“All right. I promise.”
“I sure hope you’re not under the foolish, mistaken impression that I won’t have the heart to shoot you if you pull something. I’m a farm girl from Missouri. My dad is a gun nut. All the Belknaps are shooters.”
She walked around to the front of him, pressed the magazine release on his gun and took out the magazine, then pulled back the slide to eject the round in the chamber, closed it, and tossed the gun on the bed. Then she reached into her nightstand and took out a .38 revolver. “If I have to shoot you, I’ll use my own gun. I’m used to it.”
He smiled. “Shoot lots of guys?”
She looked into his eyes for a couple of seconds, as though searching for some sign of intelligence. Then she tossed his clothes on the bed, walked around behind him, unlocked his handcuffs, and stepped back, her gun in her hand.
Jerry Gaffney dressed, not slowly, but not making any unexpected or quick moves. When he was ready, he said, “Sandy, I apologize for lying to you. I regret it more than you know.” He stood and walked toward the side door.
“Wait.”
He stopped and looked back at her.
“Oh, this is stupid,” she said. “Never mind.”
“What?”
“I said never mind.”
He turned and went to the door, opened it, and stepped across the threshold.
“Wait.”
He stopped.
“Are you really a thug working for a gangster?”
“I’m a security professional working for Manco Kapak. He’s not a gangster. He owns Wash in Hollywood and a couple of clubs in the Valley. Once in a great while I’ve had to step in and physically prevent somebody from doing something foolish. I don’t think that makes me a thug.”
She sighed. “Better, but still not nearly enough. Don’t you see? I’m a daylight person. I can’t have a guy who’s even a little bit of a thug once in a while—a night person. Even dating a cop was going to be a bit over the line, but I kind of tried you on, because I thought you got your scars protecting people from bad guys, and if it didn’t work out, at least I gave a heroic guy a nice time. I could do that. But not somebody in a shady business, especially not somebody who’s a bit of a con man. I can’t be in a relationship with a guy and know there’s no particular reason to believe anything he says. So that’s that. You have to go. If I see you again, we’ll have to do the police thing again, using real police. If you come in the wrong way at the wrong time, I’ll have to shoot you.”
“I understand.” He stood there for a moment, then went out and closed the door. He walked slowly and deliberately to his car, got in, and drove. He put his Bluetooth earpiece in his ear and pressed his brother’s number on his phone.
“Yeah?”
“Jimmy. It’s me.”
“Not only did my phone already tell me that, but since you’re my brother, I might recognize your voice by now. Where you been?”
“Where you left me, using Sandy Belknap to get to Carver.”
“Did you?”
“He called. The son of a bitch called and told her we work for Kapak.”
“You didn’t deny it?”
“Of course I did. She found some problems with my ID, so here I am.”
“How did you leave it?”
“We left it that if she sees me again she’ll call the police or shoot me.”
“Sounds like the way you leave it with all your girlfriends. Did she mean it?”
“I’ve seen her cell phone, and I’ve seen her gun.”
“Are we getting any closer to Joe Carver?”
“She and I noised his name around town for a while, and it got his attention. He called her once, and he’ll call her again. She’s wonderful.”
“Can we put something on her phone to record it when he calls?”
“I’m planning to try, of course” He actually hadn’t thought about his next move yet. His rejection still stung too much. “What about you? Have you just been sitting on your ass waiting for your big brother to get to Carver?”
“Last night, Kapak had me and Voinovich put all the money from Siren, Temptress, and Wash in the safe at Siren and sit with it. Carver and that girl you met at the bank the other night robbed us.”
“You must be okay, since you’re talking to me. Is Voinovich?”
“Nobody’s hurt, but they hauled the safe away in that big-ass SUV Voinovich drives—that Sequoia. He’s kind of sensitive about it.”
“Jesus. Carver never sleeps. And that crazy girl, where did she come from? Did she fire any rounds?”
“She couldn’t wait. Right inside the storage area in the back of Siren—
“The whole thing gives me the creeps,” said Jerry. “How did they even get into the building?”
“The police are looking into that,” Jimmy said. “Look, I’ve got to get going on this other thing right now, so I’ll talk to you later.”
Jerry could tell that what Jimmy wasn’t telling was that it was Jimmy’s fault somehow. Jimmy had let them in, and it was probably something embarrassingly stupid. Jerry felt a wave of compassion for his brother. Having awakened naked and handcuffed, he understood, but compassion wasn’t the kind of emotion that lasted. “What other thing?”
“I don’t want to go into it on the phone. I’ll talk to you later.”
Jerry stared at his phone for a second, then put it in his pocket. He had a mission now. He drove to Sherman Oaks and stopped around the corner from the Eye Spy Shop, then walked the rest of the way. He knew that there must be cameras and things recording everything that went on at the store. If they had all that stuff, how could they resist using it?
Jerry stepped into the store, and he could see himself in the big monitor on the wall in high definition, stepping into the store. He surveyed the counters and shelves, which were full of gadgets that looked as though they were exhibits in a museum commemorating some repressive government that had fallen: buttonhole cameras that could peek out of a hat or coat or briefcase, microphones that could be inserted into telephones, others that could be plugged into electric outlets to transmit speech from rooms. There were video cameras disguised as clocks, radios, and audio speakers. There were lots of computer gear—keystroke counters, programs for collecting and reviewing instant messages.
He judged that the customers must be about evenly divided between parents who wanted to spy on their babysitters and nannies, and people who wanted to spy on their spouses. He found what he wanted right away. It was a radio transmitter hidden inside a surge suppressor. He had seen a power bar very much like it under the desk in Sandy Belknap’s apartment from his hiding place behind the sliding door in her closet. It had several things plugged into it: a laptop computer, a phone charger, a printer.
He bought the proper receiver and recorder too. The transmitter had a range of only three miles, but he could listen to the recorder by telephone. He took his purchases back to Sandy’s apartment building, and then drove in ever-widening circles until he found an apartment two blocks away. He found it in time to catch the building manager before he went off to work, and persuaded him to accept a deposit on the place and give him a key.
After another few minutes he called Sandy’s apartment. There was no answer, so he drove by and studied the windows and looked for her car. He parked, walked to the front door, pretended to knock with his left hand while he slipped a credit card into the crack between the door and the jamb and opened it. He set his surge suppressor beside Sandy’s and was pleased with the close resemblance as he plugged his into the outlet. He plugged her devices into his suppressor, making sure that they were in the same receptacles, took her surge
