The Poet (51 page)

“And I have to admit I’m fucking jealous. If he gets the arrest on this … I mean, it’s my case and I’m two thousand fucking miles away from it.”

“Maybe it won’t happen tomorrow. Maybe you’ll be back in time. Even if you’re not, it’s not going to be him. It’s going to be the critical team.”

“I don’t know. Gordon’s got a way of getting in there. And I have a bad feeling. It’s tomorrow.”

“Some people might call that a good feeling, knowing that this guy’s going to be taken off the street.”

“I know, I know. Still, why him? I think he and Bob … I didn’t really get it clear from Bob why he sent me to Florida instead of someone else, instead of Gordon. He took the case away from me and I just let him.”

“Maybe Thorson told him about you and me.”

“I was thinking that. He would, too. But I don’t see Bob doing what he did and not talking to me about it, not telling me why first. He’s not that way. He doesn’t take a side until he hears both sides.”

“I’m sorry, Rachel. But look, everybody knows it’s your case. And it was your break with that Hertz car that brought everybody to L.A.”

“Thanks, Jack. But it was just one of the breaks. And it doesn’t matter. Making the arrest is like what you said about getting the story first. Doesn’t really matter what’s happened before.”

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make her feel better about the situation. She had brooded over it all night and there weren’t enough words for me to change her mind. I decided to change the subject.

“Anyway, that was good stuff you got today. It seems like everything is coming together. We haven’t even caught the guy and so much is known about him.”

“I guess. After hearing everything Brass said, do you have sympathy for him, Jack? For Gladden?”

“The man who killed my brother? Nope. No sympathy at all.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“But you still do.”

She took a long time answering.

“I think of a little child that could have been a lot of different things until that man did what he did. Beltran set the child on the path. He’s the real monster in all of this. Like I said before, if anybody got what he deserved, it was him.”

“Okay, Rachel.”

She started laughing.

“Sorry, I guess I’m finally getting tired. I didn’t mean to be so intense all of a sudden.”

“It’s okay. I know what you meant. There is a means to every end. A root to any cause. Sometimes the root is more evil than the cause, though it’s the cause that is usually the most vilified.”

“You have a way with words, Jack.”

“I’d rather have my way with you.”

“You have that, too.”

I laughed and thanked her. Then we were silent for a few moments, the line open between us, stretching two thousand miles. I felt comfortable. No need to talk.

“I don’t know how close they’ll let you get tomorrow,” she said. “But be careful.”

“I will. You too. When will you be back?”

“I hope by tomorrow afternoon. I told them to have the jet ready by twelve. I’m going to check out Gladden’s mail drop and then get on the plane.”

“Okay. Why don’t you try to go to sleep now?”

“Okay. I wish I was with you.”

“Me, too.”

I thought she was about to hang up but she didn’t.

“Did you talk about me with Gordon today?”

I thought about his comment, calling her the Painted Desert.

“No. We had a pretty busy day.”

I don’t think she believed me and I felt bad about lying.

“I’ll see you, Jack.”

“Okay, Rachel.”

I thought about the phone conversation for a while after hanging up. Our conversation made me feel kind of sad and I couldn’t pinpoint the true reason. After a while, I got up and left the room. It was raining. From the doorway of the hotel I checked the street and saw no one hiding, no one waiting for me. I shrugged off the fears of the night before and stepped out.

Walking close to the buildings to avoid as much of the rain as I could, I went to the Cat & Fiddle and ordered a beer at the bar. The place was crowded despite the rain. My hair was wet and in the mirror behind the bar I saw dark circles cut under my eyes. I touched my beard the way Rachel had caressed it. When I was done with the black and tan I ordered another.

40

The incense had long burned away by Wednesday morning. Gladden moved about the apartment with a T-shirt tied around his head, covering his mouth and nose, making him look like a bank robber from the Old West. He had sprinkled perfume he had found in the bathroom on the shirt and around the apartment, like a priest with holy water, but just like holy water, it didn’t help him much. The smell was still everywhere, haunting him. But he didn’t care anymore. He had made it through. It was time to leave. Time to change.

In the bathroom, he once again used a pink plastic razor he had found on the bathtub ledge to shave. He then took a long, hot and then cold, shower and afterward moved about the apartment naked, letting the air dry his body. He had taken a mirror off the wall of the bedroom earlier and propped it up against the living room wall. He now practiced walking in front of it again, back and forth, back and forth, watching his hips.

When he was satisfied he had it down, he went into the bedroom. The processed air chilled his naked body and the smell nearly made him convulse. But he stood his ground and looked down at her. She was gone now. The body on the bed was bloated, and had lost all recognizable values. The eyes were coated in a milky caul. Bloody decomposition fluids had purged from everywhere, even the scalp. And the bugs had her now. He couldn’t see them but he could hear them. They were there. He knew. It was in the books.

As he closed the door he thought he heard a whisper and he looked back in. It was nothing. Just the bugs. He closed the door and put the towel back in place.

41

The man we believed to be William Gladden called Data Imaging Answers at 11:05 on Wednesday morning, identifying himself as Wilton Childs and inquiring about the digiShot camera he had ordered. Thorson took the call and, according to plan, asked if Childs could call back in five or ten minutes. Thorson explained that a shipment of merchandise had just been delivered and he hadn’t had a chance to look through it all. Childs said he would call back.

Meantime, Backus monitored the caller ID display and quickly gave the number Childs/Gladden had called from to an AT&T operator standing by on the law enforcement request desk. The operator punched the number into her computer and reported that it belonged to a pay phone on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City before Thorson had even hung up.

One of the roving two-car teams of FBI agents was on the 101 freeway in Sherman Oaks, about five minutes away from the pay phone with good traffic. They gassed it down to the Vineland Boulevard exit without use of sirens, exited to Ventura Boulevard and took positions within sight of the pay phone, which was on a wall outside the office of a $40-a-night motel, porno movies included. No one was at the phone by the time they got there but they waited. Meantime, another roving team was en route from Hollywood as backup and a helicopter was circling on standby over Van Nuys, ready to move over the scene when the ground agents moved in.

The agents in place waited. And so did I, in a car with Backus and Carter a block from Data Imaging. Carter turned the car on, ready to roll if the word came over the radio that the others had Gladden in sight.

Five minutes passed and then ten. It was all very intense, even sitting blind with Backus and Carter. The backup cars had enough time to take positions a few blocks behind the first team’s cars on Ventura. There were now eight agents within a block of the pay phone.

But at 11:33, when the phone on Thorson’s desk at Data Imaging rang, the agents in place were still watching an unused pay phone. Backus picked up the two-way.

“We’ve got a ring here. Anything?”

“Nada. No one’s using this phone.”

“Be ready to move.”

Backus put the two-way down and picked up the mobile phone, hitting the preset key for calling the AT&T law enforcement desk. I was leaning over from the backseat, watching him and the video monitor on the transmission hump beneath the dashboard. It was a black-and-white fish-eye view of the whole Digital Imaging showroom. I saw Thorson pick the phone up on the seventh ring. Though both phone lines into the store were tapped, we could only hear Thorson’s side of the conversation in the car. Thorson gave the high sign on the video, raising his hand over his head and making a circling motion with his finger. It was the sign that Childs/Gladden was calling again. Backus began the same rundown with caller ID that he had done before.

Not wanting to possibly spook Childs/Gladden, Thorson engaged in no delay tactics on the second call. He also had no way of knowing that the call was coming from a different phone this time. For all he knew, agents were moving in on Gladden as he spoke to him.

But they weren’t. As Thorson was telling the caller that his digiShot 200 had arrived and was ready for pickup, Backus was learning from the AT&T operator that the new call was being placed from another pay phone at Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas Street.

“Shit,” Backus said after hanging up. “He’s in Hollywood. I just pulled everyone out of there.”

Was it by design or luck that Gladden had escaped? No one knew, of course, but it was eerie, sitting there in the car with Backus and Carter. The Poet had kept moving and so far had avoided the net. Backus went through the motions of sending the roving teams to the intersection in Hollywood but I could tell by his voice he knew there wasn’t much of a percentage in it. The caller would be gone. The only chance now would be to take him after he came for the camera. If he came.

On the phone in the store, Thorson was delicately attempting to pin the caller down on what time he would be by to pick up his camera but trying to act uninterested about it. Thorson was a good actor, it seemed to me. After a few moments he hung up.

He immediately looked toward the fish-eye lens of the camera and calmly said, “Talk to me people. What’s going on?”

Backus used the mobile phone to call the store and fill Thorson in on the near miss. I watched on the video as Thorson balled his hand into a fist and lightly bounced it once on the desk. I couldn’t tell if it was a sign of disappointment that the arrest had not gone down or maybe a sign of thanks that he would now get the chance to come face to face with the Poet.

Most of the next four hours was spent in the car with Backus and Carter. At least I had the backseat so I could stretch. The only break came when they sent me around the corner to a deli on Pico to pick up sandwiches and coffee. I went quickly and missed nothing.

It was a long day, even with the hourly drive-bys Carter made of the store and the arrival of several customers at different times, which always proved to be tense moments until they were identified as real customers, not Gladden.

By four, Backus was already talking over plans for the next day with Carter, not giving in to the thought that maybe Gladden wasn’t coming, that maybe he knew something was amiss and had outsmarted the bureau. He told Carter that he had decided he wanted to open a two-way mike so that he didn’t have to use one of the phone lines to communicate with Thorson in the store.

“I want that fixed by tomorrow,” he said.

“You got it,” Carter answered. “After we close this down, I’ll go in with technical and get it all fixed up.”

The car dropped into silence again. I could tell Backus and Carter, the veterans of too many stakeouts to recall, were used to long stretches of silent company. To me, though, it made the time pass all the more slowly. Occasionally I attempted conversation but they never carried it further than a few words.

Shortly after four a car pulled to the curb behind us. I turned around to look and saw it was Rachel. She got out and got into our car next to me.

“Well, well,” Backus said. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t stay away for long, Rachel. Are you sure you covered everything you needed to cover in Florida?”

He was being even but I sensed that he was annoyed that she had rushed back. I think he wanted her in Florida.

“Everything’s fine, Bob. Anything happening here?”

“Nope, it’s been slow.”

When Backus turned back around, she reached over and squeezed my hand on the seat and made a curious face at me. It took me a few moments to realize why.

“Did you check the mail drop, Rachel?”

She broke her look away from me and looked at the back of Backus’s head. He had not turned around and she was sitting directly behind him.

“Yes, Bob, I did,” she said in a voice slightly tinged with exasperation. “It was a dead end. There was nothing in the box. The owner said that he believed a woman, an older woman, came in every month or so and cleaned it out. He said the only mail that ever came looked like bank statements. I think it was Gladden’s mother. She’s probably living somewhere around there but I couldn’t find a listing and there was nothing from Florida DMV.”

“Maybe you should’ve stayed a little longer and looked a little harder.”