To Jester
My little pal who came to me
when I needed him most,
and left far too soon.
Always missed. Always loved.
R.I.P.
Acknowledgments
As always, I have a number of people to thank for helping me with either technical, psychological, or moral support during the writing of this book. So here goes.
My sincere thanks to Detective 2 Jeffrey Sandefur, LAPD, and Detective 2 Humberto Fajardo, LAPD, to whom I was directed by way of John Petovich, LAPD, retired; Jim Stith, Esq., simple country lawyer and international man of mystery; Eileen Dreyer, who always knows the answers to the questions about the gross, the sick, and the weirdly perverted.
To Dr. Toni Bernay and Dr. Robert Gerner. Gray O’Brien and the staff at Robert Forster Physical Therapy. You all know what your contributions were. My mind and body thank you.
To Nita, Irwyn, Danielle, Andrea, et al., for your extreme patience. You may have been pissed as hell, but not in my face, and I appreciate that more than you know. The muse waits for no one, but everyone must wait for the muse.
And finally, to Lynn Cardoso, Betsy Steiner, and the Divas—Eileen, Karyn, Kim—for the hand-holding, the listening, the sympathy, the empathy, the counseling, and for being the inner circle. Friends in need, friends indeed. Seasons and men come and go, but girlfriends are forever.
1
LA traffic.
Rush hour.
Rush hour at four hours and counting. Every Angelino busting it to get home before the heavens opened up like a bursting bladder and the rains came in a gush. The city had been pressed down beneath the weight of an anvil sky all day. Endless, ominous twilight in the concrete canyons between the downtown skyscrapers. The air heavy with expectation.
Legs pumping. Fingers tight on the handlebars. Fingertips numb. Eyes on the gap between a Jag and a FedEx truck. Quads burning. Calves like rocks. The taste of exhaust. Eyes dry and stinging behind a pair of swim goggles. A bag full of blueprints in cardboard cylinders riding his back.
The two-way strapped to his thigh like a six-gun barked out bursts of static and the rock-crusted voice of Eta Fitzgerald, the base dispatcher. He didn’t know her real name. They called her Eta because that was what they heard out of her all day, every day: ETA? ETA sixteen? Base to Jace. ETA? What’s your twenty, honey?
He had three minutes to make it to the developer’s office on the seventeenth floor of a building still blocks away. The guard at the front desk was a jerk. He locked the doors at six on the dot and had no sympathy for anyone standing on the street trying to get in. The guy would have turned his back on his own mother, if he had one, which Jace doubted. He looked like something that had sprouted up out of the ground. A human toadstool.
Shift his weight to the right. Cut around the Jag.
He caught the blast of its horn as he ran on his pedals to put a few inches between his back wheel and the car’s front bumper. Just ahead of him the traffic light had turned yellow, but the FedEx truck was running the intersection. Coming up on the right side of the truck, Jace reached out and caught hold above the wheel, letting the truck carry him through the intersection and down the block.
He was a master at riding the blind spot. If the person behind the wheel saw him and didn’t want him there, a messenger could become a bug on a windshield in a hurry. The FedEx drivers were usually cool. Simpatico. Messenger to messenger. They were both connections between people who didn’t give a rat’s ass who they were unless they were late with a delivery.
The building was in sight. Jace checked over his shoulder, let go of the truck, and dipped right again, cutting across another lane, drawing another blaring horn. He angled to jump the curb in front of a fire hydrant and behind a Cadillac idling in a red zone. The car’s passenger door swung open as the bike went airborne.
Shit.
Jace turned the wheel hard right and twisted his hips left as the bike came down. The old lady getting out of the car screamed and fell back into the Cadillac. The bike’s front tire hit the sidewalk clear.
Jace held his position as tight as a tick on the back of a dog. He touched the brakes with little more than his imagination. Just enough to break the chaos.
Don’t panic. Panic kills. Ice water, J.C. Steel. Focus. Calm.
He kept his eyes on his target. He could see the security jerk walking toward the front doors, keys in hand.
Shit!
Panic. Not at threat of injury, but at threat of being locked out. The customer wouldn’t care that he had sent the delivery impossibly late or that the messenger had nearly been killed by the door of a Cadillac. If the package didn’t make it, there would be hell to pay.
He dropped the bike ten feet from the door, sick at the thought that it might be gone by the time he got out of the building, but there was no time to lock it. He bolted for the door, tripped himself, fell like a boulder, and tumbled and skidded, arms and legs bouncing like pickup sticks. Cardboard blueprint tubes shot out of his bag and rolled down the sidewalk.
No time to assess damage or recognize and catalog pains.
He forced himself to his feet, tripping, stumbling, trying to scoop up the tubes even as his momentum carried him forward. The security jerk stared at him through the glass. A lumpy gray face, twisted with sour disapproval. He turned the key in the lock and walked away.
“Hey!” Jace shouted, slamming into the glass. “Hey, come on!”
The guard pretended not to hear him. Son of a bitch. One minute to six and this guy had nothing more on his mind than getting on the freeway and creeping out to Pomona or to the Valley or to whatever nondescript shithole suburb he squatted in every night. He wasn’t staying three extra minutes to log in a delivery. Having the power to walk away was probably the only power he had in his miserable life.
“Asshole!” Jace shouted. He would have kicked the door, but with his luck the damn thing would shatter and he’d be hauled off to jail. Not that he couldn’t have used the rest and three squares a day. In Jace Damon’s life, rest was not an option.
Juggling the cardboard tubes in one arm, he yanked his bike up off the sidewalk and climbed back on. The entrance to the underground parking garage for the building was on the side street. The chain gate would be down, but as soon as a car rolled out, he could slip in. If there was a God in heaven—which he doubted, except in times of dire need—someone would still be in the developer’s office on the seventeenth floor. Hopefully it would be Lori, the receptionist, who was blond and bouncy and would give him a Snickers bar from the stash in her bottom drawer. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast—a day-old bagel and a shoplifted PowerBar.
He parked himself to the right of the garage entrance, back just far enough so as not to be noticed by anyone coming up the ramp. He had learned a long time ago to fly below the radar, to be invisible and furtive and resourceful. Survival skills of the street kid.
His radio made a sound like Velcro tearing free. “Sixteen? You out there? Base to Jace. Base to Jace. Hey, Lone Ranger, where you at? I got Money chewing my ass.”