Sammy’s face became a blank mask. “You do him?”
“No.”
“Well, okay then.” Sammy’s eyes brightened. “I guess we’re cool.”
Luke took in the nickel-plated finish on the Smith & Wesson.357 Magnum, then emptied the bullets onto his lap. He flipped the gun in his hand, showing Sammy the pistol butt.
Sammy took the gun and stuffed it into his belt. He let out a belly laugh as he turned over the engine and checked the rearview mirror.
“It’s time to introduce Flash to Sammy’s world.”
The first thing Megan heard was her own voice, a long and sluggish moan echoing in the black ether.
The darkness whirled around her, her eyelids too heavy to open. She tried to lift herself into a sitting position, but fell back when the nausea struck. A projectile of vomit erupted from her. Then the vertigo.
Through the fog, she heard, “Lie still, dear. Try not to move.”
The priest. What was his name?
She moaned again, louder this time, and then another wave of nausea hit. Her stomach convulsed with dry heaves.
“Oh, dear God”—cough—“help the poor girl.”
Another voice, in Spanish: “Shut up!”
The shouting peeled away a layer of her stupor, and her senses edged toward wakefulness.
Suddenly, her eyelid was pulled open. A bright light brought an explosion of pain. She struggled to turn away from the beam.
“Stop it. Let her be.”
The light vanished, her eyelid fell closed. A moment later she heard a sickening thud, and then a weak groan coming from the priest.
The other voice said, “Your friend needs to learn to keep his mouth shut.”
A radio crackled. Through the static she heard, “The old man’s getting worse. Is she awake yet?”
“No.”
“We need her over here — soon. Let me know as soon as she wakes up.”
Megan tried to count the fading footsteps before the blackness returned.
“Sammy’s not into causes. Sammy’s into coin, and this is gonna cost you.”
Wilkes hadn’t changed, physically or otherwise. He had a restless, bouncing gait that accentuated his lanky farm-boy physique. His long arms swung in undulating waves as he paced around the room.
“I can pay you,” Luke said.
“Now how you gonna do that, Flash? On the run, the po-lice on your tail, no wallet. Shit. You living in a fairy tale.” He gave Luke a loose-wristed wave of his hand. “You what they call a pariah. A penniless pariah.”
“They ever teach you about connecting verbs at Cornell?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
They were in the living room of Sammy’s condominium, facing one another across a glass and chrome coffee table. The room was a study in black leather and polished metals. It looked out over the skyline of Los Angeles from the twenty-fourth floor of a Wilshire Boulevard high-rise, just west of the Los Angeles Country Club. Living in proximity to the city’s oldest money was probably Sammy’s way of mocking them.
Luke said, “How does eighty thousand sound? That’s what I have in savings.”
Sammy cocked an eyebrow.
“You get me what I need,” Luke continued, “help me figure out what the hell is going on, and you can have all of it. I get caught, or something happens to me, and you get nothing.”
He figured it was a long shot. Looking around the condominium, it was clear that Sammy wasn’t struggling financially. Was the pot big enough for the risks involved? Would Sammy trust him?
“Someone is setting me up,” Luke added, “and they’re doing a damn good job. I need your help.”
“What kind of help?”
“I don’t know.”
Sammy slapped his thighs. “Well, that’s a good start.”
“There was another murder, five days ago. A woman. The two murders are somehow connected.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but they are. A woman I haven’t seen in four years sent me an e-mail that has something to do with a boy who died in our E.R. Just before we were supposed to meet, she was murdered. A couple days after that, I’m framed for killing Erickson.”
“And why’s Sammy supposed to believe you didn’t murder these nice folks yourself?”
“Because you know me.”
Wilkes waggled a finger at Luke. “Sammy once — as in, a long time ago — knew a guy that kept to himself, didn’t say much. Come to think of it, Sammy hardly knew this guy.”
“Was the guy you knew stupid enough to leave tracks a Boy Scout could follow?”
Sammy ran a finger across his chin, then gave Luke a small nod. “Okay, so let’s suppose you didn’t do these people—”
“I didn’t.”
“If that’s true, the question is, why does somebody want you outta the way?”
“I don’t know.”
“If what you’re telling me is true, you probably do know. You just don’t know what you know.”
Luke thought about that for a moment. “If I was their problem, they could’ve just come after me, taken me out.”
“You haven’t been paying attention. I think they just did that.” Sammy came forward in his seat. “Look. Maybe killing you would draw too much attention to their problem, shine a light on ’em. Maybe this thing is closer to you than you realize.”
Luke regarded his former colleague. He wondered if Sammy was even aware of the change in his phrasing and idioms. He was shifting into professional mode. The man morphed from one persona to the next as easily as a chameleon changed its colors.
“Flash, are you drifting on me, or are you just deep in thought?”
“You going to help me?”
“I’m listening.”
Luke described for him the events of the past several days. After telling Sammy about the mysterious arrival of Kate’s e-mail, he pulled the photograph from his pocket and handed it to Wilkes.
“This came with the e-mail from Kate,” he said. “Look at the children. The boy that died in our E.R., Josue Chaca, had the same tattoo as the boy in that picture. And Jane Doe — her tattoo was identical to the girl’s.”
“Wait a minute.” Sammy made a time-out sign with his hands. “You telling me someone’s feeding you stuff? Some guardian angel just dropped this e-mail on your doorstep?”
“Looks that way. But now the police think that I was holding back. I told them about the e-mail a few days ago, told them I never got it. Then this morning, they storm into my apartment and find it sitting there.”
“Shee-it. Even when things go right, they don’t go right for you.”
The comment evoked in Luke an uncomfortable feeling: hopelessness.
Sammy glanced at his watch and then turned on a plasma-screen TV that spanned half of the wall on which it hung. “It’s five o’clock. Let’s check out the latest on Doctor Fugitive.”
Luke was the second item of the hour on the local news channel. A headshot from his hospital ID flashed on the screen behind the brunette anchorwoman’s right shoulder. A picture of Erickson appeared to her left. Most of the report centered on Erickson, including mention of the young girl left fatherless by the murder.
When the anchor moved on to a preview of tomorrow’s weather, Sammy leaned back into his couch, hands clasped behind his neck. “You need to get your hands on ten thousand, up-front cash. Sammy ain’t fronting expenses.”
Luke gave him a nod.
“And if you’re lying to me, there’s no place on earth that you can hide from Sammy. I think you know that.”
“I’m not lying.”
Sammy framed Luke between his outstretched hands. “First thing you’ll need is a makeover. Just happens to be one of Sammy’s specialties.”
“…Megan Callahan…” Luke heard the name through Sammy’s chatter. He lifted a hand to silence Sammy as he turned to the TV.