Internecine Read online

  “That’s too much to wrap my brain around right now,” I said, indicating my drink, as though it was to blame, although we both knew better.

  “We’ll stick a pin in it for later,” she said, graciously relenting, and allowing me my chance to be charming and funny. Katy even reached over to touch my hand, several times, to make a point or to mock some lame in the bar. And you know what? Past that, I don’t remember a thing we talked about, because all I could think of was that briefcase, sizzling away in the trunk of my car. I acquitted myself dazzlingly, which means I hung on for an hour past the time we had originally allotted for our pit stop. The plateau of our gestating relationship beyond our mutual jobs was broadening, and she seemed willing, but cautious (which was very smart) . . . and it was all pointless because I knew what I really wanted to do. I guess she was a little confused when I dropped her off.

  File it for later. We mutually promised to “do this again, soon.”

  I knew I was lying, but not because I wasn’t attracted to her. A stronger attraction refused to vacate my brain.

  After another paranoid moment wasted in thinking about suitcase bombs, I went ahead and opened my prize, in private.

  If it had blown up in my face, I might have been better off.

  The dossier inside the briefcase was a detailed look at the daily movements of the aforementioned Alicia Brandenberg, current campaign manager for G. Johnson Jenks, Kroeger political client, and possible phony-baloney. The kind of detail that suggested not merely rich resources, but enemy surveillance.

  Every other item inside the Halliburton presented myriad possibilities. It seemed like a toyset for contract killing, as least as far as I understood such things from espionage fiction. But what was it for? Attack or defense? Was Alicia Brandenberg a target or a player? Maybe she was supposed to pick up the kit? Maybe the guy on the phony FBI card was supposed to kill her? Or shield her? Were the cellphone numbers for one, or both of them? If I called one of the numbers, would I tumble into some sort of bureaucratic panty-twist? The guns were dense and compact, their heft testifying to their serious reality. Real guns, real bullets—hollow-point bullets, in fact—dropped off at the airport with no more concern than a FedEx envelope full of invoices.

  I’ve been on a shooting range once or twice but don’t own any firearms. Toying with them, now, was a queer, macho thrill. Take that. You’re history. You talkin’ to me? I played to my reflection in the window glass, trying to stand tough. If you don’t know how to entertain yourself, or enjoy your own company, then nobody else will like being around you, either.

  (I thought only cops could buy hollow-point ammo in the state of California; it turns out ordinary citizens can, too. I checked. Being detail-biased is part of my job. People who don’t sweat the small stuff, in my book, are called “unemployed.” I don’t have much sympathy for people who are content to slide by, with minimum effort, toward the easiest way out. They become the voyeurs of other people’s lives.)

  The itinerary for Alica Brandenberg was specific enough to suggest that she employed handlers to keep her dance card jam-packed. Visits to a gym or a salon were shoehorned between public appearances and inner-sanctum think-tanking: Address assoc. hotel managers + reception. Meet researchers for update on Cal Pablo landfill/reclamation. Lunch w/Ripkin rsrvs. Bistro Garden 12:45 P.M.

  Full stop. Ripkin, as in Theodore Ripkin, our political nemesis in the Jenks campaign? Rewind: Ripkin, as in our current lieutenant governor, noted by papers and newscasts as being in our fair town for most of the week? I knew he owned a house down here, somewhere expensive and private.

  And apparently he was having lunch with the campaign manager of his opponent.

  Guns, ammo, Alicia Brandenberg. Add Ripkin, however peripherally. Stir, shake, pour intrigue. Better: This might be the hangnail-edge of something that could be turned against Mr. Ripkin, for the benefit of all of Burt Kroeger’s employees, not to mention his opponent, Mr. Jenks. A peek behind the curtain only I knew about, so far.

  I had to give Katy Burgess a peek at this stuff, at the first opportunity.

  Unless it was a setup. A trick, a trap, a gag, an advanced marketing scheme, or maybe one of those advertising role-playing games. There are some people I would not put this past, but I hoped Katy was not one of them.

  Pedicure/private session w/Molly. Molly might also have been a masseuse; either way, Alicia’s schedule bespoke plenty of loose petty cash to make all her running around more convenient. She was being chauffeured from gig to gig, too: Confirm BLS pickup 7:30 A.M. (310) 576-0020. BLS was a high-end livery service, and it looked like the car and driver were Alicia’s for the entire day, at $120 per hour, less tip.

  There was also a page subheaded Profile Action Items that more or less blurted outright that Alicia was romantically liaisoned with somebody named Garrett J. Stradling, corporate bigwig. Another page solely about Stradling revealed that he was the president of a company called Futuristics, Inc., which name I did know, from my job at Kroeger—Futuristics had been heavily involved in selling the Metro Rail subway project to the whole of Los Angeles at retail plus a million percent. Stradling had owned half the companies under the construction contract. After Metro Rail was a fact, I think Stradling went into private enterprise; I did not recall a mental picture of him. His profile had settled into the fog of past history. He had probably traded up, into anonymity, and what was left of Futuristics was most likely being run by somebody else. Executive turnover is one of the best ways to mint cash in a dicey economy.

  Okay, this was getting interesting, in a Lifetime Channel way. Big money, power games, sex, and intrigue. Somebody phone Harold Robbins.

  Wait . . . Harold Robbins is dead, right? The guy who once proclaimed himself to be the “world’s best writer” is dead. (I know some movie producers who would say, “call him anyway.”) Man, what a dated reference. For decades, Robbins was conversational shorthand for best-selling glitterati soap opera, the kind involving power-grabbers and lustful indiscretions. Beach reads. You know: Universally accessible melodrama about common human concerns as suffered by incredibly rich people. Always remember your cultural talking points. The problem comes when your topical shorthand spoils on the shelf and you haven’t bothered to stay current on what has slid into their place. Voilà, you’re old, and past it. Okay: Somebody call John Grisham. Great; in a few years nobody will get that one, either. Ever heard of William Shakespeare? Same deal.

  I need to catch up on my reading.

  It was mildly exciting to look at these puzzle pieces as a lurker, the way you try to suss out a detective movie because you have the comfort of not being at risk yourself. You try to catch the trick or the twist, and if you are like most ordinary people, you wind up resenting the story either way: If it fools or outfoxes you, you conclude that it is too murky or dense; if you guess the snap, you dismiss it as too easy. The story isn’t allowed to be smarter than you or vice versa. It has to be just right, like most porridge, and indeed most blockbusters and best-sellers. Sorry, but that’s the way the normal world works, and I should know because, like you, I think I’d never get fooled that way—because that’s the luxury of living life as a bystander, where you never risk anything.

  Paycheck junkies always admire brash criminals until the bad guys get caught. Commuters dismiss the flamboyant as pretentious children of privilege. Ordinary people cluck about revolutionaries, broadcasting their disdain for any kind of boldness. At some point, dreams are lost because the day-to-day fight to hang onto to what you’ve already got is too exhausting. You console yourself by talking about all the traps you would never fall into; all the ways you would never get fooled.

  I wondered if I had become one of them. It happens while you’re not looking.

  I had to call Katy. Risk the embarrassment of the case being some elaborate gotcha. Cross the line of calling one of my fellow professionals during their free time. The Halliburton was weirdly crazy, but also very normal in its reassuring weight
and reality. The guns sure seemed real . . . and if they were, did that mean the dossier spoke true? The FBI ID card evoked stability and reminded me that there were agencies and authorities trained to deal with crazy weirdness.

  And if Katy started laughing at me, or got mad, then at least I would know more than I knew now, and that was an excitement I had not honestly felt in a very long time. I had to know.

  It was still before midnight. It took four rings and I got a machine.

  Beep. “Katy? It’s Conrad. I know you’re probably already asleep, but—”

  “Conrad . . .?” Her voice was a little blurry, but she had picked up, live, terminating the auto-answer. She screened her calls the same way I did.

  “I woke you, didn’t I?”

  “No, I was asleep anyway.”

  I will admit that I admire people who can be sarcastic right off the pillow.

  “Is this one of those heavy-breathing, middle-of-the-night phone sex things?” she said. I pictured her groping around in the dark by the glow of a nightlight.

  “It’s about Jenks and the campaign,” I said. “Something I just realized, spun off something you said.”

  “Oh, Conrad . . . shelve it till tomorrow, huh? I don’t wanna work now; I’m naked. Just talk dirty to me or something for five minutes and let me go back to sleep.”

  “I know; I’m sorry—”

  “You know I’m naked?” I heard her emit a congested little snicker.

  You can imagine the pictures that were now forming in my brain. Some DNA codings go all the way back to the dawn of time.

  “No, of course,” I spluttered. “I mean I’m sorry for the lateness of the hour and the rude awakening and all that, but I found something you need to know about . . . I think.”

  “Is it important?” More serious now; a bit more awake. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes to both. Yes, I think it’s important. Five minutes?”

  “You’re going to pay for this, big-time. Five minutes. Go.”

  I thought of her propping herself up in bed, clearing wisps of hair, maybe lighting a cigarette, settling in for this bedtime tale.

  But I never got started because somebody was banging on my front door and calling my name.

  I jumped like a teenager caught jerking off. My heart was trying to bend my ribs outward.

  The door muffled the voice, “Conrad? You home? Oh, please be home . . . Conrad, come on, it’s me, Celeste, from down the hall? 307? Conrad? Open up, please . . .”

  “Hang on a second, Katy,” I said to the phone.

  “I’m hanging on.”

  “Be right back.”

  I left the unit rocking on the table (to put it back on the base station would be to hang up), slammed the Halliburton (almost guiltily), and hustled to my front door’s security peephole.

  First off, I live in a security building. That’s (1). (2) was easy: I didn’t know anybody on my floor, not by name. Which suggested: (3) that I had just crossed some invisible line and the game was on, whatever it was.

  I wondered if there was a (4), dangling. Something I was missing.

  I didn’t know any Celeste from 307. I’m 318. Come to think of it, I not only didn’t know anybody on my floor, but every soul in the building was a mystery to me. Not “neighbors”; that’s why you pay for the security. Through the peephole I saw . . . well, cleavage. A hint of leather binding it all together. A woman’s face, vaguely Asian, distorted by the eighteen-millimeter vantage of the spy lens. Black unbound hair. Kind of pretty. Stranger in distress. When I first heard the door, I’ll admit I engaged in a brief fantasy that Katy had sought me out and shown up unannounced, naked beneath a trenchcoat or something, with a plaintive speech prepared about how she couldn’t let our evening go without just one kiss. This wasn’t that. Katy was still on hold, miles away.

  “Can I help you?” (Why do people always say that?)

  “Conrad? It’s Celeste, from down the hall. Three-oh-seven. I know you don’t know me, but oh God, she’s not breathing and the goddamn cellphone went dead!” Her panic seemed genuine and her sentences were rear-ending each other in urgent need. Tears on her face. “I know your name from the mailbox please please can you just call 911 you don’t need to let me in and nobody else is home, oh my god—”

  Even before I got the door completely unbolted she seemed ready to grovel, saying oh thank god over and over. I have a steel Sentry crossbar lock with a hand crank. I like the Industrial Revolution look of it, and it can forestall a battering ram. The door is solid-core and cross-girdered. Nobody gets in, unless I want them to.

  If nothing else, I wanted a better look at her. Sorry.

  She was wearing black calfskin trousers and engineer boots, a kind of bustier-corset thing, and a silk wrap over that to cover her bare shoulders. Bright gray eyes the color of aluminum dust. Now she looked more exotic; Brazilian, maybe. And she kept talking in a torrent before I could interject.

  “Oh, great, great, good, I so knew you were home, you’re really a lifesaver, Conrad, I’m sorry we don’t really know each other, but like I said I’m from down the hall—”

  “307,” I said. She had a roll of black duct tape in one hand.

  “—yeah and I’ve got this, like, total problem that I just know you can help me with, right? Please?”

  I was working on the reply when she hit me smack in the forehead with the center of her palm, and I blacked out before I could hit the floor.

  My first name isn’t on my mailbox. That was the missing (4).

  I remembered the wet, beefsteak sound my skull had made against her palm and the feel of head-butting a concrete post. Then my dreamy attention was diverted by a sensation comparable to being stabbed in the brain with a stiletto made of dry ice. I woke up in a rush, with the stench of an ammonia ampoule flooding my nostrils, and there she was, looking at me the way you’d look at roadkill on your stoop.

  “C’mon, wake up, goddammit. Stop pretending you’re asleep. People do that at the dentist all the time; they pretend to be gassed out when they’re awake. I hate that.”

  My eyes hurt to open. Rusty hinges. I definitely had a headache. I imagined scores of burst capillaries above my eyebrows. “I don’t—”

  “Spare me,” she overrode me with a wave of her free hand. “Don’t ask who I am, or what I’m doing here, et cetera, because that’ll just waste time. I don’t care if your name is really Conrad Maddox or not. It doesn’t matter.”

  She had used my downtime to relock the door and familiarize herself with the contents of my wallet. The phone was cradled. Good-bye, Katy.

  “You’re a mess that needs cleaning up, and don’t ask why, because you fucking know why.” She cocked a thumb toward the Halliburton, still on my dining-room table.

  Open, now.

  Missing one of the guns, which accounted for her free hand.

  “Stupid,” she said dismissively.

  I was mummified by black duct tape into my Dansk leather recliner, my ankles, wrists, and throat bound tight. It was hard to breathe.

  She screwed a silencer onto the business end of a SIG SAUER. The size of the suppressor made the gun unwieldy, no good for anything except close-range work. I already knew about the bullets, and my mind painted nasty pictures. She pointed the gun at me, almost experimentally, testing for balance.

  “Shouldn’t mess around with things that don’t involve you, Conrad. Shoulda stayed in your nice, safe, normal world of the walking dead. Curiosity, the cat, Pandora’s box, all that? Bad idea.”

  What could I say? That I had the briefcase by accident? That I was not the guy she was looking for, whomever that doomed soul might be? Either way, she’d probably shoot me sooner, based on the quality of my excuse. This was a million times worse than hey officer, you’ve got to be kidding, I know my rights, I pay your salary. This woman’s attitude said there was no room for negotiation—or stalling. In her mind, the jury had come back, and nobody was smiling.

  “And you read the fucking fi
les. Jesus. Y’know, if you’d’ve kept the case shut, you might have had a chance. Not now. So sorry.”

  She was wearing a pair of gloves, from the case. She flipped the bogus FBI ID wallet open right in front of my face.

  “See? That’s not you. So what are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” I managed to say.

  Worse than the worse I’d just thought of, what if the case was meant for me? I didn’t understand any of it. That made me the de facto biggest idiot in my area code. If the stuff in the case was meant to stimulate some revelation that might keep me from getting blown away right now, that magic golden punch line was staying under cover, sure as hell.

  She shrugged. “See? Makes no sense. You’re going to die for a reason that makes no sense. That’s really dumb.”

  I abruptly understood what she meant about wasting time with fruitless, obviously desperate explanations. The sheer uselessness—mine—encompassed in her contemptuous use of the word stupid.

  She snapped the action of the SIG SAUER, which set the hammer to full cock, and aimed directly between my eyes from about nine feet away, probably to avoid getting my brain matter on her boots, which looked expensive. “Thanks for the fingerprints on everything, though. Makes my part easier.”

  She smiled, holding the gun in a two-handed grip.

  My mouth was constricted into an O-shape (think of Munch’s The Scream) and my throat dried up as I tried to formulate some half-assed protest I couldn’t think of anyway, and my whole body flinched and flinched again, trying to contract, and time really does expand, like they say, during stress or torture, and bang.

  I don’t know what happened.

  There was a blinding flash of hot, solar-white, phosphorescent light, and a harsh blast of sound that seemed to punch all the air out of the room. I thought it was the gunshot, never mind the silencer. The sound of death is always loud, and for five, maybe ten, seconds, I was certain I was paid in full, or at least mortally perforated. My heart tried to break my ribs and pole-vault out my throat. All I could see were milky, purple sunburst globes. My nerves were screaming. I had an itch in my lower back that was driving me nuts.