Spiral (42 page)

"I'll have to finish the job before I can do anything else," Bias said coolly.

"What do you mean? It's too late! Too big a risk."

"It's already set up."

Ferretis gawked at him. "When?"

"Soon."

Ferretis ran a hand through his limp hair. He seemed stunned, confused, as if this new possibility had thrown everything out of perspective.

"You don't need me to help you get out of town," Bias said, watching him. "Do exactly as you instructed Cordero. You'll be all right."

Ferretis looked at Bias with panic in his eyes.

"Wait a minute. You're crazy. This piece of garbage won't make it to Brownsville. I'll never make it."

"Rent a car."

"What if there's a bulletin out on me?"

"What makes you think the police know about you? It's Negrete you were worried about."

"Give me your false ID," Ferretis said desperately. "You've got to do that, by God."

"I can't," Bias said, looking at him. "Drive to Rosenberg. It's on the way—-rent a car there."

"Oh, shit." Ferretis's voice was anguished.

Bias did not like seeing this. It was embarrassing. Cowardice was embarrassing. He opened the car door and got out, closing the door again. He bent down and looked at Ferretis through the open window.

"Drive out of here, get on Highway 59, and go to Rosenberg."

"Wait a goddam minute," Ferretis said hoarsely, and he scrambled out of his own door and stood on one leg, the other still inside, looking across the roof of the car at Bias. "You can't walk out on me like this. You've got a responsibility...

"Then they both heard them.

Two cars. One, its engine whining and tires squealing, was climbing the entrance ramp on the other side of the wall; the other was screaming up the exit ramp at the opposite end of the aisle. Suddenly its headlights burst along the walls as it shot out of the ran and into the aisle, sparks flying from under its chassis as it slammed down on the cement.

Bias met Ferretis's disoriented, catatonic stare across the roof of the car, and raised the Heckler to his waist. He fired three she through the open windows into Ferretis's stomach, three sharp smacks as if he were being hit with fists, staggering him back against the car behind him.

The car coming from the exit ramp at the other end of the garage was already barreling down the aisle, its headlights on bright, as the second car burst out of the up ramp six cars away, its headlights panning the walls and swinging around to meet those from the other direction. Bias fired two shots in each direction as he sprinted across the aisle in front of them, and dove over the second-floor ban into the darkness.XXX

Chapter 43

HAYDON
swung his legs over the side of the bed and let the telephone ring one more time. He was aware that it was still dark outside as he lifted the receiver and looked at his watch in the light of the bedside lamp Nina had just turned on. It was three-twenty.

"This's Bob, Stu," Dystal said. "That son of a bitch Negrete's gone mad dog on us again."

"What's the matter?" Haydon had to clear his throat.

"You awake?"

"Yes. Go ahead." The bottle of wine Haydon had shared with Nina only hours before was making the top of his head feel as if it were filled with lead.

"Ferretis has been killed. Night guard in a parking garage down near the Warwick heard a coupla cars ripping up and down the ramps and some shouting on the second floor. Cars tore outta there and he went up to have a look-see and found him. Three nine-millimeter slugs high in the stomach."

"Is that all?"

"Yeah, I asked too, but it looks like he was just blown away. Nothin' else except that he didn't have any ID on him. Somebody'd been through his clothes and took everything. They identified him first from a picture they'd gotten from his wife earlier, then she went and made a positive identification later."

"The guard didn't get license numbers?"

"Nope, but we got good descriptions of the cars. Next thing: They've picked up that little ol' Cissy Farrell in a motel on the Gulf Freeway. Drunk as a skunk. She'd knocked her phone off the hook and the night manager went to check, called a blue-and-white unit to haul her off. They hit on her name and took her in. She's sleeping it off down there."

"You're not downtown?"

"Hell, no. I'm sitting here on the edge of my bed in my under wear. I thought you ought to be there when we talk to her."

"Right. I'll be there in half an hour."

Haydon hung up, and massaged the muscles at the back of his neck.

"What's happened?" Nina put a hand on his back.

"Ferretis was killed a few hours ago, and they've got Ciss Farrell downtown." He stood. "I've got to get down there."

He threw his pajama bottoms on the foot of the bed and walke naked into the shower. Turning the water on cold, he sat down on the marble seat built around the walls and let the cold spray beat h head and back. He thought of the scene he had found in Lawrence Waite's kitchen, and wondered how this girl had missed being one those grotesque victims. Cissy. He tried to imagine what she looked like.

After drying off, he wrapped the towel around his waist and shaved. He splashed Kuros aftershave on his face and selected a charcoal double-breasted pinstripe from his suit closet. If he was right, there wouldn't be any time to change clothes before Mooney's memorial service later in the morning. He sat in one of the armchair in the dressing area and tied his shoelaces. Nina was watching him from the bed.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"All right." He stood, took a fresh shirt from his armoire, a put it on, taking cufflinks from one of the drawers. "Listen," he said, fastening the links. "Would you make sure Celia gets started on
teco
report? Somewhere inside her head she's got a piece of infornation that could open this up."

"What about Renata Islas?"

"I'm going to try to get over there after we talk to Cissy Farre He selected a tie and slipped it under his collar. "It was a good idea get them together."

He took his Beretta out of an armoire drawer and slipped it his belt in the small of his back. Taking his suit coat off a hanger walked over and kissed her. "Don't let Celia out of your sight."

"Okay," she said. "Be careful."

At almost four o'clock in the morning Houston streets ari empty as they ever get, and Haydon made good time by way of
Montrose and Memorial Drive. The night shift still had three hours to run, and some of the detectives on Lapierre's task force were in their offices. Others had gone downtown to the garage where Ferretis had been found.

Haydon walked into his office, where a night-shift detective was tapping away at one of the terminals. The detective turned around, saw

who it was, started to speak, then hesitated when he saw that Haydon had stopped in the middle of the room and was staring at Mooney's cubicle.

Mooney's coffee mug, a gift from another detective who had brought it back from a summer vacation in Ireland; his big-breasted pin-ups taped on the side of the cubicle next to the monthly boxing schedules; his caricature on a piece of yellowed notebook paper sketched as a gesture of friendship by a man who had dismembered his wife, but who, Mooney said, was "otherwise a nice guy with talent"; his cartoons cut from a variety of magazines... everything ... was gone. His desk was bare; nothing of Mooney remained but the hand-soiled outlines where the strips of tape had been pulled up.

Haydon had not been ready for this. Mooney was memory.

"Sorry about Ed," the detective said. His name was Harker, a young detective with wavy blond hair and a well-trimmed mustache. "I wish I was on that task force."

Haydon nodded, and turned and walked out of the office.

He was standing at the coffeepot, stirring nondairy creamer into a Styrofoam cup of coffee and thinking of the bare cubicle, when Dystal came up beside him and poured a cup for himself.

"Morning," he said. His voice was early-morning basso. Neither man looked at the other as they stood side by side stirring their coffee. "Okay. The story is this way about your situation. You're doing some sort of undercover stuff. Uh, the details aren't all worked out real clear, but . . . well, you don't have to talk to anybody about it and we've briefed the couple or so that needed to know and they aren't going to be asking you any questions. We had to do some stuff, you know, I mean, Pete's coordinating this thing and we didn't want him to think you were doing any kind of end-run kind of thing. Didn't want to get men crossways on this."

Haydon didn't have any idea what had been done, and he didn't want to know.

Dystal heaved a weary sigh. "You can ask any questions you want to when we get her in here." He sipped loudly from the Styrofoam cup. "They're bringing her up now. Pete's been down there where Ferretis was killed. He'll be here in a minute."

The squad room was quiet. Even with the twenty-four-hour task force in full swing, four o'clock in the morning is slow.

"Did you find out anything about Rich Elkin?"

"I got Moyer out of bed to ask him about it after I left your place. I didn't explain the whole deal to him, but I let him know it was purty damn important and I needed something pronto. He's supposed to get back with
me early this morning, and we can get into it about his Mexican connection and what they can do for us."

Cissy Farrell was waiting in Dystal's office with a jail matron when the three detectives walked in. She sat in a straight-backed metal chair, a skinny, wasted-looking girl in her mid-twenties. After having thrown up her binge of Doritos and Coors, she looked pathetically gaunt, with pasty skin. She was nervously smoking Salems, and drinking a Classic Coke, which she put down on the edge of Dystal's desk, making rings on the top. Her hair was so dirty it looked wet, and the bruised bags under her eyes were painful to look at. She had a thin nose, thin lips, and brown eyes that bulged slightly. She was trembling. The matron stepped outside to wait in the squad room.

Dystal introduced himself, and then Haydon and Lapierre. He went around behind his desk as the other two men took chairs across from the girl.

"Now, Mrs. Farrell," Dystal began, leaning toward her and assuming an avuncular tone. "Do you have any idea why we brought you up here to talk to you?"

She shook her head, which was bent down between rounded shoulders. She had the demeanor of a scolded dog.

"Well, the motel manager called the police because of your drunkenness, and when they picked you up they realized that you were someone we were looking for. Do you know why we were looking for you?"

The girl shrugged and limply lifted the cigarette to her colorless

lips.

"Do you know what has happened to your husband, Mrs. Farrell?"

She grew rigid in her slumped position. It seemed that even her heart didn't move for a full two minutes, and then she said, "Goddam." It was not said in anger or fear, but in unmistakable anguish.

But she seemed too weak to cry, and her hand went up to her mouth, which was hidden by a stiff hank of hair that had fallen away from her head. As she exhaled the smoke, she nodded.

"Well, hon, I hate to do it," Dystal said kindly, "but I got to ask you about it. You know anything about it at all?"

The girl nodded. She kept her head down slightly and only looked at Dystal from under her eyebrows.

"Now you just relax as best you can," he urged, "and tell us what you know, or think you know."

Cissy dragged on her cigarette. "I want immunity," she said.

"Immunity?" Dystal frowned and sat up a little.

"Uh-huh."

"From what, hon? You're not any kind of suspect in this thing."

"But I know some thangs."

"Well, you don't need immunity because you know some things."

"About criminal activity, though," she said, sucking at the cigarette again.

"What criminal activity is that?"

"Guns an'. .." She stopped and reached for her Coke. She took a few swallows and went back to the cigarette.

"Guns and what?"

Her voice was weak. "Explosives."

Dystal didn't even flinch, but kept his easygoing comportment as if she had said candy bars. "Well, hon, we don't know anything about anything. All we know is we found your man and your friends dead in that house and we don't know why, or when, or who, or how. If we're gonna do any good on this, you're gonna have to straighten us out. We sure do need your help."

"I want protection."

Dystal cut his eyes up at Haydon and Lapierre. The one thing they didn't want to hear her say now was that she wanted to see her lawyer. Dystal leaned toward her again.