City of the Sun fb-1

by David Levien

  Paul glanced at the lock, which looked as if it had undergone acupuncture, with several thin metal tools protruding. Behr had his hand on a short, corkscrewed piece of metal, holding it in place.

  Toombakis opened his bag, drew out a few pump-ratchet bit drivers of different sizes and several tiny two-ended alligator clamps connected by red wire, which he draped over his neck like a tailor ’ s measuring tape. He handed Paul his bag, which was surprisingly heavy.

  “Keep this close to me,” he instructed, then nodded to Behr.

  “If we need to head for the car, do it fast but don ’ t run,” Behr instructed, then turned back to the knob. He snapped down with the hand that held the tool, causing a clicking noise in the lock and a grimace to cross Behr ’ s face. It was his bad arm. He turned the knob with his other hand. The door opened and they stepped inside.

  The house felt vacant around them, the only sounds that of their shoes on the tile floor and the high-pitched beeping of the alarm ’ s warning signal. Toombakis approached the panel. His hands moved like rising doves as he tried several sizes of bit drivers on the screws holding it in place. He dropped the drivers that didn ’ t fit onto the floor with a clatter. When he found the right one, he pumped hard and popped off the alarm plate within seconds.

  Paul bent and collected the discarded bit drivers, glancing up to see exposed wires behind the panel. The alarm ’ s beeping sounded increasingly insistent with the panel off, but he wondered whether it was his imagination. Toombakis worked, clamping off wires, to restore the alarm ’ s circuit. The time seemed to be growing extremely long, well over half a minute, and Paul braced himself for the alarm ’ s scream when Toombakis placed a last clip, raised his hands like a rodeo roper after tying off a calf, and stepped back in a new, complete silence. He gingerly tipped the hanging panel out of the way so they could see the light was now a steady green.

  “Take care of the panel, then let yourself out. And thanks,” Behr said, offering a hand to Toombakis, who nodded. “You can forget about that thing,” Behr added.

  The statement seemed to brighten Toombakis ’ s dark eyes a bit. “Don ’ t worry, I won ’ t forget that other thing,” he said.

  Behr nodded and said to Paul, “Come on.”

  “Are you going to try and open it?” Paul asked.

  They had moved slowly about the house, through rooms that were furnished well if sparsely. Couches were dark leather, the rugs and walls of standard solid colors. The home was conscientiously decorated, but by a man. The living room was dominated by a big-screen television, DVD player, and stereo all rigged up with surround sound. They looked briefly through Riggi ’ s music and movie collection. It was mundane, certainly not depraved, and consisted largely of classic rock: Seger, the Who, the Stones, and up through Guns N ’ Roses. The films were mostly dramas: The Godfather series, Scarface, Wall Street, and everything by Tarantino.

  “It ’ s not a real safe,” Behr said as they stared at the wall safe, hidden behind some dress shirts on hangers that they ’ d pushed aside.

  “No?” Paul asked. They were in the main bedroom closet, a huge, neatly made California king bed visible in the room beyond the doorway.

  “It ’ s real, but it ’ s not for actual valuables, know what I mean? A guy like this, careful, puts a safe in the master closet? I don ’ t think so. That ’ s the first place anybody looks.” It was true, it was the first place they had looked upon entering the bedroom.

  Behr tried the handle. “Just for good measure,” he said. The safe didn ’ t open. “Cheap box like this, burglars just rip it out of the wall, take it home and work on it there.” He straightened the shirts to their original positions. They moved through the bedroom and master bath and a few guest bedrooms; one held old furniture, stereo equipment, and golf clubs, the others just beds.

  “Let ’ s go downstairs and check the study,” Behr said. As they moved down the stairs, they heard the sound of a door opening. Paul froze, his heart rate jumping by a hundred beats. “Toombakis,” Behr said in reminder. They heard the door shut. Paul nodded and they continued on.

  The study walls were covered by bookshelves that held mostly nonfiction bestsellers and a few coffee table — size histories of European car manufacturers: Mercedes, Porsche, and Maserati. A blotter covered with indeterminate notes, dates, and phone numbers topped the dark wooden desk. There was another television, VCR, and DVD player in a cabinet. There were prints of African animals framed on the wall that didn ’ t hold bookshelves: an elephant, zebras watering, and a lion on a kill. Behr sat for a while behind the desk in a new-looking burgundy leather chair, then began going through the drawers.

  He pulled out a ledger-size checkbook and opened it on the desk. It showed a healthy mid-five-figure balance. He combed through other drawers and came up with statements from a few brokerage firms. Behr held them up for Paul to see; they showed low to middling six-figure balances.

  “He ’ s doing real well,” Behr muttered to himself.

  Paul checked out the titles in the bookshelves while Behr replaced the documents and leaned back in the chair. He glanced over his shoulder at the window and a look of puzzlement came over his face. He looked at a wall holding bookshelves, then the door. He stood and moved around the room, trying to assess its dimensions. He left the room, peeked around in the living room, and then reappeared in the study, his brow knit in thought.

  “What?” Paul wondered.

  “This room.”

  “What about it?”

  “It ’ s too small. Look.” Behr pointed to the window and then the bookshelves. “This is the side of the house, right? The living room shares a common wall, so it should end here.”

  “The bookshelves are built-ins,” Paul said, not quite understanding the layout in his mind but feeling the thread of the thing and urging his brain to catch up.

  “But they ’ re not that deep,” Behr said.

  “Yeah. They should end there, not here,” Paul said, pointing to a space beyond the shelves. “Could it…?” His question hung in the air as he was unable to fully ask it.

  “I’ve seen this before,” Behr said, facing the bookshelves and pulling on them. Nothing happened. He pushed on the front of the woodwork as well. Still nothing. He pushed harder, throwing his shoulder into it, and there was a click. Behr stepped back, pulling the front of the bookshelves again, but this time they hinged out and swung free. Behr and Paul looked at each other. There was a space between the bookshelves and the outer wall of the house, perhaps two feet deep, and in it a series of three two-drawer file cabinets.

  Behr crouched, Paul fell in next to him, and they tried the drawers, which were locked.

  “Can you pick them?” Paul asked.

  “Fuck that,” Behr said, pulling out a Leatherman tool and selecting a blunt blade. He jammed it into the crack between drawer and cabinet and pried. The drawer came open with a pop.

  Behr pulled folders out of the drawer and began thumbing through the papers inside. Paul moved in close to read over Behr ’ s shoulder, trying not to block the light. The documents were both handwritten and typed and consisted mostly of columns of initials and numbers. There was a clear pattern to it, which Paul struggled to make sense of.

  “It looks like records.”

  “Yeah, I have ’ em as records, too. It ’ s written in some basic code.” Behr jiggled a few of the other cabinets. “Maybe there ’ s a key to it in one of these drawers.” The drawers were still locked and Behr must not have wanted to waste time with them. Instead they turned the pages and began to intuit the system.

  “These have got to be initials,” Paul said, and Behr nodded.

  “Dates,” Behr offered, and it seemed to make sense.

  “And these?” Paul wondered, a sick feeling coming to his stomach.

  “That ’ s the money,” Behr said in a low voice, just a shade from completely sure. “Two-part payments. The lower numbers look like some kind of monthly accounting.”

  They sift
ed through a few more folders when Paul fell back a few steps.

  “Oh, god,” he uttered.

  “What ’ s wrong?” Behr asked.

  “Bottom of the page,” Paul said. The letters “JG” were there, in lowercase. Behr glanced at it, then back at him, a current of knowing and confirmation flowing between them. That ’ s when they heard the garage door open.

  Riggi inspected the alarm panel and saw a few slight gouges in the plastic near the screws holding it in place. He did his best to remember whether they had always been there or not. Then he recognized a difference in the usual energy of his house. He felt a presence, a stirring within it, and realized someone was there. A feeling of indignation welled deep within him, a black territorial violence, and he headed deeper into the house. He heard a footstep, a depression of weight on a floorboard coming from the study, and went toward it. I ’ m gonna crack whoever ’ s in my place went through his head. He moved through the kitchen, glancing toward the knife block and considering whether to take one. His gun was in the safe upstairs. If he faced an armed man or men, the knife wouldn ’ t do him a damned bit of good. He decided he ’ d take them barehanded.

  He passed through the other side of the kitchen and moved into the foyer and saw them. Two figures, one good-sized, the other even larger, emerged from the darkened hall and were silhouetted in the doorframe. He knew who they were right away, and their presence froze his blood.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he snapped, hoping the anger masked his fear.

  “Just so you know, we knocked and the door pushed open, so we entered,” Behr, the investigator, said.

  “Bullshit,” Riggi practically shouted. He could see down the hall that the bookshelves in his study were swung out from the wall. The quiet partner stood behind Behr, one hand balled into a fist, the other clenching one of his folders. A wave of panic hit Riggi low in the gut, and he fought a sudden dizziness.

  “Time to talk, Riggi.”

  “You sick son of a bitch.” The quiet one finally spoke, his words a snarl coming from deep in his throat. The man stepped around his partner toward him.

  Riggi began backing away toward the kitchen. “I ’ m calling the cops,” he said, his last word hanging in the air over the sound of his feet scuffing over the floor as he turned and ran.

  He flew through the door into the garage and slid into his car. He barked the tires against the painted garage floor and chunked the car into gear, ripping out of his driveway. He turned right onto the street, made another right at the corner, checked his rearview, and saw them running across a lawn after him. He glanced back at the road in time to miss a gardener ’ s truck that was double-parked by a neighbor ’ s. He sped onto Bayhill Drive. He had no idea where he was going.

  The way to catch somebody, Behr reminded himself, is to stay calm and remain objective. It went for running down evidence, same as it did for a car chase, and while breaking into Riggi ’ s house might have showed judgment affected by emotion, he was determined not to let it interfere now. They ran across the lawn toward the car, Paul clutching a folder. It would have been better to leave it behind, but there was no time to go back and return it. They couldn ’ t afford to wait for Riggi to go lawyer up and use the cops against them. When they got in and he turned the engine over, Behr spent the extra five seconds it took to buckle his seat belt.

  “Put it on,” he instructed Paul, not waiting for him to do so. His injured arm throbbed as he spun the wheel and gave chase down Heatherstone.

  Behr kept his car up well and the automatic transmission shifted smoothly, pressing their backs against the seats. He could see Riggi up ahead, maybe six hundred yards away, just making the turn onto Bayhill. The important thing when chasing someone in a car is to drive faster than he or she does on the straights, and for longer, then brake harder going into the turns in order to take them at the same speed. Behr had learned and practiced the technique in weekend driving courses over the past decade of his life. He was driving with both feet now, left on the brake, right on the accelerator, so he could keep up his RPMs even as he was finishing braking on the turns. The net result was a gain of two hundred yards on Riggi ’ s car. They were on the same block now. Behr cut his eyes left and right as he crossed an intersection, as much looking for oncoming cars as for police on patrol. If the cops got involved, it would be trouble. There was no good way to explain what they were doing and it could result in an arrest. He didn ’ t look forward to it for himself, and it would kill what was left of his reputation in the business if Paul was brought in, too. He looked over at his passenger. Paul was sunk low into his seat, one hand gripping the armrest on the door, the other braced against the dash. He didn ’ t utter a sound, nor did he look frightened. He peered out the windshield with the intent eyes of a hunter. Riggi ’ s car went loose on the next corner, the rear end swinging wide as he took the turn.

  Riggi did not know what a thirty-second lead meant in a car chase. He thought it ’ d be enough time to turn a few corners and leave them completely behind. Moments later he saw he was wrong — a maroon Olds filled his mirrors.

  “Damnit,” he said, slapping the wheel and mashing the pedal, asking the Cutlass for speed. The car was a beast on straight shots. The thing quartered in some ridiculous time — fourteen or fifteen seconds flat — but corners weren ’ t the American car ’ s strength. He made several turns as fast as he could, glancing back to see Behr ’ s Olds getting closer, looming larger after each one. He tried to think of where to go. He could head for his attorney ’ s office, but it was a good half hour away even at this speed. His thoughts narrowed, as did his vision, and he was unable to think ahead. Destinations left his mind, as did any plan, as did a good choice of route, as did the next turn, and everything else but the blacktop streaking underneath his tires.

  The back end swung out going around the corner onto Hazel Dell Parkway. Riggi oversteered in correction and swept the side of a parked Explorer. It changed the angle of the front end and sent him up over a high curb. He felt the front tires blow as he hit the curb, then the car got air and began a yawning roll. White sky filled the front windshield. I ’ m going passed through his mind, and then there was brown tree and green grass. The caustic smell of radiator fluid filled his world. The sound of crushing metal and glass seemed to catch up a moment later and washed over him. Then there was blackness.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Behr pulled over and left his car idling. Paul was a step behind him as they crossed to Riggi ’ s wrecked vehicle. The car was upside down, dripping colored liquids, the tires slowly spinning down. A broken and bloodied Riggi lay half out of the driver ’ s-side window, the steering wheel lodged in his midsection. The windshield was blown out. From the looks of things, Riggi hadn ’ t been wearing a seat belt and his head had done that work. Drivers began to pull over and gawk at the carnage. Behr took out his cell phone and dialed 911, wondering if Riggi was dead already, when he began to stir. Behr asked for an ambulance and gave the address, then shut off his phone just as Riggi ’ s eyes opened and rolled around a little, struggling for focus. Then his right hand reached out across the torn-up grass. Behr tracked what he was going for, but Paul saw it first: a crucifix attached to a rosary that had been flung free of the wreck. Paul kneeled and picked up the beads, clenching them in his fist out of Riggi ’ s reach.

  It was clear the man was dying, and Behr girded himself for what he had to do. He squatted close to the man ’ s bloody face.

  “You use the medical offices in your centers to target kids?” he asked.

  Riggi shook his head weakly from side to side.

  “What do you do with them?” Behr asked, insistent.

  Bad. I know it. I ’ m dying. Things were broken and winding down deep inside of him. His thoughts were disconnected from his words. He didn ’ t feel he could work his mouth. If only he could ’ ve reached his rosary, perhaps he wouldn ’ t pass on to damnation. He looked up at the quiet one, who held them, and mouthed the word
s, “Who are you?” No answer came, and he wondered if he ’ d spoken at all.

  Light clouds moved across a pale sky. Blades of grass near his face stirred in a faint breeze. His mind drifted to Ramon Ponceterra, to the recent and future orders that would remain unfilled. He was slapped across the face a few times and he felt himself returning once again.

  “Do you kill them when you ’ re done with them?” the big one asked, breathing old coffee in his face.

  No answer came from Riggi, just shallow breathing.

  “C ’ mon, it ’ s over for you. Give,” Behr said, demanding information even though it caused his stomach to churn.

  “They ’ re gone,” Riggi rasped.

  For some reason Behr didn ’ t think he meant that he ’ d killed them. “You keep them somewhere to use, is that it?”

  Riggi shook his head again and spent a precious breath saying, “No.”

  Behr felt weak and wondered whether he could do what he had to do. He reached out and grabbed Riggi ’ s jaw. “Do you want me to make this last moment painful for you?” Riggi was probably beyond pain, but Behr squeezed up under the man ’ s trachea hard, wondering the whole time if it would do any good besides causing him to relive the deed for the rest of his life. Riggi ’ s eyes changed, though, and the act dislodged a statement.

  “They ’ re worth more to me than you could pay.”

  Behr and Paul looked at each another in horror at the words.

  The tumblers in Behr ’ s mind clicked like a series in a combination and understanding came to him. “Because you sell them,” he said.

  Riggi blinked. The lying went out of his eyes. It was a yes.

  “You used Rooster Mintz and Tad Ford,” Behr thought aloud. “Ford was a driver. You ship ’ em out.”

  Riggi ’ s mouth opened but emitted no sound, and Behr realized how hard his grip was on the man ’ s throat. He forced himself to relax it.