Mission Canyon (26 page)

The screener held up a bag of Gummi Peckers, saying, ‘‘Breakfast?’’

The wand bleated over my brassiere. The guard said, ‘‘What’s your underwear made of, detonator cord?’’

My head started racketing again. How, I thought, could this day get any worse?

The screener handed me the giant dildo labeled T-REX. She said, ‘‘Would you please demonstrate this?’’

The flight landed on time at LAX, and I hiked to catch my connection to Santa Barbara. The whiff of jet exhaust contributed to the ache in my head and body. I felt as if railroad spikes had been driven into my eye sockets. I tried not to look down at my clothes. At the Las Vegas airport I’d bought a change of attire and was now wearing royal blue shorts and a matching T-shirt that blared, I’M WINNING MY GRANDKIDS’ INHERITANCE! I headed for the gate, where I’d catch a bus to the commuter terminal. It would be a twenty-minute hop up the coast to Santa Barbara.

I was reading a departures monitor when I felt it, the electric twang of his presence. I looked around and Mickey Yago was standing three feet away, hands in the pockets of his black jeans, gold ringlets shining in the sun, his blade of a face aimed at mine. A crackle went through me.

He hitched the strap of a computer case over his shoulder. ‘‘Let’s walk.’’

‘‘I have a plane to catch.’’ I started toward the gate.

He took my arm. ‘‘Your connection ain’t for an hour.’’ His hand was cool, his voice a rasp.

‘‘I’ll tell the gate agent you’re harassing me. They’ll call security,’’ I said.

‘‘And I’ll tell security you’re the one who pickpocketed me.’’ His face was hard. ‘‘Lots of that going around.’’

He must have talked to Cherry Lopez.

He said, ‘‘My wallet’s in your shopping bag. And a dime bag of coke.’’

I looked into my Dazzling Delicates sack. Beneath the tissue paper was a man’s wallet and a Baggie filled with white powder. My vision turned red. Yago’s hand curled around my arm and he led me away from the gate.

How did he know I would be here? Only ticketed passengers had access to this part of the terminal. Was this a show—an exhibition of his ability to find me? If so, he was impressing me.

He walked through the frosted-glass doors of the airline’s business-class lounge, flashing a membership card to the woman at the front desk. Inside, the leather and pale wood made the place look like a Nordic cocktail lounge. Yago’s stride was unhurried. He led me to a sofa by the windows and sat down.

‘‘Blackburn thinks he can ignore me,’’ he said. ‘‘He’s wrong.’’

I stared at him. His face lacked any hint of humor, liveliness, or interest in me. This encounter wasn’t meant to impress me. It was a message to Jesse.

‘‘He missed the deadline.’’

‘‘What do you want?’’

‘‘For him to do what I say.’’ He picked at a bowl of nuts on the coffee table. ‘‘He shouldn’t ignore me. Cal Diamond ignored me, and he paid.’’

I said nothing, running my gaze over Yago’s sharp face. What was he getting at, aside from telling me that he was blackmailing Diamond?

I said, ‘‘Diamond had a heart attack because he was stressed about trying to keep his swindles secret.’’

And dammit, one side of his mouth went up, the neat brown goatee curling with it. The smirk was an implication. He meant that Jesse was hiding something.

I bluffed. ‘‘Don’t bother playing the game with me. I know everything.’’

He leaned in. His black T-shirt smelled of last night’s weed. ‘‘You got balls, but you can’t lie for shit. You don’t know jack.’’

Attitude . . . ‘‘I know Brand was stealing from Mako and he inadvertently ripped off i-heist’s slush fund.’’

‘‘I love lawyer words. Inadvertently, let me write that down.’’

‘‘And Kenny Rudenski covered it up, hid it all from his father and the authorities.’’

‘‘He’s a scared little boy, Kenny.’’ He leaned back, stretching out his legs. ‘‘Franklin Brand don’t have the money no more. But your dude, he got money out of Mako because of Brand. I’m weighing it up; that money should be mine. I want it.’’

I said nothing.

‘‘I told Blackburn, he gives it to me or he pays. He didn’t give it to me, so now I need something else from him.’’

‘‘What?’’

‘‘A million.’’

He had to see the shock in my eyes. I didn’t know how to hide it.

He pulled out his laptop and casually booted it up. ‘‘But I don’t figure he can get it. So I’m giving him an alternative. He does me some favors. That’s all, favors. Until they add up to a million bucks. He does that, I’ll call it even. I’m an easygoing guy.’’

He typed on the laptop. ‘‘I love computers. This is such a better business than blow. Dealing is hard work. You ever been in sales? It sucks. Hustle here, hustle there . . . but this computer shit, you just sit back and watch the bits fly. No inventory, no sales force, it’s a dream.’’

He was hooking the laptop to a cellular phone with a cable.

I said, ‘‘And if Jesse doesn’t do these favors for you?’’

‘‘He starts paying in other ways.’’

‘‘How?’’

‘‘With his friends. With you.’’

My throat was dry.

He said, ‘‘I know everything about you. I know where you’re going to be at any moment. I can touch you in a dozen different ways, without ever laying my own hands on you.’’

He hit a key. I heard the familiar ping of an e-mail message being sent.

‘‘To you, babe. You’ll enjoy it.’’

He took a white grease pencil out of his computer case and started writing on the tabletop. ‘‘Blackburn’s gonna need this. It’s an account name and number, sort code and transmittal information.’’

My stomach quivered. He wrote,
Segue
, followed by several sets of numbers.

‘‘I’ll need the same kind of information from him, about his law firm’s client trust account,’’ he said.

He wanted Jesse to launder i-heist’s money. I said, ‘‘He won’t do it.’’

‘‘Yeah, he will.’’

He picked up one of the desk phones from an end table and punched in a credit card number. ‘‘The call’s on me. What’s his home phone?’’

I said nothing. His face sharpened.

‘‘I can get it in two minutes. Save us both the time, babe.’’

I relented, telling him. He dialed and handed me the phone.

‘‘Give him the information I wrote down.’’

Jesse’s answering machine came on. I repeated the Segue account information. When I hung up, Yago took a napkin and erased the numbers from the table.

‘‘He has twenty-four hours,’’ he said.

‘‘What if I take this information straight to the police?’’

‘‘You won’t.’’ He put the computer back in the case and stood up. ‘‘Come on. Time for you to go to the gate.’’

I sat. This guy was a gamesman. He played with people. He was playing with me now, and I didn’t trust his intentions. He had just passed on information without leaving a trail back to himself, and without leaving any evidence that could be found on me by the police. He had something nasty planned.

‘‘If you want your wallet back, you can get it out of the shopping bag yourself. I’m going to dump the coke in the toilet,’’ I said.

‘‘Dump it? But it’s my gift to you.’’

I sat.

‘‘Fine.’’ He reached into the sack and took the wallet. ‘‘You got thirty seconds.’’

He followed me to the ladies’ room and stood outside the door while I went in. Another woman was at the sink. I waited for her to leave. Using the tissue paper so my fingers didn’t touch it, I lifted the Baggie out and put it in the trash, pushing it down and placing lots of paper towels on top of it.

Yago was outside the door when I emerged. He said, ‘‘Let’s go.’’

He walked me to the gate. Before I started out the door, I said, ‘‘You’re letting me go. What makes you so certain I won’t give this information to the authorities?’’

He smiled. It was a hellacious smile, the equivalent of fingernails being drawn across a chalkboard.

‘‘Because of what you ain’t figured out yet. So I guess I’d better tell you.’’ Hands into his pockets. ‘‘That hit-and -run wreck, the one’s giving your man a permanent hard-on to see Brand’s ass in prison?’’

My radar was going. ‘‘What about it?’’

‘‘Everybody has the thing backward. All thinking it was about the kid from the start-up.’’

Over the PA, I heard my flight being called. I didn’t move. Yago kept smiling. General Custer, Son of the Morning Star, ghost of a killer.

‘‘Brand didn’t care about that kid. He had the stock scam all sewn up. The wreck wasn’t about the kid who got killed.’’

My vision was pinging.

Yago said, ‘‘You and your man ain’t ever figured it. Sandoval wasn’t the one was supposed to get dead.’’

No. My chest tightened. ‘‘Why?’’

‘‘I told you that, I’d spoil the fun. But if you spill everything to the cops, they’re liable to put it all together, and then things will get kinky real fast.’’ He shifted his weight. ‘‘Know how rough it is for a crip in prison?’’

I stared, wordless. His smile broadened and he said, ‘‘Don’t miss your plane.’’

He watched me go out the door and down the steps to the bus. When I climbed aboard I looked back at the terminal and saw him standing at the window. His gold ringlets buzzed in the sunlight.

I sat like a zombie while the bus clattered toward the commuter terminal, scuttling past the gravid, howling bulk of a triple-seven. I looked at my hands. They were shaking.

Spoil the
fun
?

Jesse . . . Brand was after Jesse. He had wanted to kill him from the start. The bus pulled into the commuter terminal, a cheap and crowded portable building. Inside a TV was on, and people sat around eating vending-machine food.

I heard an announcement. ‘‘Will Santa Barbara passenger Delaney please come to the desk?’’

That did it. Mickey had a surprise planned for me, I knew it—whether I got on the plane or not. But what? I went into the bathroom. In the corner stall I dumped out the contents of my purse. My temples pounded. There was a knife.

I took a breath. I had to get out of here. And I had to presume that Yago or his buddies were watching back at the main terminal, in case I came back. I had to get out of the airport without them spotting me.

I needed a disguise. Where was that Diana Ross wig when you needed it? I changed out of my bright blue Vegas clothing and back into the red dress, putting the Zero-to-Horny T-shirt over the top again to hide the stain. Then, ferreting in the shopping bag, I pulled out the Lickalicious edible body paint. I squirted it on my hand. It was chocolate. I squirted it on my head and massaged it in, turning my toffee-colored hair a sticky brown. It looked ridiculous, but this was L.A. In L.A. ridiculous earns you a second look but not a third, so you can get away with it.

Covering the knife with toilet paper, I dropped it in the trash. I put on my sunglasses and strode outside to catch a bus back to the main terminal. Somebody would be waiting, I had a bad feeling.

The bus pulled up. My sinews felt tighter than piano wire. I climbed the stairs and headed into the terminal, and there, sitting in a chair eating a Baby Ruth, was Win Utley. He was watching the people coming through the door. As he chewed, his chins flubbered and his ginger chin beard wriggled. I stared straight ahead and walked past him with other passengers.

Abruptly he stood up. His mouth moved, words. He had an earpiece in, was talking on the phone. I tried not to speed up or look his way.

They wanted to screw me, to get me arrested. Just to pressure Jesse.

Utley tugged the waistband of his jeans and looked around. He had to be looking for me. I saw him humping toward the desk, agitation on his face. I headed toward the front of the terminal.

Two security men trotted past me, heading back toward the gate. I picked up my pace. I tried not to look up at the ceiling, where the CCTV cameras were. Woman with sticky hair, wearing rude shirt and frantic expression . . . a bored guard might look three times at that.

Then came the sound, the alarm, and guards running. I hustled it. Alarm meant security breach. Alarm meant Win Utley pointing his Baby Ruth in my direction.

It meant the guards stopping me outside, and retracing my steps to the ladies’ room trash cans, and a bag of cocaine, and a knife. I had to get out or I was hosed.

There was a cop at the door of the terminal, talking into his radio, eyeing everybody. I saw him scan the crowd, look my way. My stomach grabbed.

He started waving people outside. I rushed out to the curb and hailed a taxi.

Jesse’s car was parked in front of Adam’s house. I pulled up in the Mustang I’d rented at LAX. I felt dry, dirty, spent. For a moment I stared at the house, my nerves spinning up. How could I break the news without breaking Adam’s heart yet again?

When Adam answered my knock, his face couldn’t hide his perplexity.

‘‘What in the world?’’ he said. ‘‘Is this from the bridal shower?’’

‘‘No, honey, I did it to myself. May I come in before the flies settle on my head?’’

He gestured me in. ‘‘Do you feel as awful as you look?’’

‘‘Worse. I need to speak to Jesse.’’

‘‘He’s out back.’’

On the patio Jesse sat in the sun. There was salsa and barbecued fish and a bottle of wine on the table. Down the hill, the ocean swelled blue. The sun stained the horizon gold.

Jesse looked up. ‘‘Holy crap.’’

‘‘I’ll explain it in chronological order, except for the parts when I was drugged and blacked out. But first I need to speak to you alone.’’

He was using the crutches. He worked himself to his feet and followed me inside to the living room. I stood close and put my hand against his chest.

‘‘The hit-and-run wasn’t about Isaac,’’ I said. ‘‘Brand was after you.’’