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Kaiser came up, piled into the truck next to Cartwright, and Bunker ran on and got in with Able. Able pulled around them and down the ramp to the street.
“I don’t think there’s anybody to chase us... or anything to chase us with. We took out their car,” Cartwright said. “Let’s go, let’s go, don’t lose the caravan.”
Shofly had parkedon the third floor of the parking ramp. Letty had taken her gun and regular iPhone, and Cartwright her wallet,but they hadn’t dug out her car keys. Bleeding from the face, her broken arm screaming at her, she staggered into the bathroom, picked up a box of facial tissue, then walked unsteadily down to the elevator, pushed the button for Three, spitting on a tissue, wiping her face, made it to the exit door for the ramp.
As she pushed the door open, she heard two bursts from an automatic weapon, and a few seconds later, a third. She got in her car, started it, and rolled down the ramp to the second floor, and around again until she was pointing to the first floor.
She got there in time to see a gray Toyota Tundra, which Boyadjian had described to her, rolling out of the ramp and into the alley that led to the street. She gave it a second, then followed.
On the street, with Baxter’s truck a half block away, she got straight, driving one-handed, then used the elbow on her broken arm to steady the steering wheel. She used her good arm and dug in a hip pocket for the burner phone she used to call Boyadjian. There was only one number in it, and she poked it, still steering with her elbow. When Boyadjian came up, she told him what had happened, and then, “We’re going up to the freeway, hold on.”
She dropped the phone in her lap and used her good hand to steer onto the freeway, staying well back. Once in the slow lane, she told Boyadjian where she was, and that she didn’t know where she was going, or how long she could keep going with the broken arm.
“Hang in there, Catherine. I’m in my car, up by Westwood. I’ll try to get up behind you myself. If they keep going north, I should hook up by the time you get to the Getty and you can bail.”
“I don’t know where the fuck the Getty is, but I can hang on for a while. That bitch that broke my arm, I’m gonna shoot her.”
“Hang on, hang on...”
Boyadjian headed forthe 405 and used his Step burner to call Step on his Tom Boyadjian burner.
When Step answered, Boyadjian said, “You’ve got at least two dead, maybe three if they got your car that was waiting for the pickup. They’re all together running up the 405, I’ve got my operator following them, but she’s got a broken arm. I’m close, I’m going to follow if I can.”
“We’ll take care of you, man,” Step said. “We’ll take care of you.”
“These fuckers have hurt my people bad enough,” Boyadjian said. “I’ll put you right on top of the motherfuckers, if I can.”
Boyadjian called Shofly back, monitored the exits as she passed them, and, as he predicted, was able to move up behind her in his BMW as they approached the Getty Museum. He gave her directions to the Sherman Oaks Hospital emergency room. When they got to the Ventura Freeway, she went east and he went west, with the gray Toyota Tundra a half mile ahead, twenty cars between them.
Sovern led the paradethrough the night past Oxnard, where he kept his boat, and up the coast past richie-rich Santa Barbara, through some hills with moderately scary drop-offs, and down into the Santa Ynez Valley.
“Great road for a Porsche,” Letty said. “My dad would love this.”
“Sure, if you don’t mind killing yourself,” Baxter said. “Which you would, eventually.”
As they reached the high point of the road, before dropping into the valley, Kaiser said to Cartwright, “Those headlights.”
She said, “Yeah.”
Letty: “What?”
“We’ve had a set of those super-white European car headlights behind us since the 405,” Kaiser said. “Sometimes way back, sometimes closer, and there are a lot of other super-whites, but...”
“They’re not all the same,” Cartwright said. “And these looked sorta the same, all the way up here.”
Baxter: “Fuck me.”
They passed a turnoff to a lake campground, and farther down the hill the road began to flatten out and another, smaller road branched off to the left. The trailing car turned on its left-turn signal and made the turn.
Cartwright said, “Huh.”
They could see the lights of Santa Ynez ahead when the caravan of cars, following Sovern, took a left turn, onto what seemed more like an uphill driveway than a public street. As Baxter slowed to follow, Kaiser said, “Look.”
Cartwright turned her head. They couldn’t see the actual car. They could see it was coming slowly and that the headlights were super-white.
Baxter was already into the turn, said, “Shit. Too late to turn back.”
And itwasa driveway. At the top was a U-shaped motel with a half-dozen scraggly palm trees spaced along the edge of the approach. Parking was all along the motel’s U-shaped perimeter, both front and back. Sovern led the caravan past the building and around to the back parking lot.
