Tonight they would ignore the pot smokers and the drunks, their job was to watch for signs things were turning ugly.
The four of them moved with the fl ow of the crowd.
Music boomed and shuddered around them. Some enterprising bar owner had mounted several strobes, and they washed the crowded streets with pulsating light. Crimson and green and blinding white, they turned everything into a jittery kaleidoscope of painted shadows and light.
The crowd carried them toward La Cienega. David found it almost as interesting to watch Chris as it was to observe everyone else around them. Chris fl irted with everyone he met, running from one costumed character to another like a kid experiencing
114 P.A. Brown
his fi rst visit to Disneyland. He’d break out into a dance and haul someone off the sidelines to join him. As long as he’d known him, David had envied Chris his ability to grab life with both hands. He never cared what other people thought or said.
David couldn’t be that carefree. He still hated it when people looked at him and muttered “faggot” under their breath.
Chris tucked his hand into David’s back pocket. After a brief hesitation, David responded by draping his arm over Chris’s shoulder. They passed a stage that had been set up by a local radio station where a costume-judging contest drew a raucous throng.
Beyond the stage an alley posted with prominent “No Parking” signs cut between two dark businesses. Over the hip-hop beat from the stage, David heard the deep roar of a large motorcycle engine. The restless crowd pushed them along; they passed the mouth of the alley.
Light fl ared down the unlit brick corridor. The engine rumble grew in volume and a brilliant red bike scattered the mob on the sidewalk. The motorcycle growled and the driver popped a wheelie. The crowd fell back, screaming.
David stumbled. Chris was wrenched from his arms and he thought he heard Des yelling. The motorcycle driver’s full-face visor was as red as his bike and David couldn’t see his face, but gut instinct told him the driver was staring straight at Chris and him as it roared past. The bike slewed around, eliciting more screams and panic.
David yelled and grabbed Chris, who nearly went down in the surging mob. David wrenched him to his feet. “Run!” He thrust Chris out of the path of the returning motorcycle.
Something slammed into his side, spinning him around. The motorcycle roar fi lled his senses. Hot exhaust fl ooded his lungs and he looked up to see the bike spinning back around.
He lunged to his feet, and threw himself sideways, but the rear tire of the bike fl ipped around and plowed into his legs, sending him fl ying backwards. His head smashed against pavement; debris L.A. BYTES
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scraped his skin raw. Light fl ared behind his eyes. Someone’s foot slammed into his gut. He was being trampled in the panic.
People were yelling; he recognized Chris’s voice. He slid away into dark silence.
Tuesday 10:10 pm, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Beverly Boulevard, Los
Angeles
Chris paced the waiting room. David had been with the emergency doctor for nearly an hour. Des piped up for the third time.
“Honey, he’s going to be okay,” Des said. “He’s not in surgery or anything. He’ll be fi ne.”
Chris stopped pacing when a uniformed Sheriff ’s deputy entered the room. Des and Trevor stood. The deputy looked like he might be eighteen with a face full of baby fuzz. He was distinctly unhappy to be where he was and kept darting nervous glances at the three of them. Des fl uttered over to Trevor who gave him a brief hug. The deputy averted his eyes. He looked at Chris.
“Christopher Bellamere?”
Chris nodded. He swept a hand through his hair, encountering the beaded headband he had put on earlier. He dragged it off and stuffed it in his pocket, patting his spiked hair back into place.
“I’m Chris. Are you here to see David?”
“I’m Deputy Kenneth Dumont,” he said. “I need statements from everyone who was there when the incident occurred.” His piercing blue eyes swept over Chris then moved to Des and Trevor, who had joined them. “Were you all there?”
They nodded.
Dumont swept his hand down the hall leading away from the waiting room and its crowd of watchers. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”
They ended up near the stairwell, behind a large Fichus.
“Now, tell me what happened,” Dumont said, pen poised over a notepad.
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“We were just walking down the boulevard,” Chris said.
“Going with the crowd. This bike came out of nowhere and plowed into us.”
“I think he came out of the alley,” Des said.
“He?” Dumont asked. “The bike rider was male?”
“I’ve seen women ride bikes that size before,” Des said. “But I think this was a guy. It’s just the impression I got. I couldn’t see his face or anything.”
“What did you see?” Dumont asked. “When you say he came out of nowhere and plowed into you, do you mean deliberately?”
“Oh, yeah,” Chris said rubbing his elbow where it had scraped along the pavement. He remembered all too well, the sight and sound of the big machine bearing down on him and David. “I’d say it was deliberate.”
Dumont scribbled in his dog-eared notebook. “Any idea why someone would want to do that?”
“Nutcases,” Des said darkly. “Wackos who want to kill faggots.
You saw those protesters out there. Why aren’t you talking to them or does that make your list too long?”
Normally Chris might have agreed with Des, but he had his own ideas about who might have been out to target David and him. He shook his head. “It wasn’t the anti-gay crowd. David’s LAPD. Homicide detective. David Eric Laine.”
“Any reason to think this may be related to something Detective Laine is working on?”
Chris didn’t want to say that David wasn’t actually working on anything right now. He could just imagine what this guy would think about a cop who was on forced leave because they suspected he was into kiddie porn. Chris could hardly tell him about Bolton and his girlfriend.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged in answer to Dumont’s question.
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kept him out of that side of his life, and after his brush with it when the Carpet Killer tried to kill him, he didn’t mind at all.
“Would you be able to identify the motorcycle?”
They all traded looks. Chris shrugged. “It was big and red.
One of those crotch rockets.”
“What about the rider?” Dumont asked. “Can you think of anything specifi c about him? Was he white? African-American?
Asian? Thin? Fat?”
“He was covered in leather,” Chris said and the other two nodded. “He even had gloves on. He defi nitely wasn’t fat, though.
Maybe one fi fty? One-sixty?”
“One-sixty,” Des said. “Probably around fi ve-eight or nine. I ought to know, I dress men all day.”
The deputy looked nonplused until Chris explained. “He owns Samborra’s.”
“Samborra’s?” Dumont asked.
“It’s a men’s clothing boutique in Beverly Hills.”
“Anyone get a license plate?”
“Sorry,” Chris said. “It happened so fast.”
Dumont didn’t cover his disappointment well. He held out a card to Chris. “If you think of anything else, call me.”
“Sure, no problem. Can I see David now?”
“The doctor said she’d be right out.”
The deputy left. Returning to the waiting room, Chris slipped into the seat Des had vacated. Des sat across from him, squeezed between an overweight woman in a too-large pink and orange muumuu and a fi dgety boy who kept kicking his chair.
The doors to the emergency room swung open and a white-coated woman entered the waiting room. “Christopher Bellamere?”
Chris stood up and followed her. He caught up with her at the door. “Is David all right?”
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“He sustained no major injuries,” the doctor said. “We’ve made arrangements to have him transferred to Ste. Anne’s. I’ve already been in touch with his doctor, and he’ll meet David there.”
“But he’s okay?”
The doctor glanced at her chart. “All his injuries are superfi cial.
He may sport some bruises for a few days, but there’s no internal bleeding or bone fractures and there’s no head trauma.”
“Why does he have to go back to Ste. Anne’s?”
“We received orders.” She frowned. “We’ve been instructed to move him. A Dr. Abrahms requested the transfer.”
“If he’s okay I can drive him—”
“We’re required to send him in an ambulance.”
“When will he be going?”
“We should have him there by midnight.”
Wednesday, 1:20 am, Ste. Anne’s Medical Center, Rowena Avenue, Silver
Lake
David blinked his eyes open. He must have dozed off while he waited for Chris. He blinked some more and focused on the fi gure standing at the end of the bed.
“David?” Chris stepped forward. “You awake, hon?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said. He frowned and looked around the room. “This is getting to be a nasty habit.”
“Safer to take up smoking.” Chris sat down on the edge of the bed. Anxiety burned tracks along his already frazzled nerves.
“Why’d they send you here?”
David shrugged. “They were being overrun at Cedars.”
“I was there. They didn’t look overrun.” Chris told him what the Cedar’s doctor told him. “Talk to Abrahms. Something’s not right—”
“Now you’re being paranoid.”
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A starched nurse rustled through the door. It was Laura. Chris snapped to his feet.
“You again,” she said.
“I won’t leave until I know what’s happening with David—”
“Chris, it’s okay. Go home,” David said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“You can’t stay here,” Laura said. “Visiting hours are over—”
“He’s my husband. You can’t kick me out—”
David grabbed his hand. “I need to grab some shut eye. Come back in the morning, you can bring breakfast. How about
huevos
revueltas
?”
Laura made a noise in her throat. Chris stepped back from the bed. “I’m going. I don’t like it, but I’m going.” To David, “I’ll bring your clothes.”
David looked at the bag that held the ruined leather and jeans he had worn for only a couple of hours. “Guess you better.”
Wednesday, 9:45 am, Café Fresco, Rowena Avenue, Silver Lake, Los
Angeles
The interior of the
Café Fresco
was redolent with grilled chorizo and beans and the sharp tang of freshly cut cilantro. The girl working the counter was barely out of her teens and looked like she was about nine months pregnant. She moved with surprising grace despite her girth.
He ordered two
huevos revueltas
then fl ipped his Blackberry out and dialed the hospital switchboard. Within seconds he was talking to David.
“Hey,” Chris said. “I’ll be there in two. You better not have eaten.”
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“Hospital food?” David laughed. “You must be joking. I hope you brought clothes.”
Chris glanced at his Andiamo carryon stuffed with pants, shirts, boxers and socks. “Of course. Be right there.”
Twenty minutes later he stepped outside the little restaurant, a large sack of food swinging against his leg as he waited for traffi c to clear before crossing the road. Before he could step off the curb a familiar fi gure stepped out of the hospital.
Bolton scanned the street and glanced back the way he had come. Seconds later he pulled a Blackberry out and studied the tiny screen.
Even from where he stood outside the restaurant, Chris could see Bolton frown and throw a nervous look behind him. He took the stairs two at a time and trotted down the street. He jumped into the unlocked Cavalier and pealed away.
Chris stared after him for all of two seconds, then swore and darted across the street, narrowly missing being hit by a blue van that pulled to the curb in front of him. Amid squealing tires and a protesting horn, Chris raced up the hospital steps David! What the hell had Bolton been doing at the hospital?
Had Laura told him David was back?
Could they have been responsible for ordering David’s return to Ste. Anne’s? It had seemed suspicious that David should be transferred from Cedars. Had the two of them tampered with another set of hospital records just to get David back here?
Despite David’s thought that he was being paranoid, he knew something had been wrong with that. But it didn’t make sense.
Bolton had never been violent before. Laura was a
nurse
, a healer.
Chris raced through the doorway, pausing briefl y to get oriented. He ignored the dark-coated man with a lavish bunch of multi-hued fl owers until he was knocked aside by the man, spilling his bag full of food onto the fake terrazzo tile fl oor.
“Hey!” But the hurrying man didn’t even pause as he passed through the doors. Chris leaned down to pick his food up. He L.A. BYTES
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saw the dark-coated man pull the fl owers out of their container, splattering water everywhere, and toss the plastic container into a metal and concrete trash receptacle at the bottom of the steps, then climbed into the waiting blue van that had nearly run Chris over.
Chris’s thoughts were still consumed by Bolton. If Bolton meant trouble, then Chris wanted the cops around to deal with it.
Hurrying toward the elevators on the other side of the foyer he grabbed his Blackberry, thumbing awkwardly through his address book for Martinez’s number. If something was going on David’s partner needed to know.
“Shit. Where—” There it was. He hit dial—
A percussive boom slammed him against the elevator door.
His head bounced back against the nearest wall, spinning him around. Light and darkness burst in his head. Fire blossomed in the door he had recently passed through and a roar fi lled his ears. Dust and debris showered down; something slammed into his side. The Blackberry fl ew out of his grip, skidding across the fl oor and vanishing into a cloud of debris. His knees buckled and he tumbled down into darkness.