Dead East

by Steve Winshel

  “He’s stable, but not good. Some kind of poison. Not just bad gefilte fish.” He deadpanned the line and Jarvis would have laughed if had hadn’t wanted to break the doctor’s jaw. “We’re running some tests, but I can’t tell you what we can do or how he’ll be until I know what’s going on.”

  Rayford jotted down a few notes then watched Jarvis walk over to the bed. Jarvis looked at Brin’s face. It was paler than the last time he’d seen him. And thinner than ten years earlier when he’d almost been decapitated. It had been five months since they’d spoken. That day Brin had shown up on a stakeout just as the surveillance target figured out he was being watched…and was coming around the back of his house toward Jarvis carrying a shotgun. The target spent the next three months in a hospital bed like the one Brin was in now.

  Jarvis turned from the bed, back toward Rayford. “I’m a PI. You going to help or get in my way?”

  Chapter Seven

  The two men sat across from one another in an empty hospital cafeteria. The soft sound of institutional breakfasts being prepared seeped from the kitchen. Rayford’s notebook sat open on the Formica surface, the cover damp from the earlier swipe of a wet cloth. He twirled his pen across his fingers like it was a baton in the hands of a cheerleader.

  “I get that you’re pissed. I get that you wanna go find whoever did this. But you’re not gonna get there any faster being the Lone Ranger.” Rayford didn’t get his own unintended pun right away, then remembered what little he now knew about Brin. “You know what I mean.”

  Jarvis drained the last half-inch of bad coffee and looked the detective hard in the eye, not unsympathetically. “I don’t know much about Brin’s life except when I see him, which isn’t often. He just shows up. What he does the rest of the time, I don’t know – but I’ll find out. He wasn’t the kind of guy to circumvent trouble.”

  Rayford’s brow went up. “Circumvent trouble?”

  Jarvis laughed and stood. “That trait could piss some people off. I’ve got your number. If I come across anything that’ll help, I’ll call.”

  Rayford stood, too. “We don’t need a vigilante. If you interfere with my investigation…” It was a threat, but Jarvis read behind it to the offer of mutual help. He nodded and walked out of the cafeteria and through the hospital to the parking lot. It was late morning and the inside of his car was already hot. He didn’t turn over the engine, just sat with the door and windows closed, absorbing the heat. He watched an ambulance pull up and an old sedan limp in behind, a grim-faced woman behind the wheel. A couple of doctors crossed the lot toward the entrance. Jarvis closed his eyes and leaned back, the hot leather satisfyingly burning his neck.

  After Brin had provided unexpected back-up a few months earlier, they’d had a brief chat. Waiting for the ambulance to arrive and wondering if it would get there before the guy expired, they’d nodded at one another.

  “How ya been?” Jarvis folded his arms.

  Brin stood like a soldier while Jarvis leaned against the hood of his car. “Pretty good, pretty good.” He kept swiveling his head, in case there were a sniper or approaching armored tank in the tree-lined neighborhood.

  Jarvis pulled out a pack of gum and offered it to Brin. Brin took one without breaking his vigilant scanning of the surrounding area and split-level homes. A shadow passing overhead caught his attention and he displayed slight disappointment that it was a large black crow and not an unmanned drone armed with sidewinder missiles.

  The moaning of the man on the ground caught no one’s attention. The faint hum of a siren became audible and threatened to turn into a wail within moments.

  “You know we’re even now, right? No more of this commando Ninja shit.” Jarvis unwrapped a piece of gum and put the pack back in his pocket.

  Brin had already pocketed his. “Yup, totally even.” Jarvis smiled around his gum. It was the same conversation they’d had for almost a decade.

  “Wanna have dinner? We’ll get some girls and you can cook at your place.” Jarvis had never been to Brin’s place. He wasn’t entirely sure that Brin’s “place” wasn’t a bed of leaves in a well-hidden spot ten miles out in the Angeles Forest. He had a way of reaching Brin if need be, and it didn’t quite involve beaming an image of bat wings onto a cloud in the night sky. There was a phone number that no doubt was a dozen steps removed from Brin but had a voicemail he could check. Jarvis had been meaning to introduce him to the wonders of the Internet.

  Brin’s smile was only in his voice. “Sure. I’ll send out an invite.”

  Jarvis looked away, following the flight of the crow as it hunted for an open trashcan. Jarvis counted to ten and turned back. The empty space where Brin had been gave Jarvis a clear view of the man writhing on the ground. As the ambulance pulled up, the crow spotted a broken trash bag half a block away, the bird’s attention drawn to the spot by a figure quickly jumping over a fence and disappearing into a wooded area.

  Sitting in his car now outside the hospital, the memory made Jarvis smile. The car seat had cooled and he turned over the engine with the punch of a button. He needed to find out why Brin had been eating at the deli in Beverly Hills. He might have liked pastrami, but he wouldn’t have chosen to catch an early breakfast with a bunch of early-rising old Jewish men at Nate and Al’s at 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday unless it was related to something he was working on. And since that was the only lead, with no residence or papers or cell phone records, Jarvis headed down Doheny toward the restaurant.

  Chapter Eight

  Before interrogating the wait staff, customers, and anyone within a six-block radius of the restaurant, Jarvis decided to see if Brin had left a car full of clues parked near the deli. Nate and Al’s sat in the middle of Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, buffered by Tiffany’s, Van Cleefs, Harry Winston, and other shops that didn’t offer pastrami sandwiches for about ten bucks. A ten would barely cover the tip for the valet at the jewelry and clothing stores. Brin might have parachuted in from a low-altitude single-engine plane piloted by a former Iraq war Air Force buddy, or surreptitiously jumped on the back of a delivery truck twenty miles away and ridden the undercarriage to Beverly Hills. But he probably drove.

  If Brin had driven, he wouldn’t have parked at a meter just in case he was poisoned or otherwise delayed and a ticket was issued. He didn’t like to draw attention or provide any proof of his existence that could be traced back to him. More likely any vehicle he used was at least a few blocks away, and maybe as much as a mile. It would need to be innocuous, but with ready access and egress. Jarvis tried to think as Brin would have, then added a couple layers of paranoia. He pulled into an empty spot in front of a fire hydrant half a block from Nate and Al’s and ignored the cop writing tickets on the expired meter a few cars down. Plenty of street parking, if you could get it. No lot for the deli, but a pretty big one at the Gelsons across the street. It was underground and there was no guard taking tickets. On the other hand, the grocery store closed at 10. Jarvis kept scanning.

  There were public garages on this block, and at least three more within easy walking distance. All required you to take a ticket on the way in. Three or four blocks north, the residential part of Beverly Hills began– mansions and all the rest. Wide, empty streets. And permit parking only. Jarvis put his car into drive and planned on circling the block in an every widening pattern. He got to the corner of Beverly Drive and Santa Monica Bld, staying in the right lane so he could make the turn, when he saw a small ramp to his left going through a gated entrance. He cut across two lanes and was rewarded with the middle finger of the guy who’d been texting and about to drive his Lexus through the red light. Jarvis waved and smiled, irritating the guy more.

  Jarvis did not need to take a ticket to go up the small ramp and into the cramped parking lot that contained about fifty spaces. This was one of those hidden gems. It gave refuge to drivers weary of circling the blocks and not wanting to enter one of the gargantuan public lots. This one was open to anyone and was used by both shoppers
and employees because the meters were good for up to 24 hours. One long aisle to drive down, two rows of cars, one on either side. This lot hadn’t been converted yet from coins to credit card. Brin would have loved it – no chance of being traced. Paranoia at its very best.

  Jarvis played meter maid and rolled slowly past the cars, swiveling his head from side to side. A red Maserati had a flashing screen on the meter, but that wasn’t Brin’s style. Down ten more spots was a Prius with a ticket already on the window. The owner would be pissed – in Santa Monica, owners of the holier-than-though car didn’t have to feed meters. In Beverly Hills, though, no one avoided their civic duty. Then he found it. Second to last spot on the right. Five year old Ford pick-up. Nothing special, no marks or stickers or permits. Just a truck, with a parking ticket stuck under the wiper blade on the driver’s side. Jarvis stopped directly behind it, eliciting a brief but irritated horn blast from the woman behind him. He waved her around and got out of his car after she’d passed and glared at him.

  Jarvis circled the truck, peering into the untinted driver’s window, then pressing between the front bumper and metal posts of the fence it almost touched. There were no visible bits of paper, maps, empty coffee cups inside. He got to the passenger side and peered in, not bothering to try the door handle. Back around the bed of the truck, which was spic-and-span clean. The truck looked new even though it was at least five years old. Brin hadn’t boosted it or bought it recently. He must’ve owned and used this truck for a while and there had to be a clue. Jarvis looked around and saw no security cops, no shoppers, no homeless. He went back to the passenger side and made a sharp jab with his elbow on the smaller pane on the front of the main side window. It created a spidery web of cracked glass, but remained in place. He pulled out his wallet and took an AmEx card and his gas credit card from the fold and held them together. Wedging them against the rubber trim next to the shattered pane, he used his palm as a hammer and with a couple of hard shots the makeshift wedge moved half an inch in. He twisted and pulled at the same time, opening enough space to put two fingers in. Wriggling down another half inch, he gave a sharp tug and the pane peeled away like the skin of a fish. No alarm rang out. He reached through the hole and flipped the lock.

  The truck was clean, as if a forensic team had picked it over and removed every scrap of paper. Every fiber of material that could be used to trace the owner or anyone who’d ever been in the car. Probably because that’s what Brin had done.

  Jarvis opened the glove compartment and flipped through the half-decade old manual. No registration, or sunglasses, or burnt out tail light bulbs. No map leading him to Brin’s lair. Certainly no clues about who had poisoned him. Jarvis swung over to the driver’s side and sat behind the wheel. He flipped down the visor, half expecting a note to fall out. That was where soldiers kept pictures and letters and anything personal when they were driving around the desert in a Humvee ten years earlier. The back of the visor was as clean as the rest of the truck. Jarvis sighed and put his hands on the steering wheel. He tried to be Brin, think about what he’d seen driving here. Jarvis looked in the side mirror to see if anyone was watching him toss the vehicle. Only an empty row of cars. He turned to the passenger side and looked at the oversized rectangular mirror that would have shown if anyone had been pulling up alongside Brin waving a gun, a common occurrence in Afghanistan. Jarvis laughed as he read the writing on the side mirror, that objects appeared closer than they actually were. In Afghanistan they’d written on the bottom of them: Objects in mirror may be trying to kill your ass.

  The writing, seen from across the front seat and through the window, looked worn. Jarvis squinted, then slid over to the passenger side. He couldn’t lower the window without the key in the ignition, but he could read through the perfectly clean glass. The writing had been altered. From a few feet away, it read exactly as it should. But up close, some of the letters were made up of other letters. The O in Objects was actually several smaller letters forming a circle. Jarvis opened the door and got out, leaning in close to the mirror. He had to skim all the letters comprising the O to find a starting point where it made sense. And then it did. Brin had left him a message – just in case.

  Jarvis pulled a small notebook out of his back pocket and pen from the front of his jacket. He wrote in a straight line. All the letters comprising the O. He squinted at the next few letters, but they were solid. Then the C, also made up of small squiggles that resolved to letters as he focused on them. The S and then on to the next word. The N from In and the M from Mirror. Only letters that were continuous, with no question about where the path of smaller letters would go, had been altered.

  No more after that. Jarvis looked at the letters he’d written down and the message they conveyed. It was an address. His address, of his home in Malibu. And a string of digits. The digits looked like a telephone number, or a code. And then Jarvis recognized them – coordinates. Jarvis laughed out loud at Brin’s brazen hiding place for whatever it was he wanted his friend to find. He took out his car key and scraped away the letters on the mirror. Jarvis closed the passenger door and tried to picture where on his property the coordinates pointed and how hard it would be to find whatever it was Brin had left. He pulled out of the lot, leaving the truck behind him to be towed and discarded since. Brin wouldn’t reuse a compromised vehicle when he recovered. When, not if. Jarvis drove toward the beach.

  Chapter Nine

  Jarvis tried to remember the last time he’d seen Brin at his home on the beach. It’d been years. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there. Sneaking into enemy territory undetected was Brin’s specialty. The BMW sped along Sunset Blvd and blazed north on PCH until it reached the small community of modest homes and condos that contrasted with the beach mansions that made Malibu famous. Jarvis wound around a sandy road off the main street and pulled into his carport. From the glove compartment he took a blocky piece of electronics that looked to be one part oversized scuba watch and one part iPad.

  GPS devices sold in stores weren’t allowed by law to be accurate by more than ten feet. The military didn’t want regular Joes able to pinpoint their location on a map too closely. His GPS was a little more accurate –within inches. He flipped it on and entered the coordinates from the notebook. A map instantly appeared along with a directional arrow. Jarvis got out of the car, eyes intent on the arrow. It flowed forward, like the lights on an airport landing strip. He followed the direction it pointed but had to stop when he encountered the wall a dozen feet to the left of his front door. He keyed open the door and went into the hallway, holding the GPS in one hand and angling it in the direction of the arrow. It was turning green.

  He took a few steps towards the living room and as his body turned, the arrow reoriented to his right. It directed him to the kitchen and as he walked, the arrow began to move more quickly and the color shifted from yellow to light green. By the time he passed the kitchen table, the green was darker and the flickering more insistent. The arrow pointed a little to his left and he almost bumped into the refrigerator. The arrow was now an insistent deep green and seemed to want to leap off the screen. Jarvis held the GPS closer to the fridge and the arrow turned into a large green dot, which spun frantically and launched a loud beeping. He put the GPS on the counter and opened the fridge, expecting to find a gift-wrapped clue. Instead, he only saw a poorly wrapped half-eaten chicken and his last beer. He began to rifle through the random contents, looking for something that didn’t belong or had been disturbed. The luncheon meats looked fine. If Brin had hidden something here it wouldn’t be in a perishable item. Inside a panel, or behind a motor deep in the guts of the refrigerator. Jarvis felt the inside walls of the fridge for anything that might have some give or look like it had been opened and replaced. There was nothing.

  He stood and closed the door. Leaning back on the counter in the center of the kitchen, he looked at the metallic surface. Getting down on one knee he checked the floor to see if there were scratch marks where t
he heavy appliance had been pulled out so someone could remove a metal plate or unhinge a door. It was clean. Not so clean that it looked like someone had recently wiped it. Jarvis reached under and felt for any anomalies. He was disappointed to find nothing. Checking the fridge reminded him he hadn’t eaten since the night before. He opened the door of the freezer section above the regular refrigerator and pulled out one of the half dozen pints of Ben & Jerry’s. Before he closed the door and reached for a spoon, he noticed the heavy blanket of frost surrounding most of the freezer, reducing its capacity because of his neglect. Jarvis put the ice cream down on the counter and took a heavy knife off the rack next to the stove. He began to chip away at the two inches of ice pack.

  A spray of ice flew into his face and then a couple of chunks came away. There was something at the bottom, a slip of paper or plastic. Jarvis scraped away as much of the accumulated ice as he needed then clawed at the corner of rectangular scrap with his fingers. It was laminated, a couple inches high and four or five wide. It peeled off like the glass on Brin’s car, resisting but giving. He closed the freezer, ignoring the melting shards that puddled on the floor. The piece of laminated paper was frosted and streaked. Jarvis wiped it against his shirt, held it between two hands to warm it and turn the fragments of ice to water. It took just a few seconds. Now he could read the writing. Handwritten, clean block letters. A few lines of text and at the bottom, a string of meaningless letters and numbers. Jarvis held the message close to make out the small writing.