Death Watch Read online

  Agent Victor Fernandez stood to greet them. “Have a seat.”

  He offered them two plastic folding chairs, then perched in front of them on the edge of a desk stacked high with paperwork. Fernandez himself looked as disheveled as his desk—his unimaginative blue-and-red-striped tie was pulled loose, his sleeves were sloppily rolled up to his elbows, and his salt-and-pepper gray hair was mussed.

  Hunz introduced Sydney as a reporter at KSMJ. He didn’t give her name.

  “I’ll make it short and sweet,” Fernandez said. “We’ve been following up on your Russian mafia theory and have located General Baranov on Barbados. He owns a villa on the island, which pretty much serves as a transshipping point for narcotics bound for Europe and the US.”

  “Have you made contact?” Hunz inched forward in his seat.

  Fernandez crossed his arms. They were thick and hairy. “It’s not exactly the kind of villa Jehovah’s Witnesses would call on, if you know what I mean. We’re working in cooperation with the Royal Barbados Police through the Barbados consulate here in LA. They’ll attempt to make contact soon.”

  “Soon. You mean in a matter of hours?” Hunz asked.

  The agent’s eyes squinted with suspicion.

  Hunz seemed to read his expression. “Every hour people are dying. The sooner we nab this renegade, the more lives we can save.”

  Fernandez nodded. “Four to six hours.”

  “What about Kiselev?” Hunz said. “Any leads on a lab connected to Baranov that is capable of nanotechnology research?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “You’ll call me as soon as you hear anything?”

  “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “Agent Fernandez, the sooner this information gets out to the public, the better. Think internationally. The middle of the night here is daytime in Europe.”

  Sydney was impressed with Hunz Vonner’s style. He had a way of pressing without coming across as annoying.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I hear something,” Fernandez said.

  “So now we wait,” Sydney said, back in the car. The key was in the ignition. She hadn’t turned it.

  “We press forward,” Hunz said. “What else have you got?”

  Not much. She’d spent most of the morning at the hotel consoling Cheryl McCormick. After that, Cori Zinn had waylaid her in Helen’s office.

  She reached into the backseat and grabbed the folded printouts she’d shoved into her purse. “This is a list of death watch victims from the Homeland Security Web site. There are a few personal details, but not much. No record of immunizations or flu shots.”

  Hunz scanned the names. “They could be using a different delivery method for the nanobots.” Apparently he hadn’t spent all morning eating croissants with Sol Rosenthal. He’d done some investigating on his own.

  He flipped a page. The one with Lyle Vandeveer’s name on it. If the reminder of the previous night had any effect on him, he didn’t show it.

  “Cheryl McCormick,” he said, coming to her name. Sydney had highlighted it.

  “Visiting LA from Illinois,” Sydney said. “She’s a contestant on a game show. Wonder Wheel. Ever hear of it?”

  “No. Illinois. Is it far from here?”

  “Halfway across the continent. I’ve sort of taken her under my wing,” Sydney said. “She’s asked me to be there with her tonight.”

  Hunz looked up. That wasn’t something he wanted to hear. “Another hand-holding evening?”

  Sydney’s anger flared. She did her best not to let it show. “Cheryl is recently widowed, has a three-year-old daughter, and is pregnant. She’s due in a month.”

  “A pregnant woman with a death watch notice flew halfway across the continent to go on some kind of game show?”

  “She was handed the death watch notice when she checked into the hotel. She’s a widow and needs the money.”

  “The notice was waiting for her when she arrived?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How far in advance are these appearances scheduled?”

  Sydney brightened. “You see, that’s the thing! She was a phone-in contestant the night before and won some money. That qualified her along with other phone-in contestants to appear on the show. The first qualifier to arrive at the designated hotel becomes a contestant. She grabbed up her stuff, didn’t tell anyone, and flew to Los Angeles on a red-eye.”

  “A red-eye?”

  “A middle-of-the-night flight.”

  “The game show people knew she was coming?”

  “Not until she arrived.”

  “Interesting.”

  “That’s what I thought!” Sydney said.

  “Still"—Hunz shook his head—"this McCormick girl’s a waste of time.”

  “For Pete’s sake!” Sydney shouted. She tried to hold it back. Couldn’t. “Just because she doesn’t fit your theory, doesn’t mean she’s a waste of time! You know, for some people these death watch notices are more than just a news story. These are human beings we’re talking about. Show a little compassion.”

  Hunz sat back, obviously surprised by her outburst. But he didn’t dwell on it long. “What’s this?” he asked. He held up the email printout from Billy Peppers, the one instructing Sydney to meet him at Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery.

  “He claims to know who is behind Death Watch,” Sydney said.

  “What do you know about him?”

  Sydney sighed. She couldn’t shift emotional gears as fast as Hunz Vonner. “He lives on the street. Cori Zinn did a spotlight news story on the number of homeless people with mental problems. She interviewed him. He preaches on street corners. Says he talks to angels.”

  “You’ve met him?”

  “I’ve never met him.”

  “So you didn’t keep this appointment.”

  “An appointment is agreed upon between two people. I never agreed to meet him.” Sydney was feeling defensive. “I told you, I was with Cheryl McCormick.”

  “Let’s go talk to him.”

  “Now?”

  Hunz was buckling his seat belt.

  “He asked me to meet him hours ago.”

  “You said he lives on the street. He might still be there. It’s not as though he has other pressing business.”

  Sydney started the car. “Cheryl McCormick is a waste of time, but a mentally deranged transient isn’t?”

  “We won’t know that until we talk to him,” Hunz said. Then he added, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that to be successful in this business, you have to be a bloodhound. Relentless. You have to track down every lead. Ninety percent of them waste your time. And sometimes, if you get lucky, your best information comes from the least likely sources. We know Cheryl’s story; now let’s go get the angel-talker’s story.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sydney’s beige Volvo trolled the narrow roadways of Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery at a five-mile-an-hour pace, meandering past mausoleums, old-fashioned headstones, and obelisks that marked the final resting places of Hollywood’s greatest legends. Douglas Fairbanks was buried here, so was Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille, Tyrone Power, Victor Fleming, and Darla Hood, everybody’s sweetheart of Little Rascals fame.

  In the passenger seat Hunz Vonner was fidgety. His right leg bounced up and down nervously as he searched among the tombstones for a homeless man. Sydney had never seen Hunz on edge like this. The suave international reporter almost seemed human.

  They cruised down Maple Avenue past the elaborate marble tomb of Douglas Fairbanks with its sunken garden. Water lilies shared the pool with sun sparkles. On Sydney’s side of the car they rimmed a lake with an island featuring a whitewashed Grecian tomb.

  Hunz turned suddenly in his seat, craning his neck.

  Sydney slowed the car. “See anything?”

  “No,” he said, sounding disappointed. He turned back around. His foot kicked empty breakfast drink cans on the floorboard.
/>   “You can just toss those in the back.”

  He left them there. “Why do Americans insist on living in their automobiles?” Hunz groused. “An automobile is a driving machine, not a living quarters on wheels. Here in the States you eat and drink in your cars; you do business in them, with some people turning them into an office; you take naps in them, watch movies, and now videos; you use them as phone booths for cell phones; you convert them to music halls with elaborate sound systems; and, of course, what takes place in the backseats of American automobiles is legendary.”

  “What do you drive?” Sydney asked.

  “BMW 5er.”

  “Figures.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Sydney shrugged. “You look like a Beamer kind of guy.”

  “BMW makes a precision machine,” Hunz said. “This may come as a revelation to you, but some people purchase automobiles for reasons other than how many cup holders they have.”

  The road turned gently to the right. Through three towering palm trees, Sydney spotted a couple of men trimming a hedge.

  “Let’s see if they know anything,” she said.

  Sydney parked the car and they approached the groundskeepers, who were both wearing safety goggles and manning electric hedge clippers. One of them looked up and saw Sydney. From the expression on his face, you would have thought Jayne Mansfield had climbed out of her grave to stretch her legs. His coworker shared his rapture. Simultaneously they shut off their trimmers and pulled off the safety goggles for a better look.

  “Can I help you, darlin’?” one of them said.

  If someone had interviewed them later, it’s doubtful either of them would have remembered a man accompanying Sydney.

  “This may sound a bit strange,” she began.

  “Darlin’, you don’t know strange. Herb and I have worked in this here cemetery for nigh onto ten years. We got stories that’ll straighten the curls right outta that gorgeous blonde hair of yours.”

  Sydney ignored the banter. Two or three times a day men made fools of themselves over her. “We’re looking for a homeless man,” she said. “We don’t have much of a description other than that, but he said he’d be here today about noon. Did you happen to see him?”

  “Yeah, we did!” the shorter worker, Herb, exclaimed, obviously overjoyed at being able to help out a beautiful woman. “There was this one guy. About noon, too, wouldn’t you say, Al? He was a strange one. Real strange. We was gonna run him out ‘cause it’s not good for business to have bums hangin’ around here, you know what I mean? I mean, we get a lot of tourists comin’ here to see stars, and the last thing we want them to see is bums layin’ all over the place. Gives the place a bad name, if you know what I mean. And, believe me, we get ‘em all the time. Two maybe three every—”

  His coworker interrupted, “We approached this guy.”

  “Al! I was telling it. Let me tell it!”

  “Then tell it, and quit blabberin’ nonsense,” Al replied.

  “Anyway, like I was saying, he was a strange one. And when we approached him, he was talkin’ to someone, but no one was there with him! I mean, he was standin’ there all alone, plain as day. And then, when we told him to leave, he seemed real perturbed, you know? Like we was interruptin’ a private conversation or somethin’.”

  “He was talking to someone?” Sydney said. “Maybe he had a cell phone.”

  “Naw, bums don’t got cells,” Herb said. “He was talkin’ to the air. Usin’ both hands, like he was arguing with someone, or somethin’. Only no one was there.”

  “Hey, Herb. Maybe he was talkin’ to Harvey. You know, Harvey? Jimmy Stewart’s invisible rabbit?”

  Herb guffawed, obviously thinking that was funny.

  “Thanks, guys,” Sydney said. She’d seen enough of the Herb and Al act.

  “Wait! There’s more!” Al said. “He kept complaining about having to go to Chicago.”

  “Chicago?”

  “Yeah. Then he said something real strange. He said, ‘How do you expect me to get there? I ain’t got wings!’ That’s exactly what he said. ‘I ain’t got wings.’ I’m not making this stuff up.”

  “Al! I was gonna tell her that,” Herb complained. “You said I could tell. That’s the best part.”

  “He said he was going to Chicago?” Sydney asked.

  “Now I wouldn’t say that, darlin’,” Al said. “This guy was loonier than Mel Blanc. I’ve seen his kind before. They talk and talk like that, but it don’t mean nothing. After that, he just took off.”

  “Yeah, we chased him outta here.”

  “Thank you, guys,” Sydney said. “You’ve been a big help.” She and Hunz turned to leave.

  “Hey, darlin’,” Herb called after her. “If you’d like to stick around, we can give you a personal tour of the place. Show you things tourists don’t get to see.”

  “Thanks, fellas,” Sydney said. “I’ll take a rain check.”

  When they were back in the car, Sydney said, “Well, he was here.” She looked at her watch. “Where to now? I have about two hours before I pick up Cheryl. I’m taking her to the studio.”

  Hunz was studying the email printout. “He calls himself The Rev,” he said. “Reverend, right?”

  “Probably. Though it might be The Revolutionary.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s possible. Everybody’s political out here. Many of them are still stuck in the sixties. Long hair. Tattered jeans. Tie-dyed shirts. The whole thing. But given the fact that he claims to talk to angels, ‘The Reverend’ is probably our best bet.”

  “So, besides alleys and parks, what places would a homeless man with a religious streak frequent?”

  “The rescue mission,” Sydney said.

  “Is it close?”

  “Five or six miles.”

  “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Gospel Rescue Mission was located on East Fifth Street in Little Tokyo. Once a thriving Japanese community, the downtown area was in transition. Only a single block of the original Little Tokyo was still intact with oriental markets, clothing shops, and Japanese-language businesses. The surrounding city blocks were a juxtaposition of new development and skid row.

  The sleek new Disney Hall was just a few blocks away, while the ten-story Higgens building, built in 1911 and now an eyesore, was an abandoned shell of a bygone era.

  Also in the area were the Los Angeles Times building, the county courthouse, and city hall with its distinctive sandstone tower, the longtime symbol of Los Angeles, constructed with sand from every county in California and water from the state’s twenty-one missions.

  Fifth Street had already surrendered to shadows when Sydney turned onto it. Stripped of sunlight the buildings looked even older than they were. Many were boarded up with weathered sheets of plywood and tattered posters several layers deep. The wind toyed with the trash in the gutters, stuffing it in corners. A good number of ragged, colorless, homeless people lined the sidewalks. The luckier ones were camped out in doorways.

  “There it is.” Hunz pointed to a red brick building.

  Protruding at a right angle from the building was a white neon cross with red letters: JESUS SAVES. Beneath it, in block letters:

  GOSPEL RESCUE MISSION.

  Sydney drove half a block farther before locating a parking place. A shadowy chill greeted them as they climbed out of the car.

  Hunz Vonner’s European-cut suit and Sydney’s brilliant blonde hair and clean complexion made them an instant spectacle on the street. Eyes followed them with the detachment of people watching television.

  “Have you come to volunteer?” A happy man with short, thinning red hair and wearing a sweater-vest greeted them as they walked into the mission. They stood in a large room filled with wooden chairs lined in rows. A massive wooden pulpit was at the far end of the room facing the chairs. Next to the entrance was a table with stacks of religious tracts. There was an open passageway on the side
wall. Kitchen sounds and smells came from it.

  “Actually, we’re looking for someone,” Sydney said.

  Happy man’s smile turned defensive, but not unfriendly. “Many of our guests prefer not to be found,” he said. “May I ask about the nature of your inquiry?”

  Sydney handed him her card. “I’m with KSMJ,” she said. “This is Hunz Vonner, a visiting newscaster.”

  The man’s eyes lit up in recognition. “I saw you last night on the news,” he said to Hunz. “That man in Pasadena who died. The death watch victim.”

  “It’s the death watch notices that bring us here,” Sydney said. “Are you familiar with them?”

  “I wish to God I wasn’t.”

  Sydney continued: “This morning I received a message from a man who identified himself as The Rev. He said he wanted to meet me, that he had some information on Death Watch.”

  “Billy?” the man said.

  “You know him?”

  The man in the sweater-vest nodded and then gestured for them to follow. He led them between a row of empty chairs, through the side door, past a brightly lit kitchen where a dozen workers were stirring steaming pots, lining rolls on baking sheets, and replenishing saltshakers. The end of the hallway opened up to a large dining room set with tables and chairs. They didn’t go that far. Halfway down the hallway they entered an office.

  “By the way, I’m Ken Overton.” His voice was deeper in this room, as though a mantle of authority had been placed over his sweater-vest as he entered the office. He shook Hunz and Sydney’s hands crisply, then sat behind a desk that nearly filled the room, not because the desk was that large, but because the room was that small. He offered Sydney and Hunz a pair of old wooden chairs that swayed when they sat down.

  Overton interlaced his fingers and placed them gently atop the desk. “Billy Pepper’s a good man. Hardworking. Intelligent. Homeless by choice.”