The Kill Clause

34

TIM got to Yamashiro a full hour early and surveilled it as best he could, in case Bear was planning to spring a trap. Rather than taking the winding, no-options road up the hill to the restaurant, Tim squeezed his car into an out-of-sight meter between two preposterously large SUVs down on Hollywood Boulevard. He checked the area in a closing spiral, finally walking up the steep drive and drawing strange looks from the valets who had no doubt never seen anyone arrive at the hilltop restaurant by foot.

As always he was greeted warmly by Kose Nagura and whisked to his and Bear’s usual table overlooking the hillside Japanese gardens and the Strip below. After the waiter came by and deposited two lemonades, Tim withdrew a tiny brown bottle, released a thin stream into Bear’s drink, and gave it a swirl with a chopstick.

Bear arrived at five-thirty on the button, sliding into the seat opposite Tim and gripping the small tabletop at both sides like a giant serving platter. “You’d better give me some answers pronto here, bud, because I’m not liking what’s adding up.”

“You have the targets under protection?”

Bear spoke slowly, as if this alone held back his growing anger and unease. “We got Dobbins in protective custody. Rhythm and Bowrick we can’t seem to find. You want to tell me what the fuck’s going on?”

“You see Rayner’s?”

“Came straight from there. As ugly as you promised. You want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

The waiter dropped off a complimentary dish of pickled vegetables, and Bear shooed him off without removing his eyes from Tim.

“Do you want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

A sea of heads took a tennis-match swivel, then went back to talking and dipping toward tweezer-thin lacquered chopsticks. Great drops of perspiration stood out on Bear’s forehead. His face looked weighty, intensely vulnerable. Tim felt like Travis come to shoot Old Yeller.

He took a sip from his glass, braced himself, and began, interrupted only by Bear’s terse dismissals of the oversolicitous waiter. When he finished, Bear cleared his throat, then cleared it again.

Tim said, “Have some lemonade.”

Bear complied. He mopped his brow with a napkin, and it came away dark with sweat. He munched a few bits of pickled vegetable, made a face, and spat them out.

Tim slid a sheet of paper toward him with carefully prepared notes. “These are all the leads I can think of, which are admittedly not many. Get after them. And find Bowrick. And Rhythm.”

“News flash, Rack, but the U.S. Marshals and LAPD have different priorities in the face of all this than running down a guy like Rhythm Jones to tell him his life might be threatened. Guess what? When you push drugs and turn out girls, you’re generally aware people are gunning for you. We’ll visit Dumone ASAP and suss out Rayner’s office. And we’ll send a car by Kindell’s, but I’m with you-if the Mastersons shredded his file, they ain’t interested, and keeping him alive with the secret to Ginny’s death rattling in his misshapen head fucks with you worse and is therefore preferable to them.” He folded Tim’s list into his pocket. “As for the targets, we’ve contacted those we can contact, but we’re gonna focus on finding Eddie Davis and the Mastersons, not them.”

“There’s no difference.”

“You gonna teach me strategy, lawman?”

“There’s a team gunning for Rhythm Jones.”

“Not the whole team, Rack. They’re missing you.” His righteousness was undercut by a piece of spinach clinging to his incisor. Tim gestured and Bear buffed it off with his napkin.

“You’ve known since you heard that taped 911 call what I’ve been doing, Bear.”

Bear looked away, letting out a jerking sigh. “You’ve been as much a father to me as anyone’s ever been-”

“You’re older than me, Bear.”

“I’m talking right now, and you’re listening.” Bear’s anger was working its way into his face, coloring the rims of his eyes, turning his face an unhealthy white. “You were an officer of the federal courts. A law-enforcement agent of the attorney general. This is going to wreck Marshal Tannino. He loves you like family.” Bear’s voice was disdainful but also morose, even sorrowful. He gave off a hurt betrayal, that of an unjustly smacked dog. Tim felt his self-loathing anew in Bear’s expression, and the anger, once present, bled through him until its bearing was unclear.

At the table beside them, two Hollywood agents, dressed like affluent Mormons, talked indecipherable industry babble over sashimi.

“About half a million criminal cases go through the L.A. court systems a year,” Bear continued, his voice rising at a healthy clip. “Half a million. And you found what? Six you didn’t like? So you’re willing to shitcan the system because here and there something don’t work its way through like it should? Jedediah Lane was acquitted by a jury. It was your job to protect people like him. Congratulations. You’ve just added your name to the proud tradition of mob violence. Revenge killings. Street justice. Lynchings.” He was shaking hard enough that he spilled some of his lemonade over his knuckles when he took a sip. “You don’t deserve to call yourself a former deputy.”

“You’re right.”

“You swore you’d never be like him,” Bear said. “Your father. If there was one fucking thing I knew in the world, it was that people could rise above the shit they were brewed in. I knew that because of you. I thought I knew that because of you.”

Tim’s face numbed, and he felt a sheen of moisture gloss his eyes. “I wanted to take something back. After Ginny. Do you understand that?”

“I don’t agree with it. I do not fucking agree.”

“That’s not what I asked. Do you understand?”

Bear swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple jerking up, then down like a piston. “Of course I understand. But that has nothing to do with what you’ve done. I also wanted to take something back after Ginny. I also loved her. She was my niece, practically. I wanted to shoot a trucker who was manhandling a woman in a bar where I stopped that night, the night she was killed. Guess what? I didn’t. Just that simple. I fucking didn’t. There is no right way to take something back like that. You just stare at it and you learn it’s empty, you’re empty, and that’s the hard fucking painful fact of the goddamn catharsis-which is a word I’m sure you thought I didn’t know-that you don’t get anything back. Life ain’t a Spiegel catalog. You just go on with that part of you missing, period, the end.”

Tim started to say something, but Bear raised one hand violently. “I’m just getting started. If every father killed three men to get at who killed his daughter, where would we be? These killings of yours. Lane. Debuffier. Were they unlawful? Yes. Was there malice? Yes. Willful? Yes. Deliberate and with premeditation? Yes, yes. You’re eye-to-eye with two murder ones. And don’t think I’m not gonna bring you in. Right here, right now.” His left cheek twitched up in a squint, physical discomfort’s overture. He belched quietly into a raised fist.

“You can bring me in, Bear. Just not now.”

“You don’t think?”

“I need to finish the job. The Mastersons are out of control, on a rampage. I’m uniquely positioned to deal with them-I know their MO, their habits and patterns. You need me in the field, feeding you information. I can cooperate-through you-with the service, with LAPD. Let’s deal. Once we reign in this…”-Tim took a moment to search for the phrase-“lethal force I’ve helped to unleash, I’ll come back and face the music.”

“Oh, sure. After all this, Tannino’ll happily turn you out on the streets to keep up with your vigilante activities. You’re a civilian now, Rack. What are you thinking?”

Though Tim already knew what Bear’s answer would be, he kept laying groundwork for later. “My cooperation, intel, ass on the line, and eventual surrender. That’s what you get. I don’t care if Tannino wants the deal-you don’t have to work it out now. It’s what I’m offering. It’s the basis on which I’ll be working.”

“No. Why should the marshal trust you now? Why should I trust you now?”

“I’m finding my way back-to society and to what’s right. You can trust that.”

“Forgive me for needing more.”

“We’ve cut deals with mutts before.”

“Can you imagine the shit Tannino would catch if things get worse and it comes out we had you and turned you loose? Or that we didn’t come after you full steam? No way. No deal.” Bear leaned forward, his right arm across his stomach, clutching. The cramping was just getting started. “Give me your weapon.”

“I can’t do that.”

“We’ll have a showdown. Do you want that here, at Kose’s place?”

“I’ll come in. You’ll get me. You have my word. But I’m finishing this thing.”

His arm tightening across his stomach, Bear lurched forward, his elbow thunking the table, knocking over his glass. He studied the spreading stain for a moment, then looked up at Tim, realization giving way to fury. He cross-drew with his left hand, a single, economical gesture that ended with the barrel pointed at Tim’s head. “You piece of shit,” Bear gasped. “You fucking mutt.”

A woman shrieked across the room, but surprisingly, nobody moved. Tim scooted back in his chair and dropped his napkin on the floor. “It’s just hydrogen peroxide. Don’t worry-it’ll break down into oxygen gas and water in your stomach.”

Bear’s face was awash with sweat, his voice a coarse groan squeezed through the tightening vise of his gut. His torso was spilled across the table, but his face and the muzzle were up and pointed. “So help me God, I’ll shoot you before I let you leave here.”

Tim kept his eyes on Bear’s. He rose slowly, Bear’s front sight inching up to track him, then turned and walked out of the restaurant.