One of the Wicked: A Mick Callahan Novel (29 page)

Mandel paused in the lobby. I went inside to join him there, my body shielding us from the street. He was carefully opening the FedEx envelope.

"What's wrong?"

"Just take the damned thing, all right?" Mandel slid the disc out of the red, white, and blue envelope and handed it to me. I put it in the front pocket of my pants. Mandel pushed by me, still holding the empty envelope. He was wide-eyed, drenched with sweat. "I'm out of this, all right? Now just leave me the fuck alone."

He went through the glass doors, into the street and down two of the steps. He stopped for a moment, still toying with the envelope. I opened the glass door and started back across the street for the bowling alley. Behind me, Mandel looked around, spotted one of the mesh metal trash cans and went that way. What happened next happened faster than I would have believed possible.

First, everything went quiet. The pretty woman in shorts and a halter top trotted up the steps, large breasts bouncing joyfully. She smiled brightly at Jacob Mandel, produced a small automatic with a silencer on the end, pressed it to his forehead and blew his brains out all over the hot pavement. Mandel threw his arms up and dropped like a stone. The woman caught the flying FedEx envelope in her free hand, spun to face me. The gun inched up but I was already running. I could just see the black security guard out of the corner of my eye. He was raising another silenced weapon. I saw the large round cylinder on the end and small sparks appeared. I heard something that sounded like popcorn in a microwave.

I varied my pace and direction but always moved forward. Now the noise exploded. I could see Darlene in the doorway, pressed against the wall as she returned fire. Bullets dug a neat row of divots in the sidewalk near her position. She shifted her attention up and over my left shoulder. Something nicked my cheek. I dove for the lobby and rolled over onto my back. A man in a construction hat was on the roof of the building next to the post office with a silenced rifle. The world was louder now, the popcorn sound and some booms; people screaming, glass shattering. I turned my head just in time to watch a row of bullets zero in on Jerry, who clutched his laptop computer. A bullet caught him in the shoulder. Blood splattered and pulsed. Jerry went over backwards. He hit the floor hard. I crawled his way, but another shot from the rifle drove me back.

I went flat on the floor, peered out and tried to check on Jerry's condition. That's when I noticed Mary Kate. The big bartender had her by the neck. She was kicking and screaming as he dragged her out the back door. I wanted to follow, but suddenly the two old people I'd taken for gamblers pulled weapons. They fired just as the shooters across the street began to retreat. I barely made it back behind the wall. Darlene was reloading by then. She saw my expression but was pinned down for a few precious seconds. Finally, she put just her hand and gun around the pillar and fired several rounds. The old people vanished out the back. The world quieted down. We heard them lock the big security door and then the squeal of tires.

The wail of police sirens in the distance. People shouting, wondering what was going on. Darlene and I locked eyes. "Did you get it?"

I nodded. We ducked low and went after Jerry. He'd taken a bullet high on the right shoulder. Darlene ripped his shirt apart, used scraps to stuff the wound.

"Ah, hell," Jerry said. "That hurts."

I looked at the locked back door, still thinking of Mary Kate. Darlene shook her head. "No, Mick. Let's get him in the car."

Darlene was right and I knew it. We each took an arm and dragged Jerry out of the building, got him into the back of the car. "Give me the disc, Mick," Jerry said through clenched teeth. I slipped it from my pocket, checked the seeping wound. The improvised bandage was holding.

"Let's go!" I rolled over into shotgun position on the front seat. Darlene got into the driver's seat and we sped away. She cut down one alley, then another, and finally went straight onto the highway as if intending to head back to Los Angeles. I was already on the cell phone to Hal and told him we'd been ambushed.

"You can't go back to those rooms," Hal said quietly. "I just got a tip through Larry Donato via your friend Dave Lopez. Your identity was just compromised by someone who recognized you from your days on television."

"So much for the clever disguise."

"How's Jerry, son?"

I looked over my shoulder. My little buddy had the laptop open and was typing feverishly. His shoulder was bleeding a bit, but certainly not gushing. "He's going to be okay, but we'll need someone to clean and bandage the wound and score some pain meds."

"The friends I told you about. I'm calling now. They will help."

"Thanks, we'll need them." I turned back to Jerry. "What about the contents of the disc?"

"It's encoded, but your friend Mr. Stone did some of the work already," Jerry said. That puzzled me. Bud Stone wasn't an expert in computer science, at least as far as I knew. Jerry managed to chuckle. "Damn, there's even some operational stuff Mandel must have stolen from The Valley of Fire resort."

I remembered the back of Mandel's head vanishing into pink mist and my stomach rolled over. "Damn it, Jacob was just a scared kid but they killed him. And now they've got Mary Kate."

"Yes," Hal said, "but you have the disc."

Darlene squealed around one turn in the highway that temporarily shielded our location. "Hold on."

We braced ourselves. Darlene skidded down an embankment and into a gully filled with brush. We bounced and heaved to and fro. I dropped the cell phone. We rolled to a stop in two feet of water at the bottom of a cement wash. By the time the slow traffic behind us had caught up again, we were completely hidden from view. It was as if we had vanished on our way back to LA.

Darlene sat back, exhausted. She had a small cut under one eye. I found a tissue, pressed it, put her fingers there. I recovered the phone. Jerry kept working, fingers clacking on keys.

"Hal? Can you find us a safe place to hide?"

"I'm working on that, too. Are you okay for now?"

"It appears that way."

"Then hang on. I'll get back to you in a couple of minutes."

I closed the phone. We watched shadows crawl across cement; cool darkness approached with the paws of a black cat.

"Damn," Jerry said. He stopped working for a moment. "You know what? This really hurts."

"I'll bet. Can you hang in there?"

"Yeah. Oh, I get it." Jerry was typing again, had already moved on. He paused to turn on a small light located above the screen and went back to work, the discomfort temporarily forgotten.

Soon it was dark. I was still trembling from adrenaline. Darlene held my hand. Hers was shaking, too. "Now what?"

"Now, bingo," Jerry said triumphantly. And then, as if in awe: "Holy shit."

"What?"

I looked back. Numbers and symbols were crawling slowly up the small laptop screen, their greenish reflections lighting up Jerry's blood-streaked features. I got Hal back on the line, held the phone up so he could hear.

"Guys," Jerry said, "what we have here is a list of sums paid to politicians in the United States and England by various Defense Department contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. There must be two dozen different companies, and at least two billion dollars' worth of bribes."

I blew out some air. "Jesus."

"There's more," Jerry said. "This is the Oil for Food Scandal times two. It's got the private bank accounts of several world leaders, including a few key folks in Washington. Man, no wonder people would kill for this."

Darlene squeezed my hand. Our eyes met in the gloom. I brought the phone back to my ear. "This is far too explosive for us to broker," Hal said quietly. "My people won't touch it. Still, you can't give it back to Little Nicky and the mob, Mick. You know that, right?"

My cell phone throbbed. I had an incoming call. "Hal, hold on."

"Mr. Callahan?" My gut clenched. It was Nikolaou Argetoianu. "You will pardon the intrusion, yes? One of my people grabbed Jacob's phone before leaving the scene, so I took the liberty of using it to get in touch. You can imagine my irritation when the envelope returned to me was found to be empty."

I let Darlene listen in. Jerry went quiet in the backseat. The only light was the green cast by the computer screen. "Yeah," I said dryly, "and I'll bet that just about chapped your ass."

"Such colorful cowboy language." Little Nicky covered the phone, barked an order. I heard a muffled scream. "Someone wants to say hello."

Mary Kate. She was sobbing in pain. "Mick, oh God, Mick, give it to him, please just give it to him, Mick they hurt me. They really hurt me."

I wanted to vomit. Darlene began to reload her Glock. Little Nicky came back on the line. "Mary Kate has confessed to being your half sister. How charming that you finally met. You must tell me all about this."

"What do you and Pesci want, Nicky? A trade?"

"Just so." Another scream from Mary Kate. "What will be left of your sister for the disc? We both know the money and drugs burned up with your friend Mr. Stone."

"Easy. I'll meet you."

"Good. Naturally, we know you are still in the area because, as I am sure you already suspect, we are tracking your phone. Thus, you will soon use another. Let's just spare ourselves more drama. It will be so much better for everyone concerned to settle things quietly."

Jerry made hand motions indicating he'd find a way to block Nicky from locating our position. I closed my eyes. "Go on."

"Please listen carefully, Mr. Callahan. May I call you Mick?"

"Certainly, since we're getting to be really good friends now, and all."

"The disc is encrypted."

"We figured as much. So?"

"If you attempt to examine the contents of that disc, or to copy them, you will leave behind a record of having tampered with it. If my people discover such evidence, your sister will be executed immediately, and all of you will be hunted to the ends of the earth."

I looked back at Jerry. My eyes questioned him again. My pal smiled weakly, shook his head, mouthed something about "him and the horse he rode in on," and went back to work. Jerry wasn't concerned about leaving electronic fingerprints.

I sighed. "Understood."

Little Nicky said, "So, come and see me, all three of you, yes?"

"All two of us. My friend got shot back at the Post Office." I let my voice disintegrate. It wasn't hard. I was worried about MK. "Jerry is dead."

"Good. That will lessen your temptation to explore that which you should not. Please, come have a drink with me, Mr. Callahan, you and the lovely Sergeant Hernandez. The Valley of Fire should provide you the comfort of a crowd. I'll give you two hours."

Ten minutes later, with Hal directing us, we took several winding back roads and finally arrived at an isolated ranch-style house located out near the dam. A retired couple named Baxter lived there. They were expecting us. Dr. Baxter met us in the driveway, helped me get Jerry out of the car and took him right into their bedroom. The old man produced an old-style black bag. I tried to thank him, but he waved me away. "Hal Solomon took some heat for me thirty years ago," Baxter said. "I owe him. We'll look after your friend. You go do what you have to do." In a matter of minutes, Jerry was lightly sedated and heavily bandaged.

Darlene and I got ready to go. Jerry sat up straight, the laptop now plugged into the wall socket. "I have my cell right here, Mick. I made a copy of all the information on Valley of Fire. Hell, I can get into their computer system with this stuff. If you need my help, just call."

I paused in the doorway. "Jerry, are you sure they won't be able to tell they've been hacked?"

"Yeah. Piece of cake, my man." Jerry winced, touched his shoulder. He seemed so small, but so brave, like a little boy facing surgery. My heart cracked for him. I looked at Darlene, the determined set of her features. She had changed into another dress and borrowed a blonde wig from Mrs. Baxter. Years of undercover work were paying off. Darlene looked like a different woman. True friends. I was a very lucky man.

Jerry handed me the disc. "It's got timed worms on it now," he said. "They'll spot the first one. If you think you're going to escape safely, give them the password Lednam1, that is 1Mandel backwards. The screen will flash an okay, and Nicky will think he's in the clear." Jerry was tired and the pain had obviously begun to gnaw at him.

"However?"

"However, there's a second worm. I made it untraceable and nasty. Everything will seem to check out, but there are tiny errors that will take a while to show up, and within forty-eight hours the rest of that data will start breaking down, too. And if they screw around trying to stop my second virus, it will immediately spread out beyond the file and crash their entire system."

"Great job." I put the disc in my pocket again. "If we do make it out of there, and he passes the files along, Nicky's customers will probably think he tried to pull a fast one on them."

"That's the idea, anyway. Mick, you know he's going to kill you, right?"

I sat down on the bed. "Maybe not, Jerry. He's already got the cops after me, and a lot of underworld types thinking I deserve a bullet in the head. Why not let someone else take me out? He's the type that might enjoy watching me run."

"Ever the optimist." He picked up my cell phone, double-checked some clever modifications, and tossed it to me. I put it in my pants pocket. It made an odd bulge because he'd jammed it so that it was stuck partway open.

Jerry said, "Watch yourself."

"Always."

Darlene checked her watch. She had her Glock cleaned and reloaded and a backup .38 strapped to her ankle. She straightened the tight dress and checked herself in the mirror.