18

“IT’S A TACTICAL VEST,” Matty was explaining. His eyes stared out into the darkness of the parking lot. They were wide and unblinking, like he was trying to take in everything all at once. I thought he was about to jump out of his skin. “The vest has everything that I need.”

Except a shirt, apparently.

Once Matty was in the passenger seat and we had peeled out of the Beverlys’ driveway, he had changed into the vest, wearing nothing underneath. Matty still worked out and had a bunch of tattoos up and down his arms and onto his chest. I envied him. One, the tats did make him look badass, and two, he had the discipline to get his ass to the gym.

We had arrived with a couple of minutes to spare. Just off the 101, the Park and Ride was a lot you could leave your car while you rode into work with a coworker. A bold plan to get cars off the roads.

Spoilers: There were more cars than ever in the city.

Which meant the lot was pretty much empty. We were parked in a corner with pools of light dotting the way to the entrance. The only sound was “Mouhamabou Bamba” by Orchestra Baobab coming quietly out of my car’s speakers.

Annoyed, I asked him, “What do you need in that vest that you can’t put in a pocket?”

“It has everything, Jimmy, that I need, OK?” He looked at me. His eyes were dilated. Shit. I no longer thought that he was vigilant.

“Are you high right now?” It would explain that moment outside the bathroom at the Beverlys’. And the whole afternoon.

He shook his head, still looking out into the parking lot. “I took some Adderall, that’s it.”

Adderall. Shit, shit.

I turned to look fully at him. “What the fuck, Matty?” I did not need this wild card. Not when we were this close. I had rehearsed everything in my mind. I had gone over how it should go. Just like Gordon had taught me. And now this.

He gawked back at me. “Why don’t you focus on the job and let me handle my shit?”

“Your shit?” I couldn’t believe this. “At least I’m not high right now.”

“I’m not high. I am prepared. I’m ready for whatever they got coming for me.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” I started to wonder if this was connected to what had happened to him with Sayles’s bodyguard outside his apartment.

He looked back out through the windshield. “Of course I hear myself. I hear everything right now.” He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “I hear you being a little bitch about me taking Adderall.”

Frustrated, I snapped, “I’m not a little bitch. I just don’t think you should be high right now.” He was about to correct me, so I corrected myself. “Sorry. Abusing ADHD medication. Better?”

He grunted and brought his attention back to the parking lot.

I rubbed the side of my head and leaned against the doorframe. This whole conversation was making me nervous. I didn’t like the fact we had $50 million sitting in the back seat of a car worth $3,000 and my partner was a jacked-up — I looked at Matty — weirdo. No ifs, ands or buts about it. He was a jacked-up weirdo.

It was fine. It was fine. Things were going to turn out OK. I would take care of everything, I’d give them the case, and they would give me Patrick. The end.

“Car.” Matty pointed past me. I swatted away his hand and looked. Sure enough, a car was coming. Matty started breathing in through his nose and blowing out through his mouth.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m filling my body with oxygen.” In through the nose, out through the mouth.

I shook my head. “You don’t need to do that. You’re going to hyperventilate.”

That car passed by and kept going.

“See? Wasn’t our car.”

Matty darted around and kept an eye on it. “It’s going to turn around.” There was an edge to his voice. “He wants to make sure we’re alone.” He looked at me. “That we didn’t bring in cops.”

“Sure, Matty, sure.” As if I didn’t know what I was talking about.

The car turned around. Dammit. Matty was right. He grinned at me.

The car parked about twenty feet away, facing us. The front side window was tinted, so I couldn’t see inside. The headlights flashed. I took a breath, turned off the music, and turned to Matty.

Before I could tell him to chill the fuck out and that I would handle everything, he had stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind him. I reached back, grabbed the briefcase, and clumsily brought it forward. Getting out of the car, I walked to the front. Matty was posed, legs wide, hands gripping the tactical vest. He focused deeply on the car, like he was daring it to fuck with him.

The driver’s-side door opened. Briefly the interior light went on, and I strained to see if Patrick was in the back or if I could see anyone else in there.

The driver wore black jeans and a black sweatshirt, and their face was hidden under a ski mask. I asked myself where they had gotten a ski mask in L.A. this time of the year. OK, the answer was probably Amazon. Then I thought I should really focus on the present situation.

“I’ll take that,” the driver said, pointing to the briefcase. Their voice was all gravely and super serious. They were clearly trying to disguise it, like Batman or something.

Just be cool, Jimmy, I told myself. Just be cool.

I had taken a half step forward when Matty put a hand up, stopping me. “Not until we see the package.”

Jesus. The package? What sort of network television nightmare was I living in? Even the driver was confused, his head tipping as he looked at Matty.

Matty clarified. “I want to see that Patrick Beverly is alive and well.”

The driver put up a cautionary finger. “You don’t get to make demands here.”

Matty took a step forward, balling his fists.

Putting a hand on his shoulder, I said, “Can we do this without all this macho stuff?”

Matty pulled his shoulder away, not even bothering to look at me.

I tried again. “I got this.” I stepped in front of Matty, the suave cop to his bad boy. I said to the driver, “How are you? Lovely night to end a kidnapping.”

The driver looked around, wondering just what the fuck was I doing. Great question. I kept tumbling forward. “My aggressive partner is right. It would be great to see Patrick. We wouldn’t want to turn over so many... Look, there’s a lot of diamonds here.” Keep it together, Jimmy. “It’s all here. The amount you asked for. But I would — we would — be in a lot of trouble if we handed them over and you drove off without us having an alive Patrick to bring back to his parents. I don’t have malpractice insurance to cover that sort of screwup.”

I smiled. Smiles are always disarming in the tensest of situations. Try it sometime.

The driver thought about it. Then he leaned back and pounded the glass. The rear window rolled down, and sure enough, there was Patrick, tape over his mouth sitting inside the dark car.

“We good?” said the driver in his fake-ass voice.

“Sure.” I took another step forward, then paused. “So, what’s the plan? I hand this to you, you’ll open the door? Or, you know, you open the door now then I hand you the case?”

The driver tensed up. I could feel Matty getting tense too. Ask clarifying questions and everyone gets nervous...

“Guys. This is a transaction. A business deal,” I explained. Sure, this was a federal crime, but for the most part, yeah, a business deal.

I walked closer to the driver, extending the case. He was wearing black latex gloves. He reached out for the case and —

The driver was on the ground, Matty on top of him. He had tackled him for some unknown reason. There was a struggle, as both men tried to punch each other. I moved around them, trying not to yell, trying to figure out how I could stop this without drawing a police presence, and my back was to the kidnapper’s car. I heard the car door open, a partner stepping out —

My head ringing, I was on the ground too and the world was a carousel. I felt like throwing up.

Something was snatched from my hand. What was pulled from my hand?

I heard shouting.

A car peeled away.

Someone was saying something over and over. I managed to get to my feet and turn.

Matty. It was Matty. He was on the ground in a pool of light. “Fuck!” he was shouting. He was holding his stomach.

I looked at my hands. They were empty. The briefcase. They took the briefcase. And they still had Patrick.

“Shit.” I stumbled toward Matty as the concrete rose and dropped in front of me. “Matty... they took it, they took...”

As I got closer to Matty, I could see it. All the blood pouring out from underneath his stupid vest. I knelt beside him and unzipped it and there was more blood all over his chest. Fuck me, fuck me.

I put my hands on top of his, over the wound — wounds, there were multiple wounds. We held hands as he kept bleeding. The blood was warm, but it was cooling. Matty was mumbling and struggling.

I didn’t hear a gunshot. He must’ve been stabbed. “Just keep still, Matty. It’s going to be fine; it’s going to be fine.” I wondered how I was going to call 911 when I couldn’t take my hands off his guts or he would bleed out. Maybe someone was going to come by. It was a parking lot. Surely someone needed to park. Maybe another meeting of kidnappers was going to take place. This was as good a place as any for a drop. The 101 was right there.

So I shouted. “Help! Help me! Someone! Help!” It was at the top of my lungs. I screamed and screamed as Matty moved less and less. I could hear clicking sounds as he tried to breathe.

He stopped moving. His eyes looked at me like they were saying, “Why didn’t you warn me?”

Fuck you, Matty. Fuck you. I told you not to do this.

I stood up when I realized there wasn’t anything left I could do for him. I shouted at him. I screamed at his body about how stupid he was. I shouted about how beautiful life was and if he had taken my advice at the party, maybe he could be doing commercials again and maybe he could have had a chance at a real comeback. After all the shouting was done, nothing changed. He was gone and I felt empty.

Exhausted, I fell to the ground, flat on my ass. I wiped my blood-covered hands on my suit before reaching into my coat pocket. I grabbed my phone. My fingers slipped and left prints all over it. I wiped my hands again, finally able to dial 911.