Kill the Messenger (30 page)

                        
      43

Tyler put the radio in his backpack and tried really hard not to start crying. He thought maybe he would pull out a granola bar and eat it to distract himself. It was suppertime anyway. But the idea of eating made him feel sick, so he didn’t.

He went back inside the Central Library, his base of operations for most of the day. It somehow made him feel calmer to be in this big, solid, beautiful building full of things he loved, books. All that knowledge and wisdom and excitement and mystery around him, his for the small price of reading words.

But he was really tired now, and he still didn’t have a plan that didn’t involve superpowers, like Spider-Man had. And he doubted there was a single book in this building that could tell him what to do next. He kept thinking if only he could talk to Jace, but Jace hadn’t answered a single radio call all day, and that made him worry.

Why would Jace have bothered to take the radio with him if he wasn’t going to use it? Did the fact that he wasn’t answering mean he was out of range, or that his batteries were dead? Or did the fact that he wasn’t answering mean he
couldn’t
answer? And if he couldn’t answer, was it because he was in jail, or in a hospital because he’d been shot, or that he was dead?

Or maybe he was just plain gone—out of LA to Mexico or someplace—and Tyler would never see him again. Just like when their mother had died. She’d gone out the door with Jace to go to the hospital, and never came back. No good-bye, no I love you, no I’ll miss you. Just gone.

That horrible empty feeling came over him from the inside out, like giant jaws opening to swallow him whole. Tyler pulled his feet up on the bench and hugged his arms around his knees, holding tight as his eyes welled up again.

Jace always told him he borrowed trouble. That wasn’t true, Tyler thought, or else he would have for sure given it back to whoever he was supposed to have borrowed it from.

He had thought maybe if he went to the places he knew the bike messengers hung out, he would find Jace.

Jace never told him anything, but Tyler had long ago gotten on the Internet to find out everything he could about the bike messengers who worked downtown. He knew there were about a hundred messengers working for about fifteen different companies. He knew the “tag price” was the base price the client paid for the delivery. He knew the difference between being W-4 (having taxes withheld from salary) and 1099 (being an independent contractor).

Tyler knew that there were certain places that the messengers hung out together when they were between runs. So he had walked to the Spring Street station in Chinatown, taken the Gold Line train to Union Station, transferred to the Red Line, got off at the Pershing Square station, walked down Fifth to the corner at Fifth and Flower.

On one side of the street, messengers were hanging around in front of the library, but none of them was Jace. He went into the Carl’s Jr. on the other side of the street and found plenty of weird-looking people—a bald guy with his head tattooed all over, Goth kids with piercings everywhere, green hair, pink hair, dreadlocks—but Jace was not among them.

At Fourth and Flower, Tyler walked up and down in front of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, looking across the street at the messengers hanging out under the bridge, but he was afraid to go ask them if they’d seen his brother—afraid for himself, on account of they looked kinda scary, and afraid that if he said the wrong thing to the wrong person, he might get Jace in even bigger trouble. Maybe that person would rat him out to the cops or something.

But if Jace had been over there, looking back at the hotel, he for sure would have seen Tyler walking up and down. No one called to him, except a doorman from the hotel, who got suspicious. Tyler had beat it out of there in a hurry.

Over and over during the afternoon, he had gone back and forth between the hangout spots and the library, each time thinking this time he would see Jace, but he never did. He had tried and tried to get him on the radio, but he never had. Now it was dark, and he was afraid to go back down to Fourth Street.

Downtown was a busy place during the day, but once all the people in the office buildings went home, the only ones left on the streets were way scary—crazy, on drugs, looking for trouble. Not a place for a little kid to be walking around alone.

Madame Chen would be worried about him, he knew. Worried sick. The idea made him feel really guilty and bad. He had almost called her a couple of times during the day, but he didn’t know what exactly he could tell her. He still didn’t know. He didn’t know what he was going to do.

He worried that maybe the detectives had bugged the Chens’ phones, and if he called, the cops would be able to find him. He was already worried the Chens would be arrested for harboring a fugitive or something. And maybe the fish market was under surveillance, and the cops would see him if he tried to go back.

Tyler sat down on a bench near the restrooms. The library closed at eight. He supposed he could spend the night here if he could find a good hiding spot. But if he was stuck inside the building, he couldn’t get radio reception, and what if Jace tried to reach him? Besides, Tyler could only imagine how creepy it was in here when the lights were out and everyone was (supposed to be) gone.

He was right back where he started: alone and scared.

Tyler stuck his hands inside the pockets of his sweatshirt and fingered the business card Detective Parker had given him. He didn’t seem like a bad guy. He was kind of funny in a cool sort of way. And when he’d told Tyler he didn’t want to see anything bad happen to Jace, Tyler had wanted to believe him. The other detective could have told him the sun comes up in the east, and Tyler would have been suspicious.

Always trust your instincts, Jace told him.

It was now 6:19. His instincts were telling him he wanted to go home. Maybe if he went up the fire escape onto the roof, he could sneak back into the building and let Madame Chen know he was okay. They would have to communicate with notes or sign language or something, in case the place was bugged, but then she would know he was okay, and he could sleep in his own bed, then sneak out really early and come back downtown to try again to find his brother. It wasn’t a master plan, but it was a plan.

Tyler wiggled into the straps of his backpack and headed outside. There was some kind of commotion going on across Fifth Street, at the foot of the Bunker Hill Steps. People were standing around talking excitedly, gesturing wildly. Two police cars sat at angles to the curb, lights flashing. Traffic had come to a horn-honking standstill.

Whatever it was about, Tyler wanted no part of it. He hurried up the sidewalk toward Olive Street, his backpack bouncing against his butt as he went. The thing was heavy with his life essentials—granola bars, walkie-talkie, Game Boy, bottle of water, schoolbooks, comic books, and pocket dictionary.

Tyler imagined if he went up a really steep hill, the thing would overpower him and flip him over backward, and he would have to lie there like a turtle until somebody turned him over. Tomorrow he would leave the schoolbooks at home.

He crossed Grand Avenue and kept going, but the traffic didn’t get any better, and the closer he came to Olive Street and Pershing Square, the more people and cop cars and disorder there seemed to be.

The square was bright with floodlights and full of activity and yellow crime-scene tape and people shouting at one another. Tyler felt like he was walking onto a movie set, the scene seemed so unreal. He wound his way between people until he stood on the fringe of it all, eyes wide, ears open.

“. . . and they were just standing there, and the next thing I knew . . .”

“. . .
Freeze! Police!
And man, it was like . . .”

“. . . insane! I thought it was part of the movie, even when . . .”

“. . . the guy on the motorcycle. You mean that wasn’t a stunt?”

“. . . shooting . . .”

“. . . screaming . . .”

“. . . awesome cycle!”

Tyler had worked his way up to the yellow tape that was preserving the crime scene. He didn’t see anyone in handcuffs. He didn’t see anyone lying dead on the ground. But about twenty feet in front of him he saw two men having an argument, and he knew them both. Detective Parker and Detective Kyle. Good cop, bad cop.

Detective Kyle was so red in the face, he looked like his whole head was about to pop like a pimple. Detective Parker was so angry, a cop in a uniform got in front of him to hold him back from hitting Detective Kyle.

Pin prickles raced up Tyler’s back and down his arms and inside his belly, and he felt weak in the knees. The two detectives had one case in common that Tyler knew about: Jace.

“. . . shooting . . .”

“. . . screaming . . .”

“. . .
Bam!
And the guy is dead on the ground. . . .”

Tyler looked around to see if The Beast was propped up somewhere, or thrown on the ground.

“. . . Bam! And the guy is dead. . . .”

Tyler tried to back up a step, and banged into someone who had come up behind him. His head was swimming. He thought he was going to be sick.

Parker was still yelling at Kyle. Kyle was yelling back at him.

“I wasn’t firing at her! How many times do I have to tell you that?” Kyle jabbed a finger at him. “None! That’s how many times I have to tell you a goddam thing, Parker! You’re not on this case, and if I have anything to do with it, you’re not on the force.”

“You don’t have any power over me, Bradley,” Parker barked back, leaning around the chubby cop who was still blocking him from getting to the other detective. “Nothing you could say or do could make any more impact on my life than a mouse dropping.”

He stepped back, lifted his hands in front of him to show the guy in uniform he had no dangerous intent, then stepped around him. He leaned toward Detective Kyle and said something only the two of them could hear.

Then Parker turned, took three steps away, and looked right at Tyler.

                        
      44

Parker had stayed with Abby Lowell until the EMTs loaded her into the ambulance and drove away. She would go directly to surgery. It would be hours before anyone could talk with her, and by the time she was allowed visitors, Robbery-Homicide would have total control of who went in and out of her room.

A couple of motorcycle cops who had been dispatched to Pershing Square because of the movie shoot had taken off after Davis, who had taken off after Damon. LAPD choppers had been dispatched, and every news chopper in the city was swarming over the scene like vultures at the kill. The gridlocked traffic made it impossible for street units to join the pursuit, but that didn’t stop them from running lights and sirens.

What a cluster fuck, Parker thought.

“What the hell are you doing here, Parker?” Bradley Kyle, red-faced, steam coming out of his ears, said.

“I know I declined your invitation to this little soiree,” Parker said, “but you can’t seriously be all that surprised to see me, can you, Bradley?”

Kyle didn’t bother to deny the accusation. Another black mark against Ruiz. He looked away and called out, “Did anyone get a plate number on the cycle?”

“It belongs to Eddie Davis,” Parker said. “Did you invite him too? Were you setting up to reenact the shootout at the OK Corral?” he asked, the sarcasm like acid in his voice. “Congratulations, Wyatt Earp, you damn near managed to kill someone. Or did you mean to hit Damon? He’s the perfect fall guy if he’s dead.”

“I didn’t shoot anyone.”

Parker looked around, feigning shock. “Did I miss the guy on the grassy knoll
again
? I didn’t fire until Davis turned and was clear. You were shooting before I was.”

Kyle wouldn’t look at him.

“Are you going to try to tell me the dead guy did it?” Parker asked, incredulous. “His death grip pulled the trigger and shot Abby Lowell in the back—twice?”

Jimmy Chew stepped between them then, his back to Kyle. “Hey, fellas, let’s cool it down. One dead cop at the scene is enough, right?”

“I wasn’t firing at her!” Kyle shouted, like an imbecile. Parker hoped the TV news crews had gotten that one on tape.

Kyle bobbed to one side of Chew just to jab a finger at Parker. “How many times do I have to tell you that? None! That’s how many times I have to tell you a goddam thing, Parker! You’re not on this case, and if I have anything to do with it, you’re not on the force.”

Parker laughed, the sound caustic with derision. “You don’t have any power over me, Bradley. Nothing you could say or do could make any more impact on my life than a mouse dropping.”

He held his hands up to Jimmy Chew to say he had no violent physical intent, and took a step back and then around the officer.

“Too bad Ruiz didn’t come to the party,” Parker said. “She could confiscate your weapon and start the IA investigation right now.”

“Yeah?” Kyle sneered. “I hear she’s got her hands full already.”

“She’s got nothing,” Parker said. “She’s wasting everybody’s time, including mine. I haven’t shot anybody. I’m not slinking around, Tony Giradello’s lapdog, trying to keep this fucking shell game going.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Parker.”

“Don’t I? I know Eddie Davis is driving around in a Lincoln Town Car just like the Crowne Enterprises Town Cars. How do you think that came to be, Bradley? I know Davis and Lenny Lowell were blackmailing somebody, and I’ve got a pretty damn good idea why. How about you? What do you know about that?”

“I know you took all the paperwork on a murder investigation and stole evidence out of Lowell’s safe-deposit box, including twenty-five-thousand dollars cash,” Kyle said. “That’s a felony.”

“Bullshit,” Parker said. “I had a court order. The money is sealed, signed, and safe. It hasn’t made it to Property yet because I’ve been a little busy getting stabbed in the back by my partner and my captain, and trying to keep from letting Robbery-Homicide screw me over again.”

“You’re interfering with an investigation,” Kyle said. “I could have you arrested.”

Parker stepped into Kyle’s personal space, and smiled like a snake.

“Go ahead, Bradley,” he said softly. “You cocksucking little weasel. Do it here, now. Every media news source in LA is watching. Have Jimmy here slap the cuffs on me, then you go over there and explain to the reporters why you had a conversation with Tony Giradello at the DA’s fund-raiser, using my name and Eddie Davis’s name in the same sentence.”

Kyle didn’t try to deny it, or to correct him. Diane hadn’t been sure of the name, other than that it started with a
D.
Parker had made the jump to Damon, but that was before Eddie Davis had been identified by Obi Jones. “I don’t have to explain myself. I’m doing my job.”

“Yeah,” Parker said. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

Disgusted, angry, he turned and started to walk away from Kyle, looking for Kelly in the crowd, and finding the kid from the alley staring at him with big eyes. Andi Kelly was standing right behind him.

Parker didn’t want to react. He didn’t want Bradley Kyle wondering what he was looking at.

His eyes went from the kid to Andi, back to the kid, back to Andi. Telepathy would have been a good thing, but he hadn’t mastered it. Kelly probably thought he was having a seizure.

“Parker!” The voice came from behind him. Kyle. “You can’t just go.”

Parker glanced back at him. “Despite all the rumors I’ve heard about you, Bradley, you can’t have it both ways. Not with me anyway. And as you pointed out: This isn’t my case anymore.”

“You’re a police officer. You drew and fired your weapon.”

“Un-fucking-believable,” Parker muttered. He looked at Jimmy Chew. “Hey, Jimmy, come here.”

Chewalski came over and Parker unholstered and handed the officer his SIG. “You’ll take that to Ballistics for the purpose of elimination in an officer-involved shooting. Let Internal Affairs know where it is.”

“Will do, boss,” Chew said, then gave Kyle a long you’re-such-a-dick look and walked away.

Kyle looked like a spoiled kid who had thrown a fit and now all his friends were picking up their toys and going home.

“You’re a witness,” he said, pouting.

“Yeah,” Parker said. “I’ll be happy to come in tomorrow and give a long and detailed report on how you shot a woman in the back.”

Turning away from Kyle, he tried to find his little friend again, but the kid had gone, and Kelly too. Parker ducked under the tape and walked away from the lights and the noise and the people. He was going back across the street to the Biltmore to sit in a civilized place and have a civilized drink.

He exited the square, stepped onto the sidewalk, and glanced left. The city was doing some kind of work to a retaining wall along that side of the park. As with most construction projects around town, someone had seen a need to throw up a lot of plywood and make a tunnel of sorts out of the sidewalk for twenty yards or so. A canvas for graffiti taggers, and a welcome haven at night for street people and rats. The kid was standing in the mouth of the tunnel.

Parker stopped and put his hands in his pockets and looked at the boy.

“Funny meeting you here,” Parker said. “You get around for a kid. You don’t work for Internal Affairs, do you?”

“No, sir.”

“What brings you here?”

“The subway.”

Parker gave a weary chuckle. “Everybody’s a smart-ass.” He sighed and took a couple of steps toward the tunnel. “Your mission, I meant. You’re a ways from Chinatown, and, smart kid like you, you know this isn’t a great place to be walking around after dark by yourself. Hell,
I
wouldn’t walk around down here by myself. Where are your parents? They let you just run all over the city?”

“Not exactly.” The boy nibbled on his bottom lip and looked everywhere but at Parker. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to arrest me?”

“That depends. Did you kill somebody?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you a menace to society?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you an enemy of the state?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then, whatever you’ve done, I’ll give you a pass,” Parker said. “Looks like I’ll be out of this job soon anyhow.”

“I don’t like that other guy,” the boy confessed. “He’s mean. I saw him at Chen’s Fish Market this morning.”

Parker arched a brow. “Really? And what was he doing there?”

“Well, he came to see Madame Chen’s car, only some other cops had already taken it, which made him mad. And then he asked a bunch of questions, and was really rude.”

“Mmm . . .” Parker leaned a little closer to confide, “I think he has self-esteem issues.”

“He made Boo Zhu cry. Boo Zhu is de-vel-op-mentally challenged.”

Parker loved the way the boy couldn’t quite get his little mouth around big words. The words were all in his head, his tongue just hadn’t matured as quickly as his intellect had.

“There you go,” Parker said. “He’s probably mean to small animals too. The kind of kid who went through a lot of hamsters, if you know what I mean.”

The kid didn’t, but he was too polite to say so. Odd little character.

“So what is it you want to tell me that I’m not going to arrest you for?”

The boy looked all around and up and down, looking for spies and eavesdroppers.

“I’ll tell you what,” Parker said. “I was just on my way across the street to grab some dinner. You hungry? You want to come? The cheeseburgers are on me.”

“I’m an ovo-lac-to vegetarian,” the kid said.

“Of course you are. All the tofu you can eat, then. Come on.”

The boy fell into step beside him, but just out of reach. As they waited at the corner for the light to change, Parker said, “You know, I think we should be on a first-name basis by now. How about you?”

The sideways suspicious look.

“I can’t figure out anything about you by just your first name,” Parker said. “You can call me Kev.”

The light changed. Parker waited.

The kid swallowed hard, took a big breath, let it out. “Tyler,” he said. “Tyler Damon.”