Troubleshooter

Chapter 26

They materialized from behind parked cars and the narrow alleys between broken-down houses, crouching in makeshift formation, MP5s pointing up like the tips of a wrought-iron fence. Indistinct forms in one-piece olive drab flight suits. U.S. MARSHAL patches on the left arms, subdued gray U.S. flags on the rights. Black Hi-Tecs with quiet neoprene soles. Marshals' stars machine-embroidered over their hearts like targets. Wearing a thigh holster at crotch level, each deputy sported a. 40 Glock.

Except one.

Tim thumbed free the cylinder on his. 357, gave it a spin to watch the six brass dots whirl. With a jerk of his wrist, he snapped the wheel into place, then reholstered the revolver, letting it sling off his thigh. Chief's safe house was barely visible down the street, a block of darker shadow against the moonless sky. Husks of leaves littered the gutter and car windshields, glowing green, then red in the flashing Christmas lights.

Guerrera arrived at the staging point last, pulling into the curb between a battered VW van and a dilapidated hearse that provided further ambience. He emerged in a low crouch, document flapping, Judge Andrews's signature a fountain-pen smudge at the bottom of the page.

"Ready to light up this pendejo?" Guerrera whispered.

Miller folded the warrant into a cargo pocket and nodded at the abandoned hearse. "His ride's waiting."

Guerrera squatted and got a jingle. He emptied a few coins from his pocket onto the asphalt, then removed his watch and set it on the tire of the hearse beside him-no on-the-hour beep or night-glow dials across the dark threshold. The deputies extinguished the volume on their Motorola portables and pulled into a tight-stack formation, drifting silently across asphalt.

Miller halted, the explosive-detection canine and the column behind him freezing on the sidewalk. The house had been split into a duplex, both sides staking claims on the address Pacific Bell had relinquished.

They studied the matching doors, the dark, still windows.

"''Twas the night before Christmas…'" Jim intoned quietly.

A whispered conference. Tim drifted closer to the house. An Indian bike leaned against the side wall of the left duplex unit, unchained but secure behind a locked gate. Tim gestured Guerrera over for confirmation, and Guerrera nodded excitedly and whispered, "The kick starter's been cut in half and raised an inch or two. Only a little guy would need the extra leverage for leaning into the ignition."

They approached the row of tacked-up deputies, who'd pulled back to the neighboring house. "Left duplex," Tim said.

They hugged the wall to the front step, Maybeck pressing the top of his beloved battering ram up against his cheek. Miller directed Chomper to sniff along the door, and Chomper hesitated but didn't sit-no booby trap.

Tim lined up in the number one, Bear behind him toting his cut-down twelve-gauge Remington. Jim started his nearly inaudible pre-entry hum. For good luck or as a private show of respect, Jim tapped the black band at his biceps-Frankie Palton remembered. It struck Tim that the loss of his partner, only three days old, was still fresh to Jim. To Tim it felt distant, dulled by the fresher horror of seeing his wife shot off her feet time and time again. Even now as he muscled toward her maybe killers, her body wavered, indifferent to his desires or hers, making up its own damn mind.

The men lowered their night-vision goggles into place, Maybeck drew back the battering ram, and Tim rode its momentum into an unfurnished living room.

Before the hazy green world pulled into focus, a blaze of fire erupted from the couch, throwing Tim's view into violent brightness. Four slugs pinged the wall at his head, and one hit the stock of his MP5, shattering it and spinning him in a half turn. He slammed against the wall and struck carpet, flinging the NVGs off his head. Bear and Guerrera dove for cover as the others stacked at the door, the lead deputies trying to push back against the inward rush so as not to be driven into the line of fire. The familiar gunfire cadence continued, the song of the converted AR-15.

Though Tim's vision was still bleached out, the gun-muzzle star-bursts from the couch gave him target acquisition. He slid the. 357 from his thigh holster and fired sideways over his head. A cry of pain, masculine but surprisingly high-pitched. The automatic weapon clattered to the floor.

Tim's eyesight had recovered enough for him to make out a diminutive form scrambling across the room. Tim rose and charged after him, the other deputies just beginning to recover at the door. Chief ran in a furious limp and dove through the pass-through window into the kitchen. As Tim came around the jamb, a skillet took flight at his head. He ducked, and the aluminum dinged drywall, expelling a cloud of scrambled eggs. He dove and caught a leg, but Chief kicked free and bolted down the hall, Tim seconds after him as he slammed through a doorway. In a mad dash for his bed, Chief threw a rolling chair behind him; Tim got a foot on the bucket and leapt. He crashed down on top of Chief, pinning him to the mattress, his pistol to the back of his ear. Chief's hand froze half withdrawn from his nightstand drawer, gripping a Colt. 45.

Tim's adrenaline had ignited an explosive fury. He heard the low, rageful growl of his own voice as if it were separate from him. "You choose."

Chief's defiant eyes strained to take in Tim. His biceps tensed, and then his gun hand whipped from the drawer, finger dug through the blank eye of the trigger guard.

Tim squeezed.

Breathing hard, he remained for a moment with his knee dug between the slack shoulder blades, listening to the moist descent of brain matter on the opposing wall. Then he drew himself up, checked the closet, and shouted "Clear!" down the hall. Spread on top of the nightstand were diagrams of explosives. He gathered them up, doing his best to make out the cramped scrawl in the dimness as he headed back toward the front of the unit. Pipe bombs. Scored tubes to create more shrapnel. He flipped to another diagram, squinted at the dark sketch.

BBs. Gunpowder filler. A filament wire.

The lines took shape as a light-socket bomb. He glanced up as Maybeck reached for the switch.

"Wait, don't-"

The floor jumped with the boom. The screech of rent metal. The whine of ricochets. When he heard only the tinny white noise of eardrum aftermath, Tim glanced up from the carpet. The five deputies in the entry stirred, finding their feet, dusting themselves off, picking shrapnel from their tactical vests. Maybeck's nylon raid jacket was sliced neatly down the front. With trembling fingers, Maybeck plucked a twisted metal shard from the Kevlar covering his stomach. His fingers went to the gash, came away bloodless. His sigh of relief was shaky, verging on tearful. He helped Bear up, and they all limped outside, patting themselves down for leaks and gashes.

Miller held a black Mag-Lite knuckles up, surveying the interior. He chewed his lip, his jaw tight, facing off with the darkness. Tim noted a tremor in the sun-beaten skin at the corner of his eye. His own nerves had not yet calmed. Malane showed up and poked around, nodding to himself as if dispensing approval.

Watching the FBI agent explore the front shrubs, Bear spoke in his version of a whisper. "'Liaison' my ass. He's working a cross-agenda."

"Agreed," Tim said. "So let's figure out what it is."

Malane observed the empty American Spirit pack impaled on his pen.

"I feel more like he's playing spy guy. Lining up the case for his funny-handshake brethren to take over. Slowing us down where he needs to."

"Good luck there."

They broke apart from their mini huddle as backup arrived. It took the LAPD Bomb Squad nearly an hour to clear the building. As outlets and sockets were ruled safe, lights clicked on, illuminating the duplex a section at a time. The bomb technicians used their own dogs; Chomper watched alertly from the sidelines, licking his chops and whimpering wistfully. They found trip wires in closet thresholds and a scattering of shotgun-shell-loaded mousetraps in drawers.

Bear discovered a file cabinet hidden behind hanging clothes in the bedroom closet and went to work on the lock. The see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil stickers-one monkey on each drawer-seemed not only a fine specimen of dry Sinner humor but an indication that the cabinet held confidential material.

Criminalists from LAPD's Scientific Investigation Division showed up to give the Sheriff's CSI guys, who'd already started processing the body, jurisdictional grief. Marshal Tannino was en route; Tim figured he'd let him untangle egos.

He took a moment before reapproaching the body. If a kill was within ROEs or Service regs, if it adhered to the laws of fair play imperfectly defined in his own heart, he could sleep soundly at night. He'd killed often with the Army Rangers, though he'd never taken to it the way some of his platoonmates had. He'd inured himself to the guilt and horror over time, but he still felt enough to register his impassivity as a loss.

Staring at Chief's body now, he felt renewed rage about his wife's unresolved fate. The emotion unnerved him.

If you feel that much, you shouldn't be killing people.

"Not now, Dray."

Thomas glanced over. "What'd you say?"

"Nothing."

You feel good about wasting that guy?

No. Yes.

Can't tell us much now, can he?

I guess not. "I didn't have a choice."

Right. You had to put the gun to his head. You couldn't have shot him in his gun hand. You don't exactly have shitty aim, Troubleshooter.

The guy looked on while Den shot you off your feet. You left a boot behind on the asphalt.

Nice try, but you know damn well what I'd want. Leads. Answers. Not just bodies.

Tim stared at the spray across the pillow, the wall.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not crying over Chief's demise. I'm just saying, if you kill 'em, you can't much use 'em.

Bear stopped fussing with the lock and walked over, his brow furrowed with concern. "What are you doing?"

"Just talking to myself."

"Don't make it a habit. The church elders will gossip." He shot Tim a warning stare and withdrew to the file-cabinet lock. Bear was terrible with a pick set, but he wouldn't admit it. Tim had once waited a half hour for him to fumble his way into a school locker.

Snapping on latex gloves, Tim regarded the corpse with greater detachment. First step: confirm ID. No wallet in the back pocket made sense, given Chief's hours in the saddle. Tim tilted the already stiffening body and tugged a wallet from the front pocket, freeing a few coins and sundry bits of pocket trash. Looking at the license photo-the proud, meticulous lines of facial hair etching the beard; the erect, compensatory posture-Tim couldn't help but think of Terry Goodwin, Wunderdeed. Her relieved collapse back onto her bedspread after she heard Chief's voice on the phone. The memory, in combination with the ripe odor, made him faintly nauseous.

Nestled in the sheets beside two pennies and a generic book of matches was a torn paper crumpled around a wad of gum. Fuzzy with pocket lint, it yielded grudgingly when he unwrapped it. A ripped receipt, Flying J Travel Plaza, Nov 8. A partial credit-card number terminated at the tear: 4891 02-. With a purchase date and location, they'd have no problem retrieving the full data.

"We've got a credit-card number," Tim called out. "And I assume this isn't the one Teflon Pete uses to buy clubhouse groceries." Freed was waiting with a plastic Baggie. Tim dropped the gum-laden receipt inside and said, "Get on the horn to Visa and figure out how to get those statements. And if it's linked to a bank account, I want ATM hits, too."

The smell was starting to get to him, so he stepped outside. Tungsten-halogen lights glowed over the roof; Tim could hear the field reporters starting their on-site pickups. He walked around to the side to get a peek at the news vans crowding the curb.

Guerrera crouched beside the motorcycle at the gate. He'd removed the seat and set it on the concrete at his feet. Dressed in bathrobes and sweats, neighbors milled around on the other side of the street. Tim waved at an elderly woman staring out from her porch, and she retreated inside as if caught doing something wrong.

Collapsing his telescoping mirror against his thigh, Guerrera rose. "Cono." He gestured at a toggle switch on the handlebar. "That's the kill switch."

"For what?"

"For the pin-trigger mechanism laid in the frame tubing just below the seat. Someone tries to steal the bike, he gets a shotgun spray right up the culo. Penetrates the gut-not an easy way to go." Guerrera reached in gingerly with his pocketknife and withdrew a twelve-gauge shotgun shell from the center post. "A trip wire runs to the rear wheel. I saw a cruder version once in Miami. The discharge'll tear the spine right out of a person." He shook his head, admiring the engineering.

"Tom-Tom's work?"

"Likely. Which means it's probably standard feature on all nomad bikes. You don't watch your ass when we seize property, it'll get ripped right off you."

Bear shouted from inside, and they headed in. A few file-cabinet drawers stood triumphantly open. Shirts pulled up over their noses, hands turned magician-white in latex gloves, Thomas and Freed flipped through files, laying out documents on the carpet.

"Check this." Bear used a pinkie to open the bottom drawer. A bunched mass of cracked leather, the CHOLOS top rocker partially visible. Bear poked at the jacket with the end of a pen, bringing a fold-hidden patch into view. CHOOCH MILLAN.

"Okay," Tim said. "But we don't need evidence. We're not making a case. We need current red flags."

Thomas pointed at the diagrams and schemas spread on the floor. "We've got operation plans for the transport-van break and the Palm-dale massacre."

"Any future plans?"

"Not so far."

"So what else is in there?"

"These two drawers are filled with intel on the Cholos," Freed said.

Thomas broke in. "More than you'd ever want to know about a bunch of dead guys."

"Hangouts, relatives' addresses, ex-wives. There's a list in there must have every woman El Viejo's put his dick in since the Wall fell."

Bear dropped a binder into Tim's hands. "This makes for the best reading."

Inside, Tim found mini dossiers on cops, prosecutors, and rival bikers. An eight-by-ten of Raymond Smiles was crossed out in red-Richie Rich's diploma. An attached report identified Smiles as a top federal enemy of the club, detailing his field experience, which ranged from anti-narcotics to counterterrorism. When Tim flipped the page, he found his own face staring back at him-a shot of him lying on his stomach taking pictures at Nigger Steve's funeral. Once the chill subsided, he realized that part of him was flattered he'd made the hit list. A thought caught him off guard: What if he got taken out and Dray awakened alone? Or worse-if she didn't and they were gone. No Rackley left. It would be as if their family, for ten years the self-important center of their own production, had never existed. Or yet another disturbing variation: Their child could be orphaned before birth, excised from an insentient body to be greeted by two pensions, a garage sale, and Bear.

Their jobs gave them a courtside view of the void, a comforting illusion of separateness and control, but never before had the costs been so evident. After Ginny's death Tim had rejected the law and his badge, weary from the essential uselessness of it in the face of universal mechanics. He'd wanted back in the Service so desperately, and now he was in, but with his wife shot and a crosshairs on his own head. The dullness Jim had carried behind the eyes the past few days suddenly clarified; Tim felt the sentiment it bespoke resonate in his bones, a low-register chuckle not unlike Uncle Pete's.

What were his options? Get a job selling mattresses? Urge Dray to take up quilting? The notion of retreating under fire would be as unappealing to her as it was to him.

At Bear's urging, Tim continued through the binder. The last section contained images of dead Cholos-crime-scene shots, news photos, and, most disturbing, moment-after Polaroids.

The deputies perused the files, their discouragement growing as little useful information was revealed. If nothing else, Tim had to admire Chief's spy skills; the intel he'd managed to acquire on the Cholos was staggering in its scope and specificity. The Sinners were wise to keep Chief-and the files-segregated from the rest of the club.

Lash had told them as much-The intel officer runs separate from the pack, never goes to the clubhouse. Keeps his own safe house, even.

Guerrera muttered, "This shit might be useful if we were going after the Cholos."

Tim's hands stopped their movement. His head snapped up. "Exactly." He shoved the binder at Bear and began digging through the hanging files in the two drawers dedicated to Cholo intel.

"Rack?" Bear said. "What's going on?"

"We're in the wrong house." Tim sensed the others reacting with puzzlement, but he continued blazing through the file tabs, racking his brain to match the names to those on the list of the dead from the Palmdale massacre. El Viejo. Dead. Frito Terrazas. Dead. Gonzo Ernez. Dead.

A name finally distinguished itself from the others; Tim didn't recognize it from the coroner's roll. He yanked the file free and flipped it open. Meat Marquez. Identifiers, bike information, and an address were typed neatly beneath a surveillance photo. Bear, Guerrera, Thomas, and Freed crowded around, realization dawning.

Tim nodded at Chief's stiff corpse on the bed. "We got the wrong intel officer."

"Huh?" Bear said with mild irritation. "Which intel officer do we want?"

"Not the Sinners'." Tim grabbed the page from the file, thumb creasing the Lancaster address. Guerrera and Bear barely kept pace down the hall.

They passed Tannino in the entry. Without a word he took Tim's. 357 into evidence, handed him a fresh one, and continued back toward the body.