The Big Sheep Page 12

  “Go on, Mr. Keane,” Banerjee said. “Mr. Fowler is your partner. Surely, you trust him.”

  Keane was silent a moment longer. At last he said, “Maelstrom was a project I worked on several years ago.”

  “What kind of project?” I asked.

  “It’s not important,” said Keane. “It has nothing to do with this case.”

  I sighed. There it was again. Not relevant. Nothing to see here.

  “No,” said Banerjee. “But it has everything to do with you, Mr. Keane.”

  “How did you find out about Maelstrom?” Keane asked. He was clearly rattled, which I found extremely unsettling. I’d never seen Keane rattled before. “Nearly everyone involved is—”

  “Dead?” said Banerjee. “Nearly everyone, yes,” he said. “But not everyone. You, for instance. I’m a very careful man, Mr. Keane. I didn’t make the decision to hire you lightly. Although, as you deduced, I didn’t originally plan on you conducting a full investigation, I wouldn’t have put you in a position to discover potentially compromising information about Esper if I didn’t have some leverage over you. A few weeks before our sheep went missing, I happened to come into some information about Project Maelstrom, and I held on to it in case I needed it.” He smiled broadly at Keane. “So when our sheep went missing, I knew you were the perfect man for the job.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask your friends in the LAPD to help you?” asked Keane.

  Banerjee smiled. “I prefer to keep my relationship with the police simple,” said Banerjee. “I help them, they help me. No need for them to get involved with the seamier side of my business.”

  “What’s in here?” I asked, indicating the envelope. Keane continued to stare at Banerjee dispassionately.

  “Everything I could find about Maelstrom,” said Banerjee. “It’s by no means a complete accounting of the project, but it will give you a general idea. Your boss doesn’t come off too well, I’m afraid. You can keep that copy; I’ve got another.”

  I was sorely tempted to pick up the envelope and tear it open, but I was pretty sure that was exactly what Banerjee wanted me to do, so I hesitated.

  “Not a big reader?” Banerjee said, smiling at me. “Let me give you the executive summary. Ten years ago Los Angeles was on the verge of imploding. Half the city was rioting. Fires everywhere. Anybody who had the means had gotten out, and the people who were left behind were just trying to survive. Nobody expected the city to last. But then, by some miracle, our notoriously ineffective city, state, and federal governments got together and came up with a plan to save Los Angeles: wall off the problem areas and focus on saving the more crucial parts of the city. You ever wonder how that happened, Mr. Fowler?”

  I had to admit, I had been as surprised as anyone by the city’s bold and decisive action during the crisis. At the time, the debate (to the extent there had been one) had centered on the ethics of essentially trying to quarantine the criminal element within the city. Only a few fringe conspiracy theorists had thought to ask how the city had come up with such an effective plan so quickly.

  “You’re saying Keane knew the Collapse was coming,” I said. “That this Maelstrom project developed the plan to create the Disincorporated Zone in advance.” No wonder Keane wanted to keep that secret: he had known the Collapse was coming and had done nothing to stop it. “Jesus, Keane,” I said. “Why didn’t you do something? Hundreds of thousands of people died during the Collapse. If you had warned the feds, maybe they could have done something.”

  Keane didn’t reply.

  “Don’t be too hard on him,” said Banerjee. “Maelstrom was much bigger than one person. There probably was nothing he could do to prevent the Collapse. Of course, it’s doubtful the general public will see it that way. And the feds will probably want to prosecute him for conspiracy to commit mass murder or some damn thing. In any case, understand I’d prefer to keep this information secret. I really only brought it up because your meeting with Selah Fiore has me … concerned. Remember who you work for, and everything will work out just fine.”

  “I’ve never double-crossed a client,” said Keane.

  “Good,” said Banerjee. “Deliver the sheep, and we won’t have a problem.”

  “And if we fail?” I asked.

  Banerjee returned Keane’s glare. “Then the contents of that envelope will be delivered to my friends at the FBI.”

  FOURTEEN

  Ten minutes after leaving Banerjee’s office we were once again soaring over Los Angeles in the aircar. The envelope labeled MAELSTROM rested on the dash.

  “Are you going to open it?” I asked.

  “No,” said Keane.

  “Then may I?”

  “It has no bearing on our present case,” said Keane. “If you have some other pressing reason to review the contents, be my guest.”

  “No need,” I said. “But to be clear, if he gives that information to the FBI…”

  Keane stared straight ahead. “It will destroy me,” he said.

  We rode the rest of the way to the office in silence. I dropped Keane off and asked the car’s nav system to bring up all the Nifty Truck Rental locations in Los Angeles. There were fourteen of them. I figured I’d start at the Inglewood location and move outward. Maybe one of them had a truck that had been returned with its innards smelling like a frightened sheep. On the way to Inglewood, I called April. I hadn’t talked to her since I’d hung up on her the previous morning.

  “Oh, hello,” she said cheerfully. “I think I recognize this number. You’re some sort of appendage of that famous phenomenological inquisitor, Erasmus Keane, aren’t you? Do you have his permission to be using the comm?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Things have been just … well, crazy.”

  “You haven’t found Priya yet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, Tom will be thrilled you’re still on the case,” she said. “He’s looking for any excuse to go down to the set and gawk at her. I think he’s dummying up some fake legal documents right now.”

  It took a moment for me to register that Tom was her lawyer friend who had spotted Priya on the set of the Prima Facie commercial yesterday. “Tell Tom his sacrifice is appreciated,” I said.

  “So I should tell him to take his fake contracts down there?”

  “Can’t hurt to have another set of eyes looking out for Priya,” I said.

  “Are you working on her case now?” April asked.

  “Actually, I’m back on the hunt for the missing sheep,” I said.

  “How’s that going?”

  “Not great. We had a lead on it the other night, but things went sideways and we lost her again. It seems our sheep is in high demand.”

  “Well, I don’t think Tom can help you there.”

  “I suppose not,” I said. “Hey, there’s one more thing I wanted to ask you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Does the word maelstrom mean anything to you?”

  “You mean like a storm?”

  “A very powerful whirlpool,” I said. I had already done a Web search for the word and hadn’t found much of interest beyond the dictionary definition.

  “Sounds like you know more than I do,” she said.

  “So you’ve never heard of a Project Maelstrom?”

  “Not that I can recall. What’s this about?”

  “Probably nothing,” I said. “Thanks for your help, April.”

  “Anytime.” She ended the call.

  It was just after three o’clock, so I figured I had enough time to hit at least three or four Nifty Truck Rental locations before I needed to head downtown to meet April. I parked at the Inglewood location and sat for a moment, staring at the still-sealed envelope on the dash. If Keane really did have some dark, criminal past, didn’t I deserve to know about it? I was his partner, after all. If he was involved in something illegal, it could come back on me. I’d never asked about his life before becoming Erasmus Keane, just as I had never formally asked him to look into Gwen�
��s disappearance. In my mind, we had a sort of unspoken agreement that he would help me with the latter if I didn’t bring up the former. After three years, though, this arrangement had produced no fruit, not a single lead on what had happened to Gwen, and I had begun to wonder if I wasn’t imagining this agreement—or at least taking it much more seriously than Keane was. I’d exhausted most potential leads before I’d started working for Keane, but I kept working on her case in my spare time, tracking down classmates, ex-boyfriends, previous employers … anyone who might have had a clue what had happened to Gwen. I’d never really expected Keane to help with the mundane stuff, of course. In fact, part of my frustration with Keane was that it was virtually impossible to quantify his work. He had no process I could discern, so I couldn’t say for certain he wasn’t doing anything to help find Gwen. All I knew was that the flashes of insight we relied on to solve other cases were in extremely short supply when it came to locating my ex-girlfriend.

  Whether or not an agreement was still in effect (or even existed), though, what could be the harm in looking in the envelope? I could reseal the envelope, and Keane would never know. Would he?

  I sighed and put the envelope in the glove compartment. Of course he would know. I don’t know how, but he would know. He always knew.

  I got out of the car and went to the Nifty Truck Rental office. The pimply-faced kid behind the counter wouldn’t give me the time of day at first, but he got a lot more helpful after I slipped him a hundred new-dollar note.

  Keane and I always used new dollars for bribes, because they got people’s attention. The conversion rate for new dollars to greenbacks was pegged by the government at twenty to one, but the truth was that nobody really wanted those wrinkled, ugly old bills. I think it was a psychological barrier as much as any sort of economic principle at work: those who had held a lot of dollars didn’t like to be reminded how much they had lost in the Collapse, and those who had dumped their dollars at the bottom of the market didn’t like to be reminded of how much more they’d lost by not waiting it out. Greenbacks were just bad juju, and everyone felt it. New dollars held the promise of better days to come.

  Anyway, the pimply-faced kid didn’t recall renting a truck to anyone matching the descriptions of the three sheep thieves I gave him, but he let me sniff around the company’s recently returned trucks and gave me a printout of the last few days of rental records. The rental trucks smelled like … well, rental trucks, and no names on the printouts jumped out at me. Not a lot of information for a hundred new dollars, but maybe I’d have better luck at the next Nifty location.

  Sadly, I struck out there as well. This store, in the Torrance area, was staffed by a pretty young blond woman, and I might have charmed her into giving me the rental logs if her manager, a dour Middle Eastern gentleman, didn’t keep peeking out of the office at me, throwing off my mojo. I had her show me a few trucks under the pretense of needing to move some furniture, but when I insisted on seeing (not to mention smelling) the interior of six different identical trucks, the manager decided he needed to take over. When I agreed to take one of the trucks, he handed me back to the blonde, and I slipped her a hundred for the rental records while he took a phone call, and then got the hell out of there.

  I was on my way to the third closest location, northeast of Downtown, when my comm chirped. It was Dr. Takemago, the scientist Keane and I had talked to at the Esper Corporation.

  “Hello, Doctor,” I said. “What can I do for you? Another sheep gone missing?”

  “Mr. Fowler?” I heard Takemago’s voice say. “I tried to call Mr. Keane, but he didn’t answer. Something very strange is happening.”

  “What is it, Dr. Takemago?”

  “Mary’s GPS tracker. It’s back online.”

  “You mean it’s transmitting?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So you have Mary’s location?”

  “Yes.” My comm display lit up with coordinates. After a moment the comm identified the location.

  “She’s in Griffith Park,” I said.

  “It would appear so,” said Dr. Takemago.

  “Have you told anyone else this?”

  “No,” said Dr. Takemago.

  “Doctor, this is important,” I said. “You haven’t told anyone at Esper. Not even Jason Banerjee?” I was fairly certain Banerjee didn’t want the police involved in the case, but I wasn’t sure what he might do if he knew the sheep had been located. He might try to cut Keane and me out of the deal entirely.

  “I have told no one but you,” she said. Then her voice got quiet. “I … don’t trust Mr. Banerjee,” she said.

  “You and me both, sister,” I said. “Don’t say a word to anyone. I’ll get ahold of Keane. Stay ready. When I get close to the park, I’ll message you for updated coordinates. We’ll get your sheep for you.”

  “Safely, please,” said Dr. Takemago. “It is … imperative that the animal not be harmed.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, and ended the call. I put the car on a course to Griffith Park and called Keane. He didn’t answer, so I left him a message. I couldn’t imagine why the thieves would take Mary the sheep to a public park, or why they would have reactivated her tracking device, but there wasn’t much to do but go there and find out.

  When I got near the park, I messaged Takemago again, and she sent me another set of coordinates. The sheep had moved a few hundred yards to the northwest. The original coordinates Takemago had sent me were near the southeast entrance of the park, but now the sheep was a bit farther into the park—probably near the old merry-go-round. If I were Keane, I’d probably just have landed the aircar right in the middle of the park, but I didn’t particularly want to get arrested—nor did I want to terrify Mary the sheep into running headlong into a ravine. I parked in the closest lot I could find and then took off on foot toward the coordinates. The parking lot was mostly empty, and only a few dozen people—mostly young couples and families with small children—meandered around the area.

  I was nearing the carousel when another message, with a third set of coordinates, came in from Takemago. The sheep was moving more slowly now, north by northwest. It should be just on the other side of the merry-go-round. I walked clockwise around the perimeter, my hand on my gun, not knowing what to expect. The tracker coordinates were probably only accurate to within thirty feet or so, but I didn’t think I’d have any trouble spotting a three-hundred pound sheep anywhere in the vicinity.

  But I didn’t see it. All I saw were families, couples … and one very shapely young woman with long black hair. I’m usually pretty good at staying on task when I’m working, but I couldn’t help but admire this girl’s figure. In fact, I was still looking when she turned around and found myself—after a momentary correction of attitude—staring straight into the eyes of a face that had become very familiar of late.

  “Priya,” I said. It was her. It had to be. The exact same woman I had met in Keane’s office two days before.

  Her eyes were wide with fear. “Do I … know you?” she asked.

  I noticed, fifty or so yards away, a muscular man with dark spiky hair walking rapidly toward us.

  “I work for Erasmus Keane,” I said. “You know who that is?” There was no hint of recognition in her face. Priya had forgotten she’d ever met me. Again.

  “The private investigator? But how—”

  “Mr. Keane is … looking into your situation,” I said. “I’m his partner. You can trust me.”

  “Um, okay,” she said, looking around nervously. She didn’t sound convinced. I didn’t blame her. Spike had closed about half the distance between us.

  “Do you have a GPS tracker on you?” I asked. “A small electronic device?”

  She nodded and pulled something from her purse. It was a little plastic box, complete with a clip that could be used to attach it to a belt—or animal collar.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know if I should—”


  “Priya!” called the muscular man, who was coming up behind her.

  “Somebody told you to come here,” I said. “Somebody wanted you to meet me here.”

  “I found a letter in my room at the Four Seasons this morning. It told me to go to Selah’s office, find the tracker thing, and then go to the merry-go-round at Griffith Park.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The letter was from your—”

  “Priya,” said Spike sternly, putting his hand on her shoulder. “You can’t run off like that. It’s not safe.” He was regarding me suspiciously. Around us, people had begun to turn and stare at Priya. Priya’s eyes darted from me to the gathering crowd. She looked like a frightened little girl.

  “Who is this guy?” asked Spike. “You said you wanted to go for a walk in the park. You didn’t say anything about meeting someone.”

  “I … don’t know him,” said Priya distantly.

  “I’m a friend,” I said. I saw Spike’s eyes fall to my gun. “A concerned friend. Who are you?”

  “This is Carlos,” said Priya. “My bodyguard.”

  Another bodyguard. How many bodyguards did one woman need?

  “Well, concerned friend,” said Carlos. “Ms. Mistry needs to be going.” He grabbed her upper arm lightly and began to coax her away.

  “I’m extremely concerned,” I said, my hand hovering over my gun. I didn’t know what was going on here, but I had a pretty good idea that whoever had sent the letter that had prompted the original Priya to hire Erasmus Keane had also sent the letter that told this Priya to come to Griffith Park. Noogus must have figured out that Keane and I were looking for the sheep, and that the tracking device would lure us here. That meant he wanted Keane to meet Priya. But I didn’t yet know why, and I wasn’t about to lose her until I found out.

  “Priya,” said Carlos, putting himself between me and her, “go to the car.” His hand was on his own sidearm. Priya began moving uncertainly away from us.

  “You don’t want to do that,” I said. “Carlos, you seem like a decent guy. I don’t want to shoot you. But I can’t let you take Priya.”