by Dick Lochte
The naked ladies entered the castle and the workmen went back to their tenting.
Mace turned his magnified attention on the rest of the property, including a double tennis court beyond the lagoon area where two mullet-haired guys in muscle shirts and baggy shorts listlessly whacked a ball back and forth.
Past the courts was a garage large enough to handle at least six vehicles, above which was what appeared to be living quarters for a chauffeur. It would have been too much to ask for the chauffeur to be the black man known as Sweets. More likely, it was the blond shirtless guy in jodhpurs and boots, for Christ’s sake, posing in front of the garage as he hosed off an electric-blue Rolls.
Next in line for a washing was a yellow Mustang convertible.
Mace lowered the binoculars.
He’d seen enough to convince him that Jerry Monte’s party would be worth crashing, if only to become reacquainted with Angela Lowell. He was convinced she was the key to getting Paulie out of the soup. But he was self-aware enough to realize there may have been another reason he wanted to see her again.
He was turning to walk back to the Camry when the sound of a car horn echoed upward. A white panel truck had braked near Monte’s servants’ gate. Mildly curious, he picked up the truck with his binoculars just as the gate swung inward in response to the horn. The vehicle entered the property and headed directly to the garage area.
There was a drawing of a mortar and pestle on the door below the name ‘Honeymoon Drugs’. It braked behind the Mustang. A tanned surfer boy who may still have been in his late teens, with sun- or chemical-bleached, near-white hair, hopped out of the truck. He was wearing khaki shorts, flip-flops and a pale green T-shirt with the mortar and pestle logo on its front. Mace thought he may have seen the boy during his brief visit to the drug store.
The chauffeur said something that sounded like, ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ and the surfer boy shot him the finger. Then he opened the truck’s rear door, reached in and withdrew what appeared to be a heavy two-suiter. He struggled it to the rear door of the castle where he placed it on the bricks.
He pressed a door button and Mace could hear the resulting gong.
The rear door was opened by a big black guy who’d been with Monte at Abe’s coffeehouse. He took the suitcase from the surfer boy and carried it back into the house.
The surfer boy remained at the door until the black guy returned and tossed the suitcase to him. It floated like a feather.
The surfer boy, whistling now, got back into the white panel truck and left the way he’d come.
The good stuff had arrived. The party was on.
TWENTY-NINE
Paulie lived off Mulholland Drive in a treeless and consequently sun-baked, ranch-style house with pale, adobe plaster walls and a dark shake roof. There was a narrow lawn, freshly mowed but with yellow patches, in front of the house and a garden colored by white and pink hydrangeas. But for the most part that portion of the property was taken up by a vehicle gate and concrete slabs on which Paulie parked his Mercedes sedan and a Range Rover which, judging by a thick coating of dust, had fallen victim to the escalation in the price of gas.
Inside, the place reminded Mace of a bachelor pad, circa 1980. Or maybe earlier. Dark hardwood floor, heavy beamed ceiling. Casual, leather furniture. He had to smother a laugh when Paulie proudly showed him the living room with its giant Hi-Def, microthin TV screen and a goddamned bearskin rug in front of a massive fireplace.
Sliding glass doors led to what looked like a junior-size version of the lagoon at Jerry Monte’s. Mace wondered if they had come from the same pool company and, it being the movie capitol, if its designer had taken his cues from the old Tarzan flicks. This one included a fake-rock grotto and a black sand bottom that served, Paulie claimed, as an organic filter.
But with all those wonderful things, including a big, round bed in the master suite and a Wi-Fi set-up that allowed him to access the Internet from anywhere on the property, what really sold Paulie on the place was, ‘It’s just a block away from where Nicholson lives. And Brando used to live.’
‘It kinda reminds me of our digs at Manhattan Beach,’ Mace said.
Paulie’s face reddened. He was about to protest when he realized Mace was goofing. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘except the ceiling doesn’t leak, the toilets work and we don’t have hot and cold runnin’ hookers living next door. But, you know, those weren’t bad times.’
‘If you don’t mind having to bathe in the ocean in March,’ Mace said.
‘C’mon, you son of a bitch. We had a blast.’
Mace didn’t disagree.
It had been nearly twenty years ago. They’d met a couple of years before that in Italy, where he’d been sent by the Army; a new Warrant Officer assigned to Second Lieutenant Lacotta in the Quartermaster Corps. By then, Paulie had an arrangement going with the local representative of Mafia boss ‘Toto’ Riina. It consisted of a simple transfer of Army supplies – cigarettes and whiskey in the main – for cash.
At first, Paulie had been suspicious of the big, too-intelligent non-com. But those suspicions dissolved one drunken night when the normally taciturn Warrant Officer Mason had explained how his temper had gotten him tossed out of Louisiana State University in his sophomore year when he’d nearly killed a frat boy who had allegedly raped a young Baton Rouge girl of his acquaintance.
She later admitted that the sex had been consensual, but by then Mace’s formal education had been cut short. He’d escaped arrest only because the battered boy’s father, a state senator, had preferred to avoid the publicity of a trial.
Mace’s father, however, was not as willing to forgive and forget. He gave his son two options. He would arrange for young David to go to work with a cousin who trapped muskrat and nutria in the bayou, a hard, heading-nowhere job that paid just enough to live on. Or he could serve a stint in the Army, learn a little about life and then go back to college and make something of himself.
‘Your dad sounds like he’s got his head on straight,’ Lieutenant Lacotta had told him. ‘He saw you were a green kid who got fucked up trying to be a hero. He figured the Army would smarten you up. So are you ready for a life lesson that’ll put some coin in your khakis?’
He and Paulie amassed a comfortable amount over the next few years providing goods for the local black market. They were conservative, limiting their theft to products and quantities that were neither essential nor easily missed. They would have re-upped had Rome not dispatched seven thousand troops into Sicily to bust up the Mafia. Then the Carabinieri collared Riina, after nearly three decades of ignoring his fugitive status. Reform was definitely in the Italian air.
When members of the Christian Democratic Party began being accused of having Mafia connections, Paulie, suspecting that the scandal might eventually trickle down to his politician pals near the base in Pisa and Livorno, took his discharge before it turned dishonorable.
Four months later, as soon as his enlistment was up, Mace mustered out. Intrigued by Paulie’s tales of Hollywoodland, he eagerly accepted his service buddy’s offer of a place to crash in Manhattan Beach. His timing couldn’t have been better. Or worse, as it turned out. By then Lacotta had used family ties to secure a position as an executive with Mount Olympus Industries, a company that had been created primarily as a money laundering facility for the family back East.
Its president and Paulie’s uncle, Salvatore Montdrago, who’d graduated near the top of his class at the Stanford Business School, had not been satisfied with merely legalizing hot cash. He’d sought out ways of using it to turn a healthy profit and transformed the company into a nearly above-board major player in the California real estate boom. Then, using the company’s increasing wealth he expanded its goals and its assets by investing in various enterprises, from fast-food chains to mall construction.
He had immediately displayed a fondness for Paulie, whom he thought of not as a nephew but a younger brother, and Paulie had wisely played that part to the hilt, goi
ng to ‘Sal’ for advice on clothes and women and making sure the boss’s every request, business or personal, was met one hundred percent. With the company experiencing a growth spurt, Montdrago had promoted him from the junior executive ranks to a place at his right hand.
The promotion had not gone over well with the other two junior execs who’d been with Montdrago from the start. One, Rudy Bertoni, quit and began working for a record company, where he was eventually shot to death by a rapper in a contract dispute. The other, Tiny Daniels, decided to stay on for as long as it would take for him to be in a position to start his own operation modeled on everything he’d learned from Montdrago.
When Paulie convinced his uncle to hire Mace to replace Bertoni, Tiny had shown no animosity toward the new boy. He had become, in fact, a frequent guest at the elaborate parties Mace and Paulie had thrown at their Manhattan Beach place and, later, at the beach house they’d shared in Santa Monica.
Those had been heady days and nights. Beautiful women. Booze. Recreational drugs. The best of LA. The work had not been demanding. It had been, as Paulie noted, ‘a blast’.
And then Mace was arrested.
The original warrant had stemmed from his involvement in a dispute at a mixer bar-restaurant in Marina del Rey that Mount Olympus had just acquired. When Paulie pink-slipped the employees of the Tail Fin Inn, a laid-off doorman-bouncer went after him with a bar stool. Mace had stepped in and handled the situation, breaking the man’s jaw and leaving him in a concussed state.
The bouncer later claimed it had been an unprovoked attack and several other fired employees sided with him. Mace’s arrest for assault and battery caught the attention of a US Attorney named Fonseca who’d been trying to build a case against Mount Olympus and Montdrago. He threw in a few other crimes, the most notable being insider trading, something in which Mace had participated, though not nearly to the extent of either Paulie or his uncle. Fonseca used the crimes to build a racketeering case against Mace, one that carried a life imprisonment tag.
Fonseca had explained that he could, of course, go for a much lesser charge if Mace would assist in his investigation of Mount Olympus Industries.
That was when Tiny Daniels had shown his true colors. He pressed Montdrago to have Mace silenced. But Paulie still had his uncle’s ear and convinced him that his friend would not turn state’s evidence. Montdrago’s lawyer had no trouble getting the insider trading case dismissed, along with most of the other charges.
Fonseca’s racketeering case dissolved. But the assault charge made by the fired club bouncer suddenly was raised to attempted murder. Witnesses lied under oath. The judge admitted evidence concerning the earlier fight that had caused Mace’s expulsion from LSU. And he was on his way to Pelican Bay Prison for a term not to exceed ten years.
He was out in six because of good behavior. Even though he’d killed a man during his first week of incarceration. The man, a member in good standing of the Aryan Brotherhood, had been annoyed by Mace’s rejection of his philosophic and physical advances and had tried to rape him in the shower stalls.
Mace had banged the guy’s head against the tile until six other inmates were able to drag him away. By then the would-be rapist’s skull was cracked and his neck broken.
Mace thought the guards knew who’d killed the man, but they did nothing about it. Either they felt he was justified or Montdrago had paid them to ignore the whole thing. He knew definitely that Paulie’s uncle had arranged for his safety behind bars. Shortly after the death, when the deceased’s fellow brother–hood thugs confronted him, a half-dozen hard cases he didn’t know stepped in to inform the Brothers that Mace was ‘protected’.
For the next six years, no one bothered him. He kept to himself, eventually being assigned to the library, where he established a system of self-education that he thought, probably erroneously, to be the equivalent of earning a college degree. In any case, it, and the hours he spent in the weight room, kept him reasonably sane.
Upon his release, he went home to Louisiana and an ailing father.
Paulie had provided care for the old man, as he’d promised. Mace took over that responsibility until his father’s death. By then he’d sold off most of his family’s holdings along the bayou – primarily a cannery that had been built by his great-grandfather. Though the proceeds had not added up to a fortune, he’d had enough return on his investments to live in a modest sort of early retirement. Eventually, he’d grown tired of doing nothing, so he went to work a few days each week with his cousins, crabbing and fishing in the bayous.
That’s when Paulie called.
Paulie was standing in the doorway of the guest bedroom, watching Mace as he finished unpacking. ‘You chewing gum?’ he asked.
‘Isn’t that allowed here?’
‘Sure. I just . . . I don’t remember you ever . . .’
‘I found a pack in Wylie’s car,’ Mace said. ‘Thought it might help me cut down on the smokes. Tastes pretty good.’
‘Got any more?’
‘Yeah.’ Mace put his now empty bag in a closet and closed the door. He handed the black gum pack to Paulie as he exited the room.
They headed into the living room where two welterweight boxers were going at it on the big screen. The high definition caught the scars and scrapes and droplets of sweat and blood in almost three-dimensional clarity.
‘This does taste good,’ Paulie said, handing the gum pack back to Mace. ‘Not as good as a smoke, as I remember, but good.’
He saw Mace looking at the big screen, nestled in its huge cabinet. ‘Fifty-three inches,’ he said proudly.
Mace walked to the cabinet, reached up and grabbed the top of the screen. ‘Thin, too,’ he said. ‘I may have to get one of these for my place at Bayou Royal.’
‘Remind me,’ Paulie said. ‘I got a guy who’ll deliver it at fifty off. Swear to God, a full fifty.’
‘Good to have friends,’ Mace said.
‘Tell you what,’ Paulie said, ‘let’s go have dinner at Chow’s. Like an anniversary.’
‘Have to make it tomorrow,’ Mace said. ‘I’ve got something on tonight.’
‘Yeah? Do I know her?’
‘I’m working here, Paulie. Remember?’
‘Right. What’s your plan?’
‘As soon as I have one,’ Mace said, ‘I’ll let you know.’
THIRTY
I had been a slight untruth.
Mace did have a vague plan, which was why he was driving down Sunset that night at a little before eleven. He could probably have had dinner at Mr Chow’s with Paulie, but there would have been drinks and more drinks. Better that Paulie had made other arrangements, while he had settled for a couple of chili dogs at Pink’s.
He turned off Sunset and drove past the old brick building that housed the gun shop and Honeymoon Drugs. There was a light on inside the drug store even though a sign in its window said that it was closed.
Mace circled the block until he found the alley behind the drug store. The white panel truck was parked near the rear door. He stopped the Camry and turned off its headlights. The car beeped when he opened the door, so he killed the engine.
The beeping stopped.
He got out and walked to the barred window of the drug store’s rear door. He stared in at the surfer boy who was busily filling his suitcase with pills and powders. Interesting. Mace had decided that the truck would be his ticket to the party. He’d hoped to find it parked near the drug store where he could jack it and drive it into the Monte compound, pretending to have a delivery for the party.
This was even better. He’d actually have a delivery.
He moved the Camry to the street, nearly half a block away, in a slot where meter use ended at six p.m. Then he doubled back to the alley where he waited for the surfer boy.
It was a short wait. Maybe fifteen minutes.
The boy let himself out the back way. He bent to pick up the suitcase and Mace rabbit-punched him once behind the ear. He caught the boy b
efore he crashed and dragged him back inside the store where he lowered him to the tile floor.
He picked up the suitcase. It was as heavy as it had looked.
The party had been going for a while and a second phase of invited guests was arriving, causing a traffic jam along Cabrillo Canyon Road that was enough to piss off even the non-millionaires. Polished and gleaming vehicles – Mercedes, Range Rovers, Jeeps, Alfas, Jags – were lined up, bumper to bumper, for nearly a quarter of a mile, inching their way toward the main entry to the Jerry Monte estate.
There, the funseekers, who seemed to be very casually dressed, deserted their cars to be met by security guards, some with guest lists, others with metal detectors that they wielded with practiced, non-threatening dexterity.
The vehicles, meanwhile, were placed in the care of The Parkettes, a cadre of young woman in starched white shirts and black trousers, many of them starlet-wannabees, who drove them way up the canyon where roadside parking was still available.
A Parkette with a headset, stationed at the entrance to Cabrillo Canyon on Sunset, was instructing arriving guests to stay to the left of the road, allowing all other vehicles a small sliver of space to come and go. Mace drove the white-panel truck up that sliver. He had to pause only once to accommodate a descending car by partially entering an estate to the right of the road.
When he reached the main gate, he had to deal with Parkettes who were driving vehicles up the canyon to his left, aggressively refusing to let him turn into the estate’s service entrance. Finally, he matched their aggression and made his turn, causing a Parkette to test the on-a-dime braking facility of a new Porsche Carrera.
Mace sat with the truck’s front bumper about a foot from the closed gate and tried not to look at the tiny camera that he was sure was trained on his window.
‘Where Chas?’ an electronic voice asked.
‘He had to go home,’ Mace said. ‘Threw his shoulder out lifting the suitcase.’
