SEBASTIAN PARKED IN the driveway, behind Frank’s Buick. It was coming up on eleven, the neighborhood quiet and peaceful, as it always was, and Frank, bathed in the soft light coming from the porch, was standing outside, pruning a rosebush and collecting the clippings in a small plastic bucket. Frank insisted on tending to all the landscaping, his only hobby besides yoga, which he did alone. Frank preferred doing everything alone.
Frank placed the bucket on the ground, and as he walked toward the car, brushing his hands together, Sebastian looked around the neighborhood. Some of the surrounding homes were dark, the owners having jetted off to one of their other homes, maybe going on another long vacation. Sebastian couldn’t shake the feeling that Paul’s sniper friend, this Guidry character, was hidden somewhere in this darkness, looking at him through the crosshairs of a target scope.
Sebastian was well protected, as long as he remained inside the car. After his assassination attempt, he had brought the Jaguar to a company that specialized in outfitting cars, trucks, limos—any type of automobile—so they could withstand pretty much any type of possible security threat. The Jag’s windows had been replaced with a glass designed with a special polymer that could absorb a round from a sniper rifle. The car had enough armor plating to withstand a bomb blast and still be driven. The new tires, if punctured by a round or a knife, would drive for almost fifty miles before fully deflating.
“Paul’s not going to make another long-distance run at you,” Frank said, after he slid into the passenger seat. “When he comes at you next, he’ll use someone we don’t know, do it in a crowded place where you feel safe and—”
“He, or she—you never know—will come up and plant two rounds in my head and I won’t see it coming. Right, I know. Where’s Ron?”
“He had to cancel. His daughter went into labor.”
“You said there’s a development regarding Paul.”
“The LAPD finally got the toxicology report back on Sophia Vargas. They found Viramab in her system. Paul’s using that in his transfusions. Now, to answer your next question, yes, I’ve put out feelers to the underground suppliers who are still in the business of manufacturing it.”
“The Armenians—at least here—are the only ones who are still using it.”
“Right. We’re looking for new purchases made over the past, say, four to six months. If Paul is smart, he’s covering his tracks well.”
“This is the big development? You could have told me all of this over the phone.”
Frank buckled his seat belt. “Let’s go.”
“Where, exactly, are we going?”
“Dancing,” Frank said.
The address Frank had given him was in West Hollywood—WeHo, as the young kids called it now, a cutesy name Sebastian particularly despised. Or maybe deep down he just despised West Hollywood, a place that, for as long as he could remember, was the cool place for cool people who didn’t have to worry about how they were going to pay for their fancy dinners and fancy drinks at the coolest nightclubs and coolest restaurants. When you grew up poor, as he had, you always carried a grudge against the rich—which was ironic given the fact that he owned an empire that was worth billions.
Their destination was on North Robertson Boulevard. Traffic was heavy on Santa Monica.
Frank pulled the phone away from his mouth and said, “Take this right up here—Hilldale. Then left onto Keith.”
Frank returned to his call. He’d spent the entire drive on the phone, coordinating what Sebastian was sure was a surveillance operation. Frank, maddeningly, wouldn’t provide details. No sooner had he hung up with someone than he dialed another number, telling Sebastian, “All shall be revealed, my friend.”
Normally it would bother him, Frank’s holding out. Sebastian, though, heard the smile in his friend’s voice, which was about as expressive as Frank got when he was excited. Frank, Sebastian knew, was working on something big—something, Sebastian was sure, that had to do with Paul.
After Sebastian turned onto Keith Avenue, he took a left onto North Robertson Boulevard. “We’re here,” Frank said into the phone. He hung up. “You’re going to want to park up there, on your right, in front of the Starbucks.”
“There aren’t any spaces.”
“There will be in a moment. Slow down.”
As if on cue, the lights of a gray Audi parked against the curb came to life. The driver pulled out of his spot and Sebastian pulled in and parked. It was well after midnight—and well past his bedtime—and yet WeHo was alive and kicking like it was New Year’s Eve, the streets packed with people bar- and club hopping.
Someone knocked on Frank’s window. He cracked it an inch, just enough to allow a white envelope to slide into the car.
Frank opened the envelope and removed a small clear baggie. It held a pair of black capsules.
“Meet Paul’s new sexual-enhancement drug,” Frank said. “MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, or molly, mixed with carrier blood—a pregnant woman carrier’s blood. Supposedly it gives you the most incredible orgasms of your life.”
“Does it work?”
“Hard to say. MDMA causes arousal. The sexual stimulation we heard about involving Sophia Vargas—that, most likely, was from a transfusion. All we know at the moment is that Paul has been testing his new drug out in a couple of high-end nightclubs downtown, charging about five hundred bucks for a couple of these pills.”
Sebastian took the baggie and turned on the map light. The capsules were dark red, not black, and looked sloppily put together—not by a machine but by a human hand.
“Why would Paul be wasting his time with this bullshit?” Sebastian asked, more to himself than to Frank.
It didn’t make sense; Paul said he had a product that was better than Pandora—Pandora 2.0, he called it—and went on about how his product offered all of the health and physical benefits of Pandora (although Paul didn’t technically know what made Pandora so special, but Sebastian was sure Paul had some solid ideas about it). Pandora 2.0 came with an extremely potent side effect: making the user more sexually desirable and uninhibited. Got you off way better, too.
But the real gains—and the real money—came from whole-body transfusions. Why would Paul do this nickel-and-dime shit, creating these handmade capsules to sell at—
The answer hit him, and his eyes widened. “Infrastructure,” Sebastian said.
Frank nodded sagely. “He doesn’t have the necessary money to become operational—and he needs a good amount of it to buy storage units for the blood and the necessary transfusion equipment, chemicals, and medications.”
“And a place to house his carriers.”
Another nod, and Frank said, “Paul needs to create a revenue stream because he doesn’t have a financial backer. Or he may not want one. I wouldn’t be surprised if Paul’s decided to do this all on his own.”
Which had been Sebastian’s theory all along, Paul wanting to go it alone so he could control everything. A financial partner would want to know what made Paul’s blood so different from what was currently out there—the secret ingredients for his special sauce, so to speak. There was no way Paul would give that up. Once he told someone, he would run the risk of being cast aside, or killed.
Early on, after the incident at the house, Sebastian had wondered if Paul would be stupid enough to approach either the Mexicans or the Armenians and try to partner with them. Such an action would have resulted in Paul’s death—which would have suited Sebastian just fine if it weren’t for the fact that Paul could easily hand over Sebastian’s name as that of the person who was manufacturing Pandora. Both organizations took what they wanted by force. When they found out Paul didn’t have an actual product, per se, just the recipe for one, they’d torture him until he spilled the information, and once it was verified, they would kill him.
But almost four months had come to pass, and neither the Armenians nor the Mexicans had made a move. Paul, it appeared, was determined to keep quiet, do everything on his own. But he had to have people working with him—people he trusted, like Bradley Guidry.
“And this is definitely carrier blood from a pregnant woman?”
“I can’t say for sure,” Frank replied. “I’m going to hand those capsules over to Maya, have her test them for the gene as well as the pregnancy markers.”
“Paul said he had a couple of carriers who were pregnant.”
“And he’s adding more to his stable. Seven weeks after your attempted murder, two female carriers were abducted. One was twenty-six, the other twenty-four.”
“You don’t know for sure Paul was behind the abductions.”
“Actually, I do.” Frank dipped his fingers into his inner suit jacket pocket. He came back with a folded piece of paper and handed it to Sebastian.
Two photographs, each taken of the front windshield of a different car—a Honda Accord and a Toyota Camry. Both photographs showed the same man behind the wheel: Bradley Guidry.
Frank said, “The photos are from traffic cameras posted near where the women were abducted. I enhanced them.”
“Where’d you get these? Our LAPD contact?”
Frank shook his head. “I obtained them myself,” he said. “I now have what’s called root access to the servers used by highway patrol. I won’t bore you with the technical details—”
“Thank you.”
“—but suffice it to say, I can get in and out without being detected. After Ron sent me Guidry’s picture, I went to work. I got lucky.”
It was about goddamn time some luck had been thrown their way. “What about Guidry’s car? You know the make and model. Got a plate?”
“He used a stolen car both times. Both vehicles have not yet been recovered, I’m told. As for gleaning any useful information about the actual abductions, my contact says they were clean jobs—no witnesses or evidence.”
“Gleaning,” Sebastian said. “Look at you, Mr. Walking Dictionary.”
“Trying to educate you,” Frank replied in his characteristic dry tone. “Through osmosis.”
Sebastian cracked a grin—a rarity these days.
Frank said, “If Paul had any capital, he wouldn’t be going the pill route. It’s a short game and, I’m sure he knows, very risky. Raising money with these pills—I think it safe to say your original theory about him not having anyone backing him is correct.”
“And probably the reason why he’s been quiet these past few months. He’s building his own infrastructure, and that takes time, and capital, no matter how small that infrastructure. How did Ron come by this information?”
“One of Ron’s people happened to be at a club, a place called Deliverance, which is conveniently located right over there.” Frank pointed out the windshield, at a building across the busy street.
It was a two-floor structure that took up nearly the entire block—sort of like a little mall plaza you’d find in a nicer part of Mexico. The Spanish architecture was clear—a courtyard behind brick pillars wrapped with strings of party lights where people sat at tables, eating and drinking; flat red roofs, doorways, and windows designed with Moorish influence. But a closer look revealed a more Tuscan aesthetic, with the exterior’s intricate masonry. The windows, he noticed, were stained glass.
“Ron’s guy spotted someone he was sure was Paul dealing drugs,” Frank said. “Paul looks different now—wore glasses and grew out his hair. No more military buzz cuts. Ron’s guy tried following Paul, to get a closer look, but lost him. But he approached the guy he spotted buying the drugs, and when Ron’s person pretended to be an undercover cop, the kid handed over the bag you’re now holding and explained what it was.”
“I take it there’s a reason behind tonight’s field trip.”
“The guy selling the blood pills? I’ve received word he’s here tonight, at the club. We’re watching him as we speak.”
Frank’s phone chirped twice. He looked down at the screen.
“We have him. Let’s go. I’ve already got a place nearby where we can have a nice, friendly chat.”