‘Is there any agency that doesn’t have me flagged?’ Mike asked.
‘I’m sure there are plenty. Agencies – and individual stations within agencies – are understaffed and overworked. So unless you went to sleepaway camp in the rugged northwest of Pakistan, it’s not like you’re at the top of morning roll call. We don’t know the extent of this thing, but there’s no reason to assume you’ve become public enemy numero uno.’
‘What if we need help?’
‘Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Until we determine how widespread the alert is and who put it out, how can you know who to trust?’
Mike swallowed dryly. ‘And if Dodge and William make another move in the meantime?’
‘From what I can read at this point, I wouldn’t count on the authorities lending you a friendly ear.’
He signed off, and Mike and Annabel stared at each other.
Annabel reached down, took the revolver from Mike’s hand. She raised it clumsily, waiting, her gaze steady. He exhaled a heavy breath, moved forward, and shaped her hands properly around the grip.
Chapter 18
The laundry room’s back door had the weakest exterior lock, a dated Schlage that required only a half-diamond pick, a medium-torsion wrench, and a ninety-second attention span. With gloved hands, Dodge jiggled at it quietly. It yielded, and he stepped from night into the dull glow of the house. The old-fashioned wall clock above the dryer showed 9:27. Pocketing the tools, he moved forward into the kitchen, his size-fourteen feet surprisingly silent across the linoleum.
Mike Wingate’s head and upper torso were tucked under the sink, tools spread out on a grease-stained bath mat beside his sprawling legs. He was banging away at the U-pipe with a hammer. Dodge glided past him, drifting within a yard or so of his bare feet. Without breaking stride, he plucked a flat, magnetized digital recorder from the top of the refrigerator, where he’d hidden it days earlier. Continuing into the hall, he passed the girl in her room, her back to the open door. She was hunched over her desk, chewing a pencil, and said, ‘Mom, long division sucks,’ to him without glancing up from her work.
He ducked into the bathroom farther up the hall and locked the door. From the back pocket of his cargo pants, he withdrew a Fujitsu tablet computer, a Japan-only model the size of a checkbook; Boss Man spared no expense when it came to matters such as these. Ducking to accommodate the sloped ceiling, Dodge set up the miniature laptop at the edge of the square pedestal sink and plugged the digital recorder into a port. Within seconds the download was complete.
The doorknob behind him twisted, the jangle pronounced in the small space. Then the wife said, ‘Oh, you’re in there. Sorry, honey. Brush your teeth and get ready for bed.’
Dodge didn’t tense. His broad, flat features betrayed nothing. He kept on with his preparations.
As the footsteps padded away, Dodge tugged on a pair of clamp headphones and clicked ‘play.’ A sound graph came up on screen, charting every noise with a green flare, stretched out like a spiky caterpillar. He nudged the tracking button along a little ways to test sound.
Katherine’s voice: ‘Don’t be mad at me. It’s not like I said, “What can I do to bug Mom today? Oh – I know. I’ll get head lice.”’
Dodge popped open a search window, typed in, KEY.
High-pitched noise scribbled in his ears. And then the wife spoke, the search feature elevating the volume on the last syllable of her sentence: ‘Stay still, monKEY.’
Dodge clicked Find Again. More chipmunk babble and then, ‘I got a text from your cell asking me where the safe-deposit KEY was.’ Dodge waited, and then a feminine voice replied, ‘In the tissue box in your nightstand. I wouldn’t ask that.’ The time stamp was from earlier today, shortly after they’d sent Mike the sham text message.
Dodge folded up the equipment, distributed it to various pockets, and pressed his ear to the door. From the kitchen he heard tool meet metal again, and he stepped out into the hall and headed down to the master bedroom.
The bathroom door was cracked, the shower running. As he passed the open slice of doorway, he saw the flesh-colored outline of Annabel, blurry behind the steam-clouded glass. He opened the nightstand drawer. Inside, a Kleenex box encased in a plastic decorative cover. He reached through the slit, fingers digging around the tissue. Nothing. He lifted the plastic cover, and there, taped to the underside, was the safe-deposit key. He wiggled it free, pulled a similar-looking key from his pocket, and wormed the replacement into the spot beneath the bubbled strip of Scotch tape.
As he eased the cover back down, a glint in the rear of the drawer caught his eye. He pulled the drawer all the way out. A Smith & Wesson .357. Using only one hand, he removed it, thumbed the lever to release the wheel, and flicked it, setting it spinning. Cocking his head, he stared down the sights. His lips twitched in a sneer.
The water stopped. The shower door creaked open. He tilted his wrist, the wheel clicking home, and set the revolver back beside the new cellophane-wrapped package of bullets. When he closed the drawer, it made a soft thump.
‘Babe, you about done with that sink?’
Dodge made an agreeable noise in his throat.
‘Man, this steam.’ Her hand tapped against the bathroom door, and it swung open another foot or two.
Standing a few feet to the hinge side, out of view, he withdrew a ball-peen hammer from the deep thigh pocket of his cargo shorts. He waited, but she did not appear.
Moisture wafted across his face as he took a step out in front of the open door. Annabel was doubled over, twisting her wet hair into a towel, her eyes on the floor. He swiveled back, his face affectless, and walked out of the room. Moving down the hall, he slid the hammer into his pocket again.
Katherine was in the small bathroom, toothbrush in tiny fist, leaning over the sink to spit. He floated past her, his mirror reflection passing above her bent head, and walked back into the kitchen.
Mike remained angled up into the cabinet beneath the sink as if it were devouring him headfirst. His legs were bent, hips raised, braced for traction. A muffled clang issued through the wood, and Mike said, ‘Damn it.’ His hand poked out, groping around on the bathmat, tapping across various tools.
Dodge’s boot scuffed the threshold bar between kitchen and laundry room, and Mike said, ‘Hey, babe?’
Dodge halted.
‘Get me the pipe wrench, would you?’
Dodge hesitated, facing the rear door. Then he reversed, trod back across the kitchen, and plucked the hefty tool from the bath mat. He bent over and slapped it into Mike’s waiting hand.
Then he walked calmly out through the laundry-room door, slipping back into the night. Hands in his pockets, he started up the sidewalk. The white van sputtered to life a half block away and crept up on him, the rolling door sliding open to swallow him whole.
Chapter 19
Dodge and William waited by the Dumpster in the midnight-dark back parking lot of Union L.A. bank. The rear door had been shut and relocked, but a light shone through a high interior window. Despite the cold, Dodge wore his short-sleeved button-up open, revealing a clean white wife-beater. Eyes on the building, William shifted impatiently from leg to leg.
He cracked a sunflower seed between his front teeth and blew out the shell. ‘Cigarette,’ he said.
Dodge’s cheap plastic lighter flared, and then two cherries burned at his mouth. He removed one cigarette and handed it over. William sucked an inhale and closed his eyes, savoring it before letting white smoke trickle from the corner of his mouth.
Dropping the lighter into his shirt pocket, Dodge drew hard on the cig, the burn crackling down a third of its length.
The inside light clicked off, and a moment later William’s brother appeared at the back door with a nervous security guard, who glanced around before stepping outside.
Hanley scurried over to them, the guard on his heels. ‘It’s fucking empty.’ He tapped the safe-deposit key on his knuckles so hard it made a wooden knock
ing sound.
William drew back his lips, bit down on the cigarette. ‘Empty?’
‘He must’ve figured out the text was fake and cleared out whatever was in there.’ Hanley was bouncing from tiptoes to heels until Dodge blanketed his shoulder with a hand, firming him to the ground.
‘Listen . . .’ The guard fussed with his hands at the periphery of the triangle Dodge and the brothers had formed. ‘I did my job, right? I glitched the security recording, nothing written on the safe-deposit log – covered all the bases. So my sister’s cool? Accounts balanced and all that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘She can’t go down again, man. She got three kids under the age of ten. I mean, she’s staring at ten to fifteen. Are you sure? You positive your guy can—’
‘Boss Man says he’ll square it,’ William said, ‘then he’ll square it.’
‘You guys are angels, man. Guardian fuckin’ angels.’
‘We didn’t get what we wanted here,’ William said. ‘So what do you say you take the party elsewhere?’ He flicked the cigarette over the guard’s shoulder, sparks cascading down the front of the uniform shirt.
The man’s face changed. He looked at Dodge, who had moved to stand apart, staring at the black edge of the parking lot with no apparent interest. ‘Okay.’ The guard held out his hands. ‘I never saw you. You never saw me.’ Shoring up his posture, he headed back inside, loop-de-looping his mass of keys on its retractable cord. The Plexiglas door closed after him. His pale face stared out at them as he turned the locks, and then he was gone.
‘Goddamn it,’ Hanley said. ‘All that and the fucking thing’s empty?’ He hurled the safe-deposit key into the darkness. It clicked off the side of the van, then skittered across the asphalt.
Dodge’s head turned. ‘Get it.’
‘Look, I—’
‘Now.’
Hanley went over and searched for a time on his hands and knees. Dodge lit two more cigarettes and he and William smoked them down.
Finally Hanley brought the key over to Dodge. Dodge dropped it on the ground, kicked it into a sewer grate.
‘Sorry,’ Hanley said.
‘Relax.’ William slung a hand over to cup the back of his brother’s neck. ‘We were a step late.’
‘I know this is a big job, and—’
‘No.’ Dodge’s gaze was cold and steady.
‘Well, now.’ William showed his teeth. ‘Is it a job or The Job? That’s what we have to find out.’
‘How?’ Hanley asked.
‘How do we always get answers?’ William said. ‘Slow, steady pressure, watch ’em crumble. We gotta poke at him and poke at him. Till he shows us the way. He’s on edge, right? Wingate? Well, guys on edge make mistakes. He’ll reveal who he is.’
Without Dodge’s hand weighing him down, Hanley was back to bouncing. ‘I say we just fuck it and handle’m now.’
‘We can’t take down a guy ’cuz he looks like a guy. We got standards. Every time you do a job, there’s a mess. We gotta make sure this is a mess worth making.’
Hanley turned and spit, hard, into the wind. Rolled his lips over his teeth and bit down. ‘Fucker beat us. He beat us to that safe-deposit box.’ He did a double take. ‘What? What are you smiling about?’
William started back for the van. ‘The night is young.’
Chapter 20
‘We know who you are.’
Mike stirred in bed, the hoarse, whispered voice in his ear. Next to him, the heat of Kat burrowed into his kidney.
His eyes cracked open. The baby monitor, eye level on the nightstand, stared him in the face.
The red bars flared again, rising and falling like a painted mouth. ‘The question is, do you?’
And then an earsplitting screech ripped Mike fully awake. It was the sound made when the receiver in Kat’s room came unplugged, but in the darkness, unexpected, it sounded like nothing so much as a shriek.
He sprang out of bed, digging in his drawer for the revolver and bullets. Beside him Kat rolled over with a scream, banging into Annabel, and then both were flailing upright, frantic in the sheets, the monitor still wailing until Annabel grabbed it and tugged free the cord. Sprinting down the hall, crashing into walls, Mike fought bullets into place, dropping some, kicking others and sending them pinballing across the floorboards.
Leading with the .357, he swung into Kat’s room. A dreary stillness – made bed, orderly books, vacuum-striped carpet. The only movement was the curtain fluffing up with the breeze. On numb legs he moved forward, sweeping the curtain aside.
Both locks unfastened. The window, cracked open several inches. Black square of night looking back at him through the glass.
He shoved the window the rest of the way open and popped out the loosened screen, which flew to nestle in the moist bushes below. Leaning out, he aimed left and then swung right, but there was only stillness and the faint hiss of sprinklers along the perimeter.
Annabel called from the hall, her voice trembling. ‘Mike?’
‘I’m going outside. Take Kat, lock yourselves in the bathroom, bring the cordless phone, and call 911 if you hear shots.’
He hopped through the window and dashed to the side of the house. A few steps down the concrete run, he could make out the wooden gate, unlatched and swaying in the breeze. The cold blew across him, and he noticed that he was barefoot, wearing boxers and a T-shirt.
He ran to the gate, steeled himself, then shouldered into it hard, springing into the driveway with the .357 braced in both hands. No one there.
He jogged across the front lawn, revolver at his side, and stopped, wet grass chilling his feet. The bug zapper on the Martins’ porch across the street hummed and threw off a smudge of burnt orange. Towering like witches’ hats, the cypresses at the property line nodded in the wind. He listened, but the breeze was up, branches and leaves rustling all around.
‘Where are you?’ It felt strange speaking to an empty street. ‘You want to hide?’ Fueled by anger, his voice steadied. ‘I’m not afraid. Here I am. Right here!’ More rustling, but nothing else. ‘You think you know who I am?’ He spun, shouting to the night. ‘Who am I, then? Who am I?’
The bedroom light clicked on next door at the Epsteins’. He could hear Kat crying inside. Crickets twitched on blades of grass at his ankles. After a time their chirping resumed.
Hearing a crackling of car tires, he turned sharply, greeted by a single burp of police siren. A sheriff’s-deputy car coasted up in front of his mailbox, and he eased his arm behind his back to hide the revolver. The window glided down to reveal Elzey’s dark face. She hopped out, slammed the door.
‘What are you holding?’
Turning away, Mike shoved the .357 into the waistband of his boxers, praying that the weight wouldn’t cause it to fall through one of the leg holes. He held his bare hands to either side.
‘I know what you put back there, Wingate.’ Elzey moved forward across the curb, the heel of her hand riding the butt of her hip-holstered pistol. ‘You don’t have any registered guns in your name, so you’re in serious shit if you’re holding.’
‘I didn’t give you permission to come onto my property.’
She halted. The yard was dark, and shadow caught in her face, made her look hard and rawboned. Markovic was out of the squad car now, too, staring at him across the white roof. The taste of autumn – decaying leaves, mulch, dew – was strong at the back of Mike’s throat. A faint sliver of moon cast meager light.
‘Step back,’ Mike said. ‘Or show me a warrant.’
‘You sure you want to play like this?’ Elzey asked.
Mike said, ‘Why are you here?’
‘After you left the station,’ Markovic said, ‘we were concerned.’
‘So concerned that you’re right outside, keeping an eye,’ Mike said.
‘That’s right,’ Markovic said. ‘We were cruising by, checking on the house.’
‘You didn’t happen to check my backyard, too, just now? My daughter
’s window? The inside of her bedroom?’
The deputies’ faces pointed at him out of the darkness. Markovic jabbed a finger at the lens pegged to the rearview mirror in the cruiser. ‘We’ve got time-stamped in-car footage and GPS, both of which show our entire patrol tonight, so you’d better watch what kind of accusations you throw around.’
‘Someone just broke into my daughter’s room.’
‘You sure you’re not hearing things?’ Elzey asked. ‘I mean, running around half naked with a gun in your underwear at one in the morning doesn’t exactly unconfirm our suspicions.’
‘Half naked, sure. But no gun.’
‘Okay,’ Elzey said. ‘So if there was a break-in, we’ll need to come onto your property if you want us to take an incident report.’
‘Another incident report?’ Mike said. ‘No thanks. Let’s wait and see what kind of headway you make on that first one.’
Elzey shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
Mike walked backward to the gate to keep an eye on her and the revolver hidden. She watched with amusement. When he moved through the gate, she climbed into the passenger seat, the door slamming at the same time gate hit post.
The engine turned over, and the squad car drifted away.
The front yard was still.
Crouched in the dappled shadow of heavy-headed fronds at the far edge of the house, William leaned back against the dew-beaded sill of the kitchen window. His grin sprang into being, floating in the dark like the curve of a sickle.
Chapter 21
Kneeling on the frilly bed, Mike finished nailing Kat’s window closed and used his shirt to blot the sweat from his forehead. The dirt at the base of the window was hard packed and, as before, yielded no footprints. He pulled the curtains closed and sat on the mattress. In the master bedroom, Annabel was trying to settle Kat down, lying beside her, petting her to sleep.
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