‘You don’t worry about Mike when he’s mad,’ Shep said. ‘You worry about him when he’s quiet.’
Chapter 25
‘There’s someone new at the house.’
‘Good. Movement.’ Boss Man, on the phone, was even more abbreviated than in person.
‘He showed up in a Shelby Mustang, the ’67, a beaut,’ William said. ‘It’s got that wide grille, makes her look like she’s scowlin’ at you.’
He sank to the bed, freeing a cloud of dust from the threadbare blanket. Hanley sat opposite, a mirror image, their knees nearly touching. The motel room’s lights were off, but the blinking FIVE ADULT CHANNELS!! sign outside threw a neon glow through the curtains, lighting up patches of their faces, their bodies, the dreary furnishings. Dodge was on the floor by the bathroom, his back to the wall, flipping through one of his comics, some violent tale featuring a guy with jester tattoos on either shoulder. The bathroom door was slivered open behind him, a fall of light laid across the open pages. The stink of mildew hung in the air.
‘When did he get there?’ Boss Man asked.
‘We picked up on him this afternoon, but he may have come in earlier.’
‘He’s formidable,’ Boss Man said.
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll see about that. How’d it go with our estate executor?’
‘Wingate didn’t bite.’
‘I figured. We need confirmation on this soon, before it gets out of hand.’
William could hear the whistle of his breathing through his nose.
‘What’s he doing?’ Boss Man continued. ‘This new fella.’
‘Switching locks. Checking the fences. Looks like they’re waiting.’
‘For what?’
‘Us.’
Boss Man said, ‘Name.’ A request, not a question.
‘Don’t have one yet,’ William said. ‘We ran the plates this afternoon, came back fake.’
‘How ’bout that.’
‘But Hanley went back and pulled the VIN off the dashboard, so we can check on that tomorrow.’ William nodded reassuringly at his brother. ‘He’s been doing good work on this, Hanley. Helping us achieve the mission directive.’
‘What’s the VIN?’
William told him the number.
‘I’m not waiting until tomorrow. I’ll have someone handle it now.’
Click.
William said, to the dead line, ‘Okay, I’ll be sure to do that, sir.’ He clicked the cell shut and said to Hanley, ‘He says you’re doing good.’
‘He did? What’d he say?’
‘That you’re doing good.’
Dodge made a noise. William figured him for amused, though whether by the comic book or the conversation he didn’t know. He and Dodge got on so well because they never tried to figure each other out. William’s talents were a complement to Dodge’s – mouth and muscle, two interlocking pieces that formed a perfect whole. When Dodge was serving a nickel in Pelican Bay on a battery-assault beef, he’d celled with William’s uncle. ‘When Dodge bumps you,’ Uncle Len had said, ‘it’s like you’re eight years old and he’s a Buick.’ Uncle Len had been impressed, and that was saying something. He was the one who had started it all, who had introduced William to his distinct philosophy of brutality. Even on his deathbed in the prison infirmary, Uncle Len had held to his code. And passed on his obligations. ‘Burrells see to their commitments,’ he’d told William on visiting day. ‘But I’m leaving a piece of unfinished business. Only thing I didn’t get done.’ He’d hacked a few times and spit green into a bedpan. ‘One job. The Job.’ William’s only birthright, aside from cerebral palsy and Uncle Len’s shattered pocketwatch, had been to complete the task.
Dodge had gotten out a year later, around the time William’s osteoporosis had kicked in, his increasing fragility threatening to sideline him. With mounting medical bills, William couldn’t afford to be sidelined. A team-up was in order. When he’d brought Dodge onto Boss Man’s payroll, Dodge was happy for the work. He’d appeared at the clapboard house William and Hanley had moved into after their grandmother passed, and taken up on a mattress in the cellar, where he read his graphic novels and meditated in thunderous silence. He had a sick mom in a home somewhere – or maybe an aunt who’d raised him – and all his cash went to that. Dodge wasn’t about the money, though. He was about the work. William suspected he wouldn’t know how to spend a hundred bucks at one time unless he was buying implements. Him and that ball peen. He liked the hammer because he could work for a long time and keep someone conscious. It seemed a good fit for his patience, his deliberateness. William always figured you could read a man by his choice of weapon. Rash, sharp, and to the point, Hanley preferred a knife. As for William, the only weapons he used these days were his words.
The Morse-code flicker of the motel neon was starting to get to him. William leaned over and used a knuckle to work the stiff muscle of his left thigh. If his legs stiffened too much, they’d scissor when he lay down. The pain was so exquisite they even had a name for it: high-tone, like the record company.
He’d learned to live with pain from a young age. Maybe that’s why he was such an expert in its application. He’d walked on his knees at first, until a staph infection over one cap forced him upright. By four he’d figured out a gait that didn’t require braces. His first memory was shuffling down the shag-carpeted hall, Hanley doing an infant crawl at his side so he could lean into him when he got wobbly. Despite his test scores, William’s kindergarten teacher thought he was retarded, because of his loose articulation. During his second hospital stay for pneumonia, his nurse had gotten him speech therapy to help pass the endless bedridden hours. Even as a seven-year-old, he’d known he would be grateful to her for the rest of his life. He spent his time reading dime novels about soldiers and war heroes, fetishizing a military that would never have him. He loved the muscular heroics and derring-do, G.I. Joes charging into the fray, strong of back and square of jaw, their ramrod postures unbending in the face of fair-haired krauts, underhanded Japs, or jungle gooks. When William was discharged, he learned that his parents had moved into a fourth-floor apartment in a complex with no elevator. It didn’t take him long to wind up in a boys’ home, Hanley following shortly after in solidarity.
William clutched the sheet as a wave of spasticity rippled over him like a prolonged sneeze. The toughest part about cerebral palsy was its unpredictability. Some nights he’d go to bed tight and wake up feeling athlete-strong. Other times he’d be sailing through weeks without symptoms and drop off the cliff, a period of exacerbation coming on fast and hard without warning.
Like right now.
‘Dodge’ – his voice box felt locked down – ‘can you give me a minute alone?’
Dodge stood and walked out. His footsteps clopped down the outdoor hall, and then a door opened and closed.
William flopped back on the mattress, stared at the ceiling, and emitted a low-throated groan.
Hanley said, ‘What do you need?’
‘The baclofen. It’s in my bag.’ William tilted his head forward when his brother approached, and popped the muscle relaxant dry. It tasted bitter as sin, but it gave him no bad side effects like the Dilantin he took to prevent seizures, which made his eyes jerk like a fun-house effect. He held on as another spasm worked its way through his lower back and legs, and then he dug a thumb into the knot in his left calf, working it. ‘Okay,’ he told himself. ‘Okay.’
Hanley’s forehead furrowed, deep lines between the brows just like William’s. He grabbed William’s ankle-foot orthosis from the bag and tossed it onto the bed. The flesh-colored plastic brace, with its footlike base and high shin strap, looked anachronistic, something out of the polio-scare fifties. During bouts William wore it at night to stretch his left Achilles tendon.
William stared at it with enmity.
Hanley said, ‘Need help with your pants?’
‘No,’ William said bitterly.
Hanley nodded and headed f
or the door. When he got there, William said, quietly,‘Yes.’
Hanley came back, helped William out of his clothes, and got the orthosis strapped on.
William said, ‘Put the phone near. Boss Man’s callin’ back.’
Hanley set the phone on the mattress beside William, then pulled the sheets over him and turned out the light.
William listened to his brother walk into the room next door. He heard the shower start, the pipes humming in the wall. He felt a cramp start in the arch of his left foot, but his back was too tight for him to lean forward and fight the orthosis off. The tightness spread until he was corkscrewed in the sheets, his back arched so only his shoulder blades and right hip were touching the mattress. Sweat dotted his face. He waited, prayed, waited. Finally the shower turned off.
Using all the strength he could muster, he dragged a fist through the sheets and banged on the wall above his headboard. His eyes squeezed shut, he heard Hanley knocking around his room, tugging on clothes, then the sound of running, and – finally – Hanley barged through the door.
His little brother rushed over, tugged off the sheets, and pulled William’s limbs this way and that, stretching out the cramps, massaging away gnarls. William grimaced and grunted, releasing the pain with short bursts of breath.
Hanley drew a bath, poured in epsom salts, and carried William over, naked as a baby. He settled into the steaming water with a cry of relief. And then he was floating, weightless, the muscles letting go. In water he was just like everyone else. Hanley sat on the toilet, flicking dirt from under his nails with their father’s folding lock-back hunting knife, the one thing he’d left to either of them.
William said, ‘I wonder sometimes if this isn’t heaven. And then I remember, it’s just how everyone else feels all the time.’
The bedsheets muffled the cell phone’s ring in the other room.
‘Fetch it for me,’ William said.
Hanley retrieved the phone, and William flipped it open, warm water sloshing around his neck and shoulders. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘The Mustang’s registered to a Shepherd White. He was in a foster home in the San Fernando Valley from late 1981 to 1993. Another boy lived there during that time, named Mike Doe. Doe popped up in the system as a four-year-old with little memory and no records, abandoned by his father. Guess when?’
William said, ‘October 1980.’
‘He’s our missing person.’
In the excited silence, William could sense, after all these years, what this meant to Boss Man. The Job.
But it didn’t take him long to get down to business. ‘Hanley goes point on this. The family knows your face and Dodge’s. You two can play janitor afterward.’ He hung up.
William shut the phone, set it on the edge of the tub, and settled back into the warmth, inhaling the saline vapor from the epsom bath. His muscles felt relaxed, limber, ready.
Hanley was leaning forward, eyes bulging with excitement. ‘Well?’
William said, ‘We’re green-lit.’
Chapter 26
‘Dana Riverton’s a fake name all right,’ Hank said, his old-man voice sounding scratchier over the phone. ‘The lease agreement on the apartment was signed by a Kiki Dupleshney.’
‘That’s her real name?’ The sharpness in Mike’s voice caused Sheila to glance up from her desk across the office.
‘Implausibly, yes. She’s got your typical con-artist rap sheet – pigeon drops, mail-order nudie stuff, a phony city-inspector routine targeting nest-eggers for home repairs. She doesn’t run a regular team, looks to be a gun for hire.’
‘Let’s go talk to her about her recent employer.’
‘She cleared out last night. Manager said she was on a week-to-week. Waiting to time a meeting with you, I’m thinking.’
Ten minutes prior Shep had texted Mike from downtown saying that his contact couldn’t get anywhere tracking Annabel’s stolen cell phone. William and Dodge either had dumped it or were keeping it mostly turned off, so there was nothing anyone could do. Mike’s frustration had hit a high-water mark, but now it looked like it had plenty more room to rise.
‘So she’s gone?’ Mike asked.
‘Into the ether. We’ll have to wait for her to rear her head. Good news is, we know she uses her real name now and again.’
Mike glanced down at the fat telephone directory spread on his desk. For the hell of it, he’d flipped through the white pages and circled a few names. Thirty-seven Gages, four Trenleys, none with first initial J or D.
‘How about Gage?’ he asked. ‘A Gage family lived next door when I was a kid. I know she didn’t make that up.’
‘Yeah, but we need a first name, and I’m guessing she invented the Dana. I checked anyway, and I’m getting no Dana Gages who fit our demographics. And when we start looking at Gages, no first name, without specifying region . . . well, you can imagine what those numbers look like.’
As bad as John and Momma.
Mike asked, ‘You get anything on John and Danielle Trenley?’
‘Nothing helpful,’ Hank said. ‘There are a handful of John Trenleys, but race and age rule them out. The only Danielle Trenley the database turned up is a teenager in South Carolina.’
Mike thumped a fist down on the phone book, the sound echoing through the office, causing heads to swivel. Mike did everything he could to keep his voice low. ‘How about the law-enforcement alert?’
‘I’m making some headway – emphasis on “some”. I got to a desk officer at Sheriff’s Headquarters Bureau. I guess because they oversee Lost Hills, your hometown, the stations were put on alert. Thus the warm reception you got from Elzey and Markovic. There’s a standing request for any deputy who comes into contact with you to obtain biographical details from your childhood.’
Mike realized he’d stopped breathing. So William and Dodge had baited him into going to the sheriff’s station, where Elzey and Markovic had been instructed to hammer him on his past. But were the four of them working in concert? It seemed a stretch that a law-enforcement agency would use muscle like William and Dodge to intimidate a family.
‘And report back where?’ Mike asked. ‘Who put the alert out on me? Which agency?’
‘I still don’t have an answer. It seems there’s a weird routing request—’
‘What does that mean, “routing request”?’
‘What it sounds like, son. Take a breath. We’re working around some clearance issues here, and a misstep could draw the wrong attention and shut us down. Catch more bees with honey and all that. Plus, I’m trying to see if LAPD or anyone else is looped in on it, too. These things take time.’
Mike signed off, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, and ground at them.
His nerves were frayed – another restless night, another 5:00 A.M. wake-up augmented the whole day long with coffee. He’d been running on caffeine and adrenaline for too long now, and he felt his mood getting wobbly.
Sensing his workers’ eyes on him, he rose and headed out to the weed-scraggly front lot. He climbed into his truck, turned on the radio, scrolled through a few commercials and shitty songs, and smacked it off angrily. He gripped the wheel hard and took a few deep breaths.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He hoped it was Shep with an update on something.
The words blinking on the screen of his cell sent a wash of coldness over him.
A’S CELL.
He clicked ACCEPT.
The screen pulsed, then went live with a video feed. Through his shock it took a moment for Mike to recognize the cracked asphalt, the laughing children, the wooden benches.
The playground at Lost Hills Elementary.
His heart felt like a pulsing fist in the base of his throat.
The image tilted jerkily up. There Kat was, jumping rope.
Mike’s mouth was moving, sounds coming out.
A hulking figure stepped out from the cover of a jungle gym behind her, his features lost in the glare of the midday sun. The
man moved closer.
Dodge.
Mike’s foot dropped like a weight onto the accelerator, his tires spinning in the dirt before finding purchase.
Dodge headed for Kat briskly. She continued to play, oblivious.
Mike was shouting at the phone, crushing it in his hand, juggling it against the wheel so he could steer and watch at the same time.
Dodge was five feet away and closing fast from behind. Kat was giggling, counting as she skipped, the rope tracing a rainbow arc overhead.
Mike screeched out of the lot, swiping the gate, throwing up rooster tails of dirt and rock.
Dodge came up on top of her, barely brushing her with a hip, knocking her to the ground.
Mike bellowed.
The screen went black.
Chapter 27
He remembered calling 911 and shouting for the cops to get to Lost Hills Elementary, though his office was seven blocks away and he knew he’d get there first. He remembered reaching the school’s answering machine two, three times and bellowing at the electronic voice reciting endless options. He remembered calling Annabel’s cell phone, instinctively. When the voice mail kicked on – ‘Hi, it’s Annabel. I’m probably digging around for’ – he recalled that they had just contacted him from the very phone he was calling and, cursing his stupidity and horn-blaring through a red light, he dialed home. Voice mail there, too. Annabel wasn’t back from practicum? At the beep he heard himself saying, ‘—they got her at her school I called 911 I’m three blocks away now two goddamn it I knew we should’ve kept her out of school—’ He was furious with himself for letting Kat out of his sight, for listening to Annabel, all that blind fear and rage seeking an outlet to blast out of him.
He skidded into the school parking lot, narrowly missing a mom unloading a birthday cake from her trunk and Kat’s first-grade teacher, who stared after him as he left the truck with two tires up on the curb. Door open, dinging behind him, he sprinted through the attendance office – ‘Where’s Katherine Wingate my daughter where is my’ – and through the side door onto the playground, leaving behind a panorama of startled faces. No kids – recess was over.
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