Текст книги "The Eternal Summer"
Автор книги: Paul MacDonald
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
THE CORNFIELDS
I was five minutes late for the rendezvous with Hector because Pat Faber had dropped by my office to see if I was getting nervous about the upcoming interview. That wasn’t how he phrased it, but I could tell that was his intention. I told him that I looked forward to the competition and that I was going to “rise to the challenge,” but the hope for a quick chat was not in the cards. Pat reflected on the many defining points in his career where he similarly rose to the challenge – and won. After several minutes of my telling him how invaluable his perspective was, I finally extricated myself from the tedious discussion so that I could go meet Hector.
His sedan was parked in one of the three slots out front of the Phoenix Bakery in Chinatown. I had to park on the street. The sweetened air around the bakery was so pervasive that each breath felt like another layer of sticky film was added to my throat. It made me thirsty, but it could have just been that I was nervous.
Hector got out when he saw me and he was not pleased with my tardiness. I knew enough to skip an apology and just get down to business.
“Badger here?” I asked.
“Right here,” came the reply as Badger stepped out of the shadowy area by the restaurant next door. He wore his amber sunglasses despite the moonless night and this desolate part of the city being one of the darkest in the area. I could barely see anything beyond an arm’s reach, but he maneuvered easily and proffered a conciliatory hand to Hector.
Earlier that day, Valenti was instructed to deliver the money to a spot in the middle of the Cornfields, a long park that used to be a railway yard just south of Chinatown. Hector was the natural choice to perform the deed, but Valenti did not count on my being involved, and Hector did not expect Badger to be there as well. He stared at Badger’s outstretched hand with visible contempt.
“No hard feelings, paco,” said Badger, doing his best to provoke an already-annoyed man.
Hector looked to me for an explanation.
“Another set of eyes can’t hurt,” I told him. He didn’t like it but he didn’t have much of a choice as we were an hour away from the appointed time. “Do you have the money?” I asked Hector because that felt like the right thing to do, though the idea that he would forget the money on the night of the drop was absurd.
Despite all that, Hector moved around to the back of the sedan and opened the trunk for us. Three million in cash was surprisingly smaller than I anticipated. I envisioned a forklift and a heavy pallet but instead got a medium-sized duffel bag. But it was heavy – very heavy.
For a moment while holding that bag, I felt the warmth and comforts of being a millionaire. And I had an impulse to bolt. I heard Badger grunt behind me. Even Hector cast a sly, little smile. This was the moment when someone would casually suggest the money getting lost and the three of us running off to Mexico. Hector squelched that dream by snatching the bag from my hand and replacing it in the bed of the trunk.
We went over the plan while standing there in the bakery parking lot. Hector would deliver the money as expected. He was going to enter the south side of the park, off of Spring Street. Badger with his WWII battleship binoculars would position himself on the Gold Line platform towards the west end of the park that offered an elevated and unobstructed view of the entire area. I would wait in my car on the north side of the park on Broadway. This also offered an elevated view of the area as the land gradually sloped upwards towards Elysian Park, the 110 freeway, and Dodger Stadium. But it also was an exposed area with very little cover and almost no human activity at night. I needed to be careful lest I was spotted before the drop could be made.
The idea was that once Hector delivered the money to the requested spot, Badger and I would watch the area for the individual who picked it up. Part of me wished it would be Jeanette, despite the complications that would involve. But deep down I knew it was an unlikely scenario. The more logical outcome would be that whoever picked up the money was behind her disappearance, and possible death. We weren’t going to let that person out of our sight.
“I’m on point,” Badger explained. “I can reconnoiter from the shield wall on the platform.” Badger was using an inordinate amount of military lingo for my taste and I could see it was grating on Hector as well.
“If you screw this up,” Hector warned, “I will kill you.”
“Listen, chief, I know what I’m doing.”
“He does this for a living,” I added but had little effect on changing Hector’s overall mood.
“You brought him,” Hector reminded me. It was clear that in Hector’s mind, the threat towards Badger also included me. We all wanted to do this right, but Hector was the only one with something to really lose.
We tested our cell phones for good coverage and established a three-way text as a communication channel. As Badger’s “ROGER THAT” text buzzed in, Hector stomped off to his sedan and drove away.
Badger set off to the train station on foot, while I got in my car and drove the short distance down the road to a spot just on the edge of complete desolation where the industrial buildings ended and the run down to the L.A. River began. There was a bus stop inexplicably placed on this stretch of road like a last stop to nowhere. Even more perplexing than its existence was the fact that four or five people were waiting in the glass structure. It looked like a perfect cover for me to watch the proceedings in the park below.
I shuffled over to the bus shelter and mingled among the riders. There were two old Asian ladies with canvas sacks full of leafy vegetables and what appeared to be a plastic bag of chicken feet. The other three were Latino laborers either coming from or on their way to a nondescript manufacturing center on the other side of the river. They had the tired eyes of someone on the eternal night shift.
The tie and jacket were left behind in the backseat of my car but I was still odd man out in my pressed pants and recently-shined loafers. And while the coterie of late evening riders watched with longing eyes for any signs of the bus emerging from the flickering neon of old Chinatown, I was fixated on the black pool of park below me, a flat mass broken only by evenly-spaced lampposts and their white circles of light.
My cell phone hummed with a text from Badger: “IN POSITION.” I replied that I was in position as well, but a third confirmation never came from Hector. Not that I expected one, but it would be better if we communicated at a high level during this. I regretted not giving my “over-communication” lecture before we disbanded from the bakery parking lot. It was ingrained in the corporate world that there is no such thing as too much communication. This pervasive “feedback loop” resulted in inboxes filling up with “FYI” emails at a five-per-minute clip. But in a scenario like the one we were in, knowing everything was vital.
It was still five minutes from the appointed time when Hector was to deliver the duffel bag of money, but that didn’t keep me from checking my watch every thirty seconds. Of all the people in the bus shelter, I was the most impatient. They had the resigned looks of people waiting for a ride that was perpetually late.
That’s when I spotted Hector.
He was a solitary figure in a white shirt that flared up as he passed under each pool of lamplight. He moved with purpose despite the heavy load slung over his shoulder. I scanned the park but saw no other activity. He was close to the drop point, a garbage can near the center of the park.
“LOCKED ON TARGET” came the text from Badger.
Hector approached the garbage can and let the heavy duffel slip from his shoulder into his hand. He placed the bag on the ground right on the edge of the cone of light from a nearby lamp. I could barely make out the dark lump from this distance. Hector turned and headed back towards Spring Street.
Around me came the rustling of bags and shuffling feet. Barreling down on us was the 762 bus to Boyle Heights, a brightly-lit number with a few ghost-like passengers and a driver cast in shadow. As my shelter-mates formed a makeshift line, I turned back to the park and looked for any activity. There was none. I strained my eyes on the spot where Hector left the bag but couldn’t quite make out if it was still there. I shielded my eyes from the glare of the oncoming headlights but still struggled to see anything in the darkness. The whine of bus brakes squelched behind me and the doors exhaled to let on the passengers. After a moment came a voice.
“You coming?” asked the driver. I waved him off without turning around. “There ain’t no other bus than this one,” he came again.
“I’m good, I’m good,” I said.
The driver brought the doors in and pulled back into the street, leaving a plume of exhaust that got caught up in the shelter.
“TARGET IS IN PLAY” came another text from Badger.
Again I scanned the area but didn’t see anything. I replied, asking for clarification.
“HAS THE BAG MOVED?”
“TARGET IS IN PLAY” repeated the text.
“FOR FUCK’S SAKE HAS THE BAG MOVED?” I rattled back.
Badger replied with one word: “AFFIRMATIVE”
I saw nothing, just the same dark landscape with the white polka-dots. But then something moved in and out of one of those dots. I quickly trained my eye on the next one and after a moment the figure appeared again under its harsh light and then slipped back into the black. It looked like a man pushing something. My eyes jumped ahead and waited. He came into view again and this time I got a better look at him. He wore a long, dark coat and pushed a shopping cart filled with something a good foot above its sides. He moved back into the darkness.
It gave me time to type my question: “THE HOMELESS GUY?”
“AFFIRMATIVE”, came the response.
This time, Hector chimed in: “DON’T LOSE HIM”
That’s when I got nervous because I didn’t know if the man was part of the plan to pick up the money or if he was just that, a homeless guy who found a bag full of money left in a park and decided to add it to his collection of street detritus. The thought of Valenti hearing about the latter scenario sent shivers down my spine for what he would do to Hector who in turn would do to me.
I caught sight of the man and his cart in one of the pools of light. He was following the path towards its north-side exit. I calculated how far the park entrance was from me and what I was going to do when he walked through it. Three more times he passed under the light and now he was no more than two hundred feet from leaving the park. I watched the final pool of light for the man, but he never appeared. I waited and still nothing.
“LOST THE TARGET”, Badger texted.
And I fell into full panic mode. My instinct was to run down there but I didn’t want to alarm the man or whoever might be watching him that wasn’t on our three-way text. I instead walked purposefully in his direction, trying not to call too much attention to myself.
My phone buzzed with the incessant texts from Hector wanting to know what was happening. Each one grew shorter than the last. I envisioned him hammering away with each text and getting angrier with each send. I resisted the inevitable as long as possible, which was to reply with the truth that I lost the man.
I pulled up the phone to answer his question and typed three dreadful words: “I DON’T KNOW.”
The phone then fell out of my hand. I looked around, disoriented, and realized I had run headlong into the homeless man’s shopping cart. We looked into each other’s eyes. My gaze was rooted in fear. His look was rooted in schizophrenia.
“Motherfucker,” he muttered and pushed the cart like I was not standing there. I jumped out of the way but the front wheel caught my foot and left a track on my polished loafers. The man continued on down the street in the direction where I had just come. Rather than tail him directly, I grabbed my phone and crossed the street to the sidewalk on the opposite side, giving him a little distance.
I wanted to text the boys that I was on his tail but couldn’t risk being distracted or being spotted doing suspicious activities. I crossed in front of a small Catholic church with a well-lit Virgin Mary and then the Italian social club next door. The homeless man was maybe forty feet in front of me. I kept him in my peripheral vision. We continued on for a few more buildings and then he stopped in front of one of the cars parked on the side of the road. I stopped also, thought better of it, and continued on at my original pace.
I came up even with the man and casually glanced across the road just in time to see him hand the duffel bag over to someone inside the car. In return, he was handed something which looked like money.
I kept moving but I heard the car roar to life. It swung out from the curb and into the middle of the road to head in the opposite direction. I made myself as small as possible but kept my eyes on the driver of the silver compact, the same shitty car that Nelson used to try to run me over.
The Filipina nurse – both her pudgy hands gripping the steering wheel and her eyes trained straight ahead – roared past me.
I took off down the road towards my car. Fumbling with the key, I got the engine started and sped after her. But the road was just an empty stretch of asphalt with no red taillights to follow. The twinkling lights of Chinatown ahead were a false siren.
As I passed Bishop Street, I caught a pair of taillights out of the corner of my eye. They turned right and out of sight. I put both feet onto the brake and came to an angled stop. I reversed without checking and luckily found open road. I pulled onto Bishop and hoped I hadn’t made a mistake.
Zooming up the road, I ran one stop sign and then another and finally caught up to the taillights. As I followed it onto the onramp to the 110 freeway, relief and excitement washed over me like a cold shower – the silver compact was idling at the entrance and waiting for an opening to pull onto the freeway. I slowed so as not to get too close but managed to pull out my phone and send a very simple, reassuring text: “I’M ON IT”
A WOMAN’S LAUGH
It was easy to tail her in the moderate traffic heading back to Pasadena. Tala didn’t change lanes, which allowed me to stay in the same one without fear of getting too close or slipping too far back. For three steady miles there was a consistent two car distance between us.
I took that time to fill in Hector and Badger with the details. Hector texted back that he was in his car and coming my way. Badger was too far from his own car but he would do the same without delay.
We drove all the way to the end where the freeway funneled us onto the surface streets leading into Pasadena proper. We turned right at California and moved our way through the leafy neighborhood before moving south towards Hermon. I began to wonder if Tala knew I was following her because she could have gotten off at an earlier exit on the 110 to get where we were now. I slipped back to be extra cautious.
Tala took me on a journey of endless turns and loop-backs to the point where it felt like we were going in circles. Without any visual guides in the dark night, namely the looming San Gabriel foothills, I had no way to tell if we were heading north or south. Each new street looked like the one we just got off.
But then I began to pick out landmarks – a familiar billboard here, a recognizable street name there – and I started to feel less like a raft adrift at sea and more like a canoe with one oar. I finally spied the unmistakable glow of Dodger Stadium at night and I realized that we were headed back into the city, back to the very area in Chinatown we had just left.
I followed the small compact back over the concrete bridge into the backdoor – once the front door – entrance into the city. I eased up on the accelerator to put even more distance between me and Tala’s compact. We were the only two cars on the road for a good half-mile. As we glided over the crest of the bridge, I straightened the car for the wide open stretch downhill and called Hector with my free hand.
“Where are you?” he asked in place of any sort of greeting.
“I’m still following her. We are heading back into Chinatown, just crossing the bridge now.”
“What street?” he asked.
“Spring.”
I heard the squelch of tires over the phone as he turned his sedan around in the opposite direction. Over the roar of his engine, “I’m coming now.”
I trailed the compact down a wide, empty street fringed with industrial buildings. They were windowless structures with iron-faced front doors. Even with a great distance between us, I still felt exposed. My headlights must have been like beacons in her rear view mirror. I slipped back even further despite the fear that I would lose her.
That was a mistake.
Suddenly, the two red orbs were no longer. The road that lay ahead was dark and empty and the numerous cross streets had little to no activity on them. I couldn’t tell which street the compact pulled off on, if at all. Panic set in and I was convinced that I had gone too far and quickly turned around. I zoomed back from where I came but soon, much too soon, came upon the bridge and realized I’d backtracked too far. I spun around again, arcing too wide and careening into the curb. I floored it and rumbled down the street in the original direction.
The corporate hack in me immediately ran through a series of excuses why it wasn’t my fault that I lost her. I was ashamed at how easily this instinct came. And I was amazed at how good the excuses were in such a brief gesticulation period. All began with “we,” the classic maneuver to position failure as a shared responsibility.
There were a lot of things we could have done differently…
A lot of things we couldn’t anticipate…
The excuse diatribe would end on a positive note, a look-forward at the next steps to get us back on track. Unfortunately that was where I came up blank. There was nothing I could think of to do. This was the last step.
I pulled over and let the weight of that conclusion settle in. Hector couldn’t be far from me at that point. It was only a matter of minutes and I put my phone onto my lap as I waited for the expected call. The street was refreshingly quiet. Sometimes you have to go to the heart of the industrial complex to find true peace. I sat there and marveled at the lack of sound and thought of nothing. It was incredibly peaceful.
I saw movement in the darkness. Or, at least I thought I saw something. It came from the cross street off to my right. I used the old trick of looking out of the corner of my eye, which somehow made it easier to see things in the dark. I sat there, head tilted towards the steering wheel, hopeful that a flicker of movement would appear in my peripheral vision. None came, but I felt driven to search further and put the car into gear and turned onto the street.
This road had no parking limitations and therefore was lined with vehicles serving as makeshift homes for unseen occupants. Back windows were shaded out with towels and newspaper to provide a sliver of privacy to the sleeping souls behind them. Most of the cars didn’t look like they were in shape to drive more than a mile but in truth all they had to muster was a thirty foot hop to the other side of the road on street cleaning days.
One car, though, stood out.
Tucked between a van and a grime-covered station wagon was the compact I had been searching for. I cruised past it towards the end of the block and shut off my lights. I glided into an open slot at the end and parked in a fire zone as a cool wash of relief spread over me – there would be no need for collective excuses tonight.
I texted Hector and Badger my location and then took a moment to scan the area. When I had passed the compact it didn’t look like Tala was inside. She had to have slipped into one of the industrial buildings, but which one I couldn’t be sure because the few windows on this near-windowless block were all dark. I got out to investigate.
Any movement would easily be noticed on this quiet street. I couldn’t risk spooking Tala into flight so I looped around to the back of the buildings which sat on a wider block because of the loading docks that drove the activity during the daytime. I made my way down the alley, hugging the sides of the building to avoid the light cast by the occasional lamp. At about the spot where the compact was parked on the opposite street, I noticed a solitary window on the second floor with a dim, orange light emanating from inside. I drifted towards it like an insect towards a porch light.
I clambered up the loading dock. Two large, rolling, steel doors and a regular-sized one formed an impenetrable entrance. Shading the entire area from the relentless southern exposure and from the occasional thunderstorm was a roof jutting ten feet out from the building. It was also a good ten feet above me. Having humiliated myself before in attempts to touch the rim of a basketball hoop, I searched for another means of reaching the roof.
Back in the alley I found a rusted length of pipe and dragged it back to the dock. I leaned the pipe into the corner where the roof met the building and then wedged the bottom end against a pillar. I monkey-crawled up the pipe but was winded a third of the way and had to rest. I pressed on until the back of my head touched the edge of the roof. Unfortunately I hadn’t thought ahead to figure how I was to move my grip from the pipe onto the edge of the roof without falling to a very painful landing below. With my forearms growing numb, I knew I had to stop deliberating and just try. I uncrossed my legs and let them dangle below, nearly dangling myself off the pipe. With one hand on the pipe, I twisted around and threw my other hand towards the roof and grabbed hold of the edge. A sharp pain greeted my palm which soon grew damp with blood. I donkey-kicked my leg up to the edge and pulled myself on top.
I was gassed. I sat on the roof in a dazed stupor, my head swirling in oxygen-deprived blood. I glanced up and made out the view to the north with a clear shot of the park and then understood the importance of this building’s location relative to the drop zone. That seemed to give me a jolt of energy and I got to my feet to face the next hurdle, a far less challenging one which was to get up to the window above me. The light coming through the one window illuminated the chicken wire embedded in the glass and didn’t look like it had been opened in thirty years. Next to it was a second window, black as the night but its blackness was from the unlit room behind it. It was my only way inside.
I positioned myself below it and made the very do-able, bottom-of-the-net leap to reach its sill. I gritted my teeth and pulled myself into the room. On the floor was a pair of binoculars a third of the size Badger used for a similar purpose earlier that night. The presence of the binoculars led me to wonder if more than just Tala was involved in the ransom. My mind leapt to Jeanette but I dispelled that notion, for now, anyway.
With the filing cabinet and desks and papers piled on top, it appeared to be an office to a still-operating business. I remained at the foot of the window and strained my ears for any sounds coming from the other rooms. It was as quiet as the street outside. The only sound in my ears was from my own heartbeat thumping away. I made my way to the door, careful not to trip on anything and call attention to my presence.
The hallway was empty. The only light came from the room to my left. I stood for what felt like twenty minutes but was just a single minute. I took out my cell and texted to Hector and Badger.
“I’M INSIDE”
The reply was immediate. From whom, I wasn’t sure, but the phone buzzed in my hand and broke the silence in the hallway.
I thought I heard a click. I waited, my eyes fixed on the door a few feet from me, but nothing came out. I detected movement inside, or rather, the faintest shift in the half-light as something, or someone, passed in front of the light’s source. I concentrated on my breathing but nothing could suppress the sounds emanating from my chest. It felt like anyone outside on the street could hear my panicked attempts at air.
The barrel of a gun slowly emerged from behind the door jam, then the pudgy hand that held onto it. Tala fully stepped out of the room. She seemed focused in the opposite direction at the stairwell that led below. It hadn’t occurred to her that someone might be behind her.
I could have done several things – rush her while my position was still unknown, turn back into the darkened room and leap to safety onto the loading dock roof below – but I did nothing. These were options somewhere in the recesses of my mind but they never fully emerged.
As if sensing something behind her, she slowly turned and faced me. She looked around with a slightly perplexed look. I watched her go through the thought process as she put the pieces together – someone found me, it isn’t the police, he is alone. The gun raised ever so slightly, the grip firmed up on the butt.
There was a whirr of black behind her as a figure moved forward with mechanical, almost robotic efficiency. A face was illuminated in the light from the room – Hector’s impassive stare – and then disappeared as he slid in behind her. There was a glint of silver metal, then an arm came over the one holding the gun, and I heard something that I thought sounded like a woman’s laugh, but wasn’t. I watched how effortlessly the arm with the gun came down. The hallway flashed bright, followed by a roar as the gun discharged a bullet into the floorboards. I covered one of my ears, trying desperately to get at the dull tone drilling inside my head.
It looked like Tala wanted to sit down, to rest a spell after a long day of work at the hospital. Hector obliged by hooking one arm under her shoulder and gently lowering her down. She sat there on her folded up legs in an awkward pose on the floor. One arm propped her upright but strained under the weight and didn’t look like it would hold much longer. As the ringing in my ears subsided, I heard it.
The sounds coming out of her were a quiet plea that I knew would go unanswered. They were so feminine and fragile. And I fought the urge to rush to her side and if nothing else, just hold her in my arms. Instead, I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to watch it. But the sound didn’t go away.
I’d never heard anything like that in my life and I wished to all’s end that I never would again.
