“Bimini Wright thinks all this has something to do with her ‘Eighty-five Problem,” Emdee said.
“Ms. Wright is a lying, round-heeled twat who shagged half my Moscow bureau.”
Sweat was beginning to trickle down my back as I stood in the hot greenhouse. Roger and Emdee weren’t getting anywhere with their bulldog approach, so I decided to try another angle.
“What about Samoyla and Igor Petrovitch?” I asked. “Our department has a very thick file on them. Some people in our counterintelligence unit actually believe that they work for you.”
“I don’t believe I’ve heard of them. Are they involved in the arts?” His expression didn’t change, but there was a smile in his wet, brown eyes.
“Blood artists,” I said. “And if we ran them through a CIA check, your name would start popping up everywhere. But it’s all ancient Kremlin stuff. I don’t think they quite fit this new calling of yours. They probably make too much trouble for a man of your obvious refinement. I think you might hate the trouble they cause for your own people over here.”
His eyes gave away nothing, so I went on.
“Maybe there’s a way we could take care of some of that for you. Arrest the Petrovitchs and ship them off to some slam dance academy, where they’ll remain permanently incarcerated.”
He stood very still. “Finally, in all this hot air comes a useful idea,” he said. “I have wondered many times, why your country let these two mobsters stay. Of course, when you examine it, there can only be one answer. Somebody important is profiting from their activities. If I were you, I might look into that.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I said.
“Your question is a political conundrum with many permutations. If you care to be more specific about how we might cooperate on such a project, then yes, maybe I’m interested. It’s got to make sense, however.”
Broadway looked at me and shook his head slightly. Stanislov saw it.
“No?” he said, then set down his watering can. “Okay, if that’s everything, I have a dance audition at ten-forty.”
He turned and led us out of the greenhouse to the front door. I stopped him before he showed us out. “Sammy and Iggy both live in expensive houses in Bel Air. There must be lots of money coming in to afford those ten-million-dollar spreads. What businesses are they in?”
“They take what isn’t theirs.”
I thought it was all he was going to say, but then he added: “By the way, they don’t just have those two houses in Bel Air. The Petrovitches also own a villa up at New Melones Lake in central California. I’ve often thought that if that lake were dredged, it would give up the bones of many disillusioned people.”
Chapter 50
That pretty much sucked,” Broadway complained. “Maybe if you hadn’t taken out your street baton and started raising knots on his head, we would a done a little better,” I countered.
“Don’t let the fey Brit accent fool you,” Roger cautioned. “Bam-Bam killed his share of cowboys. He’s deadly as an E-Street gangster. You gotta go at him head-on. Besides, it’s almost impossible to role-play spooks with political immunity. He probably wasn’t going to give us squat anyway.”
Perry nodded, chewing on a toothpick. The three of us were sitting at a concrete picnic table on the long wooden pier that stretched out from the beach into the ocean at Santa Monica. The structure included an amusement park and restaurants, which were almost empty at this hour of the morning. A ten-foot hurricane break from a storm in Mexico was rolling in, pounding the sand, slamming against the concrete pilings. Not that we were overly paranoid, but we chose this location because even with a powerful directional mike, it would be next to impossible for the feds, or anyone else, to record our conversation over the crashing surf.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Roger said. He had bought a hotdog from a vendor and was peeling back the paper.
“You know what this feels like?” I said. “Feels like everybody is holding a piece of the same puzzle, but we’re all so locked into security concerns, the bunch of us will never put the damn thing together.
“We need to bring these people together. The Russians, Israelis, and the CIA. Get them all talking to each other and to us.”
“You ain’t gonna get Bam-Bam Stan and Bimini Wright in the same room together ‘less you turn off the lights, and give ‘em both switchblades,” Emdee drawled.
Roger took a big bite of the hotdog and added, “Their rivalry is personal. Goes all the way back to the eighties in Moscow.”
“What if we start the bidding by throwing something useful on the table? Give them a couple of good pieces of our Intel.”
“You’re loadin’ the wrong wagon, Joe Bob. We ain’t got nothing they want,” Perry said.
“We got the ballistics match on the five-forty-five automatic that could end up putting Sammy behind two murders. If Stanislov wants to get rid of the Petrovitches like he said, that gun could do it.”
“You nuts? We can’t give these people that part of our case.” Broadway stopped chewing and his mouth fell open in astonishment.
“Close your fuckin’ mouth,” Perry said. “Bad enough I gotta look at ya without watchin’ that mess a chaw get goobered.”
Broadway swallowed and shook his head. “If we give that information to Stanislov, and it turns out he was lying and the Petrovitches really are working for him off the books, then that murder weapon gets dumped in the ocean and we’ll never make our case.”
“I didn’t say it was perfect, but we need to find a way to unstick this.”
Broadway threw the half-eaten hotdog in the trash. Apparently, I’d destroyed his appetite.
“They won’t come to a meeting, no matter what we give ‘em,” he finally said.
“We don’t know that,” I persisted. “Look, we’re out of moves, and with Homeland circling us, we gotta set up something fast.”
Suddenly, Perry snapped his fingers and we both turned.
“How ‘bout we call in your Uncle Remus,” he said to Roger.
“We don’t have a warrant to plant a bug, and he won’t wire one up without court paper. I ain’t ready to put my badge in Lucite,” Roger said, referring to the department’s practice of encasing a cop’s badge in a block of plastic as a souvenir to take home after he left the force.
“Not plant a bug, dickhead. I’m thinking Remus should just turn one of his old ones back on.”
“Who the hell is Uncle Remus?” I asked.
“Ain’t named Remus,” Broadway said. “That’s just what this gap-toothed cracker calls him. He’s talkin’ about my Uncle Kenny. He’s an electronic plumber for the National Security Agency in L. A. When NSA gets a warrant to plant a bug, Kenny and his technical engineers do the black bag job; go into the location at midnight and plant the pastries. These boys are real craftsmen. Dig up floors and run fiber-optic cable all through the walls. Got electronics so small, the lenses and mikes are no bigger than computer chips. They plaster everything up, paint it over, and leave the space just like before. In less than eight hours, they got the place wired up better’n a Christmas window and you’d never know they were ever there.”
“So how does that help us?” I asked.
“After the cases go to court, most of this shit is never pulled out,” Broadway explained. “It’s usually too dangerous to go back and remove the hardware, so they just turn it off and leave it. Uncle Kenny’s got deactivated bugs in buildings all over town. The beauty of Perry’s idea is, maybe since the bugs are already in place, we don’t need a warrant to turn one back on.” He looked at Emdee.
“It’s a unique concept, untested by law,” Perry answered. “Who knows? I’m saying we don’t.”
“I still don’t get it,” I said, wondering how random bugs in buildings around town helped us.
“Since the bugs ain’t where the Petrovitches are,” Perry said, grinning. “All we gotta do is get the Petrovitches to the bugs.”
Then he told us
what he had in mind. It was smart but also risky. There was no way our bosses in the department would ever sanction it. That meant we’d have to run a dangerous operation off the books without LAPD backup.
We sat on the pier feeling the warm sun and the thundering surf.
Finally, I stood and said, “Okay, but if we’re gonna do this, we need to find somebody to watch our six.”
“Except, we can’t go to Alexa, Cubio, or Tony,” Broadway said. That means we’ve gotta get these intelligence agencies to help us.”
“We can’t have dickwads and liars holding our back,” Emdee argued.
“We’ve got no choice,” I said. “Sooner or later, we’re all gonna be dead anyway.”
Chapter 51
I’d been away from home way too long, and tomorrow was going to be a busy, dangerous day, so I decided to sleep in my own bed tonight and make love to my wife. I also wanted to sit down and have a long talk with Chooch.
I exited the freeway on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, then glanced in my rearview mirror. Coming down the off-ramp several cars back, was a familiar vehicle. A white Econoline van.
Zack?
I doubled back, made two quick rights, and came around behind it. But the van took off, accelerating up the street. It shot through a light just as it was changing, and I got totally blocked. I never got close enough to read the plate. All I could do was watch in frustration as the taillights headed back onto the freeway and disappeared.
Almost immediately, my mind started to deconstruct the incident. I hadn’t actually seen the driver or plate number, so how did I really know it was Zack? How many white Econoline vans were there in Los Angeles anyway? And here’s a big one. How could Zack know I’d be on that freeway at that exact time? Wasn’t it more probable that it was just some random white van that sped up to beat the light?
I was trying to smooth it over, to make it go away so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. But somewhere deep down, I already knew the answer.
It was Zack and he was coming after me.
I approached my house from the Grand Canal sidewalk, pausing to look around before opening the white picket gate and heading across my backyard. If Zack or the feds were following me, coming home could be a major mistake, but I needed to be near the people I loved and who loved me. I moved to the sliding glass porch door and found it locked. Just as I getting ready to go around to the front and use my key, Delfina appeared in the living room holding Franco in her arms. She spotted me through the glass, ran across the carpet, and opened the slider.
“Shane,” she said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. “I’m so glad you’re out of the hospital! But Alexa said you wouldn’t be coming home.”
“Changed my mind.”
Franco was stretching out a welcoming paw, so Delfina handed the marmalade cat over. As soon as I took him, he started purring and nuzzling my chest. It’s nice to be wanted.
“Guess what?” Delfina said. “This afternoon we got a call from Pete Carroll. He wants Chooch to come to the school next week and meet all the coaches. It’s an official visit. Chooch thinks it means they’re going to offer him a full scholarship. If he wants to go there, he needs to sign a letter of intent by February fourth.
“That’s great!” I said, happy that it was finally working out.
“He’s in his room calling the world,” she laughed.
I walked into the makeshift garage bedroom. Chooch hung up the phone and turned as I entered.
“Dad, it’s so cool you came home tonight,” he beamed. “Mom said you were undercover for a few days. You gotta hear what just happened!” One sentence fell on top of the next.
“Del just told me.”
“Is this sweet?” A grin spread, lighting his handsome face.
“You bet it is.”
I put Franco down and sat on the foot of Chooch’s bed as he spun his chair around to face me.
“Y’know, Dad, I’ve been going over what you said, and you getting hurt and going in the hospital sorta put a lot of this in perspective. I think you were right about most of what you said.”
“I was?”
“Yeah, about using football so people would think I was special. But that’s only part of it.”
He paused and furrowed his brow. I knew he was coming to an important realization so I sat back and waited.
“When I was a kid growing up with Sandy, it wasn’t like she was even my mother,” he finally said. “She was always off doing whatever, and she had me stashed at one boarding school or another, always safely out of the way, so I wouldn’t judge her. But I was so young I didn’t understand it was about her. I thought it was about me. I thought I wasn’t important enough to her.”
I understood what he was saying. When I first met Sandy Sandoval in the late eighties, she was a high-priced L. A. call girl who I had eventually recruited as a civilian undercover to work high-profile criminals. She was Hispanic, and so beautiful that people often turned to stare whenever she entered a room. Because of her looks, she had no trouble getting my criminal targets to confide in her once she had them in bed. In return for any information that led to a bust, she would collect an amount from LAPD equal to half of the money we had spent trying to catch that particular criminal in the proceeding year. It often came to several hundred thousand dollars. She was making ten times more as a UC than she ever had as a call girl. Sandy and I only made love one time, but without my knowing it, that union had produced Chooch. For the first fifteen years of his life, before I knew he was mine, Sandy had more or less ditched him, putting him in expensive boarding schools so he wouldn’t be exposed to her line of work. The day she died three years ago, she told me that I was his father. Chooch grew up feeling angry and rejected, much as I had. This history had produced insecurities in him, and that’s what he was talking about.
“So I guess in some ways you’re right,” he continued. “Having everybody saying I’m good at football, well it just felt real good to me, y’know?”
“Son, I know. I’ve been there.”
“But I’ve been acting like a total jerk. And you’re absolutely right about my Montebello game. It was lousy. Who do I think I’m kidding, saying Terrell Bell has rotten footwork and a bad arm? The guy is great, and I’m scared he’ll beat me out if he goes to USC. With two Heisman-winning quarterbacks in five years, they’re really loaded at that position. Terrell’s not my problem. I’m my problem. If I want to succeed, all I have to do is make myself better. I’ve got a lot to learn from these other guys, and if I get the scholarship, I’m gonna go in with the right attitude. I’m gonna be a team player, ‘cause I really love this game, Dad, and it does come from the inside.”
“That’s the right way to look at it, son.” I was incredibly proud of him.
“You and Alexa are invited on Sunday of my weekend visit. They’re gonna take us around the athletic department to meet the staff and show us the facilities.”
“I’ll be there.” I only hoped I’d be alive to keep the promise.
Alexa came home at eight o’clock and was surprised to find me sitting in the backyard. She walked outside shaking her head slightly.
“Is this smart?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Honey, I think you need to leave,” she said. “Not exactly the response I was hoping for.” I stood up and kissed her. Her arms went around me, and for a moment we clung to each other.
“Since I don’t trust the phones, I figured I’d tell you this in person,” I said.
She held my hand and waited.
“I need you to get a search team up to New Melones Lake in Central California and drag the bottom for Calvin Lerner’s body. I think he may be down there, wired to an anchor. If he is, and if he was shot in the head like Davide Andrazack, then maybe we can tie the bullet to Sammy’s five-point-four-five automatic.”
“Drag the whole lake. That’s gonna cost a fortune. There’s over a hundred miles of waterfront.”
“The Petrovit
ches have a house up there. Get somebody to check with the real estate tax board and find out where it is. Then start somewhere near the house. These guys are so arrogant, I wouldn’t be surprised if they just threw Lerner’s body off the end of their dock.”
She nodded, then said, “I’m trying to get you the warrant, but I’m afraid it’s not going to be what you want. It’ll be pretty narrow. The judge wrote it for tax records only, and limited it to Patriot Petroleum, which is one of their companies like you thought.”
“Sammy won’t have an old KGB assassination pistol hidden in his office. If it’s anywhere, it’s in his house.”
“I know, but I set this up using your gas tax idea. The judge wouldn’t write a warrant on their houses. This isn’t like a FISA court where we can get whatever we want. I had to twist Judge Bennett’s arm to even get it at all. I hardly had any PC.” Alexa pulled her hand away. “So far the only address we have for the damn company is a post office box in Reseda. Maybe the fucking gun is locked up there.” She was getting frustrated.
“Okay, okay. Don’t get hot. I’ll get an address for the warrant.”
“I’m not hot, I’m worried because I think I know what you’re up to.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t really give a shit about these tax records. It’s a nothing financial crime, and at worst the Petrovitches will only get a lousy eighteen months. You’re not going through all this just to drop a pound and a half on them. Since finding the gun is now pretty much of a long shot, I think you’re gonna try and piss this goon off.”
“How can you say that?” I said, trying to look innocent.
“You’re gonna roll over there, insult this lunatic, then lure him into an ambush and try to take him down for assault on a police officer. Once he’s in custody, you’re hoping to roll him on his brother. That’s the dumb-ass plan, right?”
Cold Hit (2005) Page 24
