Mortal Faults (9 page)

11

Shanker was in the garage when he saw the Man enter the waiting room of his shop. The Man—that was how Shanker thought of him. To everyone else he was Congressman Jack Reynolds, but to Ron Shanker he would always be the Man.

He’d been talking to a pimply red-haired kid about rejetting the carbs on his Yamaha, one of those riceburners Shanker hated. But what the hell, business was business, and with the Mexicans crowding him on all sides, he needed all the business he could get. The Mexicans wouldn’t come to him, of course. They knew about the war three years ago, and although a truce was now in effect, it didn’t mean the two sides were friendly.

Anyway, he couldn’t keep the Man waiting, especially not in the crappy little room at the front of the shop, a room whose sole amenity was an ancient coffeemaker that dripped poisonous sludge into a stained carafe. He handed off the red-haired kid to one of his mechanics, telling him to drain the gas tank before starting the tune-up because the bike had been in storage and the gas was old. Then he headed into the outer room.

“Jack, how’s it hanging?” He extended a large hand and felt it gripped by the Man’s crushing fist. “What brings you here?”

“Business.” He said it in the unmistakable way that meant trouble.

Shanker nodded. “Let’s go into my office.”

He led the Man through the shop, past the Dynotest room where a Harley was being run through its RPM range. Around him rang the screams of power tools, mixing with the casual profanities of his three mechanics. All of them puffed cigarettes, the burning ends glowing like red eyes behind veils of smoke.

His office was down a short hall, past the stinkhole washroom that had needed a good cleaning for at least six months. The wall of the hallway was decorated with cycle calendars sent to his shop by manufacturers of tools and engine parts. Most of them displayed the wrong month, having been turned to whatever page featured the best artwork—the artwork in question consisting of color photos of busty, nearly nude, creatively tattooed women draped over motorcycles.

Reynolds entered the office, and Shanker followed, careful to shut and lock the door. He noticed that the Man did him the courtesy of sitting in the visitor’s chair rather than stationing himself behind the desk. They both knew he could sit anywhere he pleased.

The office was small and smelled of carpet cleaner. An air conditioner rattled in the window frame, working hard against waves of August heat.

Shanker settled into the desk chair and tried not to look scared. It was tough to do, because the Man was one sprung motherfucker. He’d known the Man for a long time, and he’d been scared of him for nearly as long. And Ron Shanker was a guy who didn’t scare easy—he had the scars on his hide to prove it, battle scars from street combat.

“What can I do ya for?” he asked with a weak, shit-eating grin.

Reynolds ignored the question. “How’s business?”

The inquiry took Shanker by surprise. The Man never made small talk with him.

“Picking up,” Shanker said. “Not bad.”

“I guess our economic policies are working.”

“Yeah, sure.” Shanker didn’t have a clue what economic policies his congressman had voted for.

“How’s the market on the streets?”

“I seen better. Coke’s down, but this designer shit, like Ecstasy, is still pretty hot. And speed. Speed is always in demand.”

“Speed kills,” Reynolds said with a slight smile.

Shanker got the joke. It was what they used to say when they went out riding—and having said it, they would crank their bikes into gear and bust every speed limit, flashing past stop signs, flying through red lights. Because while they knew that speed kills, they didn’t believe they could die. They’d been young.

Shanker knew better now. Like the Man, he was past fifty. He’d seen people die, and he knew how real it was.

“Any trouble from the
cholos
?” Reynolds asked.

“Not as long as we stay on our turf and they stay on theirs. Fucking taco benders are basically cowards. All bullshit, no action.”

“I guess you ought to know. You get to see enough of them.”

“Too many. Goddamn border monkeys spit out kids as regular as taking a crap. Hey, I got a good one for you. How many Mexicans does it take to grease an axle?” He paused before delivering the punch line. “One, if you hit ’im just right.”

Reynolds laughed. It was good to hear him laugh. The two of them used to laugh all the time.

“I don’t think I’ll be using that one in any of my speeches,” Reynolds said. “So, no new hostilities?”

“Some hassles, you know. Guys going at it, trying to prove what big balls they got. Nothing major. Not since the Westminster Avenue thing.” Down on Westminster three years ago, Shanker’s guys had gotten into it with a crew of Mexishits. Well, actually El Salvadorans, but they were all Mexishits in the end. One of Shanker’s men bought it, but the
cholos
lost four of their own, plus another who was busted up so badly he would never pick lettuce again. After that, the truce had been called.

“Well, I’m glad you’re still making out. Even so, I don’t suppose you’d object if I send a little extra business your way.”

“I can always use more business,” Shanker said cautiously.

“Right now I can use your services.”

“Like what, as a for-instance?”

“Like removing somebody who’s become a problem.”

“Okay. I can get that done.”

“Now.”

“When you say
now
...”

“I mean today. This afternoon.”

“In broad daylight?”

“People die in the daytime. If your crew goes in fast and hard, they can get away before anybody knows what’s happening.”

“It would be better to wait until dark.”

“I’m not waiting. I want this individual blipped immediately. That a problem?”

“No problem. I just wish you’d come to me sooner. It’s good to do a little preliminary scouting, you know, check out the territory.”

“I just got the address a half hour ago,” Reynolds said, “while I was on my way here.”

“Oh.” Shanker thought about this. “You were already coming? What would you have done if you didn’t have the address when you got here?”

“I would have waited. I put my best man on it, and I have confidence in him. I always have confidence in the people I work with. They never let me down.”

He said it with a emphasis that let Shanker know how important it was not to let Jack Reynolds down.

“So where do we find this individual?” Shanker asked.

“Address in the Valley.”

“Who are we dealing with here? I mean, is this a hardened target—security protection, shit like that?”

“It’s a middle-aged woman. She lives alone at this address.”

Reynolds took out an index card, handling it by the edges between thumb and forefinger, and pushed it across the desk. On it was written 903 KEYSTONE DRIVE, the address printed in capitals to make a handwriting comparison impossible. Shanker guessed that Reynolds had never touched the surface of the card. He’d left no prints.

“I can get it done,” Shanker said. He didn’t touch the card either.

“What’ll it cost?”

“Forget it. Gratis.”

“I’ll pay. What’s the going rate?”

“It’s just her? Just this one woman?”

“For now.”

Shanker hesitated, wondering how much he should ask for. Too much, and he might make the Man angry. Too little, and he would only be cheating himself.

“Five grand,” he said.

Reynolds nodded. “I’ll pay in cash when the job is done. Unless you need a deposit?”

This had to be a joke. Even if it wasn’t, Shanker found himself laughing. “Deposit? What, are you shitting me? No way.”

He kept laughing, though there was nothing really funny about it. Except that it
was
funny—the whole routine they were going through, the scene they had acted out. They both knew Shanker would do whatever he was told, whether or not he was paid. They both knew Shanker was in no position to disappoint Jack Reynolds. And they both knew what happened to people who did disappoint him. Joe Ferris, for instance.

Joe had made the mistake of trying to blackmail the Man back when Reynolds was just getting started in the DA’s office. Ferris had dirt on him—some small-time illegal shit Reynolds had done as a teenager—and he threatened Reynolds with career-killing exposure unless he received a monthly stipend, a lien on Reynolds’ income. Reynolds played along, paying him off for five or six months, until Joe got careless and allowed himself to be drawn into a private rendezvous with the Man. By then he thought he’d broken Reynolds down, made him his bitch.

Jack Reynolds was no one’s bitch. The next day Joe Ferris was found dead in a vacant lot, his body mutilated in awful ways, all of which predated his expiration. The police never caught the killer and, given Ferris’s rap sheet, didn’t make much of an effort. But Shanker knew who had done it. And he knew that before he died, Joe Ferris had given up every piece of evidence that could have been used against Reynolds. No one could have held out against the methods that had been used, the terrible ingenuity employed.

The Man was older now, but he hadn’t mellowed. He’d filled out his suits a little, polished his act, but if you stripped all that away, he was still a fighter who knew only the law of the barrio—to defend your turf, accept no disrespect, and show no leniency to your enemies, ever.

“No deposit then,” Reynolds said when Shanker had gotten his laughter under control.

“I’ll put my best crew on it,” Shanker promised.

“Good. Let me know when it’s done.”

Reynolds started to rise. Shanker risked a question. “You said there was only one person—for now. Does that mean there’s another one, for later?”

“Yes.” Reynolds looked away. “Another woman. Younger than this one. Harder to get at. Harder to take down.”

“Gimme her address,” Shanker said, eager to please. “My crew’ll pop her, too.”

“One thing at a time. This other woman has to be approached with care. And ...” He let his words fade away.

Shanker waited, knowing the Man would tell him if he meant to.

“And when she’s taken care of, I want to be there.”

“Okay.” Shanker drew out the two syllables in an unasked question.

“I hired her, and she quit on me. Called me a liar.” Reynolds turned to him, and something in his face made Shanker almost flinch. “I don’t like that.”

“Okay,” Shanker said again, quietly.

Reynolds looked past him into some invisible distance. “I’ll be teaching her a lesson in loyalty.”

“You can teach her today, if you want.”

“Not today.” Reynolds smiled. His voice was low, the voice of a man speaking to himself. “Abby can wait. Sometimes the waiting is half the pleasure of it. You know what I mean?”

He didn’t. “Sure.”

“When I need this other matter addressed, you’ll be able to arrange it, I’m certain.”

“Absolutely.”

“And I’ll pay another five grand. With a bonus if she lasts through the night.”

“That’s very generous.” Shanker was thinking of Joe Ferris, who had lived for four to six hours according to the autopsy, though for the last hour or two he had been blind, deaf, unable to speak or move, capable only of feeling pain.

Reynolds stood. “I’ll let myself out.” Suddenly he was a charmer again, a neighborhood guy. “Great to see you, Ron. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“You too,” Shanker managed. “We gotta get together for dinner sometime.”

“Count on it,” the Man said, knowing as well as Shanker that there would be no dinner, which was just as well, because Shanker never had any appetite in Reynolds’ presence.

The door closed after Reynolds, and Shanker sank back in his chair. He thought about the two women. The second one, especially, the one Reynolds had called Abby. She’d walked out on a business arrangement, he said. Insulted him, too. Insulted the Man.

That hadn’t been smart. Whoever she was, this Abby didn’t have a clue who she was dealing with. She would find out, though.

Just like Joe Ferris did.

12

The air over Los Angeles was a grimy sepia tone, tinting the gridwork of buildings and streets below. Looking out the airplane window, Tess saw the Hollywood sign on a far hillside, the row of giant letters reduced by distance to microscopic text, a footnote to the city. She wondered why people made such a big deal about the sign. It was only the remnant of someone’s advertising promotion—for a housing development called Hollywoodland, as she recalled. Denver boasted the Rocky Mountains, a wilderness of trails and fishing holes and granite peaks running with clear snowmelt. L.A. had a defunct advertisement on a hill.

All right, maybe she was overstating things. But she truly hated Los Angeles. With any luck her stay would be short and uneventful. She would find out what Abby was mixed up in, make sure she wouldn’t come to the Bureau’s attention, then make a graceful exit.

The problem was, she’d found that situations involving Abby rarely proceeded according to plan.

The jet touched down with a skid of tires and made its way to the arrival gate. She’d checked no baggage, choosing to bring only a carry-on case with a few items she kept in her office for overnight stays—a change of clothes, some toiletries, other odds and ends. She had worn her gun in a pancake holster under her jacket throughout the flight, an option that was not only tolerated but required when federal agents traveled by plane. In the world after September 11, a law-enforcement agent with a gun was the next best thing to an air marshal.

Most of the flight had been occupied by her perusal of the MEDEA case report, faxed to her office just before she left. The first thing she’d noticed was that the case was two decades old. It had been reactivated only within the past few weeks, for reasons that fully explained the Bureau’s trepidation. It was hot stuff, all right. She was almost surprised Michaelson had allowed the material to be faxed to her, even over a secure phone line.

And she now knew why the case had been dubbed MEDEA. Apparently the name was not an example of FBI creativity, after all. It had been coined by a tabloid newspaper, and the Bureau had simply picked it up. There had been considerable press coverage. Tess remembered none of it, but she hadn’t been in law enforcement then. She had been a sophomore at the University of Illinois.

Back in the eighties, the Bureau’s involvement in the case had been minimal, limited to a psychological evaluation of the arrestee. Even that contribution was unusual, a testimony to the widespread media interest in the crime.

The description of the current investigation was sketchy, and there was nothing about any developments within the past week. Tess figured she would be brought up to speed on those details when she was briefed at the field office.

Outside the concourse she found a taxi and directed the driver to the federal building in Westwood. The cab headed north to the San Diego Freeway. Traffic was worse than she remembered, and eventually the flow of vehicles came to a standstill. At her urging the cabby exited at Venice Boulevard and took Sepulveda, creeping through the stop-and-go traffic. It was hot outside, the cab’s air conditioning didn’t work, and Tess was rapidly developing an animus toward the City of Angels that was almost pathological. Then she saw the church.

It was on Olympic Boulevard, east of the intersection with Sepulveda. She glimpsed the spire in the sun. She had been to that church on her last visit to L.A., taking confession there, her first confession in many years.

“Turn right,” she said. Obediently the cabby maneuvered through the clogged intersection and turned onto Olympic. She pointed at the church, and he stopped in the empty parking lot. “Just wait here. I’ll be right out.”

In the year and a half since the Rain Man case, she had thought of this church many times. Confession had helped her, though she hadn’t felt so sure of it at the time. She felt an obligation to this place, which she intended to satisfy with a donation to the poor box.

She contributed most of the cash on her person, reminding herself to stop at an ATM and refill her wallet. Having given alms, she was ready to go, but strangely she didn’t want to. Then she understood that she’d had an ulterior motive in coming here. She wanted absolution. She wanted to confess.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I broke the rules. I broke the law. I cut corners. I allowed myself to get away with behavior that I would never tolerate in a subordinate.

Something like that.

She entered the nave and walked down the central aisle. The church was empty. Her only company was a host of plaster saints and the backlit figures in the stained-glass windows, and the suffering Jesus on his cross, lifted behind the altar.

She remembered the location of the confessional. This was not the time when confession would be scheduled, but she’d gotten lucky on her last visit, and she hoped for the same luck again.

But she was disappointed. There was no priest in evidence. She really was alone.

Well, it had been worth a shot. She knelt and prayed before the altar, but it was a perfunctory prayer, and she felt nothing. She was retreating up the aisle when she saw a gray head bent low in one of the pews. An elderly woman, sitting alone. Tess hadn’t noticed her before, and there had been no other vehicle in the parking lot.

The woman felt her gaze. She raised her head and looked at Tess. Her face was wet with tears.

After making eye contact, Tess couldn’t walk away. She sat beside the woman. “Are you all right?”

“I come here every day,” the woman answered. “I’ve come for the last three months.”

Tess didn’t ask what had happened three months ago. “Does it help?”

“I don’t know. It’s supposed to.”

Tess touched the woman’s hand. “I hope things get better.” She rose to leave.

“What I want to know,” the woman said softly, “is why there is so much.”

Tess didn’t understand. “So much ...?”

“Pain. How can there be so much pain, everywhere?”

It was the same question, Tess realized, that had kept her out of churches after Paul Voorhees died.

There was nothing she could say in reply. She had never found an answer. Somehow, over time, she had lost the need for one. It was just the way things were. There was no point in trying to understand. There was only the struggle to make things better.

On impulse she leaned down and hugged the woman gently. Neither of them said anything.

“Thank you,” the woman said in the tone of a blessing.

Tess nodded. She left, not looking back.

***

She arrived at the federal building and received a temporary ID badge from the guards in the lobby. An elevator ride brought her to the seventeenth story, where she was buzzed into the FBI suite that occupied the entire floor. The agent who greeted her was Rick Crandall, probably her only friend in the L.A. office. Though he had put on some muscle in the past year, he still looked impossibly young to be a federal agent.

Crandall had been a rookie when she met him—a first office agent, or FOA in the Bureau-speak. He was now in his second year, still at the GS-12 pay grade. The salary he was pulling down, even with overtime, wouldn’t go very far in a town like L.A.

“Rick, good to see you.” She thought about giving him a hug, decided against it because the receptionist was watching, and settled for a handshake instead. “How is everything with you?”

“Not bad.” His voice was flat, his manner distant.

“Still managing to impress your old man?” Ralston Crandall was a deputy director at Bureau headquarters in D.C.

“I guess,” he said tonelessly, not looking at her. “You can stow your suitcase behind the reception desk for now.”

He key-carded the door to a hallway and led her inside. She tried again to make conversation. “Well, your father should be impressed. L.A.’s a tough gig for a new recruit.”

“I’m not a new recruit anymore. I’ve been on the job nearly two years.”

“Right, of course. I didn’t mean ...” Her apology trailed away. Crandall kept walking. She let the silence persist for a few seconds, then stopped him with a tug on his arm. “What’s the matter, Rick?”

“Nothing.” He pulled free of her grasp.

“I thought we were friends.”

“Yeah. I thought so, too.” He took a breath. “You want to know, Tess? You really want to know?”

Without waiting for an answer, he ducked into the break room, a kitchenette with a table and chairs, the air permanently infused with the aroma of coffee.

No one else was inside. Tess entered, and Crandall shut the door. He kept his voice low, but his eyes were fierce.

“Real good friends, that’s what we are, right? And friends don’t keep secrets, do they? They don’t lie. So I guess that’s why you told me all about Abby Hollister, right? Or should I say Abby Sinclair?”

Tess froze. For a moment she could think of nothing to say. Finally she asked the obvious question. “How do you know about that?”

“Because I saw her. I fucking
saw
her, in the flesh, alive. Not drowned in the storm tunnels.”

“I see.”

“You lied. You lied to everybody.”

“I never actually said she drowned. People made the assumption—”

“Don’t bullshit me. When we arrested Kolb, he said you two were working together. You denied it. But it was true, wasn’t it?”

Abby gave in. She hoped to God that Crandall wasn’t wearing a wire. “It was true.”

“You went outside the Bureau, hooked up with some private detective?”

“She’s not a PI. Not exactly.”

“What is she, then?”

“A security consultant.” Tess sat at the table. “You said you saw her. When?”

“Last night. Coming out of Andrea Lowry’s house.”

“You were surveilling the place?”

Crandall hesitated, then took a seat also. Some of the rage had gone out of him, but she still saw the deep hurt in his face. He had looked up to her, trusted her.

“We were surveilling Lowry’s vehicle, actually,” he said in a more subdued voice. “We mounted a GPS tracker on her car.”

Tess was familiar with the procedure. The global positioning system would log the vehicle’s movements, saving the information to a computer file.

“She parks in a carport,” Crandall went on, “so it was easy enough to get access to the vehicle. It was my job to download the data every twenty-four hours and see where she’s been. When I arrived last night to do the data dump, I saw a car parked outside the house. Later I ran the tags. The car belongs to your friend. She was visiting Andrea Lowry.”

“The car was registered under her real name?”

“Yes—assuming Sinclair is her real name. Why ask?”

“When she’s working undercover, she usually drives a car registered to an alias.”

“Maybe this time she got careless. I watched the house and saw her leave. That’s when I recognized her.”

Tess nodded. During the Rain Man case, Crandall had interviewed Abby at the field office. She was posing as an ordinary civilian, using the name Abby Hollister. It was Abby Hollister who was supposed to have died later, in the storm drains, though her body had never been found.

“Did she see you?” Tess asked quietly.

“No. I was hiding in the carport. But I got a good look.” He paused. When she said nothing, he added, “What the hell’s going on, Tess?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet. You knew she didn’t drown.”

“I knew.”

“Did you help her arrange for her car to be found?” Abby’s Honda, registered in her Hollister ID, had turned up in the drainage system.

Tess shook her head. “It wasn’t arranged. It was ... providential, I guess you’d say. It was just how things worked out.”

“So who is she, Tess?”

“You’d be better off not knowing.” She caught his mistrustful glance and added, “I mean that. Really. The less you know, the more deniability you retain.”

“Deniability? I saw her. I got her tag number. I’m already deeply into this thing.”

She hesitated, fearing to ask the next question. “Does anyone else know?”

“You mean, have I told Michaelson? Have I put it in my official report?” Crandall made a brief noise like a stifled laugh. “Do you think you’d be sitting here with me if I had? The ADIC would have had you in a detention cell by now.”

“That’s a slight exaggeration.”

“No, it isn’t. He’s been gunning for you for years. Ever since Mobius. You managed to piss him off. Frankly, you’ve managed to piss off most of the personnel in this office.”

“So no one knows?” She failed to keep the relief out of her voice.

“No one. I’m covering for you.”

“Thank you for your discretion.”

“For participating in the cover-up, you mean? Yeah, I’m real proud of myself.”

“It was a difficult situation, Rick. There were tradeoffs. Abby helped me, and I helped her. It was against procedure—”

“No shit.”

“—but it got the job done. We stopped Kolb.”

“And you took all the credit. Nice.”

“I didn’t care about the credit. I got out of town as soon as the case was closed. I didn’t exploit it.” She hated sounding defensive.

“How about Mobius? Did your secret friend help you on that one, too?”

“I didn’t know her then. She had nothing to do with Mobius.”

“And MEDEA? It can’t be a coincidence that you’re here today after she visited Andrea Lowry last night.”

“No, Rick. It’s not a coincidence.”

“Jesus.” Crandall looked away, disgusted. “You’re out of control, Tess. You’re off the reservation.”

“If it means anything, I never wanted it to go this far.”

“You know what? It doesn’t mean anything. Not to me.” Crandall stood up. “Come on. You’ve got a briefing with the case agent.”

“Not with Michaelson?”

Crandall shook his head. “He’s limiting his contact with you. Can’t say I blame him.”

That was a cheap shot. Tess didn’t respond. She followed Crandall out of the break room, aware that she had lost her only ally in the building. She was now officially alone in L.A.

Except for Abby, of course. And Abby was the exception that proved the rule.