When Last Seen Alive (24 page)

“Maybe. Maybe not. I guess I should have tested them to see, huh?”

“But you
were
bluffing,” Smith said.

“Insofar as I had no intention of just looking the other way. I thought for once in my life, I’d just hand the cops the ball and let them run with it.”

“And if we require you to do more than that now? Can we count on you to cooperate?”

“Cooperate how?”

“We need a worm on a hook,” Leffman said straightforwardly. “You’re the first person we’ve seen get this close to them and live to tell about it. They must like you for some reason.”

“Hey, I’m a likable guy. What of it?”

“We think they’ll approach you again,” Smith said. “Either to court you for membership, or kill you for lying to them. We want to be there when they do.”

“Lying to them? Who says I lied to them? If they’ve been paying attention, I haven’t moved a muscle on the Selmon case. Every cop I’ve been with since Friday has come to
me
, not the other way around.”

“True. But I think you’ll admit that’s a very fine distinction. It’s possible they’ll fail to recognize it, and if they do—”

“Hold it, hold it. They aren’t gonna ‘fail to recognize it’ unless somebody
helps
them to. And who the hell would do a fucked-up thing like that?”

Smith fell silent, and so did Leffman.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought,” Gunner said.

“With or without our assistance, we believe they’ll decide that you’ve broken the deal you made with them, and can no longer be thought of as a neutral party,” Smith said. “If not today, then tomorrow. Or three weeks from now. Paranoia’s going to set in eventually, and they’re going to come after you when it does. Wouldn’t you be better off letting us accelerate the process so that somebody’s watching your back when they make their move?”

“If I could trust you to watch my back? Maybe. But I can’t. I don’t know you guys that well, I’m sorry.”

“But you don’t—”

“Look. What the hell do you need with me? I gave you all the leads you could possibly want. Scales and Pritchard, right? The brother over at Empowerment Printing? Why don’t you go talk to him, see if
he
wants to be your goddamn ‘worm on a hook’?”

“We’ve already determined that Mr. Pritchard can’t help us. We questioned him this morning, his only link to the Defenders is apparently Scales, for whom he had a phone number and nothing else.”

“So concentrate on Scales, then. He’s bound to turn up eventually.”

“Somebody’s already told you he’s gone missing?”

“Guess I’ve got friends in Hollywood, too.”

The two Federal officers shared a glance, made a joint mental note to find out who the leak was in their otherwise airtight ship.

“We could wait for Scales to reappear, sure,” Leffman said. “But that could take time. And these people are murderers, Gunner, no matter how you slice it. Being discriminating in their choice of targets doesn’t change that.”

“So what do you want from me? Just spell it out, boys, I won’t laugh.”

“We want you to work the case again,” Smith said. “Rather than lie back like you’ve been doing, let them see you at least going through the motions of trying to hunt them down, Scales in particular.”

“You’ll be under surveillance twenty-four-seven,” Leffman added. “You’ll be in no danger whatsoever.”

“Now there’s a comforting thought.”

“You’ll be at some risk, of course,” Smith said. “But we’re convinced you would be, regardless. This way, at least, you won’t have to worry about having eyes in the back of your head. We’ll be those eyes for you.”

“And if I don’t feel like playing along? If I say you’re free to watch me as long as you want, but I’ve got better things to do with my time than
pretend
to be working a case?”

Smith smiled again and shook his head. “Come on, Gunner. We’re the dreaded ‘Feds.’ You don’t really think you have that alternative, do you?”

Leffman first chuckled, then began to laugh outright, unable to contain himself. Smith joined in right after him. The FBI wasn’t known for its sense of humor, but these two would have made a good start to a great party.

And Gunner had to give them credit for one other thing: They knew how to tell it like it was.

sixteen

F
OR THE NEXT DAY AND A HALF
, G
UNNER WENT ALONG WITH
the program.

He went back to Byron Scales’s empty apartment in Windsor Hills and made a show of peering through its windows, as if he didn’t know Scales had abandoned the premises long ago. He revisited the Stage Door Motel to hassle the fat man at the counter, demanding to know where Scales, a.k.a. Blue, was presently holed up. He even made a second run to Empowerment Printing, looking for Clive Pritchard, and acted like he was disappointed when someone he’d never seen before told him Pritchard didn’t work there anymore. Gunner did everything possible to portray a man bound and determined to turn Scales up, driving his red Cobra from one end of the city to the next, and he did it all knowing he had more to fear than just Scales and the Defenders of the Bloodline.

For Jack Frerotte and Rafe Sweeney could have just as easily been watching him as the Defenders, and both had their own reasons to wish the investigator harm. Despite the unmarked FBI sedan that was diligently following his every move, its drivers so good at doing surveillance, he himself could hardly tell they were there, Gunner was uncomfortable enough playing clay pigeon to three separate, hostile parties that he found it necessary to make his own preparations for disaster; little tricks of the trade he had learned to fall back on in anticipation of worst case scenarios.

And it was all for nothing.

Because by 4 o’clock Tuesday afternoon, no one had made a move toward Gunner. Either because they were too smart to take the bait, or because their vow to watch him had been empty, Scales and the Defenders of the Bloodline never once showed themselves, and neither did Frerotte nor Sweeney. Smith and Leffman’s “worm on the hook” had failed to get a bite, and Gunner wanted off the line. Had Smith not greeted him with good news when he checked in with the FBI man shortly before 5 o’clock, he would have said anything he had to to get the Feds out of his life again.

The pay phone connection wasn’t the best, so Smith had to repeat himself before Gunner was sure he’d heard him correctly the first time.

“We’ve got ’im,” Smith said again.

“Scales?”

“He turned up at an aunt’s place in Plainview, Texas. Alone. He’ll fly back tonight for questioning in the morning.”

“And the others?”

“No word on any others yet. As you might imagine, Scales isn’t saying much. We’re hoping that’ll change.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“If you’re asking whether or not we’re prepared to continue our surveillance of you indefinitely, Gunner, the answer is no. We’re not. The objective was to get our hands on a Defender. That objective has been met. On behalf of Agent Leffman and the entire bureau, I’d like to thank you for your cooperation and wish you a pleasant day.”

Gunner didn’t think it was funny, being used and discarded like a disposable diaper, but he had to make light of it or take serious offense, go see Smith in person to loosen a few of his teeth.

“You forgot something, didn’t you?”

“What’s that?”

“My hearty handshake.”

The FBI man hung up.

Gunner left the pay phone he was using and went straight in to Mickey’s, both to unwind and pick up his dog, the latter something his landlord and Winnie had been on him about since Saturday. Winnie had the crazy idea little Dillett could help protect him somehow in this time of imminent danger; Mickey just wanted the animal out of his shop. Somewhere around Imperial Highway and Avalon, less than five miles from his office at Mickey’s, Gunner saw the ubiquitous unmarked sedan peel off behind him, never to be seen again. Those relentless watchdogs of the American taxpayer’s money, Smith and Leffman, apparently worked fast.

Gunner put a call in to Yolanda McCreary as soon as he reached his desk, not having seen her now for over twenty-four hours. They’d been together nonstop from Saturday evening to Monday morning, when he’d left the house to meet Gil Everson’s plane at LAX with Matt Poole, but once he’d started work trying to draw the Defenders’ fire for the FBI, he’d deliberately steered clear of her. He sent her back to her hotel room and told her to stay put, hold onto the key to his home he’d given her sometime Sunday until he gave her the okay to use it. They had spoken over the phone two or three times since then, but that was all.

Now, he couldn’t even reach her that way. No one answered his call when he rang her hotel room.

His heart sank. He slouched back in his chair, riding himself for calling at the exact moment she’d left her room to eat, or something—and then stopped, suddenly realizing what he was doing. He’d known McCreary for all of eight days—
and he’d given her a key to his home!
What the hell had he been thinking? Being alone had been wearing thin on him lately, it was true—his last long-term relationship with a woman had crashed and burned more than fourteen months ago—but that could hardly excuse a fall of this magnitude. McCreary had blindsided him, no less so than Byron Scales had down in Johnny Frerotte’s basement—assuming that
had
been Scales—and now he was left to wonder whether her effect on him would prove permanent or merely temporary.

He considered the question quietly for a while, finally had to admit to himself that he was hoping for the former.

No messages had been waiting for him from either Poole or Denny Loiacano, so it seemed safe to assume that both Frerotte and Rafe Sweeney were still at large, but Gunner placed a call to Poole at Southwest just the same, just in case Sweeney had in fact been picked up and the cop was simply too busy to let Gunner know about it.

“Not a chance,” Poole said, after he’d heard how Gunner’s work for the Feds had ended.

“Everson’s story still the same?”

“Yeah. Why shouldn’t it be? He’s in the clear as long as Sweeney’s not around to point the finger at ’im. And his old lady’s suicide still looks like a suicide.”

“What about his girlfriend? The working girl?”

“We’re still tryin’ to find her. The people at the Marina Pacific remember seein’ her, all right, but that’s it. They say she wasn’t a guest there, and they never saw her and Everson together. If she stayed overnight, they say it had to be in one of the two suites Sweeney registered in earlier that day.”

“Sweeney?”

“Yeah. It was his name and credit card on the books, not Everson’s. The councilman’s got a reputation to protect, remember?”

Gunner fell silent.

“Bottom line is, we need Sweeney to put it all together for us,” Poole said. “Without him—”

“So what are you doing talking to me? Get out there and find his ass, already,” Gunner said.

“What, you worried he might hold a grudge or somethin’?”

“Let’s just say I’d feel better walking the dog tonight if you had him under lock and key.”

“Dog? You got a dog, Gunner?”

“It was just a figure of speech, Poole. But yeah, I’ve got a dog.”

“What, an attack dog? Tell me you got an attack dog.”

“Close. It’s a Rhodesian Ridgeback.”

“A Rhodesian Ridgeback? Does it know how to fire a Tec-Nine?” He laughed. “’Cause if you were thinkin’ of siccin’ it on Sweeney
without
one …”

Gunner hung up the phone on the would-be stand-up comedian and went to find his dog.

Johnny Frerotte was sitting on the living room couch when Gunner walked in.

Dillett was the first to notice him. The little dog scurried into the house and immediately went to the couch, where Yolanda McCreary was sitting on the floor between the big man’s legs, a large kitchen knife being held to her throat. Its blade was actually drawing blood.

“Get that … fucking dog … out of here,” Frerotte said, referring to the animal now standing in McCreary’s lap, excitedly yapping at his legs.

As he had out at Martin Luther King Memorial Hospital four days ago, Frerotte still sounded like an emphysema victim with a plastic bag over his head, and he was still wearing the shoulder harness and neck brace his doctors had fitted him with. Left arm bound uselessly to his chest, his field of vision seriously limited by the neck brace, the big man sported a two-day growth of stubble on his face, uncombed hair, disheveled clothing—and a stench not unlike that which might have emanated from a sun-ripened lump of roadkill.

“You don’t look so good, Jack,” Gunner said.

“I said put … put this … goddamn dog away!” Frerotte tried to bark. He brought the knife up higher on Mc Creary’s throat, forced her to tilt her head back and eye the ceiling to avoid being cut.

“Aaron …” McCreary moaned, tears rolling down her face.

Gunner called the dog by name, followed the command with a whistle, silently ruing the absence of men who had only hours ago been standing guard outside, waiting to protect him from just such an ambush as this. If only Carroll Smith had been good enough to extend the FBI’s surveillance on him for the remainder of the day …