Dangerous Games (14 page)

She was counting on his paranoia this morning. Paranoid people were acutely aware of their surroundings. That went double for paranoid cops—or ex-cops—whose street time left them hyperobservant. She wanted him to be looking around as he drove down Eighth Street, where, just after seven o’clock, she parked at the curb outside one of the area’s countless
zapaterías
—shoe stores, to the uninitiated.

This particular section of Koreatown was less exotic than the main drag. Here were no cybercafés, no patio eateries, no hot nightspots, no high-priced acupuncture clinics. Instead she was surrounded by dollar discount stores, karaoke clubs, and massage parlors. Graffiti posted by the two competing local gangs, the Playboys and the Mara Salvatrucha, defaced walls and storefronts. A crowd of undocumented aliens gathered across the street hoping to be hired for a day’s work.

Not a scenic neighborhood, but convenient for her purposes. The security firm was located at the corner of Eighth and Hoover. Although Kolb had varied his route both times she’d followed him, he’d always ended up on this stretch of road. If her timing was right, he would be here soon.

She killed the engine, got out of the car, and popped the hood. With a pair of pliers she disconnected one of the battery cables, letting it dangle. She hid the pliers in her purse and leaned over the engine, careful to keep her face in plain view while letting her body language communicate helplessness and frustration.

The next minute or so was the tricky part of the plan. Her worst fear was not that Kolb wouldn’t stop to help her. It was that some other good Samaritan would stop first.

An unfounded fear. This was LA. Nobody stopped.

Then she spotted Kolb’s Oldsmobile, coming this way.

The car, which had been in decent shape yesterday, clanked and sputtered now, with visible damage to the front end. She wondered if Kolb had caused the accident. Aggressive driving was consistent with his personality type.

She expected his attention to be drawn to the car with the open hood. And she expected him to recognize her. He would never offer assistance to a stranger, but to a woman he’d met, he might prove more gallant.

The Olds pulled past without slowing. She didn’t dare follow it with her gaze. She began to think she’d overestimated either his chivalry or his perceptiveness.

Then she heard the car pull to a stop at the curb a few yards away.

Now it was all a matter of playing her part. She’d worked out the approach she intended to use. She only hoped he would go for it.

Her earlier relationship with Kolb had been extremely short-lived. She’d worked the case for only a few days, and had met Kolb exactly once. On a day when he was off-duty, she’d started a conversation with him at a produce market where he was stocking up on veggies. Like her, he was something of a health fanatic. This mutual interest had given them something to talk about. When he mentioned being a cop, she allowed him to think she was mightily impressed. She’d never known a cop, she said. It must be interesting work. And dangerous.

This, naturally, had prompted him to tell a couple of his favorite war stories from the field. By the time he finished recounting his adventures, they had left the market and were eating lunch at a Thai restaurant. When he got around to asking her about herself, she gave him a spiel about her boring job, which left no time for a social life. She hadn’t been required to go into detail. He wasn’t interested in her, except as a mirror reflecting his own self-image. He yakked about life on the streets, the perils of patrol work, the drug dealers and psychos, and she listened and nodded, oohed and aahed. Most likely this was the nature of his relationship with all women. Probably it explained why he was still single.

She learned enough from their initial encounter to make a preliminary assessment of the threat he posed, which she’d dictated into the microcassette recorder she carried in her purse. “Narcissistic, egocentric, arrested development, latent hostility, manipulative, needs to exercise power over others. Likely candidate for Madeleine Grant’s stalker. But unable to confirm without physical evidence.”

Physical evidence was obtained when she slipped into Kolb’s apartment while he was at work. After their one meeting she’d given him her phone number—a number that, like her Civic, was registered in the name of Abby Hollister. He hadn’t called, but he’d been a little busy, having been arrested and all.

Although he’d met her just once and hadn’t seen her in a year, she’d been pretty sure he would remember her, partly because he probably didn’t talk to a lot of women, and partly because she was just so darn memorable.

“Hello, stranger,” Kolb said with a slow smile as he walked toward her car.

Up close, he was bigger than she remembered—more muscular, prison-buffed—and there was a tinge of gray in his crew-cut hair. He moved with an unconscious swagger, a type of body movement known as a broadside display because the side-to-side swing filled up an unusual amount of personal space. It was a combative, somewhat aggressive posture—body language not normally exhibited when a man was greeting a woman.

“Oh…hi.” She gave a good imitation of someone who was both startled and a little nervous. The act was tricky. She had to pretend to show fear and also pretend to be hiding it.

“Engine trouble?” Kolb asked.

“It just conked out on me. I had to coast over to the curb.” As she spoke, she let her gaze travel along his body, scanning him for weapons. She saw no telltale bulges, but his long-sleeved, loose-fitting shirt could conceal a knife strapped to his arm or a gun wedged into his waistband.

Kolb bent over the engine and smiled. “Yeah, well, a car won’t run if the battery’s not hooked up.” He reattached the cable, hand-tightening the bolt. She noticed he didn’t need pliers. His hands were strong. “Try it now.”

She slipped behind the wheel and revved the engine, then got out of the car with a sheepish expression. “You’re a miracle worker.”

“As miracles go, that one was pretty bush-league.” He lowered the hood with a bang. “So what’ve you been up to, uh…Abby?”

She smiled at the mention of her name. Some experts maintained that it was impossible to fake a true zygomatic smile, but she could do it. The trick was to let the corners of the lips curl upward, producing crow’s-feet near the eyes.

“You remembered,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

“Still working at the paper mill?”

“It’s a stationery wholesaler, actually. And yes, I’m still there.”

He was taller than she was, which made it natural for her to lift her head when she faced him, thus exposing her suprasternal notch, the faint indentation above the collarbones. To bare her throat was a sign of submission.

Kolb seemed to pick up on the signal. He moved closer. “I think you promised me some personalized writing paper.”

“You would’ve gotten it, if…” She let her voice trail off. It seemed right. It was how cautious Abby Hollister would respond in this situation.

“If I hadn’t suddenly disappeared,” Kolb said.

Averting her eyes. “Well, yes.”

“Something came up.”

She still wouldn’t look at him. “I know.”

“Do you?”

“It was in the paper. Not a lot of coverage, but, you know…when a cop gets arrested, it always makes the news.”

“I guess it does. Hadn’t really thought about it before. Maybe I should’ve saved the clippings.”

“You didn’t see the news stories?”

“I had a few other things to worry about at the time.” His eyes were darting. He was uncomfortable, his body language more paranoid than before. “I guess it was kind of a surprise, seeing me in the
LA Times
?”

“They said you were stalking some woman….”

“Yeah. That’s what they said.”

“Were you?” Instantly she brushed off the question with a flustered wave. “I shouldn’t have asked you that. It’s none of my business.”

She expected Kolb, given an opening, to tell his version of the story, and he didn’t disappoint her.

“There was this rich bitch in Bel Air,” he said. “I pulled her over for a moving violation. She got it in her head that I was sending her anonymous e-mails. It was all a crock. I never sent any e-mails. I didn’t even remember the traffic stop. Somebody else was hassling her, I guess—and I took the fall.”

Abby barely registered the words. His behavior was more telling. He was massaging one arm, a common sign of deception. Of course, he might just have a rash on the arm—but he hadn’t been rubbing it before.

She knew she couldn’t accept his story at face value. No big-city gal would be that naive. He would expect skepticism.

“I read that you pled guilty,” she said.

“It was a plea bargain. I had no choice. They had me by the private parts. I could plead guilty to something I didn’t do, or take my chances with a jury. I don’t trust juries. They’re easily manipulated. I decided my best shot was to do the short time.”

“How long?”

“Ten months in Chino.”

“Doesn’t sound so short.”

“I survived. Not that it was easy. A cop in prison—you’re a marked man.”

“But they can’t
do
anything to you, can they? I mean, you’re protected by the guards.”

He snorted. “Yeah, right. Fucking screws don’t give a shit.” He was loosening up now, using coarser language, a good sign. “And even the few who did care couldn’t watch my back twenty-four hours a day.”

“Were people actually out to…you know?”

“Snuff me? You bet. I figured I had one chance.” He leaned against the Civic, settling into storytelling mode. “See, the prison population is divided into gangs—race gangs. The Asians hang together, the blacks, the whites. You’ve got your Black Muslim sector, your Aryan Brotherhood, and the crazy gooks who are still fighting the Vietnam War. My one shot was to join up with the white gang—if they’d let me. The white boys weren’t crazy about cops either. Every one of them was put away by somebody wearing a badge. But I had two things working in my favor. Number one, I’m white, and number two, I have a German name. I was Aryan, see? Never thought of myself as Aryan, or even as a German. Shit, my partner and best friend on the force was a black guy, Wally Scrubs—used to invite me over to his house in Baldwin Hills for Sunday barbecue. But if playing the race card would keep me alive, I’d play it. So I pledged my loyalty to my Aryan brothers, and they let me join their club.”

She noted a jerk of his Adam’s apple, a sign of embarrassment. He didn’t like admitting he’d signed up with the Nazis.

“You did what you had to do,” she said. “Nobody can blame you.”

“Some folks would. You want to see my initiation badge? Take a look.” He rolled up his left sleeve to reveal a prison tattoo—a jet-black swastika.

“Jeez,” Abby whispered.

“Well, we all got our cross to bear.” He rolled down the sleeve. “Sorry—bad joke. Anyhow, once word got around that I was protected, the predators switched to easier prey.”

“At least now you’re out. Can you…I mean…will they let you…?”

“Be a cop again? No way. Convicted felons don’t wear the uniform. Which is a joke, because there are plenty of guys on duty right now who’ve done worse stuff than I ever did.”

“I thought you didn’t do anything.”

The comment caught him up short. He touched his mouth, another cue suggesting anxiety and, sometimes, deceit.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I was clean. And now I’ve got a prison record and a jailhouse tat. At least the tat can be erased. When I get the money, I’m having it lasered right off my arm.” She didn’t think he was serious about having the tattoo removed. His eyes were jumping all over the place. “I don’t want anyone thinking I’m one of them. Bunch of ignorant skinheads, always jacking their jaws about how Hitler had the right idea.”

“Were they all like that?”

“Dumb inbred yahoos? Yeah, pretty much. There was one guy, though—one guy with brains. This old, gray-bearded, motorcycle-leather guy, name of Hauser. He was as race-crazy as the rest of them, but at least he’d done some reading. He could talk philosophy—if anyone would listen.”

“I’ll bet you listened.”

He shrugged. “Not much else to do in stir. When my cellmate and Hauser’s got paroled at the same time, me and Hauser ended up bunking together. There was plenty of time for conversation.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Mostly the mongrelization of Western society.” He smiled at her shocked expression. “That was his way of putting it, not mine. But some of what he said made sense.”

She kept her tone neutral. “Did it?”

“Not the racial stuff. Other things…like how civilization’s going downhill. Everybody kind of knows that. It’s in the air, and we can smell it, sense it. But why? That’s the question.”

“What’s the answer?”

“It’s because we’ve got it all backward. Society’s only as strong as its strongest members. But today everything’s set up against the strong. It’s all about protecting the weak.” There was no deception now. There was honest anger. His jaw had tensed, and there was a canine growl at the back of his voice. “That’s what decadence is. It’s favoring weakness over strength. In any society there are a few natural leaders. The rest are followers. They’re a herd. And like in any herd, there are some who are just too slow and weak. They get picked off, and the herd is strengthened. But if the leaders get picked off, the herd is doomed. That’s what’s happening today. We’re picking off the best. Either we emasculate them with a lot of rules and regulations, or we send them off to…”

“To jail?” Abby prompted.

“To jail. Yeah.” He was on a roll, punctuating his remarks with angry finger stabs. “What I’m talking about is heroes. The heroic man is the natural enemy of all the timid, needy types. They know it, and they resent him for it, so they make every effort to keep him down. They trim the tall trees and let the weeds run rampant. Weaklings and parasites—I used to see them every day when I was riding patrol. Welfare mothers, addicts, schizos roaming the streets, hookers spreading disease. They’re what takes over when you give free rein to weakness.”

There were a lot of ways to respond. Abby chose a middle ground between confrontation and agreement. “People can’t help it if they’re weak.”