Impulse

by Steven Gould

  “And definitely no more running their packages into school.”

  “Packages?” Jade said. “What kind of packages?”

  Tony and Grant exchanged glances and clamped their mouths shut. Dakota cleared his throat and became very interested in the back of his hands.

  It was Jade who said, “Pot. Also ecstasy.”

  “No way,” Grant said weakly.

  He didn’t sound very convincing.

  Tara laughed softly. “It’s not much of a secret. So they bullied you into carrying them past Tomez?”

  “Who’s Tomez?” I asked.

  Jade said, “Sheriff deputy. He’s our cop, assigned to the school district. But that means mostly here and a little bit over at the middle school.”

  “Half narc, half truancy, and half gang activity,” added Tony.

  Tara raised her eyebrows. “One hundred and fifty percent? How you doing in math there, Tony?”

  Jade flipped her palm up. “Tomez does work long hours.”

  I’d seen Tomez after school where he stood around at the main entrance, but hadn’t realized he was specifically for the school.

  “So you were running drugs past the cops?” I said. I kept my voice neutral. They didn’t seem like criminals.

  “Technically, we don’t know that,” said Grant. “We never saw the contents.”

  Jade snorted.

  “Why didn’t you just refuse?” I asked.

  Grant looked away.

  “Threats of violence?” I tried.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Tony, abruptly. “What matters is we don’t do that anymore.” He glanced at me, then away.

  I turned to Dakota and he tried to meet my eyes but he dropped his gaze almost immediately. I looked over at Tara, mystified, and she shook her head side to side, very slightly.

  “Right, then. So, what do you guys do—chess club?”

  “Of course,” said Grant.

  I’d been kidding. “Really?”

  My surprise must’ve shown, because Grant sat back.

  Tara said, “Nothing wrong with chess.” She met my eyes. “You certainly don’t see any of Caffeine’s crowd in there.”

  “Exactly,” said Grant.

  I liked to play chess. Dad and I used to play all the time, but not in the last few years. “But not just that, right? You aren’t in there just to avoid an overdose of Caffeine?”

  Dakota snorted. “Ha! Caffeine overdose. Perfect.”

  Tony smiled. “Well, you know what they say. Too much caffeine gives you the jitters.”

  Grant smiled, but the smile faded as he said, “Just hope we don’t get one of those caffeine headaches from quitting. We like chess, all right. Dakota’s quite good.”

  Tony added, “Yeah. Dakota’s seeded number three in the club.”

  I looked back at Dakota and his chin came up, but his eyes looked nervous. “And still a freshman,” I said, nodding in what I hoped was an approving way. It must be rough when your accomplishments are the things bullies use to make fun of you.

  “Yeah. The first two seeds are seniors.” He said it in an offhand manner but his eyes darted at my face to see how I took it.

  “Nice.” I glanced at the clock. “Oops. Only five minutes until the bell. Eat up, gentleman.” Jade and Tara were already finished. They’d started bringing lunches, too, and when you don’t have to wait in the lunch line, you have more time.

  I lifted the box and began flicking rice into my mouth. The guys stared at me, unused to seeing someone eat with chopsticks, I guessed. I ignored them.

  No sweat off my brow if they didn’t finish their own lunch.

  FIFTEEN

  Davy: “Looking for Hyacinth”

  While it was possible that Hyacinth Pope had escaped on her own, Davy thought it more likely that her previous employers had helped.

  The building formally occupied by Bochstettler and Associates in Alexandria, Virginia, had been purchased by a political consulting firm almost fourteen years ago. At roughly the same time, the Virginia State Corporation Commission had ordered the dissolution of the Bochstettler and Associates corporate entity after it failed to meet its mandatory filing and reporting requirements, and no officers could be contacted at the addresses on file.

  Davy, though, had managed to locate some of its previous employees, and, oddly enough, at the same different firm.

  The offices of Stroller and Associates were in an industrial park five minutes from el Aeropuerto Internacional Juan Santamaría, outside San Jose, Costa Rica. Like Bochstettler and Associates, their apparent activities were U.S. business development throughout the world. In the months that Davy had been watching them, it was clear that most of their local activities involved going to and from the airport.

  Davy’s main interest, though, was in finding out the identity of their clients—the people who hired them—and it was for that reason that he focused on William Stroller, the CEO of record.

  He jumped to the Melico Salazar Theatre in downtown San Jose, but he didn’t have any Costa Rican colones for the Multipago pay phones and he didn’t want to use a credit card. He walked down the street until he found a closed travel agency. It had a steel grating pulled over the window but he could see through it and the plate glass, so he walked into the next shadowed doorway, jumped into the agency, and used one of their phones.

  “Hola Ramón, soy yo.”

  Ramón was a gardener on the estate neighboring the muy grande hacienda of William Stroller. While Stroller discouraged his domestic staff from discussing his affairs, half of them were Ramón’s cousins or nieces. He’d sent an e-mail that morning to one of Davy’s many accounts.

  “¡Saludes, Jefe! El pájaro está volando.”

  Like most Costa Ricans he didn’t trill the “r”, pronouncing it more like Americans did.

  Davy’s eyebrows went up. The bird is flying? “¿A dónde?”

  “A Los Angeles.”

  “¿Cuándo?”

  “Mañana. El amanecer.”

  Davy didn’t know the last word. “¿A qué hora en el reloj?” What time on the clock?

  Ramón said, “A las seis y quince de salir de la casa.”

  At 6:15 they leave the house. But morning or evening? “¿Con la salida del sol?” With the sunrise?

  “¡Eso es lo que he dicho! El amanecer.” Davy could almost hear the unvoiced, Extranjero estúpido! Ramón continued. “He escuchado de el chófer.”

  So, el amanecer must mean ‘dawn.’ And Ramón had the departure time from Stroller’s driver.

  “Mi gratitud es profunda.”

  Davy had started out paying him piecemeal, but this had encouraged Ramón to over report, so now Ramón received a monthly stipend for his news and Davy stopped dashing to Costa Rica every time Stroller travelled to the local golf course.

  When Davy checked the scheduled flights, there were still several possibilities, so dawn found him inside security, wearing a dark mustache that itched and a tropical-weight suit that was woefully inadequate for the cold in the Yukon and the air-conditioning in the terminal. He was betting on TACA, which operated the only nonstop flight to LA.

  William Stroller came through security at 6:40 with his assistant/bodyguard pulling both their cases. They paused briefly before the entrance to the airport’s only VIP lounge but, after checking the time, continued to the TACA gate that Davy had been betting on. Davy waited long enough to see them stand when the first-class boarding began, and then left his own way via a nearby restroom.

  He went back to bed.

  Seven hours later, Davy was waiting when Stroller and his assistant walked through immigration control in Terminal 2 of LAX.

  Instead of a dark mustache Davy wore a blond wig and goatee. He was in business casual: khaki slacks and a button-down shirt and, like nearly every other person in the concourse, he pulled a small rolling suitcase.

  Stroller and his assistant were met in the meet-and-greet lobby by a man with a sign which said Daarkon Group. He was i
n a suit but not dressed as a chauffeur (or chófer as Ramón would say.) As soon as he saw Stroller he pulled out a phone and talked into it, then took the luggage from Stroller’s assistant.

  Davy took a small radio out of his pocket and said, “Five minutes.”

  Mr. Leung was in a plain white Toyota Celica and he met Davy, as arranged, at the last piece of curbside at Terminal 2. He popped the trunk and jumped briskly out of the driver’s seat. He was a Chinese-American man in his sixties.

  “Slow down, please, Mr. Leung.” Davy said. “Their car hasn’t arrived yet.” He glanced back to where the three men were waiting, a hundred feet away.

  Mr. Leung nodded, then grabbed at his back. “Ow. Ow!” He clutched the side of the car, for support.

  Davy left the suitcase on the curb and went to his side, solicitous, all concern. “Uh, that is an act, yes?”

  Mr. Leung winked at him. “Mostly. I did tweak it a little at the kwoon yesterday, doing dragon form.”

  Davy smiled. “Let me help you back to the driver’s seat.”

  Davy had first met Mr. Leung two years before, by chance, on a short China Southern Airlines flight from Guangzhou across the water to Hong Kong.

  At that time, Mr. Leung’s great aunt, with no family still living near in her home province of Hubei, was dying of liver cancer. She wanted to travel to her extended family in the U.S. Her relatives had pulled every string they could get a hold of trying to obtain the appropriate visas and permissions. Both the U.S. and Chinese national authorities moved with their customary speed and precision, which meant the family could expect the appropriate paperwork roughly nine months after their aunt died.

  One night, Great Aunt Lien went to sleep in a crowded nursing home on the outskirts of Wuhan and woke up in Mr. Leung’s spare room in Anaheim. She lived five more months, surrounded by her nieces and nephews and their children.

  Davy hadn’t had a jump site in Wuhan, but that had given him an excuse to ride the Wuhan–Guangzhou High-Speed Railway from Guangzhou in the south. At 197 miles per hour, the train took him the 601 miles to Wuhan, with one stop, in three hours and fifteen minutes. And he’d had to take a taxi to the nursing home.

  Overall, he considered his contribution trivial.

  Mr. Leung still thought otherwise.

  Voices were raised several cars back as an LAPD officer argued with the driver of a Mercedes waiting at the terminal curb, with no passenger in sight. The argument ended with the car driving away to make the large loop around the terminals. The cop was now eyeing Mr. Leung’s Toyota.

  Davy took his time retrieving the suitcase from the curb and setting it in the trunk. It took him a couple of tries to properly close the lid. As it finally latched, he saw a limousine cut sharply around an SUV and over to the curb in front of the three men. Davy climbed in the passenger side of the Toyota as the greeter handed Stroller into the limo and the chauffeur put their suitcases into the limo’s trunk.

  Mr. Leung was making a show of studying an LA map. In the side mirror, Davy saw the police officer walking toward them, and sighed.

  “We might leave first, but slowly, so they pass us.”

  Mr. Leung let the policeman get within ten feet of the rear bumper before he turned on his signal and pulled away. The limousine passed them within two hundred yards.

  The limo took the 105 to the 110 and exited on 8th Street in downtown LA. The chauffeur pulled to the curb before a large mirrored-glass, multibusiness tower near Pershing Square. The greeter, who’d met them with the sign, jumped out and held the door, but did not pull their luggage from the trunk. He escorted them inside.

  Davy got out around the corner. “If you’d circle the block a few times, Mr. Leung?”

  “As many times as you like.”

  The directory in the lobby showed the Daarkon Group on the floors thirty-two through thirty-four of the forty-story Rhiarti building. A glance at the security desk showed that people who made it through to the elevators either swiped an electronic building pass, or went through a complex sign-in process that included being digitally photographed. There were closed-circuit video cameras in every corner and in every elevator.

  Davy walked out the lobby’s far doors, as if he’d been taking a shortcut through the building, and flagged down Mr. Leung as he swung around the rear of the building.

  “Where to?”

  Davy dropped Mr. Leung’s radio onto the passenger seat. “Done, Mr. Leung. I really appreciate it.”

  “I guess you don’t need a ride to the airport,” Mr. Leung said. “The debt is not diminished.”

  Davy shrugged, “I think we’re long past even. But thanks very much for driving today.”

  * * *

  Davy approached the Daarkon Group cautiously, starting with Internet research from a cybercafe in Leeds.

  There was surprisingly little information available. They had a listing with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and they were mentioned in the Conservative Corporate Donations register. They contributed heavily to the Heritage Foundation and other organizations that called for reduced regulation of large businesses.

  The only link he could find to Stroller and Associates was a picture posted on a social networking site, tagging William Stroller at the Daarkon Group Christmas party from two years before. There were five other people in the photo, all men, but only one of the others was named, a James B. Gilead. Stroller was on the fringes of the photo. Gilead was dead center, dominant.

  Davy wondered if he had an implant under his right collarbone or if he ordered such devices put in others. It was a long time. Did they even use such devices any more?

  Did they have something more effective now?

  He shuddered, and moved closer.

  The buildings surrounding Rhiarti Tower, where Daarkon’s offices were, were not quite as tall, but one had thirty-three floors, so its rooftop was even with Rhiarti Tower’s top floor. And while there were some video cameras to evade in the lobby, Davy easily jumped to the second floor using binoculars and waiting for a hallway to clear.

  He deliberately entered in the morning rush, as people streamed into work. There were CCTV cameras in this building, too, and he would stand out after hours. He was barely visible riding a packed elevator to the thirty-second floor.

  He went to the thirty-second floor because it was shared among multiple firms, unlike the top floor which was occupied by a single architecture and engineering firm, whose receptionist station was in front of the elevators and would know he didn’t belong. On thirty-two, people exited the elevator, heading in different directions. He walked slowly and by the time he reached the stairwell, the hallways had cleared.

  The entrance to the thirty-third floor required a keycard, and the roof access had an alarmed push bar, but he was able to look out the armored glass at the stretch of gravel-covered tar, so he could jump past it.

  He gazed around an air-conditioner stack to look at Rhiarti Tower, but the mirrored glass windows across the street just reflected the hazy LA sky.

  Davy recorded a jump site in the nook between the elevator housing and the A/C cluster, and returned, as he thought of it, to winter, in the Yukon.

  SIXTEEN

  “It’s for the yearbook.”

  Dad drove me to the school parking lot, getting there in time to meet Mr. Hill and Joe, the team captain. They talked while I unloaded my bags. Dad can be charming when he wants to, and I heard him offering to help out at future practices.

  I glared at him and he raised his eyebrows back at me. When he hugged me goodbye, I said, “No spying!”

  He seemed undaunted. “Sez who?”

  Joe and Mr. Hill were loading the van.

  “How many bags do you have?” Joe said.

  Mr. Hill said, “Got a helmet?”

  “Yeah, in my boot bag.”

  He looked down at my feet. I was wearing my soft freestyle boots.

  “Those aren’t your boots?”

  “Helmet’s with my slalom boots.”


  Joe’s head twisted around. “You have a slalom board? Rigid bindings?”

  “Uh, yeah. You guys do compete in the slalom, don’t you?” I was wondering if I’d screwed up again.

  “Yeah. Carl has a slalom board but mostly we’re freestylers. In the all-around meets, we’re required to do all the events, but most of us just use our freestyle boards. Ricardo will be happy.”

  During the drive, most of the team slept or listened to MP3 players. Jade and I ended up sitting on a bench seat with Lany, who promptly leaned against the window and closed her eyes. The roads were clear and we made it to the ski area by the time the lifts started running. The rest of the team went up the mountain while Mr. Hill shepherded Jade and me through the process of getting our pictures taken for the season pass.

  Mr. Hill suggested I bring both boards up the hill, so I bagged the slalom board and boots and slung them over my back. We met up with the rest of the team at the Paradise Terrain Park.

  The coach, Ricardo, was pleased when he examined my equipment, but he was also sharp. “That board is brand new. Those bindings have only been on sale for three weeks. Did you replace a board or is this your first rigid boot?”

  “First I’ve owned,” I admitted. “Tried several rentals when I was choosing.”

  Ricardo nodded. “Right. We’re going to do slalom in the afternoon.” He held out his hand. “I’ll store them in the lift house.”

  I wasn’t the worst freestyle boarder on the team and what’s more, Jade wasn’t either. That honor belonged to Carl, who managed the most amazing crashes without dying or even, apparently, breaking anything.

  The guys would occasionally pull out their cell phone cameras while waiting for other team members to jump, but they’d almost always take video of Carl. Brett said, “We have our own YouTube channel: Carl’s Crazy Crashes. Good thing he’s better at slalom.”

  My first couple of slalom runs were awful as I fouled the gates or missed them entirely, but my third run I finally learned to trust the ability of the new board to hold an edge on quick turns and got into the rhythm. It’s a parallel course, with red and blue flags, so you run it against the clock and another boarder. This run I’d gone against Lany and I beat her down by a board length.