Total Immunity (9 page)

It was a torn piece of a photograph, looked to be the bottom corner of an old Polaroid. It looked as if it had been taken long ago, but the image on it couldn't have been old at all.

He was staring at a picture of a gravestone with the name Zac Blakely on it. The birth date was October 5, 1946, which, Jack was pretty sure, was his old friend's real birth date. The date of death was today.

“What the fuck is this?” Jack muttered to himself.

Jack called Oscar over and showed him the torn photo. Oscar's eyes grew wide as he stared at the scrap of photo.

“Jesus, Jackie, somebody already bought Blakely's gravestone!”

“I don't think so,” Jack said. “My guess is this thing has been PhotoShopped, and was left here by the perps just to play with our minds.”

Oscar shook his head.

“Don't take a genius to figure out what the next part of the photograph is going to be. Headstones with Hughes, you, and me on them.”

“That would be my guess, too,” Jack said. “Somebody is playing with us.”

“You mean Steinbach's playing with us?”

“I don't know,” Jack said. “It seems a bit melodramatic, even for him.”

“But who else, then?”

“I don't know that either,” Jack said.

He put the partial photo in a plastic evidence bag and handed it to a technician.

Jack signaled to the driver of the tow truck to hoist the trashed frame of the car, then ducked underneath.

He looked at the rear brake casing and saw exactly what he expected to find — a filing job.

He looked out at Oscar.

“Electric file. Could do this in twenty to thirty minutes.”

“But on the street?”

“Zac lives right up the top of Hollywood Hills Road. In a cul de sac. His neighbor up there is one of those young movie stars. He told me she's over in Europe shooting a movie right now. The perp could get under his car and do the whole job in the dark last night.”

“Still, he had to drive up there. Maybe somebody saw him,” Oscar said.

“Right. We have to get a timetable from his wife.”

Jack felt a wave of exhaustion almost buckle him at the knees. The thought of driving up to the house and telling Val . . . Jesus, that was the worst.

“No air bag either,” Oscar said.

“Yeah, and the emergency brake had been disconnected.”

“Zac was just gonna retire, too,” Oscar said.

Jack felt a stab of pain in his chest, took a deep breath, and headed for his car.

9

THEY PARKED DOWN the street from the cul de sac where, until an hour ago, Zac Blakely and Val Lewis had lived.

“Nice up here,” Oscar said. “Feels like you're in the country.” “Zac always parked facing downhill so he wouldn't have to

turn around every day.”

“Trees and bushes obscure his car. Guy could come up here at night and not be noticed at all,” Oscar said.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “But how did whoever did this get Zac's home address? He was totally secretive about it.”

“These days there are a million ways,” Oscar said. “You heard about the guys in D.C. who put ‘Federal Agents' Home Addresses' in Google and got a list of fifty of them?”

“So much for Internet security!” Jack said.

“I feel so much safer since we started the war, too,” Oscar said. “'Cause my President tells me so.”

“You keep talking like that, and the guys at HQ will be investigating you and me, bro,” Jack said.

• • •

They walked down the street to the door, but before they could knock, Val came from around back. She was holding a planter in her hand. She had on white gardening gloves and a straw sunhat. She looked relaxed, happy, gardening on the deck.

“Zac's already left,” she said, smiling.

Then she looked at Jack, and her lips began to twitch. She let out a terrible small sigh.

“The sirens, I heard the sirens. I thought it was a fire. Tell me it's not Zac!”

Jack bit his lower lip and slowly took the planter out of her hand. He handed it to Oscar, who took it just as she collapsed into Jack's arms.

They stayed with Val for an hour. Jack told her that she didn't need to answer questions right away . . . but she wanted to, anyway.

Jack nodded and asked her about Zac's timetable during the last twenty-four hours. It turned out he'd been right. Zac had gone up to the Mulholland Tennis Club, at the top of the mountain above them, just last night. He'd played tennis for two hours and then hung out at the bar with his doubles partner, a doctor, until ten.

Jack had played tennis there with Zac once, and remembered that the parking lot was separate from the club itself. Not only that, but the club hadn't bothered to light the lot very well, either. It would have been easy for someone to come up there and then follow him home. That was one possible explanation for how the bastard knew where he lived.

“Do you think it's that guy you busted? Steinbach?” Val said.

“I don't know,” Jack said. “But it doesn't matter. Whoever it is, we're going to get him. I promise you that.”

She sighed and shook her head. As if it didn't matter anymore.

Jack and Oscar shut their notebooks and got up to leave.

“I can't believe any of this,” she said. “Do I have to go to the morgue?”

“I'm afraid so,” Jack said. “Tomorrow. I'll take you down there if you want.”

“Okay,” she said. “That would be good, Jackie. 'Cause I don't think I could stand it alone. The thing is, Zac was always so good. So devoted. You like to think that a guy is going to get some kind of reward for being that good.”

Jack looked at her, shook his head.

Val nodded and let out another small sigh, as if she knew that she had only so many sighs left and she was rationing them.

“You know, it's wrong to let Zac die this way,” Val said. “We all die, Jack, but this is wrong. To die at the hands of that bastard, Karl Steinbach.”

Her voice was small, distant, as if someone had cut her vocal cords.

“I know,” he said. “And I'm going to get whoever did it. Trust me, Val.”

“Good,” Val said. “'Cause there's no one Zac trusted more than you, Jack. No one.”

“You see anyone up here that didn't belong?” Oscar said.

“No,” Val said. Then she managed a tired smile.

Jack put it out of his mind. Right now they had nothing. It was important to get out and canvass the neighborhood. He hugged Val to his chest. Silently, he promised his old boss that he'd get who did this to him.

No matter how long it took.

Suddenly he had a thought. What if Blakely had stolen the bank money? What if the cutting of his brakes wasn't about Steinbach at all, but about the money? Maybe Zac had partners who thought he was holding out on them. Maybe one of them got tired of waiting.

And what if — just as an idea — what if that partner was Forrester? Forrester who was hell-bent on making it look like Jack and Oscar were in league with Blakely and Hughes?

Aah, it was all conjecture. But somebody had cut Blakely's brakes. And Steinbach and maybe Forrester were the only possible suspects.

But to believe that Steinbach didn't engineer this crime meant that he had to accept the fact that Blakely was dirty. And he just couldn't believe that. And yet, Jack knew it was possible. The best thieves were the guys who did it only once or twice, whose records were spotless.

That would be Zac . . .

He sighed deeply. And hoped it wasn't that way.

During the next two hours, Jack and Oscar rapped on doors in Laurel Canyon along with the city cops and two state troopers.

Up the hill on the top of the cul de sac lived a buxom blonde named Lily Carswell. Jack had seen her on an exercise tape. She wore a black leotard and a pink flower in her hair. She invited them in for bran muffins and tea, which they turned down. Lily Carswell knew and had heard nothing. She smiled and told them she wasn't really the neighborly type. As they left, Lily reminded them that her show on the Health Channel had been changed from eight on Thursday morning to seven thirty.

“Never miss it,” Jack said.

“Drink green tea,” she said, as she shut the door. “Destroys all the toxins.”

“Right,” Jack said. “Got it.”

It was the same with a tattooed rapper who lived a couple of doors down from the Blakelys. His name was RX Murder and he said he'd been away at a rave in San Diego for the last few days. He said he never talked to Blakely because the guy was “some kind of a cop.” Then he shut the door in their faces. Jack had a sudden urge to take out his gun and put a few rounds through RX's window, but managed to control himself.

They interviewed a retired woman named Ida with fifty cats. She said she was deaf. The catshit odor, which came from her house, doubled Oscar over. “Guess she doesn't have a sense of smell either,” Oscar said.

Next were two gay real-estate people whose married name was Herb and Rodd Coy. They knew nothing about what had happened, but wondered if Mrs. Blakely would want to sell her house now that her husband was dead.

“After all,” Rodd said as he ushered them out of the house, “a widow doesn't need as much square footage as a married woman.”

Jack advised them that now might not be the time to bring that up to Val, since her husband had died only two hours ago. Rodd and Herb looked off ended.

“I didn't mean today,” Rodd said. “I'm thinking of a decent waiting period . . . like you know, the day after tomorrow. Do you know where he's going to be laid out, Agent Harper? I find the funeral home is usually a good place to mention these practical considerations.”

“Check the paper,” Oscar said, pushing Jack out the door.

They rapped on a few more doors where there was no one home, then found themselves up on Skyline, the block just above Hollywood Hills, at the home of Fred Feeney, a small, bald man with a black mustache.

Feeney opened the door a couple of inches. He had eyes like a nervous gerbil.

“Jehovah's Witnesses, right? Well, I got to tell you I tried
The Watchtower
last year and I was very disappointed. I mean, the world has not yet ended. I only
feel
like it has.”

He started to shut the door, but Jack got a hand in before it was closed.

“Couldn't agree more,” he said. “Lousy magazine.”

“Well, then, what
are
you selling?” Feeney said.

“I'm Agent Jack Harper of the FBI and this is my partner, Agent Oscar Hidalgo. We'd like to talk to you a minute Mr. . . .”

“Feeney. Like you don't know my name already. Listen, you two, if this is about that Greenpeace demonstration I attended two years ago, I can fully explain. See, I'm a photographer, and I was paid to document the protest. Purely a professional acquaintance and . . .”

“It's not about Greenpeace, Mr. Feeney. Mind if we come in a minute?”

Feeney blinked and let the door open a crack more.

“Listen, all right, I know what it is, and the so-called pornographic pictures certain so-called friends of mine say I downloaded. Okay, maybe I did, but it was for purely compositional reasons. They were very artistic and . . .”

“If you'd just open the door, sir,” Oscar said, putting his weight on it and driving the deeply freaked Feeney back into his living room.

“Listen,” Feeney said, sputtering like a broken radiator. “How can an artist be expected to grow if he isn't allowed to immerse himself in all kinds of visual stimuli . . . even some that the average person might find morally repugnant?”

The little man's voice had risen to a near falsetto. He ran into a ratty brown couch and fell backward onto a cushion. As soon as he hit the seat, a little brown terrier came out from behind a nearby La-Z-Boy chair and jumped into his lap. The dog was wearing a red plaid bikini bottom.

Jack looked at Oscar and tried not to smile.

“Sir . . .”

“Freddy,” Feeney said. “Fred J. Feeney. Photographer.”

“Yeah, well, Fred,” Jack said. “A neighbor of yours down on Hollywood Hills Road, a Mr. Zac Blakely, was killed today, right here in the canyon, down next to the Wonderland School.”

“That's right,” Oscar said. “And we don't think it was an accident.”

“Terrorists!” Feeney held his dog tightly to his chest. “Did you hear that, Toodles? Terrorists have hit the canyon. Well, I knew it would happen. Everyone around here is so weird, they can blend right in!”

Jack moved a dog sweater off a chair and sat down. Oscar looked at another chair, which was covered with dog hair, and remained standing.

“We wondered if you'd seen anyone last night . . . someone you didn't know from the canyon?”

Feeney stroked Toodles and rolled his eyes like an actor doing a bad impression of thinking.

“Well . . . let me ponder that . . . Hmmm . . . yes, no, maybe . . . it's possible. No, yes . . .
Yes!
Yes, indeed. There was a big black man. He drove up and down my block looking around, like he was lost, you know? Then I saw him go down and turn left on Hollywood Hills. He was headed up to the cul de sac.”

“What time was this?” Oscar asked.

“Well, let me think. I was watching TV Land. They have on all the old
Miami Vice
s. There's the one where David Andrews plays Crockett's cousin. It's so funny. I really thought David was going to be a big star, and back then I wrote Brandon Tartikoff all about it . . . do you remember Brandon? He was the head of NBC, died tragically young and anyway . . .”

“The guy outside,” Jack reminded him. “If you could focus on him? It could be very important.
You
could help us break the case, Fred.”

“Really?” Feeney said. “Fred Feeney, Crimefighter? Did you hear that, Toodles?”