Signwave (29 page)

The target was in Los Angeles for less than an hour before he ordered off the pull-down menu, methodically placing his checkmark under the choices offered under the “preferences” tab.

Very conventional choices, all well within his belief system. Countless young, blond, toned, do-whatever girls were within miles—perhaps even blocks—of his hotel.

They weren't all as young, or young-looking, as the target wanted. And they weren't all blondes. But they all had given up on whatever dreams brought them to this City of Seconds.

No more waiting to be “discovered” for these girls. Even the ones who looked twelve years old had already aged out. The porn industry likes to talk about its “shining stars,” but never reveals that they all lose their light. And drop from the night sky.

What gets used will always get used
up
—the only variable is how long that takes.

The feeder stream that carried them in would eventually reverse itself—dreams travel much faster on the way down. At some point, they all exchange their never-happen fantasies for the always-would reality. Juggling pulled-pin grenades,
promising themselves that they'd go back home as soon as they caught enough cash in one hand before the grenade exploded in the other.

If there was one acting skill they mastered, it was lying to themselves.

—

T
he doorman greeted me with a “Welcome back, sir.”

He'd never seen me before, but I wasn't carrying any luggage, so he played it safe, assuming I'd checked in before his shift had started, gone out, and was just now returning. I confirmed that impression by walking up from the same side as drop-off cars would exit, waving a languid hand over my shoulder to dismiss whatever limo had dropped me off.

In the lobby, there was no security to bypass other than the quick eye-scan to see if the man in the gray alpaca suit and black silk shirt with designer sunglasses was important enough to warrant a personal greeting as he passed through the entrance to the elevators, casually holding up a room-key card.

Poseurs were far more common than the real thing, and sophisticated staff pride themselves on being able to tell the difference.

So the key card was enough to get me to the elevators, but not enough to merit that personal greeting. Even my gelled and spiked corn-silk-yellow hair and the prominent mole on my left cheek didn't merit a second glance.

This staff would never fail to recognize a genuine cinema star, and the town was supposedly full of major character actors. But they wouldn't need facial-recognition skills to pick out the real deal. One thing they knew for sure: no
truly
major player would ever be unaccompanied.

—

W
hen he looked through the peephole in the door to his suite, the customer wasn't surprised to see me.

Not me, personally, just the package he'd been expecting. Well dressed, properly groomed, my face unsmiling but not threatening. I was just a man on business, perfectly in tune with the hotel's ambience.

The Web site had told him that the girl he ordered was “too fresh” to be allowed out unless there was a “chauffeur” sent to look the setup over first. The girl was just another variety of room service—higher-priced, sure, but still no more than a finger-snap away. The client had already placed his order, and paid through a cleared credit card. Tips were “welcome”—there was no need to spell out “in cash.”

Anyone who used the “catering” Web site would be informed that the chauffeur's task would be to check the premises—not just the living room, the whole suite—to make certain the client was alone, then punch a button on a cell phone to summon the merchandise.

As soon as she arrived, the chauffeur would go downstairs and wait in the car until the client was fully satisfied. He'd paid for a three-hour “unit,” but if he decided he wanted to extend, he knew how to contact the service provider without going near a phone.

—

T
he dead man ushered me inside.

As he closed the door, I shot him in the back of the head. The quieted round—a .22 short with some powder removed—passed soundlessly through the hand-turned barrel of the tiny pistol. He might have made some noise falling against the door if my grip on the back of his shirt collar hadn't prevented any such possibility.

I used that same collar to haul his body into the jet-nozzle bathtub, placing him so he was lying on his back. I removed his wallet—the kind you carry in the inside pocket of your jacket—his wafer-thin oversized watch, and some cash from his slacks.

Then I put another round into each eye, draped a paper stencil over his forehead, sprayed a burst of blue paint to create a ♀ symbol, pulled off the stencil, plastic-pocketed it with the little can of paint, and walked into the unused bedroom.

Two pieces of luggage. Both Tumi, each marked with “GBB” in red on a raised portion designed for such personalization. The gusseted black leather oversized attaché case would fit any airline's definition of “carry-on” and slide under any seat in First Class. No waiting in Baggage Claim for Mr. Benton. And no chance of the airline's sending checked luggage to some other destination.

The larger bag didn't interest me. I just wanted to make sure the carry-on had a portable computer of some kind.

It did. As well as one of those phones that allow connection to the Internet.

I knew the cops would call it an “execution-style” killing. And at least one of them would tip the press about the blue symbol on his face. That would start another round of gossip about the Manson Family giving birth to a second generation.

Even experienced investigators couldn't ignore the possibility of a group of psychos. L.A. was never short of cults, usually led by a mind as dream-killed as an aged-out porn star.

Crazy people could be clever enough to think that taking the dead man's wallet would delay an ID.

Of course, it wouldn't—he would have paid for the room by credit card. But I wanted the cops to have every possible excuse to do a forensic examination of his laptop.

—

T
he corridor was soundless.

I knew its thick carpeting would mask footsteps, or even a service cart, so I scanned carefully with an extendable dentist's mirror before I stepped out, checking that the “Do Not Disturb” placard was still in place over the doorknob in the same motion.

The security camera wasn't an issue—a quick spritz of fog-colored paint had made any kind of ID impossible, even if someone was watching in real time. Not much chance of that—this wasn't a casino.

I walked up three flights of stairs, checked the elevator buttons, hit an unlit one with a latex-covered knuckle, and took an empty car down to the first floor.

The same doorman greeted my exit as sincerely as a mortician's grief. I kept walking for a few blocks until I was satisfied nobody was interested.

—

I
was in the right neighborhood for a leisurely walk.

And dressed for my surroundings. To any watcher, it would appear as if the limo had dropped me off in front of one of the buildings, and I wanted to grab a smoke before I entered my studio's headquarters, or my agent's offices. The slabby cell phone shielded my face as I…

Anyone taking a look would fill in that blank themselves, depending on who they were. Or thought they were.

Turning the corner brought me to the verge of another world, a world I needed to look over until I could stabilize pattern recognition. By the time I retrieved the car from the parking garage, I was wearing orange-lensed HD sunglasses, a banana-yellow tank top, and an L.A. Clippers adjustable ball cap. I carried the alpaca jacket, silk shirt, and tie in one hand, rolled together.

I paid the cashier on the way out. If she noticed anything, it would have been a man with a black eye patch and a white sweatshirt with “13 ½” silk-screened in red across the chest.

Two blocks later, the eye patch and sweatshirt were under the front seat.

—

T
he drive to Sacramento took me deep into the darkness I needed.

I pulled off the road, checked the undisturbed little markers I'd left, and got to work. The Walmart box cutters made short work of the alpaca suit and every other item I'd been wearing—I'd brought a half-dozen with me so I wouldn't have to spend time changing blades.

The torn strips went into a hole I'd already trenched out, along with the shoes and socks I'd worn into the hotel.

Then I coated it all with what
légionnaires
dryly called “
flambé
” in places where they spread it over humans like jam on toast. It burned perfectly, but didn't send up smoke. I refilled the hole, tamped it down with my hands, and stirred until it was indistinguishable from any of the surrounding dirt.

I removed the barrel of the little pistol, pressed one end tightly against a cube of steel, then emptied the vial of acid into it. When the hissing stopped, I used a sculptor's hammer to turn it into a shapeless lump.

That lump flew out the passenger-side window as I drove toward the Oregon border, where I left the “borrowed” car in an empty garage.

—

B
y the time I returned to our cottage, I was back to where I'd started.

But I'd learned a lot since then. More than enough for me to revisit the man I'd once been all the time.

My hands were clean. There was no back-trail.

Just one more tile was needed to turn the whole mosaic into a single black slab.

—

I
made four passes in my little Peugeot before I was certain. Leaving some lights on didn't tell me the house was occupied, but the figure moving around on the second floor was perfectly backlit.

Only one way to make certain I could rewrite the ending originally plotted by another.

I parked the Peugeot in the dark part of the huge yard. Then I walked to the front door and pushed the pale-pink illuminated button with my silk-wrapped thumb before I returned the pocket square to the lapel of my charcoal suit jacket.

That jacket was a masterpiece. It not only held my flat semi-auto without showing, it had room in the sleeves for those foam-cushioned wraps people with tennis elbow wear—the kind that looked like a honeycomb of little protective pads. Mine were different. Scalpel-cutting into each pad to extract the foam and insert precut pieces of lead had taken a long time. Elbow strikes rely on bone to cut flesh; now one from me would break any bone it hit.

Sixty seconds
was running in my head. If he didn't come to the door by…

The door opened. It was the man I'd hoped for—the man in Conrad's photo array. Even if he had company, they'd never be able to tell the police any more than what time the doorbell had sounded.

“Mr. Fairmount? Please excuse me for using that name, but
Mr. Benton said it would be the only way to assure you that I was working for him. My
bona fides
, if you will, sir.”

He was looking at a man dressed in an expensive suit, but not some mere “driver.” Not with my faint French accent and use of his real name. Before he could process everything, I said: “Please, come with me, sir. I have a car waiting to bring you to Mr. Benton. He said to tell you that a meeting was necessary, because a
very
large sum had just been introduced by a new player and a…demonstration would be required to close.”

“What's that supposed to…?”

“Sir, I know only what I was told. And I have repeated that to you.”

“I'll have to—”

“Sir, my instructions are to take you to Mr. Benton.”

“And if I don't give a damn about your ‘instructions'?”

“I understand. Mr. Benton said if you did not accompany me without delay, I was to leave without you. I cannot call him, because he specified that no cell phones were permitted—I am to report only in person.”

I turned as if to go, but his hand was on my shoulder before I could take a single step.

—

“G
eorge has made some strange moves, but this is…weird, even for him,” the dead man probed.

I didn't take the bait. He hadn't tried to jump out, so he didn't know his door wouldn't open. Besides, a true con man always tries to
work
a mark, not overpower him, and this guy was as true as they come.

“He did not share any information with me, sir. My job is simply to—”

“Yeah, I know,” he cut me off, switching to a more condescending tone, inviting me to prove I was no mere hired hand by telling him something—
anything
—to show I was an insider.

That one didn't work, either.

“This car, it's not…”

That
bait I took. “Mr. Benton wanted to be certain no attention would be attracted, sir.”

“Well…how far are we going, anyway?”

I glanced at the odometer, making sure he saw me do it. “Perhaps another dozen kilometers, sir.”

He stiffened a little at “kilometers,” but recovered instantly. He wouldn't get himself mixed up with dope, and he knew Benton wouldn't, either, and I was
some
kind of Mediterranean, so…

We drove in silence for a few minutes. I don't know what he was thinking, just my own thoughts:
He's no muscleman, but panic does strange things to people. I don't want to leave any pieces of him in this car, but if he…

“What the hell is this?” he asked, looking at the long-abandoned Thai restaurant just off a two-lane stretch of asphalt.

“Everyone is inside, sir. We enter from the back,” I told him, pushing the switch to allow his door to open.

Once he got out of the car, I walked next to him, on his left. He probably never heard the wraith's whisper of the black steel baton as it dropped out of my sleeve and whipped behind his head. Sounds carry a long distance outdoors, and a knife won't stop a man from screaming…or leaving some DNA around, either.