Old Poison (Dangerous Ground 2) Page 5

  If they had made that trip, Will was pretty sure their relationship would have reached a turning point, moved into deeper waters. But it was not to be. And Will had no real regrets.

  Bradley continued to smile at him in the old open way. “Why don’t we grab some lunch and talk the case over?” he suggested.

  Bradley drove them to an off-base steak house for lunch. They ordered prime rib sandwiches and got down to brass tacks.

  Naval Station San Diego provided shore support and berthing facilities to the operating forces of the US Pacific Fleet. Over fifty ships called NAVSTA home, with more than fifty tenant commands at the NAVSTA. The base population exceeded thirty-five thousand military personnel and in excess of seven thousand civilians. Needless to say, security was an issue for a naval station that had grown to be one of the largest surface-force support installations in the world.

  Will pounded ketchup out of the bottle onto his fries and said, “Okay, so to cut through the bullshit, we think we’re looking at illegal Mexican nationals using forged documents to gain access to the Thirty-second Street Naval Station?”

  Bradley agreed. “Originally we thought illegal aliens were using fraudulent passports to get other documents like drivers’ licenses, ID cards, car registrations, and the like in order to unlawfully gain employment in San Diego’s concrete construction industry.”

  “But the passports aren’t fraudulent.”

  “According to your people.”

  Will grinned. David’s return smile was reluctant.

  “The passports aren’t fraudulent,” Will said. “However, we’ve got a line on the guy some of these nationals were going to for these additional documents. Jose Valz runs a side business helping Hispanic immigrants obtain legal documents so they can work in the concrete construction industry — where he’s also employed.”

  Bradley’s eyes lit with interest. “You’re after Valz?”

  Will nodded. “We want Valz. He’s made false statements regarding his status on I-9 forms. He claimed to be a United States citizen. He claimed he was a lawful permanent resident. And he provided documentation that concealed his true immigration status as an alien in temporary protected status.”

  Bradley held up his empty beer bottle in question.

  Will shook his head. “Valz’s false statements not only allowed him to fraudulently obtain employment but also allowed him to obtain a US Navy badge that grants him access to all the naval bases in the region.”

  “We’re going after Valz,” Bradley said grimly.

  Somebody had to. But it was going to be a long and probably dull week. Will wondered how Taylor was faring his first day back on active duty. Then he had to bite back an inward grin at the idea of Taylor partnered with Varga. Talk about two peas in a pod.

  As though reading his mind, Bradley said suddenly, “Your partner never made it back, I take it?”

  Will was startled at the stab of emotion that went through him at the idea of Taylor not making it back. He wasn’t sure he was ever going to get over the memory of seeing Taylor shot and dying on that stockroom floor. Will couldn’t understand it. He had been in the marines; he’d seen men die. He’d lost friends. It had been ugly, painful, but none of it shook him to the marrow the way seeing Taylor shot had. He wasn’t given much to praying, but he’d prayed then. It wasn’t very often your prayers were answered; he knew to count his blessings.

  “He’s back on active duty now,” he said calmly. “We’re just working different cases at the moment.”

  The old unease about what was happening with Taylor when Will wasn’t there to watch his back returned. Not that Taylor wasn’t very good at taking care of himself — with one notable exception. Will’s separation anxiety made no sense.

  “Are you seeing anyone?” Bradley asked casually.

  The stock answer, the safe answer, was no. If the higher-ups discovered that he and Taylor were lovers, they’d be repartnered faster than you could say nonfraternization policy. But lying to Bradley was difficult.

  “Sort of.”

  Bradley raised his eyebrows.

  “It’s complicated,” Will admitted.

  “Someone you work with,” Bradley guessed.

  Will nodded apologetically.

  Bradley sighed. “Oldest story in the world.” His smile was wry. He glanced at his watch. “We should get back.”

  * * * * *

  By the time Taylor got back to the office on Temple Street, his feet ached. So did his head.

  He wasn’t one of those guys who made a drama out of hating to shop, but even he couldn’t figure out how the hell anyone could shop for nine hours. Nine hours. And almost straight through, because no one could seriously consider the stop for herbes de Provence french fries and pomegranate-blackberry iced tea at Café Rodeo a legitimate break.

  Madame Kasambala had spent the probable equivalent of her nation’s defense budget between Gucci, Chanel, Dior, Valentino, Versace, and Tiffany’s. Varga was in an even worse mood than Taylor — which was some comfort. Of course, she had a point. If they had dispensed with the pleasures of Rodeo Drive in one day, what fresh hell was Madame going to drag them through tomorrow — and beyond?

  Still, as boring as the day had been, and despite the fact that he had not been working with Will, Taylor felt almost cheerful. He was back in the field, back on active duty — and he felt fine.

  There had been a time when both those things had seemed unobtainable goals.

  He hung around the office for a time in the hope that Will might get back early from San Diego, but no dice. He hadn’t really expected it.

  He was the last person out of the office, and it was dark when he reached home.

  He parked in the side drive, walked down to the corner to pick up his mail from the stand of metal boxes. Walking back up the quiet, shady street, moon shining like a newly minted dime above the treetops, he remembered the Chevy that had been parked curbside on Friday when he’d gone to get the mail.

  That was why Will’s description of the car that had nearly run them down on Saturday had rung a bell. Not to overreact. There were one hell of a lot of Chevrolets driving around Southern California. And a lot of motorists could use a driver’s ed refresher course.

  Taylor reached his own overgrown patch of yard, reflected he needed to hire some kid to mow the grass once in a while, and went up the steps to his porch.

  He stopped.

  One of those bright plastic phone-book bags hung from the front door handle. He reached for it, but the plastic straps were knotted around the handle and in the amber porch light he caught a glimpse of white string.

  A fuse.

  His fingers froze on the cool plastic. After a couple of seconds of frantic thought, he decided he hadn’t touched or tugged anything. He delicately let go, retreated a few steps, and then jumped off the porch and sprinted for the relative shelter of the nearest car parked along the street.

  Nothing happened.

  He gave it a few more seconds. Feeling silly, Taylor returned to the steps and from that distance studied the yellow plastic bag. Now that it had his full attention, he realized that whatever the plastic bag contained was not square or even shaped like a phone book. It was round. Like an old-fashioned bomb. Like a cartoon bomb.

  As hard as it was to believe, it looked to Taylor like someone had booby-trapped his front door.

  Chapter Five

  Will’s phone rang as he was negotiating the intricacies of the 405/101 interchange. He reached inside his sports coat, extracted his cell, noted the photo of a sunburned Taylor on a chartered fishing trip, and flipped the cell open, hastily refocusing on the freeway traffic merging in front of him.

  “Hey,” said the two-year-old photo of Taylor.

  “Hey.” Will opened his mouth to ask how Taylor’s first day back had gone; it had been in the back of his mind all day. But Taylor interrupted; there was a note in his voice that Will couldn’t quite pinpoint. “Are you still in San Diego?”

>   He was now sure something was up. Taylor was perfectly calm, but it was his on-the-job voice. “No. I’m stuck on the 101. Why? What’s up? Where are you?”

  “I’m at the Red Dragon.”

  “You’re where?” Will glanced at the dashboard lights. Tea-smoked duck at ten o’clock at night? It seemed unlikely.

  “I’m having something translated.”

  Weirder and weirder. “Like what?”

  “Like the note that was left on my windshield this morning. Apparently it’s connected to the bomb on my front door.”

  “What?” Will narrowly missed plowing into the BMW that swerved into his lane without signaling — and apparently without looking.

  “Yeah. Someone hung a shaku ball in a plastic bag on my front door.”

  “What the hell is a shaku ball?”

  “You want the short answer or the long answer?”

  “Short.”

  “Hanabi. Japanese fireworks.”

  “That’s too short.”

  “That pretty much covers it, though. They’re these big spherical balls. They call them flowers of fire.”

  Will cut through the “flowers of fire” crap. “Someone tried to kill you?” he demanded.

  “Doubtful. I might have lost a hand or my eyesight, but I wouldn’t have been killed.”

  “That’s comforting. For the record, I like your hands. I like your eyes. I’d prefer nothing happened to them.”

  “Me too. Anyway, it was just wishful thinking on someone’s part, because the fuse was fucked-up. Even if I hadn’t noticed the bomb in time, it wouldn’t have gone off.”

  Will turned on his signal and started inching over traffic lanes, whether his fellow motorists liked it or not, moving into the far lane bound for Ventura. “Did you get LAPD and the bomb-disposal unit over there?”

  “Yeah, they’re on it, but essentially this amounts to someone leaving a bag of dud fireworks on my porch.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Cool it, Will,” Taylor warned.

  Will cooled it. “What did the note on your windshield say?” That much he had already figured out. A note in Japanese writing turned up on Taylor’s vehicle the same day someone tried to booby-trap his front door with fires of flower or whatever the hell it was? Taylor had made someone very angry, and Will thought he knew who.

  “Mama-san says it’s a death threat.”

  “Say again,” Will ordered tersely.

  “It might be a threat. It reads ‘Old poison slays as swiftly as new.’”

  “Stay right there,” Will said. “I’m coming to meet you.”

  “No.”

  “The hell I’m not.”

  “For chrissake, Will.” Taylor sounded exasperated. “First of all, they’re trying to close for the night here. Secondly, there’s no reason I can’t go home. Nobody broke in. There isn’t even any property damage, let alone damage to me.”

  “That place is as secure as a cardboard box. I’ll meet you at my place.”

  “Oh for God’s sake.” Taylor sighed. “All right, Mom. Whatever. I’ll meet you at your house.”

  * * * * *

  “Just for the sake of argument, let’s consider the punks from the Red Dragon parking lot,” Will said, pouring a short glass of bourbon. He held the bottle of bourbon up in offer. Taylor shook his head. He was sticking to iced water tonight.

  They were sitting in the comfortable den of Will’s Woodland Hills ranch-style home. It was a small room — the entire house was small, though more than big enough for one guy who was never there anyway. The walls were oak paneled, and the furniture was upholstered in funky blue and black plaid. There were a couple of rifles over the fireplace and a couple of marksman trophies on the mantel below.

  Riley was snoring softly on Taylor’s feet. A rare honor. He said, “Nah. Why would they leave me a note in Japanese? How would they leave me a note in Japanese? It’s gotta tie in to the cobra in the wine bottle.”

  “You said you had no idea who sent the cobra in the rice wine.”

  “I don’t.”

  Will gave him a skeptical look before proceeding with his own line of reasoning. “They would leave you a note in Japanese to throw suspicion off themselves. If they left you a note in Spanish — assuming the morons can even write — it would lead directly back to them. As for how: one of them could have a Japanese girlfriend. Who knows?”

  “Why not leave me a note in English? That would be easier. Plus, there would be more chance of me understanding the threat.”

  “They wanted you to know it was about what happened in the parking lot of the Red Dragon.”

  Taylor said reasonably, “Then that cancels out what you said about them not wanting me to know it was them.”

  Will’s easy smile took him aback. “Good, then we can eliminate that bullshit before you ever think about using it as a smoke screen. Who, besides the cholos in the Red Dragon parking lot, have you had a run-in with?”

  Sometimes Will really did annoy the hell out him. Irritably, Taylor shook his head.

  “Not good enough.”

  Taylor gave him a narrow look. “Maybe not, but it’s the truth.”

  “What about Japan?”

  Taylor tensed. “What about it?”

  “Someone sends you a cobra in a bottle, a note in Japanese, and a Japanese firework bomb? I’d say we have to consider Japan.”

  “There’s nothing to consider. Japan was eight years ago. I worked in the embassy. That’s it.” He was trying, but he must not have been too successful at hiding his anger. His muscles were locked so tight, Riley half woke, blinking up sleepily.

  Will’s brow knitted. “Hey, it’s me. Remember me? I’m on your side. Who’s got it in for you?”

  “No one.” Taylor took a deep breath, forced himself to think objectively about this. Will was wrong. This could not have to do with Japan, so it had to be something else. One of these things is not the same… He answered honestly, “Well, not lately. Not since before I was shot.”

  Their eyes met. “The Phu Fighters,” Will said.

  Taylor nodded. Old poison, for sure.

  They’d been in Orange County following a lead on a possible counterfeiting ring, when he’d been shot by a juvenile member of the Phu Fighters, a Vietnamese street gang. While Taylor had been in the hospital, Will prowled Little Saigon, eventually tracking down the two punks involved in the shooting, and — according to the reports Taylor had read — pretty much prodded them into a fight. One kid had surrendered without trouble. The other had gone for his gun and ended up with a shattered hip and missing fingers.

  It was still hard to believe that Will — patient, easygoing, teasing Will — had gone hunting with vengeance in his heart. But reading between the lines of the police report and the DSS’s own internal investigation, that’s exactly what Will had done.

  The official verdict was that Will had been under extreme emotional stress; cops and DSS alike understood the bond between law-enforcement partners. And Will had been careful to let Le Loi Roy get off the first shot. Even so, Will was lucky to slide out of it with nothing more than an official reprimand and his picture in the paper. He’d been more riled about the newspaper photo than the reprimand.

  “The Asian snake wine was bottled in the Mekong Delta,” Taylor said slowly.

  “Did you phone the manufacturer?”

  Taylor shook his head. “I never had a chance.”

  Will finished his bourbon and set the empty glass on the table. “Well, tomorrow you’re going to call the Asian snake people, and I’m going to see what Le Loi Roy is up to these days.”

  Later, brushing his teeth, Taylor stuck his head out of the bathroom to say, “If it was revenge, I don’t see why anyone would come after me. They already shot me. You’re the guy who crippled Roy.”

  Will was lying on the bed, staring moodily up at the ceiling. “Who knows? They’re kids. They’re nuts. Roy was counting you as a kill. He was disappointed when he found out you didn’t
buy it. Maybe he’s trying to reestablish his street cred?”

  It seemed shaky to Taylor, but he didn’t have a better theory. He spit the toothpaste out, rinsed his mouth, rinsed the sink, and turned out the bathroom light.

  He threw himself down on the bed beside Will.

  “Why Japanese and not Vietnamese, though? The note, I mean.”

  Will shook his head, raised up to shut off the bedside lamp. “You’re the one who insists it’s nothing to do with Japan.”

  Taylor didn’t really have a response for that. But how the hell could it be anything to do with Japan? He didn’t believe in ghosts.

  For a few seconds they lay not touching, not speaking in the darkness. It was unexpectedly lonely. “How was San Diego?” he inquired politely into the silence between them.

  “Sunny, with a high of seventy-six.”

  “Ha.”

  Will was silent. Taylor thought he might be falling asleep, but he said suddenly, “If you could live anywhere, where would it be?”

  With you. Taylor knew better than to say that aloud. “The beach. I like the beach.”

  Will was silent.

  “What about you?” Taylor asked.

  “The mountains.”

  Taylor rolled over on his side and set about falling asleep. After a couple of minutes of slow, easy breaths, Will’s arm slipped around him, pulling him close.

  * * * * *

  Will woke to the unmistakable nudge of Taylor’s cock trying to elbow its way into his dreams. Taylor was still sleeping, as evidenced by the warm gusts against the back of Will’s neck, but his body was waking up and taking an interest. Will was faintly amused by that heat and hardness pushing against him, that unconscious urgency. Taylor was the randiest guy Will had ever met — well, who actually possessed a brain to go with the balls.

  It seemed sort of a shame to waste this. He shifted around, gathering Taylor close, interrupting but not rejecting. Taylor started awake, blinking dazedly into Will’s eyes, his mouth soft and young looking — he rarely looked that vulnerable.