"Which model are you interested in?"
Lankford smiled, showing off a perfect set of teeth. Cassie noticed his eyes were sidewalk gray, an unusual combination with the man's jet black hair.
"A new Carrera, I think."
"Well, I'll get a car ready. If you could give your driver's license and insurance card to Ray, he'll get it copied while I get a car ready."
Lankford's mouth opened but he didn't say anything.
"You do have proof of insurance, don't you?" Cassie asked.
"Of course, of course."
"Okay, then let Ray take care of that and I'll get the car. Cab or coupe?"
"Excuse me?"
"Hardtop or cabriolet - convertible?"
"Oh. Well, it's such a nice day, why don't we take the top off?"
"Sounds good to me. We've got one in stock and available. It's arctic silver. That sound good?"
"Great."
"All right, come on out to the carport when you're done with Ray."
She pointed to the glass doors at the opposite end of the showroom.
"I'll meet you there," Lankford said.
While Ray took the prospect into the finance office where the copying machine was, Cassie went into his office and got the key to the silver cab off the board. She then went to her own office and grabbed her wallet out of her backpack. She looked around and saw the playing cards all over the place and realized that if Lankford wanted to make a deal, she'd have to stick him in Ray's office while she cleaned up. There wasn't time now.
She started out of the office and then remembered something. She grabbed her cell phone off her desk and clipped it onto her belt. Just in case Leo calls, she thought to herself.
She headed out to the side lot to the car. She got in, slid her wallet into a CD holder on the dash and then started the engine. She put the windows and top down, checked the fuel level and saw there was a quarter tank, then drove the car up to the showroom door just as Lankford was stepping out.
"Let me drive it until we get out of here," she called over the sound of the engine that was over-revving as the car warmed up. "Then you'll take over."
Lankford smiled and gave her the okay sign and got into the passenger side. She pulled out onto Sunset and then turned north on Vine. At Hollywood Boulevard she took a left and went down to Cahuenga, which she took north toward the hills and Mulholland Drive.
They drove in silence at first. Cassie liked to let the prospects listen to the car, feel its power on the turns, fall in love with it, before there was any talking. She liked to hold back on the sales pitch and the particulars until the customer was behind the wheel. Besides, her thoughts weren't on Lankford and his interest in a $ 75,000 car. She kept thinking about Leo's call and the anxiety she'd heard in his voice.
The Carrera effortlessly climbed through the Mulholland curves from Cahuenga up to the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains. At the Hollywood overlook she pulled off the road, killed the engine and got out.
"Your turn," she said, her first words since he had gotten in the car.
She stepped to the railing at the edge and looked down at the shell of the Hollywood Bowl far below. Her eyes moved out from the bowl across Hollywood toward the spires of downtown. The smog was heavy and had a pinkish-orange tint to it. But somehow it didn't look all that bad.
"Nice view," Lankford said from behind her.
"Sometimes."
She turned and watched as he got into the driver's seat. She went around and got in the passenger side.
"Why don't you keep going on Mulholland for a little ways. You'll get a good idea of how this handles. We can take Laurel Canyon down to the one-oh-one and take that back to Hollywood. You'll be able to open it up on the freeway a little bit, see how it does."
"Sounds good."
He found the ignition on the left side quickly and started the engine. He backed out of the parking slot, then dropped the transmission into first gear and pulled out onto Mulholland. He drove with one hand on the stick shift at all times. Cassie could tell immediately he knew what he was doing.
"I take it you've driven one of these before but I'm going to give you the pitch anyway."
"That's fine."
She started listing the attributes of the car, starting with the new water-cooled engine and transmission and moving toward the suspension and brakes. She then moved inside the cockpit and started going over the amenities.
"You've got cruise control, traction control, onboard computer all standard. You've got CD, automatic windows and roof, dual air bags. And down here . . ."
She pointed down between her legs to the front of her seat. Lankford glanced down there but then put his eyes back on the road.
". . . you have a passenger-side cutoff for the air bag - in case you are traveling with a small child. You have kids, Mr. Lankford?"
"Call me Terrill. And no, I don't have kids. You?"
Cassie didn't answer for a moment.
"Not really."
Lankford smiled.
"Not really? I thought that was a yes or no question for a woman."
Cassie ignored the statement.
"What do you think of the car . . . Terrill?"
"Very smooth. Very sweet."
"It is. So what do you do for a living?"
He glanced over at her. The wind was threatening to blow his hat off. He reached up and cranked it down over his forehead.
"I guess you could say I'm a troubleshooter," he said. "I'm a business consultant. Have my own company. I take care of things. This and that. I'm a magician, really. I make other people's problems disappear. Why do you ask?"
"Just curious. These cars are expensive. You must be very good at what you do."
"Oh, I am. I am. And cost is not a problem. I pay cash. Actually, Cassie, I expect to come into a large sum of money soon. Very soon, in fact."
Cassie looked over at him and felt a sudden shiver of fear. It was instinctive more than intuitive. Lankford pressed the pedal a little harder and the Porsche started moving through the winding curves a little faster. He looked over at her again.
"Cassie. What is that short for? Cassandra?"
"Cassidy."
"As in Butch? Your parents outlaw fans?"
"As in Neal. As in my father was always on the road. Or so I was told."
Lankford frowned and hit the pedal a little harder.
"That's really too bad. My father and me, we were close."
"I'm not complaining about it. You want to slow it down, Mr. Lankford? I'd like to get back to the showroom in one piece, if you don't mind."
Lankford didn't respond at first with his voice or his foot. The car powered through another turn, its tires protesting as they labored to hold the road.
"I said, do you - "
"Yes," Lankford finally said. "You do want to get back alive."
Something about the tone in which Lankford delivered the line revealed that he was not talking about the possibility of a car accident. Cassie looked over at him and shifted in her seat so that her body was pressed against her door.
"Excuse me?"
"I said you want to make sure you get back alive, Cassidy."
"Okay, pull the car over. I don't know what you think you're - "
Lankford slammed his foot down on the brake pedal and yanked the wheel hard to the left. The Porsche skidded and spun into a 180 -degree turn as it stopped. He looked over at her and smiled, then dropped in the gear and popped the clutch out. The car lurched forward and he started speeding through the curves, back in the direction they had come.
"What the hell are you doing?" Cassie yelled. "Stop the car! Stop the car right now!"
Cassie reached her right hand up and gripped the top of the windshield brace. Her mind was moving as fast as the car as she tried to come up with a plan, an escape.
"Actually, Lankford's not my name," the man next to her was saying. "I got it off a book I found on a shelf at Leo Renfro's last night. It's called Shooters and I sta
rted taking a look at it. I thought it was about a guy in my line of work but it wasn't. But, hell, when your boss came up to me in the showroom and asked my name, it's all I could come up with on short notice, you know. My name is Karch. Jack Karch. And I've come for the money, Cassie Black."
Through the terror building inside Cassie a thought pressed forward. Jack Karch, she thought. I know that name.
32
THE Porsche was moving wildly through the Mulholland slalom. Jack Karch was going too fast for his skill now and the car was intermittently crossing the yellow line in the middle of the two-lane road and then rebounding by going off the road onto the shoulder. Karch was red-lining the tach but didn't want to take his hand off the wheel to pop the car into a higher gear. The engine roared and whined as the car went through the turns. Cassie gripped the windshield brace with both hands but was being thrown violently back and forth in her seat. Karch screamed over the din of the engine.
"I WANT THE FUCKING MONEY!"
She didn't answer him. She was too busy watching the road uncoiling in front of them and thinking for sure they would go off the shoulder and down the embankment.
"MARTIN IS DEAD! PALTZ IS DEAD! LEO IS DEAD!"
She turned to him at the mention of Leo's name. She felt her heart being pierced. Karch throttled back. He kept the car moving but the engine noise and wind abated.
"They're all dead," he said. "But I don't really want or need to hurt you, Cassie Black."
He smiled and shook his head.
"In fact, I admire you. You do good work and I admire that. But I came for the money and you're going to give it to me. You give me the money and we'll call it square."
Cassie spoke slowly and sternly.
"I don't know what you are talking about, okay? Please pull the car over."
A look of sincere disappointment crossed Karch's face and he shook his head.
"I spent all night at Leo's. I tore that place apart. I found a lot of champagne and I found the briefcase I was looking for. But I didn't find what was supposed to be in the briefcase. And I didn't find you until along about dawn when I found you sitting there right in front of me. Leo's cell phone. I hit redial and I got the dealership. I went through the direct extension directory and, lo and behold, I hear the name Cassie Black. I switched over just to hear your voice. 'This is Cassie at Hollywood Porsche. I'm not at work for a few days but if you call back and ask for Ray Morales he can handle - ' Blah, blah, blah, don't fucking lie to me. I don't like it. I WANT THE MONEY!"
"I SAID PULL THE CAR OVER!"
"Sure."
Karch suddenly steered the car hard right and they turned violently onto a gravel road that cut through a stand of pine trees. Cassie thought it was a fire road or some kind of public utilities access road. Whatever it was, it was clear Karch was taking them away from other traffic, from potential witnesses.
When they were about two hundred yards down the road, Karch slammed on the brakes and the Porsche skidded to a halt on the gravel. Cassie was thrown forward, her body pressing against her shoulder harness, and then back. She had no sooner recovered from the jarring stop then Karch was leaning across the center console onto her and pressing the long dark barrel of a gun against her face. He brought his free hand up and locked it onto the underside of her jaw.
"Listen to me. Are you listening?"
He was squeezing her jaw and she was unable to speak. She nodded.
"Good. What you need to know is that the people I work for care about one thing at this time. The money. Nothing else. So don't be like your pals Leo or Jersey. It will only get you killed."
Cassie just stared at him down the length of the gun. She could see it had a silencer attached to it.
"Don't think," Karch said. "Just talk."
He relaxed the pressure slightly so she could speak.
"Okay," she said. "Don't hurt me and I'll tell you where it is."
"You'll do more than that, sweetheart. You'll take me to it."
"Okay. Whatever you - "
He cut her off by squeezing her neck.
"You get one chance. You understand?"
Cassie nodded. Karch slowly released his grip and took his hand away. He was leaning back toward his seat when he suddenly snapped his fingers and leaned toward her again. He reached up to her face and she flinched, but then his hand went past her face to her ear.
"I looked in your office in the showroom before you showed up. Playing cards all over the place. Like you were looking for something. This what you were looking for?"
He pulled his hand back and seemingly pulled something from her ear. He held it up in front of her face. It was the ace of hearts. He smiled.
"Magic," he said.
And then it struck her. Magic. The name Karch. She remembered the newspaper stories. Reading them in Metro detention before her arraignment. Jack Karch. He was the one.
He read something in her face.
"You didn't like that, huh? Well, I've got more. After we take care of business I'll show you a real disappearing act."
He settled behind the wheel, his right arm still stretched across the console and poking the black gun into her ribs.
"Now, we're going to have to work together here, that okay with you? Put it in gear."
He depressed the clutch pedal and she reached over and moved the shift into the first gear slot. He started the car moving. He turned it around and headed back up the gravel road to Mulholland. After he wound it out he called for second gear and she complied. He started talking again as though they were out for a Sunday drive.
"You know something, I gotta tell you, the way you did this thing, I . . . my hat's off to you. I think, you know, different circumstances . . . you and me, we could've . . . I don't know, done something."
He took his hand off the wheel and pointed to the gear shift.
"See, we work good together."
She didn't answer. She knew he was a psychopath, able to talk sincerely about doing things together with a woman he was holding at gunpoint. Cassie knew she had to make a move, to shift things. She knew this man was going to kill her. She would be part of the disappearing act he had promised. She couldn't help but smile sadly at the irony of her situation. She knew she could make the argument that this man had already killed her, six-and-a-half years before.
"What's so funny?"
She looked at him. He had caught her glib smile.
"Nothing. The vagaries of life, I guess. And the coincidences."
"You mean like fate, bad luck, that sort of thing?"
She casually moved her right arm so that her hand rested between her legs. Karch noticed and pushed the muzzle deeper into her side.
"Like the void moon?"
She turned sharply to look at him.
"Yeah, Leo mentioned something about it last night. Later on when I was looking around I read up on it in one of those books he's got. He was a big believer. Didn't do him any good in the end, did it? Where to?"
They were moving through the grove of pine trees, coming up to Mulholland. Cassie realized this might be her best chance. She took a deep breath and made her move.
"When you get up there you - "
She started raising her left arm as if to point out directions but then snapped her arm straight, knocking the gun away from her mid-section. She then grabbed the wheel with her left hand at the same time her right went down the front of her seat and engaged the air bag kill switch. She yanked the wheel hard right and the car lurched off the gravel road and directly into the trunk of a pine tree. It happened so fast Karch didn't have time to scream or fire his gun.
The driver-side air bag exploded from the steering wheel upon impact with the tree. It slammed Karch back against his headrest.
Cassie's shoulder harness stopped her forward trajectory before she hit the windshield. She was momentarily dazed but knew she had to move. She unfastened the seatbelt and frantically tried to open the door. It wouldn't budge. She didn't try it a second time. Sh
e hoisted herself up and jumped out of the car. Immediately, she started running downhill through the trees. She didn't look back at the Porsche.
Karch was more than momentarily dazed by the impact. The air bag hit him like a one-two punch to the chest and jaw. The tiny explosive used to propel it from the steering wheel also singed his face and neck. The impact knocked the gun out of his hand and onto one of the tiny rear seats. As the air bag began to deflate he came out of the daze and slapped it out of his face. He tried to jump up but his seatbelt held him secure. He quickly unfastened it and climbed up with his knees on the seat. He looked in all directions and then finally caught a glimpse of Cassie Black moving quickly away through the trees.