Alternate Routes

  Santiago glanced toward the apartment building on the east side of the parking lot and then cocked an eyebrow at Vickery.

  Looking in that direction, Vickery saw that the little girl was still standing by the bushes. “Do you know who she is?” he asked.

  Castine squinted quickly in that direction. “Who? Where?”

  Santiago had stepped back to one of the arches, and now got onto his bicycle. “Maybe!” he called, and began pedaling away across the parking lot.

  “Who?” repeated Castine. “We shouldn’t be seen.”

  “That girl by the—well, she’s gone now. Anyway, just a kid.”

  “Okay, just so—” Abruptly Castine began slapping at her clothes, and then she juggled her phone out of a pocket and flipped it open. “Yes, hello? Eliot! Thank God.” She caught Vickery’s eye and waved toward the car, and he nodded and walked away from her.

  He had got in and started the engine by the time she returned to the car. When she was seated and had closed the door and fastened her seatbelt, he put the car into gear and steered around toward the Selma entrance.

  “How’d it go?” he asked.

  Castine was looking out the side window. “He’ll meet me tomorrow.”

  “That’s good. We can hit a thrift store for uncharacteristic clothes on the way back to Galvan’s lot, and we should have a lot of . . . oh, pickles and chocolate in soy sauce for lunch, to keep our intimate ghosts from noticing us. And tonight I’d advise just—”

  “Ugh,” she interrupted. “I’ll do without lunch.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean literally. Anything acidic—spicy Thai take-out would probably do. Tell me about this white-bearded old guy who met your TUA agent.”

  “The two of them were talking up by the altar at first, and I came in through the front, and I hurried into one of the confessionals and pulled the door nearly shut. Then they walked back and sat down in a pew not far from me. They talked for just a minute or so, arguing, and then they left.”

  “Could you hear them talking?”

  “A bit. A few phrases.”

  “Well?”

  “I really can’t tell you. I’m still a TUA agent, at the moment.”

  Vickery suppressed his irritation. Nothing to be gained by arguing, he told himself. “Okay.”

  He had stopped at Selma to let a couple of cars pass, and Castine leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Thank you, uh, Sebastian,” she said, sitting back. “For all the things you’ve done for me here. When I’m gone, I want you to know I do truly appreciate it. Most guys wouldn’t have taken me under their wing the way you have.”

  My broken, melting-wax wing, Vickery thought. He steered onto the street, heading east. “I’ve mostly enjoyed it, actually,” he admitted, “having someone I can talk to about everything.” He refrained from emphasizing the last word, and impulsively added, “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you too,” she said, almost too quietly to hear. She took a deep breath and let it out in a low whistle. “Let’s go get our dumb costumes.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Terracotta had stayed up all night, through three shifts of radio monitors, but Brett had gone home to his apartment at 2 AM, and when he stepped into the office promptly at eight this morning, freshly shaved and smelling of Paco Rabanne cologne, Terracotta put down the purple pen with which he’d been scrawling notes on the whiteboard.

  “We haven’t found Castine,” he told Brett in a husky whisper. “I need you to confirm, verify, something with the Westwood office.”

  Through the long night hours Terracotta had been reminding himself that guilt—and love too—were meaningless spasms in the consciousness, which itself was a superfluous delusion.

  He had been working with Ingrid Castine for seven years, ever since he had recruited her as a graduate student at UCLA, and there had always been a mental sensation of pleasure when she had entered a room he was in; he had often noticed that his attention was drawn to the grassy smell of her hair, the light range of her voice when she spoke, the little folds in her lower eyelids which always made her seem to be about to smile.

  Terracotta shook his head to dismiss the useless and distracting thoughts, and felt a tap at the back of his neck; the elastic band that held his pony tail had broken. He went on “We need to . . . Abbott has been asking for backup, as much as he’s asked for anything. We need to get another agent over to where he is.” Terracotta could feel sweat on his forehead.

  Brett raised his eyebrows and stepped back. “Oh yeah? Who?”

  “Oh God,” Terracotta burst out, “who do you think?” Even in his meaningless unhappiness it surprised him to hear himself refer to the imaginary deity.

  “You wouldn’t be this upset over Ollie or one of the radio monitors. Or me. Castine?”

  “Yes, yes.” Terracotta’s damp gray hair had tumbled down around his shoulders, and he looked vaguely toward the desk for another elastic band. “She’s been with Woods for too long now, the chances are too great that he has tainted her, told her what he heard in that motorcade four years ago.”

  “The lustful bull stuff, right.” Brett shrugged. “Well, she did put Abbott there, so I guess it’s only fair. Do you know where she is?”

  “I know where she probably will be. I’ve told Westwood that I need a countermeasures team to . . . be there, and put her over. Today, this morning.” Terracotta watched his hand pick up a couple of paper clips; was he going to try to hold his hair back with them? “But the mullahs at the Hsaio building, they say they need confirmation of the order from a senior agent here! When we’ve done this, I’m going to have to remind them of my authority. I’ll brook no trout.” He blinked. “Argument, I mean.” His fingers were pulling one of the paper clips open, straightening one end of the short length of wire.

  Brett stared at him. “A full team? Shooter and three backup cars?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Chief,” said Brett slowly, “I think you should get some sleep first. Have the countermeasures team just grab and hold her. We can always—”

  “No, damn it, don’t you see? She might taint them. The toxic malmeme mustn’t spread among our people.” He blinked rapidly. “I can sleep and function at the same time.” I seem to do it a lot, in fact, he thought. “Call Westwood, will you? They tell me they can assemble the team. There’s not a lot of time.”

  Brett stared at him impassively, or speculatively, for several seconds; then he nodded. “Okay, sure. We could use Castine over there with Abbott—she’s always been good at talking to deleted persons from this side, maybe she’ll be as good at talking to us from that side.” He looked away toward the much-scribbled whiteboard and said, “And I’ll tell them they don’t need me to ratify your orders.”

  Holding the still-curled end of the paper clip, Terracotta pressed the straight end into the tip of his right thumb until it punctured the skin. “It’s all just physics,” he said hollowly, “all of us.”

  Vickery steered the Taurus into the Galvan lot and parked it near the Airstream trailer, and when he had got out he opened the passenger door for Castine, whose arms were around a large paper bag. He took the bag from her and she climbed out and stretched, blinking in the sunlight.

  “You can change first,” she said. “I’ll be over there having coffee.”

  Vickery closed her door and pressed the lock button on the key fob, then looked around at the several drivers and mechanics in the lot; he didn’t see Tom the yard manager or the attendant who had directed him to the car an hour ago.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be quick—try not to talk much to anybody. You’re my girlfriend and you’re thinking of applying for a job here, that’s all. If you speak Spanish, pretend you don’t.”

  She nodded, and he started away toward the rest room, carrying the bag with their newly purchased used clothing and shoes. As he reached the door, Castine came hurrying up to him. “I left my phone under the seat,” she said, “can I have the
key for a minute?”

  He braced the bag against his chest with one arm and reached into his pocket with his free hand. “Here you go. Lock it again after.”

  “Sure.” She took two steps, then turned back and said quickly, “When I hid in the confessional? The phrase I heard one of them say was, ‘exchange of force-carrying particles.’ I think it was the old bearded man talking.”

  “Oh,” said Vickery. “Okay, thanks.”

  “I—do hate keeping secrets from you.” She blinked at him, then turned away.

  “Uh, good,” he said to her retreating back.

  He opened the restroom door and set the bag on the closed toilet seat, then shut and bolted the door and began unbuttoning his shirt. He reckoned he could bathe, in a makeshift way, with soap and wet paper towels, if there were a lot of paper towels in the dispenser. He glanced wryly the bag of clothes; from among the random stock at a thrift store on Gower he had selected a pair of brown corduroy bell bottom trousers, a pair of Reebok tennis shoes that someone had once decided ought to be painted green, and a woman’s flannel shirt because it buttoned right-over-left. He was looking forward to seeing Castine in the jeans and Hello Kitty T-shirt she had reluctantly settled on.

  He had just started to unlace his boots when someone rattled the door and then pounded on it.

  “Vickery!” came Tom’s shout. “Your girlfriend just drove away in car two!”

  Vickery’s face was suddenly cold, and a couple of thoughts flickered through his mind: She lied to me about meeting her fiancé tomorrow—clearly she’s meeting some trusted associate of his today; and she has now completely succeeded in wrecking the life I’ve made for myself during these last four years.

  Luckily there’s an iPhone under the dashboard of car two.

  He quickly put his leather jacket back on, then unbolted the door and pulled it open. Tom’s face was red and contorted with rage and a bit of fear, and his bald head was gleaming.

  “She misunderstood me,” Vickery said as he retied the laces of his boots. “I told her we need to top up the gas tank, but I meant she should wait for me. I’ll give her a call and get her back here.”

  “Fuck that! I’ve got ’Turo tracking her. Trainee! I never even okayed her to go along on that fare!” Vickery had stepped past the furious yard manager and was buttoning his shirt as he strode across the asphalt toward the repair bay. Tom, puffing along right behind him, went on, “I want you off this lot now!”

  Vickery nodded and waved without looking back, and a couple of the mechanics moved warily aside as he stepped in out of the sunlight.

  “My guns,” he said to one of them.

  Tom was still following him, and now shook his head at the mechanic. “Not till that car’s back here!”

  Vickery could see the backstrap of one of the .45s on the usual holding shelf a few yards away, and he walked over to it and pulled it down and yanked the string tag off the trigger guard. He drew the slide back far enough to see that there was a round in the chamber, then let it snap back.

  “Hold onto the other one as collateral,” he told Tom as he tucked the gun into the side pocket of his jacket. He walked back out into the sunlight and headed for the trailer.

  The trailer door was open, and Vickery hopped up the steps and ducked inside. ’Turo was at the desk, hunched over an iPad, and Vickery recognized the Find My iPhone app on the screen. Galvan didn’t use the LoJack system because it brought the police into the situation.

  Vickery leaned over the desk and picked up the iPad.

  “I’ll do it, ’Turo,” he said as he turned toward the door. “It was my fuck-up.”

  Tom tried to block his way, but Vickery shouldered him aside and jumped down to the pavement. He shoved the iPad into his jacket and got onto the Husqvarna motorcycle, and he had the key in the ignition and had kicked the motor to roaring life before Tom could decide on a way to stop him. Vickery’s foot hit the gear-shift pedal and the bike leaped forward.

  He had hung his helmet with his sunglasses in it on the left handlebar grip, and it swung awkwardly and made working the clutch difficult, but he rode the bike out of the lot and a block down Eighth before he slowed and looked into one of the rear view mirrors. No cars had yet emerged from the Galvan lot, so he quickly leaned the bike into a right turn that took him across a 7-Eleven parking lot and around behind the store, where he braked to a halt beside a Dumpster.

  He pulled the iPad out of his jacket and turned it on, and after he swiped aside the opening screen he saw a map of this area of Los Angeles, with a pulsing blue dot moving south on Western Avenue. He slid it back inside his jacket, and took a deep breath and let it out; then he put on his sunglasses and helmet, clicked the bike into gear and left the lot by a driveway onto a side street. He’d soon be able to loop around to Western, and on the motorcycle he would be able to catch up to her before long.

  And ten minutes later he had found her.

  He was now stopped halfway along a narrow jogging path on a slope below the Contreras High School football field; to his right the slope descended further, to a curve of a street called Emerald, and the gaudy Taurus was idling at the curb down there.

  Vickery knew that a stairway led down from where she was parked to a narrow cul-de-sac off of 2nd Street. He guessed that she was supposed to meet her fiancé’s associate down on the cul-de-sac, and, out of caution, had arrived early for the appointment and parked where she could watch the rendezvous point from above. He reflected that it wasn’t the greatest neighborhood—the sidewalks on Emerald Street were scattered with broken couches and old TV sets, and he wasn’t happy that the 110 freeway was only a quarter mile away to the east.

  He pressed the Home button on the iPad, but before turning the thing off, he impulsively touched the Google icon and tapped in:

  “thy dominion be” “air is free”

  The results that came up all seemed to have to do with James Joyce’s book, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and he tapped one of them and took several quick glances at the screen while keeping his main attention on the Taurus.

  There was something in the online text about “Daedalus the artificer” doing violence to nature, which was no apparent help, and then he noticed that his remembered phrases were part of a passage from Ovid that was quoted in the text. In hasty, interrupted snatches he read the passage:

  In tedious exile now too long detain’d

  Daedalus languish’d for his native land:

  The sea foreclos’d his flight; yet thus he said:

  Tho’ Earth and water in subjection laid,

  O cruel Minos, thy dominion be,

  We’ll go tho’ air; for sure the air is free.

  Then to new arts his cunning thought applies,

  And to improve the work of Nature tries.

  He closed the Google window, turned the iPad off and tucked it back into his jacket; then he pulled his phone out of his shirt pocket and punched in the number of Castine’s burner phone.

  After a buzz, the line clicked and he heard her say, tensely, “Hello?” He could hear music in the background.

  “Hi, Ingrid,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m driving, I’m on . . . Hollywood Boulevard, I can’t talk.” She paused, then went on in a rush, “Oh, I’m sorry, Herbert! Sebastian! I lied to you, actually Eliot told me to rendezvous with a friend of his today, at ten. This guy can drive me fast to . . . out of the state, and Eliot will meet me. I’m sorry I’m leaving you in a jam, after we—after how kind you’ve been to me!—but I couldn’t let anyone know, and Terracotta probably has Abbott’s ghost looking for me and I needed this stealth car; and I’ll have Eliot get you out of trouble, I promise. I suppose your boss has reported it as stolen, but when I meet Eliot’s friend I’ll tell you where Galvan’s car is.”

  I can see where it is, Vickery thought sourly, looking down the slope at it. No, you’re not on Hollywood Boulevard, and in fact you’re hardly more than a stone’s throw from a freeway.
“I think this is a trap,” he said, “your man Terracotta knew about your fiancé, right? He probably—”

  “It’s not a trap. Or if it is, and I’m caught, don’t worry, I won’t betray you . . . any more than I have already! I’ve got to go. Goodbye.”

  She ended the call, and Vickery put his phone away and looked around at the visible buildings. The houses down there on Emerald Street showed no open windows, and the apartment buildings on the other side of Second Street were visible to him from his higher elevation but would have no view of her car on the street below him. To his left, though, was a seven or eight story apartment building with a lot of balconies, and open arches on the roof—if he’d been doing advance work for a motorcade, he’d have made sure that countersnipers were on that roof and that no facing windows were open; and if a previously checked window were to open, the motorcade would be rerouted.

  He glanced at his left wrist, then swore under his breath, for he had switched wrists and changed the time by an hour; he calculated that it was now ten minutes to ten.

  A shifting wave of about a hundred pigeons curled from east to west across his view of the farther buildings, their wings dazzlingly white in the morning sunlight; behind them, scraps of paper whirled in momentary updrafts.

  Vickery snatched his phone out again and tapped her number.

  A moment later she answered, speaking loudly over jangled music and a rapid clicking. “Yes?”

  “They’ve extended the field where you are! It’s a trap, get out of there fast, now!”

  “It can’t be a trap, you don’t even know where I—”

  “Damn it, that’s the dashboard metronome I hear, isn’t it? How about the radios?”

  “They’re—none of your business. Goodbye.”

  Looking down the slope, Vickery saw the car door open, and Castine stepped out.

  The driver’s side door of a gray Chevrolet sedan parked fifty feet behind her swung open, and a man got out and quickly raised a short rifle, aimed toward Castine.

  Vickery dropped his phone and yanked the .45 out of his pocket, and in one stretched-out instant he calculated the distance and the downward angle and squeezed the trigger.