the Viking Funeral (2001) (11 page)

"I heard about you. You got a lot of ink last year."

"Right." Shane smiled, trying to disarm what seemed like a negative attitude. "I notice al
l t
hese Plain Janes here have a black dust of some kind all over them."

The sergeant wrinkled his brow. "You working for the motor pool now?"

"No," Shane said. "I was just wondering what it is."

"It's burned jet fuel. These jets take off every minute or so, and they spew black exhaust. Gets all over the cars that live around here."

"No kidding," Shane said, looking at a plane that was just taking off, climbing out past the terminals, trailing dark smoke out of four huge engines. "Got it," he said. "Thanks."

Shane got into his car and pulled out of the parking lot. He didn't know what he was looking for, or even what he was doing. Maybe it was just the vast amount of free time he seemed to have on his hands these days. He drove aimlessly around the Los Angeles airport, picking neighboring streets, looking at cars parked at the curbs. The ones that looked like they'd been there for a while all had the same layer of black dust on their hoods, trunks, and windshields.

Then Shane saw the green-covered fence.

It was at the end of one of the streets near the airport and seemed to run for several blocks. He parked, got out, and moved up to the chain-link, which was covered with Highway Department green plastic so you couldn't see through it. He took out his pocketknife and cut a hole in the plastic.

Inside the fence was a vacant neighborhood, just like the one he was in, only there were no cars on the street, no tricycles or toys strewn around on the brown, unwatered lawns.

"Whatcha doin'?" he heard a voice behind him demand.

Shane turned and saw an old man with a long, string-bean neck. His Adam's apple looked like a ball bouncing up and down on the end of a rubber band when he spoke.

"What is this place?" Shane asked.

"Noise-abatement area," the old man said. "They condemned all a'them houses 'bout two years ago, 'cause they sit right at the end a'the runway and the people who lived in them was all the time complaining about jet noise. Not that it's any better out here," he said. Then, as if to make his point, a jet took off, rising overhead, its engines screaming, trailing black exhaust.

"See," the old man shouted over the racket.

"Shit, that's loud."

"They say you get used t'it, but y'don't. Fuckin' drive y'nuts. Can't never sell these here houses 'cause only a deaf moron would buy 'em. We built here in the thirties, 'fore there was an airport."

"So, nobody lives inside this fence?"

"Nope," the old man said. "Three square blocks, empty as a hooker's heart."

"Nobody ever goes in there?" Shane asked.

"Once or twice, some cops. Showed us badges; said they was using the neighborhood to practice clearin' barricaded suspect
s h
ouse to house. Only seen 'em go in there a couple a'times."

"Any way to get in?" Shane asked.

"There's a gate right up the street on the Florence side, but it's all padlocked."

Shane nodded, thanked him, then got into his car and drove up the street to have a look.

What he found inside that fence defied all reason, as well as most of the core values he believed in.

Chapter
15.

THE FENCE WAS topped by barbed wire.

Shane slid the picks into the heavy Yale padlock and flipped the tumblers. The padlock jumped, clicking open in his hand. He removed it from the chain that was wrapped around the center posts, then pushed the gate open enough to get through. He could see recent tire tracks in the black dust at his feet.

Shane reached down, withdrew the Beretta Mini-Cougar from his ankle holster, chambered it, and repacked it, tucking the weapon into a handier place in his belt. He moved into the deserted four-block neighborhood, then close
d t
he gate behind him and relatched the lock the way he had found it.

Every two minutes a low-flying jet screamed overhead, shaking the ground and the houses with a deafening roar.

Shane steeled his nerves against the racket, slipping into the fenced noise-abatement area. A broken sign announced the street he was on as East Lannark Drive. He was moving slowly, cautiously from house to house, staying out of sight of the few unboarded windows, seeking cover behind chipped, unpainted garden walls or dead hedges. The effect of the neighborhood was startling: the houses had long been unattended, the lawns brown-- bone-dry from lack of water; hedges and trees were skeletal and dusty; only a few hearty weeds clung stubbornly to rock-hard flowerbeds. The entire neighborhood was covered with the same fine black exhaust powder, turning everything dingy and gray.

Another jet screamed over him. Shane jumped in response to the shrieking roar of its four huge engines passing just a few hundred feet above his head.

Shane followed the tire tracks on the dusty pavement, running from hedge to house to wall, his senses quivering, his eyes darting back and forth, searching for any movement--any sign of life.

Could this be where Jody and his undercover unit are cribbing?

The tire tracks he was following turned right into one of the driveways. The house wa
s a
standard forties wood-frame, shake-roof number that had once been cheery yellow with white trim. But the yellow had faded to a dirty cream and the once-white trim was now gray and peeling. Shane sprinted across the dead grass to avoid leaving footprints on the dusty pavement; he pressed flat against the east wall of the house. Somebody had removed the plywood that covered the front bay window looking out onto East Lannark Drive.

Another jet took off and he jumped again, his frayed nerves unprepared for the ear
-
splitting roar. "Shit," he muttered. This was going to take a little getting used to.

Shane crept up to the locked front door. He could see that it had a shiny new brass dead bolt. He felt exposed and didn't want to stand there trying to open the lock, so he left the porch and continued down the driveway, ducking under the kitchen windows, past the locked garage door, pausing to look in through the dirty windows. Cobwebs dominated the empty space inside. Nobody had been in the garage for a long time.

He turned and moved silently up onto the back porch, where he found another new Yale lock. He pulled out his picks and in a few seconds had the back door open. Shane moved silently into the kitchen, closing the door softly behind him.

Another plane screamed overhead, rattling his nerves and the kitchen cabinets.

Late-morning sunlight streamed through dirty windows. A lone drinking glass was sitting i
n t
he sink next to a large nozzled bottle of Arrowhead water propped up on the counter. Shane tried the sink faucet, but as he had suspected, the water in the neighborhood had been turned off long ago. He picked up the glass, placing his fingers on the inside to preserve any fingerprints, and held it up to the window. He could see some latents smudged on the surface, so he put it down, reached into his pocket for an ever present detective Baggie, which all cops carry, then popped the glass inside, putting it in his jacket's flap pocket.

Shane crept slowly out of the kitchen. He could not hear any movement in the house but pulled the Mini-Cougar out of his belt as he slipped into the small dining room.

A large slab of plywood, which had probably come off the front window, was laid across two sawhorses, forming a crude dining
-
room table. It was littered with maps. Some were of a portion of South Central L
. A
.--the tangled narrow streets south of Manchester. In a separate box at the end of the table were half a dozen folded maps, all in Spanish. Shane picked them up. He couldn't determine what Latin American country the maps depicted. He hadn't heard of any of the cities. Somebody had written San Andresitos on one of the maps. Most of them appeared to be of rural desert areas. He opened them and saw two towns marked with a circle: Maicao and Culcata. He set the maps back down in the box where he had found them, then continued out of the dining room into the living room.

It was almost completely empty, except for one small camp stool and two Coleman lanterns. A small hibachi for cooking was set into the hearth where the smoke would go up the chimney. There was a corner-hanging lamp. Shane tried the light switch, but the power was also off. Shane kept his gun handy as he moved silently down a dark hallway into the bedroom, where he found a sleeping bag laid out on the threadbare carpet. Nothing else was in the room.

The jackpot was in the bedroom closet.

When Shane slid the mirrored sliding door open, he was looking at an arsenal of illegal weapons propped up against the back wall: an Uzi, complete with a Grumman laser sight, and two Heckler & Koch fully automatic machine pistols stacked next to two fully automatic AK47s. On the top shelf were boxes of 9
-
and 7.62-millimeter ammunition and a collection of thirty-round banana clips. Also in the closet was a black radio identical to the one he'd found at Mark Shephard's house. Shane took it down, set it on the floor and examined it. The dial was set to the same high-band UHF frequency: 367.23.

He switched it on; a whispered voice immediately staccatoed in the small bedroom but was overcome by another takeoff. The jet engines rattled the windows in their frames as the plane screamed overhead. Once it was gone and silence returned, Shane heard:

"Copy, W-6. There's a bird in your attic." A man's voice, whispery and coarse, followed by a hissing sound. Then a second voice crackled: "I saw him. Tell Sawdust we're in and watertight. Move the truck to the tip of the triangle. Hot Rod is holding the Alley. Inky Dink, gimme an update." Then he heard a black-sounding voice, low and resonant: "Pimp Daddy's in the house. Where's he get the white disco boots and them funky purple hats? Man, I gotta get me some a'dat."

Then unmistakably, Jody: "Hey, Inky Dink, cut the cross-talk. Take care of business. We don't take these guys till they come out with the package."

"Affirmative," the African American replied.

"Hot Rod, gimme your twenty," Jody demanded.

This time, a man with a Mexican accent: "I'm parked in the gas station across from the house."

"Okay. Till the party moves, stay back. Everybody hold position. Be ready to jam."

"Roger that... I'm parked and dark and ready to bark." The black voice again.

Shane had heard this sort of broadcast hundreds of times on police tactical frequencies. It was some kind of field surveillance, probably on a drug deal. This radio, like the one in Shephard's house, looked as though it had some kind of scrambler attached. It weighed almost twenty pounds--too heavy to lug around while he searched the house, so Shane switched it off and put it back in the closet, placing it up on the top shelf with the ammo and banana clips. There he noticed several boxes of earplugs like the ones they handed out at the Academy shooting range, answering his question of how anybody could live in these houses with the constant noise pollution overhead. Shane momentarily debated inserting some to deaden the racket, but he immediately rejected the idea. It was better to have frayed nerves than a deadly surprise.

He took out his small digital camera and photographed the arsenal in the closet. In the back, way down at the end, were two suits of Kevlar body armor. He slid the closet door closed, then moved through the rest of the house, photographing it all. The bathroom contained another jug of bottled water and some toiletries. When he finished, he exited the house and relocked the back door.

Shane darted across the street, where he could see that another set of tire tracks had turned into the driveway of a house there. He walked toward the gray stucco Spanish-style bungalow, again staying off the pavement to avoid leaving footprints in the fine black powder.

The back door was unlocked, so he pushed it open and walked into the pantry, then into the kitchen.

Just as with the first house, it looked to Shane as if only one person was living here. But this place was a mess: paper plates and plastic cups were thrown on the floor; McDonald's wrappers and stale fries were kicked into the corner. Again, no furniture, but another hibachi was in the hearth. It didn't look as if these guys cooked and ate thei
r m
eals together. The same general setup existed, except in this bathroom Shane found a hand mirror with what looked like a residue of powder on it.

"Shit,
"
he said softly as he ran a finger over the white dust, touched it to his tongue, experiencing the sharp, bitter taste of cocaine.

Shane left the house and, following more tire tracks deeper into the neighborhood, found another, one block over on Sutter Street. Then he found a fourth and a fifth house. Crystal meth, cocaine, and uppers were in three of the last four bathrooms; more weapons and Kevlar vests were in the closets. He also found one more black UHF radio. Several of the weapons he discovered still had LAPD evidence tags wired to their trigger guards with old case numbers on them, telling him that this ordnance had been stolen from the munitions locker downtown, where confiscated street weapons were held after being used in court prior to being destroyed.