Nightmare in Angel City Read online

  The guard turned his head, and Joe jabbed a fist into his stomach. He swung back, and Joe jumped away from his fist and landed a haymaker on his jaw. Unnoticed by the dancers, the guard crumpled to the ground.

  Joe ran inside the house, looking for Frank and Callie. But there were too many people for him to see anyone.

  He heard a gunshot above.

  "Frank," he shouted, dashing to the stairs.

  "You can't go up there," a guard said, standing at the roped-off bottom step. Without a word Joe ducked under the rope and streaked up the stairs two at a time, the guard hot on his heels.

  Joe heard no voices on the second floor and dashed on to the third.

  There he came to a door with brass handles. He heard Bates's voice saying "It's over for you" as he slammed open the door and dove into the room.

  Shocked at the intrusion, Bates spun and started to fire. Joe cried out, but before Bates could pull the trigger, Frank grabbed his gun hand, twisting himself under Bates's arm, and drove his elbow into Bates's shoulder, exactly as his karate teacher had taught him. Bates fell back, the gun slipping from his hand.

  "You're all wet, Frank," Joe said, having taken care of the guard who had followed him. "What happened, did Callie finally get fed up andThrow you in the pool?"

  "Very funny. Wait here while I change." Frank picked up the pistol, handed it to Joe, and left him to guard Bates and the two security men while he went over to inspect the clothes in the closet. "What do you think?" he asked Joe and Callie. "A summer wool?"

  "The blue would look nice on you." Callie grinned.

  "The blue it is," Frank said, pulling the expensive suit out with a flourish and choosing a shirt and socks from the shelves. "Be back in a minute." With a nod to the glowering Bates, Frank disappeared into the bathroom to change.

  "Let's get out of here," he said when he reappeared, looking elegant in the expensive suit. He took the gun from Joe, walked back to the bathroom door, and tossed it into the hot tub.

  "What about him?" Joe asked. They looked at Bates, who sat on the floor, angrily clutching his hurt shoulder.

  "We can't kidnap him," Frank said. "We'd never get out of here. It'd be better going after Patch. Bates'll be here later." He glanced at Bates. "We'd better leave before he and his guards recover enough to attack us."

  As they headed for the door, Frank lifted the videocassette from the pillow on the bed and handed it to Callie. Then they hurried down the stairs and out the back door. "This way," said Joe, who lead them past the dogs toward the woods. The Dobermans strained their leashes and barked loudly as the three teens passed. "They'll be expecting us to leave the front way, not through here."

  Callie saw the cassette in Frank's hand. "I thought leaving that was part of your trap."

  "We don't need it now," Frank said. "Bates has trapped himself, and so has Patch, or whatever he's called. They're meeting tomorrow for the big payoff, and I think we should be there."

  Just as the three had made it safely to the fence at the edge of Bates's property, Callie stopped suddenly. "Wait," she said to Frank and Joe. "Do you hear something—like an animal?"

  Frank and Joe held their breath. Now they heard it too. A baying, like wolves closing in on their prey.

  "The Dobermans!" Joe yelled. "Bates must have alerted the guards. They're coming closer!"

  In one movement the three ran for the fence as the baying Dobermans came closer. "You first, Callie," Frank ordered. He and Joe boosted her up, and as she grabbed the top of the fence, they climbed up after her.

  The baying grew closer. Just as the boys topped the fence they saw the Dobermans break free of the trees and leap toward them. Behind them ran two guards with guns.

  "Jump!" said Joe. The Hardys and Callie dropped down on the other side of the fence and ran for safety. Behind them the dogs howled in frustration and bullets pinged in the air.

  "Now what?" asked Joe as they stopped, panting.

  "Bates and Patch are meeting tomorrow for the payoff," Frank answered, trying to catch his breath. "I think we should be there." "Great," said Joe. "Where's the meet?"

  "Don't know that."

  "That's wonderful," Joe said, disgusted. "How are we supposed to find out? The only people who know are Bates and Moran."

  "Bates will be looking for us," Callie added. "Patch could be anywhere in the city. The meeting could be anywhere."

  "True," Frank said. "Callie, would your friends be willing to help us?"

  "I think so," answered Callie. "Help us do what?"

  "Isn't it obvious?" Frank said. "We're going to find and follow Patch."

  ***

  "Everyone in place?" Frank asked. He checked his watch. It was ten o'clock. Rested and showered and eating breakfast at a sidewalk cafe in Westwood, Frank felt ready for anything.

  "You sure this is going to work?" Joe said. He checked his own watch. "Trusting street people is kind of chancy."

  "Not really." Frank bit into a slice of bacon. "With years of surviving on the street, Patch must have developed certain habits. His habits will trip him up now."

  "The street people know all the places he hangs out, Joe," Callie explained. At her feet was equipment borrowed from the university, a video camera and a portable power pack. "They're, checking out each place for us. If Patch shows up, they'll spot him, and they'll call and tell us where he is."

  "All I overheard," Frank said, "is that Patch wants to meet in a public place."

  "After the last so-called payoff, he probably won't want to meet Bates at night," continued Callie.

  "So it'll probably be this morning or this afternoon," Joe said, "if we haven't read him all wrong."

  "I hope we haven't," Callie reminded them. "I called Aunt Emma from the hotel this morning. She said she was going to call the police if I'm not home by ten tonight." She grinned at Frank. "She thinks you guys are a bad influence on me."

  "You got us into this," Joe protested, but he saw that Callie was laughing.

  The wait at the cafe was a long one. Callie and the Hardys had to order half a dozen refills of coffee just to keep their table. Finally, two and a half hours later, a waiter came to their table. "Phone call for Callie Shaw."

  "I'll take it," Callie said, and followed the waiter to the phone inside the restaurant. Two minutes later she returned.

  "That was Adrienne. She found Patch on Venice Beach. We're in luck. The meeting is in Westwood."

  Joe looked uncertain. "How does she know?" "She followed him."

  At that, Frank frowned. "She shouldn't have done that. Moran's dangerous."

  "Don't worry," Callie said. "He didn't see her. He seemed to be concerned with getting to the first showing at the Westwood Tower Cinema."

  Joe snapped his fingers. "I know that place. It's right down the street." He stood up, dug money from his pockets to pay for the food, and dropped it on the table. "We've got to get there before the payoff goes down."

  They hurried through the crowded Westwood streets until the spire of the Tower Cinema came into sight.

  Patch was clever, Joe thought. The place was empty enough for an exchange to go unnoticed, but crowded enough to keep Bates from getting cute.

  And empty enough for us to get a good view of the whole thing, he reminded himself. He laughed. Patch's cleverness would provide the evidence against him.

  "Three, please," Frank said at the ticket booth, handing the man in the window several bills. The ticket seller slid three tickets to him along with the change. Callie and the Hardys walked into the theater.

  It wasn't until the man at the door took his ticket that Joe felt suspicious. Something was wrong, and he racked his brains to figure out what it was. Nothing came to mind. The whole thing was what anyone would expect from an afternoon at the movies.

  The smell, he realized. He caught the strong odor of mothballs in the air. It seemed to come from the clothes the moviegoers around him were wearing — the moviegoers, the ticket taker, everyone. As though the clothe
s had been in storage—in a costume wardrobe. Joe looked quickly around him. Now he realized something else. All of the people were men!

  He looked back to see the entrance to the theater being locked shut.

  "Split!" he yelled to Frank and Callie. "It's a trap!"

  Something hard smacked across the back of his head, and Joe tumbled into blackness. When he woke, he was on the floor in front of the first row of theater seats, the big screen looming beside him. With him were Frank and Callie, and next to Callie was Patch. They all had their arms tied behind their backs. As Joe tried to stand, he realized his arms were tied too. A strong hand lifted him to his feet, and he saw all the moviegoers around him, their guns aimed at him.

  Like a conquering hero, Bates stepped to the center of the narrow movie-theater stage. "Funny seeing you here," Joe said.

  "Nothing funny about it, hero," replied Bates. "In fact, it's a downright tragedy."

  He dropped down from the stage and shoved the nose of a revolver under Joe's chin. "And in case I need to remind you, pal, in a tragedy the hero always dies."

  Chapter 18

  "HOW DID YOU KNOW we were coming?" Frank asked grimly.

  Bates chuckled. "Of course you were going to find out where Moran and I were meeting. I never doubted it."

  Patch glared at him.

  "I couldn't have done it without Moran," Bates continued. "It was his idea to meet here. Lots of people around." He picked up a briefcase from a seat and opened it. Inside were packets of one-hundred-dollar bills. "I even made it look real for him.

  "But I have a lot of connections in this town, and my money talks. It wasn't hard to rent this theater for a private screening this afternoon."

  "Does that mean we get to see the main feature before we go?" Joe quipped.

  Bates grinned with half his mouth and tousled Joe's hair. "You are the main feature, buddy boy. I've got the tapes. Thanks for remembering your copy, Callie. I've got Moran, I've got you. You're the only other people who know what's going on, so you've got to go." He gestured to his men to close in. "We're going to take you a long, long way from here, and you're just going to disappear."

  "You can't get away with it," Callie cried. "If you take us out on the street, we'll scream."

  "Sweetie, I bought my way into legitimacy and power, and I can get away with anything," Bates snapped back. "You're not going on the street. There's a van out back. We're taking you out in that, far from any prying eyes."

  "What if we don't want to go?" Frank said, a threatening tone in his voice. "You'll have to kill us here, and that'll be messy. It would be traced to you."

  "Let me put it this way. If you give me even the slightest bit of trouble," — Bates nodded toward Callie — "she'll die first. Got it? Now, let's go."

  Bound and surrounded by Bates's armed men, the Hardys, Callie, and Patch were led up a long ramp into the back of the theater. There, a bay door swung open, and Frank and Joe saw the blue van, its windows opaqued, sitting directly outside, parked in a driveway.

  They stepped into the driveway, and Frank looked to the street. Too far away to make a run for it, he decided, and he knew what would happen to Callie if he did. There was no one else around, no one to see Bates take them away.

  Bates's thugs began forcing the captives into the van one by one. "Work on the ropes," Frank whispered to Joe as he fell on the floor beside him. "Mine are starting to loosen. Watch for any chance."

  "Way ahead of you, brother," Joe whispered back.

  "Shut up in there," Bates said as he shoved Patch in. He squeezed Callie's shoulder and muscled her toward the door.

  Before he could get Callie into the van, though, a teenage boy appeared at the mouth of the driveway. His face was dirty, and his dark hair shaggy and jumbled. His old blue jeans were torn at the knees, and the soles of his shoes flopped loose as he walked. When he saw Bates, he beamed and stretched out his hand. "Spare change?"

  Before Bates could react, a badly dressed, unshaven black man , entered the driveway, heading toward Bates. "Spare change?"

  "Go away, beat it," said Bates. He waved the gun at them threateningly, but they kept coming.

  Angrily he pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and threw them at the panhandlers. The coins struck the driveway and rolled, and the panhandlers dropped to their knees and scooped them up.

  The guards and Bates were distracted for an instant by this behavior, and that instant was all Callie needed to make her move. She kicked Bates hard in the shin. With a yell he let her go, and she began to run. Before she was halfway down the driveway, Bates took careful aim at her back.

  "Spare change?" called a third voice as a woman wandered into the driveway. And another voice and another and another. Callie's eyes widened.

  It was Adrienne and the rest of the street people.

  Bates lowered his gun as the mob flooded the driveway. There was no way to pick Callie out of this crowd. At least the Hardys and Patch were still in the van, though, he decided. "Get in," Bates ordered his men. "Drive out of here. Run over anyone you have to." He tossed the briefcase and the videocassettes into the back of the van, and started to climb in.

  Joe, his hands still tied, threw himself forward from the back of the van like a cannon ball, whacking Bates in the stomach with his shoulder and knocking the gun out of his hand. Bates's men, still outside the van, pointed their guns at Joe's back, but before they could shoot, Frank kicked the other van door hard. It swung around, ramming into one of Bates's men and causing the two with the guns on Joe to spin toward Frank. With a piercing yell Frank leapt high in the air. His feet lashed out, catching the men hard in their jaws. They fell back, unconscious.

  Meanwhile, Bates had gotten Joe pinned against the van and was strangling him. Joe twisted in Bates's grip, but with his hands behind his back, he had no leverage. He couldn't break Bates's hold.

  With his last shred of energy Joe stabbed his head forward, cracking his forehead into Bates. Stunned, the movie executive let go and stumbled away. By now the driveway was full of street · people. They ran at once and seized Bates and his men and held them down.

  "That about wraps that up," said Joe as Callie untied his hands.

  Frank pulled his wrists free, and the ropes fell away. Bates was defeated, and with satisfaction Frank saw the street people had everything under control. Except for one thing, he abruptly realized.

  The briefcase carrying the two million dollars was gone, and so was Patch.

  "Callie!" he shouted. "Take charge here." To Joe he said, "We're one short on the head count." They raced to the street.

  Patch, the briefcase in his hands, which were still tied behind his back, had just turned the corner at the end of the block and disappeared.

  "There he is!" Joe yelled as they rounded the corner a few seconds later. Patch was having trouble holding on to the briefcase and running through the Westwood crowds at the same time. The Hardys could hear shouts of surprise as Patch bumped into pedestrians, knocking them aside. Step by step, they were catching up to the thief.

  Patch twirled as they neared him, and shouldered a woman into the Hardys' way. Joe tripped and tumbled, and Patch cast himself into the heavy traffic in the street. If he could make it to the other side, Frank knew, they'd have an even harder time catching him.

  Tires screamed, and Patch stood frozen in fear as a delivery truck careened toward him. Frank dove at him, tackling him, hoping against hope there would be time to get out of the way of the onrushing truck. But as he rolled, it seemed time had run out. , The squeal of brakes ended, followed by a sickening thud.

  Sprawled against a parked car, with Patch lying dazed at his side, Frank stared at the open brief- ' case crushed by the truck's front tire. The money was scattering across the street, blown by the wind. That had stopped traffic as nothing else could.

  Patch struggled to get to the money, but Frank held him pinned against the parked car. Joe came over to them, a bundle of money in his hand. "Looking for this?
" he asked, thumbing the bills in Patch's face.

  The top bill was real money, but everything underneath was cut from old newspaper clippings.

  "Looks like Bates conned you, Moran," Frank said. "You both conned each other right into prison."

  Moran spat. "So what if Bates and I stole that money?" he finally said. "So what if I killed some guy years ago? I'll never admit that to anyone else. Do you really think the cops will believe a famous producer and an old bum are partners in crime? They'll laugh you all the way back to wherever you came from."

  "No more of the harmless street artist act, Moran," Joe said. He grasped Patch by the collar and raised a fist. "You'll tell everything, or — "

  "Or what?" Moran sneered. "You'll beat a poor old drifter up?"

  "They don't have to," said a familiar voice. The Hardys looked up to see Callie there, her video camera recording everything Patch had said.

  "I got the whole thing on tape," Callie said. "I have my story."

  ***

  Joe waited impatiently in the boarding line at Los Angeles International Airport as Frank said goodbye to Callie. Emma Beaudry watched from nearby.

  "Thanks for all your help," Callie told Frank.

  "My pleasure, Callie. Anything for you, you know that." He looked into her eyes. "The funny thing was that the statute of limitations on that robbery ran out long ago. If they hadn't killed anyone, they could have walked away with the whole thing."

  Callie nodded. "Still, it was nice of the armored car company to award a finder's fee for the money."

  "And it was nice of you to donate it to your street friends," Frank said. "It'll go a long way toward helping them."

  "Well, they did save our lives," said Callie. A sad look came over Callie's face. "It's too bad you can't stay until I finish my course. You'll call me, won't you?"

  Frank gently hugged her. "Callie, of course I'll call. And I'll see you when you get back."

  "I can't believe you guys," Emma remarked, shaking her head in bewilderment. "When I was Callie's age, we'd have a burger and maybe catch a flick at the drive-in. You two seem to think romance means throwing a couple of lowlifes in jail."