Everything looked wrong the second I got out of the car. The street was deserted. Huge, dark clouds laden with cold rain scudded across an oppressive sky. I hadn’t yet purchased a replacement burner and had been unable to call ahead to say I was returning. As I approached the house, a feeling of dread held me in its frozen grip.
The front door was unlocked. I glanced left and right and pulled out my Glock. Using my left hand, I slowly turned the knob and entered. Holding my weapon with both hands, I swept the foyer. The house was silent. My instinct was to run, but I remained there, waiting for a sign.
“Cuco? Sasha?”
Slowly, I moved towards the living room. Everything looked normal, except for the television, which was tuned to Cartoon Network. That seemed odd. I listened again. Nothing but the sound of the TV.
“Hello?”
I switched off the screen and moved quietly towards the kitchen. When I reached the entrance, I stopped cold. Blood sprays adorned the walls and the floor. Taking a labored breath, I entered gun first. I noticed someone’s leg next to the table. Looking at the shoe, I knew it was Cuco. Inching closer, I took in the rest. He’d been shot multiple times, lying face-up and outlined in a dark pool of blood. In his right hand lay a knife.
The gray-suits had been here.
I knelt down and felt his neck for a pulse. He was dead cold. I went through his pockets, looking for his phone. Nothing. Hiss! I whipped around—gun pointed—and saw the coffee maker on the counter. The ready light was on. I unplugged it. Carefully, I checked the rest of the kitchen, expecting to find the others in a similar condition. But Cuco had died alone.
I started down the hallway. When I got to the bathroom, I hesitated. The door was closed. I tried the knob. Unlocked. Wiping away the sweat, I turned the knob and pushed the door open.
The pale linoleum floor was slick with blood. Huddled in the corner like a frightened animal lay the body of the boy from next door—Ernie. He’d been shot twice in the chest. Stepping around the shiny pool, I crossed the bathroom, knelt down, and pressed his carotid artery. The boy’s glassy eyes stared back at me. Like Cuco, he had died alone.
Since the beginning of the plague in Tres Marias, I’d seen more violence than most people. And I had become inured to it. But the sight of this small, bloodied boy brought stinging tears to my eyes. He was collateral damage. The agents had been looking for Sasha. When they saw the boy, they didn’t hesitate to kill him. One less witness. Who would tell his mother?
Looking up, I saw the medicine cabinet door open. I grabbed my medication and stared at it. It had been prescribed to a Dave Wales and listed the name of the prescribing doctor. As I slipped it into my pocket, something nagged at me. What if the gray-suits had found it? I needed to warn the doctor. Cuco’s landline was most likely tapped. I would call Dr. Fernandes when I was able to.
I entered Cuco’s room and went through his things, hoping to find an address book. I discovered one in his dresser and flipped through it. A number of people were listed, some bearing the same last name. I slipped the book into my pocket and finished searching the house, including the garage. I didn’t find any more bodies, and prayed Sasha and her brother were holed up somewhere safe. From the look of things, they’d left in a hurry, leaving her clothes behind. I decided to pack them up—as well as my stuff—and take them with me.
I tried to sort out what to do next. All I could think about was Cuco’s family in Mexico. If I hadn’t come back, they might never learn what had happened to him. And there was no way for me to bury him. If I survived this nightmare, I vowed to write to them, plus send whatever money I could. What I couldn’t understand is how the gray-suits could have tracked us down. However they had done it, it meant we were vulnerable to more attacks, no matter where we went.
I didn’t find the Tahoe at the private garage where I’d left it and hoped Vlad and Sasha had driven it to safety. After a quick stop at an electronics store, I returned to my car and called Vlad. I expected him not to answer an unknown number but he did.
“Hello?”
“It’s Dave. Hang up and call me back from an outside phone.”
I hung up and waited for his call. Twenty minutes later, my phone rang. It was Vlad. I could hear Sasha in the background telling him something in Russian.
“Where are you?”
“I just left Cuco’s house. Where are you?”
“At a friend’s house.”
“How’s Sasha?”
“Feeling sick but okay. We almost didn’t make it out of there.”
“How did you manage it?”
“Cuco knew about those black Escalades. When he saw one outside, he send us out the back door with your car keys. We climbed fence and ran through the streets to your car. Is Cuco…”
“Dead. And so is the boy.”
“I am sorry. Better get over here.”
“Are you sure it’s safe where you are?”
“Yes.” He gave me the address in Glendale.
“I’ll be there in a couple hours. Don’t go anywhere. Get takeout if you want but stay where you are. And get rid of your phone. Someone may be tracking it.”
“Okay,” he said and hung up.
I called Dr. Fernandes to warn him about the gray-suits and got his answering service. They didn’t know where he was and said they would take the information. But that’s not the kind of message you can leave.
I prayed they hadn’t found him.
Traffic was maddening, and it took me over an hour to get across town. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining. When I got to Jeong’s, he was inside the yard, inspecting a vintage Coupe de Ville. As soon as I got out of the car, the dogs went at it. This time, Jeong gave them a menacing look, and they retreated to the back of the building.
He spoke to me through the gate. “How’s the Tahoe?”
“Fine. I need to get rid of this.”
“I can’t use this kind of vehicle.”
“No, see. I don’t want any money. I just need to make it go away.”
He opened the gate and came out to inspect Cuco’s car. After a few minutes, he came back over.
“You want me to destroy it, right?”
“Yeah. Here are the keys. I need a ride.”
“Wait.”
He pulled out his smartphone and opened the Uber app. After a few key taps, he turned to me.
“Driver will be here in five minutes.” Twenty minutes later, the car arrived.
“Uber car for Dave,” the driver said with an accent through the rolled-down window.
The guy seemed pleasant enough. He looked to be around thirty with dark wavy hair, dense black eyebrows, and full lips, dressed in a half-unbuttoned silk shirt, revealing a dense forest of black, curly chest hair.
The fact that he drove a Prius would have made me believe I was in for a safe, uneventful trip, if it hadn’t been for the busted taillight and a rear door that was partially bashed in. After a struggle, I got the door open and was met with the strong odor of sweat and falafel. I threw the two duffel bags in, climbed in, and rolled down the window. Jeong had given the driver an address a couple miles away from where Sasha and Vlad were staying.
“So Glendale, right?”
“Yeah. How long will it take?”
He was fiddling with his laptop computer, which lay next to him on the passenger seat. I felt my blood begin to boil.
“Hey!”
“What?”
“How long till we get there?”
“How do I know? I don’t control the traffic.”
I wanted to pimp-slap this asshat in the worst way. Instead, I sat back and closed my eyes, pretending I was riding in Vlad’s town car. Because Jeong had paid for the service, I didn’t want to do anything that would reflect badly on him.
As we made our way to the 110 freeway, the hyperactive moron seemed to be checking his rearview mirror a lot. I turned around to see what in hell he was staring at and noticed a tan Dodge Dart following closely. The driver looked middle-aged and angry. And he was alone.
“Who’s tailing us?”
“Don’t worry about him. Taxi inspector. Jerkoffs are always after me.”
“Why?”
“Because I look foreign.”
He opened the glove compartment and began rummaging around inside, causing him to drive even more erratically than usual. Among the debris I noticed a brightly colored hash pipe. Grabbing a box of orange Tic Tacs, he slammed the door shut and tipped back a bunch into his mouth. Without looking, he reached around and offered me some.
“No, thanks.”
I had now gone from annoyed to worried. The way this idiot was driving, I might not make it to Glendale. I turned around. The Dodge Dart was still tailing us.
“Is that guy going to pull us over, or what?”
“Relax, boss.”
He checked his rearview mirror and hit the gas, flying dangerously through a red light. I could hear the squeal of brakes, followed by a collision. When I turned around, the Dodge Dart was nowhere in sight. The driver hit the gas again and sped onto a freeway onramp, zooming past the other slower cars.
“Traffic’s not too bad,” he said.
I decided that once we stopped, I was going to shoot this guy in the neck. But for now I sat there and let the ride happen. Before long, his iPhone, which was mounted on the windshield, went off. Annoyed, he looked at it and answered, using the car’s microphone and speakers.
A woman with a shrill voice began talking fast in a foreign language I didn’t recognize. He did likewise, screaming at the phone. After disconnecting, he glanced back and shot across three lanes of traffic and, barely avoiding a semi in the slow lane, got off near the LA Convention Center.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to make a quick stop.”
“What? No!”
“It will only take a minute.”
Traffic was heavy, and he was forced to weave his way slowly. I’d decided I was definitely going to mess this guy up. In a few minutes, he screeched to a stop in front of some club, parking in a red zone and flicking on his hazard lights. Hundreds of people were lined up outside, waiting to get in.
A petite woman with long, dark hair, wearing a skimpy shimmery red top, black leather pants, and black stilettos was waiting near the curb. Her arms were folded tight across her chest. She looked upset. The driver ran up to her, and immediately, they got into it. I thought he was going to beat her right there. Everyone could hear them screaming at each other.
Someone walked up to my window, startling me. It was the taxi inspector. Where had he come from?
“Excuse me. If I were you, I would get out and walk.”
“What?”
“Mr. Ghorbani is a menace. It might be safer to leave now.”
As I exited the vehicle with my stuff, another man in a shiny black suit took the woman firmly by the arm and escorted her inside. The driver screamed something at them and turned towards the street.
“What did he say to her?”
“I don’t speak Persian,” he said.
When the driver saw the taxi inspector, he bolted down the sidewalk, pushing through the dense line of people and knocking down a woman as everyone gestured wildly and yelled at him. Incredulous, I watched him disappear around a corner. Then, I heard a beep and looked at the iPhone inside the Prius. Incredibly, someone had just requested his driving services.
“Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”
We hiked back to the taxi inspector’s vehicle, which was parked on another block, and he climbed in. I was nervous about going anywhere with this stranger, but I needed to get back to Sasha and Vlad and didn’t want to wait for a taxi. I opened the rear passenger door to toss in the duffel bags and found a Costco-size package of Depends adult diapers. Then, I jumped into the front seat. Soon, we were on the road, keeping to surface streets.
“Where are you headed?”
“I’m meeting a friend at the Americana mall.”
“Glendale?”
“Yeah. That’s a lot of diapers.”
“Ass cancer. It’s a bitch, let me tell you.”
“Sorry.”
“Wife couldn’t deal with it, so she left.”
“That sucks.”
“That’s what I get for marrying a girl twenty years my junior. Used to have a hell of an ego back then. Pride. It’s a sin, you know. Now, God’s punishing me, I suppose.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I redirected. “What’s going to happen to that Uber driver?”
He sighed deeply. “Nothing, probably. I’ll file another report. That company is so lawyered up, they can get out of anything.”
“On the plus side, they do seem to conduct thorough background checks.”
The taxi inspector coughed up a hoarse laugh. “I’ve been tracking Mr. Ghorbani for weeks. Officially, he’s a full-time student at UCLA. Unofficially, he’s a low-life. That woman you saw? His sister.”
“And the other guy?”
“Boyfriend, probably. Who knows? I don’t expect to put him out of business, but I have to try.”
The inspector told me he was a fallen Catholic. Used to be a history teacher. He and his wife never had kids. No relatives close by to speak of. Lived alone in the city. Not even a cat to keep him company. When he asked me what I was doing, I told him I’d recently moved from Seattle. Divorced with a baby girl I’d probably never see again. He seemed to buy it. Eventually, we pulled over to the mall entrance on Brand Boulevard.
“Thanks,” I said as I got out. “I hope everything works out, you know, with your condition.”
“If it doesn’t, I plan to shit myself to the grave.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Forget it. You’ve had enough trouble. See you.”
I watched the taxi inspector pull into traffic. I never did get his name. Holly would’ve prayed for a guy like that. So, that’s what I did.
As I set out to find the address Vlad had given me, I noticed the streets were packed. At first, I didn’t know why. Then, I saw the holiday decorations and remembered that Christmas was approaching. As I made my way north through the crowds, a damp darkness followed me. I thought about my first Christmas with Holly. We hardly had any money back then. We’d managed to scrape together a few bucks for a scrawny tree and a few generic ornaments from Target.
There were only two presents under our tree. Instead of waiting till Christmas morning, we opened them around midnight. She’d given me a book—Masterpieces by Khalil Gibran. I had bought her a spray perfume—Chloe something-or-other. Though it wasn’t the most expensive, it blended wonderfully with her natural scent.
The house was farther than I expected. It took me forty-five minutes to cross over the freeway and make my way into the residential neighborhood. When I arrived, the door flew open and Sasha fell into my arms. She was trembling, so I stroked her hair and whispered I was fine. The dark circles under her eyes played against her pale skin. I thought I saw something flicker briefly in her eyes. Seeing her this way, I knew she was getting worse. We didn’t have much time.
“Are you in pain?” I said.
“Not bad.”
“Who lives here?”
Vlad dropped the bags in the foyer and shut the door. “Armenian friends. They are in Moscow on a job.”
I didn’t want to know what kind of job, so I dropped it. Sasha took my hand and led me into the large living room. The décor looked like something out of the sixties with huge, round, colored-glass lamps and a popcorn ceiling. The place smelled of stale cooking. I took a seat on the sofa. She sat next to me, refusing to release my hand. Vlad sat across from us.
“Good thing your car was parked away from the house. What did you find out?”
“The news station will no longer report on the murders. I’m sure it’s the same for the other media outlets. Looks like someone got to them.”
“America sounds more like Russia every day.”
“We need to get out of the city. The gray-suits found you once. I’m convinced they can do it again.”
Sasha grabbed her abdomen and, groaning, lay back on the sofa. Shaking his head, Vlad got to his feet.
“She’s sick, Dave.”
“No, I—”
He spoke to her sternly in Russian, then came back to me. “I’m worried. Whatever they give her to control this, we need more. She might die like others.”
“Vlad, take it easy. Don’t forget, those other girls died with the treatment. So, it’s no guarantee.”
Grabbing my arm, Sasha got to her feet. “Hello? I’m here. Stop talking about death.”
“You’re right. But your brother has a point. We have to find a way to keep you safe and healthy. I think we should see Dr. Fernandes first thing in the morning. I tried calling him earlier, but he was out. In the meantime, you need to rest.” Then, to Vlad, “You and I are on guard duty. I’ll take the first watch. We’ll each do four hours.”
“You have done this before,” he said.