Indigo Slam

CHAPTER 24

Pike and I left for LAX early the next morning, leaving the apartment as the sun was torching the eastern sky. That part of the morning, the air was still and cool, and we made good time; the southbound traffic moved easily, even though dense with commuters from the Simi and Antelope Valleys grinding toward the Los Angeles basin. I said, 'We're just another couple of guys on their way to work.'

Pike said, 'Uh-huh.'

The Beretta autoloader was on the floorboard behind our seats. I had the Dan Wesson, and Pike had his Python and maybe even an MX missile. Just another couple of guys.

We left the San Diego Freeway at Howard Hughes Parkway and dropped south through Westchester to LAX. The scanner was due in at nine that morning, and, according to the dispatcher in New York, was to be held at the airport for pickup at the Small Package Delivery office in the baggage claim area. Being a small package, it would come down the carousel with the luggage, where a United employee would pick it up, then take it to be held in the SPD office until it was claimed by someone from the Journal. That person might be Clark, but more probably it would be someone that we couldn't recognize, so we had to be in position to identify the package and follow its movements.

We left Pike's Jeep on the arriving flights level as close to baggage claim as we could, then went into the SPD office. An attractive African-American woman was behind the counter there, stacking small packages for a guy in a gray express delivery uniform. I said, 'Excuse me. Could you tell me which carousel the luggage from United flight five will come down?'

'That would be carousel four. But that flight isn't due in until nine. You're awful early.'

I smiled at her. 'The wife's coming in and I miss her.' The wife.

'Oh, isn't that nice.'

The people in the terminal ebbed and flowed with the early morning flight schedule of the big cross-country flights to New York or Miami or Chicago, then grew steadily as the number of flights increased. At eight-thirty we separated and positioned ourselves with a view to all points of egress in case Clark showed. He didn't. A family of Hare Krishnas came through snapping finger chimes and offering pamphlets for money, moving from person to person until they reached Pike, and then they hurried past. Strong survival instinct.

At exactly nine a.m. the arrival monitor indicated that flight five had landed, and a few minutes later the carousel kicked on and luggage began sliding down its ramp. The fourth piece down was a white cardboard box taped with a bright yellow airbill. Pike drifted to the carousel, watched the package pass, then came back. 'Pacific Rim Weekly Journal.'

Twenty minutes later, almost all of the crowd and luggage was gone. The attractive African-American woman appeared, and took the package into the SPD office. I said, 'Watch for the package, not the people.'

People carrying packages came and went through the SPD office, but none of them had the white box.

We waited some more.

Pike said, 'Maybe you scared them off.'

Nothing like support from the home team.

We were still waiting at sixteen minutes after ten when an Asian guy went into the office and claimed the white box with the yellow airbill. I looked at Pike. 'Ha.'

We followed him out to a plain white van, then out of the airport to the San Diego Freeway, then south. It took almost an hour and forty-five minutes to reach Long Beach, but the white van didn't seem to be in a hurry, and neither were we. Pike said, 'Paid by the hour.' Cynic.

The white van left the freeway at the Long Beach Municipal Airport, then cruised north along the west side of the airport into an area of warehouses where he turned into the parking lot between two enormous modern storage buildings. The buildings were painted a plain beige and bore no identifying signs. We cruised past to the next building, then turned back, slowing long enough to see our guy carrying the white box into the north building. I said, 'Want to bet Clark is in there?'

Pike shook his head. 'We could shoot our way in and grab him.'

You never know when he's kidding.

The street was lined with similar buildings, most of which were occupied by carpet wholesalers or appliance outlets or metalworking shops. We parked across the street and trotted back, Pike going around the north side of the building, me strolling across the parking lot. The building was divided into sections, with offices in the front and three big truck doors evenly spaced along the parking lot, and no windows. All the better in which to do crime. The people door at the front was heavy and industrial, and it was also closed. The guy from the van had entered a door on the side of the building, but that door was closed, too. In fact, all the doors were closed. Maybe the Roswell aliens were in there.

I had just reached a row of Dumpsters at the rear of the building when the people door kicked open and the guy from the white van came out with three other men, the four of them laughing and yucking it up. One of the men I had never seen before, but the other two had leaned on me outside the Journal. Pike drifted up beside me, and we watched as the four men climbed into the van and drove away. 'The middle two guys fronted me yesterday at the newspaper.'

Pike didn't respond. Like it didn't matter to him one way or another.

I said, 'Anything on the other side?'

'Two doors, both locked. No windows.'

'I'm thinking Clark 's inside. There might be other people inside, too, but with four bodies out, now might be our best shot.'

Pike said, 'We could always just call the police.'

I frowned at him.

'Just kidding.' Then he looked at me. 'What if Clark won't come?'

I looked back at the door. ' Clark will come if I have to put a gun to his head. He will come and we'll sit down with those kids and we'll figure out what to do next.' I think I said it more for me than for Pike. 'But he will come.'

'Optimist.'

We drew our guns, and went through the side door into a long colorless hall that smelled of Clorox. The hall branched left and straight. Pike looked at me and I gestured straight.

We moved past a series of small empty offices to the door at the end of the hall, then stopped to listen. Still no sounds, but the Clorox smell was stronger. Pike whispered, 'Stinks.'

'Maybe they're dissolving bodies.'

Pike looked at me. 'Acid to cut litho plates.' I guess he just knows these things.

We eased open the door and stepped into a room that was wide and deep and two stories high, lit by fluorescent tubes that filled the space with silver light. A lithograph machine sat in the center of the floor, surrounded by long cafeteria tables that had been lined with boxes of indigo ink and acid wells and printers' supplies. A high-end Power Mac was up and running, anonymous screen-saver kittens slowly chasing each other. The scanner was still in its box, the box on the floor by the Macintosh. A color copier was set up on one side of the litho machine, and three front-loading dryers stood in a row against the far wall. The smell of oil-based ink was so strong it was like walking into a fog. I said, ' Clark 's going to print, all right.'

'Yeah, but what?'

Pike nodded toward a row of wooden crates stacked on pallets near the door. The crates were labeled, but the printing wasn't Arabic. Pike said, 'Russian.'

The top crate had been opened and you could see blocks of paper wrapped in white plastic. One of the blocks had been slit open to reveal the paper inside. The sheets were something like eighteen inches by twenty-four, and appeared to be a high-grade linen embedded with bright orange security fibers. The sheets also looked watermarked, though I couldn't make out the images. I said, 'Our money doesn't have orange security fibers.'

Pike drifted to one of the long tables.

'You think they're going to counterfeit Russian money?'

Pike reached the table. 'Not Russian, and not ours.'

Pike held up what looked like a photo negative of a series of dollar bills, only when I got closer I could see that they weren't dollars. The denomination was 50,000, and the portrait wasn't of Washington or Franklin or even Lenin. It was Ho Chi Minh. Pike's mouth twitched. 'They're going to print Vietnamese money.'

I put down the negative. 'We still have to find Clark.'

We went back along the hall toward the front of the warehouse, passing more empty offices. The hall reached a kind of lobby, then turned right to more offices, and as I passed the first office I saw a small camp cot against one wall, covered by a rumpled sleeping bag. 'In here.'

We went in. 'Guess he's supposed to stay here until the job's done.'

Clark had been here, but he wasn't here now. An overnight bag sat on the floor beside the cot, and a cheap card table with a single folding chair stood against the opposite wall. A little radio sat on the table, along with a few toiletry items and a couple of printers' magazines. Diet Coke cans were on the floor, along with crumpled bags from Burger King and In-n-out Burger and a large bottle of Maalox and a mostly used tube of cherry-flavored Tums. The room smelled of sweat and body odor and maybe something worse. A candle and a box of matches and a simple rubber tube waited on the table. Drug paraphernalia. I said, 'Goddamn. The sonofabitch is probably out scoring more dope.'

Pike said, 'Elvis.'

Pike was standing by the overnight bag, holding a rumpled envelope. I was hoping that it might be something that would lead us to Clark, but it wasn't. The envelope was addressed to Clark Haines in Tucson, and its return address was from the Tucson Physicians Exchange. It was dated almost three months ago, just before the Hewitts had left Tucson for Los Angeles.

I felt cold when I opened it, and colder still when I read it.

The letter was from one Dr. Barbara Stevenson, oncologist, to one Mr. Clark Haines, patient, confirming test results that showed Mr. Haines to be suffering from cancerous tumors spread throughout his large and small intestines. The letter outlined a course of treatment, and noted that Mr. Haines had not returned any of the doctor's phone calls about this matter. The doctor went on to state that she understood that people sometimes had trouble in dealing with news of this nature, but that it had been her experience that a properly supervised treatment program could enhance and maintain an acceptable quality of life, even in terminal cases such as Clark's.

The medical group had even been thoughtful enough to enclose a little pamphlet titled Living with Your Cancer.

I guess Jasper was right; Clark Hewitt was more than he seemed. I looked at Pike. ' Clark 's dying.'

Pike said, 'Yes.'

That's when a hard-looking man with an AK-47 stepped through the door and said, 'He's not the only one.'