“What might that price be, Señor Toledo?” Traynor was starting to get the hang of this banter.
“Like everything in life, that’s negotiable.”
Not wanting to distract his train of thought, neither Manuel nor Traynor said anything, allowing him to continue. “A deal like this is not to be brashly entered into. Let us meet in, shall we say, three days.” He looked around the room. “Negotiations such as this require someplace a bit more private. I want to hear more about this wealthy investor and his role in this business.” He and his soldier stood. Toledo shook their hands. Before departing, he said, “If I am able to arrange things, are you capable of providing … shall we say a portion of the price of the product when we meet in three days?”
“We are capable of bringing the entire amount,” Manuel said. “Will one million American dollars be enough to purchase … shall we say two hundred kilos?”
Toledo tried to keep his greed from showing, but he did not succeed. Upon hearing the amount of the front money, he blinked and unconsciously licked his lips. He was like a buzzard at a massacre—crazy with lust to get his hands on his reward. “That should do.” He nodded and left with his goon leading the way.
As they watched them depart, Traynor said, “Three more days…. What do we do until then?”
“I suggest we start by having dinner.”
2 Slang for violent activity, up to and including murder.
A reconnaissance of the neighborhood should be performed …
—FM 3-19.13, Law Enforcement Investigations
21
McMahon watched Skidgel leave his apartment and stroll down the sidewalk. He started the engine and Deborah sighed when the air conditioning blasted her with chilled air. “How do you think he was able to raise bail?” she asked. She studied the rundown apartment complex. “You wouldn’t expect someone who lives in a place like this to be able to raise a million dollars.”
“He only has to put up ten percent. He used a bail bondsman most likely.” McMahon pulled away from the curb and cruised slowly, keeping his quarry in sight. “For what it’s worth, I thought the same thing. It definitely makes me think there’s someone with money behind this.”
They followed Skidgel for three blocks before he turned into a garage. “I wondered if he owned a car,” McMahon said. They got lucky and found an empty parking slot across from the garage exit.
In less than ten minutes, a Porsche 9-11 convertible came out of the garage with Skidgel driving. “I’ll be dipped in shit,” McMahon said. “It looks as if ole Vern is worth more than we thought.” He let the sports car get half a block ahead before pulling into the street.
“Do you know why street gangs never steal Porsche nine elevens?” McMahon asked.
“No.”
“They think they’re police cars …”
Deborah slowly turned her head in his direction and then began chuckling.
They followed the Porsche out of Los Angeles, skirting Beverley Hills, and into Brentwood. Deborah looked out the side window and said, “Now this is where I’d expect someone worth more than a million to live.”
They passed a drive and McMahon said, “Yup. In fact, this next house is where O. J. Simpson lived.”
Deborah turned in her seat and looked at the infamous house as it fell behind them. She smirked. “That’s another one that finally got what he had coming to him.” She turned to face the front and went quiet.
They followed Skidgel for a half mile and slowly passed by as he turned into a drive, stopped before a gate, waited for it to open, and then followed the long circular lane that led to the front of the house. McMahon stopped and they watched as he exited the Porsche and walked inside. “He didn’t knock,” Deborah commented.
“Yeah, says a lot, doesn’t it?” McMahon checked his mirrors. “We need to find a spot from which we can observe this place. It won’t be easy. I got this rental so it would blend into the other neighborhood. Around here it will stick out.” He handed her a notebook. “Write down the address, would you? I’m going to ask Angela to find out who owns this place.”
They drove around the neighborhood and found no place where a lingering vehicle would go unnoticed. “What now?” Deborah asked.
McMahon pointed to a road that meandered up the side of a mountain behind the house. “We’ll watch him from up there.”
“Okay. But we have no idea how long he’ll be in there—what if he’s only visiting?”
“There’s no way in hell Skidgel is the head of this. I want to see who else is involved. But first we need to get some things. We’ll need high-powered binoculars and a good—very good—video recorder. Skidgel is about to be the lead in another film …”
McMahon adjusted the screen of the car’s GPS so that it zoomed out and showed a panoramic view of the area. They followed the map until it showed that they were at the entrance to the road leading up the ridge. He stopped the car and said, “I’m gonna stay and keep an eye on him.” He jotted a list of equipment on a piece of paper and gave Deborah the name of a man he knew who would have the gear in his shop. “Tell him it’s for me and he’ll give you a discount.”
“Does it look like I need a discount?” She perused the list. “What’s this?” She pointed at the last item on the list.
“It’s a tracking system, sort of like a GPS, only rather than telling us where we are, it will tell us where he is.”
“How does it work?”
“The transmitter is magnetic. Once it’s stuck on the car, it will send us a signal so we’ll know his location.”
“Looking at that place, I doubt our favorite shithead will have only one car …”
“You’ve been hanging around Ed and me too long. Your vocabulary has definitely gone south. Still, you make a good point,” McMahon said. He retrieved the list and made a quick change.
Deborah saw that he had amended the tracking device to read six transmitters, looked at him, and nodded. “I have one last question. How will we get these on his cars?”
“That’s my job. I’ll sneak down there after dark and attach them.”
“Jack, have you thought this through? An estate that large is certain to have a security system.”
McMahon grinned. “I knew I brought you along for a reason.” He thought for a moment and then said, “I know an exotic pet store that will provide us with what we need.” Once again, he amended the shopping list.
He handed it back and again she quickly read it. “You’re kidding me—aren’t you?”
He stepped back and saluted her. “Nope … when you’re on your way back, call me and we’ll arrange a place to meet.” He looked in the car and said, “You may want to change out of that skirt. We may be doing some climbing.”
“Climbing?”
“You never know where we may have to go in order to be able to observe things.”
Deborah nodded and drove off.
McMahon waited until she was out of sight and then walked up the winding dirt road. Even though the day was sunny and warm, he maintained a brisk stride, so that if anyone were to observe him, he would appear to be out for some exercise. In no time he was soaked with sweat, but he kept up his pace. Ten minutes later, he stood in the shade of the branches of a twisted tree and leaned against the trunk, staring down at the estate. He had found a location that gave him an unobstructed view of three sides of the house. He saw someone sitting in a chaise beside an Olympic-size swimming pool. His physique was similar to Skidgel’s, but without binoculars, McMahon had no way of being sure it was him.
A woman walked out of the large house wearing a bikini—or at least the bottom half of one. She placed something on the table between the two lounge chairs and flopped down in the vacant one. Even without the aid of field glasses, McMahon could tell that she was well endowed.
He scouted the area, hoping to find a place where they could park the car without being seen from below. Once again, he got lucky and found a small picnic area about two hundred yards
from his observation post. It was ideal. The dirt parking area nestled back into a grove of trees and bushes. He surveyed his surroundings and was satisfied that the mansion was not within the line of sight of the recreational area. Pleased with the location, he returned to his position near the slope.
He sat in the shade of the tree, leaned against the trunk and, despite the rough bark, settled in to wait for Deborah. He had been in place for almost two hours when she called his cell phone. He gave her directions to the picnic area and with a final glance at the now vacant swimming pool, walked to the appointed rendezvous.
McMahon was waiting in the middle of the lane when Deborah slowly approached their rendezvous. He motioned for her to park beneath the spreading branches of a large oak. When she turned off the engine and popped the hatch open from inside, he unloaded their equipment and placed it on a nearby wooden table.
He looked approvingly at her new attire. Instead of her usual skirt she wore jeans, a plaid shirt, and hiking boots. She was ready for climbing through brush.
“Anything happen after I left?” she asked.
He thought of the buxom, half-naked woman and said, “Nothing.”
Deborah’s brow curled. She said, “Do you know the looks I got when I bought every raccoon that pet store had?”
He smiled. “Speaking of which, we have to move them into the shade. We don’t want the heat to kill our friends in there. C’mon, I’ll show you our looking post.”
As they walked out of the picnic area, she said, “Manuel called me while I was getting our stuff … They’ve made contact.”
“And,” he added, “Angela called. The estate doesn’t belong to Skidgel. It belongs to Lawrence Provost, which could complicate things.”
“How so?”
“He’s very connected …”
“The mob?”
“The government.”
Loose surveillance can be used to spot-check a suspect. It can be used to compile long-term information on a subject.
—FM 3-19.13, Law Enforcement Investigations
22
Darkness blanketed the sky, and McMahon and Deborah had seen little, if any, sign of life on the grounds of the estate. “Time to go,” he said.
“Are you sure? Maybe we should give it another hour?”
“By the time we get down there and get set up, it’ll be close to an hour.”
Deborah stood and brushed dust and debris from the seat of her jeans. She arched her back and stretched. “I can’t believe that I’ve been sitting under a tree watching a house for over four hours.”
“It’s what we call a stakeout. I’ve sat for days … which we may do yet. Our boy seems content to hunker down.”
“Safe within his fort.”
“Yeah, something like that. C’mon, let’s do this.”
When they reached the SUV, McMahon opened the hatch and made one last check that all of their equipment seemed to be in order. He reloaded the caged and angry raccoons and then said, “You drive.”
She walked to the driver’s side door and when she opened it, stepped back a pace. “Whew!” She waved a hand in front of her face.
McMahon held the other door open and said, “Well, they have been cooped up in those little cages for the entire afternoon. When a coon has to go—it has to go.”
Deborah held her hand over her mouth and nose, and then got behind the wheel. She opened all the windows and before McMahon was settled into his seat, began backing up. She said, “Before we return this rental, we’ll need to air it out.”
“Just a little longer and they’ll be out of here.”
Deborah hung her head out of the window as she drove down the sloping road. Twice, she had to yank the steering wheel to keep from driving off the road and down the slope. McMahon kept a wary eye on her, and although he wanted to tell her to pull her head inside before she killed them, he did not say anything. When they stopped near the side of the estate, she wasted no time exiting the car.
“There has to be a place where I can get over that fence without rock-climbing gear,” McMahon said.
“Well, don’t take forever finding it. This car smells like the dung pile at a zoo.”
He grinned and got out of the car. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
Before she could reply, he had disappeared into the darkness.
McMahon skirted the wall that surrounded the estate, thankful that the owner’s paranoia was focused on keeping the inside of his compound secure rather than the outside. As a result, all of the perimeter lights faced inward, toward the house, and not toward the exterior of the walls. He circled around until he found the only breachable section of the ramparts. He stood beside a cyclone fence gate, which was obviously the entrance and exit for maintenance and sanitation workers. After all, even the most elaborate fortifications create garbage. He studied the buttresses and realized that there were no alarms on the top of them. McMahon had surmised that if the estate had an alarm system, it was most likely dependent on motion detectors that would be strategically located around the grounds—which was why he’d had Deborah buy the raccoons.
McMahon returned to the car and quickly apprised Deborah of his findings. He directed her to drive along the barricade until they came to a tree whose lower branches pressed against the brickwork. They removed each of the four cages from the backseat and placed them on the ground. McMahon spoke so softly that his voice was barely louder than a whisper. “I haven’t seen any roving guards and was unable to locate any sensors on the walls. That makes me believe that security is entirely within the walls.”
Deborah nodded. “Okay, now I understand why we need the stench sisters.”
He picked up the cages and one at a time, carried them to the base of the tree. “Think you can hand these up to me?”
Deborah lifted one of the cages. “I loaded them into the car, so I think I can handle it.”
McMahon climbed the tree and perched on a thick branch about three feet below the top of the parapet. “Okay, give me the first one. Be careful you don’t get your fingers inside those cages. Raccoons can be nasty suckers.” To emphasize his point, as soon as she reached for the first cage, its occupant bared its teeth and sounded out a menacing hiss.
Deborah hesitated. “They’re upset, aren’t they?”
He grinned and couldn’t resist saying, “If someone locked you up in a cage for hours, you’d be upset, too.”
Taking great care to keep her fingers outside the bars, she lifted the first pen by placing her hands underneath the bottom. The angry occupant spun around, shifting the cage, and Deborah almost dropped it.
“Careful,” McMahon said. “If you drop one and that pissed-off coon gets free, she’ll attack the nearest thing—and you’re it.”
“Thanks. That’s just what I wanted to hear.”
“You’re welcome.” He reached down and when she lifted the cage, grabbed it. When he lifted the folding handle on the top, the animal tried to attack. Once he had the cage secure, he placed it on the top of the wall. When he put the second cage on the wall, the occupants of the small cells saw one another and hissed and fussed. This might work out better than I’d hoped, McMahon thought. In short time, he had all four cages aligned on top of the rampart.
“Thank God these things unlatch from the top,” he said. “Okay, now the fun begins.”
He balanced himself carefully against the wall and cautiously reached for the latches on the first two restraining cages. He flipped the latches and two whirling balls of fangs, claws, and fur exploded through the opening. They collided in midair and immediately became entwined, their hissing and growling filling the area. “Wow …” McMahon said as he released the final pair. In seconds, a free-for-all was being waged as the enraged varmints rolled, bit, and gouged each other. He watched them for a few seconds, passed the empty cages to Deborah, and then heard a loud bell ringing. McMahon turned his attention away from the melee taking place on the manicured lawn and hunkered down beneath the wall. He
motioned to Deborah who passed a small satchel to him.
When he straightened up and cautiously peered over the top of the wall, he saw two men standing on the grass, engrossed in the battle of the raccoons. “I ain’t goin’ near them,” one said.
“Me either. I don’t know if my health plan covers injuries from this shit.”
“Yeah, besides, as hard as they’re goin’ at each other, they’ll either be tired or dead in a few minutes.”
“Think we should turn on a water hose and wet them down?”
“What … and have them pissed at us? No way, man.”
“We’d better get a shovel and wheelbarrow so we can pick up the losers.”
As they turned away the first man said, “I’ve been to dog and cock fights, but never seen nothin’ like that …”
“Yeah, we better turn the alarms off until they’re gone. Otherwise, we’ll be running back and forth all night.”
“You get the alarms. I’ll get the shovel and wheelbarrow.”
“Deep undercover” mission is the most difficult assignment …
—Police Procedure & Investigations
23
“What are you guys going to do if Toledo won’t go to LA?” Martin Harris, head of security for Hollis International in Mexico, sat beside Traynor and slowly turned his glass in the wet rings left on the table. He peered across the table at Manuel, as if he were awaiting word from on high.
“Haven’t really thought about that,” Manuel answered. “The DEA’s got warrants for him. They been trying to either expedite or catch him on US soil for years—he’s a smart sonuvabitch. We’ll probably snatch him, fly him back in the company jet, and turn him over to the cops.”
Black Orchid Page 12
