Next time, listen to that voice telling you something is wrong.”
The young lady nodded wordlessly, inched her way past Zapata and Aguillar, then hurried up the stairs.
The cherub climbed back to his knees. “What the fu—?”
Zapata shocked him again. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I interrupt?” To Aguillar, he ordered, “Grab his arms. Cover his mouth.” When Aguillar had secured the man, Zapata pressed the stun gun to the inside of the man’s thigh and pressed the trigger, holding it there. The cherub screamed, the sound partially muffled by Aguillar. They held him down as he bucked under the shocks. Zapata shocked him three more times on the genitals, the neck, and the stomach. The chubby man whimpered.
“That’s for the ones you’ve already hurt,” Zapata said. “If you hurt more, I’ll find you.” He stood and walked up the stairs without looking back.
Francis Aguillar released the man, who remained curled on the landing in a fetal position. Aguillar looked from the cherub to Zapata as his employer walked away, confident that he had done right. Aguillar could not be so confident.
He rested his foot gently on the man’s hand. “Were you going to rape her?”
The man sobbed. “No.”
Aguillar pressed his foot down.
“Yes, okay, yes!” the cherub squealed. “Yes!”
Aguillar caught up to Zapata where the stairs fed out onto Flower Avenue. He was almost positive that his employer had already put the sexual predator out of his mind. He had been like this for all the time Aguillar had worked for him. He observed people and claimed to know them almost instantaneously. Zapata paid as well as any other criminal activity that he might have chosen, but it wasn’t the money that influenced Aguillar. Aguillar had simply never met anyone as smart as that man before. Not graced with great intellect himself, Francis still possessed enough in himself to appreciate it in others. He knew almost nothing about Zapata except that he was brilliant, an anarchist, and incredibly wealthy. Aguillar believed he’d made his money in another life, working in computers. Now he devoted his life to anarchy.
Aguillar caught up with him. They walked together in silence until Francis said, “You’re always right.” Zapata nodded and said objectively, “Yes, I’m always right.”
7. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2 A.M. AND 3 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Chris Henderson followed Dr. Czikowlis into Ryan Chappelle’s hospital room.
“I don’t understand how you can’t know anything,” he was saying.
“Me neither,” the doctor replied frankly. “He’s stabilized, but he’s still in a coma. At first I suspected some kind of barbiturate overdose or poisoning.”
“Poisoning?” Henderson said, surprised. “Chappelle doesn’t do drugs. But poisoning? Did you test for it?”
She nodded, picking up his chart and reading it for the fourth time. “His blood work came back negative. Nothing in his system.”
Henderson stared at Chappelle, inert on the hospital bed, air tubes running up into his nostrils. Cruel as it seemed to think it, Henderson had to admit that Chappelle looked better in a coma than he did in real life. There was an aura of peace around him that was the opposite of his effect on people when conscious.
“Please keep at it,” he said firmly. “In the meantime, I don’t want to alarm you too much, but there is a fugitive on the loose. I’m going to station a uniformed security guard on this door.”
“A fugi— security guard? Here? Are you saying this fugitive might come get my patient?”
Henderson held up a hand to calm her. “It’s not very likely. But the fugitive made a call and asked about Chappelle. I can’t imagine he’d get anything out of coming here, but better safe than sorry. The armed guard starts immediately.”
Jack and Teri had once argued at La Strada, a nice Italian place on the north side of San Vicente Boulevard in West Los Angeles. The argument had been over nothing, or everything, depending on how you looked at it: Jack’s work schedule, Teri’s feeling that she was competing against the needs of a country at risk. He couldn’t remember how it had started — it might have just been the continuation of a previous argument that had never been settled — but he did remember her saying, “Whatever you’re doing at work, it can’t be more important than our marriage.”
And he remembered himself saying, “Yes, it is.”
That hadn’t gone over well.
Now, just after two A.M. this Saturday morning, he was returning to the scene of that crime. San Vicente was deserted, and La Strada, which took up half the street level of an office high-rise, was pitch black. Even the neon sign in cursive writing had been turned off. The entrance to the restaurant was an apse carved out of the corner of the high-rise, with several large potted trees and a stone bench with carved lions for legs.
Jack parked the Maxima a half block away, on a side street perpendicular to San Vicente with a clear view of the corner. He waited there for a while, holding up a hand to keep Ramirez quiet. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular — there were too many places to hide — but he wanted a general sense of the area. A car drove by once, at fairly high speed, but there was no other activity. Jack got out of the car and motioned Ramirez to follow. He walked up to the corner, again keeping close to the walls and away from the streetlights. Trees lined the parkway between the sidewalk and the curb, so it was easy to stay relatively hidden until he reached the corner. He stopped short under the shadow of a blossoming pear tree. La Strada was right across the street.
“What are we waiting for?” Ramirez whispered.
Jack ignored him and studied the restaurant’s facade, wondering where Teri had hidden his package. He needed to move quickly to get the package, without fumbling around the storefront, so he wanted to guess correctly. She had three obvious choices for the stash: each of two potted trees, and the space under the stone bench, between the two lions. One tree stood thick with glossy leaves, though he didn’t recognize the tree itself. The other, though the same species, was frail, with fewer leaves and several branches no more than sticks. The lions stood there impassively, their jaws opened to roar.
Jack thought he knew where to look.
He walked quickly across the street, feeling immediately naked and exposed on the bare asphalt with streetlights and traffic lights laying bare his every move. He half expected to hear screeching tires or gunshots, but all he heard was the faint echo of his sneakered feet on the ground. He reached the far side and hurried into the apse, straight for the withered tree.
It was there, nearly invisible in the dark: a navy blue zipped pouch. Jack opened it and pulled out a thick wad of bubble wrap, then tore at the bubble wrap until its contents were visible: a spare SigSauer, three full high- capacity magazines, and a box of ammunition, along with new identification for Jack. The minute he slammed a magazine into place and racked the slide, he felt better.
His stomach dropped away a second later when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
Dan Pascal squeezed his girth into his government-issue Crown Victoria with the unhappy growl he reserved for this daily and inconvenient event. Once upon a time they’d issued him a Bronco, which was paradise for the big man, but Homeland Security had commandeered all those, so now he was back to packing his frame into the Vic.
To make matters worse, his cell phone was ringing. With an additional grunt, he shifted and stuffed a hand into his pocket, pulling out the phone with some difficulty.
“Pascal,” he announced.
“Marshal, Sergeant Mike Santomiere, LAPD.”
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“Not sure this is much, but we don’t have a lot. Thought you’d want to know that someone just reported a car stolen. Parked on DeLeone Avenue. It’s a pretty long sprint from the Fed Facility, but it’s doable.”
