The Angel Maker - 2 (22 page)

if the cops got hold of that laptop it was all over.

The Doc would see to that.

"Trouble," J.C. Adams announced over the radio. Up until that moment, Boldt's full attention had been on the driver of the van, but now in his peripheral vision he caught sight of the juvenile crossing the street to the gas station and, a few seconds later, leaning into the open door of the van. When, on the end of that kid's arm, Boldt saw a laptop computer, he sat up so quickly he hit his head on the downturned visor. The Professor had found carpet impressions that suggested that one of the two men who had abducted Sharon Shaffer had been carrying a laptop computer. With Connie Chi's connection to Bloodlines, and Bloodlines' connection to Sharon Shaffer, this had to be more than coincidence. "Butch, Danny, you grab the kid. He's coming right at you," Boldt radioed immediately.

"J.C., you've got the Saturn. John, you take the van driver on foot-I'll play backup. And listen up: I want everybody brought in, including that laptop. Okay. Go!"

As Boldt watched his team spring into action, Shoswitz came on the radio. "Lou?"

"How about a couple of radio cars, Lieutenant? We're losing this thing," he warned, as he saw their bust go south. Butch and Danny sprang out of the jeep, weapons drawn, and took off after the kid. Displaying lightning-quick reactions, the kid veered down a driveway and vanished. Procedure would have had one of them pursue on foot, the other in the jeep, but procedure didn't matter now. In the heat of the moment, they had both run after the kid, and the likelihood of catching him seemed slim. Boldt barked into the radio, "I need those backups now! Suspect proceeding on foot, northbound between 68th and 69th. If he gets into the park, we've lost him."

The dread of further failure choked his throat as he saw the red Saturn drive quickly out of the gas station, with none of his own cars following. Blocked by a recycling truck, J.C.

Adams was forced to go around the block. Boldt punched the button on the radio mike to announce he would switch with Adams, but released it as he saw Lamoia going after the van driver on foot.

Misjudging the situation, Lamoia elected to take a shortcut cutting behind the nearest house. But when the driver of the van saw Butch and Danny, guns drawn, he pulled an abrupt aboutface, leaving Lamoia taking a shortcut to nowhere. This, in turn, made Boldt responsible for the van, which roared off, cutting in behind the slowly moving recycling truck and forcing Boldt to follow. Boldt was no fan of highspeed driving. He not only didn't care for it, he was no good at it, and he knew it.

At the first intersection he braked for the stop sign, slowing considerably-out of habit. He should have been calling in his position and situation over the radio, but he needed both hands on the wheel. He was sweating; his scalp itched. He should have been all but ignoring stop signs, but his right foot kept betraying him and tapping the brakes.

The van remained in sight, but just barely. It was suddenly making big speed. it ran two lights and negotiated a series of quick turns. Boldt managed to keep it in sight, but at this rate he knew he wouldn't keep up for long. On a brief moment of straightaway, Boldt reached for the radio to call in his position. just as he grabbed hold of it, a skateboard shot out from between parked cars. Fast on its heels was a boy of about twelve. Boldt jerked the wheel sharply to the left and slammed on the brakes. The car swerved in a squealing of rubber. A pencil skidded across the dash and disappeared down the defrost. The driver-side sun visor slapped Boldt in the forehead and forced him to duck beneath it in order to see. The front right tire crushed the skateboard.

The bumper missed the boy by inches. Boldt kept his foot on the brakes. The van continued on up ahead, growing smaller. It turned right. Boldt checked the rearview mirror. The boy was okay. In his right hand he discovered the radio microphone, its coiled wire disconnected and dangling like a stretched spring-he had ripped it out of the radio housing. He had lost all communication with dispatch.

He took the same right, following the van's route. Three blocks ahead of him, he saw it turn north onto Aurora, State Highway 99. A four-lane road with occasional lights, the traffic was typically congested and unpredictable. Boldt slowed at the next red light, but ran it. Getting the hang of this. Maybe he would attract the attention of a traffic cruiser. He craned across the front seat and located the dash-mount flasher. He tossed it up onto the dash and threw the switch, facing the blue, pulsating light forward. He forced his place into the left lane and put his foot down. By switching lanes repeatedly, the van continued to pull away from him. Boldt was no match for such maneuvers. He lost sight of it as it followed a long, arching turn to the right. He stepped on it.

A police cruiser approached in the opposing lanes. Boldt rolled down his window and beat on the side of his car, signaling-he hoped-for backup. His eyes left his lane for only a second, but when he looked back, the traffic ahead of him had come to a complete stop.

He slammed on the brakes, the car in an immediate skid, the remaining distance shrinking impossibly fast. He then pumped the brakes as he'd been trained to do-a half dozen times in quick little jabs. He cut his speed in half. The unforgiving back bumper of a pickup truck loomed directly ahead. Thirty yards to go. Twenty. An adrenaline rush choked him. His hands tightened on the wheel. Miles ... Liz ... Bear Berenson saying,

"This here is the Lou Boldt . More brakes. Still too fast.

Too close ... Mentally, these last few seconds slowed perceptibly. He could feel the shrinking space between his vehicle and the pickup, he could somehow measure it precisely.

In desperation, he hit and held the brakes. The back tires cried out. The car fishtailed.

The pickup truck-this entire lane of trafficrolled forward as drivers anticipated a green light. This added one vehicle length of roadway between Boldt and the pickup. He skidded to a stop inches behind the pickup.

The van was sitting four cars up. He grabbed for his weapon.

Weapons were not his way, this kind of street cop work was not his work, but he saw little choice.

The driver of that van was connected to Sharon Shaffer's abduction.

The stopped traffic was nothing more than a red traffic light, not a traffic jam as he had first believed. In a moment the traffic would begin to roll again. In a moment Boldt would be doing sixty again chasing him. He checked his rearview mirror: That patrol car was nowhere to be seen. All alone.

He threw the car into PARK and approached the van in a squat from the passenger side in order to avoid the chance of being seen in the driver door mirror. He hurried between waiting cars, his back cramping. Too old for this shit. Someone behind him honked, pissed off, no doubt, that he had left his car. Oh great! he thought. Let's attract as much attention as possible.

The light changed to green. Engines revved, and traffic began moving again. He caught up to the van and, arm outstretched, took hold of the handle to the side door. He yanked, now pulled along by the van's progress. Locked! He lunged for the front door next, the van moving even faster. From behind him the volley of protesting horns continued.

He took hold of the passenger door handle and jerked upward to open it. At that very instant, a finger appeared and locked it as well. The tie didn't go to the runner: Boldt stumbled and fell. The van pulled away.

By the time he reached his car and was driving again, he couldn't see the van for the trucks, the Hondas for the hatchbacks. He stayed with it a while longer, but the van was nowhere to be seen. Without a radio and without backup, Boldt resigned himself to failure.

Depression overwhelmed him-not for what was coming from Shoswitz, he could handle Shoswitz but because a woman was missing, and Boldt was convinced the driver of this van was an accomplice in her abduction.

It was time to start all over, he decided. Time to do things right.

Time to have a little talk with Connie Chi.

Tegg had never seen Maybeck look this desperate, otherwise he might have objected to Maybeck's barging into his office unannounced. Maybeck was relegated to the back hallway, the walk-in, the disposal of waste; he was overstepping his bounds.

"What is it?" Tegg complained. "The laptop's been stolen,"

Maybeck announced.

Tegg felt a sharp pain in the very top of his skull, and one of his tics hit him hard. He felt his shoulder lift and his head strain to meet it. He recovered and said, "Tell me about it, Donald."

"Don't call me that!"

"Start talking, Donald. This instant!"

Maybeck suffered through an explanation, trying to make himself into some kind of hero in the way he had avoided the police.

Tegg was beginning to see him in terms of a corpse-just exactly how would he dispose of a person that size?

The laptop? He blamed himself for having ever entrusted such an important matter to Maybeck. It had all been by design: trying to distance himself from incriminating evidence wherever possible. But now? He had to assess his situation, to take control. The planned date of the heart harvest was inside that laptop-the entire history of their operation, if you knew what to look for. "First you handle Connie. She must be dealt with.

Hmm? Nothing violent, I'm not suggesting that, just see that she's out of the way, out of town. Now! Then we get the computer back," he said. "One thing at a time. Hmm?" "Connie's first," Maybeck replied like a magpie echoing his master's voice. "Immediately."

"No problem. I know where to find her. I set that up like you told me to."

"You'll watch for cops."

"I know."

"This 'punk/ as you called him," Tegg said distastefully-he had no use for such slang-"is there some way to identify him?"

Maybeck said brutishly, "I could always report it to the police."

Tegg waved a finger at him. "Don't challenge me, Donald.

Insolence will get you nowhere with me." A bonfire, Tegg was thinking. That size body was just made for a bonfire. one fire to burn the flesh, a second for the bones. Maybe even a third for those teeth. "This is your error we are attempting to correct here-let's pay particular attention to responsibility, shall we? We've discussed this all before. All before." How strangely seductive the lure of violence could be. He wanted to hurt this man. "I can handle it."

"Spare me such indulgence, would you? Dream on your own time."

Tegg felt another tic coming. He squashed it with anger.

Interesting how that worked, he thought-perhaps anger, always heralded as the enemy, was indeed a friend. "We will go to whatever means necessary to obtain that computer. A reward, a ransom, I don't care what you have to do."

"I can put the word out. We offer a reward, and we'll be onto this thing like flies on shit. It's password protected,"

Maybeck reminded. "That's one thing good about it." "There's nothing good about this!" Tegg announced He cleaned out his wallet-one hundred and fifty dollars-and practically threw it at Maybeck. "That kind of thinking is poison! Do you hear me?

Poison! We need that computer back immediately. That computer is evidence, Donald! Get that into your head. That laptop is exactly what the police want. That's our battle, don't you see?

And it's not one we want to fight, believe you me. No, sir. But we'll fight those we must. Hmm?

You bet we will."

"I can get it back." He waved the money at Tegg. "I have friends."

This seemed unlikely, if not impossible-especially the latter statement. "What an idiot you are!"

"Shut up!"

"An idiot, do you hear me?" He leaned toward Maybeck. "You get that laptop back, and you destroy that database before the police are any the wiser! Get rid of the van, too. If you fail in any of this, you will regret it!"

"Doctor?" His receptionist's voice.

"Is everything okay?"

He'd been shouting. "Out in a minute," Tegg replied in a friendly voice to the closed door. How much had his employee heard? How could everything come down around you so quickly?

Maybeck whispered, "I'say we zoom the girl we kidnapped and take our chances with Wong Kei."

"Is that what you say?" Tegg asked, standing and approaching him, daring to put his face up against Maybeck's. Breath like an open sewer. "I'm not terribly interested in what you have to say, Donald. But you had better be interested in what I have to say. Extremely interested." He whispered, "Connie, then the laptop, the van: That's your order of business, your priorities. If Connie won't play along ... well ... Use your imagination." "No problem," Donnie said.

Was he actually condoning such a thing? He felt a disturbing pressure in his head, like a tire taking too much air. He wondered why he couldn't just step away from it all? Let it go.

How far would he go in order to make up for that mistake of his? He didn't like himself; he didn't even know himself. He had studied the psychology of cornered animals in college; only now that he was experiencing it did he begin to understand.

Only now did he see clearly what exactly was to become of the black man out in the kennel. He too was a liability, one that at this point they could certainly not afford.

But not for long.

LO With the surveillance a complete disaster, with no one to be mad at but himself, with no appetite, Boldt left work and headed directly to the back door of The Big joke. He didn't want Liz to see him like this-he wasn't sure what he wanted.

Had he been a drinker, he would have gotten drunk, but booze only gave him a sour stomach and a bad case of the blues. The blues themselves seemed the best way out-eighty-_ eight keys of refuge, where voices sang in his head and drove out all thought. The club was closed to the public by order of the Treasury Department, but since Bear Berenson lived upstairs, access was still available through the back. The piano had never been confiscated-just the financial records-and only two of the six screws intended to lock it shut had violated it. , Boldt let himself in, found the piano in the dark, and started playing. A while later Bear settled himself into a chair at the table farthest from the stage, because Boldt hated the cigarette smoke and because this table sat immediately under a light which Bear needed to read his trade paperback, How to Beat the IRS, a gift from Boldt. He studied it like a preacher with a Bible, his reading punctuated by grunts of disapproval and sighs of supplication. A captain going down with the ship, he paused and looked up only to relish a particular phrase from Boldt's piano or to roll himself another joint.