“What makes you so sure these guys blabbed everything to their wives?”
“I’m not sure, but we’re going to assume they did,” Eva told him.
“We’re not going to take any chances. We don’t want them talking to the cops.”
Rudy shrugged and placed his weapon in the inner pocket of his leather
coat. “Hell, the wives won’t know anything more than their husbands did. They all thought they were going to rob a bank and leave their families rich. That’s all the wives will know.”
Eva took a deep breath, wishing Rudy was smarter. He’d be less likely to make mistakes.
“But the cops won’t buy that story. Not with C-four explosives going off all over Los Angeles.”
“Yeah,” Rudy conceded.
“I guess you’re right.”
“Cops aren’t stupid,” Eva reminded him.
“And the ones we’re up against are plenty smart.”
“But not smart enough to figure out that we’re going to kill the ” Eva gave him a hard look.
“Keep your mouth shut. You’ve been told a dozen times never to mention that.”
“But there’s nobody here but you and me.”
“What about the people passing by on the sidewalk who might overhear through your open window?”
Rudy scanned the sidewalk to make certain no one was close, then quickly rolled up the window.
Eva’s gaze went to the apartment building across the street. The women who had been sitting on the steps gossiping were disbanding, some moving inside, others walking away.
“Go take care of business.”
Eva watched Rudy leave the car and stroll to the corner, where he waited for the light to change. Eleven days, she thought, and their target would be dead and meeting his judgment before being sent to eternal hell, where he belonged. He and others like him had ruined the country, opening the gates and letting immigrants flood in from everywhere. No whites, of course. But plenty of blacks and browns and mixed breeds who immediately went on welfare and then bitched that the government wasn’t doing more for them. And of course no school prayer and no ownership of guns for citizens to defend themselves with. But the FBI and DEA were allowed plenty of weapons so they could shoot innocent people at will, like they did at Ruby Ridge and Waco and a dozen other places. And don’t forget the U.S. marshals, she thought bitterly. They had murdered her family and walked away as if nothing had happened. She would make them pay. She would destroy their very center. She would cut off the serpent’s head.
Her eyes went back to the apartment building. A black car pulled up in front of the steps in a no parking zone. Two people exited, a man and a woman. Their backs were to Eva, but she could sense they didn’t
belong in the neighborhood. They were too well dressed, and their car was too new. She glanced over to the crosswalk. Rudy was on the other side of the street now, no more than twenty yards from the black car.
The man and woman turned to talk, and Eva immediately recognized their faces.
Oh, Christ! Oh, Christ! It was the detective she’d seen at the West Hollywood bomb site, and next to him was Joanna Blalock, the doctor she’d passed in the corridor while scouting the Pathology Department. Eva stared at Joanna. She looked different without her white coat on, but there was no question it was the same woman.
Now Rudy was only ten yards away from the black car. Get out of there! Get out of there! Eva wanted to yell. She saw Rudy reaching inside his coat and knew what was going to happen next. Quickly, Eva turned on the ignition and reached for the gearshift.
Less than five yards away from the detective, Rudy stopped and gestured as if he had forgotten something. He did a casual about-face and returned to the corner, where he patiently waited for the light to change. Then he crossed the street and came back to the car.
Eva’s heart was still pounding in her chest. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself.
“Man! That was a cool move.”
“What move?” Rudy asked.
“The way you turned around and walked back to the car.”
Rudy looked at her oddly.
“I came back because I forgot the silencer for my gun.”
“You mean you didn’t see them?”
“See who?”
“The detective who got out of the black car as you approached the apartment building.”
Rudy’s eyes almost popped out of his head.
“That was a cop?”
“The head cop.”
“And who was the woman next to him?”
“Joanna Blalock,” Eva told him.
“She’s the forensic pathologist whose lab I blew up.”
“Jesus,” Rudy muttered, now wiping his forehead with his sleeve.
“I was near enough to touch them.”
“They’re getting too close,” Eva said, thinking aloud. She now wished she had used a bigger charge of C-4 on the laboratory. Not only would it have destroyed all the evidence but it would have killed all the
witnesses. Stupid, she thought, again wondering why she had underestimated the amount of C-4 needed.
“We’re only one dumb move away from getting caught.”
“That big guy is the head cop, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Maybe we should take care of him.”
“He’s not our major problem,” Eva said.
“The woman is.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Without her the investigation would be nowhere,” Eva said, unwrapping a stick of gum and placing it in her mouth.
“She’s the one putting all the body pieces back together for them. She’s the one identifying the victims and pointing the cops in the right direction.”
“Do you want me to kill her?”
Eva thought for a moment. The woman would be easier to kill than the cop, and that would make one less headache. But that too could be dangerous. The last thing she wanted was more cops chasing them. What Eva needed more than anything was accurate information. If the cops were too close, she would have to consider calling off the assassination. No, she quickly decided. That was not an option.
The setup was so perfect. They’d never get another opportunity like this. She refocused her mind on the two questions she needed answered. What did the cops know? And how close were they to discovering the assassination plan? There were only two people who were privy to that information. Joanna Blalock and the cop with her.
“Do you want me to kill the Blalock woman or not?” Rudy asked again.
“Let’s find out what she knows first.”
“How do we do that?”
“There are ways,” Eva said and drove away from the curb.
Maria Gonzalez stared at the small crucifix in her hands.
“My husband is dead, isn’t he?”
“I’m afraid so,” Joanna said.
Maria nodded slowly.
“I knew it. I felt it deep in my bones.” She ran a hand through her hair and patted it in place. She was young and pretty, with straight black hair and doelike eyes.
“His cancer had returned and was spreading. The doctors told him there was no hope.”
“He didn’t die from his cancer,” Joanna told her.
“We think he was killed in an explosion.” Maria furrowed her forehead, not understanding.
“At the hospital?”
“No. It was some blocks away,” Joanna said vaguely.
“Did your husband ever mention explosives or dynamite to you?”
Maria shook her head firmly.
“Never.”
Joanna studied the young widow’s face briefly. There was no expression, no sign of real grief. Maria was nervously twisting the small crucifix.
Outside the apartment a jackhammer started drilling the pavement. The deafening noise came into the living room through a half-open window.
“Excuse me,” Maria said and hurried across the room to close the window.
Joanna quickly leaned over to Jake and whispered in his ear.
“She’s not exactly broken up over the news, is she?”
“You noticed, huh?”
Maria shut the window, and the noise faded. She came back and sat on the edge of her sofa.
“There is a leak in one of the big water pipes. The drilling has been going on all week. At times you cannot hear yourself think.”
“We won’t be much longer,” Joanna said, glancing at the widow’s wristwatch. It was expensive with a gold-link band.
“So you are certain your husband never mentioned explosives?”
“Not to me.”
“And you can’t think of any reason why he would be around explosives?”
“No,” Maria said at once.
“He did not like ” She stopped in mid-sentence, her eyes suddenly widening.
“Did they try to blow up the bank?”
“What bank?” Joanna and Jake blurted out almost simultaneously.
Maria hesitated, not sure how much to confide. Perhaps Ramon was not dead, she thought quickly. Perhaps he’d been caught and was being held by the police. Or maybe he was dead and the other robbers had gotten away. If that was the case, she would still receive Ramon’s share of the money.
“He he talked of robbing a bank. But I never took him seriously.”
“Tell me about the bank,” Jake said, sensing that she was lying.
“It was only foolish talk,” Maria insisted.
“I see,” Jake said evenly, nodding as if her answer was satisfactory. He watched her involuntarily breathe a sigh of relief.
“By the way, are you a citizen?” “I have a green card,” Maria said, a hint of defiance in her voice.
Jake stared at her, again sensing that she was lying. Green cards were the prize possessions of all aliens. They allowed them to work and live in America with all its privileges.
“Good,” Jake said neutrally.
“That card gives you a lot of rights, including the right to have an attorney.” He gave Maria a long, cold look.
“And if you’re lying to me, you’re going to need an attorney. A real good one.”
“But I haven’t done anything,” Maria protested.
“Withholding evidence in a murder case is a crime,” Jake said, now seeing fear in the woman’s eyes.
“All we want from you is the truth. You give us the facts, and we’ll walk out of here.”
Maria glanced down at the crucifix.
“Nothing will happen tome?”
“Nothing,” Jake assured her.
There was an awkward silence. The noise from the jackhammer faded.
“I didn’t know he was really going to do it,” Maria said softly.
“I swear I didn’t.”
Jake took out his notepad.
“Did your husband plan to rob the bank by himself?”
“No. There were others.”
“Who?”
“Some people approached Ramon and some of his friends to rob a bank,” Maria said.
“Each person would receive a hundred thousand dollars on the day the bank was robbed and an additional hundred thousand a month later. If anyone was caught or got killed, their families would receive the money.”
“As long as they didn’t talk?”
Maria nodded.
“That is correct.”
Jake asked, “Did your husband say anything about the people who hired him to rob the bank?”
“He would tell me very little about them,” Maria said.
“He was warned that if he did they would kill him.”
Joanna remembered her conversation with the mother-in-law of Jose Hernandez and the description she gave of the two who had hired him to pose in hunting attire.
The police had tried to reach Hernandez’s widow in Guadalajara to corroborate the description, but she had disappeared without a trace.
“Were these people gringos?” Maria nodded again.
“Young gringos.”
“Was one a woman?”
“5?”. A pretty woman.”
“Did she ever speak her name?”
Maria thought back, vaguely recalling a female name Ramon had mentioned once.
The only name that came to her now was Evie or something like that. Or was it Ava orEtta? She couldn’t be sure. Better not to mention it and cause trouble.
If she gave them the wrong name and they thought she was lying, they would make trouble for her, particularly when they found out she didn’t have a green card.
No. Better not to mention it.
“Well?” Joanna pressed.
“Did the gringo woman ever speak her name?”
“I do not think so,” Maria said.
“But Ramon once heard them talk of an organization they belonged to. It was a name that didn’t fit them like the name of a church group.”
“We need that name,” Jake urged.
Maria’s lips began to move, then stopped and started again.
“There was a number that went with it. Ten something.”
“An address?” Jake guessed.
“No,” Maria said, still concentrating.
“It was religious. This was a religious group, I remember thinking.” Her eyes suddenly brightened.
“The Righteous! The Ten Righteous. That was their name.”
Jake and Joanna exchanged puzzled looks, both unfamiliar with the phrase or organization. Jake flipped a page in his notepad and jotted the information down.
“Did they tell your husband the name of their group?”
“No. He overheard one of the gringos speaking on the phone.”
Jake asked, “Where did he hear the phone conversation?”
“At their meeting place in West Hollywood.”
“Did he give you the address?”
Maria shook her head.
“He said only that it was a house.”
Yeah, Jake thought sourly. It was only a house that was loaded with enough C-4 to level a row of homes and kill over twenty people.
“Was the bank they planned to rob near the house?”
“No, no,” Maria said promptly.
“Ramon said it was close to Memorial Hospital.”
Jake asked, “Was it a Bank of America?”
“He did not say.” Jake turned to Joanna.
“Are there any other banks in that area?”
“Not really. There’s a Western Federal branch in a supermarket six blocks away.”
Too far, Jake thought. Besides, banks in supermarkets never carried that much cash. It had to be the Bank of America he and Joanna had passed walking from Memorial Hospital to the rehab institute.
“Did your husband tell you why they picked a bank close to Memorial?”
Maria squinted an eye and thought back before shaking her head.
“All he said was that it was the one the gringos and their friend at Memorial wanted to rob.”
“What friend at Memorial?” Jake asked quickly.
Maria shrugged.
“I do not know. The gringos must have had some friend at the hospital.”
The door to the bedroom opened. A handsome, well-built Latino man looked over at Maria. He was bare-chested with a small tattoo just above his nipple.
“Is anything wrong, Maria?”
“There is no problem,” she told him.
“These people need some information on Ramon.”
The man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Oh?”
“Please close the door. I’ll only be a few minutes more.”
The man hesitated, then did as he was told.
“A cousin,” Maria explained.
“Ah-huh,” Jake said, smiling to himself and wondering how long Ramon had been the odd man out.
“You said that Ramon and some of his friends were approached to rob the bank. How many men were involved altogether?”
“Four including Ramon.”
Jake nodded over to Jo
anna. That was the number of bodies she had determined were in the house at the time of the explosion. He turned back to Maria.
“Do you know the names of the others?”
“No.”
“They never visited here?”
“Not that I know of,” Maria said.
“They were people he only saw at Memorial Hospital.”
“I see,” Jake said, not seeing at all. Why were the people involved from Memorial? And why did they select a bank near Memorial to rob? The only common denominator was Memorial Hospital, and that made no
sense. Jake wrote down the questions and turned a page in his notepad.
“So we have four people from Memorial that ” Joanna held up an index finger, interrupting him. She asked Maria, “Who were these friends of Ramon? Were they patients at Memorial?”
“Yes. In the clinic.”
Joanna leaned forward.
“At the rehabilitation institute?”
“No. He told me he met them in the cancer clinic.”
“So they all had cancer?”
Maria nodded.
“All with less than a year to live.” With effort she took a deep breath and exhaled.
“These men were not thieves. They were just trying to find a way to provide for their families before they died.”
Joanna leaned back and let the new information sink in. Now she knew why the tissues found at the West Hollywood bomb site contained malignancies. She also knew how and why the poor Mexican men were selected to participate in the bank robbery. But who was behind all this craziness? And why?
Jake asked, “How many times did Ramon meet with the others in West Hollywood?”
Maria shrugged.
“Three or four times, I think.”
“What did they do at these meetings?”
“They practiced the robbery, Ramon told me. They rehearsed where their positions outside the bank would be and what to do and when to do it. And they had to learn how to wear their protective vests.”
Jake’s eyes narrowed as he thought about a Bank of America robbery a few years back in which the two robbers had armed themselves with AK-47 assault rifles and worn body armor. Both were killed by head shots from a police marksman.
“Did he tell you what the vest looked like?”
“Ramon said it was made of a thin plastic that had a bright orange color. It didn’t feel very heavy.”
“Light, huh?”
Lethal Measures Page 20
