Leo Sealy’s phone rang. He’d left it charging on the kitchen counter, so he had to trot across the apartment to get it. He was hoping it was going to be a friend, maybe Bobby Danziger. Before this job had been offered to him, he and Bobby had told each other they should meet for a drink soon. They were both in the same line of work and they had known each other for a few years, since the time when they had both been hired by an old guy in Palm Springs to kill the same list of eleven people. Neither of them had known before they’d driven out there to meet him exactly what the job was or that anybody else was on it. The first they knew about it was when he arrived and the old guy let him into this sprawling one-story house. Sealy and the man crossed a vast living room with a view of Mount San Jacinto but kept walking and talking. “There’s somebody else I need you to meet.”
When he had given them both copies of the list of names and addresses, they both realized that this was a very big job. The targets were all over the country, were of both sexes and a range of ages. Leo and Bobby had let their resentment of the old man go after they realized that he wasn’t expecting to get a bargain. He was willing to pay very well for each killing. Leo and Bobby worked out a system, dividing the country so each took five names in a geographic area, and began scouting the targets. On the seventh of the next month at midnight, each would start the slaughter, trying to get through the five names as quickly as possible so the later ones would be less likely to hear of the earlier ones. Whoever got his five first could take, and be paid for, the eleventh. Leo got that one.
He reached the counter and looked down at the phone. It wasn’t Bobby, and it wasn’t a friend. It was Mr. Conger. He picked it up. “Hello.” He listened to Mr. Conger’s question. “Yes, sir. That was me, but I wasn’t just being random and stupid. Thanks to you, I knew that once the mayor’s office and DA saw the families picketing and listened to their lawyers’ interviews, the cops would make a show of getting her in right away. She’d been hiding from me for two days, but I thought she might drop in to shower and change her clothes before she turned herself in. She would have to come early in the morning before people were expecting her. I saw her walking to the building, but she saw me right away too. She sprinted for the door and beat me to it. The door automatically locked behind her. This guy was coming along the building, so I made him open the door for me, brought him inside and shot him. I went upstairs to her condo, but she wasn’t there. Somehow, she got out of sight. I don’t know how. Maybe another neighbor let her in because they’d heard the shot. I heard sirens just then, and I had to get out. Your strategy to flush her out of hiding worked, and my strategy of watching her building worked. But this time the dog didn’t get the rabbit. I’m frustrated and disappointed, but it happens. Luck doesn’t last forever, or rabbits would be running the world.”
Mr. Conger said, “So this guy you killed this morning, you don’t even know who he is. He’s not a friend of hers from Spengler-Nash, or a boyfriend, or anything. He’s just a guy?”
“A guy who lived in the building. When I was locked out, I turned away from the door, and he was there.”
“I don’t know about this,” Mr. Conger said. “When it was Benjamin Spengler, it was great for me, but you and I know it was still a mistake. Nobody asked you to go after him, you stumbled on him in the dark. This guy is different. The first one seemed like when Spengler-Nash offended me, I came right back at them and had somebody take out their leader. This looks like you panicked and executed some random retiree.”
“I didn’t panic. In a split second I knew I was locked out and saw a way in. I couldn’t let him go after that. He’d seen me.”
Mr. Conger’s voice was colder when he replied. “I’m not talking about the nuts and bolts of your job. I’ve already helped you too much with that. I’m talking about optics. You know I don’t give a shit about those two little bastards who couldn’t even rob a husband and wife with a combined age over a hundred and fifty. And I care even less about the three who are still alive and got themselves captured running away. What I have to care about is my reputation on all sides. I want anybody who considers giving me trouble to see that it’s fatal. I want the guys who work for me to get proof that what people have said about me is true. Mr. Conger is one scary guy, who always avenges the men he loses. I want the three in county jail to think that I’m a powerful friend but that betraying me would be suicidal. Your shooting some harmless bystander doesn’t contribute to making either of us look ice-cold and efficient.”
“But you do look ice-cold and efficient. You’ll destroy your enemies, no matter who has to be cut down to get to them.”
Mr. Conger’s breathing became heavy, like the breath of a man so enraged that his body was unconsciously oxygenating its blood before a fight. He said with a careful, mock-patient tone, “I guess I have to explain history to you. Years and years ago, people—all people—believed in God—a god, anyway. They did what they thought God wanted them to do. Even the bad ones believed. They just thought they were better than other people because they were kings or something, so God had given them a pass at birth. They all thought if they broke the wrong rules God would quick-fry them with lightning or something. They even reversed it, so if somebody got hit by lighting, they must have pissed God off.
“Then, gradually, people realized that these punishments—from lightning, plagues, wars, and all that—weren’t God’s justice accurately and precisely taking out the people who pissed God off. They weren’t targeted at all, they were random. Some of the worst people alive got every good thing. That was the beginning of the end of God-fearing. Since then, religion has dwindled down to making up excuses for why God doesn’t do what he was supposed to do. Now, with this in mind, what I want is to have people stay Conger-fearing. You see? If I’m just having people killed randomly, whether they’ve offended me or not, why should anybody bother to please me?”
Leo Sealy was speechless. Every reply that came to him seemed likely to be dangerous. Finally, he said, “I’ll do my best to get this done, Mr. Conger. It shouldn’t take much longer.”
Mr. Conger hung up.
Leo Sealy had been recording the local news channels on their daily schedules and fast-forwarding through them so he wouldn’t miss any tidbits that made it to the screen. He had also spent a couple of hours a day searching the internet sites. It was hard to be out hunting a target in likely parts of Justine Poole’s habitat without risking being photographed or leaving trace amounts of DNA or simply becoming familiar, so he relied even more heavily on electronic sources today. Two hours later he saw an internet mention of a news conference about Justine Poole. He clicked on the link and was sent to the front of a building with a lectern bristling with microphones but no human being, so he assumed he must be waiting for a live statement.
Then there was a man standing behind the lectern without walking there, so he knew it had been pre-recorded. There was a set of white letters identifying him as Attorney Aaron de Kuyper. He looked right for the job—expensive, well-fitted suit, sculpted haircut, slight tan that made his blue eyes stand out.
De Kuyper seemed utterly relaxed, as though he were welcoming guests he knew at a party. He listened to someone off camera for a moment and then said, “The police interviewed her today, and I understand it went according to protocol. The police have a highly legitimate need to investigate every violent fatality as fully as possible, so that justice will be served.”
“Is she cooperating with the police?”
“Of course she is,” he said. “She has been recognized by the media since the incident occurred for saving at least two lives in preventing a violent crime and for calling the police immediately. She also—and this hasn’t been said enough—stopped using deadly force immediately instead of applying it to three other suspects who were not a clear threat. The fact that she’s a heroine does not mean she has no responsibility to help further. I might also mention that her employer Benjamin Spengler has been murdered in an apparent reprisal for her incredibly brave act, and she has been the target of at least two separate attempts on her life, one of them just this morning. Since then she has shared some leads that the homicide detectives will be following up right now.”
“You don’t think there will be any charges against her?”
“I can’t imagine that police officers, who spend their careers risking their lives to save others in jeopardy, just as Justine Poole has, would be unable to interpret the facts in this case. She single-handedly saved two beloved and blameless citizens from five armed attackers.”
“We were told that you have a request for the press.”
“Yes. I’m here to ask that the press and the public be patient and give the police a chance to do their job without undue pressure. And also, that news organizations take into account the fact that Ms. Poole is still in grave danger. Any help you can give us in keeping her whereabouts and movements confidential will be essential and greatly appreciated.” He nodded and said, “Thank you,” and walked out of the view of the camera.
Sealy resumed his search. First, he looked for any sign that a news organization had reacted by releasing her location just because they resented the implication that they put her in danger and should stop reporting everything they knew. After a few minutes he saw that they hadn’t, but he kept open the possibility that they would and planned to keep checking.
The lawyer could be a lead—Aaron de Kuyper. The name seemed familiar. His Google entry identified him as a partner in Smallwood, de Kuyper & Fein. That was where Sealy had heard it before. He turned his attention to the firm. The search engine picked up dozens of mentions in connection with court cases involving well-known names in Los Angeles and New York. The clients seemed to be roughly the sort of people that Spengler-Nash protected, and the cases tended to be rich people problems—big divorces and custody fights; contract disputes with music companies, studios, agents, producers, magazines, and publishers; and slander and abuse cases against ex-lovers. The overlap in clients had to be the connection that had given somebody like Justine Poole access to a firm like Smallwood, de Kuyper & Fein. He supposed it was even possible that Spengler-Nash had a standing relationship with them.
What mattered was whether he could use the firm to find Justine Poole. A company like that would be smart enough to know that she needed to be hidden someplace. Where would they hide her?
He clicked on the first mention of the firm, looked at the article, then the second, the third, and on down the list. There were articles that stretched over about thirty years. He began to notice right away that often there would be a photograph of a client, or the client and a lawyer from the firm, in similar formats.
There were a number of pictures he recognized as taken in the corridors of the Superior Court building right outside the courtroom doors and a few in the sunken patio outside the front entrance of the Foltz Criminal Courts building. A few had been taken in front of a large building with double glass doors. It wasn’t any of the court buildings he’d seen in Los Angeles. Around the double doors was a façade that looked like mirror-polished black marble, and courthouses didn’t look like that. The later photographs were in color, so he could see that the door handles and frames were polished brass. He assumed it must be the building where Smallwood, de Kuyper & Fein had its offices. He kept looking, moving to the next and the next, trying to find a caption or identifying feature. There were old photographs, but there were also ones from no more than a year ago, some apparently stills clipped from the footage of some celebrity show.
Finally, he reached a differently angled photograph about fifteen years old showing the actress Sally Walstrop coming out of the brass-framed doors with a man in a suit. The caption said, “Sally Walstrop, shown yesterday with her attorney Davis Fein, makes her first appearance since she left Sumpter Ricks five weeks ago. Moments later, Mr. Fein announced her record divorce settlement.” About six feet above the door and to the right were five numerals, 22764.
That was a very high number. Even Los Angeles didn’t have an unlimited number of streets with 22,764 lots. That was roughly 227 blocks. He thought of Parthenia in Northridge; Sunset; Hollywood Boulevard; Wilshire, which ran all the way to the ocean; Ventura Boulevard, which ran the length of the San Fernando Valley; La Cienega, which ran from Sunset south to the airport; San Fernando, which ran from the old mission to beyond Pasadena; and maybe Vermont and Normandie. He would start with those. He used Google Maps to take a look at what was located at number 22,764 on each of those streets. As he thought of other long streets he inserted those into the list.
Sealy found it. What he found was 22764 Sixth Street, Le Chateau d’Or.
Sealy had to pause and think. He knew that he had made errors on this job. He had relied too much on Mr. Conger’s delight at the death of Benjamin Spengler to keep him content for a long time. He had been too confident in his own abilities and the woman’s lack of them. He had been sure he could go about his job by putting himself in the vicinity of Justine Poole and assuming he’d be able to kill her. Those errors had caused him to diminish his options. He couldn’t afford to kill any more bystanders. He couldn’t afford to act on impulse, taking off after the woman like a dog after a rabbit. But most importantly, he could no longer afford to keep Mr. Conger waiting.
Every bit of new information he was able to tease out of the random bits of trivia in the air was a precious thing. It was also ephemeral. It was true right at this moment, but it would change, which meant it was already on the way to changing. This particular bit was tantalizing, because Justine Poole would have no way of guessing what he already knew. What Sealy now knew was that in the past, when Smallwood, de Kuyper & Fein had a client who needed to be kept out of sight, they put her in the Chateau d’Or.