She and Norm had other cases on their docket. Bigger cases, more pressing cases, and most importantly, cases that required no imagination to be classified as homicides. It was time to do the responsible thing and move on.
Which was not the same thing as giving up. When she eventually left Rainey’s home, it was exactly as Winn had found it, with one small exception: She took the dead man’s cell phone with her. Inside the car out front, she turned the BlackBerry on, hoping to scan through Rainey’s contact list, only to find the device was password protected. No computer geek herself, she’d have to get one of the department’s tech guys to open the phone up for her. Calling in a favor might get it done as early as tomorrow.
In the meantime, she’d work her other cases with Norm and wait. Then, once she had access to Rainey’s data, she’d check it for one associate of his in particular: his ‘little friend Perry,’ as Lorraine Rainey had called him. If the man was there, she and Norm would run him down and pay him a visit.
Just to see how hard he’d take the news that his dancing and business partner, Gillis Rainey, was dead.
SEVENTEEN
R
eddick chose to take Perry Cross down first.
Ben Clarke was the man he wanted dead most in all the world, but the plan he’d come up with for dealing with Andy Baumhower’s three friends made starting with either Cross or Will Sinnott a wiser choice. He’d decided to kill all three at once, in one place, rather than individually, and so his first mark had to be someone capable of drawing the other two into a trap at Reddick’s behest just to save his own skin. Based upon what he’d already seen of the big man, Reddick didn’t think Clarke would fit the bill. Baumhower had described Cross as Class Act’s unofficial leader and intimated Sinnott was a drunk. Between the two, Cross seemed better suited for Reddick’s purposes.
He had gone over the files on Baumhower’s laptop thoroughly that morning and compiled several pages of notes; he felt like he knew his three targets as well as anyone working on such short notice could. He knew where each man lived and conducted business; their marital status and line of work. Photos on Baumhower’s MacBook had given him some idea of what each man looked like and email exchanges between the trio had established their hierarchy as clearly as a PowerPoint presentation. If any one of them could call a Sunday morning emergency meeting the other two would feel compelled to attend, it was Perry Cross.
Cross’s condo in Venice was on the second floor of a converted apartment building on Abbot Kinney that featured no form of security Reddick could ascertain. The main entrance was unlocked and the open carport out back had no gate to discourage theft. Maybe if Cross had been the equal of his partners he’d have been able to afford a more impregnable home, but Reddick had read enough about him on Baumhower’s MacBook to know that he was the financial runt of the Class Act litter.
After spending thirty minutes surveying the territory, Reddick left his car and went to the building’s entrance, a small black gym bag in hand. It was a little after nine o’clock. He paused to study the names on some of the mailboxes, then went inside and climbed the stairs to the second floor, encountering no one on the way. At the landing, he drew a pay-as-you-go cell phone he had purchased the day before from his bag and called Cross’s home number. An answering machine picked up after the fourth ring and Reddick, trying to sound several years older and considerably less composed, left Cross a message:
‘Oh, hey, I’m calling for Perry Cross? Are you there? Mr Cross, this is Brad Dunphy in unit one-oh-five downstairs. Listen, I’m really sorry, but I just scratched up the side of your car pretty badly down here in the carport. I was going to leave you a note, but—’
‘Hello? Who’s this?’
Somebody had picked up the phone. Bent out of shape, big time.
‘Mr Cross? Oh, you are there, good. Well, yes, like I said, this is Brad Dunphy, your neighbor down in unit one-oh-five, and—’
‘You said something about scratching my car?’
‘It’s more than a scratch, really. That’s why I thought I’d better call. I feel terrible about this, really awful, and I’m down here with the car right now if you’d like to come take a look for yourself.’
Reddick heard a loud click, indicating the man on the other end of the line had hung up.
Stifling a grin, he raced down the hall to the door to Cross’s unit and caught him just as he was about to fly through it, car keys in hand. He was still dressed for bed in a silkscreened gray T-shirt and green flannel pajama bottoms.
Reddick jammed the nose of his .40 caliber Smith & Wesson hard into his gut, stopping him cold in the open doorway.
‘Uh-uh. Back inside, Mr Cross. Hurry up.’
The younger man’s mouth opened to speak, but then realization dawned, common sense took over, and he backpedaled into his condo, Reddick following and closing the door right behind him.
‘Make a sound and your life ends right here,’ Reddick said. ‘Try me and see.’
Cross just looked at him. Unsettled, but not yet afraid. Reddick made a note-to-self: This was a different animal than Andy Baumhower.
‘Anyone else here?’ Reddick asked.
‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes. You must be Joe Reddick,’ Cross said.
‘That’s right. So now you know what time it is and why you don’t want to give me any fucking trouble. Don’t you?’
‘I think so.’
Reddick dropped his bag to the floor and slammed a fist into the other man’s abdomen, just under his ribcage, bringing Cross, coughing and gasping for breath, to his knees.
‘When I ask a question, I need you to be a bit more affirmative than that, Mr Cross.’
‘Yes! Yes, I know,’ Cross managed, down on all fours now, eyes fixed on the floor.
‘When you’re ready, we’re gonna find a phone and you’re gonna call your boys Ben and Will, tell them they need to come over right away.’
Reddick waited for Cross to respond. Cross sucked air into his lungs, pushed himself up to his feet again, the air of defiance he’d shown Reddick moments earlier already making a comeback.
‘And why should I do that? You’re going to kill me anyway,’ he said.
‘Am I?’
‘You murdered Andy, didn’t you?’
‘Maybe I murdered Andy because he ran his fucking mouth instead of doing what I told him to do. You ever think of that?’
Cross didn’t answer, weighing the chances that Reddick was telling him the truth, that maybe he wanted more out of all this than just Cross’s head, and those of his friends Clarke and Sinnott, on a stick.
‘You’ve only got two choices, asshole,’ Reddick said. ‘You can play along and live long enough to see what I’ve got in mind for you, or don’t and join your pal Baumhower right now. What’s it gonna be?’
Cross looked first at Reddick, then at the gun that was now pointed directly at his chest. One seemed to promise death just as much as the other. He didn’t know who Reddick was or what his ultimate intentions were, but he decided what Reddick had just told him was indisputable: If he didn’t follow the man’s orders, at least for the moment, he was as good as dead.
‘OK,’ Cross said.
They wound up in the playroom, Cross on the couch, Reddick in a chair only inches away, the little gym bag sitting on the floor at his left hand. Reddick had the other man’s cell phone, Cross having led him to it in the bedroom upon being asked. The Smith & Wesson forty was sitting in Reddick’s lap, aimed with almost casual indifference in Cross’s general direction. Still, Cross wasn’t fooled into thinking his visitor couldn’t kill him with one shot if he tried something stupid. The more he saw of Reddick, the surer he became of his capacity for mayhem.
‘OK, listen up,’ Reddick said. ‘You’re gonna call Sinnott first, then Clarke. On speaker, so we can both listen in. In twenty words or less, you’re gonna give your friends a reason to get their asses over here ASAP. Don’t answer any questions and don’t take no for an answer. Tell ’em anything you want, but keep it brief and get the job done.’ He leaned forward in his chair to give Cross a closer look at his face. ‘And understand this: I know coded language when I hear it, and I know more about the three of you than you could imagine. You try dropping any secret messages on either of your friends, your call’s gonna end with a bang. You catch my drift?’
Cross just glared at him.
‘I don’t hear you.’
‘Yes,’ Cross said.
Reddick dialed both numbers for him, having committed each to memory as part of the info he’d taken off Baumhower’s laptop. He was not at all surprised to learn that Cross was an expert liar; at the point of a gun, the younger man made a case for needing to see Clarke and Sinnott right away that sounded both plausible and unforced. He said the cops had called him that morning with some follow-up questions regarding Andy Baumhower’s murder and he wanted to make sure they all had their stories straight, before Clarke and Sinnott could be questioned next. Sinnott bought in right away, keeping Cross on the phone no longer than a minute or two, but Clarke, as Reddick might have predicted, was a harder sell.
The big man’s voice, even over Cross’s speakerphone, was instantly familiar; the memories it brought back for Reddick chilled him to the bone, and he had to fight the urge to kill Cross right now, without comment or provocation, in his stead. As he listened in, Cross was forced to do some fast talking to deflect all of Clarke’s demands for elaboration, rephrasing his request for a meeting as a direct order so that Clarke would accept it as non-negotiable. Cross was crimson with anger when he handed the phone back to Reddick, embarrassed to have had his authority over his partners so openly tested.
Reddick sat back in his chair again, digging in for a long wait. There was an extended silence as Cross studied him, trying to determine the exact nature of the adversary he was facing.
‘What exactly do you want?’ he asked.
‘For starters? I want you to shut the fuck up,’ Reddick said. But there’d been nothing about the way he’d said it to suggest he hadn’t meant it at least partly in jest.
‘What Ben did was a mistake,’ Cross said. ‘It was stupid and wholly unnecessary.’
‘And he was acting entirely on his own, I suppose.’
‘Yes. He was. Didn’t Andy tell you that?’
‘Andy told me a lot of things.’
‘Including . . . ?’
‘How your friend Gillis Rainey wound up dead in the LA River?’ Reddick nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’
Cross took the news incredibly well; the twinge of disappointment that flashed across his face had almost been too small for Reddick to catch.
‘Did you have any idea Andy had put him there before he told you? I’m betting you didn’t.’
‘And if I didn’t?’
‘Then you must know what I’m telling you is the truth. Only an idiot like Ben would think blackmailing a man to keep him silent about something he doesn’t even know he knows could ever be a good idea. I mean, do I look that stupid to you?’
‘You look plenty stupid to me,’ Reddick said. ‘But so what? What’s done is done. I don’t give a rat’s ass now who or what made Clarke do what he did.’
‘You think we’re all equally culpable.’
‘Damn straight.’
‘So what happens after you get us all together? Surely you don’t intend to do to us what you did to Andy?’
Reddick ignored the question.
Cross let out a small chuckle, incredulous. ‘You can’t be serious. You’d kill four people just because one of them broke into your house and shook your wife and kid up a little?’
Reddick bristled, incensed to hear a smarmy little weasel like Cross describe Dana and Jake’s ordeal in such blasé terms. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t seem fair, does it?’ His eyes turned black and his jaw grew taut, giving Cross his first real look at the madman he was facing. ‘But that’s life. Sometimes, the shit end of the stick is all you get.’
EIGHTEEN
C
ross could see Reddick was all done talking, but Cross went on talking anyway, finally understanding the full extent of the danger he was in.
‘If you know as much about us as you say you do, you must know what we’re worth. What we could pay you to let us go and just forget about all this.’
‘Shut up, Cross,’ Reddick said, and this time there was no questioning his sincerity.
Cross took the hint and fell silent, putting his mind to work immediately on the problem at hand. A smarter man than Andy Baumhower, he didn’t need Reddick to tell him what he had to lose by trying something foolish. He knew Reddick could make his death either quick and painless, or slow and agonizing, and between the two, Cross had a definite preference. But that wasn’t his only reason to be cooperative. There was also hope; the possibility, however remote, that between now and the time Will Sinnott and Ben Clarke arrived at the condo, something for Reddick would go wrong. He’d make a mistake or lose his nerve, or Clarke would take the initiative and do something reckless to disarm him.
Reddick sat there eyeing Cross with mild amusement, reading his mind as easily as he might were he actually inside it. Cross was neither a hero nor a fool; he would wait things out and see what developed. Still, Reddick knew, he bore watching. Pragmatist or no, the closer a man came to the hour of his own death, the more likely he was to try anything –
anything
– to save his skin.
Reddick expected this to be especially true of Clarke. The big man was the first to heed Cross’s call, roughly twenty minutes after receiving it. Reddick and Cross went to answer his knock at the door together, Reddick hiding behind it until Clarke had stepped across the threshold and into the spider’s web. Reddick gave him a split second to see what was coming, just to twist the knife a little, then greeted him the same way he had greeted Reddick at Dana’s two days before, with a blow to the head that carried the weight of an oil tanker. Or so it must have seemed to Clarke, having been hit with the two-fold force of the heel of Reddick’s gun and the thirst for Clarke’s blood Reddick had been choking on since the two had last met.