Kill the Messenger

6

Jace worked his way back to Lenny Lowell’s neighborhood through alleys and between buildings, avoiding streetlights and open spaces, his heart racing every time a car crossed his field of vision. He had no way of knowing where Predator had gone. He had no way of knowing whether or not the son of a bitch was half a block away, parked at the curb, rifling through the messenger bag for the packet that had to have been his objective in the attack—and discovering that it wasn’t there, that he hadn’t finished his job.

It seemed to take for-fucking-ever to walk The Beast back to familiar territory. He tried to balance the mangled bike up on its good front wheel and at the same time balance his own weight against the bike like a crutch. His wrenched ankle was throbbing. He had at least recovered his boot, but the swelling in his ankle prevented him from tying the laces tight. If he were a gazelle, like on those nature shows Tyler soaked up from the Discovery Channel, the next lion to come hunting would take him down.

He came to the 76 station from the alley, propped The Beast up against the back wall of the building, then leaned around the corner and peered out of the darkness toward the island of fluorescent light surrounding the gas pumps. No one was buying gas. There were few cars on the street. Those that drove past went with purpose, going somewhere and determined to get there on what was in their tank.

It was still raining. Jace was shaking with cold and fear, adrenaline and exhaustion. He felt weak and faint and on edge, all at once. Home was still a long walk away. As soon as he could find a pay phone that worked, he would call the Chens and ask to speak to Tyler. There was no phone in the Damons’ three rooms above the fish market. Jace couldn’t afford one, and had no one to call on a regular basis anyway.

He wished that wasn’t true tonight. It would have been a damn good night to call a friend for a ride. But he had no friends, only acquaintances, and it seemed best not to drag anyone into the mess in which he found himself. Instinctively, he thought in terms of isolation, keeping his life as uncomplicated by other people as was possible. He sure as hell could have done without knowing Lenny Lowell tonight.

His stomach rumbled and started to cramp. He needed to put something in it, needed fuel for what the rest of the night might bring. Lenny Lowell’s twenty-dollar tip was in his pocket. He could buy himself a soda and a candy bar. Unlike a lot of the messengers, Jace never stored money or anything of personal value in his messenger bag. He knew too well that anything could be taken from him at any time.

An overhang along the front of the booth offered shelter from the rain. A thin, dark guy in an orange turban sat in the booth behind the bulletproof glass. He startled at Jace’s sudden appearance, grabbed his microphone, and said with a crisp British accent: “The police are just down the block.”

As if he had already called them in anticipation of being robbed.

“A Snickers and a Mountain Dew.” Jace dug two damp, crumpled bills out of his pocket and stuck them in the pay tray.

“I have no more than fifty dollars in the till,” the man went on, his voice sounding tinny and distant through the cheap speaker. He pointed to the sign stuck to the window among the many warning stickers. Exposure to gas fumes could cause birth defects. Cigarettes caused cancer but if a person didn’t care and wanted them anyway, 76 stations would ask for an ID, in accordance with the law. The night clerk had no more than fifty bucks in the cash register.

“And I have a gun.”

He pulled a big-ass handgun out from under the cluttered counter and pointed it at Jace’s face, even as he snagged the two dollars from the tray with his other hand.

“Isn’t that glass bulletproof?” Jace asked.

The clerk scowled. “Yes, you cannot shoot me.”

“I don’t have a gun,” Jace said. “And if you try to shoot me, the glass will stop your bullet, maybe even bounce it back into your face. Did you ever think of that?”

Jace spread his hands where the clerk could see them. “I’m not robbing you anyway. I just want a Snickers and a Mountain Dew. Come on, man. It’s raining.”

From the corner of his eye Jace caught the watery red intermittent flash of a police strobe down the street, and his pulse kicked up a beat. The car wasn’t moving. Nor were any of its companions parked around the same small chunk of real estate.

“What’s going on down there?”

Maybe Lenny had called the cops when he figured out the package hadn’t been delivered. Maybe the envelope was stuffed with cash and everyone assumed the bike messenger had taken off with it. Maybe there was even now, as Jace stood trying to buy a candy bar from a guy in an orange turban who pointed a gun at him, an APB out on him, and LAPD cruisers were trolling the streets in search of him.

The clerk put his gun down on the counter, as casually as if he were putting a cigarette on the lip of an ashtray. “A murder,” he said. “I listen to the scanner.”

Jace felt the blood rush out of his head.

“Who?” he asked, still staring at the congregation of vehicles the next block down, on the other side of the street.

“Maybe you,” the clerk said.

Jace looked at him, a weird current of déjà vu going through him. Maybe he had been murdered? Maybe he was dead. Maybe he hadn’t gotten away. Maybe Predator’s bullet had gone through him, and this surreality he found himself in was the afterlife. Maybe this guy was the guardian at the gate.

“Maybe you are the killer,” the clerk said, then laughed as if he hadn’t three minutes ago assumed Jace was there to rob him.

“Who was killed?” Jace asked again. The shaking he had in part attributed to hunger was growing stronger, but he’d already forgotten his empty belly.

“They call no names, only codes,” the clerk said. “Codes and the address.”

He repeated the address aloud. Jace’s mouth moved along like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s, the words and numbers forming but no sound coming from him.

Lenny Lowell’s address. There was no one in Lenny’s office to kill except Lenny.

Jace wondered if the attorney had been murdered before or after Predator had tried to turn him into roadkill. Could have gone either way, he thought, if what the killer was after was the package tucked inside the waistband of Jace’s pants. Or maybe Lenny had blown away Predator. That could have happened. Except that the attorney had been too drunk to walk a straight line, let alone shoot a gun and actually hit somebody.

An LAPD black-and-white crawled up the street and turned in at the gas station. Jace quelled the urge to run. His hands were shaking as he removed his junk-food dinner from the pay tray. He stuffed the candy bar in his pocket, opened the soda, and gulped down half of it.

The cops pulled up maybe ten feet in front of the building. The cop riding shotgun opened the door and got out. A doughy-faced guy on the heavy side, all of him draped in a rain slicker.

“Hey, Habib,” the cop called in a voice too jovial for the weather. “Hell of a night, huh?”

“Jimmy Chew!” Habib exclaimed, a wide grin splitting his face. One of his upper front teeth was discolored gray and rimmed with gold. “It’s raining! I swear I should never have bothered to leave London!”

The cop laughed. “It’s fucking raining! Can you believe it?

“I need my usual, Habib,” he said. He produced a wallet from somewhere under his rain gear. Head bent, water running in a stream off his hood, the cop dug out a couple of bills. He flicked a glance at Jace. “Hell of a night,” he said again.

“Yeah,” Jace answered. “Fucking rain.”

“Your car break down, kid?”

“Something like that.” Jace raised the soda can to his lips again, trying to be nonchalant, but his hand was shaking and he knew the cop saw it.

“What happened to your face?”

“What about it?”

Chew pointed to his chin and jawline. “That’s some case of razor burn.”

Jace lifted a hand to his face and winced as he touched the part of his chin he had skinned falling on the gravel as he was running for his life. His knuckles were scrubbed and torn too.

“I fell,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Nothing. Minding my own business.”

“You got a place to stay, kid? Father Mike at the Midnight Mission can give you a hot meal and a dry bed.”

The cop had taken him for homeless, a street kid with nowhere to go. He probably figured Jace was either turning tricks or selling dope to stay alive, and that some lowlife pimp or dealer had smacked him around. Jace supposed that was what he appeared to be as he stood there wet and ragged and pathetic.

“I’m okay,” he said.

“You got a name?”

“John Jameson.” The lie tripped off his tongue without hesitation.

“You got ID?”

“Not on me. You gonna card me for buying a Mountain Dew?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

He knew the cop didn’t believe him, that he figured Jace was trying to pass for a legal adult. Compact and wiry, he had always looked young for his age. Wet and beat-up, standing there like a stray dog, he probably looked even younger.

“What are you doing out on a night like this?” the cop asked. “No hat, no coat.”

“I was hungry. I didn’t think it was raining that hard.”

“You live around here?”

“Yeah.” He gave an address two blocks away and waited for the cop to call his bluff.

“Are you come for the murder, Jimmy Chew?” Habib asked in the same kind of pleasant tone he might use to ask if his friend had come for a party. “I heard on the scanner.”

Chew answered the question with another question. “You see anything going on around here earlier tonight, Habib? Around six-thirty, seven?”

Habib pursed his lips and shook his head. He put a king-size Baby Ruth candy bar and two cans of Diet Coke in the drawer and shoved it out to the cop. “Cars go by. No fast getaways. Some poor bastard went past on a bicycle earlier. Can you imagine?”

“What time was that?”

“About when you said. I didn’t look at the clock. I’m working on my screenplay,” he said, gesturing to a mess of printed pages on the counter. He had slipped his gun out of sight.

“What direction did he come from?” Chew asked.

“The way you came. He went past and turned to the right at the corner.”

Jace felt like his heart had lodged at the base of his throat, the beating of it interrupting his ability to swallow.

“What’d he look like?”

Habib shrugged. “Like a miserable bastard riding a bicycle in the rain. I wasn’t really paying attention. For heaven’s sake, who would ride a bicycle to go commit a murder?”

“We’re just looking for anyone who might have been around, maybe saw something go down. You know how it is,” the cop said casually, including the gas station clerk in the cop process, as if Habib was some kind of auxiliary officer. He flicked another glance at Jace. “How about you? You hanging around this street six-thirty, seven o’clock?”

“I don’t own a watch,” Jace lied. “And I didn’t see anything.”

“You didn’t see a guy on a bike?”

“Who’s stupid enough to ride a bike in the rain?”

“A bike messenger, for one. You know any of those guys?”

“Why would I?”

“They hang out under the bridge at Fourth and Flower,” Chew said. “I just thought maybe you might have run into them.”

“I mind my own business,” Jace said, fronting attitude over the fear. “Can I go now? Am I under arrest?”

“Any reason you should be?”

“Yeah. I robbed the Mint,” he lipped off. “I’m just hanging around here for old times’ sake. Can I go? It’s fucking raining.”

The cop considered for a moment that seemed like half an hour. Jace kept his perturbed, defiant gaze steady and right on Jimmy Chew’s eyes.

“In a minute,” the cop said.

Jace watched Chew go back to the car, and wondered if running wasn’t his best option. The cops would probably just think he was a homeless kid who didn’t want a hassle. Or maybe Chew had taken Jace’s trembling hand as a sign he was on something, maybe had some rock cocaine in his pocket to smoke or to peddle.

If the cop decided to shake him down, looking for drugs, he would find a package with the return address of a murder victim.

The muscles in Jace’s calves and thighs tightened. He centered his weight over the balls of his feet, hoped the bum ankle would be able to support him in a sprint.

The cop stuck his head inside the car, said a few words to his partner, and came back out with something in his hand.

Jace lowered his center of gravity a couple of inches, so he could dodge either way, wheel, and run.

“Here, kid.”

Chew tossed what he held in his hand. Jace caught it on reflex. When he looked at what it was, he almost wanted to laugh. A blue disposable rain poncho from the 99 Cent Store.

“Better late than never,” the cop said. “You can get dry clothes at the mission, if you need them.”

“Sure. Thanks,” Jace mumbled.

“Sure you don’t want a ride? We can drop you—”

“No. That’s okay. Thanks anyway.”

“Suit yourself,” the cop said, shrugging him off. Jace knew Chew hadn’t bought any of his crap but had just deemed him not important enough to bother with. “Habib, you’ll call if you hear something?”

“You’ll be the first to know, Officer,” the clerk’s delighted voice crackled over the speaker.

Maybe he thought he would hear something that could break the case. Maybe the killer would confess as he prepaid for his gas. Then Habib could write a screenplay about that and maybe star in the movie, or at least see his name roll in the credits. LA. Everybody wanted to be in show business.

The patrol car rolled back out onto the street and took a right at the corner. Jace watched them go as he chugged his Mountain Dew. Then he tossed the can in the trash, threw a casual “See you” to Habib, and walked away as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Five blocks later, his knees were still shaking.