Run the Risk (20 page)

I glanced at Foley. “Get him up.”

Foley grabbed him by an arm and lifted him onto the bed. Sweeny's eyes quickly took in the room with the rehearsed skill of a con man looking for a way out of a room in case the grift went south on him.

“I don't know nothing.”

“Stop,” I whispered. It had the effect of a shout.

“I need to know everything you know and everything you think you know. If you lie to me or play games, I will lock you away forever. You assaulted a cop, you're a loser, and I have no time to waste. You help me, I'll forget about the door you hit me with in your employer's house.”

“My what?”

“Your boss, Finley. You worked for him at the flower shop.”

The air slipped out of him like a dying balloon, and he looked up at the ceiling and nodded. I glanced at Harrison.

“Get the file from the car.”

He nodded and walked out.

“Why were you in Finley's house? What were you looking for?”

“Money. What else would I be looking for? My boss got killed and my house blew up. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

“You could get a job, asshole,” Foley said.

Sweeny glanced into my eyes, then looked away as if
somewhere inside he harbored a long-simmering shame about his life or the fear that Mom was looking over his shoulder shaking her head in disappointment.

“I needed the money, okay? I didn't know you were a cop when I hit you with the door.”

That was his first lie, and I felt the blood rise inside me.

“I told you not to lie. You're going to jail.”

“Okay, okay . . . hold on. I knew you were a cop. I panicked. I'm sorry.”

“Tell me everything you know about Finley.”

“What would I know?”

“Answer the question!” Foley said, bending over and getting in his face.

Sweeny knew the routine. He sighed and shook his head.

“Not much. I just loaded the truck. The other guy hired me.”

“Breem?”

“Yeah.”

“He's dead,” I said matter-of-factly.

Surprise registered clearly on Sweeny's face, then just as quickly turned defensive.

“I didn't do it.”

“Shut up, asshole,” Foley said.

The door opened. Harrison walked in and handed me the file. I opened it and found myself looking at a picture of Lacy. It was a class photograph from school that she hated. She thought it made her look fat. I thought it made her look perfect. It had been taken pre-piercing. As I picked it up, my fingers trembled ever so slightly. I think Harrison noticed it because he looked away until my hand steadied.

“Have you ever seen this girl?”

I held it out for him to look at. His eyes passed over it, seeming to barely take notice.

“No—”

“Look at it!” I yelled.

Sweeny snapped to attention as if stung by a jolt of electricity. He nodded and his eyes fell on the picture of
my daughter and began to study it. Having a con's eyes, even those as pitiful as Sweeny's, going over a photograph of Lacy felt strangely like violation.

“Is she that girl in the pageant thing? Yeah, I saw her on the news . . . right?”

He looked at me as if for confirmation.

“You never saw her except on television?”

“No, never. What the hell is going on?”

I slipped the picture carefully back in the file and took out a Polaroid of the kid murdered in the house on Monte. It was a shot of his face. His lifeless eyes were half-open, his face slightly distorted from the blood settling as he lay facedown.

“Have you ever seen him?” I said, holding it up.

Sweeny looked at it with a puzzled expression. “What's wrong with him?”

“He has a bullet in his head.”

“Jesus Christ, what the hell is going on?”

“He was killed by the man who put a bomb in your house.”

“That was a bomb?”

“Don't be stupid,” Foley said. “You think it blew up all by itself?”

“It happens.”

“And dogs have wings.”

“Have you ever seen him?” I repeated.

“No, never.”

His voice cracked with fear for the first time. I showed him a Polaroid of the kid we arrested in Azusa and one of the dead Mexican soldier.

“I've never seen them either. You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”

I took out the sketch of Gabriel and held it up.

“Tell me about him.”

Nothing passed in Sweeny's eyes. No recognition, no attempt to conceal. No fear. There was nothing there. I glanced at Harrison. He had seen the same thing and was just as puzzled as I was.

“Never seen him,” Sweeny said.

“Look at it.”

He took a breath and looked at it for another moment.

“No, I've never seen him.”

“Don't lie to us!” Foley demanded.

Sweeny looked at the drawing again. “I've never seen him. I've never seen any of 'em. I swear it. I'm a nobody, I mean nothing to no one.”

It was as honest and as sad a self-assessment as I had ever heard. I would have pitied him if I had had any spare room in my heart to share with another person. I stuck the drawing back in the file. It felt like I was closing the door on the only hope left to me.

“Why were you hiding then?” Foley said.

“ 'Cause my boss got shot, I hit a cop, and I'm a con. Jesus, what did you think? I'm scared of guns.”

“If you're lying . . .”

“He's not lying,” I said.

Foley looked at me, disappointed. We were wasting our time and he knew it just as well as Harrison and I did.

“Is that the guy who blew up my apartment?”

I looked at Foley and motioned toward the door. “Put him in my car.”

Foley grabbed him by the arm and pulled him off the bed.

“I want to know, is that the guy? 'Cause I got a problem with him.”

“Shut up,” Foley said.

“I got a right to know—”

Foley lifted Sweeny's cuffed arms just enough to send a twinge of pain through him and shut him up. As they reached the door, I thought of one last question.

“Did you ever meet Mrs. Finley?”

There was nothing behind the question except instinct, which was possibly just another way of describing desperation. Foley spun Sweeny around with a yank so that he was facing me. It occurred to me while looking at him how pathetic it was that I was hanging even a thread of hope for my daughter's survival on a twenty-nine-year-old two-time
loser wearing unbuttoned jeans, a Jim Beam T-shirt, and black socks with more holes than fabric.

“I saw her around . . . yeah.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“I guess.”

“Yes or no?”

He shrugged, his head moving side to side like a bobble-head doll. I imagined direct answers were something he had spent most of his life avoiding.

“Yeah.”

Foley gave the cuffs another tug.

“Yes,” Sweeny blurted in a high-pitched squeal.

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing. She said hi, I said hi. Shit like that.”

I motioned to Foley and he took him out the door, leaving Harrison and me alone in the room.

“Why would Gabriel have tried to kill Sweeny if he never saw him?” Harrison said.

I shook my head and glanced at the print of the Taj Mahal above the bed. I hadn't noticed before, but there was no glass on it, and a former guest of the room had drawn McDonald's golden arches over the top of it, which the owner had apparently tried to erase. I turned and looked out the open door into the rain. There is nothing pretty or restful about rain in Southern California the way there is in New England or the Midwest. Something to do with all that pavement that just makes it cold and harsh and full of violence. I always thought that if Thoreau had been a resident of Los Angeles, Walden would have been about mud slides and flash floods.

“Clueless,” slipped out of my mouth.

“There's got to be some sense to it,” Harrison said.

I tried to put some order to it, but it eluded me.

“Is Sweeny lying?”

I shook my head. “Didn't look like it.”

“Could we be wrong about the explosion at the bungalow?”

Could we be wrong? I tried to think about what we had been right about but came up empty-handed.

“Next question,” I said sarcastically.

“Maybe Sweeny just didn't remember meeting him?”

I thought about the drawing of Gabriel's face, the distinctive scar, the intense light eyes.

“Would you forget that face?”

“Unlikely.”

“Could Gabriel have made a mistake?”

“That would be a first.”

“What other possibility is there?”

“He was trying to kill someone else,” Harrison said.

“Such as . . .”

“You.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. “I don't think so.”

“Why not?”

I stepped up to the door and watched the rain fall heavily on the street below. The water was beginning to pool on the road and passing cars were sending spray six feet into the air.

“Because he's trying to use me.”

Harrison stepped up to the other side of the doorjamb.

“The phone call?”

I nodded.

“He's counting on you doing what he says in order to save Lacy.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling a confused mix of shame and God knows what else. “I'm sorry, I should have said something.”

“I wouldn't have,” Harrison said without hesitation.

I glanced into his eyes as if to say thank you.

“It hardly matters,” I said. “I don't think he intends to hold up his end of the . . .”

I let the thought drift away. Trying to step into Gabriel's mind was a losing proposition. He was a killer; to assume he would do anything other than continue to kill was foolish.

“If Gabriel is so sure that you're going to make a deal with him to save Lacy,” Harrison said, “we do nothing to let him think otherwise. We get as close to him as he lets us and hope he makes a mistake.”

“I've been clinging to that very thought, but there's damn little to hold on to. He hasn't made a mistake yet.”

“When he does, we'll see it.”

“We have to,” I said grimly. “I don't expect there'll be a second opportunity.”

We both stood silently for a moment.

“Why did you ask Sweeny about Mrs. Finley?” Harrison asked.

“She said she never met him. Why would she lie about meeting Sweeny?”

“Maybe she didn't know his name. He was just a temp.”

“Possibly, but that's not good enough right now.”

“You want to ask her?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I want to ask her.”

My cell rang and I slipped it out of my jacket pocket. “Delillo.”

There was nothing on the other end for a second, and then he was there.

“Thank you,” Gabriel said in a voice entirely devoid of emotion or any connection to life at all.

“What—” I began to say, but the line went dead.

I turned to Harrison. “It was him.”

“Gabriel?”

I nodded. “He said thank you.”

“Nothing else?”

I shook my head. “Just thank you.”

“For what?”

“I don't know.”

I looked down at the parking lot below. Foley was opening the door to his squad. Sweeny was sitting in the backseat of my car, fifteen feet away, his head bobbing as if he were playing a song in his mind.

“You think he was just playing more games?”

I shook my head.

“What's changed since I talked to him before?”

“We came here.”

“Oh, God,” I whispered.

I looked at Harrison and saw in his eyes the same
horrible flash of recognition that was pulsing through me. He immediately began to sprint toward the stairs as I yelled to Foley.

“Get him out of the car!”

A truck passed by on the street shifting gears, smothering my words. Foley looked up and shook his head.

“What?” he yelled back.