The Wake-Up
Table of Contents
FOR MY BROTHER, JAMES
There is only one basic plot: things aren’t what they seem.
—JIM THOMPSON
Acclaim for Robert Ferrigno’s
THE WAKE-UP
“An ultra-hip comic caper. . . . The dialogue crackles and the plot moves briskly. . . . Ferrigno keeps the plot sharp and taut as
The
Wake-Up
moves to its unpredictable ending.”
—
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“Fast-moving, hard-driving. . . . Ferrigno’s punchy prose will hold you through the night.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Devilishly delightful. . . .
The Wake-Up
is relentless, brutal and scary. . . . [Ferrigno] delivers his usual gut-punches, electroshocks and sweaty palms.”
—
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“
The Wake-Up
is a white-knuckled roller-coaster ride . . . a morality tale where the good and bad guys die in equal numbers. . . . Ferrigno can limn a character in a few sentences.”
—
The Oregonian
“Ferrigno has not only transcended the crime novel, he’s blown it up. . . .
The Wake-Up
is . . . a streamlined package of dynamite with a compelling plot, a strong moral sense and genuine affection for all of his characters. A rare combination in any type of fiction these days.”
—
Las Vegas Review-Journal
“
The Wake-Up
has it all. Death, drugs, destruction, surfing and pretty girls.
The Wake-Up
is guaranteed to be a pleasant afternoon.”
—
Contra Costa Times
“Ferrigno packs plenty of action into his story, taking the reader on a roller-coaster ride through the high income and lowlife of Southern California, with enough twists and turns and sudden drops to demand Dramamine.”
—
Seattle Weekly
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my editor, Sonny Mehta, and to my agent, Mary Evans, for their assistance and encouragement.
PROLOGUE
The Engineer’s bodyguard gave Frank Thorpe the jitters. The man wasn’t doing anything that should have given him cause for concern— he leaned against a black 850 BMW sedan, lost in the pages of a porn magazine, while the Engineer stretched nearby. Same as usual. Thorpe bent down, pretended to retie his running shoes, heart pounding. The bodyguard had to be three hundred pounds at least, with a head like a hammer, and Cyrillic tattoos ringing his squatty neck, busy now staring at
Tits and Clits Annual.
Thorpe smiled at his own nervousness, strung out on adrenaline, imagining the worst. You’d think he’d learn. The moment of truth . . . it applied to Thorpe even more than to the target.
The Engineer took off down the path that circled the park, a soft intellectual in a bright red jogging suit, arms pumping twice as fast as his legs. He sprinted about thirty yards, just far enough to be out of sight of his bodyguard, then pulled a cell phone out of his jacket, walking now as he punched in the number.
Thorpe stood up, a tall, gangly forty-year-old in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt, loose-limbed and agile. No need to hurry. The Engineer’s call to Kimberly would be brief, only long enough to confirm their rendezvous at the Four Seasons tonight. The big date, almost three weeks in the making. The Engineer had started running laps the day after he first met Kimberly, ordering the fruit plate at lunch, to the guffaws of the rest of Lazurus’s crew, mostly suety, barrel-chested Ukrainians forking in meat and cheese. Any day now, Thorpe expected the Engineer to begin touching up the gray in his hair.
The park was quiet midweek, filled with new moms in color-coordinated workout clothes, pushing high-tech running strollers, their hair in braids and pigtails. Thorpe must be getting old; mothers didn’t use to look so good. In a grassy field, a couple of college guys tossed a football back and forth. One of them had an arm, too, a real cannon, arcing tight spirals forty and fifty yards. Under other circumstances, Thorpe might have asked if he could play, too, give them a surprise; instead, he trotted onto the dirt running path.
The Engineer sat on a wooden bench, his call finished, staring into space. He was in his mid-thirties, with sensual, thickly lidded eyes, and thin, ascetic lips. A face at war with itself. Right now he would be thinking of Kimberly, imagining how the evening might go, deciding on what to order from room service. There had been no bodyguard with him the day he had bumped into her at the mall. Some men might wonder how they had gotten so lucky, this chance meeting with Kimberly, a shy, pretty college girl who had commented on his cute Italian accent. Not the Engineer. He and Kimberly ordered lunch in the food court, exchanging lies over tacos and soft drinks, and when she said she had to go, the Engineer had asked for her phone number, apologizing for his boldness. Thorpe had watched from the second balcony, sipping an Orange Julius.
The Engineer got up from the bench, took off at a slow canter.
Thorpe gave him a lead, then started after him. It was a perfect Southern California morning, ripe with the smell of fresh-mowed grass and carbon monoxide. A great day to squeeze the Engineer. Squeeze him until he bled all his secrets.
People liked Thorpe when they met him, thinking afterward how easy he was to talk to. A Gypsy in Seattle had known better. She was a bejeweled matron operating out of a concrete rambler on Route 99, a garish place with brightly colored pebbles in the driveway and a neon sign in the window advertising ADVICE LOVE MONEY. She started to read his palm, then dropped it as though it were molten. She said his heart had more twists than a snake, and that his future was beyond all reckoning. She almost looked sad for him. The Gypsy was a rip-off, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t right once in a while.
The Engineer disappeared around a bend, the path winding through dense trees.
Thorpe ran faster now, his footfalls barely making a sound. He waited until the Engineer approached a cutoff, then raced abreast and tripped him, sent him tumbling. The Engineer scrambled up, running suit streaked with dirt, but Thorpe was on him, pushing him backward down the cutoff until they were out of sight of the running path.
“You want money?” panted the Engineer, eyes wide.
“I’d rather have some thermal lenses,” said Thorpe. “I’m putting together an over-the-horizon radar receiver, and Wal-Mart is out of stock.”
The Engineer stiffened, braver now that he knew he wasn’t being mugged. “There is a fellow waiting for me. You should try your joke on him. He likes to laugh.”
“Gregor?” Thorpe loved the look on the Engineer’s face when he used the bodyguard’s name. “I don’t think that tub of shit has a funny bone in his body.”
The Engineer’s hooded eyes made him look sleepy, but Thorpe knew better.
“Lazurus should have stuck with dope and tax-free cigarettes; you start exporting microswitches to Belarus, people wonder what you’re up to.”
A thin film of sweat gleamed over the Engineer’s upper lip. “You are FBI?”
Thorpe shook his head. “The Bureau still has a dress code. You believe that?”
The Engineer pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Tapped out an unfiltered Marlboro, hands shaking slightly. He watched Thorpe as his gold Zippo flared. “CIA?”
“Too macho. My shop, we’re more like Boy Scouts with a really sick sense of humor.”
Smoke trickled from the Engineer’s mouth. “You do not look like a Boy Scout.”
“Kimberly isn’t going to make it tonight, so you can save yourself a trip to the hotel.
See,
there’s my good deed for the day.” Thorpe saw the Engineer’s eyes harden. “It must be disappointing, all that foreplay and no payoff. The roses were beautiful, by the way. I dropped some of the petals in my bubble bath, kind of a sensual experience after a long day.” Thorpe could feel the rage and the electricity in the air. He
loved
moments like this. Billy said the best operators had a cruel streak, and Thorpe was as good as he had seen. “I hate to tell you, but those calls you made to Kimberly didn’t go to her directly; they rang first in an office downtown and were rerouted to her cell phone. The number that appears on your billing records is a cubicle in the federal building.” He let it sink in. “Could be a problem for you with Lazurus.”
The cigarette dropped from the Engineer’s open mouth.
“Later today”—Thorpe checked his watch—“Lazurus is going to get word that someone is talking to the feds. Someone
close.
How long you think it will take him to pull the phone records of everyone in his crew?”
“I told Kimberly nothing. This is not legal, what you are doing. There are rules—”
“Actually, there aren’t. The FBI has rules, even the CIA has rules, but my shop, we make it up as we go along. It’s part of the fun of working there.” Thorpe saw the Engineer hesitate. “Hey, you want to leave, be my guest. I won’t stop you. I’m sure you can convince Lazurus that you’re a team player. I bet he’s a good listener.”
The Engineer was rigid, hands clenched, trying to decide what to do.
Thorpe watched him but didn’t interfere. The Engineer was smart; he would make the right move. A successful squeeze only worked with someone intelligent enough to realize that cooperation was their only option,
full
cooperation. “I have a car parked nearby, and a safe house waiting. We want to know what merchandise you’ve bought for Lazurus, who sold it, and what he’s got you looking for next. Or you can finish your run, and tell Lazurus all about the bad man who tried to turn you.”
“Kimberly . . .” The Engineer’s voice cracked. “She will be at the safe house, too?”
Thorpe nodded. The Engineer smiled, grateful at the news, and Thorpe almost felt sorry for him. Then he remembered what the Engineer did for a living. Death row was filled with men who sent valentines to their mothers, and drew pictures of kitty cats playing with balls of twine. Thorpe would gladly throw the switch on all of them.
“This thing you are doing . . . it is clever,” said the Engineer. “Lazurus will not know how long I have been working with you. He will not know how deep the betrayal goes. He will suspect everyone—” He stepped back into the trees as his bodyguard lumbered past on the main path. “This is
trouble.
”
Thorpe was equally surprised at the bodyguard’s abrupt appearance.
“You said Lazurus would find out
later.
What else are you wrong about?”
Somebody at the shop had screwed up; the place hadn’t run smoothly since Billy quit. Thorpe led the Engineer through the trees, the man right behind him, huffing and puffing. They stopped in the brush at the edge of a second parking lot. His rented Jeep was still there. While they watched, three men got out of an idling black Mercedes.
The men looked around, scowling; then the driver got out, too, stood beside the car. The other three headed for the trees, their route taking them forty or fifty feet from where Thorpe and the Engineer crouched. The park was small—both parking lots would be staked out now, Lazurus’s men fanning out along the running path.
Thorpe flipped open his phone.
“Yes, call for help,” the Engineer whispered, clinging to him. “Say ‘Come
now.
’ ”
“There
is
no help. No reinforcements. No black helicopters. There’s just you and me.”
The Engineer released his grip. “Then we are dead.”
Thorpe called the safe house.
“I saw Lazurus kill a man once,” the Engineer mumbled. “A broker who sold us industrial milling equipment. We had used him before, but this time he substituted an inferior grade of ball bearings.” He stared straight ahead. “Lazurus brought him to a warehouse filled with old bicycles, rusted bicycles with flattened tires. The broker knew something bad was happening even before Lazurus lit the blowtorch. The blowtorch . . . it lights with a popping sound. The broker jumped when he heard it. I jumped, too.”
Kimberly answered on the first ring. “Trouble,” said Thorpe. He watched the driver pace beside the Mercedes, a sturdy young guy in jeans and a leather jacket, hair slicked straight back. “The Engineer and I are still at the park. We have company.”
“How did that happen?”
“You tell me.” Thorpe heard voices behind them. “We’re playing hide-and-seek.”
“Call the cops. Tell them to come with their sirens full on. Maybe you’ll scare off—”
“Too late.”
“The broker tried to explain that it had been a mistake,” said the Engineer, plucking leaves off the bushes. “He took out his wallet, showed Lazurus photographs of his family, his wife and children. Lazurus looked at the photos for a long time, with no expression on his face, just looking. Then he took the blowtorch and burned them up.”
“Ditch the Engineer,” said Kimberly. “Tell him you’ll be right back, and stroll away. Lazurus’s men won’t stop you. They don’t know you.”
The Mercedes driver kept one hand on the car as he bent forward, checking first one shoe, then the other. Thorpe slipped his 9-mm out of the front pocket of his sweatshirt, dropped the safety.
“Leave him, Thorpe. We won’t get to debrief him, and that’s a loss, but Lazurus won’t know that. He’ll still have to retool his whole operation.”
“First Lazurus burned the photographs. . . . Then . . . then, he burned the broker.”
Thorpe closed his phone. “That’s a sad story, and when this is over, we’ll sit down with some herb tea and have a good cry. Right now, I want you to take off your clothes.”
“You are serious?”
“They’ll be looking for a red jogging suit. If you’re buck naked underneath, you’ll
still
be less noticeable.” Thorpe waited as the Engineer undressed, raising an eyebrow at the man’s polka-dot bikini briefs. “Those may buy us an extra couple of seconds while your pals try to stop laughing.” He tucked the Engineer’s cell phone into his sweatshirt.
The driver of the Mercedes was still scraping the bottom of his shoes on the pavement when Thorpe reached the edge of the parking lot. Thorpe heard shouts from the woods, then gunshots. The driver looked up, reached for the pistol in his waistband, and Thorpe shot him twice in the chest, the man flopping backward as though jerked by a string. Thorpe was running now, the Engineer right behind.
Bullets dinged the nearby cars, popping out windshields. Thorpe returned fire, hit another one of Lazurus’s men, sent the others diving for cover. Thorpe emptied the magazine as the Engineer ducked into the Jeep. Thorpe threw open his door, when something knocked the wind out of him. He straightened up, got behind the wheel. A bullet shattered his side-view mirror as he peeled out of the lot. Thorpe watched his rearview as they sped away. He thought of the Mercedes driver tumbling to the pavement, and how strange it was to die with dog shit on your shoes.
“Alexi . . . the driver,” said the Engineer, “I was playing chess with him last night.”
Thorpe raced onto the I-5 freeway. No one had followed them. He took out his phone again. There was blood on the keypad.
“Are you all right?” Kimberly asked before he even spoke.
“We’re on our way. He’s fine. I got shot in the side.”
“Do I need to find you an ER?” Kimberly’s voice was even.
“No.” Thorpe pulled a pair of white socks from under his seat, pressed them against the wound. “See you soon.” He broke the connection. The white socks were turning pink. He pressed them harder against his belly, driving with one hand.
The safe house was in an upscale development, a house like every other in the neighborhood, except for the tiny video cameras covering the front and back. Kimberly and Weeks were standing in the doorway as Thorpe drove up. Kimberly had her dark blond hair pulled back and was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a clingy blue silk T-shirt, looking not at all like the innocent girl who had bumped into the Engineer at the mall. She would handle the initial interrogation. She looked eager to get to work, striding toward the car while Weeks stayed put, big arms crossed.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” said Thorpe as Kimberly leaned in the open window.