Jaclyn the Ripper (37 page)

“A little anxious, are we?” she said. “I just gave you my word.”

In the distance, the sound of a helicopter thumped closer, yet no one in the room noticed.

H.G. took another step forward, his gun waving, then steady, then waving. Amy closed her eyes and whispered a prayer. Unnerved, Jaclyn backed across the balcony until her back was against the rail.

H.G. took yet another step.

In response, Jaclyn quickly, yet delicately nicked Amy's throat with her knife as if plucking a string on a violin. Blood gushed forth.

“Do we understand each other?”

A tableau.

For a millisecond, H.G. thought he had a clean shot, but his hand was shaking too badly, and Jaclyn moved again.

“Bertie, please,” Amy whispered. Tears were running down her face into the rivulets of her blood. “Please. . . .”

“Your word,” he muttered to Jaclyn.

“Yes.”

He lowered the Beretta and tossed the special key at her feet. It spun through the air, clanged on the balcony tile. Jaclyn scooped it up without getting go of Amy, once again had the knife at her throat. She grinned.

“Candidly, my dear boy, I'd have expected you to notice by now that I am neither a gentleman nor a lady.”

Suddenly, the helicopter dropped over the top of the hotel and hovered, the blast from its rotors loud against the building. Startled, Jaclyn looked, and in that moment, Amy tried to twist free, but her hair was still in Jaclyn's hand. Jaclyn forced her against the wall and raised the knife.

A xenon spotlight lit up the balcony.

H.G. fired.

His bullet smacked into the wall between Jaclyn and Amy. He peered over the barrel, thought for an instant that he'd actually hit Jaclyn, but no. In a flash, she'd pocketed her knife and gone over the side. He went to the rail and leaned over expecting to see her body crumpled on the street below. He saw nothing—only the helicopter spotlight ballyhooing crazily over the face of the hotel trying to find her, as well.

Then Amy rushed to him and held on to him, shaking with sobs. He tried to comfort her and locate Jaclyn in the darkness below at the same time.

“Jaclyn Smythe,” bellowed a voice from the helicopter. “The hotel is surrounded. . . . Jaclyn Smythe. . . . Surrender to the police. . . .”

While the voice droned on, patrol cars and police vans pulled up on
the street below, and as commanders shouted orders, cops in SWAT gear hit the ground running and spread out.

Finally, in the darkness, H.G. saw a flicker of movement and was astounded. Jaclyn was brachiating gracefully from balcony to balcony, on a diagonal toward the ground, deliberately going for the junglelike foliage near the main entrance. She abruptly disappeared, swallowed up in the black, and he had no way of telling if she'd jumped clear, fallen or gone back in the hotel by way of another balcony.

He shouted to the police below, but his words were lost in the roar of the helicopter, the shriek of more sirens coming closer, the garbled policespeak over PA systems.

Muttering, he turned to Amy, saw blood still trickling from her wound, pulled her into the bathroom and set about cleaning her up.

“I can do this, Bertie,” she said, trying to be brave, but her voice was tremulous.

“No.”

“I'd rather bandage myself,” she said firmly looking at him in the mirror. “I've seen what you do when the children get scratches.”

“Amy—” Overcome, relieved, he embraced her from behind and buried his face in her hair. His eyes brimmed with tears. “Honestly, I . . . I don't think I'd care to go on without you, my love.”

She began crying, too, and placed her hand gently on his, then turned in to him, and they rocked back and forth as they held each other.

 

The door burst open.

H.G. found himself facing two SWAT-team members in the bathroom while others searched the suite. In full-on gear, they resembled giant black insects, but he had already seen them scrambling from the vans and wasn't put off.

“How did you
know
?” said H.G.

“We tracked her phone,” said the team leader. He lifted his mask, revealing a lined and set black face. “GPS.”

“Really.” He blushed, frowned, told himself he owed 'Dusa an apology.
Not only had he been wrong about GPS technology, in this case it had saved Amy's life.

Another team member swung into the room. “Not here,” he said. “Not in any of the adjacent rooms. . . .
Nada
, skipper.”

“She went over the balcony,” H.G. said, leading them in the living room. “I fired and missed, and then she was gone.”

Irritated, the team leader spoke into a small microphone on his helmet. “Johnny Six, we're in the room.”

“Go ahead.”

“Look for a corpse down there, will you?”

“Copy.”

“I didn't hit her!” H.G. protested. He pointed at the pockmarked stucco. “She's not dead!”

Disbelieving, the team leader inspected the bullet hole, then looked over the balcony. After a long moment, he fished night-vision glasses from his belt and peered into the black pockets of foliage. Finally, he straightened up, pressed his microphone again.

“We can't see under the bushes. There might be a body under the bushes.”

“She's alive, I tell you!” H.G. declared. “She swung down the balconies like a bloody orangutan.”

When Jaclyn got to Santa Monica Boulevard, she shook off her fugitive mode and strolled the sidewalk, looking at the closed shops as if there were something fascinating in their shuttered windows. All that was missing was Heather Trattner's purse to swing. In her obvious haste, she had left it in the Wellses' hotel suite.

Rappelling down the balconies had required nothing more than a bold, suicidal agility which after her years in hell came rather easily, though she had wrenched her shoulder, scraped her hands and arms. At the second floor, she had jumped, landed on a thicket of banana trees, bounced to the ground, then run off through gardens thick with foliage, brushing spiders from her hair. She had emerged farther east on Doheny Drive, seconds before the SWAT teams had arrived. She was already beyond their perimeter and the rookies stringing yellow tape, and now was in the anonymity of noise and traffic.

An Escalade pulled to the curb and tracked her. Admiring its maroon reflection in the windows, she continued walking. A little more swing to her hips, a carefree hand in the air, and she saw the window slide down, opening another world to her.
Every exit is an entrance somewhere else
,
she thought, quoting a genius playwright she'd surfed past on PBS while enjoying the Trattner hospitality.

“Hey, you need a ride . . . ?”

 

“Thank you,” said Jaclyn, relieved as the car whisked her away from the area. She settled back in the plush seat and studied the driver. Tall and angular, he reminded her of a stick figure with bad skin and hair combed to look unkempt. He seemed much too young for the car, and she guessed that it belonged to his father.

“Where you headed?” he said.

She looked at him blankly, noticed his Adam's apple and wondered vaguely what it would look like excised from his throat. She glanced in the rearview mirror, saw no patrol cars behind them and was glad to be leaving Beverly Hills.
This boy will want something for his kindness, and while I must admit that I'm bored playing the harlot, I cannot deny its convenience—nor its allure.

“My name's Steve.”

She nodded.

“Like some tunes?” He punched on the satellite radio, and rap music exploded from within, bass vibrating the speakers.

“Please,” she said, disgusted.

“Okay, okay.” He turned it off. When the light changed, he hit the gas and veered right on Wilshire, leaving Santa Monica Boulevard behind. He rolled his shoulders and looked smug—as if speed made him cool. He fished cigarettes from the dash, threw his arm over her seat. “Smoke?”

“No.”

He started to light one. “Mind?”

“Of course not. What a silly question.”

“So, unh. . . . you're a hooker . . . ?”

“I can be.”

“Yeah?” His eyes lit up. “I, I don't have much cash.”

“You won't need much.”

“Really?” He chuckled nervously. “Wow. That's great.” He grinned.

 

“Okay, we'll seal the deal.” He drummed on the steering wheel. “How about we go into the hills?” He gestured at the backseat. “That gonna be cool?”

“No. . . . We'll go to the Getty Museum.”

“Huh?” His face fell.

“You've never been?”

He shook his head.

“It's quite lovely.” She smiled, then looked off thoughtfully.
Wells will be coming—if he hasn't left already—and we have a little surprise for him, do we not?

“Do I get on the 405?”

“No, no. We'll be taking the back way.”

“Won't it be closed?” said Steve.

“Oh, we won't be going inside, my dear.”

H.G. got off the elevator and was ushered through a police checkpoint. He wanted to tell them that they wouldn't find Jaclyn here, but he had no time. He hurried outside. Police had blocked the entrance with barriers and tape. Seeing their black-and-whites lining the street, he realized that the last place in Beverly Hills he could hail a cab right now was in front of the Four Seasons.

He remembered the lower level and took a lift down to valet parking. There were no taxis here, either, and—complicating matters—the police had taken over for the valets, funneling guests like sheep to an angry red-and-gold-vested man who was bestowing keys and mouthing apologies. The guests all had tickets which they would show to a cop who would ask them questions, then let them pass. H.G. had no such token and was inventing a “lost ticket” story when he spotted motorcycles parked in rows before the cars, their various colors gleaming under the fluorescents like a metallic rainbow. Unsurprising in this setting, they all looked new, and while he wouldn't mind owning any of them, the one half-hidden behind a pillar brought a huge, childlike grin to his face.

He walked around the walled-in elevator shaft and worked his way
between the parked cars toward the machine that had caught his eye: a sapphire-blue '10 Kawasaki Concours 1400 GTR, or so the chrome on its front announced. He paused at an open area flush with light and waited. His heart pounded.

One last breath, and then he darted to the bike, kneeled quickly behind it, touched its cold, smooth skin. The ignition was electric, so he wouldn't have trouble marrying the proper wires and starting the bike, yet the components were enclosed, and he had no tools. He frowned. Here he was, reduced to a pathetic thief before a spectacular machine—something to which science and technology should aspire—and he had a bloody pistol instead of a screwdriver. He calmed himself and ran his hands over the bike, probed and lifted. Magically, the seat raised up.

Inside was the toolkit that came with the bike.

Within minutes, he had bypassed the switch, was putting the toolkit back when he stopped.
My God, man, you can't just nip some citizen's motorbike like a common criminal! Explain yourself!
He took pen from pocket, but had nothing to write on, looked around frantically for a fast-food wrapper or bit of trash, but the staff here kept the parking area too clean. Then he saw an invoice for the bike also under the seat, unfolded it and wrote on the back:

To Whom It May Concern:

A matter of utmost importance has come up, and I must borrow
your exquisite machine. Should I not return, please charge
whatever expenses and inconvenience you have incurred to my
hotel suite at the Four Seasons.

Respectfully,
Herbert G. Wells

 

He left the note weighted down by the owner's helmet. One last glance at the police, and he walked the Kawasaki backward, aimed at the ramp, started the machine The four-stroke engine responded quietly, properly, yet the halogen headlamp blazed on automatically, turning heads from
the noise and confusion around the valet station. They saw him. Muttering curses, he straddled the bike, cranked the throttle, and it leaped forward, sending him airborne. He hung on to the handlebars like a trapeze artist. With a mind of its own, the machine slammed down, but didn't throw him. It hiccupped forward, bouncing him on the seat.

The valet was waving and shouting, and the police starting for him en masse. He goosed the bike. It leapfrogged up the ramp, wobbling under his uncertain hands, brushing him against the wall, shredding his sleeve and trousers and finally straightened out.

At the street, he slid into a left turn, slamming foot on pavement to stay upright, zipped past members of a SWAT team jumping out of the way, went right on Burton Way, barely missing the police barricades, bounced up on the center island, tore up its grass, and finally veered back onto the pavement. Cars ahead saw him coming and wisely pulled over. Afraid to slow down for fear he'd fall off, he leaned over the bike and hung on, wind pulling at his face. On Santa Monica, he turned in front of oncoming traffic, pressing the horn to warn the unsuspecting. Abruptly, he emitted a giddy laugh. This was not his 1905 Triumph.

A car pulled out in front of him. Instinctively, he went to apply the brakes, but missed both lever and foot pedal. The bike hurtled forward. He swerved at the last second, brushing the car with his leg as he went by. The driver leaned on his horn, the blaring sound startling him.

Minutes later, he was on Sepulveda, then scooting under the 405 and speeding into the Getty complex. On the hill, parallel to the tram, he forgot himself and—bubbling with laughter—cranked the Kawasaki to eighty-five. It rocketed forward, the road flashing beneath, and he was considering ninety when he saw the arrival plaza looming ahead and realized he had miscalculated badly. Not wanting to miss the brakes again, he glanced at the handlebars, but couldn't see clearly. He looked back at the road. In that instant, the bike hit the curb and jackhammered up the graceful tiers of steps, out of control. He finally jammed on the brakes.