We Know (17 page)

I said, "I always figured they were flown in from

another office just to shake me up and get me out of the picture. Only told what they needed to do and not much more."

"Yeah. I guess there's always someone willing to follow orders without asking questions."

"You think I could still be nailed for Frank's murder?"

"I doubt it. It would be hard to convince a grand jury or a judge that the same evidence they'd had for seventeen years suddenly makes a different case."

"But it's always there. The threat of busting me. No statute of limitations for murder."

"Yeah, but if the authorities were going that route, they wouldn't have tried to make you the hero of San Onofre. I'd guess that charging you for Frank's murder would open up a lot, call attention to the wrong things for the wrong people."

"If I become a problem, it would probably be easier just to kill me the way they did Charlie."

Her jaw firmed. She didn't like considering that, but she also didn't argue with me. "Well, for the moment no one's trying to kill you. And whoever directed you to that P.O. box doesn't have official clout, or they would've just charged into the post office and searched number two-two-nine."

"Unless they needed me to find what's in it."

"Either way, it seems like whoever's watching wants to give you some leash and see if you'll lead them to whatever they're looking for."

"Which is exactly what I don't want to do."

"If you let this whole thing drop, you're probably safe. You've spent years avoiding all this. Why pursue it now?"

"The way this reared its head? It's not just going to vanish."

"Yeah, but you could."

I thought about those 2:18 wake-ups, how they'd returned with the vengeance of a shunned relative. "I've been running for seventeen years. I know now I'm not gonna get away."

"But are you ready to face it?" Her expression registered her skepticism.

I had no easy answer. The question gnawed at me. I redirected: "Can you look into the backgrounds of the Secret Service agents for me? Sever and Wydell?"

"What do you mean 'backgrounds'?"

"They're both in the L.A. office now, in Protective Intelligence. Is there some way to find out if they ever worked a protection detail out of D.C.? Then we'd have a pretty good idea if they had strong loyalty to a particular political figure. Like Bilton."

"Or Caruthers," she added.

"Sure. Him, too. Though it seems less likely."

"But worth looking into, no?" She noted my discomfort. "Why does that bother you? Would it really upset you if Caruthers was behind this?"

"I could care less if Caruthers is behind this," I said. "I care if Frank is."

There it was.

The anger in my voice underlined how deeply the notion cut me. I looked away, fearing how much showed in my face. I said, "We don't know if either candidate is or isn't involved. All we know right now is that the Secret Service is hooked into this thing differently than they're letting on."

"Meaning?"

"Wydell claimed that the Service wasn't called in until Charlie asked for me at San Onofre. The more I turn this over in my head, the more it seems like the time frame's too tight between then and when they stormed my apartment. I think Wydell's lying. My guess is the Service was there with LAPD for the shoot-out in Culver City."

She said, "You're still calling him Charlie."

"Whatever his name, I don't believe the profile."

Induma said, "Let's pull it up, then, see if there's anything more specific you can use."

I followed her to the living room. She set her laptop across my knees but leaned over me to navigate through the folders. I turned to look at her as she typed. Our faces were close.

The document chimed into existence, pulling my focus back to the screen. A rap sheet, complete with booking photo. Mike Milligan had pockmarked cheeks and sullen eyes.

He looked like a terrorist all right, but he looked nothing like Charlie.

Chapter
20

Back in my apartment, I stood well away from the sliding glass door and scanned the neighborhood with night-vision binoculars. I'd picked them up from the overpriced spy store on Sunset that catered to weekend warriors and paranoid music executives. The store's gear wasn't as top-shelf as what Frank used to bring home, but it was better than the mail-order junk Liffman used to play around with.

No one was watching me. No one I could pick out, at least.

Now that I had a functional front door double
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locked behind me, I moved the sheet of numerals and the cash from the dishwasher into Charlie's rucksack. Then I stored the whole thing beneath the counter in the giant pasta pot Evelyn had given me for Christmas last year, wrapped in Star of David paper.

Collapsing onto my ripped mattress, I felt wrecked from the day and the menace I'd churned to the surface. Charlie's head--and certainly his dentistry--had been blown to pieces, but there'd been plenty of his DNA to scrape off the power
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plant walls. They'd managed to switch or lose a lot of evidence and slot Milligan, a loner with the right rap sheet, into fall-guy position. Had they murdered Milligan, too? Or had he been the best candidate who'd died at the right time? Either way, I had to get back into Callie's attic and go through the rest of Frank's things to see if any other photos or documents could tell me anything about Charlie; I needed the real name of the man who'd pulled me into all this.

I turned on the TV to shut off my head and channel-surfed. My thumb stopped when I saw Jasper Caruthers on The Daily Show, palling around with Jon Stewart. After a NAMBLA joke that Caruthers wisely skirted, Stewart settled down into a straight-man role.

"Why do you believe you're less susceptible to special-interest groups?"

Caruthers shifted forward in his chair, his mouth firmed in a bit of a grin. "You may not have heard, but I'm obscenely wealthy."

Even Stewart cracked up. When the applause finally died down, Stewart said, "In your ex-wife's expose--"

"Which one?"

"Which ex-wife or which expose?"

"I've only got one ex-wife, unless June's been busy this afternoon."

"This one." Stewart held up a book whose title screamed from the jacket. "She makes a number of new claims, including that you drove under the influence of prescription drugs once when the two of you were first dating. Is that true?"

"Absolutely. I've also watched pornography, smoked pot twice in college--and inhaled-- cheated at checkers, gave up on a marriage, and shoplifted a candy bar from a newsstand. If anyone thinks that makes me unfit to contend with a nuclear-armed North Korea, please don't vote for me."

I smiled in the darkness and couldn't help wondering what the staffer with the horn-rimmed glasses would have to say about the pornography crack.

Wearing his bankable smirk, Stewart signaled to quiet the audience. He feigned incredulity. "How old were you when you shoplifted the candy bar?"

Caruthers settled back, laced his hands over a knee. "Fifty-five." He waited through the laughter, then said, "I was seven, I think. Or eight. My father was driving me to school on his way to work, stopped off for a morning paper. We were two blocks from my school when he caught me with the candy bar, and he turned around, drove back, and made me return it."

"That was before three-strikes legislation."

Caruthers chuckled. "Well, it still scared the hell out of me. My father had an appointment with--I think it was with the president of Sears Roebuck that morning. And he made himself late over a ten
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cent candy bar. Personal accountability. It was ground into me from an early age." Caruthers shook his head. "To this day, I see a Mr. Goodbar, I break into a cold sweat."

I found myself liking Caruthers more than I wanted to. Frank had certainly thought a lot of him. Could he have admired him so much that he'd gotten pulled into something shady on his behalf? Whatever Frank and Charlie had gotten into, it didn't appear to have been proper, to hang a prissy word on it, and it didn't seem like Frank. At least the Frank I knew.

The swirl of unease left me feeling achy and heavy-lidded, a stress hangover. I couldn't keep my eyes open, and I finally gave in, hoping to grab a few hours' sleep.

I jerked awake with more unease than usual. Not the familiar heart-thrumming anxiety of that small
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hours ritual, but a sense of imminent danger. The air sat cool and heavy across my sweat-clammy face.

Rolling to my side, I glanced at the clock--1:37 A.M.

I stopped my hand, which was instinctively reaching for the lamp. A slight chill blew across my face. Moving air.

As quietly as I could, I slid from the bed onto the floor. Once again in my pajama bottoms, shirtless, I moved through my dark apartment silently. Six steps and a shuffle to the bedroom window. The lock was fine. Nine strides across, three and a half diagonally into the bathroom--window closed, security hook secure. I picked my way into the living room. Both new front-door locks were as I'd

left them, the chain notched safely in its catch. I sidestepped the couch, arriving at the sliding glass door, muscle memory guiding my fingers to the handle's security lever. Unlocked.

My entire body tensed. I stared down at that raised metal lever as if I could make the fact of it go away. I sensed something--some vitality--in the darkness over my shoulder. With deep foreboding, I turned. A man's outline, barely discernible in the darkness, stood backed to the kitchen counter. The form tensed, registering my focus, then sprang at me.

His shove hurtled me into the wall. I collided hard, bouncing off and swinging. He'd already thrown the sliding door open and was halfway out, but I clipped his chin. He reeled back, the door screeching along the tracks. Though the overhang shadowed the balcony, the lower half of his face passed through a band of yellow light from the opposing streetlight, and what I saw froze me with shock. I was still for just an instant, but it was time enough for him to get off a kick to my chest.

My view tilted, and then the carpet was there like a horizon. Through the swirl of dust raised by my cheek, I saw the dark form leap recklessly from the balcony and strike the telephone pole. A grunt at impact, limbs scrabbled for purchase, and then he

lurched down out of view.

I got up, clutching my ribs, each inhale aching.

Staggering to the balcony, still short of breath, I peered down in time to see him sprinting away, flashing into view at intervals beneath the streetlights. His footfalls--rubber soles shushing across asphalt--rasped back from the unlit carports in half echoes.

I'd caught my breath but still felt winded. Not from the pain, not anymore, but because the wide, wild mouth I'd seen illuminated in that band of light belonged to Charlie.

Chapter
21

It was impossible. And yet there was no mistaking that mouth. Before the concussion wave had knocked me unconscious in the power plant, I'd seen the explosive flash at Charlie's head. There was no way that he'd emerged unscathed. But I never actually saw him dead. Maybe his head hadn't blown up at all. Maybe the memory had been implanted by government drones. Maybe the trauma had tipped me into a delusion sleep, and I'd awakened with bits and pieces of a story forged from my reinforced paranoia.

Had I dreamed it all up? My fingers found the little wound in my cheek. Score one for reality. I went into the stark white light of my bathroom and peroxided the cut, then checked the skin of my chest and arms. Still faintly red from the blast.

Something had happened to me. And to Charlie. But what?

I paced my claustrophobic condo, checking and rechecking locks, fighting with myself about whether it was safe to stay. My sense of isolation, I realized, was compounded by the fact that I'd dissected my home telephone. None of my friends had a way to reach me, and I was hardly in the mood to call around and give people the number of a disposable cell phone that I was soon going to throw away.

Shortly after 7:00 A.M., I resolved to go and check in to a motel under a fake name until I could figure out my next move. I shouldered the rucksack full of money and threw open the front door, nearly barking my surprise at the cheery DHL delivery guy staring back at me. He handed me a padded envelope and an electronic clipboard. In elaborate, illegible cursive, I signed Foghorn Leghorn and sent him on his chipper way.

I returned the rucksack to its home, then fought open the adhesive flap of the padded envelope. A Nokia phone slid out into my palm. I stared at it, spinning my tires and looking for traction.

It rang.

I dropped it and vaulted the counter into the living room. Crouching, I waited. No explosion, just three more linoleum-rattling rings and then silence. They were probably waiting to hear my voice before pushing the red button. It started up again, shrill and unnerving. A seeming eternity until it silenced. Slowly I crossed to the sliding glass door and nudged aside one of the vertical blinds with my knuckle. No dark sedans, no hovering helicopters, no glinting sniper scopes on the opposing roof.