Last shot

Chapter 18

Within the hour, when their stretches get stuck in traffic, I'm gonna have calls from the mayor and from Sutter's Fort or wherever the hell the governor lives. To ask what they can do to help. To inquire politely what we need. We need this guy nailed. Nothing shakes consumer confidence like a prison break." Sitting sideways on Tim's flimsy desk, hands laced across his knee in his trademark pose of paternal authority, Marshal Tannino flashed an ironic grin at Tim, Bear, and Guerrera. "Go restore order."

One of the few of the ninety-four U.S. marshals who'd risen through the ranks, Tannino preferred sweating over case files to the more prestigious-and dull-responsibilities of his appointment. He was supposed to be attending a fund-raising breakfast in Long Beach, but he liked to spend Monday mornings reviewing cases with his deputies in the squad room. The Service's central district warrant teams occupied the Roybal Building's Garden Level, so named because a bank of windows overlooked a spotty lawn and a few tired trees drooping under exhaust from Temple Street traffic. The desks were laden with laptops and red-markered maps. Crime-scene flyers, faxes, and booking photos flew back and forth over the waist-high partitions as the deputies waged an endless war of attrition against a horde of escape, parole, and drug cases.

The City of Angels also happens to be the nation's fugitive capital. Sleaze, after all, is just glamour that falls short of the mark. For every Hollywood release, there were five skin flicks staining their way into existence on a Van Nuys bedsheet; for each set of celebrity handprints pressed into pavement on the Boulevard, there was a crimson spatter across glass-strewn asphalt.

Alongside LAPD's Parker Center, the federal courthouse, City Hall, and a variety of seventies-style landscape sculptures of questionable appeal, Roybal sits on Fletcher Bowron Square, which honors a brief but valiant stab at wresting city government from rackets and vice taken by L.A.'s forty-second mayor. Bowron's campaign met with far less success than did his subsequent effort to root out, dispossess, and intern Japanese-Americans, but his later apology stands as the sole capitulation by a major political leader in the postwar years. Tim, perhaps unnervingly early in his own career, identified closely with a man whose good intentions were overshadowed by recklessness and regret.

This morning Tannino looked uncharacteristically casual, salt-and-pepper stubble darkening his handsome Italian face. Rumors of retirement had been floating through the federal corridors, and he'd been complaining more often, confiding to Tim last week that his age-a youthful fifty-seven-already had him pissing in Morse code. But Tim couldn't see Tannino relinquishing his hold on his beloved Arrest Response Team, the Service's SWAT-like strike force composed of various warrant-squad deputies. Tannino oversaw tactical operations more closely than his predecessors, though Supervisory Deputy Brian Miller headed up ART in title. Thomas, the one colleague who continued to give Tim friction over past transgressions, had risen to team leader, spending so much time at the side of the supervisory deputy that the others had dubbed him "Miller Lite." Thomas and his partner, Freed, an independently wealthy deputy with a knack for unraveling shady finances, had proved themselves invaluable resources. Though Tim was technically a rank-and-file Escape Team deputy and ART member, his Spec Ops training bought him point-man status when they were pursuing a fugitive with Walker's expertise.

"You need to reconsider a task force," Tim said. "One way or another, Walker's heading for an escalation."

"An escalation?" Tannino said. "Like he'll break out of a bigger jail?"

"He's got an agenda. He didn't break out to go lie on a beach."

"Okay. What's the agenda?"

"I don't know yet," Tim admitted after a pause.

"'I don't know yet' doesn't quite buy us a task force. Not with our caseload. I have faith in your premonitions, Rackley, but I also have faith that you and Bear can plot some trajectories of Jameson's mission before we go rolling out deputies with MP5s to chase each other around in the streets"-a dissatisfied glance at Guerrera-"and let's hope Che here can keep from kneeing any registered voters in the face this go-around if he's chained to his desk." Tannino squeezed Tim on the shoulder and rose to head back to the tranquillity of his well-appointed office at the rear of the courthouse. "Do what you do. And maybe even keep it off TV."

Tannino strode under the row of sanctimonious cabinet-member color portraits. They'd just gotten around to scraping Ashcroft off the wall, but Cheney remained, his smirk pulling to one side as if jerked by a string. Taking advantage of Tannino's having vacated, Guerrera planted himself on Tim's desk, hooking a chair with an extended boot and rolling it over for a footrest. His pop-singer Cuban features narrowed as he studied the photograph of Walker that topped the Service Record Book, freshly faxed. Guerrera, who'd always been openly in awe of Tim's tactical capabilities, flipped the page and whistled. "Think our boy Rambo's got it on you, Rack?"

"Yep." Tim took the file. "More practice. More recently."

The SRB revealed that Walker had been attached to First Platoon, Bravo Company, Fifth Marines, First Marine Expeditionary Force out of Pendleton. Walker had gone over to Iraq early in 2003 with the first troops to serve a half-year deployment. But the paperwork showed otherwise. Extended six months. Extended three months. Extended three months. Extended three months.

Page eleven showed a handful of discipline infractions, some conduct-unbecomings, and a few minor insubordinations, but the specifics of the incident that got Walker court-martialed were excised. Rather than clearing up the mystery of the Leavenworth sentence, the SRB was vague, affording the incident just three words: assault and disrespect.

Bear matched Tim page for page on his copy of the report to keep their thinking synced. "Why'd they demote a guy if they were just gonna kick him out anyways?"

"Your stay in Leavenworth is more unpleasant the lower your rank."

Bear let out an admiring chuckle. "Nasty fuckers, aren't you?"

"Did you locate any of the guys he served with?" Tim asked.

Guerrera said, "Most are still deployed or heading back."

"How about the injured?"

"They've been warehousing them in Germany."

"Of course." Tim clicked his teeth a few times, thinking. "Call Pendleton, see if you can get one of Walker's officers on the line."

Just short of San Diego, Gomer Pyle's old base was an easy drive for an interview if anything panned out. The air conditioner blew processed air into Tim's face. Across the partition, Thomas and Freed were arguing with Denley and Maybeck about a parolee who skipped a court date to go on a honeymoon.

Tim asked, "Do you think Walker's ex-wife is worth a visit?"

Maybeck picked up the question from two desks over. "Ex-wives are always worth a visit."

"Separated three years, though. Never visited him in jail."

Maybeck shrugged. "The more she hates him, the more you want to talk to her." He had faint freckles and a snub nose. He was ART's top breacher, though Denley joked that he'd look more at home in a varsity sweater than a ballistic vest.

Freed asked, "We got a girlfriend, maybe?"

"Working on it," Guerrera said.

"The family information is sketchy in Walker's presentencing report and in his SRB," Tim said. "See if you can fill it in for us. At this point don't rule anything out. Keep the lines out for family members, platoon-mates, associates, everything. The sister mentioned a shrink in her letter to Walker-see what you can dig up there, too. I know shrinks are uphill battles, but maybe we can get an insurance diagnosis."

Guerrera scribbled notes on his expanding to-do list.

"Who's looking into the Aryan Brotherhood?" Bear asked. "Enemy of my enemy and all that."

AB had tentacles everywhere. And a retaliation killing of Walker would be essential PR. Zimmer raised his arm without looking up from his monitor.

Thomas called out, "I think you should send Guerrera to talk to them. Alone."

Guerrera offered Thomas his slender middle digit and a few choice descriptions of his mother in rapid Spanish.

"'The left side'?" At his desk Denley flicked a finger against Tim's case briefing. Even before he'd lost some hearing in an explosion a few years back, his hoarse Brooklyn-accented voice had been audible from a room away. "That's all you got? How do you know LaRue passed along to Walker the same message he got on the phone?"

"We don't."

"'The left side'?" Denley said again. "What the hell?"

Bear cut in, riding his own stream of reasoning. "We get anything back from San Pedro PD?"

"Sorry, socio," Guerrera said. "Not a damn thing."

San Pedro had kept five units on alert through the night, combing the landfill and canvassing the surrounding area. Tim pictured the thousands of hiding places among the refuse, the networks of nearby streets, the blanket of distant rooftops. Walker's meticulous orchestration during the escape showed him to be a planner capable of thinking several moves in advance. Tim put himself in Walker's place, tumbling from a garbage truck into a hole filling with trash. What next?

He abruptly sat upright in his chair. "Stolen car. We should run down any stolen-car reports from last night. Within a five-mile radius of the landfill."

Guerrera cracked a smile, his response cut off by the stern voice coming from the forgotten speakerphone: "Yes, this is Second Lieutenant Lefferts."

Tim picked up the handset, and the deputies working the case popped on their headsets and kept working. Tim introduced himself and lobbed a few basic questions to test the ground. Lefferts relied on formality and briskness of tone to convey his authority. Tim had him pegged within moments, having endured similar officers on deployments of his own.

"Walker Jameson," Lefferts said. "I remember him. He was under my command for the better part of a year in Iraq." With exaggerated irony he added, "Jameson stood out."

"Had all the answers?" Tim prompted him.

"Nope, not that type. He just…quietly knew better. And he did as he pleased, always toeing the line of acceptability."

"Was he popular?"

"Walker Jameson was the kind of loose cannon who passes for a leader among the undisciplined and the foolish."

Thomas leaned heavily on the partition with both elbows, directing a pointed look at Tim, his handsome, muscular face tensing around a blond mustache too thick for the twenty-first century.

When Tim related news of Walker's escape, Lefferts seemed almost pleased. "I can't say I'm surprised. Sometimes we train the wrong ones. Then what the hell do you do with them?"

Thomas renewed his silent interrogation of Tim, his eyebrows wondering, Well?

Tim asked, "Does the phrase 'the left side' mean anything to you in relation to Jameson?"

"Not that springs to mind," Lefferts said.

"We think he's after something now. So whatever we can find out about grudges he holds or unsettled scores would be helpful. Would you mind filling me in a bit on his court-martial?"

Lefferts tightened up even further. "If the Marine Corps didn't see fit to include that in the SRB, Deputy, it would be because it's sensitive information. If you're a former Ranger as you claim, you should very well know that."

"I can get sensitive information, Lieutenant. What I want is your perspective."

"Walker Jameson is off my roll," Lefferts said with calm satisfaction. "He's your problem now."