by Don Winslow
Jimmy struggles for air.
Through watery eyes sees Oscar on his feet, staggering toward the fire escape, the only thing in his way—
Angelo, just come over the top, his face a bloody mask, his legs wobbly.
Oscar gets off a shot.
It hits Angelo below the vest, in the thigh, and the femoral artery spurts like a hose. Oscar stumbles over him and gets on the ladder, and now Jimmy has a choice.
Kill Oscar or save Angelo.
Angelo yells, “Get him!”
Jimmy crouches beside Angelo.
“Get him,” Angelo says, voice weakening.
“No,” Jimmy says. “I got you.”
He presses hard on the wound, stopping the bleeding. With his other hand, he reaches inside his clothes for his cell phone and calls Dispatch.
Eva hears, “Officer down, 2203 Morgan Avenue, Algiers, penthouse. Get EMTs up.”
She sends them and then thanks God.
“I got you,” Jimmy says. “You’re gonna make it, hang in.”
“He’s getting away.”
“Fuck dat.”
Because sometimes you’re broken, broken so bad you don’t know yourself, and then suddenly you do. You’re stronger than you ever were, strong enough to take all that anger and hate and rage and stop the bleeding.
You’re stronger in the broken places.
Oscar makes it down the fire escape.
On bruised and broken feet, he hops toward the river.
Fifty-eight cops open fire, lighting up the New Orleans night.
Jimmy McNabb stands on the terrace as the first responders load Angelo onto a gurney.
They say he’s probably going to make it.
But not Harold, not Wilmer.
They’re gone—like Danny—and Jimmy doesn’t know if it was worth it. He turns and looks out at his city.
Even in moonlight the river looks dirty.
You ain’t gotta tell Eva the world is a broken place.
She knows life, knows the world.
Knows that no matter how you come into it, you come out broken.
For Mr. Steve McQueen
Crime 101
Crime 101: Keep it simple.
* * *
Highway 101.
The Pacific Coast Highway.
Aka the PCH.
It clings to the California coast like a string of jewels on an elegant neck.
Davis loves this road like a man loves a woman.
He could drive it all day and all night.
* * *
Davis sits at the wheel of a black Shelby GT500 Mustang hardtop with a rear spoiler, Gurney flap, 550 HP and 510 ft.-lb. of torque.
Crime 101: When you need to get away, you need to do it fast.
He drives north past a stretch of coast where the sun is setting like a busted blood orange in the clouds over the ocean.
To his left the waves crash onto Torrey Pines Beach. To his right the railroad tracks cross Los Penasquitos Creek, and Carmel Valley Road runs along the ridge that flanks the northern edge of the lagoon, where the old car-repair shop has one of the best views on the coast and the pizza joint has been there as long as Davis can remember.
Like a woman of changing moods, Highway 101 changes its name frequently. Now it’s North Torrey Pines Road, and in a few yards it will shift to South Camino del Mar.
It’s always the 101 to Davis.
Davis follows a white Mercedes 500SL up the hill into the town of Del Mar.
He’d watched Ben Haddad come out of the store in La Jolla with a sample case in his hand.
Davis has watched Haddad come out of Sam Kassem’s store dozens of times, but he still looked down at the iPad in his lap and checked the photos of Haddad at the annual jewelry show in Las Vegas. Davis has photographs of Haddad at the Vegas show, the Tucson show, and the Gem Faire in Del Mar.
In the last one, Haddad sits in a banquette at Red Tracton’s with Kassem and their wives. They’re holding up martinis, smiling at the camera.
The photo was posted on Gem Faire’s website.
Davis knows that Haddad is sixty-four years old, married, with three daughters, the youngest of whom is a freshman at UC Santa Barbara. He knows that Haddad likes baseball, plays golf mostly to be social, and hasn’t quit smoking despite assurances to his doctor and his wife. He knows that Haddad is fully bonded and insured and never carries a firearm.
Now Davis lets a couple of cars get between them in case there’s a follow car. Haddad has never used one before, but you never know. Anyway, Davis doesn’t have to stay close to Haddad because he knows where the courier is headed.
Davis saw the email between Kassem and John Houghton, a jewelry-store owner in Del Mar:
Ben is on his way now.
The Mercedes pulls off to the right—at Houghton’s Fine Jewelry.
Then Haddad does what he always does, what he believes is the prudent thing for a courier to do. Instead of parking out front along the street, he pulls in to the small parking lot in back.
Davis knows the drill, because it’s an article of faith among jewelry couriers and salesmen that theft rings put storefronts under observation.
So Haddad pulls in to the back and calls Houghton to tell him he’s coming in.
Houghton will buzz him in through the front door.
This is the anomaly—the conflicting agenda of couriers and store owners: The courier wants to protect his merchandise, the owner his store. The store owner’s most valuable stock is in the back room, separately locked from the front of the store. The safe is also in the back room.
If a theft ring has followed the courier (or a salesman making his rounds), the store owner doesn’t want to let him in through the back door, where the thieves could rush in behind and get the really valuable merchandise or force him to open the safe.
So the courier parks in the back but then walks to the front.
This is the seam.
The crack.
The edge that Davis always looks for.
And he won’t do it if it’s not there.
That’s Crime 101.
That and the cigarette.
Davis hears what Haddad tells Houghton on the phone. I’m just going to have a quick smoke, and then I’ll be in.
Because it’s the family car, and Ben doesn’t want Diana smelling the smoke and chewing his ass. And unless Diana is out at one of her club meetings or something, this is his last ciggy of the day, because this is his last stop.
So what Haddad does—what he always does—is get on the horn and tell Houghton he’s just going to have a quick smoke.
But it’s a few drags, not the whole cigarette, so Davis will have, at most, a minute before Houghton wonders what’s keeping the courier and comes out to look. Houghton is also fully bonded and insured, but he does carry a weapon—a 10-millimeter EAA Witness.
But a minute is more than enough time.
Crime 101: If you can’t do it quick, don’t do it at all.
Haddad steps out of the car, lights up, takes a few precious beautiful drags, and stomps out the cigarette under his shoe.
Davis hits the gas.
He takes the SIG Sauer P239 pistol from the center console and holds it in his right hand as he steers with his left.
Davis has the clock in his head as he rolls into the parking lot and gets out. He’s dressed all in black—black lightweight pullover sweater, black jeans, black shoes, black gloves, black baseball cap, unmarked with any logo.
Holding the SIG below his waist, Davis comes up behind Haddad just as he’s grinding the cigarette butt into the pavement. Sticks the pistol barrel behind his ear and says, “Keep your eyes forward.”
Without turning around, Haddad hands him the sample case. “Just take it and go.”
Bonded and insured.
It isn’t worth it.
Take the sample case and go with God.
Except Davis says, “Not the cheap stuff in the case, Ben. The ‘live goods’ in your ank
le pouches. The papers.”
Haddad hesitates. This is where it can all go sick and wrong. This is where it can shift from eight-to-thirty to life-without-possibility-of.
Davis isn’t going to let it go there.
“I want to send you home to Diana,” he says. “I want you to walk Leah down the aisle in . . . what is it, three weeks?”
Haddad wants to take that walk, too. He bends downs, rips the Velcroed pouches from his ankles, and hands them back over his shoulder.
“Your phone,” Davis says.
It will only buy an extra few seconds, but those seconds could be crucial.
Haddad hands him the cell phone. Davis rips the battery out, tosses it into the bushes behind the lot, and hands the phone back. There’s no sense being a dick about it and costing the guy all his contact information and his family photos.
“If you turn around,” Davis says, “it’s to see a bullet come into your brain. Personally, I wouldn’t die for an insurance company.”
Haddad doesn’t turn around.
Davis gets back into his car and drives out.
Elapsed time: forty-seven seconds.
He drives just three blocks north and then pulls in to the underground parking structure of the vacation-rental condo complex. His slot is #182, he’s rented it for the month, and he has two spaces.
In his other slot sits a silver Camaro ZL1.
6.2 SC V-8 engine.
Four-lobed Eaton supercharger.
Magnetic ride technology.
The parking structure is about half full.
As usual, Davis sees cars but no people.
He gets out, quickly removes the stolen plates from the Mustang, and replaces them with the genuine ones. He takes the gem papers from the ankle pouches, puts them in his jacket pocket, and throws the pouches into the dumpster. Then he takes the SIG out of the Mustang, gets into the Camaro, and pulls out onto the 101.
If anyone is looking for a getaway car, they’re looking for a black Mustang, and now it’s literally underground.
With nothing in it that connects to him.
Even if they find the car, it gives them nothing.
He paid for it in cash, registered it under a false name. All they get is a PO box in San Luis Obispo that he’ll never go back to.
Sure, he’d lose the car, but it’s a good trade.
Couldn’t drive it in prison anyway.
He pulls out and heads north on the 101.
Through Del Mar, past the racetrack.
Past the pink neon sign by Fletcher Cove that proclaims SOLANA BEACH, past the Tidewater Bar, Pizza Port, Mitch’s Surf Shop, and Moreland Choppers. Down the hill to the long stretch of beach at Cardiff, then up past Swami’s and Encinitas, past Moonlight Beach, the old La Paloma Theater, underneath the sign that arcs over the 101 and reads ENCINITAS.
Then along the railroad tracks and eucalyptus trees of funky Leucadia, up to old-fashioned Carlsbad, past the old power station, its smokestack evocative of both Springsteen and Blake.
Davis follows the 101 as far as he can go but then has to turn east on Oceanside Boulevard and get on the 5 North to go through Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base that is a blockage in the artery. He gets off the 5 as soon as he can, at Los Cristianitos in San Clemente, wends his way through the old surf town and down along Capistrano Beach, up through Dana Point, Laguna Niguel, South Laguna, and finally into Laguna Beach.
Davis never tires of this drive, never tires of the constant but ever-changing ocean, the landmarks, his small gods of place.
He pulls in to the parking structure of another condo complex on the east side of the 101 overlooking Main Beach and the Laguna Art Museum.
Davis hits the button attached to the windshield visor, the metal gate slides open, and he pulls in to the concrete underground parking structure into one of his two assigned slots, marked on the wall as Unit 4.
Beside him sits a black 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT-8.
Hemi V-8.
Chin spoiler.
Variable camshaft timing.
Davis likes his cars American, fast and powerful.
He gets out of the Camaro, walks over to the little elevator, takes it to the third floor, and lets himself into Unit 4.
The condo is typical—an open floor plan with a small kitchen and breakfast bar at one end, a living room that runs to a set of glass sliders opening onto a narrow balcony with a table, chairs, and a gas grill. On the south side of the condo, a corridor leads to a guest bedroom, two baths, and a master bedroom that looks out on the ocean.
You buy this unit, it’s going to run the north side of a million.
Davis doesn’t buy, he doesn’t own.
Any of his places.
He rents.
Furnished, turnkey vacation rentals. They come with everything—TVs, stereos, pots and pans, dishes, glasses, cups, coffeemakers, toasters, silverware, towels, washcloths, even soap.
Davis rents them in different names and always pays in cash.
In advance.
Crime 101: People who get their money rarely ask questions.
Here’s the deal.
There are condo complexes all up and down the 101.
People buy them, but most don’t live in them year-round. A lot of them serve as places for families to gather in the summer or for people from the frigid states to come to in the winter. The rest of the time they sit empty, so a lot of the owners rent them out to pay the mortgage.
Because it’s a genuine pain in the ass to do this for yourself, most of the owners use a management service that takes a percentage.
They rent by the month, the week, even the day if they’re right on the beach, and all you have to do is establish your credit with one of these management companies and you can change condos as often as you like.
The populations of these condo complexes are mostly transient and faceless. Some of them are refugees from the cold winters of Minnesota or Wisconsin, others are waiting for escrow to clear on the house they’ve just bought or sold. Some are the recently divorced “in transition.” Some just like living by the beach. They come and go. You could live there for years without meeting a neighbor, except maybe to say hi in the parking garage or at the pool.
This works for Davis. He deals with five different management companies under five different names. He never stays in any one place more than a couple of months and rarely goes back to the same condo twice.
What he’s learned is this:
If you live everywhere, you live nowhere.
Your address is the 101.
Davis goes to the refrigerator and grabs a bottle of Pellegrino. Then he sits down on the sofa, takes the papers from his pocket, and opens them.
Five small packets of neatly folded, thin white paper. Inside the white paper is a layer of thin blue paper.
Inside each blue paper:
An emerald-cut diamond.
Total value:
One point five million dollars.
Davis gets up, goes out onto the balcony, and looks out at the ocean and the 101.
* * *
Lieutenant Ronald—“Lou”—Lubesnick stands in the parking lot in back of Houghton’s Fine Jewelry and looks at Ben Haddad.
“I guess this is what I’m trying to say,” Lou repeats. “You make dozens of runs a month between Sammy’s La Jolla store and here. Most of the time it’s with a few thousand bucks’ worth of merchandise. But on the one night you’re carrying one and a half million in stones, that’s when you get hit?”
Lou shrugs.
His partner, McGuire, smiles. Lou’s shrugs are famous. The word around the Robbery Unit is that Lou says more with his shoulders than with his mouth. Which is a lot of action, because Lou talks a lot.
Like now, Lou saying, “I mean, is there anything about this that doesn’t say ‘inside job’? What, the guy just got lucky?”
“He didn’t get any information from me,” Haddad says stubbornly.
They go over it again.<
br />
Houghton had a customer who wanted to look at some stones that Houghton didn’t have but Sammy Kassem did. Sammy chose a sample of five stones from his La Jolla store for the customer to look at. Haddad drove them over and got popped in the parking lot. The robber apparently knew that the sample case was a dummy and that the stones were in the ankle pouches.
Haddad can’t give them a face, a license plate, a car—even the color or make of a car.
“He just came out of nowhere,” Haddad says. “And he told me not to turn around.”
“You did the right thing,” Lou says. He’d much rather work grand theft than a murder. Lou did five years on SD Homicide before transferring over. The worst part was informing the families.
“Did you get a sense, was he about your height?” Lou asks.
“Maybe taller.”
“His accent,” Lou says.
“He didn’t have one.”
“Everyone has one,” Lou says. “Are you saying it wasn’t black or Spanish?”
“That’s right.”
McGuire knows where Lou is headed. Almost all the jewelry-courier robberies in the country are committed by Colombian gangs connected with the drug cartels. A year or so ago, they were banging the East Coast like ten-year-old boys playing whack-a-mole at Chuck E. Cheese. If they’ve moved out west now, it’s very bad news.
Lou Lubesnick and Bill McGuire make an odd-looking team. Lou is five-ten with some salt creeping into the pepper of his ink-black hair and a gut that’s making some advances over his belt. McGuire is a six-four, rawboned redhead with freckles and a frame like a wire coat hanger.
Together they look more like a comedy team than a pair of detectives, but there are a lot of guys in the joint who don’t find anything funny about the team of Lubesnick and McGuire, especially now that Lou is head of the Robbery Division with five other veteran detectives under him.
Even at this moment, some of the team are canvassing the neighborhood to find out if anyone saw anything, while the rest work the parking lot for tire tracks or shoe prints.
Lou turns his attention to Houghton. “Have you noticed anybody hanging around, watching the store?”
“I think I would have mentioned that,” Houghton says.
Lou is immune to sarcasm, totally tone-deaf. “Any customer come in, look around, didn’t buy anything?”
