The Exile

  “Right.”

  “He’s smart, he may have done it to throw us off.”

  “Your kid alright?”

  “Babysitter gave him pizza. I don’t how much he ate, but it’s all coming up. I’ve been holding him over the toilet for ten minutes.”

  “Go take care of him. Thanks.”

  “You okay?” There was genuine concern in Halliday’s voice.

  “Sore.”

  “Red was Polchak’s best friend.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll see what the night brings. I’ll leave both my radio and cell phone on. Get some sleep.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Barron hung up and stared at the phone; then his eyes went back to the answering machine. He was reaching for it, about to play Raymond’s message again, when he heard it.

  A sound, faint but distinct, had come from beyond the dark rectangle leading to the rest of the house. The building was old, built in the 1920s. It had been remodeled a number of times, but the floors were the original oak, and in places they creaked when they were stepped on.

  Creak.

  The sound came again, a little louder this time, as if someone were coming through the rooms toward the kitchen. Barron slid the Colt from his holster. A half second later he was across the room and next to the doorway, pressing back tight against the wall.

  Gun up and ready, he held his breath and listened. Silence. He cocked his head. Still nothing. He was tired, beaten up by Polchak and his own emotions. His nerves were like raw wire. Maybe he was hearing things. Maybe he—

  Creak!

  No! Someone was there! Just on the far side of the door. Suddenly there was a movement in the doorway. Barron lashed out. His hand found a wrist and he twisted it to him, shoving the automatic full in the face of—

  “Rebecca!”

  His heart pounding, Barron let go, and Rebecca shrank back in horror.

  “Jesus God! I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry.”

  Barron put the gun away and went to her, gently cradling her to him. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay. It’s okay …” His voice trailed off as she looked up at him and smiled. Frightened as she had been, her black hair tucked behind her ears, in sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, she was as fragile and beautiful as ever.

  She couldn’t hear him, but he asked anyway because he knew she could read his lips, enough at least to answer a simple question.

  “Are you alright?”

  She nodded, studying his face.

  “Why did you come?”

  She pointed at him.

  “Me?”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Bus,” she mouthed.

  “Does Sister Reynoso know? Dr. Flannery?”

  She shook her head, then gently reached up to touch his face. He winced at her touch and turned to a mirror behind the kitchen table.

  Polchak had done a good job. A big, ugly black-and-blue knot sat over his left eye. His nose was red and swollen; so was his upper lip. His right cheek looked more like a large grapefruit, the way it was yellowed and puffed up. He turned back to Rebecca and saw the big red “3” on his answering machine. What if Raymond called back now and he had to do something? Or if he suddenly showed up before the surveillance car arrived? It was no good; he had to do something about Rebecca.

  11:02 P.M.

  65

  FRIDAY, MARCH 15. 12:15 A.M.

  It had taken Barron a little more than an hour to drive Rebecca back to St. Francis, get her settled, and turn back for home. Now, for the second time in less than two hours, he turned the corner at the end of his street and drove down the hill past the darkened houses toward his own.

  “Bus,” Rebecca had mouthed when Barron had asked her how she’d gotten to his house. She had explained the rest, writing on the page of a notebook in the car as Barron had driven her back to St. Francis. She’d known that morning when he’d come to visit that something bad had happened and that he was very sad and very worried, and she had been concerned all day. In the end she wanted to make sure he was alright, and so without telling anyone, for fear they would stop her, she had simply walked out of St. Francis around 7:30 and taken the bus. She’d written down the address where she wanted to go, and the bus driver had helped her. It had been simple, one transfer and afterward a short ten-minute walk, and she’d arrived about an hour later.

  Getting in had been easy because she had the key he’d given her when he’d moved in. It had been a gesture on his part to reassure her about St. Francis and let her know there was always a place for her at his house.

  When she got there and realized he wasn’t home she decided to watch TV. After a while she got tired and fell asleep. When she woke the light was on in the kitchen. She hadn’t meant to startle him; her whole purpose in coming was because he was her brother and she was concerned about him.

  Ahead, two houses up from his bougainvillea-bordered driveway, Barron saw the surveillance car parked at the curb with its lights out. Slowing, he stopped beside it and rolled down his window. The man behind the wheel was Chuck Grimsley, a young detective he’d worked with briefly at Robbery-Homicide. With him was veteran detective Gene VerMeer, whom he had seen at Red’s house earlier.

  “Anything?” Barron asked.

  “Not yet,” Grimsley said quietly.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  Gene VerMeer stared at him. “Our pleasure,” he said coldly.

  “Hello, Gene.” Barron tried to keep it cordial. VerMeer, he knew, had been almost as close to Red as Polchak had been.

  “What happened to you?” Grimsley was looking at Barron’s bruised and swollen face.

  “Looks bad, I know.”

  “Shame Halloween’s over,” VerMeer said, as if he wished he’d done the job on Barron himself.

  Again Barron brushed it off. “I ran into a lamppost. I gotta sleep, guys. I’m going in. You here all night?”

  “Unless the world blows up,” Grimsley said.

  “You never know.” VerMeer glared at him, and then sat back.

  Barron forced a smile and said, “Thanks again.”

  12:20 A.M.

  Key in the door, Barron opened it, turned on the kitchen light, then locked the door behind him, the same as before. This time he went directly to the answering machine. The big red “3” still glowed. He had erased none of the messages and no new calls had come in. Wherever Raymond was, whatever he was doing, he had not called back. And whatever they had “to work out tonight,” in Raymond’s words, hadn’t materialized.

  With neither the strength nor the energy to sit up and wait for something that might never happen, Barron went straight to the bedroom.

  Sliding the Colt automatic from its holster, he put it on the nightstand next to the clock, then took off his clothes and went into the bathroom. Looking at himself in the mirror, he marveled at Polchak’s work a second time. His attack had been the kind cops were trained to handle, but the aggression didn’t often come from other cops. Polchak had been distraught and he had been drunk, but that wasn’t all. There was something more, and it was the reason Barron hadn’t fought back. Polchak himself.

  He didn’t know if what had happened tonight was a result of Polchak’s years in Homicide and dealing with the terribleness of death on so many levels for so long, the loss of Red, to whom he was probably closer than he was to his own wife or kids, just plain exhaustion, or some combination of it all—but the truth was, Polchak was crazy.

  He had seen glimpses of it earlier—the almost gleeful way he handled the riot gun in the garage as they were about to go after Donlan; the eager way he had held the handcuffed Donlan in his grip when he knew Valparaiso was about to kill him; the coldness with which he removed the dead man’s handcuff and placed the gun in that same hand; the hatred with which he had looked at Barron in the squad room that morning, blaming him for what had happened to Red. And then what had happened tonight.

  It was why he hadn’t fought bac
k. He knew that if he did, just the act of it could push Polchak over, and the end result might well have been either one or both of them dead.

  Barron brushed his teeth as best his body would allow, then shut out the light and went back into the bedroom.

  He picked up the Colt from the bedside table, checked its magazine, then set it down and climbed into bed. Hand to the lamp, he shut out the light and lay back in the dark, purposefully putting the events of the day out of his mind and letting exhaustion overtake him.

  He sighed as he pulled up the covers in the dark, then grimaced in pain as he rolled onto his side to nestle into his pillow like a child. Sleep was all that mattered. The last thing he saw was the glow of his digital clock.

  12:34 A.M.

  66

  3:05 A.M.

  “NO!”

  Barron’s own cry yanked him from the deepest sleep of his life. He was soaked in sweat and staring into the dark. He’d seen Raymond in his dreams. He’d been right there in the bedroom watching him as he slept.

  One deep breath and then two. And he realized it was okay. Instinctively he put his hand out to the nightstand to touch his gun. All he felt was the smoothness of lacquered wood. His hand moved again. Nothing. He sat up. He knew he’d put the Colt there. Where was it?

  “Now I have both your guns.”

  Barron started, crying out once more.

  “Stay exactly as you are. Don’t move at all.” Raymond was standing in the darkness on the far side of his bed, Barron’s Colt in his hand and pointed directly at him.

  “You were very tired, so I let you sleep. Two hours and a half isn’t much but it’s something. You should be grateful.” Raymond talked quietly, easily.

  “How did you get in?” Barron could just see him in the dark as he crossed at the foot of the bed to stand with his back to the wall near the window.

  “Your sister left the door open.”

  “My sister?”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly Barron realized. “You’ve been here all the time.”

  “For a while, yes.”

  “The phone call?”

  “You invited me to call you and I did. You weren’t home. Then I decided if we were going to meet anyway, why not just come over?” Raymond moved again, only a foot or two, but enough for Barron to see that he’d stepped off the throw rug where he’d been standing and onto the hard wood of the floor. He wasn’t about to lose his footing to a quick move by the policeman.

  “What do you want?”

  “Your help.”

  “Why would I help you?”

  “Get dressed, please. Put on the kind of clothes you would wear to work. What you wore earlier will do.” Raymond nodded toward the hard-backed chair where Barron had left the suit, shirt, and tie he’d worn to Red’s.

  “Mind if I turn on a light?”

  “The lamp by your bedside, no other.”

  Barron turned on the lamp and got out of bed slowly. In the pale light he could see Raymond holding the Colt evenly. He wore an expensive tan linen suit with trousers that were too short and too big in the waist, a crisp white shirt that didn’t quite fit either, and a green-and-red-striped tie. Barron’s Beretta, the one Raymond had taken from him at LAX and used to kill Red, was prominent in the waistband, its grip and trigger housing protruding from behind the belt buckle.

  “That suit wouldn’t belong to Alfred Neuss?” Barron said as he dressed.

  “Please finish putting on your clothes.” Raymond pointed the Colt toward Barron’s shoes on the floor.

  Barron hesitated, then sat back down on the bed to slide on one sock and then the other. One shoe and then the next.

  “How did you find me?” He was taking his time, trying to see a way to take Raymond down physically. But the gunman purposely kept his distance, his back against the wall, his feet solidly on the wooden floor, the Colt pointed at Barron’s chest.

  “America seems to have copy shops on almost every corner. They rent computers and Internet access time by the minute. For very little money one can collect and send electronic mail and, with a little knowledge, one can access the data banks of almost any institution, including those of the police. As for getting here, the taxi drivers in this city have very little interest in what their fares look like.”

  “I’ll make a note of it.” Barron finished tying his shoes, then stood. “Tell me something. The killings in L.A. I can understand, you were trying to avoid arrest. What about the men in Chicago, the Azov brothers?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “And Alfred Neuss.” Barron kept it up. “You were going to kill him. You went to his store but he wasn’t there. That must have been a surprise.”

  Raymond’s eyes went to the clock.

  3:12 A.M.

  He looked back to Barron. The police had done as he assumed they might and connected his gun to the Chicago killings. What surprised him was how they had found out about Neuss. And since they had been to his store and had talked to the saleswoman they would know Neuss had gone to London. As a result they would have contacted the London Metropolitan Police, who would attempt to question the jeweler themselves. It was unfortunate enough that Neuss had gone to London. That he would be talking to the police made it all that much worse.

  Again he looked to the clock.

  3:14 A.M.

  “You are about to receive a call on your cell phone.”

  “My cell phone?”

  “You have a wiretap on your landline. You were hoping to trace where I was when I called you back.”

  Barron studied him. The idea that Raymond had slipped the entire dragnet and was somehow in his house and in his room astounded him. Now he even knew about the wiretap. He was one up on them at every turn and remained that way.

  “Who’s going to call?”

  “A good friend of yours, a Mr. Dan Ford of the Los Angeles Times. At eleven-thirty I sent him an e-mail from you saying your sister had come to your home and you were taking her back to her residence and asking him to call your cell phone number at three-twenty exactly. He replied that he would.”

  “What makes you think he’s my friend?”

  “The same things that told me the young lady was your sister and that her name is Rebecca. Not only did I see her as she watched television and then slept on the couch, but you have photographs of both her and Mr. Ford in your kitchen. I have read Mr. Ford’s articles about me in the paper. And I have seen him in your presence, twice. Once at the Los Angeles airport and once outside the parking garage following the murder of Frank Donlan.”

  So that was why Raymond had come. He’d seen Barron as a way out from the moment he’d gotten into the car after Donlan had been killed. That was why he’d pushed him to anger to make him reveal the truth, at Parker Center, after he’d been booked. Now he was trying to use it against him as a tool in his attempt to escape.

  “Frank Donlan shot himself,” Barron said flatly.

  Raymond smiled a kind of catbird smile. “For a policeman you make the truth very obvious. It was there before. It’s still there. It will always be there.”

  The clock clicked to 3:20. There was silence, and then Barron’s cell phone chirped. Raymond smiled his smile again. “Why don’t we ask Mr. Ford what he thinks happened to Mr. Donlan?”

  The phone chirped once more.

  “Pick it up and ask him to hold,” Raymond said, “then give the phone to me.”

  Barron hesitated and Raymond raised the Colt. “The pistol is not to threaten you, John. Its purpose is to keep you from attacking me. The real danger to you is your own conscience.”

  The phone chirped for the third time. Raymond nodded toward it and Barron picked up.

  “Danny,” Barron said evenly. “Thanks for calling, I know it’s late … Rebecca? She was worried about me. Somehow she took the bus and got here. Yeah, she’s alright. I took her back to St. Francis. Yeah, I‘m okay. You? … Good. Hang on a minute, huh?” Barron handed the phone
to Raymond, who pressed it against his chest so that Ford couldn’t hear.

  “The plan is this, John. We are going to get into your car. I will be in the backseat out of sight in the event there are police waiting outside, which I would fully expect there to be, assigned to protect you in the event I followed up my telephone call with a visit. You will stop and tell them you couldn’t sleep and are going to work. You will thank them and then drive off.” Raymond paused. “Mr. Ford is my insurance that you will do it.”

  “Insurance for what?”

  “For the truth about Frank Donlan.” Raymond smiled once again. “You wouldn’t want to put Mr. Ford in the position of having to investigate you personally, would you? Tell him you want him to meet you in thirty minutes. You have some very important information and you can discuss it only in person.”

  “Where?” Barron felt leaden. Raymond was fully in control of everything.

  “The Mercury Air Center at Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport. A chartered jet is coming for me. It’s not as incredible as it sounds. Tell him.” Abruptly Raymond handed him the phone.

  Barron hesitated, then spoke into the phone.

  “Danny—there’s something we need to discuss and I can only do it one on one. Bob Hope Airport, the Mercury Air Center. Thirty minutes. Can you do it?” Barron nodded at Ford’s reply. “Thanks, Danny.”

  Barron clicked off and looked to Raymond. “There will be police at the airport.”

  “I know. You and Mr. Ford are going to see me safely past them.”

  Two minutes later they went out the back door and down the stairs to the carport and the Mustang. As they were leaving Raymond had made one final demand and he wore it now, an adornment under the starched white shirt and linen suit jacket taken from Alfred Neuss’s apartment. John Barron’s bulletproof Kevlar vest.