Total Immunity

by Robert Ward

  Jesus, what were Harper, Hidalgo, and Breen into? Some kind of kid smuggling? Christ, if they were, this could be the greatest arrest in Bureau history. Way better than setting them up for the bank robbery.

  Now he got out of his car and sneaked along the wet slats which ran alongside the factory walls.

  He went up to the door, tried it. Of course, it was locked.

  But there was a telephone pole alongside the building. Forrester climbed it quickly and jumped over to the old, sagging roof.

  On top of the roof was an old window with two panes knocked out.

  He crawled up to it, stuck his hands down inside, and opened it in a heartbeat.

  He already had pictures in his mind as he climbed down to the top floor. He’d open a door somewhere and all these sex- slave kids would come pouring out, grateful to be saved from a life of captivity. Jesus, he’d go from being Bureau nerd to hero. (And think of the movie deal, the parties at Spielberg’s and Tarantino’s!)

  It was just a matter of finding them.

  He reached for his revolver and made his way carefully through the old, dusty rooms.

  Meanwhile, a block away, Charlie Breen pulled into an empty space right beside his building.

  And looked at the car that was parked there already, a car which certainly hadn’t been there when he left.

  He took out his keys and grabbed a Mossberg 500 shotgun he had in the backseat. He also grabbed a 14-inch Maxam hunting knife he used for his occasional trips to the mountains.

  Then Charlie walked up to the front door, put the key in the lock, and quietly turned it.

  Downstairs, that’s where the noise had come from. Downstairs. Little voices, whispers. Yes, Forrester thought. This is where they must keep them. Down here. In the filthy cellar.

  He made his way down the steel steps, unable to see in the dark.

  But the whispers were over in the far corner, though they’d stopped now. The poor bastards! They probably thought it was their captors coming back to whip their asses or something worse. Maybe Harper, Hidalgo, and Breen were using the kids as sex slaves.

  “I’m coming, kids,” Forrester thought. “I’ll be there soon.”

  Charlie heard someone going down the steps below him. Christ, who could it be? Not the cops. That made no sense. If they had been tipped off that the kids were here, they’d come with a freaking platoon of guys.

  No, had to be some kind of goof. Maybe another kid, or two kids looking for a place to screw.

  Too bad for them. ’Cause this was the House of No Return. That was for sure.

  You might walk in, but you sure as hell were going to be carried out.

  Forrester wished he’d brought his flashlight.

  He was stumbling over furniture. Making all kinds of noise.

  “Hey,” he finally whispered. “Anyone there?”

  Silence.

  “Seriously, I’m here to help. Anyone there?”

  Another five seconds. Then . . .

  “Over here. Help us.”

  “In the corner. By the boiler.”

  “Okay, I’m coming.” His eyes were getting accustomed to the dark.

  He made his way across the room. Heading for the kids. And now he saw them, tied up to the pipes on an old boiler. Jesus, what the hell was going on?

  He looked down at them . . . dirty, great black bags under their eyes. Half starved. Drugged out.

  What the fuck?

  “Help us. We’re tied up here.”

  He looked at the kid, who somehow seemed familiar.

  He leaned over quickly and started untying the ropes.

  Forrester was pleased with himself. He hadn’t ever untied any ropes in his career before and was scared shitless that he had done it wrong now.

  It proved that the other agents were wrong. He was still an ace of an agent, and he was about to catch some crooked creeps and God knows what the offer would be for the movie and book rights to his story.

  As soon as he got these kids back to a shelter, he was going to call Spielberg and tell him all about his triumph.

  As he trundled along in the dark — he should have brought in his flashlight — shepherding the kids toward the steel steps, he . . . Let’s see . . . Colin Farrell would be good. And maybe — wait! — Clive Owen. He loved Clive. And also Daniel Craig.

  How come all the cool actors were English or Irish guys?

  Of course there was Brad Pitt, but Brad was getting a little old, and Clooney was definitely too old. He’d even let his hair go gray.

  They were almost to the steps when Forrester heard the voice in the dark, somewhere behind him:

  “Going somewhere?”

  The kids jerked as one, as though they were still attached to the same harness. Forrester turned and looked into the darkness. In his hand was his .38.

  “Breen? You’re under arrest. FBI.”

  There was a brief pause, as if both sides were sizing one another up. Suddenly a hunting knife shot through the dark and landed in William Forrester’s chest.

  He made a gurgling sound and fell to the floor.

  The kids screamed and both Kyle and Mike ran for the steps. Charlie Breen walked out of the darkness and aimed his gun at their backs.

  “I think you better come down, boys,” he said.

  But the boys didn’t stop running. He was left with no choice. He cocked his gun, aimed, and then was hit with a tackle from behind which caused his shots to go wild.

  When he looked up, Kevin Harper was on top of him, pounding his face.

  Still holding his pistol, Breen reached up and smashed Kevin in the head. The boy fell off him, blood spurting from his nose.

  Charlie got up slowly, a pain in his back. The little bastard was as bad as his father. Both of Karl’s boys were long gone.

  They could be anywhere out on the docks. If he stayed around and tried to find them, he would be losing valuable time.

  Fuck ’em both. They’d served their purpose. They were only day players in the movie, anyway.

  The important thing was he still had Kevin.

  He reached down and picked the dazed kid up by his shirt. “You come with me, shithead,” he said. “You make one move, you’re dead.”

  They started up the steps, stumbled over the gurgling, dying Forrester, and then went the rest of the way to the car.

  44

  JACK PACED THE FLOOR at his house, which somehow didn’t seem like his house at all now. Without Kevin, it was a cold, barren place. Nowhere to be. But then, without Kevin, every place was that same dead motel.

  The phone rang and Jack’s head jerked back as though someone had lashed his face with a whip.

  “Harper,” he said.

  There was a laugh from the other end of the line.

  “Harper,” Charlie mimicked. “I like that, Jack. Firm, simple, like you were in control. Of course, it’s all bullshit, because we’re in control now, aren’t we, Jackie?”

  “We,” Jack thought. That couldn’t be a good sign. Who the hell was he talking about?

  “Jack? You trying to diss me?”

  “No way,” Jack said. “You’re in control, Charlie. There’s no doubt about it. You have Kevin?”

  “Yes, I do. You know, Jackie, it’s a shame that the coach-and- player aspect of our relationship is finished. Because Kevin was getting quite good at going to the opposite field.”

  “Charlie, is he all right?”

  “Just fine. Asleep right now, Jack.”

  “Charlie, I understand why you want revenge. But Kevin never hurt you. He loves and trusts you.”

  Charlie laughed again.

  “Yeah, just like we trusted you to do the right thing, Jack. But you let that creep Chase kill my son, and then you gave him a whole new life.”

  Jack looked across the room where Oscar was working with the IT agents who were monitoring the call.

  One of them raised his hand, showed two fingers.

  Two more minutes and they’d have triangu
lated Charlie’s location.

  “Listen, Charlie, I know it was wrong. But it was my first assignment. I couldn’t have talked Blakely out of it. I was more like a spectator than —”

  “Bullshit,” Charlie said. “That’s bullshit. You were the best of them, Jack, even then. You could have done something. And afterward you could have made it impossible for Chase to get into Witness Protection, but you didn’t do anything at all.”

  “I couldn’t,” Jack said. “That was the deal.”

  “My son’s life was the fucking deal,” Charlie said. “Now I’m going to tell you the new deal. You’re going to give me Billy Chase. Once my brother has killed him, he’s going to call me and then I’m going to tell you where Kevin is. If you or Oscar or any of your FBI buddies do anything to stop me, I’ll slit Kevin’s throat.”

  “Charlie, wait!” Jack said.

  “And don’t think you can stop my brother and make him lie to me. He won’t give in, Jack. I’ll expect the call by seven in the morning. You understand?”

  Jack looked over at the agent, who shook his head.

  “Yeah, sure, Charlie . . .”

  He hung up.

  “You get him?”

  “No,” the agent said. “General area. He’s near the marina somewhere.”

  “The marina?” Jack said. “Jesus! He’s got a boat out there. Let’s get a helicopter out there now. And alert the Coast Guard.”

  But even as he said it, Jack felt that it was no use. Charlie wouldn’t be dumb enough to use his own boat.

  No, there was some kind of little trick he was playing, to make it sound as though he were in the Marina Del Rey. There were a million little tricks you could play with phones. Jack knew because he had used them all. You could route the phone through an operator at the marina and be standing in Los Feliz, if you knew the game, and clearly Charlie knew all about it. Still, they had to give the marina a shot.

  Jack slumped onto the couch next to Julie, who grasped his hand.

  “Baby,” she said. “I’m so sorry. But I know we’re going to get Kevin back.”

  “Of course we are,” Jack said.

  He smiled at her and turned away; he was right on the edge of madness. And nothing could be done about it until they saved his son.

  45

  THE DAY WAS DARK and wet as it usually is in Portland, Oregon. The rain came down in cold sheets, but it didn’t seem to bother the small, furtive-looking man who walked alone by Eagle Creek in Benson State Park.

  He wore a Trailblazers sweatshirt and, like most Portlanders, seemed to be impervious to the weather.

  Only a rookie to the rainy, brooding countryside would wear a raincoat or carry an umbrella. And this man was not a rookie.

  He’d lived in Portland for many years and could barely remember the earlier part of his life, the one in which he’d robbed banks with Adam Moore. He knew that some people might find it exciting, but to Eddie Larsen of Portland, Billy Chase barely existed anymore.

  After all, wasn’t that what the West was all about? Starting over, rebirthing yourself as the guys in AA (of which he’d been a member for twenty-five years now) called it.

  Sure, that was it. Of course it was.

  You made mistakes, and you moved on and learned from them and became a different person. A person with a kid, a lovely daughter named Rose, and a great wife, Martha, and you didn’t spend your time looking back.

  What was the profit in that?

  He walked faster now, hoping, praying that the Feds were around him, protecting him.

  Christ, he didn’t want to die at the hands of a madman!

  He’d worked so hard to break his old dope habits, wanted to stay healthy so he could see his daughter grow up and get married and maybe even have grandchildren.

  Had to keep healthy.

  Never even thought about the past until they came and told him that it was coming after him.

  It was so unfair. He might get a bullet in his head or the lunatic from L.A. (and how he hated L.A. now that he was a good Portlander, with his sustainable garden and windmill-powered house. All those L.A. phonies with their emphasis on materialism. Ugh, how had he ever stood living there all those years?).

  Where the fuck was he? Oh, yeah, the unfairness of it. Jesus, the loony might jump on his back from an overhanging tree that the Feds missed and stab him in the throat.

  And for something he didn’t even do!

  Was it his fault that Billy Chase, the drug addict, held up a store and that a kid fell and hurt his head and died?

  Well, yeah, technically, but couldn’t anyone who wasn’t a fucking lunatic see it was an accident? A freak thing?

  Well, come on. Of course they could. They could even see that he, Billy Chase, was a victim himself. Wasn’t he? Yeah, a victim of . . . the Mafia who sold drugs to kids, which was what he was when all this shit happened about ten million years ago. Anyone with half a social conscience could see that.

  Anyone except this freakin’ fanatic, this Roy Ayres. This guy couldn’t get over it. What was his problem? Was he too sensitive or something?

  Hell, couldn’t Ayres see it was another guy who had killed his kid? No, that was wrong — not even killed him, just scared him.

  Maybe that was what was wrong. Ayres and his family were just too fucking sensitive.

  The sensitive little family.

  Whining about his lost son all his life. Christ, people in other countries lose kids every day. How about Iraq? Lots of Iraq kids die in car bombings and shit every day, and do their parents walk around obsessing about it all the time? No, they get on with their lives. But he has to kill an overly sensitive guy’s kid. Jesus!

  The sensitive guy with the sensitive gun.

  Couldn’t anyone see how he’d changed? What a great guy he was now?

  Fuck, couldn’t Mr. Sensitive just have another kid? What the fuck was wrong with him anyway? You have a dick; stick it in another woman and presto, new baby! No . . . no . . . It was the L.A. thing, the sense of entitlement. They said the kid was a genius; that was why the guy couldn’t get over losing him. But come on, everybody in fucking L.A. thought their kids were fucking geniuses. The assholes had Mr. Workingman, Bruce Springsteen, play at their school fund-raisers so the kids would grow up thinking they could be great, too, and their trendy parents made them do fucking calculus problems when they were one year old. And what did they grow up to be? Hack movie makers who did dumb horror films, or else they turned into lame reality-TV producers named Barry and Mel. Not geniuses at all, but hustlers who sold cheap dogshit movies and didn’t even care about global warming!

  Like Eddie did.

  He worried about it every day, and just because he’d had a little accident a few years ago, he might die here. And leave his daughter, who was a genius and was being raised right . . .

  He sure hoped the Feds were out there somewhere. Jesus, he felt like he might piss himself. Oh, man . . .

  Walk faster, breathe in and out.

  The world just wasn’t fair. That was it.

  He wondered if, when he died, he’d see the kid he maybe killed pointing at him and teasing him as he was sent via bullet train to hell.

  Terry Ayres was dressed in a black hoodie and dark vinyl track pants. He waited next to a huge evergreen tree, though he didn’t know the tree’s name. Terry didn’t know the name of any trees or plants. To him they were blotches of light and leaves, and bark. Names were too hard.

  He spent most of his life watching movies and television and lived in a cloudy blur of action plots and tenth-rate sitcom dialogue. Random speeches bisected his thick skull, speeches from terrible, shitty sitcoms. He heard floating voices say, “Your mother’s coming for the weekend. Oh, noooo! Hide the good jewelry.” He didn’t know where he’d heard this speech. Or what the original context was. In fact he wasn’t big on “context” at all. It was just an isolated speech from some show he’d barely been conscious he was watching. Other speeches flew through his head, too.
“Oh, no, it’s fat Albert” was one he heard again and again. And “Get your mother-in-law out of here right now and don’t twitch your nose, you cunt.” He didn’t know if that last one was real or he’d rewritten it.

  Really, Terry thought sometimes, when he had brief moments of actual consciousness, there was no real Terry. He didn’t exist. Not like other people, with a solid sense of . . . what did they call it? . . . “self.” Nah, he was more like a cloud than a person.

  The thought made him laugh, which was not what he was supposed to do. Not out here in the rain. Not out here on this little hill looking down at the man in the sweatshirt with the Blazers written on it.

  Terry wondered if the Blazers would be good this year.

  Or if they would all get put in jail again.

  The Portland Jailbreakers. Ha ha.

  He shouldn’t be thinking of that either.

  He wished Roy was here with him. He liked to do things with Roy because Roy made him feel secure and happy. And competent.

  Roy, for example, would know the names of the trees and would know exactly when was the best time to kill this shit- head who himself killed Roy’s son, Jimmy, who was going to put Terry in pictures.

  It was true, Terry thought. He already had a movie picked out called The Scar, and Terry was going to play this heroic cop who gets a scar and then turns bad because prejudiced people laugh at him but then who gets some kind of redemption at the end and saves a kid. Or the world. One of them. Terry liked the world better than the kid. But Jimmy had told him the world might be too hard on their budget for the movie, which was two hundred grand.

  Still, either way, it sounded great to Terry, who had even tried reading the script but gave up two pages in. Print on a page was like angry bees buzzing in his head. He was a Valley guy who liked to look at pictures, and hear people make statements about how they’d found their true calling. How they redeemed their lost lives.

  Terry was a Redemption Junkie.

  Stuff you saw on Oprah.

  He’d found his, that was for sure. Doing jobs like this for his bro.

  Thing is, Roy knew how to use him. And this was the way! Like in a movie. He was the action hero, like Arnie before he became Senator . . . or was it Governor? Yeah, Governor.