“Jesus,” he’d recorded himself saying the second before switching to playback mode.
And not until Dave had wound the video forward and back had he even noticed that Terrell wasn’t in the back seat. Another “Jesus” escaped his lips as he wondered aloud where the hell the muscle head had disappeared to. Then came a quick “screw ’im” from Dave. There was no way on earth he was whipping his car around and returning to Long Beach. Terrell was a grown man. If he was still alive and wounded, there’d be little if anything Dave could do for him.
And if the muscle head’s dead?
Dave wasn’t adept at dealing with big issues. So he stuffed the ugly thought along with the video camera into a protective case and, once again, sped north with every intention of handing the video to Garvin as soon as he’d attended to his damaged eardrums. He’d changed his mind about seeking help at Cedars Sinai. Instead he went to a less public urgent care facility in the Valley, where he was examined and prescribed both an oral antibiotic and ear drops. His hearing had been cut in half and was accompanied by a high frequency buzz. Hopefully it was temporary. Not that it bothered him nearly as much as the creeping feeling that he’d stepped in something outside his pay grade. He was plagued by a flop sweat nearly every time he rewound his memory back to the Friday noon hour.
Then there was the news. First over the AM radio of his Lexus, then on the big screen TV that took up most of the living room wall of his NoHo apartment: Muslim terrorists had struck the Port of Long Beach. As local and national news organizations rolled out their pundits and pre-produced terrorism packages, Dave Wireman tried like hell to square what he was hearing over his television with the silly morning assignment he’d been handed by the famed private detective. On one hand, an attack by Islamic fundamentalists on America’s most significant western port had long been predicted by everyone from the president of the United States to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, whose reps were seeking greater safeguards for their members. On the other hand, Garvin had hired Dave to videotape the FBI takedown of some murder suspect for a big-dollar client.
Or was that just a ruse?
Dave Wireman needed time to think. And for that he needed distraction and noise other than the nattering talking heads on his TV or the double-jackhammers busting through the concrete sidewalk right outside his apartment window. A dark movie theater on a hot afternoon seemed like a calming idea for both his mind and his palpitating heart. From his one-bedroom NoHo apartment, he could walk the two short blocks to the air-conditioned multiplex just down the street. He first locked the video camera and the information it contained inside the five-hundred-pound gun safe he kept hidden behind a pair of overcoats in his closet.
The movie unspooled.
Dave Wireman kept one hand on his large Sprite, the other in his bag of buttered popcorn, and between gulps and loud mouthfuls he’d perform ten second checks of his heart rate by pressing a knuckle up against his carotid artery. Not before the credit roll of the first feature did the thumping diminish to south of one hundred beats per minute. Still high. But headed in the right direction, figured Dave, who asked for another go around as he squeezed a fiver into the palm of one of the ushers assigned to clean up the theater.
With the second viewing of the movie, Dave didn’t watch the picture as much as he let it distract him from his swelling paranoia that Garvin had set him up as some kind of patsy. But for what? he asked himself.
The patsy never knows he’s the patsy until he’s either dead or in jail.
That was about the time Dave Wireman decided not to contact Garvin. Instead, he’d watch the news unfold and patiently wait for Garvin to find him—a call that didn’t come until some time after midnight. Dave woke to his cell phone vibrating across his coffee table which was littered with empty Corona bottles. He could feel that he was still half-drunk when the first words wouldn’t quite roll off his tongue.
“Dave Wireman,” he answered.
“It’s Garvin. We gotta catch up.”
“Time is it?”
“Don’t matter. I’ve got another job for you. Two hours tops but Big Daddy is still paying your day rate.”
“It’s a new day?”
“Exactly,” said Garvin. “Heading your way from Malibu. Meet on the way to Granada Hills.”
“What’s there?”
“A guy we need to deliver a message to.”
For the briefest moment, Dave didn’t recall the issue he had with Garvin, where he’d spent the past six hours, or the thousand conspiracy theories he’d hatched while sitting in that air-conditioned movie house. He merely responded according to the question.
“Roscoe and the San Diego,” said Dave. “7-Eleven there.”
“Near the brewery, right?”
“Right there. Fifteen minutes?”
After Garvin hung up, Dave rolled to his back, finding the TV remote poking him in the kidney. He reflexively removed the offending device and unmuted the TV. The Fox News channel punched him in the eardrums with its Breaking News theme. With that, the day came flooding back to the wannabe actor in a rush of unwanted memories.
“Fuck me,” Dave said aloud.
33
What am I doing? he asked himself. Turning chickenshit into chicken salad, you idiot.
That very same idiot had already chewed on the inside of Beemer’s cheek until it bled. Beemer had to listen to him, considering he’d loosened the screws to The Idiot’s hatch. He was still planning to feed The Idiot by consuming the life of one Rey Palomino.
But first things first.
The lights of surrounding Inglewood barely cut through to the blackened dirt roads and man-made canyons of the historic oil field. Beemer had dispensed with cutting through the locks on the chain-link fence. Instead he employed a couple of the Freightliner's remaining assets. Power and G-forces. At an opportune moment, Beemer extinguished the semi’s lights, veered off La Cienega Boulevard and plowed through a cyclone fence topped with razor wire. When the dust settled and he was certain his act of trespassing had gone unnoticed, he’d set the parking brake on a fifteen degree uphill slope and gone about the task of unloading his former million-dollar load.
He hefted the last few cartons of thawed plasma and carried them to the tail of the reefer trailer. He tossed each on to a growing pile of cardboard and leaking plastic IV bags. He punctuated the chore by discarding the worn pair of woolen gloves that he had found in the rusty refrigerator truck. The next order of business would be to find a convenient place to switch out the faulty Freightliner for a tractor-trailer rig that was less likely to fail him.
The chore itself proved therapeutic. Exhausted as Beemer was, the activity required an unthinking peace within which he found the space to cement a new direction. With a replacement truck, the entrepreneur could set a course for either Phoenix or Albuquerque. There were blood banks there. Equally as remote as the Reno warehouse and ripe for the taking. In a quiet corner of Beemer’s brain, he painted a new scenario that had him crossing the border with a spanking fresh trailer full of frozen plasma. His UAE middle man would only suffer a delivery delay of barely one week.
There it is, Beems. You’re back on track.
Back on track with just a brief detour to Granada Hills. A forty-five minute drive. The old Freightliner behaved downright giddy to drive with its trailer swept clean of cargo.
Next, Beemer readied his equipment, which included the field dressing of both his sawed-off pump shotgun and pistol. The chore was easily completed in the skinny sleeper space behind the Freightliner’s seats. With a visit to a CVS Pharmacy he was able to buy a neoprene knee stabilizer. It was painful enough to bring tears when he finally slipped the device on to his leg. But it was worth it to save the last few cc’s of numbing agent. He washed back a double dose of ibuprofen with a liter of orange Gatorade, reclined in the sleeper compartment, and let the hum of the unworthy refrigeration compressor lull him into a much-needed nap.
The alarm on
Beemer’s phone woke him at 11:00 P.M.
Fifteen minutes later he’d found a place to set the brake on the reefer truck—a darkened grade school parking lot five-hundred yards downhill from Rey Palomino’s home. From the residential street below Rey’s, Beemer could see the unearthly glow from all the TV news crews in the midst of a variety of live-shots.
Busy news scene, thought Beemer.
Last chance. Turn around. Drive south.
Then again, sometimes great opportunity could be found in a crowd. So he slung the shotgun under his jean jacket, stuck the pistol in his waistband, and began a gimpy hike up the sidewalk-tilted grade. Concerned that his pronounced limp made him stand out a bit too much, Beemer turned his attention to a yappy Yorkshire Terrier that was patrolling its territory, a corner lot trimmed with a decrepit wooden fence laced with blooming bougainvillea. Without much effort, Beemer kicked the rotted slats until a hole formed and then coaxed the friendly Yorkie into his gloved hands. All Beemer needed then was a leash. A short length of low voltage lighting wire torn from the earth proved suitable. And in a matter of moments, Beemer and his limp were transformed from the proverbial turd in the punchbowl to just another neighbor out to walk his loyal pup.
“Need to get you a new name,” whispered Beemer to the Yorkie. “How about I call you Duke after my old dog? You like that? You wanna be called the Dukester?”
From the breadth of the glow Beemer had seen from below Rey’s property, he’d miscalculated the size of the news crew. He’d figured three, maybe four, news trucks and possibly a total of twenty or so news producers and technicians. But the trucks themselves added up to eleven in all, their microwave masts cranked so high into the air they looked like sailing vessels run aground on the curb. That and there was more than double the amount of crew he had anticipated, not to mention the four LAPD units that had been assigned to protect both Rey and his neighbors from overzealous journalists.
Adding to the spectators at the scene were the front-yard gawkers who’d come out of their houses in hopes of getting an update on the terror attack or maybe catching an eyeful of one of the many news Barbies assigned to serve up-to-the-minute reportage to TV audiences all over the world.
Beemer, playing the part of a curious dog walker, nudged one of the beefy electricians between lighting adjustments.
“After midnight,” said Beemer. “Isn’t the local news over?”
“Yeah,” said the electrician. “But there’s crews here from as far away as Australia. After we go dark we rent ’em equipment packages.”
“No shit?” said Beemer.
“Even charge ’em for the microwave, satellite uplink,” said the electrician, rubbing his pigskin gloves over his stubble. “Union got us a deal that makes out of town networks pay us time and a half. See over there,” pointed the electrician. “Other side of the mailbox. Dark-skinned Bollywood lookin’ slice of ass?”
“India?” asked Beemer.
“Al-Jazeera,” said the electrician. “Big news over there when it’s America who gets bombed, eh?”
Beemer just nodded his agreement while taking a half-step back into the shadows. With his lousy luck, the Al-Jazeera crew could’ve easily contained survivors from a reverse IED attack he’d both plotted and engineered in 2006. Paid for by a foreign contractor, Beemer and his team of talented former military misfits stole Iraqi ordinance and wired them to appear like the work of insurgent commandos, only to scare the bejesus out of foreign correspondents who opposed the coalition. Some journalists were killed. A few more were maimed for life. Beemer rationalized that getting themselves hurt or dead served the bunch of propaganda-swilling word-hacks right for forcing their beaks into a conflict about which few of them understood, let alone could report on accurately.
“Cute pup,” said the electrician.
“That’s Duke,” said Beemer.
“Yorkie, huh?”
“What’s that?”
“Duke. Yorkshire Terrier. Good dogs?”
“My roommate’s,” shaded Beemer. “I’m just trying to put some points on the board.”
“I hear that,” said the electrician.
“Lemme ask you something,” said Beemer. “You’re like what? Electricians union?”
“I.A.T.S.E.”
“Right, right. So the guys who drive the vans? They with you? Or’s that a Teamster thing?”
“Local news gets a waiver. We’re all I.A.,” said the electrician. “Which means everybody drives but the cookie.”
“Cookie?”
“News wench. On-camera. Like your Bollywood girl over there.”
“The women don’t drive?”
“Guy cookies, too. They don’t drive either. All of ’em are a buncha divas.”
Beemer forced a guffaw. While he pretended to be looking up and down the line of lighting rigs bathing a variety of male and female news cookies, he was performing a more accurate mental headcount. Twelve, maybe thirteen, on-camera Barbies and Kens. Triple that in camera crew and drivers. Six uniformed LAPD cops either patrolling the nearby lawns or flanking the front door to Rey Baby's house.
Then there was the man himself. Rey. Hiding behind the shut curtains and blinds of his house. Every window was covered, yet most of the house lights remained on. Rey had to be inside, visited by Lord knows how many federales.
Beemer carefully gauged the shadows in the house. Most were faint, changing the direction of a light or momentarily diminishing the cast on a window. None, though, were distinguishable but for assisting Beemer in the most general guesswork. How many in the house?
As many as three, Beems. Maybe four.
Family? Law enforcement? Armed or otherwise? The obvious risk of any violent approach would be described best as suicide. All but for the idea that Beemer continued to mull.
How committed are you? It's not too late to walk the little dog back to its home and call it a night. Leave Rey Baby to rest in the brain’s bargain bin.
But that would mean Rey Palomino would have to share a mental prison cell with The Idiot. And Beemer sincerely doubted one could survive with the other.
Now Rey was close. Only yards away from Beemer, separated only by the obvious and tired obstacles. The last lament simmering inside of Beemer was why, only twenty-four hours earlier, he hadn’t damned the silly estrogen party brought on by Rey’s girlfriend, crossed the threshold and blown the bastard’s head off.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
As far as Beemer was concerned, history had a sick sense of irony. Here he was, a full turn of the earth since his last bite at the apple. And so much had happened. Beemer could still smell the fuel oil on his fingers and, if he closed his eyes, he could imagine the sweet remnants of spent nitrate in the air following the spectacular detonation. The variety of video angles of the blast had already made it onto the web and Beemer’s smartphone.
“Can you believe that shit?” asked the electrician.
“No,” said Beemer. “Maybe that’s why I keep lookin’ at it.”
“On that little screen? That ain’t nothin’. I got bomb shots in HD on the truck.”
Beemer gave a glance upward at the beefy electrician. The gaze that returned was piercing and without a lick of mystery. It was an invitation to more than a view of some high-def footage of Beemer’s bomb blast. The big man was casting a line for some quickie inside-the-news-van sex.
“No shit?” said Beemer, choosing to etch a smile over his repulsion. Gay or not, opportunity had just knocked. And the rest of his plan formed in microseconds.
“No shit,” answered the electrician.
“Well then,” said Beemer. “Show me the way.”
* * * *
For Rey Palomino, all the sudden attention was anything but welcome. Yet beneath the fade of his compliant federal witness character, he felt the spotlight was deserved. After all, he’d let the devil in. Rey’d agreed to act as the smuggling agent in exchange for paying down a dining room table overloaded with overdue debts.
<
br /> But that wasn’t the story he’d told the FBI.
Once he’d decided to turn over the murderer to the authorities, Rey giddily played the good guy. Rationalized his stake in the event. Even accepted kudos from the EMTs who’d come to rescue Special Agent Dulaney Little. Deep down, though, he knew he was a key witness to a history-making crime. That every federal cop from coast to coast was going to want to speak to him. So it wasn’t so much that he’d fled the crime scene in his antique Porsche. He’d just wanted a little time to himself before the FBI caught up with him. Rey had no clue that once it became public there was a witness who had actually been involved with the terrorist, the world would arrive on his doorstep with microwave antennas, blazing hot TV lights, and interview requests. The women had such breathtakingly perfect teeth, had they not been wearing designer suits and holding microphones festooned with TV channel logos, he might’ve guessed they were former Miss America candidates.
The FBI had requested that Rey conduct no interviews until they’d finished with their own due diligence. And though he was not under arrest or suspicion of anything, they’d still asked him if he wanted to call or engage an attorney.
Rey had answered no.
Outside, the lights from the TV crews lit up the windows like the unfiltered desert sun. He’d had to close the windows, shutter or curtain them, and crank up the air conditioning. Investigators from the FBI, Homeland Security, Long Beach and Los Angeles PD, L.A. County Sheriffs, ATF, and the Port Authority had shown up with the promise of untold debriefs to come. By 11:00 P.M., having been awake for nearly thirty-six hours, Rey’s eyes were so heavy and his thoughts so jumbled, he’d begged for the interrogations to be continued the next day. He was left with three ATF sentries in the house and more LAPD cops outside. The intent was both to keep their witness safe and from hopping in his antique Porsche and buzzing off to points unknown.
Blood Money Page 25
