by Robert Ward
No, if Slick Tommy was going somewhere, it had to be an airport or a train station.
But LAX was in the opposite direction, and he’d passed right by the exit for Union Station.
So where was he headed?
To get money?
To see someone who could help smuggle him out of the country tonight?
Yeah, that made sense, but who might that person be?
Tommy Wilson walked up the termite-eaten steps of the Mark Twain Hotel. At the top floor there was another guard, this one an agent he knew: David Snyder, a man with a square head and an even squarer jaw.
“Tommy,” Snyder said. “You want to see your boy?”
“Mmmmm-hmmm,” Wilson said.
Snyder walked down the hall with him. At the end of the hall, something went squeaking across the floor.
“Rats,” Snyder said. “Fitting, huh? We babysit a rat, and the other ones come by to pay their respects.”
Tommy faked a laugh as Snyder rapped three times on the door, two longs and a short.
In a few seconds, the door opened, and Tommy was staring at Homeland Security Agent Booth Staller. Booth was a thin man with an even thinner rug on his head. The hair looked lifeless, like a couple of strands of damp vermicelli.
“Young Tom,” Booth said.
“Boother,” Tommy said, in what he hoped sounded like a col- legial tone.
He looked across the room and saw a portable card table, and on it chips, playing cards, and Cokes.
At the table sat another agent, Lenny Carbon, a thin, sickly- looking agent who took endless medicines and cold remedies.
He waved in a depressed way and quickly took three green pills which were sitting out in a row next to his poker hand.
Steinbach sat at the end of the table facing Wilson. He looked rumpled, tired, and harried.
“Agent Thomas Wilson,” he said. “What a rare pleasure to see you, sir.”
“You ready to come through on your promises, Steinbach?”
Steinbach’s face took on a quizzical look, as if to say, “But this wasn’t the deal at all, Tom.”
Still, he smiled and tried to assume an affable tone.
“Of course,” he said. “Ready to go.”
“I don’t get it,” Lenny Carbon said. “We’re not supposed to meet with those guys until tomorrow.”
“Yes, I know,” Wilson said. “But there’s been a slight change of plans. The Muslims want to go today. And they insisted that just Karl and I show up.”
Now it was Booth Staller’s turn to look doubtful.
“I’ve had no indications that this is so,” he said. “No calls, no text messages, and no e-mails.”
“Right,” Tommy Wilson said. “That’s how we decided to go with it. There’s been some concern about the other side intercepting our messages. This is why I came to tell you the old- fashioned way — in person. The truth is, I’ve got to take Karl out right now. The meet is going to be at Musso’s in two hours, and we need to rehearse what we’re going to say.”
“Take him where?” Lenny Carbon said, scratching his head.
“On a walk,” Tommy Wilson said. “On a stroll around Old Hollywood, up and down the boulevard of broken dreams.”
Carbon looked at Staller, and both of them frowned.
“No fucking way,” Staller said. “Not unless we get it from HQ.”
“But I’ve come from HQ,” Wilson said. “Straight from the horse’s ass.”
“Maybe so,” Carbon said. “But maybe not, too, Tom. This smells like old fish to me.”
“That’s good,” Tommy said. “Tell you what? You make the call to HQ and see for yourself, okay?”
Carbon looked at Staller doubtfully, but took out his cell phone and began to punch in numbers.
“It’s not that we don’t believe you, Tom,” Staller said. “But you’d think that the powers that be would have let us in on this little change of plans, ya know?”
“That is certainly true, Booth-baby,” Tommy Wilson said, taking out his SIG Sauer automatic and shooting Staller in the forehead. Staller flew backward over a chair and ended up draped over the end of an old couch on the other side of the room.
Lenny Carbon dropped the phone and reached for his gun, but Karl Steinbach kicked his chair out from under him and he fell on his side. He got up quickly but not quite quickly enough, as Tommy Wilson shot him in the head as well.
He fell over on his side, blood pooling around his neck.
“Cry for help,” Wilson said. “Loud.”
Steinbach did as he was told and sent out a mighty yowl of pain.
“Help me!” he cried.
Tommy shook his head, but situated himself behind the door. He heard feet running toward the door, then a question:
“What’s happening in there?” hissed David Snyder.
“They’re all dead!” Steinbach answered.
“All of them?” Snyder said.
“Except me. They went crazy and shot each other. And I’m wounded.”
Tommy heard the key put into the door.
The door opened and Snyder came in, training his gun on Steinbach, who sat in the middle of the room, cradling Lenny Carbon’s bloody head in his hands.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Snyder swore.
Then he noticed movement just behind him and turned. That was when Wilson shot him in the head.
He fell down to his knees, but his gun went off reflexively and a bullet landed in Tommy Wilson’s left pec.
Tommy had spent years lifting weights to make himself have a washboard stomach and perfect pecs, and his first reaction to the terrible pain of the bullet was to think how lame he’d look in a bathing suit down at Muscle Beach this year. On the other hand, a bullet hole in his pec might draw some admiring glances from blond beach bunnies.
All of these vain thoughts took about three seconds. Suddenly Tommy was hit with a killer burning in the chest. It was as though someone had drilled a hole in him with a power drill, and for the first time he understood the term “drilling someone with a bullet.” It was just like that . . .
He fell to one knee and gasped for breath.
When he looked up, he saw Karl Steinbach standing over him.
“The little fuck got me, Karl. Help me!”
Karl looked down at him and smiled curiously.
“What would you like me to do, Tommy? I mean, this is all so sudden!”
“I would like you to . . . help me up, get me out of here, then we go down to my car . . . and get to your private airplane. Then we fly the fuck out of here to South America, or wherever you can hide me.”
At that moment, they heard feet running down the hallway.
“The outside guard, Karl,” Tommy said.
The guard stopped, and they could hear him creeping forward to the room.
Karl almost started to laugh.
“Help, I’ve been shot,” he said in a choked-up voice.
The guard came into the room, and Karl shot him in the stomach and then the face.
The guard fell back out into the hallway. Karl reached out and pulled him inside by his feet.
“The cops are going to be here real soon,” Karl said to Tommy Wilson. “I don’t think the two of us can make it. One person running, maybe . . . but two, one of them leaking blood like a bread-crumb trail . . . I don’t think so.”
“You’re not thinking of leaving me, Karl,” Tommy said. “Not with what I know.”
Karl smiled, aimed his gun at Tommy. Tommy swiftly came up with his right hand and aimed as well, but then blushed as he realized he’d dropped his gun but had been too stunned to notice.
“Too bad you can’t shoot anyone with your fingers,” Karl laughed.
“I can help you,” Tommy said.
“You are helping me,” Karl said, and shot Tommy Wilson through the throat.
Tommy fell backward, then on his side like a twisted modern sculpture, blood gurgling from his neck wound like hot tomato soup on a cold winte
r’s day.
Karl knelt down and riffled through Tommy’s pockets. In a second he’d found his car keys, and a second later, his money clip. There was $200 in twenties and he took them, but left the clip. Then he stood up, looked around at the carnage for a second, stepped out into the hallway, closed the door, and ran toward the back exit, fast.
Jack had come down Sunset slowly. He’d had to make three calls before he’d been able to call in a favor and find out where the Homeland Security boys were stashing Karl Steinbach. When he heard the words “Mark Twain Hotel,” he knew at once that was where Tommy was headed. Probably to grab Karl and head out to his airplane at the secret airport in Reseda.
What better bet? Then he’d have access to Karl’s entire sup- port group, could get himself a new passport, a new pile of cash, new clothes; Christ, even a new head if he wanted to.
Karl had everything Tommy needed. They’d probably both be armed and dangerous.
Except there was only one of them.
Jesus, he couldn’t believe his luck!
He’d just pulled up past the Hollywood YMCA, was stuck behind a freaking Hummer with about twenty rappers inside of it playing their moronic music at decibel levels previously unknown to mankind, when he saw Karl Steinbach racing out of the side alley behind the Mark Twain Hotel, a revolver in his hand.
Steinbach ran up the street toward a car, opened it, and got in on the driver’s side. For a second, Jack thought he was waiting for Tommy to come out as well, but there was no Tommy, and now the car was pulling out, headed up to Hollywood Boulevard.
Jack hit his horn, but the Hummer just stood there blocking the middle of the street.
He started to get out of the car when the driver of the Hummer, a huge black kid, got out first and walked back to Jack.
He looked in the window, a huge, beefy face with spaced-out Dawn of the Dead eyes.
He then rapped hard enough on the window to shake the car.
Jack opened it, and the massive rap fan stuck his face in the window.
“You got a beef with me, muthafucker?” the big man said.
“Absolutely not,” Jack said. Then he whacked the man on the end of his nose with his gun butt.
The man howled and fell backward on the street. His nose was bleeding, and his dead eyes watering.
Two other men got out of the car. Their bodies were also huge and beefy, their clothes black, and Jack had the weird feeling that they were all one organism, just chopped into humongous steaks and then clothed with tents.
He flashed his badge and aimed his gun at the Hummer’s tires.
“Three seconds,” he announced. “That’s how much time you got to get that freaking tank around the corner. Then I start shooting.”
The two Beastie Guys leaped into the Hummer and quickly moved it out of the way.
Jack looked at the fat man, got back into his car, and roared up Schraeder toward Hollywood Boulevard.
He turned right at Hollywood and saw Steinbach roaring down the boulevard, passing cars on the wrong side of the street. When he got to Cahuenga, he made an impossible left turn and headed north.
Jack followed him, almost hitting a guy dressed like Spider- Man who was having his picture taken with two young girls.
The guy screamed at him and gave him the finger.
“Cocksucker!” the kid yelled. “Spider-Man hates you!”
Jack drove off the curb, back onto the street, and hit a yellow light at Cahuenga. He sped through it, his tires screaming as he followed Steinbach up past the Yo Yo Korean Doughnut Shop and Solarz’s Red Noodle Heaven.
Steinbach was caught in the on-ramp at the 101 Freeway. The car in front of him was a roach coach called Pepe’s Taco World. It had colorful Day of the Dead mannequins all over it, skeletons eating tacos and smiling with huge, dead-men’s teeth.
The light said one car per green, and the Taco World driver was taking the light literally.
“Fucking moron Mexican asshole,” Steinbach said. “Move, you asshole!”
The Mexican man stuck his head out the window, and yelled, “Eat shit, gringo fuckface!”
Steinbach reached for his gun. To be held back by a chubby Mexican in his death trap made him sick to his stomach. He could only imagine the roaches crawling over the three-day-old goat meat.
He thought briefly about shooting at the Mexican, but that would attract attention. Anyway, now the guy was pulling out into the traffic and giving him the finger again in the rearview.
Fifteen seconds later, Jack pulled up to the same on-ramp stoplight and completely ignored it, jammed the car into second gear, and careered crazily into the northbound 101 traffic.
He could see — anyway, he thought he could see — Steinbach up ahead of him, zigzagging through the afternoon traffic, almost hitting several other cars and causing pandemonium as he switched lanes maniacally.
Jack started after him, but after successfully maneuvering his way between two cars, he found himself stuck behind a school bus filled with raving rich kids from Harvard Westlake. They looked out the window and gave him the finger, while one boy mooned him and looked at him with his tongue out between his legs.
Jack crept along, unable to see around them.
Five miles up the road from the on-ramp is the Bruce T. Hinman Exchange. As Jack watched up ahead, he saw Steinbach bounce off a red Corvette and then bear left at the “Bruce,” which is what police officers called it. That meant he was going for the 170, heading west.
Suddenly he had another idea. The name Bruce T. Hinman had dislodged something in his foggy brain. Hinman had helped him in something a long time ago. He was sure of it. The name had stuck in his memory. Bruce T. Hinman, a Valley motorcycle cop who had been killed chasing a drunken driver. Yeah, Jack remembered it all now. He’d even gone to Hinman’s funeral. He knew him for sure . . . but how?
He turned left, got into the outside lane, and nearly ran into the concrete wall which divided the 101.
He saw Steinbach move up, then get cut off as he tried to get over to the left lane.
Jack stomped on the gas and cut over to the middle lane.
Bruce T. Hinman was rolling around in his mind.
Now he remembered. The Valley bank robberies. He and Hinman had run down one of the robbers.
He remembered it now.
The Adam Moore case. And there was the name he’d thought about at the play again — the little hustler Billy Chase.
He blinked, felt a panic, thought suddenly of Kevin, his son. He imagined someone stepping out of a shadow, shooting Kevin in the head.
“Bullshit,” he told himself. “That’s just fear talking.”
And yet he couldn’t get it out of his head.
Bruce T. Hinman, the officer who helped run down Chase.
Awww, Jesus, he couldn’t believe it.
He saw it all in his head now.
The bank robberies, seven in a row in the Valley alone, and everyone knew it was Moore.
But how to get him? You couldn’t get undercover, not with Moore. He used only guys he’d been tight with for fifteen or twenty years.
How to deal with him?
Jack looked out the window and realized that he’d almost lost sight of Steinbach. He had to get his shit together.
He saw Steinbach’s car head to the far left, and for the first time, there was an empty stretch of cars between them.
Jack smiled.
Now he’d be able to take him. No trouble.
He gunned his car and, as the speedometer topped 125, he narrowed the distance between them.
He saw the next exit up ahead. Sherman Way.
Steinbach was going to try to take it, but Jack knew that he was moving much too fast. The turn there was a half circle, and steep . . .
Steinbach cursed himself for taking the 170. All the traffic on the 101 was his friend. He could keep a good line of cars between himself and Harper.
But once they went past the interchange . . . the traffic headed out to
the West Valley disappeared. Eighty percent of it went to the right, out to the 101.
Yes, he could go faster on the 170, but unfortunately so could Jack.
And now the crazy bastard was gaining on him. God knew what he would do to him once he caught him.
He had to get off the freeway and onto Sherman Way, where the traffic would be heavy enough to get him lost again. Eventually he could take a side street, hide in the approaching dark, and make his escape.
It all depended on making this turn. If he could pull it off , he’d leave Agent Jack Harper far behind.
He hit the brakes and turned the car right, onto the approach road to Sherman Way Boulevard.
Jack watched Steinbach turn Tommy Wilson’s Crown Vic right, onto the approach road.
He saw the car hit the turn at what must have been 100 miles per hour.
At first it looked as though he was going to make it. The car went up the ramp smoothly enough.
But then came the turn, a forty-degree angle and an upgrade which it just couldn’t make.
Jack throttled down and watched in horror as Steinbach’s car launched off the approach road and sailed through the air like a guided missile.
Only it was a guided missile that had turned sideways and that had never quite made it into full liftoff mode.
Instead, the car sailed over the rooftop of a warehouse which bore the words not to public on it, and then disappeared from Jack’s view.
But not from his ears.
Jack heard a tremendous crash and saw a flash of light come from the other side of the warehouse.
As Jack made it around the cloverleaf, he could barely believe his own eyes.
There in front of him was an In and Out Burger Restaurant on fire, with people screaming and racing to their cars.
In the window of the In and Out was Karl Steinbach’s getaway car, the hood inside the restaurant, nose down, like a fallen rocket ship.
The rest of the car was outside the restaurant, part of the trunk and back wheels resting on the hoods of two other cars parked outside while their owners went in for a burger and fries.
In the background, Jack could already hear the fire alarms and the sirens blasting.
Jack parked a half block away and started running toward the disaster. People were screaming. A woman walked away dazed, blood running down her face. A man crawled over what at first looked like frozen cigarettes to Jack. But upon closer inspection he realized they were piles of uncooked French fries. Jack made his way around the cars, over a field of broken glass, and climbed through the shattered window.
