empty, and I spotted no one lingering or watching the house. I wasn't surprised that the media had decamped after shooting their soft leads last night. But no ongoing surveillance from the cops? That pretty much confirmed that the terrorist story sold to the press was the flimsy cover I'd suspected it to be.
I remembered a lesson I'd learned in another life on the bleached-white tundra. Liffman's Rules: When you don't know what to do, wait longer.
It was a fairly busy street, so I walked to the corner gas station, drank a cup of dense coffee, and returned to see if anything had changed. As I turned the corner, a police car appeared, slowed a bit in front of the house, and continued on its way. They were making a cursory show of keeping an eye on the place, at least, but it still hardly felt like a terrorist watch. I wondered who made those decisions and at what level.
I stuck my hand in my pocket, clenched it around Charlie's key. I'd checked it at the five closest post offices, starting with the one for the house's zip code. The key was appropriately sized for the P.O. box locks, giving me a stab of excitement each time it slid home, but it had refused to turn. Even if my locksmith bro had guessed right, there were countless other P.O. Box 229s in Los Angeles, let alone the country.
To figure out whatever Charlie wanted me to know, I wasn't sure what else I could do. Besides break into a crime scene.
Back in my hiding spot behind the van, I realized that I was balking because I was scared. This just wasn't the kind of thing a reasonable person did. But nothing about this situation felt reasonable.
I walked briskly up the sidewalk toward the house, timing my arrival with a break in traffic. I slipped through the crime-scene tape blocking the gaping hole the Jeep had made when it had blasted through the garage door, and I crouched in the silence, listening for shouts or approaching footsteps. I heard nothing but the drip of a faucet in the rust-stained sink, rats moving in the walls, the sound of my quickened breathing. By ducking under that tape, I'd crossed a line. In the dark quiet, the danger seemed suddenly more tangible.
After ten minutes, or twenty, I rose and poked around the garage, careful to keep back in the shadows. Several jars on a warped shelf held dried industrial glue. A jackhammer tilted in the corner, its red handle gleaming. A few oil-slick wrenches beneath a dusty workbench, a stack of National
Geographies near the step, a faded plastic sandbox on end. I knew it was a rental even before I pushed through the creaking door into the empty interior.
I stood in silence, listening to the sounds of the house. A groaning pipe, a tired floorboard, a loose shutter. There was literally no furniture. A plastic McDonald's cup in the sink. Grease-spotted wrappers in the tipped-over trash bucket. Empty drawers on top of the stove, refrigerator shoved out from the wall-the search had been thorough.
I stepped into the living room. Beams of yellow from the streetlights shot through countless bullet holes, skewering my body as I passed through.
In the tiny bathroom, the medicine cabinet had been torn from the wall and thrown into the tub, bits of mirror twinkling in the faint light like gems. The folding closet doors in the bedroom had been ripped back on their hinges, one of them snapped, and a few items of clothing dumped on the floor. An army-green sleeping bag lay bunched in the corner, as if to make as little an intrusion on the square of dusty carpet as possible. As if Charlie had wanted to curl up there and disappear.
I paused in the doorway, the loneliness of the life lived here settling into my bones. Even if the Service had cleared the place out, it was obvious that Charlie had lived like a squatter. Like someone biding time. Until what?
I walked over and straightened out Charlie's sleeping bag, then lay where he'd slept. A neighbor's porch light glowed through the vertical blinds. The low vantage and the room's bareness added to a feeling of purposeful desolation. As if he were punishing himself for something. As if he didn't believe he deserved more than this.
The tiny den across the hall was empty, the closet bare, save for an attic hatch. I pulled myself up and peered around the crawl space. I could see where numerous boots-law enforcement? — had stamped through the blanket of dust.
Dust.
I dropped down and hurried back into the garage, flattening against the wall to the side of the blown-out garage door. With a finger I drew a line in the dust on the lids of the glue jars. And again on the top cover of that stack of National Geographies. I forced myself to wait to see if there would be another police drive-by. It seemed an eternity, but finally the car materialized, slowed, drifted off.
Then I scurried past the gaping hole to the jack-hammer in the corner.
I touched that gleaming handle.
No dust.
I searched the slab for any signs of chiseling or new concrete. None. Back inside, moving quickly. A cockroach skittered across the worn-out linoleum, but there was no sign that the flooring had been peeled back.
I closed my eyes, running through possibilities. I thought about how Frank had installed that alarm monitor beside his bed so he could sleep knowing it was right there.
Racing back into the bedroom, I tugged the sleeping bag from the corner and ran my hands over the carpet, feeling for bumps in the concrete beneath. Perfectly smooth-it would have had to be or it would've been discovered in the search. In the stripes of light from the blinds, I noted how the carpet edges lifted ever so slightly from the walls in the corner. From this angle I could see that it had been pulled up for about three feet in either direction before being smoothed in place again.
It took a few pinches to get a grip on the carpet, then I peeled it back. It came easily, revealing a floor safe embedded in the concrete slab.
I was breathless. The house had been searched, but no one had bothered to lie where Charlie had lain in his sad little corner, had bothered to inhabit his world of asceticism and paranoia.
The lock in the floor safe took a tubular key. I'd hauled Charlie's key around all day, and it didn't match the safe he'd slept on top of every night. It made me wonder how many more secrets a guy like Charlie had.
I sat back on my heels like a little kid. A muscle car blew by outside, the engine spatter loud through the thin walls. A draft rippled the vertical blinds, making the strips of light roll across my face, the walls, making the room come alive. I felt a surprising calm, the still excitement I used to get when I read a ball coming out of the pitcher's hand and knew I would hit it before it was halfway to the plate.
I rose and headed into the kitchen. I pulled the McDonald's cup from the sink, reached down through the rotting rubber guard into the garbage disposal. My fingers brushed a magnetic box. I pulled it out, slid back the grimy lid, and held the tubular key to the faint light.
My head buzzing with childish excitement, I retraced my steps, sank to my knees on the tugged-back carpet, and lowered the key into place. It fit snugly, the gears shifting in the floor safe. I blew a breath through clenched teeth. The weighty door lifted silently. Hooked to the inside handle, a rope trailed down into shadow. When I tugged, whatever it was connected to gave surprising resistance. I pulled up the rope hand over hand, not sure I wanted to see what would rise into view.
A rucksack, just like the one Charlie had brought with him into San Onofre. It was full, stuffed so the fabric was taut. I undid the buckles and flipped it over before I could lose my nerve.
Out tumbled stack after stack of hundred-dollar bills, bundled neatly in purple bands.
Chapter 12
With $180,000 slung over one shoulder, I walked as casually as I could back toward my condo. The nearest parking space I'd found was five blocks away, not bad considering that it was past nine o'clock and folks had slotted their cars for the night. I paused to glance in store windows and pretended to tie my shoelaces to check if anyone was following me. All these years later and here I was again, edgy as a fugitive.
As I approached the corner mart, a woman with pursed lips confronted a massive man, his rotund form draped with layers of ripped, dirt-blackened clothing. Even the real-estate prices hadn't driven the smart homeless people out of temperate Santa Monica.
The woman pulled a dollar bill from her purse and handed it to him. 'Do not spend this on alcohol.'
'Absolutely not, ma'am.'
