The wake-up Read online

  "You don't want to get his hopes up, Padre."

  Father Esteban held on to him as Thorpe started to leave. "A very wise priest brought me into the light about ten years ago. This priest, may God bless him, once told me, 'Esteban, never underestimate the positive power of guilt.' " He winked at Thorpe. "So… what in heaven's name did you do, Frank?"

  13

  Dale Bingham crashed into the right wall of the squash court, managed to dink the small black ball against the left corner. It was a kill shot, but the club pro was nimble and incredibly quick, a nationally ranked Pakistani, who tapped it up and over Bingham's head and scored. Bingham drove down his racket in frustration, stopped it an inch from the hardwood floor. He glowered at the pro, sweat dripping down his face. "Nice shot, Hassan."

  "That's game, set, match, Mr. Bingham," said Hassan, not even breathing hard. He gave a curt nod, walked off the enclosed court, and closed the clear plastic door behind him.

  Bingham toweled off, his movements abrupt, still talking to himself. Hassan was clearly the superior player, but Bingham hadn't given up a point without making the maximum effort, diving the boards and smashing into walls without thought of the consequences. He was thirty-two years old, tall and muscular, one of those upright Dudley Do-Rights that the FBI or Secret Service scooped up right out of Dart-mouth or Yale. Bingham had been a poor fit for an off-the-books outfit like the Engineer's old shop. His current job with the state organized crime task force suited him better, requiring fewer moral and legal compromises.

  "Good game," said Thorpe as Bingham stepped out of the court.

  "Not good enough." Bingham wore a soaked polo shirt, terry wrist-bands, and baggy shorts, his calves meaty and rounded-he reminded Thorpe of a draft horse, plenty of power and determination, but no speed. He was playing the wrong game, dooming himself to endless frustration. Thorpe wondered how many rackets he had broken.

  "Mr. Bingham, we haven't met. My name is-"

  "I know who you are." Bingham blotted his forehead with the towel, his face flushed. "Surprised? I know all about you, Frank."

  Thorpe was more than surprised. He glanced around, saw only a few other jocks relaxing after their games, watching CNN from benches and chairs. "You've got the better of me here."

  "That would be a first, wouldn't it?"

  Thorpe had no idea where Bingham's anger came from. "Why don't we go somewhere and talk?"

  "Aren't you the calm one?" Bingham laughed. "That must have taken some work… a man like you, with your inclinations." He tapped Thorpe lightly on the chest with the squash racket, like an Iroquois counting coup. "I bet you practiced not raising your pulse rate with biofeedback. Or was it meditation?"

  "I just think happy thoughts."

  Bingham tapped him again with the racket, his eyes like slate. "What are you thinking of now, Frank?"

  Thorpe smiled. "I'm thinking you shouldn't do that again, Dale."

  Bingham considered it. "How did you find me?"

  "That's not important."

  "To you, maybe." Bingham blotted his face again, tossed the towel aside. "You want to talk? Step into the court. I've got it reserved for another twenty minutes." He opened the door. "Come on, Frank, it's private in here. We can say anything we want."

  Thorpe stepped inside and closed the door behind him. "I'm looking for the Engineer. You're the only one in the outfit who spent any time with him before he linked up with Lazurus."

  Bingham kneaded the squash ball. "I don't like thinking about the Engineer."

  "I think about him all the time."

  Bingham glared at him. "I imagine you do."

  "Did… did you know Kimberly? Is that what this is about?"

  Bingham slammed the ball, sent it rocketing off the front wall. Thorpe jerked his head, the ball grazing his cheek. "One to nothing," said Bingham, picking up the ball as it dribbled toward him.

  Thorpe's cheek burned. "Do I get a racket?"

  Bingham hit the ball again, even harder this time. Thorpe caught it as it flew by. "Two to nothing." Bingham held his hand out. "Still my serve."

  "You blame me for Kimberly's death." Thorpe held on to the ball. "See, we have something in common."

  Bingham wiggled his fingers, impatient. "My serve."

  Thorpe tossed him the ball.

  Bingham bent forward at the service line, not looking at Thorpe. "I only spent a couple of days with the Engineer. That was ample."

  "You and he were doing surveillance on Lazurus." Thorpe darted to the side as Bingham served, then scampered forward, the serve a cream puff that hit just above the line. He managed to get it, made the return with the palm of his hand.

  Bingham stepped into the return, slammed the ball off the side wall, hitting Thorpe's forehead on the bounce. "Three to zero." He stepped back to the service line. "The Engineer was doing surveillance, I was monitoring the conversation between Lazurus and his crew with a laser microphone." He hammered another serve past Thorpe's head, then went and picked up the ball. "Four to zero." He got back into position. "I was the outfit's bug man. Not quite the glamour of your work, but necessary."

  "You spent a couple days sitting in a van with the Engineer."

  Bingham rocked forward and back. "You want to know what we talked about? If we exchanged addresses, pet peeves?" He worked the ball over between his fingers, warming it up. "Sorry, Frank. Mostly, we just sat and-" He slam-served.

  Thorpe was ready: He turned and smacked the ball as it bounced off the back wall, made a perfect cross-court shot, which was unreturnable. "My serve." He walked to the service line. "The Engineer's a talker. I know that much."

  "Yes, but I'm not." Bingham adjusted the grip on his racket. "Aren't you going to ask me how I knew Kimberly?"

  "We'll get to that. First, I want-"

  "Does it always have to be what you want, Frank?"

  "It is my serve." Thorpe bounced the ball. "What kind of food did he like? Did he ever mention a restaurant, someplace special?"

  Bingham shook his head. "Just serve."

  Thorpe served, put some side spin on it, so that the ball barely hit the line, and Bingham hit the floor trying to reach it, his racket outstretched. He made it, too, but Thorpe returned the shot before he could get up. "Four to one."

  Bingham slowly got back into position, wincing with every step.

  "Did the Engineer have any health problems? Did you ever see him use an asthma inhaler or take any prescription medication?"

  "I was with her before you were." Bingham was rocking again, eager to get another whack at him. "Then Billy recruited her and things changed. Not at first, but later. There wasn't anything I could do about it, either."

  Thorpe's head still throbbed from where the ball had hit him before. "Did the Engineer collect anything? Stamps? Coins? Comic books? Baseball cards? He must have said something-"

  "You didn't replace me, Frank." Bingham swished his racket through the air, and Thorpe felt the breeze. "We shared her attentions. Your share was just bigger than mine." The racket flailed the air again, closer this time. "Not much fun finding out you're not special."

  Thorpe punched him, knocked him down, the racket flying across the court. When Bingham got up, he knocked him down again.

  "You don't play fair," gasped Bingham, wiping his lip with the tail of his shirt.

  "I just want to know about the Engineer."

  "The first time I met Kimberly, she wanted somebody to sweep her new apartment for devices," said Bingham. "She was always a careful girl, well organized, a very… compartmentalized mind. That's important in your line of work, isn't it? That's how you people do the things you do." He glared at Thorpe. "Me, I'm just a glorified technician. No real creativity. Not like Kimberly. Not like you."

  Thorpe bent down beside him but kept his guard up. "I'm not your enemy."

  "I came back a month later to do another sweep, and her apartment was clean, just like before, and she asked me to stick around. The next time, I showed up with a bottle of w
ine that cost me a week's salary, and she didn't even open it. She was honest-you have to give her that. I would have come by every night, but she had a schedule, and after she joined Billy's shop, her schedule seemed to get busier all the time." Bingham dabbed at his lip again. "I asked her if she was seeing someone else. 'Of course,' she said, with that little laugh of hers. Take it or leave it, right, Frank?"

  "That's right."

  Bingham stared at Thorpe now. "You knew about me?"

  Thorpe nodded.

  Bingham stepped closer. "You took it, too, didn't you?"

  "I told you I wasn't your enemy."

  Bingham sat with his back against the wall. "You knew."

  Thorpe sat beside him. He ran a hand across the smooth floorboards, thinking of Kimberly's face by moonlight, how she raised herself up on one elbow in bed, deciding whether they had time for another round. Deciding whether he should go home.

  "I didn't give her any ultimatums, never told her to make a choice," said Bingham, looking straight ahead. "It wouldn't have made any difference. She would have laughed."

  "I remember the first time I saw her," Thorpe said softly. "Billy introduced us, said she was incredibly bright, not a classic beauty, but had 'a real way with the male of the species'-those were his exact words-and I could hear him, but it was like he was a million miles away, because my attention was so focused on her. She just looked back at me, amused, knowing what I was going through, and I played along, pretended I was the smitten suitor while Billy droned on about me, and it was like she and I were in on some private joke. We didn't say a word, but by the time Billy was done with the introductions, I was in love." His voice was even softer now. "I thought she was, too."

  "Maybe you were right," said Bingham. "She certainly didn't love me. I didn't care."

  "Love wasn't something she was interested in. It would have made her too vulnerable. I probably would have felt the same way if I'd had a choice… but I didn't."

  "Did you ever wonder about me?" said Bingham.

  "Sometimes."

  "You never did anything about it, though, did you? You never tried to find out who she was seeing. It wouldn't have taken much effort on your part, but I guess I didn't count. You knew I was no threat to-"

  "When I was with Kimberly, it was just the two of us. That was as much as I could expect. It was enough. I told myself it was enough, anyway."

  "It wasn't just the two of you." Bingham jabbed a finger at him. "You see, I did something, Frank. Like they say, when you're number two, you try harder." He tried to laugh. "I bugged her bedroom. That's how I found out who you were. So you were never alone. I was there, too."

  "You might have had your ear pressed up against the wall, but there was just Kimberly and me in the room." Thorpe had never talked about his feelings for Kimberly with anyone. "That's why I can't let go. I was used to being alone, happy with it, and then I met her, and everything changed. Everything. Now she's gone, and I can't stand being by myself, because now I know what I'm missing."

  Bingham looked over at him. "I thought about going after the Engineer myself. I know you don't believe me, but I did."

  "I believe you."

  "Go ahead, Frank, humor me. I might still be able to help you, right?"

  "That's right."

  Bingham laughed, tears running down his cheeks. "You don't miss a trick. Well, I'm not like you. I wouldn't know what to do with the Engineer if I found him. I wouldn't last five minutes, but you, you're just the man for the job." He cleared his throat. "That's not a compliment, by the way."

  "The Engineer was a contract employee," Thorpe said gently. "Did he ever talk about what he was going to do with the money if the operation was successful? Things he wanted to buy, things he wanted to do?"

  Bingham rested his head against the wall, exhausted from the burden of his secrets. It was what Thorpe had been waiting for. "Most of the time, I sat in the van, monitoring the recorder while the Engineer listened to Lazurus and his crew. The Engineer could hear that they were crude, so he decided to play the effete Eurotrash intellectual. He had a closet full of personalities to choose from. You should have seen him working out the accent, the mannerisms. He made me laugh." His head seemed too heavy to hold up. "The Engineer was really talented… but then, you know that."

  "Try to remember what he talked about. Anything."

  "Do you really think you're going to find him?"

  "One way or another."

  "My outfit won't give you any help. You bring him in and they'll deny everything. So will yours. They're all afraid of him. The Engineer knows too many secrets for them to prosecute him."

  "That's okay-I don't intend to arrest him."

  "Nice not to have to worry about the niceties of the law, to make it up as you go along. Kimberly must have liked that. Well, I'm not built that way. I'm a better man than you, Frank. I'm the better man, but it didn't do me any good."

  Thorpe didn't respond, waiting.

  Bingham turned away from him, expressionless now. "He liked movies."

  "What kind of movies?"

  "Weird stuff. Horror, science fiction… half of the movies he talked about, I never even heard of."

  "Did he catch them on video or at a movie theater? Maybe some midnight art house like the Strand or the Varsity or the Palomino?"

  Bingham shrugged. "I don't even remember the titles."

  "You remember his voice, though. That's your specialty, right, the barely audible inflections, the intensity. You know, Dale; you just have to remember. Replay the scene in the van, replay the sound of his voice. What was the movie that he sounded most excited about? Film buffs love to go on about their discoveries-they can't help themselves. If you don't remember the title, tell me what it was about."

  Bingham nodded. "You should have heard him. There was this one he really liked… I don't remember the title, but he said it was a Nazi/zombie classic. He was serious, too." He shook his head. "All I know was it was set on some deserted island and there was a blonde-"

  "Shock Waves," said Thorpe.

  Bingham stared at him.

  "It is a classic. These Nazi zombies have been resting on the bottom of a tropical lagoon in the South Pacific for fifty years when shipwrecked tourists accidentally wake them up. The blonde is Brooke Adams."

  "You're as bad as the Engineer. He kept going on about the opening scene, where the Nazi zombies are goose-stepping underwater as the lifeboat drifts overhead."

  "Thank you."

  "This actually helps?"

  "It might."

  "You want to tell me how?"

  Thorpe stood up.

  "I see. You're done with me now. Fine. Well, fuck you, too, Frank." Bingham stayed sitting, back against the wall, his voice flatlined now. "She picked you. I wasn't interesting enough, so she picked you… and you let her get butchered."

  "If it makes you feel better, maybe when I find the Engineer, he'll kill me first."

  "Promise?"

  "You know, Dale, some people tell you to let things go, to forgive and forget, but that's all bullshit. You're a poor loser, and so am I." Thorpe looked down at him. "Don't let it bother you. There are lots worse things to be."

  14

  Quentin wrapped his arms around himself as the jitters hit, holding on while his teeth chattered, jerking like one of those Dodger bobble-heads every Mexican in L.A. had on the dashboard of his Camaro. He sagged when it was over, his mouth sour. He looked over at Ellis, who was hitting on a pint of Southern Comfort while his knees bounced, racked with the jitters, too. "Told you the batteries were a bad idea."

  "Recipe called for batteries," Ellis said, watching the Westminster dog show on the big screen with the sound off. He sat in the living room of the double-wide trailer, a pasty scarecrow in threadbare cutoffs, scabs crusted across his arms, hair hanging down to the middle of his back. The air conditioner rattled in the side window. It was ninety-eight degrees outside, but the heavy-duty conditioner kept things at a frosty sixty-five de
grees inside. He was sweating anyway. Ellis was always hot. So was Quentin. Their nerve endings were too close to the surface-that's what Quentin said. Ellis shifted on the recliner, eyes on the dog show. "Recipe calls for batteries, I add batteries."

  "Recipe calls for lithium batteries, not rechargeables," said Quentin. "You ruined the batch, admit it. You're the one got to explain it to Vlad and Arturo."

  Ellis scratched the scabs on his arms. "Batteries is batteries."

  "Rechargeables don't have no lithium in them," sputtered Quentin, his guts cramping up again. He groaned, a bony motorhead in a Green-peace T-shirt and greasy jeans, his dirty bare feet curled up under him on the flower-print sofa. "It's the lithium the recipe calls for."

  "You… you got to admit…" Ellis took another drink, trying to hold his hand steady, the neck of the Southern Comfort bottle clicking against his front teeth. "You got to admit, Quentin, it's a fine buzz."

  By way of response, Quentin bent over the coffee table, hooked a half gram of crank with the long nail of his pinkie, and snorted. It burned like drain cleaner. Damn Ellis had run out of coffee filters and used paper towels to filter the ephedrine brew, left in all kinds of impurities. He shook his head, hit the other nostril, jerked with the brain freeze. He smiled at his reflection in the glass tabletop, his brown hair spiked out. He would have liked to grow his hair long like Ellis, but it kept breaking off. Skin hung loosely from his arms and waist, sagged over his belt, dripped from his jawbone. He looked like he was a melting wax candle. A former all-state tackle at Huntington Beach High, Quentin had lost over one hundred pounds since he discovered the wonders of bathtub speed. He had never felt better in his life, really, but he no longer watched football on TV. He watched everything from Jap cooking contests to soap operas, but never football. Not even the Super Bowl.

  Through the back window of the double-wide, Quentin could see the carcasses of half a dozen stripped cars rusting in the desert heat, hoods gaping, engines and tires missing. Ellis collected cars. Said it was the sport of kings. Most of them had bullet holes through the windshields from when they got bored. Plenty to be bored about, too, living out beyond the outskirts of Riverside, eighty miles from H.B. It might as well be 80 million. Fuck it. Riverside was Crank Central. He flicked his lighter, held it overhead, honoring his new alma mater. He looked over at Ellis, thinking he might get a laugh, but that crater-head was glued to the big screen.