about us, Stemms. Client service comes first.”
“Think. The guy didn’t just happen by. He knew the place was bugged, and found the gizmos without tripping a sensor. He saw us go in.”
“Excuse me. That was me in the picture, not us.”
“Think. We went to the Connor house, so he knew we would go to Jasmine’s. He yanked them before we got there, and now he’s showing us up.”
“Don’t personalize this, Stemms. It smacks of hubris.”
“If these little shitbirds are with him, then he has the laptop, and, excuse me, Mr. Client Service, the client would like it back. So we ain’t saying shit until we deliver.”
Harvey stared, his mouth as slack as a plastic bag.
