Halfway back to Alabaster, Janet once again seeped into his consciousness. By the time he rolled into the gravel driveway of his father’s house, his home, he was once more in a terrible funk. He immediately dismissed the idea of buying a flight to Boston in order to beat the shit out of this Christopher, whoever he was. He also instantly shelved the wild notion of fabricating some lurid fiction involving Janet to send to the proper Wellesleyan administration in order to expel her from the college, and perhaps the east coast as well.
The house was dark, surrounded by wind and pines. Built as a one story farmhouse in the 1890’s, the giddy prosperity of the 1920’s added a second story and enlarged the basement, giving the whole a Victorian facade. Someone renovated the entire structure in 1954, and his father modernized parts of the house just before Rachel divorced him. Greg himself had converted the basement into a metal shop. As he slunk into the spacious, ultra-modern kitchen he saw the note from Dad:
Greg,
I’ll be in New York until Tuesday. The Tullock Case again. Sorry I can’t shop with you for a computer update on Sunday. I’m sure your choice will be fine. How about dinner Wednesday night?
Love Andre
He creased the paper and left it on the counter. The maid was off after Thursday for the weekend. He scooped two precooked hamburger patties and a precooked mini-pizza from the freezer and fed them into the computerized microwave. The house’s OXO message center in the downstairs den, alongside the Einstein DeskTop PC, registered calls for his dad, although a fax from Larry Reed was for Greg. The fax read: PARTY! Larry was his good friend from freshman year at ASU, Larry opting out with an AA last year to concentrate on business for a while. Greg applied the appropriate condiments and relishes, popped a Guinness from his father’s reserve, and found the living room’s TV for some mindless preoccupation while he ate. The evening news rattled on in the middle of a story about South Africa’s third year of civil war initiated by a resurgent Boer white homeland movement.
Andre Kovinski was his work. Greg had long ago accepted this about his father. Andre was the stellar partner in the prominent San Francisco law firm Armstead, Burger, Kovinski, Raj, Sukarno and Stein. He was the Bay Area’s brilliant criminal and corporate lawyer who never made the social pages, only the front pages, with splashy power-and-money cases, often internationally flavored. So wedded to his career was Greg’s father that Rachel Kovinski (nee O’Brien), Greg’s mother, had first left him to live with her parents in LA. Enrolling in UCLA, she had finally divorced Andre to gain her own life.
Greg had spent three summers, a month and a half each summer from his 12th through his 14th years, living with his mom in “HeLA.” Her life with dad had been Andre’s life. Rachel was pregnant at nineteen. In college, she had chosen to drop out to marry Andre and keep his family while Andre’s father paid for his son to breeze through Harvard law school. They moved from west to east coast, and then back again after Greg’s birth when Andre was offered a junior partnership in the above firm, minus Kovinski, immediately after graduation. He dictated the terms of their marriage through his career’s success, which had been meteoric. In particular the demands of social decorum, high level corporate entertaining, and absolute propriety before the media, so essential to Andre’s ever-advancing position, chafed upon the young couple. Rachel hated it, in truth. Greg’s summers south in Smog City had been pretty much of a drag; no one he knew to play or hang out with when she was not home. But he had never regretted spending them with her. The TV fluttered images of a shopping mall mass murder spree from somewhere in Ohio.
He had tried to learn from his parent’s divorce in his relationship with Janet. He had considered her the focus of his life, not a mere auxiliary. Few couples in high school, or at ASU, spent more time together. And now his love, his dearest love, had left him.
He drank another beer, guzzled the Guinness at the fridge, and opened a third to return with to the TV. The TV image startled him. It was a metal box. It was painted gray, with bright yellow lettering. It was in the trunk of his Spitfire, even as its image ghosted upon the TV screen.
“Scientists call riemanium ‘super plutonium’,” the newscaster said. “Critical mass, the amount that will spontaneously explode when brought together, must be considered by scientists when handling quantities in excess of a quarter of a pound. A half pound of riemanium will produce a Nagasaki-sized nuclear explosion.”
Hardly breathing, Greg recovered the very massive object from the trunk and carried it, gingerly, into the basement. Two pounds of enriched, bomb-grade riemanium had disappeared from the Security Pacific armored car, along with the Piccoli gems, both presumably stolen by the Diamotti gang. He donned goggles and plastic gloves, then used a modest solvent to wipe off his impact with the object.
PROPERTY
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
DANGER
RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL
WARNING
DO NOT OPEN
The sign for radiation, a central circle with three accompanying triangles, was also stenciled next to the lettering. Greg fit the box into the vies of his computer guided laser lathe after a few brief moments of tipsy thought. The riemanium had not been recovered from Diamotti’s safe house. He knew that the riemanium could not all be in one lump due to critical mass. Hence the necessity for some type of radiation-proof internal packing that would be safe if the outside casing was accidentally cracked. Intense, solar hot, green light threaded against one of the box’s locks. He used the high-tech tool—a continuous wave, 60% efficient, gas dynamic laser—to make a living carving metal to spec for classic automobile engines, among them his own. Now he directed its clean, cutting, coherent light to the task of violation. The laser vaporized the lock’s core under his manipulation. The beers hammered at him. Ozone, and his own sweat, drenched the air. The box’s lid sighed open.
Ten sealed cylinders, resembling enlarged, stemless, metal CO2 cartridges, rested in dense, form-fitting foam moldings inside lead and carbon lined steel case walls. Each cylinder bore a radiation mark, and recapitulated the warning on the box. The ghost of Hiroshima rested on his laser lathe counter. He pinched the bridge of his nose, slightly irritated by the basement’s odors. He needed another beer.
SIX
Peregrine blended out of an arroyo on the outskirts of Corte Madera around 1:30 a.m. He was caked with dirt, coated with dust and sweat, and scratched bloody across most of his exposed skin. Transcending it all; he was alive.
He walked side streets and feigned a little too much to drink to make his way to the junker Toyota Celica hatchback parked unobtrusively in a 24-hour Safeway parking lot. He recovered the keys from a box welded near the engine. Then he collapsed among blankets and a sleeping bag in the back, entirely exhausted. He slept for two hours; one entire REM cycle.
Peregrine had insisted upon calling Rossi before crossing the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge.
“No fucking way,” Austin shouted,” The Boss don’t want to be disturbed until we’re ready for the approach.”
“Now you shut the fuck up,” Peregrine hissed, the CB already in hand as Austin negotiated the lunch traffic congestion. After explaining the riemanium situation to “the Boss,” he concluded with the statement: “We’re hotter than Muammar Qaddafi at a Bar Mitzvah.” He was gratified to hear Rossi stammer:
“Dump that stuff. Find a back road and get rid of it.”
Unfortunately, no one had managed to find the stolen riemanium before the thieves and the semi arrived at Diamotti’s safe house in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais with the Piccoli gems. They were still molten hot! The radio broadcast desperate appeals for public assistance to capture the robbers even as Austin parked the semi.
Peregrine could only guess how they’d been detected. Perhaps a neighbor, or a kid playing on the luxurious block, had seen the mini-van when they’d let Sidney and Mako out the back. That’s all he could figure.
No one stood watch. Rossi greed
ily forced open each security case to inspect his loot. The other members of the gang, except for Peregrine, hung about the short, ugly man like slavering dogs eager to fight over the scraps from Rossi’s table. Peregrine was not sure of the whole sequence in hindsight. But it began while Rossi admired a jewel-encrusted, gaudy piece of gold smithed by Cellini.
“We didn’t have to kill anyone,” Peregrine fumed, “Sid had plenty of shells. He could have kept firing into the ground around that guard, until the gas finally got to him.”
“Yeh,” Sidney snorted, eyes fixed on the expensive bauble in Diamotti’s hand, “Like we had all day.”
“Listen buttfuck! You’re getting on my nerves,” Rossi put down the jewelry and leveled a threatening gaze at Peregrine, “You’ve just about outlived your usefulness to me. If you want your cut, and if you value your life, you’d better shut your trap.”
“You listen up Diamotti,” Peregrine snapped, “If a good friend of mine doesn’t hear from me in 48 hours, a packet goes into the mail to the FBI with your name and every detail of this operation. You’ll have to get out of the country, and how are you gonna enjoy your Piccoli gems when you’re constantly looking over your shoulder for Interpol?”
“Don’t you threaten me,” Rossi yelled, but he knew it was a stalemate. He knew Peregrine’s brother, and Peregrine’s brother’s lawyer had the packet of evidence. Still and all, Peregrine didn’t bring up the murder again. He didn’t have the time. Austin, who had drifted over to the plate glass window overlooking the northern Bay Area during their interchange, suddenly gurgled something incoherent.
“What the hell’s wrong with you!” Rossi turned on him.
“Cops.” Austin squeaked out. Sure enough, the late afternoon street crawled with them. Black-and-whites held a roadblock at the street entrance and fully three dozen uniformed CHP officers scuttled from cover to cover like cockroaches. Armed cockroaches.
“Goddamnit,” Rossi snapped, Piccoli gem cases clutched in his arms, and eyes in a panic. “Austin, get some control. Let’s get the chopper ready. Sidney, Mako, Peregrine; cover the front. I don’t want any shooting until I give the order.”
Rossi and Austin scooped up the gem cases and quickly stumbled out the back. A voice over a bullhorn boomed out a warning directed at their house. Telling Mako not to shoot was like telling the hungry infant not to grab for the milk-loaded teat swinging in front of his face. Peregrine could detect the adrenaline rush and killing lust in Mako’s twisted face. As soon as the police officer finished his announcement Mako bounded down the front door stairwell, leaned out the door, and hammered the cop dead with a single shot. The plate glass window exploded into angry shards with the first police volley. Peregrine hit the floor to crawl for the backyard. He’d reached the swinging dining room door when Rossi stuck his head through it, and shouted.
“Mako, Peregrine, Sid. Come on. We’re getting the hell out of here.”
Tear gas canisters crashed into the house at that point. They needed no further encouragement. They reached the kitchen’s back door as Austin turned over the helicopter’s engine. Ahead, in the middle of the landscaped acre of backyard, Diamotti and Austin had managed to knock down a temporary plywood shed from around the sleek Ecureuil B-5. Austin and Sidney had assembled the helicopter piece by piece in the last several months in case they’d needed to make a quick escape well ahead of pursuit. Not as a last second contingency under such tight circumstances. Now it waited for them, rotors pounding the air and flattening the grass. Roaring out their deaths.
Behind, the house shook under impact from bullets and tear gas canisters, walls shredding and brickwork shattering. Inside, the voice of Peregrine’s hunch screamed: “Don’t get on that helicopter! It’ll be your death!” They crossed the yard in a line, strung out, ducking and crawling commando-style, even though they were not under direct fire. Peregrine kept to the end of the line. As they approached, Austin swung open the cargo door. Rossi waited, crouching, at the door, as Sidney and Mako clambered on board. Diamotti noticed Peregrine’s hesitation and whipped out a gun.
“On board, fuckhead,” he shouted above the deafening thunder, “We’re all leaving the same way.”
Peregrine did as he was told. Rossi followed on his ass, revolver at the ready.
“Hit it Austin,” Rossi punched the pilot’s shoulder. Austin reacted instantly. The helicopter leapt up several yards at once, throwing everybody else off balance, and giving Peregrine his chance. He dove from the chopper, hit the grass, and rolled. In rolling, he looked back and caught Rossi, Sidney and Mako leaning out the cargo door, their handguns blazing action, the chopper slowly rising. He continued his roll to the safety of several trees, bullets plowing up the ground around him. The helicopter came under fire from the cops in the street. As Diamotti’s gang turned their attention once more to their escape, Peregrine made his break.
He ran for a far fence, not daring to look back. Feeling the itch of a set of cross hairs between his shoulder blades. He hit the fence and vaulted over on adrenaline alone. Two red-eyed Dobermans ran for him howling in the new yard, from around a large fenced off flower garden. He tried keeping the garden between him and the maddened beasts in his frantic dash for another fence. He slammed on over the fence, and broke the tops to two boards in the process. The dogs hit the wood behind him, their jaws snapping bare inches from his butt. At the same instant, the helicopter crashed and exploded. Peregrine caught his breath in the concussive aftermath seated on the edge of a brush and tree choked arroyo. The dogs bayed wildly in the yard behind him.
He’d spent the next nine hours slowly, carefully making his way back to his car. Up Blithedale Ridge, across Warner Canyon, and along Crown Road; the fugitive had stumbled, expecting any moment to hear pursuit. Now, dredging himself up from his all-too-brief sleep, he took stock of his situation. He assumed the police were already looking for him, not having found him at the safe house. He’d intended to use his cut from the heist to secure his early retirement in Trieste or Rijeka on the Dalmatian coast of independent Slovenia. As it stood, he had a mere $220 to his name. Just enough to cover a few living expenses, with the rent paid on his Alabaster apartment. Seated in the front seat, he twisted his ring, deep in thought. One set of instincts told him to blow the area for a while, at least until things iced considerably. But he didn’t have the money to split. So another packet of instincts prodded him to do another job to get some quick money; a second story job which would expose him to more unwanted police attention.
He started up the car with this dilemma in mind and drove within speed limits up Hwy. 101 to Alabaster and his apartment. He thought it strange that the radio news report still insisted that the riemanium had not been recovered. The gang safe house burn down story followed news of the funeral for another US journalist killed in the Peru/Bolivia war, ahead of the story about the disastrous ATF raid on the cannibalistic Transubstantiation cult compound outside of Butte, Montana. He was tempted to take the side road on which they’d tossed the case of riemanium in order to find it, as he was tempted to drive for his buried cache of Sulawesi contraband for the fake ID. But he didn’t feel confident about finding the exact spot of either in the dark, so he remained on the highway until the Lucas Valley turnoff.
His third story apartment was off Main Street downtown, overlooking the favored youth hangouts. The Loop was for the town’s teenagers, a circular street in the business district that surrounded a nicely landscaped Barbary Park around which they cruised in their cars. The Gondwana Cafe off the Loop was for the college set and their Bohemian pretensions. He checked his refrigerator once behind his locked door and cleaned it out of a beer and some leftover chicken. Then, he retired to the bathroom to remove his disguise.
Make-up, like lies, needed to be simple in order to be effective. If either were too complex or elaborate, there was the risk of tripping up on some inconsistency or forgotten detail. At least, that’s how Peregrine understood it. He briefly showered, then applied strong c
leansing compounds to his wet body in order to unbind the sophisticated make-up; a cream for his fake tan and a gel for his dark hair color, both of which washed away with another shower. As he toweled off, he demolished both chicken and beer. He decided to hang in until the end of February, and to do a few, as-safe-as-possible jobs to get the money to leave. He smoked a pipeful, then was ready for a troubled sleep, waking briefly for the rain.
SEVEN
“Honey. Mark. Someone’s knocking at the door.” Gwen shook her husband’s shoulder, the two in bed. He woke with a groan. “Please, see who it is.”
“What the hell time is it?” Marcus grumbled. He fumbled for both his glasses and the alarm clock. “Damn. It’s one in the morning.”
Again, the doorbell rang, followed by a long, steady knock. After several well-chosen curses, Marcus Dimapopulos hulked out of bed, stumbled about until he found his robe, and then trundled down the stairs. He felt all of his old wounds in the night chill. The door peephole revealed an old friend on the porch, Neal Emerson. Neal and Marcus had served together in the Marines in ‘65, Johnson’s occupation of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Both credited their deployment to the Caribbean fresh out of Lejeune boot camp, not only for their friendship, but also for the lucky courses to their lives since. Had they gone to Nam, as had others they had known in the Corps, things likely would have been different.
They had each gone into similar lines of work after finishing up their respective tours of duty in the Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, California; Marcus into private investigation and Neal into security services. Neal became the wealthy, playboy owner/president of Security Pacific Services, habitué of San Francisco’s elite watering holes. Marcus settled down with a wife and a one-man South Bay detective agency known for its consistently outstanding work. They had remained friends, Neal the godfather of Mark and Gwen’s two now-grown children. And Neal did look silly shivering on the porch, sheepish in his three-piece suit.
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