Page 90 of Into the Fire

A focus came back into his eyes.

“You’re safe now,” Evan said. “Right now, in this moment, you’re safe.”

He took out Nuñez’s Turing Phone and thumbed through recent calls. The directory had been completely wiped.

Except for one outgoing call.

He felt a tickle at the back of his skull, the next threat worming its way to the surface. Three problems had arisen. And he’d dispatched all three.

But if this mission had taught him anything, it was that the next problem was waiting just around the corner, blade in hand. And if his concussion had taught him anything, it was that he was playing Russian roulette. There were only so many dry clicks he’d get before the hammer dropped on a live round. It seemed cruelly fitting that his final outing as the Nowhere Man refused to end, as if the universe itself would not allow him to let go.

The time stamp on the Turing showed that the number had been dialed shortly after Max entered the Hollywood Station and turned himself in. The call had lasted twenty-seven seconds.

As the lead officers on the case, Nuñez and Brust had been alerted to Max’s presence by the desk cop. And then Nuñez had immediately contacted whoever was at the other end of that phone number.

Not Petro, since Petro was dead.

But another shot caller, even further up the food chain.

Nuñez and Brust had gotten their marching orders. And then headed to the Hollywood Station to murder Max.

The Turing Phones were links in a chain stretching up. How high that chain went remained to be seen.

Evan slid the shiny slab of Liquidmorphium back into his pocket.

“What’s that?” Max asked.

“Something else I have to handle.”

“Something or someone?”

Evan said, “Both.”

“How are you gonna handle it?” Max asked.

The headache had resumed, a vise clamping Evan’s brain. “I don’t know yet.”

Max rasped a hand across his stubble, peppered with gray. “I thought they were gonna kill me,” he said. “Two detectives. In a police station. And then … and then you busted in there with your head all wrapped like some kind of deranged King Tut.…” At this, the first sign of amusement teased his lips. But just as quickly it was gone. “Did you see Brust’s head? I’ve never … never seen anything like that.”

He blinked hard a few times as if clearing his mind and then walked over to the mud-caked wrench on the counter. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. Only a few hours had passed since he’d used it to repair the pipe outside, but to Evan it felt like weeks. He figured that for Max it felt even longer.

“Why did they want to kill me?” Max said. “I mean … they’re cops.”

“They worked for Petro. He managed to flip them before Grant was hired.”

“But those guys are the detectives running the investigation against Petro. Why would they have opened the case to begin with? Why hire Grant to start digging?”

The sound of a car engine rose on the street outside, and Evan and Max tensed. But it kept on, motoring into the dead of night.

“I’m guessing Petro knew that an investigation was coming,” Evan said. “The dogfighting arena and a number of the smaller businesses used to launder his cash are in Hollywood. So he paid off two detectives in the local station to take point on the case, contain it at a smaller level, and bury it before it got kicked to Vice downtown.”

Max said, “So Brust and Nuñez were making sure the investigation went nowhere.”

“That’s right. They needed to hire a forensic accountant to cover their bases, figuring he wouldn’t get very far. They could check the right boxes, steer the case from the inside, then drop it for insufficient evidence. But it looks like Grant uncovered more than they were bargaining for.”

“Grant was too good.” It seemed the words were weighed down, hard for Max to say. He let the wrench slip from his hand onto the counter. “I thought I’d hit bottom. Now I’m implicated in the murder of two cops. What the hell’s next?”

Before he’d died, Petro had faced down Evan, smiling into the bullet that would end him. Evan sensed in his bones now that whatever Petro had been smiling about was more dangerous than a pair of dirty cops.