David Putnam - The Replacements

He put on the turn signal and changed lanes right over to the off ramp exiting at Citrus. At the bottom of the ramp he turned right and then left at the first light to Valley Boulevard. He made a left turn into The Fontana Valley Suites’ parking lot. Dirty and dented cars predicted the décor I’d find in the room.

“Okay,” he said, “I need you to follow my lead.”

“Follow your lead? We’re just going for a quick nap, right? It’s four o’clock in the damn morning. What’s going on, Mack?”

“Take it easy, big man. I got a handle on this. Here, put on this ball cap and these glasses.”

I hated the Dodgers and he knew it. The glasses were stylish and clear. I checked the mirror behind the fold-down visor. The props did change my appearance. I looked a little like a stockbroker out for a weekend pretending to be a sports fan.

Mack pulled in and parked next to a black Toyota Camry with an Asian male sitting in the driver’s seat. Mack shut off the T-Bird. “Come on, you can have a couple hours, then you’re going to have to work some of this magic Wicks is talking about until Jonas contacts us.”

Mack knew how I worked. I’d met him on the Ruben the Cuban murder investigation nine months ago. In fact, when he and I finally ran Ruben down, Ruben threw a can of gas on Mack and was about to light him off, turn Mack into chicken flambé, when I’d intervened. Mack would have been a piece of shriveled-up charcoal.

We got out. Mack went up to the driver’s window of the Toyota. The window whirled down. Mack turned to me. “Leon, I’d like you to meet Special Agent Wu with the FBI.”

FBI, really? My knees wobbled. I was too old and tired for this kind of bullshit. What the hell was Mack doing? Every FBI agent had to have seen my ugly mug on a wanted poster at one time or another. I put on my best game face, smiled, and reached out and shook Wu’s hand proffered through the window. “Nice to meet you,” said Wu.

“Likewise,” I said, and kicked the back of Mack’s leg.

“Ouch. Man, what was that for?”

“Sorry, didn’t see you there.”

Wu got out, stretched. “I see you guys have worked together before. So, Leon, you’re just joining this investigation?”

Mack bent over, rubbed his leg. “No, he’s been off with an injury,” he said through clenched teeth. “You know the type. They get a hangnail and they take two weeks’ sick.”

Wu looked at me then at Mack, and nodded as if he did know the type.

“He’s not here for the Karl Drago thing. He’s jumpin’ into the Sandy Williams and Elena Cortez snatch.”

“Well, good luck with that. I heard tomorrow, or the day after at the latest, you guys don’t get any results, we’re comin’ in to take it over.”

Mack turned, walked away, and said over his shoulder, “You can have it, Wu. Catch ya later.”

I hurried to catch up. “What the hell’s going on here?”

Mack chuckled. “We’ve been working this Karl Drago thing, and we hadn’t been set up here for eight hours when some mope burglarized one of the FBI cars, took a gun and a laptop with high priority info. They had to splinter off two agents on the down low just to chase down the-”

“No, you know what I’m talking about. Who’s Karl Drago?”

He stopped at the motel room door marked 126, raised his hand as though poised to knock, and continued on as if he hadn’t heard me. “To chase down the crooks who took their shit. Real embarrassing.” He knocked on the door. “You know the FBI, they won’t get burned again, so now they’re taking turns watching their own cars in the parking lot. Your hard-earned tax dollars at work. Well, not yours, not anymore.” He smiled.

“Who’s Karl Drago?”

“I’m on the Violent Crimes Team, remember? The team was set up on Drago when all this other shit went down, the first kidnapping, then the second. They pulled me off Drago to work the kidnapping. I’m just using this as a home base because the room’s already paid for.”

“With the FBI in the next room? Are you crazy?”

The motel room door opened. A woman in denim pants and a long-sleeve blue shirt with a Glock in a black nylon shoulder holster smiled back. A gold FBI badge hung from a chain around her neck. She turned and walked back around a large screen. The screen, aluminum frame with black material, blocked anyone in the parking lot’s view into the motel room. Mack stepped around it. Like the rabbit going down the hole, I followed.

All the furniture in the room had been moved, stacked, and shoved into one corner. Computer monitors sat on tables set up in a U-configuration. One computer screen, divided into a quad, depicted four different images: a car in a parking lot, a motel room door-not The Valley Suites at street view-the inside of a motel room, and a bed with someone sleeping in it. A large someone with just a sheet covering him. Two other computer screens showed maps with two little red dots, both on Valley Boulevard. As far as I could tell, the location was right down the street from where we stood. This had to be the Karl Drago thing he was talking about.

A black agent sat in a chair next to the woman who let us in. Both looked bored to death.

“Hey, you guys,” said Mack, “this is Leon Johnson, the guy I told you about. Leon, this is Mary St. John, you can call her Mary Beth, and Willard Godfrey. You can call him Will, but he doesn’t like it, prefers Willard, like the rat in the movie.”

I shook their hands.

“If he’s not part of this operation, then he shouldn’t be in here,” said Mary. “And if he is going to stay, he needs to have some ID displayed.”

Mack reached into his pocket and pulled out a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s badge already on a chain, and hung it around my neck. Heavy emotions welled up in me, clogged my throat. For two and a half decades, the sheriff’s star had defined who I was, how I lived. For the briefest of seconds I was ready to forsake all else to get the star back, to wear the uniform again for real. Then the urge quelled as I remembered my family waiting for me. And most of all, the look in Marie’s eyes when I’d left.

Mack was going way out on a limb to run with me as I impersonated something I wasn’t.

Mack said, “Come on, Leon, I can tell when we’re not wanted.”

“Brilliant observation,” said Mary. She smiled again at Mack, and this time I read the look. Her eyes said she possessed a desire she couldn’t have. Mack had turned her down recently and she still felt the rejection. That wasn’t like Mack, to bypass a pretty woman. Something was going on with him.

Willard, the rat man, said, “Don’t go away mad, just go away.”

Outside the motel room, we moved down the walk a few doors to Room 136. Mack took out a key and handed it to me. “This is you.”

I took it and opened the door.

He said, “You have two hours, then I’ll be back to pick up your happy ass.”

I needed to know what was going on but was too tired to argue. I went in, closed the door, and fell on the bed.

Two minutes later I woke to pounding. I got up and stomped to the door. That sorry son of a bitch. Why did he have to play these silly, childish games? I opened the door to bright morning light and brought my arm up to shield it. John Mack shoved his way in. “I said two hours. That meant you were to be up, showered, and ready to go. I gave you an extra hour and this is the way you treat me?”

“Good morning to you too. Any contact yet?”

“No, I’ll go get some coffee and doughnuts, you hop in the shower.” He turned to leave.

“Hey,” I said. He stopped.

“How come the FBI doesn’t just set up another camera in this parking lot to watch their cars?”