Children of the Knight (74 page)

The phone rang suddenly, startling Villagrana with its harsh, tinny clang. The mayor snatched it up in annoyance. “Yes?” He listened but a moment and then held out the phone to Chief Murphy. “It’s for you.”

Murphy rose from his chair and took the phone from the obviously disgruntled mayor. “Yeah?” He listened, then covered the receiver with his hand and turned back to the group. “911 calls coming in from all over the city.” Then he resumed listening to the report.

Villagrana and Sanders exchanged a look. Despite their mutual enmity, both men knew that whatever was going on probably wouldn’t be good for either of them.

A
RTHUR
and Jenny and their team watched as people attempted to exit from the underground garage. The padlock trapped them like the rats they were. Arthur looked at Jenny, who nervously gripped his hand. He squeezed it gently and then nodded to Lavern. The boy retrieved from his satchel another arrow, this one fitted with bound cloth. Enrique soaked the cloth in gasoline and lit it. Lavern notched the arrow, took aim at the first window he’d taken out, and fired. The arrow made a perfect arc up and into the office. Within moments, fire leapt from the window as the interior of Ramirez’s office went up in flames.

Arthur observed a moment as the fire took hold. Lavern shot several more flaming arrows in through the upper windows, and as the inferno quickly engulfed the entire top half of the building, Arthur signaled to Jenny. The prepaid phone she’d been given was already in her sweaty hand, and she hurriedly thumbed in 911.

I
N
THE
mayor’s office, Villagrana, the council members, Ryan, and Gibson had all taken spots at every available window to observe the scene below. Smoke rose from all over the city. Sirens shrieked as the flashing red of fire trucks and the flashing blue and red of police vehicles ripped the twilight open like a wormhole might a galaxy of stars.

“What the hell is happening?” Villagrana practically shouted. “It looks like a war zone down there!”

Ryan and Gibson exchanged a frustrated look. They wanted to be out there with, well, whatever was going on. This was politics up here—down there was police work.

Chief Murphy finally hung up the phone. He’d made several calls to his men at Parker Center and now had a pretty good idea what was going on. And he liked it. Damn if he didn’t approve, despite the vigilante nature of the whole thing. He cleared his throat, and everyone turned to look. “You want the story? I got it.”

He leaned up against the mayor’s expensive desk, ignoring the flash of anger in Villagrana’s eyes.

“Well, Chief,” Sanders asked anxiously, “Is the city burning down?”

Murphy shook his head. “Not fires. Just smoke. Well, there’s one fire at a warehouse, but somebody called it in, and trucks’re on the way.”

“Then what’s going on out there, Chief?” Villagrana practically screamed. What was going on, he knew, might be the end of his political career.

The Chief cleared his throat again. “It seems our King Arthur and his kids have smoke bombed a bunch of crack houses and meth labs throughout the city.”

“What?” Sandra Gale exclaimed, her eyes wide with astonishment.

The chief nodded. “Yep, bagged the cookers and left ’em in fishnets for us to pick up and book. Actually, these kids are turning the netted cooks over to the locals and letting them decide to call us or not. That’s the 911 calls—citizens who want us
to finish what Arthur and his kids started. They even videoed everything and left the evidence for us to use.”

“Anybody get hurt?” Ryan asked.

Murphy shrugged. “Too early to tell. I think some cooks got shot with arrows, but that’s still unconfirmed.”

“Shit!” Villagrana cursed, glaring at the Chief as if the whole evening was his fault. “Do you know how bad we’ll look in the media, Chief, when a bunch of kids can do better police work than the LAPD? We’ll be the laughing stock of the country.”

“Is that all you care about, Mr. Mayor?” Sandra Gale asked incredulously. “I, for one, think this King Arthur has done us a tremendous favor. Chief, how would he know where to find these drug houses when your men didn’t?”

“If I may answer that, Chief,” Ryan piped up, and the Chief just shrugged. “The kids know everything that goes down in their neighborhoods, Ms. Gale, that’s why we try to befriend them. Unfortunately we stab them in the back way too often, so they don’t trust us. They
do
trust Arthur.”

“You’re out of line, Sergeant!” Murphy barked, his temper rising.

“Yeah, Ry,” Gibson added. “When do we stab ’em in the back?”

Ryan shook his head sadly. “Every time we arrest ’em and tell ’em if
they
help us,
we’ll
help them. We help ’em all right, right straight to prison.”

Gibson opened his mouth to protest but changed his mind.

The mayor felt fit to be tied. This night couldn’t get any worse. “So, Mr. Police Chief, what do we do, huh?”

Murphy shrugged again. “I got my men responding to the calls, including that warehouse downtown. Seems that was a major drop and manufacture point too. Didn’t you say Arthur wanted us here in your office?”

The mayor nodded.

“Then I guess we wait for him,” Sanders added before returning to the window. Below, smoke billowed above the city lights, and flashing sirens cast everything in strobing shades of blue and red.

Villagrana glared out a different window, wondering what had happened to R. as he watched his political future go literally up in smoke.