Indigo Slam: An Elvis Cole Novel (15 page)

Pike and I left for LAX early the next morning, leaving the apartment as the sun was torching the eastern sky. That part of the morning, the air was still and cool, and we made good time; the southbound traffic moved easily, even though dense with commuters from the Simi and Antelope Valleys grinding toward the Los Angeles basin. I said, “We’re just another couple of guys on their way to work.”

Pike said, “Uh-huh.”

The Beretta autoloader was on the floorboard behind our seats. I had the Dan Wesson, and Pike had his Python and maybe even an MX missile. Just another couple of guys.

We left the San Diego Freeway at Howard Hughes Parkway and dropped south through Westchester to LAX. The scanner was due in at nine that morning, and, according to the dispatcher in New York, was to be held at the airport for pickup at the Small Package Delivery office in the baggage claim area. Being a small package, it would come down the carousel with the luggage, where a United employee would pick it up, then take it to be held in the SPD office until it was claimed by someone from the
Journal
. That person might be Clark, but more probably it would be someone that we couldn’t recognize, so we had to be in position to identify the package and follow its movements.

We left Pike’s Jeep on the arriving flights level as close to baggage claim as we could, then went into the SPD office. An attractive African-American woman was behind the counter there, stacking small packages for a guy in a gray express delivery uniform. I said, “Excuse me. Could you tell me which carousel the luggage from United flight five will come down?”

“That would be carousel four. But that flight isn’t due in until nine. You’re awful early.”

I smiled at her. “The wife’s coming in and I miss her.” The wife.

“Oh, isn’t that nice.”

The people in the terminal ebbed and flowed with the early morning flight schedule of the big cross-country flights to New York or Miami or Chicago, then grew steadily as the number of flights increased. At eight-thirty we separated and positioned ourselves with a view to all points of egress in case Clark showed. He didn’t. A family of Hare Krishnas came through snapping finger chimes and offering pamphlets for money, moving from person to person until they reached Pike, and then they hurried past. Strong survival instinct.

At exactly nine A.M. the arrival monitor indicated that flight five had landed, and a few minutes later the carousel kicked on and luggage began sliding down its ramp. The fourth piece down was a white cardboard box taped with a bright yellow airbill. Pike drifted to the carousel, watched the package pass, then came back.
“Pacific Rim Weekly Journal.”

Twenty minutes later, almost all of the crowd and luggage was gone. The attractive African-American woman appeared, and took the package into the SPD office. I said, “Watch for the package, not the people.”

People carrying packages came and went through the SPD office, but none of them had the white box.

We waited some more.

Pike said, “Maybe you scared them off.”

Nothing like support from the home team.

We were still waiting at sixteen minutes after ten when an Asian guy went into the office and claimed the white box with the yellow airbill. I looked at Pike. “Ha.”

We followed him out to a plain white van, then out of the airport to the San Diego Freeway, then south. It took almost an hour and forty-five minutes to reach Long Beach, but the white van didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and neither were we. Pike said, “Paid by the hour.” Cynic.

The white van left the freeway at the Long Beach Municipal Airport, then cruised north along the west side of the airport into an area of warehouses where he turned into the parking lot between two enormous modern storage buildings. The buildings were painted a plain beige and bore no identifying signs. We cruised past to the next building, then turned back, slowing long enough to see our guy carrying the white box into the north building. I said, “Want to bet Clark is in there?”

Pike shook his head. “We could shoot our way in and grab him.”

You never know when he’s kidding.

The street was lined with similar buildings, most of which were occupied by carpet wholesalers or appliance outlets or metalworking shops. We parked across the street and trotted back, Pike going around the north side of the building, me strolling across the parking lot. The building was divided into sections, with offices in the front and three big truck doors evenly spaced along the parking lot, and no windows. All the better in which to do crime. The people door at the front was heavy and industrial, and it was also closed. The guy from the van had entered a door on the side of the building, but that door was closed, too. In fact, all the doors were closed. Maybe the Roswell aliens were in there.

I had just reached a row of Dumpsters at the rear of the building when the people door kicked open and the guy from the white van came out with three other men, the four of them laughing and yucking it up. One of the men I had never seen before, but the other two had leaned on me outside the
Journal
. Pike drifted up beside me, and we watched as the four men climbed into the van and drove away. “The middle two guys fronted me yesterday at the newspaper.”

Pike didn’t respond. Like it didn’t matter to him one way or another.

I said, “Anything on the other side?”

“Two doors, both locked. No windows.”

“I’m thinking Clark’s inside. There might be other people inside, too, but with four bodies out, now might be our best shot.”

Pike said, “We could always just call the police.”

I frowned at him.

“Just kidding.” Then he looked at me. “What if Clark won’t come?”

I looked back at the door. “Clark will come if I have to put a gun to his head. He will come and we’ll sit down with those kids and we’ll figure out what to do next.” I think I said it more for me than for Pike. “But he will come.”

“Optimist.”

We drew our guns, and went through the side door into a long colorless hall that smelled of Clorox. The hall branched left and straight. Pike looked at me and I gestured straight.

We moved past a series of small empty offices to the door at the end of the hall, then stopped to listen. Still no sounds, but the Clorox smell was stronger. Pike whispered, “Stinks.”

“Maybe they’re dissolving bodies.”

Pike looked at me. “Acid to cut litho plates.” I guess he just knows these things.

We eased open the door and stepped into a room that was wide and deep and two stories high, lit by fluorescent tubes that filled the space with silver light. A lithograph machine sat in the center of the floor, surrounded by long cafeteria tables that had been lined with boxes of indigo ink and acid wells and printers’ supplies. A high-end Power Mac was up and running, anonymous screen-saver kittens slowly chasing each other. The scanner was still in its box, the box on the floor by the Macintosh. A color copier was set up on one side of the litho machine, and three front-loading dryers stood in a row against the far wall. The smell of oil-based ink was so strong it was like walking into a fog. I said, “Clark’s going to print, all right.”

“Yeah, but what?”

Pike nodded toward a row of wooden crates stacked on pallets near the door. The crates were labeled, but the printing wasn’t Arabic. Pike said, “Russian.”

The top crate had been opened and you could see blocks of paper wrapped in white plastic. One of the blocks had been slit open to reveal the paper inside. The sheets were something like eighteen inches by twenty-four, and appeared to be a high-grade linen embedded with bright orange security fibers. The sheets also looked watermarked, though I couldn’t make out the images. I said, “Our money doesn’t have orange security fibers.”

Pike drifted to one of the long tables.

“You think they’re going to counterfeit Russian money?”

Pike reached the table. “Not Russian, and not ours.”

Pike held up what looked like a photo negative of a series of dollar bills, only when I got closer I could see that they weren’t dollars. The denomination was 50,000, and the portrait wasn’t of Washington or Franklin or even Lenin. It was Ho Chi Minh. Pike’s mouth twitched. “They’re going to print Vietnamese money.”

I put down the negative. “We still have to find Clark.”

We went back along the hall toward the front of the warehouse, passing more empty offices. The hall reached a kind of lobby, then turned right to more offices, and as I passed the first office I saw a small camp cot against one wall, covered by a rumpled sleeping bag. “In here.”

We went in. “Guess he’s supposed to stay here until the job’s done.”

Clark had been here, but he wasn’t here now. An overnight bag sat on the floor beside the cot, and a cheap card table with a single folding chair stood against the opposite wall. A little radio sat on the table, along with a few toiletry items and a couple of printers’ magazines. Diet Coke cans were on the floor, along with crumpled bags from Burger King and In-N-Out Burger and a large bottle of Maalox and a mostly used tube of cherry-flavored Tums. The room smelled of sweat and body odor and maybe something worse. A candle and a box of matches and a simple rubber tube waited on the table. Drug paraphernalia. I said, “Goddamn. The sonofabitch is probably out scoring more dope.”

Pike said, “Elvis.”

Pike was standing by the overnight bag, holding a rumpled envelope. I was hoping that it might be something that would lead us to Clark, but it wasn’t. The envelope was addressed to Clark Haines in Tucson, and its return address was from the Tucson Physicians Exchange. It was dated almost three months ago, just before the Hewitts had left Tucson for Los Angeles.

I felt cold when I opened it, and colder still when I read it.

The letter was from one Dr. Barbara Stevenson, oncologist, to one Mr. Clark Haines, patient, confirming test results that showed Mr. Haines to be suffering from cancerous tumors spread throughout his large and small intestines. The letter outlined a course of treatment, and noted that Mr. Haines had not returned any of the doctor’s phone calls about this matter. The doctor went on to state that she understood that people sometimes had trouble in dealing with news of this nature, but that it had been her experience that a properly supervised treatment program could enhance and maintain an acceptable quality of life, even in terminal cases such as Clark’s.

The medical group had even been thoughtful enough to enclose a little pamphlet titled
Living with Your Cancer
.

I guess Jasper was right; Clark Hewitt was more than he seemed. I looked at Pike. “Clark’s dying.”

Pike said, “Yes.”

That’s when a hard-looking man with an AK-47 stepped through the door and said, “He’s not the only one.”

He was an older guy with a hard face that looked as if it had been chipped from amber. He waved the AK. “Hands on heads, fingers laced.” The accent was thick, but we could understand him.

I said, “The building is surrounded by the United States Secret Service. Put down the gun and we won’t have to kill you.”

“Lace your fingers.” I guess he didn’t think it was funny.

He took a half step backward into the hall, and when he did Pike shuffled one step to the right. When Pike moved, the older guy dropped into a half crouch, bringing the AK smoothly to his shoulder, right elbow up above ninety degrees, left elbow crooked straight down beneath the AK’s magazine, the rifle’s comb snug against his cheek in a perfect offhand shooting stance. Perfect and practiced, as if he had grown up with a gun like this and knew exactly what to do with it. I said, “Joe.”

Pike stopped.

The older guy yelled down the hall without taking his eyes from us. A door crashed and Walter Tran, Junior, came running up, excited and sweating, expensive shoes slipping on the vinyl tiles. When he saw me, his eyes got big and he barked, “Holy shit!” He clawed at his clothes until he came up with a little silver .380 that he promptly dropped.

I said, “Relax, Walter. We’re not going anywhere.”

He scooped up the .380, fumbling to get the safety off and pointing it at the older guy who snapped at him in Vietnamese and slapped it out of his hands. The old man shifted to English. “You’re going to shoot yourself.”

I said, “Walter, take a breath.”

Walter Junior pointed at me. “This one was the guy at the paper. I’ve never seen the other one.” Pike, reduced to “other” status.

The older guy narrowed his eyes again. “He said they were with the Secret Service.”

Walter Junior said, “Holy shit,” again, and ran back down the hall.

“I was kidding. We’re private investigators.”

The older guy shrugged. “Gives the boy something to do.”

The door crashed once more and Walter Junior was back, skidding to a stop just ahead of Nguyen Dak and two of the shotgunners who had fronted me at the
Journal
. I said, “We could sell tickets.”

Nobody laughed at that one either.

Nguyen Dak was wearing a fine wool suit that had probably cost three grand. He looked at me. “We told you to stay away.”

“Clark Hewitt has three children, and I have them. A bunch of Russians from Seattle are looking for Clark because they want to kill him. That means they’re looking for his kids, too.”

“You should have listened.” Guess none of it mattered to him.

“We’re here because we’re working for Hewitt’s children. We don’t care about the printing.”

I guess that didn’t matter to him either.

They made us lie facedown with our fingers laced behind our heads, then searched us as if they were looking for a microphone or a transmitter. I guess maybe they were. Dak positioned the two shotgunners in the front corners of the room so they could cover us without shooting each other. The guy with the AK took our guns and our wallets, tossed them to Dak, then tied our hands behind our backs with electrical utility wire. Dak called him Mon. When our hands were tied, they lifted us into the two folding chairs. I said, “It started out like a pretty good day.”

Dak made a gesture and one of the shotguns punched me on the side of the head. Seattle all over again.

Dak looked through my wallet first, then Pike’s, then handed them to the guy with the AK. “Private investigators.”

“I told you that.”

“You told this gentleman you are with the Secret Service.”

“Bad joke.”

Dak stared at me some more.

I said, “We came here to find Clark Hewitt. We know he’s working with you, and we know he’s been here.”

Dak lit a Marlboro and looked at me through the smoke. The guy with the AK said something in Vietnamese, but Dak didn’t respond. He said, “We now have a problem.”

“I kinda guessed.”

“Who do you really work for?”

“Clark Hewitt’s children.”

More cigarette, more smoke. “I think maybe the FBI.”

I shrugged at him. “If that’s true, your problem’s bigger than you think.” You could tell he knew that, and didn’t like it. “If we’re feds, then other feds know where we are. If they know where we are, and we turn up dead, you’re history.”

Dak clenched his jaw and waved the cigarette. “I told you to stay away, and you did not. You came onto our property, and you have seen things that you should not have seen.”

I said, “I don’t give a damn what you’re going to print, or why, or what you’re going to do with it. I came here because Clark and his children are in danger.”

The AK spoke Vietnamese again, louder this time, and Dak shouted back at him, the other Viets looking from one to the other like some kind of tennis match was taking place, maybe yelling about killing us, maybe saying murder us clean right here in the room, then sweat it out with the cops and pretend they didn’t know what happened or how or why. They were still going through it when Clark Hewitt came in with Walter Senior and another younger guy. Clark was wearing a cheap cotton shirt and baggy trousers over busted-out Kmart canvas shoes, and he had the vague, out-of-focus look of someone who’d just shot up.

Clark saw us and said, “Oh, dear.”

Dak’s eyes flashed angrily, and he jerked the cigarette. “Get him out of here.”

The younger guy was pulling Clark back into the hall when I said, “The Russians are in LA, Clark. I’ve got your kids stashed, but they’re in danger.”

Clark jerked his arm away and came back into the room. “Where are they?”

“At a friend’s.”

Dak told the younger guy to get Clark out of there again, and when the younger guy grabbed his arm, Clark swatted at him. “Get away from me!”

I looked back at Dak. “I’ve got his children, god-damnit. Shooters from Seattle are down here looking for him, and he knows it’s a fact.” I looked back at Clark. “The Russians killed Wilson Brownell, and that means they know everything that he knows.”

Clark’s face worked. “They killed Wil?”

The AK screamed again, and this time he shoved past the others and leveled the gun at us. When he did, Clark shrieked, “No!” and lurched forward, shoving him away. Both Walters and the other Viets swarmed around him, and Dak slapped him hard, twice. Clark didn’t quit. He punched at Dak, throwing awkward punches with nothing on them, but he kept throwing them until a Walter hung onto each arm and a third man had him around the neck. Clark was just full of surprises.

Pike said, “Payback’s going to hurt.”

The three men pulled Clark out of the way, and Dak waved at us, saying, “Kill them.”

Clark said, “If you kill them I won’t print your god-damned dong.” Vietnamese money is called dong.

Dak’s face went dark, and he shook Clark’s arm. “You agreed to print for us and you will make the money!”

Clark said, “Like hell I will.” When he said it a little bit of spit hit Dak on the shirt.

The AK had had enough with all the talk. He pushed past Dak and ran at us again, barking in Vietnamese. When he did, Dak yelled “No!” and grabbed him from behind.

Dak and the AK and the other two older guys shoved and screamed at one another, and I knew what it was about. They were revolutionaries, but they were also businessmen with families and property and things they would lose if they were discovered. They were shouting about killing us, and it was clear that they wanted to. Pike tensed beside me, probably thinking that if the younger shotgunners looked at the older guys he would come out of the chair and risk the charge, maybe hit the near guy hard enough to knock free the gun, maybe get the gun and do some damage even with his hands tied behind his back.

Helluva morning. Drive down to Orange County to die.

I said, “Clark, whatever Brownell knew, the Russians know. They’ll have your address and phone number, and that gives them a place to start looking. If I can find you, they can find you, too.”

Clark was nodding, trying to hear me past all the yelling. A faint sheen of sweat covered his face, and he looked pale and more than a little nauseated. I thought that even with the dope whatever was eating him up must hurt like hell.

I said, “I’ve got the kids stashed in a safe place, but you’re going to have to do something. Either go back into the program or get out of town.”

Clark was looking from me to the Viets, me to the Viets, over and over again. “I need this money.” Whatever they were paying him to do the job.

“Clark, what good’s the money if they murder your children?”

All the screaming had peaked, and Dak jerked the AK away from the other guy and used it to shove Clark toward the door, screaming, “We have the paper now, we have the machines! Go into the other room and print the dong!”

But Clark didn’t go into the other room. He grabbed hold of the AK, and shouted, “I’m not going anywhere! If you kill them I won’t print your money.”

Dak was breathing so hard he sounded like a bellows.

One of the other guys ran up beside him and tried to wrestle the AK away but Dak shouted a single Vietnamese word and the man stopped. Now they were both breathing loud, and Clark was breathing loud, too. Clark grabbed Dak by the front of his jacket and shook him. Clark’s face was so pale I thought he might keel over. He shouted, “My children are in danger and these men are taking care of them.” He looked back at me. “If they let you go, you won’t tell, will you?”

“No.”

“You won’t stop me from printing the dong?”

“Clark, if they let us go, we’ll do everything we can to help.” I wanted Clark Hewitt to get his money.

The other man shouted and Dak raised the gun. Dak was shouting, too, and with all the shouting I thought that no one could understand anything and that the moment had taken on an inevitable life of its own. I thought that Dak would shoot right through Clark, the 7.62mm bullets ripping through Clark into me and Pike and ending us all, but then the shouting stopped and Dak muttered a single coarse Vietnamese curse, and he looked at me with an expression of infinite weariness. He said, “All right.”

He told Dak to cut us loose.

My heart began to beat again.