McGrave Read online

  The SUV spins out of control, right across McGrave's path.

  He swerves into the other lane, clipping the spinning SUV with his front passenger-side bumper.

  The impact triggers his air bags.

  He keeps on going, pedal to the floor, even though he can't see a thing with the bag in his face.

  The car scrapes the guardrail, shooting off sparks, as he heads towards a hairpin turn.

  Serena is already in the turn, swerving into the opposite lane to pass a slow car in front of her.

  She doesn't see the Hollywood Celebrity Homes Tour bus coming around the bend until it's too late.

  Serena jerks the wheel hard to the right to avoid a head-on collision and tries to squeeze between the bus and the guardrail.

  And gets rear-ended by the car she just passed.

  She loses control, smashes through the guardrail, and goes off the cliff.

  The BMW flies into the night sky and then drops into the deep canyon below.

  McGrave pushes the air bag out of his way, sees the curve and the bus coming at him, and wrenches the steering wheel hard to the left at the last possible second.

  The bus grinds to a stop, brakes squealing like pigs.

  McGrave spins and ends across the lanes. The bus hits the passenger side of his car, shattering his windows, buckling his dashboard, and snapping the burled walnut trim. The side air bags all go off.

  He scrambles out of the crumpled Mercedes and staggers to the broken guardrail just in time to see the BMW swallowed by the dark depths of the canyon below.

  Captain Roy Thackery has been a cop for twenty-five years and has a nice side gig working as a technical consultant on one of those TV series where the cops do autopsies themselves, wear Armani suits, drive vintage muscle cars, live on the beach, and can access the cameras on spy satellites with their cell phones.

  He answers incredibly stupid questions from the writers, offers them "authentic cop talk" that he totally makes up, and shares outrageously embellished anecdotes from the cases he's worked.

  The producers think that his input gives their show its "gritty verisimilitude," as if having their ex-stripper turned Navy SEAL turned homicide detective character say a few words from an actual cop makes her any more believable than, say, a talking goldfish who solves crimes.

  But for his $500 an episode, he's glad to tell them that it does.

  What he really wants is to write an episode himself. That's a $30,000 payday, not including residuals, and he figures if his script is any good, it could lead to something more, like maybe a producing gig, maybe a series of his own someday.

  So what he needs is quiet time to write. No distractions. No controversies. A clear head so he can create.

  What he gets is John McGrave engaging in a shoot-out and a pursuit that shuts down Mulholland Drive in both directions at nine p.m. on a Saturday night.

  The scene of the crash is illuminated by portable lights. News choppers swarm overhead, kicking up the air and blowing dust around. Police officers and crime scene investigators scurry around measuring things, bagging stuff, writing notes, and taking pictures. Paramedics treat the drivers of the crashed cars and the tourists in the bus for their mild injuries and what will later be characterized by their attorneys as "severe infliction of emotional distress."

  McGrave stands at the cliff's edge, drinking a Hawaiian Punch and eating Oreos that he mooched from a paramedic who keeps the stuff around to treat people for shock. He's watching a crane drag the wrecked BMW up from the canyon below. Firemen move through the brush, looking for anything that might spark a blaze.

  Captain Thackery joins him and reeks of spearmint. Ever since he quit smoking, he's always got a mint in his mouth. He's like a highly evolved Altoid.

  "What brings you out here, Roy?" McGrave says.

  "Jesus Christ, McGrave," Thackery says. "You drove a car through a house, shot up a collection of rare artifacts, stole a Mercedes, ran it into two cars, chased another one off a cliff, and then crashed into a bus full of tourists."

  "Yeah. So?"

  "What were you thinking?"

  "That I wanted to catch the bad guys," McGrave says.

  "And as a result, you made things far worse than they would have been if you'd just let the thieves get away with the crime."

  "Do nothing. Now that's an innovative approach to law enforcement that I've never considered before. Is that how you got ahead, Roy? Because I've always wondered what your secret was."

  "Do you see the news choppers up there? You shut down Mulholland Drive. It's all over the news. And since the crash, those tourists in the bus have already sent out a thousand e-mails, tweets, photos, and videos of this fiasco to the entire planet. There's going to be lots of heat on this, so you'd better hope that all of your extreme actions tonight were justified."

  McGrave nods. "Is the phony cable guy talking?"

  "Only to St. Peter."

  The instant Thackery says it, he knows it's a good line, one they'd love on the show. But he doesn't want to reach for his notebook, because that would be so fucking obvious.

  "Go ahead, write it down," McGrave says.

  "Fuck you," Thackery says, but he takes out his pad and makes the note anyway, deciding as he does that he ought to start carrying a little digital recorder around to capture his gems of authentic cop talk.

  The BMW is brought to the street.

  The car is pancaked.

  McGrave goes over and peers inside. Serena is still buckled into her seat, her head twisted at an angle not compatible with living. Her eyes are wide open and look like fogged glass.

  The passenger seat is empty.

  There could be a corpse in the brush at the bottom of the canyon, but McGrave knows in his gut that there isn't.

  He goes back to the cliff's edge and looks out at the glittering lights of the San Fernando Valley.

  The bastard is out there somewhere. And McGrave is going to find him.

  ####

  It's a warm, sunny Sunday morning, which is another way of saying there's a stage-two smog alert and Los Angeles residents are strongly advised to stay indoors and not breathe more than is absolutely necessary.

  McGrave is at his cluttered cubicle, studying a coroner's photo of Otto's tattoo and talking on the phone.

  He asks the watch commander in the North Hollywood station to:

  1. Send some patrol cars around to the local Laundromats and see if anybody has complained that some of their laundry is missing or if they've seen a guy who looks like he was shot and thrown off a cliff. 2. Get him a list of any cars reported stolen in the area since nine p.m. The same goes for any reports of break-ins at homes, drugstores, or doctors' offices.

  McGrave figures that when the German staggers out of the hills, he's going to want clothes that aren't soaked with blood, a car to get as far from the area as possible, and drugs to kill the pain and prevent infection.

  The watch commander agrees to help.

  McGrave hangs up and catches a whiff of spearmint in the air, so he starts delivering his update on the case even before Captain Thackery shows up at his cubicle.

  "I ran the faces and prints of the three dead thieves past U.S. Customs. Turns out they arrived from Berlin on three separate flights over the last two days. Customs has double-checked the passports. They're fakes."

  The captain leans on the wobbly, chest-high wall of McGrave's cubicle and swallows his mint.

  "I just got off the phone with the chief, who has already heard from Wallengren's attorney," Thackery says. "Tomorrow they're going to file a lawsuit against the city for twenty million dollars in damages."

  "That much? I've got to hold on to my toilet," McGrave says. "In three thousand years, it could be worth a fortune."

  "There's more. Frank Russell wants you arrested for attempted murder. He says you shot him because he's sleeping with your ex."

  "I shot Frank to nail the guy who was holding a gun to his head."

  "The security cam
era footage and audio strongly back Frank's side of the story. The DA is taking this very seriously and is contemplating charges. But the chief isn't waiting for the DA's decision. He wants you off the street now."

  "You're suspending me?"

  "I'm firing you. You have twenty minutes to clean out your desk and get the hell out of here."

  "You can't just fire me, Roy. There's a whole bunch of tedious, bureaucratic crap you have to go through first, hearings and review boards and that kind of thing. It'll be weeks, maybe months, before you can actually fire me. So in the meantime, I'll catch the bastard responsible for all of this and everything will be fine."

  "You don't get it, McGrave. It's a done deal. The city is tired of getting sued every time you step out of the building. I'm tired of the aggravation. And you won't find any support with your union rep. They're standing behind Frank on this one."

  "Looks like your 'do nothing' approach to policing is catching on," McGrave says. "I guess this means I can't count on you as a reference."

  "I'd look into a new profession, because you're finished as a cop in this city or anywhere else. No police force is going to hire you with lawsuits and criminal charges hanging over your head. Leave your gun and your badge on my desk before you go."

  The captain walks away.

  McGrave is just beginning to absorb the magnitude of what has happened to him when his cell phone rings. He grabs it and answers out of reflex.

  "McGrave," he says.

  "She was the only woman who was ever more to me than a warm body in my bed."

  McGrave sits up straight in his chair, his professional problems forgotten.

  It's the German.

  It's a cramped little bathroom with bloody towels on the linoleum floor, a bloody pair of needle-nose pliers in the blood-splashed sink, and a bloody bullet in the bloody soap dish.

  Perhaps you're sensing a theme here.

  Richter stands in front of the mirror in a clean but oversize white shirt, his left arm in a crude sling fashioned from a towel. He's studying his reflection and holding a portable home phone in his good hand. He's clean-shaven and his hair is washed, but his skin is a sickly pale and his brow is already dappled with perspiration.

  But considering that he just dug a bullet out of his shoulder with pliers, doused the wound with rubbing alcohol, and stitched it shut with dental floss, he looks fucking great.

  "She died with her eyes open," he says. "Did you look into them, McGrave?"

  McGrave looks at the caller ID on his phone.

  It reads "John McGrave." The son of a bitch is in his house.

  "Yeah, I did," McGrave says.

  "Then you know what I am going to see when I look into your eyes at the end of our next encounter."

  Richter opens the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, sorts through the prescription medication until he finds what he wants. Vicodin. He pockets it.

  "It's a date," McGrave says. "Make yourself comfy. I'll be home in ten minutes."

  Richter steps into the bedroom. The bed is unmade. The furniture looks like it was bought used from a Motel 6. He glances at a framed photo on the dresser of McGrave, his ex-wife, and his teenage daughter, all of them soaking wet and laughing as they try to wash an uncooperative bulldog in a plastic kiddie pool.

  "You have a nice family. I'll be back for them, too."

  He tosses the phone on the bed and steps over the carcass of the bulldog, a kitchen knife buried to the hilt in its throat, as he walks out.

  Whoever designed Berlin-Tegel Airport had a fetish for hexagons. The terminal is shaped like a hexagon. The pillars are hexagons. The floor tiles are hexagons. The ceiling lights are part of a gridwork of interlocking hexagons. Outside, there are hexagonal concrete benches on a hexagonal-patterned sidewalk bordering a hexagonal parking lot.

  The architect probably slept in a hexagonal bed in a hexagonal apartment and made his girlfriend wear hexagonal underwear.

  But the hexagons go unnoticed by John McGrave as he emerges from the terminal into the chilly Berlin night carrying only an overstuffed gym bag.

  He's a man on a mission.

  McGrave stands out in the crowd of stylishly dressed and stylishly disinterested Europeans. He is wearing a beat-up leather jacket, a loud Hawaiian shirt, faded jeans, and dirty tennis shoes. And yes, they're the same clothes he was wearing on Saturday. Be glad you weren't the passenger sitting next to him in coach on the fourteen-hour flight, because he hasn't shaved, or bathed, in almost two days.

  He approaches a line of tan E-Class Mercedes sedans idling at the curb. The driver of the first car, a short Turkish man with a thin mustache, steps forward and reaches for McGrave's bag. But McGrave holds it out of reach.

  "No, thanks," McGrave says. "I want a taxi."

  The driver gestures to his car. "This is a taxi."

  "That's a limo. I want a taxi."

  The driver points to the other Mercedes behind his. "All taxis."

  "Do I look like I can afford a ride like that? Forget the der limo. I want the der taxi. Where are the der taxis?"

  Again, the driver points to the other Mercedes. "Here. There. All taxis."

  "Okay, I see them," McGrave says. "Now show me where I can find the cheap ones."

  Ladies and gentlemen, Tidal Wave is in Berlin.

  During the Cold War, the shopping district of Kurfьrstendamm, known by locals as the Ku'damm, was a garish, glittering, glaring beacon of conspicuous consumption, shining bright from the walled island of Capitalism that was surrounded by the red sea of Communist East Germany.

  But since the wall fell, all the action has moved to Mitte, the reinvigorated heart of old Berlin, and the Ku'damm has had to change. Its vibrancy today comes less from the big stores, fancy restaurants, historic relics, and tourist traps on the main thoroughfare than from the eclectic mix of cafйs, galleries, "sex kinos," boutiques, and bars to be found on the side streets.

  One such place is Der Reizvolle Bar. The exterior embodies the contrasts of the Ku'damm. It has a tasteful, marble-tiled exterior and a garish, well-lit sign depicting a buxom woman hugging a grinning bear.

  Der Reizvolle, by the way, is German for "Sexy Bear." And yeah, that sign looks just like the tattoo on Otto's arm.

  Across the street from Der Reizvolle is a panel van, a vehicle favored as much by thieves robbing homes in the Hollywood Hills as by police officers involved in surveillance operations.

  Two such police officers happen to be sitting in the back of this van, facing a monitor mounted on the wall that shows a wide-angle view of the exterior of the club.

  The thin young cop with the prematurely receding hairline and the big goatee that he hopes will distract you from it, and who is presently second-guessing the wisdom of piercing his nipple two weeks ago to impress his girlfriend, is Kriminalkommissar Stefan Krementz.

  The fat older one, with the rosy cheeks and an undiagnosed thyroid condition that makes his eyes bulge from his chubby face, and who is happily slurping up the Dreistern Hausmacher Gulasch, halb und halb, aus Schweine und Rindfleisch that he is digging out of a can with a spoon, is Kriminalkommissar Heinrich Bader.

  Stefan looks at the slop his partner is eating. "What is that? Dog food?"

  "It's a delicacy from the old GDR. I buy it over the Internet."

  "The wall fell so you'd have the freedom not to eat that crap anymore," Stefan says.

  "The wall fell so the West could sell us more expensive crap to eat."

  Stefan spots something on the monitor. "Hello."

  An old rusted Volkswagen taxi-van chugs up outside of Der Reizvolle. The taxi is rattling and spewing smoke. John McGrave emerges with his suitcase, looks around, and goes inside the club.

  Stefan looks at Heinrich. "Who is that?"

  "You're familiar with the phrase 'Ugly Americans'?"

  "Yeah."

  Heinrich tosses his empty can on the floor. "Now you know where it comes from."

  The Sexy Bear Club is all chrome, neon, and
skin. The music is loud, throbbing, and percussive. The clientele is upscale, fashionable, and almost exclusively male. The four dancing girls on the stage are topless, black haired, self-possessed, and arrogant, wearing G-strings and high heels, moving in unison to a well-choreographed routine. The only thing missing is Robert Palmer's reanimated corpse and it would be the 1980s all over again.

  McGrave approaches the crowded bar and its neon-trimmed shelves of fine spirits. He takes a stool at the corner, sets down his suitcase, and waves over the bartender. She's a short-haired blonde wearing a low-cut red bandage dress that hugs her curves so tightly that she makes that blue babe Mystique in the X-Men look like she's got on a parka.

  Maria is wearing a necklace with a pointed silver pendant that's like an arrow pointing at her deep cleavage, and McGrave follows the directions.

  "Nice rack," McGrave says.

  "Danke," she says.

  "I meant the neon." He smiles and gestures to the lighted shelves behind her.

  "Now I'm hurt." Her English is perfect and only slightly accented.

  "What's your name?"

  "Maria. What can I get you, big guy?"

  "Diet Coke. In the bottle."

  She gets him a bottle, sets it in front of him, and pops the top. She starts to go.

  "One more thing. You see that big ugly bruiser over there?"

  He tips his bottle towards the muscled guy in the tight black T-shirt at the other end of the bar, who is watching the customers near the stage instead of the dancers. Obviously, he's a bouncer.

  "That is Dieter," she says. "What about him?"

  "Give him this." McGrave hands her a photo of Otto's corpse on a morgue slab.

  Maria looks at it, then back at him, shocked. "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah," he says and takes a sip of Diet Coke.

  "That's Otto Stoffmacher, one of the owners of this club," she says. "Dieter and Otto are friends."

  "Show him," McGrave says.

  She hesitates but delivers the photo to the bouncer. McGrave takes out a roll of Mentos from his pocket as he watches her go.