Eye of the Burning Man: A Mick Callahan Novel (The Mick Callahan Series) (19 page)

"Jerry, we won't even be staying here, except for tonight. I figured to take off first thing in the morning."

"So? Won't take me but a couple of hours, good buddy," Jerry said. He was already opening his toolbox. "You'll be in business for real. We'll just take my bad-ass laptop with us for everything else."

"Can I get a word in, here?"

Jerry didn't look up. "Sure."

"Don't you want to know what's going on?"

"Oh, you're finally ready to tell me?"

"Touché. Now, sit."

Jerry folded up the toolbox, sat on the small sofa beneath the window. He peered out into the smoggy red sunset and closed the drapes, slid the toolbox under the computer desk and spread his hands. His thick eyebrows twitched like caterpillars. "So fill me in."

"What did I tell you so far?" I sat down. "I don't remember."

"You said Mary called and you took her in," Jerry said. "You gave me some line of shit that she didn't want you to tell me she was here."

"She didn't want me to call you, Jerry. You think I'd make that up?"

Jerry shrugged casually, but his lips were thin. "Mary's a pretty girl, man. You never know."

"That's bullshit."

A long silence followed. My face reddened. I turned away to gather myself.
You are lower than whale shit, Callahan . . .

Jerry said: "Then after a couple of weeks she went missing on you, like all of a sudden. You told me to get my sorry ass down here and that maybe there's this pimp involved, and some missing kid named Loco."

"My housekeeper's nephew."

"Right. And then you said I should get my hands on a top-notch digital camera and a pro sound boom."

"You did that? Good."

"I had the store call Hal Solomon and he covered it." Jerry seemed to pull himself back together. "That camera set him back nearly five large, man. It's one hell of a piece of gear. I haven't even had time to screw around with it yet. Mick?"

"Yeah?"

"It is awful good to see you."

I shook his hand. "It's good to see you too, Jerry. I screwed up, and now I'm damned sorry. I should have just called right away and told you Mary was here."

"She really asked you not to?"

"Yes."

"I guess it don't matter now," Jerry said. "Because here we are. What do you need me to do?"

I eyed Jerry carefully. "We went through a lot the last time we were together. We almost got ourselves killed. This one could end up even worse. Are you sure you're up for it?"

"I'm up for anything, Mick," Jerry said. "I want to find Mary. You know that I had a thing for that girl, even before she saved our butts. And I owe you something, too."

"You don't owe me." A sense of déjà vu followed; memory reminded me that Darlene had used the same phrase. "But I do think we both owe Mary a great deal."

"I heard that. What do you need me to do?"

I booted up my computer. "I want you to take a look at this footage of the Burning Man Festival. You've heard of it, right?"

"Sure. Hal emailed me some shit and I answered him. I don't think I copied you on that."

"Well?"

"Well, the thing of it is that I didn't know anything, except that it happens every year. No offense, Mick, but what the hell?"

"Bear with me, Jerry. Take a look at this video then, and we'll talk. Look, I was at this thing once, years ago, in a drugged stupor. That may or may not have something to do with what happened to Mary. What I know so far is that this festival, or someone who is planning on being there, has something to do with why she vanished."

"So it really matters that I see it. Okay."

"Jerry, get on it. We don't have much time."

Jerry looked puzzled. "And the camera . . . ?"

I stood, hooked my thumbs in the belt of my black jeans and leaned against the wall. "I'm taking some vacation time. The station will play reruns. You and I are going to pretend to make a documentary about that festival. That way if anybody recognizes me, it will make sense why we're there."

"Okay."

"You're now a camera operator."

"Cool."

"It will also give us some cover with the local law, or even a badass FBI agent, if we happen to run into him. Don't ask, I'll explain later. But what we're really going to try to do is find out what the hell happened to Mary."

"Dumb question?"

"Shoot."

"I assume you already called the cops?"

"Of course I did, both officially and unofficially."

"And?"

"Officially, they told me that people go missing every day. That Mary may not have even given me her real name. That there wasn't anything they could do, especially since I didn't even have a photograph to give them. They said both she and the little boy were probably gone for good."

"And
un
officially?"

Someone knocked on the front door. Jerry jumped, startled. He wriggled his thick eyebrows. "Who's that?"

"'Unofficially' just got here."

Larry Donato stood under the porch light, wearing my old L.A. Rams sweatshirt. "You look great in that," I said, with a straight face. "Do you plan on returning it any time soon?"

Donato grinned. "I'll wash it first." With feigned innocence, "You do know my lovely cousin, don't you?"

"Hello, Darlene."

Darlene Hernandez seemed to be wearing larger ear rings and a bit more makeup. She wore a neat beige pants suit and flat shoes. For my part, I was glad to see her, even under these circumstances. I saw her dark eyes widen slightly at the burn scar on Jerry's face, and admired her for how well she concealed the reaction.

For his part, Jerry didn't much care for cops. He forced a feeble smile, introduced himself, and then headed straight for his truck to collect my new gear. He never looked Larry Donato in the eye, which was probably a good thing.

"Damn," Donato said quietly, once Jerry was gone, "what the hell happened to that kid's face?"

"He was in a foster home when he was a boy. A psychotic woman burned him with an iron."

"Christ."

"Anyway, come in."

"Mick, how the hell are you?" Donato asked. "Peanut said you sounded like you were in a world of hurt. It took me fifteen minutes to talk her into staying behind at my place. What's up?"

"What's up is that I'm going to get Mary back, but in order to do that, I'm going to have to track down and talk to Frederick Newton Wainwright."

"Oh, shit," Darlene said.

"Fred is actually a pimp and porn maker known as Fancy."

Donato sagged. "
Fancy?
You've got to be out of your fucking mind."

Darlene began pacing the room, hands behind her back. "You're not telling us this, you realize that."

"Of course not, I would never tell two sworn officers of the law that I was about to embark on a dangerous and probably highly illegal rescue mission and spill a drop of blood or two. I would never say that, if that's what you mean."

"Good," Darlene said, "because we would be in all kinds of trouble if you told us something like that and we failed to report it."

I went to the icebox for sodas, called back over my shoulder: "All I am telling you is that I am taking some vacation time to shoot two privately funded documentaries with the help of my old friend Jerry."

"Documentaries?" Donato was baffled.

"Yes. That's the kind of work I used to do, back when I did television instead of radio."

"Two documentaries," Darlene said. She was already with me. You had to love this woman.

I brought two colas and popped the cans. Darlene shook her head 'no.'

"Two documentaries. One about prostitution, actually a certain group of streetwalkers out in Pomona, to be exact."

"The other?"

"The other will be on the next Burning Man Festival out there in the flats of Nevada."

"Okay," Donato said. He took a drink. "I think I get you now. What does the Burning Man have to do with any of this?"

I sprawled on the couch, boots up on the coffee table. "I'll be damned if I know, but somebody keeps sending me messages that point that way. First, someone called my show and brought it up. Mary said something about burning and then a tent city when she called."

Donato nodded. "And then there was that burned spot on the ground, with the black rock in the middle."

"Same as that guy's tattoo."

Darlene sat next to me. I told her more about the night I first met Larry, and about the assailant and his tattoo. She put her drink down on the table and hunched forward. "Mick, in all seriousness, why the hell are you telling us all this?"

"Because I want you to help me, because I need to find Mary, and to see if any of this leads to the missing boy."

"You know we can't do that," she said.

"No?"

"Not on the books."

I smiled. "You told me you had to do some undercover stuff as a hooker once, right?"

Darlene shrugged. "So?"

"So take your vacation time. Hal will pay you to come along with me, under the guise of helping me to shoot these documentaries."

"How much?" Darlene asked, a bit mischievously.

"Oh, come on," Donato said.

"No, really. How much?"

"Five grand a week."

"Five grand?"

"You will be an official advisor to the two productions, and also provide security. One thousand five hundred per project. We will keep it all aboveboard, do a letter agreement for your records, and pay IRS on your behalf, the whole deal."

Darlene wavered. "That's a nice sounding number, and I would like to help you find the girl, but—"

Donato interrupted her. "It isn't worth throwing away your career. Come on, Darlene think for a minute. What's going to fall on your head if this all blows up in a big way, if there's some shooting involved?"

Darlene nodded. "He's right, Mick. No can do."

Jerry came back with some cardboard boxes. He was pale, except for the rippled scar. He looked straight ahead as he passed Donato and Darlene on his way to the office. I waited, but neither cop spoke again.

After a few moments, I sighed. "No way, huh?"

"No way, Mick."

"I understand, but what
can
you do to help me out, then? Anything?"

"I'm screwed either way," Larry Donato said. "If I help you I could get nailed, and if I don't Peanut won't ever speak to me again."

"Or sleep with you, anyway," Darlene said.

Larry stuck out his tongue. "Okay, I can feed you information, off the record. I can call in a couple of favors on the sly, maybe run some license numbers, petty shit like that, but don't put me in any worse position than that."

"Fair enough, and I want you to know I really appreciate everything you've done since my date and I got jumped that night."

"Just who was this date, by the way?" Darlene purred.

"Right now, Larry," I said, acting as if I hadn't heard her, "the best thing you can do for us is just nose around about Fancy's porn business. I know where he keeps some of his girls, but that's about it."

"Will do."

I turned to Darlene. "You really think it would get you in trouble if you moonlighted as an advisor on a legitimate documentary?"

Darlene eyed me. "How legitimate are we talking?"

"Darlene," Donato protested. "Come on!"

I smiled. "I'm not bullshitting you. My sponsor Hal is a pretty wealthy man. He has made millions with a media company, and still advises its board. That's who is putting up the money for us to do this. Everything will be on the books, just like I said. You'll be covered in the contracts and with the IRS."

"I'm with you now," Darlene replied. "And if anything were to happen to go wrong with a legitimate news project . . ."

"We would certainly have the right to defend ourselves," I said, finishing her thought.

"And that weird kid?"

"Jerry? He's an electronic genius and a world-class computer hack. I know how his mind works. He'll be Stanley Kubrick with that camera in less than an hour."

Donato stood up. "Darlene, you can't be serious. You could lose your badge for getting involved in something like this."

She batted her eyelashes. "Why Larry, a girl has a right to moonlight a little after hours and on vacation, doesn't she?"

Donato shook his head. "Don't do this."

Darlene chuckled, sighed, and shook her head. "He's right, Mick. Actually, I can't. No hard feelings?"

"No hard feelings." I took her hand and squeezed. "I had to ask, though. You can understand that, can't you?"

"I wish I could help out," she said. "But like I said, Larry is right. This is my career we're talking about. My pension."

"Say no more. I get it."

We heard sounds coming from the other room: Raucous cheering and then the loud blaring of rock music. Jerry had finished tinkering with his computer and started playing back the streamed video of the Burning Man Festival.

"Jerry, you want to turn that down some?"

The music got louder. I laughed. "Let's go out on the lawn, it's probably cooler anyway."

I got up, opened the front door and stood to one side so that Darlene and Donato could leave first. Night had fallen, but the porch lamp was off. I flipped the switch and the front yard turned into an odd blend of light and shadow.

Donato stepped out onto the porch and stretched his tall frame. Suddenly he stiffened and twitched. A millisecond later a POP came from somewhere far away. I felt my stomach flip over. Donato grunted, as though he'd heard something funny, fell against the porch post and then rolled out onto the cool evening grass. Dark blood flowed out from the side of his head and ran down onto my L.A. Rams sweatshirt.

I grabbed at the back of Darlene's blouse, but she was already moving, flinging her open purse away, going down the lawn with a 9mm in her hand, screaming at the top of her lungs.