Dolan turned back to them. 'I'm not like them. I'm weak.'
Tim stooped and picked up the report from the gutter. He rolled it and pressed one end to Dolan's chest. 'Don't be.'
After a few moments, Dolan took the pages and stuffed them into his waistband. He pulled his shirt down, hiding them, and shuffled toward the porch that just four nights before had been the stage for Ted Sands's murder.
Chapter 73
Morgenstein stepped out of the shower with a shaggy bath mat wrapped around his waist, a stopgap towel that ended midthigh. He weaved a bit in front of the cracked mirror and took another pull from his fresh bottle of Bombay Sapphire. A used condom, infused with streetwalker-preferred strawberry flavor, stuck to the futon mattress behind him. He'd had a hell of a night, and still had seven hundred bucks of the snitch money hiding under the cap of his Speed Stick.
He shook his head, throwing flecks of water onto the stained mirror, then traded the square blue bottle for a Q-tip. He'd just inserted the cotton tip into his ear when a shadow flashed from the open closet to his left and struck his elbow.
He sagged back against the wall, a grasping arm knocking over toiletries and dirty glasses, the bath mat falling. He felt no pain, just a loud, constant rush, a seashell pressed to his left ear.
A revolver came into focus first, then Walker behind it.
Morgenstein's fingers scrabbled up his left cheek, growing sticky, and then he unscrewed the bent Q-tip from his ear canal. Blood ran through the fingers of his cupped hand.
He picked up the bath mat from the floor and secured it around himself, an incongruous act of modesty given what was at stake. The marks of his fingers were rendered on the cloth in crimson.
They'd told him Walker was going to come. He wasn't sure if he hadn't believed them or simply hadn't cared.
Grim comprehension hit him, a cold, chest-high wave. He cleared his throat, but it still felt coated with gin and phlegm. He couldn't hear himself well over the white noise permeating his skull. 'Your father would never harm me.'
Walker cocked the hammer with a thumb, the gun doing a tiny tilt and bob. 'I'm not my father,' he said, and squeezed.
Chapter 74
I heard you got shot.'
Bear took a turn too hard, and Tim braced against the door, almost dropping his cell phone. 'Shit, Dray, I'm sorry. I just got grazed. Coupla stitches.'
'For a few stitches I wouldn't have bothered staying awake worrying.' Despite her tone, her voice was uneven. She blew out a shaky breath. 'I figured if you were dead, Guerrera wouldn't have mentioned it so nonchalantly.'
In the background Tim heard Tyler fussing. 'He's not asleep?'
'Same story.' She sounded exhausted. 'This case goes on much longer, I'm filing for hazardous-duty pay.'
'Our space between sightings is shrinking. I'd say we're closing him down.'
'Yeah? How many stitches has he got?'
'He's losing some blood.'
'Do tell.'
As Bear flew through stoplights, not bothering to distinguish red from green, Tim described the events since the last time he'd checked in with her, shortly after Walker's sniper attempt at Beacon-Kagan had hit the news channels. Caden Burke's emergence, the shoot-out at Game, Tim's visit to his father-this alone was met with stunned silence-the visit to Morgenstein, the raid on the apartment, Tim's standoff with Walker, the trip to the hospital, and, finally, the failed interface with Dolan.
Not surprisingly, Dray zeroed in on a detail he'd long dismissed as insignificant. 'Walker dumped the Camry in the airport parking lot, right?'
'We already checked, Dray. There were no other vehicles stolen out of there around that time.'
'He drove away in something.'
'He might've taken the bus. A cab.'
'Covered in ash and reeking of trash? Maybe he wrote 'fugitive' across his forehead with a Sharpie, too?' Different tone: 'No, you can't have a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid. Go back to sleep or I'm gonna put my head in the microwave. Yes, I'll send your daddy in when he gets home.' Back to Tim: 'Plus, why bother when you're gifted at boosting cars, which he clearly is?'
'So?'
'So check what cars were stolen in the surrounding area that night. He's not gonna swipe a car from the lot claiming he lost the ticket. They ding you for two hundred bucks. He'd have to grab something a block or two away.'
The Ram screeched up to Freed's downtown high-rise. The doorman looked startled beneath his wannabe- Manhattan red cap.
Tim said, 'The task force is on overload. Will you get on it?'
'Sure. Guerrera has the parking-lot ticket with the time stamped on it?'
'Yes. Thank you. Gotta run.'
'Oh, and Timothy? Let's keep tonight's count to those five stitches. In you, I mean.'
An elevator operator rode with them up to the penthouse floor. Freed's building was one of the crown jewels of downtown's gentrification, twenty-five floors of luxury living for Japanese businessmen, Europeans who missed real city living, and the occasional East Coast star whose career required a seasonal transplant to within limo range of the studios.
Freed answered the door in a silk kimono-looking robe that managed to be masculine but earned a behind- the-back eyebrow raise from Bear nonetheless. They crossed a marble floor to a granite table suspended from the ceiling by two centered steel cables. His copy of the confidential report had been laid out, page by page, across the surface. Post-its with notes and questions, rendered in blue ink from Freed's Montblanc, lifted from the sheets like feathers. A floating fireplace magically burned logs. Someone rustled beyond the cracked bedroom door, but despite Bear's nosy detour in that direction, the identity-and gender-of Freed's visitor remained concealed. The wall-length window looked down on the rooftop bar and lounge of The Standard hotel. The pool cast a diffuse aqua glow over the scene-monkeys slurping bright name-brand drinks and rolling around on the waterbed cabanas. A projector Supersized Casablanca onto the side of the neighboring building.
Tim nodded at the pages on the table. 'Make headway?'
'You could say that. I've got X5-AAT pegged as Xedral's latest model, but I've been trying to figure out what L12-AAT is.'
'It was the final model of Lentidra,' Tim said, 'a viral vector they pulled back after they hit problems during animal trials.'
'They pulled it back, all right, but not because of that.' Freed looked troubled. He sat at the end of the table and scooted his chair in. 'This report is, among other things, a risk assessment. It provides a comparative cost- benefit analysis of both viral vectors.' He tapped a graph. 'This part shows projected profit margins for Xedral, mapped against those for Lentidra.'
Bear said, 'Xedral's projected profits are higher.'
'Significantly higher. Initially.'
