by Robert Crais
Vukovich glanced around to make sure no one was listening and looked uncomfortable.
“Take it easy, boss.”
“Mr. Holman needs to understand. Fowler radioed he was going to take a break, but he wasn’t supposed to be drinking and he had no business telling those younger officers to meet him in an off-limits location. I want you to keep this in mind, Holman—Fowler was a supervisor. He was supposed to be available to the patrol officers in his area when they needed his assistance, but he decided to go drinking instead. Mellon was on duty, too, and knew better, but he was a mediocre officer, also—he wasn’t even in his assigned service division. Ash was off duty, but he wasn’t in the running for Officer of the Year, either.”
Holman sensed that Random was sweating him, but he didn’t know why and he didn’t like it.
“What are you telling me, Random? What does any of this have to do with Marchenko and Parsons?”
“You’re looking for a reason to understand why those officers were under the bridge, so I’m telling you. I blame Mike Fowler for what happened, him being a supervisor, but no one was down there solving the crime of the century. They were problem officers with shit records and a crappy attitude.”
Holman felt himself flush. Levy had told him Richie was an outstanding officer…one of the best.
“Are you telling me that Richie was a rotten cop? Is that what you’re saying?”
Vukovich held up a finger.
“Take it easy, bud. You’re the one who asked.”
Random said, “Sir, I didn’t want to tell you any of this. I had hoped I wouldn’t have to.”
The throbbing in Holman’s head spread to his shoulders and arms, and he wanted to knuckle up. All the deep parts of him wanted to throw fists and beat down Random and Vukovich for saying that Richie was rotten, but Holman wasn’t like that anymore. He told himself he wasn’t like that. He forced down his anger and spoke slowly.
“Richie was working on something about Marchenko and Parsons. I want to know why he had to talk to Fowler about it at one in the morning.”
“What you need to do is concentrate on making good your release and let us do our jobs. This conversation is over, Mr. Holman. I suggest you settle down and pay your respects.”
Random turned away without another word and moved with the crowd into the auditorium. Vukovich stayed with Holman a moment longer before following.
Holman didn’t move. He felt as if he would shatter from the horrendous rage that had suddenly made him brittle. He wanted to scream. He wanted to jack a Porsche and burn through the city as fast as it would go. He wanted to get high and suck down a bottle of the finest tequila and scream at the night.
Holman went to the double doors but could not enter. He watched people taking their seats without really seeing them. He saw the four dead men staring at him from their giant pictures. He felt Richie’s dead two-dimensional eyes.
Holman turned away and walked fast back to his car, sweating hard in the heat. He stripped off Richie’s jacket and tie and unbuttoned his shirt, tears filling his eyes with great hot drops that came as if they were being crushed from his heart.
Richie wasn’t bad.
He wasn’t like his father.
Holman wiped the snot from his face and walked faster. He didn’t believe it. He wouldn’t let himself believe it.
My son is not like me.
Holman swore to himself he would prove it. He had already asked the last and only person he trusted for help and had been waiting to hear back from her. He needed her help. He needed her and he prayed she would answer.
PART TWO
14
FBI SPECIAL AGENT Katherine Pollard (retired) stood in the kitchen of her small tract home watching the clock above her sink. When she held her breath, a perfect silence filled the house. She watched the second hand sweep silently toward the twelve. The minute hand was poised at eleven thirty-two. The second hand touched the twelve. The minute hand released like a firing pin, jumping to eleven thirty-three—
TOCK!
The snap of passing time broke the silence.
Pollard wiped a ribbon of sweat from her face as she considered the debris that had accumulated in her kitchen: cups, grape juice cartons, open boxes of Cap’n Crunch and Sugar Smacks, and bowls showing the first stages of whole milk curdled by the heat. Pollard lived in the Simi Valley, where the temperature that day—twenty-seven minutes before noon—had already notched 104 degrees. Her air conditioner had been out for six days and wasn’t likely to be fixed any time soon—Katherine Pollard was broke. She was using the heat-stroked squalor to prepare herself for the inevitable and humiliating call to beg her mother for money.
Pollard had left the FBI eight years ago after she married a fellow agent named Marty Baum and became pregnant with their first child. She had left the job for all the right reasons: She had loved Marty, they both wanted her to be a full-time mom for their son (Pollard feeling the importance of full-time mom status maybe even more than Marty), and—with Marty’s salary—they had had enough money. But that was then. Two children, one legal separation, and—five years after the fact—Marty had dropped dead of a heart attack while scuba diving in Aruba with his then-girlfriend, a twenty-year-old waitress from Huntington Beach.
TOCK!
Pollard had been able to scrape by on Marty’s death benefits, but more and more she required help from her mother, which was humiliating and defeating, and now the AC had been out for almost a week. One hour and twenty-six minutes until her children, David and Lyle, seven and six, would arrive home from camp, dirty and filled with complaints about the heat. Pollard wiped more sweat from her face, scooped up her cordless phone, then brought it out to her car.
The nuclear crystal-sky heat pounded down on her like a blowtorch. Katherine opened her Subaru, started the engine, and immediately rolled down the windows. It had to be 150 degrees inside the car. She maxed out the AC until it blew cold, then rolled up the windows. She let the icy air blow hard on her face, then lifted her T-shirt to let it blow on her skin.
When she felt she was on the safe side of heatstroke, she turned on the phone and punched in her mother’s number. Her mother’s answering machine picked up, as Pollard expected. Her mother screened her calls while she played online poker.
“Mom, it’s me, pick up. Are you there?”
Her mother came on the line.
“Is everything all right?”
Which was the way her mother always came on the line, immediately putting Pollard on the defensive with the implication that her life was an endless series of emergencies and dramas. Pollard knew better than to make small talk. She steeled herself and immediately got to the point.
“Our air conditioner went out. They want twelve hundred dollars to fix it. I don’t have it, Mom.”
“Katherine, when are you going to find another man?”
“I need twelve hundred dollars, Mom, not another man.”
“Have I ever said no?”
“No.”
“Then you know I live to help you and those beautiful boys, but you have to help yourself, too, Katherine. Those boys are older now and you’re not getting any younger.”
Pollard lowered the phone. Her mother was still talking, but Pollard couldn’t understand what she was saying. Pollard saw the mail van approaching, then watched the postman shove the day’s ration of bills into her mailbox. The postman wore a pith helmet, dark glasses, and shorts, and looked as if he was on a safari. When he drove away, Pollard raised the phone again.
She said, “Mom, let me ask you something. If I went back to work, would you be willing to watch the boys?”
Her mother hesitated. Pollard didn’t like the silence. Her mother was never silent.
“Work doing what? Not with the FBI again.”
Pollard had been thinking about it. If she returned to the FBI a position in the Los Angeles field office was unlikely. L.A. was a hot posting that drew far more applicants than available duty assig
nments. Pollard would more likely find herself posted in the middle of nowhere, but she didn’t want to be just anywhere; Katherine Pollard had spent three years working on the FBI’s elite Bank Squad in the bank robbery capital of the world—Los Angeles. She missed the action. She missed the paycheck. She missed what felt like the best days of her life.
“I might be able to get on as a security consultant with one of the banking chains or a private firm like Kroll. I was good on the Feeb, Mom. I still have friends who remember.”
Her mother hesitated again and this time her voice was suspicious.
“How many hours are we talking about, me being with the boys?”
Pollard lowered the phone again, thinking wasn’t this just perfect? She watched the postman drive to the next house, then the next. When she lifted the phone again her mother was calling her.
“Katherine? Katherine, are you there? Did I lose you?”
“We need the money.”
“Of course I’ll fix your air conditioner. I can’t have my grandsons living in—”
“I’m talking about me going back to work. The only way I can go back to work is if you help me with the boys—”
“We can talk about it, Katherine. I like the idea of you going back to work. You might meet someone—”
“I have to call the repairman. I’ll talk to you later.”
Pollard hung up. She watched the postman work his way up the street, then went to retrieve her mail. She shuffled through the letters as she returned to her car, finding the predictable Visa and MasterCard bills along with something that surprised her—a brown manila envelope showing the FBI’s return address in Westwood, her old office. Katherine hadn’t received anything from the Westwood Feebs in years.
When she was safely back in her car, she tore open the envelope and found a white envelope inside. It had been opened and resealed, as was all mail that was forwarded to current or former agents by the FBI. A printed yellow slip accompanied the letter: THIS PARCEL HAS BEEN TESTED FOR TOXINS AND BIOHAZARDS, AND WAS DETERMINED SUITABLE FOR RE-MAILING. THANK YOU.
The second envelope was addressed to her care of the Westwood office. It bore a Culver City return address she did not recognize. She tore the end of the envelope, shook out a one-page handwritten letter folded around a newspaper clipping, and read:
Max Holman
Pacific Garden Motels Apartments
Culver City, CA 90232
She stopped when she saw the name and broke into a crooked smile, swept up in Bank Squad memories.
“Ohmigod! Max Holman!”
She read on—
Dear Special Agent Pollard,
I hope this letter finds you in good health. I hope you have not stopped reading after seeing my name. This is Max Holman. You arrested me for bank robbery. Please know I bear no grudge and still appreshiate that you spoke on my behalf to the federal prosecutor. I have sucsessfully completed my incarceration and am now on supervised release and am employed. Again, I thank you for your kind and supportive words, and hope you will remember them now.
Katherine remembered Holman and thought as well of him as a cop could think of a man who had robbed nine banks. She felt no warmth toward him for his robberies, but for how she bagged him on his ninth caper. Max Holman had been famous for the way he went down even among the jaded agents of the FBI’s Bank Squad.
She continued reading—
My son was Los Angeles Police Officer Richard Holman, which you can read about in the enclosed article. My son and three other officers were murdered. I am writing you now to ask your help and I hope you will hear me out.
Pollard unfolded the article. She immediately recognized it was a piece about the four officers who had been murdered in the downtown river basin while drinking. Pollard had seen coverage on the evening news.
She didn’t bother to read the clipping, but she looked at the pictures of the four deceased officers. The last photograph was identified as Officer Richard Holman. A circle had been drawn around his picture. Two words were written outside the circle: MY SON.
Pollard didn’t remember that Holman had a son, but she also couldn’t remember what Holman looked like. As she studied the picture her memories returned. Yeah, she could see it—the thin mouth and strong neck. Holman’s son looked like his father.
Pollard shook her head, thinking, jesus, the poor bastard gets out of prison and his son gets killed, couldn’t the man catch a break?
She read on with interest—
The police believe they have identified the murderer but I still have questions and cannot get answers. I believe the police hold my status as a convicted criminal against me and that is why they will not listen. As you are an FBI Special Agent I am hoping you will get these answers for me. That is all I want.
My son was a good man. Not like me. Please call me if you will help. You can also talk to my BOP release supervisor, who will vouch for me.
Sincerely yours,
Max Holman
Beneath his name, Holman had written his home phone, the phone number of the Pacific Gardens office, and his work number. Below his phone numbers he had written Gail Manelli’s name and number. Pollard glanced at the clipping again and flashed on her own boys, older, and hoped she would never get the news Max Holman had now gotten. It had been bad enough when she was informed about Marty, even though their marriage was over and they were well on their way to a divorce. In that singular moment, their bad times had vanished and she felt as if she had lost a piece of herself. For Holman, losing his son, it must have been worse.
Pollard suddenly felt a rush of irritation and pushed the letter and the clipping aside, her nostalgic feelings for Holman and the day she bagged him gone. Pollard believed what all cops eventually learned—criminals were degenerate assholes. You could bag them, house them, dope them, and counsel them, but criminals never changed, so it was almost certain that Holman was running some kind of scam and just as certain that Pollard had almost fallen for it.
Thoroughly pissed, she scooped up the phone and the bills, then shut down her car and stormed through the heat to her house. She had humiliated herself by asking her mother for the money, then humiliated herself a second time by falling for Holman’s sob story. Now she had to beg the snotty repairman to drag his ass out here to make her nightmare house livable. Pollard was all the way inside and dialing the repairman when she put down the phone, returned to her car, and retrieved Max Holman’s miserable, stupid-ass letter.
She called the repairman, but then she called Gail Manelli, Holman’s release supervisor.
15
HOLMAN FOUND Chee behind the counter in his East L.A. shop along with a pretty young girl who smiled shyly when Holman entered. Chee’s face split into a craggy smile, his teeth brown with the morning’s coffee.
Chee said, “Yo, homes. This is my youngest baby, Marisol. Sweetie, say hi to Mr. Holman.”
Marisol told Holman it was a pleasure to meet him.
Chee said, “Baby, have Raul come up here, would you? In my office. Here, bro, c’mon inside.”
Marisol used an intercom to summon Raul as Holman followed Chee into his office. Chee closed the door behind them, shutting her out.
Holman said, “Pretty girl, Chee. Congratulations.”
“What you smilin’ at, bro? You better not be thinking bad thoughts.”
“I’m smiling at the notorious Lil’ Chee calling his daughter ‘sweetie.’”
Chee went to a file drawer and pulled out a camera.
“Girl is my heart, bro, that one and the others. I thank God every day for the air she breathes and the ground beneath her feet. Here—stand right there and look at me.”
“You get me lined up with a ride?”
“Am I the Chee? Let’s get you squared up with this license.”
Chee positioned Holman before a dark blue wall, then lined up the camera.
“Digital, baby—state of the art. Goddamnit, Holman, this ain’t a mug shot—try not to look like y
ou want to kill me.”
Holman smiled.
“Shit. You look like you’re passing a stone.”
The flash went off as someone knocked at the door. A short, hard-eyed young man stepped inside. His arms and face were streaked with grease from working in the body shop. Chee studied the digital image in the camera, then grudgingly decided it would do. He tossed the camera to the new guy.
“California DL, date of issue is today, no restrictions. You don’t wear glasses, do you, Holman, now you got some age?”
“No.”
“No restrictions.”
Raul glanced at Holman.
“Gonna need an address, his date of birth, the stats, and a signature.”
Chee took a pad and pen from his desk and handed them to Holman.
“Here. Put down your height and weight, too. Sign your name on a separate page.”
Holman did what he was told.
“How long before I get the license? I have an appointment.”
“Time you leave with the car, bro. It won’t take long.”
Chee had a brief conversation with Raul in Spanish, then Holman followed him out through the shop into a parking area where a row of cars was waiting. Chee eyeballed the beater.
“Man, no wonder you got pinched. That thing got ‘work release’ written all over it.”
“Can you have someone bring it back to the motel for me?”
“Yeah, no problem. Here’s what I got for you over here—a nice Ford Taurus or this brand-new Highlander, either one carry you in boring middle-class style. Both these vehicles are registered to a rental company I own without wants, warrants, or—unlike that piece of shit you driving now—traffic citations. You get stopped, I rented you the car. That’s it.”
Holman had never seen a Highlander before. It was black and shiny, and sat high on its big tires. He liked the idea of being able to see what was coming.
“The Highlander, I guess.”
