The Replacements (14 page)

He turned and looked at me, his mouth agape. His missing teeth gave an illusion that his hole went on forever. “We're done talking.” He laid back and closed his eyes. “Take the freeway to Central, get off and go south to Mission, hang a right then a left on Kadota. Wake me when we get there.”

“Wait. Tell me the name of the boy.”

He opened one eye. “I don't know why I should. It won't help you.”

I said nothing.

“Eddie Crane.”

He closed his eye. “From Bell Gardens.”

I drove and looked at him, again and again. I found it difficult to take my eyes from him. I didn't want to, but I did. I regretted the day I had saved his life. He slept with his mouth open, the eyes behind his closed lids moving constantly as if he was watching a lively tennis match.

Twenty minutes later I turned onto Kadota. I slowed. “Jonas.” He didn't stir. I reached over and shook him, his skin cold to the touch like a cadaver. He roused, slow, coming up out of a sound sleep, even with a bullet through his foot. He lifted his head, looked around, and waved for me to continue. I drove until he held up his hand and I stopped the car.

He got out with a limp. “Wait a minute.” He went across the sidewalk, through a fence and into a yard with a car parked on the dirt in front of the house, a broken-down, faded-green '84 Grand Marquis. The house looked abandoned, a derelict. He reached into the Grand Marquis and came back to the street, leaving a bloody snail trail. He tossed a brown paper bag into my car window. “Call me when you have the money. You have one day.”

“One day isn't enough. How am I supposed to come up with a million dollars?”

“Not my problem. Do what you gotta do. Rob a bank if you gotta. Twenty-four hours.”

I opened the bag and found a disposable phone. I looked back at him, then at the house behind him to memorize it for later.

He smiled a droopy smile. “Won't do you any good. I covered my tracks. You won't find a lead here. I'm to meet a doctor of questionable ability, who's been disbarred or whatever you call it for doctors. He'll fix me up. But I gotta tell ya, I warned him I'd be a lot worse than this. I've been hurt worse falling off
my tricycle as a kid. I hope this isn't an example of the kind of work you do. If it is, I guess I'll never see my money. You have a nice day, Deputy Johnson.” He turned and hobbled back into the yard.

“You'll always leave a trail,” I said.

He turned and scowled and shook his head. I pointed to the bloody path he'd left.

“You're a fool,” he said.

I drove away.
Maybe I was
.

I woke when the motel door slammed shut with enough violence to shake the walls and rattle the gloomy painting above the bed. If the cops had come for me, they'd have busted down the door. They wouldn't close it behind them. I put the pillow over my head. I needed to squeeze out another minute or two of sleep. I was so damn tired. Some of the fatigue came from depression, the hopelessness of the situation, the fact the kids had not been rescued and continued to be in serious jeopardy. I brought the illuminated dial of my watch up close to my eyes; I'd dropped Jonas off only three hours earlier.

“Come on,” Mack said, “Get your sorry ass up. Where is he? What'd you do with Mabry?” Mack grabbed my foot and twisted it.

I kicked free, rolled over, and sat on the edge of the bed, my head hanging in my hands as I tried to wake up. The room was dim without the lights on. “I know you're mad. I just didn't want to involve you.”

“I know all that. Skip to where you got him on ice. Where is he?”

“We need to get the money. Mabry's not going to do anything until he gets the money. I'm convinced of that now. Only then will we have a move to make. If we don't get the money, we don't have a chance. He'll give up the children if he gets the money.”

“You squeezed him? You really put the boot to him, and he still wouldn't give it up?”

“Yeah, that's right.”

“I guess you didn't do it good enough, did you, good buddy? Shit.” He kicked the bed, then sat down next to me. I rubbed my face.

“I'm sorry for leaving you hanging like that,” I said.

He didn't acknowledge the apology and lowered his tone. “You know how this works—the money's no guarantee. In fact, the odds in this kind of thing go against the kids if we do give him the money.”

“I know, but in this case, I think he'll give us the kids once he gets the money. I really do. I'll do the exchange myself, and won't give up the money without proof of life.”

I wasn't sure about the kids coming back safe. But I was sure about one aspect of Mabry's game: He wanted to hurt me any way he could, and I was somehow in his plan to do just that.

“This caper, coming out good, with the kids safe and the asshole dead, is only wishful thinking. You really did your best, beating this asshole?”

He knew better then to ask me that.

With my head still in my hands, I turned and looked at him. “Yeah, I did.”

“You try putting his nuts in a vise and twisting?”

“No, I left my medieval torturing devices in Central America.”

He reached over, took my right hand, and checked my knuckles. I jerked my hand away. “Stop it. We need to get the money.”

Someone knocked at the door. I jumped up and headed for the bathroom to hide. “You expecting anyone?”

Mack went to the door. “Chill out man, it's only Barbara. When I saw my car—the one you parked right out front like some kind of in-your-face-asshole move—I called her. That was real ballsy, coming back here with the FBI a few doors down.”

I wanted to ask how it was different from when he did so, but didn't have the energy.

He peeked out the window and then opened the door. Barbara Wicks slipped in. She spun around right into Mack's
arms as he closed the door. He hugged her as if one of them had been stranded for years on a desert island.

I backed up and sat back on the bed. I hadn't seen them as a couple; it'd never crossed my mind.
The irony
. Not nine months prior, Mack had gunned down her husband, Robby Wicks, with an Ithaca Deerslayer 12-gauge shotgun. Mack kissed her like a ravenous lion, three days without food. She returned the same intensity. I needed to call Marie. I needed to talk to Marie. “You two want some privacy?” I asked.

They broke and half-turned away from one another, heads down a little, embarrassed. I no longer wondered how Barbara weaseled the information about where I had taken up residency in Costa Rica.

Barbara straightened her blouse and composed herself. She turned professional. “Sorry. Where are the kids?”

Mack answered for me. “He didn't get them. Mabry still has them.”

Her eyes widened. “What? You
had Mabry
, what the hell happened, Bruno?”

“He tried, he really tried,” said Mack. “Mabry wouldn't give up the kids.”

She looked at Mack, her eyes narrowed. “Let
him
talk.”

“We need to get the money,” I said. “He'll give the children up once we get the money, I'm sure of it.”

“You're sure of it?” she asked. “You're sure of it? You know what the stats say about giving up the money?”

She'd turned her eyes to full intensity. I pulled the bed sheet over to cover my nakedness; I wore only BVDs. “What did I bring you here for?” she asked. “Didn't we discuss this?”

Anger rose instantly. I stood and let the sheet fall. “Yeah, we discussed this, but I'm here to tell you, he wasn't going to give the children up. I tried.”

“Bruno, how could you have tried if your hands are clean?” asked Mack.

“I used a gun.”

“You shot him?” asked Barbara.

I sat back down, ashamed of what I had done. “Yeah, I shot him.”

I told them all that had happened from the beginning and finished with, “And then he had me drop him off at a place he said was prearranged with a doctor waiting, some sort of underground doctor, off the radar. You see, he wasn't going to talk. He had drugged himself with some sort of analgesic, to help him knuckle through the pain. He knew exactly what he was doing.”

By this time, Barbara had sat down on the bed next to me, Mack on the other side, like a couple of bookends, me in my BVDs.

Silence ruled the moment. Barbara finally said, “It's not about the money, not entirely.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“The FBI has your picture,” she said. “They got it from the parking lot videocam at the mall. They got you holding a gun on Mabry and forcing him into the trunk. They now think you're the main player. That you, not Mabry, took the kids. And that Mabry is your shill to take the heat.”

I stood and half-stumbled across to the bathroom, using the doorframe for support. I'd been set up—hard and deep.

Jonas had organized and planned his crimes with me as the epicenter. He'd somehow stayed several steps ahead of us. No matter what we tried, he had been able to predict our every move. Jonas came out of the penal system as a graduate with honors. No one I had ever chased had this intricate form of advanced planning. Up in the mountains he kept using “we.” Someone else had to be helping him.

Jonas had used my background against me. I was wanted for rescuing abused children from toxic homes and taking them to a safe haven down in Costa Rica. Now he'd made it appear as if I'd come back for more kids. He set the trap so the entire kidnap scenario fell back onto me. If successful, he could take the money, walk away, and leave me holding the bag of crimes against these children.

I had to get the children away from him. The big question: If the option arose, if I could get the children back unharmed, would I, in exchange for their freedom, go to prison? A large hole opened in my gut, cold and empty. I thought I would go to prison if it came right down to that horrible choice.

Barbara brought me out of my funk. “No way will they give him the money. If they can set up that scenario, the FBI might front a fake bag of money to take him down. But no way will they let a million walk. No way.”

Of course she was right. At least two of the kids were foster children recently adopted to middle-class parents without the means to raise tens of thousands, let alone a million.

“Jonas knows we can't raise the money,” I said. “That's why he said he wanted me to rob a bank. He's either toying with me, or he wants to force me to commit felonies in the hopes I'll get caught. But one thing is for sure, violent crimes are a component of his plan before he ends this.”

“He wants you to fail so you'll go to prison,” Mack said. “That's what this game is all about. He wants you in the joint forever.”

I nodded.

The way Jonas had set up the kidnapping and exchange left only one option for me. I needed the money to show to him. Then I'd force him to show me the kids before I handed over the money.

He wanted a million dollars in twenty-four hours. Where could I lay my hands on that kind of money in twenty-four hours? Money taken in a bank robbery averaged fifteen to twenty thousand from the tellers' windows. Twenty thousand at a whack would take fifty banks. To get the big money all at once, you had to hit the vaults. To take down a vault, you needed a lot of advanced planning and a team. I had neither.

“You're not going to do anything stupid to get the money,” Mack said. “You're not going to play his game. Hello?” Mack got up, walked over and snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Bruno, earth to Bruno, are you in there? We'll give him a fake drop, a fake bag of money, and follow him. It's the only choice we have.”

“I'm sorry, what?”

“I think John's right,” said Barbara. “You're going to have to stay put for now. You can't risk getting picked up. When you talked to him, did you at least get the name of the third child?”

“Eddie Crane. Jonas told me Eddie Crane, from Bell Gardens.”

Barbara took out her cell, speed-dialed, and waited. She said, “This is Chief Wicks, let me talk to the ASAC.”

We waited a few seconds, then she said into the phone, “Hi,
Dan, the child's name is Eddie Crane. Start off checking Bell Gardens. No, I can't tell you where I got the information. I'm on my way to the ICC right now. Yes, all right. Thanks.”

“What's the plan?” asked Mack.

Barbara looked at me. “How are you to contact Chicken Hawk when you have the money?” She'd taken to using the name designation assigned to Mabry by the FBI. I resisted the urge to look over at the drop phone Jonas handed me before we parted ways, the phone that now sat on the nightstand next to the one I'd purchased.

I lied. “He told me a pay phone to stand next to, tomorrow night at nine.”

“Are there still pay phones out there?” asked Mack.

Barbara set up her cell to type in the information. “Okay, give me the location and number if you have it.”

I recited the only pay phone number I could remember. “It's on Atlantic Avenue in Compton.” I didn't know if the phone was still there. A twinge of guilt rose up to ruin my day just that much more. I hated lying to friends. But I needed time to think, to make a plan. And to sleep. If I could only get a little sleep, I knew I could figure this thing out. Jonas had left little time to do either. I'm sure he'd factored my fatigue into this part of his plan.

I flopped down on the bed and closed my eyes. The answer hovered overhead, just out of reach. I could feel it. Gauzy fatigue masked visibility and any attempt to clear the air.

“Bruno, what's the address where you dropped him?” asked Barbara. “I want you and Mack to go there and try to pick up his trail.”

“First you want me to stay here out of sight, now you want me to go? It's on Kadota, off Mission. On Kadota, five houses south of Mission, on the right. There's a chain-link fence with an old Mercury Marquis sitting in the front yard. No numbers on the house. I'm staying here. I have to close my eyes for a few minutes or my mind's going to melt down.”