Gregg Hurwitz - Do No Harm

"Well, you've succeeded in making them more complicated. The board is rightly pissed off that you're not here. The meeting is progressing, whether you're here to defend yourself or not. And you're being depicted in even less flattering fashion than you deserve. And this morning's Times photo isn't exactly salve on our PR wounds." An angry pause. "You're doing an excellent job sabotaging what was shaping up to be a great career."

"I appreciate your keeping me in the loop," he heard himself say. His voice was cold, clinical, detached. Sandy hung up without saying good-bye.

He nodded to Yale and followed him down the stairs. The irritable black desk officer looked at David, then elbowed her counterpart-an obese man with a Wilford Brimley mustache-in the ribs.

"Ask him," she said. When the man shook his head, it set his jowls jiggling.

David and Yale passed the counter.

The woman elbowed her partner again. "Ask him," she repeated.

Wilford Brimley looked up with what David imagined was uncharacteristic shyness. "I got this heart murmur… " he said.

David slid his stethoscope into place and leaned over the counter.

David sat quietly in the passenger seat of Yale's car as they headed back to his house. Dalton had stayed at the station, running down leads on the phone. The sky was gray-brown, the clouds overhead indistinguishable from the haze of pollution. David tried to imagine his life if the Board voted for him to step down as division chief. He'd always lived with a presumption of irreproachability, probably a flaw he'd inherited from his mother. Events of the past week had knocked him from his armor, and dressed him in the trappings of visible failure. Maybe this was a good place from which to start over. To pick up the fragments and build something new from them.

Not surprisingly, he next felt a mentor's pull to get Carson put back together.

Yale said something, pulling David from his reverie.

"Excuse me?" David asked.

"I said, don't worry. We are gonna nail him. We have the whole department on the lookout for him and his vehicle. Ninety-eight hundred officers. He must have the vehicle hidden away, but every time he takes a drive or steps out in public, he's playing Russian roulette with five bullets."

David's mind slowly caught up to Yale's words, taking a moment to awaken. "You're more confident than Dalton."

"Dalton is accustomed to fate, chance, and the world conspiring to fuck him. I'm not. Clyde is no longer an unknown suspect. He's now an identified, wanted, violent felon, and he's starting to unravel. He's taking bigger and bigger risks, like going to your house. He's playing an endgame now. There's no question we'll nail him, and in my mind, there's no question we'll nail him soon." His hands fisted the wheel, then loosened. "There's really only one major uncertainty."

David rested his head against the glass. "What's that?"

"How bloody it gets before it's over."

They rode in silence the rest of the way to Brentwood. As they turned onto Marlboro, David recognized Ed's red Pathfinder across the street. The police cars had all left. "Want me to come in?" Yale asked. "Check for alkali throwers under the bed?"

David glanced at Ed's Pathfinder warily. "Thank you, I'll be fine."

"Do you have a weapon?"

"No," David said, opening his door. "No."

Yale leaned over so he could see David's face. "Keep your doors and windows locked. See about an alarm system. Call me with any sign of anything out of the ordinary. I'll check in with you every few hours. We'll have a car on you by nightfall."

"Thank you," David said.

A new lock greeted David at his front door, which stood slightly ajar. When he entered his house, Ed was on all fours behind the ficus wearing a woman's halter top-nicely filled out-and a leather miniskirt. A pair of patent leather pumps sat at the edge of the carpet. Next to two Nextel phones on the counter lay a Kate Spade purse.

Ed turned toward David, revealing a faceful of makeup and a luxuriant blond wig. "Not a word, not a fucking word," he said. He spliced two wires together and attached them to a keypad.

"Darling," David said. "Your mascara is running."

Adjusting his wig, Ed stood and approached David. He moved differently-high on his toes, shoulders drawn slightly back, chin raised. Feminine. When he went undercover, he really went all out. "I was on a job. I came straight over."

"What, on Santa Monica Boulevard?"

"Bomb threat at a drag rave. I know, it sounds like a Roger Corman movie."

David laughed. "Everything under control?"

Ed shrugged. "Nothing happened. That's what I get for taking a job from worked-up queens."

"At least you got to get dressed up."

Ed's face registered that he found little humorous about the situation.

David pointed to his wig. "I think it's safe to say you can remove that now."

"Oh. Oh yeah." Ed pulled off the wig and flung it on the carpet. "I came over as soon as the cops left, so put the brakes on your commentary. Now listen, here's what we did. I switched your Schlage locks to Medeco-double-cylinder, one-inch hardened dead bolts with six-pin tumblers and brass revolving collars. I set up a triangular-patterned, infrared, dual-beam break around the perimeter of your property line. It'll give off a beep to let you know when someone's on your property."

He paused to glare at David. "Keep your eyes off my tits and pay attention. Next, we have a Radionics security system setup, run off this keypad. It employs passive infrared through the interior and at the windows, which are also outfitted with glass-shatter sensors. Delayed entry and exit is not to exceed forty seconds. If the system is breached, it'll call out on POTS-plain old telephone system-with a backup cellular dial in case someone takes out your hard line. Your code is your birthday, including the four-digit year, plus the number seven. Got it?"

David nodded.

"Your little shrub collection out front provides excellent concealment for intruders. I'd rather you went with a cleaner look."

"You do landscape design?"

Ed pulled a compact out of the purse and began vigorously removing his eye shadow. "Honey, I do it all."

"What about the phones? The cops can't get the paperwork through to trace calls for a few days. Can you get a tap on the line?"

"Yeah. As soon as I go back in time to the 1950s." Ed picked up one of the Nextels and punched in a number, shaking his head. "Nobody uses taps anymore. I have a Lucent technologist on the inside." He changed his voice to a drawl. "Yeah, hey there. Your baby brother calling. Listen, I'm trying to find mom's new phone number. Here's her old one: 310-555-4771." David's telephone number. "I'm gonna stay with her about a week… No, to be safe, I'd like to stay with her a week-twenty-four hours isn't enough time for us to catch up… Thanks, bro." He hung up and smiled at David. "Your number's red-flagged for seven days."

"Shouldn't we let the police know we've done this?"

The smile left Ed's face instantaneously. "Absolutely not. This is an inside guy I'm using. I have to keep his ass covered. We're trading legality for speed, here." Ed screwed the keypad into the wall behind the ficus and slipped into his stilettos with a pained grimace. "If Clyde calls, let me know immediately and we'll be able to trace the location he called from."

"Thank you," David said. "I… thank you."

Ed nodded at him on his way to the door. "I'll send you a bill. You'll send me a money order."

"How much?"

Ed turned, touched two manicured fingers to his lipsticked mouth, and blew David a kiss. "Honey, you don't want to know."

David retrieved the morning paper, sitting in his leather chair and reading the two front-page articles on "The Westwood Acid Thrower." He noted with amusement that they'd selected a less-than-flattering photograph of himself, captured mid-sentence during his speech at the resident meet-and-greet, to go along with Clyde's.