Parishioner (24 page)

Ecks had a gun himself. He could have drawn it and ended the possibility of a contest—maybe. But guns had the sometimes unwanted tendency to increase the stakes. When faced with death some men surged forward instead of making the sensible decision. Men were made for war, and war was defined by both stupidity and casualty.

The last choice, a microsecond into Xavier’s arc of thought, was to make it a struggle right there, along the slanted aisle of cubicles. There was still a whole fight left in him from the aborted confrontation with Soto at the Seabreeze City church.

Time was up. The battering ram of a hand was six inches from Ecks’s chest.

He decided on a straight left, jerked his right shoulder back (hitting Calvin, who had sneaked up behind), and striking the beefy pink man square on the tip of his chin. Calvin fell to the floor behind Ecks. The big man dropped on his derriere like a child’s teddy bear. Ecks was able to take three steps before the big guy was up. Xavier couldn’t avoid the punch he felt coming up from behind, but he moved to the side, making it a glancing blow and putting him in position to return the favor.

The big man was four inches taller with a longer reach, so Ecks moved in close, hitting his opponent on the chin with his skull, and dug two vicious uppercuts to the gut. The response was the man pushing hard against both Ecks’s arms and throwing him two yards. Xavier was surprised to find himself on his back.

“Stomp him, Lon!” Calvin shouted, and suddenly a hard heel was bouncing off of Xavier’s forehead.

He had a hard head; that’s what his mother, father, teachers, girlfriends, wife, and friends had always said.

Ecks rolled to his left.

A woman office drone screamed and he imagined a zombie suddenly conscious of her fate.

Xavier was on his feet. He blocked three fast punches and then hit Lon three times—hard.

That was when the men fell at each other, throwing caution to the wind and fists into
flesh.

There came more shouting and screams too. Ecks tasted blood and felt the impact of Lon’s fists. He didn’t mind the attack. Actually he enjoyed it.

Men and women stood at the periphery of the battle behind the false safety of waist-high walls. There was nothing short of a fire hose that could stop the fight—nothing but a three-punch combination that first stunned Lon and then laid him low.

The big white man went down on one knee, tried to rise, and then fell on his side. From there he rolled on his back and then rocked from side to side, trying to remember how to get up.

The bastionlike door to Calvin Leigh’s office was closed. The sandy man was nowhere in sight.

Xavier wiped the blood from his forehead and turned toward the exit.

Fannie was gone from her desk.

Nine floors below, the man who had called Xavier
son
was also missing from his post.

Xavier crossed the street and unlocked his car door. He got inside, returned the Afghani pistol to its hiding place under the seat; then, after some fumbling, he found the slot for the ignition key.

He was three blocks away, almost to the freeway entrance, when red lights flashed in the rearview mirror.

Xavier knew then that Lon’s punches had had an effect, because he didn’t know what to do. Should he stop or drive on? Were the red lights for him? Maybe there was someone up ahead who had been speeding.

Lon could hit.

Thinking hard, Ecks came up with a plan. He would pull to the curb and if the police passed him he’d know that they were after someone else. He nodded to himself and flicked on the blinker, pulled to the side of the road, and was only mildly surprised when the unmarked black sedan pulled up behind him.

Was the pistol still in his pocket? No? Yes?

There was something familiar about the trench coat–wearing man who came up to the driver’s side and rapped on the glass.

Ecks rolled down his window and said, “Hello.”

“You’re bleeding,” Detective Andre Tourneau replied.

In the interrogation room, holding a cold pack to his forehead, Ecks wondered what the weather was like in New York. It was spring, so there would be plenty of light, though it probably wasn’t very warm yet. Swan would be gone. They had both been involved in the shoot-out with the East Harlem thugs.

Ecks wondered whether even Rikers could protect him from retribution.

His thoughts drifted awhile after that.

He remembered the first day he got to Los Angeles: He went down to the beach and walked for miles in bare feet and a light gold suit. He’d met a chubby white woman sunning herself on a striped blanket.…

Light from the doorway caused his head to ache and the vision of sex darted away.

Detective Andre Tourneau seated himself across from Ecks.

“What time is it?” Xavier asked.

“A little after eight.”

“I wasn’t in your jurisdiction when you grabbed me, was I?”

“How did your lawyer know you were here?”

“It’s still the same day, right?”

Tourneau smiled.

Ecks sat back and peered into the policeman’s green eyes.

“The lawyer is Cylla Pride,” Tourneau said. “She is very expensive.”

Xavier had the sudden urge to confess. It wasn’t the feeling of guilt but a kinship with the displaced policeman. He liked the man. He needed a friend.

As hard as Lon hit he couldn’t knock the New Xavier out.

But change was neither here nor there when the Old Xavier’s fingerprints were now being checked in the system.

“Why you warn me about a lawyer, Detective Tourneau? And how did you find me outside your jurisdiction?”

“Ipio.”

“Say what?”

“I-P-I-O. The Interpolice Information Organization.”

“Like the FBI?”

“Southern California is made up of dozens of unconnected municipalities.” The Frenchman managed the mouthful of syllables almost perfectly. “Lately most of the police departments have joined a local computer system where we can monitor active cases across city lines.”

“And you’re monitoring me?”

“Just so.”

“Why?”

“What were you doing at Wicker Enterprises?”

The question was like a pail of cold water dumped on his head. Suddenly Ecks was alert and conscious. His recovery from the heavy blows absorbed in the fight with Lon was, for all intents and purposes, complete. It was after eight. He’d been in custody for hours. Cylla Pride was nearby trying to get him out. Some computer in New York was comparing Xavier Rule’s fingerprints to Egbert Noland’s.

Or was it? There was no mention of extradition. Was there a computer down somewhere back east?

“How’s the other guy?” Ecks asked.

Tourneau frowned. “He’s in the hospital but not bad.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“What were you doing at Wicker Enterprises?”

Ecks put down the cold pack. It was tepid by then anyway. He looked past the Frenchman’s eyes into the question. He had an answer but it was possibly the wrong one.

“Listen, Andre,” Ecks said. “I’d really like to tell you, but I can’t right now.”

“Why not?”

“Let me talk to Cylla.”

“There were the bones of nine bodies in Sedra Landcombe’s cellar,” the cop said. “Six of them were infants. Wicker Enterprises is suspected of trafficking in child pornography.”

“My lawyer.”

“What can you tell me?”

“Let me talk to Cylla and I’ll get back to you.”

Two blocks from the downtown precinct Cylla Pride, a broad and blunt-faced white woman, sat across a coffee shop booth from Ecks. Her features were at odds with the cut of her elegant, dark maroon pantsuit.

“Why’d they let me go?”

“No one pressed charges. They really had no reason to bring you in.”

“But they took my fingerprints.”

“Charlie Mothers.”

It took a moment for this utterance to make sense. Charlie Mothers the self-styled and rehabilitated computer supervillain.

“You kiddin’ me.”

“Computers are law enforcement’s greatest strength,” she said. “It stands to reason that they would also be its greatest weakness.”

“He could do all that?”

“He’s probably the most dangerous man in our congregation.”

“Not the most dangerous person?”

“Maybe next to me.”

Cylla had her nose broken somewhere along the way. That wasn’t so surprising. People of the nameless church had lived hard lives. What did amaze Ecks was that she hadn’t had corrective surgery. She had big hands and small feet, flat brown eyes and hair that had not yet decided to be gray. Her skin was white and lusterless. In different clothes she could have been mistaken for a nineteenth-century French laundress.

“So I don’t have to run?” Ecks asked.

“They sent out the request and got no answers. So unless you’ve been moonlighting there’s nothing to worry about.”

Xavier Rule nodded and wondered about questions he couldn’t articulate.

“Do you need a ride back to your car?” Pride asked.

“No. Thank you, though. How did you know I was in there?”

“Brother Soto called Frank,” she said. “Can I do anything else for you?”

“Charlie told me that your firm is representing Lester Lehman.”

“Yes, we are. It’s not my case. I wouldn’t represent a mad dog like that.”

“Who’s paying for it?”

“A man named Edwards. He’s done everything by mail, so no one knows him. In the letter he said something about justice being done. Do you need to know more?”

“No. Probably not. But you could tell me something.”

“What’s that?”

“Do we belong to a cult?”

Xavier’s question caught the lawyer by surprise.

“Why do you ask that?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I seem to be acting on pure faith. I mean, I really don’t know what I’m doing, or why.”

Cylla dropped her professional attitude and sat back in the red metal chair. She draped her right arm over the backrest like a cross-country trucker who’d just hit her stride on the highway.

She smiled in a parental way.

“I got ten years on you, Ecks,” she said. “I did pretty good on my own. Got an Ivy League degree and ran a string of girls up and down the East Coast. I thought I had seen it all and figured it out by the time I was forty. Then one day I woke up thinking about all the things I’d done. People and crimes crowded in around me and I knew all of a sudden that I was just a tool, like a shotgun or a butcher’s knife.

“All that was before I met Frank. When I came to the church I was already drifting. They just took me in.”

“So you’re saying, ‘Yes, it is a cult,’ ” Xavier said.

“I’m saying that you won’t find a more like-minded congregation on the face of this earth.”

Xavier realized that he was nodding, not exactly in agreement but with understanding. He liked Cylla and knew that she spoke her own truth.