Last shot

Chapter 53

A lingering party remained at a back table inside the long-closed restaurant, bathed in golden light. Tim and Bear stood shoulder to shoulder on the Beverly Hills patio, waiting for a worker to come to the locked door.

"We'll never beat him," Bear said.

"Walker?"

Hurwitz, Gregg — Rackley 04

Last Shot (2006)

"Dean Kagan. Guys like that, they don't get beat."

The Ivy's point man arrived. "Sorry, gentlemen, we closed hours ago."

Bear's gaze shifted to the VIPs drinking red wine in the rear corner. "Uh-huh."

"Deputy Rackley." Tim showed his badge and creds. "I spoke with a manager on the phone earlier, asked for some security footage for a federal investigation?"

The manager wore an expression of mild irritation that Tim would've bet occupied his face with some frequency. "That was me. Your guy already came and picked up the footage."

"When was…?" It hit Tim, and he lowered his head and laughed with stunned respect.

A moment later Bear shook his head. "That's a ruse worthy of…"

"What?"

"Worthy of you, Rack."

The basics they pried from the bemused manager fit Walker perfectly. Eager to help, The Ivy had surrendered the original security footage, and there was no backup copy.

They climbed back into Bear's double-parked Ram. Bear had left the Marshals placard on the dash to fend off the tow-truck drivers who circled L.A.'s affluent communities, clanking scavengers with sharp night vision.

Of course it would be Thomas who fielded Tim's call to the command post. When he didn't bother to gloat, Tim knew that something was wrong.

"Esteban Martinez just called here and chewed on my ass," Thomas said. "There was a break-in tonight at the warehouse that stores his legal files, and the box containing his case information on Tess Jameson was the only thing taken. He said one of the guards claimed you were by earlier, casing out the joint. Anything you want to come clean on?"

Tim tried to open the glove box, but like everything else on Bear's truck, it was broken. "Walker stole the files."

"How do you know?"

Tim gestured excitedly, and Bear finally clued in. "We thought he might," Tim said.

"And you didn't post men?"

Bear banged the dash in a particular spot, and the glove box fell open.

"Not on site. He would've seen them." Tim rooted around among Burger King wrappers and retrieved the GPS handheld he'd put in there this morning.

"Why are you protecting this guy, Rack? Whose side are you on? Walker Jameson's playing you. And you're letting him."

The GPS unit whirred to life, throwing a blue glow across Tim's face. "That might be true if I hadn't-" Tim's call-waiting beeped, and he checked the screen: Electronic Surveillance Unit.

"If you hadn't what?"

Bear screeched across the corner of someone's lawn, winging the mailbox with his remaining sideview mirror and revving down the residential street as Tim said, "No, left. Your other left."

His head knocked the window as Bear screeched into a U-turn, and it took him a moment to relocate the RF pulse of the digital transmitter on the network of streets rendered schematically on the GPS readout. Along with four other task-force cars, they'd been chasing Walker-more specifically, the transmitter Tim had dropped into the legal file box Walker had stolen-around the neighborhood. His evasive maneuvers were so keen it seemed he was invisible. Bear kept circling the same route, Richco Storage flying by on their right like scenery in a Saturday-morning cartoon. Frisk droned on the primary channel of the dashboard Motorola, along with the other ESU units that had been in the area for hours, waiting for the file box to leave the warehouse.

Tim watched the dots of the Marshal vehicles converge on the blinking red light.

"We got him boxed in." Frisk's voice was just shy of a shout. "Thomas and Freed, take your hard left. Denley-slant-park and throw up a roadblock. Bear, where the hell are you?"

"Look up." Bear squealed to the four-way intersection, meeting the other vehicles penning in the stretch of asphalt. The GPS unit showed Walker right in their midst, moving slowly.

Shouts came through from the various cars on a slight radio delay; Tim could see the speakers arrayed around the four stop signs, mouths moving behind windshields.

"The fuck is he?"

"You got your left?"

The ring of headlights caught wisps of vapor and little else. Thomas was out of his car in the fork of the open door, Glock drawn and aimed at nothing. Tim and Bear shoved free of the Ram, Bear gripping his Remington shotgun.

A pattering approach, something clicking across the asphalt. A faint jingling-coins in a pocket? About ten firearms swung to aim at the darkness behind Denley's car.

A Doberman padded into view, looking humorously intimidated.

The guard dog from the storage facility.

He sat in the middle of the ring and licked his chops self-consciously, then scratched behind the red band of his collar. The bouncing ID tags jingled again.

Too humiliated to lose his temper, Tim closed his eyes and cursed softly. The guns lowered, but the men behind them remained frozen. The dog, suddenly wary, bared his teeth.

Bear approached, hand held low, and the dog lay down and nuzzled his palm. Twisting the collar, Bear plucked free the digital transmitter from where Walker had taped it by the tags.

Thomas seated his gun in his shoulder holster. "Great work, Rack. You buy Jameson a one-way ticket to the Caymans, too?"