Michael Prescott - Mortal Faults

“Yeah?” he said, hearing both anger and desperate optimism in his voice.

“How’s it hanging, Jack?”

It wasn’t Shanker. It was Abby Sinclair.

He blinked. “Do you know what time it is?” The question was absurd-of course she knew-but it was the only thing he could think of to say.

“It’s coming up on three fifteen. Gee, I really hope I didn’t wake you.”

“What the fuck do you want?”

“To do you a favor. Well, not so much a favor as an act of reciprocal generosity. The old mutual back scratching, first popularized by our primate ancestors.”

There was something funny about her voice. She was speaking too fast, her words racing, her voice jumpy. Like she was on drugs or something. Or rattled, maybe.

Yes. He thought that was it.

Sinclair was scared.

“You’re not making much sense,” he said quietly, allowing all emotion to drain from his voice, setting his composure as a contrast to her panic.

“Sorry. Sometimes I start communicating in my own private language, you know. Like James Joyce, only without the artistry. Or the accent.”

“What are you driving at?”

“What I’m driving, Jack, is a bargain. A hard bargain, but one that will be beneficial to us both.”

“Go on.”

“Not over the phone. Some things need to be discussed face to face. I want a meeting. Tomorrow. You can fit me into your schedule, I’m sure. Get Moneypenny to arrange it. You know, your standoffish secretary.”

“She’s not my secretary. She’s my constituent services coordinator.”

“Well, I’m not a constituent, but I can do you a service-in exchange for certain considerations.”

“There’s nothing you can do for me.”

“Wrong-o, Jacko. I can do plenty. Are you going to meet with me or not?”

“We can meet privately in the morning-”

“Privacy isn’t what I had in mind. No offense, Congressman, but I trust you about as much as-well, as any other politician. Especially after that stunt you pulled a few hours ago. You know, the jackbooted thugs goose-stepping through Andrea’s bungalow like it was Poland circa 1936.”

“1939,” Reynolds corrected automatically.

“Point is, I know what you’re capable of.”

He doubted that. He really did.

Of course he wasn’t surprised that she’d heard about the attack on Andrea’s house. It had been a top news story. And she wouldn’t have needed much imagination to peg him as the one responsible.

But something more than that must have happened. Something that was testing the limits of her self-control.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Miss Sinclair?” he asked.

“No. I’m not all right. I am, in the words of a recent acquaintance of mine, screwed, blued, and tattooed. I’m in a jam. It’s only going to get worse. But you’re going to help me out of it.”

“What kind of jam?”

“The kind I could go to jail for. Which is all you’re going to hear about it, because it’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that I can solve your problems along with my own.”

“And how can we do that?”

“Are we going to meet or not? I want people around. I want a crowd.”

“I’m hosting a barbecue at my house for some of my more well-heeled constituents. It starts at noon. There should be at least two hundred guests. Is that enough of a crowd for you?”

“It’ll do.”

“Good. I’ll have my campaign manager, Mr. Stenzel, put you on the guest list.”

“Not under my real name. Any media going to be there?”

“One or two stringers, maybe.”

“Have him put me on the media list under the name Wanda Klein. I’m with, uh, Gold Coast Magazine.”

“You’ll need a press pass to get by security.”

“That’s not problem.”

“You still haven’t told me how you can help me.”

“Haven’t I?” He heard her draw a deep, frightened breath. “Okay, then, Jack. How’s this? I can give you Andrea Lowry. I can deliver her right into your hands.”

Click, and the call was over.

Reynolds stared into the darkness. Then slowly he began to laugh.

Abby lay in bed, awake but unwilling to rise and face the daylight beyond her bedroom window. She wasn’t sure how much sleep she’d gotten-three or four hours, maybe. Not good sleep, either, but the restless, troubled kind. Last night she’d been too exhausted even to shed her clothes, spotted with blood from Dylan’s broken nose. She was still wearing them now. They felt pasted on, a second layer of skin.

Finally she swung out of bed. She was thinking about running the shower and making it hot, very hot, when her cell phone rang.

“Hell,” she muttered, not in a conversational mood. She picked up her purse and found her cell. “Abby Sinclair.”

“We need to talk.” It was Tess.

Abby managed a smile. “Miss me already?”

Tess didn’t acknowledge the remark. Apparently she wasn’t in the mood for banter, either. “There’s a park on the bluffs in Santa Monica. You know the one I mean?”

“Palisades Park.”

“Meet me there at Ocean Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard. Half hour.”

“I’m not sure I can-”

Tess had already hung up.

“-make it that soon,” Abby finished, speaking only to herself. She checked the clock: eight forty-five. Early for a phone call. Her friend at the FBI was pretty revved up about something. Three guesses what it was.

She got out a clean outfit, not bothering with the shower. She stripped, then studied herself in the mirror. The bruises from her dustup with Leon Trotman were still visible, along with a couple of new contusions, courtesy of Dylan. No cuts, no scrapes. None of the blood on her clothes was hers.

That’s how you know if you’ve had a good night, Abby thought. If none of the blood is yours.

It was what she’d always told herself. Now she knew it was a lie. Last night had not been good. Not good at all.

Tess drove to Palisades Park in her Bureau car, wondering how she was supposed to feel.

Scared, she decided. Scared of what she might be about to learn.

She wasn’t quite sure why the prospect frightened her. Abby had never been a friend in a true sense. More like a sometime ally, whose deepest motives were hidden, whose agenda was purely her own.

But while Tess hadn’t ever fully trusted Abby, she had thought she could count on her. No, that didn’t make sense. Or maybe it did. She could count on Abby to do the right thing by her own standards, and though Abby’s standards were more lax than her own, they were real and predictable. There were limits to what she would do. There were boundaries. Or so Tess had thought.

She might have been wrong.

The phone in her hotel room had started clamoring at five thirty. It was Hauser, calling to summon her to an emergency squad meeting at six a.m. She asked what had happened, but Hauser said only, “Get over here.”

Even while she threw on clothes and retrieved her government-issue sedan from the hotel parking lot, she was fighting off an ugly suspicion at the back of her mind. But she didn’t begin to believe it until she was seated in the conference room with twenty other agents, Crandall among them, while Hauser handed out crime scene photos taken by the Santa Ana P.D.

“The victim’s name was Dylan Garrick,” Hauser said. “At about one a.m. he was shot twice in the face at close range. Apparently the weapon was his own gun-a Glock nine, wrapped in a pillow to muffle the report. Even so, someone heard the shot and called it in. Police responded and found the door open-no indication of forced entry-and Garrick dead in the living room. Garrick was known to local authorities as a member of a biker club called the Scorpions. He had the gang logo tattooed on his neck, as you can see.”