Last Shot

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Thomas had been playing Ma Bell all afternoon, gathering word on the Piper from Service offices around the country. In the meantime Tim, Bear, and Guerrera had split up the flash-card IDs of Game’s esteemed clientele, double-checking the addresses on the backs and finding Wes’s intel surprisingly accurate. The list was like a who’s who of rich scumbags. A surgeon with a felony for selling meds. A studio VP who went down for a handgun in his Porsche. A failure-to-appear. More businessmen with embezzlement and fraud charges than Tim could count. The clean ones were almost more troubling. Despite the varied degrees of shadiness, no one was an obvious choice for the Piper. Guerrera had red-flagged a few top contenders, but Tim was skeptical that any of them were extracurricular hit men.

  The Piper was a professional, which meant that even if one of the flash-card leads panned, they’d probably wind up with a link in a longer chain—a Hertz rental, a stolen car, a fake plate. Or maybe the Piper rode Yellow Cab, in which case they were shit out of luck. Unless Thomas came through with something that rang the cherries.

  On the corner TV, Maybeck was reviewing the footage of Walker’s brief passage through the Vector lobby. For the fifth time, Tim watched Walker disappear into the spokes of the revolving doors. Nothing new gleaned from the tape. Likewise no sightings of the Camry that had been stolen by the San Pedro landfill the night of Walker’s escape. Freed continued pursuing the trails of Pierce’s financials, so far with limited success.

  Thomas racked the phone, finally, and ran both hands through his hair. It took a moment before he seemed to pick up that everyone was waiting on him, and then he said, “Still low resolution. The Piper’s a professional, rumored to operate out of Los Angeles and Phoenix. He does some wet work for Chicago, may have been used by the Asian Triad in Houston and locally by the Russians. Hell, Rack, you should pick up this lead yourself. It’s right in your area of expertise.”

  Tim ignored the dig. “Do we have a name?”

  “Leslie Cardover.” Thomas nodded at the gallery of photos spread across the table. “Not one of our Gameboys. If it’s fake is another question.”

  Tim wondered if Leslie Cardover drove a low-rider with a hood ornament the size of a bowling ball. “If we’re gonna use him, we’d better get to him before Walker turns him into ground beef.”

  “Or vice versa.”

  “My money’s on Walker.”

  “Seems to be.” Thomas cleared his throat hard into a fist, then swept the remains of his lunchtime burrito from desktop to trash can. “My hook at the Bureau said the Piper’s been keeping his name off the boards for a while. He may have been feeling the heat after this Aspen job he allegedly did in January. A launderer for the Colombians.”

  “That’ll do it,” Bear remarked.

  “So he flies to L.A. and takes out a single mom,” Guerrera said. “Safer prey.”

  Bear noted Tim’s troubled expression. “What’s bugging you?”

  “The hit on Tess was highly competent”—Tim took a breath, held it a moment—“but not meticulous. If this guy’s a high-end contract player, why the left-side entry wound? The neighbor sighting? And the paint?”

  “The car the hundred-year-old neighbor claimed to see?” Guerrera said. “Who knows if that’s real? As for the entry wound, shit, socio, that’s a pretty tiny detail, something even a pro could overlook. I mean, Tess Jameson was left-handed.”

  “Maybe so,” Tim said. “Either way, we need more on the Piper, and we need it in a hurry.”

  Bear asked the room at large, “Any movement from the Vegas Task Force on the Aryan Brotherhood hit men?”

  Zimmer said, “I been on it with Summer. They’re watching the AB chapter, but there’s been no unusual activity.”

  A court security officer ran in, the door banging against the wall. His neck was flushed. Tim cringed, anticipating another bad phone lead or interview request. “Rack, there’s a call you’re gonna want to take on line three. Now.”

  Tim glanced at the phone unit centered on the broad conference table. The red light flashed rapidly, as if to announce a malfunction. “Who is it?”

  The officer gestured for him to hurry up. “Walker Jameson.”

  Chapter 50

  There’s a pay phone on the northwest corner of Baldwin and Huntington in Arcadia. It’ll ring in thirty minutes.” Slung in the fork of a sturdy oak, Walker clicked off his cell phone and refocused his tactical binoculars on the main house, which the laser range finder put at 105 meters away. The binocs were night-vision equipped, though he didn’t need the feature since the lit interiors provided clear visibility. Through a front window, he could see the two hired security hands still sitting detail in the foyer, playing chess, handguns and walkie-talkies bulging their blazers. The Spectra Shield vest beneath Walker’s shirt was flexible, a starchier version of a wetsuit top, the ballistic composite lighter and thinner than its woven Kevlar counterpart.

  Walker let the binocs drift south. A Pathfinder with dealer plates slowed as it approached the rear gate. The tinted driver’s window rolled down, and Percy Keating waved an access card at the pad. The gate rumbled open, and he pulled through and parked beside the guesthouse, a four-room stand-alone in the far corner of the estate. Through an abundance of windows, Walker watched an attractive Asian woman greet Percy inside, then lead him through a beaded curtain into a candlelit room where a low massage table dressed with towels awaited. Percy peeled off his shirt, a pale yellow number rife with fronds and daiquiris. His wife crossed to the window and lowered the bamboo shade.

  Walker slid from the tree and began his approach.

  The woman drifted musically through the beaded curtain, replenishing her hands with lotion from the pump on the shelf beside the sleeping Buddha carved in soapstone. Her slippered feet jerked off the ground—kicking noiselessly—the moist rag clamped over her mouth, and a few seconds later Walker set her limp form down on the tile.

  Over the hypnotic twanging of Eastern instruments, Percy’s muffled voice called, “Hurry, tee ruk.”

  Walker slipped through the curtain, the beads rattling soothingly. Percy remained on his stomach, naked, his face sunk to the ears in the crescent headrest. Acupuncture needles of various lengths stood up from his back like spines. When he shifted, they rippled like the coat of an animal. The needles’ placement grew denser at the base of his back, a few even straying to the ruddy hump of his ass. An incense cone teased a string of spicy smoke into the air. Percy’s clothes, neatly folded, were on the silk cushion of a rattan chair, a walkie-talkie and a Colt .45 pinning them down.

  Walker circled the table and Percy moaned, anticipating pleasure. Gray hairs were scattered across the mass of his shoulders. “Whaddaya say you free me from those needles so I can turn over?”

  “Not just yet,” Walker said.

  Percy lurched up, and Walker struck him across the face, feeling the bones of his knuckles connect with the hard ledge of Percy’s jaw like the skin between them was bedsheet-thin. Percy flew off the table and hammered into the wall, crying out as the needles dug into him and snapped off, the broken heads pinging on the floor. He reared up, but Walker hit him again, fist to sternum, sending him reeling back into an embroidered silk hanging. The whimper that rose from Percy seemed to be leaking out around the penetrating steel. As he deflated, he keeled forward, leaving bloody streaks on the wall, the heads of sunken needles stubbling his lower back. His jaw hung off kilter. It made him look quizzical.

  “You set up the contract,” Walker said.

  “No.” The word, blurred to Down syndrome proportion by the unhinged jaw, forced a crimson bubble at Percy’s lips.

  “That’s not what Ted Sands told me.”

  Percy was hard to understand. “Within a week you’ll be dead or getting your ass rented in prison.” He tried to move, but his back brushed the wall and his legs straightened like he’d been electrocuted.

  Walker withdrew his revolver and held it at his side. “Your wife is alive in the next room. Unconscious,
but still alive.”

  Slid low so the wall forced his head forward into a painful nod, Percy registered the threat, his pupils straining upward.

  “Who’d you hire?” Walker waited a moment, then aimed at Percy’s head.

  “The Piper.”

  “What’s his real name?”

  “I don’t know. No one knows. You don’t get more with these guys.”

  “Who paid him? Who paid the Piper?”

  Percy’s laugh was a moist wheeze. “Witty.”

  Walker put a boot on his chest. A needle broke against the floor.

  Percy howled, his chin awash in blood. “Who the fuck you think paid him?”

  “Was it the old man? Was he in on it?”

  A dark grimace. “The old man is in on everything.”

  The radio on the rattan chair burst to life. “Base One to Big Brother. Mr. Kagan wants to see you.”

  Percy looked up from his painful slump, breaths rattling in his chest. Walker shifted his weight forward onto his boot. Percy’s face contorted, and popping sounds came out of his mouth. Walker pressed down once, hard, 190 pounds of fuck you, and there was a terminal crackle and a shudder of flesh, and then there weren’t any more popping sounds.

  “Big Brother? Big Brother come in?”

  Walker picked up the walkie-talkie, thumbing the side button as he headed for the door. “Be right there.”

  The security guard hunched over the chessboard. His partner leaned back on the metal folding chair, releasing an impatient sigh that carried up the staircase curve to the ceiling and echoed back, a ghostly whisper. An ancient housekeeper bused their empty glasses, muttering Polish to herself and adjusting her box-pleated maid’s cap.

  The guard’s radio chimed, and he pulled it from his belt, keeping his eyes on the board. “Base One.”

  “Rook to A-five.”

  “What?”

  “Rook to A-five. Or he’s got your queen cornered.”

  The guard released the button and stood, his blazer rasping against the chair. He and his partner shifted their anxious gazes around the night-shrouded windows. They were about to break for the intercom system when the mail slot lid clanked open and a grenade scuttled across the floor, spinning to a halt at their feet. They sprinted for cover, getting no more than a few steps when an explosion, originating across the room from the grenade, bounced the foundation. Pebbles of ballistic glass rained across the floorboards.

  A muzzle blazed from outside, and the first guard grabbed his thigh and collapsed. Walker stepped through the manhole-size breach in the window, cutting through the airborne particles and wisps of smoke. The second guard popped up from behind an upholstered bench by the parlor threshold, and Walker shot off a good chunk of his gun hand. The man screamed and collapsed out of view, his pistol clattering off into a corner. The housekeeper stood on sturdy white-stockinged legs, her mouth ajar, her cap blown off by the explosion.

  Walker crouched over the grenade, its pin still intact, and calmly pocketed it.

  In the various rooms around him, the intercoms came to life, slightly out of sync. A robust voice—probably Dean Kagan’s: “To the safe room. Now.”

  The first guard scraped on the floor, moaning and gripping his leg with both hands. He barely took note when Walker claimed his still-holstered pistol. The other guard had crawled behind the chesterfield when Walker caught up to him. He’d located a slab of his hand and was trying to press it back into place. His uniform sleeve was matted to the elbow. Walker picked up the fallen handgun and turned for the foyer but paused above the cowering man, straight-arming the Redhawk so the sights aligned on his forehead.

  Walker nodded at the wound. “That enough to keep you occupied?”

  A vehement nod.

  Walker lowered his gun and headed for the stairs. The housekeeper still had not moved. As he passed, he picked up her cap and handed it to her. She took it with unsteady hands. “Where’s the safe room?” he asked quietly.

  With a trembling finger, she pointed through the north wall.

  Walker coasted up the stairs and reached the landing. One of the four facing doors swung inward—someone had spotted him and withdrawn. He charged through the door to its left, flying silently through an empty bedroom, an adjoining chamber, another bedroom. A rustle behind the bathroom door. A flash of light hair through the hinges.

  Chase.

  Walker flattened against the wall and waited.

  A highball glass lay on its side on the master suite’s floor, ice cubes nesting in the plush deep-pile; someone had retreated in a hurry. The space seemed too wide to be a bedroom, but the California king, stranded on a plain of carpet, said otherwise. Walker moved around the corner to the enormous dressing suite. A hardened-steel fire door had lowered over the walk-in closet’s doorway, sealing it like a vault.

  Walker knocked the wall. Impressive. Judging from the sound, at least five inches of steel lay beneath the coat of paint. Too thick for the explosives distributed through his various cargo pockets. He could blast down and in through the roof, but he wouldn’t have the time.

  He glanced at the mounted security camera on the safe room’s outer wall, then dragged over a vanity chair and stood on it. A few tugs loosened the camera on its housing. From his thigh pocket, he removed a digital camera with a fiber-optic minicam cable wrapped around it. He fed the cable into the wiring assembly behind the security camera. Using the image on the screen, he guided the peeper through the pencil-thin conduit between the outgoing video and audio lines and the power cable. It traveled about two feet before threading through the O-ring seal and poking out into the safe room on the other end, giving him a fish-eye view of the interior.

  Inside the safe room stood Dean and Dolan Kagan. A wall-mounted monitor showed Walker staring at an image of them staring at their monitor. At the minicam’s sprouting from the ceiling, Dolan took a step back, tripped, and sat abruptly on a padded chair. Dean remained stoically upright, turning to face the camera, Hannibal Lecter gone corporate. His arms were crossed, his legs shoulder width to suggest an unshakable foundation, like he was waiting to be bronzed. His face was so white it could have been powdered. An alarm panel inset on the wall beside the shoe rack blinked. There wasn’t much time.

  Walker nodded at the setup, impressed. “Good work.”

  Dean said, “What do you want?”

  “Just following the Piper.” Walker headed out and returned dragging Chase’s body. Bands of electrical tape bound his ankles and wrists, but there was no gag. Walker needed to make use of his sounds.

  Chase was stammering about offshore accounts. Walker pulled his Redhawk out from the back of his jeans and aimed it down at Chase’s knee. “Open the door.”

  Dean stared into the camera unflinchingly. “No.”

  Walker fired without dropping his gaze. The dull impact of bullet to kneecap. Chase’s howl rode up an octave, like a baying coyote’s. Walker reached down, yanking Chase’s wrists away from his torso. Embedding a boot in his armpit, he held Chase’s arms in flexed-biceps position against the carpet. He aimed at the top elbow. “Open.”

  “No.”

  Walker pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced both aligned limbs. Bone shards glittered in the carpet. Chase’s sobbing shifted in quality. Now it sounded like maniacal laughter.

  Dolan was screaming—“Open it! You have to open it!” He rose, eyeing the panel on the wall, but Dean fixed him with a stare that shriveled him back onto the bench.

  Dean said, “It’s one of us dead or three of us dead. That’s the only choice.”

  “Open,” Walker said.

  Chase was whimpering and pleaded in what sounded like a Middle Eastern tongue.

  Dean said, “No.”

  Walker moved the muzzle a half inch, never breaking his stare-down with Dean, and fired again. Chase’s shoulder gave way. The thin wail of approaching sirens came audible.

  Walker let the gun sweep north over Chase’s head.

  His voice shaking
, Dean said, “No.”

  Chase’s yell, now more anger than pain, raised the veins in his neck. It was terminated with the final bullet.

  Dean’s knees buckled, but he caught himself with a little half step. The sirens were louder now, maybe within a few blocks. Dolan stayed twisted on the bench, face turned away. Dean leaned against the wall, fighting off a faint, then straightened up.

  Walker flicked out the cylinder and tapped the extraction rod, the spent casings popping out. The new bullets, held by the speedloader, nosed into place, reloading the wheel with a single titanium thrust. “You can run,” he said, “but you’ll just die tired.”

  Walker slid the Redhawk into the waistband of his jeans and strode from the room. Dean again set his weight forward against the door, his lips cracked. Behind him Dolan wept quietly.

  Less than a minute passed before the house shuddered with boots and shouted commands. Dean punched the code into the panel, and the shield slid upward, disappearing into the ceiling. Unsteadily, he walked out and kneeled over his favored son. He closed the corpse’s eyelids, then leaned and kissed the forehead, still unblemished above the entrance wound.

  Removing the BlackBerry from Chase’s pocket, he slid it into his own.

  Chapter 51

  The pay phone rang, and Tim snatched it off the hook, hunching to the concrete wall of the liquor store and plugging one ear to muffle the traffic. He nodded at Bear, sitting an admittedly conspicuous shotgun in the Electronic Surveillance Unit van across the parking lot. Bear turned around to confer with Roger Frisk, the ESU deputy in the back. Frisk had opted for a straight tap off the junction box at the pole to cut interference.

  Tim pressed the phone to his ear, but instead of Walker Jameson, it was Thomas from the command post, his words coming hard and fast.

  Tim stood in the hydrangeas, staring into the hole blown in the ballistic glass of the front window. He had his hands full—Percy Keating’s perforated body in the guesthouse, a sobbing Thai widow trying to convey useless facts in broken English, Chase’s gray matter caking the carpet upstairs, and two ER-bound security guards who’d recounted Walker’s appearance as if he’d descended from Valhalla on a phantom steed. The first phone call—which had led Tim and Bear to Arcadia, where they’d waited, holding their dicks while Walker mounted a full-frontal assault on the Kagan estate—Walker had managed to route through the Vector switchboard, icing Tim’s embarrassment. The news crews massed at the resurrected cordon had it over European soccer fans for vehement persistence, and judging from the questions battering Tim on his approach, the next round of media portraits were to be—deservedly—none too flattering for the Troubleshooter.