Down Among the Dead Men (43 page)

The kids turn their moon faces towards him when he comes into the room and look at him, their expressions blank. One of them turns back to the screen after a couple of seconds.

'Take a seat,' says Gena. 'Don't mind the kids. I run a kind of amateur kindergarten. Lot of working moms in the neighbourhood.'

Noone sits down on a fat sofa. The floor is strewn with toys and he moves a couple out from under his feet. Gena puts the kid she's carrying down on the floor next to the other two.

'Play nice, Hector,' she says. 'Watch the show.'

She waddles out of the room. The kid who's been staring at him continues to watch Noone. Hector looks like he might have a few issues. He picks his nose and watches Noone too. The TV is loud but not unpleasant.

'ThunderCats,'
says Hector and points at the screen.

Noone nods. 'Yeah.'

Hector seems happy with the response and resumes the examination of his nose.

The house is clean and comfortable. Noone had been half-expecting a slum.

Gena comes back in carrying a solid-looking wooden box. She puts it down on the coffee table and clears a couple of cartons of juice out of the way. The effort of this task makes Gena breathe hard and she rises after placing the box, looking like she might pass out.

'You OK?' says Noone. Not that he gives a shit about the old woman but he doesn't want to have to deal with whoever's behind Gena if she dies right here. And there will be someone behind Gena. It's a tactic – so Mickey the Samoan told Noone – for suppliers of illegal weaponry to run them through a front. The front will get a hike in his – or her – pension and is completely expendable in the event of a crisis. 'Plus they have more balls than some young guys,' Mickey said. 'Dependable.'

'I'm fine,' says Gena. She puts her hands on her hips and sucks in some oxygen. 'Cancer,' she says in the voice other people might say 'flu'. She waves her hand to dismiss the subject and then leaves the room again.

Hector pulls himself up using the edge of the coffee table and puts his chubby hands on the box.

'Don't, kid,' says Noone. Hector ignores him so Noone growls in a low, urgent way and Hector sits back down.

Gena returns with two more boxes, one wooden, one waxed card. She places these down next to the larger box and, with difficulty, manoeuvres her behind into a leather armchair.

'Watch TV, Hector,' she says, flapping her hand at the tube. 'Be good, chico.'

She passes Hector a carton of juice with a straw in the top and he takes it, although he doesn't turn away from the box or sit down. Gena shrugs and flicks the clasp on the lid.

Inside, lying on a bed of shaped foam, is the most simultaneously beautiful and ugliest object Noone has ever seen. Hector leans forward, interested, the juice carton clamped to his mouth.

'Micro Tavor X95S,' says Gena. 'Just like you ordered.' In the presence of the Micro Tavor, her voice takes on a reverential tone and she transfers some of that to Noone.

He's paid upwards of twenty-five grand for this weapon alone when he could have had a fully automatic Uzi for a tenth of that.
The money doesn't matter; he'd have paid double once he'd seen the gun online. It is utterly, completely, one hundred per cent, the most badass gun a person could own.

'Israeli made. Ten point eight inch barrel, nine millimetre, integrated silencer, twelve hundred rounds a minute. Maximum range around four hundred metres. This one came from Operation Defensive Shield. Hector, don't touch; you got sticky fingers, chico.'

Gena pushes Hector's hands out of the way, lifts the gun out and passes it to Noone.

'Mine,' says Hector.

'Not now, honey,' says Gena in a soothing tone. 'Fucking sweet, hey?' she says, turning to Noone. She's not talking about Hector.

The weapon is a short-barrelled, snub-nosed, squat lump of absolute evil energy. The power of it fills the room like smoke and Noone feels his heart beat faster, the cold black muzzle of the gun seeming to draw energy inwards. No one – Hector and his compadres excepted – would ever be within fifty yards of this thing and not know exactly where it was pointed.

The weapon's made of dark grey composite material and is surprisingly light in Noone's hands. Back in Liverpool, when he'd handled the taser for the first time, he had felt the thrill then of having violent power at his fingertips, but the Micro Tavor is a beast of another species. When Noone had been researching assault weapons, the Micro Tavor had screamed out to him. Here, in Gena's living room, having one actually in his hands almost makes him cry.

He cradles it lovingly, a mother and her new born, and the ergonomically crafted weapon sits in his grasp as snugly as if it was always supposed to have been there. Noone can't believe he'd never thought of getting hold of guns before. Put together with his capacity for killing, the Micro Tavor pushes him towards godhood.

Gena taps a finger on the gun's stock. 'You ever fired anything like this before, son?'

He shakes his head.

'Uh huh, nothing like this.' He doesn't let Gena know he's never so much as handled a gun before. Gena takes the weapon from Noone and he has to suppress a momentary desire to grab it back.

Gena explains the technicalities of the gun for twenty minutes, breaking off now and again to change the TV channel or take one of the kids to the bathroom. By the end of it Noone feels comfortable. He wants to load the Mic now and feel the juddering roar as it spits.

He wants to shoot Gena and the brats just to feel what it's like.

He won't, for so many reasons, but the temptation to load and fire is there. Noone doesn't think he can wait until Saturday.

Gena puts the gun back in its box and taps a finger on a second box.

'There are three clips in here, darlin'. More than enough to get the job done.' Gena flicks a glance at Noone. They're straying into territory that neither of them wants to occupy, the reason Noone wants the gun. Gena hurries towards the third box. He lifts the lid.

'Glock 22 RTF2. Also nine millimetre. This one's fully legal.'

Noone picks up the Glock.

It's beautiful too but can't be compared to the Mic. Gena runs through the basics with Noone and their business is complete. No money changes hands; Mickey's taken care of all that beforehand. Cash money only makes everything dirtier.

'Let me go get my vehicle,' says Noone. 'I parked it round the corner until . . . well, until I was sure of how this'd work out.'

Gena nods. 'Sure. Don't blame you, hun.' Hector's pulling at her hip and Gena rubs his head fondly. 'Good kid,' she says to Noone but he just smiles and heads out.

He gets the jeep and backs it onto Gena's short drive, the trunk almost at the mouth of the carport shade. He opens the Jeep back gate and puts the boxes inside in a steel lock-up box. He doesn't shake hands or say anything else to Gena before he leaves and she looks comfortable with that. Hector's face is impassive.

Noone pulls off, leaving Gena and the kid watching him drive away through the rainbow sticker on the window.

Thirty-Two

'I'm in the wrong business.'

It's the first time Frank's seen Ben Noone's house at Pacific Palisades. Warren and Koop had been handling that side of things.

It's late afternoon. The two of them are parked in a car lot on the beachside of the Pacific Highway. Instead of peering at the ocean Frank's got the binoculars up to his eyes and is looking at a glass and steel house high on the hillside a little north of Santa Monica. The morning fog is long gone and the temperature has been climbing steadily.

'Not bad.'

Frank puts the binoculars down.

Both men look up at the house. Two large glass boxes set at a ninety degree angle to each other with an infinity pool between them. There's a cantilevered steel bridge connecting the two parts of the building, one part of which juts out into space. In front, the grounds drop down the steep slope of the canyon. Lush landscaping hugs a curving driveway that opens out into an expanse of concrete on which stands a car Frank can't identify but imagines would cost more than his house. Next to it – so says Koop who has seen the place from close up – is the space where Noone's jeep usually sits and next to that an older vehicle that looks too basic to be at the property.

A Santa Monica police cruiser rolls into the lot and drives past Frank and Koop's car. Frank resists the instinct to nod at the patrolman.

Koop unfolds a shiny tourist map and makes a show of looking at it.

The cruiser comes back after doing a circuit of the lot and, with a last glance in their direction, drifts back onto the highway and south towards Venice.

They step out and lean against the guard rail in front of a bike track which runs along the ocean front between the highway and the water.

'You still OK with this?' Frank asks Koop.

'No,' says Koop. 'But I'm still going to do it.'

Frank's about to say something else when there's movement. Frank lifts the binoculars.

'Someone's moving.'

A Hispanic woman walks out of Noone's house and to the back of the white car. She loads a box of what might be cleaning products into the trunk, gets in and reverses out of the driveway.

Frank and Koop get back into the rental and wait. A minute later, the cleaner's white car passes them in the rear-view mirror.

'Now or never,' says Frank. He pulls the car out into traffic and swings across the intersection before taking the turn into the street behind Noone's place. Koop's already done a recce. Noone's property backs onto a couple of undeveloped lots and a sliver of the Topanga State Park reaching down towards the coast like a green finger. They park in a quiet corner of a cul-de-sac and move into the trees.

Three minutes later they're at the edge of Noone's property.

Frank hands Koop one of the ski masks they'd bought at an outlet mall on the way over.

'I feel stupid,' says Koop, but he rolls it down over his face. Noone may have security cameras. Frank has a small bag of tools they got at Home Depot. It's not perfect but they'll work. Frank doesn't want to think about what might happen if Noone comes back home but the way things are going they don't have much choice.

They hop over the small wire fence and jog down the embankment to the house. There's a hot tub set on an escarpment overlooking the Pacific. Behind it is a small door that looks like a good entry point. Frank takes out a short-handled sledge hammer.

'Ready?' he asks.

Koop gives the thumbs up and Frank splinters the lock. They
both tense, waiting for an alarm that doesn't come. When there's nothing, neither man relaxes. Most alarms in a place like this would be silent, linked to a central operations room.

Frank's banking on Noone not having this arrangement. It's risky, but after Warren's death they're both in the mood. Besides, if Noone does have the place linked to security, there's nothing he or Koop can do about it.

Inside they find themselves in a short corridor of polished concrete. A translucent glass door at the end opens into the main body of the house. It's an open plan, industrial-scale building with almost 360 degrees of glass.

'Not the best place to stay hidden,' says Koop.

'The cocky fucker probably doesn't think he needs to,' replies Frank. He thinks of what Salt told him; this man does not believe you can beat him. He's had everything he's wanted all his life – except, perhaps, his father's attention. There's no reason he wouldn't have a glass house; from his perspective, he's normal.

Frank takes the upper level, Koop down.

Upstairs the rooms are divided more privately but it's still a very open arrangement. In the main bedroom Frank opens the walk-in wardrobe. It's like a department store both in the amount of clothes and in the precise arrangement. Everything looks brand-new. Expensive. But there's nothing of interest.

He moves to the bedside cabinet and finds a similar story. Neat, nothing overly personal. In the bathroom there are cupboards stocked with enough toiletries to open a drugstore. Even the toothbrush looks box fresh. Frank spends another ten minutes searching without finding anything. His stomach is knotted with tension.

Downstairs Koop has a similar story. Fridge well-stocked. Everything stored exactly where it is supposed to be. The only sign of any personality is a small pinboard in the kitchen. On it are the usual banal detritus of a householder. Two power bills. A delivery order menu from an upmarket deli. Five or six business cards, most of them for tradesmen: electrician, plumber, pool. One has a black and white photo of a young woman. Frank lifts it from the pin holding it and flips it over. Angie Santamaria. Angie lists herself as a model/actor.

'That's who we saw him with a few days ago,' says Koop. 'At the cafe.'

Frank writes down Angie's number and replaces it on the pinboard. It's a pathetic haul from the daring raid. After the buildup, both of them feel slightly foolish.

'There's nothing,' Frank says. 'Unless you have any bright ideas?'

'No,' says Koop. 'Let's go. I don't know about you,' he says, pointing to the ski mask, 'but I feel a complete tit in this thing.'

They reach the car unobserved, removing their ski masks under cover of the trees.

'What now, boss?' says Koop. He's driving.

Frank leans an arm on the sill of the passenger window and watches the Pacific Ocean slide past. The landscape, used in so many TV shows and movies, is curiously familiar. It's an odd feeling.

He shakes his head. 'No idea.' He turns his gaze back to the road.

Their whole investigation feels dead. Frank's just about had it. He turns the radio on. The DJ's in the middle of talking about the guest list for tomorrow's presidential fundraiser.
Air Force One
arrives at LAX inside the hour and the traffic is expected to be horrible. Frank switches it off and they sit in silence for a while.

'What about the girl on the card?' says Koop. 'We should talk to her.'

Frank shrugs. 'Why not?'

It's not like they've got anything else to do.

Thirty-Three

After getting the guns from the old woman in Corona, Noone heads up the Riverside Freeway until he intersects with the connecting roads onto I-10 going east.