Last Shot (2006)

by Gregg - Rackley 04 Hurwitz

  "Why, I think it's a fine idea," Tim said. "Fry Guy George Jowalski."

  "You done yet?"

  "You'd fill out the Grimace costume rather well."

  "Still going, huh?"

  "Plus, you could put your prior job skills to use..."

  Pausing with both huge hands on the padded door of The Back Nine, Bear swung his tired eyes in Tim's direction, awaiting the punch line. "Get it over with."

  "...taking down the Hamburglar."

  Bear released a weary sigh and pushed into the strip club. The doorman rose from his barstool aggressively, but Tim fended him off with his badge. Brass, mirrors, and ice cubes bounced images off one another, endless reflected corridors in which to get lost. A scattering of the usual clientele around the usual four-tops. Three college guys were having more fun than seemed plausible--elbows on the catwalk, hoarse laughter, backward baseball caps. A comb-over-gone Al Pacino gangster behind oversize sunglasses ran a doughy hand up the thigh of a between-sets dancer delivering cocktails. A young lady announced as Pinch wrapped snakelike legs around the brass pole, her magenta hair skimming the creased singles littering the stage. A hall, lit purple by cloth-and-bead sconces out of a Gypsy catalog, led to the bathrooms and the optimistically titled private lounges.

  Tim and Bear took a walk around the horseshoe of the runway. Despite Pinch's best efforts, their entrance put a chill on the festivities--they weren't the usual cops paid off so the booze could flow during restricted hours and the flesh could undulate closer than the state-mandated six inches. Ignoring the nervous eyes of the manager and bartender, they peeked into the private rooms, some ornamented with couches, others with tall aquarium windows blocked by metal shades. The men's room featured a urinal encased in a frame of crumbling drywall, and a doorless stall.

  "Well," Bear said as they headed out, "it was worth a try."

  Tim set a hand on the ladies' room door and pushed it quietly open. A better-kept space, probably used by the dancers. Even a can of air freshener by the sink. Two stalls, one with the door closed. Tim crouched, tilting his head parallel to the floor for a better vantage.

  Someone sitting, one foot free, a pair of jeans loose around the other ankle. Jailhouse habits die hard.

  Tim rose, eased the door closed, and nodded at Bear. They waited in the narrow hall, arms crossed, Bear flattening himself politely against the wall as the house dancers passed in fragranced hazes. The toilet flushing sounded like a rocket taking off, and then the door creaked open, revealing a man in a ragged sweater, stretched sleeves hanging down past his hands. He wore Walkman headphones around his neck, unplugged, a fashion statement. Dreadlocks fell like incense sticks across his shoulders. A clouded eye floated left.

  "Freddy Campbell?"

  "Shit." With the word, a waft of pure gin. "What'd I do now?"

  Bear put an arm around Freddy's waist, hand moving in a subtle frisk as he steered him into the nearest private lounge. He held him steady, easing him into the middle of five movie-theater seats lined up before a window. An impossibly tall East Asian girl in platform heels and nothing else pressed both hands to the glass, leaning over. A dollar-bill feeder stuck out of the wall like the neck of a hungry goose.

  Freddy bit his lip, studying the girl and bouncing his head as if to a beat, though the room was oddly silent. "Now, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout."

  Bear, momentarily distracted by the breasts swaying mere feet from his head, took a moment to find his focus. "Do you know Walker Jameson?" He nodded for Tim to produce the photo, which Freddy studied intently. "Or Boss Hahn?"

  "Okay. Okay." Freddy seemed to be trying to sort his way through a drunken muddle of thoughts. "Who are y'all?"

  Bear shifted his weight against the glass, showing off the Marshals star on his belt.

  Freddy bobbed his head a bit more, as if considering his options. "Don't know that cat," he finally said, tapping a dirty fingernail against the picture, "but I know of Boss Hahn. Big mofo in the AB, ain't that right?"

  "He was recently demoted." Bear settled heavily into the seat beside Freddy. "We had a little chat with Tommy LaRue yesterday evening. I guess you did, too. Right around, say, five-thirty P.M. We want to know what you told him."

  "I ain't gonna bitch up for y'all. Not on Tommy. We're road dawgs, man. Thick and thin."

  "We're not interested in LaRue," Tim said. "Not at all. We're after someone else, and we'll be as happy to ignore LaRue as we'll be to ignore you."

  The metal screen slammed down, leaving them alone in the darkness. Bear fumbled in his pocket, fed a crumpled bill into the machine, and then there was light. And breasts.

  He shrugged at Tim. "Ambience."

  "And say I don't want to talk to y'all?" Freddy asked amiably.

  "Then we'd probably have to poke and pry around all that merch in your pad. Irregularities in your First Union account. How you afforded to fly yourself and Bernadette to Brazil. Who you saw there, what you brought back."

  Freddy's eyes registered surprise at some of the proper nouns. "We don't want that," he agreed. The woman stopped dancing in her glass box and folded her arms, annoyed at the sudden lack of attention. Freddy fussed with the edge of his sweater sadly. "You talked to Bernadette, huh?"

  "Tough lady," Bear said.

  Freddy shook his head. "Word."

  "What'd you tell Tommy LaRue?" Tim said. "Answer the question and we were never here. And we won't make trouble for LaRue. Or you."

  Freddy squinted at Tim in the faint light. "Hey, you that dog killed them people?"

  "Lotta dogs kill a lotta people in this city."

  "A'ight. I'll bump gums. You cross me, I go public on your ass." Freddy winked good-naturedly. "Now, I don't know what it means. I'm just a relay man. Tommy can only call certain phone numbers from the inside, and I'm one of them. I'm his clearinghouse, right? Yesterday I get word to go to a pay phone at a certain time, someone would call. So I go. And they call. Just a grumble. 1Three words. Tommy calls me at our usual time today. I tell him. He hangs up. That's all I know. I just relayed the message."

  "Which was?" Bear asked impatiently.

  "'The left side.'"

  As if on cue, the metal screen slammed down, bathing them in darkness. At the same time, Tim and Bear repeated, "'The left side'?"

  "The hell does that mean?" Bear said.

  "'F I supposed to know, they'd be no point in tellin' me in code, right?" Freddy held up his hands. "Like I said. I don't know too much so I don't know too much."

  "I'm beginning to feel the same goddamned way."

  After the next few questions went equally nowhere, Tim and Bear left the strip club in silence. Finally Bear said, "Maybe the left side was a meet point for after the break. The left side of a road. Or a river. Something."

  "I think it's more than that. Walker had an emotional reaction to it. It put him in motion. It's the answer to something."

  "So maybe it was a signal for the break. The bedsheet? Wasn't that on the left side?"

  "I keep thinking it's gotta have something to do with Boss Hahn."

  "Walker stabbed Hahn on the left side. Though I doubt that directive would've puckered him in the dining hall. Let's take a spin through the files again, have Guerrera do a keyword search on the Aryans, the prison, the Black Guerrilla Family, whatever we got." Bear pulled himself behind the wheel, slamming the door a little too hard. The dash clock showed 2:03 A.M., and it was ten minutes slow.

  A long night, and they'd wound up with three words. Three words that could mean a lot of things but were cause enough for Walker Jameson to kill Boss Hahn and break out of prison.

  And were likely cause enough for him to do more than that.

  Chapter 12

  The run-down community within earshot of freeway traffic showed off couches, carports, and rusted truck bodies languishing on dirt lawns. The street was 3:38 A.M. quiet. Walker pulled over his Accord, shut the door soundlessly, and prowled.

  Shadows, shrubs, tree trunks--even the p
it bulls didn't pick him up. A light through a particular kitchen window caught his interest. He crept close, on his toes, peering. An open refrigerator door cast a golden glow across the sleep-puffy face of a slim brunette in her mid-thirties. Attractive features starting to wear down from work and worry. A pert mouth showing the pull of gravity at the edges. Shoulder-length hair cut in no particular style and parted in the middle. Her body, visible beneath a too-long L.A. Clippers T-shirt, still looked fit. Firm in the chest, pinched at the waist when the fabric shifted. Wide, flat feet, nails covered with chipped pink paint.

  She returned the water pitcher to the refrigerator shelf and shuffled back down the hall with her glass. His steps muffled by the barren flower beds, he mirrored her movement outside, picking her up in her room through a seam in the blinds. Converted den, fold-out couch. She eased back beneath the sheets, took a final sip, and set the glass on her bed-stand. He followed the movement of her torso in the faint blue glow of the night-light. After a few minutes, her breathing grew deep and steady.

  Walker withdrew silently, circled to the back of the house, and found a sliding glass door with a broken latch. He moved down the dark hall as if floating--not a creak beneath his boots. The doorknob turned soundlessly. Five well-placed steps and he was bedside. He inched the top sheet back, exposing a bare shoulder, and took in the swirl of brown hair on the pillow.

  He stood over her sleeping form, the cool metal of the Redhawk pressed to the small of his suddenly sweating back.

  Chapter 13

  Boston bounded past Tim over the porch, leapt through the truck's open passenger door, and Bear pulled out from the curb with a wave. Tim entered the house quietly. Dray was out cold on their bed, paperback butterflied on her chest.

  She stirred, grinding a hand into her eye. "Your son requests your presence."

  Tim checked his watch. "He's not down?"

  "Is he ever? He doesn't fall asleep for good until he sees you. We know this."

  Tim crossed the hall and saw Tyler's head poke up over the padded guardrail of his bed. Snowball, the aptly named hamster, snoozed on his exercise wheel. Habitually lazy, Snowball had never evolved into the playmate they'd hoped for; he'd just evolved into a larger hamster.

  "Fuff pillow."

  "It's fuffed. You want me to fluff it again?"

  A solemn nod. Tim tapped the pillow on either side then kissed the outsize head. "Sleep tight."

  "Elmo funny."

  "I love you."

  "I want a dog."

  Then Tyler was asleep.

  Tim sat on the glider rocker and watched him. Most parents he knew remarked that their children looked like angels when they slept. Not Tyler. His chin inexplicably weakened and his lips pressed out like a duck's bill. He wound himself in the sheets, contorted like a head case fighting a straitjacket. Sweat matted his fine blond hair. His head felt to be two hundred degrees--it had taken Tim and Dray months to figure out that he wasn't running a nightly fever, that he just slept hot.

  From the time Tyler was a baby, Dray had dealt with him directly and easily--"Sorry, pal, the breastaurant's closed." Tim had been largely responsible for Ginny during her first three weeks of life when post-C-section complications had kept Dray bedbound; from the gates, his relationship with his daughter had felt more natural than his with Tyler. Ginny's murder at the hands of convicted child molester Roger Kindell, Tim worried, had taken away a part of him that he'd yet to recover or replace. But he was also ever more certain that during his and Dray's two-year childless gap, he'd revised Ginny's brief upbringing into something idyllic. He'd forgotten how thin a kid could wear a parent's patience. How irritating it was fighting tiny socks onto uncooperative feet. The exhaustingness of a child, this living machine designed to eat and cry and poop and resist and require, all from within an impenetrable shell of self-absorption.

  The first time they'd taken Tyler to the park, Tim had hovered over him, righting him when he stumbled, steering him clear of metal and asphalt. Finally Dray had called him over. "The world doesn't work that way." She gestured at the playground equipment. "It has sharp edges and hard surfaces. He's gonna learn that. The longer he takes, the worse it hurts." Even as she was talking, Tim had scooped Tyler midair from a fall off a slide. Dray's grim silence on the walk home had an air of condescension to it.

  Tim had been freed up by Ginny's removal from their lives to take insane--inane--risks. No human had been wholly reliant on him, in his charge. It was a kind of liberty that he'd put to use. And exploited. In the squalling calm of the past two years, he'd wondered whether he was still the deputy he'd been in the void between Ginny and Tyler; there was no doubt, his softening back into affection and concern had dulled his edge. It was just a question of how much.

  Tim rose and padded down the hall. He picked up the copies of the TI security tapes from the counter and popped one into the VCR. As it rewound, a commercial was kind enough to inform him of one more pediatric disorder with which he wasn't familiar.

  "An estimated one in every two thousand individuals is affected worldwide by alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency," a movie-trailer voice alerted over a slow-pan shot of a particularly pathetic little boy with a stained shirt, frown dimples, and too-big glasses.

  Pointing the remote, Tim set the tape in motion. He viewed Boss's stabbing a few more times, looking for intricacies he might have missed, then switched tapes and watched LaRue's scamper across the dining hall. Matching words with image, he played the whispering scene again and again, speaking the words as LaRue did. "The left side." "The left side."

  Getting up from the couch, he sat on the carpet before the TV and frame-by-framed Walker's reaction after LaRue delivered the news. Walker's head settled slightly on his neck--a split-second recoil. Tim froze it on-screen. The instant revealed a look on Walker's face Tim hadn't caught previously. A hidden expression, but one Tim recognized immediately. Grief.

  Walker's mouth shifted, as if it were still working on the corn, though he'd swallowed seven frames back. Sorrow shifted to rage--an emotional logic with which Tim was intimate. Finally Walker rose and strode off camera, purpose quickening his step.

  Dray's voice from behind caught Tim off guard. "How's the Need Monkey?"

  Tim kept his eyes on the screen. "Down."

  "The Tyrant keeps me up half the night, and now that he's soundly snoozing, I'm wide awake."

  "I'll come give you Sleep Hold in ten minutes. Put you out like a stale cigarette."

  "I love it when you talk dirty about sleep. Only problem is, a ten-minute estimate when you're working, based on previous findings, really means"--a pause, during which she pretended to crunch numbers--"an hour and fifty-three minutes. And we have to be awake by then."

  "Twenty minutes tops."

  "Do I hear thirty?"

  Tim reversed a few frames, capturing the recoil again. Emotion loosened Walker's features, giving them an almost vulnerable cast. He wore the expression awkwardly; it had barely managed to slip to the surface.

  Dray slid down behind Tim on the carpet, her sturdy legs on either side of him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and chest and gave him a squeeze, then rested her chin on his shoulder and watched Walker's exit from the chow hall.

  "I miss it sometimes," she said. "The job. Almost as much as I don't miss it."

  "It's always there. You're still your captain's favorite."

  "I'd rather partake vicariously. Better hours." She waited through a moment of silence, then turned, lips brushing his cheek. "That was your cue, dummy."

  He found himself re-sorting the information as he told it to her, ordering his thoughts. She listened quietly and attentively, her muscular body still enfolding him. In the intense yet comfortable silence that followed his account, he could sense her working over the facts.

  "The Palmdale Station covers Littlerock, right?" Tim asked. "You still in touch with Jason Elliott up there?"

  "Now and then. You're thinking as a maybe-former sheriff's deputy, I c
ould get a fuller picture of the sister's suicide investigation?"

  "More than we'll get out of the crime-scene report and a CYA phone conference."

  He switched the tapes--back to the toothbrush through the carotid artery.

  Dray watched, rapt, and made a noise at the back of her throat as if she'd just seen Barry Bonds send one into the Bay. "Impressive. No hesitation."

  "Former military."

  "You know how those boys are." She plucked the remote from Tim's hand and rewound the tape. "Look at that. Not even adrenaline. No anger, no tremor in the hand, nothing."

  "He seems to be a dispassionate guy."

  She paused the video, inadvertently capturing Boss's grotesquely twisted face as he sailed over the rail. "If you buy the veneer. But in the dining hall footage, your boy's working through some material. Here he's not. He doesn't even slow down to take in Boss's reaction to getting stabbed. Doesn't seem personal to me, as far as murders go."

  "That's the problem. No one--not the guards, LaRue, or Freddy--came up with a motive for why Walker would whack Boss."

  "Maybe there isn't one."

  "There must be. If we can find it, we'll at least be on the right trail."

  "Like if you could find out what the mint mouthwash was for?"

  Tim shifted, regarding her across his shoulder.

  She clicked "play," sending Boss to plummet into darkness. "Helluva spectacle, this murder. Blood spraying. Free fall. This wasn't no quick-and-quiet on the catwalk. Remember, Walker's a strategist. He used decoys in his cell. To sidetrack you."

  "So you think he killed Boss to create a diversion?"

  "I think you're looking at this backward. There's no need to pitch the guy three floors just to hear the thud. Boss's murder wasn't the reason Walker decided to escape." Dray pointed at the inmates mobbing the screen. "It created the spectacle that allowed him to escape."

  Tim felt the range of possibilities crank wider, a sensation that was both exhilarating and alarming. "Okay. But we're still stuck with this one: What's a guy that close to the end of his sentence escape for?"