Kill the Messenger

A dark blue minivan sat wedged into a parking space between a wall and a green Dumpster. PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR STUDENT was neatly affixed to the back window. Eta Fitzgerald’s car.

“The idea of available money is out there,” Parker said, walking around the van. “Doesn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t make any offers. But you never know. Mohawk might think an offer was implied. The notion might influence him to tell us something he otherwise wouldn’t have.”

Ruiz didn’t want to calm down. Parker thought she enjoyed being angry. Anger was the fuel for her energy. And it probably made her feel bigger than she was, stronger than she could ever physically be.

“And then what?” she demanded. “He comes forward, tells you something, and you stiff him?”

“He comes forward, tells me something, I save him from you. I should be so lucky to have someone do that much for me.”

He took a peek inside the van through the windows. The usual load of family crap. A football helmet, action figures, and a black Barbie. Loose bottles of Arrowhead water that had to roll around like bowling pins when the car was in motion.

“What are you doing running around with that much money anyhow?” Ruiz demanded crossly.

“You don’t know how much money I have. I could have twenty dollars in ones, for all you know. It’s none of your damn business anyway.”

She decided to pout, crossing her arms over her chest, shoving her cleavage upward, red lace tempting the eye. “What are we looking for?”

Parker shrugged. “I just like to have the lay of the land.”

“Let’s go find this guy. I’m freezing.”

“Sixty percent of your body heat escapes out the top of your head.”

“Shut up.”

He started to move away from the van, then glanced back, something catching his eye. He frowned, and went back into the building, Ruiz at his heels like a terrier.

Eta Fitzgerald, once again juggling phone and radio mike, froze and stared at them as they approached her window. “What now?” she demanded. “You’re just a bad penny, you. Why don’t you go spend yourself somewhere else?”

Parker grinned at her and put a hand against his chest. “You’re not happy to see me? I’m crushed.”

“I’d like to crush something. Get on with it. You’re worse than a child.”

“It’s your car,” he said. “Can you come out back with us for a minute?”

She turned ashen, cut the mike, and hung up the phone. “My car? What about my car?”

Parker motioned for her to follow, and went back down the hall.

Outside, the mist was thickening again, raindrops falling spontaneously around them. Parker adjusted his hat and went to the back of the van.

The dispatcher followed reluctantly, her breathing short and labored, as if she’d run a race.

“It’s your taillight,” Parker said, pointing. “Busted out. Not a lot of damage, but still . . . You’ll get pulled over for it on a day like this.”

Eta Fitzgerald stared at the back of the van. Her expression was one of sudden nausea.

“Not by me,” Parker went on. “They don’t let me write tickets anymore. Something about road rage . . . I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“Thank you, Detective,” she said softly. “I appreciate that.”

Parker tipped his hat. “We’re here to serve.”

                              13

Jace watched from across the alley, from inside a soggy cardboard box that had been left behind an Italian furniture store. Crumbs of Styrofoam packing peanuts clung to him like fleas.

Staying in Eta’s backseat was too risky. He’d been a captive there, trapped, vulnerable. No good. He needed space, a vantage point, escape routes. As soon as she’d gone inside, he had slipped out of the van and gone across the alley. The box squatted, half-hidden, in front of the furniture store’s delivery truck. The store didn’t open for another couple of hours. He was safe to squat there for a while.

Eta had promised to come back out with the money right away, but half a minute after she had gone inside, Preacher John had shown up, chained his bike to the Dumpster, and gone in. Then came Mojo, then the guy they called Hardware because of his body piercings. They had probably cut out on their paperwork from the day before, wanting to get home and out of the rain, and had come in early to do it before they started their runs.

No Eta. No Eta.

All she had to do was put the cash in an envelope and step out to put it in her van. There was no sign of Rocco, the boss, or of his sidekick, Vlad, who seemed to do nothing all day but smoke, talk to other Russians on his cell phone, and putt golf balls around the office. Rocco usually showed up by nine. Vlad usually turned up around noon, and was almost always hungover.

Come on, Eta. Come on.

Jace huddled back into his oversize army jacket and looked at the newspaper page he had tried to show her in the van. He reread the piece for the hundredth time. Lenny Lowell’s violent passing from the world had been reduced to two column inches buried in the depths of the LA Times. It said the lawyer had been found by his daughter, Abigail (a twenty-three-year-old student at Southwestern Law), that he had been bludgeoned to death in his office. An autopsy was pending. Detectives from the LAPD were following all leads.

Abby Lowell. The pretty brunette in the photograph on Lenny’s desk. A law student. Jace wondered if she had seen anything. Maybe she’d seen Predator fleeing the scene. Maybe she knew who would want her father dead, and why. Maybe she knew who the people in the negatives were.

Speed’s back door opened, and two people came out. A man first: average height, average build, expensive- looking raincoat, and a hat like a 1940s movie detective. Sam Spade. Philip Marlowe. With a petite woman in a black suit, a flash of red in the V of the neckline. Pissed off. Hispanic. Sam Spade ignored her.

Cops. At least the guy was—even though he was really too well-dressed. Jace had a sixth sense for cops. They held themselves a certain way, walked a certain way, moved a certain way. Their eyes never stopped scanning the territory when they came into a new situation. They were taking in everything about their surroundings in case they needed to remember details later on.

This one walked around Eta’s van, slowly, looking in the windows. A chill swept over Jace, pebbling his skin with goose bumps. The woman seemed more interested in chewing out the guy than she was in the van. Neither of them tried to open a door, and then they went back inside the building.

Jace shivered. Why would the cops be interested in Eta’s van, unless someone had told them to be? She’d told him to go to the police. Maybe she had made the decision for him.

He told himself he couldn’t be disappointed, because he never really expected anything from anyone. Except that he was disappointed. People never meant what they said. Or they meant to keep a promise in the moment it was made, but not under pressure. That was always the fine print in a deal— Does not extend past the introduction of extenuating circumstances.

Eta treated the messengers like she was their cranky, surrogate mother. She had a good heart. But why would she put her neck on the line with the cops for him? She had her own life, her own real kids. He wasn’t part of her family. Or maybe she was the kind of mother who did things for her children “for their own good,” which almost always turned out to be bad.

Jace told himself he’d been stupid going to her for help, asking her to lie for him. Involving other people meant losing absolute control of the situation. But he’d seen a quick way to get his hands on a couple hundred bucks. Money he could use to lay low for a while, if he had to. He didn’t want to take money out of his bank, which was not a bank at all but a fireproof lockbox he kept hidden inside an air duct in the bathroom at the apartment. That money was for Tyler to live on, in case something happened.

Something had happened.

Time to go.

Using the delivery truck for cover, Jace crawled out of the box. He flipped up the collar of his coat, hunched his shoulders, held the newspaper like a tent over his head, and started down the alley. He tried not to limp, tried to look like he wasn’t in a hurry, like he had nowhere to go, like he didn’t want to run. He kept his eyes on the