The Vanquished

by David Putnam

  Dan watched all this, not saying anything. He turned to me. “What’s going on, Bruno?”

  “Keep Jumbo on ice, no phone calls, the same with what’s left of those guys inside.”

  Dan nodded to the agent in the blue suit, who took Jumbo to the rear of the Suburban just as another Suburban pulled up. Two more agents jumped out. Blue Suit shoved Jumbo in. After a short discussion, the three agents drew their guns and ran into Jumbo’s auto parts store.

  Dan said, “Bruno?”

  Dan had a wiretap on the phone, and I’d hung him out to dry with the phone call asking where to find Jumbo and then showing up in the middle of his surveillance to do a war crimes interrogation. Dan didn’t bring up how I’d screwed him over. If he came away with the military drone, the Hellfire missiles, and the terrorist who wanted to buy it, nothing else would matter, especially the manner in which Dan pulled it off.

  “The trade,” I said, “the money for the drone is scheduled to go down tonight, nine o’clock at a steak house on Hospitality Lane in San Bernardino. Bobby Ray has the drone on a semitruck, keeping it mobile. He’ll see the money, hand over the keys, and tell the buyer the location of the truck.”

  All the visible stress left Dan’s body at the same time and he smiled. “Damn good work, Bruno.”

  I handed him the Valvoline box. “This is mine. Don’t look in it. Just hold onto it for me and, if anything happens to me or Drago, get it to Marie, okay?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Can you give us a ride back to our truck?”

  “You bet, get in.”

  Blue Suit came out of the auto parts store, grabbed Dan by the arm, and pulled him aside. He whispered, urgently waving his hands, his expression one of confusion and fear.

  I waited to get in, to see how Dan would react to the mess we had made inside.

  Dan pulled away from Blue Suit and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “I don’t care. Deal with it. Write it up as a gang fight and that they shot each other. This is national security we’re talking about.” With the Valvoline box under one arm, he pointed back to the auto parts store. “Tell me now, do you honestly think there are any victims in there, I mean, taxpayers?”

  Blue Suit didn’t answer.

  I felt sorry for him. I’d written up many, many screwed-up crime scenes to justify legally wrong, but morally correct, things Robby Wicks pulled off. But nothing like the mess we’d left inside.

  The agent didn’t reply. Dan said, “I didn’t think so. Deal with it. Keep me apprised.” He turned to me and said, “Come on, Bruno, let’s go.”

  We got in. The air conditioner cooled and soothed, dried the sweat instantly. I wanted to curl up and go to sleep. But I still had far too much to deal with.

  I didn’t tell the driver where to go. Drago and I had driven into their surveillance net. They probably watched Drago follow the hippy away in the parts truck, corral him, and carjack his ride, and the whole time they just looked on.

  I put my head back on the seat, let the cool air work on my face, and closed my eyes. “There are guns and money in Jumbo’s office. I told him he could keep it if he cooperated.”

  Dan said, “I understand.”

  “The deal with the ATF agent Larry Gerber was all bullshit, a fabrication to clean Bobby Ray’s tail from any law enforcement surveillance.”

  “No, it’s not, Bruno, it’s real. At least part of it is.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. He sat in the front seat, looking back at us as we pulled to a stop next to the black GMC, with the hippy nowhere to be seen in the front, the windshield cloudy with a ganja fog.

  “What are you talking about? What’s happened?”

  “Special Agent Larry Gerber has gone missing,” Dan said. “He’s been gone two days now.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  “ARE YOU SERIOUS?” I asked.

  “I need to know what was said about Gerber, Bruno, exactly what was said. We now have a missing federal agent.”

  “I told you that in the Sears parking lot Jumbo claimed Special Agent Larry Gerber was dirty and wanted a payoff.” I pointed back to the store. “Well, not five minutes ago in the auto parts store, Jumbo retracted that statement and said that Bobby Ray told him to feed Gerber’s name to me after I pressured him a little . . . ah, man, son of a bitch.”

  “What?” Dan asked. He hadn’t caught on to what it all meant.

  Drago, with his head back against the headrest, his sunglasses masking his eyes, answered in a less-than-vigorous voice. “This Bobby Ray asshole fed the name to Bruno, to lay the crime off on Bruno.”

  “What crime— Ah, damn.” Dan, who just caught on, said, “The crime is that Gerber’s dead. And once we locate the body and investigate, we’ll find that Bruno has been throwin’ Agent Gerber’s name around, and we’ll also find evidence that Bruno met with him, maybe even worse than that. And with—”

  I finished it for Dan. “And with my record and outstanding warrants, I’m hung out for the murder.”

  I didn’t want to say anything more in front of Dan; the frame already looked too tight. More from me on the topic could only force Dan into a corner, force him to take action against me.

  What I found most difficult to believe was Bobby Ray. While in the hospital, in the waiting area, as his son lay in intensive care fighting for his life, Bobby Ray had asked me to take care of the problem with the dirty ATF agent. The one he had already murdered. Bobby Ray wound me up like some kind of toy soldier and sent me on my way to enmesh myself further into the frame he’d laid for me.

  I intended to have a talk with Bobby Ray a lot sooner than later.

  Then I remembered what Sonja had said: Don’t do anything Bobby Ray asks you to do. She’d been trying to warn me about the Gerber murder frame.

  “Do you have anything else on Gerber?” I asked, my head starting to pound with a headache.

  “Yes, Gerber’s supervisor told us that Gerber had flipped someone in the Visigoths’ organization and was working a heavy deal.”

  “What deal? Not this same arms deal? Ah, man, it has to be. Did the supervisor say who he’d flipped?”

  I could guess it had to be Bosco.

  “Gerber wouldn’t even tell his supervisor the name of the informant. Gerber feared for his informant’s life. He said the Visigoths had ‘too many ears in law enforcement.’”

  “What office did Gerber work out of?”

  “He’s an older agent, close to retirement, working a desk job as a liaison in cold case investigations for both Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He worked the Drug/Fire for them, shuffling their federal paperwork. His job was to submit all the ballistics, the bullets and guns from old cases, and have them analyzed with current technology. Between those two departments there are thousands of cases. They’re scrambling to sift through them all now. To find which one he was working on.”

  Drug/Fire was a database that categorized each bullet, shell casing, and gun barrel—not unlike the AFIS fingerprint system.

  “So Gerber,” I said, “must’ve matched a gun or bullet to a motorcycle gang killing, linked it to a suspect, and didn’t tell anyone about it?”

  Dan nodded. “All this just happened within the last few days. The supervisor did say one thing, though.”

  “What?”

  “Gerber wanted a tactical team on alert to respond at a moment’s notice when the informant called him with a location.”

  “Let me guess: scheduled for tonight at nine.”

  Dan nodded again.

  I looked over at Drago, his head lolled back. I grabbed off his sunglasses; his eyelids were mere slits showing all white. His mouth gaped open. A trickle of blood started and ran down the corner of his mouth.

  “Drago! Drago!”

  I slid over close to him, checked for a pulse in his neck.

  Dan leaned over the front seat into the back. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He’s g
ot a pulse; it’s weak and thready. He’s in a bad way.”

  “What’s the matter with him?” Dan said again as he leaned way over the seat and lifted the now sodden part of Drago’s Raiders jersey. On Drago’s abdomen, all the tattoos below the two tattooed breasts looked tinted in red, awash in blood. Too much blood, the top of his shorts soaked with it.

  “Are you kidding me?” Dan said. “He’s gunshot.” Dan turned to the FBI agent behind the wheel. “Get us to the closest hospital, now.” The agent took off, the back tires screeched. The back end slewed to the right and then to the left on the smooth parking lot asphalt.

  Dan opened his operational plan, checked for a number, and dialed his phone. Someone answered. Dan said, “This is FBI Special Agent Dan Chulack, we are rolling to your hospital with a GSW, ETA seven minutes. Have a team waiting at the ER door.” He clicked off his phone, reached under the dash, and flipped a toggle switch. The lights and siren came on. He looked forward out the front windshield.

  He didn’t turn around to scold me for not telling him sooner about my wounded partner. He didn’t need to. I felt guilty enough. Vulnerable and a little ashamed, I needed to be doing something, anything.

  The FBI agent whipped the large Suburban in and out of traffic, blowing through red signals.

  I took off my shirt, folded it up, and pressed it gently but firmly against Drago’s wounds. This would be the second time he’d gotten himself hurt because of me.

  Time dragged on. Dan said the trip would take seven minutes. It’d been twenty or twenty-five already.

  “Drago, hold on, we’re almost there.”

  “I thought you said seven minutes!” I yelled at Dan over the siren.

  Dan turned, looked at his watch. “It’s only been three and a half. We’re making good time, just hold on. Two more minutes, max.”

  “Hold on, Drago, you hear me, hold on,” I yelled.

  The driver finally made the last turn. The hospital came into view up ahead. He bounced the big Suburban into the driveway and skidded up to the rear door of the ER. Two men and a woman, all dressed in blue scrubs, waited with a gurney.

  How the hell would we get him on the gurney?

  Everyone tugged and pulled. A nurse ran into the hospital and came out with more help. We got him on the gurney. The doctor worked on Drago, yelling orders as they wheeled him in at a run.

  I eased myself down and sat on the edge of the open door, naked from the waist up, my hands bloody, and tried to get my breathing under control.

  I marveled at the horrible luck. What the hell.

  Everyone who came around me ended up with a trip to the ER, critically injured, gunshot, or bludgeoned. How could that be? How was that even fair? How did I always come away unscathed?

  I could hear Robby Wicks talking to me: “Quit feeling sorry for yourself, Bruno. You chase violence, it’s going to turn on you and bite back. That’s just the nature of the beast. All you can do is be ready for it. Now suck it up, you pussy. You live that life, be prepared to—”

  “Shut up,” I snapped. I put my hand to my head, which now ached something fierce. I didn’t want to be friends with anyone anymore. Not if it meant hurting them.

  Dan stood next to me, put his warm hand on my shoulder. “Hey, pal, you all right? You look a little pale.”

  “Huh, what? Oh, yeah.”

  He took off his suit coat. “Here, put this on. I don’t want you going into shock.”

  I nodded and shrugged into the jacket. The midday sun made it at least eighty degrees out, yet the jacket felt warm and inviting. “Thank you.”

  He squatted down a little. “Bruno, I need you to do one more thing for me.”

  I held up my hand. “Don’t. I’m done. I’m out. I know what you’re gonna say, because in your place I’d be saying the same thing. I’m on the inside and this deal’s too important. You want me to go back to Bobby Ray and try and get in on the deal tonight. Well, I’m sorry. It’s not gonna happen.”

  “Bruno?”

  “How could I possibly get back in? Can you hear what you’re sayin’? We just now figured out that Bobby Ray’s trying to set me up for the murder of a man I’ve never even met.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “Ah, come on, Dan, take off those rose-colored glasses. No, I’m out. Here, take your coat.”

  “No, that’s okay, keep it.”

  “Thanks.” I got up and staggered a little, then righted my gait and moved off to make a phone call. Maybe Dan hit it right when he said I looked shocky—the headache, the concussion. That explained the way I walked, the hot sun, the chills. Maybe I should’ve stayed in bed.

  I took out the FBI smartphone and dialed Marie.

  “Bruno, is everything all right?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her about Drago. I’d also kept the thing about Bosco bottled up too long. I needed to tell her about that as well. Maybe not on the phone; I should do that one in person. But I would do it, no more stalling. I’d do it just as soon as I got back to the hotel. “Marie, honey—”

  Marie cut me off. “Sonja called.”

  “What?”

  “Bruno, Bosco didn’t make it.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  BOSCO DIDN’T MAKE it?

  Bosco died?

  I’d done that. I’d killed him. All of a sudden I couldn’t breathe.

  “Bruno, Sonja wants to see you. She wants to meet with you. She said it’s important she talk with you right away.”

  “Okay, okay. Just hold on a minute, okay, honey? Please.” I took in several long breaths and then walked back to Dan, held the phone down to my chest, and said, “Can you keep an eye on Drago, call me if you hear anything?”

  “Sure, where are you headed?”

  “Sonja wants to see me.”

  He nodded and didn’t say be careful. He didn’t have to. He pulled his Glock from his shoulder holster and handed it to me. A major violation of FBI policy. A major law violation as well, giving an ex-felon a gun and aiding and abetting a felon. He wanted to step out on that limb with me, risk his career. I waved the gun off. “No, thanks, I’m good. But I need a car.”

  He pointed to the Suburban and yelled, “Mike, take him wherever he wants to go and back him with whatever he needs to do.”

  Mike got in the Suburban and closed the door, waiting for me.

  I said to Dan, “Thanks.”

  “You call me,” Dan said. “You understand? Keep in touch. We’re going to be all over that steak house tonight. If you get in trouble, use that panic button on the phone.”

  “Huh?” No way did I intend to go to that deal. No way. What the hell was he thinking?

  I tried to shift gears to the problems that lay ahead. The thoughts came a lot slower than normal. My mind had been working a problem, an issue my subconscious caught onto that I’d missed. It locked in now. “Ah, shit.” I jumped in the Suburban and slammed the door. “Go, go. Head downtown, the Bonaventure Hotel.”

  I put the phone back to my ear. “Marie?”

  “Bruno, what’s going on? What’s wrong with Drago? Where are you? What’s happened?”

  She’d heard my conversation with Dan. “Marie. Marie, listen to me. You said Sonja called you?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Tell me what happened to Drago.”

  “You didn’t call her?”

  “No, Bruno, I just told you she called me on the hotel phone.”

  “How did she know you were there?”

  “I thought you’d changed your mind and called her, told her where we were staying so she could come be with her grandson.”

  I said to the driver, “Mike, hit it, put your foot in it, we have to get to the Bonaventure downtown right now.”

  Mike turned on the lights and siren.

  “Marie, where’s the baby?”

  “Right here on my lap, why?”

  “Check him over. Does he have a necklace, something attached to his clothes, anything like that?”

&n
bsp; “Don’t be silly, babies don’t wear necklaces. They can strangle or choke on them. He’s got a cute little bracelet, though.”

  “Take it off him and flush it down the toilet. Do it now.”

  “Bruno, you’re talking crazy again.”

  “Marie.”

  “All right.”

  “Then get out of there. Don’t panic. Stay calm and walk out of there right now. Don’t take anything with you, just walk out the door right now.”

  “Bruno, what’s going on?”

  “Are you moving?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “I’m on my way there,” I said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Take a cab, get away from that hotel. You understand?”

  “I got it, Bruno. You only have to explain things to me once. I tossed the bracelet in the toilet.” The whoosh of the toilet sounded in the background.

  “Don’t grab anything, just get out.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I’m walking out now. Oh . . . oh wait . . . I . . . Oh my God, Bruno.”

  “What? What is it? Is someone in your room?”

  “No. The news, on the television.”

  “What news? The television?”

  Oh no, not now. Not now.

  I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes as the whole world dropped down on top of me, tons of weight smothering me.

  “My God, Bruno. You didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I imagined her standing in front of the television watching the footage from the CHP unit cam.

  Watching me fight the three Visigoths. The sickening violence of the event.

  Watching me flip Bosco out into traffic, the horrified look on his face in the short flight to his doom a half second away.

  Watching the Honda snatch Bosco out of the air and smash and mangle his body.

  Every couple of seconds, she let out a little yelp, the kind a puppy makes. With each yelp I shrank a little smaller in the seat, shrank again and again until I no longer resembled a normal human being, until I no longer existed.

  She came back on the phone, her breath fast. “Oh, Bruno, sweetie, I’m so sorry, are you okay? I mean—”