Fire Point (6 page)

20

They worked their way down the channel in the darkness. Krank led the way. Discovering the route into the complex where Marcus lived had been part of a game. One day, instead of driving in, like he usually did, Krank had decided to try something different. A big part of the lifestyle he’d discovered through pick-up had been about approaching things differently. There was a playfulness to it. So, rather than knocking on the front door, when Krank visited someone, he would find a different way of arriving.

One afternoon he’d been sarging ‒ a term in the community for trying to pick up ‒ cute tourist girls on the Venice boardwalk when Marcus had called. His car was in the shop so he’d walked all the way down along the beach and canals to the Marina. That was when he’d found the route into the complex from the ocean side. It wasn’t even hard. It was just that people in LA didn’t walk so no one thought to use this way. When he’d shimmied up onto Marcus’s balcony he’d thought the kid was going to have a heart attack.

There was another side to his prowling, though. One that, at first, he hadn’t been proud of but which he had come to accept as part of who he was – as part of his inner hunter-gatherer man. He had begun to prowl at night, without the rest of the group.

It had begun semi-randomly with a girl who had blown him off after one date. He realized later that she had only agreed to go out with him as a joke with her friends. She had known from the jump that he was a pick-up artist. She was curious, but immune to all the game he threw at her. After the date, when she had spent fifteen minutes making fun of him and he’d finally lost his cool and stormed off, he found that he couldn’t help thinking about her. It was stupid. It went against the code. But there it was.

He had tracked down the house where she still lived with her parents out in La Canada on Google Maps. One night he had parked his car a few streets away and gone on the prowl, through backyards and past shimmering dark blue swimming-pools lit from underneath in the darkness.

How could he describe the thrill of that night? It was like the first time he had gone out sarging and it had worked. Prowling through the early-morning streets of La Canada had been a rush beyond even that. He had felt special, like the only man who was truly alive at that hour.

From time to time a motion-activated outside light would snap on. Or a yappy dog would bark. He would start, feeling a surge of fear at the possibility of discovery. He would step out of the pool of light, or the dog would quiet, and he would be at peace again.

After a time he started carrying treats for any dogs, and was adept at spotting lights, sensors and other security features. But standing outside the girl’s bedroom that first night had been like a junkie’s first hit, magical and sick-making at the same time. He hadn’t done anything to her. That had never been the intention. It had been enough, back then, to know that he could.

Tonight was a little different. He had MG and Loser with him and they were heading to Marcus’s apartment to get some stuff.

Krank held up his right hand so that the moonlight from the ocean caught his fingertips. Nearby, a boat strained against its ropes as a swell tugged it back from the dock. Krank and the other two faded back into the shadows as a lone security man walked by.

They gave him time to pass and started moving again. In under two minutes they reached the green space under MG’s balcony. It was enough of a climb to focus the mind. They stared up at the balcony. Krank knew that both he and MG had to be thinking the same thing. He looked over at MG. ‘How could you have missed her?’ he asked.

MG shook his head. ‘I didn’t. It was that guy pushing her out of the way.’

Krank choked back a laugh. ‘Fucking with you, dude. You did good. Now, are we gonna do this thing or not?’

With Loser acting as a look-out, Krank gave MG a boost and he began the climb, hand over hand, toward the edge of the balcony. Loser gave Krank a boost and soon he and MG were pulling back the board that had been placed across the shot-out glass door.

They ducked through into the apartment. There was enough light from outside that they didn’t need the Maglite Krank was carrying. He stood in the living room while MG went to find it.

A few moments later, MG was back from his bedroom. ‘It’s gone,’ he said.

‘You’re sure?’ said Krank, panic rising in his chest.

‘I know where I left it, and it’s not there,’ said MG, running a hand through his curly mop of hair.

‘Maybe someone moved it,’ said Krank.

MG shook his head. ‘I bet my mom took it. You know, so it wouldn’t be stolen or something.’

‘Then,’ said Krank, ‘you’ll have to go get it.’

‘How?’ asked MG. ‘It’s not like coming here. They have cameras, alarms.’

MG was so dumb sometimes, thought Krank. He always overreacted. Made things bigger than they were. ‘Who said anything about breaking in? It’s your home, too, right?’

‘Now?’

This time Krank did laugh. He held up his wrist so that MG could see the luminous dial of his watch. ‘No, not now. It’s too late. In the morning.’

‘We heading back to the house?’

Krank glanced down at his wrist. It was a little after eleven thirty. The Strip would just have started to get moving. It had been a day filled with tension. It was time to party.

21

In the half light of the Griffiths family residence, Lock walked into the living room to find Ty standing by the window, peering out into the garden. Ty glanced round, though he barely needed to: both men could pick out the sound of the other’s footfall from some distance.

‘We good?’ Ty asked.

‘Kids are asleep. Tarian will probably sleep till midday and hubby’s got a serious whisky snore going on,’ said Lock, joining Tyrone by the window. ‘You?’

‘Did a full circuit outside. Quiet neighborhood. Not even midnight and I think everyone within two blocks is in bed asleep.’

‘Early to bed, early to rise so they can stay focused on making money,’ said Lock.

Ty stepped away from the window, and took a seat next to the fireplace. The last embers of a fire Lock had started earlier were glowing among the ashes. ‘Guess that money’s all well and good until something like this comes along. What’d Teddy say?’

Lock stayed by the window. He traced the shadows in the garden, trying to map them in his mind. ‘Seems like Marcus fell in with a party crowd a little while back. Teddy thought it was the beginning of the end of their problems but not so much.’

‘Kid doesn’t seem like a party guy. Not from what everyone’s saying anyway,’ said Ty. ‘But if he fell in with kids who were partying real hard that could explain some of this.’

‘Explain what?’ Lock asked.

‘Well, partying in LA usually means drugs. Say Marcus is bi-polar or some shit. He starts dropping whatever these kids are taking. Wrong drug for a kid with mental-health issues? That’s like throwing a hand grenade into the middle of a fire. Shit’s gonna get messy real quick.’

Lock hadn’t thought of the drug angle, yet it made perfect sense. Marcus is withdrawn. He falls in with what they used to call a ‘fast’ crowd. He starts using and pretty soon he has some serious psychological problems. With all the designer drugs floating around, who knew how it would affect someone like him? Ty was right. There was stuff out there now that was lab-engineered and able to part your hair straight down the middle with the first sniff, snort or pill. It would easily explain the mood swings and aggression that both Tarian and Teddy had talked about.

‘We need to find this kid, Ty.’

‘Don’t worry. We will. Teddy say anything else?’

‘That jumped out at me?’ said Lock. ‘No, not really. He doesn’t think that either he or his wife have any enemies that dislike them to the extent that they’d try to kill them. Apart from Marcus, everything is domestic bliss.’

‘Domestic bliss, huh?’ said Ty, with a wry smile.

Lock shrugged. ‘You know how it goes. People tell themselves the stories they want to believe. Anyway, that’s none of our business. Tomorrow I’m gonna go looking for Marcus and I want you to stay back here at the ranch. Go get some sleep. I’ll wake you in three hours.’

Ty crossed the room and reached out a huge fist toward Lock. They bumped knuckles. ‘Later.’ He nodded out toward the wall that fronted onto the street. ‘You see anyone come over the top of that, blow their goddamn head off.’

22

A bad night was getting worse. Krank stood with his boys at the red rope as the two bouncers stared them down. On any other night, they would already be inside, chilling in the VIP area, but this club had changed hands recently. New owners had brought in new staff, and the new staff didn’t want the place turning into a sausage fest of horny single males so a group of three guys in their twenties wasn’t getting inside.

Krank stayed courteous and polite and moved to the back of the line. A group of six women were about to join it. They were older, in their thirties, and, from their clothes, were from out of town, way out of town. ‘Like Indiana out of town,’ Krank joked to his boys.

The three guys set to work. Loser pulled out a deck of cards and started doing magic tricks, while Krank and Marcus split two of the women away from the others and started chatting to them. The women, initially resistant, soon began talking, even if it was to poke fun at Krank. He rolled with their jibes, firing them back with interest but all the while with a smile.

Marcus, who had been understandably quiet, managed to go through some old canned routines, asking one woman to imagine a cube in an empty room. Then when she had described it in detail he ran through what her choices meant. A large cube meant she was very sexual. He fine-tuned the meanings by gauging her responses and soon she was talking up a storm. The Cube was so ancient in pick-up artist terms that it qualified as retro but, between the routine, some magic tricks and Krank’s natural cocky approach, the women agreed to accompany them to a nightclub two blocks down.

This time, with a mixed group that had slightly more women than men, they walked straight to the front of the line and inside. Once inside, Krank and the others quickly ditched the women they’d work so hard to befriend. They took a table near the back while the women shot them evil looks from the bar. Krank ordered drinks.

While they waited for them to arrive, they scoped out the interior. In their world, women were ranked on a scale of one to ten. The women they had come in with were strictly threes and fours – older, out of shape, trying too hard with their make-up and outfits. Krank had explained to Marcus early on that there was no shame in sleeping with a three or a four. It was a good confidence-builder. From there you could make your way up to the sixes and sevens, and beyond. The holy grail was a ten. Tens were girls with the look of a Victoria’s Secrets model, beautiful, sexy, and fundamentally unattainable. They were hard to find, and rarely single. Krank obsessed over any tens he met. To him they were the ultimate prize, like a lion to a big-game hunter. But that was all they were. Not people. Prizes. A notch.

The three young men sat at their table, sipped their drinks and argued over where various women in the bar fell on the scale. The waitress who’d served them was, by general agreement, a solid six. Loser, the hipster of the group, argued for a seven rating but was quickly shouted down. Even MG joined in: ‘She has the body-fat ratio of a four. She’s lucky we’re giving her a six.’

Krank had noticed early on that MG was the most eager to run women down in situations like this. The kid had so much hostility, so much repressed rage, that Krank had found it funny at first. Later, he’d realized that it was a natural resource, there to be tapped. Except, when it came down to it, he wasn’t sure if MG’s rage could be channeled into swift, decisive action. Anger was fuel, but it needed direction. That was what he’d been working on. Seeing if he could channel MG. Seeing if he could turn him into a killer.

The guys were still running down the women in the bar when Krank spotted Devon Malcolm standing by the bar. Krank grabbed his beer and headed over to say hi. Devon had been part of the San Diego lair but he claimed to have ‘outgrown’ the pick-up lifestyle. What that meant, as far as Krank could see, was that, having sponged off the community, Devon had finally hit the age when he had access to his family’s trust fund. A few days later he had moved into a palatial party pad high up in the Hollywood Hills.

To be fair to Devon, he’d allowed Krank and the guys use of the place. They’d had some great times there. Crazy parties that went on for days. But Devon had hooked up with an LA Lakers cheerleader, who had convinced him to propose to her. She was a blonde WASP from somewhere back east, a solid eight, maybe even a nine. She hated Krank with a passion, and to keep her happy Devon had distanced himself from his old friends. It went against the code. Devon had never been part of the new inner circle. He had never had to live by the new code of blood in. But as far as Krank was concerned, Devon still owed him.

Krank noticed that Devon had seen him coming over. He hoisted his drink in salute and tried to disappear further into the crowd but Krank cut him off, circling round toward the door. He bumped Devon with his shoulder. ‘Hey! Thought it was you. What’s new, player?’

Devon’s girlfriend hated that Krank still called Devon a player, which only made Krank do it all the more. Her dislike of the term must have transferred to Devon because Krank noticed him grimace. ‘Where’s Lauren?’

‘Back east. Visiting her family,’ said Devon.

Krank grinned. ‘Snuck out while she’s away, huh?’ He clinked his bottle of beer against Devon’s glass. ‘Nice.’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

Krank thought about busting his balls for coming out with such a lame excuse but decided against it. Glancing back over his shoulder, he could see that Loser and MG had opened an all female five-set of sixes and sevens. They were still getting daggers from the women they’d arrived with, which amused Krank no end. It gave him an idea, though. He nodded at his boys, then said to Devon, ‘What about us heading back to your place to party? Maybe we can get these girls to call some friends. I mean, Lauren’s away, right?’

The very suggestion seemed to cause Devon pain. He scrunched up his face. ‘She really doesn’t like me having people over. I mean, guys is one thing.’

Krank clenched his fists, digging his nails into his palms. Devon would never have managed to get a seven, never mind an eight like Lauren, to speak to him without Krank’s help, and now he had, it was like Krank was some kind of inconvenience.

‘Hey,’ said Krank, ‘Remember the time that little honey at the Lizard Lounge threw a drink over you? Remember how I helped you with her?’

Devon flushed at the reminder of that night. Some of the guys from the San Diego lair had been out looking for girls when they’d run into one at a bar whom Devon had taken a shine to. But she was way out of his league and he just didn’t have the game yet to bridge the gap. Krank picked her up instead, took her back to their apartment. Then in the middle of the night, while she was half asleep, he snuck out of the bed he was sharing with her, woke Devon and offered to trade beds. ‘Just keep the lights off. She’s kinda drunk. She’ll never know.’

If the situation had been reversed, Krank would never have gone for it like that. It would have been an insult. And it was rape. Krank knew it, and so did Devon. But Devon craved sex more than power so, like the asshole he was, he slipped out of his bed and into Krank’s with the girl.

About half an hour later there was one hell of a commotion and the girl was sprinting down the hall, calling Devon all the names under the sun. She was screaming about getting the cops on all of them.

Krank intervened. It got ugly. Really ugly.

In the morning, as dawn was breaking, Devon helped Krank move the body. Although killing her had freaked Krank out, it meant that, as far as he saw it, lame-ass trust fund Devon owed him. And if you owed Krank he never tired of reminding you.

Devon was still stuttering, his face flushed to a deep crimson. ‘Maybe another night, Krank.’

Krank put an open hand on Devon’s chest. ‘No, not another night. Tonight. Lauren’s away. She’ll never know.’

Devon started to protest, but Krank cut him off: ‘It’s not much of a favor, bro. Not in the grand scheme of things.’

Of course Devon knew exactly what he was talking about.

‘That was a long time ago,’ Devon pleaded.

Krank hadn’t wanted to play his next card, but Devon wasn’t leaving him with much choice. ‘Just as well I captured the moment, then, huh?’

All the bedrooms in the San Diego lair had been fitted with cameras. They could operate in low light as well as daylight. It gave the footage a green tinge but you could still make out who was doing what to whom. The one in Krank’s room had captured Devon sneaking into bed with the girl, right up until the moment she had realized who he was and flipped out. The footage had been Krank’s insurance policy. It implicated him, too, but even at that early stage he had done things that were just as bad.

Devon sighed. ‘I’ll see you guys up there.’ He slammed his glass back down on the bar, pushed past Krank and headed for the exit.

Over at the table, MG and Loser were in full flow. Krank felt good to see it. He pushed his way through the crowd and launched himself into the middle of the merry throng at the table. ‘We got ourselves the best party house up in the Hills. Friends of ours. Big-time movie guy. Pool. Wet bar. Hot tub. What say we get out of here, go have ourselves some real fun?’