Crockett’s cell rang. As he put on his headset so he could take the call hands-free, he glanced at the area code: 310. Venice Beach maybe?
He answered, hoping it wasn’t a telemarketer.
“There’s a four-car pileup at Wilshire,” a voice said. “Things are going to jam up real fast for you. You got about two minutes to cross over from the left lane, or you’ll miss exit 59 to Sepulveda. You’ve got some zigging and zagging to do to get to the exit. I’m going to hang up so you can concentrate. I’ll call back.”
Then dead air.
Whoever it was had called Crockett’s location correctly. When possible, Crockett took the far left lane, on the theory that the right lane was too slow and any of the middle lanes put you between two lanes of idiots. Farthest left lane gave you the cushion of the shoulder, or the less heavily travelled commuter lane, in case you had to move for an idiot in the one lane to your right. When possible, Crockett also liked to drive five miles an hour faster than the traffic around him, on the other theory that it was easier to see what was happening when you came up on people, instead of letting faster cars come up from behind. He was aware of the hypocrisy, scorning his imaginary toupeed car salesman but engaging in his own traffic games. Nobody drove these roads and remained pure for long.
Crockett didn’t have time to be concerned about who was surveying him or how it was possible. When a person knows your location, down to the side of the highway you’re traveling, chances are the person is also correct about a traffic pileup. He followed instructions, glad for the short wheelbase of his Jeep. He made it across to the exit, getting on Sepulveda by the big white oil tanks. The left turn took him under the 405, and by the time he was in fourth gear again, the northbound traffic was to his right. And on the far side, southbound, as the voice had predicted, clotted traffic was massing up.
His cell rang again. Crockett reached up and clicked his headset. Sepulveda was four lanes here. Two south. Two north. Relaxed speed, little traffic.
“Smart man,” the voice said.
“Not smart enough to know who this is.” Crockett tried to ignore the surge of concern that flooded him. He had already felt he was being watched. Now he knew he was.
“Catfish. Just call me Fish. Sarah Rinker told me I needed to watch your back. Said to give you whatever help you wanted.”
It tumbled into place. The hacker Sarah had mentioned.
“Uh, hi there, Fish.”
“So, is she hot?” The guy said, as if he were talking to a close friend.
“Yeah, Sarah is attractive,” Crockett said, going with it. “Trouble is, she knows she’s hot.”
“I never got too far with Sarah, but it was always worth a try,” Fish said. “But I was referring to the doctor. She didn’t give you much time, did she? I’m not surprised—she’s a Burbank girl.” It sounded like Fish was typing on a keyboard. “Let’s see. Dr. Madelyne Mackenzie. Completed her undergrad at Pepperdine. Masters and PhD at Berkeley. Saw her photo already. No makeup. Hair looks like it’s all split ends. Bet she’s a vegan, and sometimes vegans are hot. As long as they shave their legs.”
Now Crockett knew how long Fish had been tracking him. Since he’d called Sarah in the parking lot outside Mackenzie’s office, asking Sarah to put her computer wizard in touch with him.
“Not bad,” Crockett said.
“So what do you want from me?” Fish said, clearly not needing the compliment. “And give me a big list. Sarah’s waving a lot of cash in my face.”
Crockett was just passing the turn to the Getty Center. It was a great place. Every year he took his class there. He loved watching the kids everyone called misfits lose their too-cool-for-school bravado and gape at the buildings, the view, the art. As he drove, speaking to a hacker who was trying to help clear him of a crime he didn’t commit, Crockett passed the Getty Center with an acute sense of nostalgia for simpler times.
“Sounds like you’ve already started on what I need,” Crockett said, ignoring his sentimental feelings. He would gladly use Fish’s help on Sarah’s dime.
This exorcism angle was weird enough that it deserved some attention.
And he could think of only one way to get information as fast as possible.
Computer hacking.
“I’d like to know everything I can about Madelyne Mackenzie,” Crockett said. “Think you can do some serious digging?”
Twenty-Six
aimie carried a handful of carrots. She stood inside the wood-railing fence at the retreat center, feeding the carrots to the horse that she called BB, for Black Beauty.
Mr. G had given her the book of the same name during the previous school year. He knew she loved horses and convinced her to give the story a try. The coolest part for her was that the horse was telling the story, from when he was a colt to pulling cabs in London to his happy retirement in the country. She cried when Rob Roy was killed in a hunting accident, and then cried again later when she found out that Rob Roy was Beauty’s half brother. That was weird, crying over something that was made up. She didn’t cry over things that were real.
Maybe part of her crying was that Beauty didn’t seem to have family but was passed from owner to owner. Kind of like her. She hoped someday she would end up happy like Beauty, and she was really glad that Dr. Mackenzie had been helping her. Dr. Mackenzie and her bracelet.
The first time she learned about her bracelet, she felt both scared and good at the same time. Scared because of what it meant. Good because it explained so much.
The horse in front of her knew all of this because Jaimie had told him. She wanted to believe that BB could understand, just as if he were a horse who could put his entire story into a book.
Jaimie had her story too.
But Dr. Mackenzie said her story had to stay a secret. If she hadn’t been so scared the night of the fire, she wouldn’t have said a word to Mr. G about how she felt. And he wouldn’t be in such trouble now.
Madelyne Mackenzie drove through the gates into the Bright Light Center and saw Jaimie inside the fence—against the rules—feeding a horse.
Usually, the drive from her Burbank office to Bright Lights refreshed Madelyne. She loved the shift from concrete and pavement and car exhaust and the cacophony of city noise to browned hills against blue sky and dappled tree shadows and the rush of wind through her open windows.
Not this time. The pain and confusion had been easy to see across Crockett Grey’s face, and it was just as easy to see that he was fighting to hide the pain and fooling himself into thinking he was successfully putting on a brave front.
She told herself she wasn’t responsible for what had happened to him, but she knew herself too well.
If she had been in a position to answer Jaimie’s calls for help, Jaimie wouldn’t have gone to Crockett Grey’s house. That was the first level of guilt for Madelyne. The second was in not understanding until now what was at stake and how determined Jaimie’s enemies were to stop her.
She could tell herself that it wasn’t her fault that O’Hare hadn’t done a good enough job of keeping the last six months of correspondence secret. Maybe it wasn’t even O’Hare’s fault. The Vatican was a huge labyrinth of the unknowable. What had started as a simple phone call to O’Hare had grown into something so complicated and unbelievable but real, that at no point could she have backed out. The frog in water thing—heating up the water so slowly that the frog allowed itself to be boiled to death.
Maybe that was her. Still, she’d made the choices that got her into the water in the first place.
But Jaimie had been swept into this with little choice on her part.
And Crockett, no choice whatsoever.
That was what was bothering Madelyne the most. Her own determination to eradicate a childhood bogeyman becoming a campaign that dragged in the innocent.
No turning around. It was all or nothing now.
With so much—everything—riding on Jaimie.
“Hi,” Jaimie said as Dr. Mackenzi
e walked up to the fence.
Jaimie slipped underneath the railing and outside the fence, waiting for admonishment from Dr. Mackenzie. Kids weren’t supposed to be that close to the horses.
“Good day?” Dr. Mackenzie asked.
“Lots to think about,” Jaimie said. Her shadow fell in front of her, melting into Dr. Mackenzie’s shadow.
“You afraid?” Dr. Mackenzie asked.
“Not much,” Jaimie said. “I think it would be worse, but you’ve helped me understand a lot.”
“I mean are you afraid for the next few days,” Dr. Mackenzie said.
“Rome and everything?”
Dr. Mackenzie nodded.
Jaimie could have given an evasive answer. She was good at that. But after all that she and Dr. Mackenzie had been through, it was better to talk about stuff.
“Not afraid of Rome,” Jaimie said. “But it’s weird. I’ve been feeling sad. I hardly ever feel sad. Maybe it’s because of Nanna—Mr. G’s neighbor. You know, she and I stayed up a long time after he brought us back from the fire. Talking. Seemed like all night.”
Jaimie caught the look on Dr. Mackenzie’s face. Brief alarm.
“Not about Evil,” Jaimie said quickly. “I made a promise to you that it would be our secret. It is. I don’t want people thinking I’m crazy.”
“Jaimie, you’re not crazy. If you’re feeling sad about it, we can talk more.”
“We’ve been through that, so don’t worry. Thing is, she really was a sweet old lady. It’s like two in the morning, and she made me hot chocolate and sat and talked with me like she was my grandmother. It’s not like I want my own grandmother or anything, because that would be like wishing for the moon, but it got me to thinking that I’d sure like to be that kind of grandmother someday. You know, someone who would be nice to kids and have a house with cats and family photos and be able to look back on a whole lifetime of snapshots that didn’t have Evil waiting nearby. Kind of makes me sad, wondering if I can ever have that.”
“It’s what we both want for you,” Dr. Mackenzie said.
“I notice you’re not promising it will happen.”
“I’m doing my best to make it happen. It’s why Father O’Hare is here.”
“What about the guy who burned down the foster house?” Jaimie said. She’d been waiting for the right time to ask this question. Now seemed like as good a time as ever. “What does Father O’Hare say about that?”
“He says we are safe here at Bright Lights. And that once you help him in Rome, you’ll always be safe.”
“You believe him?”
“I do,” Dr. Mackenzie said.
“Good,” Jaimie said. “When all this is over, I’d like to go back to Nanna’s house. She said I could stop over anytime I wanted. Every day, even. She wants me to help her with computer stuff because she says it’s too hard to see things on the screen and it would be nice to have my help. I think she knows I’d like to pretend she’s my grandmother and was just using an excuse to make me feel better about visiting. But you know what I think? I think she wouldn’t mind having someone like me stop by a lot. Maybe she wants to pretend I can be like a granddaughter.”
Dr. Mackenzie reacted with a couple of blinks, and Jaimie guessed at what she was thinking.
“I promise,” Jaimie said. “I’ll never tell her our secret. Or anything about Rome. Evil won’t hunt me at Nanna’s place, right?”
Twenty-Seven
rockett parked near a two-story building at the Santa Monica Airport. He was shutting the door to his Jeep on his way to see Fish when his cell rang. It was Julie.
As usual, his heart jumped as if a high school crush was calling. He didn’t need his headset; he wasn’t driving. But he should have used it. When he pushed his phone against his face, it reminded him of the bruises.
“Hey,” he said, keeping his cool. She held so much that he wanted for himself.
“Hey,” she said back, voice softer than her usual neutral. “Look, I feel bad about this morning.”
He leaned against the car door. “Me too. But not about telling Dave I’d kick his butt. Look, if you guys are going to be an item, he’s got to know that—”
“Let’s not start this again,” she said. “It’s obvious what you think about him.”
“Actually, what I was going to say is that he’s got to know that his number-one job better be to take care of you and Mickey. And if he doesn’t, then he deals with me.”
Long silence. Then a strange sound. It took him a moment to understand. She was crying.
“Julie …”
“I’m okay,” she said. “Anyway, I called because Mickey misses you. Hang on.”
A shorter silence.
Then came Crockett’s favorite word.
“Daddy!”
He choked back the tears. “Mick. You doing good?”
“I’m doing well,” Mickey said, his voice full of innocence that Crockett envied. “Mommy doesn’t like it when I say I’m doing good. I’m supposed to say ‘doing well.’ Anyway, I missed you, Daddy. Where were you? I thought we were going to the zoo.”
“We still are,” Crockett said. “Some grownup stuff got in the way. But we’ll go very soon, okay?”
“You never let grownup stuff get in the way before.”
“I know. But it shows you that this grownup stuff was something too big for me to push aside. ’Cause you know if I could have been with you, I would have. You are the most important person to me.”
“I know, Daddy. That’s okay. But let’s go soon, okay? I think the kangaroo is going to have a baby. Won’t that be cool?”
Crockett found himself nodding to nobody. “Very, very cool.”
“See you later, alligator,” Mickey said. Crockett had to chuckle at the abrupt conversation ending. Mickey wasn’t much for phone conversations. He liked Skype and video better.
“After a while, crocodile,” Crockett answered, his mood markedly lifted.
Crockett was hoping Julie would get back on the phone too. But nothing.
He slipped the phone into his pocket. Whatever it takes, he thought, I’m keeping my promise to Mickey. We’re going to the zoo.
The Fishloft, as Catfish called it, was on the top floor. The centerpiece of his loft was a black leather couch where Crockett now sat. He faced the de rigueur, 3-D flat-screen television, hooked up to video controls. An L-shaped computer desk with three computer monitors filled one corner. There were a couple of cheap floor lamps in the room too. Not much else. No paintings or posters on the walls. Man cave.
Catfish leaned back in his rolling chair, hands clasped behind his head.
Catfish was big, like football big. Brush cut, earnest face. Could have stepped out of a set of Leave It to Beaver. When he had met Crockett at the door, he’d crushed Crockett’s fingers in a handshake and grinned while doing it, then headed to the computer setup with almost a jolly gait.
“There’s a reason I wanted you on the couch,” Catfish said from where he now sat at his computer screens. He looked studious in his black, horn-rimmed glasses. “You have to check out the video. Grab the remote and hit Play.”
Crockett clicked once, and the screen slowly became luminescent, showing the side of his own head in a closeup. It took a couple of seconds for him to realize what it was.
It was Crockett in Fish’s doorway. Crockett’s bruised face filled the screen. Then came the wince that Crockett had not hidden well when Catfish crushed his hand.
The video kept running, and Crockett saw the side of his face, saw the couch from a sideways view.
Without turning his head, Crockett raised his hand between himself and Catfish, and that, too, appeared on the flat screen. Although the television was high-def, the image wasn’t, so it came from a camera that didn’t have megapixels to play with. A small, simple camera.
Crockett clicked off the television. He examined Catfish’s grinning face.
The angle of the footage was coming from Catfish’s direction
. Crockett scanned the area around Fish for a camera. Then it hit him. Low-def camera, had to fit in a tiny place.
“Your eyeglasses,” Crockett said.
“Not bad.” Fish pulled off the horn-rimmed glasses and tossed them to Crockett. The light in the room was dim, and Crockett ran his fingers over the frame to confirm his guess. In the center of the rim was a small circular depression. A camera lens.
“Got them from a private eye,” Fish said. “Cool, huh? Even waterproof. Been using them in client meetings. Or sometimes I leave them on the desk and walk out, record what clients say behind my back. Valuable. Really valuable.”
“Yeah,” Crockett said. “Valuable.”
Fish was studying Crockett. “You don’t look like I expected.”
“You mean the bruises? Never thought I’d say this, but I got hammered pretty good by a prison guard.”
“Yeah, you’ve got some nice raspberries. But that’s not what I mean. I was expecting some accountant-looking guy. Your bank accounts, bill payments, all that stuff. They’re meticulous. Conservative. I was going to write you off as boring till I found the surfing stuff about you. It looks good on your résumé, that whole story about how you single-handedly pulled a guy out of the water after a shark attack. I don’t know if I would have done it. Surfboard’s not the safest escape strategy in blood-filled waters.”
The Canary List: A Novel Page 10
