by Thomas Perry
The bed was mostly taken up by the uniforms they had laid out, so Sylvie pulled back the covers and made a small space on the far edge. In the darkness and silence of the room, she went to sleep immediately. At one Paul gave her a small shake, and she managed to bring herself out of sleep and open her eyes. “I sure hope this is a one-day job,” she said.
“Just do your best. Wake me up at four, unless something happens first. If you find you can’t keep your eyes open, get me up.”
“All right. I think I’m awake now. Where are the two men?” She put her feet on the floor and stretched.
“I don’t know. I think they must be in the building or in a parked car somewhere. I haven’t seen them since around midnight.”
Sylvie kept herself awake by searching for the men for a time, and then by trying to use the nightscope to see into the cars that passed. The only pedestrians on the street were a couple of homeless men with shopping carts. It occurred to Sylvie that they could easily be cops, too, taking the night shift. She used the scope to study them, but could not reach a conclusion about them. Their clothes consisted of several layers to keep off the night chill, so it was impossible to tell if they were hiding weapons. She saw nobody else who interested her, and at four she woke Paul and went back to sleep.
When Sylvie awoke again, the light in the room was still dim. She looked in the direction of the window. Paul had it open, and she realized that the sound of his opening it was what had awakened her. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder.
“What is it?” she said.
“A car. Get up.”
Sylvie threw off the covers and rushed to join him at the window, snatching up the other rifle. While she had been asleep, he had removed the nightscope and put on the other sixteen-power Weaver. Sylvie brought the rifle up, opened both eyes wide to rid herself of the filmy blur left over from sleep, then stared into the rifle sight.
A black SUV had pulled to the red curb in front of the building. Two doors on the far side swung open. Sylvie cycled the bolt of the rifle and aimed at a spot just past the rear door, where somebody was going to step out in a second.
“Hold your fire.”
Something was wrong—she could hear it in Paul’s voice. She looked wide of her scope, saw running figures approaching the SUV, and placed her crosshairs on one of them. “It’s the man from yesterday. The one on the bus bench!”
Sylvie watched the man reach into his coat as he ran. His hand came out, holding a gun. There was a burst of fire from inside the car, but it was another volley of shots from somewhere else that caught him from behind and swept him forward onto his face on the pavement, where he lay with his arms out in a big embrace, blood pooling on the cement by his head.
There was another barrage of shots. Sylvie swung her rifle to her left to see, but Paul held her arm. “Put it down. We’ve got to go!”
She set the rifle on the table, her eyes still on the scene below. The second man she had seen yesterday was lying on the sidewalk, too. Three plain vans—white, blue, black—pulled up quickly and men and women in black nylon jackets began to pile out. Some of them knelt by the fallen men, while others spoke into radios. A couple of uniformed cops appeared a hundred feet down the street and tossed flares on the pavement to begin diverting traffic away from the scene.
“Did you see the girl?”
“I don’t think she’s even there.” Paul wasn’t even looking now. He was folding the legs of the spotter scope and putting it in a carry-bag. “It was an ambush, a decoy thing. It was set up for us. Help me collect our gear.”
“But who were those two men they killed?”
“I think they were there to kill Wendy Harper, too. I think somebody has decided to hedge his bets by hiring another team.”
“Without even telling us?”
She could see that Paul was concentrating hard, and that he was trying to keep his voice sounding calm. “I guess we never should have called Densmore and tried to back out.”
“Are you saying this is my fault?”
“I’m not saying it’s anybody’s fault. I’m trying to tell you why we’ve got to get out of here. If the cops picked out those two, they must have been smart enough to check out the windows that overlook the entrance. Let’s go.”
“How?”
“We use the original plan.”
He changed into the police uniform as quickly as he could, so she imitated him. As soon as she had her uniform on and the utility belt buckled, she stuffed their clothes into the black canvas bag, then the Peter and Sarah Harkin clothes and wigs. When she had finished, she pulled the covers tight on the bed again, and took a last look around the room to be sure they’d left nothing behind. They hurried out into the hallway, pulling their wheeled suitcases, and managed to get to the stairwell without seeing anyone. They took everything down two flights and left the empty suitcases on the landing. Now Sylvie had the black carryall bag slung over her shoulder, and she and Paul each carried a sniper rifle. Paul led the way down the stairs, prepared to fend off questions or open fire if they met police on their way up.
They made it to the ground floor of the building in a short time. They were near the back of the building, so Paul led them along a corridor of meeting rooms to a fire exit. He pushed open the door and stepped onto the blacktop just as a pair of police cruisers came up the side street and pulled to a stop. The whole area was full of uniformed police now, setting up to block off streets on all sides of the crime scene. The neighborhood seemed to be empty of people, except for police.
As the two police cars maneuvered nose-to-nose to block the street, Paul and Sylvie stepped past them, carrying the sniper rifles. A cop who was driving one of the cars looked at them curiously for a second, but Sylvie pointed at the parking structure where she had once parked when she was called for jury duty. She called, “We’re setting up on the parking structure. Good view of Temple.”
The cop nodded, and they trotted to the parking structure. When they had gotten into the car they had left the day before and Paul was driving down the ramp to the street, Sylvie said, “You know whose fault this is, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think I do.”
31
YOUR IDEA brought us some surprises, Jack,” Poliakoff said. “In fact, the plan worked too well. It went down around four this morning.”
Jack Till held the cell phone to his mouth and spoke quietly because he didn’t want Wendy in the next room to overhear. “What happened?”
“During the night, we deployed SWAT officers in buildings along the south side of Temple Street near the DA’s office, just as you suggested. We had two black SUVs like the ones they use to deliver prisoners to court. When the two SUVs pulled up at the curb and opened their doors, two men came out of parked cars on both sides, apparently trying to get a shot at a female officer in the second vehicle. The SWAT guys had spotted them, so they each got about as far as pulling out a weapon.”
“Is everybody all right?”
“Everybody but the two men. We would have liked to ask them some questions, but they were both DOA.”
“Have you got IDs on them yet?”
“Not yet. When a guy has three driver’s licenses on him, he may as well have none. The bodies have been fingerprinted, so we’ll probably have names before long.”
Till said, “I don’t know what to say, except to thank you for doing this. If I had just pulled up in front of the DA’s office and tried to take her in, we’d be dead.”
“This is a win. Now that we’ve got those two out of the way, are you going to bring your client in to see the DA today?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve decided.” He looked up and saw Wendy Harper standing in the open doorway between their rooms.
“Do that.”
“Thanks again. I owe you.” Till ended the call and put his cell phone into his pocket.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Good news. I asked a friend of mine who’s still in the department to se
e what would happen if you and I were to drive up to the DA’s office and try to walk in.”
“What did happen?”
“Two guys with guns came out of parked cars. Both of them were killed.”
“Oh, my God! Was anybody else hurt?”
“No. The cops are all fine.”
She stepped closer until she stood over him, looking down into his eyes. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“That you were planning something like that.”
“It wasn’t my operation. It was Max Poliakoff’s. He didn’t tell me until just now, and it’s been over for hours.”
She looked at him closely. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Same reason he didn’t tell me. Until those two guys showed up, there was nothing to tell.”
“Do you think they were the same two who killed Louanda?”
“The odds are they were, but we can’t know that for sure. There may be prints or blood or something in her house in Nevada that ties them to the scene. We may have seen them at some point. They could have been in a crowd, or stopped at an intersection or something, and we’ll remember the faces. But I never got a look at them when they were chasing us. Did you?”
“No. I saw their car, and I saw that there were two heads in it.” She sat down beside him on the bed. “This is my fault. I should never have decided to leave Los Angeles. I was scared. I hated being scared, and I saw a way to fix it. I had started out okay, trying to find Kit Stoddard. But as soon as I got beat up, everything changed. I changed. I decided that I had already given enough to the memory of Kit. That was what I told myself she was by then—just a memory. And I had this belief that if I could just get away and stay away for a time, then her boyfriend would stop looking. I had the idea that my having done nothing to harm him would persuade him that I could never do anything, and he would realize that he should leave me alone. So I left.”
“Look, Ann. I—”
“Wendy.”
“What?”
“Wendy. I told you already, I can’t be Ann Donnelly anymore. Yesterday, when I left, I gave that up. Using that name now doesn’t help me. All it does is point out to everyone who doesn’t already know it that there are people with that name who are connected with me. Being connected with me is dangerous.”
“Less dangerous than it was yesterday.”
“Does that mean it’s over? We’re going to Los Angeles now?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not? If the police shot the men who were following us, then what is it that you’re worried about?”
“I’m not exactly worried, but I’m taking precautions. I’m resisting the flow of events. When you’re trying to outsmart somebody, you shouldn’t let a rhythm build up. We left San Francisco; they attacked us on the road. We lost them; they went to L.A. to wait for us. We set up our own ambush for them, and got two men. Now what? The logical, almost inevitable next move is to drive to L.A. now, today.”
“So you’re avoiding predictability.”
“I’m not making the move that’s called for at the moment when the rhythm demands it. What is the man who killed Kit Stoddard doing right now?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s scrambling, trying to scare up replacements for the two men who got killed. That’s risky. Some of the people who do that kind of work are already in trouble. Their phones might be tapped, or they might decide that their best move isn’t to take the job, but to turn him in and get credit for cooperating. He’s probably going beyond his usual circle of acquaintances. All he has to do is miscalculate once—talk to somebody he thinks he can trust and be wrong. He’s in a rush today because he thinks we’re on the move.”
“That’s quite a detailed picture of somebody you don’t know.”
“The specifics don’t even matter. Every minute he can’t get to us means the cops might get to him first. The police are trying to find out who the dead men were. When they identify them, they’ll search their houses and cars, talk to anybody who knew them. All kinds of things turn up when the cops begin to look closely.”
“So we’re doing nothing?”
“I’m giving him time to get unlucky, and time to make mistakes, and time to get betrayed. If his name turns up, we’ll get a picture and you’ll identify him.”
“I don’t know if that will help. Even if I’m sure he’s Kit’s old boyfriend, I can’t prove he’s behind everything.”
“Things have changed. Six years ago, you had a theory that Kit Stoddard might have been a victim. This time we’ve got murders we can prove happened. This time if we find out who this guy is, he’s got a problem.”
She rested her hand on his shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “You’re something, Jack. You always make things sound good. You give me strength.” She stood and walked into her room.
Jack Till sat on his bed and closed his eyes. It had almost sounded as though she was telling him she cared about him. She was beautiful, and that made it difficult to interpret what she said. It was just as likely that she was telling him gently that she knew he was manipulating her. She knew that he had been a homicide detective, and she knew that he had spent a whole career getting people to tell him things that they didn’t want to.
At six, she came in while he was talking to Poliakoff again. She sat down in the chair beside the window and waited until the call ended. Then she said, “Anything new?”
“A few things. The two men who were waiting for us at the courthouse have been identified. Their prints were in the NCIC database. One was either Ralph or Raphael DeLoza, depending upon which part of his rap sheet you’re reading, age thirty-one. The other is Martin Osterwald, age twenty-nine. Have you heard either name before?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think you would have. They apparently weren’t the kind of people who went to Banque. But eventually we’ll look at their pictures, in case we saw them somewhere.”
“Okay. When we’re there, we can do that. Are you getting hungry?”
“I guess I am.”
“Want to go out to dinner? I’ll take you.”
He hesitated. They both knew that whatever happened, she was very likely to be traveling soon, building another false identity and living on whatever cash she had managed to take with her until she was settled again. He didn’t want her to pay for anything, but he didn’t have a way to prevent her that would spare her feelings.
“If you’re hoping for a better date to call up at the last minute, I’ll understand.”
“No, I’ve been waiting for you to offer. It must be at least an hour or two since lunch.”
“You’re a man of incredible self-discipline to keep from saying anything.”
“Where would you like to go? What sort of place?”
“I’ve lost track of the restaurant scene over the years, but saw a restaurant in the tourist magazine in my room that I’ve heard of. And I liked the pictures.” She handed him a sheet from the hotel’s scratch pad with the word Aimee’s and an address.
“Did they have a phone number?”
“They did, and they do. I already called it and made a reservation in the name of Harvey. Presumably you’re Harvey. Now get showered and dressed. You could use a shave, too, Harvey.”
“White tie and tails?”
“A clean shirt would be nice. It doesn’t knock a girl off her feet, but you’ll have to accept me with feet. I’ll see you in about a half hour.” She turned and walked into her room. After a moment, he heard the shower.
Till went to his closet to examine his options. He had a fresh sport coat. He looked in his suitcase and found that he still had a couple of clean dress shirts. He showered and shaved twice, making himself as well-groomed and appealing as he could.
He gave himself a last examination in the mirror. He was always startled when he saw that he no longer looked the way he felt. He supposed that he looked like what he was: a man in his forties who had s
pent his adult life carrying a gun for a living. His eyes looked cold and watchful, and the wrinkles at the corners and on his forehead were no longer faint crinkles, but sculpted lines.
He heard Wendy come into his room, so he stepped to the bathroom door and looked out at her. She was wearing a simple black cocktail dress that fit her perfectly and made her light skin look like porcelain.
“You look great.”
“Thank you.” She gave him a quick, perfunctory curtsy.
He stepped out, took his sport coat off the hanger, and put it on. He looked in the mirror and he adjusted his cuffs and collar, then shrugged to make the coat hang correctly over his gun. He glanced at her in the mirror. “Actually, you look beautiful.”
“Thank you again. You look identifiably human.”
“It’s a step up. I can’t believe that when you were throwing stuff into a suitcase to leave town, you brought a dress like that.”
She looked down at it for a second. “It’s funny how the mind works. I didn’t think I was going to have to pack a bag again, yet at the same time I knew the things I had that I would put in it.”
“In the bag you weren’t going to pack?”
“Yes. I had in my mind an image of everything I would pack and knew just where it was. Does that make sense?”
“I guess it does. You knew what looked good.”
“I don’t know if that was it, exactly. I just had a sense of the things that would make me feel stronger, more able to go places. Maybe something inside me was reminding me that I had to be ready to move on. A little black cocktail dress takes up almost no space.”
He opened the door to the hallway, leaned against it, and stayed there to hold it open for her while he looked up and down the hallway in both directions. Her eye caught his, and he realized that she had seen him scanning. When he spoke, it was to change the subject. “You said you picked this restaurant partly because of the pictures. What were they?”
She smiled. “The food looked believable.”
“Believable?”
“Yes. You know—not a picture of three waiters in tuxedos and a sexy hostess grinning while they set a thirty-pound rib roast and a forty-pound world-record lobster on a table for two. This one had a picture of a nice room, an unassuming piece of grilled halibut, and a glass of wine. I can believe that if we walk in there, we’ll get something not too far from that.”
