The Murder Book

Stepping on greenery to muffle my footsteps, I inched forward, heading toward the road. Wondering who and what awaited me there.

I'd been overconfident, too, thinking Vargas and the small man had made up the entire army. Too important a job for a pair of thugs.

Coury had been a precise man who specialized at deconstructing high-priced machines and reconstituting them as works of art.

A good planner.

Send in the B team while the A team waits. Sacrifice the B team and attack from the rear.

Another ambush.

Coury had come himself to take care of Bill. Bill was a living witness, and eliminating him was the primary goal. The same went for Aimee. Had he taken care of her- and Bert- first? I hadn't heard gunfire as I carried Bill away, but the firebombs and the kerosene blast had filled my head with noise.

I walked five steps, stopped, repeated the pattern. The mouth of the gravel drive came into view.

Choice point, none of the options good.

I found nothing.

Just the Seville, all four tires slashed flat, hood open, distributor cap gone. Tire tracks- two sets, both deep and heavily treaded- said the pickup and another working vehicle had departed.

The nearest house was a quarter mile up the road. I could barely make out yellow windows.

I was bloodstained and bloodied, one side of my face scraped raw, and my burnt hand hurt like hell. One look and the residents would probably bolt their doors and call the police.

Which was fine with me.

I almost made it before the rumble sounded.

Big engine, heading my way from Highway 150. Loud enough- close enough- for visibility- but no headlights.

I ran into the bushes, crouched behind a flurry of ferns, watched as the black Suburban sped past and slowed fifty feet before the entrance to Bill and Aimee's property.

It came to a halt. Rolled forward, twenty feet, stopped again.

A man got out. Big, very big.

Then another, slightly smaller but not by much. He gave some kind of hand signal, and the two of them pulled out weapons and hurried toward the entrance.

Anyone at the wheel? The Suburban's tinted windows augmented the night and made it impossible to tell. Now I knew that a run for the neighbors' house would be risky and wrong: Coury's shooting of Bill resonated in my head. Coury had pulled the trigger, but I'd been the angel of death, couldn't justify extending the combat to more innocents.

I crouched and waited. Tried to read my watch, but the crystal was shattered and the hands had been snapped off.

I counted off seconds. Had reached three thousand two hundred when the pair of big men returned.

'Shit,' said the shorter one. 'Goddammit.'

I stood, and said, ' Milo, don't shoot me.'

CHAPTER 45

Aimee and Bert sat in the third row of the Suburban. Aimee clutched Bert's sleeve. Bert's eyes lacked focus.

I got in next to Milo, in the second row.

At the wheel was Stevie the Samoan, the bounty hunter Georgie Nemerov called Yokuzuna. Next to him sat Red Yaakov, crew-cut head nearly brushing the roof.

'How'd you find us?' I said.

'The Seville car got tagged, and I got hold of the tagger.'

'Tagged?'

'Satellite locating device.'

'One of Coury's car gadgets?'

His hand on my shoulder was eloquent: We'll talk later.

Stevie drove to Highway 150 and pulled over just short of the 33 intersection, into a tree-shaded turnaround where three vehicles sat. Toward the rear, half-hidden by the night, was the pickup truck, front end facing the road, still loaded with fertilizer. A few feet away was a dark Lexus sedan. Another black SUV- a Chevy Tahoe- blocked both other vehicles.

Stevie dimmed his lights, and two men stepped from behind the Tahoe. A muscular, shaved-head Hispanic wearing a black muscle T-shirt, baggy black cargo pants and a big, leather chest holster, and Georgie Nemerov in a sport coat, open-necked white shirt, rumpled slacks.

The muscular man's T-shirt read: BAIL ENFORCEMENT AGENT in big white letters. He and Nemerov approached the Suburban. Milo lowered his window, and Nemerov peered in, saw me, raised an eyebrow.

'Where's Coury?'

Milo said, 'With his ancestors.'

Nemerov tongued the inside of his cheek. 'You couldn't save him for me?'

'It was over by the time we got there, Georgie.'

Nemerov's eyebrow arched higher as he turned to me. 'I'm impressed, Doc. Want a job? The hours are long and the pay sucks.'

'Yeah,' said Yaakov, 'but de people you got to meet are deezgusting.'

Stevie laughed. Nemerov's smile widened reluctantly. 'I guess results are what counts.'

'Was there anyone else?' I said. 'Besides Coury?'

'Sure,' said Nemerov. 'Two other party animals.'

'Brad Larner,' said Milo. 'That Lexus is his. He and Coury arrived in it, Larner was driving. He was parked near the house, waiting for Coury, when we spotted him behind the truck. Dr. Harrison and Caroline were tied up in the truck bed. Another guy was at the wheel.'

'Who?'

Nemerov said, 'Paragon of virtue named Emmet Cortez, I wrote a few tickets for him before he went away on manslaughter. Worked in the auto industry.'

'Painting hot rods,' I said.

'Chroming wheels.' Nemerov's grin was sudden, mirthless, icy. 'Now he's in that big garage in the sky.'

'Rendered inorganic,' said Stevie.

'Steel organic,' said Yaakov. 'Long as deyr someting left, he steel organic, right, Georgie.'

'You're being technical,' said Stevie.

'Let's change the subject,' said Nemerov.

CHAPTER 46

'Pancakes,' said Milo.

It was 10 A.M., the next morning, and we were at a coffee shop on Wilshire near Crescent Heights, a place where old people and gaunt young men pretending to write screenplays congregated. One half mile west of the Cossack brothers' offices, but that hadn't been what drew us there.

We'd both been up all night, had returned to L.A. at 6 A.M., stopped at my house to shower and shave.

'Don't wanna wake Rick,' he'd explained.

'Isn't Rick up by now?'

'Why complicate things?'