No problem. No problem at all.
2
Lucky Dey had never ever gotten used to it. Of the thousands of times he had been awakened by a telephone, it had always been with a start. As if jolted by a billion volts. It was in his DNA. His father was a heavy sleeper. The same went for his granddad. Sleeping had always come easily to Lucky. Rest his head, close his eyes, and slumber would be summoned. Anytime, anyplace. It was one of his gifts. He was a veritable Superman of sleep. But if Superman had kryptonite, Lucky Dey had the telephone. Whether it was the classic jangle of bells or some smart phone electronica or the gentlest of musical ring tones, Lucky would still feel the surge of juice and wake with a jump. So why not turn off the phone? asked one of many girlfriends who had witnessed Lucky’s bad waking habit. Simple. Lucky was a cop. He was often on call. And until a mad scientist could implant a waking node in his brain to gently tickle him when he was needed, he would have to suffer the goddamn telephone.
“This is Lucky,” he croaked, clearing his throat only after he had answered. It was dark, but morning. He knew that much. It had been A.M. when he had closed his eyes. There’s no way Lucky could have slept through the day into night. Nobody ever left him alone that long.
“Captain needs you,” said the voice, that Lucky guessed was Chelsea’s, the part-time secretary, part-time 911 operator. Her voice was slightly throaty, with the occasional excited squeak at the high end when she finally got a joke. Very sexy. But also very married, like so many East Kern County women. So many of them were freshly scrubbed, earthy and real. Nothing at all like the ladies from down Los Angeles way. Kern County women wore their lack of sophistication like their denim. Tight and without labels.
“Goin’ on, Chelsea?” asked Lucky, fishing around his nightstand for the familiar feel of an Excedrin bottle. He snapped the lid with his thumb and dry swallowed two capsules. The headache hadn’t landed yet. But Lucky knew it would eventually arrive and settle near the base of his skull as it did most every day. “Chelsea?”
There was a pause at the other end of the line. Either that or Lucky had fallen back asleep. He opened his eyes, swept his apartment bedroom for light, landing on his television screen where the DirecTV logo bounced from edge to edge like an old Atari video game. To his left was the bathroom where the door was cracked, leaving a slice of incandescent light to bisect the small space.
“Chelsea?”
“It’s Tony,” said Chelsea, her voice cracking abnormally.
Ah, hell, thought Lucky. Of course she was calling about Tony, his half-brother younger by eleven years. Since Tony was four, Lucky had joked that his little bro was an accident prone mini-me. Little Tony Tumbles, the family poster child for ambulatory care. The list of Tony’s accidental injuries could fill an orthopedics manual. When the Dey family lived in San Pedro, there had been a local orthopedics practice comprised of five partners. And by the time he was a high school sophomore, Tony was on a first name basis with every last one of those docs.
But young Tony, fully intent on following his big brother into all adventures, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, kept seeking more thrills. Motorcycles. Football. Even base jumping. Each extreme activity had ended in a bone-breaking dust-up that left Tony radiating with permanent pins and screws deep beneath his flesh.
“What’s he done this time?” asked Lucky. He was sitting up now. That thin band of light from the cracked bathroom door touched his bare torso, revealing a landscape of scars. Bullet wounds. Stitches.
“They did everything for him.”
“Who did everything? Wait. Did you say for him? Or to him?”
“I’m so sorry, Lucky. Tony didn’t make it.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for…my brother Tony?”
“Yes. Tony. Something happened out on 395.”
“He was in a car accident?”
“I don’t know. It’s a mess out there—”
“And Tony is on the scene or at the hospital?”
There was a pause again on the other end of the phone. Lucky could hear Chelsea breathing. Or was it the buzzing in his skull? He could sense that the oncoming hangover was in a foot race with his daily headache.
“Lucky?” asked a new voice. Masculine with an edge of FM radio circa 1977 in it.
“Cappy?” guessed Lucky.
“Chelsea’s all broken up about this. She’s not sure you heard her right.”
“My nimrod brother got into somethin’ out on 395. Just wanna know where he is so I can bang his head.”
“And you heard the part where she said Tony didn’t make it?”
The tingling started just below Lucky’s ankles, slowly tracing upward along the architecture of his nervous system. As if portions of him were suddenly dying on a cellular level. Then came the déjà vu. From when Lucky was a young L.A. Sheriff’s deputy stationed at Lennox. A member of the Trace Street Crips had found his way into the station lunchroom and dropped a shot of cyanide into an Igloo cooler of lemonade. Lucky recalled his mental state when it had been radioed Lennox-wide that the poison had been discovered. He had guzzled from the cooler of lemonade earlier. And though the cyanide had not yet showed any negative affects in Lucky, the news that he might be on a countdown with death caused him the very sensation he was feeling now while seated at the edge of his bed, phone to his ear, his “Cappy” making sure his top detective was clear on the inference.
“Your brother is dead, Lucky. Medics didn’t have a chance. He died along with the other two.”
Other two? Weren’t we talking about my brother?
The sick sensation coursing inside Lucky stopped at his ears, burning them hot until they stung.
“Tony, he’s…I heard you…I heard you…” stammered Lucky, trying to keep from throwing up in his mouth. He swallowed, then spat words out loud enough to split his own skull, “Whaddayou mean… Drew? What the fuck happened?”
“Still sorting it out,” said Captain Edward Andrews. “Got three vics. Possible t.c. between Tony’s unit and the civilian. A car fire. One maybe witness—”
“So he died in a wreck?”
“No. Shot in the head. We think the perp set the fire after,” said the captain. “Listen, Luck—”
“On my way in.”
“I don’t need you today. Just need you to—”
Lucky snapped the phone cord from the wall, effectively ending the call. For a matter of minutes, he sat at the edge of bed, nearly motionless, barely breathing, infected with a form of living rigor mortis. If in the future some shrink would have the chance to ask Lucky when the precise moment was that he had lost his last true connection to humankind, he’d have to say it had been then in that little stucco shithole. Number 112. Ridgecrest Palms Apartments.
“What fuckin’ palms?” Lucky had wise-assed on the first day he had moved from his Venice Beach shag palace to the little cookie-cutter one-bedroom apartment. For six months he had shared the space with his little brother who slept on the futon. That was until Tony hooked up with a divorcee who owned a nail salon and moved in with her. Lucky had imagined he would look for a condo or maybe even a house. Invest in his new hometown. Finally possess that government tax deduction called a mortgage payment. That was five damn years ago. And the only stake he had made in Ridgecrest life was the detective job and a twenty-three foot Centurian Enzo ski boat that hadn’t left dry dock in fifteen months.
Now his brother was dead. The weight of it was overwhelming on so many levels that somewhere inside Lucky a switch flipped that sent him into a remote functioning mode, without which he wouldn’t have been able to shower or dress. He did, however, have trouble finding his gun. The apartment didn’t rack up a square footage larger than that of a single wide trailer and was choked with unfolded laundry, cardboard boxes piled three and four high from items never unpacked from the L.A. move, a big screen TV perched atop the dining table, swap meet art purchased for the house he had never s
hopped for, water skis, and wake boards. In other words, the space was merely a crash pad furnished with good intentions and no follow through.
Lucky found his gun atop the cabinet just above the toilet. It was a reissue Colt model 1911, locked and loaded with a fat bullet in the chamber. Not exactly regulation for an off-duty cop, but what good was a pistola that wasn’t ready to rumble? Lucky stuffed the weapon between his belt and the small of his back, slung on an antique high school letterman’s jacket, and walked out into the dawn without locking the door behind him.
It would be the last time Lucky ever saw the place.
3
Interstate 5. Four miles south of Valencia, California.
The tractor-trailer rig was on the downslope, pointed due south, its big wheels, rotating forward a few feet at a time before stopping again. This was the usual morning commuter traffic where thousands upon thousands of vehicles converge into the San Fernando Valley section of the City of Los Angeles. Damn, thought Beemer, how the hell do these folks do this every fucking day? He could see the heat rising from the valley floor, adding to the mirage effect of the morning light glinting off the arcing rows of windows and paint jobs from all those Sunday car washes. Why the hell did this site remind him of Fallujah? Sure, there were similar heat signatures. The desert light. But nothing else. Still, Fallujah kept flooding back to him.
So what, douchebag? That shit’s ancient history.
Beemer checked his instruments. Slightly less than a quarter of a tank of diesel. According to the GPS, plenty of fuel to get him the final fifty-seven miles to Long Beach. It was 7:58 A.M.
Temperature outside: ninety-one degrees.
Temperature inside the cab: a comfortable seventy degrees.
Temperature inside the trailer: twenty-five degrees and holding.
Damn cold. A bone-numbing chill that Beemer hadn’t quite anticipated only hours earlier. He had cursed himself for not bringing winter gloves. They hadn’t been on his to do list. How the hell could he have left gloves off his list? He had arranged everything else. The refrigerated tractor-trailer rig. The forged shipper’s manifest in case he got stopped at a weigh station. Properly faked IDs. Credit cards. Of course he had a mask and guns for the heist itself. Just in case. Not that he had anticipated trouble. He had bought and paid for all the vault security codes.
Easy but for the gloves.
Beemer checked his face in the mirror. Particularly curious about the tip of his square nose. It was pink and freckled just the way it always was. No discoloration. Nor did his ears appear to look anything but slightly undersized and exposed by a haircut that purposefully resembled that of a Japanese manga cartoon. Dyed as black as the rented eighteen wheeler. During the robbery, he had stuffed his hair under a woolen cap.
The warehouse itself was part of a loose collection of industrial buildings, not quite defined as an organized “park,” but more as an evolved locale on the edge of the city in the shadow of the mountains. There was a two-lane road that split a mile-long corridor of manufacturing and warehousing businesses—each two-acre plot surrounded by cyclone fencing topped with razor wire. Most exterior advertising was limited to simple signage by each gate. Casing the target, Beemer had practically memorized the order of businesses, most of which began with “Reno.”
Reno Industrial Business Machines.
Reno-Tahoe Kitchen and Bath Supply.
Reno Farm Equipment Repair and Service.
Reno and Sons Tire and Retread.
Third on the left after the second stop sign was a low-slung corrugated structure and a smaller, annex with heavy ventilation. The sign at the gate was equally mysterious. Just a placard with the capitalized initials “C.B.P., INC.” It was still early enough in the evening that the gate had not yet been closed. Nobody paid any attention to the big rig making a careful turn through.
The parking area was empty, lit only by two flanking street lamps at either corner. Another single light splashed across the warehouse’s blank office entrance. Beemer kept the truck in a low gear, carefully riding the accelerator as he kept the semi to the left, drawing a wide circle around to the loading dock at the rear. Next came the hard part. Maneuvering the trailer portion of the rig as he backed it up to the bumpers. This was a skill Beemer didn’t possess. In Iraq, he had driven enough heavy equipment to fake operating just about any kind of vehicle. But putting a tractor rig into reverse and steering a levered fifty-three-foot trailer square up to a pitch black platform? That wasn’t something Beemer had practiced, nor had he ever been too concerned about prior to the actual night. He kept his eyes on his side-view mirrors, doing his best to gauge distances with only a pair of back-up bulbs to guide the way. Finally he felt the bump. A slightly metallic thud, sounding that the eagle had landed.
Beemer felt his heart up-shift with excitement. This is when he needed to be extra efficient. It was going to be one man, one warehouse, and one trailer with over three thousand cubic feet of freezer to load. He rolled up the trailer flap and then the warehouse door. Keyed in the code to the outer magnetic doors and entered the freezer unit. The temperature dropped forty degrees in a single second. Refrigerator temp. Beemer wasn’t yet in the freezer. He searched for the door marked “C Closet,” pulled on the lever and released a steam of utter cold. The freezer was fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, frosty white at the fringes, and forty feet deep in wax-coated cardboard cartons, each the size of a large microwave. He looked left, read the label on the first carton, yanked it off the top, and removed the lid. Inside were frozen pint bags, neatly stacked, each stuffed full of a frozen liquid that resembled crushed corn. Yellowish and marbled and labeled with precision. Measured in mils. Recommended storage temp. Date packaged. The industry called this product by its initials. FFP.
Fresh Frozen Plasma.
Beemer recalled how he had laughed the first time he had heard of the newish blood product. It reminded him of the ads on television for frozen vegetables purchased from the Piggly Wiggly. But the importance and value of frozen blood products quickly took on a serious tone. Frozen blood products like plasma and red cell concentrate were in high demand in the war-ravaged Middle East. These were life saving interventions. A must for trauma surgery. And in a part of the world where massive blood loss was fast becoming one of the top causes of death, frozen blood products were nearly worth their weight in silver.
Using a hand truck, Beemer stacked and rolled the cartons from the freezer to the parked trailer. He lost count as to how many trips it took to fill the trailer. All he could think about was why the hell he hadn’t thought to bring gloves. He griped at himself with every step. Into the freezer for more cartons, load, then roll to the refrigerated freezer trailer. No time for his fingers to thaw before careening back into the biting cold. He worried about frostbite every time he gripped the hand truck. But he was more worried about the timing. He made the choice to forgo searching for a pair of mittens—forgo comfort—for what he had prided in himself since dropping out of Stanislaus Community College for what he thought was going to be a career in the United States Marines: mad efficiency in everything he did.
In under two hours and in a freezing sweat, Beemer had loaded the trailer rig with so much fresh frozen plasma and red blood cells that the rear bumper had dropped a full seventeen inches closer to the pavement. Beemer had only estimated the weight, hoping greed wouldn’t put him over the forty-eight thousand pound road limit. The excitement of finishing the job, wiping down the surfaces he had touched, rolling and locking down the trailer door, then slipping back into the confines of the tractor’s cab, was cause for an adrenalin push into Beemer’s bloodstream. The momentary high that came with the change in brain chemistry was welcome, not to mention ay-okay. This wasn’t an aw, fuck moment. There were no surprises but for his frozen hands. Perfect mental acuity wasn’t required to put the semi-rig into a forward gear and roll back out onto the two-lane. With that, the black as night truck trundled into the high desert air, well camouflaged by the da
rkness, the GPS plotting an uninterrupted passage to Southern California.
So much for best laid plans, Beems.
Some of Beemer’s fingers tingled. The pinky and ring finger of his right hand and the ring, middle, and index fingers of his left. He couldn’t decide if it was a tingling or a burning sensation, both being potential signs of frostbite. He had cranked the heat in the semi’s cab and made sure the windows were rolled up tight to guard against the symptoms he was feeling. The bad fingers appeared reddish but for the very tips which turned a whitish gray when he gently pressed them against the steering wheel.
The digital clock read 8:17 A.M. Since Beemer had last checked the time, he had rolled off only two point six miles. He surmised there must be some sort of accident somewhere, clogging the delicate condition of Los Angeles commuter traffic. All it took was a single fender bender in the wrong lane at the wrong moment to stop up miles upon miles of freeway like a root-infected septic line. For a minute or so he tried to imagine the severity of the accident. One car? Two? Three? Maybe a chain reaction pileup? Beemer hadn’t a clue. The only thing he knew for sure was that somebody else was experiencing their very own cursed moment.
“Hello?” Beemer answered by rote. He hadn’t really heard the mobile phone ring as much as he had felt the vibration from inside his shirt pocket. And knowing California’s laws about driving while talking on a cell phone, Beemer made sure to uncoil the hands-free cord and insert the bud in his ear before accepting the call.
“It’s Rey,” said the caller. “Just checking to see if we’re all good.”
“Clean so far,” fibbed Beemer. “Taking in traffic and all that shit.”
“It’s our version of weather,” said Rey. “What we talk about here. Where are you?”
“Uh…” Beemer looked around. “Southbound 5 at just about the 210 freeway.”
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 2
