Michael Prescott - Mortal Faults

“It’s just her? Just this one woman?”

“For now.”

Shanker hesitated, wondering how much he should ask for. Too much, and he might make the Man angry. Too little, and he would only be cheating himself.

“Five grand,” he said.

Reynolds nodded. “I’ll pay in cash when the job is done. Unless you need a deposit?”

This had to be a joke. Even if it wasn’t, Shanker found himself laughing. “Deposit? What, are you shitting me? No way.”

He kept laughing, though there was nothing really funny about it. Except that it was funny-the whole routine they were going through, the scene they had acted out. They both knew Shanker would do whatever he was told, whether or not he was paid. They both knew Shanker was in no position to disappoint Jack Reynolds. And they both knew what happened to people who did disappoint him. Joe Ferris, for instance.

Joe had made the mistake of trying to blackmail the Man back when Reynolds was just getting started in the DA’s office. Ferris had dirt on him-some small-time illegal shit Reynolds had done as a teenager-and he threatened Reynolds with career-killing exposure unless he received a monthly stipend, a lien on Reynolds’ income. Reynolds played along, paying him off for five or six months, until Joe got careless and allowed himself to be drawn into a private rendezvous with the Man. By then he thought he’d broken Reynolds down, made him his bitch.

Jack Reynolds was no one’s bitch. The next day Joe Ferris was found dead in a vacant lot, his body mutilated in awful ways, all of which predated his expiration. The police never caught the killer and, given Ferris’s rap sheet, didn’t make much of an effort. But Shanker knew who had done it. And he knew that before he died, Joe Ferris had given up every piece of evidence that could have been used against Reynolds. No one could have held out against the methods that had been used, the terrible ingenuity employed.

The Man was older now, but he hadn’t mellowed. He’d filled out his suits a little, polished his act, but if you stripped all that away, he was still a fighter who knew only the law of the barrio-to defend your turf, accept no disrespect, and show no leniency to your enemies, ever.

“No deposit then,” Reynolds said when Shanker had gotten his laughter under control.

“I’ll put my best crew on it,” Shanker promised.

“Good. Let me know when it’s done.”

Reynolds started to rise. Shanker risked a question. “You said there was only one person-for now. Does that mean there’s another one, for later?”

“Yes.” Reynolds looked away. “Another woman. Younger than this one. Harder to get at. Harder to take down.”

“Gimme her address,” Shanker said, eager to please. “My crew’ll pop her, too.”

“One thing at a time. This other woman has to be approached with care. And…” He let his words fade away.

Shanker waited, knowing the Man would tell him if he meant to.

“And when she’s taken care of, I want to be there.”

“Okay.” Shanker drew out the two syllables in an unasked question.

“I hired her, and she quit on me. Called me a liar.” Reynolds turned to him, and something in his face made Shanker almost flinch. “I don’t like that.”

“Okay,” Shanker said again, quietly.

Reynolds looked past him into some invisible distance. “I’ll be teaching her a lesson in loyalty.”

“You can teach her today, if you want.”

“Not today.” Reynolds smiled. His voice was low, the voice of a man speaking to himself. “Abby can wait. Sometimes the waiting is half the pleasure of it. You know what I mean?”

He didn’t. “Sure.”

“When I need this other matter addressed, you’ll be able to arrange it, I’m certain.”

“Absolutely.”

“And I’ll pay another five grand. With a bonus if she lasts through the night.”

“That’s very generous.” Shanker was thinking of Joe Ferris, who had lived for four to six hours according to the autopsy, though for the last hour or two he had been blind, deaf, unable to speak or move, capable only of feeling pain.

Reynolds stood. “I’ll let myself out.” Suddenly he was a charmer again, a neighborhood guy. “Great to see you, Ron. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“You too,” Shanker managed. “We gotta get together for dinner sometime.”

“Count on it,” the Man said, knowing as well as Shanker that there would be no dinner, which was just as well, because Shanker never had any appetite in Reynolds’ presence.

The door closed after Reynolds, and Shanker sank back in his chair. He thought about the two women. The second one, especially, the one Reynolds had called Abby. She’d walked out on a business arrangement, he said. Insulted him, too. Insulted the Man.

That hadn’t been smart. Whoever she was, this Abby didn’t have a clue who she was dealing with. She would find out, though.

Just like Joe Ferris did.

The air over Los Angeles was a grimy sepia tone, tinting the gridwork of buildings and streets below. Looking out the airplane window, Tess saw the Hollywood sign on a far hillside, the row of giant letters reduced by distance to microscopic text, a footnote to the city. She wondered why people made such a big deal about the sign. It was only the remnant of someone’s advertising promotion-for a housing development called Hollywoodland, as she recalled. Denver boasted the Rocky Mountains, a wilderness of trails and fishing holes and granite peaks running with clear snowmelt. L.A. had a defunct advertisement on a hill.

All right, maybe she was overstating things. But she truly hated Los Angeles. With any luck her stay would be short and uneventful. She would find out what Abby was mixed up in, make sure she wouldn’t come to the Bureau’s attention, then make a graceful exit.

The problem was, she’d found that situations involving Abby rarely proceeded according to plan.

The jet touched down with a skid of tires and made its way to the arrival gate. She’d checked no baggage, choosing to bring only a carry-on case with a few items she kept in her office for overnight stays-a change of clothes, some toiletries, other odds and ends. She had worn her gun in a pancake holster under her jacket throughout the flight, an option that was not only tolerated but required when federal agents traveled by plane. In the world after September 11, a law-enforcement agent with a gun was the next best thing to an air marshal.

Most of the flight had been occupied by her perusal of the MEDEA case report, faxed to her office just before she left. The first thing she’d noticed was that the case was two decades old. It had been reactivated only within the past few weeks, for reasons that fully explained the Bureau’s trepidation. It was hot stuff, all right. She was almost surprised Michaelson had allowed the material to be faxed to her, even over a secure phone line.

And she now knew why the case had been dubbed MEDEA. Apparently the name was not an example of FBI creativity, after all. It had been coined by a tabloid newspaper, and the Bureau had simply picked it up. There had been considerable press coverage. Tess remembered none of it, but she hadn’t been in law enforcement then. She had been a sophomore at the University of Illinois.

Back in the eighties, the Bureau’s involvement in the case had been minimal, limited to a psychological evaluation of the arrestee. Even that contribution was unusual, a testimony to the widespread media interest in the crime.

The description of the current investigation was sketchy, and there was nothing about any developments within the past week. Tess figured she would be brought up to speed on those details when she was briefed at the field office.