We Know (23 page)

I grabbed my keys, left, and walked the few blocks, stopping occasionally at windows and newspaper vending boxes to check behind me.

Homer was sleeping off a drunk, slumped against the convenience-store wall, one leg flung over a parking space's bumper block. A car pulled in right in front of him, headlights glaring into his face. He raised an arm against the light, wagging sluggishly. The driver hopped out, chatting on his cell phone, and scampered inside.

Homer was cursing and rearranging himself. He looked like a brown puddle. He got nasty when he boozed hard, not like the affable bums you see in movies. His eyes were bloodshot and sinister, his crow's-feet white lines in his dirt-caked face. I thought about what Kim Kendall had told me about his wife and kid, how he'd let his past run him into the ground. I seemed to be on a pretty good course for the same destination.

"Hey, Homer," I said. "Did you talk to anyone at the VA for me about tracking down those soldiers?"

". . . ffffuckin' think you are . . . ," he said, in a dry-throated mutter. "Leeme the hell alone."

I stepped past him into the shop. When I laid two more throwaway cell phones on the counter, Hacmed leered at me. "You start a telecommunications company, Nicolas?"

I set down some cash and went outside. Homer was out cold on his back, his mouth a ragged oval. His head was shoved up against the bumper block. I did my best to move him, but his girth and odor

outmatched me. I finally managed to roll him onto his side, his forehead clunking to the asphalt. I wedged a folded piece of cardboard beneath his sweaty cheek and left him snoring prodigiously.

The corner mart's rear wall, papered with flyers for independent films and sex-caller lines, abutted a rank alley with a Dumpster. I taped the picture of Charlie and Frank beneath the lid, then studied the slip of paper with the pager number.

Ten digits on ripped paper. My sole channel to the Powers That Be.

I flipped open one of the cell phones I'd just purchased, dialed the pager number, then punched in the digits printed on the back of the cheap plastic earpiece. I hung up and waited. A half-peeled ad proclaimed, Have Sex With Locals Now!!!! I wondered how they decided to stop at four exclamation points. The breeze wafted a faint sewer smell from the grate, but faint was enough.

The shrill ring startled me. I answered in a low voice, "Hello?"

Silence. A whisper of static coming through the live line. A soft rustle, a puff of breath catching the receiver. And then nothing.

"Hello?" I said again, wanting back just a single word to match against my memory of Sever, the Voice, Charlie. But there was only a click and, eventually, a dial tone.

I smashed the phone on the ground, threw it in the Dumpster, and headed for home.

* * *

I came awake in terror, gasping for breath, shoving at my sheets. For a few wretched moments, I tumbled through scenarios, disassociated. Was I holding Frank on the blood-glistening floorboards? Hurtling back from the blast that consumed Charlie's head? Battling an intruder by the sliding glass door? The fabric between past and present had torn, and I was in free fall between them.

Finally I realized that I was in the grip of night terrors. I didn't have to check the clock to know what time it was. My witching hour.

I spoke the facts out loud to try to calm myself: "It's 2:18, and you're safe in your bed. It's 2:18, and you 're safe in your bed. "

But still I couldn't slow my breathing, my thoughts, my furious heartbeat.

The ghouls had fled their cages, and there was no herding them back.

Chapter
28

Starting early the next morning, I sat with my back to the wall, knees drawn to my chest, watching the front door. I was waiting for a knock, the delivery of another transparent cell phone. But it kept not coming. I walked around my place, peering yet again through the blinds down at the morning
-
bright street. Finally I left a handful of messages,

pushing back my upcoming appointments--a job interview, a teeth cleaning, a get-together at Maloney's to watch the Dodgers-Giants game. I reached the dean at the Pepperdine MBA/Public Policy program and apologized for missing our meeting. Reacquainting myself, even briefly, with my normal life only underscored how far off the tracks the last few days had sent me.

By 11:30A.M.,I had a pretty good case of cabin fever and was glad to head out to meet Induma at Starbucks. I got there a bit early and made my way through the rush to the pay phone in the back. Customers were cycling past the counter rapidly, on their morning schedules, ordering in abbreviations and using the proper, ridiculous terminology. Shouldered to the wall near the bathroom, pressing the receiver to my face, I felt more out of place than usual. Maybe I was having another hiccup of envy for the liber-adjusted, with their BlackBerries and leather folios and buckets of caffeine. I tugged the well-traveled paper slip out of my pocket and dialed the pager number Kim Kendall had given me.

The first ring cut short. "This number is no longer in service. If you believe you have reached this recording in error-- "

Hanging up, I noticed Induma pushing through the crowd, holding her laptop down against her thigh. She wore a cashmere sweater, hooded and blood orange, that brought out the hidden hues of

her caramel skin. Using a napkin, she wiped down a table, bused the empty cups, then sat. As I approached, she kept her eyes on the screen. Her slender fingers flying across the keyboard, she kicked out a chair that rocketed into my hands. "Sit down. Is this him?"

On the laptop screen was a picture of Charlie, a match of the one Wydell had flashed in my face after they'd raided my place. Loose scowl, blue blazer, slicked-back hair. A training-school head shot, archived on a state employee pension site that Induma had somehow accessed. Special Agent Charlie Jackman. California State Police.

Confronted, at last, with proof, with a name.

"That's him," I finally managed. "That's him. He was real. He was there."

She studied me with her large brown eyes. "I never doubted it."

"What the hell is the California State Police?"

"What the hell was the CSP. They were merged into CHP in '95. And guess what fell under their jurisdiction?" Induma's gaze was steady across the top of the computer. "Protecting high-ranking state officials." She took in my stunned reaction, nodding. "That's right. They were a security police agency. Seventeen years ago Charlie Jackman was a dignitary-protection officer who worked close-in

detail for--"

"Governor Andrew Bilton," I said. "Holy shit.

Charlie didn't have dirt on Caruthers--"

"He had it on Bilton."

The Voice in the Dark's words, considered from this angle, made as much sense. Charlie had a lot of respect for Caruthers. He was going to try to help him. He told me he had something Caruthers needed for his election bid.

For the first time in days, I felt hopeful. The further this stayed from Caruthers, the further it stayed from Frank. I thought about how Bilton had tried to reel me in early, arranging to talk to me after I'd regained consciousness in that hospital room. How his self-assured voice had sounded later on the phone, the threats he'd buried beneath that superficial charm: If you mess around on certain stages, the spotlight finds you eventually. How his links to the Secret Service were now vastly stronger than Caruthers's. How the message divulged by Kim Kendall pointing to Caruthers-- Godfather's with Firebird--had smelled like disinformation.

"Charlie brought the dirt on Bilton to Frank," I said, "thinking Frank would broker a deal for the Caruthers camp to buy it. As Caruthers's guy, Frank would've had to bring any intel to him. But for whatever reason, Caruthers didn't bite--maybe it was too hot, maybe he didn't want to stoop to dirty politics. When Bilton's guys caught wind and came looking, Charlie hung the blame on Frank."

"That's certainly," Induma said, "one possibility."

"And?"

"The other, just as obvious, is Charlie brought it to Frank because he needed an outside man to blackmail Bilton. Working for Bilton, he couldn't do it himself."

A new dark cloud. Another array of considerations. I sagged back in my chair.

"There are two choices here," Induma said quietly. "Frank either brought it to Caruthers for the right reasons or to Bilton for the wrong ones." She watched me consider this for a moment, then directed her frown back at the computer screen. "Why did your mom say Charlie worked for the Service?"

"Because it seemed like he did. He was another dark-suit earpiece guy when she met him."

"Well, Charlie pulled a damn good disappearing act. He took early retirement a week after your stepfather was killed. Then he pretty much vanished. No tax returns, no mortgages, no phone numbers. And I know where to look." Turning back to the screen, she slid a finger across the touchpad, tapped with her thumb. "Charlie had one son. Mack. Thirty-eight."

"Mack Jackman?"

"I went to elementary school with Ronnie Ronald. 'Mack Jackman' is rock-star cool by comparison."

The screen loaded. A home page. Mack Jackman Commercial Photography. It featured numerous catalog pictures of furniture. A beechwood leather

couch. A pale sea green faux-suede chaise. A dining-room table, espresso stain and frosted glass.

Induma said, "The film used to take your picture outside Charlie's? Kodak Ektachrome 100. What'd the guy at the photo place tell you? 'Fine grain, high sharpness, makes your colors pop.'"

"If you're shooting something where you need really accurate color," I said. "Clothes or curtains."

"Or furniture," Induma said.

I clicked the "Art Shots" button on the Web site, and a few black-and-white cityscapes appeared that I recognized from the hall outside Opaque. The Voice in the Dark, tight with restaurant management as I'd thought; the smug Swiss host had made clear his unwillingness to give up anything, and the waitstaff could hardly play eyewitness. I wondered if there was some connection between Charlie and Kim Kendall, the other art photographer in the mix.

"I checked the Web page's source," Induma was saying. "The page elements are stored in date
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sorted directories. He used to add docs from the server every few days, but he hasn't added a new one since June."

"Which in English means . . . ?"

"This site hasn't been updated in three months. Not much of a way to run a business. He went off the grid. No new leases, no new jobs, no forwarding information."

"Money trouble," I said. "Hiding from whoever

he owed. Then his dad swooped in to save the day."

Induma tapped the laptop with a thumb. "I couldn't source that pager number you got off that girl. I obviously don't have clearances for all the law-enforcement databases, but still. Whoever set up that pager knows what he's doing. How to not be seen, not leave trails." She folded her laptop and stood. "When's Mack contacting you? To give you the other key?"

"I don't know. But not soon enough." I jotted my cell-phone number on a piece of paper, and she tucked it into a pocket. I took her arm. "Thank you." The cashmere was soft against my fingers. I rolled my thumb across the fabric. "You were wearing this when I met you."

"You remember?"

"With dark blue jeans and open-toed sandals. Your toenails were painted a deeper shade of orange, and your hair was pulled back in a tortoise
-
shell clasp."

She stopped, laptop against her thigh. I watched her chest swell and settle beneath the sweater.

I said, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you everything then."

Behind her, around us, people jostled and scraped by and sipped on the go. Her lips twitched--a bittersweet smile--and then she turned and disappeared through the door.

Chapter
29

Dripping with sweat, I sat on the bench before my locker. I'd hit the weights, jumped rope for twenty minutes, then run myself to exhaustion on the treadmill. The workout should've cleared my head, but instead I felt jumpy, antsy to get home to see if DHL had dropped off a transparent cell phone at my government-issued front door.

I tugged open the locker. Through the curtains of my hanging clothes, my money clip sat on the thin metal shelf. Still fat with cash--I'd stopped at an ATM--but something was different. A piece of paper was tucked beneath the clip, parallel with the top bill. I withdrew the fold of cash, pulled the silver clip free, and stared down at a familiar film
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processing slip.

One roll, ready for pickup.

The photograph looked like shit, but it did its job. Pronounced against a blur of yellow stucco were five large painted numbers. The picture had been taken at a slant, encompassing the corner street sign. All the info, in one neat little snapshot.

I lowered the photograph and stared at the real thing. Precise angle, precise distance. I was standing where the photographer had been when he'd snapped the shot--across the street on an apartment-complex driveway leading sharply down into an underground garage. As I leaned against the retaining wall, my head was just above street level. An inconspicuous spot. Which was good, given the dark sedan pulled to the curb in front of the neighboring building.