Deadline (13 page)

‘Small world,' I said. And so it was: if you worked in the LAPD, you were part of a big fraternity, whether you'd been pensioned off or not.

Bobby Stone. I hadn't thought about Bobby in a while. He and his partner – Rocco – had been working a stakeout on an abandoned house in East LA in the summer of 1993. They'd been doing it for days, and they were both fatigued. And maybe they grew careless in their weariness, or they were bored by numbing inactivity – whatever, they decided to enter the house. It was an elaborate trap. The Colombian dealers had been inside all along, waiting. In the gun battle that followed, George Rocco was shot in his left lung, Bobby Stone once in the thigh, a second time in the stomach. The dealers didn't finish them off. They devised an alternative plan of greater cruelty.

They tied George and Bobby together, doused them in gasoline, and then set fire to the house which, bone-dry in that hot, arid summer, had blazed immediately. The intervention of the fire department had saved both men, but not before they'd sustained serious burns.

Rocco apparently bounced back to health, but Bobby Stone had been sent to me by the LAPD. He was frightened of sleep, beset by nightmares of flame and falling rafters, dreams that scalded and smothered him. He was also terrified of daylight and spaces. He'd tried suicide twice and failed narrowly both times; his wife and daughter had gone.

Bobby was a mess, a hard road to travel. Slowly, we'd worked at his fears; we glued him together with therapy and hypnosis, chemicals and patience. He'd returned to the LAPD where he was given a desk job. He didn't dream of flames any more, and I was proud of how the therapy had succeeded. But it would have failed if Bobby had lost the will to live. It was one of those rare times when cooperation between therapist and patient had been seamless; difficult, certainly, and time-consuming, but both Bobby and myself wanted the same thing, his restoration.

I looked at George Rocco, who'd clearly decided he was going to be helpful. He felt an obligation to me. ‘I'll take you up to the control room if you like,' he said, and he clapped my back, as if I was a star he just wanted to touch in the hope that some Stardust might rub off.

A chance meeting with somebody happy to be helpful, no favors required. All breaks were usually chance affairs, and this was the first break I'd had since Sondra's abduction.

I followed Rocco back to the elevators. He was saying how he didn't see much of Bobby any more, they'd gone their separate ways. I wasn't really paying attention. I was anticipating the recording, I was already seeing it in my head. And when we stepped inside the cab and rode upward to the fourteenth floor, Rocco's voice had become a background drone.

We walked along the corridor, past the accounting and personnel offices of LaBrea Records. Throughout the building, the latest LaBrea releases played all day long on a looped tape: it was background fuzz.

We turned left at the end of the corridor.

Ahead was a room with a small, reinforced window and a gray door. The word
Private
was stenciled on wood. Rocco took a key from his pocket and opened the door. He beckoned for me to follow him. I stepped inside the room, which was long and narrow and smelled of cigar smoke.

‘Hey, McGloan,' Rocco said. ‘This is Doc Lomax.'

McGloan, a tall, angular man in a maroon Gardall uniform, looked up at me from his desk. He'd been reading a paperback novel. I noticed the title. It was one of those forensic thrillers filled with dug-up corpses and hanks of hair and maggots tunneling through rotted flesh. He had a dead cigar between his lips.

He said, ‘Zup?'

George Rocco said, ‘The doc wants to see a tape.'

McGloan waved a hand at the bank of monitors. They had scraps of paper stuck to them. Each scrap had writing on it. I looked closer.
Level 1. Level 2.
Ten monitors total, two to each level. ‘Against company rules,' he said. ‘You know that, George.'

‘Doc's a friend of mine, McGloan.'

‘Don't matter if he's the Queen of the Silver Dollar, bubba. Company policy is company policeeee.'

‘Come on, McGloan. The doc's a good guy.'

‘I'll pay,' I said. ‘I don't mind.'

Rocco said, ‘You don't need to pay.'

‘The man says he wants to pay to scope out some cars coming and going, Rocco. It's his money.' McGloan looked at me. ‘A hundred bucks gets you a look at what you want.'

Rocco said it was an insult to me. I told him it didn't matter. It was a transaction, capitalism, that was all. Everything had a price. I took two fifties from my wallet and gave them to McGloan.

‘OK,' he said. ‘What do you want to look at?'

‘Pictures from Level 3.'

‘Which camera? East or west?'

East or west. I didn't know.

McGloan looked irritated. ‘East is on the right when you come in. West is left.'

‘Then I want east.'

‘Any special time?'

How was I supposed to know? I'd have to guess. ‘Between nine-thirty and ten this morning,' I said.

McGloan moved to a shelf where videotapes were stored. He ran a finger over them, then removed one. It was labeled with the day's date, with the time-frame scrawled on in green Biro:
8 a.m. – Noon.

‘We make four-hour tapes here. We only store them for a day, then we record right over them until they're fucking useless,' he said. ‘I'll put this in the VCR for you.'

‘I want privacy,' I said.

‘Ah, a private viewing,' McGloan said. ‘That's different.'

‘That's against company policy too, I guess,' I said. I gave him another fifty and he folded it in his breast pocket.

‘This is goddam extortion,' Rocco said.

McGloan slipped the tape into a VCR unit and gave me a remote-control. ‘Use fast-forward,' he said. ‘Don't waste your time. I used to look at the monitors when I first started this job. I was fascinated. I used to imagine I'd see something, like,
real weird
down there. But nothing ever happens. Now I read books. I gulp down them forensic detective yarns. Larva literature.'

He stepped out of the room. Rocco looked at me and shrugged. ‘Sorry about McGloan,' he said.

I said it wasn't important. I was impatient for him to go. I pressed the
On
button just as he left the room and closed the door. I looked at the monitor. Black-and-white pictures, poor quality, grainy, too much shadow, some slippage. Cars came in, parked, people got out, walked out of shot. More cars, more people, everything moving through the gray light; it was as if I was seeing the world in an aquarium whose dank water had never been changed. Cars and people. Periods of lull. Just the angle of perception changing slightly as the camera moved. I picked up the remote and fast-forwarded. An old silent movie.

I stopped the tape. Backed it up.

I saw the Lexus emerge into view. I saw it slide into a parking-slot. Irritatingly, the camera panned away from the car, and when it tracked back Sondra was already stepping out of the Lexus. I felt a strange shock seeing her. I felt that I was spying on her, but more than that: it was as if I were looking – not into the past – but into some dread future, where the only animated record of her life would be these images trapped on gritty videotape. I wanted to tell her to get back in the car –
Turn round, Sondra, drive away now, just get the fuck out of there
– and I raised my hand to the screen to touch her, warn her.

And then a white van moved into the shot, backing up towards her as she stood by the open door of the Lexus. She made a move to reach inside the car, presumably because she'd forgotten to gather up her purse and the files on the passenger seat, but she was distracted when the rear doors of the van opened and two men dressed in white overalls clambered out.

They wore dark stocking masks.

She turned to look. She seemed surprised, uncertain, snapped out of her own preoccupations by the sudden appearance of the men. Maybe she was immune to sights like this – masked men in parking-garages, gunfights on sidewalks; a child of LA, she was accustomed to movies being shot around town. She was blasé. And maybe she half-expected to see a camera wheel into view, and a director shout ‘Action!' Maybe she thought it was one of those
Candid Camera
kind of TV shows.

Whatever, it was clear she didn't feel any danger at first, because she didn't run. And when she did feel it, it was too late.

The men approached her in a quick, flanking action. She finally stepped back from them. She held a hand forward, palm facing out.
Don't come any closer
, that was what the gesture said.
Stay away from me.
The smaller of the two guys lunged at her and she eluded him, ducking under his outstretched arm. But she lost her balance, and went down on one knee. I watched her try to rise again, but the men had already pinned her arms back. One of them caught her hair in his fist and yanked her head back. I watched her mouth open in pain, and I wanted to shut off the videotape, I couldn't absorb her look of hurt and fear. But I continued to watch in a state of paralysis as her assailants dragged her across the floor to the van, forced her to her feet, thrust her inside the vehicle, and slammed the doors. And then they were gone.

I didn't move for a minute. I thought of how she'd opened her mouth in pain, and I was glad that the poor quality of the picture prevented me from seeing the expression in her eyes. I pressed the
Rewind
button and ran the tape back to the point where Sondra's abductors shut the doors of the van.

I pushed the
Stop
button and looked at the vehicle until my head ached. I couldn't make out the number on the licence-plate, which was caked with mud. I pressed
Eject
and the videotape slid out. As I stuck it in my pocket, I thought:
I deserve this. I paid enough for it.
I left the room and walked back the way I'd come.

I saw no sign of either Rocco or McGloan. I rode the elevator down to Level 2. I went into the parking-garage and got inside my car. A shadow fell across me.

5.28 p.m.

My passenger door was yanked open and I saw the guy with the turquoise bracelet smiling at me. Immediately, the driver's door was hauled open with such force I thought the hinges would snap, and the big-skulled guy grabbed me by my shoulders and dragged me out of the car. I fell sideways, and Big Skull kicked me in the chest. I rolled over on my side, trying to deflect the full force of the blow from my ribs, but it hurt like a cattle-prod, anyway. As I tried to get up, the fair-haired man grabbed my neck and hauled my face back, allowing his companion to take a free shot at me – a clubbed fist straight to the side of my head, at that fragile junction where hair met ear. I felt like a wire that had fused into meltdown, dizzy, disoriented, brain scrambled by shock therapy. Deafened, I half-rose, sinking my teeth into the upper thigh of the guy who'd punched me. He roared – ‘Fuckensonfabitch!' – and cuffed me hard on the back of my head. I lolled forward and the light in the parking garage turned a strange color, like steak blackened on a barbecue. I lay quiet, trying to gather up the threads of myself, as the two guys walked round me. I thought:
I could fight back, if only I could get up, if only I could reassemble myself. I could take them one on one, if I had my senses together. If I was nineteen, and this was Buffalo.

‘Fucker bit me,' the one with the skull said.

‘He's one brave dude,' the fair-haired guy said. ‘Aincha, doc? Aincha one brave big dude?'

My mouth felt numb. I stared up at the ceiling. I wondered if this scene was being recorded by a security camera. Big Skull frisked me, found the videotape, and said, ‘He's a downright nosy bastard. Goes around poking into stuff where he don't belong.' He stuffed the tape in the pocket of his brown cotton jacket.

‘And I warned him,' his associate said. ‘You can't say I didn't warn him. You heard me, doc. Right?'

‘You warned me,' I agreed, and my voice was coming out all wrong.

I coughed and my ribs hurt. I labored not to show it, but I must have grimaced because the fair-haired man said, ‘I don't think he looks too good.'

Big Skull said, ‘I seen better.'

‘Maybe some internal bleeding. What do you think, doc? Feel like that to you?'

‘Your concern touches me,' I said.

‘Hey, we're human beings,' said the fair-haired one.

‘No man's a fucking island,' said Big Skull.

The fair-haired man stuck a hand in the pocket of his jeans. He said, ‘You're a bigtime disappointment to us. You didn't produce what The Man asked for, did you? You let him down badly. And then you turn to this … this
snooping.
You are one tricky customer, man. What are we supposed to do with you, huh?'

I maneuvered myself into a sitting position. It was disconcerting to see the two men loom over me; their faces seemed strangely elongated from my point of view. I wanted nothing more than to get to my feet and meet them on eye-level, but I couldn't face the embarrassment of trying to rise and having to grab their hands or arms for support. At the same time, I couldn't just sit where I was, so I made an almighty effort to get up; my gestures resembled those of the Frankenstein creation taking his first steps. I was almost at full height when Big Skull kicked my legs away from me and I slid back to the ground. I rattled my head against the concrete floor, which smelled of years of exhaust fumes and rubber.

I felt sick, my mouth flooded with saliva.

The fair-haired guy bent down and said, ‘Doc, The Man has power. He has life in one hand, death in the other. It's neat how he balances them. It's up to you to decide. You have merchandise he needs. I don't know what it is, and I don't give a good goddam, all I know is he wants it. So … hey-ho, I hate to do this, friend …' and he brought from his pocket his hand fitted with the brass knuckles. As he raised one arm up to strike me, and even as the arm began to fall, I could anticipate the crack of brass against forehead or cheekbone or teeth. The advance party of impending pain, hard-ridden horses kicking up dust on the horizon, hoofbeats.