Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) (29 page)

“You’re right, that was a dumb question.”

 We got out of the car. A concrete staircase led down to the grass. Unlike the clean, uniform green of Wilshire, Roosevelt had small patches of yellow. The wind rushed over us, staggering VC and me for a few gusts; Elias didn’t notice. We walked out onto the green and waited. A few copses of trees about thirty feet away rustled in the breeze.

 Killing time in the dark, I practiced the summing up of the case in my mind. That was how this thing was done. When Ingrid Brady showed, I’d explain to her how she did it even though she was the one person in the world who knew exactly how she did it. After all, she was there.

Then I’d have Elias nab her, disarm her, and I’d call one of the intelligence groups I was on decent terms with, probably Scorpio or INT-13, and turn Brady over with the caveat that Mina goes free and my file is scrubbed. Hell, I could turn Brady over to Stan Brizendine at the Freemasons; he’d probably have enough juice to do what I needed. As long as Neil’s death got avenged in some way, he’d be happy as a clam. I had options. Assuming I could grab a trained spook with semi-mystical powers gained through denial of pizza.

As I was thinking about it, they materialized at the far side of the green. At first, they were hard to see, since they were so slight, they looked like they should blow away. There were three of them, all with the same model’s build. Tall, willowy, cadaverous. They were dressed like VC and me, if we’d had any style. Their suits looked like Hugo Boss—thanks, Mina—and were tailored to hide the weapons I was positive were on them. All three looked like men, but I was pretty sure that was drag. These were Anas, followers of the fashion and anorexia goddess Anamadim, pretending to be government spooks.

I knew for a fact the person in the lead was a woman. The conservative wig and the wispy blond mustache didn’t fool me. Though to be fair, they had the first time I saw her in that getup. She stopped about twenty feet away, calling out to us. She hadn’t recognized me yet, but it was dark, and she seemed focused on VC. “What’s with the backup, Victor Charlie? Don’t trust me?

“Negative. Accompaniment appears in proportional measure.”

“You’ll forgive me. With Greene and Zhukovsky murdered and Constantinescu almost, I had to take precautions.”

“Oh, that’s rich,” I said. Brady’s head snapped around. I could see it on her face, trying to place me from the voice. The costume wasn’t helping her recall, nor was the busted nose, or the backlight from the pro shop.

That wouldn’t stop someone like Ingrid Brady. She and her two companions pulled pistols. “You?” Brady said. I know I didn’t imagine the edge of hysterical fear cutting the word in two. “How?”
Yeah, bet you never expected me to make it this far.

“That could take awhile.” Movement in the trees beyond Brady caught my eye. Something metallic glinting off the diffuse light from the pro shop. “Brought more backup?”

Brady glanced around and screamed, “Ambush!” Her gun barked and I dove behind Elias. I don’t think she hit anything. The golem lumbered forward; Brady was running for the pro shop, firing into the trees that had once been behind her. I scrambled to my feet and pursued, even if I had no idea what I was doing. Lights flashed along the treeline, kicking up clods of dirt around my feet. I could hear bullets slamming into the giant wad of clay that was Elias. Ahead of me, one of Brady’s two companions caught a bullet and went spinning grotesquely to the ground. I didn’t stop to look at her and just hoped she hadn’t even known what hit her.

I put my back against the cool stucco wall of the pro shop, breath burning in my lungs. I could still see Elias out on the green, striding toward the first gunfire, but VC had vanished. Good for him. I hoped he would stay low.

I tried the glass door into the pro shop, becoming abundantly aware I was chasing not just Brady, but also her friend who was probably merely a lesser version still extremely capable of handing me my ass. I went through the door as quietly as I could and found myself in a little foyer of a faux-hacienda. A glass case had pictures of various golfers brightened up by a stand of fake bamboo. The burgundy rug, worn thin by thousands of golf shoes, did nothing to hide my footsteps as I crept to the archway leading inward.

In this second room, a staircase on the left went upward to a landing, then switched back and disappeared to a second floor. A small bar, almost entirely lost in deep gloom, was next to the staircase. On the right was the pro shop, although it looked like most of the equipment was for rent rather than sale. The largest space, straight ahead, was a dining room. Circular tables were scattered about and the northeastern corner was mostly plate glass. I could see flashes outside on the course, but they were farther away, deeper into the trees. Elias was gone, and the only evidence of anything happening was the shredded turf and the crumpled body of Brady’s friend.

I ducked back into the pro shop and grabbed a golf club, listening for footsteps. While it was a little tough to hear over the sounds my heart made whenever the guns went off, it seemed like I was alone in here. If Brady had been here, she was probably gone now. I went back to the door, now armed, if bringing sporting equipment to a gunfight constituted armed.

Exiting out into the stiff wind, I saw VC’s car waiting in the lot. I took two steps toward it when the wailing of sirens stopped me. Two cop cars, lights flashing the colors of an Icee machine, were zooming up the road. A moment later, three more appeared at the first bend in the road. Guess someone reported gunfire. Seemed like an awful fast response time. Those cars would block me from getting out even if I made it to VC’s Caddy. Tack on time to hotwire it if the Man in Black had gone another way through the golf course. I ran back down the stairs onto the lawn, sprinting for the trees as far from the intermittent gunfire as I could manage.

Passing Brady’s friend, who was mercifully both still and silent, I made it to the thicker trees just as the cops were getting out of their cars. Silhouetted on the little hill by their lights, they had drawn guns and were proceeding cautiously onto the lawn. I knew if I headed east, I’d eventually hit the Golden State Freeway and I could get the hell out of here relatively safely. I briefly considered calling for a cab to meet me, but the cold blanket of paranoia wrapped around me. They were listening. They had to be. Don’t know who “they” were, exactly. Brady’s little cabal, now dedicated to the sole purpose of getting me. Seemed cold-blooded, even for her, to sacrifice her ally like that. But hey, for all I knew, that was a traitor getting what Brady had intended all along.

I reached the trees. On the other side of the open green, shapes had emerged from the treeline. I couldn’t see them clearly, not in the dim light, but I could be fairly certain those were Brady’s guns, ready to sweep in. The police were on the other side of the pro shop, spreading out into the woods on my side and heading toward finding Brady’s friend’s body.

I plunged through the trees, hoping I was basically aiming east since what I was taking to be the hiss of traffic on the freeway could very well be the wind whipping through pine branches. I could see more movement ahead, coming around from the far side of the green to encircle me. With Brady’s guns to the north and east and the cops to the west and south, I was getting caught in a very nasty zipper. I picked up the pace, grateful for the groundskeeping that kept the terrain relatively level and the trees from raking my face with every step.

Until a shape loomed up out of the dark. I skidded to a stop. It was obviously a man, leaning against one of the trees, back to me. He looked like he was dressed in a black suit, but it was tough to tell. Pretty much everything looked like various shades of black. It wasn’t until I saw the outline of a fedora, almost eaten up by the tree the man was hiding behind, that I knew. I raised the golf club.

“VC?” I whispered. “Victor Charlie?”

He didn’t react one way or the other. I poked him with the club and I knew it was going to happen about a second before it did. VC slumped off the tree and fell bonelessly to the ground. I could barely see anything, but I saw the bullet hole in the center of his forehead. I cursed. VC had been a weird creep, but he had been
my
weird creep. He was the best ally I had since this thing began. I couldn’t help but feel like I had gotten him killed, even though I knew rationally it was Brady. She had killed the other two and tried it with Oana. She succeeded in this case.

Footsteps were getting closer, thumping on the grass. I added the name Victor Charlie to the list of people I was doing this for, even if he wasn’t really a person. I rummaged through his pockets, his body already growing foamy, then found his keys and sprinted away. A gunshot tore into a tree nearby. Nobody had a prayer of hitting me, not as long as I stayed in motion and in the trees.

I ran east. A few gunshots chased me, and once I felt the sting of bark kicked up and burning across my still-injured face. A stitch dug into my side and my lungs were on fire in a distressingly short period of time. I tried not to let that bother me, and made yet another promise to myself to get in better shape. I tried to pretend I was a kid again, since back then I could run all day and not care. Make a game of it. Those lunatics with guns weren’t trying to kill me. They were actually clowns!

No, wait, that’s worse.

 Turns out I didn’t have the hang of optimism, either. Not even when I burst through a line of trees and found the edge of the golf course. Green nets, each one around fifty feet high, kept golf balls from beaning commuters. I dropped the golf club where it wouldn’t be immediately obvious it was connected to the shootout and turned right, following the line of the freeway, knowing I’d get to an access road soon. I snaked between some short pines and there it was, a parking lot. Shielded from the freeway by thick greenery, a stretch of broken asphalt held a couple cars, even this late at night.

I almost ran down into it, but something stopped me. I took VC’s keys out of my pocket and put them in the crotch of a couple tree branches. If someone was really looking, they might find them, but otherwise, the keys were basically invisible.

I stepped out into the parking lot and the light hit me in the face like a right cross.

“Hold it right there!”

Rough hands grabbed me, practically carried me, and slammed me onto the hood of a car. In the dim light, I hadn’t noticed that one of the parked cars, the farthest one, screened behind a van with a very virile-looking wizard painted on the side, was an LAPD prowler.

“You’re under arrest,” the cop said.

I WAS QUIET IN THE BACK OF THE CAR,
sitting with my cuffed hands pressed into the seat. I tried not to let anything show, but this was what I had been worried about since the close call at County. The two patrolmen, who were the primal fear of every guy like me—giant, muscled badasses with shaved heads and unchained ids—weren’t what you’d call gentle. I was a one hundred and eighty-pound bag of dog food to be swung, carried, and slammed as was convenient. They hadn’t even advised me of my rights, but I was savvy enough to know that would happen before interrogation, if at all. Wasn’t like they were above claiming they had Mirandized me if it meant a conviction.

Not that I knew what I was being charged with or even who was behind the arrest. I mean, it was probably Brady, but it didn’t really feel like her style.

The car wound its way out of Griffith Park. Periodically, the red and blue flashed through breaks in the trees. The silhouettes of cops moving through the area had a dreamlike quality. I was driven to Wilshire Division, but instead of booking me, the cops put me in an interrogation room and handcuffed me to the bar on the table. I was grateful it wasn’t Hollywood Division, considering someone might recognize me as Detective Saroyan, though slightly worried since the place of my arrest should have taken me right there.

Then they left me alone.

I could have panicked, but that wasn’t going to do me any good. Besides, they didn’t seem to recognize me as the guy who had maced two cops at Union Station and fled. I pieced that together when my arresting officers didn’t put more than a few perfunctory bruises on me. Granted, it had only been one day, but I had made a career of being a chameleon, and it was really paying dividends in the “not getting totally racked by a pair of ’roided up cop meatheads” department. If they knew who I was, I probably would have been booked for Nicky’s alleged crimes, either before or after being introduced to the wall a few times. I was going to play this as cool as I could and hope for the best.

That resolution was tested when I had to wait for what felt like several hours. It’s the waiting that gets to me sometimes, especially knowing that every minute I was cooling my heels was a minute I wasn’t trying to get Mina out of stir. Being in an interrogation room didn’t help my cheery mood either, pushing me right back to the time I had almost been caught, and I mean
really
caught. It was a disposal job. Folks at Quackenbush Security wanted me to deliver some very full garbage bags to a chemist out in Lancaster. I knew what was in them when I picked them up. I mean, you know a dismembered body even if you’ve never actually seen one in greasy black plastic before. It’s in the genome, I guess. The mistake I made was in peeking.

I knew the face looking back at me. It was my old pal Lebanon, he of the Castro replacement. Someone had gotten fed up with the old spook and hacked him up, and now Quackenbush was getting rid of the body. It might have even been an internal beef, since all those old-school right-wingers had some kind of tie to Irving Quackenbush. At least until it was time for him to bump them off. And Lebanon’s time was up.

So I stuck the garbage bags in the trunk. I was pretty shaken up, since, like I said, I knew the guy. We weren’t friends or anything, but we’d had some good times. He was fun, kind of a racist old horndog grandpa. I knew his body was going to be dissolved in acid, Heisenberg-style, and that would be it. No body, no funeral… hell, no name. Like he never existed.