The Replacements Read online

  Anger rose instantly. I stood and let the sheet fall. “Yeah, we discussed this, but I’m here to tell you, he wasn’t going to give the children up. I tried.”

  “Bruno, how could you have tried if your hands are clean?” asked Mack.

  “I used a gun.”

  “You shot him?” asked Barbara.

  I sat back down, ashamed of what I had done. “Yeah, I shot him.”

  I told them all that had happened from the beginning and finished with, “And then he had me drop him off at a place he said was prearranged with a doctor waiting, some sort of underground doctor, off the radar. You see, he wasn’t going to talk. He had drugged himself with some sort of analgesic, to help him knuckle through the pain. He knew exactly what he was doing.”

  By this time, Barbara had sat down on the bed next to me, Mack on the other side, like a couple of bookends, me in my BVDs.

  Silence ruled the moment. Barbara finally said, “It’s not about the money, not entirely.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “The FBI has your picture,” she said. “They got it from the parking lot videocam at the mall. They got you holding a gun on Mabry and forcing him into the trunk. They now think you’re the main player. That you, not Mabry, took the kids. And that Mabry is your shill to take the heat.”

  I stood and half-stumbled across to the bathroom, using the doorframe for support. I’d been set up—hard and deep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Jonas had organized and planned his crimes with me as the epicenter. He’d somehow stayed several steps ahead of us. No matter what we tried, he had been able to predict our every move. Jonas came out of the penal system as a graduate with honors. No one I had ever chased had this intricate form of advanced planning. Up in the mountains he kept using “we.” Someone else had to be helping him.

  Jonas had used my background against me. I was wanted for rescuing abused children from toxic homes and taking them to a safe haven down in Costa Rica. Now he’d made it appear as if I’d come back for more kids. He set the trap so the entire kidnap scenario fell back onto me. If successful, he could take the money, walk away, and leave me holding the bag of crimes against these children.

  I had to get the children away from him. The big question: If the option arose, if I could get the children back unharmed, would I, in exchange for their freedom, go to prison? A large hole opened in my gut, cold and empty. I thought I would go to prison if it came right down to that horrible choice.

  Barbara brought me out of my funk. “No way will they give him the money. If they can set up that scenario, the FBI might front a fake bag of money to take him down. But no way will they let a million walk. No way.”

  Of course she was right. At least two of the kids were foster children recently adopted to middle-class parents without the means to raise tens of thousands, let alone a million.

  “Jonas knows we can’t raise the money,” I said. “That’s why he said he wanted me to rob a bank. He’s either toying with me, or he wants to force me to commit felonies in the hopes I’ll get caught. But one thing is for sure, violent crimes are a component of his plan before he ends this.”

  “He wants you to fail so you’ll go to prison,” Mack said. “That’s what this game is all about. He wants you in the joint forever.”

  I nodded.

  The way Jonas had set up the kidnapping and exchange left only one option for me. I needed the money to show to him. Then I’d force him to show me the kids before I handed over the money.

  He wanted a million dollars in twenty-four hours. Where could I lay my hands on that kind of money in twenty-four hours? Money taken in a bank robbery averaged fifteen to twenty thousand from the tellers’ windows. Twenty thousand at a whack would take fifty banks. To get the big money all at once, you had to hit the vaults. To take down a vault, you needed a lot of advanced planning and a team. I had neither.

  “You’re not going to do anything stupid to get the money,” Mack said. “You’re not going to play his game. Hello?” Mack got up, walked over and snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Bruno, earth to Bruno, are you in there? We’ll give him a fake drop, a fake bag of money, and follow him. It’s the only choice we have.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I think John’s right,” said Barbara. “You’re going to have to stay put for now. You can’t risk getting picked up. When you talked to him, did you at least get the name of the third child?”

  “Eddie Crane. Jonas told me Eddie Crane, from Bell Gardens.”

  Barbara took out her cell, speed-dialed, and waited. She said, “This is Chief Wicks, let me talk to the ASAC.”

  We waited a few seconds, then she said into the phone, “Hi, Dan, the child’s name is Eddie Crane. Start off checking Bell Gardens. No, I can’t tell you where I got the information. I’m on my way to the ICC right now. Yes, all right. Thanks.”

  “What’s the plan?” asked Mack.

  Barbara looked at me. “How are you to contact Chicken Hawk when you have the money?” She’d taken to using the name designation assigned to Mabry by the FBI. I resisted the urge to look over at the drop phone Jonas handed me before we parted ways, the phone that now sat on the nightstand next to the one I’d purchased.

  I lied. “He told me a pay phone to stand next to, tomorrow night at nine.”

  “Are there still pay phones out there?” asked Mack.

  Barbara set up her cell to type in the information. “Okay, give me the location and number if you have it.”

  I recited the only pay phone number I could remember. “It’s on Atlantic Avenue in Compton.” I didn’t know if the phone was still there. A twinge of guilt rose up to ruin my day just that much more. I hated lying to friends. But I needed time to think, to make a plan. And to sleep. If I could only get a little sleep, I knew I could figure this thing out. Jonas had left little time to do either. I’m sure he’d factored my fatigue into this part of his plan.

  I flopped down on the bed and closed my eyes. The answer hovered overhead, just out of reach. I could feel it. Gauzy fatigue masked visibility and any attempt to clear the air.

  “Bruno, what’s the address where you dropped him?” asked Barbara. “I want you and Mack to go there and try to pick up his trail.”

  “First you want me to stay here out of sight, now you want me to go? It’s on Kadota, off Mission. On Kadota, five houses south of Mission, on the right. There’s a chain-link fence with an old Mercury Marquis sitting in the front yard. No numbers on the house. I’m staying here. I have to close my eyes for a few minutes or my mind’s going to melt down.”

  I looked at Barbara, her expression stunned, as I described the house.

  “That’s Montclair, that’s back in my city.”

  A new chief of police, and the kidnapping again pointed back to her jurisdiction. Not good.

  Mack grabbed my foot and shook. “Come on, old man, there’s plenty of time to rest when you’re dead.” Another maxim left over from Robby. Like a bad omen, Robby’s ghost tainted this entire caper.

  “Jonas is going to be long gone from the Kadota address, and he won’t have left the smallest crumb to follow,” I said. “Haven’t you two been listening? He’s planned this whole thing out to a gnat’s ass. He’s had two years to do it. Your time would be better served figuring out why the two years.”

  “All right, but I’m still going,” said Mack. “You get some sleep. I’ll be back.”

  I again closed my eyes and waved my hand in the air. Wet smacking filled the silence as Mack and Barbara kissed and whispered. Seconds later, the door opened and closed as they left.

  I rolled over and tried to sleep. No good.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Tara, the name for our house in Costa Rica. Dad had named our rental home Tara after the plantation in Gone with the Wind. He thought the house and grounds were huge, the largest he’d ever seen. Of course, not as large as a plantation, but a huge house on a landscaped acre
could fool an old man from South Central Los Angeles.

  The call to Costa Rica went through surprisingly easy. Technology. The phone on the other end rang.

  Someone picked up and said, “Hello?”

  “Dad, where’s Marie?” I checked my watch and computed the time difference. Marie should have been home for two hours.

  “You okay, son? Everything all right?”

  “Yeah, sure is. I won’t be much longer. I’ve got everything in hand here, don’t you worry about me. Where’s Marie?”

  “I don’t know what you’re up to, son, and I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t trust me to tell me about it.”

  “There just wasn’t a lot of time, Dad.”

  “And, you thought I’d try and talk you out of it.”

  “There is that.”

  “Damn right, ‘there is that.’ I taught you better, son.”

  “I said I was sorry.” I wanted to tell him that he had not told me about his illness, but that wouldn’t have been fair, not with what he now faced. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine. Some crazy old white man came by here today looking for you.”

  Jake Donaldson. I tried to restrain my anxiety. “What did he say? What did he want?”

  “Said he was comin’ back tonight and you had better be home or, and I quote, ‘there’ll be hell to pay.’”

  “When? What time did he say he was coming back?”

  “Long about now, I suspect. Yep, right about now.” Dad must have checked his watch.

  I tried to think. What could I do? I couldn’t do anything from where I stood. I wanted to scream. “Listen, Dad, have you seen any men, any other men hanging around out front?”

  “No, can’t say that I have.” His tone changed to firm, aggressive. “Why? What’s going on? Does this have to do with you going back?”

  “Dad, that man that came over today, he’s a little off the deep end, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, of course I do. I saw that in him. I worked as a mail carrier for forty years, don’t forget, and I learned a thing or two about people. Where do you think ‘going postal’ came from? Huh?”

  “This guy’s dangerous. He has priors for violence. Where’s Marie? Is Marie okay?”

  “I’ll show that rude son of a buck violence if that’s what he wants to bring. I have the kids’ ball bat right here.”

  The door chime rang in the background. “Bet that’s the son of a buck now.”

  “Dad?”

  “Don’t you worry, son. I’ll be nice right up until the moment when he decides he wants to hurt my kids, then, God help him.”

  “Dad, don’t you open that door.” In the background, the sound indicated he was moving, walking across the tile pavers toward the door.

  “Don’t be silly. We lived in one of the worst parts of LA for years. This isn’t a big deal, son, least not one I can’t handle.”

  “Dad, he’s killed two people already!” The noise of him moving stopped.

  “What in the hell’s he coming here for?”

  Now I’d gone and done it. When Dad got mad he didn’t always think logically. “Dad, wait, don’t open the door, please.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The door creaked open. Dad said, “Get off my property you son of a—”

  Boom. Boom.

  Gunshots.

  “Dad?”

  “DAD?”

  Yelling in the background. More guns went off, this time more distant.

  Scuffling.

  Moaning.

  “Dad? Talk to me. Dad?”

  Someone else picked up the phone. “Hello? Who is this?”

  “Is my father okay?”

  “Hold on.” The man spoke with a slight Spanish accent, Costa Rican. In the background, the man’s voice more distant. “Sir, are you shot? Have you been shot?”

  I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to run, to do something, but stood there helpless.

  The man came back on the phone, “Yes, he appears to be fine. We will have him checked out with the medics. To whom am I speaking?”

  “Oh, thank God. I am the man’s son. Are you the men working for Ansel Tomkins?”

  “That is correct, sir.”

  “What just happened there?”

  “I must apologize for our slow response. We had no reason to believe the man who came to visit would pull a gun. But he did, he pulled a large pistol. My partner, José Rivera, shot him from across the street. This wounded man ran through the house, out the back and over the fence. I don’t know how he accomplished this feat, as he appeared to be elderly, and then you add the gunshot wound. This was quite remarkable. He left a blood trail.”

  This man, cool and calm, handled himself and spoke like no professional I had ever worked with, not one who had just been in a shooting. The money I gave Ansel bought the best. I shouldn’t have ever questioned Ansel’s integrity.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much. Are you sure my father is okay? Can you put him on?”

  “Yes, one moment, please.”

  “Hello?”

  “Dad, are you okay?”

  “Yes, of course, what a silly question. That son of a buck pulled a gun. Didn’t say a word, just pulled it out. He was gonna shoot me in the face. I saw it in his eyes. I never met the man before today, and he was just going to shoot me for answering my own damn door.”

  Anger rose in Dad’s tone as he regained his composure.

  “I clubbed him over the head with the ball bat, but he fell forward into me. He should have fallen away from me. I think someone from the street shot him in the back.” Dad’s voice grew distant as he asked the man standing by him, protecting him, protecting the children. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “Dad, where’s Marie. Is Marie okay?”

  Back into the phone, he said, “How should I know? She’s on her way to see you. To help you. I don’t feel so well.” He let out a groan. In all the time I had lived with him, he’d never showed pain or discomfort. He always hid his ailing, looked at it as a personal trial. This was bad.

  “What? Wait, are you sure about Marie?” Sirens came over the phone and made hearing difficult.

  “I have to go, son, it’s getting busy here. Call me back later.”

  “Where did Marie say she was going to meet me?”

  Dad clicked off. I whispered to no one, “Take care of yourself, Dad.”

  Why had Marie felt a need to come help? How did she think she’d help out? And the bigger question, how did she think she would contact me? I tried to control my breathing and laid down. The sudden adrenaline overload made my body quake.

  I closed my eyes. Marie wasn’t a fugitive. I didn’t think she was, anyway. She was wanted for questioning, but, as far as I knew, there wasn’t a warrant for her. She could get on any regular airliner and enter the US with her passport. She would be okay. Sure, she would. But how would she find me? I hadn’t told her where I was staying.

  Mack. She’d call Mack. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, grabbed the phone, and dialed.

  Mack picked up right away. “Thought you’d be asleep.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Why?”

  “Did Marie call you?”

  Silence.

  “You’re picking her up at the airport, aren’t you?”

  “Now, Bruno, you know Marie better than I do. I didn’t want to be on her bad side. She told me not to tell you. She wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “What kind of an idiot are you? Can’t you see how this complicates matters?”

  “Don’t call me an idiot. And of course I do. She didn’t ask me, she told me she was coming. She told me. What was I going to do, huh?”

  “All right, all right, put her up in a nice hotel. I’ll deal with her when I have time.”

  “When you have time? All you’re doing now, good buddy, is catching some Zs, and waiting for tomorrow night. Right, Bruno? That’s right, isn’t it, Bruno? You’re not going out in pub
lic, that’s crazy. You need to stay put.”

  “Yeah, well, that sleeping thing just changed. I need to get this caper done and over so we can get home. Dad’s alone with the kids and shit’s happening down there.”

  “What moves do you have to make? There aren’t any. We have to wait for that phone call tomorrow night to set up a meet with this asshole. Bruno, whatta you got going? You’re not going to do something crazy, like rob a bank? Bruno?”

  “Just do me a favor. Get Marie to a nice hotel, okay?”

  “Can’t do it, old buddy. Tell me what you’re going to do.”

  I clicked off.

  The answer I’d been mulling over, how to come up with the money, chose that moment to flutter down out of the gauzy fatigue.

  Of course, how simple.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I shimmied into my pants, put on shoes, grabbed my shirt, and headed for the door. I went back for the two cell phones and the Glock under the pillow. I needed the gun. What I needed more was to slow down and think. When fatigued, I made too many mistakes. I stuck the dirk in my sock and the derringer in my back pocket.

  My mind automatically shifted to the problem at hand. If Mack drove to LAX to pick up Marie, the fifty-minute drive there added to the fifty-minute drive back—that’s if she waited at the curb when he got there—gave me an hour and forty minutes. Plenty of time to do what needed to be done and get away. I stopped at the door. But if Marie flew into Ontario, that was fifteen minutes there and fifteen back.

  I opened the door to darkness. Where had the time gone? When you wanted time to slowly ooze through your fingers it never obliged, and when you wanted time to hurry on past it—

  Out in the parking lot, a Yellow Cab pulled up and stopped. Marie stepped out. She saw me. Her face broke into a huge smile.

  I’d been cut short on my plan. At the moment, I didn’t care one whit. I caught her contagious smile and smiled back. Hers glowed warm with affection. We had not been apart one day in the last nine months. I had missed her terribly, and didn’t realize how much until I saw that smile. I met her halfway, picked her up, and twirled her around. I kissed her long and deep.