The Memory Collector Part 27

Diaz looked up. He stared. "Boss. Man."

Kanan's arms and chest were covered with writing. He raised his left arm and made a fist. The words inked on his skin stood out. Diaz's expression hardened.

His gaze scrolled up Kanan's body. Find Alec. Get Slick.

I cannot make new memories. Write it down.

"Brief me," Diaz said.

"I went to Africa to get the product. It went wrong. Guy from the company tried to steal it behind our back. But now I'm home, and I don't have it. And the only way to get it now is from my brother."

"Boss, this thing... Misty, have you-"

"No. Pray she'll understand why I'm doing this."

Diaz nodded.

"Alec has access to the last existing sample of Slick. He'll never give it to me. And if he finds out I'm after it, he'll destroy it. We have to get to him before he does."

"Time frame?"

Kanan held up his left arm and made a fist. Sat.u.r.day they die.

"Right." Diaz sorted through the Post-its. "While I organize this stuff, you think you should go back to the hospital?"

Kanan didn't remember going to any hospital. "No time."

"Okay. Anybody you've told about this?"

"Don't know."

Diaz held up the phone. "Names in here? Intel? Targets? Opposition?"

"You have to tell me."

"Has it been turned on the whole time?"

"I don't know. Diaz, I can't remember where I've been since I landed at SFO. Double-check that I set the phone on airplane mode, so it won't transmit or receive." He ran his hands over his face. He felt d.a.m.ned tired. "If I followed my own procedures, I programmed the phone to activate at a particular hour but not before. It's the system I set up for Chira-Sayf. That way when execs go overseas n.o.body can hack their calls or track their location."

Diaz fiddled with the phone. "It's scheduled to activate at ten P.M. tonight. You expecting them to call?"

"I guess I must be."

"Who's looking for you?"

"Presume everybody. Police, the targets. Chira-Sayf."

Diaz held up a laminated hospital photo I.D. "Johanna Beckett?"

Kanan gazed at it with curiosity. For an instant he seemed to smell a woman's perfume, like incense. Seemed to feel his hand around the hilt of a knife.

What the h.e.l.l was wrong with him?

Diaz scrolled through the cell phone photos. He showed one to Kanan. Shot through the window of a restaurant, it showed the woman in the hospital I.D. photo, sitting at a table with his brother. It was labeled "Doc and Alec."

"She's involved," Kanan said.

"How?"

"I don't know." The admission felt like being splashed with paint stripper. "She could be chasing me. I could be chasing her. I don't know whose side she's on."

"But you think she can point you to Alec?"

"I must."

"And you can't find Alec at any of his usual haunts?"

"No."

Diaz paused. "This isn't payback. You know that, right?"

Kanan didn't answer that question. "What gear do you have here that we can use?"

"What are you looking for?"

Kanan reached behind his back and removed the HK pistol from the waistband of his jeans.

"What kind of ammo, and how many magazines do you want?" Diaz said.

"How many you got?"

city park. The street was busy with Friday rush-hour traffic. The sun The SFPD patrol car rolled past the elementary school and the little city park. The street was busy with Friday rush-hour traffic. The sun was heading down, headlights coming on. Officer Frank Liu drove halfway past the red Navigator before he noticed it parked at the curb.

At the corner he U-turned and cruised back. He pulled over behind the vehicle.

He checked the BOLO. Be on the lookout for a red, late-model Navigator, stolen that morning. He checked the license plate. Called it in.

Tang stopped the unmarked car on the street outside Jo's house. In the vanis.h.i.+ng light, the forested hills of the Presidio had darkened to black.

Jo opened the door of the car and got out. Tang leaned across.

"Beckett, this is unspooling fast. And two hundred eighty-three people were on Kanan's flight yesterday."

Jo held on to the door. "I know. We can't determine how quickly the next strike is coming, but we have to presume it's already inbound."

"Find him. Dig into Kanan's worm-eaten psyche and figure out where he is, before more people get dead." She gave Jo an unblinking look. "Get yourself checked out, too."

Jo nodded, feeling the gulp rise in her throat again, and began to shut the door. Tang lowered her voice.

"And your blouse is b.u.t.toned incorrectly."

Jo looked down. She turned hot. She shut the car door and jogged up her front steps fumbling with her b.u.t.tons.

When she opened the door, Tina leaned out the kitchen doorway.

"Hey, sis. Get changed or we'll be late."

Tina had a sunny smile on her face and a leftover doughnut in her hand. She was wearing black workout pants and a red tank top. She stuffed the doughnut in her mouth and licked sugar from her thumb.

Jo kissed her on the cheek. "I know, girls' night out. I can't."

Tina's shoulders dropped. "Don't do this."

"It's an emergency. I'm sorry." Jo handed Tina her phone and swept past her to the kitchen. "And please get rid of the 'Sick Sad Little World' ringtone."

"Fine, I'll give you something cheery from the Killers. And I'll tell you what we're doing tonight." Tina set the phone down and picked up her backpack. She took out a filmy turquoise scarf to which were sewn four dozen cheap silver coins. She shook it. The coins jingled and winked in the light.

"Are you loony?" Jo said. "Belly dancing?"

Tina tied it around her hips. "I told you-it's cultural."

"Our culture? You and me and Nefert.i.ti? Hon, I will never tie that scarf around myself and s.h.i.+mmy around a dance floor. I have no equipment to s.h.i.+mmy with."

"You promised," she said.

"I know. But I can't." Jo shook her head, consternated and amused at her sister's enthusiasms. "You like s.h.i.+ny things, Tina. Dis...o...b..a.l.l.s, cheap coins..."

Tina turned toward the French doors. "What was that?"

In the back yard, in the dusk, a small dark shape had plunged to the ground.

"I don't know," Jo said.

She went to the doors. As she peered at the lawn, another object hit the gra.s.s like a lawn dart falling to earth. She looked next door at the dark second-story windows of Ferd's rent-a-mansion.

"I don't like this."

She opened the French doors and went outside. On the gra.s.s lay a plush toy squid and a small floppy tiger. They were ragged and pathetic.

Tina walked up beside her. "Beanie Babies." She bent down. "They look... oh, yee-eww. Why would your neighbor mangle stuffed animals and throw them at your lawn?"

In reply, another one plunged through the air like a doomed sky-diver and crashed at Jo's feet.

"He wouldn't," Jo said. "It's not Ferd. It's his alter-id, Mr. Peebles."

"His pet's a bunny-basher?" Tina peered at the darkened mansion. "What are you going to do?"

"Not a thing. Ferd can retrieve this stuff when he gets home."

"Aren't you going to stop him?"

Jo headed for the house. "I ain't the monkey police. And unfortunately, I have bigger problems to attend to."

Tina looked at the limp bunny again. "They've still got the tags on, covered by tag protectors. Jo-they're mint-condition collectibles."

"Not anymore."

"Uh-oh." Tina crouched down. "It's scorched."

"Forget about it. Ferd will have to deal with this."

"No, freshly scorched. I can smell it." She glanced at Jo and up at the darkened window. Gingerly she put a fingertip on the toy's smushed little face. "It's still hot."

Jo came back and picked up the ragged bunny. It smelled of burned polyester. Even in the dusk, she could see a blackened patch between its ears. A little flame of alarm crackled inside her. She looked at the window and saw a flare of yellow light inside the black frame.

"Oh, c.r.a.p."

The light disappeared. Then it bloomed again and flickered. And vanished.

"He's got a lighter," she said.

She ran inside her kitchen with Tina on her heels. She opened a cabinet door and grabbed a set of keys from the rack inside.

"Ferd works at Compurama on Geary. Call and tell him to come home."

The shortest distance to Ferd's house was straight over the fence. Jo rushed out the kitchen door and across the gra.s.s, launched herself at the wood, grabbed the crossbeam, and scrambled over. She landed on Ferd's lawn with a thump and ran toward his back door, sorting keys. As she charged up his back steps, she saw another toy rocket from the upstairs window. It was a vividly colored bird. And this one either had a bright gleam in its eye, or it was alight.

d.a.m.n it. Molotov c.o.c.katoo.

Jo turned the key in the lock and raced through Ferd's dimly lit kitchen to the stairs. She ran up two at a time.

Upstairs was dark. She stopped at the top of the stairs and fumbled along the wall for a light switch. Ahead was the partially opened door to the Beanie Baby launch site.

She knew from trial and error-better known as failure-that when confronting a nimble, pea-brained adversary with opposable thumbs, the first task was to confine him. Which meant shutting him in a room with the door and window locked.

But she couldn't simply close the door down the hall. Do that, and Mr. Peebles could still burn the house down. She had to get in there and grab the lighter before he climbed out the window and ran off to stuff burning Beanies through her neighbors' mail slots.

Maybe Ferd was right. Maybe a monkey virus did exist.

And was making her crazy.

Quietly she approached the door. In the dark beyond it she heard cooing sounds and the click of the lighter wheel. A bobby pin was jammed into the lock on the door. The little sociopath had figured out how to jimmy it.

She slipped inside the room and shut the door behind her.