Текст книги "The Disposables"

Автор книги: David Putnam

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Chapter Forty-Nine

“What’s her name? Do you know her name?”

She shook her head. It didn’t matter. I knew.

Chantal.

Six months though? How had I not known? It made sense. He’d come up on me looking to find Wally and made contact with her, a big risk that she would rat him out to me. But he was always into big risks, they had potential to pay off in big dividends. She did what she always did, turned on the charm, offered up the only defense she possessed, she gave him a little sugar.

“I’m sorry, Barbara, I have to go.” The words nothing more than a whisper. I stood and opened the door. The uniform blocked my path. I looked back at her. For a long moment I thought maybe I wouldn’t leave Montclair Police Department.

“That’s okay, Al,” she said. “Let him go.”

Al stood aside.

Thirty-five minutes to go before Mack came onto the same trail with all his resources backing him. I got in the little Toyota Camry with the punched ignition, started up, and drove to the exit watching the rearview for cop cars laying in wait to ambush me.

Too much paranoia.

I used the turn signal to pull out onto the street. A sleek black Crown Victoria came up rolling hot and squealed his tires into the Montclair Police Department parking lot. As the car passed under the streetlight, I caught a glimpse of the driver: Detective Mack from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He was early, in too big of a hurry to pay attention to an innocuous Camry with a fleeing felon in it. I saw him, but he didn’t see me. I don’t think he lied about the two hours. Anxiety whipped him into such a frenzy he could easily have thought he’d waited the prescribed amount of time. He drove a cop car with emergency equipment, red lights, and a siren. Once he got the same information from Barbara, he’d jump on the Pomona Freeway and scream on past me. Unless Barbara listened to what I told her, believed I was the best man to bring her husband down, if she believed in irony. If she still loved him even a little, she’d stall. I pushed the speed, as much as I dared. The trip back to the city, the freeway long and rolling ahead of me, was going to be the worst I’d ever made.

Mack must’ve left his partner Fong to book Ruben the Cuban. It also meant Mack had not released Marie. The bastard had the blood spoor and nothing else mattered. I unintentionally pushed on the accelerator, had the speed up to eighty. I forced myself to ease off.

Thirty-five minutes later. I pulled up a block away from Chantal’s. Three floors up, the white-yellow light from her apartment spilled onto the outdoor walkway. For the last twenty miles anger rose and pulsed behind my eyes. I had no weapon. Didn’t need one. I still had two hands. I had my rage. I went up the stairs intent on kicking the door.

The blinds in the window sat in the frame slightly skewed, probably from Chantal watching the street for her man to arrive home. The slot between the blinds and the frame revealed half the living room. Chantal sat naked on the couch. Her smooth, perfect cocoa skin against the butternut leather would’ve made a tasteful and expensive work of art. Call it Ghetto Princess. Before her on the thick glass coffee table—the subject of her full attention—lay stacks of US currency: sex and greed.

She sat perfectly still staring at the money, her eyes and facial features displaying the classic opiate droop. I stood mesmerized, stood there longer than I should’ve, standing right outside her window looking into her apartment. Down on the street, a random noise floated up, the acceleration of a car a block away, trying to catch an amber signal turning red. Without taking my eyes from her, my hand went to the doorknob. That’s when I realized something was wrong. Chantal hadn’t moved. For someone hooked on junk, sitting still for hours didn’t call for panic. I guess it registered first in my subconscious. Her chest, the bellows that brought the life-giving air into the lungs, didn’t move either.

My hand turned the knob. Unlocked. The little bit of pressure eased the door open. Someone had kicked it in. Splintered wood stuck out jagged in the frame. The same someone had simply pulled the door closed. I pushed it open all the way, wary of who stood behind it.

The unmistakable stink of cordite hung in the air, floating in a bank of smoke at the ceiling, too soon for it to dissipate. I walked in like an awestruck civilian. I had grown to like Chantal and saw her as a special friend. I went over and sat on the couch next to her. Her eyes stared off into oblivion, her lips were parted slightly, a narrow trickle of blood ran down the corner of her mouth. I reached up and put a gentle hand on hers; her skin still warm to the touch. Under her left breast, difficult to discern from any distance, a small red dot wept another trickle of blood. In the back of my mind I knew I should’ve cleared the apartment first. But I also knew this, the money on the coffee table, had not been his big payday. This whole time, he’d been after the million-dollar reward for Wally Kim. He was just tying up loose ends. Chantal.

All that money was too bulky to carry. And he was in a terrible hurry. Odds of someone finding Chantal before he got back were slim to none. That’s why he’d pulled the door shut. A calculated risk. Then I realized another reason he had to come back. He’d not had time to set the scene up to frame me for her murder. No, he’d be back for the money.

The bullet must have hit a vital organ, and killed her instantly. On the table was everything he had stolen from me. The motives for murder have always been timeless: money, power, sex. Robby Wicks succumbed to all three. First, the influence of the job now lost, power. Then, the woman, sex. Then, the money, greed.

The sight of the money on the table, what it represented, what it had caused, the untimely death of this beautiful woman, made me physically ill.

Her hand moved.

“Chantal? It’s okay, it’s me, Bruno. I’ll call 911.”

I looked around for a phone. No one had landlines anymore. Everyone had cells. Where did she keep hers? “Where’s your cell phone?”

Her head moved slightly from side to side, her lips moved, “No.” Her eyes held that faraway gaze. Then I realized it was the heroin, an analgesic, a painkiller that also slowed down all the bodily functions. Anyone else would’ve already been dead. Slowly, she became more animated. She gripped my hand. “I’m sorry, Bruno. It’s all my fault. Not his. It was my fault.”

She spoke in short sentences, spoke around the pain, spoke around the lack of air, with small words.

I didn’t want to leave her, not for a second. I ran into the bedroom, grabbed a blanket, found her phone on the night stand and dialed 911 as I ran back into the living room. “I need medical aid at 2615 Crenshaw, number 310.”

“What is the reason for your—”

I shut the phone.

Chantal’s skin turned chalky in the time I was gone. I wrapped her up in the blanket and held her close. I rocked her back and forth. “It’s going to be okay. I promise. You just have to hang on a little while longer. Help’s on the way.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” she said haltingly. Her eyes refocused, she came alive a little more. The blanket, the physical contact, the hope of medical aid, did it.

“I shot him.”

“What?” I looked around on the table and floor for a gun.

“No, listen. I shot McWhorter. Kendrick’s aide. McWhorter found out about—” She coughed. More blood rippled out of her mouth. “—me and Kendrick. My gravy train, baby. McWhorter was shutting down my gravy train. My retirement. You understand, don’t you?”

Kendrick was a supervisor on the County Board of Supervisors. The pear-shaped man. The man with the clothes in the other room.

“Chantal, you have to relax. Don’t move.” Far off to the north, a siren started up.

“No, you have to listen. Please, Bruno.

“I shot McWhorter. I called Robby. Robby loved me. We were going to run away—” She gulped hard. “He came over, made it—He made it look like—the burning.”

“It’s okay, I understand. Now please, just relax, concentrate on your breathing.”

The siren drew closer.

I wanted to ask her who shot her. But it didn’t matter. I knew.

She convulsed. She went still. Limp.

Chapter Fifty

I stood in the shadows waiting for him. He was already there. He knew he’d erred when his team snatched up Marie seconds before she led him to the children. Then he’d driven me over there to gloat. He must’ve thought he’d later pit her against me in the interview and get the information that way. A critical mistake he’d rue the rest of his days.

Robby must know it had to be one of five or six houses. He, too, was there in the shadows waiting for something to give it away. A tell: father, the kids, someone going to a door with food, something out of place in the neighborhood. Wicks had never been patient. He’d wait only so long, then he’d make it happen by going door to door, force his way in, insist on searching, gun in hand without a warrant, without the shroud of law as a protective cloak. He would risk discovery to make it happen.

After I calmed down, I stood there thinking it through, about the kids, how I’d been a fool putting them second in my search for revenge, an odyssey masked by a moral obligation to make things right. I realized what I needed to do. I would miss Marie dearly. She was going to be mad.

I walked out into the street, right into the middle beneath a streetlight, stood and turned a slow circle. “I’m here. I’m right here, Robby.” I searched the shadows, the overgrown trees and shrubs in untended yards, the abandoned, rusted-out cars. He could be anywhere.

“I’m alone. Now’s your chance. You’re a coward. Come out and face me man to man. I’m unarmed. What’re you afraid of?”

Nothing.

I held my hands open, up in the air, and continued to turn. “You’ve always been a self-serving coward, using people, hiding behind the badge. I was a fool. I fell for your smooth talk, your words of righteousness. I let you turn my head, convince me what we did was what was necessary. You’re no different than the street thugs we chased. You’re worse. You’re—”

I heard the shot. I didn’t see the muzzle flash. The bullet bit into my ass. It spun me around, threw me facedown in the street. I flipped over, tried to get up. My body was in shock and slow to respond. I couldn’t rise any higher. Hot pain shot up my spine. I reached back, my pants sopping wet. I was hit hard, losing serious blood.

“You going to finish me or let me bleed out here in the street?”

He yelled from the blackness. “You came from the street, you can go back to it. Where’s the kid?”

I pivoted around to the sound of his voice. Over by a sagging box-wire fence all but obscured with a hibiscus, he stepped out.

He had someone small around the neck, the gun to the head. “Lookee what I found.”

“Marie.” Her name slipped past my lips in a whisper. We were lost. I didn’t have a weapon and was too hurt to make a difference. He knew it. He smiled, his eyes twinkled, victory for him seconds away.

“Bruno! Bruno!”

“Shush. Shush. We were just having a discussion, you know the nice friendly kind, only she wasn’t being cooperative, not in the least. Then look what shows up? The solution in the form of one dumb son of a bitch.” He continued to drag her over to me. She kicked and fought. He stood a foot taller and seventy pounds more in muscle. “I gotta be honest. I don’t believe Mack turned the both of you loose. If I was sticking around, I’d launch him from the team.”

“Let her go.”

“Which house is it?”

I said nothing.

“I gotta tell ya, Bruno, you confounded me at every turn. And what makes it worse, what really chaps my ass is that I trained you. How did you hide it from me? For months. Man, I cussed you.”

“You shot me in the back just like before.”

“The same I would a rabid dog. You wanted to know how I could treat you the way I did. You kept a million easy dollars from me. From me!”

“I found Chantal.”

He froze.

“She told me. She told me all of it. You’re worse than the worst we ever chased. She was a beautiful, kind woman. You killed her. You killed her for money.”

“She was a murderer. Did she tell you that? Huh?” He took his arm from around Marie’s throat, held her with one hand behind the scruff of the neck. The pressure and pain took her to her knees. The anger I caused him translated to her pain.

I whispered, “I’m sorry, baby.”

She wept huge tears.

“She shot the supervisor’s aide.” Robby again, trying to justify his criminal intent. “She tell you that?”

“And you burned him to hide it.”

“Big deal.”

“Did you take out Bressler or did Jumbo?”

“Does it really matter?” Robby jerked Marie around like a misbehaving dog. “Point out the house, or I’ll finish off your boyfriend. I’ll pump a bullet right in his brain pan.” He pointed his gun, the sight lined up between my eyes.

“Someone heard the shot. They’ll call the police.”

He laughed. “You know better than to try and bluff a bluffer. This is the ghetto, man. By now everyone’s run up into their cribs hidin’ under their beds, too afraid to get involved. You forgot who you’re talking to.”

“Last chance. Tell me or I will put him out of his misery.”

Then someone did get involved.

Chapter Fifty-One

“Right there,” the decrepit old man yelled. He came from out of the shadows the same as Robby had, only from the other side of the street. A black man with snow-white hair and cataract eyes, leaning on a spun aluminum baseball bat intended as a weapon.

“No, Dad, go back. Go back.”

Robby spun Marie around to put her in between him and the approaching threat, a tired old man who didn’t have the strength of a third grader. “Ho, so your old man was involved in your scandalous activities. I should’ve known. Who else were you going to trust?”

Dad continued to advance as fast as his tired, broken-down body allowed; a beeline right for Robby, right toward certain death.

“I saw which house you came out of, old man.” In the yellow streetlight, Robby’s eyes turned crazy. He shoved Marie down face-first into the pavement. She hit both hands out in front, skidding across the surface of abrasive asphalt.

“Stop, old man. Stop right there.”

“Robby, don’t. You don’t have to shoot him. Robby, please.”

Robby brought his gun up.

The gunshot echoed off the face of the quiet houses, rolled down the street until it dissipated.

A gunshot too loud for a handgun.

Robby rose up and was flung back three feet. He landed in a crumpled heap. He grunted once and lay perfectly still.

I looked back up the street. Mack walked slowly down the sidewalk, an Ithaca Deerslayer, 12-gauge shotgun at port arms.

On hands and toes I scrambled over to Marie. “Marie. Marie.”

She rolled over and kicked at my face. “What do you think you were doing walking out there like that? He could’ve killed you.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

Her shoulders shook as she cried. I took her in my arms, “I’m sorry. It worked out. Pop, you okay?”

Dad stared down at the mortally wounded man. “What? Yes, sure.”

Marie said, “Bruno, you’re bleeding, you’re shot.”

Mack continued past us, went over to Robby. He knelt down felt his neck. Took Robby’s gun.

Sirens started up headed our way.

I told Marie, “Help me up.”

I hobbled over to Robby. All the buckshot hit him in the chest, neck, and chin. The sight stunned me. I never thought I would see it. Not Robby Wicks down in the street. Dead.

“Bruno,” Mack said, “we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Yeah, I know, we’ll get off the street. Come on, Dad.”

“Bruno?”

I froze. His tone told me he spoke from his official side, not out of camaraderie.

I said, “We haven’t done anything wrong. You, yourself, let us go. Remember?”

He took a step back out of range of Dad’s baseball bat. He let the Deerslayer hang down by his side.

Marie understood, shook her head, “No, not the kids. You can’t have the kids. Not now. Not after all we’ve been through. Please.”

“Don’t beg,” I said to her. I turned to Mack. “Why?”

“I can clean it all up with the kids. You can walk clean. Think about it. If you don’t give them up, they’re just going to keep chasin’ you and you can’t keep running.”

“Is that really your motivation?”

“Of course, what else?”

Sirens drew closer.

“How about a deal?”

“You have nothing to deal.”

Marie said, “No, Bruno, it’s all or nothing.”

“It can’t be—”

Mack said, “We don’t have much time.”

I leaned on her, growing weak, “We were going to give him up anyway once we got everyone to safety,” I told Mack, “They chased us hard because of Wally. We’ll give you Wally. We know he’s going to a good home. But if you want the others, they won’t stand a chance. You’ll give them back to their people. You want them all, you’ll have to gun me right here in the street.”

Dad said, “Me too.”

Marie said, “Make it three.”

Mack looked around as he tried to decide. Way down by Wilmington, red-and-blue rotating lights turned onto our street, seconds away.

Chapter Fifty-Two

The warm Pacific breeze blew across the patio, the sun warm on my naked chest. Marie came out carrying a box under one arm and sat on the lounge next to mine. “This just came from FedEx.”

My heart beat faster, my mouth went dry. “Babe, nobody knows we’re down here.”

“Take it easy, big fella, it’s from Mack. Should be fine. Relax, the kids are all playing video games, and your dad’s doing so much better with all the stress off of him. I’m really glad we took him along.”

Two weeks earlier, that night right after the shooting, we’d all hobbled back to the house. When I opened the door, Marie saw little Tommy Bascombe and socked me in the stomach. I forgot to tell her about that part. She cried and kissed me like she’d never kissed me before and that’s saying something.

We’d fled that night, left everything behind but the clothes we wore. We hopped into a car and hightailed it for the Mexican border. We crossed from San Diego into Tijuana, kept driving through Rosarita and down into Ensenada where we had already reserved a suite with three bedrooms. Everything prepaid in advance.

The nice thing about a woman who’s a physician’s assistant, she can handle most medical injuries. And, in Mexico, they sell just about anything over the counter, painkillers, antibiotics, and such.

After two weeks in the sun with three regular hot meals a day, I was healing quickly. Today was the first day I was able to sit on my butt. We were waiting for Dad’s counterfeit passport to arrive from the States before we continued on. The cargo ship that would take us all to Costa Rica, would dock in Ensenada in another five days.

Now, for the first time in the two-week vacation, Marie looked a little stressed. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Come on, Bruno, you know what’s bugging me. Our finances. We’re broke. We bailed so fast we couldn’t get to our savings.”

She was right. I was scared, too, and tried to buffer the situation a little. “At least all of our meals and transportation are paid for. I know you want help to take care of the kids. I’ll be on my feet by the time we get there and I’ll get a job.”

“What kind of job are you going to get? I’ll get the job, and you take care of the kids.” She stopped, hesitated a moment, then said, “I know what it is. I guess I’m just scared of the unknown.”

“Let’s see what’s in the box,” I said, wanting her mind off the subject.

She opened one end. “Looks like Mack sent along some baseball gear for the kids. Why would he do that? He didn’t owe us anything.”

“Large ball caps and XL shirts?”

“I know, right?”

“Hand me that,” I said.

The box was plain brown cardboard with professional printing on the exterior: Sheriff’s Benevolent Society, Widow’s and Orphan’s Fund, XL shirts, large baseball caps. I tore open the box and found wadded-up newspaper with a note on top.

Bruno,

That night I wasn’t far behind you but I was still behind you. You’re a good cop. Don’t ever forget that. Don’t ever let anyone take that away from you. I found this at one of the places; I must’ve only missed you by seconds. From what you told me, I knew it was yours so I thought I would send it along.

Marie leaned over and pushed the wadded newspaper aside, awe in her tone. “Bruno, how much is there?”

“If I had to guess, I would say two hundred and fifty thousand.” Money from Chantal’s coffee table. The money from the train heists that I had buried in the backyard of the abandoned house on 117th and Alabama. Robby had found it, dug it up. Money he and Chantal were going to use to flee the country.

Marie covered her mouth and stared at me, her brown eyes filling with tears.