Active Shooter Read online

  Chapter 6

  Bridget landed late that evening on a direct flight from JFK. Seconds after landing, she started peppering me with text messages about getting together. She had a hotel room, but if I was up for it, she would love to stay at my place, she said. I didn’t answer any of her messages, eventually shutting down my phone and removing the battery for good measure.

  With a few clicks, I checked my online presence. All was quiet on the social media front. Bridget and her source proved themselves right and accurate. A lot of dampening going on out there. I almost didn’t do it, but I gave in to the urge to dig into it a bit more, and sure enough, I found it. A story related to the LAX shootings focusing on where the terrorists obtained their weapons and explosives had take preeminence. It came complete with second amendment vs. public safety flame wars. This shrank the relevance of my accomplishments and heroism, turning me into the proverbial yesterday’s news. One offshoot of the story focusing on how a citizen -- namely, me -- able to use a gun had provided the solution, not he problem didn't get much traction. Yup. A lot of dampening going on -- the expertly done kind.

  I was thinking about winding down my day with a few glasses of wine when the secured cellphone rang.

  “It's me, Walter,” I heard him say on the other side in a digitally distorted voice. “Are you in a good spot?”

  “My apartment.” I said that assuming my answer confirmed, that yes, I was in a good spot. They'd no doubt swept my domicile before my arrival, and they kept it clean while I was out and about.

  “She's in town.”

  “I know. She's been pestering me ever since she landed. I'm sure you know that too.”

  “Yeah, about that. Why haven't you returned any of her texts?”

  “Playing hard to get, remember?”

  “Right.”

  I stepped into the kitchen and read the microwave oven clock. “You aren't just calling to let me know she's here, so out with it. I have a pillow that's getting lonely.”

  “We think she's setting up a meet.”

  “With her source?”

  “Yeah.”

  That made sense, I thought. Whoever the source was, she more than likely worked at the lab where I'd toiled for the good of national security, until my career ended with a crash.

  “OK,” I replied after a few moments of hesitation.

  “Any idea who she is?”

  “I don't have any more information than I had last night, Walter.”

  “Yeah. I see you've been taking care of some everyday life things.”

  OK, so he knew about my meeting with Lucia. Of course, he did. That's what he did, and I appreciated why he did it, so why should it bother me? Because I wanted to have a life, that's why.

  “My pillow's getting anxious,” I said.

  “Hang tight, Andre. Stay engaged. Can you do that for us?”

  “Engaged? Sure, I can do engaged.”

  “Without getting distracted? You're probably going to be the key to plugging up this leak. I am trusting you to stay sharp and engaged, OK?”

  “OK.”

  We hung up.

  I spent the remainder of the evening sipping three fourths of a bottle of Beaujolais wine while I reviewed, touched up and uploaded the four photos Lucia selected. Once the upload to a local lab completed, I placed my print order for pick up the next morning. The wine inflicted the desired effect. By the time I watched the evening news, I was drifting to sleep on the couch. I pulled a smelly blanket I’d been telling myself to wash for weeks, and I let myself crash there.

  ***

  I didn’t wake up until seven in the morning. With a half cup of coffee in my system and a low grade headache, I went out for a run. Traversing the few blocks between me and the coast line, I ran out to the jetty, back, and up to Venice. There I stopped at Muscle Beach for a quick stretch before heading back south and to my apartment. My GPS watch congratulated me with a 7 mile reading recorded at an average 9 or so minute pace.

  A run always did me good, much more so than pushups, a quick set of which I did anyway ahead of jumping into the shower.

  By the time I came out, a text message on my now re-activated cellphone let me know my photo prints would be available before noon. I made myself a quick wheat bagel with nutella and peanut butter breakfast, chewed and swallowed it with little of my usual enjoyment, and then I headed down to my apartment's garage.

  After pulling out my car, I set up shop with some pieces of framing wood, a miter saw and a nail gun. I ran some quick calculations. Based on the photo print sizes, I came up with mat sizes, which in turn yielded the size for the frames I needed. In another thirty minutes I cut all the required pieces, nailed them together, did some light sanding as needed, and satisfied with my wood work, I got out a spray can of black primer to lay a first coat on the wood.

  I went back up to my apartment to get something to drink. By the time I came back, the primer had set. A spray can of black glossy paint came next, and I applied two quick, thin coats. While that dried, I put away my miter saw and replaced it with a glass cutter. Another fifteen minutes of work yielded four pieces of glass for my frames. I then used fine grain sandpaper to smooth out my frames and applied a third and thicker layer of glossy paint.

  The frames would take longer to dry now. I used the time to put away the glass cutting blade, replacing it with the one I used to cut my frames. Twenty minutes later I had my mats. All I needed now where my photos. I scanned the garage and once more marveled at the immediate satisfaction that working with one's hands brings. Immediate results, complete control over the outcome, with none of the latency and partial nature of the other type of work I'd done in my not so distant past.

  In my pant's pocket, I felt the secure cellphone vibrate. I took it out and answered it.

  “Incoming,” a male voice said. “Look down your driveway.”

  The call went dead, and I did as told. Squinting as my eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight, I made out a tall female figure, coming at me dressed in ankle-high boots, loose cargo shorts dangling tasseled strings, and a thin yellow blouse that undulated either from a breeze or from her manner of movement. She came toward me without hesitation, as if she knew this place well, her short hair bouncing with every step.

  “Hello, Andre,” Bridget said.

  I said something I've either come to regret or forget or both of the above, and she kept coming until with one fell swoop she wrapped her free arm around me and gave me a long, unexpected kiss.

  “I really wish you'd let me come over last night,” she whispered in my ear after our lips parted.

  “Did we miss a step or two here?” I asked.

  She kept her chin tucked into the side of my neck. “We have to give them a reason why we're getting so chummy. Might as well make it yummy.” She stayed there for a second, as if to let me consider her reasoning. Then she faced me, gave me a quick peck on the lips and added, “So what are we doing today?”

  “Work.” I waved into the garage.

  Bridget let me go and stepped inside. “Frames, glass, mats.” She turned to me with a smile. “Can I see the photos?”

  I checked my watch. “I have to go get them. Right about now, actually.”

  “Whoa, good timing on my part, no? I'll give you a ride.”

  I did my best to diffuse that idea, and gave up trying a couple of minutes later. Bridget helped me tidy up the garage. Then I locked it, and we headed out.

  No more than an hour later, having picked up my prints from a digital lab in Redondo Beach, we found ourselves in a Manhattan Beach restaurant at a table with a view of the pier and the ocean beyond.

  “My treat,” she said for the third time, though this time she added, “Because we have something to celebrate.”

  “Such as?”

  “A breakthrough,” she said with a smirk. “But before we go much further, are they listening?”

  I looked around one more time. As we came in and took our seats at our secluded table, I
more or less determined monitoring would prove difficult to impossible. We'd left our phones in the car, including the secured one I slipped into the pocket of the passenger door without her notice. Unless my handlers had anticipated where she was taking me, they had no way of bugging the place prior to our arrival. And from where we sat, anyone trying to eaves-drop through old fashioned or more modern means would stand out like a red flare.

  “No, I didn't think so,” she answered her own question with a grin. “I guess I'm picking up a few tricks.”

  “Careful how many magic acts you pull,” I said. “You may succeed in letting them know you're up to no good.”

  “How nasty is that. They get you whether you are clueless or whether you take care to protect yourself.”

  “Just be selective, that's all. Make it count, don't over-use it.”

  “Thanks. But I figured this would be a good occasion to look a little suspicious.”

  The waiter interrupted us with a bread basket and the bottle of Chardonnay she'd ordered.

  I thanked him as he served us, and when he stepped away, I said, “So, this breakthrough--”

  “They stepped on their own shoelaces.”

  “They did, did they.”

  “Yeah. I have proof positive that someone's been ginning up that whole second amendment story to grab the news cycle away from you. Complete with hacked blogs posting topics they would normally not touch, Twitter and Facebook campaigns from more hacked accounts, and so on, and so forth.”

  “That's a little too obvious.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It sounds like someone wants to get caught.”

  “Sounds like a desperate Hail Mary to me.” Bridget leaned forward and lowered her voice. “As it turns out, it doesn't matter whether the guns-are-evil-campaign is real. Even if someone catches and reports on the falsification, the spotlight is still not on you, is it? And going from, hey, 'who hacked that site' to drawing a conclusion someone wants to dampen your fame is quite the quantum leap, don't you think?”

  I made an attempt to shrug that came across more like an awkward twitch. My try at taking a sip of the wine and staring out to sea didn't fare much better.

  “What's up, Andre? Are you still in can't confirm or deny mode?”

  “You really didn't listen to me, did you?” I turned to face her. “How did you confirm this thing about hacked blogs and social media accounts?”

  She grinned. “I got people.”

  “Your source.”

  “Hmm. Other people.”

  “Hackers.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “Remember what I said about playing your cards selectively?”

  She sighed. “I get it, OK? I know hackers poking around can trigger alarms. These guys are good. They've done work for me before, and they're still around.”

  I considered how best to tell her about all the angles that could go askew when you hired people you didn't really know. For all she knew, these guys were working for the very people she was trying to ensnare. Above all, I came close to sharing with her the skill and capability of the organization she and her hacker platoon faced this time.

  In the end, however, I took an approach I thought would have a much higher chance of getting her attention.

  “When's your meet with your source?” I asked.

  The grin fled her face. She sat up a little straighter.

  “That's why you're here, isn't it? In sunny L.A., to meet with your source?”

  “How would you know that?” she asked.

  Now I took my turn to lean forward and lower my voice. “I got people,” I hissed. “Not that I trust 'em, or like them, or want much to do with them. They're the kind that clamp on to your back and you can't make them go away. But they're good at what they do. Very good.”

  “Yeah, very impressive. For a guess, that is. She's in L.A., so she must be here to see her source. Brilliant.”

  “Except that this is exactly what you're doing. You didn't come all the way out here to make a pass at me or tell me about your breakthrough.”

  She shook her head and sighed again. “Actually, Andre, I'm here because she wants to meet you, and she wants me to set it up.”

  Her words jolted me, not so much because they surprised me, which they did, but because they made me face the reality that I was getting sucked back into my old life, the one without art, the one whose palette allowed for little more than brushstrokes of death and deceit.

  “When?” I asked.

  Bridget leaned back and didn't say another word until our salads came.

  “I need to know you're with me,” she said as she mixed her dressing into her greens.

  “What do I need to show you to prove it?”

  “Is dampening real? Tell me that, at least.”

  “It's real, though when I saw it at work, it was inside a lab, all simulation, not real world.”

  “Manipulation of news cycles. Amplification of information. News story transforms. Can you confirm any of it?”

  I looked her in the eye and said, “Thought experiments. Nothing beyond that. Years away from being operationally viable. Whatever you're seeing out there could have a million other explanations.”

  “Such as?”

  “Hackers hack. People spin.”

  Bridget shook her head. “Not like this. Not with this level of coordination and sophistication.” She tapped on the table. “I've seen the data.”

  "Data?"

  "Yeah, the data."

  “Jesus, Bridget. Do you know how deep you've gone? I mean, can you even realize you've lost sight of the top of the mine shaft?”

  “I think I know exactly what I'm into. Do you?”

  I looked away again, toward the end of the pier, straining to make out the detail on the red tiled roof of the building that stood there. Then I scanned the ocean, dotted with a few surfers in search for the worthy wave that a placid ocean wouldn't give them. Closer, on the sand, I saw kids scooping sand into bright green and pink pails, moms at their side, seagulls aloft watching them from above.

  I fought the longing to go out there, to join the rest of the world, to have nothing better to do than walk on a pier, or curl my toes into the sand, or splash in the water.

  “When am I meeting her?” I asked.

  “As soon as she tells me.”

  We finished our salads and our entrees in another thirty minutes.

  ***

  An hour later we arrived in my apartment. I watched Bridget set up her laptop on my kitchen table to work on the story she was supposed to report on during her outing to the west coast. She barely acknowledged me when I excused myself to go downstairs.

  Alone in my garage, I assembled my matted prints and framed them. With all four of them propped along my work bench, I felt none of the satisfaction manual work brought me a few hours before. Neither did I enjoy seeing four of my photos as finished images. The dread of what might come robbed me of that joy. It stripped me of the passion I'd felt when I photographed and developed those four images. I could not summon even a glimpse of it now. And I hungered for it. More than anything I yearned for the world of beauty I saw through my camera's lens to rescue me from the one pressing in and down on me now.

  As if to pull me out of my wallowing, my phone rang with a call from Lucia.

  “Got it done?” she asked.

  “Looking at ‘em right now, Ma'am.”

  “Great. Maybe you can bring them over.”

  “Sure. How about tomorrow?”

  “How about tonight,” she said, not a question, almost an order. “I’ll throw in dinner if that persuades you. Are you up for some Paella paired with a nice Rioja vino?”

  “Well, I have out of town company.”

  “How many?”

  This was my out. Tell her fifteen, and I was off the hook. “Just one.”

  “Just one. Hmm. Sounds like a she?”

  I don’t know if it was the way my mouth had watered at the mention o
f Paella, or my awkwardness at being found with a girl, but all I could manage to say was, “What time?”

  “Perfect,” she said and told me to be at her place by 7:00 PM, “or earlier if you want to sample this nice Rosé I picked up in Paso Robles last week.” Then she promised to text me her address, along with instructions on how to gain access to her condominium complex.

  Back upstairs, in my apartment, Bridget, mouth half open, eyes fixed on her laptop screen, acknowledged my return with an absent “Hmm.”

  For a few moments I fought the impulse to look over her shoulder or ask her what she was working on. Her rather submerged immersal into her work gave me pause, but she was a hard working gal, and her level of concentration, I supposed, aligned with the intensity of a go-getter trying to get things done.

  I turned on the TV, on low volume out of consideration for her impromptu work environment, even if this was my house, even if I had no idea whether having her stay with me would prove wise. I watched a mid-afternoon talk show, and as it wound down, I broached the topic of dinner at Lucia's.

  Bridget answered with laconic, almost terse answers that more or less communicated she had some things to take care of. She could drop me off at Lucia, and I could call her once I was ready to go home, she suggested. This way she could pick up her stuff from the hotel, she explained. If I was up for it, that is, and I said sure, why not.

  As I walked up to Lucia's front door a couple of hours later I pondered the implications of meeting these two women within a matter of days. I could not shake the thought that their convergence held more meaning for me than that of passing coincidence.

  Chapter 7

  “Art must be good to you,” I said to Lucia as I stepped into her place.

  Lucia smiled. She closed the door behind us and gave her living room a round-house wave.

  “It's my mini-gallery,” Lucia said. She walked over to a faux fireplace and pointed at an oil painting that hung above it. “This one's been here a little too long. I like to feature samples of my artists' work in my space, and I know whose piece will go here next.” She capped that remark with a wink.

  I smiled back, then turned my attention to the rest of that space Lucia seemed so proud of. A couple of statues, one behind the sofa, the other next to her TV, stood like sentinels. From their looks and styles, I deduced they came from different artists, one more given to surrealism, the other more pedestrian. I wondered which sold better, and I guessed the latter. Two other paintings and one large black and white photograph hung from three of four walls in the living room.