The Big Sheep Page 10

  “And what makes you think Hugo Díaz is at the house?” I asked.

  “It’s owned by a real estate management company,” said Keane. “Care to guess who the majority shareholder in that company is?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” I said.

  “Levi Magnusen,” Keane replied. “Also known as Mag-Lev.”

  “The DZ warlord?” I said. “What does he have to do with this?”

  “It would appear Mag-Lev masterminded the sheep theft,” said Keane. “Although we won’t know for sure until we verify Hugo Díaz is at the house.”

  “How would Hugo Díaz even get in contact with Mag-Lev? I wouldn’t think they go to a lot of the same parties.”

  “Turns out, this isn’t the first time something has gone missing from Esper,” Keane said. “About a year ago, a large quantity of a synthetic opioid went missing from the same lab. Later some of it turned up in the DZ, being distributed by members of the Tortuga gang. The police never identified a suspect, but the timing of the theft corresponds with some financial difficulties Hugo Díaz was having. Apparently, one of Jessica Díaz’s other endearing traits is a propensity for overspending on clothes and jewelry. They had over forty thousand in credit card debt. Over the next few months, after the police dropped the case, Hugo gradually paid off their debt.”

  “Even if Hugo stole the drugs, that still doesn’t explain how he’d get in touch with Mag-Lev.”

  “The drug theft was probably a crime of opportunity. Hugo saw a chance to take the drugs, and nabbed them. Then he probably started asking around, trying to figure out where he could unload them. Eventually he found one of Mag-Lev’s people, or they found him. So when Mag-Lev decided he needed one of Esper’s sheep, he had a man on the inside.”

  “What on Earth would a DZ warlord want with a genetically modified sheep anyway?” I asked.

  “That,” said Keane, “I have yet to determine.”

  We had arrived at the address Pavel had given Keane. It was a large Spanish colonial-style house with a lush green lawn, located in a wealthy area of Sherman Oaks. I parked a few houses down, behind Pavel’s Suburban. Keane got out and had a brief conversation with Pavel. Pavel drove off a moment later, and Keane got back into the car. He filled me in while I drove to Sherman Oaks.

  “Stephanie just left,” said Keane. “Pavel says she was alone.”

  “You know,” I said, “Anybody could be renting this house from that management company. How do we know Stephanie’s not just watering a friend’s plants?”

  “Oh, she’s watering his plants all right,” said Keane.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “That’s the worst euphemism for intercourse I’ve ever heard.”

  “No,” said Keane. “Intercourse is the worst euphemism for intercourse you’ve ever heard. Normal people call it fucking.”

  We waited for some time in silence. It had gotten dark, and some lights went on inside the house—the only indication anybody was home. I was still trying to figure out the logistics of Hugo Díaz’s illusory demise.

  “So if Díaz faked his death,” I said at last, “does that mean he didn’t really have a heart attack?”

  “Somebody had a heart attack,” said Keane. “But I don’t think it was Hugo Díaz.”

  “Who then?”

  “Somebody who looks an awful lot like Hugo Díaz. Enough to fool his wife.”

  “Could it have been a twin brother?” I asked.

  “Hey?”

  “The corpse Jessica Díaz identified. Maybe someone swapped out her real husband with the twin?”

  “A forty-eight-year-old twin would have developed enough physical differences that a spouse would notice the difference. But sure, it’s possible.”

  “You already looked into whether Hugo Díaz had a twin, didn’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  “And?”

  “Only child. And in answer to your next question, he was not adopted.”

  “Plastic surgery? They find someone who fits Hugo’s rough appearance and modify him to match?”

  “Who is ‘they’?” Keane asked.

  “Hell if I know,” I replied. “Whoever is behind all this.”

  Keane shrugged. “Again, the wife would know. Even a self-obsessed, sexually repressed harpy like Jessica Díaz. And why go to the trouble, just to draw attention away from Hugo Díaz? It’s an absurdly complicated plan if their goal is just to muddy the waters a bit. And after spending months, maybe years, carving him up to make him look exactly like Hugo Díaz, they forget to give him a titanium shoulder? Doesn’t fit. Ah, here we go.”

  The garage door had opened, and a brand-new BMW pulled out. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but the driver looked quite a bit like Hugo Díaz. The BMW backed out of the driveway, turned, and then sped down the road to the east.

  I followed at a safe distance in the aircar. Half an hour later, we found ourselves in a rundown industrial neighborhood in Inglewood, not far from the DZ. The BMW pulled into the parking lot of what looked like an abandoned auto body shop, and I cut the lights and parked down the street. The BMW was out of sight behind a fence.

  I opened the dash and handed a spare nine-millimeter to Keane. “Just in case,” I said. Keane generally didn’t care for guns, but I didn’t know what we were up against, and figured it was better to err on the safe side. He took it from me reluctantly, and the two of us crossed the street and made our way along the fence toward the body shop. As we neared the corner, I saw headlights turning onto the street a couple of blocks down. From the height of the lights, I surmised it was some kind of truck. “Back!” I whispered to Keane.

  We shuffled along the fence and retreated into the next driveway. I peaked around the corner as the car moved toward us and then turned down into the body shop. Evidently, Hugo—or whoever had been driving the BMW—was meeting someone.

  I ran along the fence again, stopped at the corner, and peered down the driveway just in time to see the truck’s taillights disappear around the back of the building. I drew my gun and ran down the driveway to the corner. Keane followed. Peering around the corner, I saw a twenty-foot box truck parked maybe thirty feet from the back of the building, with two men standing in front of it. The feet of a third man were visible on the other side. I couldn’t make out the license plate of the truck, but the side of the truck bore the logo for Nifty Truck Rental. In front of the truck was the BMW. Across the parking lot, a hundred or so yards away, was a long squat building, probably a strip mall. The lot was lit sporadically by streetlights, but the one nearest the body shop was out, so the only light in the vicinity was from the headlights of the truck. There was enough reflected light from the BMW to see that the two men on this side of the truck wore sidearms, and I assumed the third did as well. A fourth man, who may have been the driver of the BMW, was opening a door in the back of the building. The door closed, and he disappeared inside. The two men near me conversed in hushed tones.

  Tactically speaking, the situation wasn’t great. Ideally, I’d have sent Keane around behind the truck to cover the man on the far side while I dealt with the two closer to me. But for all his brilliance, Keane isn’t particularly stealthy, and he’s a terrible shot. I didn’t like the idea of him having to face off against an armed man who might be a hell of a lot more comfortable with a gun than he was. I didn’t know who these guys were, but I had to assume they were pros. So I stayed where I was while I assessed our options.

  Our options diminished significantly a second later, when two halogen floodlights went on, bathing the whole area in white light. I heard a garage door going up, and a moment later something like a child crying. I glanced at Keane, and he shot me an impatient glare. We both knew what that sound was. I shook my head. If we were going to intervene, we needed to wait until the right moment.

  I took another look and saw the fourth man walking the sheep toward the truck. I’d seen too many strange things over the past couple of days to say for certain it was him, but it sure look
ed like Hugo Díaz.

  “Room for one more?” said the man I took to be Hugo. He laughed after he said it, like it was a joke.

  “Fucking hilarious,” said one of the two men.

  “God damn,” said the other man. “That’s a big fuckin’ sheep.”

  “It’s like a fucking buffalo,” said the first. “Braden, open the truck and get the ramp.”

  Braden? I thought. For some reason, I hadn’t figured the sheep thieves would have a Braden among their ranks.

  The man on the far side of the truck, whose name was evidently Braden, came into view and opened the cargo door of the truck. This would have been a perfect moment to act, but now the men were too close to the sheep. If I drew on them and things went wrong, there was a pretty good chance Mary would end up taking a bullet. That was not an acceptable risk. Keane tapped impatiently on my shoulder, but I ignored him.

  Hugo and Braden coaxed the sheep up the ramp into the truck while the others watched. I was starting to think we were just going to have to hold off, wait for the truck to leave, and follow it. The problem was that there was no telling which way the driver might go out of the parking lot. We could get back in the Nissan and take to the air, but the sheep thieves would see us for sure.

  So: immobilize the truck. Decrease the number of variables, as Keane would say, and hope for the best. I stepped around the corner and took aim at the right rear tire. From inside the truck, I heard Díaz say, “Well, that’s that. Signed, sealed, and delivered. Now where’s the rest of my—” But his voice was cut off by the sound of two gunshots. For a sickening moment I thought Braden had shot the sheep, but then she gave a terrified bleat and bolted back down the ramp—and headed right at me.

  I’d never have guessed it by looking at her, but that sheep could move. I suddenly had a three-hundred-pound farm animal coming at me at close to thirty miles an hour. I reflexively trained my gun on her, but couldn’t bring myself to shoot. Maybe it was because Mary was a multimillion-dollar genetically engineered marvel of science, or maybe it was because she was just a big, dumb, scared animal trying to get out of a bad situation, and I felt sorry for her. I could have dived out of the way, but Keane was right behind me and had no idea what was coming. The only thing I could think to do was to raise my arms over my head and start yelling.

  It worked. That is, it scared the shit out of Mary the sheep, causing her to skid to a stop close enough to me that I could have grabbed a handful of wool, and then took off running across the parking lot. It also attracted the attention of the three sheep thieves. All three pulled their guns and started shooting. This time I dove out of the way, retreating back around the corner. Bullets tore chunks out of the masonry in front of my face.

  “Move!” I yelled to Keane. “Go!”

  Keane ran back down the driveway toward the front of the building, and I followed. We dodged another rain of bullets as we rounded the corner of the fence. The shooting stopped, but we kept running until we got to the car, where we could take cover and see anybody coming out of the driveway. We strained to hear what the sheep thieves were saying.

  “Who the fuck was that?” one of them asked.

  “The fuck do I know?” replied another.

  “Are they gone?”

  “I think so. Where’s that goddamned sheep?”

  “The fuck did you shoot him inside the truck?”

  The conversation continued, but it was mostly inaudible. After a moment all I could hear was a horrible screeching sound, like nails on a chalkboard.

  “Stay here,” I said to Keane. I ran across the street and peered around the fence down the driveway. There was no sign of anyone. I moved quickly down the driveway until I had a good view of the parking lot. The sheep was just a white patch of fuzz retreating in the distance. Two of the men were running after her, and the third was driving the truck. They’d left the ramp down, so it was dragging on the asphalt, making an unbearable screeching noise. Poor Mary had to be on the verge of cardiac arrest, from sheer terror if not from the physical strain. Finally the driver had the idea of making a wide right and then swinging around to the left, blocking Mary’s egress while the two men cornered her from behind. The geniuses had their guns out, so they either didn’t realize the value of the sheep or thought she could be coaxed with the threat of violence.

  I think Mary finally gave in from exhaustion more than anything else. The men managed to corral her and lead her back into the truck. They put up the ramp, closed the door, and drove off. One thing was certain: these guys weren’t pros.

  TWELVE

  I dreamt of the sheep again. I saw fear in her eyes, and I was trying to reassure her.

  “Someone is trying to kill me,” the sheep said.

  “Mr. Keane and I will get to the bottom of this,” I told her. “It’s going to be all right.” Then Keane showed up with his shears again. The sheep panicked and ran across a parking lot into a warehouse. I followed her, and found myself inside a fun house. When I looked in the mirror, the sheep was looking back at me.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” the sheep told me. Everywhere I looked, there were sheep. Hundreds of them, all around me. I wanted to help the sheep escape the mirrors, but I didn’t know how.

  “Keane,” I said. “Get in here. You have to help me.”

  “Sure,” said Keane, coming up behind me. He raised a gun and fired. Everywhere, mirrors shattered, leaving only blackness in their place.

  “Hell,” I said. “I could have done that.”

  “Done what?” said Keane.

  I opened my eyes to find him standing over my bed. “Never mind,” I said. “You don’t knock anymore?”

  “I did,” said Keane. “You told me to come in. Get up, we’ve got to get to the DiZzy Girl set.”

  An hour later we were inspecting the site of the explosion. Cleanup was already well under way; most of the rubble had been cleared, and there was no sign anyone had been killed. There was also no sign of Priya’s body double. We asked around a bit, and nobody seemed to know where she was. Priya hadn’t been seen on the set since the explosion either. Roy was beside himself. I was sorely tempted to tell him we had just seen Priya alive and well at a hotel a few miles away last night, but Keane insisted that was a bad idea until we knew exactly what was going on. Keane and I were debating what to do next when we saw Élan Durham walking our way.

  “Do you think he knows what’s going on with Priya?” I asked.

  “I would guess we’re about to find out,” replied Keane.

  But Élan didn’t want to talk to us about Priya. In fact, Durham didn’t particularly want to talk to us at all. “Somebody wants to see you,” he said gruffly. “This way.” He turned and started walking back the way he had come.

  I looked at Keane, who shrugged. We followed Durham to his trailer. He opened the door and gestured for us to go inside.

  As we entered, Keane and I both balked. Sitting on a burgundy leather couch inside the trailer was Selah Fiore, the legendary actress and current CEO of Flagship Media. Keane did a better job than I of hiding his surprise, but I think we were both a bit starstruck. Fiore smiled and got to her feet. After getting a scowl from Fiore, Élan did the same. “Mr. Keane,” she said, shaking his hand. “Mr. Fowler.” Élan nodded curtly to us, not saying a word. Clearly, this meeting was not his idea.

  “It’s an honor to meet you, Ms. Fiore,” said Keane. I nodded. Now in her late sixties, Selah Fiore’s beauty had begun to fade a bit, but she was still a head turner—not to mention one of the most powerful people in Los Angeles. “Please, gentlemen, sit down. Can I get you something to drink?” She held up a ceramic mug with the DiZzy Girl logo on it. “The coffee is excellent.”

  “I’m fine,” said Keane.

  “I’ll take some coffee, Ms. Fiore,” I heard myself saying.

  “Please,” she said. “Call me Selah.” She turned to Durham. “Élan, get Fowler some coffee.”

  “Seriously?” asked Durham. Selah glared at him
. Durham got up and poured me a cup of coffee.

  “Cream, two sugars,” I said with a smile. I hated cream and sugar in my coffee, but I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to have Élan Durham wait on me. Durham grumbled but fixed the coffee and brought it to me.

  “Thanks, Élan,” I said with a smile. I took a sip. Even with the cream and sugar, I had to admit it was damn good coffee.

  Durham turned toward Selah. “Anything else?” he asked, a tinge of irritation in his voice. “I’ve got a scene to shoot.”

  Selah gave him a dismissive wave, and he left, slamming the trailer door behind him. Selah laughed. “Talented guy,” she said, “but a bit of a prima donna. Has to be reminded who signs the checks.”

  Keane and I nodded as if we understood.

  “I’m surprised Mr. Durham is shooting today,” I said. “After the explosion yesterday, I mean.”

  “We’re on a very tight schedule,” said Selah. “The explosion was a setback, but I’m dealing with it.”

  A setback, I thought. That’s how she thinks of an event that killed at least three people.

  “How is Priya this morning?” I asked.

  Selah smiled at me. “Priya is taking the day off,” she said. “She’s a little shaken up, but she’ll be fine.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, and took what I hoped was an ominous sip of coffee.

  “I didn’t ask you here to talk about Priya, though,” said Selah. “I would like to talk to you about a completely unrelated matter.”

  Yeah, I thought. Anything other than Priya Mistry, probably.

  “Really,” said Keane. “And what might that be?”

  “I understand, Mr. Keane,” said Selah, “that you’re the best private investigator in Los Angeles.”

  “Phenomenological inquisitor,” said Keane. “But yes, I am.”