The angle of the sun told him it was approaching 6 p.m. when the door opened and the woman exited. She turned left on an interior walkway, away from where he sat, and moved toward the parking lot. He quickly slipped the book into his briefcase, closed the case, dropped to the sidewalk, and called out, “Oh, miss, hello.”
The woman turned around and looked at him.
“It’s me, miss. You remember?”
The woman cut across the lawn toward him, smiled, and said, “Of course, I remember you. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“What are you doing here?”
He lowered his gaze, coughed, and said, “I want to apologize for my poor behavior yesterday. I didn’t thank you for helping me. And it was terribly rude of me not to introduce myself.” He performed a brief half-bow, and said, “My name is…Cecil Rosandich.”
The woman smiled again. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Rosandich. My name is Janet Jenkins. Is there something I can do for you?”
“No, no, quite the opposite. I wanted to thank you for your help and give you a small reward.”
“Your thanks are more than enough. No reward is necessary. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me. I’m running late.”
The man raised a hand. “Please, I’ll only take another minute of your time.” He opened his briefcase and removed a packet wrapped in a paper towel, secured with several rubber bands. He extended the packet to the woman. “Please accept this gift as an expression of my deep appreciation.” He half-bowed again.
The woman bent and took the packet. “Thank you, Mr. Rosandich. I appreciate the gesture. But I really must go.”
He nodded, picked up his briefcase, and walked away.
Janet watched him and felt a pang in her heart. She’d got a really good look at him this time. His suit appeared to be of excellent quality, perhaps custom made. But it was frayed at the collar and cuffs. His shirt was now more gray than white and was also frayed. His polished wing-tipped shoes were wrinkled with age and wear. The tie, although neatly done, was stained. Despite the worn appearance of his clothes, the man appeared to be well-groomed. His fingernails were clipped; his gray hair was cut short and appeared to be clean. But what made the greatest impression were his eyes—startlingly blue and intelligent, and his articulate speech. Despite her first impression in the alley, she now thought, he’s no ordinary homeless person.
“Jeez,” Janet mumbled as she walked past the building to her car. “I wonder what his story is.”
She unlocked her car and slipped into the front seat. After she tossed the package the man had given her onto the passenger seat and placed her purse beside it, she started the Impala and drove away.
Jimmy Duffy had been unable to concentrate since Rasif Essam left his home. It wasn’t because he’d given the woman’s address to Essam. That’s what he did for a living—provide information to people for a price. Hell, he’d hacked classified databases for years and given information to all sorts of people and organizations. But Essam was a fugitive from the law. Duffy had told his wife, Sarah, what he’d done for Essam. His usually calm and gentle wife had thrown up her hands in exasperation and screamed at him for a full minute. She’d finished her tirade with, “I’ve told you to stay away from that man. He’s evil. What if he doesn’t get out of the country and is captured by the police? What if he tells them you gave him the woman’s address?”
After Sarah stormed from his office, Duffy leaped from his chair, paced for a minute, and then growled, “Damn.”
He moved back to his desk, pulled open a desk drawer, and selected one of a dozen burner phones there. He plugged it into a charger cord and waited until it powered up enough to call 9-1-1.
The tension in the unmarked was palpable. Detective John Andrews was still pissed at his partner, Detective Hugo Rosales, about the way he’d manhandled him in the hospital. Rosales still harbored a grudge about Andrews’s chauvinistic reference to Janet Jenkins. He would have been angry if Andrews had disrespected any woman, but he was especially angry because Andrews had used gutter language to refer to a woman he respected and who’d become a friend of his wife, Carmela.
Rosales was just about to say something to Andrews, in an attempt to clear the air, when the car radio squawked and the dispatcher announced their call sign.
Andrews responded, “This is Bravo 23. Over.”
“Bravo 23, we just received a call about fugitive Rasif Essam. A male caller said he believes Essam is on his way to the residence of a Janet Jenkins. 1428 Brockhurst Lane in El Segundo.”
“Did you alert El Segundo P.D.?” Andrews asked.
“They’re on the way.”
Andrews signed off as Rosales pulled a U-turn and drove toward El Segundo. “Damn! Damn! Damn!” he cursed. Then he handed his cell phone to Andrews and said, “Look up Janet Jenkins’s name in my contact list. Try to reach her.”
Andrews pulled up Jenkins’s number and called it, but it rang without being answered. He left a message.
As he goosed the accelerator, Rosales cleared his throat and said, “Listen, I shouldn’t have put my hands on you. It was unprofessional.”
Andrews grunted. “Is that an apology?”
Rosales cleared his throat again. “Yeah, I apologize.”
After a good fifteen seconds passed, Andrews asked, “You gotta tell me why you reacted as you did. Jeez, Hugo, I was just admiring a piece of—”
“You weren’t admiring a piece of ass; you were disrespecting a fine woman who I think the world of.”
Another few seconds passed before Andrews asked, “You got something going with her?”
Rosales shot a glance at Andrews, expelled a loud breath, and muttered an extended curse in Spanish.
CHAPTER 8
Two drive-bys of the bungalow in El Segundo in his wife’s Toyota van left Rasif Essam frustrated and angrier than he was already. There was no vehicle in the gravel driveway on the side of the house; no garage either. He could see no lights on inside. His left foot tattooed the floorboard and his hands beat a riff on the steering wheel.
He thought, I can’t wait around here forever. Some damned cop might drive by and spot this van. He sorely wanted to punish Janet Jenkins. He’d come to the point in his thinking that what had happened to his family was all because of her. But, if she wasn’t home, he could still harass her; make her sorry. He’d trash her shitty little house.
He parked the van in the lot of an Asian market and walked two blocks back to the bungalow. After he eyeballed the houses on either side of Jenkins’s place, to make certain there were no nosy neighbors, he fast-walked down the driveway to the rear door, found it locked, and kicked it in. He quickly went through the kitchen into a small dining room that opened onto a living room.
Essam scoffed as he glanced around. “Nothing of value in here,” he muttered. He moved toward the bottom of the staircase to the second floor, when a shrill voice called from the top of the stairs, “Is that you, dear?”
Essam took in a big breath and charged upstairs.
Janet was listening to KKGO radio when she heard her cell phone ring. She tried to grab her purse, which had slid up against the passenger door, but couldn’t quite reach it. I’ll deal with whoever it is when I get home, she thought. Then she sang along with Carrie Underwood’s Jesus, Take the Wheel. She knew her voice was professional quality and wondered what her life would have been like if she’d moved to Nashville, rather than to L.A. She interrupted her singing, blurted a laugh, and said, “Dream along with me.” Despite bumper-to-bumper traffic, she was making decent time and hoped her mother had eaten the lunch she’d left for her in the refrigerator. She then picked back up with Underwood.