City of War (57 page)

Everyone was distracted, and I squeezed Archer’s hand, hoping she’d understand. She squeezed back, and I nodded toward the front door. It was still twenty feet away over broken glass with a pair of armed men guarding it. But it was now or never.

I slipped my hand into my jacket pocket and gripped Guinevere’s tiny gun. It was worthless, but it made me feel like I wasn’t completely naked. As every nerve ending poised to signal its corresponding muscle, the barrel of a Kalashnikov suddenly jammed into the back of Archer’s neck so hard, it almost knocked her down. At the same time, an accented voice inches from my right ear hissed, “Don’t.”

I turned and saw another body-stockinged man step directly in front of me. He gestured to the guards standing at the front door, and one of them inserted a key, turned it and pushed the heavy steel frame outward. I eased my hand out of my pocket. Had the voice come a hundredth of a second later, we would have died against the glass.

The man led us outside. The air was cool, and there was a misty fog blanketing the city. It was so quiet I could hear a train leaving Victoria Station. I looked for traffic, but the street was empty. Someone had made sure there would be no surprises.

I felt Archer limping, looked down and saw the blood prints from the glass-cut soles of her bare feet. And then my car appeared. It was double-parked with its lights out and its motor running. I turned, half-expecting to catch a rifle butt to the face, but instead, the man who was escorting us pointed for his partner to return to the house.

I opened the car and got Archer inside. I tried to bandage one of her feet with my handkerchief, but it was beyond inadequate. She’d have to make do until we got back to Strathmoor Hall. I stood and closed her door.

The body-stockinged man had pulled his hood off, and I could now see his face. He was handsome and dark-haired and of indeterminate ethnicity. His eyes, however, were blue, which didn’t fit the accent. And then I remembered I had seen people with this characteristic before.

“I know you, don’t I?” I said.

He smiled. “I used to call you Mister.” He extended his hand. “Nice to see you again, Sergeant Black.”

I took his hand. His grip was warm and firm. No nervousness at all.

“May I ask?” I said.

“Colonel Serbin headed the Soviet pacification program in my country. The Americans had brought us food and books for our schools. Colonel Serbin had a different approach. He would position his tanks around a village, then open fire with incendiary shells. It was quite effective. Ashes are very peaceful.” He paused. “If I close my eyes, I can still hear the screams.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Every person with me lost somebody. Tonight our dead will finally sleep.”

“Then I really am sorry…sorry that it had to be you.”

I thought for a moment he was going to embrace me, but he changed his mind and extended his hand again. I put my left hand over our grip, and he did the same. Then he turned and walked back toward the house.

I got in the Bentley, half-expecting to find Archer in shock and needing a hospital. Instead, she reached over and took my hand. I put the car in gear. When we reached the front of my grandfather’s former home, muzzle flashes were visible through the white-draped windows, and there was a sudden rush of flame inside the front door.

Archer put down her window, stuck her head into the cold and yelled, “For the record, Colonel, the entertainment was fucking grand. Just fucking grand.”

Epilogue

It was December on Dove Way, but the night was warm, so I’d cracked the French doors in the bedroom. I looked at the clock on the nightstand. 3:47.

Since I live near the end of the street, it isn’t unusual for someone to use the apron in front of my gates to turn around, but the car out there now had been sitting with its lights on and engine running for a couple of minutes.

I got out of bed, slipped on a bathrobe and walked out onto the balcony. The front gate obscured all but a pair of unidentifiable taillights. Then a man stepped into view and lit a cigarette. Manarca.

I went back inside and hit a button that opened the gates. Archer lay sprawled across the sheets, sound asleep. Her half-packed luggage was strewn around the room. Rudolfo had called from Rome and said he needed her—desperately. His modeling coordinator was completely incompetent, and the Milan show was approaching. He wanted her to stay at least a year.

Then Jannicke had dropped in unexpectedly and asked if
she’d consider doing a photo shoot in Norway. Top money and a guaranteed cover of
Elle
. I knew Archer wanted me to try to stop her, but even if I’d been able to, I wouldn’t have. She wasn’t finished with that life yet, and in truth, I wasn’t finished with mine.

We’d gone to the cemetery the previous afternoon so she could say good-bye to Kim. Unlike the downpour when we buried her, it was a perfect Southern California day, and the celebrity-obsessed were meandering the grounds, including a dozen or so lined up to make rubbings of Marilyn’s marker.

Archer brought along a HUG ME—I’M LONELY cactus, and after setting it on Kim’s grave, she asked me to say a few words. It’s not my line of work, but I gave it some thought, then said, “If it’s true we enter the next life cleansed of the past, then no one deserves it more. Good luck, Kim. We both would have liked to have known you better.”

“Amen,” said Archer.

Suddenly, I felt somebody at my elbow. It was an attractive young lady, not long out of her teens, dressed in jeans and a skimpy UCLA T-shirt. She had an expensive camera draped around her neck. “This somebody famous?” she asked.

I looked at her. “No.”

“Good, all the other kids have done stars until I want to puke.” She regarded Kim’s marker for a moment. “Cool poem,” she said. “Mind if I take a picture?”

“I think my sister would approve,” Archer said.

The girl focused and snapped off a couple of shots. When she finished, she said, “Kinda young. How’d she die?”

“She was murdered,” I answered.

“No shit. By who?”

It should have been an easy question, but it wasn’t. And while I thought about it, Archer answered. “By life.”

The girl looked at us and seemed about to say something else when another young lady with a camera came trotting up, out of breath. “Hey, Angela, Soledad just told me that
little girl from
Poltergeist
is buried here. You know, the one who yelled, ‘They’re heeeere.’ Her older sister in the movie too. Jesus, how weird is that? You know where they are?”

Angela rolled her eyes at us as if to say, see what I mean. “Sure, Sheila.”

We watched them walk away, and Archer said, “At least Kim won’t suffer from a shortage of laughs.” Then she slipped her hand into mine, and we headed back to the car.

Downstairs, Mallory had the house decorated for the holidays, once again putting Macy’s to shame. He got more out of control every year, but he always pushed it through by telling me that the party for Sister Vonetta and her students couldn’t be the same ol’, same ol’. Really?

Somewhere in the east wing, he’d be sleeping to an old movie. Growing up with a father mostly gone, his mother had put him to bed with the television on when she went to work, and he’d been so terrified that he pretended the voices belonged to angels. Now he can’t sleep without them. We’d head down to the boat Christmas Eve and stay through New Year’s. This would be Bert’s last of both, and the plan was heavy on everything, especially the laughs.

I opened the front door and saw Manarca resting casually against the fender of a Pontiac Grand Prix with a nice set of rims. Not police issue. Since he didn’t look like he wanted to come in, I went out.

“You didn’t ring, Detective,” I said.

He looked at me and smiled. “Now that I’ve had time to check you out, I didn’t figure I had to. Looks like I was right, doesn’t it,
Sergeant
?” He leaned on the last word longer than he had to.

He offered me a cigarette, and I took it. We smoked in silence for a while, then he opened the passenger door of the Grand Prix, reached in and came out with a clear plastic evidence envelope. Inside was a scorched, but legible, sheet of paper. The outdoor lighting provided enough il
lumination to see the twenty or so names on it and, about halfway down, to make out mine and Archer’s. Konstantin Serbin’s guest list.

“Recognize it?” Manarca asked.

“Should I?”

“There are four more pages, if you need them. One hundred and two people.” He paused. “Everybody dead.” He looked at me. “Well, almost everybody.”

“I get on a lot of lists. Occupational hazard.”

He laughed, but not with much mirth. “Some guy in London with a name like a bank merger sent this. Asked me to look you up. Mention that they worry a lot.”

“You can tell him I’m fine.”

Manarca wasn’t finished. “I checked with a friend over at Homeland Security. National Security type. Didn’t even have to call me back. Knew you right off. Said you were in the UK at the time. And that just before that you’d been in Corsica when some shit went down. Corsica? Isn’t that where that prick Dante was from?”

“Late prick,” I said.

“Fuckin’ shame. Now, how about putting away the tango shoes and telling me how come people on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be keeping track of you?”

“How about telling me why an LAPD detective cares.”

“That’s the same thing my friend in Homeland Security asked. Told him I didn’t. I was just handling some bullshit assignment for the chief.”

“That true?”

“Yep, but I’m a naturally curious guy. Occupational hazard.”

I looked at him for a couple of seconds, then smiled. “I think maybe somebody thought they saw Paris.” He didn’t laugh this time, so I added, “Happens. Even to professionals.”

Manarca hesitated, then nodded. “Ain’t that the truth.” He took back his list, got in the Pontiac and started it up. Just
before he pulled away, he rolled down the window. “Hey, I almost forgot. Your buddy in London said to mention the name Bibiana. Let you know she opened a gallery in Dubai.”

Dubai. Made sense. Follow the money. I didn’t offer a comment, and Manarca rolled up his window. I watched him drive through the gates then went back inside.

I went to the bar and poured two fingers of the Bowmore 40 that had just arrived. The warmth of the fine single malt felt good. I opened a drawer. The key was where it should have been.

I made my way to a door just off the study—the room that had so aroused Kim’s curiosity that she’d gone outside to look. I inserted the key into the substantial dead bolt, stepped into the darkness and closed the door behind me, standing still for a moment to let my eyes adjust.

As always, the plantation shutters were closed, but the full moon bathed them in enough light to give shape to the larger pieces in the room. I noticed the faint odor of furniture polish. Mallory again. Always one step ahead. Everything else was the same as I’d left it more than a year ago.

I walked to the center of the room, careful to avoid bumping into the ottoman I had kicked several times in the past, and reached for the matches that should have been there. They were, but they’d gotten pushed a few inches to the left. I struck one and lit the single white candle.

I sat down and pushed the cover off the keyboard. I started to play, but the notes were hollow, uninspired. I got up, crossed the room and touched a switch. While the turntable came to life, and the stylus fell silently into the first groove, I eased into a large leather chair.

My mother’s words and Sanrevelle’s voice filled the room….