11
Serena marveled at my new hair color and especially the bruise: “That shit is tight, prima.” She assumed I’d done it myself, and I didn’t explain to her about Tess. CJ and Tess were the only really sane people in my life, and I took care to protect them from all the others, who, like Serena, were by necessity a little crazy.
She took me to where I’d parked the Aprilia and followed as I rode it to Chato’s chop shop for storage. I wasn’t happy about leaving it behind, but there’s a big difference between a sport bike and a roadster. My Aprilia had no panniers, no storage. Neither Serena nor I traveled heavy laden, but this was a mission. We needed to carry gear.
By midafternoon, we were on the 101, heading north in her Chevy Caprice. I took the first shift driving. As I did, I told her what I’d learned and what I believed about it: that everything grew out of last year and my clash with Skouras’s men.
“The mobster’s crew again?” Serena said. “We shoulda killed those pendejos when we had the chance.”
Serena liked to talk like that, as if she were as bloodthirsty as the gangsters of legend. I didn’t know whether to believe it. There were a lot of years I hadn’t been a witness to her life, though as far as I’d heard, she hadn’t ever killed anyone.
I told her that among the things I was going to need from her was partly boring stuff, like going into mini-marts to pay for food, so my notorious face could stay off security cameras. She nodded and didn’t complain.
Our relationship was flexible like that. Normally she was in charge and I was her lieutenant. But now my future, maybe my life, was at risk, so this was my mission, and I’d lead it. Serena knew that. We’d been friends too long to let ego issues get in the way. We’d hashed that stuff out long ago.
Then Serena said, “Hey, I got you some stuff. Extra cartridges for your piece and—” She dug in the black gym bag at her feet and came up with a small white pill bottle from which the label had largely worn off. She shook out part of the contents in her hand. Glancing over, I saw Dexedrines, Vicodins, Ambiens, as well as some plain orange-brown Advil tablets.
She said, “You mentioned stakeouts—that’s what the Dex is for. The Ambien so we can sleep when we need to, between stakeouts. The Vicodin, who knows when that’ll be helpful?”
“I’m not sure we should be traveling with this stuff.”
She shrugged. “We’re both carrying unregistered weapons, you’re wanted for murder.…”
“So why sweat the details?” I finished for her.
A few hours later, we stopped in King City to eat. I didn’t want to risk going into a fast-food place, so Serena went to buy takeout we could eat in the car. When she was gone, I went to a pay phone outside a grocery store, turning the “bruised” side of my face toward the wall. The ugly mark in itself might draw attention I didn’t want.
The phone rang three times before he answered. “This is Ford.”
“It’s me,” I said.
“Hailey?”
“There are some things I should add to our earlier conversation.”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to give you the address of the apartment where I’ve been living in L.A. for the past four months,” I said. “If your techs dust for fingerprints there, they’ll find all of mine except the left little finger, the one I lost since I was fingerprinted for the Army’s database.” I paused. “That print is the only one that it’s possible the San Francisco techs could have found in the Eastman place.”
He absorbed that. “You’re saying,” he said, “that someone could have your amputated finger and be using it to create a kind of biological forgery?”
“I can’t rule it out.”
It was a theory I’d come to unhappily, thinking about it on the drive north. Last year I’d thought Quentin was likely to be the “fetishist” who’d needed a trophy from the torture session. If he was, and he was also behind the sale of my identity papers and my gun … well, maybe he was both inventive enough and disturbed enough to think of it.
“How’d you lose the finger?”
“That’s a story for another time,” I said. “Let me give you the address to my apartment.”
After I’d hung up, I wondered if I was being paranoid in warning Ford about a biological forgery, as he’d called it. It was a theory that echoed Tess’s question from earlier: How much of this was about me? The sale of the identity papers and even the gun I could write off as simple greed on Quentin’s part. But if they found my fingerprint in the Eastman house, that would be personal. Quentin would have to know he was setting me up to go to death row.
I watched birds circle over the parking lot, looking for dropped french fries or bread crusts. The 101 was a cool roar not far off.
Was I creating a bogeyman in my head, building up Quentin Corelli into a master criminal when he wasn’t? Adding up what I knew about him, it didn’t come to much: a little older than me, a foot soldier for Skouras and now for Joe Laska, good-looking in that golden brown Italian way, tightly wound, kinetic, foul-mouthed, misogynistic. He was a nasty piece of work, but I wasn’t sure he was capable of engineering a complicated frame-up. Neither did I know if his resentment of me burned that hot.
I picked up the receiver of the pay phone again. There was a second call I wanted to make, and again I thought it would be safer from a pay phone whose number wouldn’t show up on caller ID.
I didn’t know how Jack Foreman would respond to hearing my voice, that of a hotly pursued murder suspect, on the phone. Most journalists supported law and order, but at the same time they rejected a role as unofficial agents of the police. Some went to jail rather than turn over their informants, notes, or film to the cops. Jack Foreman, cynical and hardworking, struck me as likely to be in that camp. I didn’t believe he’d automatically call the police after getting off the phone with me. If he believed I’d really committed the crimes, sure. But he’d known me. I had to believe that the idea of me as a double murderer wouldn’t add up for him.
A year ago I’d had his home phone number committed to memory, but now I couldn’t remember it. A quick call to directory assistance told me that there was no John or Jack Foreman in the published records. So I requested the number for the Associated Press in San Francisco.
I fed more coins into the slot—a long-distance phone card was clearly going to be in order—and dialed the number. After two rings a woman’s voice answered: “Associated Press.”
“I’m trying to reach Jack Foreman,” I said. “Is he in?”
“I’m sorry, he’s not,” the woman said. “Jack’s on sabbatical.”
“Sabbatical?” I repeated. “Do you know when he’s coming back?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t,” she said. “He’s in Kiev, teaching investigative journalism at the university level. I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with him. Could another reporter help you?”
“No,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”
I hung up, thinking that it was good that Jack was branching out and taking a break from the grind of being a newsman, but wishing that he’d timed it a little better. He’d been my only potential source of information and help in San Francisco.
Then I half turned, almost jumped in my tracks, and whipped my head around to face the phone again. Behind me, only six feet away, were a pair of uniformed police officers.
“—didn’t mean it like that. Of course it’s a tragedy, with a wife and kid, too,” one of them was saying. “But how often do you get to be part of a huge investigation like that? It’s something that really makes a department pull together.”
“I’d rather not pull together, if that’s the price of it, two lives.”
Were they talking about San Francisco? Even as I tried to overhear them, I looked for something to do to justify my continued presence at the pay phone. I pulled the phone book off its metal shelf and opened it, as if searching for a listing.
The first cop was speaking again. “I’ll tell you one thing, she’s lucky she pulled that shit up in SF. I know some guys on the job down south. LAPD would eat her a-freaking-live.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” The second guy sounded older, and he spoke more slowly. “She killed a cop. Wherever she gets caught, I think she’s gonna come to Jesus pretty quick.”
I heard their movements as they passed behind me. Looking to the right without turning my head, I could just see a squad car parked nearby, clearly their destination. I began to slide the phone book back onto its shelf.
At that moment the cable that attached it to the phone snapped free. The book tipped in my hands, and I couldn’t catch it in time. It fell to the pavement with a loud smack.
Quickly I sat on my heels to retrieve it, as the two cops stopped and turned around.
“You okay there?” the younger one said.
“Yeah. Fine.” I didn’t make eye contact.
His partner drew closer. “Hey.”
I looked up. There was nothing else to do. Anything else would have been suspicious behavior.
The younger one was blond and blue-eyed, with a face that was hard-boned but innocent-looking, the kind of face that lost its freckles only a few years ago. His partner was more solidly built, with short-cropped light brown hair and a full mustache. His name tag identified him as Pratt.
“What happened here?” He lifted a finger to his own cheekbone, mirroring the bruise on mine.
“Oh, nothing. I was sparring at the gym.” I shoved the phone book back into place and stood up.
“Really?” the younger guy said. “In town? Do you work out at—”
“No, I don’t live around here. And I should get going. Be safe, now.”
I turned and stepped off the curb, trying not to project haste. It was unwise to cut off a conversation with cops before they considered it finished. But neither was it smart to give them time to study my face at length.
“Miss! Wait.” It was the voice of the older one, Pratt.
So sorry, didn’t hear you. I kept going.
“Hey, wait.”
He wasn’t going to let it go. Reluctantly I stopped and turned to face him.
He caught up to me at an awkward half jog. He said, “Listen, maybe I’m off the mark here, but if someone’s hitting you, there are resources.”
He reached into his pocket, drew out a billfold, and produced a card. “The top two numbers are local, but the bottom two are nationwide, since you say you don’t live around here.” He extended it.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it from him. “Nobody’s hitting me. But I’ll keep it, just in case.”
“Good.” He regarded me uncertainly. “You know, you do look familiar.”
“Really? But I’m from south of here. Outside of Lompoc.”
“Oh, yeah? I know Lompoc. That’s Air Force country.”
“Right. I was just a townie, though. I didn’t mix much with the military people.” I fingered the card as if hesitant. “Can I go?”
“Yeah, you can go. Use that card if you need it.”
Walking away, I decided not to go straight to the car. Should he look back, I didn’t want him to see the vehicle I was traveling in, nor Serena when she approached. If the puzzle pieces fell into place for him, sometime later, I didn’t want him to have any new information to pass along about Hailey Cain, other than about my new brown hair and fake bruise, which couldn’t be helped.
I angled across the lot, heading for the delicatessen where Serena had gone, disciplining myself not to look back in the direction of Pratt and his partner. When I pushed my way through the door, Serena was at a self-serve condiment stand, getting napkins and straws. There were two white bags on the counter in front of her.
“Hey, I was just coming,” she said.
“There’s cops out there.”
Her gaze shifted to the windows. “Where?”
“Up near the store. They saw me but didn’t recognize me.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“You get the car and come around. The less they see of me again, or us together, the better.”
She nodded, put the napkins and straws into the bag, and left.
I stood inside the door, not too close, watching her retreating form. I couldn’t see Pratt and the other guy, but their car was still visible. A group of high-school-age kids came in, laughing together and briefly blocking my view. Then, when they were past, I saw a second police car crawling slowly up the far aisle of the parking lot, in the direction of the first.
This was probably a popular shopping center for coffee and lunch breaks. That was probably all there was to it.
Or Pratt could have called them.
Had he recognized me and just been playing me with the wallet card of abuse hotlines? Was he engaging me in conversation to get a further look at my face? It didn’t make sense, unless he was a careful guy, too careful to confront a known cop killer in a public place, with an inexperienced young partner.
But I’d been looking at his face the whole time he’d been seeing mine, since I dropped the phone book. I hadn’t seen anything change in his expression. Either he had the best poker face in the world or he’d been ignorant of who I was.
The Caprice reached the curb outside the deli at about the same time that the second squad car pulled in next to the first. Lifting my chin, I pushed the door open and ambled quickly but casually to Serena’s car. Then I pulled the passenger-door handle, which snapped back against the door. It was locked.
“Serena!” I bumped the glass hard with the side of my fist, then lowered my head against the edge of the roof, face tipped down, out of view. Serena reached over and opened the door, the latch clicking free as she did so. I slid hastily inside.
“Sorry,” Serena said. “That other five-oh car distracted me.”
I slid down, out of view again. “It might be nothing. Don’t panic.”
It took a good fifteen minutes on the freeway before we were both satisfied it had been nothing. Serena had glided out into the center lane of 101 North and kept the speedometer needle at the posted sixty-five miles per hour, while I stayed in my uncomfortable position below the dashboard. Meanwhile she grilled me on my encounter with the police.
“How close did they see you?”
“Close. Like, normal range for conversation.”
“You talked to them? Are you crazy?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” I said, and explained about Pratt seeing my bruise and his suspicions of abuse.
“Okay, so he didn’t suspect anything.”
“Probably not.”
I straightened up, then reached down between my feet, to where I’d left the deli bags on the floorboard. I got busy unwrapping sandwiches and handed Serena’s to her.
“Listen,” I said, poking a straw through the lid of my Coke, “while we’re on the subject of the five-oh, there’s something I should tell you. I don’t want you to find out by accident and think I was hiding it from you.”
“That sounds heavy,” she said. “What is it?”
“I’ve been talking over the phone to a cop about the Eastman case, a cop that thinks I didn’t do the murders.” I sipped from my Coke. “It’s Magnus Ford.”
Serena’s eyebrows jumped sharply, though she didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Ford, the freaking Shadow Man himself? You just called up and got through to him?” Then alarm broke through her surprise. “Hailey, you’re not gonna roll over on me, are you?”
“Of course not, you goddamn know better,” I said.
“I did, prima, but you’ve never been wanted for two murders before. You’ve got a lot to gain by trading.”
“First, Ford doesn’t know I’m Insula,” I said, my tone matter-of-fact. “Second, even if he did, no one would go light on a cop killer just to get at a gangbanger, even a shot caller like you. Third, if I was going to cut a deal like that, I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you I’m talking to the guy. How smart would that be?”
Serena nodded slowly. “I guess so,” she said. Then, curiously, “So what’s he like?”
As if I’d met a celebrity. After a second the absurdity struck both of us, and we started laughing.