Hot Wire (17 page)

Just then, a car went by on Sixth Street, its headlights steaming in the rain.

The driver looked kind of familiar.

Rain flurried through the lot, spattering the blacktop, beading on hubcaps and fenders. The car pulled into a space in front of the restaurant and its headlights went dark, but I didn't see anyone get out.

"Let's take a ride." I started the engine.

"Something wrong?" Brown sat up, looking around.

"I don't know," I said. "I can't tell anymore."

I pulled out and made for the exit, watching the mirror. Nobody followed us out of the lot as far as I could tell, but I circled the back streets until I was sure, then headed north on Sixth, hiding in the traffic. Brown smoked constantly, talking about all this weird crap that made just enough sense to freak me out.

"When the Soviet Union collapsed," he said, "the Russians lost control of their military stockpiles. The command structure broke down. Their soldiers weren't getting paid and there was a lot of looting and profiteering. They were selling weapons wholesale. Guns. Tanks. Aircraft. You name it. That was bad enough, but Washington was worried that nuclear weapons from the Russian arsenal were being sold on the black market and could end up in the hands of terrorists and hostile nations." He lit another cigarette, watching the street. "They called it the Loose Nukes market."

Headlights floated by in the rain. Neon signs. Storefront windows. It was like this weird, streaming hallucination with Brown rambling in the background like some kind of lunatic. Maybe he was crazy, maybe not, but he didn't seem like much of a threat so I stuck the gun under the seat where I could get it fast if I had to.

"I've been researching this for years." Brown relaxed a little when he saw me put the gun away. "The Loose Nukes market was for real and guess who was one of its biggest customers?" He glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to me, his eyes intense. "The CIA."

I took the next left. Almost clipped a parked car.

His jabber was starting to make me really nervous.

"That's a fact," he went on. "Very few people know this – even in Washington – but the Agency was buying nuclear weapons on the black market. Russian warheads and bombs. Tactical. Strategic. They've got a stockpile on the east coast somewhere, but I've never been able to track it down. It's an underground facility. That's all I know."

"So?" I thought I was going to scream. "So what? What's that got to do with me?"

He was watching me closely. "The guy in your car was in charge of the operation. Oliver. He's still running it for all I know." He turned away again, blowing smoke at the dash. "Get the picture?"

"You're insane. Why would they do that?"

"Why do criminals buy stolen guns?" He shook his head. "This is huge, Emma. A covert, untraceable stockpile that doesn't show up in the nuclear weapons tracking system. It's managed by a faction inside the CIA that might be working for the White House. They could detonate one of those bombs anywhere in the world, blame it on terrorists or whoever, and nobody could prove any different." His eyes bored in. "Why was Oliver in your car? What did Matthews want? He's been chasing this thing longer than I have."

I didn't say anything.

"There's more," he said, lighting another cigarette off the butt of his old one. "I thought the operation was dormant, but it looks like it's active again. Matthews has been working here in Oakland for months. He was running an agent named Chase. Howard L. Chase. He was a lawyer for a shipping company in East Oakland named Ligar Shipping."

"How do you know this crap?" The name
Chase
gave me a jolt and it must've shown on my face.

"Confidential sources." He frowned. "Have you heard of Chase before?"

"Yeah," I said reluctantly, clamping down on the wheel.

He perked up at that. "How'd you hear about him?"

"I read about him in the paper. There was a fire down in the bottoms and they found his body in a vacant lot."

Brown nodded. "Ligar Shipping was a front: a CIA proprietary company. They set up these fake companies all the time. Oliver – the guy in your car – was running it. He must've set it up because he needed to ship something and wanted to keep it quiet. If something went wrong, it couldn't be traced back to the Agency."

"You think he was shipping a
bomb
?"

"Nobody knows." He blew a smoke ring. "This Chase character was probably a CIA asset. He was the lawyer for Ligar Shipping. He worked for Oliver, but he was working for Matthews, too. Matthews was trying to find out what Oliver was doing and Chase was his agent inside the company. Understand? Chase was a double. He was spying for Matthews. Maybe Matthews found out what he was doing and blackmailed him. I don't know."

I didn't say anything, but I was getting a very bad feeling.

"It's complicated," Brown went on. "Chase was working for Oliver, stealing documents for Matthews and it looks like he was embezzling from the shell company at the same time. The cops don't know about the Agency connection, but they think Chase set the fire himself to cover his tracks. They found accelerant stains on his clothes that matched the stuff used to start the fire. Nobody knows what happened, but it looks like something went wrong with the operation. Chase was caught in the middle. Maybe he thought he was blown for some reason and tried to run with the cash. He burned the place down, but his employers caught up with him before he could get away. They killed him when they found out he was working for Matthews."

I thought I was going to puke. If Brown was telling the truth, we
had
blundered into a hit. A government hit. I flashed on the goon I'd shot at Vincent's and had to choke down this ugly panic.

"There's more to it than that." I decided to tell him the whole story and see what happened. I had to tell him if I was going to try to cut a deal with Matthews. "The guy who was in my car when I got busted thought Matthews had hired me to steal this Lexus. I was taking him to get it when the cops pulled me over."

"Lexus?" Brown got all excited. "What do you mean?"

I told him everything that had happened except the parts about Steffy and the guy I'd drilled through the head. It was a relief to talk about it and by the time I'd finished, Brown had a sweaty look like he wanted this story bad.

"Chase's car," he said. "That's the missing piece."

"Missing piece?" I couldn't take it anymore. "What's the big deal about his goddamn car? Everybody wants it, but nobody knows why. What's so important?"

"I don't know." He blew a smoke ring. "They must've grabbed him when he was trying to get away after starting the fire, then they drove him in his own car to that place in Oakland. Maybe he hid something in the car. Papers, most likely. Evidence. He was documenting the Ligar operation for Matthews." He shook his head. "Then you came out of nowhere and stole the car. They had to think you were involved."

"Papers?" I braked for a light. "All this for papers?"

"It has to be." Brown had this look of pure greed. "If we can get to them first, I can blow this out of the water. Don't you see? If this goes public, they're screwed. It's my ticket off the NewsWire and it's your only way out of this mess. I don't know if we can help your partner, but we've got to find those documents."

"I searched the car myself. There was nothing there."

"You must have missed something."

"I searched the trunk. Under the seats. The glove box. There was nothing there."

"A hidden compartment, maybe."

"That's what Deke said." The light changed and I turned left on Cedar, driving around a flooded sink hole. "He wanted me to turn the car over to this detective on the Emeryville Auto Theft Detail – leave it on the street or something and let him know where to find it."

"Deke?" Brown looked distracted. "You mean Deacon? Your boss?"

I told him everything that had happened with Deacon and Heberto, but he just shrugged it off and blew some more smoke at the window.

"Listen," he said. "Matthews is probably trying to use the Emeryville cops to help him recover the car, but it doesn't make any difference, OK? One way or another, this doesn't have anything to do with the Oakland P.D. and Jacobo sounds like the detective I heard about a couple months ago. I didn't get his name, but I heard the Task Force and Internal Affairs had busted a corrupt detective in their smuggling probe. It's probably the same guy."

"I knew it," I said. "I knew he was a rat."

"Forget about Jacobo," he went on. "The Task Force is secondary, all right? It's the least of your problems right now. If you want my advice, you should turn yourself in when this is over and make a deal with them – testify against Deacon and Gonzalez and go into protective custody. Or cut a deal with Matthews."

"You're crazy."

"That's your decision, but we've got to find out if there's something hidden in that car. The bastards who snatched your friend aren't going to stop until they get it back or until this whole deal goes public. If we don't get there first, you'll never be safe, not even in jail. This goes all the way to the top and you saw what they did to that stripper. You were there. You found her after they left."

I didn't bother to deny it.

"You were in the wrong place at the wrong time." Brown came off sympathetic. "That's all there was to it."

"All right," I said, making up my mind. "Here's the deal. You can have your story and get famous and go on all the talk shows for all I care. It won't do jack for me. I'll take you to the car and you can look it over all you want, but when you're done, I'm giving it back to this Matthews jerk and you've got to help me make the deal. We find some papers, you can make copies or whatever, but they're going back to him. Understand? I mean the originals. Screw politics, but they've got Arn and this is the only way they'll let him go. And I want full immunity. For everything. That's the deal."

"Take it easy," he said. "You want to make a deal with Matthews? Trade the car for your partner?"

"And immunity. What else do I have to trade with?"

"It might be too late," he said quietly. "Arn might be dead."

"I'm screwed," I said. "I've got to try."

"OK," he said. "Matthews can help, but if you go to him, you'll probably have to turn yourself in. Let's check the car and I'll put you in touch with him if that's what you want to do, all right? He's the only one who can really help you now."

"He knows this Oliver scumbag?"

"Oh yeah," Brown said, lighting another cigarette. "He's known him for years. They used to work together."

"Well, isn't that cozy."

I headed back towards the highway and the storm picked up the closer we got to the Bay. Rain hammered the traffic, fogging the windshield, and I could hardly see the street through this muddle of wipers, headlights and spray. One thing for sure: nobody was going to spot us in this slop.

Brown kept his mouth shut for a while, brooding over his big story, I guess, or maybe he was trying to figure out how to screw me after he got what he wanted. Slumped in his damp trench coat, he smoked his way through a couple of cigarettes and stared out the trickling window.

"You're doing the right thing, Emma." He said it like he thought I cared about his opinion. "I checked you out before I tried to reach you and the cops say you're smarter than the average car thief, so I figured you'd at least listen to what I had to say. If you were one of Deacon's thugs, I never would have met you like this."

He was one deluded moron. We made the highway, sat on the ramp for a while, then finally merged with the rush-hour traffic: a parking lot of brake lights and glossy car tops backed up for miles in both directions. The Bay had vanished, clouds touching the water, the lights of San Francisco haloed and blurred in the fog. Wind whipped the station wagon. The windshield rippled. I could hardly see past the wipers, but I kept an eye out for patrol cars, tow trucks, Hummers and black SUVs.

It took thirty minutes to make the Ashby exit and my nerves settled into a steady buzz. Brown passed the time by yammering about politics, giving me the dirt on the feds in this tone of moral indignation. He went on and on about Washington and the CIA, ranting about how Crewcut was part of this shadow group that wanted to set up a police state and how they had to be stopped before they used one of those Loose Nukes to start another war and take away all our freedoms, but he could have saved his breath. They were maniacs. I got the picture.

"So they're crooks," I said. "What else is new?"

"They're looters and killers." He'd worked himself into a lather. "Psychopaths. Mass murderers. You've got no idea how dirty they are. They smeared me like they smear everybody who tries to expose them – wrecked my career with their phony charges. Sex crimes and dope. They love that stuff. The Congress is full of pedophiles and faggots and they're all on the take – shills for the corporations and foreign lobbies, the worst kind of whores. They've got sick minds and they're going to wreck this country if somebody doesn't stop them." He sucked at his smoke. "I'm going to break this story, Emma. They think I'm washed up, but I'm going to see them in jail."