Strip Read Free Page A

his disappointment, it missed the back of the closest Hummer entirely. But before he could readjust the angle, the hook swung back, directly into the windshield of the Hummer parked in front of it. He could hear the bang of the impact and the crash of breaking glass as the hook burst through the windshield and buckled the roof. Carver swung the arm back and saw that the hook was caught on the vehicle. His movement dragged the front Hummer into the back Hummer, crumpling its hood and grille. He activated the winch and raised the front Hummer forty feet into the air, and then lowered it as quickly as he could onto the back Hummer. The hook came free, and the front Hummer rolled off onto its side.
    Two men ran toward the gate, sprinting as hard as they could while he moved the horizontal arm backward. As he prepared to swing the hook again, they toppled the barrel and rolled it away, shouldered open the gate, and ran outside and across the street to disappear between two buildings. A moment later, the other three made a dash for the wide-open gate. He tried to move the arm to swing the hook toward them, but by the time he got it moving, they were already across the street. He watched them from his height for a few seconds until they disappeared beyond a building.
    He knew a couple of them would be lying in wait for him across the street. The others would make their way around the block to surround the construction site. As soon as he came down from his crane, they’d kill him or try to take him alive and make him give up the money he didn’t have. They knew he couldn’t be armed if he was reduced to defending himself by swinging cars at them with a crane.
    Carver sat still in his crane, trying to spot the men moving to positions where they could fire through the chain-link fence into the lot. Then his eye caught a new brightness. From this height he recognized the blue and red flashing lights long before he could hear the sirens. There were two, four, six police cars now, coming fast along Beverly Boulevard. He saw two more appear on Bronson, trying to cut off an escape. He looked for the five men again. This time when he spotted them, they were blocks away, running hard.
    He opened the cab of the crane to step onto the first ladder. He looked back once, noticed the three nude pictures of Mitch’s wife taped to the inside of the cab, and hesitated. Tomorrow morning there would be people all over this cab—probably cops, supervisors, all kinds of people. He tore the photographs down, bent them into a little tent shape, set them on the floor, lit each of them with his lighter, and let them burn. Mitch would see the ashes and know what had happened to them. Then he hurried down the ladders to reach the ground before the cops arrived.
    He ran to the contractor’s trailer at the edge of the lot farthest from the gate. He picked up a plank and propped one end on the roof of the trailer and the other on the top of the chain-link fence, compressing the coiled razor wire. He climbed to the roof of the trailer, walked the length of the plank, and jumped to the sidewalk outside. In a few moments, he had dissolved into the night.

2
    M ANCO KAPAK AWOKE to the sound of the master bedroom door swinging inward. He tugged the sleeping mask up onto his forehead with his left hand, reached under his pillow with the right, grasped the .45 pistol, and held it under the covers, squinting against the morning sunlight as he prepared to fire through the blankets. He had been jumpy since the night a month ago when a man in a ski mask had stuck a gun in his face and robbed him.
    “It’s me, Mr. Kapak. It’s only me.” The male voice was soft and calm.
    It was Spence, Kapak’s driver and bodyguard. Kapak brought the pistol up and put it into the top drawer of the nightstand. “What do you want?”
    “It’s the police on the phone. They say they need to talk to you right now.”
    “Shit” Kapak sat up and yawned, then rose to his feet. He