Hood said nothing, looked at Wyte.
“Really?” asked Wyte quietly. “I think Charlie has come up with more than smoke.”
“Can’t you just unscramble the voice on Boyer’s video?” asked Marlon. “Or maybe scramble Jones’s voice the same way as Allison’s, and see if they match? Then we’ll know for sure. No more moms and cokeheads and pissed-off girlfriends and maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. If you can’t convince me-the homicide sergeant-how are you going to convince a DA or a jury?”
“I’m working on the voices,” said Wyte. “There’s dozens of scramblers she could have used. Some of them you can buy for six bucks in toy stores. Some of them render a human voice one hundred percent unrecognizable, by any means.”
“Well, if Jones is Murrieta then we got the transponder on her car,” said Marlon. “We can catch her right in the middle of one of her stickups.”
“A good way to get someone shot,” said Wyte.
“Then let her pull the job,” said Marlon. “We’ll have helicopters in the air and we’ll spike-strip her car.”
Wyte seemed to ignore Marlon. But he gave Hood a long look. “You sleeping with her?”
“No, sir.”
Now Marlon stared at Hood. “What? You’re not, are you, Charlie?”
“I just said I wasn’t, sir. I can say it again.”
Marlon looked hard at Wyte. “Where’d that come from?”
Wyte shrugged and very small smile lines ringed his mouth. “Sorry, Charlie. Things get into the air. Must have been just me.”
“You’re fucking her?” asked Marlon.
Hood didn’t laugh with the other two men, and he stayed seated though he knew he was giving off bad heat. Lying about Suzanne Jones felt something like not filing charges against Lenny Overbrook but in Hamdaniya he had been covering a fellow soldier’s ass and now he was just covering his own.
“None of us is fucking her but Lupercio’s trying to kill her,” Hood said quietly.
“After we’ve got him in custody we can figure Suzanne and Allison Murrieta,” said Wyte. “We’ll have a little time to get it right. Some wiggle room-I like that.”
“I do too,” said Marlon. “Just a laugh, Charlie. Lighten up. We’ll stop this guy.”
28
Lupercio watched the scenery in the lenses of Suzanne Jones’s sunglasses. She was part of the evening news that was now playing on a large screen behind the Bull. The picture was vibrant and clear and Suzanne Jones’s face was almost as tall as Lupercio’s entire body.
“Marina del Rey,” said Lupercio. “One place I know not to look.”
“Exactly,” said the Bull. “She won’t be hard to keep track of now.”
“Why not?”
The Bull shrugged.
Lupercio was used to having his questions dismissed by the Bull but this gesture seemed particularly brief and disrespectful. After much thought, Lupercio had decided that the Bull had once been a law enforcer, perhaps still was. Little else could explain his arrogance and his abundant information. That the man was also a successful criminal set off no alarms in Lupercio-witness to the disappeared, finder of loved ones’ bodies in the human piles of Puerta del Diablo, brother and son of El Salvador, the Savior.
The Bull sat above Lupercio as usual, surrounded by his aluminum-cased computers and peripherals, the low-voltage bulbs overhead throwing shadows down his face. He rolled his chair across the dais, casters echoing lightly upon the wood. He tapped at a keyboard.
Lupercio turned, and through the windows of the big office he could see the Port of Long Beach, its legions of trucks and trailers tending the immense walls of stacked containers. The sun was still high and the harbor was silver and the great cranes cast black reflections on the water.
“Watch,” said the Bull.
Lupercio turned back and watched the big TV screen split. On the right side of the screen Suzanne Jones’s face froze in all its oversized beauty. On the left side appeared another face of equal size and similar shape. This one had straight black hair and wore a jeweled mask.
“Allison Murrieta,” said Lupercio. He enjoyed her exploits and liked it that she gave some of her money to the poor. She had saved the life of an old man. Lupercio’s wife and daughters were much more interested in Allison stories than in the “reality” shows they watched. Lupercio hoped that the cameras would be there when she died in a hail of bullets.
“What do you see?” asked the Bull.
“What can anyone see behind a mask?”
“Are they the same woman?”
“I don’t know. That is why she wears it.”
“Are they the same woman?”
Now Lupercio shrugged. There was too much in the world that went unseen to speculate on what was not even visible.
“A mask can hide many faces.”
“This only hides one.”
“Jones has the diamonds unless she sold them,” said Lupercio. “If Allison Murrieta also has them, it is not my concern.”
The Bull stared down at him. “I admire your economy of thought.”
“Yes.”
The Bull still stared down at him. “Are you feeling pressure, Lupercio? Because of the attention in the news, your pictures being shown on television, the various law enforcement agencies all focused directly on you, the reward money?”
“I do what I must do to remain unseen.”
The Bull smiled. “You cut your hair.”
Lupercio nodded.
“I find it very entertaining,” said the Bull, “that here in the twenty-first century, some of our deadliest enemies hide from us in caves. And that here, in this huge city, with all of our manpower and technology, all of our vast and fast lines of communication, our most wanted man simply cuts his hair to remain invisible. And our most wanted woman wears a simple mask. And for a time, it works.”
“Few see.”
“True. But then where did they get the drawing of you they showed on TV? Someone not only saw you, but observed you closely. Right down to the hair you had to cut.”
“Her son. The shirt in the drawing I have worn only one time.”
“Why did you let the boy see you?”
“He was my opportunity to search for the diamonds.”
Lupercio wondered if the Bull had been a federal enforcer or a Sheriff’s deputy or a municipal policeman, or perhaps an insurance investigator.
“Will he live?” asked the Bull.
“He chose his path the moment he talked to me.”
“You are an unforgiving thing, Lupercio.”
“I’m simple and true.”
“He’s a boy.”
The Bull turned and looked at the big screen behind him, which still contained the split-screen images of the women.
“Where is she?” asked Lupercio. “I want to finish this work.”
“I want you to finish it, too.”
The Bull rolled over to one of his computers and guided the mouse. He consulted his laptop. The light from the monitors shifted on his face. A moment later he leaned back and crossed his thick arms over his thick chest.
“She’s in Lake Arrowhead, at the Gray Fox Cabins. She’s driving a white Sentra.”
The Bull gave Lupercio the address and the license plate numbers.
“How many police are with her?”
“The police are in Marina del Rey.”
“If you know where she is, then they must know where she is.”
The Bull smiled and entered something on a keypad. “No. I’ve got a little helper. I control it. If I want, it talks only to me and gives static to everyone else.”
A little helper, thought Lupercio. The Bull has many little helpers. A criminal policeman with many helpers, such as myself.
“She might have a friend with her,” said the Bull.
A sheet of paper emerged from a printer and he plucked it out and looked at it. He set it on the edge of the big desk, and Lupercio stood on his toes in order to reach it.
“The deputy from Miracle Auto Body,” said Lupercio.