Total Immunity (28 page)

Jack felt the same chill that bothered him before.

“And maybe you were going to kill a few of them, too, huh, Tom?”

“Maybe,” Wilson said. “They're bad guys, Jack. We know that. What difference does it make if a couple of them catch a stray bullet or two? Everybody comes out ahead. Homeland Security is a hero, and Steinbach gets to go home with a medal.”

“But why . . . why would he want to get busted in the first place?” Oscar said.

Wilson smiled and shook his head. “I don't know. Of course, I asked him about that. He said he owed a guy a favor. A big one. He had to pay the guy back.”

“A favor?”

“Yeah, it sounded like bullshit to me . . . I tried to talk to him about it a couple of times. I was worried he was setting me up . . . but he wouldn't discuss it. Anyway, I know he hated Blakely and Hughes, but I don't believe he killed them.”

“You
believe
he didn't kill them or you
know
he didn't?”

Wilson looked down at the ground.

“I'm not a hundred percent sure, but . . .”

“But what? It sounds like he played you for a sucker, Tommy. You gave him an out, and he killed them both. That makes both of you his accomplices.”

“No, you're wrong,” Wilson said. “And Alison didn't know anything.”

“And how much did he pay you to give him that alibi, buddy?” Jack said.

“Nothing,” Tommy said.

“Bullshit!” Oscar said. “We know Slick Tommy. He always gets paid some way.”

“I'm not saying anything else until I have my lawyer,” Wilson said. “Nothing.”

“That's smart, Tom. Both of you are under federal arrest. Turn around. I gotta cuff you. “

“Oh, c'mon,” Alison said. “You can't do this. It's opening night. There's a party I have to get to.”

“Hey, you're gonna be having it, all right,” Jack said. “But in a four-by-eight holding cell. And the other guests might not be from Beverly Hills, bitch. Turn around so I can cuff you.”

Tommy Wilson started to turn but as Jack tried to get his handcuffs with his free hand, Wilson turned and chopped him in the neck. The Glock went off , discharging into the wall. Oscar reached for Wilson, but the actress reached out and raked his face with her inch-long fingernails. Oscar fell back, blood dripping down his chin.

Wilson shoved by them both and made it to the door. In a second, he was gone. Oscar saw Alison Baines moving past him and hit her in the head with his right hand, sending her sprawling over a rattan chair and onto the floor. She moaned as she stood up, and Oscar pulled her arms behind her and clasped the cuff s.

Jack was up now and through the door. He ran down the hallway and up the stairs, but hit a wave of stagehands who were carrying a sofa down the stairs. He tried to get by them, but they stumbled and dumped the sofa down the stairs. He barely avoided it by jumping over the railing and rolling onto the floor.

By the time he'd gotten to his car, Jack saw Wilson pulling out of the gate and turning left. Headed toward the freeway, Jack thought, backing up and squealing his tires as his car roared through the gate and went up on two wheels as it screamed down the street.

Jack cut off a giant Cuervo Gold Tequila truck and nearly smashed into a local bus, but somehow reached the 101 Freeway, though he could barely see Wilson's car up ahead.

He drove like a madman, passing cars and trucks on the left and right, and several times going up on the right shoulder, almost hitting a sign which advertised nude nudes. (What the hell were Nude Nudes, anyway?)

He screamed past the Echo Park exit, no sign of Wilson at all now.

“Shit!” he said. Wilson could have already gotten off the freeway. Where the hell could he be heading? Certainly not to his home, which was in the opposite direction.

• • •

Up ahead of Jack, Tommy Wilson roared west down Sunset Boulevard, past Denny's Diner, past EAT, past the Hollywood ArcLight Theatre. He crossed Cahuenga and turned right at Schraeder, went past the Hollywood YMCA, and pulled up one block short of an ancient, battered rooming house called the Mark Twain Hotel.

Quickly getting out of his car, he hurriedly walked toward the front steps of the decrepit three-story building.

What looked like an old wino sat on the three crumbling front steps, but as Wilson started to pass him, he stood up and announced: “Sorry, sir, the hotel is being refurbished and is closed to the public.”

Tommy reached into his pocket and showed the man his Homeland Security credentials.

“Sorry, sir,” the man said.

“No problem. I need to see Baker right now.”

“Second floor. Room 245. I'll tell them you're coming.”

“Thanks,” Wilson said as he swung up the steps and went through the badly warped front door.

Jack was stuck in traffic three or four feet in front of the turnoff at Sunset. Though he was frustrated, it gave him a chance to think . . . Where would Wilson go? Would he keep right on going out to the Valley? Did he have some kind of safe house out there in Studio City or Van Nuys?

It was possible. But what would be the advantage of going to ground now?

He was sure to be recognized once his picture got on the evening news and in the
L.A. Times,
not to mention flashed all over the Internet.

No, if Slick Tommy was going somewhere, it had to be an airport or a train station.

But LAX was in the opposite direction, and he'd passed right by the exit for Union Station.

So where was he headed?

To get money?

To see someone who could help smuggle him out of the country tonight?

Yeah, that made sense, but who might that person be?

Tommy Wilson walked up the termite-eaten steps of the Mark Twain Hotel. At the top floor there was another guard, this one an agent he knew: David Snyder, a man with a square head and an even squarer jaw.

“Tommy,” Snyder said. “You want to see your boy?”

“Mmmmm-hmmm,” Wilson said.

Snyder walked down the hall with him. At the end of the hall, something went squeaking across the floor.

“Rats,” Snyder said. “Fitting, huh? We babysit a rat, and the other ones come by to pay their respects.”

Tommy faked a laugh as Snyder rapped three times on the door, two longs and a short.

In a few seconds, the door opened, and Tommy was staring at Homeland Security Agent Booth Staller. Booth was a thin man with an even thinner rug on his head. The hair looked lifeless, like a couple of strands of damp vermicelli.

“Young Tom,” Booth said.

“Boother,” Tommy said, in what he hoped sounded like a col- legial tone.

He looked across the room and saw a portable card table, and on it chips, playing cards, and Cokes.

At the table sat another agent, Lenny Carbon, a thin, sickly- looking agent who took endless medicines and cold remedies.

He waved in a depressed way and quickly took three green pills which were sitting out in a row next to his poker hand.

Steinbach sat at the end of the table facing Wilson. He looked rumpled, tired, and harried.

“Agent Thomas Wilson,” he said. “What a rare pleasure to see you, sir.”

“You ready to come through on your promises, Steinbach?”

Steinbach's face took on a quizzical look, as if to say, “But this wasn't the deal at all, Tom.”

Still, he smiled and tried to assume an affable tone.

“Of course,” he said. “Ready to go.”

“I don't get it,” Lenny Carbon said. “We're not supposed to meet with those guys until tomorrow.”

“Yes, I know,” Wilson said. “But there's been a slight change of plans. The Muslims want to go today. And they insisted that just Karl and I show up.”

Now it was Booth Staller's turn to look doubtful.

“I've had no indications that this is so,” he said. “No calls, no text messages, and no e-mails.”

“Right,” Tommy Wilson said. “That's how we decided to go with it. There's been some concern about the other side intercepting our messages. This is why I came to tell you the old- fashioned way — in person. The truth is, I've got to take Karl out right now. The meet is going to be at Musso's in two hours, and we need to rehearse what we're going to say.”

“Take him where?” Lenny Carbon said, scratching his head.

“On a walk,” Tommy Wilson said. “On a stroll around Old Hollywood, up and down the boulevard of broken dreams.”

Carbon looked at Staller, and both of them frowned.

“No fucking way,” Staller said. “Not unless we get it from HQ.”

“But I've come from HQ,” Wilson said. “Straight from the horse's ass.”

“Maybe so,” Carbon said. “But maybe not, too, Tom. This smells like old fish to me.”

“That's good,” Tommy said. “Tell you what? You make the call to HQ and see for yourself, okay?”

Carbon looked at Staller doubtfully, but took out his cell phone and began to punch in numbers.

“It's not that we don't believe you, Tom,” Staller said. “But you'd think that the powers that be would have let us in on this little change of plans, ya know?”

“That is certainly true, Booth-baby,” Tommy Wilson said, taking out his SIG Sauer automatic and shooting Staller in the forehead. Staller flew backward over a chair and ended up draped over the end of an old couch on the other side of the room.

Lenny Carbon dropped the phone and reached for his gun, but Karl Steinbach kicked his chair out from under him and he fell on his side. He got up quickly but not quite quickly enough, as Tommy Wilson shot him in the head as well.

He fell over on his side, blood pooling around his neck.

“Cry for help,” Wilson said. “Loud.”

Steinbach did as he was told and sent out a mighty yowl of pain.

“Help me!” he cried.

Tommy shook his head, but situated himself behind the door. He heard feet running toward the door, then a question:

“What's happening in there?” hissed David Snyder.

“They're all dead!” Steinbach answered.

“All of them?” Snyder said.

“Except me. They went crazy and shot each other. And I'm wounded.”

Tommy heard the key put into the door.

The door opened and Snyder came in, training his gun on Steinbach, who sat in the middle of the room, cradling Lenny Carbon's bloody head in his hands.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Snyder swore.

Then he noticed movement just behind him and turned. That was when Wilson shot him in the head.

He fell down to his knees, but his gun went off reflexively and a bullet landed in Tommy Wilson's left pec.

Tommy had spent years lifting weights to make himself have a washboard stomach and perfect pecs, and his first reaction to the terrible pain of the bullet was to think how lame he'd look in a bathing suit down at Muscle Beach this year. On the other hand, a bullet hole in his pec might draw some admiring glances from blond beach bunnies.

All of these vain thoughts took about three seconds. Suddenly Tommy was hit with a killer burning in the chest. It was as though someone had drilled a hole in him with a power drill, and for the first time he understood the term “drilling someone with a bullet.” It was just like that . . .

He fell to one knee and gasped for breath.

When he looked up, he saw Karl Steinbach standing over him.

“The little fuck got me, Karl. Help me!”

Karl looked down at him and smiled curiously.

“What would you like me to do, Tommy? I mean, this is all so sudden!”

“I would like you to . . . help me up, get me out of here, then we go down to my car . . . and get to your private airplane. Then we fly the fuck out of here to South America, or wherever you can hide me.”

At that moment, they heard feet running down the hallway.

“The outside guard, Karl,” Tommy said.

The guard stopped, and they could hear him creeping forward to the room.

Karl almost started to laugh.

“Help, I've been shot,” he said in a choked-up voice.

The guard came into the room, and Karl shot him in the stomach and then the face.

The guard fell back out into the hallway. Karl reached out and pulled him inside by his feet.

“The cops are going to be here real soon,” Karl said to Tommy Wilson. “I don't think the two of us can make it. One person running, maybe . . . but two, one of them leaking blood like a bread-crumb trail . . . I don't think so.”

“You're not thinking of leaving me, Karl,” Tommy said. “Not with what I know.”

Karl smiled, aimed his gun at Tommy. Tommy swiftly came up with his right hand and aimed as well, but then blushed as he realized he'd dropped his gun but had been too stunned to notice.

“Too bad you can't shoot anyone with your fingers,” Karl laughed.

“I can
help
you,” Tommy said.

“You
are
helping me,” Karl said, and shot Tommy Wilson through the throat.

Tommy fell backward, then on his side like a twisted modern sculpture, blood gurgling from his neck wound like hot tomato soup on a cold winter's day.

Karl knelt down and riffled through Tommy's pockets. In a second he'd found his car keys, and a second later, his money clip. There was $200 in twenties and he took them, but left the clip. Then he stood up, looked around at the carnage for a second, stepped out into the hallway, closed the door, and ran toward the back exit, fast.

Jack had come down Sunset slowly. He'd had to make three calls before he'd been able to call in a favor and find out where the Homeland Security boys were stashing Karl Steinbach. When he heard the words “Mark Twain Hotel,” he knew at once that was where Tommy was headed. Probably to grab Karl and head out to his airplane at the secret airport in Reseda.

What better bet? Then he'd have access to Karl's entire sup- port group, could get himself a new passport, a new pile of cash, new clothes; Christ, even a new head if he wanted to.