by Robert Crais
“It’s still boring.”
“Try reading. Beautiful rich chicks can read, can’t they?”
The corners of her mouth made the curl.
“You talk a lot. Does that mean you’re trying to entertain me?”
“It means I’m trying to entertain myself. You’re kinda dull.”
Larkin rolled off the couch and went back to the window.
“Shouldn’t he be back by now?”
“It’s still early.”
She returned to the couch, but this time she pulled her feet up and crossed her legs. Cole could see she didn’t want to let it go. She was frowning at him as if he was keeping something from her.
“Well, is it true? Was he in Africa?”
“He’s been to Africa many times. He’s been all over the world.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Joe didn’t cut off her fingers.”
“I mean being a mercenary. I understand being drafted and all, but I think it’s sick, getting paid to play soldier.”
“Joe wasn’t playing. He was a professional.”
“I think it’s disgusting. Anyone who enjoys that kind of thing is insane.”
“I guess that depends on what you do and why you do it.”
“You’re just making excuses for him. You’re probably just as sick as him.”
Cole loved her certainty so much he smiled.
“That story he told you about the woman, did he tell you why he was there?”
“Of course not.”
“You still want to know?”
She stared at him as if it was a trick question, but when she finally nodded he told her. He told her the one story. He could have told more.
“A group called the Lord’s Resistance Army was running around Central Africa, mostly in Uganda. They kidnapped girls. What they would do was, they’d blow into a village out in the middle of nowhere, shoot up everything with machine guns, loot the place, and grab the teenage girls. Not one or two, but all of them. They’ve kidnapped hundreds of girls. They take them as slaves, rape them, do whatever. It’s the Third World, Larkin. It’s not like here. Most of the planet isn’t like here. You understand?”
She managed to nod, but Cole sensed she didn’t understand, and couldn’t. They didn’t have police; they had warlords. They didn’t have Republicans and Democrats; they had tribes. In Rwanda, one tribe would target another and hack a million people to death in less than three months. How could an American understand something like that?
“The people in those villages, they’re farmers, maybe have a few cattle, but sometimes these villages get together and pool their money. They figured they needed professionals to stop the kidnappings, so Joe made the trip. Joe and his guys-I think he had five guys with him that time-they arrived in the afternoon. The morning of the day they arrived, a raiding party shot up another village and stole more girls. That woman’s husband and her sons were murdered that morning. That’s the first thing Joe saw when they rolled in that day, this poor woman mutilating herself.”
Larkin stared at him as if she was waiting for more, but when Cole only stared back she wet her lips.
“What did he do?”
Cole knew, but decided to keep it simple.
“Joe did his job. The raids stopped.”
Larkin glanced toward the front windows, but it was darker now, and the light in the room made it impossible to see out.
Cole said, “I’m getting hungry. You want dinner?”
Cole wanted to go into the kitchen. He wanted to have a glass of the wine and cook, but the girl stared at the windows, wetting her lips.
“He did that a lot?”
“He’s been all over the world.”
“Why?”
“Why would he hire out?”
She nodded.
“He’s an idealist.”
She finally looked back at him.
“I still think it’s creepy. He wouldn’t do that kind of thing if he didn’t enjoy it.”
“No, probably not. But he probably doesn’t enjoy it the way you mean. C’mon, let’s make dinner.”
She turned back to the windows.
“I’m going to wait.”
Cole went to the kitchen, but didn’t begin their dinner. He thought about Pitman. Pitman had told Larkin and her family a version of events that no longer fit with the facts, and probably never had. Cole had caught Pitman in a lie, and now he wondered if Pitman had lied about anything else.
17
John Chen
The firearms analysis unit was called the gun room. You went in there, all you saw were guns. The walls were lined with cabinets filled with hundreds of guns from the floor to the ceiling. Pistols sprouted from the inner walls of the cabinets like fruit from a dangerous tree; row after row of pistols, impaled on rods in their barrels, one gun next to another, stored that way because so many guns had been backlogged the analysts had no room to store them any other way; each gun with a tag hanging from the trigger guard to identify its make, model, and case number; each gun confiscated, used or believed to have been used in a crime. It was a harvest of bitter fruit.
John Chen eyeballed the hall outside the gun room, cursing his rotten, born-to-be-screwed luck as he made sure no one was coming. Chen hated hanging around so late in the day, but the firearms analysts were so overworked and ever-more-falling-behind that the slave-driving bitch Harriet Munson was constantly on their ass, which meant she was constantly in the gun room, which meant Chen had to wait until Harriet had gone home, which was later than anyone else on the day shift because even Harriet was overworked and behind. And to make matters worse-and matters were always growing worse, which seemed to be John’s inescapable lot in life-Pike was probably working himself into a killer rage at this very moment because he hadn’t heard from Chen about the guns. Chen’s stomach grew queasy as he imagined it. Pike was a monster, a cold-blooded killer, and would probably snap Chen’s neck like a pencil-
– which would be Harriet Munson’s fault, too. That bitch.
That morning, Chen thought for sure he would be able to get what Pike needed ASAP and be well on his way to a ’tangmobile upgrade-but no. As soon as Pike left, Chen had ripped back into the lab with his story of heroically returning to work. He had planned on badgering one of the firearms analysts into jumping the Eagle Rock evidence to the head of the analysis line, but John never had the chance. There he was, describing his courageous recovery from the broken tooth-and what did that bitch, Harriet, do? She ordered him out to a crime scene-right then, right there, right away; do not pass Go or even stop to take a piss. A domestic knife murder in Pacoima, for Christ’s sake. And THEN, as if that wasn’t enough, she sent him on to a body in Atwater, one of those homeless dudes who lived on an island in the L.A. River, found with his skull caved in like a casaba melon, almost certainly having been beaned by another homeless dude over pussy or dope or territory. Now, was THAT any way to reward a guy who overcame a broken tooth to return to work? Chen didn’t get back to the lab until almost six, only to find Harriet haunting the gun room like the Ghost of Christmas Future. Pike was certain to be impatient with the delay and no doubt would be growing angrier and angrier-at John.
Chen lived in an absolute agony of nerves until Harriet left and his chance to corner the firearms analyst appeared. Now, all he had to do was convince her to let him have the Eagle Rock evidence, and he could finally get Pike off his back.
Chen had come prepared.
The duty analyst that day was a tall, thin woman with close-set eyes and yellow teeth named Christine LaMolla. Chen was convinced she was a lesbian.
John crept down the hall, made sure no one was coming, then pressed the buzzer. Being filled with guns, the gun room was kept locked. He heard the lock click, pushed open the door, and entered.
LaMolla turned from her computer and peered at the coffee, smile-less. Lesbians never smiled.
Chen held out the cup. He had raced out to the nearest Starbucks and bought their l
argest mocha. Even lesbians liked chocolate.
Chen gave her his toothiest smile.
“For you.”
“I didn’t ask for this.”
Chen tried to smile enough for both of them.
“I know you work late. I thought you might need it.”
LaMolla glanced at the cup again as if she thought it was laced with acid. John had once asked her out, but she turned him down flat. Lesbian.
Now she eyeballed Chen with equal suspicion. She still hadn’t touched the coffee.
“What do you want, John?”
“You know the shootings we had in Eagle Rock? I need to see the guns.”
Mr. Nonchalant. Mr. Just Another Day at the Office.
Her eyes narrowed even more.
“You didn’t cover the Eagle Rock case.”
“Nah, but something came up in one of my old Inglewood cases. I think they might be connected.”
LaMolla peered at him even harder, then took the coffee. She smelled it, but didn’t taste, then went to the door. She locked it, then leaned with her back to the door, blocking his exit.
John got an unexpected, more-than-a-little-hopeful notion that maybe she wasn’t a lesbian after all; that maybe his luck in all things was about to forever change, and he smiled even wider-
– but then she dropped the mocha into a trash can.
She said, “What the fuck is going on?”
Chen didn’t know what to say, and wasn’t even sure what she meant.
“What do you mean, what’s going on?”
“Eagle Rock.”
Her beady eyes made her look like a bird of prey. Chen was confused. He tried to cover it by looking, well, confused.
“Yeah, Eagle Rock. I gotta see the guns, Chris. No biggie.”
She studied him, and Chen felt himself squirm. He knew if she kept it up much longer his nervous twitch would fire up like a chain saw. He shrugged, and did his best to look innocent.
“Hey, all I wanna do is see the guns. What’s going on?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
“Whattaya mean, you wanna know? Jesus Christ, you gonna let me see the guns or not?”
She slowly shook her head.
“The feds took them.”
Chen blinked.
“The feds?”
“Mmm. The three semi’s and the wheel gun bagged in Eagle Rock. Here’s what’s really weird. They took the wheel gun last night-a.357 Colt Python. But then they came back this afternoon for the semi’s.”
Chen saw his chances for a Carrera upgrade circling the drain. Visions of his lost opportunity with Ronda flashed like lightning at the edge of his horizon. But mostly he imagined Joe Pike beating his ass. Pike wasn’t a man you let down. Pike would get even.
Chen blurted, “But that was LAPD evidence! The feds can’t just take our stuff. That’s our stuff!”
“They can when Parker tells us to let them have it.”
“ Parker Center gave them permission?”
LaMolla slowly nodded, still watching him with tiny eyes.
“All I know is, Harriet got the call, and she wouldn’t tell me anything about it, John. She said the sixth floor says let’m have what they want-”
The sixth floor of Parker Center was the power floor-the realm of the Assistant Chiefs.
“-so we did. They took the guns.”
John was frantic. His mind was racing for some angle or explanation that might appease Joe Pike when a desperate idea came to him.
“What about the shell casings? Did they take the casings?”
Spent casings would have been gathered at the scene, and like the guns, they could be compared and analyzed.
But Christine was shaking her head, her eyes boring into him now as if searching him.
“They took everything. Even the casings.”
Chen wondered why she was looking at him that way, and then he felt a last dismal shred of hope.
“Chris-you didn’t, you know, keep one of the casings, did you?”
She slowly sighed.
“I kept two, but they went through the evidence list. They checked off every item we recovered, so I had to give them up. But you know what was really weird?”
Chen shook his head.
“They wouldn’t sign an evidence receipt.”
Any time evidence was transferred or moved between departments or agencies, a receipt and an acceptance of possession had to be signed. It was standard operating procedure. This ensured that the chain of evidence remained intact. This prevented evidence tampering. This prevented evidence from being lost. Or stolen.
Chen said, “But they had to.”
LaMolla simply stared at him.
“No, John, they didn’t. And now here you come, wanting those same guns. And the casings. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
LaMolla, who clearly didn’t believe him, said, “Mmm.”
Pike had hinted at some kind of conspiracy, but Chen figured he was talking about a couple of crooked cops. Now it looked like the feds and Parker Center were involved, and no one seemed to know why, or what they were doing, even though they were doing things that no legitimate police agency would do. The chain of evidence was sacrosanct, and now the evidence was gone.
John Chen grew afraid; afraid in a way to which his earlier, over-wrought, overly melodramatic fear could not compare.
No Carrera was worth this. No job in TV as a technical advisor, or even the smokin’ hot ’tang that would follow.
John Chen suddenly felt trapped; caught in a claustrophobic nightmare between a homicidal maniac (Pike), the federal government (rife with known assassins), and the shadowy powers within Parker Center (still hiding the truth about the Black Dahlia killer), none of whom could be trusted, and any of which might snuff his life and career without hesitation. Chen’s hands trembled. The tic beneath his left eye sputtered like a fire raging to life as he saw his future unfolding: LaMolla telling Harriet he had asked about the guns, Harriet ratting to Parker Center; Chen suddenly at the center of an investigation. Or worse.
Chen tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. He worked up some spit.
“You’re not-listen, Chris, you’re not going to tell-well, I mean, Harriet doesn’t need to-”
LaMolla, still considering him with her calm, predatory eyes, uncrossed her arms and spread her hands wide like Moses parting the waters.
“This is the gun room. This room is mine. These guns are mine. The evidence here? This is my evidence. I don’t like someone taking it. I don’t like you knowing something about it that I don’t.”
She lowered her arms and stepped away from the door.
“Get out of here, John. Don’t come back without something to tell me.”
Chen stepped quickly past her and fled down the hall. He ran directly to his car, jumped in, and locked the doors. He started the engine but sat with his hands clenched in his lap, shaking and terrified. Danger was everywhere, just like when he was the tall geeky kid other kids picked on. Destruction might come from any direction. Just like when he was a child-just walking, man; maybe going to his locker or crossing the parking lot, and someone would bean him with a clod of dirt. Hit him just like that, out of nowhere, bang, right in the head, and he never even saw it coming. But it always came. Always.
Chen fished his cell phone from his pocket. The shaking made it difficult to scroll through the numbers, but Pike had told him to call Elvis Cole when he had something. Pike would almost certainly blame Chen because the guns were missing. He might even think that Chen was making everything up, and fly into a murderous rage, but Cole was Pike’s friend. Chen had the vague hope that Cole could convince Pike not to kill him. It was Chen’s only chance. His last best hope. Everyone knew Joe Pike was a monster.
18
In the quiet of the later night, a violet glow from Dodger Stadium capped the ridges as Pike eased up to the Echo Park house. The air was warmer than the evening before, but the sam
e five men still clustered at the car beneath the streetlight, and families still sat on their porches, listening to Vin Scully call a game that many of them knew nothing about only a few years before. Cole’s Sting Ray was missing, but Cole would have left it on an adjoining street. The house was a dim cutout against the blacker night, lit only by the street lamp and the ochre rectangles that were its windows.
Pike parked in the drive and crossed the yard to the porch. The five men glanced over, but not in a threatening way.
The porch, hidden by its overhang from the street lamp, was a cave. Cole opened the door as Pike reached it, and stepped out onto the porch. In that moment when the door opened, Pike smelled mint and curry, and wondered why Cole had come out.
Cole spoke low, hiding his voice from the men.
“How’d it go?”
Pike described the two men who searched his home, and unfolded their pictures. Cole cracked open the door wide enough to light the pictures, then closed it again. This time when the door opened, Pike glimpsed the girl, standing in the kitchen at the far end of the house. She was wearing an iPod. Pike had made her get rid of her iPod in the desert.
Pike said, “Where’d she get the iPod?”
“It’s mine. I made Thai, you want something to eat. That’s what we had.”
Pike put away the pictures. The Thai sounded good. But then Cole moved farther from the door and lowered his voice even more.
“I got a call from John Chen this evening. You talk to him?”
“This morning.”
Cole glanced at the door, as if he suspected the girl had her ear to the crack.
“The feds confiscated everything from Eagle Rock. The guns, the casings, all of it.”
“Pitman?”
“All Chen knew was the feds.”
“John run the guns before they were taken?”
“They moved in too fast. Here’s what’s really wild-they took the stuff without paper. Said Parker called down and told them to let it go, no questions asked.”
Pike raised his eyebrows.
“No questions.”
“Those D-3s at Homicide Special wouldn’t roll over just because Pitman’s a fed, not with five unidentified stiffs on the plate. Someone must have-no pun intended-put a gun to their heads.”
