Hell and Gone Read Online Free PDF

had doubled up the protection like he’d promised and that he’d follow the bread crumbs and figure this shit out.
    Because Hardie was okay with death; he probably deserved as much. But not his wife. Not his boy…

5
     
    You know why so many people came to my funeral?
They wanted to make sure I was dead.
    —Larry Tucker, Shock Corridor
     
    DEKE CLARK DROVE up and down the 101, burning gas.
    Deke didn’t know what he expected to see, really. The mystery ambulance? Not a chance. Some little random forensic clue that would unravel the case? Yeah. Like that ever happens. Besides, he’d done as much of the forensic-type work as he could, tapping traffic cameras everywhere from the Studio City crime scene all the way out to the hospital, and then out again to the major highways. He’d spent days trying to account for every ambulance on camera, retracing their routes, trying to find his phantom vehicle. It was a hard task, and hard to stay focused, since he kept pausing to check his cell phone and e-mail accounts—both official and private—hoping to hear from Hardie. Nothing. Exacerbating the whole situation was an awkwardness with his wife. When she’d call to check in, Deke would invariably be distracted, and it would leave his wife hurt. Later he’d feel bad and want to call back, but then would feel guilty about not using every waking minute to search for Hardie. Five days in, and nothing to show for it except half a license plate.
    Deke knew who would have been great at this: his buddy Nate Parish.
    Until his untimely death, the man was the secret genius of the Philadelphia police department.
    Nate and Charlie Hardie had worked together—only semi-officially. Their mission: clean up the streets of their hometown, using whatever legal or extralegal means necessary.
    Deke himself had almost busted the two of them during the infamous mob wars that permanently finished the Italians, crippled the Russians—but also opened the way for the Albanians.
    Only reason he didn’t bust them was that Nate knew what he was doing, and he was doing the right thing. And he wouldn’t work without Hardie.
    So what would Nate Parish do?
    He had this gift for boiling things down to their simplest and purest form. Crime was not complicated, he’d say. Sure, criminals would obfuscate and try to make it seem as clever and confusing as possible, but it always boiled down to something simple. Almost always money. If you can strip away the drama and the clues and bullet casings and the blood-splattered walls, boil it down until the fat and meat fall right away from the bone…what do you have? You have some kind of financial transaction.
    That’s when it hit Deke—the ambulance.
    Keep digging until you find out who owns it.
    Whoever owns it might know who was driving it.
    Whoever was driving it would know where Hardie was.
     
    The ambulance was owned by a small private company based out in Arcadia, California, now defunct. Calls to that company were directed to a San Francisco law office called Gedney, Doyle & Abrams.
    Deke called GD&A.
    GD&A stonewalled.
    The essence of their exchange:
    GD&A: We don’t own ambulances. We handle insurance litigation.
    Deke: I’m looking at the papers right here; you represent the company that owns this ambulance.
    GD&A: Must be a filing error. Because we don’t own ambulances. We handle insurance litigation. Can I ask what this is regarding?
    Deke: You may not.
    GD&A: Well, go fuck yourself and have a great day.
    Deke: This company in Arcadia, do you still represent them?
    GD&A: No, really, go ahead and fuck yourself and have a super-awesome day.
    Four hundred miles away, in San Francisco, in a hotel suite overlooking Union Square, Gedney was deep into another one of his conversations with his partner Doyle about the events of the past few days.
    As usual, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue sat unopened on the marble desk between them, along with a fine array of artisanal cheeses and hand-carved meats.