Shadow of Betrayal

Once he was out of earshot, Orlando said, “It was the leg, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “I guess. Shit.”

“If you’re not going to get past this, then release him. Set him up with someone else. Hell, I’ll take him on. Make him an apprentice researcher. He can sit behind a desk all day, I’m sure he’ll love that.”

“I… I don’t know what to do,” he said, surprised by his own words. “I want him to succeed, I do. But it’s not as easy as that. I need to know he’ll be ready for any kind of situation. I need to know he’ll be able to function at a high level at all times. I need to know he’ll do the job just like someone who still has both legs. Being a cleaner is a dangerous job, and I’m not going to put him out there if I think he’s going to have problems. He could die. I can’t have that.”

“Quinn, seriously.” She touched his arm, stopping him. “Let it go. If he’s not good enough, fine. Let him go. But you have to give him a chance to prove himself.”

Quinn looked at the ground near his feet for a moment, then, with a sigh, he tilted his head up. “Come on.”

He wanted to let it go. He knew Nate would be a good cleaner. His skills continued to improve. But the leg. The leg that had been maimed while he was helping Quinn on that personal mission in Singapore when an LP operative had purposely smashed into it. Would it hold out in the worst of circumstances? Could Quinn take that chance knowing he’d be responsible for whatever happened?

He gave her a faint smile, then started walking again.

Quinn’s main concern was being set up. He was looking for any sign that this might be the case. Perhaps a couple of men waiting in a parked car around the perimeter of the museum, or maybe some tourist who didn’t look the part.

He first walked by the Ahmanson Building and the old main entrance to the museum. LACMA was actually a collection of several buildings: the Ahmanson Building, the Bing Center, the Hammer Building, the Pavilion for Japanese Art, the old May Company building known now as LACMA West, and the newest building, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum.

The first four were clustered together near the center point of the museum grounds. In the middle of this group, beyond the entrance, was the central court where Nate would be sitting at one of the tables, reading the paper. There, in addition to a dozen or so tables and chairs, visitors would find the ticket booth, a café, and the museum store.

Quinn continued north along the sidewalk. Traffic on Wilshire was its usual midday busy, not bumper-to-bumper, but constant. Since rush hour was over, cars were again allowed to park along the street. Keeping his movements natural, Quinn checked each of the cars on either side of the street, making sure they were empty. So far, so good.

Past the last of the museum’s buildings, the grounds continued for another whole block up to Curson Avenue. Here it was more of a park. Grass, trees, pathways, kids running around, people walking dogs, and, of course, four life-size mammoths and a small lake of black tar.

It was the centerpiece of the famous La Brea Tar Pits, a tar lake about the size of a football field. The mammoths had been added sometime in the past, no doubt to provide visitors an idea of what could happen at the pits—a single mammoth at that west end looked out over the lake, while at the east end a family of three was caught in a life-or-death struggle. One of the mammoths from the family was half-submerged in the black sticky grip of the tar as its mate and child looked on in horror from the shore several feet away.

Quinn turned north on Curson. Here no cars were allowed to park along the street, but there were several school buses. That explained all the children. Field trips.

He kept up a steady pace, assessing everyone he saw, and marking those in his mind that he felt might deserve a second look. Five minutes later he met up with Orlando on Sixth Street along the back side of the museum grounds.

“All clear?” he asked.

“As far as I can tell,” she said.

“Nate. Anything?” Quinn asked.

There was a pause, then the rattle of paper before his apprentice’s hushed voice came over his receiver. “Quiet over here. The museum doesn’t open until noon. Most of the people I’ve seen probably work here.”

“No one paying attention to you?”

“I know how to do the job,” Nate snapped.

“So that’s a no?”

“That’s a no.”

“Orlando and I are going to walk around the grounds, then I’ll come over there and we’ll switch.”

“Copy that,” Nate said. Then, after a slight pause, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Quinn said, conceding without actually saying it that he might have pushed too much. He looked at Orlando. “Let’s go into the park, but switch. You take the east, and I’ll go west.”

She was giving him her patented you’re-an-idiot look, no doubt about the exchange with Nate, but she only said, “Okay.”

After wandering through the park that surrounded the museums for another thirty minutes, noticing nothing unusual, Quinn decided it was time to get into position.