35
“Still nothing?” Arturo stood in the middle of the media room, arms crossed. He was still wearing the green Kevlar three-piece suit he had on yesterday afternoon.
“Nobody is reporting anything at the grove,” said Clark, the recliner tilted back almost horizontal as he flipped channels on the big-screen TV. “No blood, no body, no reports of gunshots. Say what you want, Guillermo never leaves the cops anything to chew on. Man is tidy.”
“Frank said he was tidy, too,” snapped Missy, cinching her red bathrobe tighter. “That didn’t count for much, did it?”
“Frank lied to us, just like Arturo said.” Vlad sat on the floor, knobby knees pressed against his chest. His socks drooped around his ankles. “I’m sad about it, too, but Pinto was the one who killed our cookers. Pinto and some guy named Mellon, not Guillermo.”
“Maybe Guillermo lied to
Frank,
” Cecil said from the edge of the sunken media room, perched uncomfortably on the steps. “I agree with Missy: You should have gone ahead and killed Guillermo.”
They ignored him.
Clark kept switching channels. The coffee table in front of him was strewn with half-eaten bowls of cereal, congealed eggs, and coffee cups. Sugar granules were scattered across the shiny black surface from where Clark had loaded up his Frosted Flakes.
“You fucked up, Arturo, no two ways about it.” Missy sat on the couch, her legs tucked up, twisting her blond hair back and forth as if trying to start a fire. “Driving off the way you did, to interrogate a grease monkey, no less . . . no wonder Guillermo thinks we’re weak.”
“Guillermo thinks we’re not dumb enough to fall into a trap—
that’s
what he’s thinking now,” Arturo said to her, his voice wound as tightly as one of the watches Vlad wanted to take apart someday. “You should be
thanking
me and Vlad, instead of insulting us. You should be grateful for what we did last night, and what we did a hundred other nights.”
“Arturo . . . dude, maybe you
should
have brought Frank here, so we could talk to him.” Clark tapped the remote control on the arm of the chair as he spoke, sleepy-eyed and slack. “See, now we’re not sure if he was hired by Guillermo or the Yellow Magic boys or maybe even—”
“How could we trust anything he said?” asked Arturo.
“You
make
him tell us the truth,” said Missy. “Isn’t that what you and Vlad do?”
“We do a lot more than that,” said Arturo.
“Too late to argue about now, so let’s kiss and make up.” Clark yawned, pulled a vial of pills from the pocket of his pajamas. “Who wants to get high?”
“
I
do,” called Cecil.
“Anybody?”
“Me!” said Cecil.
Clark looked around, shrugged, and shoved the vial back into his pocket.
“You should have brought Frank back here and forced the truth out of him,” Missy said to Arturo. “That’s all I intend to say on the matter.”
“Let me tell you something.” Arturo stepped toward her, but she just kept on twisting her hair. “
Some
people, it don’t matter what you do to them, they’re going to lie to you with their dying breath. Just like Pinto last night. Raising the car up, giving him room, letting him think there’s a chance . . . that’s when they break. Not Pinto. He was hard-core to the bone. Guys like him, they’re going to lie just so they can feel like they got the last laugh. That’s what Frank is like, too. Exact same.”
Vlad tugged at his socks. “You said you had a lot of respect for Pinto.”
“
Lot
of respect,” said Arturo. “After the way he handled himself last night . . . yeah, he died like a man.”
“Then that must mean you have a lot of respect for Thorpe, too,” said Vlad.
Arturo’s face got red.
“I think he’s got you there, Arturo,” said Clark. “That’s what they call a logical syllogism.”
“I’m going to get another ice tea.” Arturo stalked toward the kitchen. If Cecil hadn’t scooted out of the way, he would have been kicked aside.
There was a beeping from the couch. Missy pulled out her PDA, checked the screen. She opened the e-mail, curious, then closed it, slipped the PDA back between the cushions.
“Who was it, babe?”
“Nobody,” said Missy. “Just more junk.”
“I’m
in,
” said Warren, clapping his hands together like a Vegas dealer making a shift change. “How long, Billy?”
Billy looked out over the beach, impassive and untouchable. The morning light gleamed on his shaved head, his skin so black that it was purple, the color of kings. He was large and powerfully built, but graceful, oddly dapper in ocher slacks, a loose cotton shirt, and a yellow paisley ascot. Sometimes Thorpe thought Billy chose his wardrobe to see if anyone would laugh. No one ever did.
“Billy?”
“Four minutes, fifty-eight seconds,” said Thorpe.
Warren’s blue-tipped hair was spiked like a cockatoo. “You fucking with me?”
“Not even a remote possibility,” said Thorpe.
“Under five minutes . . .” Warren nodded, flipped Missy’s business card back to Thorpe, and went back to the wireless laptop balanced on his knees. “That’s acceptable.” He sat on a bench just off the beach bike path, wearing a black mesh tank top, Lycra bike shorts, and customized silver-flecked Rollerblades. Without his black leather jacket, he looked scrawny and vulnerable, but his sneer was still in place.
A few minutes ago, Warren had sent Missy spam. She had spiked the free offer without downloading it, but just opening the e-mail had inserted a worm into her operating system, a keystroke-sniffing program that Warren had created himself. Four minutes and fifty-eight seconds later, he had her password and files at his disposal.
“Off-the-shelf encryption . . . why do people even bother?” Warren sat hunched over, immobile except for his fingers dancing over the keys.
“Can you do it?” asked Thorpe.
“Don’t insult me,” said Warren.
“In the interest of fair play, I think Warren and I deserve to know what you’re up to,” said Billy. “The last time I saw you, your little wake-up had gone awry. It doesn’t seem like you’ve made much progress since then.”
“Not much.”
“If you want our help, if you’re exposing us to potential harm, I think it only appropriate that you tell us what you’re planning.” Billy sat down beside Warren, smoothed his ascot, playful now. “Of course, my own curiosity does factor in, too.”
Thorpe hated to admit it, but Billy was right. If Thorpe had leveled with Bishop, he might still be alive. He casually checked the area, but there were only joggers, bicyclists, and skaters, all with their headsets on, moving to their own private beat.
Billy didn’t say a word while Thorpe filled him in on what had happened since they had breakfast at the Harbor House Café. It had been only eight days since they had sat on the outdoor patio reading Betty B’s column, Billy asking Thorpe if it was his doing. Everything had changed at that moment, and Thorpe hadn’t even realized it. He told Billy everything that had happened in the last eight days. He left out only Danny Hathaway’s involvement and the convenient departure of Gina and Douglas Meachum.
“I’m very sorry to hear about the death of your friend,” said Billy when Thorpe was finished.
“We only knew each other for a few days. . . .”
“It’s not really a matter of time, is it? It’s what you share, the decisions you make.”
“He was my friend, Billy.”
Billy patted Thorpe’s arm, and for a change it wasn’t an attempt to be proprietary or intimidating. It was oddly tender. “Don’t beat up on yourself, Frank. Mistakes happen. The problem with being a lone wolf is that your mistakes magnify because you have no one to bounce your ideas off of, no one you trust to tell you no. I’m not telling you this to persuade you to work with me; I know you have to carry this wake-up of yours to its conclusion.” His eyes were warm. “When you’re finished, though, I hope you’ll reconsider what we’ve discussed.”
“Thanks, Billy.” Thorpe meant it. “I just can’t . . . I just can’t quit. Not now.”
“That’s why you’re the best at what you do,” said Billy.
“What happened to the businessman who smacked the kid at the airport?” Warren crossed his legs, spun the wheels of his skate. “The art dealer. What happened to him?”
“He’s in Hawaii,” said Thorpe. “He’s drinking mai tais with his wife.”
Warren shook his head. “What’s the name you want me to hack from her address book?” he asked, fingers poised over the laptop.
“Arturo . . . I don’t know his last name,” said Thorpe.
“No big deal,” said Warren, tapping away. “I’ll just run through her recent e-mail exchanges.”
“Don’t crash his PDA until I call,” said Thorpe. “I don’t know when I’ll catch up with Missy. You’re sure you can do it on a moment’s notice?”
“Spare me your doubts, okay?” said Warren. “I’ll toast him.”
Billy gazed off into the distance, past the Boogie boarders and the building waves, past the curve of the earth, for all Thorpe knew. “You haven’t mentioned the Engineer. Was that deliberate?”
“I’m meeting him next week,” said Thorpe. “We’re going to talk about old times.”
Billy raised an eyebrow. “Really? I had no idea your contact had progressed to that stage. Are you sure it’s wise?”
“I’m sure.”
“You’ve been on-line with the Engineer?” Warren looked from one to the other. “You should have told me, Billy.”
Billy ran a hand across his bare scalp. “Frank knows what he’s doing.”
“How long do these on-line chats last?” Warren asked Thorpe.
“No more than five or ten minutes,” said Thorpe. “I use a cell phone to make my connection. No landline. That’s safe, right?”
“Depends on how good the Engineer is,” said Warren. “Five or ten minutes isn’t enough time to snag your address, but if the hacker is good, really good, he could narrow your location. He could get within a few miles of you.”
“A few
miles
?” said Billy. “No harm done.”
Warren glared at Billy. “You should have told me he was talking with the Engineer. That’s what I’m here for.”
“I apologize,” said Billy. “I’m truly sorry.”
“Dump your cell phones, Frank, every one of them. Dump them
now,
” said Warren. “I have a box of cloned phones in the car. Take as many as you want. Use them.”
“Why are you doing all this?” asked Thorpe. “I appreciate it, but—”
“The Engineer made initial contact with you because of my mistake,” said Warren, blue-crested, even more birdlike as he hunched over the laptop. “He backtracked on my own search for him; he
used
me.” His lip curled. “You think you’re the only one with a sense of responsibility? The only one who cleans up after himself? Just do me a favor—stay off the Net for a while.”
“Scout’s honor,” said Thorpe.
36
Thorpe waited for Missy to get out of her car before he called Warren and told him to go ahead and crash Arturo’s system. Warren snapped his fingers into the receiver, said, “You’re welcome,” and broke the connection.
He followed her through the Fashion Island mall for over an hour before making his move, tracked her through Prada and Chanel and Versace, Missy striding along in her sleek forest green skirt and top, snapping her fingers from the dressing rooms, barking at saleswomen. The clothes that didn’t meet with her approval were tossed aside, diaphanous dresses thrown onto the floor; those she liked were packaged for delivery later. Fashion Island was four stories of platinum AmEx finery and hauteur, nymphets practicing their sneers as they window-shopped, their mothers proud of their own washboard midriffs, looking like their daughters’ older, harder sisters.
In a tapered blue-black suit and with a newly cropped haircut, Thorpe fit right in—“the New Militarism,” the stylist had called it. Thorpe checked himself in the mirror. His face reminded him of an ax blade, but there was something off about his eyes. He had glimpsed Claire only once or twice through his window since they had made love. Neither of them made any effort to contact the other, their fleeting intimacy fractured, sending them in opposite directions. That didn’t mean he didn’t think about her.
Missy headed for the elevator to valet parking, and Thorpe closed in. “I would have passed on that last outfit you bought, the silvery one,” he said, the words barely out of his mouth before she turned. “It made you look like a Martian hooker.”
Missy stared at him. “Arturo is going to be disappointed, but I’m not. You look dangerous enough to eat, Frank. Did you kill Guillermo?”
“No, but I took his bulletproof car away from him.”
Her mouth twitched. “I almost believe you.”
“Ask around. I’m sure someone has heard Guillermo lost his wheels.”
She watched him, then nodded to the small round tables outside the French-themed café. The waiter ambled over a few minutes later, a skinny kid with scimitar sideburns, leaving just as slowly with their café au lait orders. Missy crossed her legs, showed just enough thigh to get the attention of every passing male. “How
did
you get away from Guillermo?”
“Smoke and mirrors.”
She showed the tip of her pink tongue. “Whoever hired you to cause trouble between Guillermo and us chose the right man.” She waved at someone behind Thorpe’s back. A woman—he could see her in the reflection of the café’s window. “Alison Peabody,” she said, looking past him, still waving. “Last time I ran into her, she asked me if it was true I was collecting decorative ceramic thimbles.
Cunt.
” She turned back to Thorpe. “Who
was
it who hired you, by the way?”
“Guillermo hired me, just like I told you. He wants you and Clark dead. That hasn’t changed. He just doesn’t think he needs me anymore.”
The waiter interrupted them, set their drinks on the table, one cup wobbling, spilling a few drops of café au lait into the saucer. He backed away without a word.
“Vlad and Arturo were supposed to back me up at the orange grove. We could have ended both of our problems.” Thorpe sipped his coffee. It was weak and barely warm. “I thought we had a deal.”
“You lied about Guillermo’s taking down our cookers. That ended the deal.”
“I didn’t lie. That’s what he told me.”
“That’s what Cecil said.” Missy tossed her blond mane. “When Cecil starts agreeing with you, Frank, you’re in big trouble.”
Thorpe pushed aside his coffee cup. “When I was sitting in Guillermo’s Town Car, just before his
pistoleros
made their play, Guillermo said he was officially canceling my contract. He said he had somebody on the inside working for him. They were more expensive than me . . . but Guillermo said he could be more certain of the outcome.”
A pencil mustache of foam curved across Missy’s upper lip. She slowly licked it off. “Of course, Guillermo didn’t tell you the name of this
someone.
”
“No.”
“I bet you could find out, though, if I deposited money in your offshore account. Where is it, the Caymans?”
“Isle of Wight. Tighter bank security laws than the Caymans.”
Missy laughed. “What
ever
are you up to?”
“Same as ever . . . I’m up for telling the truth and having fun telling it. I’m up for doing unto others before they do it to me. I’m up for giving you a hard ride and making some money, too. The all-American dream.
You
up for that, Missy?”
Missy’s eyes flashed, and he knew that look, pure blood lust masquerading as eroticism. She stirred her coffee, the spoon clinking against the side of the cup. “Someone
inside
our operation. There’s probably a dozen people who qualify. Dealers, cookers . . . our accountant, our contacts at various chemical supply houses. You
must
have some idea who Guillermo was talking about.” She spooned the foam into her mouth. “Otherwise, what do you have to sell?”
Thorpe smiled. She was fast. “I don’t know, but we can find out.”
“We?”
“That’s right.”
“Now I am intrigued. Why don’t we go back to the house and see if Clark wants to play.”
“Clark doesn’t get to play. Arturo wouldn’t have hung me out to dry if Clark hadn’t okayed it.”
“Arturo made that decision on his own.”
Thorpe shook his head. “This is between you and me.”
“I’m flattered.”
“I thought you would be.”
Missy had a small laugh that dirtied everything it touched. “I can’t get a handle on you, Frank. I love the way you talk . . . but I wonder what I’ve done to deserve you.” She crossed her legs again, treated him to the rustle of silk. “I’m a married woman, a happily married woman, but I know what men are like. I think you show yourself movies in your head when you’re all alone. Sweaty movies with lots of grunting and groaning, and I think I’m the star, aren’t I, Frank?”
Thorpe allowed himself to fall into her eyes, and he wondered what Clark would have been like if he hadn’t met her. A man could drown in those cold blue eyes; a man could lose himself and never find the bottom.
“I think we could have some fun, Frank.”
“I think we’ve already started.” She didn’t work on him, but Thorpe was impressed. She used everything she had to claw her way up the food chain. So did he. “Do you have a PDA? Vlad and Arturo were always checking their PDAs.”
A little confused, Missy dipped a hand into her purse, brought out her wireless PDA. “Do you
really
think Guillermo has an inside man?”
Thorpe took his time answering, waited until she inclined her head toward him, an inadvertent sign of vulnerability, but enough. “I’m not sure. He might have been just fucking with me. Maybe he
let
me get away, thinking I’d come to you with the story, and set you worrying about who was about to betray you. No better way to ruin an operation than from within.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if Guillermo was lying, but I know how to find out the truth. It will cost you one hundred thousand dollars.” He slid the number of his offshore account across the table to her.
“Do you expect me to trust you?”
“No, I’ll trust you instead.” Thorpe smiled. “Just before I came here today, I contacted Guillermo and made him an offer. I said unless he paid the balance due on my contract, I was going to tell you that he had compromised your organization.”
Missy looked down her nose at him, waiting. “
Well?
What did Guillermo say?”
“He said he wanted to think about it. He also asked for his car back.”
“So all I have is your word that—”
“Log on to your PDA. Send an e-mail to everyone in your operation. Everyone in your address book. Tell them it’s a test, that you want to make sure they’re monitoring their messages, and that they should send you an e-mail response immediately.” Thorpe stood up. “I’m going to take a stroll, give you some privacy. I’ll be back in ten minutes. That should be enough time.”
“For what?”
Thorpe started walking. He didn’t need to look behind him to know she was already sending out the e-mail. He took twenty minutes to return. Never let anyone be able to clock you—that was one of the first things Billy had told him when he signed on. Returning in five minutes would have been just as effective.
“You’re late,” said Missy. The PDA was on the table.
Thorpe sat back down. “Has anyone gotten back to you?”
“What do you think? I said I wanted a response
immediately.
”
“Then you’ll know soon enough who’s the inside man.” Thorpe looked just past her, watched the reflection of the passing shoppers in the café window, all the pretty people on parade. “After I spoke with Guillermo, I sent him an e-mail with my offshore account number. Inside the e-mail was a doomsday virus that bypassed his fire wall and corrupted the hard drive. Anyone Guillermo sent an e-mail to in the last hour had their computer infected. Anyone he contacted had their system fried.” He tapped Missy’s PDA. “I figured that after I spoke to Guillermo, the first thing he would do is contact his inside man. So, anybody who doesn’t answer your e-mail . . . that’s the guilty party.”
Missy stared at her PDA.
The waiter appeared. “Hi. Can I—”
Missy waved him away.
“How many of your people still haven’t responded?” asked Thorpe.
“Three.”
“Kind of exciting, isn’t it?” Thorpe stood up. “You owe me one hundred thousand dollars. Send it to my account as soon as you’re down to one no-show. I work on the honor system.” He kissed her hand. “Strangely enough, no one ever stiffs me.”