Hour of the Assassins (46 page)

Caine pressed the seat button and adjusted the seat to an upright position. Harris crushed out a cigarette and straightened his tie.

“Now listen. When we land, you are not to say anything to the reporters. Not a word, get it?” Harris said.

Caine nodded, but he scarcely heard him. His mind was busy with other plans. It was all a matter of timing, he thought. The only chance he had was to move so quickly that they wouldn't have the time to react. His best assets were that he was willing to die and they weren't and that their own secretiveness and bureaucracy would slow down their lines of communication. He would have to complete the job before they even knew what had happened.

The plane made a wide turn over Westchester, the single-family rooftops forming a neat Monopoly board pattern as the plane came in. Just below him he could see the oval green of the Hollywood Park racetrack. Sunlight glinted off the El Segundo oil refinery, looking somewhat unfinished, like the ruins of a vanished industrial civilisation. The air was hazy with smog that misted from the brown Santa Monica hills to the white-capped waves beyond the shore. There was a slight bounce and the rumble of the tires on the runway, his body lurching forward as the brakes were applied.

Caine and Harris were the first ones let off the plane. They walked side by side through the connecting tunnel to the terminal gate. At the mouth of the tunnel he could see a jumble of reporters and photographers, flashbulbs popping, behind a police cordon. Standing at the the foot of the gate to receive him were Chuck Powell, a southerner with a bland “good-ole-boy” expression and blow-dryed hair, who was the Company's public spokesman; Smiley Gallagher, wearing a rumpled suit and a beatific smile on his pudgy face; and two unsmiling types with beefy torsos straining at their dark suits, who were obviously there for muscle.

“Make it look good, kiddo,” Harris hissed and smiled at the crowd.

“What do I get if I do, Bob? A berth on the
Good Ship Dollipop
?” Caine remarked.

They were engulfed by Powell, Gallagher, and the Company men, who formed a ring around Caine, reinforced by a flying wedge of LAPD cops. They moved rapidly through the throng of newsmen and wide-eyed spectators that ran alongside the cortege. A noisy jumble of voices shouted questions about Mendoza and the CIA and Powell and Harris kept snapping, “No comment! No comment!” as they shoved their way through the melee. Caine glanced quickly around as they neared the down escalator to the street level. In all this crowd and with all the cameras he didn't think they would shoot. The escalator was his best shot, because it funneled the crowd and minimized the number of people in front of him. A cop and one of the shields got on in front of Caine, with Harris, Smiley, and Powell right behind.

Caine stepped onto the escalator and Harris moved onto the same step. As they glided down, Caine took a deep breath and shifted slightly, but something alerted Harris and he took hold of Caine's jacket lapel.

“Don't do anything stupid, Johnny,” Harris whispered.

“I warned you—” Caine began and started his move.

He locked Harris's hand to his jacket with his right hand and smashed the base of his left palm against the outside of Harris's elbow, breaking it. Harris screamed.

Caine slipped past the shield in front as the lead cop began to turn around. Caine's foot caught him in the chest, knocking him down into the crowd in front. They tumbled like bowling pins and the escalator was clogged with screaming people and tangled limbs. Caine vaulted over the handrail and began sliding down the slick metal incline beside the escalator. A shot rang out near his ear and he was running and sliding down the incline amid the panicked shouts and popping flashbulbs.

He leaped to the ground and dodged through the crowd, knocking people aside. Someone was shouting “Stop him!” and he crashed into a businessman carrying a briefcase and a valise. They tumbled to the ground in a tangle, the businessman cursing loudly, and then Caine was up and running. He glanced briefly back over his shoulder. The second shield and one of the cops had reached the foot of the escalator and had snapped into a two-handed firing position, but people were in the way and they held their fire. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted one of the gray-uniformed airport security guards moving to head him off and he ran even harder, bursting through the open doorway to the street, crowded with double-parked cars unloading.

A middle-aged woman in a Chevy station wagon was seated behind the wheel, while another woman was getting out of the front seat. Caine shoved the woman behind the wheel over, leaped into the driver's seat, and slammed the car door.

“Don't move, lady, or I'll kill you,” he snapped at the startled woman, his eyes glittering murderously as he started the car.

“Who are you?” she asked in a quavering voice, her eyes wide in terror.

“Shut up, goddamnit!” he growled urgently. He put the car into gear and pulled into the heavy traffic flow. He turned around and saw a couple of cops and the second shield running after them on the sidewalk. Another cop jumped into a taxi, but it was momentarily blocked by the traffic.

“Take it easy, lady,” Caine ordered, noting a movement out of the corner of his eye as he picked up speed. He knew he would have to switch cars as soon as possible. It was only a matter of seconds before they had an APB out on him and the vehicle. He took the turn off to Sepulveda Boulevard and raced through the light, nearly sideswiping a van. Then they were speeding down Lincoln Boulevard, weaving in and out of traffic, angry drivers blowing their horns and gesticulating obscenely at them.

He spotted a line of taxis outside the Airport Marina Hotel and suddenly pulled over with a screech of brakes. He leaped out, stuck his fist in his jacket pocket as though it were a gun, and told her to take off. She hardly needed urging, and with a last frightened glance at him she moved over to the driver's seat and pulled quickly away.

Caine ran across Lincoln Boulevard, just beating a wave of oncoming cars and jumped into the first cab. The Chicano driver started to move and leisurely flicked on the meter. Caine told him there was a C-note in it for him if he got him to Hollywood in fifteen minutes.

“You got it,
hombre
,” the driver shouted happily and gunned the engine as if he were on the starting line at Indy.

The cab leaped forward and the driver stopped to turn onto Manchester, as a police car tore down Lincoln, its siren wailing like a voice of doom. The cab sped down Manchester and headed north on La Cienega, over Baldwin Hills. The oil pumps scattered over the brown hills relentlessly bobbed up and down like giant mechanical insects feeding on the vast corpse of the city. Oil and money, that's all it was ever about, Caine thought bitterly as the taxi came over the rise. The city spread out before him, swathed in a smoky white shroud of smog, as though the city were burning from an unseen fire.

As the taxi weaved through the heavy traffic on La Cienega, Caine checked his watch, trying to compute how much time he had before Wasserman and C.J. got the news. The taxi radio was tuned to hard rock music, and fearful of a news broadcast, Caine told the driver to shut it off and concentrate on his driving. The Chicano glanced reproachfully at Caine in the rearview mirror as he turned into the broad expanse of Wilshire Boulevard.

Caine told the driver to slow down on Wilshire and the driver nodded, as they drove past the expensive stores and office buildings. The last thing he needed now was to get stopped for speeding. He ordered the driver to pull over at the Bank of America branch and wait for him, jumping out of the cab before the Chicano had time to object.

He walked directly to the counter without glancing around at the moderately crowded bank and signed the safety-deposit slip. The attractive blond teller, barely out of her teens, verified his signature and buzzed him in. As they fitted the two keys into the locks, he thanked his lucky stars for the hunch that had prompted him to rent the box before he had gone down to Peru.

Carrying the metal box, he followed the teller to the small cubicle. As she turned away, he locked the door and sat down with a sigh of relief. In a way a safety-deposit cubicle is the last sanctuary left to Western man, the one remaining place where his privacy is inviolate, he thought. He opened the box and took out the big S & W .44 Magnum revolver and cracked open the cylinder. He loaded it with the large and lethal-looking Remington hollow-head bullets and placed a handful of cartridges in his sagging jacket pocket. He took the $2,000 he had left in the box and put it in his inside pocket and stuck the heavy gun in his belt, buttoning his jacket over the bulge. At last he was ready for the Starfish, he thought grimly. He signaled for the teller and they returned the box to his slot. She wished him a good day and he mechanically returned her smile as he headed for the door.

Through the glass door he spotted a black-and-white police car stopped by the taxi, and without breaking stride, he turned on his heel, snapping his fingers as though he had forgotten something, and walked calmly to the side door to the parking lot. He walked through the lot away from Wilshire and turned down a palm-lined sidestreet. He walked a long block, then turned up Western Avenue and stopped at a coin-operated newspaper box. His own face grinned up at him from the front page of the
Herald-Examiner
, under the banner headline:

CIA INVOLVED IN MENDOZA DEATH?

He didn't need to buy a paper to know that they were playing it cagey. The question mark at the end of the headline told him that the editors were worried about libel and security violation charges. They were probably relying on carefully worded innuendo to handle the story, he decided. He felt naked, standing there on a busy street with his face on the front page like that. He walked away and went into the big Thrifty Drugstore on the corner.

He bought a pair of sunglasses, a silly-looking canvas porkpie hat, and a cheap blue blazer. It was essential that he alter the image now that the APB was obviously out on him. He walked into a nearby restaurant and headed directly for the men's room, where he put on the hat and sunglasses and changed jackets, putting the money and bullets into the blazer pockets. He left the white suit jacket hanging on the hook of the cubicle door. Whoever found it would assume that it had been left by an absentminded customer. He left the restaurant and mingled with the lunchtime crowd on Western until he was able to hail a taxi.

He had the leering driver drop him off about two blocks away from the massage parlor. As he strolled down Western, he kept checking the street. There was no problem in being open about it: furtive glances were normal in this seedy district. He hesitated as he neared the massage parlor. The beige Mercedes was parked in front and he could see Freddie's hulking outline behind the wheel. Wasserman must have been tipped and was planning to get out, he surmised. He had gotten there just in time, he thought as he approached the car, checking the street one last time. It looked okay and then he exhaled slowly. Freddie's nose was buried in a comic book. That was the break he needed, he thought, and walked up to the open window on the driver's side. Caine pulled the S & W from his belt and stuck the muzzle into Freddie's ear.

“Don't even blink, Freddie baby,” Caine said.

Freddie started to turn his massive head. Caine jammed the muzzle harder into Freddie's ear and the big man froze.

“This is a .44 Magnum, Freddie baby, so don't even breathe. Now, reach very slowly over to the ignition with your left hand and, using just two fingers, pull out the key and carefully hold it out the window,” Caine said.

Freddie did as he was told and Caine pocketed the keys. Then he ordered Freddie out of the car, keeping the gun aimed at Freddie's head and standing clear of the door, in case Freddie decided to try some heroics.

“Wasserman inside?” Caine asked.

“No, man. He's left for the day,” Freddie said.

“You're a lousy liar, Freddie baby,” Caine retorted, and jamming the muzzle against Freddie's spine, he marched him into the empty massage parlor. The reception room was still lined with the same photos and somehow this time they made Caine think of Fong and the Venus flytrap. They'd caught him twice with sex. There wouldn't be a third time, he vowed savagely.

“You're making a big mistake, man,” Freddie's voice rumbled as they stepped through the side door into the dim corridor to Wasserman's office.

“Don't be stupid. This isn't one of your comic books,” Caine whispered, easily hiding himself behind Freddie's giant bulk as they posed before the closed-circuit television camera. Caine prodded Freddie again with the gun.

“Open up. It's me,” Freddie said.

For a long moment they stood there in the silent corridor, waiting. The steel door slid open with a faint hydraulic hiss. Caine prodded Freddie ahead of him as they walked into Wasserman's office.

CHAPTER 20

Wasserman was seated at the computer terminal as they entered. He was wearing an expensive blue blazer, white slacks, and an open-necked floral-print shirt. He looked like one of those Beverly Hills yachtsmen, who do most of their sailing by pushing their olives from one side of their martinis to the other. An open attaché case stuffed with papers lay on the big Chippendale desk. It was apparent to Caine that he had been tipped and was clearing out. Wasserman half turned with annoyance to look at Freddie and his eyes opened wide with shock to see Caine standing there. He trotted out his benign grin, but the smile faded when he saw the gun.

“You can stop dropping files now and log off,” Caine said and was rewarded with a stupefied expression from Wasserman.

“I don't know what you're talking—” Wasserman began in a quavering old man's treble.

“Shut up and do as you're told,” Caine snapped, gesturing with the gun. He ordered Freddie to lie facedown on the floor and told Wasserman to tie him up.