They're Watching (2010) (34 page)

"Jesus, I--" He looked around the van, as if the walls were closing in. His panic sweat clinched for me that he wasn't in on the scam. "Okay," he said. "Okay. I've gotten lost before when the heat's turned up." He stuck a thumb in the upholstery, widened the tear. "You didn't have to come find me. Thanks for the warning."

I said, "Trista Koan. I need an address."

He nodded, one pronounced dip of his head, a man used to dealing. "I'll get one for you. Gimme an hour. What's your cell?" I gave him the number of the throwaway I'd reclaimed from Ariana. He had me repeat it twice and didn't write it down. "What else?" His eyes were light green and surprisingly pretty set in that coarse face.

Those two muffled percussions echoed in my head, making me flinch. The toe of that black boot, barely in view at the edge of the door. Joe was looking at me funny.

I cleared my throat. "I'd like you to call in the location of Elisabeta's body. Anonymously. I can't have anything to do with it."

"Like you said, this broad ran cons and had death threats against her. The cops're gonna connect the dots to draw the wrong picture or to lead back to you. Either way, they'll be all over you once she turns up dead. So why report it?"

"What, just leave her body there?"

"Not like she cares."

"She's got family, I'm sure."

"So what? She'll still have family in a week when the neighbors complain about the smell, but at least you'll buy yourself a few more days to dig around without the cops up your ass. She fucked with us. It's not like she deserves better."

I said, "Her family does. Make the call for me."

"It's your jail sentence."

"Anything else you can give me on Keith Conner?"

"I can give you everything on Keith Conner," he said. "But that's my currency, man. What do I get?"

"You say you want to know who fucked with you. Well, this could be your chance. I'm not even asking you to share the risk."

He was back at his fingernails again, but he noticed and set his hands down in his lap. "From what I've learned, movie stars don't do shit. Meetings, lots of meetings. Business managers, agents, the Coffee Bean on Sunset. And fucking lunches. You just sort of hang in and hope for some break in the routine, something weird. One day, about two weeks ago, I noticed something like that. Another car following him, keeping an eye. Not one of the regulars. We all know each other. And no one trolls in a Mercury Sable with tinted windows. I call the license plate in to my hook at LAPD, and guess what? The number doesn't exist."

He'd lowered his voice, and I found myself leaning toward him. The smell of the van--peanuts, coffee, spent breath--was making me claustrophobic, but the hook was set and I was going nowhere.

Joe continued, "Now I'm curious. So when it peels out, I follow it. I lose it at a light but find it parked two blocks up at the Starbright Plaza, one of those crappy strip malls on Riverside by the studios. You know, stores downstairs, offices up? I go kick the tires. It's got a Hertz sticker on the windshield."

Hertz again. Just like the car Sally traced the VIN back to.

He continued, "So someone had switched the plates. I check the mall directory, walk around, but there's a ton of offices and nothing looks suspicious. I stake the car out for a few hours, then get bored and leave."

"Starbright Plaza?"

"Starbright Plaza. That's the best I got for you."

I pulled open the door, drew in a deep breath of fresh air, and stepped down onto the street toward my car. I'd gotten the key into my lock when I heard the van behind me, sputtering.

"Hey," Joe's gruff voice called out. "If you live, I still want that exclusive."

When I turned around, he was already chugging off.

Chapter
43

A bland-as-hell two-story sprawl, brown wood and beige stucco, named Starbright Plaza. The inadvertent irony was common around these parts, in the slices of neighborhood around Warner Bros., Universal, and Disney. A-List Tires and Rims. Blockbuster Orchard Supply. Red Carpet Motel with FREE cable in every room!

The parking lot was jammed, so I valeted in front of the cafe at the far end of the complex. None of the patrons took note of me, though I assessed their faces with skittish defiance, searching for signs of recognition. Amazing how self-centered a good dose of fear can make you.

The valet handed me a slip featuring a glossy ad with Keith Conner's scowl:

This June, Be Afraid.

This June, There's Nowhere Left to Hide.

This June . . . THEY'RE WATCHING.

Another driver tapped the horn politely; I'd zoned out there a few feet off the curb. I stepped through the mist of the outdoor air conditioner onto the sidewalk and took in the shops and offices, feeling some of the frustration Joe must have felt: How do you search a massive strip mall for something suspicious?

Two workers carried a picture window out of a glass shop, like extras in a Laurel and Hardy sketch. Figuring that the other downstairs businesses, which ranged from a dry cleaner to a Hallmark, were equally innocuous, I walked to the stairwell. A FedEx delivery guy tapping at an electronic clipboard whistled down, not even bothering to glance up as I skipped aside at the landing.

The upstairs hallway, shaped in a wide V, hosted an endless row of doors and windows. Quite a few were open as I strolled by, uncertain of what I was looking for. Cubicles and wall charts, young guys on phones working baoding balls, selling penny stocks and exercise equipment in three no-hassle payments. I passed a fly-by-night insurance shop, then a straight-to-video operation with proudly displayed movie posters featuring giant insects wreaking havoc on metropolises. A few of the offices had been hastily cleared out, clipped cables poking from the ceilings and walls, jumbles of telemarketing phones mounded in corners. Others, with closed blinds and unmarked doors, were as silent as a surgeon's waiting room. Clearly the rentals had a considerable turnover rate.

Ducking the occasional shitty security camera, I kept walking, noting business names and glancing at faces, wondering what the hell I was doing here. Finally I ran out of room, reaching the far stairwell. I was just starting down when the brass placard drilled into the last office door caught my attention: DO NOT LEAVE ANY PACKAGES WITHOUT SIGNATURE. D O NOT LEAVE ANY PACKAGES WITH NEIGHBORING BUSINESSES. A FedEx tag had been left compliantly around the knob. Except for its number, 1138, the door itself was blank, like many others.

I plucked the tag free, stared down at the sloppily penned business name: Ridgeline, Inc.

My face tingled with excitement. And fear. Careful what you look for--you just might find it. In this instance the likely operating base for the men who'd sent me those e-mails, who'd framed me for murder, who'd killed three people and counting.

The orange-and-blue tag indicated a second delivery attempt for a package sent from a FedEx center in Alexandria, Virginia. Just inside the Beltway, the city was rife with influence peddlers and power brokers. The package's origin struck me as ominous.

The blinds of the office window were imperfectly closed. I went up on tiptoe to get an angle through the slats. The front room was as plain as could be. Computer, copier, paper shredder. There were no plants, no paintings, no Sears family portrait taped to the monitor. Not even a second chair for a visitor to sit in. A windowless door led back, I assumed, to a hall and more rooms.

I jogged downstairs and through the dingy alley behind the complex to check out the rear of 1138. A rickety fire escape rose to a thick metal door. The dead bolt was shiny, and traces of sawdust on the landing said it had been recently installed.

I huffed back around and confronted that front door again, in case it had decided to unlock itself. It hadn't.

Now what?

I thought about that FedEx driver, shouldering past me on the stairwell.

I dialed the 1-800 number on the tag, keyed in the tracking code, and waited through a xylophone rendition of "Arthur's Theme." When the customer-service rep picked up, I said, "I'm calling from Ridgeline. I just missed a drop-off, and I think your driver's still in the area. Will you please have him swing back around?"

I walked a ways up the outdoor corridor, not wanting to hang around 1138 in case someone with Danner boots reported back to work. Twenty minutes passed in a crawl. My rising anxiety and discouragement had just reached a tipping point when I saw the big white box of the FedEx truck making its way through traffic. Positioning myself at the office door, I touched the tip of one of my keys to the dead-bolt lock and waited for what seemed an eternity. Finally I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and I pivoted, key in view, as he approached.

"Oh," I said, "you just caught me locking up."

"Missed you the last few times." He handed me a thin express envelope and the electronic clipboard. "You guys are tricky."

I scrawled J. Edgar Hoover illegibly and handed the clipboard back. "Yeah," I said, "we kind of are."

I had to force myself not to sprint downstairs and across to the valet. Waiting for my car, I glanced nervously along the length of the building toward the Ridgeline office. Only then did I see the silver security camera mounted on top of the overhang right above 1138, out of sight from the corridor itself. It didn't match the others.

And it was pointing at me.

On the FedEx label, under Contents, was written, Insurance.

Sitting at our kitchen table in the quiet of the house, I tore open the envelope. A piece of corrugated cardboard, folded once and taped to protect its contents. A Post-it read, Going dark. Do not contact. I broke the tape with a thumb. Inside lay a computer disc. I took a deep breath. Rubbed my eyes. Frisbeed the cardboard into the heap of trash on the floor.

Insurance? For whom? Against what?

"Going dark" implied it was sent from an inside operative of sorts. A spy?

I took the disc upstairs to my office and, feverish with anticipation, slotted it into Ariana's laptop.

Blank.

I swore, banging the desk with the heel of my hand so hard that the laptop jumped. Couldn't one damn clue pan out? After all I'd risked to get it. The security footage of me left behind for the crew at Ridgeline. The wrath that could bring down on us.

Ariana was at work, looking into our financial options. Worried, I tried her as I had several times earlier, and again got voice mail all around. She was keeping her cell phone turned off, as we'd agreed, so she couldn't be tracked by its signal. I'd taken back and was using--right now--the disposable cell phone I'd gotten for her to carry so we could be in touch throughout the day. Smart.

In Ari's address book downstairs, I found her assistant's cell number and waited as it rang, my knee hammering up and down. A wash of relief when she answered.

"Patrick? You okay? What's going on?"

"Why aren't you guys picking up?"

"We're still getting bullshit calls about . . . you know, so it's easier to just let everything go to voice mail."

"Where is she?"

"At another meeting--she hasn't stopped scrambling all day. I can't reach her because she's keeping her cell phone off for some reason."

"Okay, I just wanted to know that she's . . ."

"No shit, huh? But don't worry. She's being super careful. She took, like, our two biggest delivery guys with her."

That made me feel incrementally better.

"When she checks in, can you have her call me at home?" I asked.

"Sure, but the meeting should be wrapping up, and she said she's heading home after, so you'll probably talk to her before I do."

I hung up, pressed the phone to my closed mouth. Given that it was the middle of the day, the drawn curtains were oppressive, confining. I'd sneaked in over the back fence again, and it struck me that I hadn't been in my own front yard since getting home from jail. Bracing myself, I stepped out onto the porch. Who could have imagined that something so simple would feel like a bold act? A few shouts, and then a throng appeared at the end of the walk, calling questions, snapping pictures. Closing my eyes, I tilted my face to the sun. But I couldn't relax out there, exposed. In the pressure of darkness behind my eyelids, I relived Elisabeta's bathroom window shoving against me as I'd tried to slither through to safety.

Back in the kitchen, I pounded a glass of water and rooted around for food, adding torn boxes and moldy bread to the trash heap on the floor. Chewing a stale energy bar, I returned to my office and stared some more at the blank disc on the screen. Maybe a hidden document? But the memory showed as zero. It seemed unlikely that data could have been embedded in a way that took up no memory, but with these guys anything was possible. I hid the disc in the middle of my blank DVDs impaled on the spindle and dropped the FedEx packaging into a desk drawer.

The phone rang. I snatched it up. "Ari?"

"I'm under a rock." Joe Vente. "Memorize this number." He rattled it off. "I'm bedded down. Safe. No one has this number, so if they come kill me, I'll be really pissed off at you."

"I won't breathe a word."

"I called in the body of Elisabeta or whoever the fuck she is. Get ready for the shit to hit."