The Gatekeeper, page 23
Malibu Colony Beach, California
As they wait for Russian Ambassador Dmytro Rudko and General William Tancredi to march up from the pier, Constantine lights up another Greek cigarette. He glances at the inert television monitor embedded in the wall. “If the cable is cut off, why am I getting that damned soccer game in the office?”
Petra maintains her passive face and thinks, Damn it.
She’d already figured out Alonzo’s chess move.
Brittany Kinney turns to the old man. “No TV signals are coming in. None.”
“Tell that to the idiots on my TV.”
Brittany heads back toward the office.
She returns in about ninety seconds carrying a cheap plastic router box.
“This was under the desk. We’ve got a leak. Vincent?”
Guerrero turns to her.
“I’m pretty sure I know who did this.…”
CHAPTER 68
Dez hits Los Angeles. He follows the map coordinates to the apartment complex. It’s the most generic of structures: five free-standing buildings, each three stories tall, a good twelve to fifteen apartment units in each. Exterior stairs and wraparound, exterior walkways on the second and third floors. Bland as tofu. This could be a subdivision in Boise or Butte or Birmingham.
He spots Alonzo’s lavender Mini Cooper, the one he’d borrowed the week prior. It’s in a parking space stenciled 535.
Dez finds the apartment building marked NO. 5 and jogs up to the third floor. He finds the door marked 535. He raps twice on the door with a knuckle the size of a bridge rivet.
A curtain twitches.
Dez waits.
The door opens and a stranger stands in the three-inch gap. It’s a man, midtwenties, with a mop of curly blond hair and blue eyes.
“I’m Dez.”
The man’s eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. He’s been crying. He pauses, steps back, undoes the chain, and opens the door fully. He wears a hoodie with the Green Lantern symbol and artfully ripped jeans and is barefoot. “He’s in there.” He head-juts toward a bedroom.
Dez finds Alonzo in bed. He’s on his back, his face blotchy and bruised, one eye swollen shut, with an inch-long, vertical split to his upper lip. Far worse, one leg is in a cast. They’re using an inverted Postal Service box made of pliant, white corrugated plastic for elevation.
“Jaysus.”
Alonzo offers a half smile, trying not to pull on the two stitches in his lip. “It doesn’t look worse than it is. It’s that bad. Please don’t ask about the other guy.”
Dez finds a chair at a desk piled with a laptop, reams of papers bundled with brass brads, and used books on screenwriting. He drags the chair over to the bed and sits. The blond man stands in the doorway, hands jammed in his trouser pockets, tears glittering.
“Desmond, Andrew. Andrew, Desmond.” Alonzo slurs his words and his one open eye is dilated. He’s on serious painkillers.
“Wotcher,” Dez whispers over his shoulder.
Andrew says, “Hi.”
“It’s not my deathbed, bitches. You don’t gotta whisper.”
Dez nods to the broken leg. “Guerrero’s lads?”
Alonzo nods. “I wouldn’t leave her there by herself. Petra.”
“You planted that looped email before all this, did ye?”
“The … oh, that.” Alonzo sounds loopy. “Madre. I wanted to get her away. I knew they could trace our phones. Wanted to leave you bread crumbs. Holy smokes, that worked?”
Dez rests a hand on his shoulder. “I’m here, aren’t I, ye dozy bastard. ’Course it worked.”
Andrew inhales sharply. “Such loyalty. For a rich bitch who needs a butler.” His voice cracks halfway through.
Alonzo smiles at him. “I should wash your mouth out with a cheap varietal sold in a box, sweetie.”
Andrew wipes tears from his cheeks.
Alonzo turns his one good eye to Dez. “They’re holding her at the house. I don’t have my access card, or my company phone. No way in.”
Dez, the gatekeeper, shrugs. “We’ll see. Your leg…?”
“Ankle,” Andrew interjects bitterly. “After they knocked him down, they stomped on his ankle. They said…”
He hiccups, covers his mouth with his palm. Alonzo croons. “Hey. Shhh. S’all right…”
“They said, ‘Dance this off, faggot.’”
Dez feels a lightness in his chest. A disassociated feeling of serenity. He’s felt it before, when facing an enemy it was his job to kill. Experienced killers do it without too much emotion. So, too, do sociopathic killers. Dez is pretty sure he’s not a sociopath. But then again, he suspects most sociopaths think that.
A problem for another day.
“Recognized ’em, did you?”
“Guerrero’s guys. I’ve seen them on Con … Const … the old man’s security crew.”
Alonzo’s open eye is drooping. Andrew walks out and Dez hears the sound of tap water flowing into a glass.
Dez fakes a big grin. “Lucky you. I was looking forward to kicking your arse on the football pitch.”
“You … and what … army…” The painkillers do their job. Alonzo drifts to sleep.
Dez feels utterly calm. His breathing is even, his hands steady. He stands and reorients the chair to the desk, as he found it. He steps out of the bedroom, spots the kitchenette.
“You holding up, then?”
Andrew stares out the window over the sink, ignoring him, holding a water glass against his narrow chest. The kitchen is cluttered but clean. A tortoiseshell cat crouches in one corner, eyes on Dez. Dez crouches down and presents two fingers forward. The cat takes a tentative step, sniffs his fingers, settles back down. She allows herself to be scratched between the ears.
“Hey…” Andrew says, his eyes on the window, peering down three stories at the complex parking lot.
Dez catches the energy in the man’s voice and rises.
“I think those guys are back.”
CHAPTER 69
Dez glances out the kitchen window. Three stories below, two black sedans pull into the complex’s parking lot. They’re well washed and identical. They have tinted windows and stubby antennas on their boots for short-range radio communications. They park at forty-five degrees relative to the pavement stripes, noses canted out for a quick getaway. Pros, them. Dez says, “Andrew, was it?”
The blond kid nods.
“You a dancer, too, then?”
He blinks at Dez. “What?”
“Dancer. D’you dance?”
“Um. No.” Andrew watches as four men climb out of the two sedans. “I’m a writer. I want to be a writer.”
“Good on you. Writing’s murder for me. I get the sweats trying.”
Andrew is gripping the tumbler so tight his knuckles turn white. He points down to the parking lot. “The guy with the flattop? He’s the one who stomped Alonzo.”
Dez thinks, “Dance this off, faggot.” He nods. “Before this weekend, I gave Alonzo something.”
Andrew says. “A gun?”
“That’s it. Smith & Wesson .45. Yea big. Wrapped in a kerchief. Seen it?”
The four men below consult one another. One of them peers at a smartphone. They are fit, tall, young, dressed well with jackets and shiny shoes and Ray-Bans. The man with the regulation flattop haircut is a bit shorter than the others and looks well put together.
Andrew gulps. “I, um … I didn’t want it in the apartment. I made him keep it under the seat, in the Mini.”
The Mini Cooper. Which is parked two spots over from the sedans.
Dez keeps looking out the window as he nods. “Smart. Nasty things, guns. Wouldn’t have ’em in the house, either.”
Dez kneels and checks the cupboard under the sink. He moves a lined garbage bin, digs around it and finds a box of small garbage bags, for bathroom-sized bins. He takes one. He spots a bottle of lurid purple dish soap—For Greasy Messes!—and takes that, too.
He stands and walks around the partition into the adjoining living room. He pops open his folding knife with the flick of his thumbnail, kneels again, and unplugs a lamp next to the davenport. He slices through the lamp cord near the lamp base.
He stands. “Sorry about that.”
He lays the wire on the flecked Formica counter and deftly slices the lower six inches of it, peeling back the insulation, exposing wires. He’s done this a thousand times. Did it, recently, at a compound in Algeria, only that time using a car battery. He moves to the front door and ties the exposed wires to the doorknob. The cord dangles to the floor.
“Do us a favor?” he asks casually.
“Um … yeah?”
“When I leave—”
Andrew’s voice rises an octave. “You’re leaving?”
“When I step out, briefly like, plug the cord in, will ye?” Dez pulls out his wallet, digs around, finds a card. “This lady is a police officer, yeah?”
Andrew sneers. “The police can’t—”
“She can, and you’d be wise not to speak ill of her in my presence, mate. Beth Swanson. Call her an’ tell her what’s what. Then call … what is it, here? Nine one one?”
Andrew takes the cards. “O … Okay…”
“Ta. Then go sit with our lad, will ye? Wait for the sirens. There ye go. Cheers.”
“What are you going to do?”
Dez slaps him on the shoulder. “Converse.”
CHAPTER 70
Vincent Guerrero tasked four good men to track down Petra Alexandris’s ex-employee and to ask him the purpose of the hidden router and the eight dull seconds of soccer. These are good men: two ex-Navy, two ex-Army. They’ve been with Guerrero long enough to be fully trusted. They’ll get the job done.
The lead guy, by way of seniority with Triton Security, is Boland. He’s Navy. He leads the other three up the exterior stairs of building number 5 to the third floor. Boland is a no-nonsense sort. A lot like Major Guerrero himself. He approaches the door to apartment 535 and draws a thin packet of lockpicks out of his jacket, briefly exposing a Kydex holster and his SIG Sauer P365. He selects two picks. He reaches to jostle the doorknob, to make sure it’s really locked first. It happens. You try picking a lock that’s already unlocked and you only end up locking it, which is embarrassing and wastes time. Boland grips the knob.
He convulses. It’s alternating current, not direct current, so he releases his grip on the knob. His spine arches backward and his muscles shove him away from the door. His butt hits the banister that runs the length of the exterior walkway, around all four sides of the building. His momentum takes him over the edge.
He lands three stories below, his neck cracking like celery.
* * *
Alonzo lives in the middle of the north-facing walkway, between apartments 534 and 536. Dez has been hiding around the corner, on the east side with apartments 537 to 539. He hears his electricity trap spring and comes around the corner, arm cocked back.
He’s holding a tied-off garbage bag for a bathroom bin. It’s sloshing with about two cups of dishwashing liquid.
Two of the three surviving Triton Security guys lean over the railing, as if hoping somehow they could catch the leader, who already lies dead on the sidewalk below. The third guy spots Dez and reaches for his holster.
Dez lets fly with the small, round bag.
Two of the men raise their hands, palms out, the way you do when someone throws anything at you.
The soap bomb explodes, coating the guys and their hands with thick purple liquid.
It’s narrow up here. Two men could stand shoulder to shoulder if neither of them moves. The guy nearest Dez is shocked to suddenly find himself coated in lemon-scented liquid. He tries to draw his weapon but only succeeds in elbowing his mate. Dez draws close enough to throw the first punch.
The second guy reacts quicker and actually draws his SIG. But his hands are covered in soap and the gun skitters away, bouncing on Alonzo’s Garfield and Odie welcome mat.
Dez hits the nearest of the three in the nose, aiming the kinetic energy of his blow in such a way that this man will ricochet back into his pals, tying everyone up.
They stumble into one another.
Dez drives his fist into the cheek of the fella with the flattop. The one who broke Alonzo’s ankle. “Dance this off, faggot.” The guy bounces into the apartment wall, stunned.
That leaves one, well tangled up in his mates and trying to get soap off his gun hand. Dez hits him in the middle of the chest, a bit lower than heart level. His sternum cracks.
Dez swings his right arm as far to his left as he can, then sweeps his elbow forward, into the ear of the man with the broken nose. The guy’s eyes roll up into his skull as his legs give out.
Dez grabs the right shoulder and right wrist of the lad with the cracked sternum. He wonders if the doorknob to Alonzo’s flat is still electrified, so he uses the leverage he has on the man’s arm to drive the man’s cheek and nose into the knob.
Dez lets go before the man makes contact.
The man screams, his long muscles freezing.
Yup. Still electrified.
Dez hears sirens.
The flattop is still on his feet, but stunned. Dez grabs him by the soapy lapels of his jacket and waits until they make eye contact.
“Dance this off, love.”
He drives his knee into the man’s testicles. So hard, he lifts the man’s shiny dress shoes off the third-floor walkway.
He collapses in a pile of lemon-scented, unconscious bodies.
Dez uses the side of his boot to kick all three SIGs into a neat pile atop Alonzo’s welcome mat.
Two LAPD cars roll in to the parking lot. Dez leans his forearms on the banister, hands clasped and, more importantly, fully visible to the cops who’ll be storming up the stairs any second now.
His hands will be cuffed behind his back soon enough.
Not the first time this week. Not even the third.
CHAPTER 71
Dez doesn’t stay handcuffed long. Detective Beth Swanson arrives within ten minutes of the first patrol cars. Captain Naomi Cardona isn’t far behind.
Dez warns the first responders about the electrified doorknob. They get dispatch to call Andrew, who disarms the trap and lets everyone in.
The police make themselves at home in the flat. More units arrive to secure the corpse on the ground and the three badly wounded men on the third floor. More units block off the entryway to the parking lot, while others string warning tape up around the whole scene.
Captain Cardona and Detective Swanson ask Andrew to take them in to see Alonzo. The dancer wakes up long enough to slur his part of the story. As he drifts out again, he murmurs, “How come everything smells like lemon?”
When he’s out, Naomi Cardona nods toward his ankle. She turns to Andrew. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
“Okay.”
“The guy who did this, and who called him faggot. Was the guy about five-ten, flattop haircut?”
“That’s him.”
Cardona had talked to the med techs who’d arrived first. They’d told her about the various injuries. At first, the testicular damage done to flattop had seemed excessive, given what she knows of Dez.
Now it doesn’t.
* * *
In the living room, Beth Swanson and Naomi Cardona sit with Dez, a little away from the commotion around them.
“All hell has broken loose in Boca Serpiente County,” the captain says, hunched in, her voice low. “Military. State and county law enforcement. FBI and DEA. What the hell happened up there?”
Dez lays it out quick-like, with a minimum of unnecessary details. Is there time to explain about the would-be sovereign nation of Lexington? There is not.
“Told you about Petra Alexandris, yeah? She’s trying t’stop this thing. Being held against her will at her own house in Malibu. Massive security detail. The house is a fecking fortress. Sorry.”
Naomi nods. “I heard from my contact up in Boca Serpiente. He does not impress easily. He says you’re for real.”
The DEA agent not named Phil. “Says the same of you, guv’nor.”
Beth says, “What do you need from us?”
“When Petra was almost kidnapped and them three idiots was arrested, did you authorize the entire LAPD report to be sent to Vincent Guerrero, Triton Security?”
Naomi turned frosty. “No. As in: no goddamn way.”
“Yet it was. I hacked my lad Vincent and saw your entire police report. That’s how I knew the prisoners were being transferred, so I could warn Beth.”
Beth Swanson nods to her boss.
Dez turns serious. “Meaning no disrespect to present company, but Triton Security is inside the LAPD in a big way. If I were to ask for official help, I fear it’d get back to ’em.”
Naomi reluctantly nods.
“’Sides, for every military-trained guard at that house, the family can whip up a dozen lawyers. It’s Petra’s house but the title is in her father’s name, she told me. We can’t storm the place and we can’t lay siege and wait for the lawyers to chew us up.”
Naomi nods. “Which leaves…?”
“I have to get them to walk out.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“What I do.” Dez smiles. “Open some doors.”
CHAPTER 72
Dez takes a cell phone from one of the downed Triton Security guys. He retrieves the hacking/breach equipment lockbox from his truck, pries the back off the phone, and quickly bypasses the phone’s lockout.
With the permission of Naomi Cardona, he takes photos of the wounded men being carried onto ambulances. He gets an image of the man whose neck he snapped; in situ, on the pavement, eyes still open, skull no longer spherical, neck broken so badly it’s nearly severed.
He texts the photos to Vincent Guerrero.
He and the two cops stand near the two Triton sedans. “Stirring up the hornet’s nest?” Captain Cardona says. Skinny as a broom, six-two, she towers over him, peers down at him through her half-glasses.
As they wait for Russian Ambassador Dmytro Rudko and General William Tancredi to march up from the pier, Constantine lights up another Greek cigarette. He glances at the inert television monitor embedded in the wall. “If the cable is cut off, why am I getting that damned soccer game in the office?”
Petra maintains her passive face and thinks, Damn it.
She’d already figured out Alonzo’s chess move.
Brittany Kinney turns to the old man. “No TV signals are coming in. None.”
“Tell that to the idiots on my TV.”
Brittany heads back toward the office.
She returns in about ninety seconds carrying a cheap plastic router box.
“This was under the desk. We’ve got a leak. Vincent?”
Guerrero turns to her.
“I’m pretty sure I know who did this.…”
CHAPTER 68
Dez hits Los Angeles. He follows the map coordinates to the apartment complex. It’s the most generic of structures: five free-standing buildings, each three stories tall, a good twelve to fifteen apartment units in each. Exterior stairs and wraparound, exterior walkways on the second and third floors. Bland as tofu. This could be a subdivision in Boise or Butte or Birmingham.
He spots Alonzo’s lavender Mini Cooper, the one he’d borrowed the week prior. It’s in a parking space stenciled 535.
Dez finds the apartment building marked NO. 5 and jogs up to the third floor. He finds the door marked 535. He raps twice on the door with a knuckle the size of a bridge rivet.
A curtain twitches.
Dez waits.
The door opens and a stranger stands in the three-inch gap. It’s a man, midtwenties, with a mop of curly blond hair and blue eyes.
“I’m Dez.”
The man’s eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. He’s been crying. He pauses, steps back, undoes the chain, and opens the door fully. He wears a hoodie with the Green Lantern symbol and artfully ripped jeans and is barefoot. “He’s in there.” He head-juts toward a bedroom.
Dez finds Alonzo in bed. He’s on his back, his face blotchy and bruised, one eye swollen shut, with an inch-long, vertical split to his upper lip. Far worse, one leg is in a cast. They’re using an inverted Postal Service box made of pliant, white corrugated plastic for elevation.
“Jaysus.”
Alonzo offers a half smile, trying not to pull on the two stitches in his lip. “It doesn’t look worse than it is. It’s that bad. Please don’t ask about the other guy.”
Dez finds a chair at a desk piled with a laptop, reams of papers bundled with brass brads, and used books on screenwriting. He drags the chair over to the bed and sits. The blond man stands in the doorway, hands jammed in his trouser pockets, tears glittering.
“Desmond, Andrew. Andrew, Desmond.” Alonzo slurs his words and his one open eye is dilated. He’s on serious painkillers.
“Wotcher,” Dez whispers over his shoulder.
Andrew says, “Hi.”
“It’s not my deathbed, bitches. You don’t gotta whisper.”
Dez nods to the broken leg. “Guerrero’s lads?”
Alonzo nods. “I wouldn’t leave her there by herself. Petra.”
“You planted that looped email before all this, did ye?”
“The … oh, that.” Alonzo sounds loopy. “Madre. I wanted to get her away. I knew they could trace our phones. Wanted to leave you bread crumbs. Holy smokes, that worked?”
Dez rests a hand on his shoulder. “I’m here, aren’t I, ye dozy bastard. ’Course it worked.”
Andrew inhales sharply. “Such loyalty. For a rich bitch who needs a butler.” His voice cracks halfway through.
Alonzo smiles at him. “I should wash your mouth out with a cheap varietal sold in a box, sweetie.”
Andrew wipes tears from his cheeks.
Alonzo turns his one good eye to Dez. “They’re holding her at the house. I don’t have my access card, or my company phone. No way in.”
Dez, the gatekeeper, shrugs. “We’ll see. Your leg…?”
“Ankle,” Andrew interjects bitterly. “After they knocked him down, they stomped on his ankle. They said…”
He hiccups, covers his mouth with his palm. Alonzo croons. “Hey. Shhh. S’all right…”
“They said, ‘Dance this off, faggot.’”
Dez feels a lightness in his chest. A disassociated feeling of serenity. He’s felt it before, when facing an enemy it was his job to kill. Experienced killers do it without too much emotion. So, too, do sociopathic killers. Dez is pretty sure he’s not a sociopath. But then again, he suspects most sociopaths think that.
A problem for another day.
“Recognized ’em, did you?”
“Guerrero’s guys. I’ve seen them on Con … Const … the old man’s security crew.”
Alonzo’s open eye is drooping. Andrew walks out and Dez hears the sound of tap water flowing into a glass.
Dez fakes a big grin. “Lucky you. I was looking forward to kicking your arse on the football pitch.”
“You … and what … army…” The painkillers do their job. Alonzo drifts to sleep.
Dez feels utterly calm. His breathing is even, his hands steady. He stands and reorients the chair to the desk, as he found it. He steps out of the bedroom, spots the kitchenette.
“You holding up, then?”
Andrew stares out the window over the sink, ignoring him, holding a water glass against his narrow chest. The kitchen is cluttered but clean. A tortoiseshell cat crouches in one corner, eyes on Dez. Dez crouches down and presents two fingers forward. The cat takes a tentative step, sniffs his fingers, settles back down. She allows herself to be scratched between the ears.
“Hey…” Andrew says, his eyes on the window, peering down three stories at the complex parking lot.
Dez catches the energy in the man’s voice and rises.
“I think those guys are back.”
CHAPTER 69
Dez glances out the kitchen window. Three stories below, two black sedans pull into the complex’s parking lot. They’re well washed and identical. They have tinted windows and stubby antennas on their boots for short-range radio communications. They park at forty-five degrees relative to the pavement stripes, noses canted out for a quick getaway. Pros, them. Dez says, “Andrew, was it?”
The blond kid nods.
“You a dancer, too, then?”
He blinks at Dez. “What?”
“Dancer. D’you dance?”
“Um. No.” Andrew watches as four men climb out of the two sedans. “I’m a writer. I want to be a writer.”
“Good on you. Writing’s murder for me. I get the sweats trying.”
Andrew is gripping the tumbler so tight his knuckles turn white. He points down to the parking lot. “The guy with the flattop? He’s the one who stomped Alonzo.”
Dez thinks, “Dance this off, faggot.” He nods. “Before this weekend, I gave Alonzo something.”
Andrew says. “A gun?”
“That’s it. Smith & Wesson .45. Yea big. Wrapped in a kerchief. Seen it?”
The four men below consult one another. One of them peers at a smartphone. They are fit, tall, young, dressed well with jackets and shiny shoes and Ray-Bans. The man with the regulation flattop haircut is a bit shorter than the others and looks well put together.
Andrew gulps. “I, um … I didn’t want it in the apartment. I made him keep it under the seat, in the Mini.”
The Mini Cooper. Which is parked two spots over from the sedans.
Dez keeps looking out the window as he nods. “Smart. Nasty things, guns. Wouldn’t have ’em in the house, either.”
Dez kneels and checks the cupboard under the sink. He moves a lined garbage bin, digs around it and finds a box of small garbage bags, for bathroom-sized bins. He takes one. He spots a bottle of lurid purple dish soap—For Greasy Messes!—and takes that, too.
He stands and walks around the partition into the adjoining living room. He pops open his folding knife with the flick of his thumbnail, kneels again, and unplugs a lamp next to the davenport. He slices through the lamp cord near the lamp base.
He stands. “Sorry about that.”
He lays the wire on the flecked Formica counter and deftly slices the lower six inches of it, peeling back the insulation, exposing wires. He’s done this a thousand times. Did it, recently, at a compound in Algeria, only that time using a car battery. He moves to the front door and ties the exposed wires to the doorknob. The cord dangles to the floor.
“Do us a favor?” he asks casually.
“Um … yeah?”
“When I leave—”
Andrew’s voice rises an octave. “You’re leaving?”
“When I step out, briefly like, plug the cord in, will ye?” Dez pulls out his wallet, digs around, finds a card. “This lady is a police officer, yeah?”
Andrew sneers. “The police can’t—”
“She can, and you’d be wise not to speak ill of her in my presence, mate. Beth Swanson. Call her an’ tell her what’s what. Then call … what is it, here? Nine one one?”
Andrew takes the cards. “O … Okay…”
“Ta. Then go sit with our lad, will ye? Wait for the sirens. There ye go. Cheers.”
“What are you going to do?”
Dez slaps him on the shoulder. “Converse.”
CHAPTER 70
Vincent Guerrero tasked four good men to track down Petra Alexandris’s ex-employee and to ask him the purpose of the hidden router and the eight dull seconds of soccer. These are good men: two ex-Navy, two ex-Army. They’ve been with Guerrero long enough to be fully trusted. They’ll get the job done.
The lead guy, by way of seniority with Triton Security, is Boland. He’s Navy. He leads the other three up the exterior stairs of building number 5 to the third floor. Boland is a no-nonsense sort. A lot like Major Guerrero himself. He approaches the door to apartment 535 and draws a thin packet of lockpicks out of his jacket, briefly exposing a Kydex holster and his SIG Sauer P365. He selects two picks. He reaches to jostle the doorknob, to make sure it’s really locked first. It happens. You try picking a lock that’s already unlocked and you only end up locking it, which is embarrassing and wastes time. Boland grips the knob.
He convulses. It’s alternating current, not direct current, so he releases his grip on the knob. His spine arches backward and his muscles shove him away from the door. His butt hits the banister that runs the length of the exterior walkway, around all four sides of the building. His momentum takes him over the edge.
He lands three stories below, his neck cracking like celery.
* * *
Alonzo lives in the middle of the north-facing walkway, between apartments 534 and 536. Dez has been hiding around the corner, on the east side with apartments 537 to 539. He hears his electricity trap spring and comes around the corner, arm cocked back.
He’s holding a tied-off garbage bag for a bathroom bin. It’s sloshing with about two cups of dishwashing liquid.
Two of the three surviving Triton Security guys lean over the railing, as if hoping somehow they could catch the leader, who already lies dead on the sidewalk below. The third guy spots Dez and reaches for his holster.
Dez lets fly with the small, round bag.
Two of the men raise their hands, palms out, the way you do when someone throws anything at you.
The soap bomb explodes, coating the guys and their hands with thick purple liquid.
It’s narrow up here. Two men could stand shoulder to shoulder if neither of them moves. The guy nearest Dez is shocked to suddenly find himself coated in lemon-scented liquid. He tries to draw his weapon but only succeeds in elbowing his mate. Dez draws close enough to throw the first punch.
The second guy reacts quicker and actually draws his SIG. But his hands are covered in soap and the gun skitters away, bouncing on Alonzo’s Garfield and Odie welcome mat.
Dez hits the nearest of the three in the nose, aiming the kinetic energy of his blow in such a way that this man will ricochet back into his pals, tying everyone up.
They stumble into one another.
Dez drives his fist into the cheek of the fella with the flattop. The one who broke Alonzo’s ankle. “Dance this off, faggot.” The guy bounces into the apartment wall, stunned.
That leaves one, well tangled up in his mates and trying to get soap off his gun hand. Dez hits him in the middle of the chest, a bit lower than heart level. His sternum cracks.
Dez swings his right arm as far to his left as he can, then sweeps his elbow forward, into the ear of the man with the broken nose. The guy’s eyes roll up into his skull as his legs give out.
Dez grabs the right shoulder and right wrist of the lad with the cracked sternum. He wonders if the doorknob to Alonzo’s flat is still electrified, so he uses the leverage he has on the man’s arm to drive the man’s cheek and nose into the knob.
Dez lets go before the man makes contact.
The man screams, his long muscles freezing.
Yup. Still electrified.
Dez hears sirens.
The flattop is still on his feet, but stunned. Dez grabs him by the soapy lapels of his jacket and waits until they make eye contact.
“Dance this off, love.”
He drives his knee into the man’s testicles. So hard, he lifts the man’s shiny dress shoes off the third-floor walkway.
He collapses in a pile of lemon-scented, unconscious bodies.
Dez uses the side of his boot to kick all three SIGs into a neat pile atop Alonzo’s welcome mat.
Two LAPD cars roll in to the parking lot. Dez leans his forearms on the banister, hands clasped and, more importantly, fully visible to the cops who’ll be storming up the stairs any second now.
His hands will be cuffed behind his back soon enough.
Not the first time this week. Not even the third.
CHAPTER 71
Dez doesn’t stay handcuffed long. Detective Beth Swanson arrives within ten minutes of the first patrol cars. Captain Naomi Cardona isn’t far behind.
Dez warns the first responders about the electrified doorknob. They get dispatch to call Andrew, who disarms the trap and lets everyone in.
The police make themselves at home in the flat. More units arrive to secure the corpse on the ground and the three badly wounded men on the third floor. More units block off the entryway to the parking lot, while others string warning tape up around the whole scene.
Captain Cardona and Detective Swanson ask Andrew to take them in to see Alonzo. The dancer wakes up long enough to slur his part of the story. As he drifts out again, he murmurs, “How come everything smells like lemon?”
When he’s out, Naomi Cardona nods toward his ankle. She turns to Andrew. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
“Okay.”
“The guy who did this, and who called him faggot. Was the guy about five-ten, flattop haircut?”
“That’s him.”
Cardona had talked to the med techs who’d arrived first. They’d told her about the various injuries. At first, the testicular damage done to flattop had seemed excessive, given what she knows of Dez.
Now it doesn’t.
* * *
In the living room, Beth Swanson and Naomi Cardona sit with Dez, a little away from the commotion around them.
“All hell has broken loose in Boca Serpiente County,” the captain says, hunched in, her voice low. “Military. State and county law enforcement. FBI and DEA. What the hell happened up there?”
Dez lays it out quick-like, with a minimum of unnecessary details. Is there time to explain about the would-be sovereign nation of Lexington? There is not.
“Told you about Petra Alexandris, yeah? She’s trying t’stop this thing. Being held against her will at her own house in Malibu. Massive security detail. The house is a fecking fortress. Sorry.”
Naomi nods. “I heard from my contact up in Boca Serpiente. He does not impress easily. He says you’re for real.”
The DEA agent not named Phil. “Says the same of you, guv’nor.”
Beth says, “What do you need from us?”
“When Petra was almost kidnapped and them three idiots was arrested, did you authorize the entire LAPD report to be sent to Vincent Guerrero, Triton Security?”
Naomi turned frosty. “No. As in: no goddamn way.”
“Yet it was. I hacked my lad Vincent and saw your entire police report. That’s how I knew the prisoners were being transferred, so I could warn Beth.”
Beth Swanson nods to her boss.
Dez turns serious. “Meaning no disrespect to present company, but Triton Security is inside the LAPD in a big way. If I were to ask for official help, I fear it’d get back to ’em.”
Naomi reluctantly nods.
“’Sides, for every military-trained guard at that house, the family can whip up a dozen lawyers. It’s Petra’s house but the title is in her father’s name, she told me. We can’t storm the place and we can’t lay siege and wait for the lawyers to chew us up.”
Naomi nods. “Which leaves…?”
“I have to get them to walk out.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“What I do.” Dez smiles. “Open some doors.”
CHAPTER 72
Dez takes a cell phone from one of the downed Triton Security guys. He retrieves the hacking/breach equipment lockbox from his truck, pries the back off the phone, and quickly bypasses the phone’s lockout.
With the permission of Naomi Cardona, he takes photos of the wounded men being carried onto ambulances. He gets an image of the man whose neck he snapped; in situ, on the pavement, eyes still open, skull no longer spherical, neck broken so badly it’s nearly severed.
He texts the photos to Vincent Guerrero.
He and the two cops stand near the two Triton sedans. “Stirring up the hornet’s nest?” Captain Cardona says. Skinny as a broom, six-two, she towers over him, peers down at him through her half-glasses.
