The Killing Kind (11 page)

There was no furniture in the living room. No art. The beige carpet was stained, the window bare of curtains. Beside the window was a sliding-glass door over which hung a set of cheap vertical blinds, louvered open to let in the light. Engelmann grasped the chain that operated them and slid them back and forth. They moved easily on their track. He ran a hand along the top of the track, but felt nothing. And when he poked his head outside, he found the balcony bare.

What he was looking for, he didn’t know. Some clue as to how Cruz operated. Some indication as to how his quarry knew Cruz’s plans. He didn’t know if he would find it here, or even if such evidence existed. But given the attention to detail with which the woman agent conducted the search on Cruz’s family home, and the deflated air about her when, after hours of searching, she gave the order to pack up, he was certain there was no such evidence to be found there.

The apartment’s bathroom was a collection of dingy off-whites. The cheap faux-marble vanity. The putty-colored toilet—the seat up, the bowl streaked with rust. The yellowed fiberglass tub, blushed with mold at the corners and black from mildew at the edges of the fixtures. The popcorn ceiling was mottled black as well. The whole room smelled of damp.

He checked the vanity. The toilet tank. The hollow inside of the towel rod. Nothing. The fan rattled when he toggled the switch on and off, so he plucked a screwdriver from his pocket tool kit and removed the vented faceplate. Nothing but grimy fan blades.

Engelmann entered the bedroom. One could hardly call it that, for there was no door separating it from the living space—just the suggestion of a doorway as the room narrowed slightly before widening once more. There was nothing in the room but a nightstand, a combination light fixture/ceiling fan, and a mattress resting on a metal frame, draped loosely with unmade sheets of charcoal gray. There weren’t even any pillows.

Naturally, he checked the nightstand first. There was no lamp atop it. There was, however, a bottle each of strawberry-and chocolate-scented body oils, an amber prescription bottle half full of Viagra, a hot pink vibrator, and dildos in a variety of shapes and sizes—none of which were likely found in nature. Some were so oddly shaped, Engelmann wondered at their method of use. Then he found the Polaroids in the drawer and wondered no longer.

It seemed when Engelmann assumed Cruz’d taken a lover, he’d underestimated Cruz’s appetites. There must have been three dozen photos in the drawer, and at least three times that many partners. Each picture contained no fewer than two people, not counting the person behind the camera—who, by dint of his omission from the collection, must have been Cruz himself—and no two pictures contained the same combination of lovers. They ranged in age from maybe fifteen to twenty-five, and they ranged in gender from male to female to any combination thereof. Most were Hispanic, but many were black, with the occasional Asian thrown into the mix as well. None were white. Cruz apparently drew the line somewhere in his predilections.

Engelmann pored over these images of tangled limbs, toys, and genitalia for quite a while, but it stirred nothing in him. He was simply looking to see if they held some clue that could prove of use to him, but if they did, their secrets were as remote to him as the pleasures of the flesh they depicted. Only killing provided him the satisfaction these hollow images promised.

When he finished with the photos, he tossed them to the floor and returned his attention to the nightstand drawer. There was nothing in it but the old, bulky Polaroid that snapped those pictures, open and empty of film, and a tacky hardback crime novel, which he cast aside after shaking to see if anything fell out. Then he inspected the drawer box as he had the ones in the kitchen, but to no avail.

Engelmann stripped the mattress of its sheets, which were stained, soft from countless bodies, and smelled of sweat. The mattress appeared intact—no openings or hand-stitched seams to suggest Cruz’d hidden anything inside—but Engelmann sliced it open and searched it regardless. Soon the room was littered with springs and batting as well as tawdry photos, but Engelmann was no closer to the clue that he was looking for.

He disassembled the metal bed frame, but that was empty, too. Nothing was taped to the upper surface of the ceiling fan blades, nor stashed inside the glass dome that encased the bulbs. All Engelmann found in the heating vents were mouse droppings, and moving the appliances yielded nothing but dust bunnies and dead roaches.

Engelmann stood shaking with frustration in the center of Cruz’s ruined apartment. Filthy and sweat-soaked, he retreated to the refrigerator, yanking open the door, grabbing one of Cruz’s beers, and cracking it open. Then he lowered himself stiffly onto the linoleum, letting the chill air from the open refrigerator pour over him as he drank.

His gaze wandered the apartment, dispassionately taking in his handiwork. He found no joy in the mess he’d made—only disappointment. He’d been so certain there

was something here to find. And yet.

And yet.

As his eyes lit upon the hardback novel lying spine-up and open on the floor, he felt a rush of discovery, of revelation. The cover, he realized, was in English, though his dossier indicated Cruz held the English language in disdain and would not permit it to be spoken in his home. Perhaps the lack of white lovers indicated he preferred other tongues in his love nest as well. And anyway, the lack of furnishings made it quite clear Cruz didn’t spend much time here that wasn’t spent in bed.

So why the book?

Engelmann hoisted himself up off the floor and bounded over, his beer and exhaustion both forgotten. He picked up the novel, turned it over in his hand.

It was Mario Puzo’s
The Godfather.

He thumbed through it and found that, here and there, letters were underlined, seemingly at random.

Engelmann smiled and fetched his burner phone from his pocket, fingers clumsy in his sweaty gloves.

That was fine. The Council was on speed dial.

The phone rang once. “Yeah?” his contact answered. Not angry, simply succinct.

“Yes, hello. I believe I’ve discovered something of interest.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Nothing you need concern yourself with—I’m working it.”

“Then why’re you calling
me?
”

“Because you and your constituent organizations have been naughty boys and girls indeed.”

“How’s that?”

“You’ve been passing notes in class.” Engelmann
tsk
ed. “And I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask to see them.”

There was a long pause—so long, Engelmann wondered for a moment if he’d pushed too far, if his contact would simply fail to answer.

Then his contact said: “Our communications are encrypted. Locked down.”

“Not so locked down as you might think,” Engelmann replied, his self-satisfied smile reflected in his tone.

“You’re gonna wanna watch the way you talk to me,” his contact spat. “We’re not a bunch of fucking morons, and we don’t take kindly to people who suggest otherwise.”

Engelmann was chastened, his smile dying on his face. “I wouldn’t dare suggest—”

But his contact cut him off. “Good. Keep not suggesting.” Then he sighed, and when he spoke again, he was once more composed. “If this shitwad’s cracked our communications, he’s even better than we thought. If I get you the access you want, are you good enough to get this guy?”

“Yes. There’s no one better.”

“Yeah, that’s what they say. But I swear to God, if I find out you’re using this information to fuck us over, we’ll hire the number two through five guys to hunt your ass down and make you live just long enough to regret it. You get me?”

Engelmann paused before answering. “I do.”

“Good. Check your phone. I’ve forwarded along some links to sites you’re gonna wanna take a look at. I’m also gonna put out the word to my organization that our communication network should go dark until you find our man.”

“No. That could signal to him that something’s amiss. Your communications should remain undisrupted.”

The line was silent for a moment. “You understand that’s one hell of a big request.”

“I do.”

“You’d better. Because if I don’t plug this leak and any more of our guys die by his hand, it’ll be on your head.”

“Until today, you were unaware your network had been breached. It would be folly to squander the tactical advantage this discovery affords us.”

“All right. I’ll give you a week. Then we’re changing the locks whether you got the guy or not.”

“Understood.”

“All right, then. Good luck.” And with that, his contact hung up.

No, not good luck, Engelmann thought. Good hunting.

11

By day, MacArthur Park seemed safe enough. Sure, it was blanketed in elaborate graffiti and dotted here and there with homeless people, napping in the shade of the park’s eucalyptus trees. But people still walked their dogs across the patchy, sun-scorched lawn, and couples brought their kids to kick soccer balls or climb atop the Day-Glo play structure.

Once the sun was doused by the Pacific to the west, though, the tenor of the park—and the Eastside neighborhood of Long Beach in which it sat—changed. Families packed up and left. The indigents retreated to the sidewalks and stoops outside the park, or vanished from the neighborhood altogether. And then the gangs arrived.

They strolled in with cultivated swagger, calculated to intimidate—but they traveled in packs, because numbers meant safety. They were black, mostly, although there were some Hispanics, too, and even one Cambodian crew. There was no intermingling of races within groups. Long Beach may pride itself on its diversity, but it seemed their street gangs weren’t so enlightened.

Michael Hendricks watched them with feigned disinterest from his perch across the street. No one paid him any mind. He was nothing more than scenery.

Hendricks had arrived in Long Beach late last night. Lester had booked him into a midrange chain hotel a couple blocks off the water under the name Robert McCall, and supplied him with the corresponding ID and credit cards. Shortly after he arrived, he took a walk down to the beach, a military duffel slung over one shoulder. There, he’d unpacked from the bag a pair of jeans and three shirts—a plain white tee, a heather gray tank top, and a red-and-black checked flannel. The tide was low, polluted water lapping Coca-Cola brown beneath the sodium vapor lights. He walked down to the water’s edge, dipped the clothes into the surf, and wrung them out. Then he stuffed them back into the duffel, the dampness bleeding through, and hiked back to his room.

Come morning, the clothes—which he’d hung across the shower rod—had dried. The seawater had discolored them. A saline crust stiffened the fabric. The room smelled like something died in it.

He put them on, layering the shirts—first the tank, then the tee, then the flannel. Then he slipped out a side entrance and hiked inland, stopping at a bike rack to smear grease from the chains into his hair and face and hands. A few blocks later, when he saw a businesswoman’s expression flicker distaste as he walked by, he knew he’d achieved his goal; as far as she was concerned, he was one more homeless person in a city full of them.

Irving Franklin’s only known address was a modest single-story stucco home belonging to his grandmother. Hendricks settled in on the stoop of a shuttered pawnshop across the street and a few doors down, and watched.

The grandmother was up when he arrived. She tottered back and forth past the windows for hours. Cooking. Cleaning. Tending to two young children—Franklin’s brothers, or cousins maybe. But Hendricks didn’t lay eyes on Franklin until noon, when he stumbled into the kitchen— his face pillow-creased, his expression sleepy. Hendricks was shocked by how young he looked. Franklin was small-boned, with delicate—almost feminine—features, no visible tattoos, and he stood somewhere shy of five-five. Hendricks couldn’t fathom why a major criminal organization would want this poor kid dead.

Hendricks remained outside the house all day, changing looks and position to evade notice. Sitting on the pawnshop stoop, his flannel buttoned up. Propped against a neighbor’s fence in his T-shirt. Lying beneath a black acacia tree, tank top showing. He’d hoped for a chance to talk to Franklin alone. But the kid didn’t set foot outside until nightfall, when three members of his crew—each older and harder than Franklin, their inked-up necks and knuckles adorned with chunky, ostentatious gold—came by in a tricked-out Civic to pick him up.