House of Smoke

by JF Freedman

  They’ve met halfway, at the Dupar’s in Thousand Oaks, freeway close. He wolfs down the last bite of apple pie. She isn’t eating—she was too nervous before he arrived, and now she’s too upset and scared. And angry.

  “On me,” he says, grabbing the check for his pie and coffee. “I’ll bill you,” he indicates the envelope. “It won’t be too bad. Louis has done favors for me.” More seriously: “This is a big pile of shit you’re stepping into. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  He dumps some bills on the table, stands up. “See you around. Call if you need any clarification.”

  “Thanks. I will.”

  She spreads the papers out on the table, carefully begins digesting them. It’s mid-afternoon—the restaurant is almost empty. Middle-aged waitresses in uniforms dating back to the fifties (down to the crinoline under the puffed-out skirt and the lace handkerchief pinned over the left breast) wipe tables and gossip. Kate signals to one with a raised finger.

  “A pot of tea, please.”

  “Anything to eat? The boysenberry pie’s nice and fresh.”

  “No, thanks. Just the tea.”

  Her stomach is churning. If she ate anything it would bring on nausea—reading this material is making her sick to her stomach.

  It’s all here—Saperstein’s done a thorough job. Names, dates, places. Transaction records, bank accounts, stock ownership, property—everything.

  Now I have it, she thinks. Now what the fuck do I do?

  “What’re you going to do with this?” Carl looks off, his eyes clouded with cataracts.

  “I don’t know.”

  “This is incendiary material.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  They’re sitting outside his unit at the convalescent home. It’s late afternoon; the sun is low, it’s getting chilly. Carl wraps his sweater tighter against his body, but the cold doesn’t go away.

  “They’ve come after me before,” Kate says gloomily, “and that was before I had any proof.” She taps the package of documents sitting on the table between them. “You don’t think they’d do whatever it takes to stop this from coming out?”

  Her doctor took the bandages off her face earlier in the day; she’ll still wear the protective shield in physical situations. She rubs her face with both hands, being careful as she feels the fresh pink skin that’s newly formed over her healing cheekbone. All the shit that’s happened to her has taken a heavy toll. She’s exhausted—there are large dark circles under her eyes, and the color is drained from her face. She’s run out of steam, just about, she feels like it’s all fumes she’s going on now, adrenaline and fear.

  “I have no doubts,” Carl agrees. “The question is, how can you use it so they can’t?”

  “Go to the district attorney?”

  He shakes his head vigorously. “There’s no evidence of criminal activity in this stuff.”

  “But—”

  He cuts her off impatiently. “There’s stupidity, by the carload. There’s venality, manipulation, lies. But there’s nothing in here—” he pokes his finger at the documents—“that’s against the law.”

  She slumps in her chair. “Maybe I should go to the News-Press,” she thinks out loud. Laura’s weekly, The Grapevine, would be where you’d normally go with material like this, but that’s the last place she can take this stuff.

  “Do you have a friend there? Someone you can trust?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s iffy. They do love a juicy scandal—they are a newspaper, after all—but they’re also part of the establishment, they’re not going to print anything this explosive without corroboration, and then you’re exposed again.”

  “They’d never come after me once I’ve gone to the newspaper!” she exclaims. “They couldn’t.”

  “At this point what do they have to lose?” he counters. “Three people have already been killed, what difference would one more make?”

  “You don’t have much faith in our public institutions.”

  “No, and for many good reasons. Years of them.”

  She fingers the documents. This is scary.

  “So what should I do?” she frets. “I’ve got to do something, for self-preservation if nothing else.”

  “You’ve got to find a piece of incontrovertible evidence. Do you remember the Watergate hearings?”

  “Yeah. I was in high school.” She would have been about Wanda’s age. Full of passion and commitment, like her daughters are now.

  “The smoking gun,” Carl says. “That was what that one congressman kept saying—‘I’m not going to vote to impeach the President of the United States without a smoking gun.’ Well, they found one, and that gave them the excuse they needed to get rid of the sonofabitch. You have to find the same thing.” He taps the documents again. “So far you haven’t. Because that’s everything. All the rest is commentary, as the wise old man said.”

  “You’re the only wise old man I know.”

  “And I’m no goddamn help to anyone anymore.” He bangs the arm of his wheelchair. “I’m a frigging prisoner in this thing!” he rails. “I couldn’t help an old lady cross the street.”

  “You listen to me,” she says. “You give me good counsel.”

  “Big deal.”

  “It’s a lot.”

  “It won’t do you any good out there.” He points in a nebulous direction.

  “If the people who did all this know someone else knows, too, it might,” she counters.

  “That’s a flimsy hook to hang your hopes on,” he tells her. “To entrust your life.”

  “It’s better than nothing. And right now it’s all I have.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Carl asks again, getting back to the root of her problem.

  “Watch my ass like a hawk. The one advantage I do have is they don’t know that I know what I know—yet.”

  “You’d better be super careful. They almost got you already, two times now.”

  “I will,” she promises him. “Hey, fuck ’em all but six, right?” she adds in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood, which doesn’t work. She stands, starts to wheel him back inside.

  “Stay low to the ground,” he warns her, a bony finger stabbing her ribs. “And don’t show your hole card until the other side shows theirs.”

  Watch your ass. Yeah, right. Great fucking idea. If you want to barricade yourself in a closed room for the rest of your life. How do you watch your ass and get theirs at the same time without tipping them that you’re on to them?

  She has to make her move. Right now, not one day more of indecision. She has to make something happen, because she is being hunted: as of the moment she turned down the cash offer, first in Oxnard and then with Miranda, she was prey. They have her in their sights; maybe not this very minute, she’s eluded them so far, but there is a plan, and she is the focus of it—and the purpose of the plan is to kill her.

  20

  HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL

  KATE CLEANS HER GUN. It sits on the center of the bed in her motel-room hideout on a spread-out sheet of newspaper, to prevent staining. She’s been assembling and disassembling her weapon for years since she bought it as a cadet at the police academy, she could probably do it blindfolded like in the movies, but there’s nothing to gain by doing it that way, unless you’re making a bet with someone. If that were to ever come up she’d practice first, to make sure she could.

  Smith & Wesson, model 411, .40-caliber eleven-shot automatic. Matte black finish, polymer plastic grip, nonglaring.

  She removes the magazine.

  She puts the safety on.

  She pulls the slide back to the disassembly notch.

  She pulls the slide-release lever out.

  She removes the safety.

  She removes the slide from the frame by sliding it forward.

  She removes the guide rod and spring from the slide assembly.

  She removes the barrel from the slide.
<
br />   It’s a quarter to nine in the morning. She sips from a double latte she picked up at Coffee Cat. The radio is tuned to the public radio station, KCBX-FM, the Morning Cup of Jazz show. They’re featuring Bill Evans this morning, the Blue in Green album. Very mellow. It helps her chill out, stay focused:

  She uses a toothbrush to apply solvent to the various parts: Hoppe’s Nitro #9. The Hoppe’s smells sweet, almost like a man’s cologne.

  She scrubs the inside of the barrel with a cleaning rod and a barrel brush.

  She removes the solvent from everything with a clean cotton T-shirt from a former lover. She can’t remember exactly which one.

  The gun is dry.

  She lubricates the slide rails with Break-Free. She lubricates the guide rod and guide spring.

  She reassembles the gun:

  She puts the barrel in the slide.

  She returns the guide spring and rod to the barrel.

  She puts the slide back on the frame.

  She lines up the notch and hole, places the slide release in the hole to secure the slide to the frame.

  The gun is now cleaned and reassembled.

  She gets a box of bullets from her duffel bag, which had been hidden behind a pair of black spaghetti-strap three-inch high-heeled pumps in her bedroom closet. Winchester Black Talons, a bullet that has a Teflon-coated copper jacket with a nickel-plated brass case. Special bullets, to be used for special occasions, which this definitely qualifies for. This bullet, if it hits you in the arm, the arm comes off. If it hits you anywhere in the body, you die. This bullet is not for sale anymore—Winchester voluntarily took it off the market, it’s too destructive. She bought two boxes years ago, in case she ever needed the extra stopping power.

  She loads the empty magazine with the Black Talons, returns the magazine to the frame. She double-checks to make sure the safety’s on, which it is.

  She takes the gun and the cleaning implements into the bathroom, on the way in tossing the oil-stained newspaper into the trash basket in the corner.

  She washes her hands, scrubbing them hard in hot water, getting off all the solvent and oil residue.

  She has a long day and longer night ahead, so she lies down on the bed, forcing herself to sleep, quieting her racing mind.

  Sundown.

  She wakes up, showers, gets dressed: cotton underpants and bra, jeans, long-sleeved cotton sweater, sweat socks, running shoes.

  She brushes her hair out and pulls it back into a ponytail. A touch of lipstick, pale red, mascara, hint of eyeliner. She wants to look good, professional.

  Her face stares back at her. The left cheek still protrudes, but the swelling is going down, daily. She looks at her face objectively. The scars are receding. Not a face to hide from the world anymore. There will always be some scars, but that’s okay, she can be proud of them, she’ll wear them with honor. The marks of a survivor.

  Night.

  It’s dark and the moon is clouded over, but she finds her way like a homing pigeon. She parks a hundred yards down the road, out of sight. She’s getting good at that.

  The bullet-punctured Rancho San Miguel de Torres sign flaps in the wind. Over her left shoulder is slung a black Nike day pack, empty now. She walks down the dark road, the trees on either side hovering like huge ominous crows over the road. Off in the fields, she sees a few beef cows, shorthorns, who look back at her with blank curiosity.

  It takes almost fifteen minutes to walk the mile from the highway to the house. It’s cold outside, not near freezing—it rarely gets that cold in the valley—but bracing. Her hands are in her jacket pockets.

  The house is dark. There are no cars parked in front. She prepared for that; before she left town she called Miranda’s office posing as a UPS dispatcher (a hoary but time-tested gimmick), to verify Miranda and/or Frederick Sparks’s whereabouts for a special delivery to their house that evening. Celeste—Miranda’s secretary—bless her trusting soul, had confirmed that Mr. Sparks was out of town on business and Mrs. Sparks would be dining at home that evening with Mr. Sparks’s mother and Mr. Wilkerson of The Friends Of The Sea. (Kate immediately walked into the nearest flower shop and ordered an ornate floral bouquet to be sent up to the Sparks house, courtesy of “Your friends who support removing the oil platforms from the channel.” Miranda could figure out who those friends might be, but in case her secretary mentioned the inquiry, she was covered. She paid in cash, of course, and declined to include a card.)

  She reaches the low ranch house, standing off to one side in deep shadow. The house looms dark against the gray hills and black starless sky. The moon is shrouded by the clouds and a low fog lies on the ground, further obscuring vision.

  This is risky business, but there’s no other way. The proof of why Frank Bascomb was killed in his jail cell and why she was attacked and would’ve been killed if it wasn’t for Cecil showing up and why those two people were killed last week in Orange County is in this house. It has to be.

  She had thought, fleetingly, about asking Cecil to help her, but had quickly decided against it—she can’t involve him in breaking the law, even though she knows he’d do it for her.

  Taking one good deep cleansing breath, she walks across the open space in front of the house and up the steps.

  “Miranda? Mrs. Sparks?” She knocks on the door, loudly, calling out. If anyone is at home, she’s here legitimately.

  No one’s here, of course.

  Squatting down, she examines the locks on the door. A tumbler and a dead bolt; Schlage, brass finish. The tumbler’s most likely a B-460 with a one-inch dead bolt. Good quality, solid.

  This is going to take some work—she hopes she can open them, she’s rusty, she hasn’t done this for a long time. Otherwise she’ll have to try another door, which will probably also be locked, which would then necessitate breaking and entering, an altogether different situation, not one she wants to do if she can possibly avoid it.

  Be here and gone without anyone ever knowing is the idea. To be the hunter, not the prey.

  There could be an alarm, of course. It would be a silent alarm, you wouldn’t know you’d tripped it until the security people came breaking in the door. Usually, though, the security service calls to make sure you didn’t trip your alarm accidentally. You give them your secret password and they caution you to be more careful next time.

  If the phone rings after she’s entered she’ll be out of there in about one-tenth of a second, if that.

  She takes her latex gloves from her jacket pocket—the same gloves she wore when she went into Wes and Morgan’s house last week. Then she gets out her set of lock picks in its nice leather case. Twenty-five different picks, along with an assortment of tension wrenches. Years before, she’d busted a professional burglar—and then, as sometimes happens, she got to know him through the course of following his case through the legal chain. The friendship was helped along by allowing him to cop to a light plea in exchange for working with the force in busting a chain of big-time burglars, which he was happy to do. Part of his payback had been to acquaint her with the time-honored profession of lock picking, even giving her a good set of picks and teaching her how to use them, a piece of knowledge that has come in handy more than once.

  She inserts a diamondhead pick into the dead bolt, slides the tension wrench in alongside. The lock is a five-pin tumbler. Slowly, methodically, she rakes the tumblers. It takes time, she’s not a professional at this, and she doesn’t practice it as much as she should.

  This is the most vulnerable part of the operation—if she’s caught in the act, she’s dead. Literally, most likely.

  It’s chilly out but she starts sweating, beads forming on her forehead, in her hair, getting in her eyes, itching. She wipes her head with the sleeve of her jacket, keeps working.

  She can feel the tumblers falling. She turns the tension wrench. The bolt slides open.

  She checks her watch. Six minutes, not bad for an amateur.

  The knob lock is easier, now
that she’s back in practice.

  She opens the door, steps inside, and closes it behind her, turning the dead bolt and locking it as a precaution—if anyone comes up here, the few seconds it will take to unlock the dead bolt could be the difference.

  It’s dark inside. She doesn’t want to turn any lights on—a single light can be seen for miles out here, so she stands in the blackness waiting for her eyes to acclimate.

  It takes a while. She doesn’t move, not one step.

  Her pupils gradually dilate so that she can see where she is and what’s around her. The living room is as she remembers it. She walks across the room to the den where Miranda conducted her million-dollar business.

  Outside, the wind is picking up, causing pebbles and pieces of board to knock against the walls of the house. She listens carefully. Nothing. Her nerves, that’s all.

  Heavy curtains frame the two small windows of the den. She pulls them shut. Then she takes out a small penlight, turns it on, and points it around the room.

  The den, like the rest of the house, is decorated in old-fashioned Santa Barbara County ranch style: old leather couch, sturdy wooden chairs, Native American rugs on the floor, which is peg-and-groove oak, worn from decades of being trod upon. Against the widest wall she sees the work area, which consists of an old desk made from Monterey County madrone wood, which must be an heirloom and undoubtedly worth a lot of money, a large leather chair like a lawyer from a Charles Dickens novel would sit in, a new computer and printer, fax, multiline telephone, and other contemporary instruments of commerce.

  In four steps she crosses to the desk and quickly begins rifling through the papers on top. Different business and personal transactions, notes, the usual crap people who aren’t particularly neat have on their desktops. She pulls open the drawers on either side, starts leafing through the contents, taking care not to mess things up, to leave everything as it is as much as possible. There is some stuff pertaining to finances; most of it she already has from Saperstein. He’s done a good job, she thinks, looking the material over.

  She glances at her watch. She’s been in here for twenty minutes? No way. It felt like it was only a couple of minutes, five tops. You can get entranced in this stuff and lose your focus—when that happens you’re likely to get your ass handed to you.