Free Fall

by Robert Crais

  The Hispanic guy yelled, "Get your hands up. Out and away from your body." When the guns come out there's always a lot of yelling.

  The guy with the butch ran over and patted me down with his free hand. I made him for Pinkworth. The other guy for Garda. While Pinkworth did the shakedown, some of the people from the tour buses began to gather on the walk and look at us. Most of the men were in Bermuda shorts and most of the women were in summer-weight pant suits and just about everyone held a camera. Tourists. They stood in a little group as they watched, and a fat kid with glasses and a DES MOINES sweatshirt said, "Hey, neat." Maybe they thought we were the CBS version of the Universal stunt show.

  Garcia said, "Jesus Christ, we've got a goddamned crowd."

  I smiled at him. "My fans."

  Pinkworth looked nervous and lowered his gun like someone might see it and tell. Garcia lowered his, too.

  Riggens's car screeched to a stop and he kicked open the door. His face was flushed and he looked angry. He also looked drunk. "Stay the fuck away from my wife."

  Garcia yelled, "Floyd," but Floyd wasn't listening. He took two long steps forward, then lunged toward me with his body sort of cocked to the side like he was going to throw a haymaker and knock me into the next time zone.

  He swung, and I stepped outside of it and snapped a high roundhouse kick into the side of his head that knocked him over sideways.

  The fat kid said, "Look at that!" and the fat kid's father aimed a Sony video camera at us.

  When Riggens fell, Garcia's gun came up and Pinkworth started forward, and that's when Joe Pike reared up from behind their car, snapped the slide on a 12-gauge Ithaca riot gun, and said, "Don't."

  Garcia and Pinkworth froze. They spread their fingers off their pistol grips, showing they were out of it.

  The crowd went, "Ooo." Some show, all right.

  Joe Pike stands six-one and weighs maybe one-ninety, and he's got large red arrows tattooed on the outside of each deltoid, souvenirs from his days as a Force Recon Marine in Vietnam. He was wearing faded blue jeans and Nike running shoes and a plain gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and government-issue sunglasses. Angle the sun on him just right, and sometimes the tattoos seem to glow. I think Pike calls it his apparition look.

  I said, "Gee, and I thought you'd got lost in traffic."

  Pike's mouth twitched. He doesn't smile, but sometimes he'll twitch. You get a twitch out of Pike, he's gotta be dying on the inside. In tears, he's gotta be.

  I took Garcia's and Pinkworth's guns, and Pike circled the blue sedan, finding a better angle to cover Riggens. When he moved, he seemed to glide, as if he were flowing over the surface of the earth, moving as a panther might move. To move was to stalk. I'd never seen him move any other way.

  Garcia said, "Put down that goddamned gun. We're LAPD officers, goddamn it."

  Pike's shotgun didn't waver. An older woman with a lime green sun hat and a purse the size of a mailbag looked at the other tourists and said, "Does the bus leave after this?"

  I pulled Riggens's gun and then I went back to Pinkworth and Garcia and checked their IDs. Pinkworth said, "You're marked fuck for this, asshole. You're going down hard."

  "Uh-huh."

  Riggens moaned and sort of turned onto his side. His head was bleeding where it had bounced on the tarmac, but it didn't look bad. I took the clips out of the three police guns, tossed them into the blue sedan's backseat, then went back to Riggens. "Let me see."

  Riggens pushed my hand off and tried to crab away, but he didn't do much more than flop onto his back. "Fuck you."

  Pinkworth said, "You're in a world of shit. You just assaulted a Los Angeles police officer."

  I said, "Call it in and let's go to the station. Maybe they'll give Riggens a Breathalyzer while you guys are booking me." You could smell it on him a block away.

  Garcia said, "Quiet, Pink."

  A green four-door sedan identical to the other two cop sedans came toward us across the lot. Riggens was still trying to get up when the green car pulled in behind him and a tall guy with short gray hair got out. He was wearing chino slacks and a striped short-sleeve shirt tucked neatly into his pants and short-topped Redwing trail shoes. He was tanned dark, like he spent a lot of time in the sun, and his face was lined. I made him for his mid-forties, but he could've been older. He looked at Riggens, then the two cops by the blue sedan, and then at Joe Pike. He wasn't upset and he wasn't excited, like he knew what he'd find when he got here and, when he got here, he knew that he could handle it. When he saw Joe Pike he said, "I didn't know you were in on this."

  Pike nodded once.

  I gave them surprised. "You guys know each other?"

  Pike said, "Eric Dees."

  Eric Dees looked at me, then looked back at Pike. "Pike and I rode a black-and-white together for a couple of months maybe a million years ago." Pike had been a uniformed LAPD officer when I'd met him. "Put away the shotgun, Joe. It's over, now. No one's going to drop the hammer."

  Pike lowered the shotgun.

  Pinkworth craned around and stared at Pike. "This sonofabitch is Joe Pike? The Joe Pike?" Pike had worn the uniform for almost three years, but it hadn't ended well.

  Riggens said, "Who?" He was still having trouble on the ground.

  Dees said, "Sure. You've just been jumped by the best."

  Pinkworth glowered at Pike like he'd been wanting to glower at him for a long time. "Well, fuck him."

  Joe's head sort of whirred five degrees to line up on Pinkworth and Pinkworth's glower wavered. There is a machine-like quality to Joe, as if he had tuned his body the way he might tune his Jeep, and, as the Jeep was perfectly tuned, so was his body. It was easy to imagine him doing a thousand pushups or running a hundred miles, as if his body were an instrument of his mind, as if his mind were a well of limitless resource and unimaginable strength. If the mind said start, the body would start. When the mind said stop, the body would stop, and whatever it would do, it would do with precision and exactness.

  Dees said, "Long time, Joe. How's it going?"

  Pike's head whirred back and he made a kind of head shrug.

  "Talkative, as always." Dees looked at the people from Des Moines. "Pink, move those people along. We don't need a crowd." Pinkworth gave me tough, then pulled out his badge and sauntered over to the crowd. The fat kid's father didn't want to move along and made a deal out of it. Dees turned back to me. "You're this close to getting stepped on for obstruction and for impersonating an officer, Cole. We drop the hammer, your license is history."

  I said, "What's your connection with Akeem D'Muere and the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys?"

  Dees blinked once, then made a little smile, like maybe he wasn't smiling at me, but at something he was thinking. "That's an official police investigation. That's what I'm telling you to stay away from. I'm also telling you to stay the hell out of Mark Thurman's personal life. You fuck with my people, you're fucking with me, and you don't want to do that. I'm a bad guy to fuck with."

  Riggens made a sort of a coughing sound, then sat up, squinted at me, and said, "I'm gonna clean your ass, you fuck." He got most of his feet under himself but then the feet slipped out and he sort of stumbled backwards until he rammed his head into the green sedan's left front wheel with a thunk. He grabbed at his head and said, "Jesus."

  Dees stared hard at me for another moment, then went to Riggens. "That's enough, Floyd."

  Floyd said, "He hit me, Eric. The fuck's takin' the ride." There was blood on Riggens's face.

  Dees bunched his fingers into Riggens's shirt and gave a single hard jerk that almost pulled Riggens off the ground and popped his head back against the sedan. "No one's going in, Floyd."

  Riggens got up, took out a handkerchief, and dabbed at his head. The handkerchief came back red. "Shit."

  I said, "Better get some ice."

  "Fuck you."

  Dees made a little hand move at Garcia. "Pete, take Floyd over there and get some ice."

&nbs
p; Floyd said, "I don't need any goddamn ice. I'm fine."

  Dees said, "You don't look fine. You look like a lush who got outclassed." When he said it his voice was hard and commanding and Floyd Riggens jerked sideways as if he had been hit with a cattle prod. Garcia went over to him and took him by the arm. Floyd shook his hand off but followed him into the Market.

  Joe Pike said, "Elite."

  Eric Dees's face went hard. "They're good, Joe. They didn't cut and walk away."

  Pike's head whirred back to lock onto Eric Dees.

  I said, "That's the second time I've seen Riggens and the second time I've seen him drunk. Your people always get shitfaced on duty?"

  Dees came close to me. He was a little bit taller than me, and wider, and maybe six or eight years older. He reminded me of a couple of senior NCOs that I had known in the Army, men who were used to leading men and taking care of men and exercising authority over men. He said, "I take care of my people, asshole. You'd better worry about taking care of you."

  Joe Pike said, "Easy, Eric."

  Eric Dees said, "Easy what, Joe?" He looked back at me. "This is your wake-up call, and you're only going to get one. The little girl's problems with Mark are going to be solved. She's not going to need you anymore. That means you're off the board."

  "Is that why four LAPD officers have nothing better to do than follow me around?"

  "We followed you to talk to you. It was either talk to you or kill you."

  "I'm shaking, Dees." The detective plays it tough. "What did Akeem D'Muere have to do with Lewis Washington's death?"

  When I said Lewis Washington, Dees's eyes went hard and I wondered if I'd pushed too hard. "I'm trying to play square with you, Cole. Maybe because of Joe, or maybe because I'm a square guy, but if you're not smart enough to listen, there are other ways I can solve the problem."

  "Where's Mark Thurman? You give him the day off?"

  Dees looked at the ground like he was trying to think of the magic word, and then Pinkworth came back with Riggens and Garcia. As soon as Pinkworth turned away, the crowd came back. The fat kid's father was smiling. Riggens got into his sedan and Pinkworth and Garcia went back to the blue. Dees looked up at me with eyes that were profoundly tired. "You're not helping the girl, Cole. You think you are, but you're not."

  "Maybe she has nothing to do with it anymore. Maybe it's larger than her. Maybe it's about Lewis Washington and Akeem D'Muere and why five LAPD officers are so scared of this that they're living in my shorts."

  Dees nodded. Like he knew it was coming, but he wasn't especially glad to see it arrive. "It's your call, bubba."

  Then he went back to his car and drove away.

  Riggens cranked his sedan and took off after him with a lot of tire squealing. Garcia fired up the blue, and as they pulled out after Riggens, Pinkworth gave me the finger. When he gave me the finger the fat kid in the DES MOINES sweatshirt laughed and shook his dad's arm so that his dad would see.

  A Kodak moment.

  CHAPTER 13

  Thirty-five minutes later I pulled up the little road to my house and saw Pike's red Jeep Cherokee under the elm by the front steps. I had left the Farmer's Market before Pike, and I had made good time, but when I got home, there he was, as if he had been there for hours, as if he had been both here and there at the same time. He does this a lot, but I have never been able to figure out how. Teleportation, maybe.

  Pike was holding the cat and the two of them were staring at something across the canyon. Looking for more cops, no doubt. I said, "How'd you beat me?"

  Pike put down the cat. "I didn't know it was a race." You see how he is?

  I turned off the alarm and let us into the kitchen through the carport. I was uncomfortable moving into and through the house, as if I expected more cops to be hiding in a closet or behind the couch. I looked around and wondered if they had been in the house. People have been in my house before. I didn't like it then, and I liked it even less, now.

  Pike said, "We're clear."

  One minute he's across the room, the next he's right behind you. "How do you know?"

  "Went down to the end of the road. Checked the downslope and the upslope. Walked through the house before you got here." He made a little shrug. "We're clear."

  A six-thousand-dollar alarm, and it's nothing to Pike.

  He said, "You want to tell me about this?"

  I took two Falstaffs out of the refrigerator, gave one to Pike and kept one for myself, and then I told him about Jennifer and Thurman and Eric Dees's REACT team. "Four months ago Dees's team was involved in an arrest in which a man named Charles Lewis Washington died. Washington's family filed a suit against Dees and the city, but they dropped it when a street gang called the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys pressed them."

  Pike took some of the Falstaff and nodded. "So what's the connection between a street gang and Eric Dees?"

  "That's the question, isn't it?"

  I went upstairs, got the notes I had made on the case, and brought them down. "You hungry?"

  "Always."

  "I've got some of the venison left."

  Pike made a face. "You got something green?" Two years ago he had gone vegetarian.

  "Sure. Tuna, also, if you want." He'll sometimes eat fish. "Read the notes first, then we'll talk after."

  Pike took the notes, and I went into the freezer for the venison. In the fall, I had hunted the hill country of central California for blacktail deer and had harvested a nice buck. I had kept the tenderloins and chops, and had the rest turned into smoked sausage by a German butcher I know in West L.A. The tenderloins and the chops were gone, but I still had three plump sausage rings. I took two of the rings from the freezer, put them in the microwave to thaw, then went out onto the deck to build the fire. The cat was sitting out there, under the bird feeder. I said, "Forget the birds. We're making Bambi."

  The cat blinked at me, then came over and sat by the grill. Venison is one of his favorite things.

  I keep a Weber charcoal grill out on the deck, along with a circular redwood picnic table. The same woman who had given me the bird feeder had also helped me build the picnic table. Actually, she had done most of the building and I had done most of the helping, but that had probably worked out better for the table. I scraped the grill, then built a bed of mesquite coals in the pit and fired them. Mesquite charcoal takes a while, so you have to get your fire going before you do anything else.

  When the coals were on their way, I went back into the kitchen.

  Pike looked up from the report. "We're squaring off against five LAPD officers, and all we're getting paid is forty bucks?"

  "Nope. We're also getting forty dollars per month for the next forty-nine months."

  Pike shook his head.

  "Think of it as job security, Joe. Four years of steady income."

  Pike sighed.

  I opened another Falstaff, drank half of it on the way upstairs to the shower, and the other half on the way back down. When I got back down, Pike had built a large salad with tuna and garbanzo beans and tomatoes and onions. We brought the salad and the venison out onto the deck.

  The sky had deepened, and as the sun settled into a purple pool in the west, the smells of budding eucalyptus and night-blooming jasmine mingled with the mesquite smoke. It was a clean, healthy smell, and made me think, as it always does, of open country and little boys and girls climbing trees and chasing fireflies. Maybe I was one of the little boys. Maybe I still am. There are no fireflies in Los Angeles.

  I put the venison on the grill, then sat with Pike at the table and told him about Charles Lewis Washington and the Washington family and what I had learned from Ray Depente about Akeem D'Muere and the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys.

  Pike sipped his beer and listened. When I finished he said, "You think the family was telling the truth about Charles Lewis going straight?"

  "They believed it."

  "Then where'd a guy like that get the cash to buy a solvent business?"

&nbs
p; "There is that, yes."

  "Maybe he had a partner."

  I nodded. "D'Muere funds the pawnshop to front a fence operation, and Lewis's working for D'Muere. I can see that, but why does D'Muere front off the Washington family from pressing their lawsuit? The pawnshop is shut down. The fence operation is history."

  "If there's a suit, there's an investigation. There was something else there that he wants to hide."

  "Something that Eric Dees knows?"

  Pike shrugged.

  "If Dees knows about it, it's not hidden."

  Pike angled his head around and stared at me. "Unless it's something Eric wants hidden, too."

  "Ah." I turned the sausages. Fat was beginning to bubble out of the skin and they smelled wonderful. "Akeem D'Muere and Eric Dees are sharing a secret."

  Pike nodded.

  "The question arises, how far will they go to protect it?"

  Pike stared at me for a moment, then got up and went into the house. I heard the front door open, then I heard his Jeep's door, and then he came back out onto the deck. When he came back, he was wearing his pistol. It's a Colt Python .357 with a four-inch barrel. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. I said, "Guess that means they'll go pretty far."

  Pike said, "If five cops are on you, then it's important to them. If they're with you, then they're not doing the work they're supposed to be doing, and that's not easy to cover. Dees's people can't just go to the beach. He has to account for their time to his boss, and he has to produce results with whatever cases they're working."