Playing the Game (9 page)

            ‘Exactly’, Fergs confirmed.

            Well it made sense that The Chemist had to somehow track the game. That however, was ingenious. I was about to run a couple of ideas past Charlie when Fergs piped up again. ‘Holy shit!’ he muttered. I followed the trail of his pointing finger, back to the box. Another red LED had come on.

            ‘What? What does that mean?’ I demanded.

            ‘It means that the computer has just received a return signal from the remote device. That’s not good’.

            Before I could ask what ‘not good’ meant, a deafening explosion came from downstairs. The force of the blast broke every window in the room and sent the three of us cascading into walls, furniture and each other. Shaking off the blast, we sat speechless and stunned. The three of us were unscathed but we obviously hadn’t been in the direct line of the blast.

 I reconciled my senses to where I thought the blast had come from, and even though my sense of direction was somewhat muted, I was pretty sure it had come from the living room. That’s where we had been questioning Laura Edwards.

            I didn’t need to ask Fergs what ‘not good’ meant anymore.

23

            As the pain of the migraine subsided, The Chemist’s eyes opened just as a feeling of being watched was becoming apparent. The waitress who had served the coffee was hovering expectantly.

            ‘Are you, are you ok?’ she asked. ‘You looked like you were in pain for a while there’. The Chemist sensed she was asking merely out of kindness, and was no threat. She was probably hoping for a bigger tip. If only she knew who she was speaking to! Nevertheless, it wouldn’t do to draw any further attention by being impolite. ‘I’m fine, thank you’, The Chemist managed to look grateful for the waitresses concern. The waitress hovered for a moment, maybe hoping to strike up a conversation. That was a definite no-no. Mercifully, at that moment, the pager sounded and The Chemist turned back to the waitress. ‘Migraine that’s all. I’m sorry’, The Chemist almost sounded apologetic. ‘I have to get this’.

            ‘Oh, that’s ok honey,’ the waitress replied, the groundwork for a bigger tip completed. ‘You have a nice day now, y’hear?’ The Chemist just nodded and turned to the pager. Ah, there it was. The pain having fully subsided now, The Chemist was jubilant. Patton and Holland would just have finished looking at the email. Quickly pressing six buttons, sending a return signal, The Chemist folded the pager away, back into the coat pocket, and downed the remainder of the coffee. There was no rush. There was still plenty of time. As usual, the LAPD were a couple of steps behind.

            Leaving the correct money for the coffee, no more, no less, on the table next to the empty cup, The Chemist casually walked out of the diner. Scuttling across to the table, the waitress was dismayed to see that there was no tip. How rude. After she had been so nice and concerned and all. Shaking her head she picked up the cup and saucer and slammed them onto the counter, angrily putting the money into the till. She was unaware that The Chemist had just left her the biggest tip possible. She was still alive.

24

           
For a moment we just looked at each other as the sense of what might just have occurred gradually sunk in. Fergs looked completely shell-shocked; field work was not his speciality.

            ‘Stay here Fergs’, I commanded. ‘Get what you can off that computer. Can you trace where the signal came from?’ Getting no answer, I had to repeat myself. ‘Fergs, can you trace that goddamn signal?’

            ‘Yeah, I think so,’ he finally managed, still sounding stunned.

            ‘Then get on with it. We don’t have much time’.

            As soon as we left the bedroom, it became apparent that the house had suffered considerable structural damage on the ground floor. Doors had become detached from their hinges, a couple of the walls had been blown right through and some of the lower stairs had crumbled, leaving our descent down somewhat perilous. The eerie silence that becomes an area where a bomb has exploded, once the debris settles, was only interrupted with cries and moans for help. I was right; it had come from the living room.

            With Charlie close behind me, we made our way carefully down what was left of the stairs, another two almost giving way under our considerable combined weight.

            Nothing quite prepared me for what we walked into. Going onto the scene of an accident is always tough, but then again, this hadn’t been an accident had it?

            Guns drawn purely out of instinct, we combed the remnants of the living room, almost unable to come to terms with what we were seeing.

 Laura Edwards was dead. It seemed she must have been sitting near where the bomb had exploded; both her legs had been blown completely off her abdomen. The psychologist was dead also; I could see from where I was standing that he had been horrifically burned all over. Officer Cowap, a good guy, lay face down and a quick check of his vitals confirmed he had also died. One officer I knew only by sight had also died; he’d been blown through the downstairs window. Whether the blast itself or the sheet glass from the bay window had killed him, I couldn’t tell, but he was covered in blood.

Two officers had been in the hallway when the bomb had exploded and had been trapped under falling debris. One had a particularly nasty cut to his left leg, the flesh had been cut to the bone and you could visibly see muscle, tissue and sinew. He probably didn’t feel like it, but he had been very, very lucky.

Charlie made the 911 call, while I helped stabilise the surviving officers. Then I called Captain Williams who was as dumbfounded as we were. ‘Patton’, he sounded grave, ‘what the hell is going on here?’

In the few moments I’d had to think, I found it hard to imagine that Charlie and I had been primary targets for the bomb. We hadn’t played enough yet, had we? Nevertheless, it was an unnerving statement of further intent on the part of The Chemist. A statement that told us to expect the unexpected, that anything could happen at any time and that The Chemist was far cleverer than we were. At the moment, how could I disagree?

‘Patton, hey, Patton’, I heard Ferguson shout from upstairs, and I sensed a little excitement back in his voice.

‘Yeah Fergs, what’s up?’ I yelled back.

‘I think I’ve traced the signal. It came from Sunset Junction’.

I rounded Charlie up and we left Sutherland Boulevard in the hands of the arriving EMTs and a secondary LAPD team. We didn’t have much, but once again, it was all we had to go on.

25

Last week

            The day after Burr and McCrane told him of their impending problem with The Chemist, the uneasy feeling in the pit of Cyprian Hague’s stomach remained unabated. He was worried, of course. Well who wouldn’t be? But it all seemed a little bit, well, strange. Not that he’d had any reason thus far to distrust his fellow Animi; they had accomplished many great things in Los Angeles, his home town. He had very much played an integral role in what they had done over the last five years and knew that the public perception of him would be extremely different if they knew what went on behind closed doors and some of the decisions he’d helped to make. But no, the public loved him. His image, right from the start, was built on wholesome family values; that had actually been his first campaign slogan. After the scandal and corruption of his predecessor, that was just what the public had craved. So that’s what he had given them. Or at least that’s what they thought he had given them. The Animi had worked so effectively since its inception. They almost seemed unstoppable now. Invincible even. Even so, something about the information ushered upon them by Burr and McCrane didn’t sit quite right with him. He had wondered if they had their own agenda, maybe working an angle for their own undisclosed purposes. He’d dismissed that as nonsense paranoia; his over-active imagination running riot. Still, despite this, the thought had returned and had returned several times over the last twenty-four hours. So much so, that he now sat in his luxurious office at Getty House with the phone in his hand and finger hovering, wondering whether or not to make a call. There was no denying that McCrane, chairman of the Animi, was the figure head of the group with Burr most definitely his second in command. What were they hiding? He suspected there was something that they weren’t telling the rest of the group but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

            Eventually deciding that being sure, and watching his own back, was the right way to go, he made the call to an old friend Nick Tanner, who also just happened to be Chief Analyst of the LAPD Video and Imagery department. Hague wanted to check that what McCrane and Burr had told the rest of the Animi was indeed accurate. He knew that any crime scene photos and videos would pass through Tanner’s department, even the covert operations, such as guarding a witness to a mafia hit; the story purported by McCrane at the meeting.

            It took only a couple of minutes to get hold of Tanner. His old friend had been happy to hear from him, and it had taken a further couple of minutes of small-talk and pleasantries before Hague could cut to the chase.

            ‘Listen Nick, I need a favour. There’s something I think you can help me with’.

            ‘Well if I can help, I will Cyprian, you know that’, Tanner had replied, ready as always to assist the Mayor where he could.

            ‘About six months ago, two guards were killed safeguarding a mafia witness. Ring any bells?’ There was a pause on the other end of the line, Tanner taking his time to think. He must deal with hundreds of photos and videos on a weekly basis.

            ‘Yeah it does actually, nasty. Why Cyprian? What are you after?’

            ‘Do you think you could get a copy of all the crime scene reports and photos for me? Needs to be below the radar, Nick.’

            ‘Well obviously, I’m not supposed to …’ Tanner momentarily pondered, weighing up the pros and cons of his decision, ‘but I suppose I could. Call it a favour banked, if you will?’

            ‘That’s great Nick’, Hague had hoped he would agree. ‘I need it a soon as you can, when can you get it together?’

            ‘Give me an hour. You want it couriered?’

            Hague was taking no chances. ‘I’ll collect it myself Nick, see you at five’.

            He hung up the phone, undecided as to whether or not he wanted to find out if Burr and McCrane were telling the truth. Either way, he suspected he was going to have massive problems somewhere down the line.

26

            As soon as he regained consciousness, James Tetley knew he was in trouble. He opened his eyes slowly, and surveyed his surroundings, groggily. He remembered Jimmy stalling for more time at the bank, and he also remembered the fire-fight between Jimmy and the cops. He also, very vividly, remembered Jimmy’s body collapsing in front of him, or at least, what had been left of him. That was a sight that Tetley knew would haunt his dreams to the grave. He gagged, and momentarily fought to stop himself throwing up his breakfast all over the hospital bed.

            Trying to raise his right hand to his mouth, just in case, he found that he couldn’t but heard a slight rattle as he tried to do so. Looking down, he realised that the bastards had handcuffed him to the bed. As if he was going anywhere on one leg.

            Despite the intravenous painkillers slowly dripping into his system from his left hand, he had a sense of where he was and knew that pretty soon, well just as soon as these drugs had taken effect probably, he would be transported to a local station where he would be held until he was convicted of parole violation. That meant he was straight back to prison, more than likely back to San Quentin. If that was the case, not only would he be back in prison, he would also have Graziadai and Seinfeld pissed that they hadn’t gotten their promised bounty. He would have to hastily promise that an associate would be taking care of that for them imminently, a promise that he in all likelihood couldn’t keep. Then they would probably kill him. Best case scenario, they would seriously hurt him.

He’d once seen them sever an inmate’s arm, just below the elbow. They had been on laundry detail; him, Seinfeld, Graziadai and several other inmates, including the unfortunate Mendes. Seinfeld and Graziadai must have had the guards in their back pockets, because they must have heard Mendes’ bloodcurdling screams. Seinfeld had somehow prised the laundry goods delivery lift open. The lift had been on the next floor, which had been only slightly above their floor; no more than two feet. There had been an exit on the opposite side above them. Graziadai held the guy to the floor, a foot on his upper arm; the arm hovering ominously over the open lift pit. They had then sent the lift cascading down to their floor, severing Mendes’ arm from his body. The resulting screams had given Tetley several sleepless nights over the following few weeks. And all this over something as trivial as Seinfeld thought Mendes had been serving him smaller portions than anyone else the last couple of lunchtimes. Now Mendes wouldn’t be serving anybody. Not with his right arm at least. Mendes had somehow survived, in spite of the massive blood loss that had occurred, and had gone through extensive rehab in following four months or so. Almost as soon as he was back, Mendes had been subjected to daily ridicule from Graziadai and Seinfeld but never once ratted them out to any of the prison staff. Well not to any of the ones that weren’t on the take, anyway. He must have thought that life with one arm was at least better than no life at all.

            So it gave Tetley no comfort to imagine he could expect a minimum of the same level of treatment from these guys. All the IV in the world wasn’t going to make that thought any less painful.

Fucking Jimmy. If they had stuck to the agreed time, they would have been well clear. Moseley could probably have covered ten to twelve blocks before the police had shown up, he’d have his ten thousand dollars, everyone would be happy. Instead, he was laying here with a fucked up leg, facing the unnerving prospect of prison certainly, and death a distinct possibility.