The Sentry (33 page)

“Green tea?”

Pike nodded.

Pike sipped the tea, and stared through the passing people at the ocean without seeing them or the water or anything else. He thought about nothing except the warmth of the tea and the cool ocean breeze, and how good the sun felt as it melted into the horizon.

When the sky was dark, Pike paid his tab and returned to the canals. He followed the sidewalk along the canal past the Palmers and checked Jared’s window. Jared was up there, wearing headphones and swirling to a rhythmic, unknown beat.

Pike moved on, stepping onto the tiny dock at the back of Steve Brown’s house, where the kayak hung on twin wooden posts.

Jared told him Steve Brown would return by the end of the week. Jared had also told him other things, like how Rainey would sit on the little dock at night, and how he’d go out in the kayak at night, and how Jared had twice seen Rainey wading in the canal at night.

Always at night.

But it was Rose who convinced him, with the things she said at the end, how she couldn’t walk away from that kind of money, how she had lived like a rat for that money. The way she had looked at him when she thought she would lose it.
If only you knew
.

Pike wondered if she had known where it was, or if Rainey told her in the moments before he died. Either way, she seemed to be talking about much more than three hundred forty-two thousand dollars.

Pike ran his hands over the kayak’s smooth skin, then lifted it from its hooks. Pike knew the money wasn’t in the little boat because he had checked it two days ago, but he enjoyed the feel of its weight.

He set the kayak back on its hooks, then sat on the dock. It was a nice night, cool, and the water would be cold.

Eighty-five concrete stones lined the bank from one side of the property to the other, arranged in five staggered layers of seventeen blocks each. Pike knew this because he had counted them when the water was down. He had returned at night twice, and waded to the center of the canal, where, at its deepest point when the tide was high, the water reached his neck. He had probed the bottom and the plants that grew there in feathery clouds, then began checking the blocks to see if any were loose or movable.

Pike searched the blocks beneath and around the dock first. It was the obvious choice, but Pike had found nothing. Each block had been firm and secure in its file.

There were more blocks to check.

Pike took off his running shoes and pistol. He pulled off his pants and sweatshirt, wrapped the gun in his pants, then put on his shoes and slipped quietly into the water. His muscles clenched at the first shock of cold, but the shock, like all pain, faded.

Pike resumed where he had left off, checked eleven more blocks, and was wading beneath the salt plants when his leg struck a hard object. He felt it with his foot, and realized he had bumped against a ten-inch pipe. He had seen pipes like it in the canals when the water was out. They were drains for rain and runoff collected from the alleys and yards.

The pipes he had seen were capped with a heavy mesh grid to keep out birds and animals when the water was low, but when Pike pushed his foot against this one, he felt the grid move.

Pike took a breath, pulled himself under, and found four nylon duffel bags stuffed up the pipe, tied together with rope. They did not come easily, but after a while Pike had them free.

Once he had them out of the water, he put on his shirt and pants, clipped the pistol to his belt, and headed back to his Jeep with the bags. As he climbed the narrow pedestrian bridge, an older couple stopped on the far side to let him pass.

Pike said, “Thank you.”

The lady said, “Lovely night.”

Pike’s Jeep was on Venice Boulevard not far from the bridge. He dropped the bags in the shadows at the curb, then opened the rear hatch. When he went back for the bags, former DEA agent Norm Lister was waiting. Holding a gun.

“Good job, Pike. Very good. Excellent.”

Lister looked ragged and dirty, like he’d been living in a car. He made a pushing gesture with the gun, as if he expected Pike to step back.
If only you knew
.

“Put the keys there in the bed, and walk away.”

Pike didn’t move.

“Did you know where the money was?”

“No, man, but I knew Rainey. I’m the guy who flipped him. It had to be close.”

Pike thought back to the video. How they had tailed Rainey and Platt, watching their every move. Maybe hoping Rainey would visit the money.

Lister made the push again.

“Go away, Pike. This is your pass.”

Pike looked at Lister’s trembling gun, then at the man’s nervous eyes. He thought about Jerry Button, and poor little Futardo, and Rainey and Dru Rayne who turned out to be Rose Platt.

“Lister. If you knew me as well as you knew Rainey, you wouldn’t be here.”

Pike shot Norm Lister in the chest, then walked over and shot him in the face exactly as he had shot Jerry Button.

Pike loaded the money aboard, leaving Norm Lister on the curb.

P
ike brought the bags home, but did not open them for three days. He put them in his bathtub the first night, figuring they would drain. The next day, he moved them to his bedroom at the foot of his bed.

He brought them downstairs on the third day, and opened them for the first time since they’d been out of the water. He slit the plastic wrappers and stacked the packs of cash on the floor. There were a few packs made up of fifties and twenties, but most of the four-inch-thick packs held only hundreds.

It took Pike four hours and thirty-five minutes to count the money, keeping track of how much was in each stack on a yellow legal pad. When he finished, Pike leaned against his couch and considered the miniature skyscraper city spread across his living room.

William Rainey had lied to the end, telling them he only had three hundred forty-two thousand.

If only you knew
.

Pike counted six million, seven hundred, fifty-five thousand dollars.

Pike wondered how much remained hidden in other locations, but didn’t much care one way or another. He stared at the money for a while, trying to figure out what to do with it, then turned on ESPN and watched the late-night sports.

Later, Pike turned out the lights and went up to bed. He didn’t pick up the money. He left the stacks on his floor like the meaningless paper it was.

Father Art was doing better except for the fever. The color had cleared from his urine, but a low-grade fever remained. Not so bad, only a degree or so, but it hung on like bad debts, leaving him weak. Marisol was worried, so she came early and stayed late, and tried as best she could to keep Angel Eyes open.

That morning when she arrived, well before the counselors or kids, Marisol found a blue nylon bag on the ground beside the front door.

That the bag would be here was odd, but more odd was the card pinned to the bag. It was a simple white index card bearing her name.

She looked around to see if anyone was watching, like maybe someone playing a joke to see what she would do, but she saw no one.

She brought the bag inside and put it on her desk. The bag had a hefty, bulky weight, maybe eight or ten pounds, like it might be filled with chocolate.

Father Art called from the back.

“Is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me. Who else?”

“Don’t come back here. I’m on the toilet.”

“Finish your business. Call when you’re ready.”

Marisol went behind her desk, studied the bag, then pushed her suspicion aside and opened it. The first thing she saw was another white card. The note on this card was simple.

Someone is watching.

Cole saw the red mist. The dream woke him that morning, as it had the night before, and the night before that, and more nights than he remembered. Now, he stood on his deck on a bright empty day, thinking about how close they had come.

Cole had not seen or spoken with Joe Pike since they left Mulholland Drive eleven days earlier. Even during the aftermath with the police, Pike had seemed more distant, as if he had withdrawn even more deeply into a secret place only he knew.

Cole had left messages, but Pike had not returned his calls. Cole had gone to Pike’s condo, but not found him home. Pike could and would disappear for weeks at a time, but this time was different.

Two red-tailed hawks floated in slow circles over the canyon. Cole watched them, wondering what they were searching for. He had been watching them for hours. His cat sat on the edge of the deck, watching Cole watch the hawks. Bored.

Cole said, “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

The cat narrowed its eyes, falling asleep, then suddenly stood and sprinted into the house.

Cole said, “Thank God.”

Cole went to the sliders as Joe Pike came through the front door. Pike was framed in the door for a moment, surrounded by light, then he shut the door and came out onto the deck.

They stood face-to-face, neither of them speaking, then Pike pulled him close, and hugged him. Didn’t say a word, just hugged him, and went to the rail.

After a while, Cole went to the rail, too, looking out at the canyon spread before them like a hazy green bowl.

“Good to see you.”

Pike nodded.

“You want something to drink?”

“I’m good.”

Cole held tight to the rail for support.

“We should talk.”

“No need.”

“She was going to shoot you.”

“I know.”

“I had to. I didn’t want to, but I had to. You understand?”

Pike squeezed Cole’s shoulder, then looked at the sky.

“Hawks.”

“Been up there all day.”

“It’s where they belong.”

Cole nodded, and felt the tears come. They watched the hawks together. Where they belonged.

ALSO BY ROBERT CRAIS