They're Watching (2010)

by Gregg Hurwitz

  "But," Joe added, "we've got a problem."

  The words knocked the breath out of me. Everything had to go like clockwork. If the Ridgeline crew caught wind of anything before I knocked on that door, they'd likely kill Ari and bolt.

  Reimer's words floated back to me: If you take them on alone, you might as well put the bullet in your wife's head yourself.

  If they hadn't put it there already.

  "Problem?" Fear thinned my voice. "What problem?"

  "Big News caught the story. I don't know how they got onto it, but they're sending crews. And once crews show up, my ilk ain't gonna hold back. You know how we are."

  I was running toward the car. "How the hell did that happen, Joe?"

  "How's it always happen? Someone paid someone for a tip, probably. You're a cop killer, too, now, so this thing's bigger than the white Bronco. Patrick Davis and the Big Showdown."

  I jumped into the car, turned over the engine, and peeled out. On the passenger seat was the fat laptop of Jerry's signal analyzer, the pulse from Ariana's raincoat represented in oddly pretty amplitude waves. A handheld GPS unit was plugged in to the side, the blinking dot laid down on the street beyond the turn I could see just ahead through the dusty windshield.

  "Hold everyone back," I said. "You told them it's dangerous? A hostage situation?"

  "Of course, but look, the block is crawling. The natives are getting restless, inching in for a peek. It's only a matter of time before someone's spotted."

  I floored it, fishtailing on gravel. "Any sign that you've been seen?"

  "No, man. All the curtains are drawn. Silence." A beat. "Shit. Here we go. This thing just went live."

  "What hap--"

  I screeched around the corner in time to see a news helicopter roar up over the ridge, blowing specks of dirt across my hood. Channel 2 News. Up ahead, paparazzi had gone on the move, shuffling from front yard to front yard, high-stepping hedges, and clutching cameras. A few news vans came gunning toward the house from the opposite direction. A second chopper joined the fray above the house. Way below I could hear the faint wail of sirens, the cavalry en route.

  It was all going down too fast.

  I could barely hear Joe above the commotion: "--movement at the windows. You'd better get here."

  "Do you see Ariana?"

  "No . . . nothing. . . ."

  Guys were running beside my car, snapping pictures of me. TV cameras up ahead, well back from the curb. Joe coming in and out in my ear. ". . . directional mike . . . hear them inside . . . freaking out . . ."

  Confused reporters blended with the freelancers, swarming the car. A few houses away, I threw open the car door and shoved out, yelling, "Stay away from the house! There are armed men inside."

  A ripple of panic. Shouting. Questions.

  Their fear only compounded mine. What if they saw the cameras, killed Ariana, and shot their way out?

  I sprinted forward, breaking from the throng, the numbers dwindling as I neared the house. Even paparazzi weren't eager to get in the line of fire. But a few had pushed out into the danger zone. A scrappy woman with hippie hair aimed a camera from behind a telephone pole. A guy in fingerless gloves crouched by the mailbox. His lens had rolled out into the driveway, but he looked too scared to go for it.

  I confronted the house. Peeling cornflower blue paint, a broad porch, the rental sign still hammered into the front lawn. It seemed a fiction that the clapboard walls contained such menace inside. Then again, what did I expect? A dungeon with dripping pipes? This is where quiet horrors happened--every day in perfectly nice neighborhoods like this one, behind closed doors and cheery suburban facades.

  To my right, Joe was bellied down in a stand of lavender, sneezing and pointing a directional mike, earpiece in, to pull sound vibrations off the front windows. I'd barely noticed him in my dash to the walk.

  "What are you picking up from inside?" I asked.

  Keeping his face to the dirt, he repeated flatly, " 'What the fuck what the fuck oh Jesus God we're fucked.' "

  Sirens came screaming up the hill.

  A shadow at the curtain ahead. And then the dark oval of a face. It stared at me. Frozen, I stared back.

  "Hang on." Joe cleared his throat, listening. " 'Let's do her and get the fuck out of here.' "

  I had the sensation not of running but floating up the walk.

  You can't begin to imagine what kind of men these are. There'll be nothing left of your wife but a bloodstain.

  I banged on the door. "Wait!" I shouted. "It's Patrick! I have information you need!"

  Silence. Locked. I banged away, kicked. "Wait, wait! You need to talk to me!"

  The door opened, and then a giant hand shot out, grabbed my shirt, and hurled me inside. I pinwheeled across the slick tile, DeWitt's face leering down at me. Verrone was at his side, and two other men with military builds shouldered to the front windows with short-barrel shotguns at the ready. One was red-faced, his knee jittering back and forth. He swung the barrel, sighted on my head. "Let's do him and hot-ass it out of here."

  I recoiled from the dead stare of the muzzle, shouting, "You need to know what I've got!"

  The sirens, almost on top of us.

  A closed door led back to a bedroom. Ariana. I had to tear my eyes away. "Is she back there?"

  No answer from the Ridgeline crew.

  "Is she okay?" My voice shook.

  Sweat beaded DeWitt's forehead. He said, "What the fuck did you do? What the fuck did you do?"

  I pulled a manila file from inside my jacket and threw it at him. The pages scattered across the floor. Money orders, surveillance photos, all those banking and phone records, the payments for the murders of Mikey Peralta, Deborah B. Vance, and Keith Conner.

  "No," Verrone said. He took a wobbly step back. "How?"

  "The hard drive on your copy machine."

  Verrone shot a furious glare at one of the men by the window, who said, "You didn't tell me anything about a fucking hard drive."

  I spoke quickly. "Those documents blaze a trail back to Festman Gruber. But they also blaze a trail forward to you."

  "Who cares?" Verrone said. "We've got the leverage to make Festman throw their weight around on our behalf. They'll have to. Or they'll go down, too. And these aren't the types of guys to go down."

  "Right," I said. "Mutually assured destruction. But guess what? I'm not part of the 'mutually.' "

  "What does that mean?"

  "I'm holding the cards. I've got the disc, too--those illegal decibel levels. And I know what it all means to the parties involved."

  "How?"

  Very slowly, I retrieved the digital recorder from my pocket. When I punched the button, Bob Reimer's voice filled the room: "These documents make clear that Ridgeline isn't interested in upholding their agreements. But that cuts both ways. We are no longer obligated to offer them the customary protections."

  DeWitt said, "Reimer knows? Festman fucking knows already?"

  The man by the window said, "This piece of shit brought it to them?"

  The other: "We've gotta clean up and split. Now."

  Verrone paced a tight circle, grabbing at his hair, his yellow face gone gray. He pulled out a sidearm, aimed at my face, the skin fluttering at his temple. I flinched, waiting for the crack.

  "You can't manipulate Festman into doing what you want," I said. "Your leverage is gone. I gave it away. And they know it. You're finished. There is no move. This is checkmate."

  Bob Reimer's recorded voice continued, "Ridgeline thinks they've built an insurance file in this, but they've done nothing more than arrange for their funerals."

  The Ridgeline men exchanged a round of glances, eyes darting frantically from face to face, reading the angles, weighing options and loyalty. I could hear the click in DeWitt's throat when he swallowed. Both men at the front windows stepped back from the curtains.

  "Cops are here," the jittery one said. "They're gonna set up a perimeter. We can still run and gun.
But it's gotta be right now."

  From behind his gun, Verrone considered. He took a step forward, placed the cool metal against my forehead, pushed until I sank to my knees. I dropped the digital recorder, but it kept playing. My back-and-forth with Reimer in that air-conditioned office seemed like a game of badminton compared to this.

  "You think you're in charge?" Verrone said. "You think you're writing the script? So you made some moves. Put us in a bind. But right now it's just us and you in a room. Why are you calling the shots?"

  "Because I'm the guy with the cameras on him."

  "A couple reporters--"

  "No, not a couple reporters," I said. "There are news helicopters in the air. Paparazzi for blocks. SWAT all over. Everyone's watching, documenting. You can't get away. You can't do anything without them watching and knowing."

  Play the hand you're dealt.

  More sirens neared, then cut off. The rush of news helicopters overhead. The curtains blocked out the mayhem, but we could hear the cries and footsteps and vehicles, the photographers yelling, someone shouting orders to reposition the cars.

  I said, "You don't want to add another murder to what you're facing."

  DeWitt looming over Verrone. "The hell we don't."

  The barrel shoved harder into my face. I steeled myself, fighting off terror, praying that I'd be alive for the next breath and the one after that, praying that my wife's heart was still beating behind that closed door.

  My first word came out a yell--"Just . . . just stop. Think. What's the only play? Talk to the cops. Cooperate. Turn state's evidence against Festman Gruber. Think of the pull they have. It's your only prayer against those guys. And it starts right now. This instant."

  Reimer's voice from the recorder: "Everything will be hung on you. And the fallout will land on Ridgeline."

  The men had moved in to surround me. My knees ached. My head throbbed. My heart was moving blood so fast I felt dizzy. They towered over me, blank-faced executioners. Verrone's arm was as steady as a statue's. His finger, curled around the trigger, was white at the creases.

  I closed my eyes, alone in the dark. There was nothing in the world except the ring of steel against my forehead.

  The pressure lifted.

  I opened my eyes. The pistol was lowered at Verrone's side. The men parted unevenly. DeWitt's lips bunched around his teeth. It looked like he was biting down hard. One of the others abruptly sat on the floor, and the fourth went back to the window. It was as if a spell had been broken, leaving them dazed and dumb.

  I came up, wobbly, to my feet. It hit me that I hadn't heard a sound issue from that back room--not a single shout or cry. "Is my wife behind that door?"

  But they all just stood there, guns lowered, stunned.

  I blinked back tears. "Is she alive?"

  Verrone nodded to the man by the window, who reached over and tore the curtain from the track. Light flooded in, striking us. A bleached-out view of camera lenses and tactical goggles and windshields and gun muzzles--the whole world, perched out there, trained on the sudden spectacle. And us, staring through the glass right back at them.

  Squinting into the brightness, Verrone put his hands up. DeWitt, and then the two other men, followed suit.

  When DeWitt raised his arms, I noticed a streak of crimson running along the underside of his forearm. A drop snaked down, dangled from his elbow.

  All at once the shouting from outside was gone, and the thrumming of the helicopters. Through the window I saw a cop at the perimeter yelling into a bullhorn, his mouth partially in view, the cords of his neck straining but no sound at all issuing forth.

  I could hear nothing but my heartbeat, the muffled echo of my shouted words. "What did you do? What did you do to her?"

  And then I was barreling for that closed door, moving in hateful slow motion. SWAT blew in--I sensed the vibration, the shrapnel spray from the splintering front door peppering the back of my neck, the wood panel flying past my head. I was feet from the closed door, yelling my wife's name. I heard the officers behind me, felt the heat of their bodies, the air moving from their limbs, their shouts. Each strand of the carpet stood out, a sea of fibers stretching between me and my wife. My arm was ahead of me, reaching, veins splitting the back of my tensed hand. Someone struck me low at the calf, knocking me off balance, but I righted myself, still hurtling forward, almost there. The officers hit me at once, high and low, wrapping me up and hammering me down into the floor. My head collided with someone's heel, sending me into a spin, darkness coming on to blot out my last glimpsed image--that door, still closed to whatever bloody sight lay beyond.

  Chapter 58

  I step out of the headmaster's office at Loyola High, walk across the verdant front lawn, and tip my face to the sun. It's July, my favorite month. The gloom has finally burned off. For such an impatient town, Los Angeles likes its summers to come late.

  In my hand flutters an offer to teach tenth-grade American literature. I will certainly accept, but I didn't want to do it in the room; I wanted to draw out the sweetness of anticipation, like putting off the bottom half of an Oreo to drink more milk.

  I am free of legal trouble. After literally days of grueling interrogation, and with the help of some of those well-placed phone calls Gordon Kazakov is so fond of, I managed to untangle myself from all charges. As Detective Sally Richards might have pointed out, I did have justice, truth, and all that crap on my side as well. Excessive scrutiny actually helps when you're innocent.

  Even the lawsuit against me for not punching Keith Conner was dropped. With no more Keith to protect, Summit Films wanted to get as far away from me as possible. You know you're in dire straits when no one wants to sue you anymore. At final tally my legal costs were almost precisely what I'd netted from my screenwriting deal for They're Watching.

  The movie opened last month, not with a bang but a whimper. On its second weekend, I finally worked up the nerve to go see it. Feeling like a self-abusing pervert in a pussycat theater, I watched from the back row of an empty Valley cinema. It was worse than I could have imagined. Though Keith was afforded some respectful deference, the reviews were understandably blistering. Predictable plot, trite dialogue, bled-dry characters, the pacing pumped to a steroid-rage confusion of edits. It was, in its own way, masterful in its incompetence. Kenneth Turan suggested that the script might have been generated from a software program.

  As my name flickered during the closing credits, it struck me that--like so many of those first-round wailers on American Idol--I was never really very good at this. Getting fired off They're Watching was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I'd come close to throwing away everything that I'd built because I had never bothered to reexamine a childhood dream that I didn't even want anymore.

  I'm happier watching movies than writing them.

  I'm happier teaching.

  Standing on the front lawn, I open my eyes again. I turn and look at the school, and in the reflection of the chapel window I see myself. Khaki trousers and a button-up from Macy's. Battered backpack in hand, dangling at my side. Patrick Davis, high-school teacher. After all this I'd wound up where I'd started.

  But not really.

  I climb into my Camry. The interior is a bit scorched from the stun grenade, but not too bad, since my face had been good enough to absorb most of the blast. I can't afford a new car yet, but I did have the dashboard buttons and dials fixed, and I've vowed not to punch them anymore.

  I hide the job offer in the glove box like treasure and head home, running the 10 west, then cutting up to Sunset Boulevard so I can surf the curves. The air blows through the open window, riffling my hair. I watch the mansions roll by behind their gates, and I don't wonder or care what it would be like to live in them.

  My life isn't like Enemy of the State anymore. It's not Body Heat or Pay It Forward either.

  It's my life.

  I stop off and pick up dry cleaning, nodding to the clerk, whose eyes linger a beat too l
ong on my face. People look at me differently now, but less so every day. If fame is fleeting, then L.A. infamy is the blink of a firefly. But still, things are not back to what they were. They never will be. There are night terrors and waking panic and from time to time I still break a cold sweat checking the mailbox or opening the morning paper. And most days, when it's too quiet or not quiet enough, my thoughts drift to my wife, bound and held in the back room of a clapboard house. How she'd tried to fight her captors. How she'd sunk her teeth into DeWitt's arm when he'd gagged her. How, in the grip of blind fear, she'd felt in her heart of hearts that she was going to die.

  Sally was honored as a hero at her funeral. Which she was. More and more I think of heroes as ordinary people who decide to give a damn about what they do, not what they might get. Watching her casket descend, I felt heartsick. I doubt I'll encounter her combination of composure and wry incisiveness again. Her son is being adopted by a cousin. The pension board is reviewing Valentine's case, and it seems unlikely his four boys have as straight a road ahead.

  The four men in that clapboard house--none of whom were actually named DeWitt or Verrone--all copped pleas. In return for offering testimony against Festman Gruber, they'll avoid the needle, but they all had to agree to life without parole. I think of Sally and Keith, Mikey Peralta and Deborah Vance, and I am pleased that those men will be eating off trays and looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.

  If they can be believed, they were the entire team for this job. Ridgeline and the numerous shell companies enfolding it are being vigorously investigated, but from what's trickled back to me, it's been tough sledding once that paper trail hit Bahrain.

  Bob Reimer, the face of the scandal, has not fared well. His pretrial motions drag on, and he's looking at special circumstances, which could mean the death penalty. As he forges forward with gray-miened unflappability, prosecutors and media continue to dig into the Legal Department at Festman Gruber. Reimer's well-heeled colleagues are wading through a sea of lesser indictments, and some of them may likely join him in lockdown someday if he isn't executed.