Charlie Huston - Sleepless

I pinched the flowering tops from a basil plant.

“What does that suggest?”

“To me it suggests one of two. Number one is that he’s gone undercover for IAD. They like new cops, guys who haven’t had a chance to get too dirty yet. The fact my guy was able to find his SA file, even if he can’t get a look, that doesn’t speak well of the effort to hide your cop. And that smells very IAD. Get all sneaky, but do it in a half-assed way.”

“And number two?”

“Number two is bagman.”

I inhaled deeply, oils from the basil filling the air.

“Ah.”

“Yeah, ah. Way the force is now, is it’s kind of fragmented. Goes way beyond this division won’t share with that one. There are units that are off the map. Gone dark. Fringe law enforcement. They operate without sanction, but also without rebuke. As long as bad guys are being removed from the board, there’s a lot of looking the other way. Financing operations like that is tricky. Can’t draw too much from the budget. Can’t dedicate too many visible resources. So most of the money comes from the bad guys. Asshole A pays to have his operation protected and, just as important, to see that Asshole B is struck from the record. In this number two scenario, your guy is dirty from when he walks through the door, someone spots his potential, and he’s recruited. They move him to the margins of the books, and he’s your new invisible bagman. Drawing pay, carrying a badge, but all he does is call on assholes and take donations.”

I thought about the conversation I’d witnessed a few hours before, outside the gallery.

“Yes, Vincent, that sounds quite plausible.”

“Yeah, it’s a sad, dirty world.”

“My thoughts almost exactly.”

“Of course there’s another possibility.”

“Yes?”

Vinnie coughed as if he might be embarrassed to bring something up.

“He could just be a cop doing his job.”

I considered the possibility.

“Is that likely?”

“No.”

I nodded.

“My feeling as well.”

“Anything else?”

“No. This was extremely helpful.”

“My pleasure. And thanks for taking care of things on my end.”

“No trouble at all.”

“Keep your head down, Jasper.”

“And you as well, Vincent.”

I closed my phone and dropped it in my pocket.

Above the San Gabriels the sun shone silver behind an unseasonable marine layer. Though, at that point, labeling any weather phenomenon as seasonable or otherwise was a fool’s errand. It was not the intense early morning brightness of just a few years prior, but plenty hot. The cool I’d enjoyed a moment before was fading. I brushed my hand along the tops of the basil and the other herbs in my little container garden. Rosemary, lemon thyme, Mexican oregano, peppermint, bay, coriander, all of them releasing their oils.

I needed to get out of the previous day’s clothes. I needed a shower. I needed a few hours’ sleep. Refreshed, I would return to Officer Haas’s home and pursue my business with him. I still harbored a slight hope that he was in possession of the drive. But imagined it more likely that it had been sold to Afronzo Jr. for monies that would fatten the coffers of whatever secret police squad Haas was a member of.

The blend of herbs was disrupted. A change in the breeze taking it from me. But there was no breeze. I began to turn, and, as I did, my attention was caught by the sight of an intense bead of light arcing up out of the Los Angeles basin.

Perched on an extreme southern foot of the Santa Monicas, just above West Hollywood, overlooking the entire basin from an advantageous elevation, Number One Electra Court was a natural location for SoCal Theater of Operations Command to place an observation post. Yes, the high-rent owners within the dubiously named Mount Olympus development objected, but national security was invoked and little more could be said. Had anyone known the flying saucer-shaped house was also a forward firebase the objections might have endured. I knew that it was a forward firebase. As I am certain that anyone with any personal experience of artillery knew it was a forward firebase. Not only could such a position be used to call in pinpoint coordinates for bombardments from the 16”/50 Mark 7 guns of any Iowa-class battleship that might one day find itself anchored off Santa Monica, it was also the ideal spot from which to launch surface-to-surface rockets, or lob mortars onto the street below.

Just across Laurel Canyon, with my own spectacular view of the basin, I was shocked to see that the first shot fired did not come from Mount Olympus, but from below. It flashed across the sky, leaving a contrail. More than likely a Javelin, it could have come from anywhere within twenty-five hundred meters. Anywhere with a clear line of sight. Any number of parking lots along Fairfax would have worked. Whether by luck or by virtue of poor marksmanship, it didn’t strike the house directly but impacted on the blast walls covered in soldiers’ graffiti that had been staggered across the yard to defend from just such an attack.

Still, it served its purpose. Served it if I may be so bold as to suggest that Electra Court was not the actual target of the rocket. Assuming my own ego has not run away with me, the Javelin scored an absolute bull’s-eye on my awareness. I watched it hit, watched it explode, a bare moment before it rolled thunder over the hills, felt the trailing waves of super-heated air, the reverse suck as the fireball rolled upward, smelled the burned plastic odor of modern warfare, and came back to myself.

The scent of herbs. How the air had shifted unexpectedly seconds before. What had caused that change? All too late considered.

Two teams of three. Well-trained units of mercenaries like the ones I had killed at the gold farm. One coming up from below the deck, one from within the house.

I said they did not take me by virtue of surprise. And if there had been only two attackers, indeed they would not have been successful, as that is the number I killed before I was subdued.

IN A WINDOWLESS ROOM, A COMBINATION OF FATIGUE POISONS, adrenaline dregs, and the waning influence of the spansule he’d taken before leaving his house, had twisted the hands from Park’s internal clock. Counting slowly to himself, Mississippi by Mississippi, as if he were “it,” Park waited, his face buried in his hands, until he could count high enough for someone to let him start seeking, peeking from time to time at his father’s watch, his guesses about how much time had passed never correct.

The door opened.

“What were you doing there?”

He stopped counting and looked up at Captain Bartolome.

Bartolome looked at the AC vent mounted on the wall. He lifted one of the limp pieces of ribbon tied to the grille and let it drop.

“This thing been off since you came in?”

Park pulled the front of his sweat-soaked shirt from his chest.

“Yes.”

Bartolome dragged a chair away from the table at which Park sat.

“You tell anyone?”

“No one has been in since they left me here.”

Bartolome set a few sheets of copy paper on the table.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Park lifted his left hand and jerked it twice against the cuffs that latched him to a steel ring welded to the tabletop.

Bartolome dropped his keys on the table.

“You tell anyone?”

Park found the stubby cuff key and unlocked himself.

“What time is it?”

Bartolome scooped up his keys.

“Did you tell anyone?”

Park rubbed his wrist.

“Tell anyone what? That the AC doesn’t work? I haven’t seen anyone. Except Hounds. He thinks I’m a snitch.”

“Haas.”

Bartolome picked one of the sheets of copy paper and turned it over, revealing the reverse side; a photo print blurred by a printer running low on toner.