Gregg Hurwitz - Troubleshooter

"We can do this," Malane urged. "We can tie the whole fucking thing up tomorrow."

Bear growled, "He's gonna walk outta here, Rack."

Tim listened for Dray's voice but for the first time couldn't hear it. She was done playing conscience. Everyone else was hidden, lost in disguise, holed up in trucks and sedans, phantom voices in his ear. Wind whistled through the balcony rails, cutting into the silence.

Bear again: "What's it gonna be, Rack?"

It was just him, the Troubleshooter, with the crosshairs on the man who'd shot his wife.

Den threw a leg over the bike and kick-started the engine.

"What's it gonna be?" Bear said.

Tim said, "Let him go."

Den carved a sharp turn, passing within feet of Guerrera. Scope to his eye, Tim watched him float unopposed up the street. The frosty MGD bottle flew by in the background. Den passed Haines's and Zimmer's Broncos, facing out of opposing driveways, ready to rev forward to form an instant barricade. Up the street a dark FBI sedan-probably Malane's-eased out from the curb behind the bike.

Moving through headlight splashes, Den drove evenly up the street, abiding the speed limit, signaling at the turn. Tim watched the black bulb of his helmet until it disappeared from sight.

Squeeze, Dray. C'mon. Give a squeeze."

Tim finally slid his index finger from his wife's limp fist. Her hand fell open to the sheet. He walked around the bed and tried her other hand, but to no avail. Someone shouted from a nearby room, and he heard the tapping of running feet in the hospital hall, the clatter of gurney wheels. He sat for a few minutes in perfect silence.

Then he retrieved Dray's brush from the bag he'd brought and ran it through her hair, working out the tangles. He wet one of her wash-cloths in the sink and cleaned her face. He traced her hairline, circled her eyes, rode the bridge of her nose. Then he stopped to feel the warmth of her curved belly. Gently, he pulled up her eyelid so he could see her iris. Her eyes were emerald-true emerald-an arresting shade that had depth and layers like the infinite refractions of the gem itself.

But now they seemed flat and vacant, devoid of inner light. No longer did he hear her voice in his head. He wondered if that meant he'd lost her already, if she'd drifted beyond the pale of recovery.

"I could've killed Den Laurey," he said. "And I didn't."

But if he was looking for approval or absolution, he'd have to look elsewhere. He let go, and the eyelid pulled back into place.

Night crowded the hospital window. From his place by the bed, Tim could see neither stars nor streetlights, just the black square of glass, the opaque end of a corridor of darkness. The hospital might have been the last outpost of civilization; it might have been perched on the edge of a cliff or drifting through outer space.

He rose wearily and stretched Dray's legs, her arms. Her face, slack now for four days, no longer retained the lines and shapes that made her unique, that made her Dray. In another few days, the muscle tone would start to weaken. And her chances of recovery would weaken with it.

He was massaging her jasmine lotion into her hands when a noise at the door made him look up.

Malane came in an awkward half step, one arm still clutching the doorframe as if to indicate his willingness to extract himself from the intimate scene should Tim desire it. Tim nodded, and Malane entered and sat in the opposing chair, facing Tim across Dray's body.

"I'm sorry to bust in on you… Bear told me you were here."

Tim continued rubbing Dray's hands.

Malane flared a few fingers at Dray, a small, awkward gesture. "I, uh, I hadn't realized…"

"That's the job. For better or worse, it's part of the job." Tim blinked a few times, then said, "But that's not why you're here."

Malane took a deep breath, blew it out, and said, "The good news is, Den Laurey stopped again up the road, used a different pay phone to place a call to Babe Donovan."

"He addressed her by name?"

"Yeah. He calls her Dunny. We got him on the parabola mike. He told her to drop the car tomorrow in the Taco Bell parking lot at Pico and Bundy."

Tim rotated Dray's foot, the cranky ankle tendons putting up resistance. "And the bad news?"

"We lost him."

Malane watched him closely, but Tim merely continued with Dray's hands, lost in the smell of jasmine.

"We were closing in, and he dropped into a ravine and disappeared. Trails. The cars couldn't…" Malane's hands flew up, clapped to his knees. "We have a line on the drugs, Rackley. That's most important. We'll pick Den up again tomorrow."

Tim looked at him, expressionless.

Malane's eyes jogged back and forth, and then his voice softened. "I'm sorry. I promised something to you, and I didn't deliver. I, uh, I at least wanted to tell you myself."

Tim said, "I appreciate that."

"You cut us in on your operation, now I'd like to cut you in on ours. You want to work with us on this thing tomorrow morning?"

Tim set Dray's hand by her side, smoothed her fingers flat. He rose and pulled on his jacket. "Yes."

Malane nodded. "Let's have us a takedown."

The morning sun blazed off the windshields of the parked cars. A few gardeners sat in the back of a dinged pickup, eating breakfast burritos and slurping soda from big plastic cups. One of them stood and belched, a splash of Fire Border sauce embellishing his dated FREE KOBE T-shirt. Gordita wrappers rolled across the asphalt, urban tumbleweed. Though it was past 11:00 A.M.-beyond the sticky reach of morning rush hour-still the intersection was clogged with runoff from the 10.

Tim sat in the passenger's seat beside Malane, the Crown Vic's air-conditioned leather a considerable upgrade from the dog-chewed bench seat of Bear's Ram. Bear had parked strategically across the street. Malane offered Tim the bag of sunflower seeds, and he took another handful and continued spitting shells into an empty plastic Coke bottle.

Bear came through the radio for the fifth time in as many minutes, and Malane stifled a smile. He'd given Bear and Guerrera FBI-coded Nextels for the operation, and Tim was getting the sense that the agents tended more conservative in their radio banter.

"Now, this fucking guy," Bear started, Guerrera the ongoing person in question, "this fucking guy, now, he says he thinks A-Rod's got it on Bonds in batting. Batting. Not in the field."

They'd been sitting on the Taco Bell since 8:00 A.M., and, as on most stakeouts, conversation was running thin. Aside from the Harley parked in the farthest parking-lot space that, at this point, they were presuming belonged to a TB employee, nothing had yet demanded their attention.

A background murmur came through, to which Bear responded, "I don't give a shit if A-Rod's younger. There's Barry Bonds, and there's everyone else. Don't give me your ethnic bias." Then, more clearly, "What's the vote?"

Malane said, "A-Rod," at the same moment Tim replied, "Bonds."

"All right," Bear said. "Then we go to Car Four for the tiebreaker."

An FBI agent cut in on the primary channel. "Eyes up, eyes up. Babe Donovan approaching in a…looks like a Pinto."

"A Pinto?" Bear said.

The car drifted into view. The orange coat had given way to rust, the subtle contrast lending it a strangely camouflaged appearance.

Babe Donovan parked the car in the tiny parking lot and hopped out. The gardeners let out a volley of whistles and catcalls that silenced immediately as soon as her Sinners property jacket came into view. One of the guys tugged off his Dodgers cap as she passed, offering her a deferential little bow. She ignored them, hopping onto the Harley and pulling out, heading opposite the direction she'd come.