We Know

Chapter 37

I accelerated along Ocean Avenue, the Pacific whipping by beyond the cliffs to my right. I was gripping the prepaid cell phone so tightly my hand cramped. "Why should I stay and risk my life for some seventeen-year-old girl I've never met? I told Caruthers about Baby Everett. I told Steve. They can handle it now. I'm not a cop."

On the other end, Induma said, "True. You're not."

Craving open air, I screeched over into a slant parking space and climbed out, slamming the door behind me. "Bilton's agents are on my heels. If I keep looking, I could lead them right to her. I could wind up getting her killed."

"A valid concern."

"I don't give a shit about politics. Or Bilton. I don't owe anyone anything."

"No one's maintaining you do."

"I've done everything I can." My voice was shaking.

Induma just said, "Nick."

I crossed the strip of lawn and leaned against the rickety rail fence. Below and beyond, past the Pacific Coast Highway, stretched a quarter mile of sand and endless water. The sun was low, filtering through the puffy clouds in magenta and violet. It reminded me of the circle of sunset I'd watched from the tunnel where Homer had hidden me. I looked down at my shirt, the one I'd pulled from the cardboard box behind the church. That stupid scrolled lettering-Forgive Us Our Trespasses.

"Frank knew about Baby Everett," I said, "but he kept it from Caruthers."

The weight of the implications hung between us.

I heard Induma shift on the couch, maybe stand up. She said, "You're trying to clear Frank. I know that. But if you're gonna keep prying at this, you have to do it knowing that you could damn well confirm your worst fears."

The phone was trembling at my cheek. I said, "I have to get out of here." I hung up. Drew in a few deep breaths. Then returned to the Jag. I could leave it somewhere for Induma later, in some other city. I stared at the rucksack in the passenger seat, then at the broad curb drain, at the ready for all those L.A. hurricanes. Three steps and I could shove the rucksack through into the sewer and be rid of all this. Five yards and a push. I could leave the bundled hundreds curbside for the homeless folks camped out along the grass.

Instead I backed out and rode down the Santa Monica incline, merging onto the Pacific Coast Highway. Blending into traffic, I headed north, away from the city, away from Bilton and ultrasounds and the charred remains of Mack Jackman. I was now one of those cars I'd heard thrumming overhead from the tunnel, one of those fortunate souls with somewhere better to go. Just as Homer had told me four days and a lifetime ago, I was a runner, not a fighter. And just as he'd said, people don't change.

I had better reason to run now than I ever did. I was trying to run away from Frank's being dirty. I couldn't stay and face the possibility that everything I'd gone through these past seventeen years was for someone who wasn't worth it. The thought alone knocked the fight out of me, left me resigned to the only life I'd always feared. I deserved- motel rooms and transient work, dark memories and 2:18 wake-ups. As bleak as that seemed, I'd take it over losing Frank all over again.

I flew through Malibu, past the fish-taco joints with the washed-out surfers counting gritty change from neoprene pockets, past the Country Mart where movie stars park their Priuses between jaunts on Gulfstreams, past the impeccable and untrodden green lawn of Pepperdine. I kept going, past rocky state beaches, past VW buses out of seventies horror films, past falling-rock signs and even a few falling rocks. Somewhere around Paradise Cove, my cell phone rang.

I pulled it out of my pocket. Checked caller ID. Induma. I flipped it open.

"They got Homer."

The words moved through me, an icy wave. After a time I said, "Where?"

"They took him from his parking space outside Hacmed's store. Hacmed tried to call you. His stock of throwaway cell phones, I guess they have sequential numbers. He called the last one in line before the one on his rack. The one you left here rang, so I picked up."

"Okay. Give me a… I need a minute. Sorry."

I hung up and pulled over onto the hazardous shoulder, my hands bloodless against the black steering wheel. Vehicles shot past off the turn, rocking the Jag on its stubborn English chassis, one or two offering me a piercing blare on the horn as an after-the-fact fuck-you.

I don't know how long I sat there, but when I looked up, the sun was a shimmering remembrance on the water at the horizon. A few seconds later, the dark waters extinguished the last dot of yellow.

I waited for a break in the headlights, then signaled and U-turned, heading back to whatever was awaiting me.

With mounting dread I drove to the corner mart, pulling the Jag around back. I stared across at the white parking-space lines.

What if they'd killed him already, just to send me a signal? He'd be easy to wipe off the map. I'd read the newspaper stories from time to time with perverse interest-a body discovered weeks or years after the desperate end, skeletonized in a chimney, bloated in a well, rotting in the trapped air of a by-the-month motel room. Lost souls who didn't punch in to work or have family dinners on Sundays. No one to miss them. No one to notice their removal. No one to care until a disruptive odor, a heap of chalky shards, or some other gristly matter gummed up life in progress or a real-estate inspection.

Before I could climb out of my car, I heard a call from the building. "Psst!"

Hacmed was gesturing at me furiously from the barely cracked rear door. "Nicolas. You come here."

I slid from the car and entered the storage room. He put his hand on my chest, steering me into the corner, away from the overhead security camera's field of vision. "They take Homer."

"I heard. What happened?"

"It is my fault." Agitated, Hacmed twisted his sweaty hands together. "I do not have time to take cash-register receipts to bank Friday. So I go first thing today. Drop them off. One hour later two men show up at my store. Secret Service. They ask about hundred-dollar bill I deposit at bank. They tell me bank lady checked serial number against list."

I sagged against the wall. I never should have given Homer those hundreds from Charlie's stash. Monitoring banks was actually part of the Service's infrastructure, since the agency had been set up to catch counterfeiters. I should've known that Bilton's crew would've tagged the serial numbers before paying off Charlie.

"They threaten me with being terrorist, with plotting to kill the president. They ask where I get this one-hundred-dollar bill. Only one I have is from Homer last night. I tell them. Homer is outside. They collect him. Shove him into car."

Hacmed's eyes were wet now. "I was scared, Nicolas. I did not know what to do. What was I supposed to do?"

"There was nothing you could've done that would have made this turn out differently."

"I could have made up story. Said it was not his hundred."

"They would've checked the security tapes and found out it was him anyway."

"They ask about you, too. If I know you. I say I recognize picture, you are sometimes customer. But I do not tell them anything more. You be careful, Nicolas."

The front door rattled, the ding nearly sending Hacmed through the ceiling tiles. He left me there, stunned, and scurried out to ring up the customer. Then he returned. I hadn't moved. I'd barely breathed.

It took me a moment to realize that Hacmed was speaking again. "My brother-in-law, they take him for three month. He is cabinetmaker. Nothing more. But they take him, because he is from Pakistan. No lawyer, no nothing. Just gone. Three month. I support my sister and their children. Three month. And then one day he is back. No explanation. They kept him in secret jail, asking questions, feeding him like dog. My brother-in-law is strong man. Homer cannot survive this."

"They'll have to realize that Homer doesn't know anything."

"You think my brother-in-law knew anything?" He was practically shouting.

"No, no. What else did they tell you?"

"They are going to charge Homer with murder. Murder. They say he kill man in apartment, then lit him on fire, then blew up apartment. They say the bill proves he is involved with dead man. Homer tell them someone else give him the bill. They do not believe him. He has no money to hire proper lawyer. He cannot make bail. They will leave him to rot."

"Who told you all this?"

"Secret Service agent came back one hour ago. Told me everything."

"Broad guy, buzz cut, tan face?"

"Yes. That is him."

"Nice of him. To give you all that info."

Hacmed looked at me unsurely. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing, sorry. Anything else?"

"They are processing Homer now. They are to release him into general population tomorrow. First thing. With rapists and killers." Hacmed shook his head, on the verge of tears again.

Sever had gone to great lengths to make sure I knew that Homer would suffer worse than he already was unless I turned myself in. Either Homer or I was going to be charged with the murder of Mack Jackman. The decision was up to me.

"You must leave." Hacmed ushered me to the back door. "You must go hide."

I said, "Hacmed, listen to me. This is not your fault."

He pulled his head back through the gap and regarded me with mournful eyes. "No? Then whose fault it is?"

The slab of the high-rise towered over me, black windows framed with white concrete, an imperious honeycomb. I'd left the Jaguar three blocks away in a grocery-store parking lot, keys in the wheel well for Induma. Concrete planters and reinforced trash cans were positioned around the base of the building, measures against unresourceful car bombers.

Feeling oddly naked without my rucksack, I pulled the cell phone from my pocket and placed a final call.

Steve's voice answered me gruffly. "I thought I told you only to call me if you were about to get killed."

"Yeah, well."

"Shit," he said. The wind blew across my cheeks, the receiver, and then Steve said, "Hello?"

"I'm here. You make any headway?"

"I'm hitting the databases every time I can grab a minute, but I have to do this quiet, like I said. Jane Everett's not the most common name, but it's not the most unusual either. A good number of hits so far, none matching the profile or the picture."

I cleared my throat. "Don't try to reach me. Don't call this number. Wait and I'll contact you. If I can."

"Listen, Nick, your mother-"

"If you don't hear from me, tell Callie…"

"What?"

"Tell her thanks for believing me."

I snapped the phone shut before he could say anything else. I set it on the concrete and smashed it with the heel of my shoe. Then I pried out the circuit board and bent it in half and dropped it through a sewer grate. The plastic casing I dumped in a trash can.

Odds were good that I'd soon become an enemy of the state, with all the attendant privileges. Or one of those anonymous corpses, hidden in a heating duct, discovered weeks later when the weather shifted. Disappeared, but this time for good. Sadly, I felt as if now I had more to lose than ever. So much had changed over the past six days. I had shared my past with Induma and Callie, and that meant I would miss them with more of myself.

A bus wheezed by on Figueroa, then slowed with a gassy exhale. The nighttime breeze swirled up hot-dog wrappers and a few early leaves. Leaning back on my heels like a rube in Manhattan, I contemplated the commanding building. It all but blocked out the sky.

I was sweating through my Jesus shirt.

Before I could lose my nerve, I walked into the lobby. A moderate amount of traffic to and from the elevators, even at this hour. By dint of habit, I put my head down and veered past the reception console. I didn't like signing visitor books, not that any of that would matter anymore. The rent-a-cops, distracted with phones and a shrill woman who'd misplaced a coat, didn't notice me.

I slid through the closing elevator doors. Thumbing the button for the thirteenth floor, I realized I'd turned away from the rear mirror and the security camera it likely hid. So many habits, stretching back so many years. But this was the end, the time to lay aside Liffman's rule-book and head into the belly of the beast.

I counted the passing floors, my heart racing, pins and needles in my fingertips. The doors parted and I forced myself out, assailed by the bright fluorescents. At the end of the hall, beside the reception desk, hung the vast crest with its eagle and flag.

The woman looked up. Behind her was the open squad room, desks arrayed around waist-high partitions. Despite the loosened ties and sloughed suit jackets, the room was the picture of industry. Agents flipped through files, pulled faxes from machines, jabbed fingers at booking photos.

I kept on toward the receptionist. My palms were slick. I shrank from a passing agent as if he were infectious. The overhead security cameras felt like interrogation lights in my face. Shying from their glare, I reached the desk. Nowhere else to go now. The receptionist, nicely made up like a 1950s front woman, smiled at me expectantly. A few of the agents glanced up from their desks. I was having a hard time getting air.

"Yes?" she asked.

A swirl of nausea, like the sickness that accompanied my 2:18 wake-ups, except more vivid under the bright lights. Beyond the partition I recognized the wide shoulders of Reid Sever. He was facing away, bent to scrutinize a document. The strip of white flesh beneath the line of his buzz cut was pronounced.

"I'm…" My throat froze up. I couldn't get my name out.

"What, sir?"

"I… I'm…" My eyes tracked up to Sever. He-and every other agent in the room-was now staring at me. I was completely, pathetically immobilized.

Sever said, "Nick Horrigan."