by Ian Bull
“The vest saved your life. I didn’t do much surgery except to clean and suture,” he says, running his fingers across my skin. “It’ll hurt, but start moving it today. Use it or lose it.”
“I know all about rehab,” I say. “I’ve been shot in both shoulders and my right hip. I’ve had enough bone chips taken out of me to play a game of poker.”
“If he’s complaining, he must be feeling better,” Carl Webb says as he walks in with a smile so wide his face must hurt. I know, because my smile’s just as big.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I say, and we grasp hands hard. I got shot last night, and my best friend, who lives 2,500 miles away, is already standing in front of me. When he’s home in the Bahamas he wears shorts and t-shirts, but today he’s wearing a black business suit. That means he’s back doing corporate security. But he’s still tan, with a shaved head and a trim black goatee with flecks of gray.
“Julia called me at three a.m. this morning in Washington DC and said you were dead. I got out of bed and went straight to Dulles airport.”
“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
“And they’re still exaggerating. It was on TV in the airport, and I heard it on talk radio driving here. The world thinks Julia Travers’s ex-boyfriend has gone to heaven.”
“I need a phone,” I say.
“Julia knows everything, and so does your family. Your brother Anthony said your mom is dragging your dad to St. Cecilia’s to light a dozen candles for your speedy recovery.”
“Thank you, Carl,” I say, and lean back against my pillow. Of course Carl talked to them. Carl thinks of everything, six steps ahead of anyone else.
Cloudy memories return to me, of being in an ambulance, of faces staring at me and voices shouting, and then a second ambulance ride. Now I wake up in the most crowded VA hospital on the West Coast, but in my own private room.
“You arranged all this?” I ask Carl. “Major Rita and Dr. Hyun too, right?”
Dr. Hyun smiles. “My work is done here. I need to get back to the East Side.”
“I owe you one,” Carl says. He shakes the doctor’s hand with a firmness that says they’ve endured something of their own together.
“I’ll be at my station. I stay until the soldier leaves,” Rita says, following the doctor out.
“Thanks for all this,” I say to Carl as he sits down. “I’m sorry you had to come.”
“I much preferred getting the second call that you were wounded, rather than the first saying you were killed. I got both calls in the last twelve hours, you know.”
“Are you missing work?” I ask. “Some big client?”
“My clients understand the nature of my business,” he says with a shrug. He pulls out a candy from his pocket, unwraps it, and pops it in his mouth, all while shooting lasers from his blue eyes. “You were wearing a tuxedo over your vest. Are you James Bond now?”
I don’t answer him.
“Rikki Lassen didn’t make it. Maybe you should have told her to wear a vest, too.”
The shame stings, making me blush. “They were in a black Audi.”
“Hold that thought, I don’t want you to say this twice,” Carl says, and taps his cellphone.
Two men in wrinkled suits walk in. Compared to Carl’s sleek outfit, their clothes look lived in. They stare at me without a nod or a smile. They’re cops.
One’s a white guy, around fifty, in a gray suit that matches his hair and skin tone, so he appears to be one color with a green tie in the middle. He’s in shape, though, with the wiry build of a runner. The other guy is Chicano, closer to thirty, darker skin than me, and his blue suit has a Hello Kitty sticker on the back of his right sleeve—a dad who’s in a rush in the morning.
“I’m Detective Yancy Mendoza, LAPD,” says the Chicano daddy cop.
“Special Agent Tom Taylor, FBI,” says Mr. Gray, the runner cop.
Carl and I trade glances. He suspects I was shot because I was investigating names on the flash drive, so he called the law in. It was probably his second phone call, right after he arranged my stay in this hospital.
“They were big white guys, dressed in black jackets. The driver has straight black hair and bad acne scars on his face, and light blue eyes. The guy on the passenger side has curly brown hair, light pale skin, almost albino, and he was wearing dark sunglasses at night.”
“Do you know why someone would want to kill Rikki Lassen?” Mendoza asks.
The question surprises me. The guys in the black Audi were trying to kill me, not Rikki. “She’d talk about who she hated and who hated her, but she half-enjoyed it.”
“Enjoyed it?” Mendoza asks. “What do you mean?”
“It was all part of the Hollywood publicity game. Not dangerous. More like high school.”
A wave of nausea hits me. It hurts to breathe. “Where’s Julia?” I gasp.
“Downstairs. She’s already given us her statement,” Mendoza says.
The room tilts. Major Rita appears and claps a mask over my face. The pure oxygen clears my head, and their faces come back into focus. She pulls the mask away but stays, ready to protect me. “His CO2 gets too high if he talks too much. Keep it short,” she tells them.
Special Agent Taylor steps forward for his questions. “Why were you wearing a vest?”
“I get nervous,” I say, which is not a lie. “It’s my PTSD. I bought it a year ago.”
“People wear vests when they think they may get shot. Have you been threatened?”
“No, I just like to wear it.”
“Have you been investigating the names you found on Constantinou’s computer on Elysian Cay? The list of names you put on that flash drive?” Taylor asks, his face neutral.
The FBI talked to us after our ordeal in the Bahamas. They were supposed to track down all the names I gave them. But the FBI either didn’t get far or didn’t try very hard.
I gasp and nod at Rita, who puts the oxygen mask back on my face. Carl glares at me. He wants me to fess up. Carl is the best friend a guy can have, but he’s so law and order that he’d tell a meter maid if I parked illegally.
Taylor keeps talking. “The names on the flash drive you gave us are foreigners that are hard to track. But if you have information on any new illegal activity they may be funding, we want you to share it with us. We can’t investigate a crime we don’t know about.”
Rita doesn’t move the mask. “He needs a break.”
“We’ll be in touch,” Taylor says. The men leave their business cards on the table and go.
Rita lifts the mask and turns off the oxygen. “If his CO2 climbs again, I’ll shut down your conversation, too,” she says to Carl before leaving the room.
“When did you have time to call the Feds and the LAPD?” I ask Carl.
“At five a.m. from the airport. When Julia called and said you weren’t dead, I was relieved. But when she told me that you were wearing a vest, I knew something was up.” He stares down his nose at me like I’m a third grader he caught cheating. “Did you just lie to the FBI? You are in trouble if you did. Not even the POTUS can lie to the FBI.”
“Nothing I said to them was a lie.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re telling the truth, either.” Carl motions like he wants to strangle me. He’s like my older brother. I resent him bossing me around, but he brings out the best in me. I don’t measure up to him, but he’s also jealous of my natural talents. Bottom line, we’re best friends, even if we live thousands of miles apart. He drops his hands and stares out the window at the 405 Freeway. “I don’t get California. The bigger you build the freeways, the more cars come to drive on them.”
“Why the suit? You working on a job?”
“I have to help some Americans get out of Central Asia.”
“That’s what you’re good at,” I say. “Keeping people safe.”
“And you’re harder to keep safe than any client I have right now.”
“Do you think they’
ll restart an investigation into those names?”
Carl shakes his head. “Julia thinks that Rikki Lassen pissed off the wrong people and was murdered. They believe her right now. She also says that you’ve got a screw loose and you’ve been wearing the vest for months, roaming California. They believe her on that, too. But I’ll get her to see things from my point of view soon enough.”
“I love you, too, Carl.”
Carl turns from the window and comes back to the bed. “Go to the Bahamas and wait until I get back. Recover with a beer in your hand. Then, we’ll work on the list together.”
That’s exactly what I don’t want to do. I found the list of millionaires on that computer in the Bahamas, while bad guys were trying to kill me. This is my search and my chance to prove myself. I must finish it.
“No thanks,” I say.
Carl puts his hands in his pockets and rocks on his heels. He’s running out of moves.
“Do me one favor, then. The media is reporting that you and Rikki Lassen were killed. No one saw you come here. I made sure of that.”
“So?” I ask, unsure what he’s getting at.
“Stay dead.”
“What?”
“Let them think they succeeded. Taylor and Mendoza agree that there’s no reason to tell the world otherwise. That means only you, me, Julia, and your family know you’re alive.”
Carl planned all of this—my hospital transfer, the private doctor and nurse, the FBI and LAPD—all while he was in transit from DC. He anticipated how our conversations would go before we even had them. Like a chess player, he’s playing his only remaining move.
“You really think of everything, don’t you?”
“The people on your flash drive get upset when you dig around in their business,” he says, pointing at my wounds. “If I can’t stop you from doing something stupid, this is the least you can do for me.”
He’s right. If I want to live, I have to stay dead.
Chapter 5
* * *
Julia Travers
Day 2: Sunday Morning
Los Angeles, California
“Hello, Malo, remember me?” Malo is a big, mean, blue-feathered parrot inside a cage as big as a railway car. Twenty birds hop on branches and fight over food and toys. It stinks of feathers and guano in here, but the birds are beautiful.
This is Serenity Park, an animal rescue center for parrots and cockatoos on the VA grounds, a quarter mile from the hospital. Veterans help the abused birds and get healed themselves in the process. When Steven and I met Malo a year ago, he’d gnawed out half his feathers and was more of an angry, biting dinosaur than a bird, but Steven chose him to love. We’d picnic together, two humans eating cheese sandwiches while Malo cracked Brazil nuts. He got better, and so did Steven and I. Now, he’s got healthy shiny feathers, but I can tell he’s still mean.
“Remember me, Malo? Come on down and say hello to me.”
A hippie vet with a red bandana on his head leans against the cage. “He’s going to bite you first, then shit on you.”
A familiar face appears behind him. Carl Webb, handsome in his black suit, strides up and pats his fellow vet on the back. “I’m betting that velour tracksuit of hers will be covered in poop before she gets out of there,” Carl says with an even bigger grin.
The hippie vet doesn’t question why Carl is there. Carl moves through the world as if he belongs everywhere. I turn back to Malo and hold up a Brazil nut. “Come eat, Malo. Prove those boys wrong. Eat this nut. It’ll make you fat and your feathers shiny.”
Rikki is dead. Steven is shot. Trishelle is in Canada. I need help, and the only thing that will make me feel better is if you show me some love, you mean bird. I helped you once; show me that you remember me. Malo moves close, his head bobbing.
“Remember me, Malo?” I ask, holding out a nut.
Malo goes for the leather strap of my wristwatch instead and bites clean through, sending my Omega into the sawdust at my feet. I pocket the watch and hold out the nut again.
“Just take the nut,” I whisper. “Prove that everything will be okay.”
“Antennae up, antennae up,” the bird says, and then takes the nut.
That’s Steven’s catchphrase, which he taught Malo. That’s a good luck sign.
“Say thank you, Malo.”
“Thank you, antennae up!” he says, then cracks the nut wide open.
Carl kisses me on the cheek as I step out of the cage. “Hello, Julia.”
“Hello, handsome. Thank you for everything. Is he awake yet?”
“He is. And he’s ready to go home, if you’ll have him.”
We walk back to the black Cayenne that I’m driving, courtesy of Porsche. I was supposed to make appearances in it all week, and then step out of it onto the red carpet at the Oscars, but that won’t be happening now. They’ll want it back soon, but I’m keeping it for another day. I need a black car with dark-tinted windows. It’s moving anonymity.
I let Carl drive. The VA grounds are empty at eight a.m. on a Monday, except for old Army buildings dotting rolling green lawns. It’s pretty. The only other flat open spaces this big in Los Angeles are the private golf courses.
“You’ve got your hands full with him,” Carl says. “He didn’t offer up anything.”
“So you really think people were trying to kill him, and not Rikki?” I ask.
“I do. When was the last time you two spent real time together?”
“We broke up months ago. He said he wanted to research a project. I don’t know why he needed to disappear to do it. I could have given him an office and an assistant to do his work.”
“If he was making progress with the list, he didn’t want to be linked to you,” he says.
We both know the list he’s talking about—Xander’s list of rich investors who each paid a million for the chance to see me get killed in their own private snuff film.
“Why won’t he just let it go?” I ask.
“He wants to make his mark on the world.”
“It’s self-destructive and selfish,” I say. “Rikki is dead because of him.”
Carl takes the ramp under Wilshire Boulevard. Army, Marine, and Navy logos from different fighting outfits are hand-painted on the cement walls of the underpass—painted eagle heads and lightning bolts over colorful shields, with words like “valor,” “steadfast,” and “brotherhood.” It’s all that hero crap I wish I could erase from Steven’s mind.
As we pull up in front of the VA Hospital, the sliding glass doors open and the nurse wheels Steven out. My anger evaporates. I rush from the car like a high school cheerleader sobbing about her injured quarterback. Steven winces as I hug him.
“Julia, back in the car,” Carl says in his command voice. I get it. No one can see me.
I slide into the backseat as the nurse helps Steven get in next to me. Carl pulls away.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
“Malibu, where Julia’s staying,” Carl says. “And we want answers.”
Steven’s face turns gray. I squeeze his hand and smile, but now I want answers, too.
Chapter 6
* * *
Steven Quintana
Day 2: Sunday
Los Angeles, California
We pass the Malibu pier and Surfriders Beach. A few lucky surfers sit on their boards, waiting to ride a smooth green wave, but my wounds won’t let me in the ocean anytime soon.
Julia leans forward and catches Carl’s eye in the front seat. They’re up to something.
“So, how many names have you tracked down?” Carl asks, taking her cue.
So it begins. There’s no way of getting around this; I might as well answer. “There were 200 names on the flash drive. I picked ten names in North America, found their online identities, and went searching for them on the DarkNet.”
“What’s the DarkNet?” Julia asks.
“It’s an untraceable, encrypted Internet within the larger Internet, and it allows people
to trade information secretly,” I say. “Activists use it, but so do criminals.”
“So you just went crashing around the DarkNet, like a drunk at a party,” Carl says.
“No, I created a false identity. I’m Geraldo Silva, Mexican-American smuggler. I’m rich and always traveling, and I’m willing to pay big money to buy snuff films. I tracked down some of the names from the list online, and we started trading emails.”
“You blew it somehow,” Carl says. “They knew you’d be with Julia on Saturday night.”
“I don’t know how. I used a new computer with Tor software, and always kept moving.”
We pass the long lawn of Pepperdine University, which slopes down from the school on the hill to the Pacific Coast Highway. Julia fights back tears.
“How many of those videos did you look at?” Julia asks, looking at me with hard eyes.
“None, I swear.”
“All that is over for me. I pushed it away. Why can’t you do that, too?”
“Don’t you want to catch whoever killed Rikki? They’re the same people who tried to kill you. And me. And Trishelle.”
We pass Tivoli Cove and the ’70s beach house with my bachelor pad. After we got back from the Bahamas, Julia and I sipped beers on the deck and watched the sunset, nestled against each other in my hammock. That’s when our relationship started. Who knows where it is now?
“What did you write in your emails?” Carl asks.
“I said I wanted in on their next big thing. They said I could buy into their next project for 20,000 dollars in bitcoin and own five percent. I was ready to transfer the money today.”
“But they tried to kill you first,” Carl says.
“But I still found something,” I say.
“Oh yeah?” Carl asks, with doubt in his voice.
“Whatever they’re shooting next is an international reality TV fight competition, with high stakes gambling. It’s starting soon. People from Hong Kong will be part of it.”
“And?”
“That’s it.”
