Part 21 (1/2)

”What'd you tell her?”

”What do you think I told her? That she was being a f.u.c.king idiot, that she should have swallowed her pride and called you, like you should have swallowed your pride and called her.” Bear took no note of the glances from neighboring tables. He shook his head, disgusted. ”You're both stubborn, spiteful people who will die alone.”

Tim continued to work the chopsticks back and forth, harder. ”We decided we needed to take a little time off. We were tangling up in each other.”

”Have you really not seen her in five days?”

Tim felt a sudden heat in his cheeks. He took a sip of water, got a mouthful of lemon. ”That doesn't mean I don't love her.”

The waiter came up, and Bear ordered quickly for both of them without looking at the menu, naming the spicy shrimp simmered in sake, crab cakes, and seven-spice mussels. He'd been coming here more than once every few months, that was clear. Probably taking the occasional date.

When the waiter left, Bear fixed Tim with an apologetic stare. ”Look, I'm just saying you should call her. You need each other. And she needs you-that house went from full to empty in a hurry. Can't really blame her for wanting someone around in the wake of all this, even if it is Mac sleeping on the couch. And while we're at it, when are you coming back to work?”

Tim looked up, surprised. ”I'm not coming back, Bear. You know that.”

”Tannino's wondering why he's having so much trouble reaching you. He's pulled me into his office twice this week to make clear he hasn't accepted your resignation.”

”He doesn't have a choice.”

”What are you doing, Rack? What are you up to?”

”Nothing. I'm just dealing with things on my own for a while.”

For the first time Tim could remember, he didn't recognize the look in Bear's eyes. ”Let me add to the list of things that I will make my business. You can't embarra.s.s me. Not as your partner. And you can't embarra.s.s the service.” Bear leaned back, crossed his arms. ”I know you're up to something. I don't know what, but I'll figure it out if I want to.”

”You're overreacting. There's nothing going on.”

”I thought you said you didn't have a phone.” Bear's voice was firm, driving. ”So what was the bulge in your pocket when you hugged me? It hasn't been that that long.” long.”

Tim had instinctively grabbed his cell phones so as not to leave them unattended in the car with the valets. An unforgivable oversight. ”Picked it up this morning. 323-471-1213. Don't give the number to anyone.”

”Why all the cloak-and-dagger?”

”There's still a lot of fallout from the shooting, media hounding me, so I'd just as soon stay under for a while.”

”Really? I haven't seen anything lately. Everyone's whipped up about the Lane a.s.sa.s.sination now. You hear about the guy who pulled that off? They're snake eyes on leads-guy must have been an ice-cold professional.” He shook his head. ”Cranium ventilation. They always can find a new trick.”

Tim shrugged. ”It's not so bad. One less mutt on the street.”

Bear's forehead furrowed into a wrinkled pane.

Tim looked down, played with his straw. An emotion rippled through him that took him a moment to identify. Shame. He realized he was giving off nervous energy, so he dropped the straw, placed his hands on his knees.

Bear pointed at him with a chopstick. ”Don't let Ginny's death eat you away. Don't let it corrupt you. There's enough ignorance out there. The one person I don't expect it from is you.”

The waiter arrived with their food, and they ate in silence.

*A funeral procession pa.s.sed by while Tim idled at the stoplight at Franklin and Highland. The hea.r.s.e led, somber and dignified, and a convoy of rain-polished cars followed-Toyotas, Hondas, and the obligatory drove of SUVs. Seized by an impulse, Tim pulled out behind the last car and followed the line of vehicles to the Hollywood Forever Memorial Park. He parked a block and a half away. By the time he'd made his way through the solemn front gate and over the first gra.s.sy hill, the ceremony was under way.

He watched from a distance, the mourners arrayed in black and gray, diminutive like figurines. When the sun managed to knife through the smog, Tim donned sungla.s.ses to cut the glare. The presumed widower shovel-turned a scattering of rocks and dirt into the open grave, and, despite the distance, Tim could hear it patter on the unseen casket. The man collapsed to a knee, and two young men stepped forward quickly, chagrined, to help him up. He managed as best he could, a patch of mud weighing down his wind-flickering trouser leg, the sun glimmering off his cheeks.

A murder of crows swept in and blanketed an overlooking sycamore, where they looked on, sleek and inauspicious. Tim waited several minutes for the birds to depart, but they didn't, so finally he turned his back and headed down the too-green slope toward his car.

21.

”...KCOM'S HAVING A field day, with around-the-clock updates and polls. On Hardball Hardball, Chris Matthews hosted Dershowitz, two senators, and Mayor Hahn for a roundtable discussion, and a particularly vivid argument brewed on Donahue Donahue yesterday morning during a segment t.i.tled, 'The Lane Slaying: Terrorism or Justice?'” yesterday morning during a segment t.i.tled, 'The Lane Slaying: Terrorism or Justice?'”

Rayner shuffled through his sheaf of notes while the others sat in varying degrees of attentiveness around the table, waiting for his media recap to conclude. Like mirrored objects, Robert and Mitch.e.l.l sat on either side of the table, each shoved back in his chair, each with his legs loosely crossed, sneaker resting on opposite knee. Their languid postures suggested boredom; at last an attribute they shared with Ananberg. The Stork listened intently-Tim noted he had a tendency to blink frequently when concentrating-and Dumone, leaning back in his chair, statue-still, hands laced across his stomach, took it all in with a silent, almost magnanimous patience.

Rayner at last reached the final page of his report. ”The footage of the execution is making the rounds on the Internet via a chain e-mail with an mpeg attachment-it's the topic of choice in a wide range of chat rooms. A family-values activist appearing on Oprah Oprah this afternoon expressed concern about the impact the footage has had on children. She drew a comparison to the this afternoon expressed concern about the impact the footage has had on children. She drew a comparison to the Challenger Challenger exploding on live TV or the planes. .h.i.tting the World Trade Center.” exploding on live TV or the planes. .h.i.tting the World Trade Center.”

”Except those were regrettable regrettable events,” Robert said. events,” Robert said.

Mitch.e.l.l's grin flashed beneath his thick mustache. ”It's adult content, all right.”

”And now the big news,” Dumone said. ”I have it on good authority that LAPD recovered an undisclosed amount of sarin nerve gas in the trunk of Lane's car. In a canister prepped for aerosol delivery. A briefcase in the pa.s.senger seat contained diagrams of KCOM's air-conditioning system, with the ducts labeled based on ease of accessibility. It seems not unlikely that Lane was planning on leaving a little gift for the government-controlled leftist media on his way back into hiding.”

”Why hasn't that information been made public?” Tim asked.

”Because it shows LAPD's a.s.s. Particularly after September 11, intel and enforcement communities aren't rus.h.i.+ng to the public to point out their oversights and blind spots. Especially regarding a suspect who's so obvious. Another atrocity was avoided only because of dumb luck.”

”And us,” Robert added.

Rayner smoothed his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. ”The public knows nothing about that, but still the polls are overwhelmingly in our favor.”

”We didn't do this for the polls,” Tim said, but Rayner didn't appear to hear.

”Three morning talk shows over the past two days featured call-ins regarding variations of the same question: Was Lane's a.s.sa.s.sination an undesirable event? 'No' scored seventy-six, seventy-two, and sixty-six percent. The proper news shows' pedestrian interviews were fairly well split between tacit approvers and indignant citizens. A significant minority expressed their disgust that such a thing had occurred, regardless of the character of the victim. One commentator referred to it as 'p.o.r.nographic.'”

”How do you get all this stuff?” Mitch.e.l.l asked. ”I don't see you watching TV twenty-four/seven.”

”Media breakdowns on topics relevant to my research are faxed to me twice daily.”

Ananberg ran her hands over her thighs, smoothing her skirt. She wore a striped dress s.h.i.+rt with well-starched cuffs, cut like a man's, which oddly made it more feminine, and a sweater arranged in a country-club loop just below her neck. The frames of her gla.s.ses peaked out at the top corners. ”Grad students,” she said. ”The ultimate workhorses. And you don't even have to groom them.”

”So far my sense of it is, no one knows what to make of us yet,” Rayner said. ”So I'd like to raise the obvious consideration at this point, one which I'm sure we've all given some thought to. Do we make our position-though not our ident.i.ties-public?”

”Absolutely not,” Dumone said. ”Too much of an operational risk.”

”We want more from Lane's death than public euphoria. It may be more effective to take credit and explain how we arrived at the decision.”

”I think it's cowardice not to,” Ananberg said. ”No responsible state-no ent.i.ty I respect or trust-commits secret executions. It was a public act. I say we leak some sort of communique that states how we determined his guilt. 'We citizens who have empowered ourselves thus, made the decision on the following evidence-'”

”We do not submit the defendant to the mob in this country,” Dumone said. ”Our judges and juries don't grovel for societal support. They make rulings.”