The Power Of The Dog (85 page)

No surprises there.

But he is surprised when the blinking red light gets off the 405 at MacArthur Boulevard in Irvine and turns west.

“What the fuck is she doing?” Art says out loud. He tells the pilot, “Pull in on her!”

The pilot shakes his head. “Can’t! Air-traffic control!”

Then Art gets what the fuck she’s doing.

“Goddamnit!”

He calls for ground units to hustle to John Wayne Airport. But the map tells him that there are five potential exits out of the airport, and he’ll be lucky to cover even one of them.

She gets off MacArthur at the airport exit and pulls in to the parking structure.

Art’s helicopter hovers over the 405, north of the airport. It’s his best hope, that she pulled into the airport to block audio surveillance, is getting the location in San Pedro, and will shortly pull back onto the highway.

Or, Art thinks, she’s taking millions of dollars in cash and getting on an airplane. He watches the screen but the blinking red light is just gone.

Nora gets on the cell phone.

“I’m here,” she says.

Raúl gives her an address in nearby Costa Mesa, about two miles away. She pulls out of the structure and turns west on MacArthur, away from the 405, then turns onto Bear Street into the nondescript flat gridiron of Costa Mesa.

She finds it, a small garage on a street full of small warehouses. A man with a Mac-10 machine pistol slung over his arm opens the door and she pulls in. The door closes behind her, and then it’s like the Formula 1 race she once went to with a client—a crew of men instantly jump the car with power tools, take it apart and put the money into Halliburton briefcases and then into the trunk of a black Lexus.

This, she thinks, would be the moment for a rip-off, but none of these men are even tempted. They’re all illegals with family back in Baja and they know that Barrera sicarios are parked in front of their homes with orders to kill everyone inside if the money and the courier don’t leave that garage quickly and safely.

Nora watches them work with the smooth, silent efficiency of a first-class pit crew. The only sound is the whine of power drills, and it takes only thirteen minutes to disassemble the car and reload the money in the Lexus.

The man with the machine pistol hands her a new cell phone.

She calls Raúl. “Done.”

“Give me a color.”

“Blue,” she says. Any other color would mean that she’s being held against her will.

“Go.”

She gets into the Lexus. The garage door opens and she pulls out. Gets back on Bear and ten minutes later she’s back on the 405, heading toward San Pedro. She drives right under a traffic helicopter circling the area.

Art stares at the empty screen.

Nora Hayden, he finally admits to himself, is in the wind.

She knows it, she gets it, she’s driving north into God knows what and now she’s doing it alone. Which is nothing new for Nora—except for her too few years with Parada, she’s been doing it alone her whole life.

But she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to get this done now. Or what’s going to happen. The easiest thing in the world would be to just take the money and keep going, but that won’t get her what she wants.

It’s nighttime as she passes through Carson, its natural-gas drills burning like signal towers in some sort of industrial version of hell. Working the plan, she gets off this time at the LAX exit and calls in.

They have the place for the meet.

An AARCO gas station heading west on the 110 exit.

On the way to San Pedro.

“Give me a color.”

“Blue.”

“Go.”

For a second she thinks about just using the cell and calling Keller on the hotline number he gave her, but then the number would show up on phone records, and besides, the car might be bugged. So she just drives to the gas station and pulls up by the pump. A car flashes its lights. She pulls over by a row of phone booths (God, does anyone use pay phones anymore? she wonders) and sits there while an Asian man with a small briefcase in his hand gets out of the other car and walks over to the passenger side of her car.

She unlocks the door and he gets in.

He’s a young man, probably mid-twenties, dressed in the black suit, white shirt and black tie that seem to be a uniform for young Asian businessmen these days.

“I’m Mr. Lee,” he says.

“Yeah, I’m Ms. Smith.”

“I’m sorry,” Lee says, “but please turn around and put your hands on the door.”

She does it and he frisks her for wires. Then he opens the briefcase, takes out a small electronic sweeper and checks the car for bugs. Satisfied it’s clean, he says, “You will forgive me, I hope.”

“No problem.”

“Let’s drive.”

“Where to?”

“I’ll tell you as we go.”

He gives her directions and they head for the harbor.

Art has the GOSCO harbor facility under surveillance.

It’s his last, best shot.

A DEA agent sits high atop a gigantic crane, his powerful night-vision glasses trained on the GOSCO entrance, and he sees the black Lexus coming down the street.

“Vehicle approaching.”

“Can you ID the driver?” Art asks.

“Negative. Tinted windows.”

It could be anyone, Art thinks. It could be Nora, it could be a GOSCO manager coming to check on a warehouse, it could be a john finding a dark spot for a quick blow job.

“Stay on it.”

He doesn’t want to be on the horn too much. If this is really going down, the narcos will have audio sweepers going, and even though his transmissions are encrypted, the sad fact is that the narcos have a bigger budget and better technology.

So now he sits in the back of a hippie van three miles from the harbor and waits.

It’s all he can do.

Nora drives down a street between two rows of GOSCO warehouses that run perpendicular to their two loading wharves. Two huge GOSCO freighters are pulled up at the wharves. Sparks fly from welders doing repairs on the ships, and forklifts scurry back and forth between the wharf and the warehouses. She keeps driving until they’re in a quieter area.

A warehouse door opens and Lee directs her inside.

“I lost them,” the agent says to Art. “They went into a warehouse.”

“Which goddamn warehouse?”

“Could be one of three,” the agent answers. “D-1803, 1805 or 1807.”

Art consults a plan of the GOSCO facility. He can have teams at the location inside ten minutes and cut the group of warehouses off from two sides. He switches channels and says, “All units, prepare to move in five.”

Mr. Lee is polite.

He gets out, comes around and opens the car door for Nora. She gets out and looks around her.

If there’s a huge shipment of weapons in here, it’s cleverly disguised as a whole bunch of empty shelves and a black Lexus identical to the one she drove in.

She looks at Lee and raises her eyebrows.

“Do you have the money?” he asks.

She opens the trunk, then the briefcases. Lee flips through the stacks of used bills, then closes everything up again.

“Your turn,” Nora says.

“We’ll wait,” he says.

“For what?”

“To see if the police arrive.”

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Nora says.

“It wasn’t part of your plan,” Lee says.

They stare at each other for a few long moments.

“This,” she says, “is really boring.”

She gets back in the car and sits down, thinking, Please God, don’t let Keller come blasting through that door.

Shag Wallace’s voice comes across the radio.

“On your signal, boss.”

Art tightens his Kevlar vest, flips the safety of his M-16 off, takes a deep breath and says, “Go.”

“Roger that.”

“Hold!” he yells into the mike. It comes from his gut—something’s wrong here, something’s hinky. They’ve been too careful, too cute. Or maybe I’m just getting chicken in my old age. But he says, “Stand down.”

Fifteen minutes.

Twenty.

Half an hour.

Nora reaches for her phone.

“What are you doing?” Lee asks.

“Calling my people,” Nora says. “They’re going to be wondering what the hell happened to me.”

He hands her his own phone. “Use this one.”

“Why?”

“Security.”

She shrugs and takes the phone. “Where are we?”

“Don’t send them here,” Lee says.

“Why not?”

He has a little self-satisfied smile on his face. Nora’s seen it on men a thousand times, usually after one of her spectacular fake orgasms. “The merchandise isn’t here.”

“Where is it?”

Now that no police have arrived at this location, he feels it’s safe to tell her the real one. Besides, he has Adán Barrera’s mistress as insurance.

“Long Beach.”

The new GOSCO facility at Long Beach Harbor, he tells her.

Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323.

She calls Raúl and gives him the information. When she hangs up she says to Lee, “We have to call our boss and get the okay for this change of plans.”

Art Keller is sweating bricks.

If that was Nora who went into the warehouse, she’s been there for over half an hour. And nothing’s happened. No one has gone in or come out, no trucks have arrived. Something’s gone wrong.

“All units stand by,” he says. “We’re going on my signal.”

Then his cell phone rings.

Lee listens anxiously as Nora tells Adán Barrera all about how they took her to an empty building and put a gun to her head as a test, and how the guns are really at Long Beach, “Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323.”

“Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323,” Art Keller says.

“You got it,” Nora says.

She hangs up and hands the phone back to Lee.

“Let’s get going,” she says.

He shakes his head. “We’re staying here.”

“I don’t understand.”

She understands when he takes a .45 from beneath his black suit jacket and lays it on his lap. “When the transaction is safely completed,” he says, “I will take the car with the money, and you will take the other car and drive away. But if something unfortunate should occur …”