Once he had the door open the man looked up the street to the left and then back to the right. Karch ducked behind the corner. When he heard the door close he stepped out and crossed the sidewalk to the Cherokee. Crouching behind the car, he watched through the front window of the business as the man approached the wall of postal boxes. When he bent down in the area where box 520 was located, Karch knew he had his man. It was Leo Renfro.
Karch turned his penlight on and put it in his mouth. He then put the Rollerboy down and lay down on it face up. He grabbed the underside of the bumper and pulled himself completely under the car. He had done an installation on a Cherokee once before and was not anticipating a problem. It was tight quarters and hot; his chest rubbed the greasy undercarriage at several points and he had to keep his face turned to the side to avoid scraping it or even getting it burned on the hot pipes of the exhaust system.
He reached to his legs and removed the satellite receiver and CelluLink transmitter from the right cargo pocket of his jumpsuit. Both were small, square devices that had been lashed together with tape. A small stub antenna for the cellular connection was part of the bundle. The base of the receiver was a heavy-duty magnet. He reached up and attached the devices to the car's undercarriage frame directly below the driver's seat. Though the magnet appeared to hold firm, it was always Karch's practice to supplement to be sure. From his right arm he unwrapped two long pieces of duct tape and used them to lash the devices to the framework, further securing them to the underside of the car.
Using Cassie Black's silent drill he quickly attached the ground wire to the car's carriage pan, using a self- tapping screw. He then rolled to the curb and tried to look up and through the front window of the mail box business. But the angle was bad and he could not see Renfro or gauge how much more time he had.
He quickly pushed back to the middle and pulled down the electrical conduit that ran down the center of the carriage pan. Using an X-acto knife he slit open the plastic casing and quickly pulled out a bundle of wires. He combed through them until he found a red wire, the color indicating it was a full-time carrier of current from the battery to the rear of the car – most likely to a trunk light. The end of the power wire from the GPS receiver had a cut-in connector that he clipped to the red wire and then squeezed down on until he felt it cut through the rubber coating and into the live wire. He looked over at the receiver and saw the faint glow of the red power light beneath the duct tape.
He didn't have time to push the wires back into place. Instead he moved immediately to the last piece of the installation, the GPS antenna. He removed the small disk from his left cargo pocket and started unspooling the wire it was wrapped in. Just as he connected the wire to the receiver he heard the door to the shop open. He quickly turned the penlight around so that the lighted end was inside his mouth. He waited.
The door closed and Karch watched as Renfro's feet started moving around the car to the driver's door. Karch wanted to curse but knew he had to be silent. He continued unspooling the line from the antenna.
As Renfro opened the car door Karch used the sound as cover as he pushed himself down the length of the Cherokee. He was now directly below the rear bumper, the lower half of his body protruding from beneath the car. He reached the antenna up and wrapped the wire around the exhaust pipe just as the car started and he was hit with a blast of hot exhaust.
Karch stifled a cough and quickly brought the disk up and placed it on top of the bumper, where it would be in a direct line with the satellites above. He used the last piece of tape from his sleeve to tape the wire down and hold the antenna to the bumper.
It wasn't a finesse job but it would have to do, given the circumstances of the installation. He knew the GPS antenna would be spotted the first time Renfro looked at the back end of his car. But Karch was gambling that that wouldn't happen this night. What mattered was the next hour, maybe even less.
The Cherokee shuddered as it was put into drive. It started to move away from the curb. Karch let the bumper pass over his face and then quickly rolled off the Rollerboy and pressed himself to the curb. He kept his head down and listened for any hesitation in the Cherokee's engine. There was none. Renfro kept his foot on the gas and drove off. He never looked back. Or if he did, he was checking the road behind him, not the curb.
Karch finally looked up as the Cherokee receded from view. He smiled and got up.
As soon as Karch got to the Lincoln he took the laptop computer out of the briefcase, raised the antenna and booted up the QuikTrak software. With the receiver and the equipment he had just installed on Renfro's car, Karch would be able to track the Cherokee's movements with a global positioning system that took a signal transmitted from the car to a constellation of three satellites miles overhead and then back down. The satellites triangulated the precise location of the car and sent the data by cellular link to the cellular modem in Karch's computer. The QuikTrak software allowed him to follow the car's movements with real-time data displayed on street-level maps on the computer screen, or he could download historical data from the satellite that would show the car's entire movement over a selected time period.
Karch was first interested in making sure the installation had no flaws and he would be able to track the Cherokee by satellite. As a fallback he had committed the car's license plate number to memory and would be able to locate the car through the archaic means of a DMV trace in the morning, a move he hoped to avoid because it would leave an official trail of his activities.
He typed in the receiver code and frequency and waited. After what seemed like an interminable wait during which he could feel beads of sweat pop from his scalp, the lines of a map began to appear on the screen. After the street lines came the words Los Angeles Region Map. Then a pulsing red star appeared and began trailing a line. It was the Cherokee. The legend at the bottom of the screen gave the location.
RIVERSIDE DRIVE – WESTBOUND – 23:14:06
Karch smiled. He had him. The installation was successful. He would be able to follow a map right to the treasure. He hoped.
'Fucking A,' he said out loud.
He decided not to follow the Cherokee's real-time movements in his own car at the moment. He figured that it was likely that Leo Renfro had opened the padded envelope in the mail shop or in the car. Either way, the playing card he found inside would be both confusing and threatening. It was Karch's guess – based on Leo Renfro's two drive-bys before finally stopping at Warner Post amp; Pack It – that his target would take a circuitous route to his next destination in an effort to carefully identify and then lose any surveillance. He typed in a command creating a file for historical data collection beginning immediately. He then closed down the program and put the laptop back into the briefcase.
Just after pulling down the zipper on his jumpsuit and opening the window to get some air, Karch heard a woman's sharp scream from the other side of the parking lot. He turned toward the sound but didn't see anything. He opened the door and got out and looked around. He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He was about to get back into the Lincoln when he heard another shout and saw movement on the other side of a BMW parked about ten slots away.
Karch wasn't wearing his holster with the Sig Sauer. He had taken it off and left it under the front seat before putting on the jumpsuit. Rather than get the weapon now, he peeled off the top half of the jumpsuit and reached behind his back to remove the little. 25 from the magician's pocket in his pants. He then tied the arms of the jumpsuit around his waist and went to investigate the screams.
Palming the small black pistol as he casually walked down the row of cars, he got to the BMW and heard the sounds of crying. He saw a couple standing at the front of the car. A young man and woman. The man had the woman bent backward over the front hood. He was leaning on her and kissing her neck while her head constantly rolled back and forth as if trying to get away from the rest of her body.
'Everything all right there?' Karch called.
The man looked over at him.
'We're fine. Why don't you just piss off?'
Karch started moving down the side of the car. The man suddenly stepped away from the woman and turned to Karch. He stood arms and feet wide apart and waiting.
'Why don't you leave her alone?' Karch said. 'It doesn't sound like she – '
'Why don't you fuck yourself? She's fine. She just likes to yell, okay?'
'No, not okay. Maybe you just like to make her yell. Makes you feel like you're in control of things.'
The guy suddenly leapt forward in a charge that Karch was expecting. Like an experienced bullfighter he
