Hostage

by Robert Crais

  Glen rolled up the window and pulled away. He drove slowly so as not to attract attention. He had the strange sensation of being removed from his body, as if the world had receded and he was no longer a part of it. The a.c. was roaring. Walter Smith. Three assholes had crashed into Walter Smith’s home, and now the place was surrounded by cops and cameras, and their whole fucking neighborhood was sealed.

  Three blocks later, Glen pulled into a parking lot. He took his gun from the glove box and put it back in his pocket. He felt safer that way. He opened his phone again, and dialed another number. This time, his call was answered on the first ring.

  Glen spoke four words.

  “We have a problem.”

  Palm Springs, California

  5:26 P.M.

  SONNY BENZA

  Oxygen was the key. Sonny took a deep breath, trying to feed his heart. He was forty-seven years old, had high blood pressure, and lived in fear of the stroke which had claimed his father at fifty-five.

  Benza stood in the game room of his mansion perched on a ridge above Palm Springs. Outside, his two kids, Chris and Gina, home from school, were splashing in the pool. Inside, Phil Tuzee and Charles “Sally” Salvetti, sweating like pigs, pulled an extra television next to the big screen, 36 inches, a Sony. They were rushed and frantic, anxious to get the set on. Between the big-screen projection TV with the picture-in-picture function and the Sony, they could watch all three major Los Angeles television stations. Two showed aerial views of Walter Smith’s house, the third some pretty-boy talking head outside a gas station.

  Sonny Benza still refused to believe it.

  “What do we know? Not this TV bullshit. What do we know for sure? Maybe it’s a different Walter Smith.”

  Salvetti wiped the sweat from his forehead, looking pale under the Palm Springs tan.

  “Glen Howell called it in. He’s at the house, Sonny. It’s our Walter Smith.”

  Tuzee made a patting motion with his hands, trying to play the cooler.

  “Let’s everybody take it easy. Let’s relax and walk through this a step at a time. The Feds aren’t knocking on the door.”

  “Not yet.”

  Phil Tuzee was close to pissing himself. Sonny put his arm across Tuzee’s shoulders, giving the squeeze, being the one in control.

  “We got, what, ten or fifteen minutes before that happens, right, Phil?”

  Tuzee laughed. Just like that, they were calmer. Still worried, still knowing they had a major cluster fuck of a problem, but the first bubble of panic had burst. Now, they would deal with it.

  Benza said, “Okay. What exactly are we dealing with here? What does Smith have in the house?”

  “It’s tax time, Sonny. We have to file the corporate quarterlies. He has our records.”

  The bristly hairs on the back of Benza’s head stood up.

  “You’re sure? Glen hadn’t made the pickup?”

  “He was on his way to do that when this shit went down. He gets there and finds the neighborhood blocked off. He says Smith doesn’t answer his phone, which you know he would do if he could, and then he gets the story from some reporters. Three assholes broke into Smith’s house to hide from the cops, and now they’re holding Smith and his family hostage. It’s our Walter Smith.”

  “And all our tax stuff is still in that house.”

  “Everything.”

  Benza stared at the televisions. Stared at the house on the screens. Stared at the police officers crouched behind bushes and cars, surrounding that house.

  Sonny Benza’s legitimate business holdings included sixteen bars, eight restaurants, a studio catering company, and thirty-two thousand acres of vineyards in central California. These businesses were profitable in their own right, but they were also used to launder the ninety million dollars generated every year by drug trafficking, hijackings, and shipping stolen automobiles and construction equipment out of the country. Walter Smith’s job was to create false but reasonable profit records for Sonny’s legitimate holdings which Benza would present to his “real” accountants. Those accountants would then file the appropriate tax returns, never knowing that the records from which they were working had been falsified. Benza would pay the appropriate taxes (taking every deduction legally allowable), then be able to openly bank, spend, or invest the after-tax cash. To do this, Walter Smith held the income records of all Benza businesses, both legal and illegal.

  These records were in his computer.

  In his house.

  Surrounded by cops.

  Sonny went over to the big glass wall that gave him a breathtaking view of Palm Springs on the desert floor below. It was a beautiful view.

  Phil Tuzee followed him, trying to be upbeat.

  “Hey, look, it’s just three kids, Sonny. They’re gonna get tired and come out. Smith knows what to do. He’ll hide the stuff. These kids will walk out and the cops will arrest them, and that’s that. There won’t be any reason for the cops to search the house.”

  Sonny wasn’t listening. He was thinking about his father. Frank Sinatra used to live down the street. It was the house that Sinatra had remodeled to entertain JFK, spent a couple of hundred thousand to buff out the place so he and The Man could enjoy a little poolside poon as they discussed world affairs, sunk all that money into his nest only to have, after the checks were signed and the work was done, JFK blow him off and refuse to visit. Story goes that Sinatra went fucking nuts, shooting through the walls, throwing furniture into the pool, screaming that he was gonna take out a hit on the motherfucking President of the United States. Like what did he expect, Kennedy to be butt-buddies with a mobbed-up guinea singer? Sonny Benza’s home was higher up the ridge than Frank’s old place, and larger, but his father had been impressed as hell with Sinatra’s place. First time his father had come out to visit, he’d walked down to Sinatra’s place and stood in the street, staring at Sinatra’s house like it held the ghost of the Roman Empire. His father had said, “Best move I ever made, Sonny, turning over the wheel to you. Look how good you’ve done, living in the same neighborhood as Francis Albert.” The Persians who lived there now had gotten so freaked out by Sonny’s dad, they had called the police.

  “Sonny?”

  Benza looked at his friend. Tuzee had always been the closest to him. They’d been the tightest when they were kids.

  “The records don’t just show our business, Phil. They show where we get the money, how we launder it, and our split with the families back east. If the cops get those records, we won’t be the only ones who fall. The East Coast will take a hit, too.”

  The breath flowed out of Phil Tuzee as if he were collapsing.

  Sonny turned back to the others. They were watching him. Waiting for orders.

  “Okay. Three kids like this, the cops will give’m time to chill, they’ll see they’re caught and that the only way out is to give up. Two hours tops, they’ll walk out, hands up, then everybody goes to the station to make their statements.

  That’s it.”

  Hearing it like that made sense.

  “But that’s a best-case scenario. Worst case, it’s a bloodbath. When it’s over, the detectives go in for forensic evidence and come out with Smith’s computer. If that happens, we go to jail for the rest of our lives.”

  He looked at each man.

  “If we live long enough to stand trial.”

  Salvetti and Tuzee traded a look, but neither of them added anything because they knew it was true. The East Coast families would kill them.

  Tuzee said, “Maybe we should warn them. Call old man Castellano back there to let’m know. That might take off some of the edge.”

  Salvetti raised his hands.

  “Jesus, no fuckin’ way. They’ll go apeshit and be all over us out here.”

  Sonny agreed.

  “Sally’s right. This problem with Smith, we’ve got to get a handle on it fast, solve the problem before those bastards back in Manhattan find out.”

  Sonny looked back at
the televisions and thought it through. Control and containment.

  “Who’s the controlling authority? LAPD?”

  Salvetti grunted. Salvetti, like Phil Tuzee, was a graduate of USC Law who’d worked his way through school stealing cars and selling cocaine. He knew criminal law.

  “Bristo is an incorporated township up by Canyon Country. They have their own police force, something like ten, fifteen guys. We’re talking a pimple on LA’s ass.”

  Tuzee shook his head.

  “That doesn’t help us. If the locals can’t handle this, they’ll call in the Sheriffs or maybe even the Feds. That’s all we need, the Feebs rolling in. Either way, there’ll be more than a few hick cops to deal with.”

  “That’s true, Phil, but it will all be processed back through the Bristo PD office because it’s their jurisdiction. They’ve got a chief of police up there. It’s his crime scene even if he turns over control.”

  Sonny turned back to the televisions. A street-level camera was showing the front of the house. Sonny thought he saw someone move past a window, but couldn’t be sure.

  “This chief, what’s his name?”

  Salvetti glanced at his notes.

  “Talley. I saw him being interviewed.”

  The television shifted its shot to show three cops hunkered behind a patrol car. One of them was pointing to the side of the house like he was giving orders. Sonny wondered if that was Talley.

  “Put our people on the scene. When the Feds and Sheriffs come in, I want to know who’s running their act, and whether they’ve ever worked OC.”

  If they had experience working organized crime, he would have to be careful who he deployed to the area.

  “It’s already happening, Sonny. I’ve got people on the way, clean guys, not anyone they would recognize.”

  Benza nodded.

  “I want to know everything that comes out of that house. I want to know about the three turds who started this mess. That bastard Smith might start talking just to cut a break for himself or his family. He might let them in on everything.”

  “He knows better than that.”

  “I want to know it, Phil.”

  “I’m on it. We’ll know.”

  Sonny Benza watched the three cops hunkered behind the patrol car, the one he believed to be the chief of police talking on a cell phone. He had never murdered a police officer because killing cops was bad for business, but he would not hesitate to do so now. He would do whatever it took to survive. Even if it meant killing a cop.

  “I want to know about this guy Talley. Find out everything there is to know about him, and every way we can hurt him. By the end of the day, I want to own him.”

  “We’ll own him, Sonny.”

  “We better.”

  PART TWO

  • • •

  THE FLY

  6

  • • •

  Friday, 6:17 P.M.

  TALLEY

  Two of Talley’s night-shift duty officers, Fred Cooper and Joycelyn Frost, rolled up in their personal cars. Cooper was breathless, as if he had run from his home in Lancaster, and Frost hadn’t even taken the time to change into her uniform; she had strapped her vest and Sam Browne over a sleeveless cotton top and baggy shorts that showed off legs as pale as bread dough. They joined Campbell and Anders in the street.

  Talley sat motionless in his car.

  When Talley rolled to a barricade-hostage situation with SWAT, his crisis team had included a tactical team, a negotiating team, a traffic control team, a communications team, and the supervisors to coordinate their actions. The negotiating team alone included a team supervisor, an intelligence officer to gather facts and conduct interviews, a primary negotiator to deal with the subject, a secondary negotiator to assist the primary by taking notes and maintaining records, and a staff psychologist to evaluate the subject’s personality and recommend negotiating techniques. Now Talley had only himself and a handful of untrained officers.

  He closed his eyes.

  Talley knew that he was in the beginning moments of panic. He forced himself to concentrate on the basic things that he needed to do: secure the environment, gather information, and keep Rooney cool. These three things were all he had to do until the Sheriffs took over. Talley began a mental list; it was the only way he could keep his head from exploding.

  Sarah called him over his radio.

  “Chief?”

  “Go, Sarah.”

  “Mikkelson and Dreyer got the security tape from the minimart. They said you can see these guys plain as a zit on your nose.”

  “They inbound?”

  “Five out. Maybe less.”

  Talley felt himself relax as he thought about the tape; it was something concrete and focused. Seeing Dennis Rooney and the other subjects would make it easier to read the emotional content in Rooney’s voice. Talley had never bet a hostage on his intuition, but he believed there were subtle clues to emotional weakness—or strength—that an astute negotiator could read. It was something he knew. It was familiar.

  His four officers were staring at him. Waiting.

  Talley climbed out of his car and walked up the street. Metzger had a look on her face, the expression saying it was about goddamned time.

  They needed a house in which to view the tape. Talley set Metzger to that, then divided more tasks among the others: Someone had to find out if the Smiths had relatives in the area, and, if so, notify them; also, they had to locate Mrs. Smith in Florida. The Sheriffs would need a floor plan of the Smith house and information on any security systems that were involved; if none were available from the permit office, neighbors should sketch the layout from memory. The same neighbors would be questioned to learn if any of the Smiths required life-sustaining medications.

  Talley began to grow comfortable with the familiarity of the job. It was something that he’d done before, and he had done it well until it killed him.

  By the time Talley finished assigning the preliminary tasks, Mikkelson and Dreyer had arrived with the tape. He met them at a large Mediterranean home owned by a bright sturdy woman who originally hailed from Brazil. Mrs. Peña. Talley identified himself as the chief of police and thanked her for her cooperation. She led them to the television in a large family room, where she showed them how to work the VCR. Mikkelson loaded the videotape.

  “We watched the tape at Kim’s to make sure we had something. I left it cued up.”

  “Did you pull up anything on Rooney from traffic or warrants?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dreyer opened his citation pad. Talley saw that notes had been scrawled across the face of a citation, probably while they were driving.

  “Dennis James Rooney has a younger brother, Kevin Paul, age nineteen. They live together over in Agua Dulce. Dennis just pulled thirty days at the Ant Farm for misdemeanor burglary and theft, knocked down from felony three. He’s got multiple offenses, including car theft, shoplifting, drug possession, possession of stolen goods, and DUI. The brother, Kevin, did juvenile time on a car theft beef. At one time or another, both were in foster care or were wards of the state. Neither graduated from high school.”

  “Any history of violent crimes?”

  “Nothing in the record but what I said.”

  “When we’re done here, I want you to talk to their landlord. Guys like this are always behind on the rent or making too much noise, so the landlord has probably had to jam them. I want to know how they reacted. Find out if they threatened him or flashed a weapon or rolled over and made nice.”

  Talley knew that a subject’s past behavior was a good predictor of future behavior: People who had used violence and intimidation in the past could be expected to react with violence and threats in the future. That was how they dealt with stress.

  “Find out from the landlord if they have jobs. If they work, ask their employers to come talk to me.”

  “Got it.”

  Mikkelson stepped away from the VCR.

  “We’re r
eady, Chief.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  The screen flickered as the tape engaged. The bright color image of a daytime Spanish-language soap opera was replaced by the soundless black-and-white security picture of Junior Kim’s minimart. The camera angle revealed that the camera was mounted above and to the right of the cash register, showing Junior Kim and a small portion of the clerk’s area behind the counter. The counter angled up the left side of the frame, the first aisle angled along the right. The camera gave a partial view of the rest of the store. Small white numbers filled a time-count window in the lower right of the screen.

  Mikkelson said, “Okay. Here they come. The guy we think is Rooney entered a few minutes ago, then left. Here where the tape picks up, it’s maybe five minutes later.”

  “Okay.”

  A sharp-featured white male matching Dennis Rooney’s description opened the door and walked directly to Junior Kim. A larger white male with a broad face and wide body entered with him. The second man’s hair was shaved down to his scalp in a fuzz cut.

  “Is that Rooney’s brother?”

  “The third guy is about to come in. The third guy looks like Rooney.”

  A third white male stepped inside before Mikkelson finished. Talley knew the third man was Rooney’s brother from the resemblance, though Kevin was shorter, thinner, and wearing a Lemonheads T-shirt. Kevin waited by the door.

  Talley studied their expressions and the way they carried themselves. Rooney was a good-looking kid, with eyes that were hard but uncertain. He walked with an arrogant, rolling gait. Talley guessed that he was posturing, but couldn’t yet tell if Rooney was posturing for others or himself. Kevin Rooney shuffled from foot to foot, his eyes flicking from Dennis to the gas islands outside the store. He was clearly terrified. The larger man had a wide flat face and expressionless eyes.

  “We have an ID on the big guy?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Was the camera hidden?”

  “Hanging off the ceiling big as a wart on a hog’s ass, and these guys didn’t even bother to wear masks.”