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cd0c72c
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Holman settled in, expecting her to be late. She would arrive late to establish her authority and to make sure he understood the power in this situation was hers. Holman didn't mind. He had trimmed his hair that morning, shaved twice to get a close shave, and polished his shoes. He had handwashed his clothes the night before and rented Perry's iron and ironing board for two dollars so he would appear as unthreatening as possible. Holman
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Robert Crais |
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92f66b0
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Chee was clearly mystified and impressed at the vagaries of the federal system.
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Robert Crais |
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a5233ac
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He said, "Have you heard of two bank hitters named Marchenko and Parsons?" Holman watched her stiffen and knew she was finally interested. Now she wasn't just being nice or killing time until she could jump up and run. She took off her sunglasses. He saw that the skin around her eyes had grown papery. She had changed a lot since he had last seen her, but something beyond her appearance was different that he couldn't quite place. She"
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Robert Crais |
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2a981fe
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He went out the front door. The sun was blinding after being in the dim house. He walked back to Perry's car, feeling like a boat without a rudder, trapped in a current. He had no place to go and no idea what to do.
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Robert Crais |
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1ccc352
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I know why you didn't get the money. I was wondering how much sixteen million dollars weighs." "I can tell you exactly. Bank gets hit, they tell us how many of each denomination was lost. Tally that up, you know how many bills; you have four hundred fifty-four bills in a pound, doesn't matter what denominations--just do the math. This particular sixteen million weighs eleven hundred forty-two pounds." Holman"
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Robert Crais |
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1b37ba5
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When long-term convicts were first released they often experienced a form of agoraphobia--a fear of open spaces. The prison counselors had a special name for this type of agoraphobia when they attributed it to convicts--the fear of life. Freedom gave a man choices and choices could be terrifying. Every choice was a potential failure.
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Robert Crais |
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9d93405
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Mrs. Phelps, sixty-two years old, was overweight, dowdy, and a retired sheriff's deputy from Riverside, California. She had moved to Culver City with her new husband, a retired Los Angeles police officer named Steven Earl Phelps, and had been a customer at this branch for only eight days. She was unarmed, but would not have reached for her weapon if she had been carrying it. Lynn Phelps knew the two A-holes robbing her bank were not profess..
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Robert Crais |
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b92c9eb
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Is Dolan there?" "What's it to you?" "I want to talk to her." "Haven't seen her. You wanna know what I heard Krantz say?" "I'm not going to like this, am I?" "Krantz says you were probably in on it with that bastard, Pike. He says if he can tie you into it, maybe you and Pike can do the IV tango together." Williams"
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Robert Crais |
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76c0ffd
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people over the years,
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Robert Crais |
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e1b75d9
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know." She took a breath, and suddenly I liked her smile a great deal. "Maybe you are."
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Robert Crais |
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5920992
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Her face was focused and contained, as if she was concentrating on something more important than answering the door. She was slight, with dark eyes, a thin face, and prominent ears. She was wearing denim shorts, a light green blouse, and sandals. Her hair was damp, as if she wasn't long from the shower. Holman thought she looked like a child. She stared at him with curious indifference. "Yes?" "I'm Max Holman. Richie's father." Holman"
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Robert Crais |
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e277df5
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Their call log that night showed fewer than a third their usual number of calls, which made for an easy shift, but left Scott bored. Hence, their search for the unfindable noodle house, which Scott had begun to believe might not exist. Stephanie reached to start the car, but Scott stopped her. "Let's" --
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Robert Crais |
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7805dfc
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Stephanie was still holding his hand, and Scott was wondering what she meant by it when an enormous Bentley sedan appeared at the end of the street, as out of place in this neighborhood as a flying carpet, windows up, smoked glass, not a speck of dust on its gleaming skin. Stephanie
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Robert Crais |
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63c6f5a
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He nodded, approving. When he nodded, the two lesser attorneys nodded, too. No one had bothered to introduce them, but they didn't seem to mind.
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Robert Crais |
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3206792
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Jonathan Green sat in one of the leather director's chairs across from my desk and the two lesser attorneys went to the couch. Truly stayed on his feet. The videographer noticed the Pinocchio clock on the wall, then hustled around to the opposite side of my desk so that he could get both me and the clock in the frame. The Pinocchio clock has eyes that move side to side as it tocks. Photogenic. Like Green.
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Robert Crais |
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bf523c0
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Holman held the door for a young woman leaving the bank. He smiled at her pleasantly, then stepped inside and took in his surroundings. Banks were usually busy during the lunch hour, but now it was almost four. Five customers were waiting in line for two tellers. Two manager types were at desks behind the teller cages and a young man who was probably a customer service rep manned a desk on the lobby floor. Holman knew right away this bank w..
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Robert Crais |
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89aa061
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Truly said, "We've talked to people, Mr. Cole. You've an outstanding reputation for diligence, and your integrity is above reproach."
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Robert Crais |
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ead29e5
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We said our good-byes and I called Joe Pike to tell him that we were once more employed. His answering machine picked up on the first ring and beeped. He used to have a one-word message that just said, "Speak," but I guess he felt it was long-winded. Now, there was just the beep. When I asked him how people were supposed to know who they had gotten or what to do, he'd said, "Intelligence test." That Pike is something, isn't he?"
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Robert Crais |
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d2c9c4f
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Pike didn't like this business about guns. He studied her face, trying to read her. Her eyes were light brown, almost hazel, but not. A vertical line cut the skin between her eyebrows, matched by a scar on her upper lip. No laugh lines, but no frown lines, either. Pike didn't like her certainty. "How did you find me?" She made an offhand shrug, her face as flat as a Texas highway, ignoring his question."
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Robert Crais |
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0331ecd
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I put everything back into the envelope, then called my friend Eddie Ditko at the Examiner. Eddie has been a reporter for about ten million years, and he answered with a voice that was maybe three weeks away from throat cancer. "Ditko."
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Robert Crais |
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d7100ae
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It was eighteen minutes after seven, and I was getting ready to take a shower when the phone rang. Adrienne. I said, "Hi, Adrienne." Elvis Cole, Too Hip Detective, pretends he can read minds."
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Robert Crais |
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b32efd4
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You may be interested in why I am waiting for Adrienne to call." "I'm sure I don't want to know." "Do I detect coolness?" "You detect indifference. They are not the same."
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Robert Crais |
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3c79354
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Lucy blew me a kiss and hung up and I lay back on the kitchen floor with the phone on my stomach, grinning at the ceiling. The cat stopped purring and came closer to stare into my face. He looked concerned. Maybe he didn't know I was grinning. Maybe he thought I was dying of some sort of hideous facial stricture. Is that possible? Death by grinning. I said, "She's coming to see us."
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Robert Crais |
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5031717
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By nine o'clock the next morning I had gained some measure of control over the sappy grin and was once more feeling focused, productive, and ready to swing into investigative action. Sappy grins are fine in your personal life but somehow seem less than professional when one is representing the Big Green Defense Machine. Credibility, as they say, is everything.
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Robert Crais |
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47153b9
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Pike said, "This is dim mak. That's Chinese. It means death touch." Dim mak was the dark side of acupuncture; in one, pressure points were used to heal, in the other, to damage."
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Robert Crais |
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86378e8
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LeCedrick Earle was maybe an inch shorter than me, with dark glossy skin and a shaved head. He was wearing a prison-issue orange jumpsuit and Keds. I said, "That's right. I work for an attorney named Jonathan Green."
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Robert Crais |
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687b3ce
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As I tooled north back to Los Angeles I tried to keep an open mind. Just because someone looks like a liar and acts like a liar doesn't mean that he is a liar. It doesn't even mean he's a liar when his story is full of holes. Even the truth has been known to have holes. Of course, when his story doesn't make sense it becomes a little more difficult to swallow. I could see Angela Rossi's side of it, but not LeCedrick Earle's. Rossi's report ..
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Robert Crais |
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c66541e
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I thought it might stand out because of the nature of the arrest." "A vice sting?" "A Serbian sex ring. They worked for a Serb gang set." "Ah. Okay, that sounds familiar. NoHo Vice took down thirteen or fourteen girls over by CBS Studio Center. A joint task force deal with OCTF." Organized Crime Task Force. "That's it." "Serbians. Okay, sure. They had cribs all through those complexes. They had so many hookers around the pool over there it ..
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Robert Crais |
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f720b01
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Behind the parking lot was a larger, two-story corrugated-steel building. The front building blocked most of what lay behind it from view, but Pike could see that the grounds were crowded with stacked auto chassis, rusting pipes, and other types of scrap metal. Two new sedans were parked out front on the street, and two more sedans and a large truck were in the parking lot, but the gravel drive was chained off, and a sign in the front offic..
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Robert Crais |
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522fada
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Pike rolled down his window and motioned them over. Pike spoke Spanish pretty well, along with French, gutter German, a little Vietnamese, a little Arabic, and enough Swahili to make himself understood to most Bantu speakers.
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Robert Crais |
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7876c58
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Pike rolled down his window and motioned them over. Pike spoke Spanish pretty well, along with French, gutter German, a little Vietnamese, a little Arabic, and enough Swahili to make himself understood to most Bantu speakers. "Excuse me. May I ask you a question?" The three men exchanged glances before they approached, and the youngest man answered in English."
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Robert Crais |
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4373ddf
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Pike slipped behind the wheel of his Jeep, lowered the sun visor, then started the engine. None of the three men looked toward the enormous Do-It-Yourself parking lot across the street. They would have seen nothing if they had. The Jeep was just another tree in a two-hundred-tree forest. Pike
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Robert Crais |
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08cb694
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Still, people sometimes do strange things for strange reasons, and I decided to see what Mrs. Louise Earle had to offer. I expected that she would support her son's claims, but in the doing perhaps she would add something to give them greater credence.
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Robert Crais |
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0012aaa
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A short, slight gentleman was standing in the living room. He had wavy marcelled hair and he was wearing a brown summer-weight suit that had probably been new twenty years ago. His hair was more gray than not, and his skin was the color of fine cocoa parchment. He was holding a small bouquet of zinnias. I made him for his late sixties, but I could've been off five years either way.
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Robert Crais |
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6de835d
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Louise Earle was credible, cogent, in full command of her faculties, and did not seem to be a person who would miss seeing a cop carrying a bag of funny money through her living room. Of
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Robert Crais |
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a355209
|
When I reached the sidewalk a tall, muscular black guy appeared beside my car. As he reached the car a heavy white guy in his early fifties climbed out of a blue sedan parked across the street and started toward me. The black guy was in impeccably pressed designer jeans and a tight knit shirt that showed his muscles, and the white guy was in a rumpled light gray winter-weight suit. A million degrees, and he's wearing winter weight. Cops. A ..
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Robert Crais |
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b005c5e
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It should die down in a few days." "And if it doesn't?" Truly shrugged. "Enjoy the idolatry. You earned it, my friend. You really came through for us." A tall thin guy from one of the national networks yelled, "Hey, Sherlock Holmes! Are you really that good or did you just get lucky?" I said, "Some idol." Truly laughed and I climbed into my car and drove away. Slowly. I almost ran over a cameraman."
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Robert Crais |
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cb94897
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Lucy was beaming. "We just turned on the news and there you were. You and Jonathan Green. Was it exciting?" "Being with Jonathan?" "No, silly! They said you made some kind of break-through that might turn the case around. Jonathan said that you were the finest investigator he's ever worked with." I tried to look blase and stifled a yawn. "Oh, that." She punched me in the arm. "Be serious."
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Robert Crais |
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d0ab687
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She was looking at me expectantly, so I nodded. "Sure." If you can at least look smart, people will assume that you are smart." --
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Robert Crais |
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b93ff11
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The cheery woman was coming toward me from the adjoining yard as if she had been standing at the corner of the house there, waiting. She was maybe five-eight, and dark the way you're dark when you spend a lot of time in the sun running and working out and playing sports. I made her for her early- to mid-thirties, but the lines around her eyes and mouth were deep. Probably from all the sun. She was wearing designer jeans like the black guy a..
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Robert Crais |
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548f43a
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I left my car in the garage, then followed the guard's directions past a Spanish tile fountain in the lobby to the elevators, and then to the top floor. Another blazered gentleman smiled at me in the lobby, and a third just happened to be on the elevator. Both were polite and both, like the guard in the parking garage, had the corded necks of men who spent a lot of their time honing confrontational skills. Corded necks are a dead giveaway.
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Robert Crais |
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fff5d1d
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Another man came in behind Jonathan. He was a little shorter than me, but his arms were as long as backhoe shovels and his shoulders so wide they looked like they had been built of steel frame girders. The arms and the shoulders didn't go with the rest of him, as if they had once belonged to King Kong or Mighty Joe Young or some other large mammal, and now this guy was using them. He was carrying a manila envelope.
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Robert Crais |
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743f99b
|
Jonathan Green nodded again, then stared at the far wall for what seemed like several minutes. No one moved, and no one spoke. All of the other attorneys stared at Jonathan as if he might suddenly utter some dictum and they would have to act on it. Apprehensive.
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Robert Crais |
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0b4ca6f
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He made a sympathetic shrug, then spread his hands. "Flexibility, my friend. Flexibility is the key to all happiness. Remember that."
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Robert Crais |