time missing: 44 hours, 17 minutes
We got our second break when we took Mrs. Luna back to her catering truck. Though Ramón Sanchez was unable to add to what she had already told us, her grill cook, a teenager named Hector Delarossa, remembered the make and model of the van.
"Oh, yeah, it was a sixty-seven Ford four-door factory panel Econoline with the original trim. Crack in the left front windshield and spot rust on the lamps, no caps."
No hubcaps.
I asked him to describe the two men, but he didn't remember either.
I said, "You saw the van had rust spots around the headlights, but you can't describe the men?"
"It's a classic, yo? Me and my bro, Jésus, we're Econoheads, yo? We're rebuilding a sixty-six. We even got a website, yo? You should check it out."
Starkey called in the make and model to be included in the BOLO, and then I followed her to Glendale. Chen had gone ahead of us.
The Los Angeles Police Department's Scientific Investigations Division shares its space with LAPD's Bomb Squad in a sprawling facility north of the freeway. The low-slung buildings and spacious parking lot made me think of a high school in the 'burbs, only high-school parking lots don't usually sport Bomb Squad Suburbans and cops in black fatigues. Not usually.
We parked beside each other in the parking lot, then Starkey led me to the white building that belonged to SID. Chen's van was outside, side by side with several others. Starkey waved our way past the reception desk, then brought me to a laboratory where four or five workstations were grouped together but separated by glass walls. Criminalists and lab techs were perched on stools or swivel chairs, one in each glass space. Something sharp in the air stung my eyes like ammonia.
Starkey swaggered in like she owned the place.
"Homie in the house! Look what the bomb blew in!"
The techs smiled and called back when they saw her. Starkey gibed with them like a long-lost sorority sister working the home crowd, and seemed more relaxed and comfortable than any time since I had met her.
Chen had put on a white lab coat and vinyl gloves, and was working near a large glass chamber. He hunched when he saw us as if he were trying to hide inside the coat, and waved at Starkey to keep it down.
"Jesus, paint a target on me with all that noise! Everybody's going to know we're back."
"The walls are glass, John; they already know. Let's see what you have."
Chen had split the wrapper along its length and pinned it flat to a white sheet of paper. Jars of colored powder lined the back of his bench, along with eye droppers and vials, rolls of clear tape, and three of the fluffy brushes that women use to apply makeup. One end of the wrapper was smudged with white powder and little brown stains. The outline of a fingerprint was obvious, but the architecture of the pattern was blurred and indistinct. It looked pretty good to me, but Starkey made a face when she saw it.
"This looks like shit. Are you working here, John, or are you too busy hiding inside your jacket?"
Chen hunched even lower. If he hunched any more he would be under the bench.
"I've only been at it fifteen minutes. I wanted to see if I could get anything with the powder or ninhydrin."
The white smear was aluminum powder. The brown stains were a chemical called ninhydrin, which reacted with the amino acids left whenever you touch something.
Starkey bent for a closer inspection, then frowned at Chen as if he was stupid.
"This thing's been in the sun for days. It's too old to pick up latents with powder."
"It's also the fastest way to get an image into the system. I figured it was worth the shot."
Starkey grunted. She was okay with whatever might be faster.
"The nin doesn't look much better."
"Too much dust, and the sunlight probably broke down the aminos. I was hoping we'd get lucky with that, but I'm gonna have to glue it."
"Shit. How long?"
I said, "What does that mean, you have to glue it?"
Now Chen looked at me as if I was the one who was stupid. We had a food chain for stupidity going, and I was at the bottom.
"Don't you know what a fingerprint is?"
Starkey said, "He doesn't need a lecture. Just glue the damned thing."
Chen went pissy, like he didn't want to miss out on the chance to show off. He explained while he worked: Every time you touched something, you left an invisible deposit of sweat. Sweat was mostly water, but also contained amino acids, glucose, lactic acid, and peptides – what Chen called the organics. As long as moisture remained in the organics, techniques like dusting worked because the powder would stick to the water, revealing the swirls and patterns of the fingerprint. But when the water evaporated, all you had left was an organic residue.
Chen unpinned the wrapper, then used forceps to place it on a glass dish with the outside surface facing up. He put the dish into the glass chamber.
"We boil a little superglue in the chamber so the fumes saturate the sample. The fumes react with the organics and leave a sticky white residue along the ridges of the print."
Starkey said, "The fumes are poisonous as hell. That's why he's gotta do it in the box."
I didn't care what he did or how he did it, so long as we got results.
I said, "How long is this going to take?"
"It's slow. I normally use a heater to boil it, but it's faster when you force the boil with a little sodium hydroxide."
Chen filled a beaker with water, then put the water into the chamber close to the wrapper. He poured something labeled methylcyanoacrylate into a small dish, then put the dish into the chamber. He selected one of the bottles from his bench. The liquid inside was clear, like water.
Starkey said, "How long, John?"
Chen ignored us. He dribbled the sodium hydroxide over the superglue, then sealed the chamber. The sodium hydroxide and superglue fizzed, but nothing flashed or burst into flames. Chen turned on a small fan inside the chamber, then stepped back.
"How long?"
"Maybe an hour. Maybe more. I've gotta watch it. So much reactant will build up that you can ruin the prints."
We had nothing to do but wait, and we weren't even sure if anything would be found. I bought a Diet Coke from a machine in the reception area, and Starkey bought a Mountain Dew. We brought our drinks outside so that she could smoke. It was quiet and still in Glendale, with the low wall of the Verdugo Mountains above us and the tip of the Santa Monicas below. We were in the Narrows, that tight place between the mountains where the L.A. River squeezed into the city.
Starkey sat on the curb. I sat beside her. I tried to conjure a picture of Ben alive and safe, but all I saw were flashes of shadow and terrified eyes.
"Did you call Gittamon?"
"And tell him what, that I bailed on a crime scene to come over here with a guy that I was specifically ordered to keep off the case? That would be you, by the way."
Starkey flicked ash from her cigarette.
"I'll call him when we know what John finds. He's been paging me, but I'll wait."
I said, "Listen. I want to thank you."
"You don't have to thank me. I'm doing my job."
"A lot of people have the job, but not everyone busts their ass to get it done. I owe you. However this plays out, I owe you."
Starkey had more of her cigarette, then grinned out over the cars in the parking lot.
"That sounds pretty good, Cole. Now what kind of ass-busting did you have in mind?"
"I didn't mean it that way."
"My loss."
Starkey ate another white tablet. I decided to change the subject. I decided to be clever.
I said, "Starkey, are those breath mints or are you a drug addict."
"It's an antacid. I have stomach problems from when I was hurt, so I gotta take the antacid. It messed me up pretty bad inside."
Hurt. Being blown apart and killed in a trailer park was "hurt." I felt like a turd.
"I'm sorry. That wasn't my business."
She shrugged, then flicked her cigarette into the parking lot.
"This morning you asked why I didn't bring you the tape."
"It's not important. I just wondered why the other guy brought it instead of you. You said you'd be back."
"Your 201 and 214 were waiting in the fax machine. I started reading while I was waiting for the tape. I saw that you were wounded."
"Not when I was out with five-two. That was another time."
I should have gone to Canada. Then none of this would be happening.
"Yeah, I know. I saw you got hit by mortar fire. I was just curious about that, is all, what happened to you. You don't have to tell me if you don't want. I know it doesn't have anything to do with this case."
She struck up a fresh cigarette to hide behind the movement, as if she was suddenly embarrassed that I knew why she was asking. A mortar shell was a bomb. In a way, bombs had gotten both of us.
"It wasn't anything like with you, Starkey, not even close. Something exploded behind me and then I woke up under some leaves. I got a few stitches, that's all."
"The report says they took twenty-six pieces of frag out of your back and you almost bled to death."
I wiggled my eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx.
"Wanna see the scars, little girl?"
Starkey laughed.
"Your Groucho sucks."
"My Bogart's even worse. Want to hear that?"
"You want to talk scars? I could show you scars. I got scars that'd make you shit blue."
"What a pleasant use of language."
We smiled at each other, then both of us felt awkward at the same time. It wasn't banter any more and it somehow felt wrong. I guess my expression changed. Now both of us looked away.
She said, "I can't have kids."
"I'm sorry."
"Jesus, I can't believe I told you that."
Now neither of us was smiling. We sat in the parking lot, drinking our caffeine as Starkey smoked. Three men and a woman came out of the Bomb Squad and crossed the parking lot to a brick warehouse. Bomb techs. They wore black fatigues and jump boots like elite commandos, but they goofed with each other like regular people. They probably had families and friends like regular people, too, but during their shift they de-armed devices that could tear them apart while everyone else hid behind walls, just them, all alone, with a monster held tight in a can. I wondered what kind of person could do that.
I glanced at Starkey. She was watching them.
I said, "Is that why you're on the Juvenile desk?"
She nodded.
Neither of us said very much after that until John Chen came out. He had the prints.
time missing: 47 hours, 04 minutes
White concentric circles covered the wrapper in overlapping smudges. People don't touch anything with a clean, singular grip; they handle the things they touch – pencils, coffee cups, steering wheels, telephones, cigar wrappers – their fingers shuffle and slide; they adjust and readjust their grip, laying fingerprint on top of fingerprint in confused and inseparable layers.
Chen inspected the wrapper through a magnifying glass attached to a flexible arm.
"Most of this stuff is garbage, but we've got a couple of clean patterns we can work with."
I said, "Is it going to be enough?"
"Depends on how many typica I can identify and what's in the computer. It'll be easier to see when I add a little color."
Chen brushed dark blue powder on two sections of the wrapper, then used a can of pressurized air to blow off the excess. Two dark blue fingerprint patterns now stood in sharp contrast to the white smudges on the wrapper. Chen hunched more closely over the magnifying glass. He grunted.
"Got a nice double-loop core here. Got a clean tentarch on this one. Couple of isles."
He nodded at Starkey.
"Plenty. If he's in the system, we can find him."
Starkey laid her hand on Chen's back and squeezed his shoulder.
"Excellent, John."
I think he purred.
Chen pressed a piece of clear tape on the blue fingerprints to lift them from the wrapper, then fixed the tape onto a clear plastic backing. He set each print onto a light box, then photographed them with a high-resolution digital camera. He fed the digital images into his computer, then used a graphics program to enlarge them and orient them. Chen filled out an FBI Fingerprint Identification Form that was basically a checklist description of the two fingerprints with their characteristics identified by type and location – what Chen called "characteristic points": Every time a ridge line stopped or started it was called a typica; when a ridge split into a Y it was a bifurcation; a short line between two longer lines was an isle; a line that split but immediately came together again was an eye.
The FBI's National Crime Information Center and the National Law Enforcement Telecommunication System don't compare pictures to identify a fingerprint; they compare lists of characteristic points. The accuracy and depth of the list determines the success of the search. If a recognizable match is even in the system.
Chen spent almost twenty minutes logging the architecture of the two prints into the appropriate forms, then hit the Send button and leaned back.
I said, "What now?"
"We wait."
"How long does it take?"
"It's computers, man. It's fast."
Starkey's pager buzzed again. She glanced at it, then slipped it into her pocket.
"Gittamon."
"He wants you bad."
"Fuck him. I gotta have a cigarette."
Starkey was turning away when Chen's computer chimed with an incoming E-mail.
Chen said, "Let's see."
The file downloaded automatically when Chen opened the E-mail. An NCIC/Interpol logo flashed over a set of booking photos showing a man with deep-set eyes and a strong neck. His name was Michael Fallon.
Chen touched a line of numbers along the bottom of the file.
"We've got a ninety-nine point nine-nine percent positive match on all twelve characteristic points. It's his cigar wrapper."
Starkey nudged me.
"So? Do you know him?"
"I've never seen him before in my life."
Chen scrolled the file so that we could read Fallon's personal data; brown, brown, six, one-ninety. His last known residence was in Amsterdam, but his current whereabouts were unknown. Michael Fallon was wanted for two unrelated murders in Colombia, South America, two more in El Salvador, and had been indicted under the International War Crimes Act by the United Nations for participating in mass murder, genocide, and torture in Sierra Leone. Interpol cautioned that he was to be considered armed and extremely dangerous.
Starkey said, "Jesus Christ. He's one of those people with a fucked-up brain."
Chen nodded.
"Lesions. They always find lesions in people like this."
Fallon had extensive military experience. He had served in the United States Army for nine years, first as a paratrooper, then as a Ranger. He had served an additional four years, but whatever he had done during those years was described only as "classified."
Starkey said, "What the fuck does that mean?"
I knew what it meant, and felt a sharp tightness in my chest that was more than fear. I knew how he had come by the skills to watch and move and leave no sign when he stole Ben. I had been a soldier, and I had been good at it. Mike Fallon was better.
"He was in Delta Force."
Chen said, "The terrorist guys?"
Starkey stared at his picture.
"No shit."
Delta D-boys. The Operators. Delta trained for hard, hot insertions against terrorist targets, and membership was by invitation only. They were the best killers in the business.
Starkey said, "All this Army stuff, maybe he got a hard-on for you while he was in the service."
"He doesn't know me. He's too young for Vietnam."
"Then why?"
I didn't know.
We kept reading. After Fallon left the service, he had used his skills to work as a professional soldier in Nicaragua, Lebanon, Somalia, Afghanistan, Colombia, El Salvador, Bosnia, and Sierra Leone. Michael Fallon was a mercenary. Lucy's words came to me: This isn't normal. Things like this don't happen to normal people.
Starkey said, "This is just great, Cole. You couldn't have a garden-variety lunatic after you. You gotta have a professional killer."
"I don't know him, Starkey. I've never heard of him. I've never known anyone named Fallon, let alone someone like this."
"Someone knows him, buddy, and he sure as hell knows you. John, can we get a hard copy of this?"
"Sure. I can print the file."
I said, "Print one for me, too. I want to show Lucy, then talk to the people in her neighborhood. After that, we can go back to the construction site. It's easier when you show people a picture. One memory leads to another."
Starkey smiled at me.
"We? Are we partners now?"
Somewhere in the minutes between the parking lot and our waiting for the file, it had become "we." As if she wasn't on LAPD and I wasn't a man desperate to find a lost boy. As if we were a team.
"You know what I meant. We finally have something to work with. We can build on it. We can keep going."
Starkey smiled wider, then patted my back.
"Relax, Cole. We're going to do all that stuff. Play your cards right, and I might let you tag along. I'm gonna put this on the BOLO."
Starkey put it on the BOLO, then phoned a request for information about Fallon to the L.A. offices of the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, and the Sheriffs. After that, we rolled back to Lucy's. We.
The street outside Lucy's apartment was jammed with Richard's limo, Gittamon's black and white, and a second black and white with MISSING PERSONS UNIT emblazoned on the side. Gittamon answered the door when we knocked. He seemed surprised to see us, then angry. He glanced back inside, then lowered his voice. He kept the door pulled like he was hiding.
"Where have you been? I've been calling you all morning."
Starkey said, "I was working. We found something, Dave. We know who took the boy."
"You should have told me. You should have answered my calls."
"What's going on? Why is Missing Persons here?"
Gittamon glanced back inside, then opened the door.
"They fired us, Carol. Missing Persons is taking the case."
time missing: 47 hours, 38 minutes
Richard rubbed his hand nervously through his hair. His clothes were wrinkled worse than yesterday, as if he had slept in them. Lucy sat cross-legged on the couch, and Myers was leaning against the far wall. He was the only one of them who looked rested and fresh. They were listening to an immaculately groomed woman in a dark business suit and her male clone, who were seated on chairs that had been pulled from the dining room. Lucy had been looking at them, but now she stared at me. She didn't want me involved, yet here I was. Making it worse.
Gittamon cleared his throat to interrupt. He stood at the edge of the living room like a child who had been reprimanded before the class.
"Ah, Lieutenant, excuse me. This is Detective Starkey and Mr. Cole. Carol, this is Detective-Lieutenant Nora Lucas and Detective-Sergeant Ray Alvarez, from the Missing Persons Unit."
Lucas had one of those shrunken, porcelain faces with absolutely no lines; probably because she never smiled. Alvarez held my hand too long when we shook so that he could make a point with Gittamon.
"I thought we understood that Mr. Cole wasn't going to be involved, Sergeant."
I said, "Let go of my hand, Alvarez, or you'll see how involved I can be."
Alvarez hung onto my hand for a moment longer just to show me that he could.
"These are interesting allegations against you on that tape. We'll talk about them as we review the case."
Richard ran his hand through his hair again as he paced to the window. He seemed irritated. He looked at Lucas and Alvarez.
"What can you people do that's any different from what's already being done?"
Myers said, "More horsepower."
Lucas nodded.
"That's right. We'll bring the full weight and authority of the Missing Persons Unit to finding your son, not to mention our experience. Finding people is what we do."
Alvarez leaned forward on his elbows.
"We're the A-team, Mr. Chenier. We'll get the case organized, review what's been done, and find your son. We'll also cooperate with you and Mr. Myers in your own efforts."
Richard turned impatiently from the window and motioned for Myers to peel himself away from the wall.
"Good. That's great. Now I want to get back to finding my son instead of just talking about it. Come on, Lee."
I said, "We know who took him."
Everyone looked at me as if they weren't sure what I had said or why I had said it. Lucy opened her mouth, then stood.
"What did you say?"
"We know who took Ben. We have a description on the vehicle and two men, and an ID on one of them."
Myers peeled himself from the wall.
"You're full of shit, Cole."
Starkey held out her copy of the Interpol file so that Lucy could see Fallon's picture.
"Look at this man, Ms. Chenier. Try to remember if you've seen him before. Maybe at a park when you were with Ben, or after school or when you were at work."
Lucy studied Fallon as if she was falling into his picture. Richard hurried across the room so that he could see.
"Who is that? What did you find out?"
I ignored Richard and the rest of them. I was totally focused on Lucy.
"Think hard, Luce – maybe you had one of those feelings like you were being followed; maybe you got a weird vibe from someone you saw, and this was him."
"I don't know. I don't think so."
Lucas said, "Who is that?"
Starkey glanced at Lucas and Alvarez, then handed the sheet to Gittamon.
"His name is Michael Fallon. I've already put it out on a BOLO, along with a description of the vehicle they used. At least one other man was involved – a black male with distinctive marks on his face, but we don't have an ID for him yet. Probably because we're not the A-team."
Richard stared at Fallon's picture. He breathed hard and rubbed his hair again. He shoved the picture at Myers.
"You see this? You see what they have? They've got a fucking suspect."
Myers nodded with little roach eyes.
"I can see that, Richard."
The roach eyes came to me.
"How do you know it's him?"
"We found a cigar wrapper on the ridge opposite my house. We found it near footprints that match the footprint where Ben was taken."
Richard's eyes were bright.
"That footprint we saw? The one you showed us yesterday?"
Starkey said, "Yeah. We got an NCIC hit on fingerprints from the wrapper on twelve out of twelve points. It doesn't get more positive than that."
Both Lucas and Alvarez got up so they could see the picture, too. Lucas glanced at Gittamon.
"You didn't tell me about this."
Gittamon shook his head as if he were on the spot.
"I didn't know. I called her, but she didn't call back."
Starkey said, "We found the wrapper this morning. We only got the ID a few minutes ago. That's what Cole and I were doing while you people were figuring out how to steal our case."
"Take it easy, Detective."
"Read his goddamned warrants. Fallon is a professional killer, for Christ's sake. He's got a war-crimes indictment in Africa. He's murdered people all over the world."
Lucas said, "Detective!"
She glanced at Lucy as she said it, and her voice snapped across Starkey like a slap.
This guy is a professional killer. He's murdered people all over the world.
And now he has your son.
Starkey flushed deep when she realized what she had done.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Chenier. That was insensitive."
Richard went to the door, anxious to leave.
"Let's get on this, Lee. We can't waste any more time with this."
Myers didn't move.
He said, "I'm not wasting time. I'm investigating how Cole knows this man. Everything I've heard so far fits with the tape. Cole and Fallon have a lot in common. How do you know each other, Cole? What does this guy want from you?"
"He doesn't want anything from me. I don't know him, never met him, and don't have any idea why he's doing this."
"That isn't what he says on the tape."
"Fuck yourself, Myers."
Lucy's forehead was lined in concentration.
"This doesn't make sense. He has to have some connection with you."
"He doesn't. There isn't."
Lucas whispered to Alvarez, then spoke loudly to interrupt.
"Let's not get sidetracked. This is a good start, Detective. Ray, call SID to confirm the identification, then have Central distribute the picture."
Lucas had assumed command of the case, and she wanted everyone to know that she was still running the show.
"Mr. Chenier, Ms. Chenier – what we want to do now is bring the elements of the investigation together. This won't take long, then we can get on with developing this lead."
Starkey said, "It's already developed. We just have to find the sonofabitch."
Gittamon touched her arm.
"Carol. Please."
Richard muttered something, then opened the door.
"You people can do what you want, but I'm going to find my son. Lee, goddamnit, let's go. Do you need a copy of that?"
"I have what I need."
"Then let's get the hell out of here."
They left.
Alvarez turned toward Gittamon.
"Sergeant, you and Starkey wait outside. We'll review what you've done so far when we're finished with Ms. Chenier."
Starkey said, "Have you people been asleep? We made a major breakthrough here. We don't need to have a meeting about it."
Alvarez raised his voice.
"Wait outside until we're finished. You, too, Gittamon. Stop wasting time and get on with it."
Starkey stalked out, and Gittamon followed, so humiliated that he shuffled.
Alvarez said, "You stick around, too, Cole. We want to know why this guy has it in for you."
"No, I'm not wasting more time with that. I'm going to find Ben."
I looked at Lucy.
"I know you don't want me involved, but I'm not going to leave it alone. I'm going to find him, Luce. I'm going to bring him back to you."
"You'd better be downstairs, Cole. I'm not asking I'm telling."
Alvarez said something else, but I had already shut the door. Starkey and Gittamon were on the sidewalk by his car, arguing. I ignored them.
I went to my car. I could get in, I could drive, but I didn't know where to go or what to do. I looked at Michael Fallon's picture and tried to figure out what to do.
This doesn't make sense. He has to have some connection with you.
All investigations run the same course: You follow the trail of a person's life to see where it crosses with another. Fallon and I had both been in the Army, but we had been in the Army at different times, and, so far as I knew, our lives had never crossed. So far as I knew, his life had never crossed the life of any man with whom I served, and I didn't see how it would. A Delta-trained killer. A professional mercenary. A man wanted for murder in El Salvador and war crimes in Africa who had come to Los Angeles to steal Ben Chenier and make up a lie. Current whereabouts unknown.
I glanced up and down the street to see if I could spot Joe. He would be here, watching, and I needed him.
"Joe!"
Men like Michael Fallon lived and worked in a shadow world that I knew nothing about; they paid cash and, were paid in cash, lived under other names, and moved in circles so clannish that they were known in their true lives by very few others.
"Joe!"
Pike touched my shoulder. He might have stepped out of a tight thatch of plants at the corner of the building. His dark glasses gleamed like polished armor in the sun. My hands shook when I gave him the file.
"This man took Ben. He's lived all over the world. He's fought and done things everywhere. I don't have any idea how to find him."
Pike had lived and worked in dark places, too. He read through the file without speaking until he had finished. Then he put the pages away.
"Men like this don't fight for free. People hire him, so somebody somewhere knows how to reach him. All we have to do is find that person."
"I want to talk to them."
Pike's mouth twitched, then he shook his head.
"They won't talk to you, Elvis. People like this won't even let you get close."
Pike stared, but he didn't seem to be staring at me. I wondered what he was thinking.
"I can't go home. I can't just wait."
"It's out of your hands."
Pike disappeared between the buildings with the same distant look on his face, but I was too worried about Ben to notice.
time missing: 47 hours, 54 minutes
Pike
Pike thought that Cole's eyes looked like tunnels the color of bruises. Pike had seen the same purple eyes on cops cruising the edge of a burnout and combat soldiers with too much trigger time. Cole was in The Zone; amped up, wrung out, and driving forward like the Terminator with mission lock. You get in The Zone, Pike knew, and your thinking grew fuzzy. You could get yourself killed.
Pike ran the three blocks to his Jeep, feeling awkward in the way he moved. His back was tight from having been still for so long and his shoulder was numb. The jogging hurt his shoulder, but Pike ran anyway.
Mercenaries didn't simply show up in a war zone and get hired to kill people or train foreign troops; they were recruited by private military corporations, security firms with international contracts, and "consultants." The talent pool was small. The same people hired the same people over and over, just like software engineers jumping from job to job in Silicon Valley. Only with shorter life expectancies.
Pike once knew a few consultants, but he didn't know if they were still in the business. He didn't know if any of them would be willing to help, or, if so, what they would want or how long it would take. He didn't even know if they were alive. Pike had been out of that life for a long time, else he would have called from his car. He no longer remembered their numbers.
Pike drove to his condo in Culver City. When he reached home, he pulled off his sweatshirt, then drank a bottle of water with a handful of Aleve and aspirin. The phone numbers for the men he had known were in a safe he kept in his bedroom. They weren't written as digits, but as a coded list of words. He got them, then made the calls.
The first four numbers were no longer in use. A young woman with a bubbly voice answered the fifth number, which had clearly been recycled into the system. The sixth number was another disconnect, and the seventh a dentist's office. War was a business with a high casualty rate. Pike scored on the eighth.
"Yeah?"
Pike recognized the voice as soon as he heard it. As if they had spoken only that morning.
"This is Joe Pike. Remember?"
"Hell, yeah. How ya been?"
"I'm trying to find a professional named Michael Fallon."
The man hesitated, and the easy familiarity was gone.
"I thought you left the game."
"That's right. I'm out."
Pike sensed that the man was suspicious. They had not spoken for almost ten years, and now the man was wondering if Pike was working with the Feds. The government took a dim view of its citizens hiring themselves to foreign governments or paramilitary groups, and had laws against it.
The man spoke carefully.
"I don't know what you got in mind, Pike, but I'm a security consultant. I run background checks and offer references in a variety of military specialties, but I don't do business with terrorists, drug dealers, or dictators, or associate with anyone who does. That shit's illegal."
He was saying all that for the Feds, but Pike happened to know that it was also true.
"I understand. That's not why I'm calling."
"Okay. So what you want is a consultation, right?"
"That's right. His name is Fallon. He was with Delta, but then he went freelance. Two years ago, he lived in Amsterdam. Today, he's in Los Angeles."
"Delta, huh?"
"Yes."
"Those boys bring top dollar."
"I want to see him face-to-face. That's the important part, seeing him face-to-face."
"Uh-huh. Tell me something that might ring a bell."
Pike read from the NLETS report, citing the countries where Fallon was known to have worked; Sierra Leone, Colombia, El Salvador, the others.
The man said, "Shit, he's been around. I know some people who worked in those places. You really out of the game?"
"Yes."
"That's a shame, man. What's in this for me?"
Pike had known that the man would want something, and Pike was prepared to pay. People like this never did anything for free. Pike had not mentioned that part to Elvis, and wouldn't.
"A thousand dollars."
The man laughed.
"I'd rather book you into a job. I still get offers, you know. Your thing, you'd get top dollar, too. They need people like you in the Middle East."
"Two thousand."
"I can probably find someone who knows this guy, but I might have to call all over the goddamned world. I'm not wasting my time for a few bucks. I'm going to have costs."
"Five thousand."
It was an outrageous amount, but Pike already knew that the man wanted more than money. Pike hoped that the figure would be persuasive.
"Pike, I wouldn't be Fallon on a bet, you and your face-to-face. I don't care if he's Delta or not. But you have to see it from my side – if something happens to this guy, your Fed buddies will use this little transaction between us to hammer me as an accessory before the fact or maybe even a co-conspirator. I got no friends over there."
"No one is listening."
"Yeah, right."
Pike didn't respond. Pike had learned that if he didn't say anything, people often told themselves what they wanted to hear.
"Tell you what, I'll ask around, but you gotta let me book a job for you. I don't know what or when, but one day I'll call. That's it. That's my price. If I find someone who can help you with the face-to-face, you gotta go. Yes, no, I don't give a shit. That's what it costs."
Pike regretted calling this number. He wished that it had been disconnected like the others. He considered trying to find someone else, but the first seven numbers had given him nothing. Ben was waiting. Elvis was waiting. The weight of their need kept him on the phone.
"C'mon, Pike, it isn't just the calls. I haven't heard from you in ten years. If I find somebody who's dealt with him, I'll have to vouch for you."
A Zen fountain sat on a polished black table in the corner of Pike's living room. It was a small bowl filled with water and stones. The water burbled between the stones with the gentle sounds of a forest stream. Pike listened to the burble. It sounded like peace.
"You knew it was coming, Pike. That's why you called. I'm jamming you up with this, but that's what you wanted. You're looking for something, and it isn't just Fallon. We both know what you want."
Pike watched the water move in the little fountain. He wondered if the man was right.
"All right."
"Give me your number. I'll call back when I have something."
Pike gave the man his cell phone number, then stripped off his clothes. He brought the phone into his bathroom so he could hear it from the shower. He let hot water beat into his back and shoulder, and tried his best to think about nothing.
Forty-six minutes later, the phone rang. The man gave him a name and an address, and told him that it had been arranged.
time missing: 48 hours, 09 minutes
Two messages were waiting on my answering machine when I got home. I hoped that Joe or Starkey or maybe even Ben had called, but one was Grace Gonzalez from next door, asking if she could do anything to help, and the other was Crom Johnson's mother, returning my call. I didn't feel strong enough to talk to either.
From my deck I could see that Chen's van was back on the ridge across from my house, along with a second SID van and a Hollywood Division radio car. Several of the construction workers stood by the vans, watching downhill as Chen and the others worked.
Normal people bring in their mail after they get home from work, so that's what I did. Normal people have a glass of milk, take a shower, then change into fresh clothes. I did that, too. It felt like pretending.
I was eating a turkey sandwich in front of the television when my phone rang. I grabbed it, thinking that it was Joe, but it wasn't.
"This is Bill Stivic from the Army's Department of Personnel in St. Louis. I'm calling for Elvis Cole, please."
Master Sergeant Bill Stivic, USMC, retired. It felt like weeks since I had spoken with him. It had only been that morning.
I glanced at the time. It was past business hours for a government office in St. Louis. He was calling on his own dime.
"Hi, Master Sergeant. Thanks for getting back to me."
"No problem. It seemed pretty important to you."
"It is."
"Okay, well, here's what we have – first, like I told you this morning, anyone can have the 214, but we never send the 201 to anyone except you unless it's by court order or we get a request from a law enforcement agency, you remember?"
"I remember."
"The records here show that we telefaxed your file to a police detective named Carol Starkey out where you live in Los Angeles. That was yesterday."
"That's right. I spoke with Starkey today."
"Okay, the only other request we've had for your files was eleven weeks ago. We were served with a State court order by a judge named Rulon Lester in New Orleans."
"A judge in New Orleans."
"That would be it. Both your 201 and 214 were sent to his office at the State Superior Court Building in New Orleans."
Another dead end. I thought of Richard waving the manila folder. The bastard had gone all out to check up on me.
"Those are the only two times my files have been sent? You're sure they couldn't have been sent to anyone else?"
"That's it, just the two. The records section keeps track for eight years."
"You have a phone number for the judge, Master Sergeant?"
"They don't keep a copy of the order, just that your files were sent and why, along with the court's filing number. You want that?"
"Yes, sir. Let me get a pen."
He read it off along with the date of the order and the date that my file had been sent. I thanked him for the help, then put down the phone. New Orleans was in the central time zone like St. Louis, so the courts would be closed, but their offices might still be open. I called the Information operator in New Orleans and got numbers for the State Superior Court and Judge Lester's office. The coincidence between Richard living in New Orleans and a judge there ordering my files was obvious, but I wanted to be sure.
A woman with a clipped Southern accent answered on the first ring.
"Judge Lester's office."
I hung up. Lester would have had no legitimate reason for writing a court order to force the Army to release my files. He would have done so only as a favor to Richard or because Richard had paid him, either of which was an abuse of his office. He almost certainly wouldn't talk to me about it.
I thought it through, then dialed the number again.
"Judge Lester's office."
I tried to sound older and Southern.
"This is Bill Stivic with the Army's Department of Personnel in St. Louis. I'm trying to track down a file we sent to the judge in response to an order he issued."
"The judge has left for the day."
"Then I'm in a world of hurt, sugar. I pulled a whammy of a mistake when I sent the file down to y'all. I sent the original, and that was our only copy."
Sounding desperate was easy.
"I'm not sure I can help you, Mr. Stivic. If the file is admitted evidence or case documentation, it can't be returned."
"I don't want it returned. I should've made a copy before I sent it, I know, but, well, I don't know what I was thinking. So if you could find it, maybe I could get you to overnight a copy to me up here. I'd pay for it out of my own pocket."
Sounding pathetic was easy, too.
She said, "Well, let me take a look."
"You're a lifesaver, you truly are."
I gave her the date and the file number from Lester's court order, then held on while she went to look. She came back on the line a few minutes later.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Stivic, but we don't have those records any longer. The judge sent them on to a Mr. Leland Myers as part of the requested action. Perhaps you could get a copy from his office?"
I let her give me Myers's number, and then I hung up. I thought about the folder that Richard slapped on the table when we were listening to the tape. Myers had probably handled the investigation. It felt like a dead end, and left me deflated. Fallon could have gotten most of what he knew by breaking into my house, and could have learned the rest a thousand other ways. All I had learned from Stivic was what I already knew – Richard hated my guts.
I went back to the turkey sandwich that I had left in front of the television, but threw it away. I no longer wanted it. My body ached and my eyes burned from the lack of sleep. The past two days were catching up with me like a freight train bearing down on a man caught on the tracks. I wanted to stretch out on the floor, but I thought that I might not be able to get up. The phone rang again when I was standing in the kitchen, but I wanted to let it ring. I wanted to stand there in the kitchen and never move again. I answered. It was Starkey.
"Cole! We got the van! An Adam car found the van downtown! They just called it in!"
She shouted out the location, but her voice was strained with something ugly as if the news she shared wasn't good. The aches were suddenly gone, as if they had never been.
"Did they find Ben?"
"I don't know. I'm on my way now. The others are on the way, too. Get down there, Cole. You won't be that far behind me, where you are. Get down there right away."
The tone in her voice was awful.
"Goddamnit, Starkey, what is it?"
"They found a body."
The phone fell out of my hands. It floated end over end, taking forever to fall. By the time it hit the floor I was gone.
time missing: 48 hours, 25 minutes
The Los Angeles River is small, but mean. People who don't know the truth of it make fun of our river; all they see is a tortured trickle that snakes along a concrete gutter like some junkie's vein. They don't know that we put that river in concrete to save ourselves; they don't know the river is small because it's sleeping, and that every year and sometimes more it wakes. Before we put the river in that silly trough centered on a concrete plain at the bottom of those tall concrete walls, it flashed to life with the rain to wash away trees and houses and bridges, and cut its banks to breed new channels almost as if it was looking for people to kill. It found what it looked for too many times. Now, when it wakes, the river climbs those concrete walls so high that wet claws rake the freeways and bridges as it tries to pull down a passing car or someone caught out in the storm. Chain-link fences and barbed wire spine along the top of the walls to keep out people, but the walls keep in the river. The concrete is a prison. The prison works, most of the time.
The van had been left under an overpass in the river's channel between the train yards and the L.A. County Jail. Starkey was waiting in her car at a chain-link gate, and rolled when she saw me coming. We squealed down a ramp into the channel and parked behind three radio cars and two D-rides from Parker Center. The patrol officers were in the shade at the base of the overpass with two kids. The detectives had just arrived; two were with the kids and a third was peering into the van.
Starkey said, "Cole, you wait until I see what's what."
"Don't be stupid."
The van had been painted to change its appearance, but it was a four-door '67 Econoline with a cracked windshield and rust around the headlights. The new paint was thin, letting the Em from Emilio's show through like a shadow. The driver's door and the left rear door were open. A bald detective with a shiny head was staring into the back end. Starkey trotted ahead of me, and badged him.
"Carol Starkey. I put out the BOLO. We heard you got a vic."
The detective said, "Oh, man, this one's nasty."
I moved past him to see inside, and Starkey grabbed my arm, trying to stop me. I was holding my breath.
"Cole, please let me look. Stop."
I shook her off, and there it was: A thick-bodied Caucasian man in a sport coat and slacks spread on his stomach with both arms down along his sides and one leg crossed over the other as if he had been dumped or rolled into the back of the van. His clothes and the floor around him were heavy with blood. His head had been cut from his body at the top of his neck. It was tipped against a spare tire just behind the front seat. Like that, his face was hidden. Fat desert flies covered the body like bees in a blood garden. Ben was not in the van.
Starkey said, "Jesus Christ, they cut off his fucking head."
The detective nodded.
"Yeah. The things some people will do."
"You get an ID."
"Uh-uh, not yet. I'm Tims, out of Robbery-Homicide.
We just got here, so we haven't been cleared. The CI's on the way."
They wouldn't disturb the victim until the Coroner Investigator examined the scene. The CI was responsible for determining the cause and time of death, so the police weren't supposed to do anything but preserve the evidence until the CI cleared the scene.
I said, "We're looking for a boy."
"What you see is what we got – one corpse and no blood trails. Why'd you ask about a boy?"
"Two men driving this van kidnapped a ten-year-old boy two days ago. He's missing."
"No shit. Well, if you have suspects here, I want their names."
Starkey gave him Fallon's name and description, along with a description of the black guy. While he was writing it down, I asked him who opened the van. He nodded toward the kids with the uniforms.
"Them. They came down here to ride on the ramps – you know, go up and down? They saw the blood dripping and opened it up. Way the blood's still leaking out the side panel over there, I'd say this couldn't have happened more than three or four hours ago."
Starkey said, "Did you check them for his wallet?"
"Didn't have to. See on his butt where the sport coat's pushed up? You can see the bulge. Wallet's still in his pocket."
I said, "Starkey."
"I know. Tims, listen, if we can put this van to a location or get a line on Fallon, we'll be closer to finding the boy. The vic might have had a hand in it. We need an ID."
Tims shook his head. He knew what she was asking.
"You know better than that. The CI's on his way. It won't be long."
I glanced at Starkey, then went to the driver's door.
Tims said, "Don't touch anything."
Blood had pooled around the driver's seat. I could see part of the body, but I couldn't see his face. I looked under and around the seats as best I could without touching the van, but all I saw was blood and the grime that builds up in old vehicles.
Tims and Starkey were still at the rear. The other two detectives and the uniforms were with the kids. I climbed up into the front seat and squeezed between the seats into the van's bay. It smelled like a butcher shop on a warm summer day.
When Tims saw me, he lurched toward the rear doors as if he was going to jump in with me. He didn't.
"Hey! Get outta there! Starkey, get your partner outta there!"
Starkey stepped in front of Tims and braced her arms across the door as if she was peering inside at me. She was also blocking the door to keep him from pulling me out. One of the detectives and two of the uniforms ran over to see why Tims was shouting.
"Cole. Would you please do this fast?"
Flies swarmed around me in an angry cloud, pissed off that I had disturbed them. The blood on the floorboards was as slick as hot grease. I took the dead man's wallet, then went through his pockets. I found a set of keys, a handkerchief, two quarters, and a card key from the Baitland Swift Hotel in Santa Monica. An empty shoulder holster was strapped under his arm. I tossed the wallet and other things onto the front seat, then turned back to the head. The skin was purple and streaked with grime. The cervical vertebra showed openly in the flesh like a white marble knob and the hair was jellied with blood clots; it was obscene and awful, and I didn't want to touch it. I didn't want to be here with the flies and the blood. Tims was shouting, but his voice receded until it was just another fly buzzing in the heat. I balled the handkerchief and used it to upright the head. When I tipped the head, I saw that it had been placed on a black K-Swiss cross-training shoe. A boy's shoe.
"Cole, who is it? What?"
"It's DeNice. Starkey, they left Ben's shoe. Ben's shoe is in here."
"Did they leave a note? Is there anything else?"
"I don't see anything. Just the shoe."
The Missing Persons car rolled down the ramp with its blue dash lights popping, and Richard's limo brought up the rear.
Starkey said, "Get out of there. Bring his things with you. We might find something that tells us how he found them. Don't touch your face."
"What?"
"You have blood all over yourself. Don't get it in your eyes or your mouth."
"It's Ben's shoe."
I wasn't able to say anything else.
Starkey trotted away to intercept Lucas and Alvarez. I climbed out of the van and put everything on the ground. My hands were gloved in blood. The wallet and Ben's shoe and the other things were smeared with it. One of the uniforms stepped back like I was radioactive.
He said, "Dude, you're a mess."
Lucas stepped around Starkey and steamed to the van. She looked inside, then staggered backwards as if she had been slapped.
She said, "Oh, my God."
DeNice's wallet contained sixty-two dollars, a Louisiana driver's license for one Debulon R. DeNice, credit cards, a Fraternal Order of Police membership card, a Louisiana hunting license, and photographs of two teenaged girls, but nothing that indicated how he had found Fallon or had come to be dead in the van. I had also found a set of keys, a handkerchief, and two quarters, but that didn't help me, either.
Richard and Myers pushed past Alvarez, and Richard turned white when he saw the blood.
Lucas said, "Mr. Chenier, wait at your car. Ray, they shouldn't be here. Jesus Christ."
Richard said, "What's in there. Is it -? Is -?"
"It's DeNice. They left his head in Ben's shoe."
Richard and Myers looked into the van before Alvarez could stop them, and Richard made a deep gasping sound as if something were caught in his chest.
"Holy God!"
Richard grabbed Myers to steady himself, then turned away, but Myers stared into the van. His jaw flexed and knotted, but the rest of him was still. One of the big flies lit on his cheek, but he didn't seem to feel it.
I said, "They left Ben's shoe. Ben's shoe was in that."
Richard raked his hands through his hair and turned in a frantic circle. I thought about what Pike had said about men like Fallon doing whatever they did for money. I thought about DeNice in the van with the blood and the gore and Ben's lonely shoe, and I knew that they hadn't done this for me. They had done it for Richard.
"They didn't just kill him, Richard – THEY CUT OFF HIS HEAD!"
Richard threw up. Starkey looked worried, but maybe because I was screaming.
"Take it easy, Cole. You're shaking. Breathe deep."
Richard was bent over and heaving. He looked frantic and sick.
I said, "They hit you for ransom, didn't they? They're jamming you for ransom and you got cute with DeNice."
Starkey and Lucas looked at me. Richard straightened up, then hunched again.
"You don't know what you're talking about! None of that's true!"
Myers said, "You're talking out your ass, Cole. We're doing everything we can to find these bastards."
"These guys are using DeNice to scare somebody and they weren't trying to scare me."
Richard's face blotched with fury.
"FUCK YOU!"
Lucas said, "How can you say that?"
"Fallon's a mercenary. He doesn't do anything unless he's going to make money and Richard has money. They're working the ransom."
Richard lurched forward like he was going to hit me, but Myers took his arm. Richard trembled as if he was coming apart.
"This is all your fault, you bastard. I'm not going to stand here listening to this while my son is missing. We have to find my boy and you're talking bullshit!"
Richard stumbled to his limo. He leaned against the side of it and threw up again. Myers watched him, but his eyes didn't look so flat any more.
I said, "What's going on, Myers?"
Myers walked away and joined Richard at his car.
I said, "He's lying. They're both lying."
Starkey watched Myers and Richard, then considered the van.
"We're talking about the man's son here, Cole. If these guys were grinding him for ransom, why wouldn't he tell us?"
"I don't know. He's scared. Look what they did to DeNice."
"Then why all that stuff with you?"
"I don't know. Maybe it started with me about something else but when Richard got here they saw the money."
Starkey didn't look convinced.
"And maybe DeNice just got too close to them."
"DeNice wasn't good enough to find them. They arranged some kind of meet because they're hitting up Richard for ransom, and they used DeNice to make sure he pays."
It was the only way the pieces fit.
Lucas wet her lips, as if the notion of it disturbed her.
"I'd better speak with Mr. Chenier. I'll speak with Mr. Myers, too."
Starkey said, "Maybe we can backtrace DeNice's moves from last night to see how he got here. We can talk to that other guy, too, Fontenot. Maybe he knows something."
Lucas nodded absently, then looked back at the van as if it held secrets we might never know.
"This isn't a simple missing person case anymore."
Starkey said, "No. If it ever was."
Lucas looked back at Ben's shoe, then considered me.
"I have some Handiwipes and alcohol in my car. You need to take care of yourself."
Starkey stayed with Lucas and Alvarez to question Richard and Myers about what they knew. I took the Handiwipes and alcohol to my car. I took off my shirt and shoes, then poured the alcohol over my arms and hands. I got off as much of the blood as I could with the Handiwipes, poured on more alcohol, then used even more Handiwipes. I put on a T-shirt and an old pair of running shoes that I kept behind my front seat, then sat in my car watching the cops. Lucas, Alvarez, and the Parker Center detectives were bunched around Richard and Myers. Richard shouted that they didn't know what they were talking about. Richard was freaking out, but Myers was as calm as a spider waiting at the edge of its web. I stared at the van and saw what they had left in it even though I was a hundred feet away. I would always see it. I would never be able to stop seeing it. They had cut off his head, and the men who did it had Ben.
My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. It was Pike. I told him about DeNice. I told him about going inside the van. My voice sounded strange, as if it was muted by fog and wind. I kept talking until I heard him telling me to shut up.
He said, "I found someone who can help."
I started my car and left.
Ben
Eric and Mazi treated Ben differently after Mike shot the man. They stopped to pick up In-N-Out burgers on the way back to the house (double meat, double cheese, and an order of onion rings and fries for everybody). When they reached the house, they didn't lock Ben in the room or tie him; they let him sit with them in the empty living room while they ate and played cards, and gave him an Orangina. They were a lot more relaxed. Even Mazi laughed. It was as if killing that man had freed them.
After they finished the burgers, Eric made a face.
"Man, I shoulda passed on the onions."
Mazi said, "Yes?"
Eric broke wind loudly.
Mazi said, "Ewe body is rotteen."
They sat in a circle on the floor. Ben snuck glances at the gun that bulged under Eric's shirt, trying to think of a way to get it. All he thought about for most of the afternoon was getting the gun, shooting them, then running to the house across the street. When Mike came back, he would shoot him, too.
When Ben looked up from the gun, he saw Mazi staring at him again. It creeped Ben out, the way he did that.
Mazi said, "He theenkeeng about ewe gun."
"Big fuckin' deal. He did all right out there. He's a natural-born killer."
Ben said, "I can shoot."
Eric raised his eyebrows, glancing up from his cards.
"That's right, you're a coonass. You people hunt before you can walk. What kinda shooting you do?"
"I have a twenty-gauge shotgun and a.22. I've been duck hunting with my uncles and my grandpa. I've shot my mom's pistol."
"Well, there you go."
Mazi said, "Waht meenz koonahz?"
"A coonass is a Frenchman from Louisiana."
Eric liked it that they were talking about guns. He reached under his shirt, and took out the gun. It was big and black, with a checked grip and worn engraving on its side.
"You wanna hold it?"
Mazi said, "Stop eet. Put ewe gun ah-way."
"Fuck off. What could it hurt?"
Eric turned the pistol from side to side so Ben could see.
"This is a Colt forty-five Model nineteen-eleven. It used to be the standard-issue combat sidearm until the Army went pussy with this nine millimeter shit. A nine holds more bullets, but a nine ain't shit; you don't need more bullets if you hit your target with this."
Eric waved the gun toward Mazi.
"Take a big nigger like Mazi here, he's strong as a cape buffalo and ten times as mean. You can shoot him all day with a nine and he'll keep comin', but you put one of these in him, you'll knock him flat on his ass. This gun's a stopper."
Eric waved the pistol back to Ben.
"You wanna hold it?"
Ben said, "Yeah."
Eric pressed something on the gun and the magazine fell out. He pulled the slide. The gun coughed up a bullet and Eric caught it in the air. He handed the gun to Ben.
Mazi said, "Mike see thees, he keek ewe ass."
"Mike's off havin' all the fun while we do this, so fuck'm."
Ben took the gun. It was heavy, and too big for his hands. Eric set the magazine on the floor, showed Ben how to work the safety and the slide, then handed back the gun so that Ben could do it himself. The slide was hard to pull.
Ben held the gun tightly. He pulled back the slide and locked it in place. All he had to do was shove in the magazine, release the slide, and it would be loaded and cocked. The magazine was right by his knee.
Eric took back the gun.
"That's enough."
Eric jammed in the magazine, jacked the slide, then returned the loose bullet to the magazine. He set the safety, then put the gun on the floor in front of him.
"Fuck all that shit about no round in the chamber. You gotta keep one in the box and good to go. If you need it, you won't have time to dick around."
They played cards all afternoon as if they did this kind of thing every day. Ben sat close to Eric, thinking about the gun being loaded and cocked with one in the box. All he had to do was release the safety. He rehearsed doing it in his mind. If he got his chance, he wouldn't have time to dick around.
Eric went to the bathroom, but brought the gun with him. When he returned, the gun was back in his pants, but now Eric had clipped it onto his far side. Ben told them that he had to go to the bathroom, too. Mazi brought him. When they came back to the cards, Ben sat on Eric's side near the gun.
Mike didn't return until almost dark.
When he walked in, he said, "Okay, we're set."
"Ewe find dee plaze?"
"It's Delta, man. Everything's rigged and ready to rock.
They won't see it coming."
Eric said, "Fuck all that, I wanna know if we're getting the money."
"After they see what's in the van, I'd say yes."
Eric laughed.
"This is so sweet."
"I'm gonna grab a shower. Get your shit together. Once we leave here, we won't come back."
Ben stayed close to Eric. If they worked it the same as before, Mike would leave by himself, and Ben would go with Eric and Mazi. Ben planned to sit as close to Eric's gun as possible. He could make himself throw up so that Eric would turn away, or drop something so that Eric would have to pick it up. Hey, buddy, your shoe's untied! A chance would appear, and Ben wouldn't have time to dick around. He would stay with Eric like a second skin.
Ben's mom had told him about something called visualization, which all the best tennis players do to help their game. You imagine yourself smashing a perfect service ace or a killer passing shot, and you see yourself winning. It's a mental rehearsal that helps you do the real thing.
Ben imagined every possible scenario for grabbing Eric's gun: Eric getting into the car ahead of him, Eric getting out, Eric bending over to pick up a quarter, Eric chasing a bug – Ben only needed one brief moment when Eric's back was turned, and Ben would do this: He would lift Eric's shirt with his left hand and grab the gun with his right; he would jump backwards hard as Eric turned, and release the safety; he wouldn't yell Stop or I'll shoot! or anything stupid like that; he would pull the trigger. He would keep pulling the trigger until they were dead. Ben visualized himself doing it just like that – POWPOWPOWPOWPOW. It's a stopper.
Suddenly, it was time. Mike came from the back of the house with a short pump-action shotgun and a pair of binoculars.
Mike said, "This is it, ladies. Showtime."
Eric shoved up from the floor like it couldn't come too soon, pulling Ben with him.
"Fuckin' A. Let's get it on."
They slung their duffel bags and trooped through the house. Ben was so scared that his ears buzzed, but he stayed close to Eric. A battered blue compact that Ben hadn't seen before was waiting in the garage next to the sedan. Eric steered him toward the compact.
Eric said, "Okay, troop, step lively."
Behind them, Mike said, "Hang on."
They stopped.
"The kid's coming with me."
Mike took Ben's arm and turned him toward the sedan. Eric climbed into Mazi's car. Ben pulled back from Mike.
"I don't want to go with you. I want to go with Eric."
"Fuck what you want. Get in the car."
Mike pushed him into the passenger side, then got in behind the wheel with his shotgun. The garage door opened, and Mazi and Eric drove away. Ben watched Eric's pistol go with them, cocked, good to go, with one in the box. It was like seeing a life preserver drift out of reach while he drowned.
Mike started the engine.
"You just sit still and be cool like before, and everything will work out all right."
Mike put the shotgun on the floor so that it rested between his legs. Ben looked at it. He had a twenty-gauge Ithaca shotgun at home and had once killed a mallard.
Ben stared hard at the shotgun, and then stared at Mike.
"I know how to shoot."
Mike said, "So do I."
They backed out of the garage.
time missing: 49 hours, 28 minutes
Pike was waiting for me at one of those flat anonymous office buildings that were clustered all through Downey and the City of Industry, just south of LAX; cheap buildings thrown up by aerospace companies during the defense boom in the sixties, surrounded then as now by parking lots jammed with midsized American cars driven to work by men wearing ill-fitting dark suits.
When I got out of my car, Pike studied me in that motionless way he has.
I said, "What?"
"They have a bathroom in here."
He brought me into the lobby. I went into the men's room, turned on the hot water, and let it run until steam fogged the mirror. DeNice's blood was still speckled around my nails and in the creases of my skin. I washed my hands and arms with green soap, then put them under the running hot water. My hands turned bright red again, almost as red as the blood, but I kept them in the water trying to burn them clean. I washed them twice, then took off my shirt and washed my face and neck. I cupped my hands and drank, then looked at myself in the mirror but I was hidden by fog. I went back to the lobby.
We walked up three flights of stairs and into a waiting room that smelled like new carpet. Polished steel letters on the wall identified the company: THE RESNICK RESOURCE GROUP – Problem Resolution and Consultation.
Problem resolution.
A young woman smiled at us from a desk built into the wall.
"May I help you?"
She had an English accent.
Pike said, "Joe Pike for Mr. Resnick. This is Elvis Cole."
"Ah, yes. We're expecting you."
A young man in a three-piece suit came out of a door behind the receptionist and held it for us. He was carrying a black leather bag.
"Afternoon, gentlemen. You can come with me."
Pike and I stepped past him into a hall. As soon as we were out of the waiting room, the young man opened the bag. He was fit, with the pleasant professional expression of a mid-level executive on the way up. He wore an Annapolis class ring on his right hand.
"I'm Dale Rudolph, Mr. Resnick's assistant. The weapons go in here and will be returned when you leave."
I said, "I'm not armed."
"That's fine."
Pike put his.357, a.25, the sap, and a double-edge SOG knife into the bag. Rudolph's expression never changed, as if men de-arming themselves was an everyday occurrence. Welcome to life in the Other World.
"Is that everything?"
Pike said, "Yes."
"All right. Stand erect and lift your arms. Both of you, please."
Polite. They taught manners at Annapolis.
Rudolph passed a security wand over us, then put the wand into the bag.
"Okey-doke. We're good to go."
Rudolph led us into a bright airy office that could have belonged to someone who sold life insurance except for the pictures that showed mobile rocket batteries, Soviet gunships, and armored vehicles. A man in his late fifties with crewcut gray hair and coarse skin came around his desk to introduce himself. He was probably a retired admiral or general with connections to the Pentagon; most of these guys were.
"John Resnick. That's all, Dale. Please wait outside."
"Aye, sir."
Resnick sat on the edge of his desk, but didn't offer us a seat.
"Which one's Pike?"
Pike said, "Me."
Resnick looked at him.
"Our mutual friend speaks well of you. The only reason I agreed to see you is because he vouched for you."
Pike nodded.
"He didn't mention anyone else."
I wanted to identify myself as the sidekick, but sometimes I'm smart. I let Pike handle it.
Pike said, "If our mutual friend spoke well of me, then that should cover it. Either I'm good or I'm not."
Resnick seemed to like that answer.
"Fair enough. Perhaps you'll have the chance to show me just how good, but we can discuss that another time."
Resnick knew what we wanted and got to the point.
"I used to work with a PMC in London. We used Fallon once, but I would never use him again. If you're trying to hire him, I would recommend against it."
I said, "We don't want to hire him, we want to find him. Fallon and at least one accomplice abducted my girlfriend's son."
Resnick's left eye flickered with an unexpected tension. He studied me as if he were deciding whether or not I knew what I was saying, then he sat a bit taller.
"Mike Fallon is in Los Angeles?"
I told him again.
"Yes. He took my girlfriend's son."
Resnick's left eye flickered harder and the tension spread through him. But then he shrugged.
"Fallon is a dangerous man. I can't believe that he's in Los Angeles or anyplace else in the country, but if he is and he did what you said, you should go to the police."
"We've been with the police. The police are trying to find him, too."
Pike said, "Without my resources. You know him. The thought is that you know how to reach him, or know someone who does."
Resnick considered Pike, then slid off his desk and went to his seat. The sun was beginning to lower and bounced off the cars. Jets arced out of LAX heading west over the sea. Resnick watched them.
"That was years ago. Michael Fallon is under a warcrimes indictment for atrocities he committed in Sierra Leone. Last I heard, he was living in South America, Brazil, I think, or maybe Colombia. If I knew how to find him, I would have told the Justice Department. Jesus, I can't believe he had the balls to come back to the States."
Resnick glanced at Pike again.
"If you find him, will you kill him?"
He asked it as simply as if he wanted to know whether or not Pike enjoyed football.
Pike didn't answer, so I answered for him.
"Yes. If that's your price for helping us, then yes."
Pike touched my arm. He shook his head once, telling me to stop.
I said, "If you want him dead, he's dead. Not, then not. All I care about is the boy. I'll do anything to get the boy."
Pike touched me again.
Resnick said, "I believe in rules, Mr. Cole. In a business like mine, rules are all we have to keep us from becoming animals."
Resnick went back to the jets. He watched them wistfully, as if a jet could take him away from something that he could not escape.
"When I was in London, we hired Mike Fallon. We sent him to Sierra Leone. He was supposed to guard the diamond mines under a contract we had with the government, but he went over to the rebels. I still don't know why – the money, I guess. They did things you can't imagine. You would think I'm making it up."
I told him what I saw in the van at the edge of the Los Angeles River. Resnick turned back from the jets as I described it. I guess it sounded familiar. He shook his head.
"A fucking animal. He can't work as a mercenary anymore, not with the indictments. No one will hire him. You think he kidnapped this child for ransom?"
"I think so, yes. The boy's father has money."
"I don't know what to tell you. Like I said, the last I heard he was in Rio but I'm not even sure of that. There must be a lot of money at stake for him to come back."
Pike said, "He has an accomplice. A large black man with sores or warts on his face."
Resnick swiveled toward us and touched his own face.
"On his forehead and cheeks?"
"That's right."
He leaned forward with his forearms on the desk. It was clear that he recognized the description.
"Those are tribal scars. One of the men Fallon used in Sierra was a Benté fighter named Mazi Ibo. He had scars like that."
Resnick grew excited.
"Is a third man involved?"
"We don't know. It's possible."
"All right, listen, now L.A. is starting to make sense. Ibo was tight with another merc named Eric Schilling. I guess it was a year ago, something like that, Schilling contacted us looking for security work. He's local, from here in L.A, so Ibo might have contacted him. We might have kept something."
Resnick went to work on his computer, punching keys to bring up a database.
I said, "Was he involved in Sierra Leone?"
"Probably, but he wasn't listed in the indictments. That's why he can still work. He was one of Fallon's people. That's why it stood out when he contacted us. I won't hire any of Fallon's people even if they weren't involved. Yeah, here it is."
Resnick copied an address from his computer, then handed it to me.
"He had a mail drop in San Gabriel under the name Gene Jeanie. They always use these fake names. I don't know if it's still good, but it's what I have."
"Do you have a phone for him?"
"They never give a phone. It's like the mail drop and the fake names. It's a way to stay insulated."
I glanced at the address, then passed it to Pike. I stood, but my legs felt wobbly. Resnick came around his desk.
He said, "We're talking about very dangerous people right now. Don't mistake these men for your basic shiteating criminals. Fallon was as good as it gets, and he trained these people. No one is better at killing."
Pike said, "Bears."
Resnick and I both glanced at him, but Pike was staring at the address. Resnick gripped my hand and held it. He looked into my eyes as if he was searching for something.
"Do you believe in God, Mr. Cole?"
"When I'm scared."
"I pray every night. I pray because I sent Mike Fallon to Sierra Leone, so I've always felt that part of his sin must be mine. I hope you find him. I hope the little boy is safe."
I saw the desperate darkness in Resnick's face, and recognized it as my own. A moth probably saw the same thing when it looked into a flame. I should not have asked, but I could not help myself.
I said, "What happened over there? What did Fallon do?"
Resnick stared at me for the longest time, then confessed.
Sierra Leone
Africa
1995
The Rock Garden
Ahbeba Danku heard the gunfire that morning only moments before the screaming boy fled down the road from the mine to her village. Ahbeba was a pretty girl, twelve years old this past summer, with long feet and hands, and the graceful neck of a princess. Ahbeba's mother claimed that Ahbeba was, in fact, a royal princess of the Mende tribe, and prayed every night for a prince to take her eldest daughter as his bride. The family could claim as many as six goats for their dowry, her mother predicted, and would be so rich that they could escape the endless war that the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front waged against the government for control of the diamond mines.
Ahbeba thought her mother crazy from smoking too much of the majijo plant. It was far more likely that Ahbeba would marry one of the young South African mercenaries who protected the mine and village from the rebels. They were strong handsome boys with guns and cigarettes who grinned brazenly at the girls who, in turn, flirted with the young men shamelessly.
Ahbeba spent most days with her mother, sisters, and the other village women tending a rock-strewn subsistence farm near the Pampana River. The women cared for a small goat herd and grew sweet potatoes and a hard pea known as a kaiya while their men (including Ahbeba's father) mined the slopes of the gravel pit for diamonds. As diggers and washers, the men were paid eighty cents per day plus two bowls of rice flavored with pepper and mint and a small commission on any diamond they found. It was hard, dirty work, shoveling gravel out of the steep slopes by hand, then pumping it into small washing plants where it was sorted by size, sluiced for gold, and picked through for diamonds. The men worked in shorts or underwear for twelve hours a day with only the dust that caked their skin as protection from the sun and the South Africans to protect them from the rebels. Princes were in short supply. Even more rare than diamonds.
That morning, Ahbeba Danku had been left to grind kaiya into meal while her sisters tended the crops. Ahbeba didn't mind; working in the village gave her plenty of time to gossip with her best friend, Ramal Momoh (who was two years older and had breasts the size of water bladders), and flirt with the guards. Both girls were blue with pea meal as they snuck glances at the guard who stood at the edge of the village. The young South African, who was tall and slender and as pretty as a woman, winked at them and beckoned them to join him. Ahbeba and Ramal giggled. Each was daring the other to do it, saying you, no, you, when a string of faraway pops crackled down the hill.
Poppoppop… pop… pop… poppoppop.
The guard jerked toward the sound like a street puppet in the Freetown bazaar. Ramal jumped up so quickly that the grinding stone tipped over.
"They're shooting at the mine."
Ahbeba had heard the guards shoot rats before, but it was nothing like this. Older women stepped from their huts and younger children paused in their play. The young South African called across the village to another guard, then unslung his rifle. His eyes were bright with fear.
Bursts of automatic-weapon fire layered over each other in a furious overlapping rage that ended as quickly as it began. Then the valley was silent.
"Why were the guards shooting? What is happening?"
"That wasn't the guards. Listen! Do you hear?"
A boy's scream reached the village, and then the thin figure of a child raced between the huts. Ahbeba recognized eight-year-old Julius Saibu Bio, who lived at the northern edge of their village.
"That's Julius!"
The boy pulled to a halt, sobbing, flapping his hands as if he was shaking off something hot.
"The rebels are killing the guards! They killed my father!"
The South African guard ran several steps toward Julius, then turned back toward the trees just as a white man with hair the color of flames stepped from the leaves and shot the South African twice in the face.
The village exploded in chaos. Women scooped children and infants into their arms and ran to the bush. Children burst into tears. Ramal ran.
"Ramal! What's happening? What do we do?"
"Run! Run NOW!'"
Two more South African guards burst from between the huts. The flame-haired man dropped to a knee and fired again – bapbap, bapbap – so fast that the shots sounded as one. Both South Africans fell.
Ramal disappeared into the jungle.
Ahbeba started for her family's hut, then ran back for Julius. She took him by the arm.
"Come with me, Julius! We have to hide!"
A flatbed truck crowded with men roared into the village, horn blowing. Men jumped off the truck in twos and threes as it raced between the huts. The flame-haired man shouted orders at them in Krio, the English-based Creole that was spoken by almost everyone in Sierra Leone.
The rebels fired into the air and beat the running women and children with the butts of their rifles. Ahbeba picked up Julius to run, but more rebels jumped from the truck behind her. A skinny teenager with a rifle as big as himself dragged Ramal from the bush, pushed her down, then kicked her in the back. A man wearing nothing but shorts and a fluorescent pink vest shot at the village dogs, laughing every time a dog screamed and spun in a circle.
Julius shrieked.
"Make them stop! Make them stop!"
The flatbed truck skidded to a stop in the center of the village. As quickly as the gunfire had come and gone from the mine, the village was captured. The South Africans were dead. No one was left to protect them. Ahbeba sank to the ground, and tried to pull herself and Julius into the earth. This could not be happening to a princess waiting for a prince.
A muscular man in wraparound sunglasses and a ragged Tupac T-shirt clambered up onto the truck's bed to glare at the villagers. He wore a bone necklace that clattered against the ammo belts slung from his neck. Other men stood beside him, one wearing a headband made of bullets; another, a net shirt sewn with small pouches made from the scrotums of warthogs. They were fierce and terrible warriors, and Ahbeba was very afraid.
The man with the bone necklace waved a sleek black rifle.
"I am Commander Blood! You will know this name and fear it! We are freedom fighters of the Revolutionary United Front, and you are traitors to the people of Sierra Leone! You dig our diamonds for outsiders who control the puppet government in Freetown! For this, you will die! We will kill everyone here!"
Commander Blood fired his rifle over the heads of the villagers and ordered his men to line everyone up to be shot.
The flame-haired man and another white man came around the side of the truck. The second man was taller and older than the first, wearing olive-green pants and a black T-shirt. His pale skin was burned from the sun.
He said, "No one's killing anyone. There's a better way to do this."
He spoke Krio like the flame-haired man.
The two white men were on the ground; Commander Blood stood on the truck's bed. The commander charged like a lion to the edge of the bed so that he towered over the men. He fired his weapon angrily.
"I have given the order! We will kill these traitors so that word will spread throughout the diamond fields! The miners must fear us! Line them up! Now!"
The man in the black shirt swung his arm as if throwing a punch and hooked Commander Blood's legs out from beneath him. The commander landed flat on his back. The man jerked him from the truck to the ground and stomped his head. Three fierce warriors jumped from the truck to help their commander. Ahbeba had never seen men fight so fiercely nor in such strange ways – the man and his flame-haired friend twisted the warriors to the ground so quickly the fight ended in a heartbeat, with the two men defeating four. One of the warriors was left screaming in pain; two others were unconscious or dead.
Ramal edged close to her and whispered.
"They are demons. Look, he wears the mark of the damned!"
As the black-shirted man held Commander Blood by the neck, Ahbeba saw a triangle tattooed on the back of his hand. Ahbeba grew even more fearful. Ramal was wise and knew of such things.
The demon pulled Commander Blood to his feet, then ordered the others to bring the dead South African guards to the well at the center of the village. The commander was dazed and submissive; he did not object. The flame-haired man spoke into a small radio.
Ahbeba waited anxiously to see what would happen. She held Julius close and tried to calm him, fearing that his sobbing might draw the rebels' attention. Twice she saw brief chances to escape, but she could not leave the boy. Ahbeba told herself that there was safety in numbers; that she and Julius would be safe within the crowd.
As the rebels stacked the dead South Africans by the well, a second truck rumbled into the village. This truck was battered and misshapen and cowled with black dust. Great winged fenders hooded the tires like a sorcerer's cloak, and broken headlamps stared crookedly over a grill like a hyena's snaggle-toothed grin; the rust on its teeth was the color of dried blood. A dozen young men with glassy unblinking eyes squatted in the truck. Many had bloody bandages wrapped tightly around their upper arms. Those without bandages showed jagged scars cut into these same places.
Ramal, who had been to Freetown and knew of such things, said, "You see their arms? Their skin has been split so that cocaine and amphetamines can be packed into the wounds. They do this to make themselves crazy."
"Why?"
"It makes them better fighters. Like this, they feel no pain."
A tall warrior jumped down from the new truck and joined the two white men. He wore a sackcloth tunic and baggy trousers, but that is not what drew Ahbeba's eye; his face was as cut and planed as a finished diamond. His upper arms bore the same scars as his men, but, unlike the others, his face was also marked: three round scars were set like eyes along each cheek and a row of smaller scars lined his forehead. His eyes were fired with a heat that Ahbeba did not understand, but he was breathtakingly beautiful, as beautiful and as princely as any man that Ahbeba had ever seen. He held himself like a king.
The black-shirted man twisted Commander Blood toward the stack of South African corpses.
He said, "This is how you create fear."
He glanced at the tall African warrior, who motioned his men from the truck. They jumped to the ground, howling and hooting as if possessed. They were not armed with rifles and shotguns like the first group of rebels; they carried rusty machetes and axes.
They swarmed over the dead South African guards. The machetes rose and fell as the crazy-eyed rebels hacked off their heads. They threw the heads into the well.
Ahbeba sobbed and Ramal hid her eyes. All around them, women and children and old men wailed. Ishina Kotay, a strong young woman with two babies, as fast as any boy in the village when she was a girl, jumped to her feet and bolted for the jungle. The flame-haired man shot her in the back.
Ahbeba felt light-headed, as if she had smoked the majijo plant. She lost track of what was happening, and vomited. The world grew hazy and small with empty spaces between moments of brilliant clarity. The day had begun with cakes for breakfast as the first kiss of light brushed the ridges above her village. Her mother had spoken of princes.
Commander Blood fired his rifle into the air and jumped up and down, howling like his men. The rest of the rebels jumped up and down, too, caught up in the frenzy.
"Now you know the wrath of the RUF! This is the price you pay for defying us! We will fill the well with your heads!"
The white demon and the tall scarred warrior turned toward the huddled villagers. Ahbeba felt their gaze sweep over her as if their eyes held weight.
The white demon shook his head.
"Stop jumping around like a baboon. If you kill these people, then no one will know what happened here. Only the living can fear you. Do you understand that?"
Commander Blood stopped bouncing.
"Then we must leave living proof."
"That's right. Proof that will scare the shit out of the other miners. Proof that your enemies can't deny."
Commander Blood walked over to the headless bodies of the South African guards.
"What could be more terrible that what we have done?"
"This."
The white demon spoke to the scarred warrior in a language that Ahbeba did not understand, and then the drug-crazed rebels ran forward with their axes and machetes, and hacked off the hands of every man, woman, and child in the village.
Ahbeba Danku and the others were left alive to tell their story, and did.