Gregg Hurwitz - Troubleshooter

Den looked at Kaner. "Put out the cigarette. Warm-up's over."

Kaner ground the butt against his front tooth, popped it in his mouth, savored a few chews, and swallowed.

"Still never met a nicotine junkie like you." Goat tapped his glass eye with a long fingernail, a gross-out stunt that had developed into a nervous tic. "Chasing the cancer like a piece-a ass. What you gonna do when you catch it?"

Kaner's words came in a deep rasp: "Smoke through the hole in my throat."

He tugged off his shirt, revealing an enormous pectoral tattoo-a revolver aimed straight on, with six Sinner skulls staring out of the holes in the wheel. The dim light-morning's first gray glow-turned his flesh pale and moldy. He found a fresh T-shirt in a cabinet and tossed it to Den. Den slid his bowie knife from his shoulder holster. Its genuine-ivory handle shimmered. On the butt, tiny inset rubies formed a flaming skull. He'd paid over a grand to a Kenyan poacher for the section of tusk, or so the story went. Den slit both sleeve cuffs and threw the shirt back to Kaner. The fabric still stretched at Kaner's biceps when he pulled the shirt on.

Tom-Tom laughed. He was bouncing in his boots, white hair flapping, fingers going at his sides as if he were hopped up on meth, though he required none. "Lookadit. His shirt. Doanfitchasogood." His voice sounded funny, altered through an oft-broken nose.

Kaner said, "Why should I stain mine?"

The man in the chair emitted a faint cry.

Goat laughed. "You sound like Chief. Next you'll have your bitches polishing your boots."

Chief stared ahead, unamused and silent, his thin lines of beard fastidiously sculpted.

As Kaner drifted behind the man, Den drew forward into a square of foggy light thrown through one of the tiny windows. The man tried to recoil in his chair, pulling his head back and to one side, muttering a prayer in Spanish.

Den's surprisingly handsome face tensed. "I won't ask again."

"Por favor…por favor…"

Den nodded at Kaner, who palmed the man's skull, his other hand locking beneath his chin, and ripped him and the chair backward. Kaner dragged him, shrieking, toward the kitchen area.

Den got there before they did and spun the arm of the vise. A metallic whir as the jaws spread. At the sound the man found a hidden reserve of strength, bucking against Kaner's hold. Goat and Tom-Tom stepped in, and then Kaner gripped the man's blood-slick ponytail, forcing his head back. The man grunted and strained forward against his hair, face reddening, veins standing up in his neck. At a snail's pace, both hands tightening around the ponytail, Kaner fought the head between the open jaws. Den knocked the handle with the side of a hand, and the device clenched.

A piercing scream that faded to whispered babbling.

Chief watched impassively from across the garage, looking mildly bored. He had not moved.

Den appraised the tools on the counter, picking up a pair of needle-nose pliers. He looked down at the trapped head.

The pliers rose into the man's view. "I tell you. I tell you todo."

"I know." Den bent sympathetically over the upturned face. "But I'm gonna work for a while first."

The air-conditioned elevator filled with the Muzak stylings of "Arthur's Theme." Bear hummed along at the chorus, then rustled under Tim's and Guerrera's looks.

"What? I was clearing my throat."

The elevator stopped, and they stepped out into a marble foyer that led to glass doors with deco etching. Bear, who'd made short and noisy work of an eye-opener Super Big Gulp on the way over, ducked into a bathroom.

The foyer window looked down four stories onto South Rodeo Drive. Tim and Guerrera stood shoulder to shoulder and watched Jags and Hummers flash back the morning light.

Guerrera brought his knuckle to his jawbone, a nervous tap. "Listen, I'm sorry I lost my cool at the clubhouse yesterday."

"You let Pete get to you a little, that's all."

"Never seen you get rattled like that."

Tim laughed. "You don't read the papers."

"You know what I mean. You're level, even when you're not."

"They say racist shit to get a rise out of you. Don't give it to them. Detach."

Bear stepped out from the bathroom, readjusting the star on his belt, and by tacit understanding, Tim and Guerrera let the exchange end. The three headed to reception and flashed creds. After a fifteen-minute wait, during which they were forced to endure the receptionist's too-loud phone recollections of a recent shopping expedition, they were escorted past a secretary and a dressed-for-success paralegal to the Inner Office.

Dana Lake stood with her back to them, silhouetted against a sun-bleached pane of glass. A cordless headset slightly crimped her hair. "If you won't offer us anything better than that, I'll wait until five minutes before trial to plead him out. I'll make you spend six months building a case you won't even try. Yeah? Then don't waste our time with bullshit offers."

She pulled off the headset, shook out her hair, and pivoted to face them. "Don't fuck with my client. You want to talk to him, you bring a warrant or you phone me."

"Uncle Pete and I reached our own arrangement," Tim said.

She tossed the headset onto her meticulously ordered desk. "Credentials."

They handed them to her, and she wrote down their names and badge numbers on a yellow legal pad. A framed lithograph of the Laughing Sinner logo commanded the wall behind her desk. "To DL-a friend to bikers, my kind of tough broad." Danny the Wand's flourish of a signature was Sharpied beneath the dedication.

Dana stared at Tim's creds for an extra beat. "I hope you don't think you can get away with your celebrated stunts with my clients, Deputy Rackley. I'll have your ass in a sling."

"Ms. Lake, my ass lives in a sling."

"So. You've sicced the heat on the entire Laughing Sinners organization. Incisive investigative strategy. Was the Marshals Service the brain trust behind color-coding Arab travelers after

"You rep all the Sinners?"

"I do."

"How's that arranged?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but I'm on retainer to the club."

Bear said, "Lucrative, I'd imagine."

Her gaze dropped to his feet. "I don't buy my shoes at Payless."

"You know where that money comes from?"

"And your paychecks come from an Enron-funded junta government that supports tyrannical monarchies and wages illegal war in violation of international law and against UN votes. Looks like you've got the moral upper hand on a sleazy gal like me. Let's get to business. I bill six-fifty an hour. This diverting badinage with the constabulary has already cost me"-a glance to her Baume amp; Mercier-"a hundred and twenty-five dollars."

"I'm sure Uncle Pete'll pick up the tab," Bear said.

"Good idea. I'll inform Billing."

Tim produced the municipal permission allowing the Sinners to ride without helmets in that morning's funeral procession. She lowered her head into a pair of frameless half-glasses and perused it. She finished, and her glasses took flight, landing softly on the legal pad on her desk. "What's your angle?"

"Goodness of my heart. I was told to smooth things over so our fine city's middle-class churchgoers can sleep soundly in their beds."

She refolded the permission. "I'll drag you through the press if we take you at your word and you use it to roust my clients." She seemed to speak without breathing, a rapid-fire assault perfected by years of courtroom performance. "It's preposterous that riding bareheaded even has to be granted as a favor. We've been petitioning against the helmet laws for years. So much for Patrick Henry-you won't let people risk their own skulls."

Guerrera said, "Helmet laws save-"