Strip (42 page)

“Good. Now let’s pack up the letters and I’ll mail them on the way.”

“You don’t have to do that. I can have my staff do it later.”

“I’d like to do it myself.”

“All right” The three worked together to put all of the remaining papers into the correct envelopes and collect them in a cardboard box.

When they were finished, Kapak held up a set of keys. “If you don’t mind giving me a ride, I’d like to leave my rental car here.”

“Harriet will do that. The police may have identified my car and be watching for it. They won’t know hers.”

Harriet said, “I’ll be happy to drive you.”

“Good. Gerald, thank you for everything. I’ll call you in a few days.”

“I wish you the best of luck,” Ospinsky said.

“No. Wish me the strength to go on without it.”

“Then I wish you that.”

They took the elevator down to the bottom of the parking garage, where Harriet’s car was parked. It was a gray Prius. Kapak set the letters on the back seat and went to the rental car to get his suitcase and a carry-on valise.

Harriet was a fussy driver, taking each turn with mechanical precision. She went down Vermont Avenue to the post office, and waited at the curb while Kapak carried his box inside and pushed the letters through the slot. He crumpled and tore the box so it would fit in the trash can, went outside, and got into Harriet’s car.

Harriet said, “What does it feel like?”

“Lighter,” he said. “It feels like dropping a sack of weights so you can swim.”

At the airport she pulled up ahead of a hotel shuttle bus in front of the Delta terminal. She jumped a little when Kapak leaned over suddenly and kissed her on the cheek. He said, “I wrote a check for you before I closed an account today. It’s good. Take it.” He unfolded a check, and she could see it was handwritten, not printed like the others. When she took it he said, “Don’t tell Gerald or he’ll give you a lot of advice about investing it. Have a good life.”

He picked up his suitcase and valise and hurried into the terminal. He scanned the crowd but saw no face he’d ever seen before. He waited in the line to check his suitcase. The line wasn’t too long, because most of the business flights to the East coast left in the morning. The evening was for the overnight flights to Europe. He took his boarding pass and carry-on bag, and walked to the security barrier, took off his shoes, and put them in the gray plastic bin to be x-rayed with his telephone, his watch, his sunglasses, and the change in his pockets. He stepped through the metal detector, scooped up his belongings at the end of the conveyer, and walked on.

He sat down on a seat in a row of four set aside for the shoeless and tied his shoes. He sat still for a moment. He had rushed all day, trying to get here past the metal detectors with a valid ticket in his pocket. Now he was a little afraid to see what awaited him at his departure gate. He took a deep breath and let it out, then stood up and began to walk.

The gate was far down the concourse. He watched people run past him, and he walked past others who were looking in shop windows or stopped at the television monitors mounted above the concourse to list arrivals and departures. As he approached his gate, he saw the sight that he had been dreading since he left the police station. He stopped walking and looked at it for a moment, studying the elements of it.

There were only three of them, but they had known they wouldn’t need more. They were the same three who had picked him up this morning—Timmons and Serra standing along the wall like a couple who had spent so much time together that they never talked anymore, just leaning on the wall and staring straight ahead while their boss, Lieutenant Slosser, talked. The woman, Detective Serra, even had a bulging shopping bag from the bookstore across from the waiting area.

Kapak walked directly to the small group, stopped, and stood still. Slosser became aware that someone was behind him, turned, and saw him. “Hello, Mr. Kapak.”

“Hello,” said Kapak.

“Let’s talk.” He put his hand on Kapak’s elbow, took his valise and handed it to Timmons, and walked with him out of the waiting area to a spot beside the big window of the bookstore. There was nobody standing near them. Even the male and female detectives didn’t follow, and travelers coming along the concourse instinctively passed far from them. The pair stood by his carry-on bag, making sure nobody stole it.

Slosser said quietly, “I was happy to see you decided to fly to Paris. You’ll be there in the morning. I’ll notice you’re missing and report it to Interpol sometime tomorrow evening, so they’ll be too late to stop you and turn you back at the airport. After the police find you, hire a good lawyer and tell him the truth about what happened in Malibu last night. France won’t extradite anybody who might be eligible for the death penalty. They’re trying to have a civilization.”

“Why tell me this?”

“You’re leaving, and you’re not going to be able to come back. That means I don’t have the problem I thought I did.”

“I’m your problem?”

“Not exactly. The problem is that Rogoso hasn’t been dead twenty-four hours yet, and already shooters who work for Rogoso’s Mexican drug suppliers are on their way here to find the one who killed him. The feds have already recognized three two-man teams and stopped them at the border. Two of them were pairs of teenagers. The gangs down there recruit these kids to be killers by hanging advertisements on highway overpasses.”

“So how does my leaving help?”

“When you’re gone, so is the threat to public safety. If you’re here in jail, Rogoso’s friends will kill you. If you’re out on bail they still will, but you’ll have a chance to get some of them too. Even worse, if I try to bring you to trial, I have to produce my two eyewitnesses. If I do that, then Rogoso’s friends will know about them and kill them.”

“You care about that?”

“My job is to ensure public safety. What that means is to keep as many people alive as I can. I don’t see how your trial would make my division any safer. Do you?”

“No.”

“Then
bon voyage.
” He turned, walked back to the waiting area, and nodded to Serra and Timmons as he passed. They followed him at a distance, but neither of them appeared to have noticed Kapak.

He waited until they were out of sight, picked up the carry-on bag they’d been guarding, and then sat in one of the blue seats and stared out the window at the big airplane with the accordion tunnel attached to it. It occurred to him that close up, they didn’t look like birds. They looked more like big fish. He let his eyes go unfocused, staring into the early evening light. When this day ended, so would his thirty-year sojourn in America.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he stood up. He stepped around the row of seats, put his arms around Sherri, and held her. “You came.”

“Of course I came” she said. “Who puts out on the first date and then turns down the second date?”

“This is serious, Sherri. I’m never going to be able to come back.”

“There are worse places than Paris. I think I might have spent the last few years serving drinks in one of them.”

He kissed her. She leaned her body into him and made the kiss go on just a tiny bit longer than he had intended it to. She had always found that when a woman showed she was more interested than the man and at his mercy, it was easier to manipulate him. She amplified her feeling of passion by reminding herself that the carry-on case he was carrying had to be full of money. She let the kiss end, but looked up at him for a few seconds with wide-open eyes and slightly parted lips. Finally she sat down on the nearest of the connected chairs in the waiting area, as though she were trying to control her feelings, and he sat down beside her. She lowered her eyes shyly and looked at the purse in her lap. Inside was a large prescription pill bottle with her name and her doctor’s on it. Kapak had already had his first heart attack. Sherri had enough confidence in her skills to be sure that with the help of this much Viagra, she could make him have his last. She glanced at the valise again. An attractive woman alone in Europe could have a nice time with that much money, even if she was no longer an ingénue.

Slosser and Serra and Timmons walked along the concourse together. When they reached a restroom sign with the silhouette of a woman, Detective Serra went inside. The two men continued a few yards farther and went into the men’s room. A few minutes later, the three reassembled and walked on. They went down the escalator, past the baggage area, and out onto the sidewalk. Detective Serra handed Lieutenant Slosser the shopping bag she had been carrying. “Paree isn’t going to be quite as gay as he thought.”

“Thanks, Louise. You two can go off-duty now.”

“Good night, Nick,” said Timmons.

“See you tomorrow,” Serra said. They stepped onto the crosswalk and went into the parking structure across the circular drive, got into their unmarked car, and drove toward the airport exit.

Slosser glanced into the bag. It was neatly packed with banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills. He did a rough estimate, then closed it again and began to walk along the sidewalk in front of the terminal. When he came to the first taxi stand, he went out to the island and waited his turn to be put in a cab.

In a moment he was sliding into the back seat of a cab. “I’d like to go to Burbank,” he said. “4394 Cambria Street.”

The cab glided forward, picking up speed as it headed out toward the overhead sign for Sepulveda Boulevard. He hefted the shopping bag in his hand. It was a lot of money. It was just the thing for Nick and Rachel’s first college tuition payments, and he had been promising both wives new cars for at least a year.

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