Indigo Slam

I put down the negative. 'We still have to find Clark.'

We went back along the hall toward the front of the warehouse, passing more empty offices. The hall reached a kind of lobby, then turned right to more offices, and as I passed the first office I saw a small camp cot against one wall, covered by a rumpled sleeping bag. 'In here.'

We went in. 'Guess he's supposed to stay here until the job's done.'

Clark had been here, but he wasn't here now. An overnight bag sat on the floor beside the cot, and a cheap card table with a single folding chair stood against the opposite wall. A little radio sat on the table, along with a few toiletry items and a couple of printers' magazines. Diet Coke cans were on the floor, along with crumpled bags from Burger King and In-n-out Burger and a large bottle of Maalox and a mostly used tube of cherry-flavored Tums. The room smelled of sweat and body odor and maybe something worse. A candle and a box of matches and a simple rubber tube waited on the table. Drug paraphernalia. I said, 'Goddamn. The sonofabitch is probably out scoring more dope.'

Pike said, 'Elvis.'

Pike was standing by the overnight bag, holding a rumpled envelope. I was hoping that it might be something that would lead us to Clark, but it wasn't. The envelope was addressed to Clark Haines in Tucson, and its return address was from the Tucson Physicians Exchange. It was dated almost three months ago, just before the Hewitts had left Tucson for Los Angeles.

I felt cold when I opened it, and colder still when I read it.

The letter was from one Dr. Barbara Stevenson, oncologist, to one Mr. Clark Haines, patient, confirming test results that showed Mr. Haines to be suffering from cancerous tumors spread throughout his large and small intestines. The letter outlined a course of treatment, and noted that Mr. Haines had not returned any of the doctor's phone calls about this matter. The doctor went on to state that she understood that people sometimes had trouble in dealing with news of this nature, but that it had been her experience that a properly supervised treatment program could enhance and maintain an acceptable quality of life, even in terminal cases such as Clark's.

The medical group had even been thoughtful enough to enclose a little pamphlet titled Living with Your Cancer.

I guess Jasper was right; Clark Hewitt was more than he seemed. I looked at Pike. ' Clark 's dying.'

Pike said, 'Yes.'

That's when a hard-looking man with an AK-47 stepped through the door and said, 'He's not the only one.'

CHAPTER 25

He was an older guy with a hard face that looked as if it had been chipped from amber. He waved the AK. 'Hands on heads, fingers laced.' The accent was thick, but we could understand him.

I said, 'The building is surrounded by the United States Secret Service. Put down the gun and we won't have to kill you.'

'Lace your fingers.' I guess he didn't think it was funny.

He took a half-step backward into the hall, and when he did Pike shuffled one step to the right. When Pike moved, the older guy dropped into a half-crouch, bringing the AK smoothly to his shoulder, right elbow up above ninety degrees, left elbow crooked straight down beneath the AK's magazine, the rifle's comb snug against his cheek in a perfect offhand shooting stance. Perfect and practiced, as if he had grown up with a gun like this and knew exactly what to do with it. I said, 'Joe.'

Pike stopped.

The older guy yelled down the hall without taking his eyes from us. A door crashed and Walter Tran, Junior, came running up, excited and sweating, expensive shoes slipping on the vinyl tiles. When he saw me, his eyes got big and he barked, 'Holy shit!' He clawed at his clothes until he came up with a little silver.380 that he promptly dropped.

I said, 'Relax, Walter. We're not going anywhere.'

He scooped up the.380, fumbling to get the safety off and pointing it at the older guy who snapped at him in Vietnamese and slapped it out of his hands. The old man shifted to English. 'You're going to shoot yourself.'

I said, 'Walter, take a breath.'

Walter Junior pointed at me. 'This one was the guy at the paper. I've never seen the other one.' Pike, reduced to 'other' status.

The older guy narrowed his eyes again. 'He said they were with the Secret Service.'

Walter Junior said, 'Holy shit!' again, and ran back down the hall.

'I was kidding. We're private investigators.'

The older guy shrugged. 'Gives the boy something to do.'

The door crashed once more and Walter Junior was back, skidding to a stop just ahead of Nguyen Dak and two of the shotgunners who had fronted me at the Journal. I said, 'We could sell tickets.'

Nobody laughed at that one either.

Nguyen Dak was wearing a fine wool suit that had probably cost three grand. He looked at me. 'We told you to stay away.'

'Clark Hewitt has three children, and I have them. A bunch of Russians from Seattle are looking for Clark because they want to kill him. That means they're looking for his kids, too.'

'You should have listened.' Guess none of it mattered to him.

'We're here because we're working for Hewitt's children. We don't care about the printing.'

I guess that didn't matter to him either.

They made us lie face down with our fingers laced behind our heads, then searched us as if they were looking for a microphone or a transmitter. I guess maybe they were. Dak positioned the two shotgunners in the front corners of the room so they could cover us without shooting each other. The guy with the AK took our guns and our wallets, tossed them to Dak, then tied our hands behind our backs with electrical utility wire. Dak called him Mon. When our hands were tied, they lifted us into the two folding chairs. I said, 'It started out like a pretty good day.'

Dak made a gesture and one of the shotguns punched me on the side of the head. Seattle all over again.

Dak looked through my wallet first, then Pike's, then handed them to the guy with the AK. 'Private investigators.'

'I told you that.'

'You told this gentleman you are with the Secret Service.'

'Bad joke.'

Dak stared at me some more.

I said, 'We came here to find Clark Hewitt. We know he's working with you, and we know he's been here.'

Dak lit a Marlboro and looked at me through the smoke. The guy with the AK said something in Vietnamese, but Dak didn't respond. He said, 'We now have a problem.'

'I kinda guessed.'

'Who do you really work for?'

'Clark Hewitt's children.'

More cigarette, more smoke. 'I think maybe the FBI.'

I shrugged at him. 'If that's true, your problem's bigger than you think.' You could tell he knew that, and didn't like it. 'If we're feds, then other feds know where we are. If they know where we are, and we turn up dead, you're history.'

Dak clenched his jaw and waved the cigarette. 'I told you to stay away, and you did not. You came onto our property, and you have seen things that you should not have seen.'

I said, 'I don't give a damn what you're going to print, or why, or what you're going to do with it. I came here because Clark and his children are in danger.'

The AK spoke Vietnamese again, louder this time, and Dak shouted back at him, the other Viets looking from one to the other like some kind of tennis match was taking place, maybe yelling about killing us, maybe saying murder us clean right here in the room, then sweat it out with the cops and pretend they didn't know what happened or how or why. They were still going through it when Clark Hewitt came in with Walter Senior and another younger guy. Clark was wearing a cheap cotton shirt and baggy trousers over busted-out K-mart canvas shoes, and he had the vague, out-of-focus look of someone who'd just shot up.