He had staked out the Sheraton Miramar in Santa Monica for a whole day, tracking comings and goings. He had spotted Tannenhauser once, and seen a woman who might have been the former Erica Ledbetter three times, depending on how she could have changed her look over the past two years.
They appeared to be together, as Mojica had said.
Just today, outside, waiting for a car, they had appeared to be arguing.
Now all Barney had to do was time them out, and tag them inside the building. Figuring out what code names they were registered under was a waste of time. He had them and they did not appear to be anxious to relocate just yet. There was probably a lot of longdistance spin control going on, the kind that was safer to do from another country.
He would scoop them alone, and his men might be spared a stray bullet.
Armand ruined all of Barney’s quiet strategy with a single cellphone call.
“You’ve got to get down here now.”
Bad news, incoming, take cover...
“Somebody nailed Sirius. Right outside the gun range. Wherever you go, don’t go back there because I’m pretty sure it’s hot. Meet me at the morgue, four o’clock.”
The downtown Los Angeles County Department of the Coroner — the county morgue, due west of the University of Southern California Medical Center — has a gift shop on its second floor called Skeletons in the Closet, where one can buy “ghoulish gifts” such as toe tag keyrings, coffee mugs featuring a body outline in chalk, or toy miniatures of the 1938 Black Mariah hearse. Profits from the shop go to stout causes such as the Youthful Drunk Driving Visitation Program, which, among other incentives to reform, compels offenders to watch an actual autopsy-in-progress. Founded in 1993, the shop pulls down between $15,000 and $20,000 in sales every month (excepting, of course, Halloween season, when it does double that) and has an international clientele.
People who visit the morgue for the purposes of putting a name to a corpse usually don’t stop at the gift shop for a souvenir.
The late Sirius had a small-caliber bullet hole straight through his head. You could actually see through it; blow frigid condensed breath through it, if you had the guts to lift it from the confines of the body bag on refrigerated drawer-tray Number 38.
“They’re hunting us,” said Armand. “We’re not as smart or cool as we thought we were. We destroyed their operation in Mexico and now the sonofabitch is going to pick us off locally. The only reason he missed you is because you’ve spent so much time staking out the hotel. Me, I can’t figure. We might walk out of here and right into a gunsight.”
“I know where he is,” said Barney.
“Then we take him. Sudden death overtime.” Armand nailed his friend eye-to-eye. “I know what you’re going to try to sell me. You’re going to say the hunt is over, that this isn’t Mexico, that it’s your problem. Then, when I don’t believe that, you’re going to say it’s not worth it. They hired a guy to kill you in Mexico when you were slightly less mobile than a rutabaga, and they’re going to keep hiring soldiers until we are dust. You and me are the same, now — our dead friend in the drawer there is proof positive.”
“I was going to suggest you go hole up with your brother in Cincinnati until the gunsmoke clears.”
“Let history pass me by? Fuck that.”
Sirius’ dead, closed eyes offered them no counsel. No one else was present to waste time by suggesting maybe it was all an accident, random, unrelated, a tragedy, sure, but nothing more.
“You’ve got the bloodlust, partner,” Armand said. “Keep it boiling and don’t let it blind you to tactical reality.”
“Armand,” Barney said. “I let one go in New York City. I shouldn’t have. I let one go in Mexico and I shouldn’t have. But each one was a negotiative play for a bigger target. It’s me that Tannenhauser wants; let me take the risk. I don’t want you getting waxed now that Karlov and Sirius are gone.”
“I’m a big boy,” said Armand. “Practically a grownup.” He waited a beat. Barney was not smiling. “All or nothing.”
They left the morgue. No place was safe. The person who had killed Sirius had walked right up to him, put a pistol to his temple, and fired.
Barney flexed his hands, trying to remember what they had looked like when they were whole.
“You’re right. This isn’t over until they’re all gone.” Grimly he thought, Or we are.
Their entire arsenal — what they had not disposed of in Mexico — was trapped at the gun range, inaccessible. It was tainted ground until they were clear. Barney had his Super .40 and Armand had his Ruger, end of story. It would be so easy to hit the freeway and keep on driving. This was not home anymore.
“See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” said Armand, slapping his friend on the shoulder.
“We just jump in the car, drive to the hotel, kill some people and then have a steak dinner?”
Armand remote-fobbed the doors on his ride, a low, gorgeous Cadillac DTS V-8 in pewter. “No. We jump in the car, drive to the hotel, smoke the snake-in-the-grass motherfuckers that subtracted Sirius from our lives, and then go have a steak dinner. Chez Jay’s. I’ll buy. Our dead buddy in there needs one toast at least.”
Yes. At least. At least in a couple of hours it would all be done...
Barney was nearly at peace with that brutal truth when Armand grinned at him over the roof of the car. Then everything behind Armand’s ears burst toward Barney in a macerated mist of red blood, white bone, gray brains.
Barney walloped his chin on the car roof in his hurry to hit the deck, saturated in the remains of the back of Armand’s head. Armand collapsed in a boneless tumble. Two seconds ago, this had not happened yet.
Another .338 Lapua round pierced the door on Armand’s side and exited through Barney’s door three inches from his head. It was a flat trajectory. The shooter was so far away that the echo of distant report came after the bullet had struck. These were boat-tailed, full metal jacketed military rounds, Super Magnums with a muzzle energy of nearly five thousand foot-pounds. This was the sort of death you got at the hands of an expert with a four thousand-dollar rifle and painfully precise optics. The guy could be 1500 meters away. Anywhere.
Barney had about two feet of clearance he was pretty sure the shooter could not aim below. Clawing his own gun out would have been pointless. This was surgical, dispassionate, the slaughter of farm animals.
He crawled on his belly toward a palm tree planter made out of UltraCal while several more rounds chopped and channeled Armand’s car. It was absurdly quiet. There was a good chance the sniper had not seen him move.
Barney actually heard the whine of the incoming slug cutting air. A cloud of gasified fiber turned the air yellow and the palm tree fell over like a British butler, bowing.
Even if he could make it back to the car, what was the point? There was probably a bullet deep in the engine block by now.
Sirius had been killed at the gun range, and the enemy had figured Barney and Armand would come to the morgue. The question that might save Barney’s life was: Had the sniper seen Barney’s car?
It was parked on the other side of the street, a leased Dodge Hemi Charger in gunmetal gray. The only armament it offered was one of Karlov’s Benellis, in the trunk along with some spare ammo for the .40. Both useless.
It stinks, amigo. It stinks like underbrush when you probe by fire.
Carl’s words from an eternity ago echoed back at him. That’s what this superior sonofabitch was doing, but from a leisurely bench rest. He probably had time to sip a Primer Pop between rounds until it was time for him to pack up, drive away, and eat his own goddamned steak.