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On the way backto Los Angeles, Letty, Baxter, and Cartwright talked sporadically about what had happened on the dock and at the police station.
Letty said to Cartwright, “You gave up your pistol pretty easily.”
She shrugged. “I got another one just like it, in my bag. Remind me to get it out.”
And Cartwright told Letty, “You know, I got all the reports about what happened in Pershing, the three guys you shot. You have a tendency to walk the edge. You try to be fair. The guy I shot was about to pull a gun. You never let a guy pull a gun.Never. There’s nothing you can do with a gun except shoot it. Or maybe, if you’re building a house, you could use it to drive nails, but basically... If a guy’s about to pull a gun, shoot him.”
“If he’s just going to threaten you...”
“Bullshit. You don’t know that unless you’re clairvoyant. If he goes for a gun, you shoot him,” Cartwright said. “Once a gun’s pointed at your heart, the options get really narrow.”
“You think I messed up?”
“Not exactly. There’s a learning process. Remember that gun fights aren’t fair... or shouldn’t be. Asshole tries to pull a gun, shoot his ass, right now. Like a cop would.”
Baxter: “Remind me not to annoy you.”
“I’m easily annoyed,” Cartwright said.
Baxter: “Really? Who woulda thought?”
Eighteen
Leigh Lawrence had one defining talent: when she was working, she was invisible. One example: when she was working and second in line at Starbucks, the barista would serve the first person, then go to the third. Another: she’d been on dates, when she was working, and the waiter had asked her date, “Will anyone be joining you?”
If someone looked at her closely, that someone might conclude that she was pretty, but not in a distinctive way, with a slight olive complexion, dark hair and eyes, rounded shoulders. When she was wearing her working clothes, which tended to browns and middle grays, she simply faded away.
On this night, she and her partner, Barry Martin, who was nearly as invisible as she was, were standing at the back corner of the Wanderer, a nice-enough waterfront lounge in Oxnard, looking toward the marina behind the Motel California.
Lawrence and Martin were licensed private detectives, but didn’t think of themselves that way. They didn’t carry guns, crack wise, hang out with mugs, get rousted by cops, or drink too much. They considered themselves researchers, who researched all kinds of things. Good with computers, good with public files, good with surveillance, good with conversation, they worked for Boyadjian Surveys.
Tom Boyadjian, their boss, operated in the intersection of cops, lawyers, crooks, political consultants, fixers, and others who made their livings by dealing favors. Both Lawrence and Martin had witnessed serious crimes, which they were skilled at forgetting.
“Where are they?” Martin muttered. They’d seen two harsh-looking men get out of a car in front of the motel.
“Could be talking to the clerk,” Lawrence said.
“Who will remember their faces,” Martin said.
“Not that clerk.”
“Mmm.”
From their vantage point, they could see the fat man and the two girls sitting on dock boxes, talking, while the target, Sovern, was doing something in his boat.
“How are they going to get rid of the witnesses?” Lawrence wondered. “This could get ugly. Do we really want to see it?”
“Nothing to do with us. We’re bystanders.” That wasn’t exactly true, as they were the ones who’d found Sovern. Sovern had made the mistake of having both phone and Internet bills sent to his boat through the motel, and the further mistake of having his photo on a California driver’s license.
Then the glass back door on the motel opened, and Martin said, “Here they come.”
They watched the whole drama unfold: the two men walkingdown the dock as rock music began banging out of Sovern’s boat, disturbing the night.
Step’s men stopped to talk to the two young women and the fat man who were sitting on the dock boxes. The conversation was short and then one of Step’s men unexpectedly dropped onto his butt, and then fell flat on the dock. One of the women had gotten to her feet, moving fast, her hand pointed at the head of the second thug.
“They shot him. Did you see that?” Martin said. “We gotta get out of here.”
He took a step away, but Lawrence caught his arm. “Not yet. Wait. There’s something funny going on.”
