Perpetual Motion (20 page)

Opening the door into the garage, Cynical was
surprised to see one of the SUVs still waiting for them. Ducking
behind the heavy steel door, he peered back out to the man in the
driver’s seat who appeared to be slouching over the steering wheel.
Looking more closely, he realized the rest of the vehicle was
vacant.

Doing some simple subtraction, Cynical
deduced the assailants had lost at least three men. That meant they
only needed one getaway car. Fortunately, the surviving unit had
left in the rear SUV, the one with his transmitter.

As they hurried by the black Esplanade,
Desmond stared slack-jawed at the motionless driver who appeared to
be missing a piece of his cranium. Cynical tried to turn the kid so
he wouldn’t see the gore. Having already taken in too much,
Desmond’s legs turned back to rubber and Cynical had to bear the
brunt of the young man’s weight. At the Impala, it was all he could
do to open the back door and drop him inside like a one hundred and
fifty pound mold of Jell-o.

Although sirens were converging on the
building, they seemed to be congregating in the front. Cynical knew
he only had moments to escape the police and avoid a lifetime of
questions. Starting his car, he turned his Impala around and
screeched toward the closest exit. On his way out, he was at least
glad to see the Mercedes was gone.

Once he was out into the night, he took a
left and a quick right as a couple of police cars went screaming by
in the opposite direction.

As if the sirens suddenly woke him up,
Desmond leaned forward from the backseat. “Where are we going?” he
asked in a trembling voice.

“To get Karen back,” Cynical said with
conviction.

“How are we going to find her?”

It took several seconds before the questions
coalesced in the private detective’s mind. Without warning, he
pulled into a fast food parking lot and turned around to face his
fare.

“Did Karen tell you what Michael said?”

“No,” Desmond responded weakly. “Just that he
wanted us to meet him.”

“Did she say where?”

He shook his head. “She said we needed to
wait for you first.”

Karen had played it smart; too bad she’d
trusted the ‘x-detective.’ Wading through a swamp of
self-destructive thoughts, he began to pick through the scrapes of
litter in his well and cup holder, coming up with a slightly
stained business card. Knowing he didn’t have any other cards to
play, he dialed the number.

“Pick up,” he ordered the ringing phone.

“McCobb.”

“It’s Cynical Jones.”

“Yeah, hold on,” McCobb said, as if he was
half-expecting the call. There was an extended pause as
indecipherable words were exchanged on the other end. When the Fed
came back on, he was on speaker. “I’m hearing there’s trouble at
University Circle.”

“Yeah,” Cynical confirmed. “They kidnapped
Karen Norton. It’s the same outfit I ran into in Vegas.” Without
pausing for questions, he bull-rushed on, “Look, I need your help
to find Karen.”

“Did you get a plate?”

“I got something better.”

Like a stockcar in the pits, the Impala sat
idling on the edge of the parking lot, bristling to get back on the
track. With Desmond crouched in the back, Cynical sat in front, the
cell phone pressed to his ear. Realizing this was no time to be coy
with the FBI, he stated, “I was able to get your transmitter on
their get-away car.”

“What transmitter?” McCobb asked
half-heartedly.

“The one you put on my car,” Cynical replied
matter-of-factly. “All you need to do is tell me where it’s
going.”

There was silence on the other end, followed
by faint whispering.

“Are you there? McCobb?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” the agent said, a little
sheepishly. “We’re checking the signal now.”

“Just tell me which direction it’s going,”
Cynical said with more insistence than he had a right to
expect.

“Why should we tell you anything?” another
voice spat. It was O’ Riley.

In his desperation, Cynical had overplayed
his hand. Even before he made the call, he knew he would have to
give them something if he had any hope of getting their
cooperation. “I can give you more information about the case.”

“Like what?” McCobb asked.

“Michael invented something important in the
field of energy,” Cynical quickly said. “It could literally change
everything.”

“Yeah, we’re aware of that much,” O’ Riley
said, unimpressed.

“Who are you working for?” McCobb asked.

The damage Mancuso could inflict on him if he
broke their confidentiality agreement gave him pause. But, at the
moment, Karen meant more to him than any legal threats. “I’ll tell
you that,” Cynical promised. “But, first, I want the location.”

There was a muffled confab on the other end
before McCobb came back on. “They’re heading North on the 405.”

“Where are they exactly?” Cynical insisted as
he put the car in drive and began to pull out into traffic.

“They just passed Sherman Oaks.”

“Okay, I want updates every five minutes,”
Cynical insisted.

“What about your client?” McCobb asked.

“When I get their final location,” Cynical
said.

“If you don’t give it to us, I’ll have your
license pulled.”

It was O’ Riley - and he was referring to his
private detective license. Cynical guessed the FBI could probably
do that with a phone call, which would effectively put him out of
business. Whichever way he went, he was going to be screwed by
forces more powerful than himself. If he managed to live through
this, he should probably start looking for a new line of work.

“That’s fine,” the defeated private eye said,
“Just call me back in five minutes.”

Disconnecting, Cynical drove with reckless
abandon, weaving the Impala through the sparse, late night traffic
that fed into the interstate. As he sped underneath a red light, he
jumped when he heard a small voice coming over his right
shoulder.

“It’s my fault.”

In his frantic rush to get on the 405, he’d
forgotten about Desmond. Keeping his eyes focused on the road, he
passed a dawdling subcompact on the onramp. “What do you mean ‘it’s
your fault’?”

“I told someone what we were working on,”
Desmond said in hushed tones, as if he was afraid the car was
bugged.

“Why did you do that?” Cynical asked as he
merged onto the five-lane super- speedway.

It took a moment for Desmond to speak again.
“Toward the end, when we knew we really had something, something
important… Michael decided no one should profit from his invention.
He said it was too big. So, he was talking about putting a video of
the working prototype on the internet and sharing the plans with
the world.”

A mixture of hurt and outrage penetrated the
progressively louder disembodied voice in the backseat. “I put
three years of my life into this! It’s a once in a lifetime
opportunity. Maybe a hundred lifetimes - and he was going to give
it away?!”

Cynical half-turned his head to indicate he
was still listening despite weaving his way up the 405.

“So I had heard about a company that was
flush with government funding – all earmarked for alternative
energies. And, I thought they might be willing to buy our
technology. I mean, I didn’t do anything until I knew Michael was
serious about giving away our invention. That’s when I called them
– and I told them what we were working on and the kind of results
we were getting. At first, they didn’t believe me, so I sent them
some of our findings.” More defensively, he added, “But I never
gave them our actual plans - and I never got a penny from
them.”

“A few days later, a couple of dudes from the
Department of Energy showed up, poking around, wanting
information... They said the government had to license any
intellectual property, so we had to share our invention with them
anyway.”

Cutting a glance in the rearview, Cynical
found Desmond slumped back in his seat, staring out the side
window, lost in his thoughts.

“What happened?”

“Michael freaked out. He wanted to know how
the Department of Energy knew what we were working on. Of course, I
didn’t tell him. I thought about it, but before I had a chance, the
prototype was blown to smithereens. That’s when the shit really hit
the fan. Michael just took off to parts unknown…I guess Vegas.”

His voice was falling again to a hoarse
whisper. “Fernando was killed….And, now, Karen’s dead because of me
too.”

“She’s not dead,” was all Cynical could think
to say as he assimilated what Desmond had told him, all the while
driving eighty plus miles per hour. There was a gulf of awkward
silence between the front and back seat and, when his cell phone
rang, he answered before the second ring. “Yeah?”

“They merged into 5 North,” McCobb informed
him. “It looks like they’re getting on 14 toward Palmdale now.”

“Got it.” Cynical hung up before they could
ask him any more follow-ups. Leaning over, he popped open the glove
compartment. With his free hand, he pulled out an old Thompson
Guide and flung it into the back seat. “Make yourself useful and
look up the area around Santa Clarita and Palmdale.”

Despite himself, Cynical almost felt sorry
for the guilt-ridden kid who stared at the book of paper maps like
it was an ancient relic, which it probably was to him. Turning on a
bright light that emitted from his cell phone, Desmond slowly began
to flip through the pages.

As the Impala raced up the freeway, Cynical
looked from the rearview mirror just in time to catch the sign for
Highway 14. In a sudden move, he switched to the empty right lane.
Once he safely made the transition, he glanced back in his
mirror.

Desmond’s stringy hair hung down over the
glowing guide.

“You’re not the only one who messed up.”

It took a moment for the remark to register.
Slowly, Desmond looked up. “What do you mean?”

“How do you think these people knew exactly
when Michael called – and when to go after Karen?” Cynical asked.
Before Desmond could venture a guess, he answered himself. “They
were listening to our phone conversation.”

“I thought Angelo got all the bugs.”

“He did,” Cynical said, “But I’m pretty sure
they were able to put a bug on my phone.”

“How did they do that?”

Cynical swallowed, not sure how to answer.
“Let’s just say, you’re not the only one that messed up.” When his
phone rang again, he was glad for the interruption and picked it up
before the end of the first ring. “Yeah?”

“You’ll want to get off at Sand Canyon,”
McCobb said, apparently having decided to let their arrangement
play out. “You’ll head north. About three miles up, there should be
a side road on the right. I’m not sure if it’s even marked. It
looks like they stopped about five miles down that road.”

“Okay,” Cynical said. “Thanks.”

“You’re a few miles ahead of us. Don’t do
anything until we get there,” the agent warned. “You
understand?”

“Got it,” Cynical said. Clicking off, he
turned back to Desmond. “Look for Sand Canyon.”

Dropping his head again, Desmond squinted
down at the map. “It’s just a few miles up.”
“We go three miles and look for a side road,” Cynical said. “Do you
see that?”

“Not really,” Desmond said, straining at the
squiggly lines.

Concentrating on the road in front of him,
Cynical felt a strange bond with the kid behind him. Despite their
differences and, maybe, because of their mistakes, they shared an
unspoken, desperate desire to find Karen.

Through the dirty windows, craggy hills could
be seen in the distance as they rode in silence for a couple of
minutes. Both spotted the sign for Sand Canyon at the same time and
neither said anything as the Impala took a left, winding in a
northerly direction.

After a quick check of his odometer, Cynical
looked for any sign of life around him, not finding a flicker.
While he didn’t say it out loud, it was the perfect place to dump a
body. The morose thought made him gun the car into the vast
nothingness, as if trying to get to the bottom of a black hole.

Suddenly, Desmond thrust his finger straight
ahead. “Is that it?”
The high beams lit up a washed out gulley on the right. Checking
his odometer again, Cynical saw they were at 3.6 miles down the
road. This had to be it, didn’t it? Skidding to a stop, he took the
turn and began bouncing along an unpaved road or, possibly, a dried
up river bed.

“So, who do you think they are?” There was a
nervous strain in Desmond’s throat. “You think it could be
CIA?”

“Who knows,” Cynical said noncommittally.
“Based on your story, maybe someone in the government wants this
thing shut down.”

Something manmade loomed in the darkness and,
as they approached, a large building began to take shape. A few
seconds later, they were passing through a ten foot high metal
fence whose gate had been left open.

Leaning forward over the seat, Desmond
watched as they closed in on the big, complicated structure beyond
them. “What is it?”

The headlights hit a faded sign to the side
of the road;
Blue Star Pioneer CA-13 Refinery
.

“An old oil refinery,” Cynical observed as he
slowed down and turned his headlights off; the Impala disappearing
into the darkness.

While the abandoned refinery was relatively
small by modern standards, it was still a labyrinth. Large round
storage tanks rose up around the base, next to what had been a
furnace and a smoke stack. The towers and tanks were connected by a
cluster of pipes that snaked around in a chaotic pattern. The whole
operation looked like a crude cross between a petro-chemical plant
and a massive still for an ambitious moonshiner.