Troubleshooter (2005)

by Gregg - Rackley 03 Hurwitz

  "Warriors don't wear helmets?"

  "Not our brand."

  "Most real warriors understand that their head's worth more than their hairdo."

  "Think of it as a show of respect for the fallen."

  "We've got a couple of funerals of our own tomorrow." Tim bobbed his head, wearing an appropriately thoughtful expression. "I'll tell you what--I'll let you guys do your funeral run without helmets."

  "I want it in writing. I don't want a boatload of bullshit when we pull out of here."

  "I'll get you a municipal permission."

  Bear shot Tim an unveiled look of angry incredulity.

  "Yeah, well, I'll believe it when I see it." Uncle Pete studied Tim, then Bear's quite genuine reaction, and the distrust faded gradually from his face. "Maybe you got some class after all, Trouble. We're not bad guys. We're just tired of all the bullshit. We never get anything but the rules--nothin' like a little raping and pillaging to stir things up."

  Still burned by Tim's concession, Bear said, "Like the hitchhiker you gang-raped through August? And September? And October?"

  "Shit fool, that ain't gang rape. That's training. The boys downstairs are havin' a group splash with Wristwatch Annie. You don't hear her complaining."

  "That's because her mouth's full," Tim said.

  Uncle Pete laughed. "See, there it is. A little humor never hurt no one. Plus, if we gang-raped that broad, where's the charges? Well? Shit, we did her a favor. Opened her up some. Know what I think? I think you citizens are jealous. Drivin' around in your cages, you never get the gurgle in your groin, the wind off your face. And you cops? Shit, you get paid to watch us have fun. I got my slags here all day long. And when I get home, I still knock a few out with my main deed."

  "Christ," Bear said. "Don't you have a TV?"

  Uncle Pete cocked his head, deciding whether to laugh. "We have our own world, we make our own rules, and we live and die by them. Just like you. Except you live and die by other people's rules."

  "And your rules involve pissing on each other's jackets and collecting wing patches for going down on dead women," Bear said. "Where do I sign up?"

  "Yeah, we do that shit now and then, just to freak the citizens. P fuckin' R. Don't underestimate the power of intimidation." Pete ruffled the poodle's topknot. "But we stopped making pledges get fucked by Hound Dog here, though."

  "Well, that's an institutional advance," Tim said.

  "We make the pledges do useful shit now."

  Tim thought of Guerrera's claim that Sinners had to kill someone to join the club and wondered if that was the "useful shit" Uncle Pete was referring to.

  "The name of the game now is class. I got a house on the hill. I only bike on runs and funerals anymore. Got me a blue onyx pearl Lexus coupe with cruise control, Paris rims, ivory interior--hell, it's even got a sat-nav system. Thing practically drives for me. We don't hang up in the small time. Fuck the white-power shit. We're color-blind. All we see is green." He offered Guerrera an accommodating grin. "That's how we cut in on the other outlaw gangs. We're younger and meaner. We don't believe in shit but the backs of our jackets and cold, hard cash."

  "That how you cut in on the Cholos?"

  "The Cholos, shit, they're not a blip on our radar. Those motherfuckers are all show and no go."

  "Chooch Millan, too? I heard he's no show and no go now."

  The poodle came up on all fours, and Uncle Pete scratched his belly until he hunched and phantom-scratched with a hind leg. "We're done now. You want more, you go get that warrant and I call my lawyer and we do the dance."

  Tim walked over and turned off the digital recorder on the bureau. He picked up the Z-shaped piece of metal and approached Uncle Pete. Bear and Guerrera looked tense, unsure. The poodle bared its teeth at Tim, but--standard or not--it was still a poodle.

  "We both know that the weapon used on the prison break and to kill Chooch Millan was an AR-15. We both know that this"--Tim flipped the piece of metal and caught it--"is an illegal drop-in autosear that converts the gun to full auto. We also know that our lab can't link this sear to those bullets. Probably wasn't even this sear that was used. But we could haul you in, give you major static, as you say." Tim leaned closer. "You spew your own brand of propaganda, but to us you're an ordinary murderer. I'm not interested in a two-bits weapon charge. I want your ass."

  He pressed the autosear into Uncle Pete's fleshy chest and let it fall into his lap.

  Uncle Pete returned Tim's glare, but then a smile crept across his wide face, making his rope beard bob. He started clapping. "Good stuff, Trouble. I like your delivery."

  Tim headed out, with Guerrera after and Bear bringing up the rear.

  Uncle Pete called after them, "I'm gonna hold you to that no-helmet deal for the funeral ride. I got your word?"

  "You have my word."

  "All right, Trouble. Get it to my lawyer by the A.M. We're riding at noon."

  The woman awaited them in the hall and led them downstairs. Tim peeled off at the front door despite her protests. A few of the bikers muscled up to him, but he ignored them, finding the girl with the swollen eye on the couch. A tattoo on her skinny arm read SINNER PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING. She, too, had four fingers on the left hand, the knuckle wound still bearing stitches.

  "How old are you?"

  "Nineteen."

  "You all right?"

  "I'm fine, Heat. Get the fuck out of my face."

  "Okay." Tim rose from his crouch. "Best of luck with your budding romance."

  He joined Bear and Guerrera at the door, and they stepped out, blinking into the light.

  Chapter 6

  Dray was stretched out on the couch when Tim finally got home, her special-order sheriff's-deputy pants unbuttoned around the eight-months heft in her belly. She looked up when he came in through the kitchen, and her cheeks were wet. He dumped his files on the table and stepped over the couch back, sitting high so he could cradle her.

  "Goddamnit, I liked Frankie. How's Janice holding up?"

  "Jim said not good."

  "These are the risks we take." She was trying to firm up her face, play it tough as she'd learned from four older brothers and eight years as the sole female sheriff's deputy at the Moorpark Station, but her lips kept trembling, and her voice, when she spoke again, came out hoarse. "I want to blame him. I want to know Frankie made a mistake. That he did the wrong thing. That it's not that easy for our chips to get cashed in. I keep picturing Janice getting that phone call...."

  She rested her head on his thigh, and he stroked her hair for a few minutes. Melissa Yueh, KCOM's ever-animated star anchor, proceeded with muted vigor, images and rolling tickers providing largely inaccurate tidbits about the prison break. As usual, Tim and Dray had spoken a few times throughout the day, so she knew the real version.

  Dray thumbed down her zipper with a groan and slid a hand over the bulge, Al Bundy style. Her muscular frame accommodated the baby well. She carried the weight mostly in her midsection, though in the past month her toned arms and legs had swollen and softened, which Tim remembered from the last go-around and adored. Dray hated it.

  "You ate?" he asked.

  "In excess. You?"

  "Not since breakfast."

  He noticed her scowling and followed her gaze to the TV. Dana Lake, a component of that bizarre Los Angeles order of substars--the celebrity attorneys--sat in a swivel chair, fielding questions from Yueh about her two escaped clients. Dana was in the press constantly, representing everyone from the Westwood Rapist to an al-Jihad shoe bomber taken down at LAX. With her porcelain skin, precise features, and rich chestnut hair, she was stunning. She should have been beautiful, too, but she lost something in the summing of her parts. Despite her overwhelmingly apparent femininity, something about her was off-putting. Too hard a jawline, perhaps, or too severe a set to her mouth. Her face was like a beautiful mask, hardened from shaping itself pleasingly against its will. She rested her forearms on the news desk, squaring her sho
ulders and showing off the lines of her impeccably tailored suit.

  "I hate this broad," Dray said. "She's been making the rounds all night. Larry King introduced her as 'the flashy female lawyer who never wears the same suit twice.' As if that's something admirable. Besides, what does she do with the suits when she's done? Is there some exchange program for anorexics?"

  "She donates them to the needy."

  Dray snickered, still wiping her cheeks. "Yeah. I'm sure the homeless are using her DKNY silk to stave off the holiday chill." She glanced at the field files piled up on the kitchen table, then thumbed Tim's Marshals star dangling from the leather tag at his belt. "Of course, now they want you back on the Warrant Squad."

  "I'm the Troubleshooter."

  "Oh, yeah, I forgot." She shoved her short blond hair up off her flushed face and fanned her olive deputy shirt. "I'm hot all day. I sweat like a pig in the vest. I feel like I'm melting. Except when I'm cold. Then I'm freezing."

  "Maybe you should start your leave now."

  "And miss all the fun of rousting biker assholes? Me and Mac pulled over three today. Yeah, wipe that surprised expression off your face. While we can't all stroll into the lion's den like a certain big shot, we're doing our part, even out here in bumfuck Moorpark. Captain said the database is coming along nicely?"

  "That it is." He slid down next to her. She raised her boot, and he tugged it off and rubbed her foot. She groaned with delight, arched her back like a cat. "My visit with Uncle Pete actually gave me some good ideas," he said. "I decided I want you to start wearing a property jacket. And I want a tattoo. Right...here. 'Property of Tim Rackley.'"

  "Then you'll let me sled with you?"

  "Then I'll let you sled with me."

  "Bring on the ink, Big Daddy." His Nextel chirped--radio freq this time--and Dray laughed. "Here we go. Don't mind me. I'll just be here on the couch, sweaty and knocked up."

  Tim flipped the phone open, heading back to the kitchen, and keyed "talk."

  "Rack, it's Freed."

  "How'd it go with the Cholos?"

  "How's, 'Chingate, pinche cabron' sound? I'm not really sure how to interpret that."

  "Well, we figured, right?"

  "I couldn't even get in to see El Viejo--they keep the boss man pretty well shielded. I sat a local unit on the clubhouse. We can't do much more than that. The Cholos buzz out of there like gnats. If the Sinners want to pick 'em off, they'll find a way."

  "What are you doing now?"

  "After this day? I'm gonna head home and see my kid."

  "Don't blame you."

  Tim clicked off and dialed the command post.

  Haines said, "I told you already, we'll call if anything breaks."

  "Anything. My phone is on."

  "So you mentioned."

  Tim pored over the files as Dray focused on the TV, making occasional wordless exclamations--disgust, contempt, derision. The only thing Dray liked more than watching the news was reviling it.

  He spread out the photos, marveling at Goat's face, Kaner's breadth, Den's dark, baleful eyes. He scanned over the crime-scene report, feeling the cold weight of the scientific phrasing. His eyes stuck on the name of his friend.

  Six apparent entrance shots to Deputy Frank Palton's torso, two to the head. Skull fragments and soft tissue noted in the mesh and the back of the van.

  He flashed on his first day back on the job after Ginny's death, Frankie doing his shtick with Jim, joking about the "Commie Sutra" book his wife had foisted on him. Tim remembered it vividly because it had been his first single moment of levity in three days, the earliest glimmer of a possibility that the world might still be inhabitable. When Tim had gone missing, Palton had been the one to find the blood at the pickup near the cult ranch. Tim pictured the annoyingly endearing batches of photos Frankie used to e-mail out every few months--updates on his daughters' swim-club awards, theme birthday parties, Halloween costumes.

  Dray looked over, psychically attuned to Tim's shifts in mood from ten years of marriage. She met his eyes, her face soft with empathy.

  "Two kids left behind," Tim heard himself say, as if he and Dray weren't aware of this already.

  "Not over there," Dray said gently. "Talk about Frankie's two kids with me over here on the couch. Not when you're a deputy over files." She watched him, the yellow light of a Claritin commercial shining through her translucent, ice green eyes. "Only let it be personal when you're off duty. Otherwise just get it done. That's how you'll honor Frankie's memory. And Hank Mancone's. And Fernando Perez's."

  "Who?"

  "The illegal guy killed one car over in the blast. Which is my point. If that guy doesn't matter, no one matters. Everyone counts. And everyone counts the same. Getting personal is like putting on blinders. It blocks you from weighing deaths equally, which blocks you from weighing clues equally."

  "You're implying I've been hotheaded in the past?"

  She laughed. "Never. I'm saying your friend just died. Take a timeout when you need it. Besides, haven't you seen enough of Goat Purdue's fetching smile for one day?"

  Tim looked down at the files and pictures spread across the table, let out a breath, and pulled back his shoulders, which he realized had been cramping his chest for the past hour. "What am I supposed to do?"

  "You're supposed to feed me." A long pause as they studied each other across the room, both on the verge of a smile. "And yourself."

  He got up and looked inside the refrigerator. Save jars of condiments, a browning apple, and the residual legs of a chocolate Santa Claus, it was empty. "I thought you were waiting to eat Santa until Christmas."

  "That's four days away."

  "I'm gonna have to start hiding food around here."

  "There are some sunflower seeds in the cupboard."

  "I was hoping for something heartier."

  "You," Dray said, "are a Black Hole of Need."

  He closed the refrigerator door.

  "And while you're out," Dray continued, "can you bring me Strawberry Crush? In the bottles? And Lunchables?"

  "Lunchables?"

  "Yeah. The turkey ones."

  "Right."

  He took his newly purchased used Explorer to Albertsons and shoved a cart up and down the aisles, checking his phone--still nothing--and stocking up on everything he could remember Dray eating in the past eight months. No small feat. When he came home, the living room was empty, but he could hear the television going in the bedroom. He peeled off the Lunchables lid, popped open a Crush, and arranged the meal on a silver tray they'd received as a wedding gift from someone they no longer recalled. Across the folded napkin, he laid a clipped grocery-store-diminished Siberian iris--Dray's favorite flower, one of the few girlie indulgences she permitted herself.

  She was lying flat as a cadaver on the bed, her tummy sprouting between her boxers and her shoved-back academy T-shirt. Her head rolled to take him in, and then a spontaneous smile reshaped her face and he thought of the first time he saw her smile, in the parking lot at a fire-department fund-raiser. "Timothy Rackley."

  He lowered the tray to the mattress and kissed her sweaty bangs. She regarded the food and--through a grin--issued her trademark grimace. "That looks disgusting. Turkey on crackers and strawberry soda? Whose idea was that anyways?"

  He handed her the iris, slid the tray onto his lap, and began his dinner.

  Chapter 7

  The five men walked a slow turn around the broken figure on the chair. Duct tape bound the man to the chair arms from wrists to elbows; both his arms had left their sockets. His features were no longer discernible. He coughed out a mouthful of blood; it ran from his cheek to the thin carpet. His matted ponytail hung stiffly.

  The room, a garage conversion with milky plastic windows set high in the still-functional roll-up door, smelled of oil from the Harley and from the greasy tools occupying the brief run of kitchen counter. A vise protruded from a wobbly table littered with engine parts, spare wheels, and blackened wrenches. The cot
against the far wall and a scattering of dirty plates and cups were the sole signs of habitation.

  Den halted, and the others stopped their pacing, waiting for his next move. They looked unnatural off their bikes, eroded into slouches acquired from too many hours leaning on handlebars.

  "Tell me," Den said. "I know you planned it out by now."

  The man was weeping quietly, a hiss that turned to a gurgle somewhere around the mouth. "I haven't. I swear, ese."

  Den looked at Kaner. "Put out the cigarette. Warm-up's over."

  Kaner ground the butt against his front tooth, popped it in his mouth, savored a few chews, and swallowed.

  "Still never met a nicotine junkie like you." Goat tapped his glass eye with a long fingernail, a gross-out stunt that had developed into a nervous tic. "Chasing the cancer like a piece-a ass. What you gonna do when you catch it?"

  Kaner's words came in a deep rasp: "Smoke through the hole in my throat."

  He tugged off his shirt, revealing an enormous pectoral tattoo--a revolver aimed straight on, with six Sinner skulls staring out of the holes in the wheel. The dim light--morning's first gray glow--turned his flesh pale and moldy. He found a fresh T-shirt in a cabinet and tossed it to Den. Den slid his bowie knife from his shoulder holster. Its genuine-ivory handle shimmered. On the butt, tiny inset rubies formed a flaming skull. He'd paid over a grand to a Kenyan poacher for the section of tusk, or so the story went. Den slit both sleeve cuffs and threw the shirt back to Kaner. The fabric still stretched at Kaner's biceps when he pulled the shirt on.