The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (96 page)

The fourth man popped out of cover behind the sofa and fired.

Milton dropped flat, rolled three times to the right, opening the angle and negating the cover, and pulled the trigger. Half of the buckshot shredded the sofa, the other half perforated the man from head to toe. He dropped his revolver and hit the floor with a weighty thud.

He got up. Save the cuts and grazes from the explosion, he was unmarked.

He went back to the kitchen.

Smokey was dead on the floor.

Eva and Karly hadn’t moved.

“It’s over,” he told them.

Eva bit her lip. “Are you all right?”

“I’m good. You?”

“Yes.”

“Both of you?”

“I’m fine,” Karly said.

He turned to Eva. “You both need to get out of here. We’re in Potrero Hill. I’ll open the gates for you, and you need to get out. Find somewhere safe, somewhere with lots of people, and call the police. Do you understand?”

“What about you?”

“There’s someone I have to see.”

ARLEN CRAWFORD waited impatiently for the hotel lift to bear him down to the parking garage. He had his suitcase in his right hand and his overcoat folded in the crook of his left arm. The car had stopped at every floor on the way down from the tenth, but it was empty now, just Crawford and the numb terror that events had clattered hopelessly out of control. He took his cellphone from his pocket and tried to call Jack Kerrigan again. There had been no reply the first and second time that he had tried, but this time, the call was answered.

“Jack! Smokey!” he said. “What the fuck’s going on?”

“Smokey’s dead, Mr. Crawford. His friends are dead, too.”

“Who is this?”

“You know who this is.”

The elevator reached the basement, and the doors opened.

“Mr. Smith?”

“That’s right.”

“What do you want, Mr. Smith? Money?”

“No.”

“What do you want?”

“Justice would be a good place to start.”

“Jack killed the girls.”

“We both know that’s only half of the job done.”

He aimed the fob across the parking lot and thumbed the button. The car doors unlocked and the lights flashed.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it. There’s no proof.”

“Maybe not. But that would only be a problem if I was going to go to the police. I’m not going to go to the police, Mr. Crawford.”

“What are you going to do?”

No answer.

“What are you going to do?”

Silence.

Crawford reached the car and opened the driver’s door. He tossed the phone across the car onto the passenger seat. He went around and put the suitcase in the trunk. He got inside the car, took a moment to gather his breath, stepped on the clutch, and pressed the ignition.

He felt a small, cold point of metal pressing against the back of his head.

He looked up into the rear-view mirror.

It was dark in the basement, just the glow of the sconced lights on the wall. The modest brightness fell across one half of the face of the man who was holding the gun. The other half was obscured by shadow. He recognised him: the impassive and serious face, the cruel mouth, the scar running horizontally across his face.

“Drive.”

THE MEETING on the third anniversary of Milton’s sobriety was a Big Book meeting. They were peaceful weekly gatherings, the format more relaxed than usual, and Milton usually enjoyed them. They placed tea lights around the room, and someone had lit a joss stick (that had been the subject of a heated argument; a couple of the regulars had opined that it was a little too intoxicating for a roomful of recovering alkies and druggies). Every week, they each opened a copy of the book of advice that Bill Wilson, the founder of the program, had written, read five or six pages out loud and then discussed what it meant to them all. After a year they would have worked their way through it and then they would turn back to the start and begin again. Milton had initially thought the book was an embarrassingly twee self-help screed, and it was certainly true that it was packed full of platitudes, but the more he grew familiar with it, the easier it was to ignore the homilies and clichés and concentrate on the advice on how to live a worthwhile, sober life. Now he often read a paragraph or two before he went to sleep at night. It was good meditation.

The reading took fifteen minutes and then the discussion another thirty. The final fifteen minutes were dedicated to those who felt that they needed to share.

Richie Grimes raised his hand.

“Hey,” he said. “My name’s Richie, and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Richie,” they said together.

“You know about my problem—I’ve gone on about it enough. But I’m here today to give thanks.” He paused and looked behind him; he was looking for Milton. “I don’t rightly know what happened, but the man I owed money to has sold his book, and the guys who bought it off him don’t look like they’re going to come after me for what I owe. I might be setting myself up for a fall, but it’s starting to look to me like someone paid that debt off for me.” He shook his head. “You know, I was talking to a friend here after I did my share last week. I won’t say who he was—anonymity, all that—but he told me to trust my Higher Power. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was right. My Higher Power has intervened, like we say it will if we ask for help, because if it wasn’t that, then I don’t know what the hell it was.”

There was a moment of silence and then loud applause.

“Thank you for sharing,” Smulders said when it had died down. “Anyone else?”

Milton raised his own hand.

Smulders cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “John?”

“My name is John, and I’m an alcoholic,” Milton said.

“Hello, John.”

“There’s something I need to share, too. If I don’t get it off my chest, I know I’ll be back on the booze eventually. I thought I could keep it in, but… I know that I can’t.”

He paused.

Richie turned and looked at him expectantly.

The group waited for him to go on.

Eva reached across, took his hand, and gave it a squeeze.

Milton thought of the other people in the room and how they were living the program, bravely accepting “honesty in all our affairs,” and he knew, then, with absolute conviction, that he would never be able to go as far down the road as they had. If it was a choice between telling a roomful of strangers about the blood that he had on his hands and taking a drink, then he was going to take a drink. Every time. He thought of what he had almost been prepared to say, and he felt the heat gathering in his face at the foolish audacity of it.

“John?” Smulders prompted.

Eva squeezed his hand again.

No, he thought.

Some things had to stay unsaid.

“I just wanted to say how valuable I’ve found this meeting. Most of you know me by now, even if it’s just as the guy with the coffee and the biscuits. You probably wondered why I don’t say much. You probably think I’m pretty bad at all this, and maybe I am, but I’m doing my best. One day at a time, like we always say. I can do better, I know I can, but I just wanted to say that it’s my third year without a drink today, and that’s as good a reason for celebrating as I’ve ever really had before. So”—he cleared his throat, constricted by sudden emotion—“you know, I just wanted to say thanks. I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own.”

There was warm applause, and the case of birthday chips was extracted from the cupboard marked PROPERTY OF A.A. They usually started with the newest members, those celebrating a day or a week or a month, and those were always the ones that were marked with the loudest cheers, the most high-fives and the strongest hugs. There were no others celebrating tonight, and when Smulders called out for those celebrating three years to come forward, Milton stood up and, smiling shyly, went up to the front. Smudlers shook his hand warmly and handed him his chip. It was red, made from cheap plastic, and looked like a chocolate coin, the edge raised and stippled, the A.A. symbol embossed on one side and a single 3 on the other. Milton self-consciously raised it up in his fist, and the applause started again. He felt a little dazed as he went back to his seat. Eva took his hand again and tugged him down.

“Well done,” she whispered into his ear.

IT WAS TIME. He had already stayed longer than was safe. He had thought about skipping the meeting altogether, and he had gone so far as getting to the airport and the long-stay parking lot, but he had been unable to go through with it. He needed the meeting, and more than that, he needed to see his friends there: Smulders, Grimes, the other alkies who drank his coffee and ate his biscuits and asked him how he was and how he was doing.

And Eva.

He had needed to see her.

She stayed to help him clear away.

“You hear what happened to the governor’s aide?”

“Yeah,” Milton said vaguely. “They found him in his car up in the Headlands.”

“He’d killed himself, too.”

“Yes.”

“Put a hose on the exhaust and put it in through the window.”

“Guilt?” Milton suggested.

She bit her lip.

“You’re sure he had something to do with those men? Those girls?”

“He did.”

Milton looked at her, and for a moment, he allowed himself the thought: could he stay here? Could he stay with her? He entertained the thought for a moment, longer than was healthy or sensible, until he caught himself and dismissed it. Of course he couldn’t. How could he? It was ridiculous, dangerous thinking. He had made so much noise over the last few days. The spooks back home would be able to find him without too much bother now. Photographs, references in police reports, all manner of digital crumbs that, if followed, would lead them straight to him. The arrival of the Group would be the first that he knew of it. They would be more careful this time. A sedative injected into his neck from behind; a hood over his head before being muscled into a waiting car; a shot in the head from a sniper a city block away. He’d be dead or out of the country before he could do anything about it.

Thinking about staying was selfish, too. He knew what Control would order. Anyone who had spent time with him would be a threat.

A loose end.

The guys at the meeting?

Maybe.

Trip?

Probably.

Eva?

Definitely.

“What are you doing now?”

It startled him. “What?”

She smiled at him. “Now—you wanna get dinner?”

He wanted it badly, but he shook his head. “I can’t. I’ve got—I promised a friend I’d catch up with him.”

If she was disappointed, she hid it well. “All right, then. How about tomorrow?”

“Can I give you a call?”

“Sure,” she said.

She came over to him, rested her hand on his shoulder, and tiptoed so that she was tall enough to kiss him on the cheek. Her lips were warm, and she smelled of cinnamon. He felt a lump in his throat as she lowered herself down to her height. “It was good to hear you speak. I know you’re carrying a burden, John, and I think it’s very painful. You should share it. No one will judge you, and it’ll be easier to carry.”

He smiled at her. His throat felt thick, and he didn’t trust himself to speak.

“See you around,” she said, rubbing her hand up and down his right arm. “Don’t be a stranger, all right?”

HE DROVE BACK to the El Capitan for the last time. He recognised Trip Macklemore as he slotted the Explorer into the kerb outside the entrance to the building. He scanned his surroundings quickly, a little fretfully, but there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. The Group were good, though. If an agent was using the boy and didn’t want to be seen, he would be invisible. Milton felt an itching sensation in the dead centre of his chest. He looked down, almost expecting to see the red crosshatch of a laser sight, but there was nothing there. He turned the key to switch off the engine and stepped outside.

“Hello Trip.”

“Mr. Smith.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“What can I do for you?”

“There’s someone you need to talk to.”

Milton noticed that there was someone else waiting at the entrance to the building.

She smiled nervously at him.

Milton couldn’t hide his surprise. “Madison?”

“Hello, John.”

“Where have you been?”

“Is this your place?” she said, rubbing her arms to ward off the chill. “Can we maybe go in? Get a coffee? I’ll tell you.”

SHE EXPLAINED. To begin with, she edged around some of the details for fear of upsetting Trip, but when he realised what she was doing, he told her—a little unconvincingly—that he was fine with it and that she should lay it all out, so that’s what she did.

It had started in May when Jarad Efron booked her through Fallen Angelz for the first time. She had no idea who he was other than that he was rich and generous and fun to be around. They had had a good time together, and he booked her again a week or two afterwards, then several times after that. The eighth or ninth booking was different. Rather than the plush hotel room to which they usually retreated, this was a private dinner party. Some sort of fundraiser. He had bought her a thousand-dollar dress and paraded her as his girlfriend. It was a charade, and it must have been easy to see through it, but there were other escorts at the party, a harem of young girls with rich older men. Madison recognised some of them, but it didn’t seem like any of it was a big deal.

One of the other guests came over to speak to Efron. She guessed within minutes that the conversation was an excuse; he was more interested in finding out about her. She hadn’t recognised him at first; he was just another middle-aged john with plenty of cash, charming and charismatic with it. He didn’t explain who he was, and when she asked what he did for a living, all he said was that he worked for the state government. They had exchanged numbers, and he had called the next morning to set up a meeting the same night. She reserved a room at the Marriott; they had room service and went to bed together.