Down Among the Dead Men (39 page)

A hand clamps itself over his mouth and another grips his nose hard and Warren is dragged back through a doorway. Inside it's freezing cold and Warren realises that he's in a cold storage area servicing the market. Noone has Warren's head clamped between wiry, muscled arms and the Australian can't get free. He reaches up, frantically clawing at his attacker, but it's no good. Warren's badly out of shape and Noone isn't.

A few frantic, panicky seconds tick by. Noone is breathing hard close to Warren's ear. He smells of expensive cologne. Warren can hear his own blood pumping madly through his lousy veins and then a black tunnel starts to form at the edges of his vision and the sound of his blood is drowned by a distant humming and all he can think is how stupid it is that after all the anti-smoking warnings, he's going to die, like this, with his feet in the air in the cold storage area behind a Korean barbecue. Warren's phone starts to ring, muffled inside his pocket, but it's too late, much too late.

Twenty

Sam Dooley's already at a booth when they arrive at the coffee shop.

He's an imposing black guy about Frank's age with a belly and a taste for smart clothes. Next to him Frank feels scruffy. He's not what he imagined from Koop's description of his role.

After the introductions are made and coffee ordered for Frank and Koop, Dooley fills Koop in on some of his history. The Gang Detail had been formed in the wake of the Rampart Division corruption scandal of the late nineties in which a large number of officers were implicated in gang crime. Dooley's one of the results of the overhaul. Recruitment standards were raised and pride restored. It's clear to Frank that Dooley's proud of his contribution.

He listens politely but Frank's mind keeps flashing on to the old photo of Dennis Sheehan and the implications for his case. It's a fucking time bomb and Frank feels out of his depth. This – if what they think is true turns out to be so – is way beyond his pay grade.

'Keane,' says Dooley. 'Am I boring you?'

'Sorry,' says Frank. 'Jet lag.'

'Yeah.' Dooley purses his lips. He turns to Koop. 'I guess I might have been talking too much.' He juts his chin at Koop's file. 'What you got?'

Before they'd arrived at the coffee shop Frank and Koop had agreed to keep the Sheehan photo under wraps until a point in the meeting with Dooley when it feels right. With Frank's stock apparently so low with the US authorities, he needs time before making any wild assertions about the Noone case to a sceptical local.

'We need a friend,' says Koop. 'You're it.'

Frank outlines the case he's chasing and fills Dooley in on bringing Koop and Warren in as consultants. As Frank's talking he
can feel Dooley closing off. Dooley sits back in the booth, his body language indicating growing discomfort.

Frank can't blame him; if a US cop had shown up on Merseyside with two freelancers in tow and a hinky story like this, Frank would have been less than happy. But he perseveres.

'I know it's not something that you'd like,' he says, 'but I'm beginning to think that Noone's planning to kill again.'

'If he's your guy.'

'He's our guy, believe me.' Frank tells Dooley about Noone's trip to Palm Springs and about the way he shook off the blue Toyota. 'There's something he didn't want anyone to see.'

'Probably a boyfriend,' says Dooley. 'Palm Springs is a big gay town.'

'Maybe. It wouldn't be something that would surprise me. But I don't think it is. Noone's being followed by people from Daedalus. They're a –'

'I know who they are,' interrupts Dooley. 'We deal with them all the time through the D of C. Rent-a-cops, mostly.'

'Maybe here,' says Koop. 'But the Daedalus core business is several rungs higher than that. Ex-Special Forces, CIA, hardcore military intelligence people. They're running big operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. All of it legal as far as we know, and the people are top quality. It would be a mistake to see them as amateurs.'

Dooley's expression hasn't changed but Frank can sense they've got him at least paying attention.

'OK, then I guess the question is,' says Dooley, 'why are Daedalus following Noone?'

Koop looks at Frank and raises his eyebrows.

'Show him,' says Frank.

'Daedalus is owned by Loder Industries,' says Koop. 'Loder Industries' majority shareholder is Dennis Sheehan.'

Dooley's fully with the program now. He's leaning forward, eager. 'Ex-Secretary of State?'

'The same.' Koop takes out a photo showing Sheehan giving evidence to the congressional hearings. He places it on the table and rotates it so that Dooley can see.

'OK,' says Dooley. 'But I'm still not getting the connection.'

Koop takes out another sheet. This time it's a photo of Noone taken from the Hungry Head pre-production publicity website for
The Tunnels
. Noone's smiling, looking right at the camera. Koop puts it next to the shot of Sheehan.

Dooley shrugs.

Koop places the photo of Dennis Sheehan with Richard Nixon and puts it next to the one of Noone. Dooley bends closer, his eyes widening. He takes the photo of Noone and slides it across to take out Nixon.

'You see it, right?' Frank leans forward and taps a finger on the image of the young Sheehan. 'We think Dennis Sheehan is Ben Noone's father.'

Twenty-One

Noone, breathing hard, lets go of the dead guy and lowers him to the floor of the cold storage room. Conscious that someone could walk right in at any time, he bends and takes out the man's wallet, holding it by the edges. He lets it flip open and sees the guy's driver's licence. It's not a California issue.

Warren Eckhardt.

Australia?

What the fuck is an Australian doing snooping around Los Angeles?

For the first time in a while Noone wonders if he's done the right thing. Maybe this guy is a tourist after all. Then he flashes on the restroom in Morongo and knows that Eckhardt's no tourist.

A further inspection of the wallet reveals Eckhardt's ID card, still showing him as a Queensland police officer. What the fuck?

Noone places the wallet on the floor and finds a cheap prepaid phone in the dead man's jacket pocket. He slips the phone into his own pocket. Then he replaces the wallet in Eckhardt's jacket after wiping the corners to remove any trace of his own prints.

Standing, he checks that the alley is empty before wiping the handle of the storage room door and slipping out. Noone's last act is to push the door shut behind him with the toe of his boot before walking calmly away.

Noone takes the long route around and back to a cafe in the centre of the market. He sits at the counter and orders a coffee from the Latino server. A few minutes later and there's a tap on his shoulder.

'Ben.'

Noone turns and sees his agent, Fiona Berens. She's a small, dark-haired woman in her thirties, dressed in grey. Like almost everyone working in the LA media she has the body of a gym rat. She pushes her sunglasses up on her head and kisses Noone's cheek.

'You're cold,' she says.

Noone shrugs.

'Been here long?' says Berens.

'I just arrived,' says Noone. 'Good meeting?'

Berens is the one who'd suggested coffee here after her meeting at CBS.

She smiles brightly and cocks her head on one side. 'It was a meeting. They're all good, aren't they?'

Both of them laugh. Berens orders an espresso and places her phone flat on the counter so she can see any messages as they arrive. Hollywood etiquette: phone on silent, but messages can be glanced at.

'And now you got another one.' Noone makes an apologetic face.

'Oh, meetings with you aren't meetings, silly. They're fun.'

Berens isn't kidding. She does enjoy Noone's company. He is fun. If she wasn't happily married she might even have slept with him.

He looks sceptical.

'You're not pushy,' says Berens. 'Most of my clients . . .' She lets the sentence drift. It's true. Ben Noone doesn't have the desperation most of the actors on her books have. She imagines it's the family money that gives him that confidence but there's something else there that Berens can see. A deeper sense that Noone knows exactly who he is and what he wants. She'd seen it before in other actors who made the grade. They just know.

The possibilities for her new client excite her.

As the espresso arrives there is a commotion over towards a Korean place. Berens and Noone glance across to where a small crowd has gathered.

'Always something in LA,' says Noone.

Berens nods. She takes a sip of coffee and starts talking business.

Noone barely listens – he has almost zero interest in obtaining roles now that he is playing the biggest role of his life – but he lets her chirp on about developing projects and meetings with casting
directors. From time to time he interjects with some sort of encouraging word while, over Berens' shoulder, he watches an ambulance arrive and take away the man he's just killed.

Noone hopes the Australian cop won't be a problem.

There's less than a week before the big one.

Twenty-Two

Frank's not the only one worried about the scale of the thing they appear to have stumbled into. Dooley's veneer of cool has evaporated like spit on a desert road. It's like Koop's put down a grenade on the table.

'Uh-huh, no, no fucking way.' He pushes the photos back across the table as if needing to put a physical distance between himself and the knowledge of the connection between Sheehan and Noone.

He leans back, shaking his head. 'Have you any idea of the amount of shit something like that could bring down? You guys are fucking deluded if you think I'm gonna go near that mess. I'm not happy you even told me.' He looks around as if expecting a SWAT team at any moment. 'I mean what the fuck, man? Sheehan?' His voice is low, urgent. 'Are you fucking kidding me?'

Koop holds up his hands. 'Listen, Sam, there's no reason to go off. We're just trying to make sense of this. We have zero proof that Sheehan is Noone's father. And even if we did, it doesn't add anything to the case against Noone. Sheehan might be covering up that he'd fathered a child. At the time of Noone's birth Sheehan was married. He's a conservative and he stood on a platform of family values. There's every reason for him to cover it up but so far we can't see any crime he's committed.'

'If we're right,' says Frank, 'it explains a lot about the case. If Daedalus were tailing Noone they might have seen things relating to the deaths that I'm investigating. They were doing something similar in Liverpool, I'm pretty sure.' Frank flashes on the American putting him on the bathroom floor in Bean. 'At the very least it would be good to talk to them.'

'You need to take this to the Feds,' says Dooley. 'I can't do anything. Even if I wanted to. Which I definitely don't.'

'Noted,' says Frank. 'But we still want you to remember that we showed you this. In case it does get really nasty. In case something happens.'

Dooley rolls his eyes.

'Oh, you don't think it could?' says Koop. 'Some of these guys were underground in Baghdad for months. Do you think they'll worry about knocking off a few nosy Brits and Aussies?'

'We're going to take it to the FBI,' says Frank. 'But I suspect that they'll just take it away from us and do nothing. Now that might be OK if Noone isn't planning to carry on killing. It might also be OK if he hadn't killed six people in Liverpool including a sixteen-year-old boy. And if the Feds don't want to do anything about Noone, I do. I want that fucker – I mean, I
really
want him – and you can help us without doing very much. You don't have to do anything except track the records on Deborah Sterling. It'll take us forever. I'm going to ask my official connections here to do the same but I have a suspicion that the evidence might go the same way that the CCTV footage did at JFK.'

Frank looks at Dooley. 'Get us a connection between Sterling and Sheehan before someone sees to it that there is no connection. That's it.'

Dooley slides out of the booth and gets to his feet.

'I'll think about it,' he says, and leaves.

Twenty-Three

From the coffee shop in Burbank, Frank and Koop head back to see Mills at West Street.

'I have to give them this,' says Frank.

Koop agrees. Information as explosive as this might prove to be needs to be passed along. Still, Koop's conscious that it's speculative. Without further evidence of the connection between Sheehan and Noone's mother, it's all conjecture. Coming hard on the heels of Hagenbaum's words about bringing something solid back to the table, both Frank and Koop aren't sure how this will play.

Mills, to his credit, sees Frank immediately, while Koop waits with the car. Frank's not ready to reveal openly he has help on the ground just yet. For all he knows, the Feds are fully aware of Koop and Warren but there's no need to make it easy for them.

The landscape of the investigation is shifting underneath his feet. Frank can feel it. Information is becoming currency and it doesn't come in any larger denominations than Dennis Sheehan. As the tectonic plates shift, Frank needs to retain some sort of edge, even if it's only to make him feel better.

Everything's a long way from the murders in Burlington Road. It's not a good feeling.

'Quick work,' says Mills when Frank hands over the file of printouts. 'You had this before our meeting earlier?'

Frank shakes his head. 'I'll need copies of those,' he says.

Mills puts the papers down on his desk and rubs his face. His reaction isn't so different from Dooley's.

There's a silence in the office. Frank can see the business of the department going on through the glass windows of Mills' office and he gets a sudden yearning to be tucked up nice and safe at Stanley Road.

'What do you want me to do with this?' says Mills.

Frank repeats what he asked Dooley. 'If I can establish the connection between Sheehan and Noone it'll help me obtain – or try to obtain – information from any Daedalus employees who might have been following Noone in Liverpool.'

'It's thin,' says Mills. 'I mean from the point of view of your case. As information . . .' Mills mimes an explosion with his hands. 'We'll have reporters crawling through the fucking air vents to get their hands on this.' He seems to be talking to himself so Frank says nothing.