Green Monster

by Rick Shefchik

  “Fine with me,” Sam said. He took Heather by the elbow. “Let’s try Bally’s.”

  They walked back toward the door, the entire gym having gone silent to watch the owner quell the disturbance.

  “Bye now,” Kaylee said with a wave—looking up from her magazine with her ear buds back in place—as Sam and Heather passed her desk.

  Back at the BMW, Sam leaned against the driver’s side door with his hands on the car’s finish and his chin nearly touching the buttons of his golf shirt. This was not going well. All he had going for him right now was the word of a crime boss that he’d help find Babe Ruth. Miranda had given them nothing, and the trip to the gym had nearly turned into a disaster, except to establish that there were some hair-trigger steroid cases pumping iron in the same health club where Alberto Miranda worked out—and that he’d needed Heather to jump in to save him from a beating.

  He hated himself for his next thought. Hated himself, but at this point, with the hours slipping by and Babe Ruth no closer to surfacing, Sam had no choice. Miranda was still the key to the whole thing—the only one who knew for sure what had happened, or not happened, during the World Series. They had to get to him again—and this time, he had to talk.

  “Heather…” Sam said, not knowing exactly how he was going to phrase his request.

  “Quiet,” she said. “I’m calling him.”

  She was sitting in the passenger seat of the convertible, her cell phone to her ear and a hand up to keep Sam from saying anything more.

  “Calling who?”

  “Alberto. Shhh, it’s ringing.”

  “Where’d you get his number?”

  She looked at him with an expression that said, “Are you from outer space?”

  Sam should have known. Miranda had done what any other millionaire pro athlete would have done after meeting a hot blonde like Heather. He got her phone number and called her later. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t talked to Kenwood the night before. At any rate, Heather now had Alberto Miranda’s number in her call list.

  “Alberto—Heather Canby,” she said with a musical lilt. “Great game tonight…Of course we were. We were sitting behind your dugout, about thirty rows up…Listen, I thought maybe we could get together tonight…No, no, Sam’s just…well, you know, we work together, but…”

  Sam smiled. He’d been on the verge of pimping Heather out to Miranda, and now she was doing it herself—though she certainly didn’t seem offended. This was the up side of casual, recreational sex: Whatever jealousy Sam might have felt was more than compensated for by the prospect of getting some useful information out of Miranda.

  “I don’t know where the players’ entrance is…” Heather was saying. “Oh…sure, I can find that…Will you be ready in twenty minutes? Great. See you then.”

  Heather clicked off the phone and turned to Sam.

  “Back to the stadium. I’ve got a date.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Vin Scully was wrapping up the post-game show after the 7-2 Dodger victory when Sam and Heather got back to the stadium. The lights of downtown Los Angeles burned brightly to the south as they drove around the ballpark, until they found a section of the lot where several dozen luxury cars were clustered together under the watchful eye of a couple of security cops. Sam recognized Miranda’s Jaguar, with the California vanity plate “AM 19”—his initials and uniform number.

  Several dozen autograph seekers and baseball groupies clustered along a metal barrier near the clubhouse door, waiting for the players to emerge. Sam stopped the BMW and turned to Heather.

  “We’ve got to get him to talk—tonight,” Sam said.

  “I know. It might take a while, though. I’ve got to earn his trust.”

  She looked at Sam with the same knowing expression he’d seen the first time they’d met in Kenwood’s office. She wasn’t going to tell him what she was prepared to do. She didn’t have to.

  “I’m going to follow you,” Sam said. “I’ll keep out of sight, but I’ll be nearby, wherever you go.”

  “Why? I’ll be all right.”

  “I know, but I haven’t got anything better to do. If you learn anything, we can move on it right away.”

  “I might not be done until morning.”

  “Fine. Just don’t turn it into brunch and a matinee.”

  Heather got out of the car and walked over to the group of fans waiting along the barrier by the players’ entrance. The kids waiting for autographs didn’t pay much attention, but the waiting women looked at Heather as though she’d just walked into their kitchen and taken the roast they’d set out for dinner.

  Ten minutes later, Alberto Miranda came out, wearing brown tailored slacks and a cream-colored Tommy Bahama sport shirt. The fans clamored for him to come over to the barrier, waving programs, baseball cards and notebooks for him to sign. He worked his way down the barrier, signing, unsmiling but dutiful. When he spotted Heather, he broke into a grin. He gestured for her to walk around to a gate where a guard let her through. He put an arm around Heather’s waist and walked her to his Jag, disappointing dozens of young women who’d waited around after the game, hoping for the same invitation. While the autograph hunters turned their attention to other players who’d come out of the locker room, Miranda’s sleek sports car sped off toward the limitless possibilities of L.A.

  Sam put the BMW in gear and followed at a distance. A red BMW convertible wasn’t the ideal car for a tail, but it wouldn’t stand out all that much in L.A. And Miranda had no reason to think he was being followed.

  Sam followed Miranda south on the Pasadena Freeway and stayed with him when he exited west onto the Santa Monica Freeway, headed toward the ocean. Traffic was not as constipated as in the daytime, so Sam could stay several hundred feet behind Miranda without worrying about losing him.

  He dialed up Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” on the iPod. He’d always wanted to drive in L.A. with the top down, listening to that insistent synth riff, Mike Campbell’s ominous guitar fills swooping like a pack of malevolent seagulls, and those desperate lyrics about a dying summer love—with a title borrowed from a book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, which in turn was borrowed from some famous poem…who wrote that? Yeats? Keats? Dylan Thomas? Tennyson? He should have paid more attention to his English poets in school, and less time studying batting averages and chord progressions.

  Sam figured he was one of many men cruising the L.A. freeways listening to the same song that night, and thinking the same vaguely paranoid thoughts about a woman—it was a Southern California cliché, for sure. But he didn’t care.

  Some guys could sustain a sexual relationship with a woman without getting the least bit involved, but Sam wasn’t that kind of man. His thoughts bounced back and forth between Caroline and Heather. Don’t look back, the song advised. He’d agreed that a cooling-off period was the right thing to do when Caroline went back to Tucson. But what did that mean? There were no rules. No advice, either. Don’t look back…he could see both of them, feel them, smell them…never look back…Heather’s shiny blond hair and hard-eyed focus on what she wanted…Caroline’s dark, silky hair and her optimistic, I-can-get-through-anything smile…summer was coming to an end, even here in Los Angeles…

  Heather…Caroline…Kenwood…Miranda…don’t look back…

  Miranda’s car was nearing La Brea when Sam’s cell phone rang. The guitar riff continued to peck in the background as Sam opened his phone. It had to be either Daly or Mink.

  “This Skarda?” he heard an unfamiliar voice ask.

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “Sid wants to meet with you. Tonight.”

  “Where?” Sam asked. He kept his eyes on Miranda’s tail lights. He wasn’t sure he wanted to leave Heather on her own—she might get something out of Miranda sooner than later, considering how effective she could be with men who enjoyed sensational blondes. And what man doesn’t? Yet Mink was just as likely to give him some vital informat
ion—and you don’t refuse offers from the Sid Minks of the world.

  The voice on the phone—it sounded like Mink’s tough-guy companion Joey Icebox—gave Sam directions to a Mexican restaurant called Dos Mujeres in Inglewood. Then he hung up.

  Sam exited on La Brea and headed south. Heather wouldn’t know that he had stopped following her, or why, but she could take care of herself. Obviously.

  Dos Mujeres was located a couple of blocks past the Hollywood Park racetrack and casino on West Century Boulevard. Driving by, Sam glanced at the casino, a newer building with a soft pink four-story façade and a metallic art-deco rotunda that extended over the circular driveway to a lighted waterfall facing the street. Airplane noise from LAX completed the area’s ambiance of hustle and edgy commotion.

  Sam pulled into the parking lot at Dos Mujeres and found a spot near the front door. He locked his gun in the trunk of the car, knowing Joey would just pat him down again anyway. He thought about putting the top up on the convertible, but there was nothing in it worth stealing, after he unplugged his iPod from the car stereo and put it in his jacket pocket.

  A black Cadillac pulled into the lot and stopped in front of the entrance. Joey Icebox jumped out of the car, followed by Leon with his Clooney haircut. They scanned the parking lot with the self-importance of a couple of Secret Service agents. Joey noticed Sam and nodded to him. Then Mink struggled out of the back seat, having exchanged his Dodgers jacket for a huge, ill-fitting brown sport coat. He had a lit cigar in his hand, but when he reached the steps of the restaurant, he tapped the ashes of the cigar and ground it into a wooden pillar just below the NO SMOKING sign. Then he put it back in his mouth and walked through the door that Leon held open for him. Joey gestured at Sam to follow them. In the vestibule, Joey did another quick frisk on Sam, then motioned for him to go in ahead of him.

  The sound system was playing contemporary Latin pop, with drum machines and synthesizers instead of accordions and trumpets. The decor was the typical potted ferns with colored Mexican blankets hanging from stucco interior walls. Substitute red checkered tablecloths for the chips and salsa, Chianti for the Dos Equis, and Dean Martin music for Selena, and Dos Mujeres would be the classic mob hangout. Sam didn’t have any urgent desire to be wearing his gun, but he didn’t know much about organized crime in L.A., either. Maybe gangsters here were as relaxed as the city they controlled; maybe not. Sam couldn’t shake the feeling that Mink was as much Hollywood as he was Mob; that he and his boys had never missed an episode of “The Sopranos,” and had “The Godfather” memorized line by line.

  “Good evening, Mr. Mink,” the ruffled-shirted host in the lobby said. He sounded nervous. “We weren’t expecting you.”

  “I got a whim,” Mink said with a shrug. “The usual table, Jorge.”

  He pronounced it hor-GAY, letting the emphasis linger purposely on the second syllable. The host did not correct him.

  Jorge led them through the restaurant to a booth in the corner that was occupied by a man and woman with three young children. Their food had just been served, and the woman was trying to calm one of the kids, who didn’t like the looks of his plate of rice and beans.

  “We’ll need to find you folks another table,” Jorge said to the couple.

  “What the hell,” the man said. He looked behind Jorge to see Mink and his men waiting impatiently. “I didn’t see a ‘Reserved’ sign on this table.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Joey said. He reached into his sport jacket. “Here it is.”

  He pulled out a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic and laid it in the middle of the table. Without another word, the man grabbed two of the kids by the arms and pulled them out of the booth. The woman picked up the youngest one and followed her husband without making eye contact with Mink or his goons. The youngest child stared wide-eyed back at Joey Icebox over his mother’s shoulder, and Joey stuck out his tongue. The little boy covered his eyes and screamed.

  “I’ll have this cleaned up right away, Mr. Mink,” Jorge said. He waved furiously at one of his busboys.

  The table was wiped down and re-set in less than a minute. Sam sat next to Leon on one end of the booth, with Sid Mink in the middle and Joey on his other side, where he could keep an eye on the front door. In another minute, three plates of food appeared, and another waiter placed a drink in front of Mink. Each plate had a different entree; Mink’s was three large enchiladas, a stuffed burrito, and sides of refried beans, rice, and pico de gallo; Joey Icebox had a chimichanga; and Leon had three tacos. One of the waiters asked Sam if he was going to order, but Sam waved him off. His stomach wasn’t in the receiving mood for Mexican food.

  Mink put a few hasty, ungraceful forkfuls of food in his mouth, had several sips from his drink, then returned to his dinner plate and finished it off before speaking to Sam. He pushed his empty plate away and chewed on his unlit cigar.

  “You sure you don’t want anything, Skarda?” Mink asked.

  “No thanks.”

  “Get him a drink, Leon.”

  Sam wasn’t going to argue: “Dos Equis.”

  Mink leaned toward Sam and spoke softly. His breath smelled of cigars, whiskey, and cilantro. Not all that unpleasant, really.

  “The guy you’re looking for is a Spic hustler named Frankie Navarro.”

  “How do you know?”

  Mink looked at Joey, then at Leon.

  “How do I know, he asks. I got people everywhere. Take it to the bank, pal—Navarro’s behind this. He’s been nipping around the edges of my business for a while now. A bookie here, a drug dealer there. Nothing to make me mad enough to do something about it. It’s a big town. He likes to pump iron, thinks he’s a tough guy. I hear he was in a couple of movies. But he’s a dumb punk who’s way over his head on this one.”

  Mink put the cigar in his mouth and worked it around like a lozenge, waiting for Sam to ask more questions. Sam had a dozen of them, but he wasn’t sure which one to ask first. The most obvious one was why Mink was bothering to tell him. Sid Mink’s say-so might be reliable, but it didn’t get Sam any closer to proving anything, or stopping it. It had to be in Mink’s interest, as well as Louis Kenwood’s, to terminate the extortion plot—and he’d have to help—but Sam wanted to hear Mink say it.

  “What are we going to do about it?” Sam asked. He stared coolly at Mink, though he didn’t feel cool. He was about as far out of his comfort zone as he could get, talking to mobsters in a strange town about a rival mobster.

  “We?” Mink said. “When did you become one of my guys?”

  “I can’t wait for you to clean this up,” Sam said. “My job is to tell Kenwood he doesn’t have to worry about Babe Ruth anymore. And I have to know that it’s true.”

  Joey Icebox put one of his large hands over the closed fist on his other hand and rubbed his knuckles, then said, “Only one way to be sure you don’t have to worry about Navarro.”

  That’s as far as Sam wanted to take that discussion. He couldn’t be party to planning a hit, assuming these guys could pull it off. If they did, and the cops defied the odds and did something about it, Sam would go down with Mink and his boys. Mob guys loved to make everybody think they were running smooth, trouble-free organizations, but Sam knew there were always wiseguys trying to position themselves to move up, others falling out of favor, and a cop strike force trying to exploit the rivalries. For all Sam knew, Joey or Leon could be wired by the Feds, working to bring Mink down. Sam didn’t have police affiliation anymore; good intentions wouldn’t help him in court if he was caught on tape discussing how to eliminate a rival mobster.

  “How do you know you can trust me to talk about this?” Sam asked Mink.

  “We had you checked out,” Mink said with a wave of the cigar. “Didn’t take long. You used to be a cop in Minneapolis. You got shot a couple years ago, went into private practice, and you’ve been peeping in bedroom windows for the last few months until Kenwood hired you. And somebody tried to gun you down rig
ht after that.”

  “You know about the boat?”

  “What boat?” Mink said. “I’m talkin’ about that fucked-up drive-by in Minneapolis.”

  So the kid lying in a coma back in the Twin Cities had been gunning for him, not Marcus. And that meant somebody knew Kenwood was going to hire him almost from the minute Heather called him—or even before. Navarro might not be a big-timer like Mink yet, but his reach was long; he’d found a guy in Minneapolis to try to take him out, and a guy in Boston, too. When the Minneapolis gang-banger failed, Navarro sent somebody else to shut the kid up. He didn’t need to worry about the guy in the speedboat. His talking days were over.

  So who was giving Navarro information? It had to be either Heather or Paul O’Brien—and Heather had had other chances to get rid of him since they left Boston. He needed that background check on Kenwood’s driver.

  “If Navarro is such a punk, how did he put all this together?” Sam asked. “Sounds to me like he’s getting ready to come after you.”

  “Bring it on,” Mink said. “I let him hang around, run his cheap operations because I didn’t think he had the brains or the balls to do anything that could hurt me. But suddenly he’s ambitious. The only way he becomes anything in this town is if he takes me out, and that ain’t gonna happen.”

  Mink looked at Joey and Leon, both of whom nodded silently.

  “We’re gonna go see Frankie tonight. Your problem’s gonna go away. You want to come, be our guest.”

  Sam had to think this through. He couldn’t take Sid Mink’s word that killing Frankie Navarro was the end of the Babe Ruth problem. At the very least, he needed to hear Navarro admit he was behind the plot. He also needed to know who had tipped him off that Kenwood had hired a detective. And a dead Frankie Navarro could do neither of those things.

  “Can’t you just lean on him a little?” Sam said. “Scare him into talking, then run him out of town?”

  “Evidently, he don’t scare,” Mink said. “He thinks he’s safe. He’s got his own soldiers.”