Black Water (42 page)

But it didn't work. No matter what angle she looked from, nothing about the pipe and the glue and the tarp suggested anything she could use to figure what Archie Wildcraft was up to.

Half an hour later she put everything back in the bag, tied it shut and leaned it in the corner before turning off the lights.

She called Brice on his cell phone and he answered, slurry with drink.

"Where was Wildcraft when you saw him?" she demanded.

"Up against the wall, Sergeant."

"What wall and where, Gary? I can't believe you wouldn't tel! where he was."

"I called you four times, Merci. I
tried
to tell you where he was.

"You could have tried Zamorra. Or the watch captain. You could have called Vince, for that matter."

"I wanted you to get the exclusive."

Merci heard a female voice in the background, teasing and chipper.

"Where was he?"

"He sent me to a pay phone in Santa Ana, then to another Then to a closed-up body shop down on First Street. When he saw I hadn't brought along any company—such as
you,
Sergeant—he led me around to the back and let me shoot him. He said if I told anybody where he'd been, he'd never call me again with an interview. He took off real fast when it was over."

Giggling in the background, the sound of a slap.

Rayborn felt her anger abating, replaced by curiosity over the condition of Archie Wildcraft.

"He looked a little ... unbalanced on the TV," she said.

"Unbalanced?
Merci, that guy's crazier than a shithouse rat. Tell me about the Russians."

"What did he say?"

"Said he'd be taking care of them real soon. What gives? Do you have some suspects I should know about?"

"Abelera's on at noon. Pictures, everything."

"Shit, no kidding? Fucking ROC in OC? That's a story I'd like to run with."

"Too late for the morning final," she said. "You'll have to break along with everybody else."

"You could really help me out here."

"I was saying that to you two minutes ago."

"Forgive me. Forgive me, and when we meet again, punish me severely. In any way you want.
Whip me. Beat me.
But until then give

me the names of the suspects and some of the evidence you've got against them. E-mail me the pictures and I'll get them into the Art Department ASAP. Give me just a two-line statement I can use. Please, please,
please
help me get this story out before the
Times
and
Register
do."

She hung up on him and didn't answer when he called back

W
hile Merci puzzled over tarp and PVC, Archie Wildcraft pulled the Durango into a parking space outside the Fifteenth Street Surf Shop in Newport Beach. He sat for a moment, looking at the lavender light cast by the streetlamp, the red moths arcing against the bulb. He couldn't get the smell of burned flesh and phosphorous out of his head. He'd blown his nose three times and wiped his nostrils with a wet napkin from a foil pouch but nothing helped. He tried to feel bad for Sonny Charles but didn't.

He took a deep breath and got out. A blue fog hung over the san and he could hear the waves roaring up the shore. A bright green kid on a skateboard thunked down the sidewalk.

Archie went to the rear lift gate and opened it. He pulled out the Canadian crutches one at a time and propped them against the vehicle Then the wings. Slipped a screwdriver into his shirt pocket. Swung the door shut and locked up with the key pad. He carried his things down the sidewalk, past the restrooms and onto the sand. He was pleased at how light the wings were, yet so eager to perform: even the faint breeze off the ocean caught the skin of tarp, wrapped tightly and glued to the bones of the PVC. Ingenious

"They'll work," he said.

"I hope so," said Gwen, hovering in the fog behind and above him.

"Sorry you had to hear Sonny scream like that."

"The gag helped," she said. "But he won't drive another getaway car."

"No."

"Won't he tip Vorapin?"

"That's okay. Let the big man be afraid. He
should
be afraid."

He walked across the sand until he saw the orange, luminescent waterline. There, he knelt in the cool sand and laid out the wings, upside down. He fitted the right crutch against the underside of the right wing and screwed it tight with the hose-clamps he'd built into the crossbeams of PVC. Then the left.

"That's a good fit," said Gwen.

Archie reached a hand back to touch her. She took it and held it against her warm cheek.

"I can't wait to try them," he said.

"Go for it."

He slid his right hand down along the crutch leg, worked his upper arm into the big C-clip, closed his fist around the padded handle.

"It really feels good."

"It really looks good, Arch."

Archie lifted his right wing and felt for the first time its slight weight and powerful lift. Then he felt a gentle upward nudge from a breeze so light it never registered on his skin. What power!

"Oh," he muttered.

"Oh, my," echoed Gwen.

Carefully as a newborn creature, he folded the great yellow wing to his side.

"It's indescribable, Gwen."

"I'm proud of you. You're beautiful. And so were the flowers at the funeral. And the ones you put by my pictures in the hotel."

He was too excited to answer. He leaned over to get his left arm into place. It was a little precarious but he felt Gwen holding him and he got his hand onto the soft grip and his arm into the C-clip. He righted himself and stood.

Archie looked out at the bright golden water. Slowly he lifted his wings. The spread was sixteen feet—seven for each wing and twenty-
four inches across his back, just below the shoulders. First he felt emancipation of weight from his feet. Then the diminished load on his legs. Next, the lightening of his bony middle, then the joyful buoyancy of his back, the tickling freedom of his chest and neck. He felt like a big helium balloon held down by a weight only slightly heavier himself. Like he could glide along for miles between effortless steps. Like he could fly.

He walked down to the waterline and turned south. Felt the lift. Broke into a trot. Felt the uneven pull of the wings, like a marionette. Heard the
slap-slap-slap
of his shoes in the water.

"How's it feel, Arch?"

"They want to fly. I just need more speed and more air under me.

He kicked the trot into a gallop then to a sprint. The
slap-slap-slap
came fast and his horizon line jiggled and he felt the great long muscles of his ballplayer's legs rejoicing in the effort. He veered up onto embankment of the beach, then turned back downhill. He was running on his toes, then on nothing at all. The
slap-slap-slap
had suddenly stopped and Archie felt as if someone was trying to hook him into sky. An enjoyable confusion broke over him as he suddenly realized the dimensionality of flight: the heart stopping ups and down, the quease of pitch and yaw, the wild potentials of attitude and the azimuth of a body in space.

"Wow, Gwen!"

"Arch, it's working!"

"I'll be coming soon, girl!"

"Oh, Archie, I can't wait!"

Then he plunked down to heavy Earth again and came to a stop ankle-deep in the Pacific.

"Totally cool, man," said a young male voice. Archie hadn't noticed anyone. The boy came out of the ocean with his surfboard, turned north and ran through the whitewater.

"Thanks!"

Archie got his breath back quickly, then turned around and walked back to the lifeguard tower at Fifteenth Street. He wanted to get up onto the platform from which the lifeguards observed, but they took the ladder with them at night. Archie had to remove his wings and reach them one at a time onto the platform before climbing one of the legs and chinning himself up and over.

He worked his arms back into the wings and stood at the edge of the platform facing the ocean. The sand looked to be about eight feet down from his feet. He spread his arms, then started pumping. He felt lighter with each big down thrust. He jumped. Out and up. Timed it with the down stroke and saw the ocean move a small notch away and felt the air-starved tarp lifting him upward.

Then the sudden exhilaration of ascendance.

Moving not on Earth but above it, wings stiff and alive with air.

Gwen out there somewhere, close and touchable.

And this great new strength that gave him all the lightness and endurance of a bird.

The next thing he knew the ocean was rushing up at him.
Cold!
He got his feet under him and stood waist-deep in the bright gold water.

"Whoa," he said quietly.
"Whoa.
Hon?"

Gwen didn't answer. She had a way of coming and going, which was the reason for this whole project to begin with.

"Gwen?"

Just the ocean rustling on the sand.

More speed, he thought.

More air.

Catch her.

Take care of the giant first.

The brine stung the bullet hole in his head but it wasn't an altogether unpleasant sting. He pushed through the icy ocean toward shore, dragging his yellow wingtips through the golden sea.

_H
ours later, just after sunrise, a stumbling, disoriented man was picked up by two sheriff's deputies cruising the Ortega Highway outside of San Juan Capistrano. Both deputies dropped from the unit and drew down on him in the uncertain light. When they saw that he was completely blind and in tremendous agony they holstered their weapons with a sense of relief and awe.

"At first I thought he was drunk," Deputy Maxwell told Rayborn and Zamorra. He was waiting for them at the entrance of Western Medical Center in Anaheim. "Then I saw his face."

The detectives hustled up the steps and Maxwell stayed abreast them, his belt jangling with gadgetry. "All he's got left of his eyes are black pits."

"And his CDL said what?"

"Steve Charles. But the burns and his accent made me think, we ran the name through the Feds and came up with Sergei Cherbrenko. He's a gangster. Dobbs heard it at the morning roll and call you guys."

Yes, Dobbs again. Marching through the automatic doors of the hospital entrance Merci wondered: how could one formerly host Deputy 1 get so lucky? He'd spotted Cherbrenko and Vorapin coming down the hill from the Wildcraft home. He'd found the abandoned STS Cadillac they'd used. Now, he'd smelled the connection between a freshly blinded man wandering the Ortega and the murder of Gwen Wildcraft.

She was suspicious of fortune this good. She wondered if Dobbs might be connected up with the Russians, might be running interference for them. How? By ID'ing them in the car, and sealing off the STS crime scene like a pro? Idiotic. Maybe he was fingering them for a rival. Maybe the sun would rise blue next Tuesday. Was she still pissed about him not protecting the Wildcraft driveway?

Gad, woman, she thought: you'd shoot an angel out of the sky to make sure she was real.

And the problem here wasn't that Deputy Dobbs had made a nice leap from Cherbrenko to Gwen. The problem was that Deputy Wildcraft had probably tortured him.

"Road flares?" she asked.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Maxwell. "Well, actually, I have, in college. The end of one of those old tragedies, where they put the guy's eyes out."

"But he wouldn't tell you who did it?" asked Zamorra.

"No. He just blubbered and cried. Does this have to do with Archie?"

"We're about to find out."

Cherbrenko lay in the burn unit with his head and face wrapped in white gauze and his hands in wrist restraints. His fingers were cupped and still. His pale hair was bunched behind the bandage, loose as a pile of straw.

"He's on a strong painkiller and sedative," said the doctor. He referred to Cherbrenko as if he was absent but would be back soon. "He can answer your questions if he wishes. Do not be surprised if he falls asleep."

Rayborn stood and looked down at the gauze mask. There were no eyeholes. She thought she should be quiet, but the doctor hadn't been. She wondered what it would be like to have roaring road flares be the last thing you ever saw in your life.

She told him who she was. The mask moved slightly to the right, toward her. A sigh elongated from the nose opening but that was all.

"You're Sergei Cherbrenko and you worked for OrganiVen, she said. "Gwen Wildcraft worked there with you."