Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

Then came Penelope’s self-description riding the breeze through my open windows: ninety percent lover and ten percent killer.

“Roland, he’s trying to justify his own monstrous behavior. Did he ask you to find Daley and bring her to him?”

I saw Atlas come from the house. He went a few yards down the walkway, stepped under the leaves of a magnolia tree. He wore his regulation jeans and white shirt, but tonight he was barefoot.

“Roland?”

“Yes, he asked me to bring her to him.”

Atlas lit a cigarette. The smoke rose and spread.

“And what did you say back?”

“I’ll bring her to you, as contracted.”

“You don’t believe Reggie Atlas, do you?”

“I believe that Daley is in danger.”

The sound of Penelope breathing. “You do believe him. You believe I brought this all upon myself and Daley. You big dumb man. Isn’t my word good enough?”

“You’ve given me a lot of words, Penelope. Some are more truthful than others.”

“Yes, I have,” she said. “What a terrible mistake I’ve made. But you’re still under contract with me. Daley is mine and you will deliver her to me, as written.”

And hung up.

The phone screen went to black. Atlas smoked his cigarette under the magnolia. He pulled a phone from his pants pocket and I could see the faint light on his downturned face. He worked it with one hand, read the screen, then tapped a command.

Penelope again:

“Roland Ford, you’re not a big dumb man at all. You’re a huge, stupid ox.”

I waited for her to end the call. Instead I heard her breathing again, this time faster and louder.

“For an ox,” I said, “I’m of average intelligence.”

“I’m going to get the better of you someday.”

She hung up again.

As I raised my eyes from the phone to the house, I saw that a vehicle had stopped at Pastor Reggie Atlas’s pearly white gate. It was a silver late-model Cadillac CTS, the ones with the stealth body panels and fighter-jet front end. Wrote the plate number in my notebook. Rolled down the driver-side window.

Atlas ground his cigarette butt into the grass at his feet, tapped something into his phone, and the gate lurched to life. The car started up the drive, curbside motion lights coming on to show the way. Atlas stayed beneath the tree until the Cadillac came to a stop a few yards short of the garage.

In my night-vision binoculars I watched the driver’s door swing open and a tall, slender old man unfold from the front seat. He looked to be eighty, with brisk white hair brushed back over a creased, hawklike face. Sharp nose, thin lips, bushy eyebrows. A brown suit, cut and cuffed in an older style. Expensive, by the look of it. White shirt, red tie. He was familiar, in a distant, secondhand way.

Penelope, back for thirds: “I’m sorry for what I said. Please find my daughter.”

And just as suddenly, gone.

Old Hawk lifted the trunk lid and left it open, then walked to the magnolia tree. He conversed with Atlas in a terse, all-business kind of way. I wasn’t close enough to hear their words or even the sound of their words. Guessing from Atlas’s gestures — his open hands and interrogative expressions — he was asking for something. Old Hawk seemed to listen patiently, but nothing in his posture or movements gave me any indication of positive or negative. To Old Hawk, Reggie Atlas could have been a branch to perch on or a mouse to eat.

Old Hawk tapped a finger against Reggie’s chest. Words from a dry smile. Atlas poked the older man back and said something in return.

Old Hawk marched long-legged into the garage, turning on the lights, and opened the trunk of a gleaming black Mercedes AMG sedan. Lifted out a metal Halliburton case and walked to his car. Set the Halliburton in the trunk and closed the lid with a touch of a button.

Reggie stepped from under the tree and joined the old man by his car. The two men talked for less than a minute, then Old Hawk climbed into his Cadillac. The silver sedan made a wide turn and headed down the drive.

I followed him through the winding roads of Rancho Santa Fe to Del Dios Highway, and all the way to Escondido. Plenty of traffic for cover. Out on the east side of town the homes got older and smaller, and the business signs turned to Spanish and the barrio said hola . The silver CTS proceeded comfortably down the avenue, went right on Holiday Lane, then made a sharp left and stopped at a gate.

End of my welcome. I drove past, made a U-turn, and came back in time to see the CTS heading up the drive. It was narrow and curvy but paved. No buildings or dwellings, only a poorly kept grove of orange trees. The Cadillac’s headlights raked through trees with thin branches, sparse leaves, and small stranded fruit. More oranges in the dirt than on the trees. On top of the hill stood what looked to be a cluster of buildings surrounded by trees that nearly hid them from sight. A few lights through the foliage. When the Cadillac was about halfway to the top, security lights came on along the road, leading the way through the dark to the buildings within the trees.

FBI Special Agent Mike Lark was not quite a friend but much more than an acquaintance. We had had the same boss, though at different times in our careers. Her name was Joan Taucher. Joan was a tough and complex woman, and her death last year — shot by a terrorist on my property — rocked Mike’s world and mine considerably. I killed that terrorist, a few seconds too late to save Joan’s life. A soul-bruising series of events. I will take them to my grave.

Mike Lark had been not only Joan Taucher’s FBI understudy but her lover, too. I hadn’t seen him since her funeral, late last December. Now he looked more than nine months older. Mid-twenties. Same short blond hair, but leaner in the face and harder in his brown, Taucher-like eyes.

We met in the pay lot at Torrey Pines State Beach, shook hands. I told him I’d explain my most recent facial improvements later. We headed north on the dry, low-tide sand. Plenty of surfers on the small waves. Walkers and runners and kids with beach toys. On this mid-September day I could feel the change of seasons coming on. Just a liner of cool in the air that hadn’t been there a week ago.

The license plate number I’d taken down from Old Hawk’s CTS had led me to Lark, whose FBI database had swiftly revealed the registered owner of the car, and his history.

“Alfred Battle is the godfather of San Diego’s once formidable white supremacists,” said Lark. “Two years ago returned from Idaho. Even Hayden Lake was glad to be rid of him. He told the media here he was ‘returning to the land of the mud people’ to live permanently. ‘Mud people’ being blacks and Hispanics. He bought his old spread up in Escondido, where he held the Aryan rallies and conferences in the seventies and eighties. Hoping to recapture his glory days, like everyone else. He has informal rallies on Sunday mornings. Bills them as the ‘White Power Hour.’ Guest speakers, glossy propaganda, fruit punch and sandwiches. Late in the morning, though, so he’s not competing with church. I stopped by with a couple of other agents one Sunday and they were happy to escort us out. We’ve got nothing actionable on him. We’d love to shut him down, but it’s a free country. He’s got the city and fire permits, the porta-potties, plenty of parking. It’s a big compound. Views to the ocean, much too nice a place for him. Battle’s a hateful sonofabitch and it shows. A nasty dude in his day. Yet he’s never spent a night behind bars. What else do you want to know about him?”

“I’d like to know why he picked up a Halliburton case from Pastor Reggie Atlas last night,” I said. “For starters.”