car window!” he ordered.
Patrol in all four cars had opened their doors and taken cover behind them, weapons leveled. The occupants of the car complied, a set of hands sticking out from each side.
“Open the doors slowly. Get out and lie down on the ground!”
Again the occupants complied, and a moment later two men had climbed out, lying down on the asphalt in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard. As one, the law enforcement officers hurried forward.
Pascal stalked forward, moving suddenly much faster than one might have expected from someone his size. Catching Captain America had been easier than he’d thought. He watched the LAPD officers handcuff the occupants and haul them to their feet. Pascal straightened up to his full height and stared down. at two terrified eighteen- year-old kids.
Jack and Ramirez parked the just-stolen Nissan pickup truck a block away from the InterContinental Hotel and left it there for someone else to find. They walked into the four-star hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The lobby was quiet except for the Latino man and woman running an industrial-sized scrubber across the tile floor. Ramirez walked over to the house phones mounted over an elegant marble ledge. Picking one up, he punched in 7 plus a room number and waited while it rang.
“No answer?” Jack wondered.
Ramirez shrugged. “He did sound pissed when I called before. Wait—” Now he was talking into the phone. “Yeah, we’re here. Okay, Van, we’re coming up.”
They found a bank of elevators and pressed the button for the twenty-third floor.
“So this was the guy you were working with, the one you murdered for?” Jack asked.
“Sort of. His name’s Vanowen. I worked for him, he worked for the guy in charge. I never met that guy. Not sure I want to.”
They reached twenty-three and walked down to 2346. It was a good hotel, with wide hallways and thick, soft carpet. Ramirez knocked and the door opened, then closed behind them. The man who’d admitted them was short and round with a thick walrus mustache and close-cropped reddish-brown hair. His arms weren’t cut, but they were big, bulging out of his blue polo shirt. He was holding a Glock.40 in his hand.
“It don’t figure,” he said by way of hello. He motioned for them to sit down on the couch. The hotel room was an L-shaped suite, with a sitting area and, beyond a door, a bedroom. A couch stood near the door, and beyond it was a small counter extending out into the room, creating a divide. Beyond that was the bed.
“It don’t figure why you’d break out to come see me.”
Jack didn’t say anything. He was sure in this case it was better to speak when spoken to.
“It does,” Ramirez replied. “We didn’t break out to see you. We broke out because someone was trying to kill us. We need a place to hide out.”
The man sat down in a chair across from them, the Glock resting casually across his leg. “Rami, you know I owe you and you know why. You need someplace to hide, I’m gonna do it. But I don’t know squat about you,” he said to Jack.
Jack didn’t like seeing the muzzle of the Glock, but at the moment he had no choice. He kept his hands on his knees. “Ask away.”
“Tell me a story.”
Jack told the story he’d used with Ramirez, the same story Ramirez knew. Like all good lies, it was as close to the truth as possible: he was a former agent for Homeland Security who’d murdered a scumbag and was awaiting trial and decided he didn’t want to wait once MS–13 decided to kill him. He told the story of killing Tintfass. The man called Van seemed amused.
“I could check your story,” Van said, rubbing his thick mustache. “I got people who could check.”
“Knock yourself out,” Jack said.
Van figured he would. “Uh-huh. Meantime, why the fuck should I help you?”
“I come in handy, if there’s any trouble.”
Vanowen waggled the gun. “Why’d there be trouble? I got a legitimate business, ask Rami. No reason for trouble.”
“If you say so. I just figured if Rami was going to kill someone, there was something worth killing for and you were okay with it.”
“I got people to answer to, people who don’t like new faces. I probably oughta kill you right now.”
Jack immediately relaxed. He had heard this kind of talk before. It almost always came from someone who had no intention of doing any killing. A man cold-blooded enough to kill him would have done so already, without compunction. Vanowen wanted to appear tough, and he wanted Jack to know that he was capable of killing if need be. But Jack would give him no need.
“I did Ramirez a favor getting him out. He’s doing me a favor by getting us a place to lay low. That’s all that’s going on here. You decide you want some extra help, I’ve got some skills you might use.”
Vanowen did not ease off, but his face shifted. He’d made some decision. “So tell me how you got out of jail.”
Jack started to tell the story.
There was no such thing as a good way to knock on the door at three-thirty in the morning, so Nina Myers didn’t try. Bauer was a fugitive and they needed leads A.S.A.P. She found the little house off Kester Avenue, a square one-room stucco building on a flat square lot. She rang the bell and pounded on a metal door knocker in the likeness of William Shakespeare.
“Who. who is it?” called a sleepy, frightened voice on the other side of the door.
“Federal agent, ma’am.” Nina held up her ID to the peephole above William Shakespeare’s head. “Sorry for the late hour, but I have a couple of urgent questions.”
There was a long pause — so long that Nina started to decide whether to sprint around back or try to kick in the door — when the bolt turned and the door opened. The woman standing there was short, with thin black hair, a big nose, and a very unwelcome look on her pale face. She wore slippers and a frayed blue terry-cloth robe that she kept tucking and re-tucking around her body. She opened the door just enough to talk, but kept her body wedged into the open space.
“What questions?” the woman asked grumpily. She had clearly been sleeping.
“You’re Marcia Tintfass?” The woman nodded. “Nina Myers. I’m afraid I have a question or two about your husband.”
“I figured,” the woman snapped. She was waking up, and her sleepiness was turning into indignation at being awakened at such a ridiculous hour. “What kind of question couldn’t wait a few more hours until people were awake?”
“The kind that have to do with your husband’s murderer, who just escaped from jail.”
Marcia Tintfass’s eyes popped open. She looked around, as though the killer might jump out from behind Nina. “Come in then.”
Nina entered and sat down on the couch in a living room lit only by one standing lamp. Many of the shelves were bare, and Nina noticed two moving boxes in the corner. “You probably know all this, but I gave a big statement to the police already. I really didn’t know much about my husband’s business.”
Nina had reviewed the file on Adrian Tintfass’s murder, and learned everything there was to know about Marcia Tintfass, which wasn’t much. “I understand. We’re really interested in the killer himself—”
“I didn’t know him,” Marcia said hastily.
“I, yes, I know you didn’t know him. We’re just trying to figure out why he did it. The man who murdered your husband was an exemplary agent for the federal government.”
“Right up until he killed my husband, I guess.”
“Are you moving?” Nina asked.
The question caught Marcia off guard. “Oh, yes. You know, now that Adrian’s gone, it doesn’t, well, you know, it doesn’t feel right being here.”
Nina nodded but didn’t believe a word of it. One learned a lot from interrogating prisoners, and Nina had interrogated her fair share. Marcia Tintfass’s words were totally reasonable, of course, but her delivery had been off. Nina had the distinct impression that, in her sleepiness, the woman had forgotten a line and then picked it up,
