“This is what happens to those who stand in the way of Los Salvajes!” Manuel screamed as Ray felt something hard and cold bite under his right ear.
CHAPTER 63
PARKER AND I DECIDED to meet up for a late-night dinner when news of the Dodger Stadium murder dropped.
A little after one in the morning, we left the hotel and drove to a softly lit restaurant called Ammo, on Highland Avenue in Hollywood.
“I like the name,” I said to Parker as we sat at a booth. “After what happened at the ball game tonight, we’re probably going to need a case of double-aught buck and couple of boxes of fifty caliber to go.”
Instead, we ordered some drinks. Jack and ginger ale for me, a pinot grigio for Emily. I’d actually had a couple of room service beers after I heard about the ball-game decapitation, but they hadn’t worked at all. After seeing the now-national news coverage about the savagery committed in the midst of the Dodger home opener, I’d never felt more sober in my life.
On the ride over, Emily had told me that a team from our Perrine task force had been sent to the stadium, but we hadn’t heard back from them yet.
“It’s Perrine. We both know it,” Parker said angrily as she placed her unringing phone down on the corner of the table. “He’s marking his new US territory now and rubbing our noses in it in the process.”
Emily sighed as she stared out the plate-glass window. She looked tired. Pale and drained, as if she’d just given blood. The hours she was putting in would have taxed anyone, not to mention the unrelenting pressure from above. And still we couldn’t move the needle on what the cartels were doing. I shared her frustration. No doubt about it, we were getting our asses thoroughly kicked.
“I saw this video on the Internet recently,” Emily said, “where these kids, these nice, normal-looking suburban kids, film themselves slowly, methodically, and mercilessly abusing a sixty-eight-year-old bus monitor. They call her fat, ugly, say that she should hang herself. And as she sits there, crying, these kids are laughing themselves silly. I mean, her tears are turning these kids on. It’s like debasing this poor old woman is the greatest and funniest thing they’ve ever done in their life.”
“I saw it, too,” I said. “I wish I hadn’t. It was like something out of A Clockwork Orange, only for real.”
She lifted her wine and stared at it.
“You ever wonder if maybe Perrine is a symptom of a larger disease? As if things are … changing. As if people are changing. Their attitudes. The way we treat each other. Look at all this bath-salt stuff. People biting each other’s faces off. The flash mobs where hundreds of punks go wilding in some store.
“Seems to me, the center is having some serious trouble holding these days, Mike. It’s like Perrine is picking up on that and just going to town, trying to egg on complete collapse. Maybe it’s time to head for the hills. Any room up in Northern Cali for one more in the Bennett militia?”
“Nah,” I said, marking circles on the napkin with the bottom of my drink. “That’s not the move, Emily. Trust me. The hills are a nice place to visit, but you don’t want to live there. I know things are looking pretty bleak, but right here, right now, is the place to be. This latest crap from Perrine only proves it. He’s trying to break our will, but he’s out of his league. Bigger assholes than he have tried and failed. I told him before, when he was in custody, he has no idea who the hell he’s messing with.”
“How can you be so sure?”
I rattled the cubes in my glass.
“Think about Nine-Eleven, Emily. Three hundred Spartans stood up against a million invaders at Thermopylae, right? Well, down in the valley of Lower Manhattan on Nine-Eleven, four hundred and three fire-fighters, cops, paramedics, and service members stared up into the face of six hundred million cubic pounds of unmoored steel and glass and concrete that hovered, burning and groaning and swaying, above them. Six hundred million cubic pounds!
“And they didn’t blink! They held the line, held their post. With burning debris and the bodies of the victims exploding around them, they stood there and stood there and stood there, saving life after life, pulling out person after person from the burning, bloody, hungry jaws of what can only be properly described as hell on earth. The victims in the towers and the Pentagon and on the planes didn’t have a choice about being vaporized.
“Those four hundred and three on the ground had a choice, and they chose that others could live.”
After a long moment, Emily nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “King Leonidas would have tipped his horsehair helmet.”
“Of course, I’m right. That’s our legacy, Emily. The terrorists think they won that day? Keep dreaming. The terrorists only proved what they feared the most about Americans. That among us live everyday superheroes, free men and women who at the drop of a hat, or in this case a skyline, will stand up and sacrifice their lives to save someone else. Who the hell on this earth is still ballsy and crazy enough to go down with the ship? Us! That’s who!”
I clinked my glass to Emily’s.
“Chin up, Agent Parker. Perrine thinks he’s crazy? We’ll show his ass the meaning of crazy before this thing is through.”
CHAPTER 64
THE WAITRESS HAD JUST brought dessert when our phones went crazy. On the tabletop beside my untouched cheesecake, my iPhone started its almost subliminal hum a split second before Parker’s mobile joined in.
“Oh, wait. Are you following Bieber on Twitter, too?” I joked as we both looked at the incoming texts.
“The task force is calling a meeting now? It’s coming on two a.m.,” Parker said, shaking her head at her BlackBerry.
“No rest for the semiconscious,” I said, fishing out my wallet.
About half the task force was present and accounted for when Emily and I arrived upstairs at Olympic Station twenty minutes later. Instead of sitting at their workstations, the cops and agents were gathered together, standing in the very middle of the command center, in front of an overhead projector screen.
It was eerily quiet in the crowded room. Under the garish fluorescent lighting, pretty much everyone looked physically and mentally exhausted, not to mention frantic. Of course they were. The killing at Dodger Stadium was obviously an act of terrorism. Who knew what would happen next?
The lights dimmed after a moment, and the swirling circle of a loading digital video appeared on the white, sail-like screen.
“What’s this?” I whispered as we stepped over beside Agent Rothkopf.
Rothkopf shook his head grimly.
“LAPD Detective Division just received an e-mail with an attached video. They think it’s from Perrine.”
The screen focused, and then Perrine was there. Sitting in a Dodger-blue leather chair, he was wearing disposable white Tyvek coveralls. From chest to knees, the coveralls were splattered in blood.
He must have been in one of the stadium’s luxury suites. There were video game consoles behind him, video monitors, bar stools. Behind him on the wall were the framed Dodger jerseys of Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, Tommy Lasorda.
The camera zoomed back a little, and beyond the window of the suite, the packed stands could be seen. There was a sudden loud, swelling, sizzling sound as fans stood in succession, doing the wave. Perrine waited and then did it as well, rising out of his club chair with his hands raised before swiveling back for the camera.
“Hey, LAPD, FBI, and all my other fans out there tonight in La-La Land. How are you doing this fine evening? As you can see, I myself am having a blast here in your city.”
Perrine smiled as he did a little drumroll on the arm of the chair. He seemed pumped, really enjoying himself.
From off screen, someone suddenly offered him something. It was a hot pretzel with mustard on it. He looked it over and then carefully took it by the napkin before he took a bite.
“I wanted to take this opportunity,” Perrine said, chewing, “to communicate with this task force that has been set up to find me. Ask yourselves hones
tly, are you truly up for the job? You people have families, people who depend on you. How will you be able to look out for them? What if you come home from work tonight and they have some—what is the term—assembly required?”
He took another bite, thumbing mustard off the corner of his mouth.
“I always give people a chance to get out of my way,” he said after licking his thumb. “That is why I am strongly advising you to relieve yourselves of your present duty. You should take this opportunity to transfer, retire, or, better yet, quit. In fact, if I were you, I would leave Southern California with your families as soon as possible.”
The two dozen of us standing there looked from the screen to each other with the same question etched in every face. Say what?
“See, ladies and gentlemen, you think this is about drugs, but it isn’t. Why do you think my men are so highly trained, so highly motivated to do whatever needs to be done? I am doing what the cowardly Mexican government will not. Piece by piece, inch by inch, gringo by gringo, I am taking and returning California back to its rightful owners, the Mexican people.
“What you took by force in 1848, I will now wrest back by force. The revolution has begun. I am formally declaring war on the United States of America.”
“This bastard,” I heard Rothkopf whisper through his gritted teeth when the video ended. “This goddamned barbaric bastard.”
Every cop in the room made the same sound then, a kind of growl of shock tinged with rage. Emily had been right. Perrine was rubbing our noses in it. And loving every minute of it, apparently.
CHAPTER 65
SILVER DROPLETS EXPLODED VIOLENTLY in the morning sunlight as Lillian Mara pulled the immense black Ford Expedition up almost against the fence. On the other side of the chain-link, the water in the Olympic-sized public pool churned as the Van Nuys–Sherman Oaks under-twelve swim team did their laps.
As usual, the other swim moms and dads gave Lillian dirty looks from their poolside camp chairs. She knew what they were thinking. There she was again, the evil, blond new lady in the business suit and big, idling, earth-warming SUV who didn’t even have the decency to get out of her car to watch her kid swim.
Sometimes she felt like getting out and explaining to them that the truck was actually her mobile office. As the newly transferred assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s LA office, she had to be available 24-7 to juggle case meetings with DAs and surveillance teams and undercover agents, and a secure, private communication link was a priority.
As if that matters to them, Lillian thought with a sigh. Everybody had an excuse, didn’t they? Oh, well. She guessed she would just have to live with all the mommy-war scorn.
Lillian sat up and held her breath as a sopping, thin-shouldered ten-year-old blond boy dragged himself out of the opposite side of the pool and headed for the starting blocks.
“C’mon, kiddo, you can do this,” Lillian whispered, cheering on her son Ian as he got into position. “Bend over more, just a little more. Chin against your chest. You have this, kid.”
She let out a groan as Ian jumped weakly and, as usual, landed flat with a loud, belly-flopping slap in the water. Then she laughed to herself.
“Won’t be the first time you fall on your face, little buddy,” she told her baby boy as she watched him thrash intently across the pool. “Take it from personal experience.”
Her phone, charging on the dashboard shelf in front of the speedometer, began buzzing. She snatched it up when she saw it was her husband, and pressed the FaceTime option.
She smiled as her goofily handsome husband, Mitch, appeared. He was the head of mechanical engineering at Northrop Grumman and was on a business trip to Brazil.
She turned up the volume on the phone as a couple of landscapers beside the pool’s parking lot fired up their air rakes.
“Hey, good-looking!” Lillian yelled. “Wearing your wedding ring still? Well, that’s a relief.”
“Just got the last of the carnival gals out of the room,” Mitch said, nodding.
They both laughed.
As if. Mitch, a hulking former combat marine, had proposed to her the day they both graduated from Irvine. He once told her that he truly liked only three things in this world. Her, running, and beer. They had six kids now, two of them in college, and were still going strong. They were lucky people.
“How’s Aquaman?” Mitch asked.
“I’m sorry to say I still don’t see too many Olympic diving team invitations in Ian’s near future,” she said with a wince.
Mitch said something, but she couldn’t hear him at all as one of the landscapers came directly behind the SUV, the air rake screaming in the painful decibel range now, like a 747 taking off.
“Hold on a second, Mitch. I can’t hear you,” Lillian said. The side window suddenly smashed inward.
Staggered by the abrupt explosion, glass still spraying around her, Lillian turned to see the hard face of the Hispanic landscaper in the blown-open window, already half in the car. Her glance went to his hand. There was something black in it rising toward her face.
She was pulling the .40 caliber in the pancake holster on her right side when the pepper spray hit. Gagging on chemical fire, her face burning, her eyes blinded, Lillian still managed to draw her service automatic as the air rake shrieked in her ears.
Then the landscaper smashed her in the jaw with his huge fist, hard enough to make her teeth click. The last things Lillian heard were the thump of her gun dropping to the foot well and the sound of the truck door opening. The seat belt loosened then, and she was sliding and falling, tumbling into a wave of black that seemed to rise up to meet her halfway.
CHAPTER 66
WHEN SPECIAL AGENT MARA came to, she was being carried by someone large and strong up a slate walkway. The house they approached was a white stucco, Spanish mission–style structure with a clay tile roof. The man carrying her smelled strongly of tobacco and coffee. The door looked like something from a castle, with dark wood timbers banded in iron.
She opened her mouth but couldn’t form words or even sounds. Drugs, she thought dully. She’d been drugged. The opulent door was creaking open when the black came back.
Music was playing when she woke up again. It was classical, a baroque cello concerto. Was it Bach? No, it’s Haydn, Lillian thought dreamily. She even knew the piece, she realized. Concerto in D Major.
She wondered idly where she was, but something told her not to worry so much. She kept her eyes closed as she listened to the deep, warm tones of the cello playing melody, then harmony, then melody again.
Lillian opened her eyes when she realized someone was humming along to the music. A cute, perky-looking young Hispanic woman was standing alongside her.
A nurse? Lillian thought. But no. It couldn’t be. The woman was wearing a shiny green- white- and- red Mexican-soccer shirt over yoga pants, with bright-pink-and-white Nikes. Her highlighted brown hair was pulled back in a tight, all-business ponytail.
Lillian blinked, quickly trying to wipe the last of the cobwebs from her foggy mind, assessing her situation.
She was in a dark, paneled room, some kind of office with wood blinds pulled down. There were bookshelves on one wall with no books in them. She was sitting, almost fully reclined, in a large leather office chair, her arms and legs strapped securely to the chair with thick, gray duct tape.
She remembered. Ian. The pool. The window crashing in.
Jesus, God, no, she thought as she began to shake hysterically, trying to break free. No, no, no. Just no.
“Relax,” the athletic young woman said, stroking the back of the FBI agent’s arm. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to hurt yourself. My name is Vida. I am going to help you, if you let me, Agent Mara. Or shall I call you Lillian?”
“What do you want?” Lillian sobbed. “Let me go. Why are you doing this to me?”
“There are many reasons. But for now, we’ll concentrate on one,” Vida said, lifting a stern finger. “Our o
rganization is looking for a man who is in hiding. We believe that he may be in California. His name is Michael Bennett. Do you know him?”
“No,” Lillian said, staring at the woman. “You have the wrong person. I am an FBI agent, but I run the white-collar division. I don’t know anything.”
“That truly is a shame,” Vida said, turning on the heel of one of her pink-and-white Nikes and lifting something from the corner of the dark room. Lillian wheezed. It was a large, yellow-handled, heavy tool with an ax on one side and a sledgehammer on the other, known as a splitting maul.
The young woman hefted it neatly.
“No!” Lillian screamed as the young woman brought the sledgehammer side of the maul back and up and then down with authority onto Lillian’s left elbow, pulverizing it into splinters.
Vida turned up the music as Lillian shook and screamed and howled in pain. When the white noise of Lillian’s excruciation notched slightly back, Haydn was still playing merrily.
Vida lifted the sledge again.
“We’re going to try this one more time. With the ax part this time. Where is Bennett?” she said.
“In Northern California … near Susanville,” Lillian found herself saying between the sobs and the throbbing, center-of-the-sun agony that had become her left elbow. “I’m not … sure exactly where … I’d tell you his address if I could … but they wouldn’t tell me … in a million years.”
“How do you know this?” Vida said.
“An agent from the LA office,” Lillian continued in her pain-induced, haiku-like rhythm, “was sent up there … to pick his brain … about capturing Perrine … I do the books for the office … I saw the destination on the manifest.”
“An agent from the task force?”
“Yes.”
“What was the agent’s name?”
“Parker. Emily Parker,” Lillian said without hesitation. She hated herself. She knew she was putting others in jeopardy. But she was in so much pain. And afraid. God, was she afraid.