CHAPTER TEN

 

Bait on a hook.

My parents died when I was five years old, so I couldn't remember a lot about them. My mother's face was just a blur – dark eyes, black hair, a vague smell of talcum powder and perfume. My old man was a mechanic. He had a beard and he smoked cigars in front of the tube every night, laughing at game shows and yelling at the news. He was a drunk, I guess. A happy drunk. He liked to fish the Delta on the weekends and he took me along on some of his trips, even bought me a rod and this little tackle box. Sitting in the bow of his john boat, watching my bobber while the moon rose over the trees, I used to wonder what the worms thought about, dangling down there in the dark.

Now I knew.

I drove into Berkeley and circled around for a while, checking for tails, then I pulled into a Conoco near the railroad tracks and bought a gallon of gas. I still had some money left, so I got some coffee and donuts, then I parked the Dodge by the johns and searched it for transmitters. I checked the interior, engine compartment, wheel wells and trunk. I checked behind the dash and crawled around under the chassis, but I couldn't find any beepers or GPS trackers, not that I really knew what to look for.

I had to ditch the car. Even if it was clean, the cops knew what I was driving. So did Deacon. So did Baldy and Crewcut. I had no idea how many different factions were looking for me or following me around, but there had to be three or four of them including Matthews and his fleet of goons. He must've decided that I wasn't going to cooperate, so he pulled rank on the Task Force and made them cut me loose, stomping all over their jurisdiction and screwing Jacobo in the process. He was using me for bait, hoping that I would lead him back to the Lexus or something – flush out Baldy and Crewcut. One way or another, the feds had me under surveillance. No doubt about it.

I took off again, driving around the neighborhoods, watching the side streets and rearview. I drove the wrong way down a one-way street, made four right turns in a row, then headed to Berkeley Circle and parked by Indian Rock, watching the traffic and the peds walking by on the sidewalk.

Nothing. If they were following me, they knew what they were doing.

I headed into downtown Berkeley, parked on a side street for ten minutes, then I drove by the campus and got stuck in a traffic jam. Hundreds of Lefties were staging a demo against the latest war or something. I waited at a light while they marched by on the sidewalk, chanting slogans like the rest of us cared what they thought about Republicans or peace or anything else. Some motorcycle cops passed right in front of my car, but none of them even looked at me. Crowds and chaos had their advantages.

Fifteen minutes later, I abandoned the Dodge on the top level of a parking garage on Telegraph and took the stairs down to the street. The car would pile up tickets for a couple of days, then the cops would tow it to the city lot and put it up for auction when nobody claimed it. Ditching it like that was a bummer. It was the only car I'd ever owned and Vincent had loaned me the down-payment.

Horns blared on Telegraph. The sidewalks crawled with tourists, junkies, street vendors, runaways and bums from People's Park. UC students walked by with pierced ears, tattoos and the usual look of smug stupidity, mingling with trendy Marxists and Goth punks dressed in black. A couple of Earth Mothers wandered through the crowd, arm in arm, naked to the waist, making a statement about Free Expression that was older than their flopping tits. A Bible Thumper with a megaphone was preaching Armageddon on the corner by Cody's Books, trying to ignore a hippy who was screaming insults and gibberish, trying to drown him out. The scene was typical Berkeley: a tie-dyed sewer of dopers and Sixties rejects.

"Spare change?"

"Spare change?"

The bums were out in force, but they left me alone for some reason. Bad vibes, I guess. I made my way through the crowd, checking my back, watching the reflections in the store windows, then I went into this sports bar and had some coffee at a table with a clear view of the door. The coffee gave me a buzz like crystal meth. I watched a couple longhairs shoot pool for a while, then I walked back to the john, washed my face, and ducked out the back door into a garden patio with a gate leading into an alley.

Nobody followed as far as I could tell.

I walked around the neighborhood west of Telegraph, checking out the cars parked on the street, watching the pedestrians. It was a funky area: old houses, big trees, gardens, a stone church. I was looking for a car that would be easy to steal without tools – some rattletrap, a student's wheels, something like that. When I found a likely candidate, I walked around the block a couple times until the street was empty and then I went to work.

Ten minutes later, I was driving down University, heading back to the highway in a Nissan pickup with rust spots, peeling clear coat and a Nuke The Whales bumper sticker.

#

I thought about hitting the road, but I didn't have the money to run and I couldn't split until I found out what had happened to Arn. It was dumb, but I couldn't just leave him behind like that, abandon him all over again. A couple years ago, I wouldn't have given him a second thought.

I drove a couple miles north on I-80, passing the track at Golden Gate Fields, then I turned on 580 and pulled into a Motel 6 near the Albany Flats Ecological Reserve, a stretch of weedy beach and marsh with a hazy view of the Bay. There were a couple trucks parked at the Denny's next door, but the lot was mostly deserted. Nobody saw me go into the office unless they were watching through binoculars.

The old lady behind the desk had a hearing aid, frosted hair and bulging eyes that made her look like a startled cat fish. I asked for a room in back, gave her a fake license-plate number and paid for two nights in cash. She didn't ask any questions. Didn't hassle me about my age. Squinting at my bruised face, she handed over the key and shuffled back to the soaps in her office.

I parked the Nissan under a tree that blocked it from view of the highway, then found my room and locked myself in, fastening the chain and propping a chair under the door knob. The room was spartan: bed, writing table, TV bolted to the wall, one bar of soap by the sink, two towels, one tube of shampoo in the shower. I figured I'd wash up and make some calls, but when I sat down on the bed, this black hole opened in the mattress and sucked me into Nowhere.

#

I woke up in the dark.

Hip-hop thumped on a car stereo in the parking lot, then a pair of headlights swept across the curtains and the jungle noise faded into the distance. The clock on the bedside table read ten p.m. I'd crashed for twelve hours.

I took a shower, pulled on the same grungy clothes I'd been wearing for two days, then cracked the drapes and checked out the parking lot. Rows of windshields glistened under a streetlight. A buoy flashed on the Bay. I was starving, but I didn't want to make any calls from the room or drive anywhere in the hot Nissan, so I took a chance and walked over to the Denny's by the motel.

The restaurant was busy. I felt like everyone was watching me when I walked through the front door, but the Greeter just smiled and showed me to a window table by the kitchen. When the waitress came around, I ordered a sirloin steak with french fries, peas and mushrooms, a salad and a big Coke, then I went through a basket of dinner rolls while I waited for my dinner. Someone had left an Examiner on the counter and I skimmed the stories to see if anyone I knew had made the paper.

Nothing about Steffy. Nothing about me.

The front page was full of the usual crap about the economy and how the war was going in Jabberstan and Suckmalia and a bunch of other rat holes I'd never heard of. The terrorists were everywhere, blowing up kittens, raping premature babies in their incubators. We were under attack. We needed more security, more surveillance cameras, more thugs groping old ladies at the airport, blah blah blah.

I flipped through the Metro section and found a weird story about a fire in the Oakland bottoms. A company named Ligar Shipping had burned to the ground last night and the cops suspected arson. The body of the company's lawyer, some guy named Howard L. Chase, had been found in a vacant lot a couple blocks away, cause of death "under investigation."

Chase. The Lexus had been registered to H.L. Chase – some address in San Francisco. Crewcut had said Chase and Matthews had hired me to steal the car.

I read the story all the way through, trying to make sense out of it. Somebody had torched Ligar Shipping last night – that must've been the fire we'd seen from the highway when we were driving to the warehouse. A little while after that, we saw the Lexus go by and I followed it to that place in the bottoms, driving into a federal stakeout in the process. Then, later that night, the cops found this Chase dead in the same area. The guy who owned the Lexus. The lawyer whose company had just burned down. The guy we'd seen with Baldy and Crewcut just before he croaked.

A hit. We'd interrupted a hit.

The waitress brought my food and I forgot about everything except my empty stomach. I hadn't eaten all day. I was starving. I cut up my steak and slathered it with A1 Sauce, washed down my fries with Coke, stabbed at my salad with a fork. I was so hungry, my hands were shaking. At least that's what I told myself.

When I finished eating, I paid the bill, got some change, then made some calls from a pay phone in the parking lot. An RV pulled into the motel office while I was dialing. Traffic passed on the highway and the breeze reeked of marsh and dead fish.

I called my room at the Berkeley Marina, just to see if anybody answered, but nobody did and I hung up when I got the recording. Then I psyched myself for a couple minutes before I dropped in some more change and called the convenience store at the Nite-N-Day. I had to talk to Deacon. Find out what was going on. The phone rang for a while, then Janice, the speed-freak cashier, picked up and I heard a gas pump chime in the background.

"Deacon's," she drawled. "Can I help you?"

"Janice. It's me."

A long pause. Horns tooted on the other end of the line.

She lowered her voice. "Emma?"

"I need to talk to Deke."

"Where are you? What's going on?"

"Is he there?"

"He went home a couple hours ago, but he's been trying to reach you all day and he's really pissed off about something."

"What happened?"

"I don't know, but Heberto and that sleaze-bag cop came by this afternoon and they were locked up in the office for hours."

"Jacobo came by the station?"

I closed my eyes.

"He kind of snuck in the back," Janice said. "And Buster didn't show up for work tonight. Have you seen him?"

The line clicked and her voice faded for a second. It couldn't have been a tap. The cops tapped lines at the phone company these days, so you never heard a thing, but it freaked me out anyway.

"I've got to go," I said.

"Where are you?"

I hung up, my skin crawling.

The Nite-N-Day had to be under surveillance. I should never have called there in the first place, but I'd screwed up even worse by not talking to Deacon right away and explaining what had happened. Jacobo had beaten me to it – the little weasel must've figured I hadn't talked to them yet or he would never have gone near the station. He was probably running damage control: no telling what kind of lies he'd told them about me. Deacon and Heberto must've found out about my arrest and the weird way I got released would've spooked them big time. If Jacobo told them I'd cut a deal with the task force, then Heberto's crew was probably looking for me right now, cruising around the city in a fleet of taco wagons with their shotguns and machetes.

Wonderful. I scanned the parked cars, the windows, the dark field between the motel and the waterline. The parking lot was deserted, but that didn't mean a thing. The cops could've taken over a room at the motel. The feds could be sitting in a van somewhere with night-vision glasses, waiting to see who picked me off first – Baldy and Crewcut, or Deacon and Heberto.

I called Arn's place to see if anybody answered. His phone rang four times and rolled over to voice mail. Nobody home. Nobody who wanted to answer, anyway. I hung up when I got his machine and just stood there for a while, trying to figure out what had happened last night.

Arn had told Baldy and Crewcut who I was. They went to my apartment, found Steffy and forced her to tell them where I'd gone, then they killed her to cover their tracks. After they left, Matthews showed up with his black SUVs and staked out my building. The lights had been on in Arn's apartment when I drove by, so Baldy and Crewcut must've stopped off to search the place before they went to the Radisson. One of them had answered the phone when I called. The bunch of them had been crawling all over me last night and I hadn't even known it. I'd passed them coming and going.

I called my apartment and checked the answering machine. There were six messages, four of them hang-ups from last night. Somebody had wanted to know if I was at home. Message Five was from Buster, of all people. He came off drunk and scared.

"Em," he whispered, breathing into the phone. "I moved that thing you brought in last night. You know what I'm talkin' about. Couple guys sniffing around the lot this morning – bald fucker and some dude with a crewcut. Said they were looking for this Lexus supposed to get some body work or something, but you could tell they was lying. I said we didn't have nothin' like that and showed them the book to prove it, but I don't think they believed me. Big fuckers. Smelled like cops, but I didn't see no badges. Anyway, I towed it after they left – that old garage on Potter. You know the one. I don't know what's going on, but cops been cruisin' by all morning and they got to be watching this place. I'm out of here, baby. You do the same."

Buster. Jesus Christ.

Just then, a black SUV pulled into the lot and parked in front of the Denny's. I clenched up when I saw it, but a couple drunks got out and stumbled through the front door, their shadows wobbling across the sidewalk. Bugs swarmed a light on a telephone pole. A bell chimed on the water.

The last message on my answering machine had a lot of traffic noise in the background. I couldn't tell who it was at first. It sounded like he was using a pay phone at a gas station next to a busy intersection. Pumps chimed and I heard a siren go by while he was talking.

"Emma..." He came off hoarse and spooked. I'd heard his voice before, but I couldn't place it. "You know who this is? I don't want to use my name on the phone, but I showed you a picture last night. Remember?"

Brown. That sleaze-bag reporter. How'd he get my number?

"Listen," he went on. "I've got to make this quick. I don't know if you'll get this, but if you do, we need to talk right away. I saw you at the station this morning and I know what's going on. Part of it, anyway. I know the guy who was in your car when you got arrested and you blundered into something major, believe me. Just take my word for it." He coughed and cleared his throat. "Check me out with the old man – the one who runs the place we were in last night. OK? Then give me a call. I can't say anything on your machine, but they'll back off if this goes public. Understand? So give me a call. This is one of those throwaway cell phones, so they won't get anything if they trace it."

He left his number, then hung up and a robotic voice told me I didn't have any more messages. There was a pen on a chain hanging by the pay phone and I used it to scribble his number on a page in the phone book, then I ripped the page out and stuck it in my wallet. No telling what the drunken bum wanted, but he had a lot of contacts and I couldn't just ignore his call. I deleted the rest of the messages on my answering machine in case the cops hadn't heard them already – especially the one from Buster. The crazy dope had freaked out and moved the Lexus to that old garage on Potter. I couldn't decide if he'd helped me or screwed me worse, but I hoped he was free and clear.

#

I dug out some quarters and made one last call. I couldn't put it off any longer.

The phone at Deacon's house rang a couple times, then his wife picked up and went to get him. I almost lost my nerve and hung up, but I forced myself to wait.

"Gimme your number," Deacon said when he came on the line. "I'll call you right back."

I almost hung up again, but I figured I had to take some chances if I was ever going to find out what was going on. I was screwed blundering around in the dark, so I gave him the number and hung up to wait.

Time dragged by. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Cars pulled in and out of the lot, their headlights sweeping across me and reflecting on the windows of the motel. A helicopter passed overhead, rotor light blinking, then it circled over the Bay and headed towards San Francisco.

The phone rang. Heart-attack city.

"Where the hell are you?" Deacon asked, traffic noise in the background. He must've gone to a pay phone near his house. "I been trying to get you all day."

"El Cerrito," I lied. Pac Bell could be recording the call, for all I knew. No telling who was listening. "I've been driving around all day and I stopped at this Quick Trip by Harding Park."

"You're on a pay phone?"

"Yeah."

"Anybody else know where you are?"

"I don't think so."

"All right." He coughed into the phone. "We heard Emeryville picked you up this morning, then cut you loose again."

"I didn't tell them anything."

"Take it easy," he said. "We got it from Jacobo, but we're kind of wonderin' about that fed or whoever it was talked to you last. Jacobo never saw him before."

"Jacobo's a rat, Deke. He's got to be."

"Just relax." He came off tired and edgy. "This is fucked up, OK, but it's not so bad if you keep it together. All right? Jacobo told us everything that happened and me and Herb believe him, as far as that goes. I been working with him for years and this bullshit task force has only been around for like a month or something. Jacobo's OK until I find out different and they don't have a damn thing, so don't worry about it."

"They must've flipped him," I said. "Janice told me he was at the station today and he's got to know they're watching the place."

"Nobody's watching the station." Deacon sounded like he believed it. "You think we'd have a meet there if the place was staked out? I told you already – this task force is a lot of bullshit. A judge turned them down on a couple search warrants, but they're going through the motions, OK? Trying to justify their budget."

"They knew everything we did last night. They said they busted Arn."

"They don't know jack and nobody busted Arn or my bondsman would've heard about it. Jacobo almost shit his pants when they picked you up, but you kept your mouth shut and they had to cut you loose, all right? It was a fishing expedition. Herb's calmed down, more or less, but we got to know what happened with that fed you talked to."

"I didn't tell him anything."

"Nobody says you did, but who the hell was he? What did he want?"

"I don't know, Deke. He said his name was Matthews and he showed me an FBI badge, but he acted kind of dodgy about it and he was the only one in the room. I don't know. All he wanted to talk about was the Lexus."

"What about it?"

"I don't know, but he was real eager to get it back for some reason."

"What did you tell him?"

"I didn't tell him anything."

"So where's the car?" he asked. "We checked the garage back of the lot after Jacobo told us what happened, but it was gone and so was Buster. He never showed up tonight and he never turned in the keys."

"I don't know," I said, but I must have hesitated for a second too long and Deacon picked up on it right away.

"Listen," he said. "I don't know what you got going with Buster or maybe it's something else I don't know about, but that car started all this shit and we've got to turn it over to Jacobo right away. Understand? That fed you talked to's been leaning on him." He lowered his voice. "Jacobo made some calls and found out what happened last night. Those guys you ran into were Oakland cops shaking down this junk wholesaler who's supposed to go to the Grand Jury next week. It was his car. They snatched him and they were getting ready to lean on him a little when you ripped off his car and fucked everything up."

"Jesus Christ," I said, wondering if I could believe it. Deacon was getting all of his information from Jacobo. "What happened to Arn?"

"Nobody knows, but they're going crazy looking for that car." He cleared his throat. A horn beeped twice in the background. "Jacobo figures there's evidence in the trunk or something that ties those cops into the Latham Scandal. That's why your fed wants to find it. He's investigating police corruption in Oakland."

"I searched the trunk," I said. "It was empty."

"So it's got a fake bottom – who gives a shit? We're talking Oakland cops looking at hard time for shaking down dealers and a couple murders. Get the picture? They want that car back."

"Jesus, Deke. I don't know where it is."

"Well, you got tonight to find it," he rasped over the line, his voice hoarse and strained. "Get with Buster or do whatever you got to do, but if you don't call me by noon tomorrow and tell me where it is, I got to cut you loose. Understand? Herb don't want to handle it like this, but I talked him into holding off for a day. You know what I mean?"

"Holding off on what?"

"Just find the car," he said. "Noon tomorrow."

The dial tone buzzed in my ear.

I was walking back to my room when I saw the Deacon tow truck pull into the lot.