Dangerous Games (15 page)

Rod Whipple nodded. His partner was right, but Kenyon Styles' definition of outrage included real injury and risk of worse. They'd wind up with manslaughter charges before they were done. They'd already had to edit out a couple of serious injuries, and the current one gave him the willies.

Encouraged by an early heavy snowfall over the Sierras, they had bundled up in parkas and shifted production to the pro snowboard slope at Mammoth, right in front of a red sign that said cryptically
Wall Hits Not.
He wasn't even sure which was the verb or what the Teutonic syntax was proposing, but it made for a nice hint of mystery.

Kenyon pointed to a medium-sized limber pine far down the hill and off to one side, standing out like a glowing skeleton in the moonlight. “Make your way down there. They ought to be going into overdrive by then.” He'd talked a couple of snowboarders into braving the expert slope on big uncontrollable plastic trash barrel lids.

The mountain held about eighteen inches of powder, half of it manufactured just to jumpstart the season, plus a thin crust from the daytime melt. Rod could still manage to high-step his way down with care, crunching through the crust in tall waterproof boots. He stayed off to the north edge of the slope where it wasn't quite so steep, but he didn't have a clue how anyone could ski down this run without trending off line a few yards to the other side—which would take you over an escarpment and almost straight down. There was a red flag out, signaling treacherous snow; thus, no one was visible on the slope.

The way the wind was blowing, he couldn't hear anything from the top, but when he got to the tree he braced himself to look back at Kenyon's upraised arm. The daredevils seemed all set to go. The arm swung down.

One of them spun backwards immediately, digging with his palm like an oar trying to straighten himself out. The other caught the rim and tumbled once before somehow righting his craft again.

They were probably fifty feet down the run, still gathering uncontrollable speed, when Rod saw his partner toss something into the snow behind them. In a moment, quite a lot of snow heaved up into the air; a few seconds later the blast caught him like a punch in the chest.

Panic overtook him. He felt suddenly ill. Kenyon had given him no warnings about explosives. A big apron of fresh snow tore loose along a perfect break near the top of the run and puffed up instantly into a wall of white smoke that headed downhill toward him. He dropped the camera on its lanyard around his neck and scrambled up the young pine, bough to bough. He got up maybe twenty feet, then unbuckled his belt to lash himself to the skinny tree.

Only when he felt he was secure did he pick up the still-running camera, and aim it up at the barrel-lid riders. They were close, riding the forward edge of the avalanche like surfers with a look of tidal-wave terror on their faces. He felt the rumble up through the tree which suddenly seemed much too frail. The powder wave crested well above where he clung.

“You didn't tell Maeve who you're tutoring, did you?” Gloria asked him.

He glanced up from his book. He was in the living room to be sociable, trying to reread an early Robert Stone, but the cop show she was watching was already intruding. She liked to watch them to make fun of the mistakes, both small and large, over police procedure, or so she said. But he could tell that what she really liked, at least as much, was the flattering portrait of lawmen doing their best to maintain a sense of honor in all the gray zones. There were few bad cops on TV, no racists, no brutal misfits, or bribe-demanders, at least none that survived more than an episode. If America had fetishized anything by the early twenty-first century, it was law enforcement.

“Not yet.”

The show started up again, and Jack Liffey started to watch a black cop arguing with somebody in a suit outside a courtroom. He could understand the popularity of TV cops. Everybody deep down wanted to be part of a team of like-minded people working together toward a decent goal. It was the same impulse that had finally made
Star Trek
a hit. He wondered if the cop show passion hadn't subtly replaced religion for a lot of the viewers. Or maybe it rechanneled their impulses to social activism or civil rights—at several removes. He was drawn to the cop shows, himself, for exactly the same reasons. Yet he resisted out of his perverse loyalty to the need for some disorder in the world. Cop shows were always about keeping things in line.

“So, what happens when she finds out?”

“Hey. Maybe Thumb will be a better kid by then. Doesn't your universe brook any forgiveness?”

“Jack, Jack. Don't be so gullible. He's a banger. He'll die a banger, probably violently, in a year or two.”

“What were you at seventeen? Gandhi? I was a mess. Everybody I knew was a mess. Hormones get us, if nothing else does.”

“Were you into turf wars and drive-bys?”

“Those things weren't big in my neighborhood. God knows, I might have been. When I was thirteen, my friends and I got into a stupid rock fight with a group of kids from the next block over. We started lobbing things over a house at each other. We weren't even that pissed off, just bored. I ran out of rocks and grabbed up a piece of a broken bottle. It was as stupid and thoughtless as it gets, but there it is. A few seconds later I saw a little girl come screaming around the house with a bad cut on her forehead. I don't know if I did it, I don't know if it left a permanent scar that changed her life forever—but …”

He shrugged. “It happened. You back out of your driveway, and you just happen to be angry about something, and you don't see the kid on the bike. Thumb doesn't even know why he capped off, but it wasn't about Maeve. As the actual target, I ought to get a little say in this.”

Gloria shook her head. “I wish I could take you out in the squad car for a few days. You might think differently about second chances.”

“Two seems fair,” he said.

“It's probably this kid's hundredth.”

“I can't know that. I'm having a little trouble liking him, it's true, but off and on he seems to be trying.”

“Just remember, I warned you. And keep him away from me. I don't buy into this sainthood you're aspiring to.”

Jack Liffey reached out and touched her leg. “You're not mad at me, are you, Glor?”

“I'm furious at you.” She took a deep breath. “And the trouble is, I don't know why.”

“Jesus.”

“It has to do with me, Jack. I know that. I'm really sorry.”

“Do you want me out of here for a while?”

“No,
querido,
please. Just think of me right now as PMS on patrol. Ten-24.” She almost smiled. “That means, trouble at the station.” She slapped herself, roughly over the heart. “The trouble's in me. I'm the station.”

“I'm here for you if I can be,” he said.

“I've been seeing my rabbi—Donald. My mentor. You know what he says, that we all need a faith system, the stronger the better. Right now, mine isn't working. Pretty wise, for a cop, don't you think?”

“I won't let you down,” Jack Liffey said.

“Oh, yeah?”

FOURTEEN

Professional Integrity

Terror Pennycooke had one of the most amazing bodies she had ever seen, all glisten and sheen. Here and there it almost disappeared into the shadows that filled the dark room and then reemerged like something molded of hard rubber, stuffed with muscle, and beaded up with sweat. She liked the casual way his dreadlocks flopped around when they weren't stuffed under the big knit cap.

“Can't I call you Trevor?” she asked. “Terror sounds so violent.” He had been nothing but sweet to her, not a terror at all. She'd offered to go down on him, and it was generally so much easier, anyway, but he shook his head and said something about that being for white boys. He had touched her all over with his long dry fingers and then made love to her tenderly, and longer than she had ever experienced. She didn't know she went in that far. He found his way to places she didn't even know she had. She only had to pretend a little at the end.

“Boo-ya,” he said into the dark room. “For you, you can call me Fontleroy if you want. Hah. That a joke, you no dare. You got you a special name?”

“Just for you, you could call me Taboots. It means rabbit.”

He laughed, easy and warm. “TAH-boots. That nice.”

“You seem like a big powerful buffalo to me.”

“Ah, buffalo. What you call buffalo?”

“Cooch.”

Now he made a face, and grabbed up a handful of sheet to wipe the sweat off his face. “Cooch. Sound like dat place ‘tween you legs. Got anything else?”

“How about horse? He's Cabi.”

“Cabi, dat's a fine ting. But only you can ride Cabi, Taboots.”

She rolled over and kissed him.

“But you got to stop eating the flesh of animals an' dead creeturs,” Terror declared. “That no good at all, make you fret, full a science stuff, bad crap. You got to avoid all food in packets and tins, too.”

“Okay. I'll do it for you, Cabi.”

He ran his finger slowly down her nose. “You step up. Maybe we see about a ting.”

“What?”

“Ting dey call Dangerous Game.”

“What's that?” she asked, feeling a chill.

“Man, I hear it's a way we make lotsa money fast. Maybe get us out of Babylon, dawta, forward to a fine likkle farm on J.”

Rod Whipple found himself at least 500 feet farther down the slope than where he had belayed himself to the tree, without his pants or even his boxers—all of which had vanished into the avalanche along with the top half of the tree. He now lay nearly strangled by the nylon cord that held the Panasonic around his neck. He knew he was fortunate to have ridden the frothy upper layers of the snow wave, and as his panic began to subside, he found his head and one arm in the clear, with the cold crisp air burning his nostrils. As avalanches go, it had probably been small potatoes.

He got the fish eye from the Mammoth Ski Patrol as they dug him out. After all, it was pretty late, and he clearly wasn't fitted out to be on the slopes for any legitimate purpose. They didn't know what was up, but they had heard the dynamite, of which he quite rightfully pleaded ignorance. They gave him an old pair of sweat pants for which he traded a phony name and address.

Kenyon Styles seemed to have evaporated into the moonlit evening, but Rod figured he was just in hiding, waiting for things to simmer down so he could make a discreet return to their old station wagon in the village. He had no idea what had happened to the trash-lid riders, and he hoped they had been able to ride it out alive, but the minute he found Kenyon he was planning to pound him senseless. This time his recklessness had gone way, way over the top.

Gloria had rolled out ahead of him at the crack of dawn, saying she said she had to write up a report, and so he had drifted back to sleep. He wasn't usually a slugabed, a term his ex-wife had favored, especially since he'd stopped drinking, but he'd been feeling tired and slow for quite a while now. It might have been something to do with the collapsed lung that had spontaneously reinflated a while back. The last time he'd seen the psychiatrist who'd been forced on him—so he could collect workman's comp—the man had talked about incipient depression. Jack Liffey had figured life was a lot simpler if he just said he was a bit tired.

“Some juice, Jack?”

She was all uniformed up for some reason—as a detective she normally wore a skirt and blazer—sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of bound notebooks and papers. The first time he'd seen her in blues, he'd found it strangely sexy, but now he was used to it, and it just seemed fussy and a bit absurd.

“I know you're in a rush. I can take care of myself.” In fact, he cleared her plate and utensils, and refreshed her coffee before staring hard into the fridge. He'd forgotten why he'd opened the door, and then he remembered and took out the milk. It was taking longer than usual for the cobwebs to clear this morning.

“What's making you so worn down these days?” she asked.

“What've you got?”

It might have been a soft laugh behind him. Now he was stuck trying to choose between two boxes of cereal, his arm frozen in mid-gesture toward the shelf. There was no earthly reason he could discover to choose the raisin bran over the Wheaties, so he just gave it up and poured some coffee instead. He'd converted her to the burnt-tasting French Roast that he loved, and it was great.

“I'm sorry I was such a bitch last night. Sometimes, I don't know what gets at me. It's amazing how things look so much better in the daylight.”

“La madrugada,”
he said. He liked the feel of all those bursting syllables on his palate. He'd missed his Spanish class at city college that week.

He rotated the pile that was
The L.A. Times
with one finger so he could read the headlines. The mayor and the police chief were at odds again, the U.S. was withholding money at the U.N., and a small plane had crashed into a motel in Hawthorne. Nothing of interest above the fold. He'd been a copy boy at the now defunct
News-Pilot
on that busy day Khrushchev had been overthrown and the Chinese had set off their first H-bomb. There had been a third big event that day, too—he couldn't remember what—and the editor of the street edition had been tearing his hair out trying to get all three headlines big enough and all above the fold. That was back when street editions still mattered in L.A. Nobody read the paper in the streetcar now, and nobody much cared. How different that postwar world had been. He'd only had a glimpse of it as a child. Newsboys hollering headlines at the red-car stop. Guys wearing Homburgs. Worrying about A-bomb tests. That world had a soiled feeling, he felt as he contemplated it. Not innocent at all.

The doorbell rang, making Gloria look up sharply. “Who the hell is that?”

“You sound like you're worried some boyfiend might show up before I'm gone.”

“It better not be a girlfriend,
mijito.
You get no second chances from me on that.”

Jack Liffey opened on plainclothes Sergeant Dean Padilla, already looking a bit rumpled but plainly satisfied with himself. The day behind him was glorious and sunny, the kind that made you wonder how anybody could ever be unhappy in Southern California.

“Sergeant.”

“Mr. Liffey. Sgt. Ramirez.”

“Come in,” Jack Liffey said. “Can I get you some coffee?”

“I wouldn't say no. I don't know why Joe Friday always turned it down.”

Padilla sat opposite Gloria, and she closed the report she'd been reading.

“What brings you out so early?” Jack Liffey asked.

“It's one of those mornings. For me, the Santa Anas are a tonic. All the positive ions blowing off the desert and putting everybody on edge to make the assholes turn crazy and challenge us. If attacked, I will wholeheartedly accept the challenge.”

“Have they ever taken a statistical look at crimes on Santa Ana days?” Gloria asked.

He shrugged. “I read wife-beating goes way up after Monday Night Football.”

“I heard that.”

Jack Liffey brought him a cup of strong coffee and an option of milk and sugar.

“Black, thanks.” He sipped his coffee and opened a fancy aluminum briefcase, then took out a five-by-seven photograph of Thumb Estrada and slid it across the table.

“He was in the lineup,” Jack Liffey said, as the silence grew oppressive.

“
Si, esse,
and this is the very
pendejo
who shot your girl.”

“How do you know?”

“We know.”

“Can you prove it?” He felt Gloria Ramirez watching him.

“Not without you.”

Jack Liffey thought about his words carefully, but he'd already made his decision. “From one glance at a kid in a dark car, I am not going to send him to prison. That one look was not definitive.” Of course, closer looks later had been, but strictly speaking, he could pretend he wasn't lying.

Padilla tapped the photo thoughtfully with his finger. “Look harder.”

“I'm sorry, man. I can't drop a dime on this guy. Maeve is recovering. I'd like to forget the whole thing.”

“What do you think this is, a civil suit over some fucking dog barking after the Leno show, keeping you up? This is a major felony.
We
bring charges. You can't drop it, you got no option that way at all, my friend.” He turned to Gloria. “What do you say?”

She took a long draft of her coffee. “I have to get to work. You know I was in the house, Dean. I didn't see the shooting.”

“Yeah, but you know what your boyfriend is up to with this shithook. Whose side are you on?”

“I'm blue,” she said.

“Don't cut off your nose to spite your face,” he insisted.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He slapped the photo back in his briefcase. “How the hell do I know? Maybe your face can't be made any more presentable.”

“That's uncalled for,” Jack Liffey said.

Padilla glared at him and stood up slowly. It had been a long time since a cop had got his goat like this, but Jack Liffey stood, too, locking eyes with their visitor.

Gloria sighed. “Let's not have a dick-waving contest here, okay,” she said. She stood and got between them, facing Padilla. “He said he can't identify the kid. What do you want him to do, lie?”

Jack Liffey knew there'd be a price for this, but her loyalty to him now was breathtaking. His jaw was still tight with anger, with some guilt mixed in. There had to be a simpler way to make your way through the world, he thought. He was just trying to help a kid who could use as much as he could get and maybe more.

“Tell your man he's lucky I don't arrest him for obstruction. Or shoot him for good measure,” Padilla hissed at Gloria.

She grinned suddenly. “Don't waste it. You know it's not a good shooting unless it involves overtime.”

Padilla barged out and left the door open. She shut it and turned to Jack Liffey with an unreadable expression.

“I hope that hasn't hurt your professional integrity,” he said.

“It did. I used to get along with Dean.”

He thought of getting up to kiss her before she went off to work, but actually didn't want to. He knew she was perfectly aware that he was just trying to help the kid—but it struck him all of a sudden how little an understanding like that had to do with the ways of the heart. He'd wager neither one of them was very much in love at that moment.

She needed faith, she'd explained. He guessed he needed a dream. Jack Liffey wasn't used to self-pity, but something like it was dogging him. I seem to want something from life that I'm not getting, he decided.

The grunting and cooing behind him was driving him crazy, making him wish he'd taken the other available seat on the Greyhound, up front beside the violent-looking bearded guy in fatigues with the thousand-yard stare. As Rod Whipple sat down beside the large sleeping black woman, he'd gotten a good look at the girl directly behind him, a blonde with her unbuttoned shirt showing off not just the straps but half the cups of her black bra. The guy in the window seat was only a blur of blue work shirt and mustache.

“My name is Sally, and I'm an ex-Mormon, and I don't give a flying fuck who knows it,” she had announced loudly as the bus pulled out. “I do everything those weenies hate and I'm drunk as a skunk.”

A hundred miles later, the big woman beside him was pretending to sleep to avoid the noises from the seat behind them. Rod sat cradling the ugly little video camera, cursing Kenyon Styles silently. By the time he'd been released by the ski patrol and made his way back to where they'd parked, Kenyon's station wagon was gone. His own money had vanished with his pants in the avalanche so he had to try various cars around the darkling ski town until he found an unlocked Suburban in a ski lodge lot that he could sleep in. In the morning, he'd made a collect call and had his censorious sister in Grand Rapids very reluctantly wire him some money.

“Ohyesohyesohyes
there
theredoit.”

Kenyon Styles had a lot to answer for. Rod's anger welled up. Yet what he really wanted to do was weep with frustration. The worst part was that he knew his own weaknesses and understood that he probably wouldn't do anything. He desperately wanted his share of the money
Dangerous Games II
would bring in. Greed eats the soul, he thought. And this was the first time he really understood how greed worked.

As usual when his sense of purpose was wearing a bit thin, he made a lunch date with his daughter, who had a school holiday. She had recently given him a Jane Smiley novel to read, suggesting he shouldn't think it was a “woman's book,” and he suspected it of being a test. Of his sympathy, or his sensibility, or just his ability to shed the toughened skin he sometimes wore.

The wind was still gusty but buffered by the taller buildings around where they sat. They were out front at Houston's, a few miles inland in Manhattan Beach, with all the other prospective lunchers from the high-tech companies waiting all around, carrying the discreet little pagers from the maître d' so nobody had to do anything as uncouth as calling names into the afternoon. He preferred places a little less crowded, but this was Maeve's current favorite restaurant.