“The woman I have in mind is more of a vigilante. A private operator with an agenda of her own.”
“This woman got a name?”
“She usually goes by Abby. She may have started a conversation with you.”
“She the talkative type?”
Tess winced. “Very.”
“We didn’t get no talkative women in here last night.”
“Last night she may not have been in the mood for talk. I think she may have been, well, stalking Dylan Garrick.” It seemed odd to imagine Abby as a stalker, yet that was the only word for it.
“Is that so?” the bartender said.
“I could be wrong. Actually, I hope I am. Maybe you can help me find out one way or the other.”
“I don’t know why you think I’d want to help you do anything.”
“Because, Biscuit, you and I are on the same side. You don’t want your friends to go down for Dylan’s murder. If I can prove somebody else did it, they’re in the clear.”
“You’re feeding me a line of bullshit. They sent you in here to work on me some more because I wouldn’t give them anything. It ain’t gonna work. So fuck off.”
“You’re difficult person to reason with.”
“Figured that out, did you?”
“You think I’m running some kind of game on you. You’re wrong. I’m not in tight with the local police or even the local feds. I’m in from out of state, and I’m pretty much on my own, just following up a hunch that nobody else needs to know about.”
“So you’re the Lone Ranger.” He snorted. “Feds never work alone. They’re like ants in a pantry. If you see one, you know there’s got to be more.”
“Ever hear of Mobius?” she asked.
He paused, confused by the change of topic. “Nutcase with the nerve gas, the one who had L.A. shittin’ its trousers a few years ago?”
“That’s right. How about the Rain Man?”
“Kidnapper, put women in the storm drains and let them drown. Yeah, I’ve heard of them both. I read the papers now and then. So what?”
“If you read the papers, you ought to remember that I was involved in both cases. I came in from out of state, just like I’m telling you. And I worked alone.”
“Show me your ID again.”
She reopened her black leather credential case to reveal her gold badge and, under plastic, her photo and signature, along with her personal agent number and the signature of the FBI director.
Biscuit hesitated, then reluctantly reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a pair of reading glasses, which he perched on his battered nose. He caught her glance and mumbled, “We’re all getting older every day.” He studied the credentials. “Fuck, what d’ya know. You are her. I didn’t, you know, register the name before. They got you working this piece-of-shit case?”
“It’s tied in to something bigger.”
“Huh.” He appraised her with new respect. It occurred to Tess that her supposedly legendary status in the greater L.A. area was finally working to her advantage. “So you are the fuckin’ Lone Ranger. You took out Mobius and that rain guy all by yourself.”
“That’s right.”
“Got a set of balls on you, don’t you?”
Tess ignored the question, assuming it to be rhetorical. “So you know I’m telling you the truth when I say I’m working an angle nobody else has picked up on. I don’t care what the police wanted to hear you say. They weren’t asking you about any woman who left with Garrick last night, were they?”
“No.”
“That’s all I want to know about. Did you see Garrick leave?”
“Yeah. I saw him.”
“Did he leave alone?”
“No.”
“Who was he with?”
“You really think I’m gonna tell you?”
“I’m hoping.”
“Well, keep on hoping, but it ain’t going to happen. Shit, you think I want to see my name in the goddamn newspapers?”
“I’ll keep you out of it.”
“Yeah, right, you will. Until you write some fucking best-selling book about it or sell your story to cable TV. No way, darling.”
Apparently her notoriety wasn’t such an asset, after all. “Just tell me if he was with a man or a woman.”
“Hey, all I know, it was one of them cross-dressers.” Biscuit laughed. “Put that in your book, why don’t you?”
He wouldn’t talk. She had wasted her time. She handed him a card with her cell phone number. “If you change your mind,” she said simply.
He flicked the card into a wastebasket. “I won’t.”
She started to walk away. His voice stopped her.
“Hey. I ask you something?”
She turned back to him. “Sure.”
“When you whacked the bad guys-you feel good about it after? Like, was it a rush?”
“No. I only felt good that I survived.”
“Yeah. That’s how was for me, too.” She recognized this as an admission that he had killed at least once. She said nothing. “I just wondered. Because everybody else, you know, they say it’s a trip. They say it’s like getting high. And I always tell ’em I feel like that, too. But I don’t. I thought maybe it was just me.”
“It’s not just you.”
He nodded and turned his back on her. Tess wondered if she should ask again for his help. But it was useless. In the end, she was the enemy, no matter what they shared.
She asked herself if Abby, too, saw her as an enemy, to be manipulated and cajoled, but never trusted. Perhaps she did.
And perhaps, from her standpoint, she was right. Because Tess still intended to learn what Abby had done last night. She would find a way. Somehow.
And if her suspicions proved correct, she would take Abby down.
38
Shanker knelt in the rear compartment of his van, arranging a small arsenal of illegal firearms under a pile of blankets. No way he would need all this firepower, but he didn’t know exactly what the Man had in mind for tonight, and his orders were to come heavy. He was debating whether or not to include the sawed-off shotgun he’d taken from a dead Mexican twenty years ago, a prized possession and one he ordinarily wouldn’t bring into combat, when his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and answered impatiently, annoyed at the distraction. “Yeah?”
“Ron, can you talk?”
The voice he heard belonged to Marvin Bonerz, an ex-con who’d done six years in Soledad for murder in the second, but who was known to his associates as Biscuit.
“A little busy right now,” Shanker said.
“But can you talk?”
Shanker realized he was being asked whether or not he was still in police custody. “I can talk. They cut me
